Chapter 42

     When he did wake up, he took stock of where he was, and wondered where the hell he had just been. Had he really traveled across the country in a drunken haze like that? It seemed surreal to him. That he was here, lying in the bed he shared with his wife without her. It was a future he never could have dreamed of.

     He looked down the stairs, and once again he felt the sense of life folding in on itself. He had played on these same stairs as a child with his grandmother, and carried on the tradition with his own daughter when the farm was theirs. Every step was another memory. Old and new, both tempered by the current cloud of angst that hung over the house with each step he took. Memory could be cruel when a person’s road ahead was still so foggy.

     He made his way down to his daughter’s room, and looked inside. He saw her toys, and art supplies and posters and felt a swell of fatherly pride at the young woman she had become. Given what she had been through the odds were long that she would ever find a sense of innocence again, but she had reclaimed her joy and become a child again in front of his eyes. It was the privilege of a lifetime to see her resilience, and he wondered what she might have become. He knew she was happy at the end, and visualized a world full of hope and possibilities. Maybe it was impossible to improve on that?

     He stepped outside and took a deep breath of the country air. It smelled like manure, and he realized it always had. He had idealized that smell in his mind for most of his life, but when he was here, he remembered. He realized he smelled it more acutely now because he was alone. Most of his life at this far he had been surrounded by people he loved. Now it was just him and the smell.

     He looked up and saw a car drive by slowly on the small country road, and he realized that people would begin to notice he had returned. He knew they would have no idea what he was doing here by himself or what he had just been through. Can we ever really triangulate another person’s emotional place in the universe? Not really. It was a reminder to tread lightly with people.

      He thought for a moment about platitudes and sympathy and going through the motions with his neighbors, and decided he simply wasn’t up for it in that moment.

     He felt himself reaching for his keys and starting for the car. Consciously understood he was pointing it towards a bar. Understood that this choice had consequences and would carry the weight of further guilt, and physical and emotional malaise. He did it anyway.

Maybe time was a flat line.