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 Vocalise (Songs without Words)

I watch the slow loosening as the vodka sets in. The pores of John's face dilating like a thousand unseeing pupils. The handsome peak of his nose gradually swelling as if its crevices were flooding with rain.

It is hard to begrudge him this numbness, this escape, when I have wished the same for myself so many times. From the next seat at the bar I see tension in his shoulders, muscle fibers pulled and knotted like a rope net holding too many fish. Others say he seems so calm, so restrained. What they don't see are the restraints: the system of beeping and blipping nerves that form a cage from head to hands to feet, humming with constant anxiety. Who wouldn't want to quiet their messages for a while, even if it meant blotting out the world? Starting with the girl sitting next to him, aching to talk.

A few more sips, and his knots come undone. He leans in. I smell the fog that has settled inside him, a strange rancid cloud. There is no driving through that kind of weather, no matter how you yearn for the destination. I draw back, turning my shoulders to face clear sky, electric stars. I say nothing, but I hope he hears me.

***

My sister is playing Rachmaninoff. Loud, hard. I can hear it pounding through the carpet of my bedroom upstairs. I never play Rachmaninoff. My fingers stutter and choke. I'm stuck at Chopin, a soft etude in a minor key. I whine while she bangs. The piano teacher must notice the contrast. Wonder at my sister's need for fortissimo when the music doesn't call for it. But she's a piano teacher, not a psychologist, so she doesn't ask.

I make my own noise. The morning paper comes bundled nice and tight in its plastic casing. My dad rips it open, ruffles through and pulls out the funnies before tossing the rest on the table. He reads those, then sprints off to work. When he gets back, he expects that paper to be nice and neat, stacked up on the extra chair in the kitchen. Just a thing he has, another of the many little things that set him off. I don't know why. Maybe his boss wants everything just right, and he wants to be boss somewhere too.

While he's gone, I create my own subtle jumble, mixing the classifieds with the news, the arts with the sports. Set the whole thing off at an angle on the chair, just enough so he knows. He comes home, and it isn't long before he's raging up the stairs, brandishing the paper. “Who did this?” he yells. Who am I to answer? If you can't speak, you find a way to say something.

***

John is in the ER, his mother calls to tell me. Diarrhea thirty times overnight, electrolytes a mess. Blood pressure through the roof. They're going to admit him. It might be bacterial. Or that sushi he eats so often, she says. Parasites, who knows what else. Crazy to eat raw fish anyway.

Did you mention he's been under a lot of stress, I ask? Teaching four college classes, working two jobs on the side. Plus a paper two days past due, pressure for perfection building up by the hour, an entire PhD program in question? Something was bound to burst. I saw it at eight o'clock that night, his face pale, fingers twiddling with a tuft of hair. By the next afternoon, he was on a stretcher getting fluids.

Yes, she did tell them he was struggling. That seems merely coincidental, she says. I know all too well. He and I are twin thunderstorms, sometimes cycling in parallel, sometimes colliding wordlessly. I have been there, allowed my body to express what I was unable to say.

I call his cell phone. No one answers. I leave the same message every time.

 

 Immersion

I can hardly think for thinking about him. Who knew I had gotten in so deep, in the cold water up past my knees. Now it's a struggle to lift each jean-clad leg, the fabric soaked and heavy. It's scary stepping into the stream like this, on a fall day when the air is cool and the sun hasn't had the strength to saturate the depths. It's all flowing so fast, eddies slipping deviously out of reach, the bottommost zones mingling with odd dark weeds, with rock that becomes sand that becomes water again. But once you're in, you feel as if you'd always been a part of it, your chest rising and widening to the bright sky, fingertips tracing each shift in the current's moods.

It is time to go home, a distant voice calls. Am I not already there? Gravity and cold and hunger return as I slog my way the few feet back to shore.

And now that I'm back, I can't leave the memory behind. My heart is still deep in the river, even though my body is long since dry. This body still has to go on as though it's powered by a normal blood supply. Has to answer to the alarm clock, arrive at work at a certain hour, smile and make do. But the heart is pumping out blood still steeped in the earthy currents of some faraway stream. That blood goes straight to the head like a shot of vodka. Makes you forget why you entered a room, where you left your glasses. Did you add those figures correctly, your boss asks? You might want to check again.

You might want to flush your system of this troublesome influence, you tell yourself. But then you could lose him completely. And besides, once you've felt the rush of cool water swirling around your ankles, is it ever possible to take your whole self back to shore?

Leah is an active member of the St. Louis writing group Writers Under the Arch and the St. Louis Artists' Guild. Although she published her first poem at age six, she set aside writing for many years and only recently returned to it. In the meantime, she has earned a medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis and has met many wonderful volunteers through her work in Alzheimer's research.