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The Numbness Within
by Philip Goldberg Birthdays mean nothing to me. Been years since I last celebrated one. My 34th, I remember it like I recall the first time I had sex, and the last. Whatever. Today marks my birthday. All 43 years of my life rolled into one day on the calendar: a mere 24 hours. Birthday blues? Call it that if you must. To me, it’s more than that. Much more. I gaze out the bug-splattered windshield of my parked Impala, circa 2003. Before me, the low-built apartment complex spreads out, a vista of faded red brick, single-paned windows and fiberglass entry doors. Summer leaves’ shadows dapple the façade, twitching in the gentle breeze. Sitting behind the steering wheel, I ponder how shadows play an important part in my life. The ones I see and the ones I don’t. With hesitation, I exit my car. The door’s squeak assaults my ears. I need to oil the hinges. I’ll get to it… eventually. My eyes lock on the empty parking space where Bill Hammer’s pickup truck used to cast its own shadow. I swallow hard and recall that red Silverado with its chrome rimmed wheels and extra cabin space. Every free moment, he tinkered under the hood, checked the tire pressure, gave it the kind of tender loving care usually reserved for another human being. I’d be lying if I said that it hadn’t weirded me out. Yet at the time he seemed like a good neighbor, someone you shared a six-pack with, talked NASCAR, groused over stresses of the job, and escaped family pressures. He listened well, advised little and rarely clouded the air with his own personal storms. I needed that. I liked that. But that was then. I enter my four-room cave. Been here for years, since before the birthday celebrations ceased. Dusty light bleeds through open slats of window blinds. Stale cigarette smoke chokes the air. A pack a day man I am. “Green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I am,” I quote. My daughter when she was young loved that rhyming stuff that doctor guy wrote. Somehow the line has stuck with me. Fighting the urge for a smoke, I march to the fridge and grab a cold can of beer. One bad habit trumps another. Popping the tab, I rain brew down my throat, soaking my tongue, my gullet, my soul. Oh, how good it feels. One of the few things that still does. Plopping into the recliner across from the wall-mounted television—the only furnishings left in the room—I let loose a long sigh, almost a yelp. No one greets me. No dogs, no cats, no humans. Not a soul has in years. Allison, my wife, and I split up about a year after I had stopped celebrating my birthday. Edgy, I run my hand across the faux leather arm of the chair. It feels like the slipcovers that used to wrap the sofa and chairs in my parents’ living room. Adhesive to bare skin, I still feel the sting of peeling from it. At its memory, I squirm. Thank good ol’ Jesus I’m wearing a shirt. Albeit a sweaty shirt but who cares? No stick. No sting. Leaning back, I rerun my day of checking bedside charts at St. Mary’s Hospital and recording them into an iPad I carry. Bullshit work. But it’s a job. After not working for two years, an eight-hour shift feels good (something else that still feels good). Pride disappeared months after being shelved at the tool plant. No, my job didn’t get outsourced. I fucked up, took too many days off. At first, everyone understood. Hell, they even encouraged me to take time off. But like aspirin for a hangover, good intentions wear off faster than you’d like, or need. I finish the beer and crush the can, knowing full well that it was more than the days off that canned me. Not doing what was asked of me at times didn’t help, or did talking back at other times and sulking most of the time. With all this going down, they sent me to see a shrink. Now talking to a shrink is just more aspirin. Add Lexapro and Celexa, which I took whenever I felt. Guess that’s why the meds failed. The ax came down on me soon after. At this, I smirk. Smirking is my new smile. I dig that. Think I’ll have those five words engraved on my tombstone. Thirsting for another beer, seeking the company of that frosty can chilling my hand, I go get not one, but all remaining five in my fridge. I pop my second beer and it rushes down my throat. My tongue wipes foam from my lips. “Bull’s-eye,” I say satisfied. With cans in hands I pace the living room. A million watts of images stream and voices hum through my head. Jessie, my 15-year old daughter, is chief among them: Her curious eyes, her emotive lips. Violently I shake my head. Images break apart like poor television reception. Voices grow garbled. As soon as I stop shaking my head, her face returns before me. It always does. It stares at me. It mesmerizes me. The back of my neck grows hot, sweaty. My mouth grows dry. I consume more beer, which douses my increasing urge for a smoke. Everything feels as if it occurred yesterday. Close. Smothering. I gulp some air. A fly buzzes me. I swat at it. Damn bug flies off. I stare at the front door. Years later I still see Jessie there, posing as teenage girls do, in her bright summer dress. Her smile added wattage to the room’s light. It electrified me, illuminated my soul. I smiled back, spirited and warm. No smirking then. "Eleven” my wife shouted from the kitchen. Begrudgingly my daughter nodded, her eyes pleading with me. “Can’t hear you,” my wife barked. I raised my eyebrows at my daughter. She widened her eyes in return. “Yes,” she said. A slight huff blew the word through her lips. “Later,” she whispered to me and then danced out the front door on her way to her friend, Amanda’s house. Gone. Missing. What could I have done? Nothing. How could I have prevented it? Doubtful I could have. What had I missed? So much. Can you spell g-u-i-l-t? I claim another beer. The day after Jessie disappeared, Allison and I sat across from two cops. As one took notes, the other stared at us as if gauging whether or not we were telling the truth. I held my wife’s hand, cold and damp. Occasionally, I looked in her eyes. They appeared vacant at times. Other times they appeared fearful, as she mumbled: “It can’t be.” “This is not happening.” Or “God help us.” Within days, Allison started playing the “if only” game. “If only I’d done this,” she exclaimed. Or, “If only you’d said that,” she accused. Of course, I lacked answers, which fused her anger. Who would have had any? Soon she widened the gap between us. Whenever I tried to cope with her, or soothe her, she protested: “Leave me alone.” Or whenever I tried to embrace her, she shook me off like a flea, snapping: “Back off. I need space.” Eventually I gave up. Tired of pacing, I sit. The fly buzzes me again. Where did it come from? Probably entered with me. It lands on the top of my beer can. Is that bug lapping up some brew? I shake the can, and watch it take flight, whizzing about the air like some giddy stunt pilot. “Happy birthday,” I mutter, hoisting the can toward it in a mock toast. My party guest, I muse. My past is my gift, boxed, papered and bowed. My smirk returns. The fly lands on the wall of moving shadows. I blink a few times, trying to banish the shadows, the fly from the wall. It doesn’t work. They mock me by their presence, by their movement. Frustration overflows, and I hurl the beer can at them. It hits the wall with a wet thud. Suds spray the wall and leave their stain, joining the others caused by various thrown beers and liquors. The fly buzzes off, its tiny body chilled by the splattered beer. The cold room iced my skin. Goosebumps erupted along exposed flesh as I stared at Jessie’s lifeless body laid out on the metal table. Her skin was the color of classroom chalk. Her electrifying stare permanently switched off. In the fluorescent glare, the bruises around her neck, wrists and ankles appeared luminescent. Touching her hand, it felt colder than the room. As I noticed that my daughter’s right ear lobe had been severed, my wife crumbled against me, whimpering, crying. At that moment I inhaled the thought that there was no god. As I exhale and lean forward in my faux leather armchair, I remember that we called Jessie, “God’s Gift” as we’d had trouble conceiving before her. Not long after the “miracle birth” of our daughter, Allison developed cysts in her ovaries. The surgery removed the cysts as well as her ovaries, ending any future births. I sit back, experiencing a succession of small tremors quiver through my body, and recall how we discussed adoption but decided against it. So it was just the three of us. Overwhelmed, I bury my face in my free hand. We buried Jessie in a small plot on the outskirts of town. For me, the day was too sunny. The birds chirped too much. The breeze seemed too gentle. The priest sounded too pleasant. Among graveside guests, Allison and I stood close. I felt numb. To rid myself of this lack of feeling, I placed my hand in hers. But all this accomplished was a greater numbness. After all, who was I fooling? We had grown so far apart. I place a new can between my thighs, holding it close, tight as I mourn my marriage. Fragile structures, I know; the union between two humans had little chance of surviving the death, the murder of a child. If not for Bill Hammer’s ear at the time, I would have done worse. He came by often, drinking with me, smoking with me, staying with me when no one else would. So my surprise was deadening when I arrived home from my old job late one afternoon to discover police going in and out of Hammer’s place. Some exited carrying boxes. Some came out toting bags. One walked out holding his computer. A few swarmed his beloved pickup, carefully dusting the doors and inside the cab, going through the glove compartment, searching under the seats. Betrayal didn’t describe what I felt. Anger was too kind. I wanted to find that bastard and do what he had done to Jessie. But could I? Would I? The numb feeling within me might have prevented my retaliation. It mattered little as he’d already been taken into custody. Sure I felt like one of those damn fools who tell reporters: “Nothing like that ever happened around here”, or “He seemed like an okay guy,” or “He did what!” His sympathetic ear, his compassionate face was all bullshit: a psycho’s mask, a mirrored reflection of what I needed. Turned out that good ol’ Bill had committed more crimes than just this one. Guess that was the reason why he offered so little of himself as we chugged beers, smoked cigs, talked sports. The beer struggles down my throat. I swear the shadows stop dancing on the wall, and the fly hangs frozen in the air. Probably the alcohol, but I take it as a moment of silence, stillness, nature’s way of apologizing for creating a monster like him. The next time I laid eyes on that prick was at the trial. By this time, Allison and I had separated, but we sat together in the courtroom, even held hands at times. We appeared stuck to the backs of our bench as if it had been slip-covered. Even when the prosecutor introduced as evidence a cigar box filled with Hammer’s trophies, and the urge to leap from my seat surged through me, I stayed put. The numbness within, which had been growing inside me since that night more than a year ago, which I’d felt the day they arrested him and the morning of the burial, kept me in my place. A jury of his peers nailed Hammer, took them less than three hours. The prick was gone for good. Heard that prisoners don’t take kindly to child rapists, teen murderers. Hopefully, he has suffered for his sins at their hands. He had better. As the light bleeding into the room grows golden, I know darkness will soon take charge. My pain will ooze out only seeping back with the new dawn. I squirm in my chair as a thought occurs: you bury bodies. You never bury pain. How could I ever again celebrate the day of my birth in the shadow of Jessie’s death? No way. “Never,” I protest, wanting to chuck another beer against the wall but don’t. Instead I stand, beer in hand, and walk to the window. Why am I still living here? Guess people think I’m nuts, a stubborn prick, or both. Let them believe what they want. The numbness prevents me. The fear of leaving this place and losing the last physical connection I have to Jessie alive keeps me here. Craving a cigarette, I know I’ll smoke soon. For now, I pull up the blinds and peer out. The fly lands on the window, crawls across the streaky, grimy glass. I have to clean the panes. One day I will. In the distance, I spy some kids playing in the small playground beyond the parking lot. Their happy screams scratch my ears. I imagine blood flowing out of them. I shut my eyes and the sick image disappears. Turning, I face the wall. The shadows darken. In a short time they will cover the wall, cover everything. They always do. Soon my 43rd birthday will be history. I walk to the door, open it, but the fly doesn’t depart. So I shut it. The fly ascends into the air and lands on my arm. Staring at the insect, I decide not to swat it. The fly walks along my arm and remains there. A smile creases my face. It lingers there for a few moments. Only the fly with all his eyes witnesses it. Long enough, I decide. A wide smirk replaces it and remains planted on my face for quite a while. It’s time for that smoke. |
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