Excerpt from a short-story 2

"We've been talking in a dream for fifteen years."
 Biff Loman, from Death of a Salesman, Act 2

    Speaking softly giving tremendous thought to the words I was about to breathe I began, "It's like we were once perfectly beautiful. Do you know what I'm saying Tom?" But I sensed Tom didn't know. He didn't understand.

    "Not beautiful in the sense of being young and handsome, physically attractive like you were, we were, along time ago. No. A beauty both inside and outside. An inner beauty, maybe an innocence. Yes, innocence. We were innocent once. Do you remember? There was a purity to our being a substance of something beautiful. We were perfectly beautiful almost like the way were supposed to be and we were happy Tom. We were happy." As I heard myself speaking I had to stop and wonder if I truly believed what I was saying. I do remember being happy once don't I? Yes, I was, there was a time, a time when beauty and innocence lived in and around us.

    "And then as if we were caught up in a knife fight," I continued, "our faces were slashed, cut right across the cheek!"

    "We were scarred Tom, horribly scarred. And we became different. We were once beautiful and at times the scar didn't show so bad, but it never went away did it. We were marred forever, our beauty gone. We were ruined Tom and worse I knew we'd never get it back; that I'd never get it back."

    Somehow knowing that Tom would not stop me from continuing I braved on. "That scar, the wound inflicted on you and me, I see now that it only scarred me but it killed you Tom. It killed you. Somewhere along the road you just died."

    The weight of understanding what I would say next bore down on my very soul, compressing my heart as if I would never breathe again. "I think it was me. It was me who killed you. When I left you. When I abandoned you... to save myself... you see I found life. But you, I killed you. In saving myself I killed you. I see now. We cut ourselves, wounded ourselves, chose to throw our beauty to the pigs. But you never recovered did you? You died a slow death  and my choice, what I chose to do in leaving, put you down for good. In the ground."

    Tom moved as if he was defending himself, ducking a jab, about to speak into the silence, "No, please. I'm not finished. Let me finish Tom. You talked now I have to talk."

    Looking into his face I whispered to stop the reverberation of the words in my chest move me to tears,"I know you loved me. You love, or you loved some idea of me of who we were, what our friendship meant to each other in those days. But Tom you hated me. Like you hate me now."

    "That's not right, true!" he said as measured as he could.

    "Don't speak Tom, don't say anything and let me, I have to talk now."

    I felt I was coming up to the cliff now. Standing on the edge where one more step would take me to a place I would not return or recover. "Have I said I'm sorry for what I did to you? I'm sorry Tom. And I can't cry anymore. I don't know when I stopped being able to cry?"

    I continued in a monotone whisper, "I need you to forgive me. I need to know that you and me that we can both be resurrected! I want to live Tom, for the days that I have left I want to live. And I want to leave here tomorrow morning knowing that you're alive, you're okay. Not dead. Tom. I can't bear the weight of murder anymore. Tom if you ever loved me just a little bit, loved me as your friend, your brother, than release me; release us both."

    He didn't move or blink. I had driven over the cliff beyond any point of pulling back what I had said; how I had laid my insides bare! If there was a time when I had been more vulnerable I couldn't remember it and didn't care anyway. I had given over to heart abandon.

    "You're a lucky man to have love Mickey," Tom said as unaffected as humanly possible. "You're wife. She's so beautiful. And I'm happy for you, for her. This is good, a good thing for you to have love. Do you love her?"

    Not knowing where he was taking our conversation I said, "I love her. She is good to me."

    "She's good to you. That's nice. I want to remember you and her together and she's nice to you and this is good."

    I began to sense anger building within my gut. I did not want my anger to betray me as I desperately needed to break through to this man, to this man who was the closest friend I have ever known; a brother.

    But why is he beginning this verbal torture, this evil surgery?

    Does he want to let it alone? Is it too late for him, having been dead so long?

    "Do you want to let it alone Tom? Is that it? You want to let it alone." Sometimes when death is around long enough you learn to live with it. Like an unwanted companion you can't shake; an oppressive presence that fills the void of emptiness. Better to have something, someone with you instead of nothing or no one.

    I probed again, "You want to let it remain dead, unspoken, unresolved, wrapped up in a neat little box filed under 'life' and just let it go?"

    He moved uncomfortably. There! I caught something in his right eye that said "No! Let's have this out! Let's clean this up!

    Encouraged by this I pressed on. "You see you're still churning and twisting in the white-wash of the waves. The white-wash of disappointment. Disappointment in others. In yourself. Lost dreams. Visions of what you could have been."

    I mustered the last vestige of courage, of love rather, and continued. "I'm standing on the sea shore and I'm watching you churning and churning in the rough and tumble of the surf as it crashes upon you. And I can't get you out, rescue you, because I won't go out there! I won't leave the safety of the shore to get you! I can't. I will not live that way again Tom. I can't swim fast enough, strong enough to keep my head above the waves. If I came out to you, joined you where you are now, we would both drown."

    The raw honesty of what I said next startled me, "But how I wish for you to be with me on the safety of the sand! With the sun burning down our necks, reddening the tops of our shoulders, and the smell of salt in our noses. Put your feet down brother! Find bottom and push up! Push up ad lift your eyes to heaven! Rise above the sea and breathe. Turn towards the shore: I'm here! Swim man! Swim!"

Read the third excerpt