'Insomniac in Limbo'

for Steinar Bragi

We’ve always been a quiet family; even at the dinner table we don’t talk. My ma likes it that way. I sit across from her, my dad at my left. Our chewing is always soft and polite, rhythmic, with everyone meeting up at the same gait during the meal. It’s funny how that happens, but no one laughs. I want to laugh, but Ma says, "We don't voice our enthusiasm."

Aunt Pearl used to live with us, but she’s gone to a place they call the home where she sits in a wheelchair. She’s learned to laugh loudly there, as if in flights of optimism. With Aunt Pearl gone, I still practice wiggling my ear at the dinner table, but only when my ma looks away.  

Tonight, we’ve taken Aunt Pearl out to hear her favorite soprano at the Rejkeyvik Concert Hall. The wheels of her chair make a whispery sound that's familiar in comparison to the bright voices around us, celebrating with the toast of glasses, and the rustle of new clothes brought out for a night at the opera. I push  the wheelchair through it all, and I want to hoist myself up and fly for the orchestra down the burgundy aisle, but my parents are behind us, so I focus on the wheels and on Aunt Pearl’s delight at having cut out of the home for a night.

“Sophia!” she cries. Her voice, once a powdery kiss, is shrill now that she’s deaf. “Just look at this place!"

The opera crowd stares as we pass.

At the home where she lives, where the old ladies are bent over and calling out names of people I don’t know; when I’m there, I like to give Aunt Pearl a great big push and pull myself up on the handles of her chair and zoom across the waxed floors at speeds that scare the nurses and the aides.

“Be good,” my ma whispers after us, as we fly past the doorways of the infirm. Sour smells come out to meet us; but we keep going, past the room where the old man lived.

I saw him once dancing to his own music, his feet floating just above the floor, his walker on its side. I turned away before his feet stopped moving.

His room is empty now and Aunt Pearl says, “He’s an insomniac in limbo,” and leaves it at that. Now she chews ugly, with her mouth open and sometimes her voice hurts my ears.

 “Make way,” she yells as I push her chair down the burgundy aisle. Two women in shimmering evening gowns step aside and Aunt Pearl smiles at her power. 

“Sophia, my great-niece,” she shouts at the two in evening wear. They recoil at the volume of her introduction.

 “Isn’t this wonderful!” she screams at them, and turns to touch my wrist. 

Her skin is translucent and blue, cooler than anyone’s, as though she’s from a damp place where moisture condenses on the walls.

My parents nod their heads behind us. “Yes, it’s lovely!” they whisper, but my ma has turned away. Her neck is red as though she’s blushed.

Our seats are right at the orchestra with a space for the wheelchair. I sit beside Aunt Pearl. I am the one with patience, my ma always says.  There’s a hush as the musicians tune up and then the moment before it all starts, the hall fills with the crinkle of candy wrappers. Aunt Pearl makes a racket with hers, so I help her out. I turn her at an angle, facing me. She pops the candy in her mouth and sucks with abandon. 

My ma shudders lightly at my right.

The conductor appears and there’s thunderous applause.  

The music starts, and all I hear is discord. It sounds like the musicians are struggling to find their place in the score. Next thing I know, I’ve fallen into it like a dead man hanging from a window curtain. I drift out on the bay with it, sailing a boat made from the curtain, just after midnight. I hear nothing and everything as I head for the mountains, the sea, and the sky. There is a roll to the waters, a harmony. I've never been here before but I know the way.

Something brings me back, a sound like when his neck snapped, or was it when the window pole crashed? No, it’s only Aunt Pearl, her hazel gaze still on me, her voice competing with the prima donna on stage -

“Sophia, when’s the music starting?”

I smile at her and look at the fat woman on stage whose mouth is open wider than humanly possible. I point and Aunt Pearl follows my finger, then she covers her mouth to hold back a laugh, but it burps out, and her eyes shine with silliness, and for just that moment I can see her as she was when she was young. Curious and hopeful. Excited about what lay ahead. Now she lives in a home where people die. I cross my eyes wide to her delight and wiggle my ear.

My ma shoots a look our way. “Sophia!” she says in an angry whisper.

“It was me, honey,” Aunt Pearl calls back in her too-loud voice. She waves her hand at ma and does a little dance in her wheelchair, side-to-side. 

A man behind us says, “Oh really!” and my ma turns to him.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, even though she hasn’t done anything to be sorry about.

Aunt Pearl isn’t even listening to them. She’s humming along to the music and I wonder what she hears. I wonder if she’s already weightless and floating over unknown waters, like me, looking down on the dark surface of the bay. A breathy sound calls my attention, maybe the waves, or my mother telling the story of the good girl and the bad girl. I turn to look, but there are no waves; the black bay is smooth and hard, and I know his feet have stopped moving. 

I push off and glide above it but something’s happened that I can’t explain. I could have saved him.

I’m back in my seat at the opera house with Aunt Pearl beside me. She’s finished her candy and fidgets with her mouth, flicking her lower lip out against her front teeth. She makes a sound like fuh, fuh, fuh -  

“Fuck!” she cries, coming down hard on the k, like she’s just learned to curse.

I feel my ma flinch beside me, the jerk of her body sharp as the old man’s.  

Aunt Pearl has calmly turned her attention back to the stage. Her mouth is open in wonder as the two singers embrace; the tenor lost in the soprano’s bosom. Her breasts are wrapped around him like the curtain wrapped around the old man’s neck.

“Fuck,” Aunt Pearl says softly now.  She turns to smile at me and then at the man behind us. I try to remember my ma's story about the good girl and the bad girl, but I just can’t stop laughing.

Source: https://www.standmagazine.org/archive/stand-241-221/80