“Your time is coming. You’ll be leaving soon. Come back to me if you can. Let me know you’re okay.”
“I’m going nowhere.”
“Yes, Lara, you are, but I’ll be okay if I can just hear from you. Promise.”
Even in these last hours of Lara’s life, I was lying. I’ll be far from okay.
“I won’t leave you. I’ll stay here. In this bed. My spirit. Right here, in this house. Look for me in the floating dust when the sunlight slices through the shades. When your foot hangs off the bed and feels a cold caress. I’ll slip in and out of your dreams and be with you always.”
Closeness to death had sparked her fluid tongue. Words flowed from her lips like secrets she needed to share since any word spoken might be her last. She was propped up by clouds of white pillows. A checkered afghan blanket lay on top of her. Somber light glowed from the lone lamp and the air filled our lungs with sadness.
Cancer air.
It was there in each breath. She exhaled the cancer and I inhaled it in, hoping to catch the disease. But no matter how much love exists in your heart, one cannot catch cancer, and she would not be taking me with her into death.
At-home hospice, they called it, and I tended to her needs around the clock, where it mattered little if it was day or night. I made grilled cheese, tomato soup, or scrambled eggs, and she took small bites and then pushed the plate aside. Awkward silence filled in the waiting. Our bedroom, with a large king mattress, bedside table, and two dressers had become a funeral parlor. All that was missing was the tall funeral director who was overly-versed in the language of condolence. Lara lay there as if in an open casket, flowers delivered from co-workers and cousins lined the walls.
“Our spirits. They will commune again,” she said. I gripped her hand and looked into her hazel eyes. During the first days she had come home to die, her eyes had been red from a constant stream of tears, but today, all I saw was a stoic white. Her pupils were tiny black pinholes, her body was so full of death had this been an open casket for the public to see, I might have closed it. Her skin was pasty, and her ears looked alien, not human. Her nose as pug-like as the dog we swore we would buy, but never did. Not after the diagnosis.
“We’ll be together,” I said with a squeeze of my hand. “We will. I will look for you all the days until I die, and then after that.”
But the emptiness in my gut told me something different. There was no chemotherapy for the sickness I had. At the hour of her death I expected my insides to be gouged out, for our spirits had been fused together. It happened as we walked the Hawaiian beaches on our honeymoon, where the salt of the deepest oceans baptized our feet. When we lay on the surf under the dark Hawaiian sky and the universe peered down. The stars were so vivid it rained in blues and reds. Her flesh pulsed with life then, her spirit as powerful as the cosmos that looked down upon us. Promises of adventures waited on the horizon.
It was on this very bed upon which she lay dying where we’d had sex with such heat and ferocity my soul penetrated hers and melted us together. Both of us cried out for God as if to say his name in thanks. We fit together like lock and key, a testimony to the glory of our creator.
But the glory was now gone.
I watched her chest rise and fall, each breath I expected to be her last. Her hand no longer squeezed back in response to my touch. The blood flow was leaving. The warmth in retreat. When she finally closed her eyes for good, I kissed her lips, waiting for the smile to return, for her eyes to twinkle.
But there was nothing. She was gone.
I curled up next to her, wrapping myself around her like a snake, and wept. Her skin grew cold with no spirit to heat it from within. The quiet of the air hung over us. Even the cancer retreated without its host. It had done its job here. Her body was dead and her spirit set free.
The funeral was merely a series of motions. My hands were in my pockets often, twiddling at a wadded up piece of tissue from the last time I wore this suit. My insides burst on occasion and I doubled over in pain. People rushed to console me, so I feigned togetherness and tried to keep my guts iron. I repeated what I had heard others say at moments like these as I waited to go back home.
Lara’s spirit was there waiting for me and I was eager to return.
I controlled what I could in the empty house by cleaning and organizing. I made color coded labels and filed credit card receipts. I cleaned behind the stove and under the fridge. I never stopped, unless I heard something that seemed out of place, in which case I stood completely still listening for whatever tiny messages might be hidden within. When the furnace kicked on and stirred the air, my head jerked towards the noise waiting for more. But it was just the furnace, no voices, no whispers. Cars from the street outside whooshed by full of life, but inside, things were dead and lifeless. I wanted to hear Lara’s spirit stir in this house, to feel the heat of her flesh next to mine, but it was as if she had never existed.
Days passed, and I kept the house in such order that Lara could have walked inside at any moment and felt at home. I bought cream for her coffee. I scraped the ice off her car.
At night, I lay in our bed soaking in whatever physical residue she may have left behind. Her body’s dead skin cells still lay beneath me in these unwashed sheets, and I bathed in the remains. I imagined microscopic bugs in the sheets feeding on the last traces of her flesh.
Lara’s real ashes sat on the nightstand. I would have kept her body had they let me, but cremation was her wish. All that was left of her was completely trapped inside a metallic box.
But it was her spirit I needed, and I watched and listened, felt and waited, for the spirit to show itself.
At night, I scanned the darkness. A soul as bright as hers could not remain hidden in black. In the light of day, things are clear, but in the dark, you can see tiny specks of colorful light floating, flickering. They are souls, and they move, they dance, they collide, they try but are unable to make a shape. Still, there is action in the air, I felt it, but it was not her. Not Lara. Night after night, she failed to show up, so I gave in to sleep and woke to a new darkness each day.
I spoke to her inside my head, out loud to a silent room, and in both prayer and meditation, asked for a sign. Each day was spent waiting for the night to come so I could lie in the bed where she had died. I wrapped myself in the same afghan checkered blanket, a larva in a cocoon, my foot hung over the edge. Cold air danced around my exposed flesh, teasing the tiny hairs, my limb hanging over the bedside waiting for dead hands to grasp my ankle, but the touch I longed for never came.
There is no afterlife, for if there was, a spirit such as Lara could return.
I shaved little. I brushed my teeth only when the grime became too much to bear. I drank Southern Comfort whiskey and waited for the spirits to make her appear. My brain became mushy. Confused. My stomach full of acid.
I finally left the house to visit our favorite places. First, the coffee shop where local acoustic guitar players sang and sold their homemade CDs for six bucks a piece. Next, I shopped at the thrift store where we’d given each other fist bumps after finding a secret stash.
On All Hallows Eve, I went to an orchard where Lara and I used to pick apples each fall. A brilliant yellow sun rained down in the chilly autumn air as I filled two bags with Honey Crisps. I carried the bags back to my car and a tiny dog poked his head out from under the bumper. He had no collar, no marks, a tiny mutt-mix. There was some pug in him, had to be, and we had wanted a pug, so I took him home. Now we had our dog, and I am sure Lara looked on with a smile. The mutt licked my face in the morning to wake me. He waited for me to sit so he could jump on my lap. There he stood guard to gaze about the house, as if sensing my mission to see Lara’s spirit.
Now I had help.
I set an alarm to wake me at 3:15 A.M. every night, for I’ve heard that is the hour when spirits safely walk the earth, and I wanted to bear witness. The alarm is cold and cruel at such an hour, ripping me from sleep into a dark world. Still, I woke with hope and looked about the shadows of the room, waiting for her to materialize at the foot of my bed, for her hand to touch mine, for her eyelashes to brush against my cheek. Still nothing. By four a.m., I was back to sleep.
I bought an Ouija board at K-mart for $9.99. I knew it was pathetic, cliché even, to expect a spirit unique as hers to show herself this way. Still, at midnight during a lightning storm (for lightning storms open up the gates of heaven and let the spirits in) I put my fingers on the plastic piece and waited for movement. A lone candle flickered. My fingers hung tense on the board, all ten of them suddenly longer, skinnier, veins bulging, muscles begging to be moved as I asked:
“Lara. I need you. I need you here. Please tell me. Am I alone? Are you here? Tell me.” There was no response, just me and the dog on my lap, looking at the candle as it cast shadows upon the wall, wondering what was real and what wasn’t.
I was alone.
Except for neighbors. They brought me chocolate chip cookies, spaghetti in Tupperware, always asking, “Is there anything I can do?” One woman, who spoke in mumbles so soft I could not decipher quite what she was saying, listened for hours while I told her stories of Lara over coffee. Some days she wore only her robe, the roundness of her breast teasing me, her warm heart an effective space heater for my cold life. The simple act of watching her fingers wrap around the coffee cup made me long for her touch.
We finally did touch, had sex on a Saturday morning. She understood when I drew the shades, closed the door, and kept us under the covers. I needed darkness thick as ink to turn her into Lara. My eyes stayed closed as I imagined it was Lara who was beneath me. The woman continued to visit with her smiles and indecipherable mumbles, and I cried out for God in moments of ecstasy and prayer.
I was still praying for my Lara back.
Weeks went on. I ate little other than from an old, expired canister of almonds. My skin grew pale and stomach gaunt. I had sex with my neighbor, I fed my dog. I took the phone off the hook and didn’t even charge my cell—the 3:15 A.M. alarm was fruitless. Coffee made me nervous. Sweat beads stuck to me.
Without the dog, I may have never left the bed. Without the neighbor, who came over near daily, I wouldn’t have talked to anyone.
Forget about her, you have me, she mumbled. Lara’s gone. Be with me. Really with me. Please. Just be with me.
Her words were spoken in the dark, between the sheets, and under heavy breaths while blood rushed through my head, faint whispers from lips at my ear. The slithering words of a seductress. A temptress. She was both Scylla and Charybdis and I had crashed. Lara was watching and I had failed my true love.
The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes, but the steak knife I pulled from the block of wood was clean and made my hand feel powerful. I tilted the metal and watched it sparkle and speak to me. I needed to kill the Scylla. I really did. I made motions with the knife, and practiced sliding it from one side of her jugular across the windpipe to the other. She had sucked my life force away from its soul mate, so it was her who must die. I would do it in the morning.
I practiced as if walking up behind her and then slicing the knife across her throat. I wanted it to be painless, fast, efficient, so I practiced until my muscles remembered the motions and the real thing would simply be a repetition.
But this guaranteed nothing, and the idea that had shined so brightly faded like a drunken promise. I would be back right where I started.
I want to die and be with Lara.
That was it. Why hadn’t I think of this earlier? I would either join Lara in the afterlife, or fade away into the same black nothingness which had taken her.
The dog was fed double for breakfast the next morning and gobbled it up eagerly. The unnamed mutt looked at me with suspicious eyes while I drank from the freezer-chilled Southern Comfort bottle. It burned going down, but there was more burning to be had.
I fetched the red gas can from the shed, and the menacing fumes caused the mutt to whimper when I brought it inside. He shouldn’t be here for this, I thought, so I opened the back door and he took a few steps outside. I looked into his sad eyes one last time, wishing I had given him a name. Whoever finds you will care for you, I whispered before shutting the back door and leaving him safely behind.
The whiskey in my veins made me drunk with the passion to die. I dug out Lara’s leftover pills—Xanax, Vicodin, even morphine—from their hiding place deep in the linen closet. I put equal handfuls of all three in my mouth, and washed them down with a river of Southern Comfort. Gas can in hand, I climbed onto the king mattress with such relief, and it wasn’t long until my brain started to swirl downwards.
Consciousness was fading, and I needed to act fast to make sure I didn’t wake. I needed a sure death. The gasoline was surprisingly cold when I poured it on my chest, seeming to sizzle before it was even lit. The fumes burned my nostrils and down into my lungs.
When I struck the match, flames followed the fumes, sizzling my skin and burning down into my throat. I’ve never felt such a rush. My body burst open and my insides were released like an explosion of fireworks. It was painless, orgasmic. My soul was set free from the charred carcass and I was born again.
My spirit soared. Freedom was had. Lara would be near.
But something was wrong. The joy of death turned to pain. I wailed like a wraith with nowhere to go. My body was as burnt as a witch on a stake, and just as dead, but my soul was still aflame. Through the fire, I saw the face of my neighbor, my lover, who had let herself inside as I had planned. Her face contorted with anguish at the sight that confronted her.
I was a body no more but felt lost, adrift in the darkness of an ocean bottom. Black jellyfish were piled on top of each other, squirming, some moaning words I could not decipher, and I feared I had become one of them.
“Lara,” I cried out, praying she might hear. “Lara, come to me.”
The blobs began to take shape. Bodies of black, with nooses hung around their necks, foam at their mouths, slices and cuts on their wrists and their necks, some still bleeding, some with dry blood caked all over. One had fractured leg bones which jutted out of its skin, and I saw the marrow inside, as if he had jumped to his death. Another’s skull was blown off from a shotgun blast through the roof of her mouth.
Suicidal souls, all of them. I felt it, and I was one of them.
“Lara, Lara.”
Yes.
Her voice! I heard her voice.
“Lara, I can hear you, but I cannot see you, cannot feel you, cannot be with you.”
My love, you were with me, and I with you. I came to you.
“No. I looked for you. I waited. I tried, Lara, but you were gone.”
No. I was there. I was the dog who sat on your lap. I felt every stroke you gave upon my back. I watched as you suffered and wanted you to be in peace. I then visited you and gazed into your eyes over coffee, waiting for life to emerge from the sadness. I came to you like I promised. We were together and I now carry your seed. I am the spirit inside a new body, one that was lifeless and easily occupied. Together we will have a child, so here I shall stay.
Lightning bolt visions flashed and burned inside of me. I remembered the days on the couch petting the stray mutt and feeling the life in his spine. I remembered sex with the neighbor in the darkest of rooms and the sensations of her flesh on my fingers. I had none of that now, and I felt Lara fading.
“Come back.”
Silence
“Lara, come back . . . ”
I can not.
“Why?”
Your death. Your suicide. You are a murderer now. You are forever tattooed in black. It’s all you will ever hear, all you will ever be. I want none of it.
“Come back”
Too late
I would have screamed if I’d had a real voice, but instead, I was a soul forever burning. Lara was alive, somehow, and with child. She would be a shining star in someone else’s sky, but mine was forever dark.
I watched as she covered the last bits of flame on my body with a blanket until the fire roared no more, crumbling to the ground next to the charred body I had left behind. My skin was crispy, the scent nauseating, but I refused to accept my mistake. That I had taken my last breath. I prayed that somehow Lara could make my heart beat again and bring me back to life.
But nothing.
Now in darkness I remain. The torment goes on and time passes. I see Lara light up when she smiles at her baby, the way she used to light up for me. She inhabits her new body as though it’s a new house, making it her own. Knowing she’s happy is sometimes enough to help me endure getting sucked into this black hell.
But my love has its limits. My loneliness burns, my regrets an endless fuel. I beg for mercy from this perpetual pain.
I beg for Lara to come back, even if it means she suffers alongside me.
And I think I’ve found a way to make it happen.
If I can make her life a living hell, if I can torture her each night with a touch of the darkness that I’ve come to know so well, if I can cause enough pain, she will no longer want to live. She will take her own life, and join me.
My persistence is one part of me that hasn’t died.
I become her new cancer, the disease I once cursed I now embrace, and it will kill her just the same. I infect her dreams with fears. I turn her waking hours into a nightmare. I splash my sea of blackness onto the brilliant starshine of her soul.
Despite how strong Lara is, her shine dims by degrees each day.
Someone else will need to care for the child, Lara can do so no longer. She is back at in-home hospice, rarely leaving her bed. Her pupils have become black holes, her skin pasty and cold. She is unable to withstand the torment.
There is no relief but to join me.
Tattooed all in black.