We Are the Light(61)
“Like late last night,” Tony said, elbowing my ribs.
“Everyone loves a winner,” Isaiah said.
I know that reporting all of this sounds cynical, but I was truly happy to see Sandra at the premiere because it meant that every member of The Survivors was in attendance, making us whole again.
But I had started to sweat profusely. I thought it was the August heat, even though there were large fans set up to keep us cool. But there were so many people taking my picture—flashes of light everywhere—and a young woman was ushering me through the media section, telling reporters that I unfortunately was unable to answer any questions that evening; and then we were bypassing the photo ops that I knew Jill was looking forward to; and then Jill was saying she’d be waiting for me in our seats—which were right next to the black sash Mark and Tony had put on the chair in which Darcy had been shot—and then I was locked in Mark and Tony’s private bathroom staring at myself in the mirror and wondering if it was really still me that I was making eye contact with.
I don’t know how much time passed before my handler started banging on the door and yelling that it was time for my speech, but it was enough for me to sort of lose touch with reality. Suddenly, it was like I was in an early Spike Lee film and I was gliding forward without moving my feet, riding on some invisible skateboard. And then I was behind the great red curtain, stage right, watching Mark and Tony and Eli discussing the redemptive and uniting power of the movies and how remarkably resilient our town of Majestic, PA, is and will always be.
Suddenly they were talking about me without using my name, saying things that I wasn’t sure were any longer true. When Mark finally said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lucas Goodgame!” everyone in the Grand Viewing Room rose to their feet and applauded loud enough to crack the plaster walls. My handler gave me a little push and then I was in front of the red curtain, gliding across the stage, once again without even picking up my feet, let alone moving one in front of the other. When I was center stage, Eli handed me a microphone just before he and the others exited stage left.
The applause went on for some time, but eventually everyone stopped clapping and took their seats, creating the distinct sound of several hundred people sitting down in unison. Then it was deadly quiet. There was a spotlight hitting my eyes, so I couldn’t make out any faces in the audience, which made it impossible to search for winged Darcy. I started to worry, until I remembered that she wouldn’t be seated in a chair, but would be hovering above, if she had come at all. I knew that I should be trying to summon strong Lucas to give the required speech, to honor the dead, and to lift up the community, but—selfishly—I was totally consumed with a need to see the angelic version of my wife, if only one last time.
Tilt your head back and lift your face up, said some strange, suspicious voice deep within me.
It’s what I most wanted to do, and yet I was suddenly terrified, almost paralyzed with dread.
Look up! Do it! the voice commanded, which is when I began to shake uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, Lucas!” I heard Jill yell from the audience. “I’m coming.”
I could hear people making room for Jill to pass as she made her way from the center of the Grand Viewing Room to the stage on which I stood. I could hear her footsteps and then I could hear that she was running. I knew I didn’t have much time.
End this! the dark voice said. Now!
I felt something grab the hair on the back of my head and pull down, so that my face tilted up and I was forced to stare at the ceiling—at what Darcy always called Majestic’s answer to Michelangelo; at what she and I had gazed up at in wonder before every movie we ever watched in this building. I saw the sun and the blue sky and the clouds. But what I also saw forced me to my knees. Then I was screaming. And punching myself in the head and the chest and the thighs. And trying to scrape the skin off my face with my fingernails. I got in an impressive amount of damage before the good people of Majestic subdued me, all while Jill kept sobbing out that she was sorry.
Soon after that, I was in restraints and riding in the back of an ambulance with two young EMTs telling me I was going to be okay. I wasn’t going to be okay anytime soon, and I knew it—so I just kept screaming.
Having been to the Majestic Theater many times yourself, you already know what I saw up there on the ceiling painted so beautifully—what psyche had brushed out of my memory. A host of angels soaring majestically, with wings spread wide. Seeing them again broke whatever spell my unconscious had put me under immediately after the tragedy, when I looked down at my bloody hands. And so on that stage, staring up at the painted angels frozen forever on the ceiling of the movie house—when I was supposed to be giving my speech—I was also down in the aisle seats the previous December. And the life was rapidly draining out of my wife as—up on the giant screen—a black-and-white Jimmy Stewart exclaimed, “Merry Christmas, movie house!” And then I was desperately trying to make the blood stop coming out of Darcy. But my hands couldn’t keep all of that purple liquid inside of her skull and throat and I could plainly see that the life had already exited her eyes, which were reflecting the movie light like two tiny cold mirrors. I heard my neighbors screaming and moaning through the obscene POP! POP! POP! of Jacob Hansen’s guns, as he raised and pressed the barrels into heads and throats, executing every other person with what I have since learned are called “contact shots.”