Bliss

“The chicken is dry,” said Harry.

“The hose is out back,” snorted Mary, face down into her pillow.

“Forty-five years, you still can't cook.”

Mary scratched her head and pulled the blanket up over her ears.

“I can choke to death on this.”

“Harry, you shouldn't be eating in bed…”

“Or what, Mary?”

Mary rubbed her sleeping eyes open, and then suddenly, in that blinking instant, leapt from the bed to standing.

“Harry?!” The frail woman leaned into the darkness, arms out. “Harry?”

Silence filled the blackness. Mary slowly found the edge of the bed and brought herself down to rest upon it as delicately as possible.

“If you’re eating in this bed, Harry, I don't care if you’re dead already - I'll kill you again,” she said, trembling.

“And if you use the toilet, put the damned seat down. I'm used to it being down. You’re dead. I can have it down. And tomorrow, I'm gluing it down.”

Harry waited until Mary was comfortable again, until her eyes were closed and she had convinced herself that it was a dream. He waited until he felt the heat of sleep rise up from her body.

“How can I get any rest when you’re snoring like that?” He asked, nestled in tight.

“Holy hell! Harry!” Mary sat upright but didn't bother to leave the bed. “It's you! I'm not dreaming?!”

“Nope, you’re not dreaming.”

“Why the hell are you waking me up, Harry? It's the middle of the night! Can't you haunt me in the morning, after I've had coffee, a shower?”

“Are you complaining to me already, Mary?”

“Are you being a pain in my ass? Already? Harry?”

“Will you ever change, Mary?”

“Will you ever just stay dead, Harry?”

“I tried that. It didn't work so well.”

“Go haunt Grace Kaputnik. You haunted her enough when you were alive – I don’t see why you should stop now! Jesus Christ, Harry, what did you do, get thrown out of hell?”

“Something like that, Mary.”

Mary got out of bed and fumbled for her gown. She put on her slippers and found the lamp at the bedside and turned it on.

“You still wear that rag? I figured you'd buy something nice with the insurance money.”

“Listen,” growled Mary, “if you came back from the dead for small talk, I'm not interested. And by the way, your funeral and the bills you hung me with didn't leave me much, so don't have a fat head about the insurance money. You didn't do me any favors!”. 

“Still hot stuff. I almost miss you.”

Mary leaned this way and that way and took small steps across the grey carpeted floor on her way to the bathroom.

“Why can't I see you?” asked Mary, snapping on the bathroom light. “What's it like being dead? Does it hurt? I hope it hurts. Does the devil put a hot poker in your ass? I hope he does.”

Harry tried to laugh, but couldn't. 

“Funny you say it. I'd laugh but…”

“Oh,” Mary turned into the yellow light of the small bathroom, “where the heck did you leave the remote to the garage? Six months, I can't find it.”

“I come back from the dead and you ask me about the garage door opener?”

“You probably left it at Grace Kaputnik’s house!”

“I have to apologize to you, Mary.”

“Stop hiding, come out here - it's creepy just hearing your voice. I want to see you, want to see what six months of being in hell has done to you. Harold didn't even want your clothes. Your own son, he told me to throw them away. Didn't even want to donate them.”

“He can do as he pleases.”

“There you go. That's exactly the kind of thing…”

“Mary, they sent me here to apologize. Did you hear me?”

Mary stood still and dropped her head. Harry could see her hair had become a thinner, brighter grey. She stood and Harry waited and neither of them spoke until the steam hit the pipes and the familiar dull thud ran up into the radiator on Harry's side of the bed.

“You bastard,” Mary sobbed. “You left me alone – you were rotten to all of us, and then you dropped dead and left us alone! No sorry, no goodbye, not one decent word for all those years – your daughter! You never made it up to her! Walk out on her wedding, make a scene! And you get away with it all by dropping dead!”

Mary stood in the doorway of the small bathroom listening, hoping for nothing, absolute silence, proof that she was simply dreaming. The pipes rattled gently in the dark bedroom as the steam subsided. The clock in the hallway ticked off seconds, and Mary could hear the soft pile of the carpet give way beneath her feet as she stepped tentatively into the bedroom, and then back again, unsure of which space might bring her continued silence. 

Harry waited. And when he felt the sudden fear rise in his wife, the desperate realization that his presence may actually have been nothing more than a dream, he touched her gently on the shoulder.

Mary felt Harry's touch and she knew it was him. Her anger and the love that she had beneath it gave way to tears.

“Why are you doing this to me, Harry? Can you fix this? Are you here to take me away Harry? Our children need me. I'm not ready for heaven, or hell, or whatever you came here to offer.”

“There's no heaven Mary, no hell either; there's no here or there or this or that – although I do actually feel something like a hot poke in something that may once have been my backside,” Harry said giggling.  

Mary could feel the pain behind the burbling but she stamped one foot and banged a frail fist against the bathroom wall. His joking inspired anger in her as it always had--the wrong jokes at the right time. Always, in the face of catastrophe, as an excuse, as a diversion.

“You woke me up to say that? You came back from the dead to say something stupid? What will I tell Harold? What will I tell Missy? Where the hell is the remote?!”

Harry said, “I gave you my pain, Mary. I gave Harold and I gave Missy my pain too. I handed all of you my suffering because I didn't know what to do with it. I'm here to take it back.”

Mary cradled her sore fist with her other hand and rubbed it slowly. “I'm not accepting your apology,” she said. “It's nonsense. You used the love we had for you to pay for your misery? That will never be okay. You can't take that back. You can't give back the time we suffered you either.”

Mary wept quietly, hoping that Harry couldn't see her. She wiped her eyes with a forearm and tried changing the subject.

“What's it like, Harry? Is it dark?”

“It's not dark. It's not light, either. It's somehow both light and dark at the same time but…” Harry's voice weakened and then returned. “Words are tricky here, Mary.”

Mary laughed sharply. “Words were easy for you when you were alive! Remember all the words, Harry?”

“I don't have to remember,” Harry said. “All time is in one place here, all space and ideas and everything and nothing, here and here and here. I am with all I have done and all I will do…”

“You sound like a lunatic. Cuckoo bird ghost -leave it to you. I'm going back to bed right after you tell me where the doggone remote is.”

Mary clicked off the bathroom light after looking around for some excuse not to. She moved back to the bed.

“I don't even remember why I married you, Harry.”

“I had a very big business,” said Harry.

Mary laughed and startled herself with the sound of it. “Yes, how's your business now, Harry? Are you still giving your business to Grace Kaputnik? Because I don't care if you’re dead, that's none of her business!”

“Mary, what you've told yourself about Grace Kaputnik is a story, the same way those things I said to alienate our children from me were my own stories. And the stories our children wrote after hearing my stories are, I'm sorry to say, just more stories.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And that's your story.”

“You’re a bigger idiot now that you’re dead.”

Mary heard Harry giggle.

“Go ahead and laugh. What do you have to do now? It's easy for you, no responsibility - our kids are lost and damaged; you left a wake of despair behind you…”

Harry interrupted. “You asked me what it's like. Let me tell you, although the words we use are too small to really describe this.”

Mary rolled her eyes and sighed, “Just make it quick, Harry. I'm hoping to forget all of this by the morning.”

Then Harry spoke quietly.

“It might be hard to understand, Mary, but seeing and hearing, touch and taste and smell, and even thinking thoughts are just one thing for me now. They were one thing when I was alive too, only, like you, my body needed to split up those tasks - you see - because of the ears and eyes and so forth. Silly-shaped creatures we are.”

“What are you talking about?” Barked Mary.

“When we are alive, we lean too much on the physical world, Mary. We spend time looking at Grace Kaputnik’s legs and suddenly there is ‘that,’ and then there needs to be a ‘this’ in order to desire that.”

“I knew it,” spat Mary.

“When we are alive, there is also something that approaches clarity –the oneness among things – it is love, and compassion, and generosity for those close to us. But we falter half way through comprehending that oneness, and mistake it for a simple extension of ourselves. I said awful things to our grown children because I couldn't see the difference – I treated them as if they were simply my property, as much as you and I often did with each other. Our children are separate and angelic for so many years, just like newlyweds are to each other, and then at a certain point, we misinterpret a real oneness for something as petty as familiarity and a hot kind of boredom.”

Mary listened and tried to keep her tears inside of her.

“And then, instead of stepping inside that oneness, letting it be, letting it happen, and understanding that one and many and this and that and here and there can all happen without having to pull or push it toward what we believe we want to see and hear and touch and taste…”

Mary put her hand out into the space above the bed and gently whispered, “We try to help--help, Harry, not harm. I know you had a great love inside you, Harry, but you brought harm to your family and yourself...”

“I did.”

“Well, thank you for admitting it. You can leave now, uh - where's the damned garage door opener? I'm tired of asking.”

“But that was my story,” Harry continued, “it was my story, and I think deep down you know that, and you also know that the pain I inflicted upon you was my own suffering, and you don't have to take it, don't have to push or pull it or share it or deny it or look for revenge because of it. It was mine. Time blinks everything into the past the moment it arrives - one of the graces that time offers you. What you suffer from the past is something you have to make, make every moment again and again in your mind. I'm here to take that from you now. I'm here to relieve you of that making. I'm here to take that part away. You are left with every moment now; free to feel and live and laugh and cry and let those moments come and go without pushing or pulling or convincing yourself that you need to do anything to change them.”

When Harry was finished, Mary was lying once again on the bed with one hand gently beneath her cheek. She had drawn up the blanket and fallen asleep.

Mary woke from a restful slumber to the soft scattered tapping of the pipes as the heat rose in the chilly early morning. She had no memory of the visitation by Harry during the night.

The first cardinals of spring brought their songs to her bedroom, muffled in light breeze and punctuated by the simple beat of the clock ticking in the hall.

She allowed the cascading complexity of sounds wash over her as the morning light slowly filled the room.

When the cardinals’ song had ended, Mary drew back the blanket and sat up easily. As she leaned over to find her slippers at the bedside, a sudden memory rose up from the depths of a place within her that subtly felt like darkness untangling.

“Ohhh!” She exclaimed. “Oh yes! Oh dear! Oh, yes indeed!!”

Mary slipped on her slippers, draped her robe over her shoulders and walked quietly from the bedroom through the living room, past the kitchen, and into the foyer that led to the garage. For a moment, she paused and looked at the peaceful convergence of rooms at the center of the house. It was a nice home, a restful place, and it felt to Mary that the morning light seemed somehow to heighten a sense of homeyness that she hadn't experienced before.

Then without a thought, Mary gently tapped the door to the sideboard in the hall where she and Harry kept their keys and mail and other items they needed to remember to remember. The small door opened and without bothering to look, Mary put in her hand, and drew out the garage door opener.

“Exactly where I’d left it,” she said quietly surprised. “All this time, exactly where I'd left it.”

The end.