The View From Outer Space

I am so high up, so far above everything I used to be and know.

I think I can see the earth, a point of light far below. I know the people are still there. I know they have concerns and activities, interactions and routines. They don’t think about me up here, even if by chance they’re aware of my existence. If I suddenly disappeared, perhaps taken to another galaxy, or simply dissolved into unconnected molecules, how long would it take anyone to realize? And then what? Would anyone be curious enough to try to solve the mystery of my disappearance?

When I think about that possibility, that someone might care, I feel a moment’s warmth, a breath of an emotion, but it lasts only a millisecond. I do not expect that. I do not expect anyone to wonder. I expect that when they notice I’m gone, they’ll shrug and maybe not think about it again. Or even worse, will they ever notice at all? They will not wonder because they will not see that I am gone. Or they never knew I was here to begin with. Are the two things so very different?

I used to be an ordinary person, locked onto the earth in every tangible way. I had a job, I bought things, I ate in restaurants, I had family and friends, I laughed. I had a library card. I knew what each day would bring, more or less, and I was connected to the world around me by many invisible threads. That was a long time ago. The invisible threads have dissolved. Now I am utterly disconnected, adrift. My mind is as far away from earth as my body. I cannot plan or imagine, I cannot control or affect, I can only observe passively. I have no spirit left, no power to wield. I can’t remember if I ever did have any power. But I did have connections. I had a purpose.

Now I am so, so far away. It’s restful.

It’s dark night in every direction, and I am completely alone, perhaps drifting but I cannot tell. I am safe inside here, safe for today, safe for how long? Can I just stay here forever?

There is a particular window where, if I press up against it, I feel like I am outside the ship. So I press my body against the window and stare out into the darkness. I forget to blink for a long time and then have to hold my desiccated eyelids shut for awhile, to re-lubricate the eyeballs. How can a person forget to blink? With my eyes shut, I drift off to sleep.

I am jolted awake by a loud banging. Is it a disaster? Is my safe space under attack? It is dark no longer, full light, and the air seems too bright.

And then I realize. I am not so far above the earth, 32 stories is all, not millions of miles. I am in the apartment where I’ve lived most of my life, the apartment I haven’t left in six years.

The person at the door is calling my name. I walk over there, as silently as I can manage. I look through the peephole. Someone I don’t know. Wait, no, it’s my sister. She calls my name again, and bangs on the door some more. “Are you in there? Are you all right?”

Am I all right? I don’t know how to answer, so I stay silent. “I can see you’re at the peephole,” she says. I don’t move. “Look,” she says. “I just need to know you’re healthy and okay.”

I don’t say anything. She says, “This really isn’t safe. My name is on the deed too. I can have the door broken down if you won’t talk to me.”

There is a pause. I expect her to say something else, but she doesn’t. Finally I say, softly, my lips against the peephole, “I’m healthy. Please don’t break anything.”

She lets out a big sigh. “We have to talk about something important. Won’t you let me in?” Obviously I can’t open the door without losing the atmosphere, so I don’t understand why she is asking me that. Then I remember that I’m not in outer space, so the air outside is safe. Probably it’s safe. It’s confusing. I can’t sort it out in my brain, so I say nothing.

It sounds like she leans her head against the door. “I need to have a way to get in touch with you,” she whispers, her voice increasing in volume as she continues. “You don’t answer your phone, I’ve called a million time.” I look at the shelf where my parents’ old telephone lies, unplugged with the cord neatly curled. But wait, she means the cell phone. Last time its battery ran down, I just let it go. I don’t need it. When it’s powerless in a drawer, I’m safe from it.

“I saw your mail downstairs,” she says. “Boxes of it. What are you thinking? There must be important things there. I’ve been paying your bills online, from the trust, but aren’t you even curious?”

I had forgotten about mail. A very long time ago I stopped leaving my apartment, when I blasted into outer space. No, wait, that didn’t happen. I didn’t blast into outer space. Or did I? It’s confusing. But I know I can’t go downstairs to the lobby to pick up any mail. That man, that man in the lobby, I forget his name. He came a couple times and told me through the door that he could bring it upstairs for me. But of course how could I get it in the apartment without breaking the air lock?

No, that’s not right. There’s no air lock. But maybe there is. No sense in taking chances. I forget what mail is for, anyway. It’s a crazy word, mail, mail, mail. I’m confused about mail.

My sister is speaking again. She says my name several times. She seems upset. “You can’t stay here anymore, I have to make you understand. The building has been condemned. They’re tearing it down. Everybody has to leave. Most people have already left. But they haven’t been able to get you to answer the door.”

This makes sense, someone has been banging on the door and calling out to me every day for awhile. I didn’t understand what they wanted but they did talk about the building. Different people came and banged on the door and shouted and left. Yesterday that man from the lobby was banging and I looked out and saw someone in police uniform was with him. The police officer was explaining something to the lobby man, who seemed upset.

They were trying to get me to leave my apartment. To step out into airless space, into the dark and frozen nothingness, to drift away from safety and suffocate and freeze. Obviously, I can’t survive out there. I will stay inside the ship. Not the ship. The apartment. I will stay here.

I am so high up, so far above everything I used to be and know. All I know for sure is that safety is here, not there.

I can barely hear my sister when she speaks again. Something about three days.

I whisper into the door crack, “I’ll stay here.”

“But you can’t!” She is shouting now. “Today is Tuesday. On Friday they finish prepping the building for implosion. On Thursday, they’ll come take you away. They’ll break down the door and drag you out of here, and then they will demolish the building and all your stuff too.”

I don’t say anything. There is a pause, and when she speaks again she sounds defeated. “I’m coming back again tomorrow, one last time. Can you at least think about which of Mom and Dad’s things we want to save? Her jewelry? His books? If you just shove them out into the hallway, I’ll at least take them away before they come Thursday to forcibly remove you.”

Forcibly remove you. The words shimmer in the air for a long moment.

After awhile, I hear her walk away.

I need darkness. I sit in the linen closet until I can’t see a line of light under the door, and then I emerge and go into the kitchen to eat. As I slice the bread and cheese, I am struck by a thought. When I order food, it is delivered outside my door, and I temporarily disable the air lock so I can retrieve it. Can I do the same to put things out in the hall for my sister? She seems to care about my parents’ things, and I have time. I’m not going anywhere.

Or better yet, could I just move the airlock so I can stay here where it’s safe and she can still come take what she wants?

I look through the peephole to see the hallway outside my apartment. I notice the walls out there are already stripped of all the decoration. The door is missing on the apartment across the hall, and I can see debris on the floor in there.

Maybe they really are going to demolish the building.

It doesn’t matter. I can’t go out there. It’s fully dark outside now, and I lie down and press my body next to the window where I feel like I’m almost outside. I watch the pinpricks of light in the darkness, stars and planets in the vastness of space. I’m in a space ship, not tied to the earth. Or maybe I am tied to earth but when this building is destroyed my space ship will be free to drift up, up, up to where it’s dark. And safe.

I need a place here where I can hide, where they won’t find me before they destroy the building. I turn and stare at the ceiling. Directly above me is an old-fashioned vent, its slatted metal grille covered in cobwebs and dust. It covers an empty space, but it’s too small for me, I know. Next I go to the kitchen, where an old trash chute, unused for many years, is covered with wallpaper. I run a knife along the seam so I can pry it open. Possibly big enough for me, but no way to keep from plunging down to the depths of the basement.

I stand, looking around the apartment. I like the idea of getting inside the walls, but I know there’s no opening. Then I remember the poorly planned closet remodel when I was a child, when part of the hall closet was walled off to make a larger bedroom closet, and there wound up being an almost inaccessible corner in the the new closet. My mother covered it with a shoe rack on hinges. Like a little door with shoes on the front. I slip behind it. Perfect fit. I close the shoe rack behind me. It’s dark and safe. No one will find me here.

Knowing where my hideaway will be, I press myself against the window again. After awhile I get up and write a note that says, “I understand now. I know I have to leave. I will do this myself. They will not need to come take me away.” I read it and cross out “take me away” and substitute “forcibly remove me.” I lie against the window again. It is very dark and most of the windows in the city are dark.

Outer space. I am so high up, so far above everything I used to be and know. I think I can see the earth far below, a tiny pinprick of light. I am surrounded by darkness, resting in safety.

When it gets light, I disable the air lock and leave the front door ajar with my note on the welcome mat. I hold my breath while I move the airlock to the bedroom, and put it on the closet door. In the dark, behind the shoe rack, I wait.

My sister comes. I hear her stop in front of the open front door. She calls my name. I hear her moving from room to room. She calls my name a few more times. She looks into the closet where I’m hiding, but doesn’t see me, behind the shoe rack in the dark.

Then she goes back to the front door and I can hear her on her phone. “She’s gone,” she says. Then, “I have no idea. She left a note saying she was leaving. And she left the door wide open. She’s gone, I’ve looked everywhere.”

Another pause while the person on the other end talks. “Yes, if I can, I’d love to get some stuff out of here. Thank you. Some carts would be great. And I won’t say no to help. Thank you for your offer.”

Another pause, then a forced laugh from my sister. “Yeah, I suppose so. There’s one in every family, I guess.”

After she ends the call, it sounds like she lands heavily on the chair in the hallway. And she begins to cry. Big, loud sobs, messy weeping mixed with my name. I don’t know what to think. Why do people cry? It’s a funny word, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry.

The rest of the day, I can hear different people. I can hear them moving from room to room. Squeaking wheels from a metal cart. Occasional thuds as heavy objects fall. Questions to my sister, “Do you want this?” Mostly she says no. Someone asks what she’s going to do with the furniture.

“I guess it will be destroyed along with the building. I don’t need it, don’t want it. I have no way to get it out of here and nowhere to put it.”

I suddenly realize I’m like the furniture. My sister doesn’t need me, doesn’t want me, has no way to get me out, and has nowhere to put me. I know I’m making the right choice by staying in the building. When the building goes down, I will blast up, up, high above everything I used to be and know.

The conversation is continuing. “Take it all, if you can get it out of here in time, it’s yours.”

It feels uncomfortable to have people in my ship. In my apartment. But I just wait. Eventually, the lifting and moving noises give way to the crashing of destruction as they break down…what? Or pull out…what? I don’t know what. I just wait. They must be getting close to being done. When will the building implode and crumble to the ground? When will I blast into the sky? Soon, soon.

Then, a huge crash, very close, and the wall next to me smashes into the hallway, destroying my refuge and exposing me to the air and the light. Three men in masks stop short, staring at me. Then they begin to shout as they hold my arms and forcibly remove me from the safe place I’ve made. They force me out the front door into dark, frigid, airless space, where I will drift away from safety and suffocate and freeze.

I see my sister’s face, and I see she is saying something but I can’t understand because I cannot hear. I am bitterly cold. I can’t feel my body. My vision is failing. I can’t breathe. In the darkness I hear a disembodied scream of utter despair, going on and on without pausing for breath.