An Exercise of the Untethered in Four Parts

Act one, scene one.

Four white walls, white ceiling, white ceramic tile. White porcelain toilet and sink. And, the tub. Like a vat, a boiling pot, something in which to cook children. Something filthy and to be washed out. I rinse out the tub, in annoyance. I have my pile of things to the left. It’s mid afternoon and the air makes everything sticky, and even though the sun is out, you can see the big fat moon hanging far too close to the earth. Framed by the window, framed by the broken tree branch above the garage. Daydrunk and alone feeling slow, feeling sad and stuck. The water from the faucet echoing around the house. Daydrunk alone and it’s hot out and I’m sweaty and mildly annoyed. Three crushed Valerian on a saucer downstairs. Norah Jones playing at a normal volume but it sounds way too loud, and then too quiet, like a funhouse. Eventually I’m in the bubbles up to my neck, feeling only the heat of the water. It’s the only thing I feel, like a bunch of pins and needles. Myself and the hot water, the moon during the day, and Norah Jones. I wake up when mom calls for supper and the water is freezing, my hands unrecognizable.

Act one, scene two.

I don’t know how to explain to you what the car smells like. It’s not mothballs because we don’t keep the car in the closet, but it would be the garage equivalent. Slightly musty but also cooked completely, carpet seats burning the backs of your legs. You can’t hold onto the steering wheel for the first ten minutes, wreaking havoc on the road. Check engine light on, radio blown out. It smells like heat. I don’t know how else to describe it. Heat and dust coming in from the twenty year old air conditioner. The visor hangs down on one side. My legs and hands are burning and I have a speaker on the seat next to me, because the radio is blown out. I’m putting lotion on that I stole. I’m thumping The Fray. I cried the entire way here. In the way that children cry when wearing clothes that don’t fit. I watch mom come out of the building and I crawl over the cupholder into the passenger side.

Act two, scene one.

Flat on my back on a plastic-vinyl-type couch in the middle of the night. You would never know it’s the middle of the night for the fluorescent overheads that remind everyone of an emergency room. Like a casino with no clocks and too many outlets for all the men with their backpacks and briefcases. I’m flat on my back with a pile of things stacked next to me. I have a goblet of diet coke and no one can see my eyes under my sunglasses. I have lost my passport, probably. My headphones are dead and my face feels like it’s about to peel off.

Act two, scene two.

I am lying on the ground rubbing my fists on close-cropped cream carpet. It’s very thick carpet and I’m drawing in it with my pudgy fingers. Not so pudgy anymore, I guess. I’m only ever lying or sitting, so I’m always only at the knee level of the grown ups. They talk for hours about things that don’t matter to me and I lay on the ground rubbing my fists in the carpet. Sometimes I go wander around and explore her jewelry drawers and his belt buckles. I spend my afternoons opening and closing cupboards just to see what’s inside, and I trace the faces in all of the greying or browning pictures. I get swatted for fooling around with something breakable. I think about how none of the faces in the pictures look like mine. They don’t look like anyone. The whole place smells like the carpet because my face is so close to it all the time. Carpet and sour black coffee.

Act three, scene one.

The incense is so ripe it almost cripples you. I think this is why half the service is spent on your knees. The chapel is not like the ones of yore, my yore, that is—what with the creaky wood and tiny corners. And the vastness surrounding it. There’s no vastness here, you exit the heavy doors and are slingshotted right back into everyone else’s life again. Churches in cities don’t properly count. Regardless, the ceilings are so high I’m sure there are birds hanging out up there, and the incense is making children fussy. Father is reading Hebrews. He mumbles into the microphone so you have to lean in and strain for any grains of redemptive instruction. I spend half the time sideeyeing the line for the confessional booths. The pew is hard and comes only halfway up your back, forcing you awake and on guard. Palms flat on the seat, shoulders square. When the time comes and we’re kneeling I catch myself actually praying, for the first time in years. Grandmothers around me are proper with their hands folded over the rosary. Me, my head is in my hands in a perpetual lurch. He’s mumbling into the microphone but I can hardly hear him for the rushing in my ears.

Act three, scene two.

Dead of winter is not what it should be called. It should be asleep of winter, or something. Things do not feel dead to me, as I rest my chin on the lip of the purple couch and inspect the outside through the frosted glass. There are red robins dotting the snow like blood. There are foxes past the creek. I have seen three deer and one elk. There are all kinds of brush mammals, of the prey variety, identifiable from all of the posters and informational books laying around the house. Things are wafting in from the kitchen and it smells like I want to cry. I’m wrapped in an orange afghan and I don’t know where my phone is. I was just asleep for two hours accidentally, and I hear laughter and the clinking of plates being set in the other room. I am watching the robins. I am watching the fireplace. I am warm and quiet and nothing around me or inside of me is dead.

Act four, scene one.

Lots of machines are beeping and the television in the corner is on mute, switched to Jeopardy. A lot of the postcards she has tacked on the wall are from me, but I can’t remember what half of them say. There is a discarded meal on the trolley behind us and I am not the one holding her hand. I’m thinking about yahtzee and pink bathrobes. The room is very hot and we all keep taking off clothes, layer by layer. Everyone is talking too loudly and over annunciating. There’s a dripping sound coming from the bathroom, both my hands are under my butt. I imagine that she also spends the daylight hours watching robins through the windows, and then she confirms it and asks us to refill the birdfeeder outside of her window. My brother leaves after a while to sit outside in the lobby, outside of the crushing atmosphere. She doesn’t remember my name.