SPRING FORWARD

CAREN GUSSOFF

I finally talked Gomez into buying the setting, since he wouldn’t take the stone. I pried back the soft gold prongs with my fingernail to loosen the diamond; he crossed himself.

He weighed the metal as I held the stone to the light. The fluorescents looked beautiful, all faceted fire and spark. “You sure it isn’t real?” I asked.

“It’s real.” Gomez winced and swallowed, like taking a pill dry. “But it’s made from a person.” Then he crossed himself again.

“What are you talking about?” I rolled the diamond between my fingers. Then, it jumped from my hand.

Gomez caught it before it hit the counter. He was quick. “Don’t drop it like that,” he said.

“I didn’t,” I said. “It jumped.”

Gomez shook his head, grey hair on end. He handed the stone back to me quick. “You stole someone’s loved one’s ashes.”

I wrapped my hand around it this time, so it wouldn’t get away.

He shoved bills at me. “For the gold.” He wagged the paper until I took it. “Get the fuck out of my shop.”

I tried to come back a few times, but I’d crossed a line. I learned, since then, the stone was called a Life Gem. Chemically a diamond, yes – compressed from carbon ashes, human remains, and sometimes cremated pets. Gomez knew it from the serial numbers engraved under a facet.

It took balls for me to walk in to the store today, even with my good intentions, amends to make. I had a padded envelope and a roll of stamps, and the jumpy stone. I wanted Gomez to witness. I was going to send it to the Life Gem company for return to its owner. Set it right, no pun intended.

But Gomez wasn’t there. He started wintering in Miami, his daughter explained. And his name wasn’t even Gomez. It was Deshais. Gomez was the name on the sign when Deshais bought the place. He never saw reason to change it.

When I told her I was here to make amends, she nodded her head, unsurprised. “Come back in a few weeks,” she said.

I went to the diner, early, but my sponsor was already there. “How did it go?”

I told him. He looked disappointed. “I was hoping you’d be done with amends soon.” He made a check mark in the air. He was big on gestures, literal and figurative.

“I will,” I said. “I’ll finish my other amends, then go back.”

“You can’t go backwards. You can only go forward to the next step.” My sponsor folded his hands like he was praying. “Besides, he’s only part of it. You need to return the ring, too.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll mail it myself.”

My sponsor reached for my wrist. “Does that feel right?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know. I shook off his wrist and rubbed my chin. The stubble was starting to itch.

“You need to move forward.” He smiled. “Spring forward, fall back.”

“I’m not sure how,” I said. “Knock on doors in my old neighborhood?”

My sponsor slapped his hand on the table like I’d said something inspired. “Yes! Good idea. What else do you have to do?”

Sobriety did free up a lot of time. But I did not want to do this.

I went back to my sister Nanette’s place in Yonkers. She’d made soup. I asked her about going door to door to find the ring’s owner. “Ridiculous, right?”

But my sister shrugged. “Why not? You have nothing to lose.”

Since I got sober, I relied on Nan as a baseline. I’d convinced myself of so many things for so long, I didn’t trust my sense of reality.

But this, it was absurd. That made me want to get high, which then made me question whether it was indeed absurd. “I think it’s absurd,” I admitted.

Nan dug into her soup. I followed suit. I ate a few bites, counting the beans in it. Nan made a big deal of it being a 15-bean soup. But I only counted eleven different beans and said so.

Nan pushed up her glasses. “The bean mix actually counted large and small lima beans, and whole and split peas as different.” The lenses had a smudge from her finger, but I could still see her roll her eyes. “Now, that’s absurd.”

***

I hated knocking on doors, catching people in their bathrobes, cluttered hallways behind them, weird food smells and voices and loud televisions. It was so intimate.

But I kept thinking of one rickety apartment complex in particular, not far from Gomez Loan and Imports, where I knew I’d spent some time. Even now, as I stood in front of it, it was as familiar to me as any place I’d ever lived.

So, floor to floor I went. I knocked, tried to explain myself through doors. I stumbled through my Spanish. I waved the diamond at one mostly deaf old guy who thought I might be meals-on-wheels. One young, stylish guy opened a door on the fourth floor and looked at me like I was a bag of garbage offering him another bag of garbage.

I used to be young and stylish.

He shook his head and shut his door. Like everyone else, he didn’t know anything.

But then I came to 602. The door was decorated with daisy no-slip decals, faded down from dark green.

I knew this door. I’d been here before.

It was the place.

I was sure. 602.

Next thing I knew, I was running. Down the stairs. The bare bulbs on each floor swung with the wind I made, I ran so hard. My knees wobbled, feet hitting each concrete stair with a punch. I didn’t stop until I was in the lobby.

My hands supporting my liquid knees, I looked at the mailboxes. Most of them were built up with years of names taped over one another. Not 602. In old-style Dymo tape, typewriter font, the box was marked sylvia morrison.

Sylvia Morrison. She wore the compressed ashes of her dead husband set in a gold ring I’d sold for forty bucks.

Sylvia. I said the name in my head like I knew her. And then, two things occurred to me: firstly, I couldn’t go back up and just plop the rock into Sylvia Morrison’s hand with an apology; and secondly, I had to go to the bathroom. Immediately. The running set my sister’s eleven-bean soup into motion. I broke into a sweat. Docs told me it could take up to another year before my digestion would work properly again after so many opiates.

I went to the closest and only place that made sense. Deshais’s daughter didn’t seem surprised to see me. She read my face; without a word, she waved me to the back bathroom.

When I was done, I laid the diamond on the counter in front of her. “I need a setting for this,” I said.

She squinted at it behind the loupe. “You know what this is, right?”

I nodded.

She closed her book and placed the diamond on top. She wasn’t afraid of it. “You want gold? Silver? For you?”

“Not me,” I said. Then, before I even knew I said it, added, “For my wife.” I had no idea where that lie came from.

Deshais’s daughter didn’t even sniff. “What ring size?”

“Whatever,” I said. “Gold, I guess.”

As she rifled through a box of scrap, the metals tinkled like little bells. “How much you want to spend?”

I only had a credit card. Nan wouldn’t allow me cash. She could follow me by the charges on the bill. “Doesn’t matter.”

Deshais’s daughter held the diamond against a ring. It looked like tin foil. “It’s white gold,” she said. “About a size seven. That’s pretty average for a lady.”

I nodded and she set the diamond in with tweezers, then squeezed with her fingers. She handed it to me in a little velvet bag, which I appreciated. I didn’t even ask or look at the total as I signed.

When I walked out, it was three p.m. I found a bench in a tiny park, sat down.

I should have gone back to my sister’s house then, before rush hour.

I hated rush hour. I hated taking up the space, walled in by swollen ankles, briefcases and the clacking of empty lunch containers. It made me embarrassed and lonely, and I didn’t belong there or anywhere.

But instead of getting up, I felt the velvet bag in my pocket, and wanted to get high.

I’d not had a craving for a few weeks. The power of it ripped me naked, down into the familiar panic that I had no pills and needed pills. It was organized terror: scanning down a mental list of where and how I could score some oxy, codeine, morphine.

I looked around at the people, walking through and around the little park, eddies of bodies, a creek of purpose and destination. I was alone, dressed only in want.

I could limp into a clinic and perform, first refusing the script, then accepting it sheepishly.

Or, I could head to Manhattan and find Manny or Joe or John Bullet, and hope they’d sell me good shit instead of punishing me for going straight.

Or I could go to the station, jump onto the tracks. If I didn’t die, which at the moment was a fine option, then I’d wake up, painkillers piped straight into me.

But the ring burned in my pocket. Hotter and hotter, until it was unbearable, pushing my cravings aside for the pain. I pulled out the bag, shook the ring into my hand. It wasn’t really hot; I held it up, twisted it between my fingers. In the light, the diamond flashed.

It was almost too much to see, so I looked down, a group of pigeons at my feet.

The sun also played across their iridescent necks, purple and green, beautiful. But they ignored me, pecking at invisible crumbs. A bigger one carried thin sticks up into the tree above.

After a few errands between the tree and ground, the big one took a break, pecked at the ground with the rest. He had a big, round head, and eyes like shiny candy.

I called out to him. The others flapped and jumped back, but he kept at his pecking, moving closer, even stomping on my shoe with one craggy, pink foot.

I realized I’d been holding onto the ring so tightly the new setting left little dents in my palm. If it was warm now, it was from my own heat. I dropped it into the bag, into my pocket, stood up and shook myself.

Suddenly, I was a threat. I was solid and real and big. A predator again. The pigeons scattered and flew away.

***

I knocked hard. The doorbell didn’t feel connected to anything. I gave Sylvia some time to get to the door. Then knocked again.

No answer. No blaring television or voices or footsteps or food smells.

I had to get inside. The ring burned again. It took all my strength to turn away. She wasn’t home.

Halfway down the hall, the stairwell door opened and a little guy pushed through. The weight of his tool belt pulled down on his small pants, and he hiked them up with a surprising amount of authority. He stopped me not two steps from Sylvia’s door. “Hey, you been knocking on doors? You selling something?”

“No,” I answered. “Visiting.”

He squared his shoulders to take up as much room as he could, blocking my way. “Who?”

I jerked my thumb behind me. “Sylvia Morrison.”

He changed posture. “Oh,” he said. “You a relation?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t meant to lie again. It was out before I knew it. “She’s my—”

“Grandmother?” he finished.

I nodded. I let him lead. Nerves, cravings, pressure, lies. My stomach gurgled.

The little man stuck out his hand. “I’m the super, John. She’s been in the hospital now, what, four days?”

“Four days,” I repeated, returning the shake.

“You need me to let you in? You have keys?” John asked.

I reached in my pocket like they keys would actually be there. There was nothing except the ring. It was only warm now. I nodded again and stood aside.

He jiggled the key in the lock, pushed in Sylvia’s door. It opened with a blast of furnace heat.

A thought from nowhere: she always liked it warm. I shook it away. Old folks always did.

“Damn,” John said. He barely had to stoop to reach underneath the radiator and turn the knob down. Then, he stared at me, expecting something, like a tip.

“Thank you,” I said.

That broke his gaze. “No problem,” he said. “Lock the bottom on the way out.” He stepped out, then stuck his head in. “And let me know if I can do anything. Your gram’s a real nice lady.”

And then I was alone.

The layout was definitely familiar. More familiar than I expected.

It wasn’t just that I’d broken in before. It is different to know a place, than what you consider when you rob a place.

It wasn’t that there’s only a few floor plans for modest New York apartment buildings.

Not that either.

I knew it.

It was clean, though now shabby from scrubbing. The air was metallic, like from copper or blood or oxidized bleach – a heady smell combined with stale furnace air.

In the bedroom, Sylvia’s bed was unmade, the crocheted coverlet half on the floor. It was wrong, and I picked up the blanket to pull across the foot of the bed. Without thinking, I held it to my nose. Camphor and violets, an older person, a grandma.

But also something else, something sweet and familiar. I startled, realizing I was squeezing the acrylic yarn so tight it squeaked and that I was sporting half an erection.

I jumped away from the bed and into the dresser. A herd of glass and wooden and ceramic horses fell against one another, with a tinkle like ring settings.

Then a slam, a shatter: a pewter frame, amputating legs and tails. I righted it, crooked now on animal bits. It was a photo of Sylvia, years ago. The colors had gone faded and sheer, lightened her black waves to acorn brown.

“You were a real cherry, Syl,” I said. I didn’t know where that came from, or even what it meant. I was in bad shape.

I followed the hallway to the bathroom with my hands. It was tiled with more photos, arranged somewhat chronologically: from black and whites, a wedding, vacations, retirement. I didn’t look carefully – I needed the can – but stopped by the bathroom door, at one of the last. An older couple, on a boat, still docked, grinning at an anniversary cake. Sylvia, her hair dark, obviously dyed. A man, blurred, as if in motion; impossible, the couple was posed, still, for the shot.

I traced back in time up the hall, Sylvia at twenty, thirty, fifty. Her husband – the diamond in my pocket burning now, again, hot-hot, a chemical burning – always out of focus, imprecise, furry lines. I shook my head, as if I was the lens out of focus, and for a second, just a second, with the burning on my leg, I saw him. I saw myself.

I crashed into the spotless bathroom. A dead-eyed doll covered an extra roll of toilet paper. I looked in the mirror; everything was as I left it. Thirty-five. Looking it from the drugs. Blue eyes. Shot through with red from panic and cravings, but the family blue. Pale, damp, needing a shave.

The doll watched me. I watched it, waiting for it to come alive or spin its head. It didn’t. We just watched one another until I calmed down. I looked at the carpet the whole way out, and shut the front door tight and locked behind me.

***

Back at in Yonkers, Nan seemed mad at me. “You should have just left it,” she said, handing me a bowl of leftover soup. “On her side table or something.”

“No,” I said. I couldn’t explain why. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t right. None of it was right. “It just didn’t feel right,” I said.

“Nothing feels right,” Nan replied. “Nothing ever feels right to you.”

Nan wasn’t wrong. But she was twisting my words back at me and applying them in an exceptional context. But she kept an eyebrow raised the whole time she watched me eat as if to dare me to argue.

I didn’t argue. Nothing to say that wouldn’t make her think I was using again.

After Nan went to bed, I made calls.

No Sylvia Morrison at Columbia Presbyterian. Nor at Lincoln Memorial, Good Samaritan or Saint Johns.

I tried Mount Sinai last, because I knew she was there, and I didn’t want to know that I knew. She was, though, on 10 North, cardiac intensive care.

I also knew the tenth floor of Sinai well, for good reason. I’d been in South. Behavioral Health. For managed detox.

I dialed my sponsor without thinking.

“Do you want me to go with you?” my sponsor asked.

Even though I was the one who called, it was a surprise he offered. I didn’t want him to. I wasn’t really sure why I called him. “No,” I said. “I can do this. Tomorrow morning.”

We made plans for afterward: an afternoon meeting a few blocks from Sinai. I’d get a six-month chip, and talk in front of everyone. I’d tell them about returning the ring. They would clap and we’d have cookies and coffee. And I’d formally take the next step.

My sponsor was proud.

“Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead tonight,” my sponsor said. “Remember, spring forward, fall back.”

“Right,” I said. “Spring forward.”

***

It was a beautiful morning. The world was alive with color and movement: birds and insects, insistent swards of green, punching through cracks in the sidewalks towards the sun.

Even at Sinai, there was color and purpose. Doctors and nurses, fidgeting families, carts and wheelchairs. Diehard smokers, sweatpants under their striped gowns and Velcro shoes over slipper socks, let out cumulus clouds of smoke that rose around their portable IVs.

I bought some overpriced daffodils in the gift shop so I wouldn’t have completely empty hands. They were so yellow they seemed fake. But I couldn’t really remember the last time I’d really looked at a daffodil.

Maybe they were always this yellow.

They were as yellow as the paper daffodils that decorated the tenth floor lobby, along with fabric butterflies and a bird’s nest made of crêpe paper to celebrate the season. It looked like a kindergarten classroom, rather than a ward.

I stood in front of the whiteboard at the nurses’ station. I re-read the list a few times, dumbly. Montenegro in 10a, Bernstein/Whyte in 10b/c, Josephs in 10d, Widell/Wada, Zeno, Hartpence, Lencioni, Pantages/Carroll, Bae/Olson, Villanova.

An aide finally asked if she could help me.

“Sylvia Morrison,” I said. “I don’t see her name.”

The aide scanned the list over my head, then ducked behind the station. She tapped some keys. Her eyes made little darting movements tracking the information. “Are you a relative, sir?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied. It was beginning to feel true.

“Can you take a seat in the waiting room?” she asked. “I’ll get a caseworker to come and talk to you.”

The waiting room was empty, but the seat I chose was warm. The caseworker ducked his head around the corner. His comb-over waved like a flag, then plopped back into place. I followed him into a little room I assumed was designed for these sorts of conversations.

“I’m so sorry,” the caseworker said. “The contact numbers for her—” he glanced down “—for any family members were wrong or disconnected.”

“We only…” I surprised myself saying, “had each other.”

It made the caseworker, understandably, uncomfortable. “You were close?”

I nodded, trying not to let any other words slip as the ring warmed.

“Your grandmother…” he started.

I let him assume I was that grandson, just like the super. I nodded again.

“Your grandmother passed away at approximately three a.m.,” he continued. “She had an Advance Directive. Do not resuscitate. We have copies of her arrangements. She had a pre-need contract with Funeral Alternatives for a cremation.” He looked deeper into the folder. His hair quivered, like it didn’t like what it saw.

I shifted in the chair. The ring was hot now, burning.

The caseworker assumed I fidgeted from emotion. “Have you ever dealt with this before? The passing of a relative?”

I shook my head.

“We can schedule transportation. You’ll have to arrange with the crematory to pick up her ashes. And any subsequent memorial.” He smiled an unhappy smile. “It sounds like it was quick. There probably wasn’t any pain.”

That seemed like a good thing. “That’s good,” I said. The ring was hotter than it’d ever been. I kicked my leg to reposition my pocket.

He nodded. His hair seemed relieved at my response. He passed me the open folder and a pen. I managed to take it, though my leg was on fire. An orange paper arrow indicated where I should sign.

I saw words on the paper, but I couldn’t read them. The pain was blinding, deafening.

“I can provide referrals,” the caseworker added. “For outside assistance.”

It sounded like we were underwater, and the only way I knew we weren’t was that water would put out the fire on my legs. I dropped the folder and pen on the floor and clawed at my pocket. I could only think of the ring. I had to get it out. I was in agony and the caseworker kept talking. Things were closing out, dimming from the outside in. I was falling. Falling.

“Do you need assistance?” the caseworker asked. “Are you OK?”

“I am fine,” I said. I drew in my breath to bend for the folder, waiting for the jolt of pain. None came. I even reached for the pen, which had rolled a bit. I was fine.

It doesn’t take much pain before you come to expect it.

I propped the folder onto my lap, sat up straight. I had a second of joy, until I remembered where I was, why I was there.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” I swallowed the tears that were starting. I’d let them out later. Nothing was sadder than an old man crying. Oh, Syl. My Syl. “As fit as possible.”

“Take your time,” the caseworker said.

I shook my head. I signed my name, and passed it over to him.

He glanced at it, then ripped off the original. He laid the copy on the table and pushed it towards me.

I took my copy, tucked it and the daffodil under one arm. I stood up. It was easy, quick. I was light, straight. I held out my other hand for the caseworker to shake. “Thank you, young man,” I said.

“My condolences,” he said, eyebrows raised.

Next to the door, the clock was an hour behind.

I cocked my head at it. “Spring forward,” I said to the caseworker.

“Right,” he answered. “Spring forward.”

And then I took a step.

***

Caren Gussoff lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and two cat-children, Molly Bloom and Paul Atreides. She loves serial commas, quadruple espressos, knitting, the new golden age of television, and over-analyzing things. Her turn offs include ear infections, black mould, and raisins. She’s studying to be (and volunteering as) a peer counselor for mental health issues.