How Far They Fall

“He was a writer.”

“Yeah? Well, what’d he write?”

“Don’t know. Shit. I don’t read.”

“Well, look at’em now.”

“Yeah. Look at’em now. How far they fall.”

They chuckled and shut the door like a coffin lid. The room was dark and cold. He lied on the cot in a t-shirt and white boxer shorts, staring at a dead wall. Tears in his eyes, frozen, he didn’t blink. No expression. A crystal thread of drool from his lip to the wool blanket beneath him.  A window with bars through which there was a still-frame purplish night, pregnant with moon. Clouds rolled as though pulled, and the belly of that moon, yellow and fat, gave life to his face.

He thought, dreamt while not sleeping, staring still. Thorazine overtook his mind like Nazis for Jews, but he wouldn’t sleep. Or perhaps, he was sleeping and his eyes were just so restless they simply didn’t go along. A mouse sniffed the back of his head and slipped away into the shadows. The moon came and went. The mouse came and went. Hours passed and his eyes stared. He could hear the orderlies’ radio. New York Giants at Wrigley. Top of the eighth. Willy Mays leading off. 4-2 Giants. Rain. He tuned it out but the announcer’s voice sounded like her fathers, just like her fathers.

“Come away from the door, Lucy,” her father said.

Instead, Lucy took his hand. She was bathed in the light of the sun that shone through a gape in a large sycamore. Tears in her eyes. She hadn’t slept in days.

“Come back to me,” she cried. She repeated the plea in a whisper, “Come back!” She clutched his hand tight and kissed him. Her lips tasted like orange and salt. He tasted them again, while staring at the wall. Eyes wide open.

He left in his olive green wool suit that felt like the blanket. Helmet in hand. Sat in the back of a Model T convertible that sputtered away. She stood staunchly in the doorway until a pair of hands pulled her inside. It had appeared as though she would run for the car and he wished she had. He watched her fade in the distance, the door shut and then her house become the size of a matchbox. His face splotched with sunlight that broke through the tops of the long lane of magnolia trees that were losing their blossoms. She ran out to the lawn and waved. He watched her, in the yellow dress, reclaimed by the house. Fade into it when it all became an undiscernible blur. Then he turned to the back of his father’s head that was like death.

He wrote her 427 letters from France. One every night by a fire in a can, hunched over with a small grease pencil and slips of precious paper. Then it came. The gas. Whistles screamed demonically and he fumbled to put on his mask, dropping the pencil and futilely searching for it in the mud. A plume of smoke hung heavy over him. They were ordered out of the trench, to advance, but the gas that had gotten to his eyes seared them. He could hardly see through glassy tears, blurry night, a fat moon, mutilated men and horses strewn about, the spitfire of machine guns in the eye of a distant bunker, rocked by artillery and driven mad by those whistles, the screams. He put his hand to the man before him but lost him nearly as soon as he left the trench. He tripped, got tangled in some wire and all her letters fell out in the mud like paper snow. Then a burning splash of pain tore through his side, and another through his stomach and he fell onto the letters someone would use later to burn and keep their hands warm, indifferent to the words.

When he was a child he dreamt of her, almost nightly, not understanding anything more than the feeling. He dreamt of her room, the trunk at the foot of her four-post bed, the arched ceiling, the light from the high-set windows, her hair, her soft skin, and the day he left her for war. When he was thirteen the dreams ended, but memory never failed. It was his obsession. He drew pictures of her. Wrote novels, stories, and scanned faces on railcars, in stores, and of those he passed by in streets. When he was thirty four the dreams returned. He wrote for a San Francisco monthly. Several successful novels. Several more unsuccessful. A career oppressed by alcoholism and doubt. He had been in Cuba with Hemmingway. Met a president. Married and divorced and fathered children he no longer knew. Then in a magazine, he saw her face, not the same face, but her face. He knew. She was in her eyes. She lived in Chicago and was the wife of a prominent politician running for the senate.

He took a train to Chicago, ecstatic at last in his best suit. Freshly shaven. Bathed. Doused in drugstore cologne. He didn’t drink more than two. He began a novel. And in Chicago, he found her there and approached her in a haberdashery where she stood with her husband who was shaking hands. She regarded him for a moment, he was handsome and gruff, and she smiled politely thinking he was there to meet her husband. Security eyed him suspiciously. He didn’t notice. She thought she knew his face but couldn’t place him then she thought no more of it. Overwhelmed, he took her in his arms and kissed her. “I came back,” he cried. “I am here.”

“Please!” she cried stunned by his audacity. “Stop!” Her husband was dumbfounded. He assumed his wife had an affair. He did nothing to stop him but his security swarmed on him. The politician watched the man implore his wife’s affection. A police officer was nearby and rushed to arrest him and he called for her as they drug him away. “Lucy! Open your eyes! Lucy! It is me, Albert! It’s me! Albert!” They took him to the asylum to make certain the public knew the man was crazy and had no real ties to the politician’s wife, to defuse the enthusiasm of the societal gossip columns. To give no one any wrong ideas. She sat at dinner with her husband dejectedly. He asked her seven times if she knew him and every time she said no with less conviction. She rolled her pees on the porcelain with a silver fork. Seven days later she left. Left her husband a note written in grease pencil. Took the rail to the asylum and walked in quickly before she changed her mind. She had never been so bold to do what she wanted to do, without fear of how she would be perceived. Her hair was dark, her eyes as well. She wore pink lipstick and a white daisy on a yellow sun dress. It was September 2, 1956.

“I am here to see him. The gentleman that accosted me.”

The orderly scratched his head. He knew who she was. He had seen her picture enough to know that someday she might be the first lady. “Ma’am?”

“The gentleman…” she repeated patiently. “….who accosted me. He said his name is Albert. The papers say it is Jack Foles of San Francisco.”

“This is ― highly unusual.”

“I don’t care if it is. I have dropped charges at the district attorney’s office this morning and he will be coming with me.”

The orderly was dumfounded. He excused himself to get a doctor. She could see them speaking through the glass window of an office. The tall bald doctor looked at her suspiciously then turned so she could not see what he was saying or detect the emotion of his face. He picked up the phone and she knew he was calling her husband. Everyone called her husband. Shit, she thought. Hadn’t counted on that.

“Albert!” she screamed. She tore down the hall. The yellow dress blowing behind her in a waft. Her shoes clopping with an echo. The daisy fell from her chest onto the green-ceramic floor. “Albert! Albert!” People moseyed out of rooms and into the hallway to see what the commotion was. It wasn’t the usual outburst. Nurses, patients, orderlies looked at her.  A therapeutic cat looked at her. But no Albert. No Jack Foles. Then she came to the room with the coffin door. Closed tight. She opened it and there he was on his side facing the wall, as he was the night before in a white t-shirt and white boxers. He didn’t move. “Albert,” she implored. She shut the door behind her and walked slowly to him. The room was bright. And at last, as she reached to touch his shoulder, he rolled over to see her swathed in sunlight. He blinked. And there was the girl in the yellow dress.

He smiled at her. Not dead. Not lobotomized. “Have you anything for me to wear?”

She grinned back. “You can wear anything, but a uniform.”

“So you remember?”

“Oh, I never forgot. I died of a broken heart when I heard of your death. Your father came over and told us, oddly, with an air of satisfaction or pride. I lived only another three weeks. How could I have gone on without you? I was born in Oak Park four years later in 1921. My parents painted my room yellow. I had dreams of you since I could remember. I had dreams of wearing this dress. For years I dismissed it. But I always knew in my heart. I always knew you would come back.”

“Maybe you are crazy. Like me,” he said getting out of bed.

“Let’s go. I have a car.”

“Where to?” he asked putting on his slippers.

“Does it really matter?”

“No,” he smiled. “It doesn’t matter at all.”