The Night Watch
The corridor loomed ahead of me—all pointillistic murkiness, all reverberating shadows. The worst was about to happen, and it would happen . . . to me.
I stood alone in the passageway. Look in the right room. Look in the left. I looked in the right. Peering through the tiny window in the door, the unanticipated blinding sunlight caused my eyes to squint and stream, but eventually I was able to make out a tangle of cats milling about the room, their tails erect and crooked at the tip like question marks. The windows were open, and clouds streamed past at disaster speed; one by one the cats jumped onto the sills to be sucked out into the sky. I rattled the door, frantic to stop the exodus, but it was locked.
Reeling away from the calamity, the front porch of my childhood home slowly emerged at the end of the hall, barely visible through the gloom. Running up the front steps, I flung open the screen door. It came off its hinges and blew away just as if I was in Kansas, but the entrance was boarded up. A small cabinet was nailed to the two by fours crisscrossing the front door, a key hanging from its knob. I grabbed the key and opened it. Inside, the shallow shelves held stacks of hundred-dollar bills, each neatly rubber-banded. Picking up one wad, I closed my eyes and fanned the bills, feeling the breeze of currency against my face. But the money was fragile and crumbled in my hands, setting off a cloud of debris that transfigured into hundreds of tiny, tattered insects. They flew about my head, laughing, tossing insults, then settled on the open door of the cabinet, a nattering, twitching mat. The rest of the money had vanished and the cupboard shrunk in size, its interior now taken up with an old rotary telephone. It rang. I reached out my trembling hand . . . shaking, shaking . . .
I sat up in my tousled bed, jolted awake and heart pounding, staring into the darkness. Struggling into my bathrobe, I padded toward the kitchen, but veered into the den. Carefully, I took a box down from the closet shelf, opened it, spread apart the tissue paper and lifted out a framed photo of Michael holding Izzie on his lap. I took this shot, I remember, the Christmas we visited my parents while we were still in school. A charming pair, those two, Michael grinning at the photographer, Izzie looking up at his newfound friend—a photographic punch to the solar plexus. I pressed the frame to my forehead, screwing up my eyes, daring it to come, but nothing came—no tears welling up, no waves of sorrow. Nothing. Which was what I wanted; I wanted only to keep the terror at bay. I placed the picture back in its box and put it back on the shelf.
In the kitchen, the blue-flame pilot lights flickering under the burners eerily illuminated the room. Switching on the light, I put the kettle on and my reflection in the black window stared back at me apathetically, dullish drab eyes sunk in an unremarkable face. Any remaining teenage notion that suffering would be a beauty boon was proving to be miserably false. Trapped in the lower levels, I’d been spinning a melancholy cocoon of late, putting on weight, letting my hair grow long and lank, covering up the body, covering up the soul.
During previous nights such as this, when I felt I had no adequate explanation for my existence—being in the way, being stupid, being ugly—I had thought of willing my earnings to a worthy cause and quietly checking out. But it would never be an option as long as my parents were alive. They did not deserve that from their depressive second daughter. I owed them something; I could do something; I could pretend I was okay. But I would never have copped out anyway. Thinking of Izzie and Ben, of Maureen, of the atrocities touted on the news each night, I did not want to give myself over to this terrible force, giving it one more victory—I hated its seemingly unlimited magnetic power, all that consciousness, all those worlds ripped out of all those minds; I’d be damned if I’d let it suck out one more.
I made a cup of instant coffee, went back into the den and turned on the cable weather channel, afraid of any unintentional conjuring of emotions too painful to bear. Because these wings are no longer wings to fly, but merely vans to beat the air. Because I do not hope to know again. No more visions for me. Steam clouded the radar map as I pressed the hot mug comfortingly against my face, the glowing screen the only illumination in the room. Huddled curled up in the corner of the chair, I put the TV on mute and stared into space. Faraway choirs, wordless singing reached my ears, formless songs hanging in the air, drifting through the rooms. Unseeing for a time, my eyes eventually focused on the phone on the desk—supposedly inanimate, but capable at any time of administering a deadly shock slicing through the silence. I got up and pulled the cord out of the jack and turned the sound back on the set.
3:38 AM. The weather people chattered on and on, various maps appearing one after another—New England, India, the storm maps of Australia—the chain broken only by ads for various flotsam all priced at $19.95. Sadly, these were not the directions or devices I was looking for; the meteorological symbols held no hidden meaning for me. Nonetheless, slowly, ever so slowly, peace crept over me during the remaining night hours; the warmth emanating from the mug was my creature comfort, the television drone a companionable balm for the nerves. Toward dawn I’d once again reached equilibrium, at the lowest possible level to be sure, but I had no wish to disturb it.
Image: Storms over India. Source: NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, edited by J. Weigley