Dad struggled through the water to get to her, his grief leaning back behind a smile to say,
“You know, my love, the funniest thing happened on the way to the cemetery…”
26
Must I thus leave you Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades?
IT WAS THE last day of summer and only nineteen days since we’d buried Grand. Nineteen days of Dad in T-shirts and pajama pants, of him growing the most beard of his life and of him sitting there in coffined silence. Nineteen days of Mom in a robotic restlessness that saw our house the cleanest it ever was. Nineteen days of Fedelia asking what we wanted to eat, and nineteen days of our not caring and of her making meals of her own decision. Above all else, it was nineteen days of pure, corroding pain.
The florist was always at our door, delivering the latest batch of sympathy and house plant. Even Elohim sent a lily condolence. I don’t think it was coincidence it arrived that very morning as I was sitting on the sofa with Sal by the open windows.
Dad was resting in his chair, the strands of his hair like a pile of broken branches. In his mess, in his ruin, in his unkempt chaos, he was more wilderness than the one outside. The groomed father I once had was now like a stain in his almost savage neglect of hygiene. For all the showers and baths he did not take, it was confusing why he wore his bathrobe, slung open though adding bulk to his going frame.
Mom was up and straightening an already straight lampshade. Her apron was like Dad’s bathrobe, something worn but not with purpose. Mom hadn’t cooked since Grand. Cleaning, sorting, emptying — those were the things she did. It was Fedelia who was in the kitchen cooking meals we wouldn’t have the appetite to eat.
As for me and Sal, we were in and out of grief, in and out of quiet talk that made short stretches of the impossible possible. As a whole, we were just a family, just the Blisses trying to get back to it, knowing we never would.
With it soon to be October, the heat had still to break. Some wondered if winter would be skipped altogether. We feared a one-season life, where the fan is always on and the heat boils us in our beds. There are winter dreams to be had when summer makes too good of its time.
“The ice cream will be delivered today,” Sal spoke just above a whisper. “Juniper’s called here. Said the truck is on its way. They thought I’d like to know because of how I used to call and ask.”
He stared out the open window before him. His frown like a red land. A place you can imagine screams echo so well in.
“Funny it took a whole summer to get ice cream to a town in a heat wave.” He turned from the window to me and we looked at each other.
Mom on her hands and knees, dusting the already dusted bottom shelves. Dad sitting so still, staring up at the ceiling as if he’d heard someone walking just overhead in Grand’s room. Fedelia clanking a pot against another in the kitchen. Amidst all of this and more, me and Sal looked at each other and knew we’d never eat ice cream again.
“Do you hear that?” Dad slightly raised in his chair but did not get up. “I think I hear someone, up there walking.” He pointed toward the ceiling and Grand’s room above. “I should check, don’t you think?”
He asked no one in particular, still Mom was the one to answer as she stood up from her hands and knees, the duster something she used to tap the top of Dad’s head with as she passed and said, “It’s no one, dear. Just relax back now.”
And so he did as she said later she would polish the silver, but first there were the curtains to wash, never mind she washed them just the day before. She climbed the ladder and took them back down, piling them in the middle of the room while she diverted to some other cleaning task. Meanwhile, I reached over to the coffee table and picked up my chemistry book, trying to finish my homework.
School had begun a few weeks back. I was starting the eighth grade. My old friends, who weren’t my friends anymore. Flint and the whole gang, who still had their happiness like the whole world laughing. I found myself reaching toward them the way Sal had when they ran past him that first day. They ran by me too, as if I should know better than to think I could ever have youth that way again.
I did have my old locker. Same combination. Who would’ve thought a combination could make me so happy? But I liked having the same. It was from that old life, and sometimes I thought I could just spin the lock back to it. I could open the locker and find the old Fielding, a summer younger. I could open it to Grand. There he’d be, squeezed inside, and I could just pull him out. Dresden too. Just keep pulling out all the things lost.
Sal took a test to determine what grade level he would function at. According to his score, he’d be in high school already. Apparently, he was some sort of genius. Mom said it wasn’t a good idea for him to go to school yet with others. I guess she thought it would be a mad, glistening violence. Bullies and beasts lining up and all that. So a tutor came in and taught him in one of the spare rooms, which Mom eagerly cleaned out for a desk.
When I look back, I now know Grand’s death was the final vibration for Elohim and his group. The final fusing of them into a single sword pointed at Sal.
I can imagine Elohim at his meeting, saying Grand’s name.
Just a boy, a young god of Breathed who would’ve made us all proud. But he’s dead now. And all because of that devil. How many more gods will we allow the devil to kill?
We Blisses were too busy grieving to see the sword on its way to Sal. We couldn’t see beyond the dirt we felt buried under. I hadn’t even seen Elohim since passing him on the way to Grand’s funeral. I walked by him, sure. I passed his house when he was out on the porch eating his vegetables, but I didn’t see him. I had too many ghosts in my eyes. We all did.
I laid down the chemistry book and my homework.
“I wish it would snow.” I reached behind the sofa and laid my arm across the hot windowsill, my fingers dangling to the brick outside. Mom had taken the screens down to clean and the windows were left open to air out the house.
I looked up at the sky. It was like the fur of a coyote, tan in all the places it wasn’t gray. A bolt of lightning came in a slender flash. The thunder slipped in a low grumbling hello. In its wild self, it was finally going to rain.
“There’s something—” Sal cleared his throat “—there’s something I have to tell you all. About me.”
I brought my eyes down from the sky and saw Elohim’s face staring back at me. How canine his features looked. How his mouth seemed to foam. Just another rabid dog at the window.
“I’m sorry, Fielding.”
Elohim looked as though he might have meant it as he reached through the window and grabbed Sal. Dad quite possibly made a leap from the chair to the sofa. Mom quite possibly flew from the lampshade. I know Fedelia ran in from the kitchen, joining Mom and Dad, who each had a foot of Sal’s.
Elohim would not let go. For all his life, he would not let go of Sal, of Helen, of her lover. He held tight to all these things and that’s when the others appeared. They’d been so quiet, not your usual loud mob. Their silence was worst, stealing away our right to shut the windows and bolt the door. We didn’t even have time to scream. It was a silent struggle on both ends. Joining the battle, I wrapped my arms around Sal’s legs, pulling back with Mom, Dad, and Fedelia.