I don’t know how to tell the next part. It was like I knew a plane had crashed. Even though I was all messed up. Even though I was thousands of miles from the plane. It was like I had a premonition. Or I felt a reverberation. I mean I felt a crash push through my skin. Not from his pen. Not what you think. It was more like air pushing through. Or a song pushing through. It was more just like a ghost.
Winter was creeping in again. The holidays, again. I would not be doing much that year. The same thing I did every year. Going to my father’s house. Not eating what my father made. Staring at my father across the table staring at me. Glaring across the table because he never let me do a thing. My father, who thought he’d saved my life.
The other kids all studied abroad. They came back home all better than me. They knew things I didn’t know. There were lamp-lit roads they talked about. There were churches made of stone. There were whores in windows lit by red lights. I could see myself walking the lamp-lit roads. I could see myself small in a hollow church. I would be too far for my father to find. But my father said no to study abroad. You’re not ready, he said. You don’t study, he said.
It wasn’t technically a crash. It was technically an explosion. It was technically a fireball. Technically, it was a lot of things. What I mean is, it was meant.
It then took just the sound of a plane. Or a trail of smoke. Or a shadow moving fast and wide across grass. And the terrible way my brain worked. The way my brain said duck. And fast. And now. And I would lie in the snow. I would lie under trees. I would wait for the plane to pass overhead. Or for the smoke to disappear. Or for my brain to tell me, Get up. Or for the plane to crash.
I knew the chance of a crash was small. A plane would not likely drop from the sky. I would not likely be crushed on the ground. It was all of it unlikely. And I knew that it wasn’t just planes. That cars could swerve. That trains could derail. I’d once seen a bus that had gone off the road. It was upside down in a field. But this didn’t make me afraid of buses. Because there was something different about crashing on land. I mean it was different from crashing to land.
As a kid I wanted to walk a tightrope. I’d seen a circus on TV. I’d watched it with my father. I liked the tightrope walker most. I liked the thin stick he held on to. And how he stared ahead to the other side. And how he would make it clear to that other side. Or how, perhaps, he would not.
There were photos all over of the crash. It’s not enough to say raining metal. It’s not enough to say twisted metal. Or that the people on the ground were stuck in the storm. Or that I wasn’t there, of course, in the storm. Because I was thousands of miles away, of course. I was sitting around Club Midnight. And pills were spilled out onto the floor. And a guy was writing on my arm. He wrote the first four letters of my name. I imagine he planned to write the fifth. But I said, Stop.
There was a service in a church. I went because it was right to go. I went because everyone went. Before the service, we stood outside. Someone had something to smoke. Someone else had pills. We went to the service all messed up. I was too messed up to feel a thing. It wasn’t a big deal, being messed up. The whole world was a mess.
Then were the times lying flat in the snow. It didn’t make sense, my lying flat. I know this now. It would not have saved me, lying flat, from a storm of metal crashing.
To my friends I said, I’m fine. I said, I am. But they looked at me like, You’re not fine. But I am, I said. Because I was, I thought. Because I didn’t know her well enough to be anything other than fine.
The guy was laughing at me. I was too messed up to laugh. My tongue felt covered in fur. Clouds had formed, and I fell into them, one by one. I said, My tongue. I said, My God. I didn’t mean to say this. I didn’t mean to say anything. I didn’t want a conversation. It had started to snow, and I wanted to go outside. Because the snow just seemed like more than snow. It was something about the light. I didn’t know what it was. But the guy said, Your tongue, and laughed again. And then I was falling into him. And if I must use an adjective, right now, right here, I would use beautiful.
I know I shouldn’t have been driving. The roads were a mess. Murder, my father would have said. Murder, every time it snowed. But there I was, rising from the couch. There I was, surrounded by clouds. Next I was in the driver’s seat. And there he was beside me. And there were the holiday lights in windows. And the lit-up trees in windows. And the reflection of my car. And the reflection of us inside the car. And there was my building. There were the stairs leading to my door.
I said I wanted to walk a tightrope. My father said, Do you want to be killed. I didn’t want to be killed. I wanted to be something else. I wanted to be between living and not living. Just for the time it would take to walk the tightrope. Just for the time it would take to make it to the other side. Or for the time it would take to fall. Over my dead body, my father said. I would go to school like everyone else. I would read and write like everyone else. I would graduate like everyone else. I would go to college. I would get a job. I would live in a house. I would have kids. And eventually I, like everyone else, would die.
There’s nothing to say about the service. Someone spoke. Then someone else spoke. Then someone played guitar. Because she played guitar. Because it’s how she would have wanted it. That’s what everyone said. She would have wanted it that way. As if anyone ever could really know. I hardly even knew the girl. She went to my school. I sometimes smoked with her after class. I sometimes saw her in Club Midnight. But it was always a lot of us drinking. It was her and it was the guy from the couch. It was others too, and we sometimes talked. And perhaps I lit her cigarette once. Perhaps she cupped her hands around mine. But she went off to study abroad. And I, as you know, did not.
In my bed we talked about who knows what. Those nouns that emerge in bed. What passes for deep. Life. God. I know you know how I must have felt. And at some point we just fell asleep. And while we were sleeping, saviors were being called upon. Saviors were showing up to help. Bodies were pulled from the wreckage. The scene was played and replayed and replayed. And we lay there.
But this story is not about the guy. He just happens to be in it. Like paint on the walls. Like sound in the air. Like hydrogen. Like oxygen.
It’s a miracle, my father said. I saved your life, he said. My father had food on his face. The TV droned in another room. The wine was almost gone. A holiday at my father’s house. A miracle, he said.
When the phone rang, my dreams were of ringing. And when I waked and answered, I meant not to answer. But there I was, saying hello. And there was someone else saying, Wait. Saying, Get up, get up. I already knew it was something big. I’d already had a premonition. If I were someone else, I would tell you more. I would tell you what I was told. But I’ll just say the world was then an open door letting cold air in.
And I’ll say it was like a supernova, how I thought of supernovas. A split second of silence. An explosion in the sky. Then a shooting outward and shooting outward. And some things landed. And some things burned. And some flew through clouds. Or fell through clouds. Or crashed into bodies they never knew until they crashed.
I’m sure the people in the bus all died. There was no way, the bus turned over like that, they did not. I wanted to drive out onto the field to see if I could help. But I kept on driving up the road. I had somewhere to be that night. There was no way I could have helped.
I kicked the guy awake. I said, You should leave. I said, Please leave. I said, Leave. And I left too. I watched the guy walk through the snow. I found my car parked terribly. I didn’t notice the tires at first. I didn’t see that two of the tires were slashed. It looked almost right, the car tilted like that. And I drove it like that. And I kept on driving, until I found help.