RECEPTION

(excerpts)

We’re in an elevator. I know my time to visit with him is only the length of the elevator journey. It doesn’t matter if we’re going up or down, just that it’s extremely limited. The elevator has mirrors on the walls and the closed doors are shiny and reflective, too. The reflections of the reflections of the reflections reach out in all directions. Forever. A finely tailored shatter. We look so young. Both of us with shaved heads, both in denim jackets. I can see so many angles of my head and shoulders, three inches above his head and shoulders. I move my eyes without moving my head. I want to see what it is like to look at me but not to be me. My heart stills with the familiarity of standing so close but not touching. I experience the satisfying symmetry of looking in the same direction with someone. I watch our time slide away with the illumination of circles, one, then the next, then the next. I’m soothed by the intimacy and capture of this small space. It feels like he might give me advice or encouragement, but he just stands next to me as if that’s plenty. And it is. And the doors open. 

I awake slowly like crawling out of a burrow after hibernation. It’s dark and I have no idea of the hour - late night or early morning. I claw at my phone for the time. On one of the  nights following his death I changed the wallpaper on my phone to pull images from a folder called “James eating things.” It changes every hour. On my lock screen it is James eating a Costco hot dog with too much mustard. I don’t even see the time before clicking the screen off and putting it back on the nightstand. 

I get up from the bed, get dressed, use the toilet. I wash my hands with fragrant soap in an old sink. I look up at the cracked plaster ceiling. I feel relieved. I look at my phone again. I notice the time this time. Just past the hour and the wallpaper background changed to James eating a soft-serve ice cream on a sugar cone, eyes closed, swimming in the pleasure of a sweet treat. I put on thick wool socks and Chelsea boots, still a little damp from the wet walk through town to the hotel. Out the front door, I walk toward the river. I hear sea lions, I see tankers in the anchorage. The wind carries salt off the ocean a couple of miles away. I can taste it. The longer I walk toward the bridge, the more tastes arrive. Rotting seaweed, rusted iron, charcoal from beach fires, ferns, agates, and filtered moonlight. 

My stomach growls. I hadn’t eaten since I left home. I veer away from the riverfront and walk inland. I order and wait for a noodle takeaway at the Vietnamese restaurant. There are bright lanterns in here, it is colorful and busy and familiar. I could stay to eat, but I just want to be back in the room, by myself, with extra pillows and a view of the empty street. The food is warm in my arms as I walked back to the hotel. In the common kitchen, I unstack a bowl from the pile on the shelf and unhook a fork from the others in the drawer and walk the creaky hall back to my room.

After dinner I take a night shower. While still steamy, I root around in my backpack. Remove the box and tuck it under the bed, hidden behind the seam of the duvet. With my hooked finger I snag a gold chain and fish it out. It clinks as I lower it on the side table into a round shape like a puddle. I get back into the soft, soft bed.

*********

I wake up in the night with a sadness. When I feel sleepless because of sadness, I think of flowers in alphabetical order. A - aster…. B - begonia… C - chrysanthemum. Tonight I made it all the way to K and couldn’t think of a K flower. My mind flipped through other flowers I know - iris, peony, wisteria, lobelia, clematis - no Ks. I skipped K and went to L - lupin. M - marigold. And then I finally fall back to sleep.

*********

The next morning I feel like a noir detective in this antique building, gazing out of the drafty window. I make notes about James’ living body with careful script in a small notebook with a fresh pencil I tuck behind my ear between thoughts. I pause my investigation and tap my lower lip with my tented fingers on my thinking hands. An app notification pops up on my phone. The background is James, eating leftover french fries smeared with a garlic aioli from a soggy takeaway box. His eyes are narrow because of the sleepy angle of the photo. He has a bit of a beard.

I open the phone and search for flowers that start with K. Kalmia, Kalanchoe, Kangaroo Paw, Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, Knapweed, Kniphofia, Kitaibelia, Kolkwitzia, Kudzu. 

*********

Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul - Hey, can you hear me? Can you see me? I’m waving. I’m trying to touch your shoulder, can you feel that? I tried to knock on the wood, but it’s too loud in here and I can’t hit it hard enough yet. I’ll practice. Maybe if I become more agitated, I can produce more powerful knocks. Maybe I’ll be able to tug on your shirt. Pull at the sheet while you are sleeping. Put my hand against your cheek. There are so many looming things. So many shadows and corridors. It’s hard to know where to go at night so I pace in the room, up and down the halls. I’m a restless spirit! Can you believe it? Sometimes I’m on the roof! Can you hear my footsteps up there? Has anyone noticed? Did you ask? I can mess with the machines! Does anyone have a radio? I saw the pictures on your phone. That’s cute. I remember eating every one of those things. I remember eating. Do you remember that day that you called “Wolf Day” and you made us a breakfast of mostly meats because you said that a wolf can eat up to 20 pounds of meat in a meal? And then we drove for one hour up a mountain to go for a hike and howl up the logging roads where the gravel was so sharp and there were lots of little maybe-trails into the watery woods where the trees wore sweaters and stripes of mist wandered through their tops. Down one of the roads there was a galvanized steel chain stretched across the way through, but no sign or anything so you climbed over and I walked around the side and both ways felt like an initiation ritual. On the other side, there was a tree that had fallen over and its roots were embarrassingly exposed, clutching river-worn stones and I knew, for sure, that time is so much bigger than either of us could ever hold. And then there was a clearing and under our feet the ground was spongy with leaf litter so we laid down on it on our backs and looked up at the sky and maybe we had our hands down each others pants, but mostly we were looking up at our own private sky bordered with drooping hemlock crests. I don’t owe anyone the full unwavering story and neither do you. This one wavers, yes, and contorts, and sails like a boat depending on the day, the weather, the season, the wind. The event was, and always has been and always will be the thing that happened the way that it did, and the details come and go like tidepools. If the story is known in a general way, the attendant themes of fear, loss, betrayal, shock, revulsion, can be understood in a bloodless way – depending on the day, the weather, the season, the wind. I saw you eating noodles last night and it made me want to cry. Because of the tastes and because of the way you sigh when you are very hungry and you take the first bite. It is so heartbreaking to be missing you so much and standing right next to you. I see you writing, I’ve read it. Thank you for being so thoughtful, but you cannot say those things. Don’t tell them about what happened and don’t tell them what happened to my body. They don’t need to know. They think they want to know but they don’t really. Don’t use my first name – the first-first name. I don’t think you would, but there’s just so much to say and not say. Thank you for trying to say something. I thought I’d run into someone else like me, but I haven’t yet. It’s lonely so I talk to myself all the time. There are some doorways that I feel like I get stuck in. Like stretchy sticky spiderwebs are blocking the way and tugging at me, keeping me on one side of the doorway. If I keep pushing the air gets hot and I think I'm going to be burned and I ache and it’s terrible. When I step backwards to get out of the doorway the web, or whatever it is, unsticks from my hair and clothes and when it pulls away from my skin it is the worst feeling I have ever felt. It makes my throat tight, I worry that somehow this will turn my whole body inside out. Which, as you know, is impossible because you have my body, with no inside or outside, in a bag, in a box, under your bed. I saw the vase of flowers that the guest in 206 forgot on the coffee table when they packed up and dropped off the key at the front desk and left. I watched the first one to go in. She stripped the sheets off the bed, grunting. Noticed the flowers in the vase. Yanked the flowers out by their faces and stuffed them into the trash bag in her cart. Dumped the water in the sink and nestled the vase in a nest of dirty towels and left. An hour later I heard the guest come to the front desk asking about the flowers in the vase. The innkeeper said they would try. Inside the room, there were no flowers and there was no vase. There were no sheets on the bed because the first one to go in had been there which was the clue. The innkeeper asked the first one to go in if she had seen them. She produced the surreptitious vessel and admitted to disposing of the flowers. The innkeeper took the vase from her hand by putting their fingers into the mouth and hooked their thumb around the lip. They presented it to the guest at the counter who said, but the flowers??, and the innkeeper said, I’m sorry, the flowers are gone. I watched every one in the scene walk away in different directions and no one had the thing they wanted. The guest mourned the ephemeral flowers, the first one to go in was disappointed to lose the vase, and the innkeeper was stung by their failure to keep everyone happy. I’ve been in the basement most of the evening. Looking, really searching, for some clue about what comes next. And maybe I should switch from searching to seeking. I think there is a difference; one feels assertive, the other receptive. I’m seeking now. Open to the mystery. Open to many mysteries. I saw a mysterious hatchet leaning against an old pillar. There was something drawn on the wall beside the pillar. I reached out to put a finger on the wall, to see if the sigil marks would smudge, but they didn’t. My finger disappeared into the wall. I don’t really know why I tried. I just wanted to make any kind of change. To affect something. Effect. I knew I probably couldn’t but I tried anyway. I returned to the hatchet leaning against the pillar and thought maybe I could knock it over. It was small and balanced almost upright, it wouldn’t take much  of a nudge to tip it over. I thought it might even make a crisp metallic noise to slice through the voluminous chamber. I knelt on the concrete slab and reached out two fingers. I touched the worn wooden handle – I felt its texture! I felt it wobble on its heavy head when I applied a little force with a poke. I moved it! I picked it up in my right hand, gripping. I felt the muscles tense in my forearm. I was powerful at last. Is it a ghost hatchet? Or am I getting the hang of something new? It’s so hard to know what is of this ghost world and what is not. Now I’m in the room next door to yours. I'm messing up the bed. I'm pulling the folded towels off the shelf, I'm tugging tissues out of the box and they are fluttering to the floor. I'm reminding you that I'm here. Still here. I'm the memory and the monster. My footsteps grow louder because I understand more now. I can draw the electricity and now I'm flickering the lights. I'm knocking once for yes and twice for no. Now it is twice for yes and once for no. I know you can’t be sure of what I'm communicating because there are so many veils. I can’t either or I won’t or I shouldn’t. My memories are fading too - like I can’t smell anymore, but I remember the smell of your clean white tee shirt. I remember the way the hair on your thigh was soft and easy. My ear is pressed to the plaster. Beneath, the lath is vibrating with the sounds of history and the trash deposited there and the dead bug bodies and the dust. I can hear you talking in your sleep. I can hear you snoring. I can hear your phone buzzing. And I hear you knock it to the floor. My ear is burning because you’ve been writing about me. My mouth is burning, my eyes are burning. I can read it as you are writing it. I play a game where I guess what you are going to write before you do and I wonder if I can put thoughts in your mind and have them roll out with the ink. Sometimes I wish you would shut up. In front of me the window is banging against the sash, the old weights and ropes unseen in the wall are swinging and thumping too. The floor below is solid and also a portal. Above, everyone can hear the footsteps of children. I’m exhausted now. When I look down at my own hands they are transparent.