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.
