She wept. He sat on the floor beside her and held her head in his lap. He stroked her hair until she calmed down.
“We’re going to go now,” he said. “I’m going to take you to the hospital, okay?”
“Wait, wait,” she said. “There’s more.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “I don’t want to hear these things. I don’t want to think about them. I don’t want to remember them.”
“Please,” she whispered. “Please listen to me.”
She was desperate. She needed him. He wanted to be needed. He nodded.
“The thing is,” she said, “the biggest thing is, ever since the Trade Center fell down, I’ve been hoping it would happen to me. I kept hoping I’d be at work or in some shopping mall or theater when it blew up. So when that bomber ran inside the restaurant and shouted at us, I was happy. I knew God had answered my prayers. I knew I was going to survive. I was going to live, and I was going to crawl out of the ruins, and I was going to walk away from my life. I knew they’d never find me and would figure I was dead. They’d mark me down as dead, but I’d be alive. I’d be so alive, and I’d walk away. I’d walk away and start a new life, a better life. I was going to escape.”
How could anyone be so unhappy? How could anybody survive so much pain and loneliness? But these questions were inadequate, he knew, and he was inadequate. She needed him to be a good man, and he had never been that, not once in his life. He pushed her away and ran for the bathroom. But he was not fast enough and vomited on the living room carpet.
“It’s awful,” he said. “It’s so awful.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I am, I am.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Take me to the hospital. Make sure I’m safe, and you never have to see me again. Promise you’ll take me to the hospital. Promise me I’ll be safe.”
Stronger than he knew, he picked her up like a child and carried her out the door and down three flights of stairs. Curled in his arms, she cried and prayed. Through the crowded and hectic streets, he carried her. All around them, men and women and children stared up into the skies and waited for death to swoop down and claim them. He looked at those strangers and knew each of them lived with terrible secrets. He knew that man cheated on his wife with her sister and that woman pinched her Alzheimered mother’s arms until they bled. And that teenage boy set dogs on fire and that pretty teenage girl once knocked down a fat ugly girl and spit in her mouth. And he knew that father had two sons, one who couldn’t read and one who wore dresses, and he made them punch each other because they were stupid and weak. And there was a white grandmother who hated her Mexican grandchildren and a priest who burned himself with cigarettes whenever he dreamed about sex with little boys. And that man had abandoned his wife and children and didn’t know they were now living in a car, and that woman hadn’t talked to her father in fifteen years and didn’t know he was now dying of prostate cancer. And none of these people, not one of them, had loved any of the others well enough. Failures, he thought, we’re all failures. Carrying the woman, he walked among these sinners, the obese and the vain, the intolerant and the selfish, the liars and thieves, the wasteful and the avaricious. And wasn’t he the greatest sinner? Wasn’t he more dangerous to the people who loved him than any terrorist could ever be? Wasn’t he the man who failed the woman who’d loved him most? Didn’t he explode her life and burn her to the ground? Right now, somewhere in the world, wasn’t she still grieving the death of their marriage and the death of some large part of her? Forgive me, God, oh, forgive me, he thought as he carried this other exploded woman. If he could save her, he hoped he might be saved. But she wanted to escape. She pushed and pulled against his grip and he set her down. Everything smelled of smoke and fire. She kissed him hard and touched his face. He wanted to talk, to say the words that would free her. But he was silent and she was silent. And wasn’t silence more ambiguous and terrifying than anything else? Loose-limbed, he trembled. He wanted to love her, and he wanted his love to be bittersweet and irrepressible. He wanted his love to be different than everybody else’s. He wanted his love to be the only true image of God. He wanted his love to be the tyrant that saved the world no matter if the world desired to be saved. He wanted his love to be the wine and bread, and the blood and flesh. He reached for her, a dangerous stranger in a city of dangerous strangers, but she turned away from him and walked unsteadily through the crowd. How many loveless people walk among the barely loved? She looked back once, and he thought to chase after her, but she shook her head, and again walked away from him. And he watched her until he couldn’t see her anymore.
Do Not Go Gentle
MY WIFE AND I didn’t know Mr. Grief in person until our baby boy got his face stuck between his mattress and crib and suffocated himself blue. He died three times that day, Mr. Grief squeezing his lungs tight, but the muscular doctors and nurses battled that suffocating monster man and brought our boy back to life three times. He was our little blue baby Jesus.
I’m lying. Our baby wasn’t Jesus. Our baby was alive only a little bit. Mostly he was dead and slept his way through a coma. In Children’s Hospital, our baby was hooked up to a million dollars’ worth of machines that breathed, pissed, and pooped for him. I bet you could line up all of my wife’s and my grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and first, second, and third cousins, and rob their wallets and purses, and maybe you’d collect about $512.