He pulls his car into the long rectangular parking lot and heads to the back, seeking the shade of a small tree as refuge from the late summer heat. He parks and sits for a moment, contemplating nothing beyond his dashboard and the play of dappled bits of shade offered by mapled youth. He reaches across to the front passenger seat for his lunch and his newspaper, running his fingertips over the curves of the seat’s empty indentation. Remembering other once-upon-a-time curves beneath these fingertips, he is startled for a moment by the shadow of a maple leaf across his hand.
A hand over his, but his hand alone.
As he exits the car, he pats at his pockets to be sure he has his keys. So many things to remember, and there is no one to remind him anymore. He pats at his pockets once more before shutting the car door, taking comfort in the solid metallic jingle. He reaches to touch the top of the car before walking away, his gesture a marker . . . here is his passage.
As he enters the building, coolness rushes forward to embrace him, the chilly air redolent with the rich odors of the interior. He associates heavy scents with warm humid air, and he is always surprised that the cool dry air of this place carries these thick odors so easily. As always, he stops a moment and breathes deeply to isolate a particular scent in order to keep himself from becoming overwhelmed.
There.
As a boy, he spent long hot sticky Illinois summers doing the things small boys do. Injuries were common, and blood, when it ran, trickled down his legs and his arms and dried in long burgundy paths of crackling paint. He didn’t care; he was too busy conquering the world . . . too busy making his mark to notice the small marks the world made upon him.
At the end of the day, he would sit with his mother on the front porch after his bath, and she would inspect his injuries. Armed with a damp towel and a box of bandages, she would tend to his wounds. He needed no treatment, but he enjoyed his mother’s attention in this sleepy late part of the day, and so he relaxed into the tending. As the shadows grew, he talked with his mother of the adventures of the day, detailing as best he could remember how he had accumulated his various scratches and gouges. In his memory, his closest moments with his mother are suffused with the scent of bandages, hints of rubber and leather and damp. He closes his eyes for a second, losing himself in the memory of his mother’s fingers pressing an adhesive-backed bandage to his shin, her voice amused and frustrated all at once, “I swear, David . . . you are just determined to spill your insides right out for everyone to see.”
He breathes deeply in this cool dry air, picks out the rubbery leathered damp of bandages, and takes himself back to the comfort of those dusky warm moments in sultrier atmosphere.
He smiles, at first just for himself, but then he arranges a broader smile across his features as he walks down the hallway to the large room where he will eat his lunch.
There are massive round tables set up as if for a banquet, but the reality is that the room serves only intimate meals. The empty table by the window that he thinks she prefers beckons to him, and he sits down to wait. He runs his fingers along the edge of the table where the protective rubber strip has come away, revealing the particle board and formica construction of the table’s top. He presses the rubber strip back into place with his fingers, but it will not stay. He picks at the table’s formica coating, and as his fingertips explore its rough edges, he is struck by a sense of repetitive familiarity. How many times has he sat in this spot and waited as his fingers idly explore?
Staring at the bits of damage his fingers have wrought on the tabletop, he is keenly aware of just how small his marks upon the world are these days.
The marks of the world upon him, however, ravage from within.
How he wishes blood would flow as it did when he was a child.
How he wishes to be able to spill his injuries out into the world.
The pressure required to contain these wounds is unbearable.
But.
The unbearable will be borne.
She joins him for lunch.
He stands to embrace her, bending into her shape and pressing himself to her form. He tells her of the heat and how he has shaded the car beneath a small tree and how he has not forgotten his keys. He jingles them for her . . . see? He tells her what he has packed for lunch, how he couldn’t decide between a banana and an apple and so he brought both but now the banana has softened and mottled and looks less appetizing than the apple so perhaps he will just eat the apple. He tells her that he took the garbage to the curb for pick-up. He tells her of the cat’s lazy wave from the window as he drove away this morning.
He falls silent and falls into her silence for a moment.
Her silence is vast enough to swallow them both, so he makes some noise. He unpacks his lunch and sets his items on the table with a series of small thumps. He makes a show of shaking open the newspaper and then laying it across the table. He reads to her from the newspaper between bites of sandwich. The stories are unimportant, but he runs out of his own words when he is with her and finds the words of others helpful.
Time passes.
Her lunch arrives, along with cheerful reminders of how much she liked the strawberry applesauce last time.
She eats nothing.
He cannot bear this next part.
But.
The unbearable will be borne.
He lifts the spoon and scoops a small bit of the pink applesauce, brings the food to her mouth. She makes no movement until the spoon has crossed the threshold of her lips, and then she chews in awkward exaggerated fashion, as though she has no idea what has been placed in her mouth or how much effort might be required to grind it down. He pulls the spoon up against her upper lip and out, moving quickly, fearful that she will hurt herself on its metal edges.
He speaks aloud the story of his boyhood self being tended to by his mother on the front porch so very long ago.
He speaks to soothe himself as he scoops the applesauce.
She does not care about his story.
The applesauce gone, he wipes at her face with a paper napkin.
He realizes he has let his smile slip, and he rearranges his features.
She does not look at him.
He rests a hand in her lap, runs a hand down her thigh.
Remembers the once-upon-a-time of these curves beneath his fingertips.
He slips his hand beneath her hand.
A hand over his, but his hand alone.
Unbearable.
But.
Borne.
It is time for her to leave.
Time for him to leave.
He gathers his bits of lunch debris and his newspaper.
Makes a promise to eat lunch with her the following day.
She does not care about his promise.
He makes his way back along the cool scented hallway and out into the humid hot air of the late summer day.
Makes his way to his car.
Drives.
But not so far away.
He parks again, beneath another small shade tree.
As he does many days.
All alone.
He stares straight ahead, seeing nothing. His body and his mind are wracked with sorrow and pain and loss. The world’s marks upon him sear but leave no visible scars . . . he is ravaged from within.
He shakes with agony.
He weeps.
He weeps for all that was and will never be again.
He weeps for an ending.
He weeps.
He stares straight ahead and he shakes and he weeps.
He is not aware of the woman and her two daughters in the car beside him. He is not aware that the woman gives her daughters the task of collecting trash from the back of the car to give him a chance to collect himself before she makes her presence known. He is not aware of anything. He weeps.
The woman finally cannot stall any longer, and she opens her car door and slips out.
He is not aware of the woman.
The woman’s daughters climb noisily from the car.
He is not aware of the children.
The woman considers knocking on his window and asking if he is alright, but she does not want to intrude. As she is considering, one of her children trips on the sidewalk and scrapes a knee. A minor injury, but she bends to examine it and offer soothing words.
When she stands up, she sees the man is watching her. He is wiping at his eyes with a paper napkin, and he is smiling. She waves a tentative greeting and he does the same. He rolls down his windows and makes a noisy show of shaking out his newspaper.
The spilling is done for now.
The woman’s daughters pull her away.
He watches as they walk.
He inhales deeply.
Inhales of heat and humidity and rubber and leather and damp.
He needs tending.
