Monday, December 6, 2010

Not Heartless

          I see him through lidded eyes, that Leland character. As I kneel by the bushes at Jack's Tracks and watch Leland write retarded lyrics, I can't help but remember the time my dad passed away (don't you just love euphemisms and how they sugar-coat reality? Gotta love 'em!). It was a Sunday and it was snowing, much like today. I must have been about 9 years old. My parents were divorced and my mother's sanity was completely intact but my father kept becoming more distressed day by day. It was his job, my job. He didn't have the heart to go through with everything and he was feeling guilty for everything he had already done--he had ruined lives and destroyed families.
          I remember startling myself awake as I heard a loud knocking at the door. At the time, I was convinced that it was a monster, some trumped up delusion in my head because I was just coming out of a dream. Because of the juxtaposition of my room and the living room, I was able to look out of my window at a sharp angle and see who was at the front door (it was about five in the morning). I saw a barely discernible figure, dark and large with huge shoulders. I could hardly see him; he was just a black gob of motion in the darkness. But as he knocked again and turned away from the door, the incandescence of the streetlights illuminated his figure. It was a man with a round cap. He began to bang louder and louder on the door. I heard my mother's footsteps pound down the hall past my room and went back to sleep, terrified. I was now convinced that the man was not a monster but a murderer and that I was going to die. So naturally I went back to sleep. Isn't it funny how we do that? We are convinced that there is a murderer in the house and yet we go back to sleep.
          The next morning, it was snowing and the streets outside my house were sloshed over in the weak gray light. The whole world seemed gloomy and off-kilter. The pine tree outside my house was swaying in what was fast becoming a gale. I went into my mom's room as I always did after I woke up and I didn't hear a single sound in the house, not the sound of my dog, not the sound of a TV (which was always on, buzzing with the morning news). Nothing. I saw my mom on her bed and before she opened her mouth, I felt a lump in my throat and a shaky feeling in the pit of my stomach; I knew what had happened before she told me--it was one of those insane moments of intuition that we experience only once in a while. As the words escaped her mouth, I remember looking down on the wooden floor and noticing the intricacies of the little cracks, how they were perfectly symmetrical. I looked out the window and saw a little red bird on the pine branch, beaming and thrusting out his chest with pride. I'll never forget it.
          According to the police--which I now knew explained the shadowy figure outside my house--my father died on the job. I immediately resolved to take his place. I am well-aware of the dangers of my--and my fathers--profession but I am convinced that I trained well enough to prevent a slip-up. And now, as I see Leland stuff his notebook into his pocket and plod back towards his apartment in a scummy snow, I know that the time has come. But I'll allow him to buy his (undoubtedly fake) golden diamond-studded grille. I owe it to him. I'm not heartless.