part of a longer piece . . .
IF, THEN
only then
Isaac relaxed his grip on the strong arm that held him firmly against the wall. The faint beeping of a disconnected line whispered from somewhere across the room.
Isaac closed his eyes. He considered prayer. But who wouldn’t, he argued against the urge.
He would die an atheist. He had promised his mother this. He had meant it.
“Aren’t you the least bit afraid?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“You know what I mean.”
And she was right. He was. Yet, what he feared was not dying, but living with disfigurement. And if he survived this . . .
He shuddered.
The blow never came.
Isaac opened his eyes. Two of the other men had grabbed the bottle, which had been held above Isaac’s head just moments before, and were wrestling to free his throat from the grip that was suffocating him slowly.
The police would be here soon he thought. He stared boldly into the eyes of the man who held him by the throat and waited patiently for the chance to breathe again.
then
Light fell across the afternoon. Autumn. Late September. Isaac drifted across the earth like a shadow, always the faint impression of things. Himself included. Even then.
Des Moines. Iowa. Land of Opportunity. It could have been worse.
The land unfolded before him to let him pass then folded back up behind him.
He had put most of all he owned—except for his trophies, which he kept boxed in the basement of his mother’s home—into the U-Haul himself. He had some help. His housemates made no real concerted effort. They stood around or carried small objects like lamps, a footstool, or framed art. They mostly drank beer.
Sarah was waiting for him at the house when he arrived with the truck. She was sitting alone on the front steps smoking a cigarette she had flirted for from a neighbor, who stuck around too long afterward until it was clear she really had only wanted the smoke, and nothing else. He was gone when Isaac pulled up. And, had he been there still, it would have felt as if he had never been there at all.
if
“You’ll come back to me, right?” Sarah asked, pulling her tee shirt back on, the sweat on her body bleeding into the fabric.
“Of course,” Isaac answered, stepping into his shorts, pausing just before he zipped. “Of course I will.”
There was something in his voice he couldn’t hide. There was something in his voice she never noticed. And, just like that, nothing had changed.
then
Isaac was a few hours behind. He thought back to the moments before he left, the tenderness in everything he closed the door on, the way it sounded from inside the cab of the truck, the feel of Sarah’s hair brushing his arm as he pulled away from her and how he still felt it there. He rubbed it away. He had no need for it now.
There was nothing about the conditions of the trip that would allow him to make up the time. Alex would just have to wait.
Isaac flicked the speedometer with his finger. He pushed on the accelerator, which was already pressed to the floor.
He cursed the traffic passing on his left.
only then
Isaac had had the presence of mind to call the police. The phone never reached his ear. The force of the man’s swinging hand knocked the phone over the couch into nothingness just moments after Isaac’s thumb had pressed the last 1. He paused then, unable to recall if the final tone had sounded.
He watched the phone arc over the couch just under the ceiling fan and out of view. He was still looking after the phone when the hand straddled his throat and pressed him up against the wall.
The kitchen was still filled with angry voices. Each slipped over the other like young seals, like larva, like waves.
Isaac had let them in. They were friends of Alex’s. The moment he pushed on the latch, one of the two friends grabbed the handle and yanked the door open as three more men raced to the porch from the dark. They moved like fire. The heat held him pasted against the door.
How quickly that fire spread.
then
“Why don’t you come out here,” Alex pleaded. “Like old times . . .”
Isaac closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He listened to Alex inhale on the other end of the line. It would have been easier to say no if he had a reason.
“Sure,” Isaac said, drifting alone in this small corner. He looked out his window into the street below where the neighbor kids were playing. They moved without thinking. They just moved. Somewhere just beyond the row of houses on the other side of the street, nothing at all happened. It was happening just like this, too. Just happening.
if
“It’s only for a year?” Sarah asked, brushing Isaac’s hand against her face.
“Yes,” he thought. Only a year, he nodded.
Her face felt distant. He imagined how it might feel if he felt right here. For a moment then, he missed never being “here” before.
Together, they drifted apart.
then
The sun was low on the horizon. Cars blistered the road with headlights. Isaac drove into the coming darkness. “Anonymous,” he said out loud.
The sky was orange. The clouds blued like bruises. He missed Sarah. At least, that’s what he thought he missed. The feeling of regret was still with him, the way it had been his whole life. Even in love he regretted. Love, like everything organic, decomposed too. Or, at least our allegiance to it did. At least, his did.
He had owned several pets. He had let them all die. It was only after his mother realized he cared nothing of the deaths that she questioned his motives for wanting another. He seemed determined. Not for the pet, but for the experience. It was the way he said it. He didn’t ask, he demanded that “It was time to try a cat,” the mud still clinging to the knees of his pants from the bird he just buried.
She told the pet store not to sell another animal to her son, handing them a picture just to be sure no “future mistakes were made.”
The young woman who met with him the very next day, looked down on Isaac from behind the counter with a motherly, affected smile as she tried to explain why she could not sell him the kitty with the “perfect purr.”
“It could die,” she said, aware that he was aware. She could think of nothing else to say, then asked him to leave. He stood in the window until the store closed, his head pressed against the glass, his hands winged out beside his head like giant ears to block out his own reflection, to block out the reflection of all that lived behind him.
The young woman pretended he wasn’t there, and carried out the tasks of her job with her back to the window or by gazing just over Isaac’s head, his breath steaming the glass with perpetuity.
The young woman called in sick the next day.
That night, she cried herself to sleep. She cried upon waking. She cried silently until the boundary between sadness and happiness was no longer clear and sadness filled everything she touched, even the ground beneath her feet, which swelled with dew wherever she stood.
It was near dark when he arrived. Only mists of light remained in the air. There was no one there to greet him. A note, which had been scribbled hastily on a piece of paper torn unevenly across the middle, was taped to the door.
“Back in 5” was all it said. Isaac pulled the paper from the door and looked back at the truck, back down the hill, back down the road to the highway to the endless summers he felt falling away.
Slowly, the day fell away too. Night fit the earth so perfectly it was hard to believe the light would come again.
