The History of Luminous Motion (16 page)

           
Love,

           
Dad

I
put the letter down on the counter. Immediately it began absorbing a semicircle
of 7UP, causing many of the words to expand into nervy blue blotches. My hands
were trembling, and I felt a slow descending warmth in my stomach. I felt
insecure and dizzy. Rationality had abandoned me like a boat or a train. I
wanted to grasp hold of something, but I couldn’t find anything firm enough. I
heard the letter crumbling in my fist, the thin computer paper like something
you’d wrap around steaks at the butcher’s. I was hot with sudden steaming rage.
Dad thought he was going to leave me. He was going to abandon me and Mom and
the baby. He didn’t care what happened to us, or what sort of place we might
end up. He wouldn’t even take us with him. Suddenly I recalled a solitary
moment from my childhood. I was standing on the front lawn, watching Dad’s car
pull out of the driveway. I was holding something in my hand–a toy truck,
or a plastic soldier, or perhaps a partially macerated baseball card. It was an
offering, but he wouldn’t take it. He was climbing into his big automobile and
slamming shut the door. He was pulling out of the driveway, looking over his
other shoulder, not seeing me. Then I was watching the taillights of his car
fading in the gray dusk. I called his name but he didn’t turn around. I started
to run after him. The streets were boundless, punctuated by simple trees and
hedges. His car was pulling further away, he didn’t see me. I was running into
the darkness. I didn’t know where I was, or where Dad was. From that day
forward, Dad stopped being Dad altogether. From that day forward, Dad became
somebody else entirely.

“Hey,
Phillip! This is your party, guy. We’re still waiting in here. Bring me a
little more Jack Daniel’s–and while you’re at it see if you’ve got
anything munchable, you know? Pretzels, or sardines or something.”

I
returned to the living room with Ry Krisp, beer nuts, Hershey’s chocolate
kisses and a renewed sense of purpose. Dad thought he could go places without
me. Dad thought he was a man and I was just a boy. Dad thought he was special
and I was nothing. I reached into the toolbox and removed something that looked
interesting. Then I stood again over Dad’s unconscious and fleeting body, like
a surgeon conducting life’s most sacred rites.

“There
you go,” Rodney said. He was flicking beer nuts into his mouth with one hand;
his left hand embraced his can of 7UP, into which he had poured prodigious
whiskey. “Now we’re getting somewhere.
 
Ease up–we’re in no hurry, right?”

Rodney’s
hand took my arm firmly. Just as firmly, I shook it away.

“Be
careful, there. Hold on, you want me to get some towels or something? Phillip? Are
you listening to me or what?”

I
wanted to be good. Feverishly, as I worked, I knew I wanted to be good and to
enter the kingdom of Heaven. “I used to pray,” I said out loud, to nobody in
particular. “When I was little, I used to pray every night.”

“What’s
that?” Pouring more whiskey into his soda can, Rodney dripped some onto Dad’s
white shirt sleeve. Then, after a moment, “Are you sure you don’t want me to
hold something?”

Again
I shrugged him away. “I used to pray on my hands and knees, and imagined a
Heaven filled with white lacy clouds. Many pleasant men and women came out to
greet me as I entered through these tall, alabaster white gates. There was a
young girl there about my own age. I thought she was really beautiful, and we
became close friends. One night she let me kiss her, and another night I saved
her from the hordes of Satan’s evil minions. I imagined all this while I prayed
to be good and pure. I wanted to remain a child like that forever.”

“I
never prayed to be good,” Rodney said, reflectively sipping. “I only prayed for
three things in my entire life. Money. Women. And power. And when you get right
down to it, I’m not in such a hurry about the women and the money. Power’s the
main thing, Phillip. Power’s the only thing worth really praying for.”

“I
wanted to do good deeds. I wanted to help cripples and old women who nobody
loved. I wanted to save puppies from the pound, and teach broken birds to fly
again.”

“What
are you doing with that–”

“I
wanted there to be absolutely no pain and suffering in the entire world. Sometimes
I wonder why I wanted that. I can’t understand the dreams I dreamed then. What
did they matter? What did pain and suffering have to do with me? They had
nothing to do with me. They were things, they were different from me. I’m not
really in the world at all, Rodney, am I? I’m really not, am I?” I was hot with
dizziness and my own blood. With the back of my hand I wiped the sweat
gathering on my forehead. I needed to lie down for a minute. I needed a glass
of ice-cold water. But I couldn’t relax just yet. I wasn’t finished. And then I
heard the sudden crack of Mom’s overpainted door opening down the hall. It all
seemed perfectly natural–the world right now, events and circumstances. Then
Mom’s slow, balancing footsteps, her large stomach preceding her into the mouth
of the living room. Rodney nudged me sharply with his elbow.

“Hello,
Mrs. Davis,” Rodney said.

I
was about to attach a pair of snub-nosed pliers. I cupped them in my hand like
a guilty, smoldering cigarette and turned. Mom was standing there, watching us,
her face glowing, wearing the big blue robe I had bought her for Mother’s Day.

Mom
was looking at Dad’s face as if it were the face of a child in a photograph. Her
eyes steadfastly refused to look at any of the things I had begun doing to him.

“When
you’re finished in here, baby, I want you to leave,” Mom said. The fingertips
of one hand were poised upon her stomach, as if gauging delicate reactions down
there, secret chords and melodies. Morses of plasma, protein and bone. “I don’t
want you around the baby. You can take the car, and your father’s money. But go
far away, and I’ll say I don’t know what happened. I was asleep in my room. I
woke up in the morning and found him. I hadn’t heard a thing all night. I’ll
still love you, Phillip, but I don’t want you around anymore. I’ve tried hard
to understand, but I’m afraid I just can’t understand anymore.”

It
was cold static moonlight. Outside, in the distance, I heard the helicopter
beating past again. Somewhere in the night a police car sounded, and then its
brief momentary eruption of inhuman voices. “
Not in the alley, over
”; “
Roger,
Sam-six
.” I was thinking, Just fine. You go where you want to go, Mom, and
I’ll go where I want to go. I was staring her straight in the eye. I was
ashamed of nothing. She, on the other hand, wasn’t looking at me. She couldn’t
look at me because she knew it too. She knew that this was my night, the night
of my stark ascension. Dad wasn’t going anywhere without me. Mom was the one
who would be left behind. Everything was going to turn out exactly the way I
wanted it to turn out and there was nothing Mom, or Dad, or anybody else could
do about it. I was going to have my way, simply because I finally understood in
which direction my way led.

“I
lost you in San Luis,” Mom said. She was watching the can of 7UP in Rodney’s
hand. “You’ll never change, Phillip. You are the way you are and that’s that. I
didn’t say anything at the time but I knew, and you knew I knew. Whatever your
father knew isn’t any of my business. Your father simply shouldn’t have gotten
involved. He knew better. He knew me. He couldn’t have been that naive about
you. I don’t know what he expected when he came here, but we never invited him,
we never made him any promises. Now, if you and your friend don’t mind, I’m
going back to bed. I’m going to sleep for about a hundred years. When you
leave, remember to lock up. Don’t leave any lights on. You won’t be able to
write me because I won’t let you know where I’ve gone.”

Mom
turned, paused with one hand on the wall, the other on her stomach. Then,
cautiously, she conducted my unborn sibling down the hall to her warm and
silent bed.

There
wasn’t any time for reflection. I attached the snub-nosed pliers. Nobody was
going to tell me what to do anymore. Nobody could send me away or leave me. Not
even Mom. Not even Dad.

“Jesus,”
Rodney said. His hands were trembling, his voice faint, his eyes intent on my
work now with either concealed admiration or blank distrust. “Your family’s too
much, guy.”

“I
always wanted to be good,” I said as I feverishly worked, feeling vast geologic
plates and fissures expanding in the deep earth under my feet. “I always wanted
to go to Heaven. Now I don’t care. I’ll go anywhere. It’s quite a relief, you
know. It’s like having all your appointments canceled and knowing you can spend
the whole day in bed with a good book.”

“You’re
really something, Phillip,” Rodney said. “You really are.”

“In
order to free the self, one must abandon all preconceptions about what the self
is.” As I worked, the words arose in me without my volition. They were like the
hard intricate tools I wielded, they were like the dense yielding body of Dad. Associative,
crystalline, buzzing, hard. Next to these words, the world seemed to reliquefy
itself, dissolving in the blood of some archetypal Christ. “Make no mistake
about it–the self exists, Rodney, and this is it.
This
is the self. This is the self here.” I showed Rodney something
on the end of one stubby screwdriver. “Blood, tissue, bone, cartilage, marrow,
mass, gravity, liquid, sound, light. It moves or it doesn’t move. It lives or
it doesn’t live. This is the history of luminous motion, Rodney. This is the
flux and convection of sudden light. We’re all the same but we’re all not the
same too. What you know is not what I know. What you prefer is not what I
prefer. There’s just this–and this–and this–” Dad’s body gave
a sudden, galvanic kick– “or
this
,”
I said, enraged by the still pulsing life in him, “or this or this or this or
this. This here, or this
here
.
This
is all we are, this warm and
fragile envelope, this thin impacted tissue. It’s not that we exist but that we
know we exist that makes our lives so miserable. And this–this is
nothing. And this, and this, and this. This is all nothing too.”

“And
this,” Pedro echoes. “And this, and this, and this.”

“This
is the progress men and women make alone in the world of light,” I chanted, the
words filling me with heat and rage. “This is all we are, Rodney.
 
This is all we’ll ever be…” They were my
words but they were somebody else’s words too. Mom couldn’t leave me. Only I
could leave Mom. I was dizzy with fierce excitement. The blood coursed and
raced in my head. I was moving too, through these humming veins, down these
moist undulating corridors. I was moving into the world of Dad’s body, a place
even Dad had never been before. I would show them. I was going to show all of
them. Mom and Dad, Rodney and Beatrice, Ethel and the world. The whole world,
the whole vast and intricate world. And Pedro. Pedro, of course… I was going to
show all of them. “This is it, Rodney. This is the light. This is Dad’s
light–but now it’s mine. Now it’s my light. Now it’s Mom’s light too…”

Rodney
said, “Hey, Phillip. What’s that noise?”

“This
is the history of motion, Rodney. The history of motion. Look–the history
of motion. The history, the history of motion…” I could feel it now. I knew it was
coming. I could feel the pulse in my bones and skin. It raced in my blood. It
raced in Dad’s blood too. Something spurted into my eye and I wiped it away
with the back of my wrist.

“Hey,
Phillip. Something’s wrong, man. Phillip. Hey–get it together, guy. I
think somebody’s outside–”

It
was mine and it was Dad’s and someday it would be the baby’s too. Me and Mom
and the baby and Dad. And the light, the light–

and
then suddenly there was just the awful thundering noise of it, descending
outside in the ruined and brilliant white sky. Finally I saw it. The light, the
hard bright white light flashing through the cracked venetian blinds into our
living room, beating and flashing, fast and sudden and secure, roaring and
louder like massive engines driving and obliterating everything, even the
night. It was all life, it was all living. This
was
my life. I was doing it
now
.
I was living my own life
now
–

“Jesus
Christ!” Rodney shouted, grabbing my hands, pulling at me. “Phillip–we
gotta get out of here!”

But
nobody pushed me, nobody made me do anything I didn’t want to do. Not tonight
and not ever again.

“Rodney!”
I shouted. I was disentangling my hands from Dad’s clinging warmth. I even
tried to lift Dad in my arms to show him. I wanted Dad to see too. I wanted
everyone to see. “Look there! At the window!”

It
burned through the window blinds. It was life. It was white. It was coming for
me, for me.

“Rodney!
Look!”

I
was shouting over the noise of the beating helicopter rotors. Everything was so
simple now. All the hard eternal light of it was burning in our blood and our
bones and our brains…

“Rodney!”
I called. I turned around the room, alone in the whirling hallway. The back
door to the garage door stood wide open.