Belt Buckles & Pajamas Read online

  We walk into afternoon session and Kareem is sitting there and I see the package he is carrying and I point it out to Stuart.

  Stuart – Stuart, mind you! – runs up to Kareem and hugs him. “Thank you for your dedication to this solemn task,” he says. “The legacy left behind will be restored. The nameless named, the forgotten remembered, the lost found. I salute you.”

  “Well, I guess you have figured out what Kareem brought us,” Andie says. “Yes, the engraver called, said the plaque was done, and Kareem volunteered to pick it up on his lunch hour.”

  “A scholar and a gentleman,” the cow moos.

  “Thanks for picking it up, Kareem,” I tell him. “This means a lot to me – to all of us.”

  “No problem, it was a nice day for a drive.”

  “And a nice day for putting up a plaque,” Andie adds. “Sam is already out at the cemetery with the setting stone, let’s not keep him waiting any longer.”

  So off we go. I keep trying to catch Shy Boy’s hand but he is back to being shy. He glances at me occasionally and it seems that he is checking to make sure I am okay but for some reason he is playing it like he is the old Shy Boy.

  “We’re off to see the wizard,” says the hedgehog, and again he has captured our mood succinctly. Stuart is carrying the plaque high over his head, leading the triumphant procession to the cemetery.

  I watch Andie and Kareem walking side by side, talking so easily, so naturally, that I wonder if they are more than co-workers. The flare of jealousy doesn’t become such a wonderful occasion and I quickly douse it. Andie is just so empathic and Kareem so nice but always a friend that the ridiculousness of the combination eliminates any further consideration of hidden relations between the two.

  We arrive and see Sam has been busy. He has already prepped the site, having mowed a little clearing in the front center area of the cemetery, just inside the broken gate. A new block of stone sitting there, its bright white surface a sharp contrast to the weathered grays of the surrounding tombstones.

  “All set, Andie,” Sam tells her. “I have the holes drilled already, I can bolt it on whenever you want.”

  “Great job, Sam.” She takes the plaque from Stuart and passes it to Sam, who installs it on the stone block. It doesn’t take long; minutes later he steps back so we can all get a good look at our work.

  “It’s perfect,” Andie says, and I nod my head in agreement. It is simple, but profound to those of us who can relate to it – relate to those whom it honors.

  “Read it to us, Andie, please,” Pet Shop asks.

  “IN MEMORIAL OF THE PEOPLE OF KANAPOLIS SANITARIUM. FOR THOSE BURIED HERE, MAY THEY NEVER BE FORGOTTEN, MAY THEIR NAMES BE KNOWN. WE DEDICATE THIS TO SOME, SO THAT ALL MAY BE HONORED.”

  Underneath the words are the individual plates made from our cards. I trace the names, the engraved drawings giving each of them not only their name but uniqueness as well. I marvel again at the intricacies of Shy Boy’s plates. Detailed or not, they are all respectful of those who were here before us. People just like me: lost, confused, abandoned. But deserving more. Deserving to be held, to be comforted. To be known.

  Stuart kneels beside the tombstone with three seven dash four three three on it. He kisses it as Violet did in the past. He rests his forehead against the stone and starts shaking, tears rolling down his cheek. Violent sobs rack his body.

  Andie kneels beside him and he throws himself into her arms and she strokes his head and rocks him back and forth. “It’s all right, Stuart. No one will forget them now. No one will be a number anymore.”

  He looks up into her eyes. He is crying and smiling simultaneously. “I know,” he says. “I’m so happy for them. But I’m sad. I’m so sad.”

  “Why, Stuart? This is a celebration, why are you unhappy?”

  Stuart reaches for her hand, holds it tightly. I feel him clasping her hand. I feel his sorrow, and know why it is there. He looks at her. I look at her. My eyes are filled with Stuart’s tears. I want to cry out, to tell him I still need him, but he won’t listen. I hear him say the words. I hear him tell Andie goodbye.

  Andie stares into my tear-brimmed eyes. She doesn’t understand. Not at first. Slowly I see the comprehension come, as she realizes who it is she is now looking at. I feel the blood rush out of my face, I feel the gaping emptiness inside me, I feel the world spinning me into the heart of the sun and then I give in and collapse into her arms.

  Fifty-Four: Two Lights

  I sink through the endless void, the deep stillness of eternal darkness that I have traversed before. The hollowness within my corporeal shell mirrors that which surrounds me. Where once lived many now only one remains. The protector from harm, the guardian of change, the caretaker of emotions, the shield against assimilation – all have left, all have abandoned me.

  I reach inside and I find resistance. Strength. Self-confidence. I reach deeper and find love. Acceptance. Understanding. I scrutinize all that I have become, that their passing has transformed me, galvanized what were disparate fragments of being into a whole. Fragile yet durable as a sapling is. Able to survive the gale as it bends while the stubborn oak cracks in its inflexibility.

  I cast my vision across the cosmos and it is only through my eyes that I see. I sing hosannas to the outer reaches of infinity and my ears alone hear the echoes. I bare my body to the universe and feel solar flares, asteroids, galaxies caress my skin and the ecstasy is solely mine.

  I embrace all that I am as I release all that I was. Glen, Theodore, Violet, Stuart. Even Melissa. They are part of me and always will be, but it is Daphne who will command the vessel that carries us all.

  Two beacons appear. I am drawn to them, twin points of light set against the ocean of black. They call to me, and I am entire enough to answer. I swim rapidly to them, eager to escape from this solitary confinement. I reach for them, I beseech them, to pull me free, to take me home.

  “Daphne,” the sirens sing in unison. “Come back to us.”

  “Help me,” I plead, “deliver me from this prison I have built.”

  The lights mutate as I approach. The one on the left slowly changes into Shy Boy – no, Gordon, he is too complete, too alive, to be Shy Boy anymore. The one on the right transforms into Andie. They both reach out to me, to pull me to safety, to bring me out of the depths I have fallen to. I try to grasp both their hands but they are too far apart, I cannot stretch enough to span the distance between them. I start drifting away.

  “Daphne, please, take my hand,” Gordon says. He is at once the never been kissed and first dance and prom and maidenhead taking white picket fence and two and a half kids everything that a man could be.

  “Daphne, let me save you,” Andie says. She is sweaters and pajamas and leaves and clinging and sweet gentle hands and softness and purring and everything that a woman could be.

  Their eyes are full of love and promises and happily ever after and I can’t decide and I drift away as they continue to offer all that I ever wanted. I look above as the figures become shining stars and the points of light and then even those fade. Then there is nothing.

  Fifty-Five: Gordon

  I wake and I am in my bed and somebody has dressed me in pajamas again. I wonder who stripped my clothes off, who saw me naked before clothing me in my sleepwear. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever they saw would pale in contrast to the nakedness of my soul. Unless it was Sam, whose putting me to bed would perhaps not solely consist of a change of clothes. I wonder if I could even tell if I had been violated while I was out of it. Surely I would have experienced nightmares of my past abuses, rather than the celestial wanderings and visions I recall from last night.

  I shake off thoughts of Sam and any potential assaults. He may be crude and obnoxious but if he was prone to rape he would never have left my room the night Violet had invited him in. I get out of bed and change out of the pajamas and into a t-shirt and jeans. The t-shirt is insufficient; I add a sweatshirt over it. It is warmer but there is s
till a coldness inside that no layering of garments will defrost.

  Breakfast. I walk in to the cafeteria and Pet Shop and Gordon are there. Even awake, his manifestation sustains, I no longer see him as Shy Boy. He lifts his head in greeting as I sit, his eyes crystal, his lips forming the bridge to eternity that I was unable to cross last night. As empty as I am now, doubtless he has been filled equally, and he is so present that I can do nothing else but smile as I bask in his glow.

  “Hey, you,” I say, not sure how he would react if I called him Gordon. Not sure if I want to make it that apparent that I view him differently.

  “Yea, though we walk in the shadow of the valley,” offers the hedgehog. Quite a solemn choice for the normally sarcastic fur ball.

  “Good morning, Pet Shop. You too, hedgehog,”

  I eat a couple pieces of toast. While Gordon has lifted my spirits I am still so uncertain. He is overpowering next to me, but I cannot fool myself into thinking that I will not be as swept away in another direction the moment Andie is near.

  It is quiet, eating breakfast with Gordon and Pet Shop. All the usual suspects, with the exception of the hedgehog, are absent. No tangential observations from the paranoid set, no sexual innuendoes or trouser attacks, just a couple people eating food. What used to take forty-five minutes is over in ten.

  We sit there at the table, Pet Shop playing with the remains of his breakfast, and Gordon and I staring at each other. Finally I give in to half of my heart. I tell Pet Shop we will meet him at morning session, take Gordon’s hand and lead him back to my room.

  I sit down on the bed, motion for him to sit beside me. He takes my hands in his, lifts them to his lips, and brushes tender kisses against them. I close my eyes, drinking in the caresses, the touches of his lips as he travels from hand to forearm to shoulder. He nuzzles my neck, his hot breath as he exhales soaks through the frost that had filled me since I awoke, thawing the blocks of ice surrounding my heart. Half of it, anyway.

  Half of it. I know it is only half. That he is offering all and I am not prepared to reciprocate. Even though in his arms I am ready to make love, to lose myself in passion and to thrust in rhythm with eager anticipation, I cannot continue. I open my eyes, capture his hands before they can rove across my chest, pull back from his embrace. I meet his gaze, see everything that could exist alive in those sparkling orbs, and turn it away.

  His arms drop, his shoulders slump, tears roll down his cheeks. His incomprehension resonates through every movement his body makes.

  “I’m sorry. I want this as much as you do, believe me I am aching inside. I just – I can’t – I –” Tears fall from my own eyes as I struggle to find the words to explain what I don’t fully understand myself.

  He lifts my head up, smiles gently. He brushes my hair back, leans in, and kisses me. Not a “let’s make love” kiss, not a hello or goodbye kiss, but a “hey, let’s just kiss and it will be all better next time” kiss. An “I understand, even if you don’t” kiss. Almost a kiss to claim all of me.

  “I love you, I really do,” I tell him. “I love you, Gordon.” He is Gordon now; he will always be Gordon.

  His eyes go wide as he hears his name. I take advantage of his surprise to lean in and return the kiss. A “thank you, I love you, even if I am an idiot” kiss.

  Fifty-Six: Anyone Else In There?

  I hold hands with Gordon all the way into morning session. I hold onto him until we sit down and I look over and Andie is sitting there with her black-rimmed glasses and divine presence and curl of hair over her ear and Gordon’s hand just slips out of my grasp. Slips away and I can hardly remember what it was like to hold it.

  “Good morning,” Andie says, and I look at her pearl white skin and I notice a freckle on the side of her nose I have never seen before and I wonder how I ever could have missed something as beautiful as that. “How are you feeling this morning, Daphne?”

  I smile and I want to hide and I try to reach Gordon thinking maybe that could anchor me but he doesn’t notice, his hands are on his lap and I bite my lower lip and hope she asks someone else.

  Andie reaches out and the bridge is there again, a span I must choose to cross and I think it is only fair, I shared with Gordon earlier, so I shift my hand from moving toward Gordon to intercepting her own and I allow her to pull me close. Closer than she expected I think because she gives a little start as my face is next to hers and I breathe in her perfume and I am shaking.

  “Daphne?” she asks, not knowing who it is, so I give her a timid half-nod and a nervous smile. Have I changed so much that she no longer recognizes me?

  “Andie,” I whisper. “Andie, I don’t know what’s left of me. I’ve lost so much. Everyone’s gone, everyone but you and Gordon.”

  “Oh sweet dear, you haven’t lost, you’ve gained.” She strokes my hair in mirror to Gordon’s own acts of comfort. “They aren’t gone, they are a part of you. You have their essence inside; they will always be there to help you. But you are strong enough now that you don’t need them to live your life. To act on your behalf.”

  Her words recall many of my own reflections from my dream last night. I lift my head to look at her radiance, her smile, her teary eyes, burn through the other half of my frozen heart. I reach an arm around the back of her head and pull her toward me.

  Our lips meet. I taste the moon, luminescent tendrils of joy run like a river through my veins. Briefly it seems she returns the kiss, but then she tries to pull away. I hold one hand firmly behind her head, pressing my lips on hers, the other hand around her waist, trying to keep her from escaping, wishing to turn this moment from one second to a century, no, that would not be enough, wishing to stop time itself with our lips joined.

  She stands up, breaking my grip on head and waist. She is blushing and furious and Gordon is staring at me and Kareem is running over to get between us. I look at her; I look at someone I love. I look at someone I just forced myself on. Changing love to anger, possibly fear. I hang my head in shame.

  Kareem puts a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Daphne.”

  I lift my head. Andie is avoiding my eyes, trying to calm down. “Andie,” I say. “I’m sorry. That was against everything you taught me. I didn’t have the right to… invade your space. To kiss you without permission. I just… I love you, Andie. I know that doesn’t make it right. But I do. So I’m sorry. Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be like him, God help me I don’t.”

  She stands there, still not looking at me. I take Kareem’s arm. “Okay, Kareem, I’m ready.”

  We’re at the door when she calls out to stop. She walks up, the angel of mercy, the soul of redemption, half of my heart. She comes up, and as soon as she meets my eyes I know that Armageddon is at least another day away, that there is still hope and dreams and prayers and love left in the world. She gives a small half-smile. No hug, but the half-smile was far more than I deserved.

  “You’ve been through a lot the last few weeks, Daphne. I know it has been hard on you, but please know that I am very proud of you. Now get some rest and we will talk some more this afternoon, okay?” I blink the tears away and shake my head in agreement.

  “And no more uninvited kisses.” But she says it with a smile, a full one this time, and not a hell will freeze over before we ever touch again look. On the way back to my room I wonder if there will ever be invited kisses.

  Fifty-Seven: Rest And Reflections

  Kareem takes me to my room, suggests I take a nap, and I say okay but as soon as he leaves I am out the door. I know Andie said to get some rest but I do not want to face these emotions in my sleep. I need to address these conflicts, these thoughts, these desires in waking mode, to allow conscious decision on my life. To accept them. To accept me.

  My feet follow natural, familiar paths as I try to sort out my feelings for Andie versus my feelings for Gordon. I look up and am not overly surprised to see the broken down fence and the numbered tombstones of the cemetery. The bright white stone with its memo
rial plaque shines in stark contrast to the rest, a beacon of promises, of acknowledgement, against the stale backdrop of death and anonymity.

  I read the metal plates affixed to the plaque. Norman Jameson, Mary Franklin, Peter, Felicia, Samantha, Felix Potato. So many people who lived here, seeking help, looking to find meaning in a world that had none for them. Did they love each other? I wonder. Did they have their Andie to hold them and care about them and make it all seem better even when it wasn’t? Did they have an anchor to hold them fast against the chaos surrounding them? Were they blessed, too?

  “Screech!” calls Pet Shop’s friend. I search for him among the branches of the big tree. There he is, watching me watching the past, doubtless waiting to see if I have brought more toast. Having no concern over what happened decades ago. Or what might happen decades from now. He cares for today. He lives in the moment. And I think that maybe I should do the same.

  I have been reliving my past for years. I have sacrificed my present in constant suffering over what was done to me. Over the abuse by my dad, over the acceptance of it by my mom. Over things which I had no control over. No ability to change, to escape, to survive.

  I have no precognitive talent to espy the proper course I should pursue. I have no indication that I could ever truly live a normal life, with Gordon or with Andie. That either of them would attempt it with me. But I refuse to let the potential nightmares of the future paralyze my present as I have let those of the past do. Regardless of who will return my love, of who I love the most, I owe it to myself to give out that love. To live in the real world — to be a part of that great mass of humanity which I have shunned for so long.

  “Carpe Diem!” I shout to the screech owl.

  .

  Fifty-Eight: Prognosis Good