Dispatch #6: If I Could Talk I'd Tell You

Special "Same Walk, Different Shoes" edition

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a Substack community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

The Dork Mansion Dispatch is a newsletter featuring fiction, poetry, and music about death, love, and road trips.

Huge thanks to

Ben Wakeman

for organizing the SWDS project and letting me be a part of it. I’m also grateful to the person who shared this deeply personal and intimate prompt and gave me the opportunity to walk in their shoes.

-CD

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If I Could Talk I’d Tell You

If I could talk I’d tell you I don’t know when I got here or where I was before, only that I’m here. Far away and getting closer.

All I know is I’m in love. The boys are goofy and loud and messy, and I can almost feel their sticky doughy hands when they touch you, feeling for me. When I squirm, they squeal.

We’re dancing in the kitchen. “Near Wild Heaven.” We’re eating pizza and the little one puts pepperonis on his eyes and you think it’s the funniest most disgusting thing. You think, that’s kids, funny and disgusting.

We’re drinking coffee on the porch before the boys are up, soaking up the silence. You call me the Ghost Baby, or your Ghost Baby, depending on how much distance you want between us. Something’s in there, but I’m watching from the outside, everyday getting closer, closer, until one day, maybe, who can say, I’ll coalesce with a body like droplets on a window.

Do they believe in ghosts? In God? In me? I’ve never seen God, but I’m know she’s seen me.

We eat a cupcake at the big one’s birthday party. It’s too hot. Water pistol-wielding boys menace the backyard. Jenny’s mom isn’t doing well. Beth’s ex is getting remarried. The Evans’ are moving at the end of the summer. You cut the cake and comb the little one’s hair with your fingers. He’s asleep before bathtime so you clean the chocolate off his face and tuck him in. You breathe in the smell of sweat, icing, and fresh cut grass. The bigger one is reading comics on the floor of his room, and you wonder where it all went, the baby, the toddler, the kid, and now there’s this boy in the house. You cash in your last birthday hug and hold on tighter than normal.

He doesn’t know how good he is, you think.

You look up bunk beds and leave them in your cart. The little one stirs so you sneak in and sing him the tried and true, the sure thing. “Go to Sleep Little Baby.” You rub his back. He’s out.

“Want to be a big brother, baby?” you whisper. You feel for me and I reach out but I’m still too far to touch. But barely.

If I could talk I’d tell you your voice is incredible. Everything you do is a song, every move is music. I play in the waves. If I could talk I’d ask you where I came from. I know it was warm, and gentle, and soft. Like an orchestra warming up, a messy bed of strings. Lushness.

You don’t want to go but there’s a work party and Dan insists, gets a babysitter and everything. You sip seltzer and he tells everyone you’re the real life of the party and it gets a big laugh. You roll your eyes and take in his graying beard, his balding head. You hold his hand. They don’t know.

We’re on a plane to Grammy’s, to the lake. The cousins are great. Somehow louder than expected. The little one and the big one disappear and reappear like shadows, come home with colorful rocks, furry bugs, scrapes and bruises. Wild tales. Uncle Steve got another stent but he’s fine. Kev got a raise. Mary is on the travel soccer team and little Ollie can use the potty. Dylan went to his first Twins game and can’t stop talking about it. Brock is still in Berlin and Aunt Gemma thinks he may never come home. Grammy’s on the Library Board. Lisa whispers in your ear and you double over, laughing like one of the boys heard a fart.  

The little one left Bunny on the plane and at bedtime you help him through the hurt. You find words about loving and letting go and wonder what they mean to a four-year-old, but you say them anyway. Later when you’re crying in the bathroom with the fan on so no one can hear I’m still too far away to touch your tears, but I still bathe in their unspeakable warmth.

Grammy knows better than to ask, but Lisa presses. She’s in there, you say, because how could you know how this works. It’s serious, you say, but the doctors are hopeful. The lightening bugs blossom and bloom against the dark purple lake, the loons call, the air is still. You say you’ve come around, that you love her already, you say you’ve let go, what will be will be. How can one person hold so much?

Loons have solid bones, the bigger one says over pancakes. So they can sink to the bottom and find food. Other birds have hollow bones and float too much, but loons don’t have to fight the water so hard.

Cousin Jamie says loons have the sharpest beaks of any birds ever.

No they don’t goofus, says the bigger one.

Be nice, you say.

Cousin Alameda says sometimes loons get stuck on a lake because it takes them so long to get their heavy bodies up to flying speed.

You say that must be tough to be trapped and she says not if the lake is nice.

On the last day the little one gets stuck in the green-black muck at the water’s edge. I watch from the dock as you and Dan and Aunt Lisa pull him out with a walloping sucking sound. You haven’t laughed this hard in years.

We’re at the pool when we touch. You can’t see me. How? You start, you think it’s a spider, then a fly. Maybe a splash of water? It’s me, living my lifetime of liminality but for these sacred moments of connection, of breakthrough.

“You’re here,” you say.

“I can’t stay.”

I hear your voice in response, soft but sure, outside of time, echoing among the strings, forever dancing.