Floating Staircase(9)
I took a step forward, and that was when my foot broke through the ice.
My breath seized, and I heard my foot splash into the water. Instantly, my leg, straight up to mid-thigh, went numb. And I went forward and down, unable to prevent the fall. My heart lurched. Instinct thrust my hands out, and I managed to catch the side of the protruding staircase, preventing myself from falling farther through the ice. Holding on to the side of the staircase, I caught my breath before extricating my soaked, anesthetized leg from the lake and hoisted myself up and on my feet.
The cold night air immediately froze the water on my leg, the flimsy material of my pajama pants clinging to me like a second skin. A freezing burn traced up my thigh toward my groin, and once again my testicles performed their disappearing act. My whole body trembled.
Stupidly, I lost my balance and fell in an arc down onto my left side. I hit hard, rattling the teeth in my head. I heard something crack; I couldn’t tell if it was the ice beneath my weight or the bones within my flesh. The nub of my cigarette went flying, and I watched the ember cartwheel through the air in slow motion. I felt ice water seep against my ribs, my arm. Like a dream, the ground shifted beneath me: the ice had cracked and was breaking apart.
I uttered a train wreck of curses and quickly rolled onto my back, retreating from the widening fault in the ice. Even as I rolled, I heard the ice splitting; the sound was like the crackling of a fire.
I continued to roll away from the breaking ice until some internal sense told me I could stop. So I stopped. My eyes were closed, though I couldn’t remember closing them. My breath whistled through the narrow stovepipe of my throat.
Then, for whatever reason, I burst out laughing.
I’m a goddamn moron.
Rolling onto my side, I crawled, still trembling with a case of the giggles, toward the embankment. Once I was close enough, I grabbed a tree branch that extended over the lake. Finally secure in my footing, I hauled myself up and crossed from the frozen lake onto solid ground. Despite being the only living soul in the vicinity, I felt like an imbecile.
A tree limb snapped behind a veil of trees in front of me.
I froze. Again, I thought I saw something move beyond the intertwining branches, but I couldn’t be sure. “Hello?” I called. My voice shook. “Someone there? I could use some help if there is.”
No one answered. No one moved.
I kept my gaze trained on the spot between the trees, but I could see nothing. A deer, perhaps? Some forest critter creeping through the underbrush? Whatever it was, I was freezing my ass off out here trying to figure it out.
Shivering, my entire body slowly being consumed by the numbness originating from my deadened left leg, I took a deep breath and made my way up the snowy embankment toward the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
It has been said that nature does not know extinction—that once you’ve existed, all parts of you, whether they’ve dispersed or remained together, will always be. Thick dust may hide the relics of human history, but it cannot erase the memory.
Picture a large, square conference room, with teal carpeting and alabaster acoustical tiles in the ceiling. Look around. You will notice that the mahogany benches are dull beneath the heated spotlights and crowded with suburban onlookers. At one end of the room are two large double doors with tapered brass levers, newly shined.
A cluster of people, solemn and reposed in what they so ignorantly consider their most formal attire, stands against the back wall, shuffling uncomfortably from right foot to left foot. The men with their hair awkwardly parted and grease matted to their scalps, the women with half-moon impressions on their palms where their nails have been digging in. Their hairstyles are outdated, and their inability to recognize this fact only reaffirms their small-town-ness. These are my mother’s people from small towns across America, unified in the big city, my father’s city, at last for this occasion.
At the other end of the room subsists a large podium-like assembly, modular and archipelagic in construct, cordovan-stained, teak, and recently shellacked. There are many people seated on the benches and standing at the back of the room, wedged together as if for warmth, but for the sake of this retelling, there exist only four individuals that we should concern ourselves with: the middle-aged father with the vacuous stare and wrinkles in his suit like the creases in a worry; the mother who cannot seem to focus on anything, anything at all, despite her constant stare. Then there are this duo’s two remaining adolescent sons, particularly the thirteen-year-old mope with the sticking-out-too-far ears and the restless hands.
The boy, this thirteen-year-old, stares at his father’s eyes. The boy’s mouth goes dry, and he is only vaguely aware that he has unraveled the thread binding the little black plastic button on his blazer and that he is now squeezing the button hard between his right thumb and forefinger. Just before he brings this button to his mouth, his hand spasms and the button drops to the carpeted floor.
It occurs to him that he is the only one at the entire funeral service who knows he has dropped this button. Something in that knowledge comforts the boy, as if he has found some safe and hidden haven far away from everyone else—even his father, his mother, his older brother, the cold body of his younger brother, the baby of the family, in the casket at the front of the room. And when he looks over the sea of stoic, hardened, country faces, he feels only slightly less afraid.
Sometimes we go in; sometimes we go out.