Just turned 50… five minutes past 50… sitting at the library computer center, and no one’s around… It’s late… just before dark and the sky is all blue past the hills… a kind of gray blue… Looking at the time… Never thought I would get here… Thought I might tell you about it… I don’t really know how this works, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lonely church, and when this all went down… Thought someone else might want to know… Someone could’ve been there too… It’s been a while now. Maybe I’m just like my dad.
Almost an hour drive at sunset from the apartment in Little Armenia… back in the Valley my parents and I would go down to the other house Friday nights until I was eight… Unmarked… crowded. He would order a cup of coffee… the bone arm of the lady in the apron, torn at the hem… her wrist clicking under the weight of the pot. The coffee would be tepid by the end of the night… A bouncing leg… a tattooed fist… and all night long dad tells me stories… looking at the walls like it was the first time.
Yeah, so, he would say a couple of times. Yeah so yeah so yeah so… then looking at me… flash of a smile… fading into the table, and then back to the pigeon neck twitching at the walls. Hows it going buddy? You like your burger? I nod. Back to the walls. The sound in the den. Yeah so yeah so yeah so… He sighs. Okay. So last night, you know… before I called… yeah right then I was walking back home, and this guy John was following behind me. Bruce… he was up ahead… beneath the street lamp like you couldn’t see a thing — shadows on the face in the yellow… and he’s talking to a guy I didn’t recognize, and a group of kids ride their bikes with the light-up wheels on by.
He paused and the lady with the clicking wrist has her hand on my plate like it was a dead moth flying from the buzzing blue light in the kitchen… burger half-eaten… back to the walls… The green table makes me sick.
He looks at me and smiles again. He knows where we are… back from the corners… back from the walls… Hey, he said. I got this feeling that night… the other night… like… I don’t really know what it was, but like the smell when you’re mom would bake a cake for your birthday when… or like the sound of the train going by in the distance… or like when you write your name for the first time on a sympathy card. That kind of feeling. It was like it was over me… in the trees… on the path from the lumber yard. Heading back home. It was… just kind of… yeah… You know what I mean?
I wasn’t listening… busy looking over at the cat on the wall with the time on his stomach, and his eyes and his tail counting each moment away… laughing like… but I looked at my dad and I smiled because he was looking at me… waiting on me… wasting each moment the cat looked on. Yes, I said. I know.
A burst escaped his mouth… between a wail and a laugh… covered his mouth… and his eyes glistened in the blue. He grabbed my hand, and told me he was so glad I was here… at the other house… Friday night… guys night out, right? So I’m standing there, he says. And John sits on one of the benches… and… and Bruce waves to me back on the other end of the path… up ahead, and the stranger waves too… like I’m supposed to know him… or maybe I did. Then, the kids with the light up bikes ride through in the other direction, and the wind blows, and the feeling’s gone.
The cat wastes time… mom comes out of the room, and the crash of pool balls from the basement… and a let down… disappointment… laughter for why… and she sits at the chair in the archway between the hall and the kitchen… picks at the white paint on the molding… her face a couple of inches away from the wall… and we all just sit there. Mom talks in whispers… like door hinges… like a kid… and I don’t know what she’s saying, and I don’t like it. Her pitch drops, her arm falls out of her lap, and she holds her wrist up, shoulder height, and she’s all like Did you tell him where we’re going?
So I’m backward in my chair, and the lady with the clicking wrist is looking in the refrigerator, and she drops a carton of milk… and my mom isn’t looking at anything… and my dad reaches over and touches my shoulder like I’m made of tissue. I’m turning around and his face is covered in shadow, and he walks out. That’s when the cat stops. The last words I remember… and this is what little I can… dad says It’s time… I’m heading off… church, you know… and then he’s gone, and I never see him again.
###
My mom’s boyfriend tells her about lonely church years later… a name the guys at the plant gave a small group of houses between Santa Clarita and Lancaster… he says most of the guys who go out there go out there to die. Nod off, he says, but I know what he means.
And where do they go? I look at the man my mother loves… all leather and oil… sitting on the porch in a rusted iron chair… smoking the dregs of his cigarette, and he’s laughing.
They go to lonely church, son… that’s the last stop.
My mom starts laughing too… rocking back and forth on a weathered bench… holding her arm up like a symptom… head in hand… the flies buzzing around the yellow porch light.
Last stop, she says. Last stop…
No, I say. No… I mean the bodies… where do the bodies go?
Sideways glances at my mom… laughing… Nobody knows that. They just go.
###
Late at night I dream about my dad and lonely church… and I’m probably fourteen and the phone rings… The image of my dad sitting on a dirty sofa in some room with the lead paint peeling off the walls… it’s blurring… but it’s still there… Mom comes running into my room, and she hisses, The neighbors are outside.
I turn over in bed… eyes still closed… My bed feels like a plank beneath me. Yeah? And what?
Get your things, she says. We’re leaving.
No, I whine, and she smiles… eyes darting from me to the window… yellow light streaming in from the porch and the flies still buzzing… No… and she touches my arm with her withering hand.
We’ve got to go. He’s got the car running, and the neighbors are coming. We’ve got to go.
We drove up The Old Road with our car full of trash bags of clothes and other necessities… everything else back at the house… holding a photo in the back seat of my dad… backlit… he’s at a party… and he’s holding something… and his hand is blurry because he’s waving into the camera… back and forth… and I keep falling asleep.
###
Must’ve been about six years later… mom finds a different guy and washes her hair… cooking… cleaning… everything different this time and I’m gone. He doesn’t like me… says I’m too old to be hanging round the house… brining in people at all hours… sitting up in the basement… doesn’t like it. I might tell him to screw, but my mom… she tilts her head and unblinking looking at me… and she prays… and she lifts her lower lids a few millimeters just to beg me… saying I’ll be fine. Go on.
So I go on and get properly drunk. Found a place nearby… a little hole in the wall kind of dive that Kevin used to go to… guy I met out of high school… nice kid… not to bright… but he could hold his own, so I stuck with him. Anyway, I call him up and say I’m at the place, but he’s caught up in something with his girl that I’m just not ripe for… rain check, and I say don’t bother I’m leaving.
You’re leaving the bar, he says through the phone. What? Just cause I’m tied up?
No leaving town. They finally got me, and I’m headed out. Mom told me to go on. Thought I’d take a few drinks before getting lost.
We don’t talk for too long. Next to me there’s this guy I can’t remember too well… face like a few other faces… brown hair long under his hat… flannel or something… just like everyone in the place. He’s out here standing at the door and he hears me and I know it… I feel the kind of guy he is… the getaway kind. He says he hears me, and wants to know if I have a place to stay.
Ask me again when I have a couple more, I say, and he obliges. Don’t too much care for the man, but I’ll listen and I’ll squawk and maybe he’ll have the answers or a couple bucks. At least he has a couple drinks in him.
So I start squealing, really deliver, and he’s here with a couple uh-huhs and reallys… don’t say all that much though. Just looks in the mirror right into his eyes… hie own eyes. Then he asks the stupid question… where my dad is… and I tell him all about lonely church.
Went up and shot himself to hell that’s what, I say.
This time he looks down into his drink like for an answer, but nothing there.
Yeah I know the place, he says. Not like what you’re talking about though. It’s a little industry town up right outside of Kingsburg in the Central Valley. Not but barely a mile wide. Kinda commune like. There’s a couple of shops and restaurants, sure, but everyone works for the church. Nice place. Sure, a little run down, but not half bad. In the middle of nowhere for the most part though. I mean, not as remote as some of the places down south, but still at least a 20 minute drive from any center.
What kind of church is it?
Hell if I know. Christian church, I think. That’s all I can tell. Don’t know much about anything else. If it talks like church and walks like church…
Yeah I know, I mumble. Thought it might be some kind of cult thing.
He laughs… big booming laugh… not like the secret chuckle from that night on the porch… flies buzzing in the yellow light and the oily boyfriend all ash and teeth.
No sir, he says. I mean it might, but the people there seem normal to me, and I’ve seen it all. Straight up and down the road in my opinion… nothing much to either side. Oh yeah I know they probably have their weird ones, but who doesn’t?
Yeah, I say. Yeah… my mind is running with questions… He closes out his tab, and now I’m a little weak to stand, but he says he’s headed up to Fresno in a day or two and I can crash on his couch till then. Probably stop in Kingsburg on the way… he says. Could even take you to lonely church… maybe… maybe your dad has a place for you until you get back on your feet.
###
His apartment is ok… clean enough, but looks like he just moved in… Girlfriend talks all day on the phone, muffled through the door to the master bedroom, and I hover between the couch and the bathroom for two days until he wakes me in the night… TV in the darkness… hand on my shoulder… and tells me to pack my things. Rubbing my eyes I look at the TV and I turn to see static like rain on the wall.
We get to Kingsburg early in the morning… just after daybreak… and he drops me at a bus stop downtown. Truck idles a bit in front of the stop, and I’m starting to think maybe he has some trouble… Walk a couple steps forward and he rolls down the window… face backlit by the rising sun… and he’s grinning at me in the shadow of the cab, chewing a piece of gum… and he shouts, almost too loud… like I’m not just by him… like I’m falling away… and he says, I hope you find what you’re looking for… and he’s gone.
I wait a couple of hours… no bus… nothing coming my way to take me out by lonely church. There’s a little park nearby and I see a couple old folks… probably a husband and wife… and they’re walking up from a bench and they see me looking around all concerned.
Excuse me, the old woman says. Excuse me, where’d you be hoping to go? Buses don’t run today.
I smiled and looked down at the pavement… laughing at myself… she smiles back. I was hoping to get out to lonely church before dark? Maybe I heard its not too far away. Probably out in the boonies. Don’t know why I thought I could ride that way on a bus.
The old man looks confused. You ever been to lonely church?
I shake my head. I haven’t, but my dad moved out here a few years ago and I’m headed to stay with him.
Old woman squeezes the old man’s hand and they share a couple glances. He looks at the sky as if to gauge the time, and then says, Well to tell you the truth, we live out in lonely church. It’s not far, and not in the boonies neither. We could drive you out that way, but I’d have to search you, and you’d have to put your things in the trunk. Just for our safety, seeing as how we don’t know you or nothing. I have a pistol in the car. We won’t have any problems if you’re not a problem. You aren’t, are you?
No sir.
They drive me out a few miles. Not far, like the old man says. Just as the buildings begin to get a little more sparse, and there’s a heap of farmland, then I see it. A small fountain and a concrete sign with big iron letters attached reading “Lonely Church”. Palm trees dotting the fence, and a swing-arm gate out front. The old man punches a code into the gate and it opens… riding down the cobblestone road past a few condos and bigger units… a couple of kids ride a surrey past a security station… laughing… and they head off into a small neighborhood park.
Back there’s the community center, the old woman points back into the park to a small building encompassed in trees and benches… hardly could see it. Your father should be in there by now, but we’ll take you round to his place so you can get settled.
I was falling asleep, and didn’t remember telling them my dad’s name, but I was tired… the whole ride seemed fuzzy… Everything’s green and pastel. Topiary and homes like saltwater taffy.
###
My dad has a condo out by the back of the development, near the garages. My dad lives there with his new wife and a couple kids about 10 years younger than me. Mom’s feeding them cereal when I knock at a sliding glass door leading out to the front lawn. She smiles and comes out to see me.
Oh honey, I just washed that thing. Looks like you got a couple of fingerprints. No. Nope. I’m not gonna worry about it. What can I do you for?
I tell her my dad’s name and I say I’m his son. She introduces herself sympathetic like… Carol… her name was Carol or Jean… I can’t remember now.
We were hoping you’d make it out here today, she says. Jimmy called me and told me everything. No honey, I was asking because they said they’d take you to talk to your dad first thing.
I’m confused. They said that I should come by and get my things settled. Jimmy… was that his name? Well, Jimmy said… or… his wife said that my dad was at the community center?
Oh? That old thing? I wouldn’t call it a community center really, but I’m sure he’ll get back soon. Anyway, I have your room all ready and we’ll be getting you rested and ready in a jiffy.
She walks me into the house. Tiled kitchen… orange and green wallpaper, and a small breakfast nook… Down the hall through the foyer… Wood paneling and a shag carpet… Old Dutch folk art on the walls… This, she says, pointing to a small bathroom. This one’s yours, and we’re right next door past the stairs to the basement. We put fresh sheets on the bed and tried to get it as comfortable as possible. There’s some towels in the closet, and I’ll hang up the things you brought if you want. Or do you want me to wash them?
I pause and stare at the bedroom… shelves upon shelves plastered with baseball figurines, framed autographed pictures of baseball players and a huge poster of a man in black and white wielding a baseball bat that read: “Hank Greenberg, Rosh Hashanah, 1934” on the wall parallel to the door. I don’t know what to say so I ask, Your condo has a basement?
Yeah, she says. We share it with the other house.
###
I stay in the room for the rest of the day sleeping, and occasionally staring at Hank Greenberg. No one comes and knocks… No sounds from inside the house of children playing or running around… It’s about nine o clock and I’m hungry, so I go out to check if anything’s in the fridge, but it’s empty save a carton of milk and some moldy apples. The whole place is dark, and it looks like everyone left… Not a single light on.
I go outside and the place is all quiet. The streetlights are on, and I stroll down the sidewalks to the park, smoking a cigarette. I come up on this park. All the trees and a few benches… and I stand under the streetlight and finish my cigarette… then I’ll head back home. A shout in the distance… a kid screaming, Left! And I turn and see a few kids on bikes with light up tires riding up to me. The wind blows, and I get a certain feeling, as the kids ride up to me I open my mouth to say something, but I can’t seem to make a sound… they ride past me… and I turn to see two men a few yards up ahead, looking at a piece of paper. One waves… I wave back… and then I stamp out my cigarette and head back to the condo.
###
Back at the condo, everything’s still dark… the porch light isn’t on… and I walk inside and go about the house turning on every light I can find. I turn on the TV, and sit for a moment, but something doesn’t feel right. That’s when I hear the sound.
It sounds like something between a laugh and a scream placed beyond me and a hundred concrete blocks… like true terror… like a child screaming before he knows he’s about to die… but deeper… heavier… still, there’s something feminine about it… like a boy alto… something rich, and sad… muffled… apologetic.
I turn up the TV. Someone’s fighting in another house, I think… A domestic disturbance… You’ve spent a thousand nights hearing the same kind of thing… Over and over… over and over… But there it is again. Softer… moaning… somewhere. But this time, I don’t hear the concrete. Not muffled, but still quiet. It’s closer this time. Near the back hallway. I walk. Maybe it’s the kids. Maybe they’re alone, and someone had a nightmare, and I need to call my dad. Maybe their mom took some pills to sleep and they need help.
So I go into the kids room, but it isn’t the kids room. It’s just a room made up like mine. A single bed. The same poster of Hank Greenberg on the wall. The same figurines and pictures signed with the same photographs. One bed. An empty closet.
Then I hear it again. Behind me. In my room. I go in and look under the bed. Nothing. I look in the closet, and all my stuff is gone. But I know it’s in here.
No.
In the basement. It’s below me. They’re locked in the basement. That’s what it is. Maybe.
The door to the stairway is narrow like a closet, and it stands between my room and the master bedroom. Outside the door is a light switch, which illuminates the carpeted stairs, and then another switch at the base of the stairs to turn the lights on in the basement itself.
I walk down the stairs, and I hear the sound of a washing machine. As I make my way down, I see a small light on in the corner. It’s a single floorlamp, but it gives me an idea of the basement. It’s finished with carpet and wood paneled walls. It has a pinball machine in the corner and a couple of bean bag chairs and a TV. Behind the chairs, next to the stairway is a washer and dryer. There’s a clear boundary between my dad’s condo’s basement and the part of the basement that belongs to the other house, demarcated by two large blue, construction tarps that hang from the ceiling.
I hear the sound again. On the other side of the tarp. I stand in front of it, frozen for a couple of seconds. Slowly, and as if by its own will my hand raises to pull back the tarp. Directly in front of it is a small leather bag, unzipped and full of shining metal that plays off the light from the floorlamp behind me. It’s full of gynecological forceps. I notice there are several of these bags scattered throughout the floor next to the tarp.
This side of the basement looks to be larger than the rest. It doesn’t have any furniture, but it has the same shag carpet and wood paneled walls. There’s a door underneath the stairway. I think it probably leads to a parallel stairway up to the other house, but I’m not sure. I open it, but all I see is a room with a billiard table and a desk. There’s a small lamp on the desk and a man sitting behind the desk in a swivel chair and rummaging through the drawers.
Was that you? I whisper.
Was what me, the man asks. I can’t see his face. He’s bent over and rummaging through the drawers.
The sound, didn’t you hear it?
A pause, the sound of papers being moved about, and the man’s body shifting in the darkness, hunched over the drawer.
No… No.
I’m confused, but I turn around to leave. Sorry to bother you, I say, and place my hand on the door knob to close it behind me.
Oh! The man says. Oh I know what you mean! And I turned back around.
Now the man is no longer hunched over the drawers in the swivel chair. He’s standing by the lamp. Wearing a striped polo shirt and denim shorts. He’s bald and wearing large glasses. He’s smiling.
Yes, I’ve heard that sound before, he says. That’s here. It’s here. Behind the door.
I look about the room. There isn’t a door.
Yes, he says. That’s the mother. She’s here. Do you want to see her? She’s here.
You mean your mother, I ask, and he blew some air out his nose.
He sat back down, and hunched back over the drawer. Hold on a second, he said. I’ll get the key. We’re the mask and after the mask, and that’s why there’s the mother.
Then I heard the sound again. Loudly this time. As if it was right in the room with me… behind and before at the same time.
The man looks up at me and smiles again… Would you like to see her? She still hurts a little, but she’s just down there… there… He points to a spot behind the desk, and… again… as if I don’t have a say… my feet start to move without me… towards him.
His hand twitches… pigeon neck… he’s staring into me, unblinking… grinning eyes… There you go… Right here… one foot in front… the other now… There you go.
He lifts up a small metal ring attached to a square of carpet… a door underneath, like a bank vault. He punches in a code, and opens the door in the ground… Yeah so… He says… Yeah so, yeah so, and rubs his knees, smiling up at me. There’s a ladder heading down into the darkness beyond the door… and the smell of lilac and wheat… and the sound, grumbling now, like a low drone.
I start to move down the ladder, every square inch of muscle wants to run… but I keep moving down the rungs… deeper… I hear him above me… It’s dark now… now it’s dark… getting darker… darker still. We are the mask and after the mask. That’s why there’s the mother.
Through the dim light above, I can see the hallway at the foot of the ladder. I step off, and onto another carpet… I make out white baseboard molding and there are pictures on the wall in thick black frames… all with various stock photos… and then he closes the door, and I can’t see anything.
I feel like the earth fell out below me, and I grab for the walls, and beg him to open the door again… Please… I whimper because all I can muster is a hoarse childlike whisper. Please… let me back.
I hug the walls… they’re damp with humidity… I walk down the corridor, feeling the sharp edges of the picture frames… I turn corners and look both ways into the abyss, moving through the darkness… feeling time move.
I hug the walls… and then I see the light, bursting through… needles into my eyes… the small overhead light against the white tile of a bathroom. The drain in the floor… the metal table… the screaming drone… the drone… louder and louder like a child’s throat singing mixed with a thousand terrified screams… and I can see her sitting in the corner. She’s reaching out to me and laughing, but I can’t hear it… I can’t hear the laughter above the sound.
The light becomes brighter… brighter… blinded now, and she begins to crawl, and I’m paralyzed against the smell of her lilac and wheat skin moving towards me, hand outstretched… like a thousand eyes, digging into mine… wearing me like a shroud.
Then it goes.
###
I’m sleeping in a car… the sign says “Kingsburg. Välkommen”, and it’s night. I don’t open my eyes. I’m not waking up, but I’m there… and I don’t know this car… and I don’t know how I got here… but I drive… and I keep driving.
###
Never felt really settled after that… Sometimes I hear that noise still today… I wake up in the night alone and I hear that noise, between waking up and sleeping at a rest stop in a part of America no one knows … and there it is… and I’m face to face with the dark, so I drive to a different town… follow my headlights into the parking lot of a worn out factory… ride into the desert… to a different city… and sometimes on the exits I’ll see a sign for lonely church.
Lonely church next exit.
Lonely church eight miles.
You are now entering lonely church.
And I wait until the exit says something normal, and I hope that there’s a Holiday Inn or something… someplace else I can go. I don’t look for my dad… I haven’t talked to my mom in a couple years now… she calls every night on my birthday, but now she has dementia and doesn’t really remember what day it is… might be gone now… Used to call on weird days and think it was the right one… wrong year… wrong day… but it wasn’t really… It was just any other day.
But now I’m in the library, and they turned the lights off in the book lounge and I should probably head out… Closing soon… The place looks empty… It’s raining outside, so I better head back…. Back to nothing… Back to an unfurnished room… the edge of eviction…. A mattress on the floor… A TV making rain against a blue wall…. Muffled sounds from another room… a fight… a phone conversation… Another road… Another exit… The lights are going now, and I can see here…. I can know. You know? Yeah so you know? I can get it… I can understand…
We’re the mask and after the mask. Like a child playing alone in its room. And it sees all the people… all the masks it wears… and we’re the mask, but then… and it thinks of its friends, and everything it’s ever loved, and everything it’s ever been scared of, but there isn’t anyone, and there isn’t a room, and there aren’t any toys, and it’s just us. It’s just me. It’s just the child. Playing pretend. In his room. Alone.
That’s why there’s the mother.
The librarian comes by and tells me they’re closing, and it’s time for me to leave… gonna press post on this and hopefully I’ll forget… The lights are going now… darker… darker now… darker still… and even darker… now it’s dark.