AS IF TO THE SEA
I wanted to get this story out of the way, that sounds awful and feels a bit ruthless, so disrespectful after going through this little darling word by word, breath by breath, but I’ve already started the next one and it’s pretty exciting watching the plot swing back and forth.
This story is true in some ways, I did attach a reel to my dad’s favourite chair when he was failing, and when he made it go t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t, he looked as if he were watching the sea.
Thanks for being here.
As If To The Sea by Sherry Cassells
That’s how he looked, my father, as if he were watching the sea.
I sat beside him, rocking, lest I die of stillness.
Sometimes I went t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t to make it sound like he was fly fishing, and something more came unto his face, like the discovery of a sharp flavour in the mouth, his face did whatever it is the face does to indicate a zing of pleasure.
I was not told what happened and I didn’t ask. I would have liked to tell my classmates, they buzzed around me with their questions and rumours those first few days of shock, but l hate things like that, I watch the reflected TV in the window when scary movies are on, I learned to look at my father without seeing.
Before the swelling, when it was just juicing up, he said there was a bird in his head.
I imagined this. I pictured a small, neat and colourful bird in the gigantic sky of my father’s mind. But his bird, he said an hour later, was a trouble-maker. So in that sky I gave the bird some sharp turns and close calls. At night, when he said the bird was getting bigger and faster, I increased both wingspan and torque. In the morning when he said in feathers that his head was full of bird, he wasn’t exactly sure who I was. I imagined the bird contorted, somersaulting against bone, while my father watched the television like the sea, the window like the sea, and he watched me, his ever-rocking daughter, like the sea.
t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t
Quickly quickly when I looked into his eyes I’d see feathers pressed behind his busy pupils, magnified and distorted, something too big in a washing machine like the time my brother Stanley put the cushion in after Trapper peed on it, there wasn’t room for it to turn, same with the bird.
Enormous. It was enormous.
As if he were in the middle of the sea my father splashed and grappled for a boat, a lifejacket, anything, he sputtered his mother’s name when I walked into the room.
At first I told him the truth about my dead grandmother but his face went like a cliff and from then on I lied to to man who had taught me to never lie, I was whoever he thought I was, t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t.
Between the wild shifts of the bird, he was quiet.
He was only 38. It was an accident at work. Something from a great height fell and didn't kill him.
I heard my mother whisper into the phone to aunt Shell that she wished it had but I don’t think she meant it, maybe in the moment she said it but not after, she sat beside him and held his hand, she squeezed and pumped it vigorously, as if it were a back-up heart.
Except for the first few days of panic, I didn’t go to school, they let me do my work at the hospital which I did with great enthusiasm. He didn’t do much, for a long time he couldn’t even open his eyes for all the swelling, he looked like I saw Mohammed Ali on television once, no eyes, almost like his head was made of iron, except my father's body was surprisingly white, shocking how thin.
I did my homework, t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t, long division and spelling words like accommodate and conscientious. I read a story, a myth I suppose, Androcles and the Lion, I tried math on the number of days he hadn’t spoken, I divided it by the way you spell G O D, and I tried praying, which I’d never done before in earnest, I found it similar to wishing at first but I was nervous and I soon found myself pleading.
Always just the right tension, t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t.
My mother and father used to fight about how much he loved fishing, she yelled, flushed, if I’d known I would have to play second fiddle to a fish… it was an empty threat but that didn’t make me feel any better, maybe worse, what would she do? Shoot herself, shoot him, leave him, leave us????
In a month his face was less swollen, allowing his eyes to squirt open.
I brought him his best lures, I hung them in front of the window where they caught the sun and spun long bubbles of light throughout the room, over us like footprints, he said a few words but I couldn’t tell what they were, I responded with t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t, his body a valley in the soft bed, he looked through them to the sea, surely you must know that’s a euphemism, the sea was a long way away.
The first word I actually heard was an account of the bird in his head, he used his curled up hand to bounce a finger against a temple, busy, he said and I hoped it was busy shrinking, but I must have heard that word in a you-hear-what-you-want-to-hear way, the doctor was there at the time, he said the word was dizzy.
My little brother Stanley started coming to visit, the swelling was almost gone, revealing the stranger he had become, his head was still stained, his face twisted as if he were about to laugh, his eyes as if to the sea.
I stayed in my corner, t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t, I roared to the top of my class, my own bird now a genius, they started calling my father recovering, but I learned that recovery is relative, and terribly slow.
He continued to look through me, as if to the sea, I continued my stutter t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-trying to catch him and bring him home.