Prognostication
In my dreams, the dead are silent. I’ve never had a
good conversation with a single one of them, just
offer my apologies, bake the bread, pour the coffee.
What is the guilt about? The dead no longer care
about my transgressions. Isn’t it enough that I hold
them here in my subconscious, treat them as gently as
I would a freshly-laid egg?
But this dream was different. We were going to visit
Kevin, who has been gone for over seven years now. As
in real life, I was nervous: would I react properly
to him? Would he toss the verbal slings, so subtle
and cutting, if I didn’t pick up on something, if I
reacted too slowly? Or would he sit there, blue eyes
glowing, as my mother and I circled him like
butterflies, flitting here and there in our attempts
to placate?
Kevin spoke. He used the ethereal language of dreams,
of those who are now ashes and light, but in that
nasal New Jersey accent that I haven’t been able to
replicate in my mind for years. And he was funny, so
funny, because Kevin was bitingly funny. I laughed and
realized how much I missed him, how much time had
gone by and then I woke up, not remembering a word of
his complicated meta-joke.
Time flies on and I die a little every day, lose
another connection, feel the pull of a long-ago past.
Yet my grandfather still shows up at the old house. I
smell his cigarettes, breathe in sawdust, too-sweet
coffee and turpentine. He waits in his cell of a
room, a voiceless old man in a flannel robe, unshaven
and glassy eyed. I rush past the sink filled with
dirty dishes, walk a path of slate to get to a
mailbox that hasn't been opened in years. Sometimes
we take his car for a complicated drive to
Christiana. Maybe we are heading to the hospital,
waiting for someone to hand me a small bundle,
something I've forgotten.
The dead appear without explanation or warning.
Carolin greets me in a too-bright dorm basement,
fixes me with intense eyes. David Anderson sits in a
classroom, shoeless, staring at the algebra equation
on the board. Frank the cat meows for food that I
don't have. And my grandmother, the one I ache to
see, is sick of my inattention and has stopped
showing up at all.
Someday, no one will know that I was sixteen and
angry once. They will remember an old woman deeply
lined, forgetful, with clouded-over eyes, demanding
and harmless. Inconsequential. As though I had been
born without desire, without the power to wound.
Image: Postcard, date unknown.