Caleb Coy
Last Day In April
We all found out you had lymphoma and I presented you with a set of anointing oils and a pebble inscribed with the word HOPE. The rock might as well have said LUCK, or PAIN. And you cried at the oils but not at the rock. Everyone flooded you with little cards with gold angels on them and words about love and prayer and friendship and family on the inside, and they sent you daisies and poinsettias and you never liked any of the flowers. Not even Dad ever knew your favourite flower was violas. I wish you would have told him your favourite flower was violas.
The oils were frankincense, Rose of Sharon, Lily of the Valley. They came in a little wooden case and I couldn’t tell the difference between the three of them when I smelled them. But I told you to use the frankincense because I did the research on it, and I would check the bottle every week to see if you were using it, and I think you were. You kept them on the top of your hope chest where the perfumes used to be, like it was part of your ritual in the mirror every morning.
Dad closed the door after we fought and wouldn’t let me in, but I want you to know I could hear him through the door and I know it was all his regrets coming out in tears. He didn’t share them with me, and I don’t know if he shared them with you, but I want you to know I heard him. And then later when I found him in the garage I knew he only did it because he couldn’t breathe because he was so unhappy it was toxic. I think that’s why he chose it that way, in the car. I like to think he was ashamed of himself, because that’s how I know you’d want me to remember him, instead of by what he said when you and him fought. I know you’d rather me remember him as ashamed of himself than angry at you.
Remember in that cold afternoon in March when I came to visit you, and I sat by the window reading a book and you had the blinds pulled back. I was staring out at the tarmac and you asked what I was reading and I said “a Ferris wheel”? I said that because I didn’t like to look at you sick and that’s why I brought the book with me and the book was Running with Scissors and I’ll always remember that, but only because of the Ferris wheel. But I was reading and I looked out the window and instead of pavement and wind socks I saw a circus and a Ferris wheel, because I remembered that when I was six you took me up in that Ferris wheel and we reached the top and I wasn’t scared because you were there, do you remember? And I always remembered your face then because you were so happy to have your son at the top of the Ferris wheel and him not be scared by the height but instead he was thrilled. I can tell you this now because you’ll understand it but when I was five and in that Ferris wheel I wanted to marry my mom. I mean it in the way that you were mine and nobody could replace you. And so later I never wanted to ride it again because when I did it would be with a girl I would marry, a girl like my mother. But that’s why I said it, and probably also why I didn’t look back at you that day in March, because I just wanted to stare at your young face forever.
There are so many pretty things in the world, Mom. I made you drawings of rainbows and cardinals and geckoes and skies, and you held on to them all. I found them again in a box in the closet underneath the wooden Santa figurine and the pack of Viceroys and the unopened sexy board game. I’m not embarrassed about the drawings, or the sex game or the smokes. I know you think they are beautiful still—the drawings, I mean—like how you said God looks at our vain ugly colours and our pain and calls it beautiful. Then he calls it up and away, like how the closet was full but your bed was empty.
I didn’t want things to get all complex and tangled up, Mom, but I kissed a girl before I even asked her out because she said her mother was dying, and I told her my mother was dying. I hope you’re not mad because it was the truth and I really meant it, even though I wasn’t really sure if I was saying it because I was thinking of you, or because I wanted her to kiss me. I think you’ll understand it, and I wish you could have gotten to know her, but I didn’t want things to get all tangled and they did.
On a Saturday when it was kind of paltry the elders came over and laid their hands on you, they poured the oils I gave you, and it dripped down to your shoulders where you rubbed it in, and they called for the healing power of the Holy Spirit. Bobby Tiede led the prayer while I sat in the corner with my hands curling over my knees praying to myself, staring at the lighting fixtures and the porcelain robin on the fireplace. I was hoping that between the frankincense and the healing power of the Holy Spirit we would never have to utter prayers like those again.
Her name was Michelle, by the way. We were just at a party at a friend’s. It was after you and Dad had that fight. We were the only ones who didn’t want to be there and we found each other in the yard, because when you’re at a party and your mom is dying everything is enchanted in a way nobody else sees, and I know you know what I mean by that. She wasn’t standing over the rails or anything like girls do when they want to be found or they’re mad at what their stupid boyfriend did. She was hanging off to the side of some fake conversation with fake people and feigning interest and waiting for someone else who saw the moonlight like she did, for someone like that to come over to talk. I promise I didn’t bring you up right when she said her mother was dying because if I had it would have been sleazy and I don’t want you to think of me as sleazy. And I promise that wasn’t the night I gave her a hickey and she ran her hand up my leg and I wasn’t planning on anything like that happening while you were sick.
So remember that day when you found her earring on my bed and asked me about it? I lied because I was terrified, and I didn’t want you to go thinking about me that way, because it would stifle what hope you had left. And her father wouldn’t even let me see her again after that, at least that was what she said. She told me from the bottom of her doorstep. There are so many pretty things in the world, Mom, like how you said God looks at them. And it was beautiful when she grabbed me by the wrist and took me with her and I said I didn’t want to go and make her father mad, but we left anyway. She took me with only her pyjamas and her jacket on, and we didn’t do anything, but we talked all night and I held her.
When I found the drawings I made you I also found all the cards people sent. I found the photo album too. I can see why you put all the cards away, because you didn’t want me to see them everywhere and you knew I’d be getting more later. I got even more after I found Dad. I cut out the picture of you from when you took me to the fair and I put it in a frame by the window so when the light hit it just right in the morning you’d be transfigured, like how I’d pictured it would be when they laid their hands on you.
Up against the wall I’m crying in my pyjamas and my jacket on, because I’m looking at your picture and I had to get away and I’m at the train station and I don’t even have a ticket or know where to go and I just want you to please come and get me but I know you can’t.
It was two-thirty and black outside when your heartbeat stopped and I dropped my book and your eyes were closed because you had said goodnight already and I tucked you in and kissed you. And the doctor shook his head and later the chaplain came in and then the elders and everyone else would pour in to the house later and I just looked out the window and tried to find the Ferris wheel. And the room filled up with it all, and then the petals fell off the flowers and Dad threw them out and none of them were violas.
It’s the last day in April and I’m caught under a hazy spring cloud and you’re gone, Dad’s gone, and Michelle is gone because she broke up with me because of what her dad said we were doing to her mother, who will be gone too. And when I woke up I thought you were smiling at me but it was just the sun on your picture. When the sun hits the picture just right, you’re transfigured, and you are young again and you are my mommy on the Ferris wheel with me, and it never stops moving, never stops bearing us up.
There are so so many pretty things in this world, and you taught me the Lord made them all, but I’m still waiting for the violas to bloom and I thought that if I’m on the train and I look out the window I’ll see the fields of violas flourishing and never ending, and I’ll see your face in them smiling and young, and I’ll see the Holy Spirit moving across them, picking them and taking them up. And I don’t want everything to be tangled when I look for the violas and I can’t find them. I don’t want a mess like what I found in the closet or in the garage, even if it’s a beautiful mess, because in that mess is only memories and some of them I will never understand and they’re taken up and they’re gone.
There are so many pretty things in the world. The hour God made you and Dad and violas and Michelle, and the hour I held her in my arms and I kissed her hair and that was it and she fell asleep and I closed my eyes and I listened to her breathing against me. And I took one of her earrings while she slept so that I could keep something of her in case she was going to be gone, which she was. And I know the Comforter comes like you said and I know the healing power, and I know he lifts us up and it all comes pouring out like oil upon an offering and everything is called up and up and up and I just want to tell you that me and Michelle, I took her to the fair, and we were riding the Ferris wheel, and that was the moment. I couldn’t buy her any flowers at the fair, I could only try to win her a stuffed panda, and the man tried to guess her age and he guessed too old and I think it was because her mom was dying and she felt so old in the world even when I held her. It’s cold in my pyjamas in this train and I have a book but I keep looking out the window hoping I’ll see you transfigured into a field of flowers, but it’s still too early for them to bloom. I’m looking for you now, and you were called up, and we were riding the Ferris wheel, Mom, we were riding the Ferris wheel. AQ