The bottom of the sea
Tom was pinned to the sea floor, staring into the gloom of pale green water, when his family started drifting past like surreal floats in an underwater parade. The first one to show was Faye, his father’s girlfriend, jammed into a one-piece bathing suit with a plunging neckline. It was the same suit she had worn on the Mexico trip and even in the murk he couldn’t stop staring at her cleavage, worried that something would pop out. Faye was bounteous, but untidy. She was a concern. He tried to speak, to get her attention, but his words came out as a giant bubble. Faye’s pale blue eyes were open and unseeing. Tom watched with increasing tension, staring into them, not noticing the pocket of air that contained his voice had winnowed its way to the surface. It was the same with all of them, his sister Veronica, his parents. They floated past one by one without purpose or reason, looking as they did in life. Except for their eyes. Unresponsive, flat and always open, their eyes were sightless. It was as if they were dead. Veronica, in her pajamas, wearing one of those high-necked flannel nightgowns their mother insisted on buying, clutched a leash with a stiffened hand. Tilly was on the other end of it, pulling in undeath as in life, stretching the girl’s arm past her head as she floated by on her back. From the look on his father’s face overhead – his eyebrows raised, mouth shaped like a giant O, as if he were in mid-shout – the man was surprised to find himself there with the rest of them. He was dressed for a pickup ball game, with catcher’s mitt and a ratty Phillies baseball jersey over a pair of running shorts and his legs, weighted down by over-technical sneakers, just missed brushing Tom’s face.
It was only once his father floated away, became a speck in the water, that his mother showed up. She was almost within touching distance, if Tom could have moved his arms. Her body slowly began to turn, the white terrycloth robe twisting around her legs and then spinning out again. With each turn the fabric fluttered and fanned in a slow motion dance. There was a beauty to it. For a second Tom thought he caught her eye, thought he saw a flash of recognition, but then she, too, was gone, carried away by the current.
He was emptied. Bereft. How could they leave him tied to the bottom of the sea where there was no air? But he was alive. The air just came. He became aware of the heaviness in his chest, how his lungs, thickened and clogged, would fill like balloons, suddenly buoyant. His chest would start to expand and his body, reborn, light, would pull against its tethers, and then his lungs would empty again. He would wait for the next breath to push into him, to refill his body with lightness.
An eleven-year-old boy lies on a hospital bed, his body a pale thread under bleached sheets. A cap of greasy blonde hair clings to his forehead and underneath his sallow skin blue veins trace a map of the body. Sleep glues his eyes shut. White Velcro ties bind his wrists to the bed frame and his arms are so thin that the elbows jut out like smooth, rounded stones. Two lines run from a plastic port in his hand to an IV stand. A tube snakes from his mouth to a ventilator sitting to the left of the bed. The night nurse re-taped it a few hours ago, inadvertently placed the tube at a rakish (though more comfortable) angle, so that Tom looks as if he should be holding a candy cigarette between his teeth instead of a ventilator line. For the moment, his lungs are receptacles. They expand and contract at the ventilator’s bequest. Intake and outtake, the machine does the work with quiet hums and hisses. His breath is external. Electric.
The room is dark. His mother sleeps in a slate blue reclining chair by the window, mouth slightly open, head slumped against her shoulder. A copy of the New Yorker lies open on her lap. In this light the circles under her eyes look like shadows and her unwashed hair has the tousle of sleep. Because she keeps forgetting to brush, her teeth are mossy and her breath sour. When the respiratory therapist, a large square man named Joseph, walks into the room, she doesn’t stir, having become accustomed to the strange cadence of hospitals, where day and night are delineated by the migratory patterns of doctors and residents, the dominant physician leading his or her flock with authority during business hours. The way they trample! At night, residents travel alone or in whispering pairs, quiet in soft-soled shoes, not wanting to bring attention to their drawn faces and wrung-dry minds.
Joseph visits twice on his shift to check on Tom’s numbers and clean the vent line. He pulls a pair of gloves from the box by the door, struggling to get them on. Underneath the latex, his pale hands shimmer with a thin layer of sweat. He smells of cooking grease and baby powder. Tom’s vent tube is gummed up; he has pneumonia and the thick secretions interfere with his breathing. As the man bends over him and attaches the vacuum line to the vent tube, his body exudes heat. Tom feels the warmth of breath, of Joseph’s proximity, followed by the industrial pull of the vacuum. It sucks away thick clots of mucus. Every ten seconds or so Joseph dips the tube into a glass of clean water. The water rushes with the joy of movement, of life.
With each suction Tom’s lungs sag. They deflate, go limp, until they spasm in protest. He begins to cough. The coughs are productive and Joseph continues with his careful cleaning, until, satisfied, he leaves the room, nodding politely to the bleary-eyed mother who has just woken up. Exhausted, scraped clean, Tom falls into a deeper sleep while his mother adjusts his blankets and smoothes her hand over his forehead. She is grateful to feel his skin under hers, is even relieved by the warmth of a fever. Tom is still here and fighting.
The bottom of the sea is murky. Out of the green, a small shape moves toward him. It travels in a nimbus of light made blurry with disturbed silt. The slow movement is hypnotic and Tom is filled with a sense of calm. As the form emerges, he recognizes the fine long hair of his maternal grandmother, white as bone, a flash of brightness in the deep. The mud and sand, the irregularities in the sea floor slow her down. She catches his eye and waves. Tom feels warm, well-fed, almost satiated. Gram will catch up with him. Everything will be ok.
But someone is tugging on his elbow. His mother has returned with purpose and animation. Tom looks into her eyes, her face a series of hollows, furrowed brow over darkened eyes. Her dark hair floats around her head in crazy corkscrews. We love you. Stay here with us, she demands. Gram waves again, smiling, encircled by jaunty bubbles. There is no hurry. When it is all over, the end will only matter to the people left behind. He has infinity stretched out before him. His suffering will eventually be a memory and such memories are stored in the body, destined to rot.
Give the living a little more time.
Image: "Murky Water" by -Ebil-Bils.