The Guardians Read Free Page B

and the trees and the house in a vacuum of silence, we heard the beginnings of a scream.

[  2  ]
    T HERE ’ S A TRAIN to Grimshaw leaving Union Station at noon, which gives me three hours to pack an overnight bag, hail a cab and buy a ticket. An everyday sequence of actions. Yet for me, such tasks—pack a bag, hail a cab—have become cuss-laced battles against my mutinous hands and legs, so that this morning, elbowing out of bed after a night of terrible news, I look to the hours ahead as a list of Herculean trials.
    Shave Face without Lopping Off Nose.
    Tie Shoelaces.
    Zip Up Fly.
    Among the fun facts shared by my doctors at the time I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s was that I could end up living for the same number of years I would have had coming if I hadn’t acquired the disease. So, I asked, over this potentially long stretch, what else could I look forward to? Some worse versions of stuff I was already experiencing—the involuntary kicks and punches—along with a slew of new symptoms that sounded like the doctor was making them up as he went along, ashaggy-dog story designed to scare the bejesus out of me before he clapped me on the shoulder with a “Hey! Just kidding, Trevor. Nothing’s
that
bad”? But he never got around to the punchline, because there wasn’t one.
    Let’s try to remember what I do my best to forget:
    A face that loss of muscle control will render incapable of expression. Difficulties with problem solving, attention, memory. The sensation of feeling suffocatingly hot and clammily cold
at the same time
. (This one has already made a few appearances, leading to the performance of silent-movie routines worthy of Chaplin, where I desperately dial up the thermostat while opening windows to stick my head out into the twenty-below air.) Vision impairment. Depression. Mild to fierce hallucinations, often involving insects (the one before bed last night: a fresh loaf of bread seething with cockroaches). Violent REM sleep that jolts you out of bed onto the floor.
    For now, though, I’m mostly just slow.
    This morning, when my eyes opened after dreams of Ben calling for help from behind his locked bedroom door, the clock radio glowed 7:24. By the time my feet touched carpet it was 7:38. Every day now begins with me lying on my back, waiting for my brain to send out the commands that were once automatic.
    Sit up.
    Throw legs over side of bed.
    Stand.
    Another ten minutes and this is as far as I’ve got. On my feet, but no closer to Grimshaw than the bathroom, where I’m working a shaky blade over my skin. Little tongues of blood trickling through the lather.
    And, over my shoulder, a woman.
    A reflection as real as my own. More real, if anything, as her wounds lend her swollen skin the drama of a mask. There is the dirt too. Caked in her hair, darkening her lashes. The bits of earth that refused to shake off when she rose from it.
    That I’m alone in my apartment is certain, as I haven’t had a guest since the diagnosis. And because I recognize who stands behind me in the mirror’s steam. A frozen portrait of violence that, until now, has visited me only as I slept. The face at once wide-eyed and lifeless, still in the mounting readiness of all dead things.
    Except this time she moves.
    Parts her lips with the sound of a tissue pulled from the box. Dried flakes falling from her chin like black icing.
    To pull away would be to back into her touch. To go forward would be to join her in the mirror’s depth. So I stay where I am.
    A blue tongue that clacks to purpose within her mouth. To whisper, to lick. To tell me a name.
    I throw my arm against the glass. Wipe her away. The mirror bending against my weight but not breaking. When she’s gone I’m left in a new clarity, stunned and ancient, before the mist eases me back into vagueness so that I am as much a ghost as she.
    Impotence. Did I fail to mention that this is coming down the pike too? Though I could still do the deed if called upon