The Holding Place, Chapter 5

Abby

This man is handsome or at least at one point in time he was. From far away I did not notice the wrinkles on his face or the streaks of gray in his hair. If I had to guess at an age it would be anywhere in the early to middle sixties. This is a man who knew a life of hard work, with his leathery tanned skin and rough hands. Still, none of these attributes make him the slightest bit familiar to me. The town I grew up in was full of men like this.


I think he can see me but I can’t be entirely sure. He has not said anything directly to me to give me affirmative evidence that he can. I’m a little nervous to find out. If he can see me I have no clue what he would want from me. Right now he is just staring at me, blankly. He can either see me or this man is disturbed.


I slowly wave my hand in front of his grinning face. The dark irises of his eyes are still fixated in an indeterminate direction; I cannot tell if he is staring at me or through me. The frozen expression on his face is beginning to send creeping chills through me. He is simply standing in the middle of the street, mere inches from me, and is staring straight out ahead. His eyes are empty, searching out nothing in the clear distance of the night sky.


“You take all of the fun out of it,” the older man says suddenly.


My gaze widens at him in surprise. He has fixed his stare to meet my eyes. There is no mistaking it, this man can see me. I reach out to touch him and my hand comes to a solid stop at his shoulder. My mind shifts to the moments where Blaine and Casey have touched me and I remember that I was able to feel him. This man is warm to the touch, just like Blaine was. Casey was not warm like Blaine and this man are.


There is a twinkle of humor in this man’s dark eyes and he puts me instantly at ease. At the very least I know that he means me no harm. He seems surprised as I am that I am able to touch and feel him. He reaches out to touch my arm and his gaze further widens in surprise. His rough hand is warm against my arm. He moves his hand up and down to feel more of my arm, checking to make sure that the warm sensations are indeed real.


I frown at the man as he begins to move up my shoulders and brings his hands to my face. He is so lost in the shock of this discovery that he has forgotten the parameters of personal space. With a lack of grace I bat his hands away from me and take a step back from him. I scowl at him to let him know my thoughts of his abrupt rudeness. The humor in his eyes is replaced by embarrassment and aims his head down to look at his feet, attempting to extinguish the awkwardness of the moment.


“I’m sorry,” he whispers quietly. “I just forgot what it was like.”


His words confuse me. “Forgotten what what was like?”


It is impossible to miss the sadness in his eyes when he returns his gaze to meet mine. “What another person feels like.”


There is no need for me to ask this man if he is dead. He can touch me, see me, talk to me, and hear me when I speak to him. There is no more evidence I need to know that he has been cursed into this mysterious place of inbetweenness just as I have been. I understand the sadness that fills his eyes. The humor and warmth that was there just a few moments ago were fleeting. This man is filled with a sadness that is almost dysthymic. He is in search for something just as I am, perhaps even the same thing.


“I am not another person,” I reply. “I’m just like you.”


The man gives me a questioning look. He does not understand what I am trying to tell him. I do not know the words to tell him either. It is impossible to conceptualize my existence to this man when I do not even understand it myself. If I understood what I was then I might even know what I need to be looking for. I would not be roaming this place, existing as I do, feeling all of the pain that I do. There are no more words for me to offer this man. The look on his face is tragic, even for me.


“Just like me?” he asks, tracking his eyes over my frame from head to toe.


I rub my hands to my temples and give out a frustrated sigh. A strange pull of compulsion to tell this man something, anything, lingers at the forefront of my mind. He said that he has been waiting for twenty-five years. I share the agony of his wait. If his existence is anything like mine then he counts and lives the days in the same way that I do, cognizant of every moment that passes him by. Physical needs are irrelevant to him and he has not even the small consolation of sleep to provide him a brief reprieve from the watching and the waiting. Yes, I am just like him.


“The watching, waiting, the searching but never finding,” I reply. “Stuck here, not knowing what to do or how to even begin doing it.”


He clasps a rough hand over my smaller one. A deep sorrow courses through him but there is something else there, something deeper and more complex than sorrow. He is stuck on something or someone, I cannot tell which. He grieves for someone. He is crying out for them but he cannot reach them. He cannot see them or feel them. All he is left with are scattered memories, too scattered to bring together a clear picture.


A woman is there in his memories, lithe and beautiful. Her face is not clear but her hair is black and lush with thick curls. Her dress is a soft brown and at the waist is a fitted cream-colored belt that accentuates her slim yet gentle curves. A warm love surrounds her, this man’s love for her. He loves her deeply, possibly more than anyone else in his life. He would do anything for her; go to the ends of the Earth for her, hopelessly devoted to her.


A young man pads through a carpeted house after her, nothing but black flannel pants at his fit hips. A squeal of delights sounds of from the woman, wrapped only in a small towel, as he closes in on the small space between him. He grabs her and pulls her into him on the couch to meet his full lips for a kiss. There is no hesitation from her as she eagerly responds to him. Wild, happy and in love is the projection these two lovers give off.


A toddler with the same dark curls sits upon his lap and the young man is bouncing her upon his knee and singing along a stream of nonsense with her. Same as the mother the toddler’s face is unclear and the features indistinct. Chubby little hands are clapping together with every bounce of the man’s knee and he is smiling down upon her. The love there in his gaze burns just as strong.


He releases his grasp from my hands and disconnects me from his memory. I am startled by his abruptness and struggle briefly to bring my focus back to the present. This man’s memories are haunting and there is something strange about the clarity in which he remembers them. There is love for the people for remembers but not much else. It leaves me cold and empty.


“It used to come back to me so clearly,” the man says. “Every single detail, as clear as yesterday. Well, when I remember yesterday.”


He shakes his head in a dazed fashion and gives me a small smile. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you my name. John Midd...Metz… well John anyways.”


I laugh lightly and extend out my hand to him. “Abby Franklin.”


“Nice to meet you, Abby, and I assume born properly as Abigail Franklin.”


I groan at his use of my full name. My parents christened me with a name about one hundred years out of fashion when I was born. My mother refused to ever call me by my shortened name and called me Abigail, knowing how much it bothered me to be called such. The name I was born with dripped with the stiffness that my mother craved and adored in a little girl, a stiffness that completely escaped her own.


“Just Abby, I haven’t been called Abigail since I was a little girl,” I say.


“Sorry, just something about the name Abigail,” John says. “Such a beautiful name. Can’t think of it now but the name reminds me of someone.”


“Are there a lot of things that you can’t remember?” I ask.


He rubs his chin and ponders my question for a moment. He looks around at the small lighted houses as if looking for a clue of some sort. He is shifting from side to side uncomfortably. I do not mean to make him uncomfortable and reach for his shoulder to tell him that he does not have to respond when I see the light of a response slightly light up his eyes.


“Just faces and names,” he replies. “I remember everything else. Where I was born, where I went to school, even how I died.”


This is the first time since I bumped into John that there is any mention of death. There is no need to discuss it, to relive it over and over again more than necessary. I am brought back to the scene of my death every time Michael is. I view the helplessness, the sorrow, the heaviness of misplaced blame every time. The manner of how I died is not something I wish to share voluntarily but something about John begs the knowledge of my death.


“It was a car accident,” I acknowledge to John, for the first time. “At first I thought it was a dream, some nightmare brought on by drinking too much. Watching myself slowly die on the hood of a car in the pouring rain, watching my own funeral, listening to my husband give my eulogy. But the days kept themselves counting, and I still didn’t wake up.”


John puts his hands into his pockets in an awkward manner and cannot bring himself to meet my gaze. I am expecting him to tell me the circumstances of his end but only silence follows my revelation. Frustration begins to creep through me at his silence when I suddenly remember that Blaine and Casey did not tell me how they died, I already knew. I knew them before I died. I don’t know this man; everything about his is unfamiliar to me.


“I was selfish,” he says finally. “I was a weak man. I let love make a fool out of me and let it become the end of me.”


John does not need to say anything further to me. I am at a loss of words for what to say to him. There is no comfort I can bring to him. The end of his life was a choice and mine was not. Suddenly I feel nothing but anger for him and extend the space between us. I cannot even bring myself to look at him; my anger is burning so bright.


“I don’t blame you,” John says quietly. “I’m angry at myself. I’ve had 25 years to dwell on it and hate myself even more because of it.”


“That woman and little girl?”


An expression so deep that it is almost incomprehensible crosses his face. He is beginning to have trouble standing and makes his way to sit on the ample curb that the dark street provides. As he sits on the curbs he places his face in his rough hands and lets out a sigh that is as dilapidated and broken as his soul. There is more than just pain inside of him, there is remorse so bottomless that it unglues him.


“My wife and daughter,” John replies sadly. “My wife and daughter…”


There are things about John that confuses me. All of his memories contain a young man whose face is clear and a woman and young child whose features are blurred. John is an old man who is suffering from a singular type of memory loss. I am the only person who has seen or spoken to in the past twenty five years. My mind is beginning to formulate a horrible realization.


“Do you still watch them?” I ask him.


John gives me a look of genuine confusion. My heart clenches with sympathy for him, even I am able to watch my loved ones from afar. He is stuck here, on this street. All he has are the memories of loved ones that are beginning to fade in clarity. It is a cruel punishment for a man who feels true remorse. He is not free to leave. He is not free to search, if there is anything to search for at all. He has no hope. Though unlikely, he is not even free to hope for an escape from this hellish existence.


“They were gone a month after my death. She just took my little girl and left not a trace of herself. Didn’t take anything with her, even left the car parked in the driveway, leaving the city to take care of the mess left behind.”


John has not experienced this pain for a long time and the palpable waves of bereavement confirm it. I sit down beside him and draw him into a hug. He does not resist and he lets me hold him in a comforting embrace. This is all that I know what to do for him. Words will appease nothing. Touch will only alleviate momentarily. He no longer has even the names of the ones he loved to cling onto anymore, just blurred faces of memories that once were.


“John, I’m sorry,” I say soothingly, tightening my embrace around him as a reminder that I am still there with him.


“I didn’t die like this,” he says, pulling himself from my embrace. “Sallow and sunken in…just the opposite actually. Just as fresh-faced as the day I pulled the trigger. I didn’t even realize it until I began talking to you.”


“Didn’t realize what?”


“That I couldn’t even remember their names, all the holes that have formed in my memory of them. I’ve forgotten to think about the happy times and stay fixated on the sadness, letting it just build and build.”


John tells me about his existence on this street for the past twenty-five years, learning the things that he can and cannot do. The loneliness drives him to the brink of insanity. He cannot even glean happiness from the sight of watching children grow and play in their front yards, having watched almost two generations pass him by without ever being aware of his presences. His search for an escape ends at the cul-de-sac where the neighborhood stops. He is free only to visit his memories, recount the mistakes he made in his life. He has lost the ability to conjure forth happy memories. He is forced to watch as life goes on for others as his remains frozen in the desperation he felt right before entering this strange existence.


His life work was with his hands, the only type of work he ever enjoyed. He loved the feel of the weight of fresh dug earth against a shovel and the satisfaction of seeing that his work created something beautiful. His landscaping business was successful enough to provide a roof over his families’ heads and food in their mouths. He worshipped the ground his wife walked on and provided everything short of what she wanted for herself. His love was met with resentment and cold words. His efforts were never enough for his wife and her rejection of his life weighed heavily on him all the way to the very end.


“It sounds almost like my mother,” I say almost absentmindedly. “I grew up with her always treating my father like that.No shock in her voice when she told me about the accident.”


“What kind of accident?” John inquires curiously.


I shrug my shoulders at him. “Oddly enough, she never did tell me. My father was something we never brought up again. I didn’t want to risk throwing her in a rage. I left at eighteen, leaving my father’s fate as one of many unanswered questions.”


John nods his head understandingly. “My old man was like that and I too left at a young age because of it. Guess that makes at least two things we have in common.”


He is looking up at the stars that are showing in the now fading twilight. His eyes glisten with unbroken tears as he contemplates the sight above him. Tonight the sky is clear and the stars twinkle with breathtaking beauty. It is enough to put even a cynic like John in awe. I cannot remember the last time my mind allowed me a rest to appreciate beauty such as a clear night sky.


“I thought I was crazy before seeing and talking to you. I’ve seen other people too. They aren’t the people I see walking up and down this street. They are like me, but different. They know where they are going. There is a peace inside of them. They aren’t tormented like you and I.”


What John is saying is not making any sense. He is babbling coherent non-sense. “What are you talking about?”


A look that is deadly serious settles on his face. His dark eyes have a touch of wildness inside of them. He looks past me at longingly to the end of the street, to the place that he is forbidden from crossing.


“They come and go. I see them leave through a bright door. They pass because they know I can see them, tormenting me.”


A bright door? I quickly race my thoughts back to the time when Blaine took my hand, right before a door of bright light. His eyes were telling me that everything was going to be okay, that I had nothing to fear. A sinking feeling of desolation comes over me as the meaning of John’s words sink in.


I believed Blaine.