I swear I saw the breath leave his body.
The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Why is it impossible for me to see the breath leave? There is a soul.
I wanted to name my grandson after a saint. I sometimes wander into the grocery store and steal the passion flowers for him, but I don't remember where his grave is. So I place them at a park bench near my house. Once I tried to plant them beneath the shade of a hickory tree but it was very late at night and I was caught by a police officer. He turned off his flashlight and took me by the hand and gently asked me if I wanted to go home. I said I don’t have a home anymore. I ventured to feel his clean shaven face, and I wanted to tell him he reminded me of my son. I was touched by his kindness, and I’m sorry to say that I wept.
Most of the time I am high or drunk. I didn't tell the officer this but I'm sure he understood my bloodshot eyes. Why didn't he take me in? Is it because I am old and not good for anything anymore?
I write letters beneath a pull switch bulb in the old abandoned gas station beneath the ramp. I write such beautiful letters. My penmanship is flawless. My prose is level and lyrical, and sometimes it even convinces me of absolution. In the letters I deglove my soul, and I end them with I'm sorry, son. I'm so sorry.
In addiction, there is the temporary suspension of the quotidian, but that is ancillary. It's nearly orthogonal to what addiction truly is: a narrowing of being, a life in a tunnel or in the gullet of a snake, looped into itself, consuming itself.
“Let’s go back,” says the officer. “It’s OK,” he says. His voice is fragile and it frightens me.
I want to get out of the car. But I don't want to be rude, and my hands are shaking. There's a liquor bottle in my coat's pocket but I don't want to take it out in front of him. I'm ashamed to do that in front of this nice, polite officer who looks so much like my son who will never forgive me.
There are monsters in my past. My father. My husband. I can remember beatings so savage that I’m certain I have died in them and what I am now is someone else altogether.
But I drink to excess in order to remember my grandson. Because in the bottled dream I can touch his face and know it again uncorrugated by burning water. I can unhear the scream and return the pale smoothness to his palm.
The officer’s eyes are in the rearview mirror. There are little tears in them, of pity or of sympathy, but I hope he will drop me off at the shelter. I don’t recognize these roads, but for me, such details are difficult to order and keep apart. I have to be careful in my reminiscences, not to wander into dark chasms by a coincidence of association.
I don’t want to be in this car. I don’t want to look at those eyes. I feel the terrible patience we had to endure as they wrapped the child with bandages. Why? my son wanted to know. Just that. Not that I was making tea. Not that I had put him to sleep. Not that I was sure I had set a kitchen timer that would wake me up. Why? His wife was muted, white with horror at what life lay now before them, her hands clasped too tight even for prayer.
I drink to excess because it feels good. Because at least it doesn’t feel bad. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
The officer is saying something about a birthday, but I feel a mounting panic and a pressure beneath my eyes.
“Let me out,” I say. I try the door. “Please. Let me out.”
“We’re almost there,” he says, pleading with me. “It’s OK,” he says.
I keep trying the door, banging my hands against the window until they begin to hurt. I don’t want to remember that scream. Please, God. That immense silence, the mouth, the hand swelling and blistering, and the steam rising from the water on the floor, no, please God, and then the endless announcement of his pain.
Please, God, kill him. I will burn in hell. To have thought this while they raced him away to surgery, one of the orderlies straddling him on the gurney and driving needles into him, I know I will never be forgiven. But if he is dead, his breath shall join with the Father's, who art in Heaven, who gives his beloved sleep, who saw the spikes driven into his only son. The shepherd shall lead him beside still waters.
I am weeping now, and the car is still. The officer’s head is in his hands. I beg him, softly, to open the door. I shouldn’t be here with him. I don’t want to remember.
“OK, ma,” he whispers, wiping his nose.
He comes around and opens the door for me. The place he’s brought me to seems so familiar. The trim lawn and the cul-de-sac and the white pillars on the stone porch. There is a shadow at the bay window, the dark outline of a child’s hands pressed against the glass. In a moment, he’ll lean back and wave at me. The light behind him will fall on his face and that terrible hand, and I’ll see him.
I turn away before that happens. I don’t know him. I fumble in my coat’s pocket.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” And then I’m warm again. I feel my grandson’s sleek tiny paw in my weathered hands. I am reassured by his ghost. He is dead. I saw the breath leave his body.