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Sitting on the porch’s top step, Brendan swallowed a sip of beer and set down the half-filled Pilsner glass. Tonight was the night; he could no longer avoid telling his wife. Along the horizon the silhouettes of the Adirondacks billowed, trees brushing the sky – green swells reaching for the twilight-chased sun and hinting of neon to come. A creak and swoosh snatched him from his reverie. Caitlyn leaned halfway out the screen door. A petite woman, much trimmer than most mothers of two, whenever she and Brendan strolled together in town, distant onlookers often mistook her for a teenaged daughter.
She stepped onto the porch. “Uh, huh. How'd I know you'd be here? I called you a dozen times.”
Nothing gained arguing the point, Brendan picked up the glass. “Sorry about that. I guess I just didn't hear.” He straightened from the step, joined her, and kissed her cheek, next to the crease of her nose, her favorite spot.
“I'm not complaining, hon,” she said, “only asking for some help. Lately – look, it's nice having you home for dinner, having you home at all before the kids are tucked away for bed.”
They hugged. “The sunset’ll be gorgeous tonight,” he said. “How about we catch it later, listen to the crickets, watch the stars come out. Okay? Can't wait too long, or we'll miss the best part.”
“Fine, but we have to get through dinner first. Please give me a hand, so –.” Brendan raised his hands, the beer glass included, but his poker face failed him. “And don't you dare clap.” Caitlyn's mock glare hid her grin. “Not if you want a warm meal.”
All innocence, he thrust the free hand into a pocket and glanced about the porch, his tuneless whistle filling the air.
“Good boy. Now, please. Please listen. Go round up the kids. Okay? I've been calling them, too. No response.” She glanced at the porch's ceiling as if pleading for the gift of patience from the wooden planks, then ducked back into the house; the spring slammed the screen door shut behind her.
He gulped the last of his beer and followed. Molly, the younger, was easy to fetch. A second grader, she brought her latest drawing into the kitchen. Caitlyn paused from dinner preparation to tape the artwork to the side of the refrigerator. Other masterpieces overlapped one another, a rainbow dazzle of paper shingles affixed from top to bottom. Corralling Brendan Jr. proved more of a challenge. Brendan Sr. glared at his son who still needed to wipe out 500 more brain-munching zombies to reach Level Four. The threat of unplugging the game console convinced Junior the zombies could wait. His son was at the cusp of teen-hood; Angst had already moved in, open for business. Its countrymen, Sturm and Drang, awaited employment immediately around the corner.
The family settled in around the circular kitchen table and held hands to say grace, a habit Caitlyn introduced after their son's birth, along with attendance at weekly Mass. Brendan found it surprising that a year after their move, she remained uninvolved with the local Church's clubs and functions. In the city, she was the main go-to parishioner to organize events or solve associated problems.
Their heads bowed, the Staceys prayed as one, “Bless us, oh Lord, for these Your gifts, which we are about to receive from Your bountiful hands, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Brendan added in silence, “And if You have time, Lord, please, keep Cat calm after I break the news.”
Momentarily dumbfounded, Caitlyn gaped at him. Window curtains billowed behind her; wings of sheer white brushed against her bare shoulder and side. She was nude, in mid-change for bed, her cotton tee-shirt laid on the chenille bedspread next to a pair of panties. He returned her stare, grateful for their bedroom's second floor location; the children's rooms were on the third story of the old Victorian. Molly would be asleep. In all likelihood his son, headphones on head, still secretly battled creatures of the netherworld.
A king-size bed separated Brendan and his wife. He was fully dressed and next to the tall bureau drawers. She studied him in disbelief, hands clasped near her collar bone. Her mouth opened, no sound emerged. She blinked several times before words found an escape route. “California. California, and you said – you said 'yes,' Dear God above – California? Without discussing it with me, you said 'yes.' These last few weeks, not a word about it, not a hint from you, not – “
“Cat, the CEO flew in at the last minute. You know what a macho bastard he is – I had no idea. No warning – none. I was their second choice. Robins bailed out, had another offer. They wanted an answer, right then and there. I...”
She shook her head “no,” her gaze drifting off into the distance, his words sailing past her. Brendan's sense of caution wrestled with his heart – to stay bolted in place or to approach and, if possible, soothe her distress.
Her thousand-yard stare vanished. “Can't you…” She abandoned the thought, sat on the edge of the bed, her hands cupped over her eyes. She inhaled and exhaled to calm herself.
Brendan sensed an opportunity. He unfroze, went to her side, and knelt on one knee. She tightened her arms against his caresses, flattening and squeezing her breasts together like a boxer protecting herself against an opponent’s blows. Her chin rested atop her hands, the fist of one clenched within the palm of the other. She refused to meet his eyes. “Babe, listen, please listen. The VP position – it's, it's a godsend. We’ll place the kids in the best schools. We'll hire all the help you need. We'll travel, we'll...”
The pace of her breathing grew more rapid. She scowled at him. “Don't!” Brendan's hand stopped in mid-caress, began a cautious retreat. “Don't try to placate me, don't...” A puzzled expression replaced her scowl. “Why can't you see? Just for once, please, open your eyes.”
He stood to scrutinize her from a better defensive position. His gut tightened in anticipation, though he really didn’t know what to expect. She glanced upward. “I don't need a hired anything. The kids don't need the best schools. Where we lived, the city schools, they were just fine, better than here. I...” The pro-city argument, familiar territory to Brendan. He backed away, his veiled gaze drifting to the far corner of the room. She bounded from the bed and grasped his hands.
His voice edged toward a shout. “Look, I don't need this.” He would not meet her eyes. “I don't. You know damn well the kind of job stresses I – hell, with all the shit in the city, my blood pressure was through the roof. I didn't need any more, not then, not now – not ever. Moving out here was the best decision we ever made. Why can't you see that? Why can't you?”
Caitlyn’s body tensed. “We?” She released his hands, twisted away, returning to the bed to grab her garments. She yanked the tee-shirt over her head, pulled on the panties. “So, you think the city was shit, huh? Shit? Oh, oh, yes, I know all about shit.”
A distant headache marched steadily in Brendan's direction; the last thing he needed or wanted. He closed his eyes. Her words rolled past him, boxcars coupled in an unending line, non-stop. Riders unwelcome. “I deal with lots of shit, lots of it, when I'm left...” Shaking her head, she looked toward the ceiling. Tears of anger glazed her eyes. “I'm left here, alone, my family over a hundred miles away, in the city. They can't just pop over to help when I need them. There, they were still a real part of my life, an active part – every week, every single week, I saw them. And you, you're gone, what? Two weeks a month, now, if I'm lucky, if the kids are lucky. You don't think they notice, that they don’t care, that they don’t want you here?”
His wife's cross-examination was only just begun. Brendan's jaw clenched. The urge to flee clawed at him, anything to avoid venturing into the places she wanted to explore, the places he dreaded. If he fled, she would not follow him outside, not in her bed clothes – the reason he had remained dressed.
“They'll be grown up and gone,” said Caitlyn, “sooner than you imagine. Do you really, really think a VP's job will give you more time with me, with them? That some move to California will bring me closer to my family in the city? Bring us all closer together? Do you?” Caitlyn examined his blank expression. “Don't you disappear on me, just answer me, that's all I ask. Damn it! Say something. Anything. Look at me. Oh, damn it. Damn it!”
He raised his shield, his standard reply, his non-answer to fend her off. “Everything, every sacrifice I've made in this job, everything's been for you, for the kids, for our family. I don't need this, I really don't, I..." Throughout the argument, Brendan had edged closer and closer to the bedroom door. Now in mid-reply, he opened it, and, before his wife could interrupt or react, he fled. Better judgment and his concern for the children prevailed over his anger, stopping him from slamming the solid oak door. Caitlyn's tears carried through the heavy panels. Her sobbing pursued him along the hallway, down the staircase, and out the front door to follow him into the car.
He still heard her tears from a mile distant, heard them while he drove in random patterns throughout the farmland and hills beyond the town. But no amount of distance brought him solace or relief, brought true escape. Tired and resigned, his passion spent, he u-turned on a moonlit country road and returned to his wife, his home, and children. Turning onto his driveway, he cut the headlights and the engine and coasted to a stop. The lock whispered as he closed the car door. The windows of the master bedroom were dark, their curtains drawn back, allowing the night breeze easier access, a hopeful sign Caitlyn slept.
Brendan’s spirits lightened at the sound of the crickets in full chorus. Unwilling to face his wife possibly awake, he headed through the house, sat on the rear porch, and lost himself in the insects' chirping hail to the moon. All the trials of his life faded like embers at the day's end he and Caitlyn earlier enjoyed. But the headache which he thought had marched off returned full force, high jacked his tranquil interlude. His neglected blood pressure medication was of little help in the master bathroom. Desperate, he searched the kitchen and swallowed three aspirin from the bottle he discovered.
Creaks followed his every step up the old staircase and along the floor boards in the hallway. He paused in front of the closed bedroom door and strained to listen. Nothing, no sound of breathing or agitated movement. He turned the knob and entered. A moonbeam streamed through the room's window. The gossamer light bathed Caitlyn's body, transformed her into a ghostly Sidhe of Celtic legend, a fully awake Sidhe who sat with knees tucked against her breasts, back pressed to the headboard of their bed.
“Are you listening, damn it?” asked Caitlyn. “Are you?”
Curled half a bed away and half asleep, Brendan eluded his wife. Her words, roadblocks intended to hinder his sleep, spiraled, indistinct and meaningless down the corridors of his mind and shape-shifted into the spaces reserved for the making of dreams. His arm dangled mid-air beyond the mattress, one leg half-draped down its side. A swell of vertigo lightly roused him, carried him up, down, and then passed beneath to expend itself toward some distant, unconscious shoreline.
Caitlyn grew more insistent. “Will you answer me? God, I'm tired of this, I'm so damned tired.”
Past experience taught him her distress would not soon diminish. His mumbled response slipped across the boundary of Brendan's awareness and scrambled over the heap of her words pinning him to the bed. He longed to convince Caitlyn he was awake. Useless. Whatever his response, the deluge of her words would continue to cascade over him. He clung to a boulder in the mid-stream of their quarrel and, like a spent swimmer, attempted to outlast the flood rather than resist.
Allies aided his struggle as they had on the porch. The song of the crickets in the surrounding fields flowed through the open bedroom window; his wife's words melded into their music. The chorus embraced and guided him, freed him to drift across the threshold of sleep.
In his dream, he sat on the porch. Though the insects sang and the moon floated above the distant hills, something was wrong. An imperfection, a slow, steady cadence, pump-like, played counter to the chirping and rippled across the otherwise smooth surface of his dream. Another wave of vertigo, the strongest yet, shook him. Whoa, dear God! I rolled off the bed. Adrenalin surged; his limbs flailed outward. He braced himself for the worst. The worst never came; not what he anticipated. Brendan never hit the floor; he floated flat on his back in mid-air.
His mind floundered, overwhelmed at the impossibility. He refused to concede to his senses; surrender meant madness. Or worse. Reality blurred, incomprehensible, leapt past him, leapt far beyond his experiences, beyond any logic. Chaos swallowed him whole, Jonah-deep within the belly of the beast. He shut down to cope and regroup the remnants of his sanity.
Some interval passed, incessant, immeasurable, before the darkness unblurred, lightened. Bit by bit, the numbness faded. His surroundings returned; reality refocused, and the wall of his denial crumbled, one brick at a time. He still floated in mid-air, his back toward the floor, but the darkened bedroom no longer hindered his view.
Caitlyn's voice re-emerged. “Your damned career.” She stifled a yawn. “That's all you think of; our marriage won't survive, can't. Can't, too much. I'm exhausted, just too much of...”
He stared over his shoulder at his wife, her knees tucked beneath the tee-shirt. The sight of her entranced him, despite the streaks of evaporated tears and the half-moon swellings beneath her eyes. Too many months had passed since her unhappiness trumped the tone and intention of her words. Her voice stumbled, faded; she lay on her side, drifted off to sleep.
He attempted a roll in mid-air. No amount of twisting, tucking, or flailing gained him any purchase or changed his position near the ceiling. “Cat! Caitlyn! Hey, Cat, do you hear me? I'm up here. Look up here. Come on, babe – please. Please, look up!”
Once asleep, Caitlyn's sadness took form. Tendril-like wisps rose in slow swirls through her dark, short cropped hair, from her back, shoulders, and legs. The strands flattened at the ceiling and merged into eddies, pushed along by unseen currents. Brendan drifted along with them but panicked when he realized their destination, an open window; its screen proved no barrier to the wisps. The room emptied of all the sadness, along with Brendan, who passed feet first through the screen. Before his head slipped through the mesh, he glanced back at his wife. The wisps no longer rose from her body.
Outside, he rose with the tendrils to the height of the treetops in the front yard. Stronger air currents scattered the swirls beyond the highest leaves. To his relief, he proved much less ephemeral, though his continued upward journey dismayed him. He groped without success at the branches just out of reach beneath him.
The universe expanded infinitely, unperturbed and indifferent to his circumstances. A three-quarter moon orbited at near zenith. The reflected light from its surface bathed the Earth below, and a myriad of stars glimmered down at him.
Somewhere a switch flipped, and the beacons in the heavens abruptly winked out of existence. Black descended. Other than with touch, the hand Brendan held in front of his eyes was undetectable. The whispers of his pulse in his ear, the rush of air through his lungs, and the faint beating of his heart became his reality. He counted thousands of heartbeats, prayed for a resolution, and waited, and waited as the breath of eternity flowed inward, outward, and dissolved the boundaries between moments. Brendan slipped into some inner place where space, time, and self no longer intruded.
Like a pebble dropped in a pond, a wave rippled through the void, a pattern coalesced. He awoke, recognized sound; the sensual familiarity warmed his soul stoked his self-awareness. Memories returned – Caitlyn's whispered words of love, his children’s laughter. Relieved, he smiled and strained to absorb more of the resonance, the beat, mechanical and rhythmic. A pump. His relief chilled. Something else accompanied the cadence. He stretched his senses. Someone, a woman, wept; voices spoke. His heart raced. My God, please – God, please, help them find me!
“Will he...” Caitlyn drew a deep breath. “You're certain, completely certain, that my husband, that – he's no longer there, inside...”
“Please,” said the doctor, “believe me, I…”
The sound of a ventilator wove under and over the threads of their conversation. The labor of the pump and its fellow machines, an orchestra of mindless musicians, sustained Brendan's physical existence with a symphony of beeps and chirps, clicks and wheezes. The bed supporting Brendan's body separated Caitlyn and the physician. “Every diagnostic instrument we have at our disposal indicates brain death. If I thought there was the slightest possibility, the slightest…”
Caitlyn pounced. “Indicates? You don't sound certain.”
“Mrs. Stacey, your husband's no longer here. His body may be, but he's gone, the damage from the stroke was just too massive. The – his body can no longer sustain itself, not independently, not without all this.” He waved at the machines and played his ace. “There's a living will, I believe. Mr. Stacey wanted…”
"Yes, yes, he didn’t want extraordinary measures if…”
The doctor pressed his advantage. “If brain death was indicated…” He winced. "I mean determined – if brain death was determined. Mrs. Stacey, the machines can't lie. What they have – determined – is brain death. When someone descends into this state, nothing can reverse the outcome. Your husband is…”
“Yes! Fine, I understand. My husband is effectively dead. You've made that point over the last few weeks. Several times. I know it's what Brendan wanted, I know. We…” She paused to gather strength.
“If you'd like…” said the doctor.
“Please, let me finish. I need to finish. I just needed to be certain, absolutely certain all hope was gone, and – " She struggled to complete the sentence. “And it is.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper, “It is. I understand. I do. You can turn off the machines. Brendan's gone. He's…” She turned away from the bed and walked to the room's only window. Her sobbing lasted a minute before she regained enough composure to return to Brendan's bedside. The doctor began disconnecting the machines.
Brendan shouted for Caitlyn's attention, his shouts unable to mask the moment when the final note of the mechanical symphony ceased. He gasped for breath; an obstruction blocked his throat. Panic gripped him; the fist of his right hand tightened, held something, someone not himself, another hand in his. Light burst through the void engulfing him, the brilliance as unintelligible as the previous darkness. Tears filled his eyes, blurred his vision. Unable to speak, he squeezed the hand again. His squeeze was returned.
Caitlyn stroked the side of his face. “Brendan? Is that – are – Brendan?”
He hoped she would never stop speaking to him again. Her fingers brushed the tears from the corners of his eyes. He marshaled every ounce of strength to squeeze his wife's hand again.
Caitlyn called to the doctor and to his nurse assistant. “Oh, dear God, my God. Brendan? Doctor! Do you see – he's awake. He's…”
A sensation of falling gripped Brendan. A brief dizziness, not the rush of chaos which had clouded his mind eons ago. His vision cleared. He gazed down at the occupants of the room. The furnishings, everything within it was transformed, the images much more distinct, as if an obscuring veil was removed. The living beings brightened his senses – the flowers on the nightstand, the spider hidden in the corner spinning a snare. He peered into their forms, past the colors and textures, observed the life behind the life.
His body lay unmoving. Unlike the others in the room, it appeared normal, dull; dreariness spread slowly across it. The sight surprised him, saddened him. An old friend was passing. He watched the doctor press a stethoscope against its chest and then speak to the nurse next to a machine, at rest after weeks of non-stop effort. Satisfied, the young man placed a flexible tube onto the bed and jogged off.
Caitlyn remained apart from them, her hands clasped like a child in prayer, the fingertips of the steeple pressed against both her lips. A tear journeyed down her cheek, clung above the corner of her mouth. Brendan swept down, brushed the jewel. She stared through him, her eyes never wavering from the fact of his body. She caressed the place he touched in life. At her favorite spot, where her nose and right cheek blended, just beneath Caitlyn's eye, Brendan kissed her goodbye and was gone.
R. A. Keenan survived the Age of Aquarius despite his best efforts to the contrary. If not writing, teaching, or enjoying the companionship of his wife, his inspiration and still a bride in his eyes, he is often seen hiking the forest-covered hills of the Hudson River Valley.
Look for him, as well, tucked away in a favorite pub, sharing tall tales with friends, holding a well-brewed pint in his one hand, darts in the other. Someone has to show the pups how the workingman's game is played. His own pups, a son and a daughter, are grown and trotted off to seek their fortunes. They still drop by once in a while or call the old boy to share their adventures. As his readers soon discover, family and friendship are everything to him.
He has published a dozen stories, three in anthologies. Contact him at: bobkee47@gmail.com
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