the blueshift journal

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just enough light for shadows.
            Thin ones, pale.

            Paralyzed.

            As if they need sun and, without it, they’re just plants with skin for soil.

            Here, one flowers from Rosa, across the room—her drinking a glass of water helps Merrill breathe.

 

Merrill picks Helen up under her arms and sits her on the horse she chooses: a blue horse with a pink mohawk mane, diamond eyes and sparkling golden hooves. Merrill stands beside her, his hand around her waist as she clutches with both hands the chrome pole skewering the horse. Helen's hands are so small. 

            Rosa keeps feeling her cell phone vibrating in her pocket. She touches her thigh, nothing. She wakes up in the middle of the night, feels her side of the bed. Merrill is not there. She has nightmares Merrill will ask her someday. Just please, ask. His side of the bed is cold. She looks at her finger, nothing.

            A phantom ring.

            Other parents help their children climb onto horses. There are lots of people in the food court surrounding the carousel. There is a play area with miniature foam dinosaurs children play on. Helen plays on them for a while, then wants to ride the carousel.

            Merrill gives Helen a dollar for a token. She slides the dollar into the mouth of the token machine, and the token falls tinkling into the tray. Helen takes the token and they stand in line. Helen gives the token to the operator.

            One morning, Helen asks Rosa if she’s supposed to see out of both eyes.

 

It gets to the point where Rosa and Merrill cannot watch their favorite movies or television shows on DVD anymore because they miss the commercials.

            There is a shiny black car in the middle of the food court the mall is giving away for a contest. People cup their eyes trying to see through the car’s tinted windows. The operator closes and locks the gate surrounding the carousel. She walks to a small electrical panel, opens the cover, keys jingling in the lock, and starts the carousel.

            Rosa imagines a movie camera panning around her head all day long, only pausing for close-ups on her face during the least dramatic moments of her day. The carousel begins to move. Helen looks at Merrill with one wide eye—the good eye eclipsed by an adhesive, floral-patterned patch—, and Merrill smiles.

            The carousel goes around once, Helen's horse going up and down. Helen waves to the operator as she passes, and the operator waves to Helen. To Helen, the operator is blurry. Merrill kisses Helen’s head carefully as her horse comes up. Helen adjusts her new glasses, says, I feel like a Muppet.

            Why’s that, Merrill says, laughing.

             I don’t know. I feel like I’m being controlled, but I’m still breaking the rules.

            The footage would need to be edited down to show only the highlights of Rosa’s day. Rosa imagines wading through but, ultimately, not being able to cross the cutting-room floor.

 

Apology: This must be some new area of study.  

            Rosa stands in the bedroom doorway. Merrill sits on the bed looking at himself in the mirror, his back to Rosa. Rosa does not look at the back of Merrill’s head. Rosa looks past Merrill. Rosa looks at Merrill’s face, in the mirror.

            Rosa says, Don’t blame this on me. It’s not my fault you feel guilty. It’s your fault. It’s your fault you feel guilty.

 

Merrill leaves Rosa his DVD player. Months later, Merrill sees a movie on television. He likes the movie. He only sees the second half of the movie, but he likes the second half a lot. He orders a used copy of the movie on Amazon. The movie arrives in the mail a week later.

            The carousel goes around once more. They pass the dinosaurs. Helen waves again to the operator. The operator waves to Helen. Helen says, How many snow globes do you think you could fit in your mouth?

            Eight, Merrill says. Maybe eight.

            Helen laughs. She says, Tell me again why you moved out.

            Merrill pauses, says, Because I love your mother very much.

            Do you love me?

            More than anything.

            Merrill opens the bubble envelope and pulls the movie out. He looks at the front cover, reads the back. No special features. He opens the case, snaps the disc from its small plateau of plastic teeth, checks the reflective underside for scratches. It is in very good condition, just as described.

            The carousel plays carnival music. They pass the dinosaurs. Helen says, Then why did you leave?

            Merrill snaps the disc back onto the case’s plastic teeth, closes the case and alphabetically places the movie on the DVD stand. Merrill will watch the movie again someday, maybe. The whole thing, this time. He’ll have to get a DVD player.

 

Rosa says, Maybe giving birth to a child is no different than taking it hostage. It grows up knowing you only as its captor, develops Stockholm syndrome. It learns to love you, feels sympathy for you, no matter how much you torture it.

            Clipping his nails, Merrill notices the days are getting shorter. Through the window he feels the world drifting in, already dead. There’s no time, he thinks, closing the window.

            No time. How long had it taken him to understand this?

            Everything we decide to do is a memory we are predicting, Merrill says. Merrill feels like a black hole from which light cannot escape—from which even darkness cannot escape.

            How galaxies are bruises, the universe bleeding internally. So many stars, how it’s not their fault. It’s wonderful, Rosa feels, that, at 33, she’s still able to care about such things. Rosa opens the window.

 

I remember the first time I fell in love with you, Merrill tells Rosa. It felt like the world was coming to an end.

            We haunt ourselves with all we love, mispronouncing our own fears, Rosa wants to say. The truth is a dead star waiting between Rosa’s lips like actors before curtains part.

            They pass the dinosaurs. Your mother doesn’t want me there anymore, Merrill says. The carousel goes around once more. They pass the car with the tinted windows, people struggling to see inside. The operator waves to Helen. Helen sees the blurry operator but does not wave. She says, But you want to be there, right?

            Sunlight comes through the floor-to-ceiling food court windows, blinds Merrill a moment. More than anything, Merrill says.

            Helen says, You still love Mommy, right?

            More than anything, Merrill says.

            Anything?

            Except you.

 

Jump-roping strands of time, playing leap-year.

            Rosa comes home from work, feels she completely understands the word gibberish. She does dishes. Merrill drinks coffee and stares at the kitchen table.

            Rosa looks out the window, thinks about atoms. She thinks, There’s no such thing as size. Things humans think of as really small aren’t really small, they’re just really far away.

            Size is only equal to distance. Microscopes allow human eyes to look closer at things—to, in some sense, be closer. If she could just get close enough to an atom—if she could breach the infinite Zenoic horizon and simply walk up to an atom—it would be the largest thing Rosa has ever seen, and it would be the same size as Rosa.

             Just like objects falling at the same rate because gravity has the same effect on all objects regardless of mass, Rosa thinks. Mass has no bearing on size. There is no size. We just need to be closer to everything. Rosa touches her swollen belly.

            The telephone rings. Rosa drinks water, wipes her hands with a dry washcloth. She walks to the telephone, answers. Merrill looks up from the kitchen table. Rosa says, Thank you, closes her eyes. She hangs the telephone up.

             Just enough light for shadows.

            Rosa says, That was the doctor. Rosa and Merrill are alive. It will always be the doctor. Merrill pushes his coffee cup away.

            Rosa says, I’m going outside. Rosa stands in the garden, the sun blinding her a moment as she squints through one eye, looking into the backyard as if gazing off into some great expanse, as if painted on the wooden fence separating their yard from the neighbor’s is a movie backdrop depicting a serene and uncharted landscape, an infinite horizon she could never reach, as if the backyard itself goes on forever.