A return to the street where I grew up. A return in the long summer, day after day of heat and humidity, a blanket of sweat that nestled over the neighborhood. The brick house where I lived as a child, a cocoon, a nest my parents never left. A home built with a weak foundation, the ceiling had cracked the year we moved in, the windows never shut right, a sign of things to come.
Dad had died when I was in college. The long winter, Mom called it. I took the semester off and spent a lot of time watching Mom sleep, her body small beneath the covers, her voice thick with sedatives as she called out Dad’s name. The space where Dad used to sleep would unfold, the emptiness spread inside the house, spread inside of us. I remember those eight months before I went back to school as a frozen lake, a cold and solitary thing, nestled in mountains, undiscovered and alien.
They said Mom died in her sleep, peaceful, but I knew different. She never got peace from sleep, that was where Dad dwelt after he died, she said so. Those cold Christmases, the two of us at the dinner table, silent but aware. We would exchange gifts but there was never much talk. Year after year, the visits grew shorter, but she always managed to tell me about Dad, the Dad in her dreams, the Dad who kept on living.
The first day back home, I cried a lot. I went into their room and fell onto the bed, tear stained face pressed against the sheets. This felt like an ending, something forever closing in the grand scheme of things. I cried and cried and cried, unable to handle the silence of the house, the stillness of it all.
The second day, I began going through Mom’s things, trying to find any information on family to contact. It seemed odd, I don’t remember any aunts or uncles, cousins. No mention of my grandparents. I have a hard time remembering details about Dad’s funeral, there are flashes, taking some clothes to the cleaners, realizing I had outgrown my old Sunday best. The long rows of pews, empty. The paint on the outside of the church peeled, signs of neglect everywhere I looked. Had it just been Mom and me at the funeral? The two of us staring at the body of Dad? I begin to get headaches, and sleep seems like something I cannot achieve.
The third morning, I notice the coffee tastes funny, the freeze dried grounds are fine, but the water smells odd as it flows. I begin to smell the same thing all over the house. The smell is odd enough to notice, but it’s hard to place. I ask the neighbors if anything has been done to the neighborhood well, but they all say no. Maybe it’s the pipes in the house. I spend a few more hours going through Mom’s date book, hoping to find anyone else to contact about her passing. There is no one to notify, I was contacted by the doctor listed in her directory, every other spot was empty, except for my own information.
The smell causes the headaches to get worse, so I open windows around the house. The heat and humidity seep in but I don’t mind. When the house is cold, I feel unease, reminded of all the winters I came home. Mom’s hands move across utensils, across plates and present, bony things that remind me of birds, spiders, things from outer space that sleep, dreaming of home or hunger. I spend a few hours in the backyard, trying to sweat the headache out, but it lingers, a malignant thing that squats in my skull, pressing into my brain, grinding at my skull.
The third night is when the dreams begin. Mom and Dad, seated at a long table, gaze at one another, sounds emerge from around the table, birds, wolves, cats, insects, animal sounds that border on mechanical, hot, threshing noise. They hold each others hand but something is wrong, the table cloth writhes beneath their arms, shapes seem to solidify and melt away in the blink of an eye. They begin to turn towards me and I wake up, my body covered in sweat, the pillows damp with it, or is it tears, I’m not sure.
I didn’t go back to sleep, taking the rest of the night to prowl the house in hopes of finding more to Mom’s mysterious information blackout. As I went through box after box of old bills, receipts and tax returns, a revelation dawned upon me. One that rose on the horizon of my mind, burning away what I thought of my past with my Mom and Dad.
The fourth morning, I have a hard time while talking with the funeral director. Every so often, a click forms in my throat, causing me to stop speaking, creating long pauses when I try to respond to the director’s questions. I close my eyes tight and press the heel of my hand against the socket, forcing the pressure deep into my flesh that seems to dislodge whatever is causing my voice to stop. I must’ve said something or made some strange noise because the funeral director gets upset and hangs up on me.
I find myself in the back yard again, smoking one of the stale cigarettes I found in the glovebox of my truck. I had tried calling the funeral home back after a couple of hours but I kept getting a busy signal. I’m sweating as the sun sinks lower and lower in the sky and I see one of my neighbors in their backyard. I begin to raise my hand in greeting but something in the back of my mind whispers to me, warns me that I cannot trust them. They might notice I’m too much like my parents. I grow still, only blinking as the sweat runs down my brow into my eyes. A chorus of insects rise and the cigarette burns down to my knuckles, making me yelp as I drop it into the roiling grass below.
The fourth night, I sit in the darkness of the house. All the lights are off and I have flipped the breaker for the AC unit, opting instead to run a box fan with all the windows open, hoping to push out the strange smell that has began to coat everything in the house. Things stir in the darkness, in my skull, beyond the fluttering of the curtains. In my slowly growing delirium, I reach my hand out to one of them and it reaches out to me.
I cannot recall the fifth day or the sixth day.
The seventh night, I have gathered all the boxes my Mom kept. I take them one by one into the backyard, piling them up so they resemble stone structures across the ocean, the ones created by ancient people to mark time, to perform a ritual function. I notice strange marks all over my arms as I haul the boxes out, some of them resemble the long, winding marks of cat claws, others are like inverse starbursts, puckered wounds that threaten to wink open and reveal what I really am.
My Dad is with me, like he was with my Mom but I am not she or he. I am the product of their joining, a bridge between. The papers that looked like tax returns, receipts, old paystubs, they were beyond that. They were a cipher of sorts, a key to something that was always beside me that I refused to acknowledge. The insects are singing as I finish stacking the last of the boxes. The sun dips below the horizon, turning the edge of the sky into a fire that I mirror with the formation of boxes.
The neighbors watch from their windows as I stand before the fire, letting the light hide the changes my body take. The dancing fire makes my shadow change to reflect what I am before I can. How long has Dad been in my dreams? Has he always been there, even before he died? And Mom, how long did you bear his weight as I slowly descended into what I would become? Did it hurt? Was it worth it? Do you see me as I see myself now? Have I always been like this in your eyes? You never really looked at me, I realized as I combed through my memories. You would touch me, reach out to feel my hand, my hair, my shoulders, as if you were reminding yourself that I was still your son, not yet fully Dad’s child.
The flames grow bigger than they should, something happens as the sun fully sets and full dark descends. There are no more neighbors to watch as I spread myself further and further out. Dad and Mom are within me, forced to sit at the table I created for us, forced to reach each other for only the faintest of moments before more and more people join them. A table fit for the entirety of this world and all its inhabitants. Dad smiles, proud of my accomplishment and his own.