ANNIVERSARY

By

Elaine Barnard

I’ve dreamed of this day for a long time, never knowing exactly when or how I’d make it happen.  There were so many possibilities.  I wanted the choice to be painless as a dream, floating from this world into the next.

Today I rose, more tired than usual, just as a watery rainbow fringed the palms.  I bent to force the brake on Gale’s chair.  It’s an old chair but sturdy.  The plastic seat is lusterless blue like his eyes.  And the aluminum arms are silver, almost the color his hair is now.  The seat isn’t that comfortable but it’s strong enough to hold three hundred pounds, or so the label claims.  Of course, he’s never been heavy, and weighs a little under one hundred pounds now fully dressed.  I bought the chair years ago after the doctors concluded his paralysis was permanent.  Optimist that I was, at first I only rented the chair.  Buying it seemed so final.  It was like signing away hope, giving in to whatever the doctors determined.  How can we go on, I’d thought, without hope?

          But now, all hope’s vanished.  Help can’t arrive.  “You’re too far out,” the doctors said, “Too high up” the nurses echoed.  “Our vans will never make your hill in this torrent.”

And until this day, our anniversary, the rain has never let up, seventeen inches this week alone and more on the way, isolating us from the villages.  So this is why I’m imploring your prayers, because prayer might provide a channel to the next life.  The one that must be there as the life we are living now is certainly not the one we were meant to have.

Gale is worse today, his pulse irregular, his blood pressure high.  When I bathe him, he nods.  His head lolls forward like the rag doll I cherished as a child on this very same island.  It’s a special island, rainy on one side, dry on the other.  My family lived on the rainy side, taking trips to the dry side on holidays, when I swam in the tropical waters like a small slim fish in a protected paradise.  And even now, withered as I am, like a palm prepared for its final pruning, I still find release in water.  It’s as if water is our natural element, one that we should never have left for the brutal life on land.  If I could, I would spend eternity in water.  No cloudy heavens for me, no pearly gates.  Water is where I long to be.

I bathe Gale’s forehead with a cool cloth.  He likes the coolness.  On our honeymoon we traveled to Alaska, made love in an ice hut beneath warm polar rugs, the fur soft and sweet as Gale’s skin once was.  “I love this landscape,” he’d murmured.  “In my next life I want to be an Eskimo skimming my surfboards across the ice.”  We laughed.  His cool lips kissed me to sleep as the wind howled about us.

A hint of a smile curves his lips, his eyelids close as if to dispel any distractions.  He wants to be totally in the moment of cool.  I almost envy his ability to be so completely absorbed by a single sensation, that simple luxury.

Next I bathe his neck, patting dry the scruff of hair on its nape until it shines.  This scruff seems so healthy, this gray fringe of time.  Then I bathe the lobes of his ears.  The lobes are long and soft as a child’s, out of place on his head, which is big and square, appearing much larger since his limbs have atrophied into pale appendages without definition or strength.  He’s simply a vessel now, an embodiment of fluids that give him life.

His eyelids open, gazing at me in that somber way that is somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.  I can’t tell what he’s thinking.  I don’t even know if he recognizes me at all.  I could easily be a figment of his imagination, a dream he had once years ago.  Is he even aware that I exist?  Does he remember our years together, those tender years raising Remy that passed almost imperceptibly, as if we were dream walkers?  It all seems so strange now, so foreign.  Did our past really happen?  Did we truly exist in that state we called happy, knowing no other, where small inconveniences seemed major obstacles to the joy we somehow felt we had a right to, somehow felt should be our natural state, just as now, this pervasive dark that follows us seems all we have ever had.

Soaping the cloth, I bathe his arms, letting the water trickle over the veins as I follow the path to his heart.  I lay my head on his chest and listen to the slow beating within, the clock of his years.  His arms rest in his lap.  Lifting each one, I bathe his hands in the rain, which has begun to fall once again, increasing the slippage on our hillside, the possibility that we might find our bungalow afloat on the sea, our sparse treasures drifting from us.

Next I bathe his legs.  They are long and thin, the skin so dry it flakes when I rub them.  But the massage is such a relief for him.  He wiggles his toes to signal his appreciation.  His toes curl when I push back his cuticles, grown hard with time.  The arch of his foot that always gives him pleasure when I caress it has fallen, like a bridge too weak to support its weight.

When I’ve finished washing all his outer parts, there remain the private places.  He’s always been so modest the private places were not easily revealed.  But in time he conceded.  I hold them gently, wash them with care as you would a delicate treasure.  Then I kiss them, something he has never allowed me to do before.  But now I can see, by his subtle movements, that he yearns for me to touch him.

  I place a child’s spoon filled with pudding, between his lips.  It’s our Remy’s spoon.  He was drowned years ago in a hurricane that devastated our island.

We had gone to bed late the night of the hurricane, exhausted from piling sand bags and other barriers around the lowest level of the bungalow.  Gale hadn’t wanted to flee to higher ground as the authorities advised.  “We’ve lived here so long,” he said, “so very long.  Leaving would be like abandoning an old friend.”

We worked far into the night, gathering our belongings and stowing them high up in the attic.  We let Remy sleep between us that night.  Normally he slept on his little cot in the playroom so he could be near his favorite animals.

About five in the morning I woke to the slosh of rising waters only to find Remy missing.  I couldn’t wake Gale.  He slept like one possessed.  I rushed downstairs to the playroom.  There lay Remy clutching his favorite toy, a shaggy black poodle with a missing tail.  The waters swirled around him.

As if in a dream I heard Gale call my name, “Alida,” he shouted, “Alida!”  His step heavy on the stairs.  Then he was beside me dragging Remy from the water, breathing into his tiny mouth.

The phone lines were dead.  There was no one to call.  No help existed.  Remy’s face was pale.  His heart had stopped despite Gale’s efforts.  We placed him between us on the bed so that even in death he could feel our warmth as we waited for the waters to recede.

It was then Gale’s paralysis began.  First just his fingers, then his hands, his arms, progressing throughout his body each year after we scattered Remy’s ashes on the sea.  It was as if Gale blamed himself for Remy’s death, for sleeping while the waters rose around our boy.

Gale opens his lips.  I feed him slowly, letting him savor one spoonful before I offer him the next.  He’s hungry this afternoon, having refused food yesterday and the day before.  Was he trying to die, I ask myself?  Then why this sudden hunger?  Or is this

the result of intuition?

The pudding slips down his throat.  When we finish one container, I offer him a second.  He accepts it with a sigh.  Tears form on the corners of his eyes and gradually mix with the pudding, nourishment of the body and the soul.

I hold him a long time before I wheel him from the shelter of the trees close to the pool’s edge.  The water is cool and inviting, the way he likes it.

Positioning myself on his lap, I belt us together so tight nothing can tear us apart.  Then, releasing the brake, I wheel us to the pool’s perimeter.  A faint residue of chlorine greets us, the chemical smell of death mixed with the fragrance of honeysuckle, plumeria and jasmine.  The moon is behind a cloud now.  A trade wind begins to blow, lashing the palm trees until they shudder.  I must be quick, I think.  I must hurry before the wind becomes a hurricane and I lose my courage.

Suddenly the wind softens to a breeze, the rain stops.  His body calms as the breeze dries it.  There are no shudders.  Evening birds call, a symphony so exalting it resolves any doubts I may have had, any hesitations.  With effort, I roll us closer to the tiled lip.  Looking down I see darkness waiting, feel its cool rise from the depths and surround us as, with a final thrust forward, we pierce its brilliant surface.  The chair will hold us together I think, its weight secure as the lid of a coffin.  The chair will be our salvation.

          Stars circle in a milky haze as we float, inching slowly beneath the pool’s surface.  The floral design on the hem of my gown drifts like a wedding wreath.  The moon begins

to smile as it escapes from a shroud of mist.  Behind me I feel Gale’s heart pound erratically as if he were trying to gain strength.  Then I hear him murmur my name, “Alida….”  He chokes with the effort.  I haven’t heard him murmur my name in years, ever since the paralysis reached his vocal chords.  “A…li…da…” he tries again.  His voice thrills me like an old song out of tune but still cherished.

I struggle with the straps that hold us in, his voice still in my ear, his heart vibrant behind me.  The water has shocked him to life, dissolving his paralysis as surely as it caused it years ago.

The straps are taut the way I’d wanted them to be.  My hands strain to release them, bruise with effort.  Blood trickles from the raw flesh of my fingers mixing with the dark ripple of water surrounding us.  “Ali…da,” he whispers again, “Ali…da….”

“Yes,” I answer, “yes,” as if that single word could save us, free us before the  chair drags us under.

The moon disappears.  The wind whips us into a whirlpool circling the pool’s perimeter.  I try to grab the tiled edge but it slips from my fingers.  I lunge toward the steps.  The metal railing eludes me, shines cold and heartless in the darkness.  I feel him

struggle behind me, press into my back as if he could buoy us up somehow, release the straps that imprison us.  Our wedding rings connect.  His hands close over mine.