Three Immesurables

***

The boy grips and re-grips the bat. He cannot remember if he is any good at baseball. He remembers playing in a summer league when he was eight- or nine-years old. He played centerfield, which, at eight or nine, is the equivalent of saying “Please stand over there so you don’t get in the way.” Very little happens in centerfield at eight or nine; occasionally, a lazy ball rolls over second base and into the tall grass of the outfield where it stops and lays waiting to be picked up. He remembers standing at the plate and swinging aimlessly at two pitches. He remembers the fielders creeping in on him knowing that if he even contacts the ball it will be by chance. He remembers running the bases as their centerfielder gave chase to the ball that somehow had taken flight from his bat. But that is all he remembers. He never plays baseball again.

Now, he turns the bat anxiously in his hands and re-grips it. It is a small bat. A child’s bat. At thirteen he has barely outgrown it. He has not yet enjoyed the next summer when he will grow five inches. He has not yet French-kissed a girl or begun using deodorant. He has not yet been awakened in his bed in the middle of the night lying in a puddle of his own emission. At school in the locker room he showers quickly. He dresses not bothering to towel off his small hairless body.

Standing in the shadow of his bedroom door, his fingers tighten around the wooden neck and he looks at his all- too-large hands dangling from his little boy arms. The sleeves of the terry robe that the Mother bought him years ago are short. This is a child’s robe, he thinks.

He wonders if he can swing this bat.

A heat races through him; he knows that he must do this. In the dark, he grips the bat again and waits for his signal.

***

Sometimes I wish I had not seen the body through the half-open door. That I had not seen the tubes that fed the body or drained the waste from the body or put clean blood back into the body or carried the morphine that finally quieted the body — that I had not seen all of the tubes with their clear and purple-red and ochre fluids laying helplessly aside coiled like a tangle of Christmas lights. I wish that I had not seen beneath the sheets that hid the secrets of the swollen and yellowed body. Or beneath the backless gown that one learns to wear so shamelessly.

Half-opened; I watched them lift the arm and with it the whole dead body rose. Bloated and so swiftly stiffening, it floated, upended, dancing upon the toes for one brief moment as they reached around and disrobed it. The fingernails and lips already whitening. I hoped to, but could not look away.

From inside, someone closed the door and the body was gone forever.

***

In 1980 it rained so much that they drained the Villa Park dam. They feared that it might overflow and flood the homes, like ours, just down the hill, and so they opened the gates and released the water into the dry creek bed. Three miles further down the hill Villa Park Road washed out. The yellow dashes and black asphalt just ended. A six-car-length section collapsed under the force of the water. The drainpipe that ran beneath the road was a drinking straw trying to swallow a fire hose.

After the rains, a decision was made to drain the entire dam and service the gates. A river of dam water flowed for months after the rains had stopped. The bigger fish fought the initial flow and towards the end millions of them were trapped in the receding dam and they flopped on the backs of one another in the final few muddy meters of water. They brought out a busload of convicts from the county jail to bury the fish. The dam keeper said that they buried 100,000 carp a day for better than a week. When the water finally slowed to a crawling stream of mud, we hiked along the creek bed. The air was full of flies and we worked to keep them out of our mouths. The smaller fish that had not escaped the initial release of water had been dashed upon the rocks along the banks. A galaxy of small top-feeders — minnow, bluegill, sun fish and crappie — lay dead and picked over by scavengers and birds and ants and flies.

It was summer and the heat cooked the last few dying fish trapped in the muddy water as it oozed down the hill. Scores of trophy catfish dotted the shallows, blown up like balloons around a birthday celebration or lay in the mud gulping at the air hoping to speed millions of years of evolution into a matter of minutes. A three-foot long catfish has a belly the size of a bowling ball but with the sun in July beating on them they doubled and trebled in size. The sun robbed them of their dull ashen color. Exposed, they turned a blackish-brown that made their white lips whiter still and made the yellow eyes swell as if to run away from the head.

***

Through the half-opened door I watched as the body of my sister was, in minutes, transformed into something else.

She had been dying for years; heroin and prison and, finally, HIV. And long before all of that. She was dying when, as a young teen, she threw herself from a second-story window. She was dying when she banged her head against the walls of her bedroom hoping to quiet the Mother’s voice. She was dying as she begged to be caught, smoking pot in the playground while still in grade school. And she was dying, sampling her own death at five years old, hiding in her closet as we scoured the neighborhood searching for the missing child. The Mother called out her name again and again while my friends and I and eventually an entire neighborhood of bicycled deputies and anxious mothers and fathers searched the alleyways and streets. The echoes of her name ringing into the night.

Missing from her home in the city of Orange; five-years old, blonde with blue eyes wearing a white and yellow dress.

But she was not missing. She was in her closet all along — quietly dying for someone to notice.

***

The family shunned their roles. The moors that served to ground the fit drowned the fragile. When the Mother and the Father divorced it was further excuse to confuse and deny the parts which they played. The divorce cast a hot light on an empty stage.

When the Father left, it was never stated, but the boy assumed to keep the cast afloat: To understand the Father. And parent the girl. And partner the Mother. He had failed the girl most of all. She was dying. Still, she was happy to have him with her once again. She asked about the Father “when is he coming” And once again, the boy assumed a role he understood too well.

He called the Father that night from the hospital. The Mother had called the boy earlier that same afternoon. He had been in Long Beach visiting an old friend who had briefly known his sister and it was good to be with his friend when he had received the call. The friend said what he could — but what does one say? They simply hugged and said goodbye and the boy drove to the hospital in Los Angeles.

***

The Father likes to think himself a fisherman yet I do not remember him catching but a handful of rather average fish. He claims to enjoy fishing but he is no real fisherman; it is merely another one of those traits that he hopes to possess but simply does not.

Fishing is more than having the right gear and tying the right knots and waking up before dawn. We did all of that; we just never caught many fish.

The times that we fished off the jetties in Newport or Laguna Beach we didn’t catch anything at all, but it was a thrill knowing that in the early morning, before the sun rose, we would be fishermen. I was nine, maybe ten, and I was going fishing with my Dad.

I wouldn’t sleep the night before. I would lay in bed thinking about me and Dad fishing. Just thinking about me and Dad.

I awoke hours early, we would be fishing soon. I got up, dressed and went back to bed in my clothes. Everything but the shoes. I don’t want to waste one moment of time getting dressed, I just want to wake up and be fishermen.

It is nearly five o’clock when Father wakes me. It is dark. He calls me by my name — he has no special name for me like Sport or Junior or Buddy. I envy the boys whose fathers have special names for them. I envy the children on TV whose fathers lay their big hands upon their small heads and tousle their hair and say “Someday Sport, you’ll be too big for this . . . but you’ll always be my little buddy.”

He could simply call me son.

But he calls me by my name and I awake and he and I load the car and head out into the darkness. Like fishermen.

“Dad, I’m at the hospital . . . Michele is not doing very well.” Should I have simply said that she is dying?

“I’m sorry to hear that.” and he calls me by my name.

“Dad, you need to come see her.”

“Well, right now I’m, I’m in the middle of our biggest event of the year. I’ve got four full days of work ahead of me. I . . . I’ve got 700 families lined up . . . and I’m working from morning ’til night. I . . .”

I cannot hear what he is saying. The echoes of my own words bounce back at me across the gap.

“Dad, you need to come see her.”

“I’ll be finished on Sunday and I can come out then.”

Father has taught me to recognize the keen distinction between “can” and “will.”

It is Wednesday night, nearly nine o’clock, and Michele has been fading in and out for the last six hours. When she does speak her voice comes out wet, like cement. In this, the final stand against her addiction, she has refused morphine to fight the pain. The irony is lost on no one; least of all the nursing staff who claim to know, but can only guess, what a body feels as its organs begin to fail and the act of self-poisoning begins.

“I can be there Sunday.” he repeats and calls me by my name.

“Sunday won’t do anybody any good. You need to come now.”

He is silent but I hear the sound of a merchant loading baskets onto a scale.

Again, I tell him that he needs to come now, but I know his answer and my weightless words do not tip the balance.

Again, I have failed . . . did I not volunteer to send the flare skyward? To cross the desert in search of others? To ride into the sun and promise to return with help?

***

He is in the house; drunk and shuffling across the kitchen. He is muttering to no one and yanking open kitchen drawers. He is searching for something.

The boy listens . . . No, not that drawer.

He fumbles through the utensils and finds what he is looking for.

But the boy has heard this before: The yanking open of the drawer and the sound of utensils pitching back and forth. The Mother would rifle through that same drawer looking for the plastic spoon that she would beat the boy with. A hard, off-white plastic spoon whose bowl had hardened and aged a ruddish-brown. It is the type of spoon that the boy will never have in his own home.

But this is new. Impossible.

It was nearing ten o’clock and the Mother was on the telephone when he knocked at the door. She would later say that she opened the door because she thought he needed help. But now, inside, he is breathing on her and holding a wooden-handled serving fork to her neck.

The boy had just gone to bed and turned out his light and within minutes there was the knock at the door. The Mother had been talking on the phone in the kitchen which always made it difficult for the boy to sleep. They had an open door policy. Nothing was ever private. Everything and everyone was exposed, and so, everyone kept everything of any importance in their own head.

His door open, forced to listen to one-half of the Mother’s phone conversation, the boy heard the knocking and muffled request.

“Oh . . . hold on, there’s somebody at the door. That’s weird. Just hold on.” The Mother walked to the door with the receiver still in her hand.

“Yes, hello . . . who is it?” She leaned her ear toward the door.

“What? . . . Are you alright?” She heard the small voice in the receiver asking questions.

“What? . . . You know I can’t really. . . Yes. Yes. Just hold on a minute — there’s somebody at the door. Just hold on.” She tried talking to them both. When she unlocked the door it was shoved into her and he was in the house.

She feigned annoyance at his intrusion and tried to negotiate the phone conversation and the man rummaging through her kitchen drawers, but when the points of the serving fork found their way to her neck she quietly hung up the phone.

“He’s in the house? He’s in my fucking house?”

The boy thought about the man in his kitchen. What is he . . . twenty-something? And he still plays with the rest of the boys? It’s not like he’s retarded — that would be different. Fine even. But he’s not retarded, he’s twisted.

Not so long ago, the man in the kitchen and the boy had been listening to music and fake kung-fu fighting when the man had begun to wrestle the boy. He held the boy down. There was little that the boy could do. The man was too strong. When he started grunting and humping on the boy – like a dog – the boy felt shamed. Though he lived next door, the boy avoided him from then on.

“What are you doing? Now put that down!” The Mother denied everything before her and spoke to the man as if he were some child that lived next door even as he thrust his hand through the front of her robe and between her legs.

He grunted like an animal, breathy and hot. The more he fumbled between her legs the more he grunted.

“Stop it. Now just stop it — What do you think you’re doing?”

If she did not yet know what he was doing, would she ever know? The tremble in the Mother’s voice grew in response to the fingers wedged between her; the boy slipped out of bed, put on his robe and reached into the closet where he kept an old wooden bat.

From his bedroom, down a short hallway, the boy listened. First, to the drawer full of spoons and spatulas and measuring cups and knives. There were knives. Then, to the man grunting as the man had when he mounted the boy. And to the Mother’s voice. Annoyed. Then indignant. And, finally, pleading.

“No, please don’t. No. No.” She had hoped to play it off as if it was not happening.

“No, don’t do this. No.”

In the hallway the boy stood with his back against the wall gripping the bat. Listening and re-gripping the bat.

Their voices had moved beyond the kitchen. Into the entryway, maybe. And there it sounded as if bodies were on the floor. The grunting and the breathing quickened and the Mother?s pleas had simply stopped.

The boy stepped out of the hallway. He dismissed the kitchen and was standing over them. The Mother, on her back, the fork still at her neck. The man between her legs, his pants around his thighs, and his hand down there, moving in the space between them.

The first swing sent the man to the hospital, and it was from there, while a doctor put twenty stitches in the back of his head, that the police were called and he was taken into custody. But the boy did not know this — and the boy kept swinging. Hitting him as he scrambled to stand. Hitting him as he stumbled and clutched at the doorknob. And his pants. Hitting him harder for the terror revealed in the Mother’s eyes as the man’s body clawed and stumbled off of hers. Hitting him for knocking on the door just minutes after the boy had turned out his light. Hitting him because, until the family moved out of that neighborhood, the boy would have to sleep with his light on. Hitting him because the boy did not know how much of this his younger sister had heard through her own open door. Hitting him in spite of the Mother who had dared to bring this into the boy’s home. Hitting him for the lies the Mother would tell the police when she later downplayed the assault. Hitting him because the man would too soon be released. Hitting him because the Mother would have to move her family from their home. Hitting him because the boy would have to go to a new school. Hitting him because the boy would see the man six months later on a crowded street, and the boy would turn and run. Hitting him for the absence of the Father and the invitation that this must have presented.

The boy hit him again as he ran from the house.

***

Nearly thirty years passed and, again, the boy went fishing with the Father. They had very good-looking fishing gear and stood, like fishermen, on the shore of Mexico and cast their lines into the sea. No real fishermen fish during the monsoon season in Mexico. As soon as they cast their lines out the wind and waves tossed their lures right back upon them. The Father walked down into the sea and stood, knee-deep in water, and aimlessly cast again.

The shore break was storm-heavy and the very next wave slammed an angry door on the Father. The wave pulled his feet from under him and spat him up onto the rocks and shells. One foot and an ankle and the tip of a fishing rod could be seen above the foam as he was dragged into the sea. His head came up and he gulped at the air. The return wave rolled him out into the sea and his heavy limbs flopped upon themselves in the froth. When once he seemed to gain his footing, a second wave drove him back into the rocks and broken shells and began rolling him out to sea again. For a moment he bobbed above the roiling breaker, and then went under again.

Setting his gear aside, the boy, who had not been a boy for a very long time, pulled the Father free.

Again, they did not catch any fish. Later, over margaritas, they had a good laugh about it, but the boy could not help but see the momentary look of terror on the Father’s face when the second wave laid the weight of its intent upon him. And he could not help but hear a half-cry for help from within the tangle of fishing line and foam. They ordered more margaritas and laughed until their faces turned red.

***

To hear Mother tell the story, Michele refused to die that morning until she knew that I had come. I suspect that some of this is true. I did everything within my power to be there. I did abandon my car in traffic and ran the final three blocks to the hospital. And it is true that she was alive when I arrived. But I cannot say that she was not still waiting for someone more.

Straining, withholding, sputtering, then grasping again at the air — Michele was dimly aware of the family and friends circled around her bedside. Over the last 24 hours she had lost service of both her kidneys and her liver. The heightened toxicity of her blood turned her skin and eyes even more yellow than the days before. Her body had become a bloating river of poison — and still, she refused anything for the pain. The nurse assured Mother and I that, now, even the smallest amount of morphine, for the pain of course, would fatally flood her system. This final irony welcomed.

***

We are small and helpless. Buttons lacking fingers. Little flowers chasing the sun. It is a life spent seeking redemption for what we did not know. And for what was left unsaid between hello and goodbye.

I take her hand in mine and she opens her bored, yellow eyes. Her voice is the low gurgle of boiling water. I lay my forehead against hers. My mouth works to speak but I say nothing while the nurse readies a syringe. I think of summers and bare feet and the breeze blowing through an open window. A small blonde girl in a white and yellow dress laughs and falls in the grass and is tickled by puppy kisses in the wind.

I kiss her forehead — it is hot. For a moment I wonder about her disease and the sweat on her face, and my lips, and I realize how little I understand anything at all. The nurse behind me waits. Let them wait — she has waited. This button. This little flower. I can be there Sunday.

I stand in, closer still. It is not much. I nod my head and I sense the nurse behind me moving. I kiss her forehead and in a brave voice that only I can hear she asks again. Of course she knows, but she must ask. She does wait. And, maybe, she asks to remind me of what I had forgotten — that in that bare-footed summer, fallen in the grass, is a young boy. Waiting still.

***

About The Author

JC Jaress is an artist. He paints, photographs and writes about things left unsaid, which, to him, mean more than the spoken. He currently does this in Altadena, California, usually in the middle of the night in the company of his dog, Mattie, who does not speak much at all. Jaress once wrote an article (in 45 minutes) about the speed of life which was published in the “LA Journal”. His paintings and photographs have shown in over 60 exhibitions internationally and have made appearances on wine labels, CD covers, magazine illustrations and some Dutch website that Jaress has been unable to translate but is pleased to know that the Dutch dig him. Someone once told him that they have had a copy of one of his works hanging on their refrigerator for two years. That makes him happy because all of the best artists’ works hang there. And two years is a long time. When asked, Jaress has no problem saying, “Yes, I love chocolate cake.”