/yesod

Tag: guilt

  • comedy and tragedy

    …when the comedian pulls up in the Winnebago, I hop in. We chat and get acquainted while his two cats prowl around in back.

    A few hours on the road and I realize we’re not going to get back home in time for me to help out with the baby’s bedtime. I’m embarrassed to say anything, I don’t want to appear unprofessional.

    We arrive at the venue — an old theater in Charleston, West Virginia. A few people are already in the balcony seats, waiting for the show to begin.

    While the comedian gets ready to go onstage, I call my wife to apologize and break the news.

    “I should be back around midnight,” I tell her. Then I remember the driving time. “Actually, it’ll probably be later than that.”

    She is annoyed, rightfully so. But she doesn’t press the point.

    I feel terrible and offer to rent a car so I can return early.

    She hesitates before answering. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”

    She tells me that there’s been an accident. The father of the two girls who lives across the way fell from their balcony and died.

    (Somehow I recall an earlier dream, while dreaming this one, in which the man’s mentally disabled brother also died. This family has seen nothing but tragedy, in my dreams.)

    I rent a car and, in time, arrive back home. A cloud of sadness hangs over the apartment complex, clinging to everything.

    Looking across the way, I can see into the windows of the neighboring apartment where the two little girls play on their bunk bed. I worry that they might fall.

    An elderly man comes into their room — their grandfather, I assume. He moves so slowly, weighed down with age and sorrow.

    I make a mental note to go over after dinner and offer to help.

  • precision

    …with slow, precise snips of the nail clippers, I remove most of my right toenail, somewhat proud to have done it in a single, broad piece.

    The skin beneath is tender, painful. I hope my wife will not notice.

  • the floating eye

    …and I have no breath to scream as my daughter falls twenty feet to the hard concrete floor, a gasp pressing out of my as I run to pick up her tiny, limp body.

    “Oh god, her eyes…”

    I turn away hiding her face from my wife so she cannot see how our daughter’s right eye has become detached and is floating freely between one socket and then other as she tilts her head, a dreamy smile on her face.

    It is horrible to see. It is my fault.

    So horrible that, later that day, I decline to tell my wife the particulars of my dream. I want to spare her the horrors of that image, the drifting float of our child’s eye.

  • an uncomfortable visit

    …shocked at how seedy the old neighborhood looks, I feel a pang of survivor’s guilt over my own relatively comfortable life now.

    Through the open door of the apartment, I can see that our old neighbors are sitting down to dinner. I’m stunned for a moment to find that the little boy my son used to play with is now a paraplegic. I’m already regretting the visit as I knock.

    Shuffled of chairs inside, dishes and silverware clatter on a tabletop. I’m interrupting dinner. Idiot.

    The husband opens the door, still chewing.

    I’m puzzled by a poster of an old comic book character on the wall behind him.

    He’s puzzled by my visit, doesn’t recognize me at first. Then his eyes light up and he calls his wife out to say hello. He tells me to wait for a moment, that he’s got a gift he’s been saving for me. I do my best to demur but he’s already rummaging around in the chaotic jumble of old toys and rubbish in their little apartment.

    At the door, his wife asks about my kids. We trade polite pleasantries for a few minutes. She tells me that crime in the area has made it almost impossible to raise a family. Uncomfortable, I joke about dressing up like Batman and clean things up.

    In the stairwell behind me, I hear a door slam. Mutter of voices, a low level of panic. A woman cries somewhere up above.

    A man with a handgun makes his way door to door, collecting this week’s rent and/or protection money.

    She does her best to hold on to her fear. I do my best to hope that the thug didn’t hear my ridiculous crimefighter comment.

    Her husband comes out into the hallway to confront the thug. I can feel the anger building in his wife, that he would jeopardize their safety with this pointless bravado.

    Things get complicated, convoluted . . . the sands of dream shift under my feet and slides into another, disjointed direction…