Betwixt

by R. A. Keen


"Are you listening? Are you?”
His wife’s words formed roadblocks, meant to hinder any attempt at escape. Their sounds shape shifted, indistinct and meaningless, through Brendan’s half-conscious mind, and spiraled down into the corridors reserved for the making of dreams.
He had inched far from her to the edge of the bed. His arm dangled in mid air beyond the mattress, one leg half-draped down its side. Trapped between two worlds, he ignored the precarious position despite the occasional wave of vertigo.
“Will you answer me?” Caitlyn demanded. “God, I’m tired of this, I’m so damned tired.”
A mumbled response slipped across the border of his awareness and scrambled over the heap of words pinning him to the bed. He longed to convince her of his attentiveness, to avert the next angry jab of an elbow.
She remained thoroughly unconvinced.
Whatever his response, her distress would not diminish, the deluge of her words would continue to cascade over him. Like a spent swimmer, rather than resist the current, he avoided the threat by clinging to a boulder in the mid-stream of their quarrel.
His struggle was not without allies; field crickets sang to him through the open bedroom window. Their chorus embraced him, guided him from the quarrel he had anticipated and striven to avoid earlier that evening.

  *  *  *

Brendan gazed at the approach of dusk. He swallowed a sip of his beer and placed the half-filled Pilsner glass next to himself on the porch's top step.
Along the horizon, the hills of Upstate New York formed swells of frozen green. Tree-topped silhouettes brushed ragged strokes against the sky and reached toward the nearby sun, its wake, twilight chased by a hint of neon to come.
The creak and swoosh of the screen door snatched him from his reverie. Caitlyn leaned half-way out. Ten years younger, and trimmer than most mothers of two, she stood nearly a foot shorter than his six foot-one. Whenever he and she strolled together, onlookers at a distance often mistook her for a teenaged daughter.
"Uh, huh. How'd I know you'd be here?" She sighed and exited onto the rear porch. "I must have called you a dozen times, you know."
Though she may have exaggerated the count; nothing was gained by arguing the point.
"Sorry, about that...I guess I just didn't hear."
He rose, glass in hand, and joined her. Leaning forward, he kissed her favorite spot on the cheek.
Mollified, she said, "That's okay, dear husband, I'm not complaining, only asking for some help. Lately...look, it's a nice change to have you home for dinner...to have you home at all before the kids are tucked away for bed."
He smiled, nodding in agreement and changed the subject.
"The sunset will be gorgeous tonight. We can catch it later if you want, listen to the crickets, watch the stars come out. Okay? Can't wait too long or we'll miss the best part."
"Fine, but we have to get through dinner first. Please give me a hand, so..." His poker face failed him, and she warned, "And DON'T you dare clap, not if you want a warm meal!"
He lowered his hands, and thrust the one without the beer glass into a pants pocket. His tuneless whistle filled the air as he glanced around the porch. She smiled.
"Good boy. Now, please...please listen to me. Just go and round up the kids. Okay? I've been calling them, too, along with you."
She glanced toward the porch's ceiling to beseech the gift of patience from the wooden planks. Without another word, she ducked back into the house. The spring slammed the screen door shut behind her.
He gulped down the last of his beer, and followed. 

  *  *  *

Molly, their youngest, was the easiest to fetch. A second grader, she brought her latest drawing to the kitchen. Her mother paused from the food preparations to display the new artwork on the side of the refrigerator. Other masterpieces overlapped one another, a rainbow of colors captured on paper shingles affixed from top to bottom.
Corralling Brendan, Jr. proved more of a challenge. His son needed five hundred more brain munching zombies to achieve Level Four. Only the threat of unplugging the game console convinced him of the error of his ways. He was at the cusp of teen-hood, and Angst had already moved in to set up shop. Its fellow countrymen, Sturm und Drang, awaited employment immediately around the corner.
The family settled in place about the small eat-in kitchen table. They held hands to say grace, a habit Caitlyn introduced after their son's birth, the same with attendance at weekly Mass. Brendan found it surprising that nearly a year after their move, she remained uninvolved with the local Church's clubs and functions. In the city, she was the parish's main go-to-person.
Heads bowed, the Stacey's prayed as one voice, "Bless us, oh Lord, for these Your gifts, which we are about to receive from Your bountiful hands. Amen."
Not wanting to risk a blow-up in front of the children, he added in silence, "And if You have the time, Lord, please, keep Cat calm after I break the news tonight."
Discretion remained the better part of valor, at least until bedtime.

  *  *  *

Momentarily dumbfounded, Caitlyn paused and gaped at him. The window curtains billowed into wings of sheer white, brushing against her bare shoulder and side. She was nude, in mid change for sleep, her cotton tee shirt laid on the chenille bedspread next to a pair of panties.
He returned her stare, grateful for their bedroom's second floor location; the children's rooms were in the old Victorian’s third story. Molly would be sound asleep. In all likelihood his son, headphones on head, still secretly battled creatures of the netherworld.
Fully dressed, he stood next to the tall bureau drawers; a king-size bed separated him and his wife. She studied him in disbelief, hands clasped high, near her collar bone.
Her mouth opened; no sound emerged. She blinked several times before the words found their escape route.
"California, and you said...you said `yes’ Dear God Above...California. Without discussing it with me, you said `yes.’ These last few weeks, not a word about it, not a hint from you, not..."
"Cat, the CEO flew in at the last minute,” he explained. “You know what a macho bastard he is...I had no idea. There was no warning...none. I was their second choice. Robins bailed out. They wanted an answer, right then and there. I..."
The words sailed right past her. Shaking her head "no," back and forth, her gaze penetrated the room's walls to drift off into the distance. His sense of caution wrestled with his heart whether to remain bolted in place or to approach Caitlyn, and if at all possible, soothe her distress.
The gleam in her eyes returned, banishing her thousand yard stare.
"Can't you..."
She abandoned the thought and sat on the edge of the bed. Her hands cupped over her eyes, she inhaled and exhaled, calming herself. Brendan unfroze, sensing an opportunity to approach. He knelt on one knee at his wife’s side to avoid looming over her.
He caressed her shoulder. Her arms tightened, flattening and squeezing her breasts together, protecting herself like a boxer against the blows from an opponent. She focused past his shoulder. Her chin rested atop her hands, the fist of one clenched within the palm of the other.
"Babe," he rationalized, "the VP position...it's a godsend. We can place the kids in the best schools. We'll hire all the help you need. We'll travel, we'll..."
The pace of her breathing grew more rapid. Scowling, she stared into his face.
"Don't! " she spat.
His hand stopped in mid-caress and began a cautious retreat.
"Don't try to placate me, don't..."A puzzled expression replaced her scowl.
"Why can't you see? Just for once, please, open your eyes."
He rose from the floor to scrutinize her from a better defensive position. His gut tightened in anticipation of...he really did not know quite what to expect.
She glanced upward, insisting, "I don't need a hired anything...the kids don't need the best schools. Where we lived, the city schools...they were just fine, better than here. I..."
The pro-city argument was familiar territory. He backed away; his gaze, veiled and defensive, drifted to the far corner of the room.
She bound from the bed to follow. Catching up to him, she grasped both his hands in hers.
He cried out, his voice balancing on the edge of a shout, "Look, I don't need this...” His eyes did not meet hers. “I don't. You know damn well, the kind of stress...hell, with all the shit in the city, my blood pressure was through the roof. I didn't need any more, not then, not now...not ever. Moving out here was the best decision we ever made. Why can't you see that? Why can't you?"
Her body tensed. She released his hands.
"We?" she said and twisted away, returning to the bed. She grabbed her garments, yanked the tee shirt over her head, pulled on the panties. "So, you think the city was shit? Oh...oh, yes, I know all about shit, too."
The last thing Brendan wanted to endure was his wife's fury. A close second to last was the distant headache marching steadily in his direction.
"I deal with lots shit, lots of it," Caitlyn spelled out, “when I'm left..." Shaking her head, she looked toward the ceiling, tears of anger glazing her eyes. "When I'm left here, alone, with my family miles and miles away...they can't just pop over to help when I need them. They were a real part of my life…every week, every single week, I saw them."
Her words rolled by, boxcars coupled in an unending line, non-stop, riders unwelcome.
"And you, you're gone, what? Two weeks a month, now, if I'm lucky…if the kids are lucky. Don't you think they notice, that they care, that they want you here?”
Brendan's jaw clenched. Her cross-examination was only just begun. He remained fully dressed for a reason. The urge to flee clawed at him, anything to avoid venturing into the places he dreaded, the places she wanted to explore. If he fled, she would not follow him outside, not in her bed clothes.
"They'll be grown up and gone, sooner than you can imagine. Do you really, really think a VP's job will give you more time with me, with them? That some move to California will bring me closer to my family in the city? Do you?" His expression blanked. Caitlyn paused to examine him, obviously not liking what she discovered. "Don't disappear on me..." she demanded, "just answer me, that's all I ask. Dammit. Say something...anything. Look at me. Oh, dammit, dammit!”
He raised his shield of words, his standard reply, his non-answer to fend her off.
"Everything,” he asserted, “every sacrifice I've made in this job, everything's been for you, for the kids, for our family. I don't need this, I really don't, I..."
Mid-reply, before his wife could interrupt, he turned and exited the room. Anger rationalized his urge to slam the solid oak door as he departed. His better judgment, the concern for his children, prevailed.
Caitlyn's burst of tears reverberated through the door's thick panels. Her sobbing drifted after him, along the hallway and down the staircase. It exited out the front door to follow him into the car. He drove off and heard her tears from a mile distant. He heard them all the while he drove in random patterns throughout the farm land and the hills beyond the small town. He could not outdistance her sobbing. No escape was possible, not from tears shed by two souls and hearts so deeply entwined.
His passion spent, he slowed to a stop and parked for a time next to a field, the culverts and hillocks coated with moonlight icing. Tired and resigned, he made a u-turn and returned home.
Before pulling onto their property, he cut the engine and headlights to coast into the driveway. He closed the car door carefully behind him; the soft click of the lock whispered in the air. The darkened windows of the master bedroom greeted him, their curtains drawn back to allow the night breeze easier access, a hopeful sign that Caitlyn slept.
His spirits lightened at the sound of the crickets in full chorus. Not wishing to face his wife possibly awake, he passed through the house to sit on the rear porch. For a brief while, he lost himself in the choral hail to the moon's veil of stars. All the trials that harried and hurried his life faded like the earlier glowing embers of day's end.
The headache, no longer slight, high-jacked the peaceful interlude. He had no intention of rummaging through the master bathroom for his neglected blood pressure medication. On the way to the bedroom, he searched in the kitchen and found an aspirin bottle. He swallowed three tablets. In the upstairs hallway, he faced the wooden panels of the door for a full minute in preparation for whatever lay beyond. He turned the doorknob and entered.
The pale glow of the Moon bathed Caitlyn, transforming her into a ghostly Sidhe of Celtic legend. She sat fully awake in bed, her back against the headboard.
He suspected the night would be a long one.

  *  *  *

The chorus of Brendan's allies prevailed. His wife's words melded into the songs of the crickets, freeing him to drift across the threshold of sleep.
He dreamt of sitting on the rear porch. The insects sang out, the moon floated in the distance, but an imperfection rippled across the otherwise smooth surface of his dream. A slow cadence played counter to the chirping; a barely perceptible intrusion that marred his usual contemplation. The sound was pump like, a mechanical ring that felt out of synch with the life in the field.
Another wave of vertigo, the strongest yet, engulfed him.
"Whoa, sweet jezus!" raced through his mind as he fully awakened. Realization struck within the breadth of a heartbeat; he had slipped over the edge of the bed. Adrenalin surged, his limbs flailed outward. Bracing himself for the worst, he stiffened for the impact.
The worst never came, not his version.
He never hit the floor. He floated flat on his back in mid-air.
Overwhelmed at the impossibility, his mind floundered, refusing to concede to his senses. Surrender meant only madness...or worse. So called reality, transmuted into the incomprehensible, blurred past him and leapt beyond his experience, beyond any logic he had ever known. The chaos swallowed him whole, like some Jonah deep within the belly of the beast.
He shut down to cope, to regroup the remnants of his sanity. Some interval passed. Reality refocused. The dark blur, in which he lay, lightened. Bit by bit the numbness faded. Inexplicably as ever, he still floated in mid-air, but with no further assault to his senses, his trust in his sanity revived. The trust strengthened and the wall of his denial crumbled, one brick at a time.
The darkness in the bedroom no longer hindered his view, and the familiar voice of his wife re-emerged.
Oblivious to his predicament, she argued on, “Your damned career. That’s all you think of is yourself. This marriage won’t survive, can’t survive I just can’t go on like this, I can’t…it’s too much. I’m exhausted, just too much to expect of…”
He stared over his shoulder at her sitting in bed, her knees tucked beneath the cotton tee-shirt. Despite the streaks of evaporated tears and the half-moon swellings beneath her eyes, the sight of her entranced him. Too many months had passed since her unhappiness had trumped the tone and intention of her words.
He attempted a roll in mid-air in the hope of attracting her attention. No amount of twisting, tucking, or flailing gained him any purchase or changed his position flat on his back near the ceiling.
"Cat!" he called out. "Caitlyn! Hey...Cat, do you hear me? I'm up here...look up here. Come on, babe...please. Please, look up!"
The reaction to his plea startled him. Her sadness had somehow become more visible the more her voice faded. Tendril-like wisps rose in slow swirls through her dark, short cropped hair, from her back, shoulders and legs.
The strands flattened close to the ceiling and merged into eddies, pushed along by unseen air currents. They drifted toward one of the open, double-hung windows. The screen, a more than capable filter for insects, proved no barrier, and the room emptied of all the sadness, along with Brendan. He passed feet first through the screen without the slightest tingle, let alone the jolt he anticipated. He glanced back at Caitlyn before the last of him, his head, slipped through the fine mesh strands.
The wisps no longer rose from her body. She sat with her chin slumped against her chest, her eyes closed, her lips unmoving and silent. She was sunk, exhausted, into a deep sleep.
Outside, with no idea of what was in store or what possible action to take, he rose with the tendrils to the height of the front yard's treetops. Beyond the highest of the leaves, the stronger air currents scattered the swirls. He proved much less ephemeral, but his continued upward journey dismayed him. He groped without success at the leaves that rustled beneath him.
Above, the Universe expanded into infinity, unperturbed and indifferent to his or humanity's circumstances. A three quarter moon, his brightest companion in the night sky, orbited at near zenith. The reflected light from her surface bathed the Earth below as it had for eons. A crystal myriad of stars, the moon’s serene and distant courtesans, glimmered down at him.
Somewhere, a switch flipped; the beacons in the heavens winked out of existence and pitch black engulfed the world. Not a gleam of light was detectable, not the hand he held in front of his eyes. Only the pulse in his ear, the rush of air through his lungs, and the faint beating of his heart whispered to him. Left with no other recourse, he prayed for some resolution and waited...and waited as the full breath of Eternity flowed inward, outward dissolving the boundaries separating each moment. Brendan retreated into some inner place where Space, Time and Self no longer intruded.
Infinity released him when the wave rippled through the void like a pebble dropped in a pond. A pattern coalesced, one that his awakened consciousness recognized as sound. The sensual familiarity stoked the embers of his self awareness, warmed his soul. He recalled Caitlyn’s whispered words of love, the laughter of his children. He smiled.
The resonance evolved into a beat, mechanical and rhythmic - a pump. His relief evaporated. He tried to force the noise from his perception but something else accompanied the cadence. He stretched his senses to their limit. The something transformed into a someone. A woman, she wept. He heard voices. His heart raced.
"My God, please..." he pleaded, "God, please, help them find me!"

  *  *  *

Caitlyn began, "Will he..." then interrupted herself to take a slow deep breath. She preferred not to lose control again, not to descend into another round of sobbing. "You're certain, completely certain, that my husband...that he's no longer there, inside... "
"Please," the doctor cut her off, "believe me...”
The sound of the ventilator wove under and over the threads of their conversation. Its labor and that of its fellow machines sustained Brendan's physical existence. They surrounded him with a kind of music, composed of beeps and chirps, of clicks and wheezes. A symphony performed at his service by an orchestra of mindless musicians.
Oblivious to the music of the machines, Caitlyn and the doctor continued their discussion.
The doctor insisted, "If I thought there was the slightest possibility, the slightest...every diagnostic instrument we have at our disposal indicates brain death,"
"Indicates?" Caitlyn pounced, "That's not..."
"Mrs. Stacey, your husband’s no longer here. His body may be, but he's gone, the damage from the stroke was just too extensive...and that body can no longer sustain itself, not independently, not without all this..."
He absently waved in the general direction of the machines. The bed, in which Brendan's body lay, separated them. She made no attempt to reply, and only stared at the doctor.
He played his ace.
"There's a living will, I believe...Mr. Stacey wanted..."
"Yes," she cut him short, "yes, he did."
Her surprise at the use of the past tense was evident to the doctor. He pressed his advantage.
"If brain death was indicated, he wanted no extraordinary measures taken to maintain his vital signs. " The doctor winced in frustration, correcting himself, "Determined...if brain death was determined. Mrs. Stacey, the machines can't lie. What they have...determined...is brain death. When someone descends into this state, nothing, nothing can reverse the outcome. Your husband is..."
"Yes, yes, I understand. My husband is...effectively dead. You've made that point...several times, over the last few weeks. I know it's what Brendan said he wanted, I know, we..."
She paused to suppress her rising emotions.
"If, you would like..." the doctor enquired.
"Please doctor, let me finish. I need to finish.”
He maintained his silence.
"I just needed the time to be certain, absolutely certain, that all hope was gone, and..." she struggled to finish, "and it is." Her voice dropped to a near whisper, "It is."
Guilt contributed to the delay in completing the living will's provision. She would not admit as much to the doctor.
"I understand. I do, and," she resolved, "I've to come to better terms, with his...passing, his..."
Her breaths arrived in stutters. She walked to the room's only window, before grief erupted through her composure again. Outside, dusk painted the darkening horizon. The image of her husband, sitting on the back porch and lost in reverie of the day's end, splintered her willpower. The sobbing lasted a full minute.
In that interval, Brendan shouted into the spaces between Time.
"Caitlyn, Caitlyn, I'm here. Cat, I'm here, I'm alive. Can you hear me? Oh, dear God, please...I'm here. Don't let them do this. Please, don't let them. Not yet...I'm alive!"
The shouting did not distract him from sensing the moment when the final note of the mechanical symphony ceased playing. He gasped for breath. An obstruction, abrasive and unnatural, blocked his throat. His panic rose. He tightened the fist of his right hand and gripped something, someone not himself. Another hand held his.
Not mere light, a universe of light, the brightness incomprehensible as the darkness, dispelled the void that engulfed him. Tears filled his eyes, blurred his vision. Unable to speak, he squeezed the hand within his grasp.
The hand returned his squeeze. Someone touched the side of his face, someone spoke to him.
Brendan? Is that...are...Brendan?"
He hoped Caitlyn's voice would never, ever stop speaking to him again. He felt her fingers brush the tears from the corners of his eyes. He marshaled every ounce of strength to squeeze his wife's hand again.
Oh, dear God, my God," she implored Heaven, anyone who would listen. "Brendan? Dear God! Doctor! Do you see...he's awake. He's..."
The doctor, and the nurse, who had entered to assist him with the machines, turned to face her.
A sensation of falling gripped Brendan. Unlike the last one from eons ago, no rush of Chaos clouded his mind. The people within the room, the furnishings, everything, refocused into more distinct images, into a reality transformed.
The living beings especially brightened his senses; the people, the flowers on the nightstand, the spider spinning its snare hidden in the corner. He peered through their forms, past the colors and textures, to observe the life behind the life.
His body lay on the bed. Unlike the others in the room, he appeared normal, somewhat dull. A dreariness spread slowly across his body. The sight saddened him, as if losing an old friend.
His point of view from the ceiling no longer surprised or concerned him. Below, he watched the white coated figure lean over the body. The doctor pressed a stethoscope to its chest, and spoke to the nurse next to a machine, now at rest. The young man placed a flexible tube onto the bed's surface and jogged off, perhaps to fetch something.
His wife kept herself apart from them, hands clasped like a child in prayer. They formed a steeple, the fingertips pressed against both lips. A single tear journeyed in silence down her cheek, and clung above the corner of her mouth.
He swept down to face her and brushed the tear; the jewel of liquid resumed its course. Her gaze traveled straight through him, never wavering from the image of his body trapped on the bed. She sighed and caressed the exact place Brendan had touched.
At her favorite spot, where her nose and cheek blended, just beneath Caitlyn's eye, Brendan kissed her goodbye, and was gone.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silver furred and long of tooth, R. A. KEEN, a survivor of the Age of Aquarius, can be found wandering and grumbling in the forests and hills along New York State's majestic Hudson River Valley. Look for him brandishing his shillelagh among the cliffs of the Shawangunks and bemoaning to the moon the current state of affairs. He has published here and there, nothing really worth mentioning, save for the exception of TAR, and that due mostly to the Herculean efforts of the journal's talented staff. Keen refuses to embarrass his Alma Mater with the mention of its name but the basketball team is to die for. His loving wife of many years has the patience of a Saint. Sláinte.
  
The Adirondack Review