Can We Go Now

CAN WE GO NOW?

He is pushed, stumbling into a dim, vast, featureless void. He wobbles a bit as he battles for balance, looking down to find himself standing on a seamless, slightly polished wooden floor that stretches in all directions around him. As he looks around to determine where he might be, a violently bright beam of light snaps him to attention. He throws his hand up in front of his eyes, fingers splayed, twisting and turning, in an attempt to see beyond the light. He turns back, looking in the direction from which he was pushed.

“C’mon, Georgia,” he says. “Really? What is this?”

He moves in that direction, stepping out of the light into the dim expanse of space beyond it. The light blinks out. He turns back, looking directly in front of himself.

“Who’s doing that?”

He steps back into the area he’s just vacated and the light comes back on. He steps back out, the light goes out again and he turns to his right with a question.

“That’s a spotlight,” he says. “Heaven’s got lighting??!!”

Georgia steps into the void with him, maintaining some distance. She looks, he thinks, much like she did when he last saw her, 30 years ago. Thin, shapely, her shoulder-length hair in ringlets that circle her face, with its blue eyes, small nose, high cheeks. She’s in jeans, an untucked, soft-red pastel man’s shirt and sneakers. Seeing this, he looks at his own clothes; khaki pants, a Grateful Dead T-shirt and running shoes.

She stands, as she did when he knew her, with her weight centered on her left foot. Her arms are crossed in front of her just above her waist.

“Nobody’s said anything about heaven, Jeff.”

“Oh, Jesus.” he says.

“I think you should get back into the light.”

He does and the light returns. He steps back out quickly, the light goes out and he points in the direction of its presumed origin.

“Gotcha!” he says to no one. “You’re doing this light ‘thing’ on purpose.”

A softer, round circle of light illuminates Georgia, revealing the hint of a smile.

“Yeah, the light thing happened a lot when I got here, too,” she tells him. “Got snippy about it a couple of times, told him he wasn’t going to get me crazy by not saying anything. Told him I was just going to sit my ass down and wait for him to tell me what in hell, or wherever, I was doing here. There wasn’t anything to sit on and I fell on my ass.”

It’s funny to both of them and they laugh. It’s brief, while they realize that it’s something they haven’t done together, in a very long time. The moment hangs until he remembers, looks out into the distance in front of him and steps back into the area he’d vacated. The light returns.

“You said ‘him,” he says to Georgia. “You said you told him.”

“Where the hell are we, Georgia?” he adds, to ward off the frustration he can see building in her. “What is this? I mean, seems pretty clear this is, I don’t know, some afterlife? What are we supposed to be doing here?”

“Waiting,” she tells him.

“For what?” he asks her, frustration building in him, as well. “Please don’t say ‘for Godot’.”

She considers her response, for a moment, tilting her head as she gives it some thought. He sees, again, physical echoes of his memories. A sharp pang of sorrow, regret and the sum total of remembering her.

“It’s not really waiting, Jeff,” she says. “Time just, I don’t know, seems to keep going on, that’s all.”

“Have you been here all this time?”

“Time doesn’t work like that here. I’ve just been here and then just, knew you were here, too. And I knew that I had to help you through this first part.”

“How many parts are we talkin’ here?” he says, as the thought creases his brow.

“I don’t know.”

“So, what is it with this guy? Are we going to spend the rest of our lives, or whatever this is, going in and out of these lights?”

“I don’t know that it’s a guy, Jeff. I just never thought of God as anything but.”

“Yeah, me neither,” he says. “It was all over the place, remember? Catechisms, books, the stained-glass windows at church. We seem to know that Jesus actually existed, so I can see how that might have locked in the idea of him being male.”

He turns his attention back, outward toward the void.

“Do you think you could possibly get these lights of yours in one place?”

Slowly, the light surrounding Georgia begins to move. Georgia moves with it until the two lights illuminate a single area.

“It’s going to be a long day, isn’t it?” he asks her.

“Oh, yeah.”

Jeff takes a tentative step in her direction, reaching out to embrace her. She’s tentative at first, as though having to relearn a process that had been as common to both of them as breathing and has been gone. For a very long time. Jeff breaks the embrace, holding her shoulders and moving her just an arm’s length away.

“Whatever this is all about,” he says, “it’s a pretty good ‘perk,’ you know?”

She offers him a weak smile. He tilts his head as he releases her and looking again at his own outfit, he smiles back.

“I wonder whose idea it was that I’d spend eternity in these clothes?”

“What? You think someone picked out your clothes for you?”

“She,” he suggests, gesturing into the void, “might have been tempted. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“If it’s a ‘she,’ I doubt you’d be here in that outfit.”

They smile again, touched by the warmth of memory, the times when she’d toss a complaint about his clothing choices. He turns, slowly, gazing out at the expanse surrounding him. He comes full circle until he’s back facing her.

“Strange place,” he says. “Be nice if there were furniture. You’d think if he. . . or she could do all this lighting and things like us and the wood floor, there’d be something to sit on.”

With a low-volume thud, a couch lands on a space behind them. They startle, emitting brief gasps as they jump back, away. They see the older-model, upholstered couch; a burgundy color, three cushions, stuffed armrests on the ends. They pivot their heads back and forth, between themselves and the piece of furniture. By mutual consent, they walk toward the couch, the light following them and settling into the new area, as they begin separate investigations; touching the cushions, the armrests. At opposite ends, they collapse into it.

They’re silent. Jeff begins to question the whole process, thinking ‘If I’m dead, how can I be thinking about anything and how is this . . . solidity possible?’ He reaches up with his right hand and touches his head, fingertips brushing his nose, cheek, brow and . . . hair? He backs off from the thinking with a quick, violent shake of his head, like a dog trying to shed water, an exhalation of breath creating a sound with it. He goes back to looking around, as far and in as many different directions as he can, without physically turning backwards on the couch.

“The way people talked about this,” he says, “I was picturing a big block party with everybody we ever lost. Wouldn’t mind having a conversation with my Dad, you know? My Mom. . . My sister, Jill. Seen any signs of your people around?”

“No.”

“Wow,” he says, with a couple of head shakes, “that’s kind of a letdown, you know? That whole ‘seeing everybody you ever knew up here’ was a big part of the sales pitch, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe that’s just for some people, not for everybody.”

“Segregation at the pearly gates?” he says. “Who’d have thought that? What do you think?”

“About what?”

“All this. Seems like you’ve gotten used to it. Do you think we’re being punished or rewarded here?”

“Hard. . . impossible to know, Jeff. Drives me crazy sometimes, but hey, it’s not like we’re in one of those other pictures we used to see. The hell fires and all that.”

“True, but I’m actually wondering why we’re together. Do you think everybody gets paired back up?”

Georgia shifts a little in her seat, turning her eyes away from his, deliberately. She closes them, speaking tentatively.

“I don’t know,” she tells him. “Unfinished business, maybe?”

Jeff stiffens and jumps to his feet, crossing a little away from the couch, out of the light.

“I stopped thinking about that a long time ago, Georgia,”

“Liar!” she says, standing up slowly and moving out of the light, in the opposite direction. It remains on, as he speaks from the darker expanse of the place.

“Guilty,” he says, after a moment, turning back to her. “Spent the last 30 years since, thinking of little else.”

“Jeff,” she says, pleading, stopping for a breath to find the words. “I just. Couldn’t. Face it. Something in me just snapped and I couldn’t . .”

“Hey! I know, Georgia. I was there, remember?”

“No, you don’t know,” she says, fierce. “you think you know. You just stood there with that pitiful look on your face.”

“Georgia, you were dead already!”

“I WAS NOT!!” she shrieks. “I saw you. I couldn’t lift my hand, couldn’t speak. I tried to say it with my eyes, but you weren’t listening.”

Startled a little by the sudden ferocity of her response, he stops moving, stands motionless for a moment and steps forward, back into the circle of light.

“Hey, you!” he shouts. “Out there. Whoever you are! You think maybe you could give us a hand here. Let us know what in hell is actually going on?”

Silence.

Georgia has started to sob. Jeff keeps moving in a fruitless effort to see beyond the limits of his vision. Georgia speaks through her sobs.

“He’s . . . very busy. All the time.”

“Yeah, I get it,” he says, wondering as the words come out of his mouth, why sarcasm has remained in whatever else is actually left of himself. “Probably off somewhere consoling Marie Antoinette.”

The light snaps off, and Jeff snaps with it.

“GODDAMN IT,” he shouts, pointing his finger. “No apologies for that one, you son of a bitch. This is fucking important. It has to be or we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

“Like you said,” he adds, turning to Georgia. “Unfinished business. I did look into your eyes and I saw a lot of things. I just. . . want to make sure I’m remembering them right.”

“Look,” he says, turning back toward the void, “you’ve got this whole stage-lighting thing going on, wooden floors and you’re tossing furniture around like it’s a toy, so why don’t you do something that’ll actually be of some use to us. Pull whatever you’ve got up that sleeve of yours or wherever it is you hide this ‘magic’ act and point it at us. Let her. . . let us see it. Remember it.”

“Jeff, no,” Georgia says, stepping in Jeff’s direction, but stopped by his hand. “I don’t want to, Jeff. No!!”

“Georgia, it’s all right. Think about it. It can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It is not easy for me to say,” he tells her, a bright glare of anger in his eyes, “and I’m not surprised that you’d think like that.”

The central light snaps off leaving them both in dim surroundings. Jeff leaps back into action, his anger now incandescent.

“No, no, no!” he says to the void. “Don’t do that.”

“Jeff, please, I can’t.”

“You can. Look around you. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Her dying was an accident, Georgia. Yours was deliberate. You never had the chance to work through any of that and if you don’t deal with it one way or another, you’ll be here for another 30 years. And me with you from the looks of it.”

“It feels like yesterday, Jeff.”

“Exactly! And if you, if we don’t go back there, it’ll always be yesterday. I just got here and I hate this place already. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through for the last 30 years.”

“It’s too late, Jeff.”

“It’s never too late. I bet all those people that started religions way back when had an idea that this is the kind of thing we’d face when we die. That’s why, when they buried their dead, they’d say, ‘Requiescat in Pace.’ Peace, Georgia. You look as though you could use some.”

“You, too, Jeff.”

They look at each other, across 5 yards and 30 years. Jeff turns outward, speaking softly.

“So, Maestro,” he says, “if you please.”

All illumination ceases. It’s more than darkness. It’s the absence of all light. Jeff feels a concentrated pressure explode in the place where his heart used to be. It throws him off balance, bending him over as he shuts his eyes, hard. It lasts for two of his former heart-beats and he snaps his eyes open, panic and desperation intact.

He is standing in his home, at the bottom of the staircase that led to their bedrooms. Without hesitation, he begins racing up the stairs, with a shout.

“Georgia!!”

He does it only once, remembering the baby and not wanting her awake as he deals with whatever the hell is going on with Georgia. He pauses at the top of the stairs to take a breath. No other sounds allow his heart to slow down a notch or two as he heads down the corridor toward his bedroom. He notices as he passes that the nursery door is partially open. He steps inside, a night light casting faint illumination around the room, where, on the floor, his daughter lays.

His heart makes up for the time lost when silence suggested peace. He races to her, going down on his knees to the floor. He reaches his hands under her and lifts. Her head lolls back over his wrist, her tiny hands are open, her open eyes motionless. The horror of it bursts a panic bubble in him and he starts to sob, instantly, insistent, persistent, uncontrollable, as he pulls her closer, wrapping his arms around her.

“Oh, my God,” he says, aloud.

Caught for a moment, absolutely still, he begins to rock back and forth, his fingers along the child’s back, twitching. He thinks ‘ambulance’ for half a breath, pauses to feel for a move, a pulse, and then, knowing with certainty that it’s useless, he stands. He walks to the crib and gently lays the child into it. He turns to go, pauses to reach out and touch the child. His entire face is quivering, tears pouring out of his eyes, a strange combination of sorrow, loss and blinding anger. He bolts out of the nursery door and races for his bedroom.

She is not in the bed, and he moves rapidly to the en suite bathroom, its door half-open. He pushes it violently as he steps into the room and stops as though he’s run into a wall. Georgia is in the bathtub, fully clothed. Her left arm is dangling over the edge. Blood is spilling out of an open wound on her wrist. She is motionless. Her open eyes, staring at the ceiling.

He doesn’t rush to the bathtub. He stands, silent. His mind rushes in a tsunami of thought until the flash of bitterness and anger takes center stage, reaches the surface.

“Why?” he says, grinding his teeth. “How could you . . .?”

He crumbles and sinks to his knees, which fail to register the stab of pain as he hits the tiled floor. The room goes black, his chest is pounded again and he closes his eyes against the pressure.

The pressure drops and he opens his eyes. On his knees, on the wooden floor of the void. He is breathing hard, fast, as the empty space and absence of all sound relieves the pressure and breathing (breathing?) returns to normal. He looks ahead and sees Georgia, on the couch, her left hand dangling, her eyes vacant. This time, he moves right away, standing, heading for the couch.

Georgia’s body twitches, reacting as though someone has just punched her in the stomach. She blinks and looks around in panic. Jeff stops just short of the couch, as Georgia becomes alert to where she is and sees him standing close. She swings her feet off of the couch, stands and rushes to him, gripping him as though she were drowning and he the only log left in a violent storm at sea.

“You were right,” she tells him finally. “I wanted to go. I did.”

“I know.”

“And you let me die.”

Jeff hesitates briefly, holding her in their embrace.

“I did,” he says.

“It was a blessing, Jeff.”

“I don’t know, I was just so angry that I couldn’t think straight long enough to wonder if I could have done something. It wasn’t a blessing, Georgia. It was a curse that we’re still paying for.”

She moves away enough to look up into his eyes.

“I’m sorry I put you through that, Jeff, really,” she tells him, as tears flow freely. “I just, couldn’t. She died, Jeff. I just wanted her to stop, I didn’t mean to. . . and then, she just stopped and I couldn’t. . . go through with all that I knew was going to happen next.”

“And I’m sorry you had to see me, angry like that, in your last minute.”

They re-embrace. In silence, for a moment, before Jeff turns his head outward, inviting the void into the embrace and speaking quietly.

“Can we go now?”