I Remembered I Was Going To Die
Ken Sparling

I was reading a book. I went to the window, looked out at the units across the street. There was rain in the trees. I opened the window. Someone's car door slammed. I tried to see who it was. I went downstairs. Stood in the kitchen. The boys were asleep.

*

Angel had ten dollars on March 13. I know, because she showed me. She showed me her ten dollar bill. She leaned close to me and I could smell things on her, and see the delicate space between each of her fingers.

*

I took my pants off because I felt a long sleepless night coming on. I thought I would stay awake now, although I was drowsy and should have gone directly to sleep while the window of opportunity presented itself: we lose sight of the importance of sleep, potatoes, the soul of a small stand of trees in an otherwise unremarkable park, the place of the hot dog vendor. I didn't want to wrinkle my pants, thought I could get another day or two out of them, so I took them off, although I kept my underwear on. Instead of falling asleep while I had the chance, I read a terribly sad book, sad partly because everyone died in the end, but mostly because it slipped through the deaths almost effortlessly, bringing the dead poets together in the end in a bar.

*

In both cases, it was a physicality that mattered. The physicality of a woman against a man, the pressure of the breasts, the hardon trapped in underwear. The hardon becoming, in later years, a private embarrassment, then a physical hindrance, finally the orgasm of a hanged man.

*

"That guy just put his Cadillac on the front lawn!" she called. She was upstairs. The mother was down in the kitchen.
"What!"
She ran over to the door and put her head out in the hall. "It's the man from the Cadillac, Mom. Don't let him in."
"Why not?"
She ran back over to the window. Looked down. The streetlights lighting up her face.

*

One night, when Angel was a child, she woke up in her bed and sat up on her knees and her covers shed away from her and her flannel nighty held her safe and she set her hands on her pillow and looked on in horror.

*

"I don't want to be talked about like that," Angel said. "I myself have indulged in that sort of talk. I don't want that sort of talk to surround my life, take its essence, leave me nothing."
We were on the bench in the cemetery. It was months later. Each of us has our reasons, and those reasons remain incomprehensible, even to ourselves.

*

Felt better today. Less pain in the abdomen. Less pain in the crack of my ass. Why am I feeling better? Probably the cup of coffee at lunch. I'll die anyway. Plenty of reason to enjoy the weather. The weather is so lovely today. The sun is out, the air is cool, but verging on warm. As though the warm air is there, in hiding, underneath a misty layer of cooler air coming up from the lake. Both kinds of weather, warm and cold, can exist together, can make you aware of their presence simultaneously. The two, warm and cold, are unable to mix on certain days. Not like hot and cold water. Enjoy the faces and the walk and that young girl over there in the tight sweater. That belief she has in her own immortality that allows her to fret over the clothes she is going to wear; allows her to invest continually in her own good looks.

*

Angel looked in the mirror one morning and recognized her own subdued beauty. She took her clothes off to see if she could see anything else, and when she looked back at her face, it was gone. The certainty would never return. On May 23, she had it. May 24 it was gone. As quickly as that. More quickly, really.

*

The Christmas lights come on in the tree outside. Sammy and Shortboy are talking about the TV show they've been watching. Ruth is out in the car with the headlights on. She backs the car out of the driveway, then drives out of sight. The dinner is in the oven.

*

I think they all thought I was in there saying things to him. But I wasn't. I couldn't think of anything to say. They closed the door and left me there.

*

A couple of impossible things happen. Leaves start falling out of trees. A dog barks. Out beyond the starlight, the night is just a rumour.

*

My cousin was at the door, waiting to get in. This was two years ago. It was snowing. I let her in.

*

The girls came at eight in the morning, every morning. I didn't usually see them. I was on my way to work. Twice that year, I had dinner with Dad. I began to wonder how long I could keep doing this.

*

In the distance, behind the woman, water lapping at the shore. Water falling from the sky. I step out. In the distance behind there are things that no one sees. The air hits me. Something falling a long way off. The sound of gravel where the tires roll. I step forward into my footsteps.

*

I have dreams. In all my dreams, I am afraid.

*

It was like the edge of something that nobody else had seen. Cathy hadn't seen it. She was giving routine instructions to the children who were sitting in a circle holding out their hands.

*

The twins had been there, but I'd never seen them prior to that year, for whatever reason. They were a moment on the beach I hadn't expected, the sand gritty on my skin where the wind had deposited it, and the twins' hair behind them and their flesh leaking out of their bikinis and their diligent efforts to look different, one from the other, and Jennifer in her bikini, larger up top, but belonging so much more than either of the twins that the wind had no resonance within her.

*

I thought I could make it work. We talked about what Tony looked like before he died. Angel said he looked awful. We laughed. I ordered coffee. We had nothing to talk about. I asked her about her children. We got nowhere near where I was aiming to go. In fact, the harder I tried to zero in on something that might matter, the farther we moved in other directions, until I couldn't hold onto the conversation and I began to feel afraid.

*

Ruth and I lay awake for an hour talking. I couldn't get the whole thing sorted out in my head. Finally, I asked Ruth, "Do you support the postal workers?" "I don't know, honey." She moved closer to me. I didn't want her to touch me because she had the flu. I didn't want to get the flu.

*

We never had the door from the garage to the house. In 1985, we finally got the garage, but you had to go out of the garage and up a set of steps to get into the house.

*

After Dad died there was a funeral, which I went to. After the funeral, I went home. It was 4:00. There was some cake in the fridge. I ate it with ice cream. Then I went to the living room. I sat on the couch. I read.

*

God was like smoke drifting by the window. If some got in, it was really just an accident.

*

I remember seeing the twins in their bikinis, thinking I was going to die. Seeing anyone in a bikini made me remember I was going to die.

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