Hanna Warren

It was strange, the sound. I wonder how something so remarkable could exist. Just another natural marvel of our world, just like the seasons themselves. Death was all around but when you breathed in, the air masked itself as something that was cold, crisp, and refreshing. It’s like Mother Nature was mocking me, making a spectacle of the transition from life, to death, and back to life again, year after year after year. Most people devour it. They take photos of the reds, oranges, and yellows on the trees and look forward to the cooler temperatures. Even those who hate either the winter or the summer are reassured by the cyclical change that their favorite seasons would be back again. In the end, everything would be okay. Many of us craved that reassurance. But now, winter was officially here, and snow plastered the ground outside, smothering the dead grass beneath it. So beautiful, so pure, so soft and delicate. I think I think about myself too much. Well, I think about her too much. Not that I can exactly do anything about her invading all my thoughts, telling me that I could be just as beautiful as I desire. I could be the snow and the lake. I could be her. What I was currently being is unreasonable for even entertaining the thought. If I tried to transition, went through with it, I’d end up scorched, disappearing into the sun from the inside out. The ball of fire that burns inside me would finally consume me. I wanted to accept myself, but I couldn’t bring myself to face my own feelings. Sometimes I wonder if I should let it consume me. Let her consume me. It's not like I can blame her for trying so hard. Working to convince me it would work. After all, there is a part of me that is, and as much as I try, I can’t go my whole life hating all parts of me. Not even her.

The Disc

Hanna Warren

I force myself to ignore all previous warnings, digging into the heart of the box with my cto knife. It feels like I’m actually turning the knife point in on my own chest, but there isn’t time to think about morals. I unveil a thin disc with a piece of Scotch tape on the clear casing, displaying the words “For Annie” in scribbled Sharpie. Tracing the words with a quiet resignation I slowly slide papery fingers up and down the smooth writing. *** Every Sunday morning, I host brunch at my home for my fellow waitresses, sizzling up fat sausages and gooey chocolate crêpes for their enjoyment. Our friendship began in a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop where we scrape grime off the cappuccino machine in exchange for minimum wage. Naturally, our husbands function as the main topic of conversation as we spread jam on our toast and take small sips of scalding coffee. Pamela’s husband is very handy as she always points out, talking in a carrying voice about the newest tool he’d scavenged from Home Depot. (“He always forgets his hacksaw in the backyard. Men.”) Melissa’s husband is coaching their son’s Little League baseball team. (“And they’re undefeated, did I mention?”) Kim’s husband is into stocks. (“Jimmy has been going on about how profitable the market is looking these days…”) The girls are kind enough to never ask me about Henry. I can sit on the sun-stained wood of my kitchen chairs and pretend that I am one of them, looking up at the embroidered message over the back door and trying to act like I believe what it says. “Here comes the sun,” it promises. It used to be my favorite song. My friends pretend to not be aware of the fact that my husband has forgotten how to drive, write, make phone calls, and can barely walk. He asks me what the weather was like five times in the same hour, frequently forgets where he has put the remote (on the ottoman every time), and has taken to calling me by the name of Jessica. “Now wait a minute,” I always tell him in a calm, low voice, “you know my name is Annie. Jessica—that’s your dentist, don’t you remember?” A flash of reality will wash over his see-through blue eyes and he always flashes his practiced aw-shucks grin.

“Darling, how could I ever forget your name? Just because me and Jess have a thing on the side doesn’t mean I don’t love you!” I always sigh in relief at this demonstration of his old humor, but shudder at the fact that he’s already made this same joke, more or less, dozens of times. I routinely frown at the Early-Onset Alzheimer’s pamphlet sitting on his desk in the study, a second copy (he lost the first) of the pamphlet we received on the day of his diagnosis right after that stormy night. *** I remember I waited at the kitchen table. Clutching a leathery cookbook in both hands and trying to decipher a recipe on Pecan-Maple Salmon, focus was impossible with the nagging hint of worry sitting, heavy and obtrusive, somewhere near the very back of my cranium. My heart was in my throat, pounding as though my veins had constricted and it was trying to pump the same amount of blood as usual into my overactive brain. His absence hung on my shoulders, grinding deeper into my tight muscles until I physically couldn’t take it. Sheets of rain were dumped, ton by ton, on our fragile roof, torturing the thin planks of wood as they groaned in distress. The lights flickered out and left me in a pool of darkness, phones dead and all communication lost. I simply, helplessly perched myself near a front-facing window, watching the uniform inky blackness outside for any sign of him. He never came. I pressed my fingers against the unyielding glass like a child. The wind screamed into our chimney and lightning created strange shadows on the living room furniture in the blackout. The tiny house shuddered ominously, creating the feeling of being trapped in the belly of a storm-tossed ship at sea. Eventually, two pinpricks of light yielded themselves to my vision, and I threw open the front door without thinking. A sheet of rain flew in, splashing on my rug as a figure emerged somewhere near the pinpricks on my driveway. The person stomped through my front door and promptly slammed it shut. “Annie,” he groaned as I embraced him before realizing this newcomer was not my husband, but my neighbor Jack. I faltered and pulled back. “Why are you here? Where’s Henry?” He pointed at a person on the floor who I hadn’t noticed somehow. I stared blankly at my husband on the floor, unconscious. *** I asked all his friends and family to send in things from his childhood,

letters he wrote, accounts of things he’s done and said so I can show him. On good days, he nods or smiles, sometimes saying a few words or a sentence if he’s up to it. On bad days, his watery clear-blue eyes look truly translucent, and he merely stares at what I have to offer as though I’m holding air in my hands. He may say nothing at all. I can’t pretend like I’m the best candidate for Housewife of The Month. Every other day in the long, twilight hours of the evening it comes down to a screaming match between me and the walls. My curls fly askew and I know my face gets beet red, and yet Henry’s capacity to tease me about my tomato face is forever gone along with his ability to drive. He just stares at me, slack-jawed, eyes twitching to follow me from room to room as I pout. I spit profanity into the dense air as Henry watches beneath one of my homemade quilts, I rant on the unfairness of life, of this particular life. Henry’s not the one who’s suffering. Every time I say that sentence I feel the stab of satisfaction coupled with a mountain of hate for myself and my selfishness. Henry always used to say that I love too deeply, too completely, which is probably true. I’m in love with a dead man. There is no escape. ***

His slick, pale hands were pressed violently against his eardrums as if to block out sounds of the shrieking thunderstorm. His dark hair was rough and matted and his face was smudged with grime. Clean tear tracks shined on his dirty cheeks, and his limbs were tensed into one tight knot. I dragged my knees across the wet carpet, putting my shaking hands on his damp face with a slightly slap-like sound. “No—what—what happened?” I asked him, propping Henry up on my knee. For all the good it did he might as well have been dead. “Found ‘im,” Jack said gruffly, sitting up wearily, “I was driving home and I found him on some curb, getting completely pelted with that onslaught out there,” he gestured vaguely toward the rain hammering on the windows. “He was just sitting there.” I looked into Henry’s slackened expression and closed eyelids. “Thanks, Jack,” I murmured, nodding at him in gratitude. Thank goodness for good neighbors. Henry was completely out for an hour, but while pressing my fingers to his icy wrists, I could still feel a surge of life. He woke up with his head on a damp pillow, fat beads of sweat rolling down his temple. His baby blue irises rolled up in my direction as he coughed up a thick spray of water into the air.

“Let me go,” he said unsurely, slurring his words into near incomprehensibility. “W-what? Henry?” I stammered, truly alarmed. “Need to get home,” he said plainly, trying to roll into a sitting position before running out of breath and simply staring at me and Jack from the ground with an intensely psychotic gaze. Rain—or drool—dripped down his chin and sunk into his already doused shirt. “Henry, buddy—you are home! It’s Annie, this is Annie! Your wife,” said Jack, trying and failing to seem conversational and nonchalant. “What?” said Henry, scrunching his face up, “Wife? Who’s Henry?” *** This morning, as his lungs stop working and he is actually choking for air, I’m so desperately searching for any kind of solution—something to keep him here for just a bit longer. I tell myself that this is just a minor setback, that he can keep on living with the disease somehow—just as he has been for three years. You can never accept the truth, says that sarcastic half of my brain that's responsible for the hissy fits and Alzheimer-related tantrums. Stop lying to yourself. WHAT ELSE CAN I DO, the angel on my shoulder bellows, maddened with some sort of sickening pre-grief. The beeps of hidden machines in his sterile hospice chamber actually sound morbid. Maybe these beeps sound the same no matter how the patient is doing, but I don’t care. I have everything I need to know from the fact that his lips are practically the color of that forgetful fish from Finding Nemo. Forgetful. If his disease is based on forgetting, what if— Thirty minutes later, I’m clawing through boxes, bags, and old Christmas trees in our tiny, poorly-lit attic. I rip plastic and paper indiscriminately, thrashing into the heart of the clutter as violently as my heart is currently scraping against my ribcage. I find the box, the box he gave me on our wedding night.

***

Dancing on top of ivory tiles in a spacious ballroom with a faint bluish backlight, I distinctly remember him pulling something small from his inner coat pocket and handing it to me. It was a shiny disc reflecting glints of rainbow onto his porcelain face. “If ever you find yourself without me, and only then,” he whispered,

raising his eyebrows so I knew he meant he was talking about till death do we part, “play this CD. I love you, Annie,” he said with a goofy grin, to make the whole thing seem less serious. Even so, he warned me many times after to never, ever open the box until he had finally departed to a place I couldn’t visit. The fragile little disc rested in a box collecting dust in our attic for ten years.

*** I find the little box in a moss-covered corner. So what does it matter if he’s still alive? This is an emergency. I force myself to ignore all previous warnings, ripping the tape from the cardboard box, wedging the stiffly shut folds open and stabbing my X-Acto-knife through layers of styrofoam. It feels like I’m actually turning the knife point in on my own chest, but there isn’t time to think about right and wrong. My hands fumble on a light, plastic disc that shines like some fluorescent beetle in the copper-colored light. There’s a carefully denoted piece of Scotch tape on the clear casing around the disc, displaying the words “For Annie” and reeking of Sharpie fumes. I trace the words with a quiet resignation, softly sliding papery fingers up and down the smooth writing. At the hospital, I pop the disc into a CD player by his bed. In the corner of my eye I can see the machine recording the beats of his heart, relieved to see that the line still forms peaks and valleys. With the help of drizzled oxygen, Henry is slightly propped up and staring vacantly into space. My voice does not stir his interest. Nevertheless, I let the disc play. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll remember something when he hears… There’s a crackling sound. A muffled something. And then a melodious blend of notes hovers for a moment before a voice is audible through the previously stagnant air, proclaiming “here comes the sun” over overlapping guitar harmonies. And it continues. In the wide, wide world of seemingly endless English vocabulary, I have nothing to describe my reaction to that tinny singing taunting me from that CD player. A stupid song—that stupid song does exactly what he wanted it to. I furiously bite back the tears—tears for my expectancy of something that would save his life, for my disappointment that this was all he had left to offer me, for the fact that he knew exactly what would reduce me to tears. Tears for the fact that right about now his innocent face has about as much emotion on it as a Saltine cracker as his grotesquely cheerful requiem sings him to death. There’s a reason it’s not my favorite song anymore. The beeping sound in the room condenses into