The Car Accident: A Man And His Death
There she is, outside our car. She's crying, screaming, weeping and wailing outside the window's broken glass. I can't do anything. I can't even tell her that there's nothing wrong, I'm okay, the crash was nothing, we can fix it, it'll be fine. My lips strain to move, my heart strains to speak, my soul strains and strains...but she's leaving now, walking away, through the broken glass. Or am I leaving? I move up in the air, the van door closes, the siren wails, the light vanishes. Just me here. In the darkness. Wet, but not with water. Water isn't so sticky. Or red. The room about me is a haze of light and a buzz of sound. White coats with white masks hover over me, whispering about broken things. Things that have stopped. Things that are going too fast or too slow. They look at charts and shake their heads and mumble softly like I might hear what they are saying, but I can't lean forward and hear anything. I can't lean anywhere. Too much white. Too much pain. There she is, and she's not crying any more. This was before, where we met, at the Mayford Fair. Oh, look at her. So beautiful. She's holding up the ice cream I bought her, saying it's good and I should try some and that I didn't have to buy her anything, but it was really sweet of me. I'm in love. She smells like morning lilies. Her blonde hair waves in the wind, caressing her face. And there's the special smile, like a firework of joy on her face. You can never catch a real, good smile, she says. All the good smiles are off camera, when the only person that is ever going to see it is the one you really want to see it. I thought right then, if I can't catch that beautiful smile, I'll catch the smiler. She gave me one of those smiles when I gave her our ring. And on our first kiss. And several times after. The blood sprays up like a fountain, rising and splashing on my chest, then rising up again. I feel nothing. I can hear the man in the white coat better now, and he's talking about arteries and heart palpitations and about The Chances. Whatever they are, apparently they haven't been doing very well, because he calls them bad and says that it won't be much longer until they're gone for good. There�s a deadening certainty in his voice that I don�t like. I want to tell him that The Chances are fine, but the red fountain is splashing softly and the light overpowers me again . . . "Vincent! Vincent! Here, try these on." My mother and I are at a shoe store. The shoes that she's trying to make me wear are definitely not the fad. I shrug them off and walk outside, away from the blaring music and onto the cold quiet tile walkway of the Santa Rosa mall. Fountains of water shoot out pillars that crash down into the decorative pool islands. The pools glimmer with beauty and light, they dance and sparkle up and down in waves and lumps. They rise up and splash from the fountains, only to repeat the cycle. Beautiful, I thought. I was a hopeless romantic, even at sixteen. Mother comes out with a box of shoes. "Mom, did you buy shoes?" "Yes, dear." She calmly put her wallet in her purse, put her gloves and hat back on, and started walking toward the exit. Her eyes shifted and wavered. "For you?" "For you, honey," She said briskly. I pushed. "You didn't buy those shoes, mom. Tell me not those shoes." "Honey..." She looked at me in exasperation of my adolescence. "Yes. I bought you those shoes. You didn't come in and pick any yourself!" "Mom, don't do that!" I grabbed the box from her hands and pulled, and ripped. The shoe box fell to the floor, and the shoes skipped and sprawled out onto the cold tiles. My mother reached for me. "Vincent! What are you doing? Stop!" I grabbed the two shoes, the nasty, ugly, horrible shoes, and threw them in the fountain. The water sparkled and danced, and I ran, all the way back to the car and to the cold, cold seats. Someone came, opened the door, and quietly sobbed as she drove us home. I pretended it wasn't my mother, and that I hadn't made her cry over something so stupid. I kept pretending until I went into my room. I could hear her crying over my radio, over my video games, over everything I could do to try to make it stop. And then I stopped pretending and started crying myself. Mother was in the room with the White Coats. She sat and stared at me, looking at my face and then my body and then at all the red that shouldn't be there. She was crying, just like at the shoe store, big giant wet drops. Expressions of the soul. I opened my mouth to tell her that I loved her, and that I would never ever throw another pair of shoes in the fountain, promise, but my lips wouldn't move. Nothing moved. A tear rolled down my cheek, and for some reason, it made the White Coats happy. They started writing graphs and redoing the things attached to me, but all I could see was my mother smiling through her tears. If my crying made her happy right now, I would cry and cry and cry until my tears went over Mt. Everest and passed the stars. As long as she�ll keep smiling, I�ll keep crying. But the stars are shining brighter on the water of the mall fountain, and my eyes start to blur and fade . . . "We're here, boys!" My dad wrinkled at us through the rear view mirror. When my dad smiled, his face wrinkled upwards, so we all called it a wrinkle. He wrinkled all the way to the campsite, where we plunked stakes into the ground and whooshed a fire into bellowing hot. We toasted our faces along with the marshmallows until both were golden brown. Mom was happiest when we were all together like this, laughing and loving and just being alive. A spark caught my brother's ear, and we all laughed and thumped him hard with our pillows even after he said we had gotten it. We laughed and panted and laughed some more, and then we talked about the Bible and Jesus and what would happen if He was to come back tonight with the keys of hell and death in his hands. I asked Dad what hell was. He described it for me. "Hell is a place where you go if you don't have Jesus, Vincent." I rubbed my eyes and stared at the flickering flames of the fire. Hell was like that, forever and ever and ever . . . Dad sputtered a little when I woke him up later that night and told him that I didn't want to go to hell. He prayed with me and showed me how to get Jesus. I crawled back to the blue tent and shook my brother awake. "Hey! Hey you, hey hey!" "What? What now? Aaa! Vince, what is it that's worth waking me for?" "I found Jesus!" My eyes shone like the mall fountains, they glittered and sparkled and danced. "Oh yeah?" My brother sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Where'd you find Him?" "Right over there!" I pointed to my parent's tent. "Right there!" "Ah. So you found Him. And do you suppose He's there now?" "No. He's right here now." I took his hand and pressed it against my heart. His eyes looked troubled. "What is it, Paul? What, what?" I said. "Nothing," He said, but his face was as dark as the fountain pools. "I'm just happy you found Jesus, that's all." "Happy doesn't look like you do," I said, feeling my face turn darker and darker. "Happy looks like Mom." "Go to bed, Vince. Just go to bed." I was happy. Looking at my mom who was happy that I was crying, looking at her smile and at the White Coats making me better, I was happy. And then, there she was. My wife, my love, my life. Sitting next to Mom. Oh, look at her. So beautiful. She�s crying, yes, but smiling too, my love inside her eyes and on her face, in her own heart, deep within her soul. All of these sweet, romantic things that I wished I had said rushed to my unmoving mouth, hit my teeth, and then bounced back into my head. She�s wearing our ring, the one with two halves, one on her finger and the other on mine. It's beautiful, the diamond is even cut in half, and now . . . now she can put it together. I know I'm leaving, but if only I could say something, to end it all, to make everything perfect before I leave. The car accident had been my fault, and I only wanted to say I was sorry. Too late now, Vincent. But love shines through my crying eyes, and even though tears are all I have left, she must understand, because she walks up and kisses my lips, once, twice, and once more. She says something about The Machine, about how they can't keep me on anymore, how they're going to turn me off to make it comfortable. I don't understand. And then I do, and my eyes grow, they darken, they shimmer with the new understanding. She must have seen, because her smile shakes and quivers and she walks away. Mother walks over and pats my head once, twice, and once more. I'm still crying, trying to make her smile, but she's not smiling anymore, she's crying, and her face is dark, like the mall pools. Without the sparkle. "Vincent. You're hurting, aren't you? It's okay, it's going to end tonight. We're ending it, Vincent, for you.� I can't do anything but cry, and there's only so many different messages that eyes full of tears can send. She looks into them and smiles, a lovely, breathtaking smile that glimmers, dances, and sparkles. I wish I had a camera. "Remember, you have Jesus, don't you? So we'll see you soon. We love you, Vincent. So much." After a few minutes, the White Coats leave the room until there's only one left. He turns off The Machine, and then, ever so slowly, everything goes quiet and black. And the stars stop dancing. And then, there He is. Oh, look at Him. So beautiful.
Copyright © 2007 Robert J Parker Joseph Valentine |