A Symphony of Cicadas

Nine



To my surprise, flying proved to be effortless. I had thought for sure I would start out with a plunge to the earth and gain a few bumps and scrapes along the way. But instead it felt like the most natural thing in the world, as if I were made for flying. I held my hands out at first like Superman, looking down on the world that was streaming below my soaring body. But I soon realized it didn’t matter which position I held myself in as I ascended through the air.

I passed birds at high velocities, their thoughts mingling with mine as I came close to them. They saw me as just a speck of light, I realized; the vision presented to me earlier in the forest making much more sense. With their direction, I knew when to move up or down to travel with the air current, and when to turn so I was on the right path. But getting lost didn’t worry me. I had all the time in the world, or rather, the lack of time’s existence. I didn’t know how long I had stayed at the carnival. To me it felt like just a few hours had passed. But judging by the green tops of the trees and the fresh moisture in the air, I could tell the seasons had changed from a long and dreary winter to a hopeful spring.

Images of our familiar neighborhood flashed from the minds of the birds that flew around me, popping at me like the scattered pages of magazines. I descended from the air, passing the few trees that lined the streets before touching my feet to the sidewalk. I walked the last few steps left toward our apartment complex; its gray cement adorned with windows dressed in iron bars looking back at me in cold contempt.

I never liked this place. Inside we had made it a home, the photos and warm colors brightening up the tone from the busy world outside. But outside it was dirty and riddled with angst. Our neighborhood stood on the edge of the Tenderloin, the streets lined with those out of luck who carried their belongings with them at all times. It was a rare day in life when I didn’t have to step over a sleeping body to climb the stairs or wasn’t asked for a cigarette despite the fact I hadn’t smoked a day in my life. Bags of trash overflowed into the streets, at times forgotten by the city waste management as the rats took turns tearing them open and grabbing what they could for their home. Blocks away were the adult bars where girls danced on stage for money, and patrons drank more than they should to drive home safe. They parked in our neighborhood, and I’d often see them stumbling back to their cars and groping for their keys, hitting the metal trash cans on the side of the road at ungodly hours of the night before driving off. Some were even too drunk to drive. I’d pretend to ignore their passed-out body at the steering wheel as I’d leave for work in the morning, hoping they were only sleeping and not, in fact, dead.

On this afternoon, one of our regular homeless inhabitants sat next to the stairs of our apartment, staring straight ahead as his dog slept at his feet. In life I had ignored him, so repulsed that I had to live near these people with their mental problems and affinity for booze. But this time his thoughts prodded at my mind despite the fact that his face looked blank.

So hungry, he repeated in his mind, and I felt the way his stomach churned inside of him. Beside him lay a wrapper that held a half-eaten sandwich that looked to be weeks old. He picked around the rotting parts with care and placed it in his mouth. On the outside, he didn’t seem to mind eating the spoiled food. But I felt his disgust at the way it tasted, eating it only so his stomach didn’t rip in half. I brushed away my repulsion as I experienced every ounce of his affliction, just as I brushed away my shame for my lack of compassion towards him during my life.

Sensing the old man’s hunger and thoughts, it dawned on me that I could feel the thoughts of anyone. The only thoughts I had heard were those of the birds and cicadas – but only when they projected their thoughts to me. To actually feel what people were feeling, to see what was hiding behind their words… The possibilities in this tiny detail of the afterlife seemed to make up for everything else that was just outside my grasp in this existence.

I closed my eyes and imagined the inside of our apartment, feeling myself pulled within the cold walls and away from the starving man outside our steps. In an instant, I was surrounded by blaring music. I opened my eyes with a start.

The house was in total disarray. It looked as if the dishes hadn’t been washed in weeks, maybe months, and they overflowed from the sink to the countertops and all across the dining room table. Clothes were slung over the back of the couch and on the floor, some of them clean and never folded and others still sporting the stains from a full day of construction work. I wrinkled my nose at the smell that wafted through the apartment, a mixture of garbage and air freshener creating an odd bouquet of odors.

I could sense that John wasn’t in the apartment. But someone was there; probably Sam, judging by the awful noise coming from the stereo. I walked up the stairs and turned the corner. The closed door to Joey’s room stared back at me, daring me to come inside. I was curious if they had kept the room the same, or if it was now being used for something else. I didn’t want to know yet, and focused instead on the source of the loud music.

Sam’s room was overflowing with clothes and papers, and he lay on the bed with some girl I had never seen before. They lay in an intimate embrace amidst the chaos that surrounded them.

“Come on, Lacey,” he whispered between messy kisses while his hands searched out the buttons of her pants. “My dad isn’t supposed to be home for a few more hours.” She found his hands at her waist and pushed them away.

“Not yet, not now,” she said, pulling away. “I can’t.” I could feel his frustration bubbling inside him, even as he tried to appear understanding. His thoughts groaned, pounding the walls of his brain as he saw another opportunity to lose his virginity wash down the drain.

“It’s okay,” he told her, stuffing his frustration in an effort to not ruin it for future attempts. He smoothed his hand through her hair to keep it from falling into her eyes. She smiled up at him as she moved to lie in the crook of his arm. They both closed their eyes, drifting into sleep despite the heavy beat of the music that screamed around them.

I left them like that, moving away from Sam’s room to face Joey’s door once again. Reaching forward, my hand moved through the door to a room I couldn’t see. I took a deep breath and walked in.

His bed was still unmade, the video game controller I had taken from him now placed on his pillow. Almost everything lay as he had left it, right down to the dirty laundry that spilled out of his laundry basket and his backpack with papers falling out of the pockets. But along with Joey’s mess were numerous boxes that took up much of the remaining space. I peered in one of them and my heart sank when I realized it was all of my things. Everything I had ever owned was now hidden away in a box of cardboard, locked up in a room so that the ghosts of memories would cease their haunting. I did a quick inventory of everything inside the rest of the boxes and saw my favorite coffee cup, the dress I had worn on our first date, the tattered blue robe I wore every morning before getting dressed… Even my wedding dress was in the room, though it hung from Joey’s closet instead of being stuffed as a wrinkled mess into one of the boxes. I felt a pang of regret when I realized that John had to see the dress for the first time after I had died. It hung there now in innocent perfection, as if waiting to be slipped over the head of a girl with a mind full of hopes and promises. The only thing amiss was a small square of fabric, about three inches in length, missing from the hem of the skirt. I looked a little closer and could see the rough edges of a crude cutting job.

Despite the music that still blared from Sam’s room, the click of the front door was unmistakable to my heightened sense of hearing. John was home. I was at his side in an instant as he walked into the house and grimaced at the mixture of mess and noise that greeted him.

“Sam!” he shouted. He tried to be loud enough to be heard over the music, but it was no use. He sighed and hung his jacket on the doorknob of the closet, unwilling to push aside the shoes and stacks of unopened mail blocking the closet door so he could open it and hang the jacket inside. He thumped up the stairs, his lack of energy adding cement to his weighted feet. “Sam, can you turn that down,” he said as he neared the room, freezing when he saw that Sam wasn’t alone. The two of them woke with a start. Lacey sat upright and pulled her sweater back over her bare arms. John started to say something, his face a mask against the thoughts reeling in his head. But he closed his mouth and turned towards his room, shutting the door behind him. I could hear every question he left unspoken. How could they? How old is that girl? How would Rachel handle this? What am I supposed to do?

In Sam’s room, Lacey put her shoes back on and grabbed her backpack. “I really should go,” she apologized, and Sam nodded in agreement. Inside he swore at his dad for ruining the slim chances he still had of getting in her pants. But he covered it up by giving her a brief hug and helping to carry her things to the front door.

“I’ll talk to you tonight,” he said, giving her a light kiss before closing the door behind her. Then he bounded the stairs by two and slammed his own door, locking himself in his room.

At his desk in his own close-off room, I saw John wince at the sound. I tuned into him, taking special efforts to sense everything he wasn’t saying out loud.

He was aware of the irony, a whole apartment of space and this was how they spent their time. He was ashamed at how he’d let the apartment go, allowing the two of them to live like dogs in their own filth. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had cooked dinner for the two of them, both of them left to fend for themselves when it came to mealtimes.

At least there was still food, he thought to himself. At least I’m still going to the grocery store to make sure we have something to eat.

It was as if a light went on inside him, and I wondered if it was because I was standing next to him with my hand as close as I could get to his body. He got up and opened the door to his room and went downstairs, gathering the clothes that lay on the stairs he passed. He created several piles in the room, separating the mail and the clothing, and gathering all the dishes into a consolidated mass of dishes and cups. Filling the sink with hot water, he worked at the glued-on food of each plate, rinsing them clean and placing them in the rack next to the sink. When it was too full to hold any more, he dried them and put them away, then started over on the diminishing pile next to him.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked behind him, startling John as he stood immersed in the hot, sudsy water.

“You scared me,” he said, but Sam stood emotionless and unapologetic. “I’m tired of the filth. I’m just straightening up.”

Sam watched him without speaking, his dad’s back to him as he continued to wash dishes. I could see the wheels turning in his head, and I was cast into the feelings of a fifteen year old boy full of more anger than he knew what to do with. For months his dad had acted like he had died with me, choosing to be absent as a father even when he was physically in the apartment. This sudden act of waking up from wherever he had disappeared to confused the hell out of Sam. He didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful to have this glimpse of his old dad. He wanted to confront him on it, ask him who the hell his father thought he was, say everything he wanted to say in the past six months about his dad having been a vacant vessel. But instead, he grabbed a towel off the counter and began drying the wet dishes John had placed into the rack.

John turned to him and smiled at Sam, grateful for the help. The two of them finished tackling the dishes together before moving on to the rest of the house and putting it back together. The music still blared upstairs, but it served as a beat to move to rather than a force to move against.

Later, they both sat down at the table, eating the first homemade dinner they’d enjoyed since before my death. John chewed on the words rolling around in his head, questions he didn’t even know how to ask. I could hear Sam’s thoughts as his dad figured out the right thing to say in a situation like this.

Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask.

“So who is she?” John asked, and Sam slumped in his seat in defeat.

“No one,” he mumbled, pushing at his food with his fork. “Just some chick.”

“She seemed more than ‘just some chick,’ Sam. Is she your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s her name?” John prompted. He took another bite of food and waited, trying to appear casual even as the rest of his questions pushed to be first in line. I could sense that one opening in the conversation would cause them all to come spilling out to the floor, drowning John and Sam in the confusion of puberty, growing up, and experiences that could change a life forever. But Sam remained tightlipped, choosing now to remain silent as if the question had never been asked.

“Sam, I asked you a question,” John said, the curiosities about Lacey now evaporating against the heat rising up inside of him. There was nothing that made him angrier than when Sam shut down like this, losing any outward displays of emotion as he ignored whoever was speaking to him. It was the game he played whenever John acted as someone with more authority than a roommate who fed Sam and paid all the bills. Instead of fighting his father, Sam would just keep his mouth shut and react as if no one were speaking to him at all.

****

“I don’t think he can hear you,” I said in bewilderment the first time it had happened. Sam remained tightlipped and calm while his father reddened in the face, repeating several times what he had said. It had been dinnertime then, too, the only time Sam was ever around us. Other than mealtimes, he would lock himself in his room with his videogames or hang out with his friends until moments before it was time to eat. I had been dating John for just a couple of months, but I was beginning to see that Sam was fighting against any kind of parental control. He wasn’t a bad kid, and as far as I could tell he wasn’t rebelling in any major way. He just didn’t like to be told what to do.

On this particular occasion John was merely asking him what his plans were for the weekend. We all sat in silence as we waited for his answer, and I thought I saw just the hint of a smirk as he got up to put his plate in the sink. Beside me Joey ate his dinner as if nothing were amiss, though he watched in silent curiosity to see how things would unfold.

“Sam, your father is asking you what you are up to this weekend,” I said to him. Sam looked at me with a calm demeanor, as if I were a child who didn’t understand the way things worked.

“I heard him,” he said.

“Then why aren’t you answering him?” I asked. “Are you mad at him?”

“No, I just don’t feel like talking,” he said, and he turned to walk out of the room before anyone could say anything else.

****

“Sam, don’t start this shit again,” John said, setting his fork on the table and looking at his fifteen year old son as they sat alone at the table we had once shared as a mixed up family.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam mumbled. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Then why aren’t you speaking when I talk to you?” I could feel the heat of John’s infuriation simmer inside of him, threatening to explode as he did his best to keep things under control.

“I don’t have to talk just because you spoke to me, Dad. I can talk when I want,” Sam said, sitting up out of his slouch and looking his dad straight in the eye.

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Sam. If you don’t want to talk about something, I’ll give you that. But tell me that. Tell me you’d rather not talk about her, or whatever it is you’re feeling. But to blatantly disregard me is rude. And if we go down this road again, I’m just going to give you much of the same and forget to feed you or drive you wherever it is you need to go.” John sat back in his chair and folded his arms in front of him, confident his last word would sink in with Sam. But Sam looked at him with blazing eyes, standing up and glaring down at John.

“What the f*ck do you think has been going on the past couple of months?” he shouted. “Have you been feeding me, driving me anywhere, or even talking to me? You’ve been ignoring me ever since Rachel died. So don’t tell me how to act around you when you can’t even do the same shit for me!” With that he picked up his plate with food still on it and threw it into the sink with enough force that it split into three separate pieces. He started to go back up the stairs to his room, but realized that was expected of him. In a split-second decision he opened the front door to the apartment and slammed it behind him as he left.

John sat in silence at the table, numb as a flurry of emotions shot through him in a passionate fight to be center stage. Sam was right. He’d been absent as a father as he mourned the dead and forgot about the living. I danced in his swirling thoughts as he remembered that first week I was gone and how I was everywhere. I was in the smell of my hair that still lingered on my pillow. I was in the photographs that beamed out at him from every corner of the house. I was in the books stacked upon my dresser waiting to be read, whose resolutions I would never know.

He had spent that first week finding everything that reminded him of me and hiding it in Joey’s room, shutting the door on the past several years that made up the best parts of his life. But he’d paused when he came to my wedding dress, hidden within an opaque garment bag. I peered into his memory as he unzipped the bag with halting fingers, letting the creamy silk spill out onto my side of the bed as he looked at the dress he’d never see me wear for him. He took in the way it ruffled at my imaginary waist, hugging my curves and flowing into a subtle bell where my feet would be. One of my stray hairs remained on the dress, and he lifted it off with care, touching the fabric with his calloused hands and remembering the softness of my skin. I sat in silence in the corner of this memory as he lifted the dress to his face and sobbed into it with muffled cries. I stood next to John at the dinner table as he relived this very first cry. It was the one that opened the floodgates, leading to weeks of staying in his room and sobbing in secret. So ashamed of this weakness that possessed him, he left Sam to fend for himself, a temporary solution that soon became a habitual practice. And I was everywhere, haunting the apartment in his memories despite the fact that every part of me was locked up tight in Joey’s room.

In time, John tore himself away from the wedding dress, hanging it in Joey’s closet after maneuvering around the piles of boxes that took up every inch of space. Seeing it hang there, shining its promise within the darkened room, he was stuck between closing the door on it forever and the fear of forgetting me once he abandoned the dress to the room of memories. The idea was still formulating in his mind when he walked back to his room and grabbed the pair of shears that sat up straight in the cup of pens on his desk. He hesitated for only a moment before he began cutting into the fabric, taking a square piece of material and putting it in his pocket before closing the door of the room for the last time.

Months later, the material remained hidden in his pocket. He rubbed it between two fingers as he sat in solitude at the empty dinner table, the slam of the front door echoing over and over through his head as if it were hitting against the vortex of hurts.

Bang. Rachel and Joey are gone.

Bang. You will never hear her laugh again.

Bang. You may even forget what her laugh sounded like.

Bang. You are losing your son.

Bang. Rachel was the glue that held this all together.

Bang. You are a horrible father.

Bang.

John stood up and threw his plate at the wall, another porcelain casualty of a war that couldn’t be won. I shrunk down in the corner of the room at the violence in the action, ignoring the nagging thought that I was the cause of it. I couldn’t be. He was still mourning. He’d been suffering without me here. Nothing had changed.

The plate was the last thing in the house to be broken that night, if I didn’t count John’s heart. He stopped himself at the climax of the action, his breath heavy as he stared at the food that stained the wall, and the pieces of white that were now scattered across the dining room floor. For several moments he stood like that, clenching and unclenching his hands, fighting the urge to grab something else and heave it with a satisfying smash into the wall. His breath came out in forced rushes of air as he worked to expel the anger and rage that was clawing to fight its way out of him. He wanted to shout, to scream at the unfairness of having to be a father even though his whole world had come crashing down around him and he wasn’t sure how to pick up the pieces.

Six months after my death, and I was still both his waking breath and sweet suffocation.

We both stayed quiet in that room, his breath slowing to a calm rhythm in the heavy air around us. Without a word, he grabbed the broom and began sweeping up the shards of plate. Once the floor and sink were free of broken porcelain, the walls without evidence of the earlier actions, and the remaining dinner dishes cleaned and drying in the rack, John sat in a chair in the living room in silence, waiting for Sam to cool down and come home.