Floating Off
Shane Stricker
A brother tells his sister the motel where he stayed the night before, downtown, small town, Sikeston, Missouri, lifted off the ground, three inches, no more, he says. His fingers are this far apart. For almost a full minute, he adds. It had to have been after three but before four because at four oh four, he says, kiss your hand and press it to the air because palindromes are the most sacred. He’d just finished telling her about the gun shot when he switched to the motel floating. I didn’t see the bullet go through the wall, he says, but I saw the remnants. His sister shakes her head. Finally, she thinks. Finally, something happens to this man that makes me feel sympathy. And he milks it, explodes it, makes it something else, makes it dirty. That’s what it is right then to her. Dirty. Talking about floating. Right there in front of her when all she wants to do is take him up and hug him for almost catching a bullet in his motel bed and he takes that want away from her. At one time she would have thought to tell a breaking person that at least things couldn’t get broken any further. She shakes her head at her own foolishness.
Isn’t it big enough already? she says.
And he says, I didn’t see the first hole until the second. He ticks out his fingers. One. Two.
His name ought to be Come and Go, she thinks, because he comes, and he goes. He comes and he steals. He steals and he goes. And he goes and he does. And he does and he comes and he’s almost a shadow of who he once was to her when he returns.
And that shadow’s shadow makes her like him when he’s high. For that moment when he walks through the door and says something so kind, funny, thoughtful, familiar, she pulls out memories from drawers she doesn’t normally let herself go through. She’ll remember the man who was the boy that rubbed her shins when she was growing too fast her body split beneath the skin. She’ll remember the boy who made up T-shirts for all eighteen of them in the stands at her high school graduation. He came up with the cheer, too, she adds to herself in those moments when she can almost smile at him. And she hates herself and him both for liking him when he’s high because high does not last. He gets straight, but not the kind that’s looking to stay straight. And he’ll be angry again. He’ll be delusional again. He’ll talk about buildings floating when there’s something real enough to open drawers inside of her.
She asks him the question she knows will wound him because she’s hurt him with it before. How high were you? she asks.
And he says, It isn’t like that.
And she says, It’s never been like that, has it?
And he says, It’s been like that plenty.
And she says, See.
And he says, But see.
She uh-huhs him and that uh-huh carries salt. Dirt. It brings with it fragments of bone.
He kisses his open palm and puts it in the air again. I have wanted to be high 28 days in a row. I have not been high in 27.
And she shakes her head. Okay, she says.
She wants it to sound just like the uh huh, force great enough to blow him off his feet, but it doesn’t so much as move a hair on his head. In fact, it might have turned itself back on her. Of a sudden, she’s leaning up against the kitchen counter, and he’s there too close with his breath smelling the way it does, asking her if she’s alright.
And she tells him something isn’t right with his breath. She says, You need to go on and get away from me with your breath smelling that way, and he does step away too. He breathes into his palm.
And he says, Fresh as the day I was born.
And she says, You know where your mouth was that day, don’t you? It takes him a second to smile.
But she doesn’t feel like smiling. She leans a bit heavier against the counter. She hasn’t been feeling too good recently and she’s been hoping it’s just allergies and not COVID alpha or beta or delta or whatever letter from that Greek alphabet we’re on at the time of you reading this story.
And he says, I think dizziness is a symptom of COVID like he reads the mist inside her head.
And she tells him not to worry about her and to herself she says, Worry about me.
But no, that’s not right. It’s more like this, Worry about me? Italics. Question mark.
See, he says. She understands exactly what he’s seeing, but it’s not right him seeing her.
And she says, Don’t see me. Don’t say see to me.
And he tells her he told her she needed to get herself vaccinated. She isn’t one of those people holding up signs outside the public health office or voting for that man who read the worst on everyone and used it up like hair product and golf balls. No, it isn’t like that. She just isn’t sure she trusts this thing. No. It isn’t going to make her magnetic or cause her to pick up cell service. There aren’t any microchips. It isn’t going to make her shed DNA all over everything. No. She just doesn’t know how far her trust of the government goes, how far her trust of other people goes. But she’s absolutely scared about it all. The fear grows from her chest. It sprouts and thorns outward until it consumes half the kitchen.
What, he says, and it’s a fair question because she’s just been standing there staring at him. This tightening in her chest. She coughs. This cough here. Hear it? She takes a step and a breath. This feeling like she won’t ever take a light step or breath again. And he says, See. And she walks to the other room, sits down. It’s probably just him exhausting her mixing with her allergies.
He follows after her, and she says that to him. If it wasn’t so bad with pollen outside and you weren’t so bad with being you, I wouldn’t be feeling at all bad.
That’s all it is? he says. He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head. There’s a smile she wants to take from him. Put her hand out, touch his warm skin, squeeze, and pull. Leave him with a blankness there. The blankness that’s been there so much of his life whether he had nose, mouth, and forehead or not. And he says, we’re both sick now.
And she thinks on that. She’s been in counseling off and on for thirteen years trying to figure out how to let other people’s problems be theirs and let hers be hers. He’s given her that. Those issues she can’t figure a solution to. And now, here he is, comparing her possible illness to whatever he has inside of him. He never stops surprising her. And so rarely are those surprises good.
Without her asking, he goes back in the kitchen and half-fills a glass with water and brings it to her. He looks at her like she’s something delicate that could break or float off. You think I’m going to just float off, she says.
And he says, might.
Fingers to its scratchy fabric, she says, I’ll unfold this blanket and drape it over me if you think it’ll keep me from floating away.
Blanket will just float with you, he says. If you’re going anyway.
She shakes her head. He’s always had an answer for everything. She says, How do you think you’d react if you stayed here tonight and tomorrow morning you woke up to me dead?
He says hold on, and he closes his eyes, and she figures he’s picturing her death behind his lids like some kind of movie projected on a sheet there. Okay, he says. I think I’d react something like this and he starts into fake hysterics, throwing his body all over everywhere until he’s down on the ground, and it’s too ridiculous. She laughs and clasps her hands together. She has to give it to him.
See, he says.
He can’t stop himself from seeing, but he sounds so much like a himself there’s not been in so long she doesn’t even want to make a sound for fear of him slipping away and some other himself coming up and sitting in the chair.
As far as you dying, he says, you’re not. Your allergies have always been this way at the beginning of March.
Truth be told, she doesn’t know whether he’s right or not because that’s not a pattern she’s ever recognized in herself. But she likes that he said it. She likes the way it makes her feel remembered, cared for. But I don’t have her thank him for that remembering, for that care. I have her say, But tell me. Please. He rolls his eyes and looks at her. Are you okay? she says. He pats down his chest to his thighs, reaches to his shins, and comes back up to the top of his head. I’m whole, he says.
And she says, I know you are. Physically. I see you. Not a hole in you. But are you okay?
He shakes his head no. And he keeps shaking his head and there’s sympathy blossoming in her chest right in that space the fear occupied earlier. Almost a drug. Sympathy for him feeling so good. And he says, I was almost shot last night because some dude had so much anger built up in him the only thing that would get rid of it was shooting through walls to scare his girl. He shakes his head.
She says, You’ve been that angry.
I ain’t ever been shoot a gun off in a motel room angry.
If you’d have been holding a gun and standing in a motel room, you’d have been shooting a gun off in a motel-room angry.
He says, You’re probably right, and she doesn’t say anything. I copy and paste from before. You’re probably right.
I leave blank space.
She says, I was asking what you were feeling about what went on last night.
I know, he says. I always know what you mean, you know. I just can’t always hear it right then. Or I don’t want to.
It’s her turn to shake her head. She doesn’t feel any animosity toward him right in that moment. He uncrosses his arms, and she sees where he used to cut himself and then she sees the damage to the arms from the other way he has to get away from everything. Do people stare? she says. She nods toward his arm.
He says they do. Like the lines and holes are going to come to life and swallow them up. Their eyes, he says. They get big and they look around. I wish I could just tell them. I wish I could walk up to them and say, those right there are for letting the pain out— he points to where he’s done the cutting—and those, pointing to the soft of his elbow, tell them those marks are for letting the pain stay and treating it there on the inside. She reacts like I might react on hearing that. She puts her hands up to her face and rubs her eyes.
He says, After all this time and everything I’ve done, do you hate me?
And she says she doesn’t, but she lies. She lies because I need her to lie because I need him to feel like she can’t ever hate him. He needs that right then so badly I let him hold onto that feeling. But I let her hold onto her internal truth too because me making
her lie isn’t fair to her. And it isn’t fair for me to give her something that may or may not be COVID to create some kind of parallel between her and him. And I don’t know how much of any of this is fair. I don’t know what fair is, I don’t think.
But I’ll tell you, the one thing I want so desperately to happen in this story hasn’t happened yet. And so I’m going to let it happen. The sister wakes up on the couch later with the dark and a thin blanket pulled around her. She remembers telling her brother he could have her bed, that she’d sleep on the couch. She remembers fighting off his refusals. She remembers how he thanked her for not hating him. How he told her he didn’t know how that was. And the whole time that hate sitting there inside her like something needing cleansed. She starts coughing and about the time she’d normally stop, she doesn’t. The coughing keeps on and she thinks about how much she needs to get a breath and she steps outside. Almost immediately, the cool of the night air is like lemon and honey to her throat.
The floodlight’s coming on scares her, and she turns around. This is when the thing I wanted to happen happens. The apartment building has lifted off the ground three inches, no more. She doesn’t have her phone on her. And she knows if she goes inside to get it that everything will be over and done with before she can return. She stands back and witnesses.
She doesn’t know how long the building was like that before she noticed, but she knows it’s been that way at least half a minute. And then it settles back into its foundation silently as wind with no resistance. She wants to hug him. He deserves my sympathy, I have her think. Then, I have her think about how he’s always been a person who deserves sympathy. I have her walk inside and down the hall to her bedroom where she knocks and waits for him to answer. She just wants to hear him breathe. And I’m not sure how fair this next part is either. To them. To you. To anyone.
But she gets this terrible feeling like she knows what she’ll find beyond that door if she turns the handle. She feels this way because whether it’s true or not, I tell her to feel it. But I don’t want to write what’s behind that door, so you decide. It’s okay if he’s sleeping there, snoring something awful. It’s okay if the bed’s empty, if he’s taken off into the night. It’s okay if she’s right and it’s him and he’s there, but not breathing anymore. If that’s what you need. If that’s what she needs. I don’t know what it is that I need, but I know I’ve sacrificed enough people for the sake of naming things, and metaphor, and trying to come to a place where I understand anything at all.