THE MESSAGE ON A BUMPER STICKER
The gun lay on the coffee table, light glinting off the barrel as the neon sign outside his hotel room blinked on and off, on and off, on and off. He lost track of how much time had lapsed as he sat and stared at the sign. It occurred to him that this suspended moment typified his life of late. Everything at a standstill. Nothing mattered. Nobody cared.
His mind wandered through memories in no particular order, instances ricocheting off each other randomly. How could he describe his father? No images came to mind, only a shadow glimpsed through the bars of his crib, as his father passed through the door and out of his life. His mother, poor thing, cried as she told him how she wished she could be more attentive to him but there were too many demands on her and not enough time. Of course, she said, that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. Often noises in the night leaked through his bedroom wall, woke him and he would weep silently in the darkness.
He rose and walked to the window to look out into the night. Below he could see cars wending their way along the avenue, pausing for changing traffic lights and crossing pedestrians. People moved purposely up and down the walkways. When was it that he first concluded that everybody else seemed to have a purpose with someone to go to or come from, to eat with and weep with? What would it be like to lie in bed and hold another in your arms?
He remembered the sign that flashed in the night from the rooftop of the church across the valley from his home. Or was it a bumper sticker on a car that said, “Jesus loves you” in bright red on a black background. For a time he used to say that simple phrase over and over like a mantra, as he wondered what the three little words meant. Who was Jesus? Why would Jesus love him?
Physical liaisons satisfied only for a moment and left him with a deeper sense of emptiness and longing. Pills dulled the pain and afterwards he was anxious. He thought for a while that Sartre understood. So did Thomas Hardy, especially when they wrote about the loneliness and the dark and the impending sense of hopelessness.
“Jesus loves you” echoed in his ears in sync with his heart’s beating. He watched as a little girl in the park floated back and forth on the swing in lazy arcs and she laughed gleefully as her father pushed her higher and higher. He remembered standing at the base of a tree and watching with envy from behind it. Maybe her father would notice him and invite him to take the swing next to hers and push him, too. But that hadn’t happened.
He turned back from the window and stared at the gun. He walked back to his chair, sat and took up the gun, its cold metal startling him. He thought that it might not be that bad after the brief moment of pain to be enveloped in silence and darkness. At least the ache would stop.
What would it have been like to be in love? To be a father? To hold a little child by the hand and calm fears and tell the little one that everything would be OK when the morning comes.
He clutched the arms of his chair and thrust his head into the soft back. He screamed into the night from his constricted throat, “Jesus loves you!” Or was it a whisper? He did not bother to whisk away the tears that coursed down his cheeks.
“Do you?” he sobbed. “Do you love me? I need to know. I think I could go on if I thought that you cared. I would even follow you if you wanted me to.”
He listened to the silence and pled into the void, “Please.” Over and over again he repeated the single word, “Please. Please. Please,” until he was exhausted and slept.
He stood at the end of a pier and looked out at the rolling sea. Light from the moon played on the rippling water. The beams blinked as clouds parted and scuttled across the face of the moon. A foghorn sounded. Or was it a gull in a quest for food? Way out there was a ship with smoke billowing from its stacks. Was he watching it sail away, or was he waiting for it to reach the port?
He awakened. The lights of the city still danced before him. He noticed that the skyline now stood in silhouette against gold that was just beginning to streak in broad swaths across the horizon.
It wasn’t a word or any other sound. It wasn’t a touch, as he had known touches in the past. He likened it to a sudden gentle breeze that caresses your cheek in the midst of a becalmed day. Or perhaps it was like that moment when the rain stops and you know that the gray will soon yield to blue dappled with white cotton-ball clouds. Or that moment when you sense someone is there.
He held the gun before him and watched the dawn play on the barrel. And he laughed.
