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.
