Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso by Jeff Vrolyks
how about some juice? Or… you’re in college now, I’m sure you go to parties and drink; would you care for a glass of scotch? I don’t have any beer.”
I hated my fool mouth. Was I really offering my eighteen-year-old niece alcohol? Boy, if Liz were here she’d lay into me. And she’d have every right to.
Emmy’s already troubled eyes became more concerned. “No thank you. I have classes, remember?”
“So you do drink,” I said, and damned if I knew why I said such an abominable thing. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that. Let’s go have a seat in the living room.”
She followed me. We sat partially facing each other on the couch.
“I see you’ve been drinking,” she said with a hint of a smile. “Or smell, is the better word.”
“I normally don’t drink this early. The reason why I have is the same reason why you’re here now, and I thank you for coming over.” Impulsively I went to take a sip of my scotch and realized I had left it on the desk in my office.
“What’s wrong, Jeff?”
“Did you see anything on your drive over, by chance? Here on Manchester? A guy in a black robe?”
“No. Why?”
I had no immediate response to that. Did I want Emmy to think I’m nuts? My vanity was as such that I grudgingly abstained from wearing a suit for her arrival, and now I was positioning myself to intimate to her that I’m losing my mind.
“I… I…” God, what do I say? Just be honest, old Jeffrey old chap, old bean. Pip Pip! Tell the lass the ripping good yarn of a man in black who haunts you.
Emmy leaned forward and put a hand on my own, peered sympathetically into my eyes, conveying to me that I could say anything to her and she’d be just fine with it; go ahead and tell me you’re gay, Uncle Jeff, I won’t judge you; thirty four is a little old to have no prospects of a wife, isn’t it? Tell me you have pancreatic cancer and caught it too late, and your days are numbered, I’ll be here for you. Tell me you struck and killed a vagrant with your car on a dark stormy night and instead of reporting it to the cops you buried him in the wood, as to preserve your good name. There’s nothing you cannot confide in me, Uncle Jeff.
That endearing gesture works like gangbusters in the movies, but it doesn’t do shit in the real world. Truth be known, it made me wish I was wearing a suit and I don’t know why. God bless her heart for the thought, but what I needed wasn’t her sympathetic blue eyes reaching into mine, but a few more fingers of that damned scotch. It’s easier to confide in Johnny Walker than Emmy Jacobs—no offense, Emmers.
“Just a second,” I said and left the couch.
I returned a minute later with two stout glasses of scotch; one was quite heavier than the other. I retook my seat and proffered the glass with less scotch to Emmy. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I didn’t need to take no for an answer. She accepted the glass, drank the scotch with me staring pie-eyed at her, then sat the empty glass on the coffee table.
“Now tell me!” She said with a faint grin.
I took a sip of my own, leering at her.
“You better not tell mom I just drank that.”
That little interaction was far more endearing than what she had done with the hand and sympathetic eyes. It wasn’t show, it was real. She just confided in me that she does indeed drink, if only for sport or socializing or whatever may be the case. And I’ll tell you something else, she didn’t have a whisky face when she swallowed it. You know, the ugly wrenching of the face that comes from swallowing such an intense flavor. Apparently she had inherited her uncle’s tolerance for scotch—tolerance, ha! I cherished scotch.
“Have I ever told your mother anything you’ve confided in me? We’re friends, Emmy. Friends first, uncle-niece second. I’m sorry for forcing that drink on you. I just… well I worry what you’ll think of me after you hear what I have to say. It’ll be easier for me to say after a drink, and figured it would be easier for you to hear after one, too.”
“You’re gay, is that it?” She said with a sober face. I was stunned by her supposition. She erupted in laughter. I then laughed too.
“I wish it were that simple. Here’s the thing, Emmy.”
I proceeded to tell her of the figure in black. I contended that apparently I was the only one who could see him, or it. I related the trip to the market where I found him all the way out on Longview Avenue. I said he was getting nearer and nearer every time I encountered him, and what could that possibly mean? I admitted that I hadn’t left the house these last two days, hadn’t so much as looked outside until five minutes ago when I peeked through the blinds, and I didn’t see him then, so that was a good sign, was it not?
I took a deep breath and awaited her response.
“Well…?” She said. “Are you going to tell me or what?”
Okay, so I didn’t tell her anything, but I said it all in my head and I sounded like a lunatic even to myself.
Notwithstanding, I told her everything, only the subject matter wasn’t the man in black but of my high school sweetheart Anna Macintyre. I told her how I never really got over her, how much she meant to me. I laid it all out on the table, all right. I was misty-eyed toward the end. It was the first time I’d ever confessed my love for her to anyone, and damn if it didn’t feel therapeutic to do so. But I was wasting Emmy’s time. I didn’t need advice about Anna, I need it about the man in black. But I came to the conclusion that I was too chickenshit to admit to her that I was seeing things.
“Uncle Jeff,” she said exasperatedly, “why did you want me to come over, really? To tell me about Anna? What was your purpose in asking me if I saw a man in a black robe? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Em. Maybe I just needed some company, and I miss you. We don’t spend as much time together as we once did. It’s great to see you. I still can’t get over how you’re a woman now. No more cute little Emmers in pig tails, lapping up a Flintstones push-pop.” She smiled. “You look a lot like your mother did at your age. Very pretty.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Stop changing the subject. Is there a man stalking you or something?”
“I doubt it. Yeah, there is a man in a black robe and I’ve been seeing him around lately, but I don’t think… it’s not a big—”
“If it’s not a big deal, why did you invite me over, and don’t give me that bullshit about missing me.” She grinned disarmingly.
I stared into her eyes for a moment before mindlessly saying, “Ever think about your mortality?”
“My mortality?” Her brow had arched. “I suppose.”
Have you ever noticed that when you write—or sometimes it happens when you talk to someone about your personal thoughts—you begin to learn things about yourself? Or things start to make more sense? It happens often with me, and it did just then.
“Yeah, mortality. We’re all going to die someday, and I’m sure it won’t happen to you for eighty years, but still, it’s going to happen to us all. We each owe God a death, and He is the only one who knows when that day is. For the sake of the argument let’s just say that I know my day is forty years from now, to the day. In forty years I’ll die. I picture a guillotine, the slanted sharp blade of a guillotine miles and miles above me; heck, thousands of miles above me. It is falling now, you see. Eventually it will enter the earth’s atmosphere and ultimately it will chop through the clouds and fall, fall, fall down to Manchester Lane where it will cut my head off. Obviously that’s not how I’ll die, but you understand what I’m saying, right? Maybe I’ll die of a heart attack—I do have high blood pressure and cholesterol—but a death is a death. That blade is descending upon every single person on earth. For you that blade is eighty or ninety years above you, but it’ll find you one day. When you see an old man at the hospital, that blade is so very near. I’ve often thought it would be wonderful to know what day that blade will arrive so I could milk the most out of life before then. But then again, knowing that date would be all-consuming. It would be more of a det
riment than a benefactor. Maybe it’s best we don’t know.”
“Is that the scotch talking?” She said and grinned measuredly.
“Maybe it is,” I said and matched her grin. “This guy in the black robe just reminded me of that concept, of the guillotine, because the couple times I’ve seen him he’s been a little closer from the last time. Encroaching. Maybe he’s just a stalker; more than likely I have some bad wiring in my eyes and what I’m seeing is just a shadow. I guess the impact it has had on me is the idea of mortality.”
“How’s your health, other than high cholesterol and blood pressure? You look to be in good health.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t mean to tell you that I think I’m dying. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m scared.” That last tidbit snuck by my filter. I didn’t want to alarm poor Emmers. “I shouldn’t be, but it is what it is.”
“Where’s the last place you saw him?”
“In the middle of the road, just outside here.”
She patted my knee and stood up. “Come on. We’re going outside. I’m going to show you that you have nothing to be worried about, Unc—Jeff.”
“Nah, I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
She took me by the hand and pulled me off the couch.
“You’re an awful lot like your mother, you know that?”
She said shush. I saw my prescription sunglasses on the table and took them before Emmy pulled me away in her haste.
“You don’t need sunglasses, it isn’t that bright out.”
“They’re prescription: I don’t have my contacts in.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
I felt like a delinquent child being pulled grudgingly along by the hand. I tried to free myself of her grip but to no avail. She was intent on holding my hand through this. I think it was a gesture of solidarity, that we were in this together. Bless her heart for thinking so, because it definitely wasn’t the case. I was to suffer this nightmare alone, and the enormity of Emmy’s heart wouldn’t change that.
She unlocked and opened the door. Together we stepped along the porch. A UPS truck was across the street. Cathy was signing for a package. Strength in numbers. And she was at least two people, more like three. She saw me and the pretty young girl attached to me at the hand and probably thought some shenanigans were taking place over at the Jacobs’ residence. She waved at me: I waved my free hand back at her.
I saw Emmy’s Honda Accord in the driveway parked behind my Explorer. I continued looking at it as we traversed the walkway. There was a sticker on her rear window which was a rainbow with some glittery words below it that I couldn’t decipher. Rainbows… how simple her life must be. She was free to dance and prance under rainbows, with her guillotine blade light years overhead, as I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the guillotine blade not light years overhead but something much less. How much less only God knew, and He can keep a secret.
I thought her palm felt sweaty. But on second thought, it was my own palm which was sweaty. The slack between our linked arms tightened as she said, “Come on, mister, no dallying.”
“Yes, mother.”
We stopped at the curb.
“There. You see? There’s no bogeyman. No stalker. It’s just you, me, the UPS driver,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “and that morbidly obese lady across the street.”
I would have chuckled over her choice of words had we been in another circumstance. Morbidly obese is what she was, but I thought it was cute that she chose such a diplomatic pair of adjectives to describe what most kids her age would have used. Something like disgusting fatty, or fat bitch, heifer, or etcetera et cetera.
“I guess so,” I replied. “Maybe I just needed my contacts in after all.”
She was smiling broadly,
I hated my fool mouth. Was I really offering my eighteen-year-old niece alcohol? Boy, if Liz were here she’d lay into me. And she’d have every right to.
Emmy’s already troubled eyes became more concerned. “No thank you. I have classes, remember?”
“So you do drink,” I said, and damned if I knew why I said such an abominable thing. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that. Let’s go have a seat in the living room.”
She followed me. We sat partially facing each other on the couch.
“I see you’ve been drinking,” she said with a hint of a smile. “Or smell, is the better word.”
“I normally don’t drink this early. The reason why I have is the same reason why you’re here now, and I thank you for coming over.” Impulsively I went to take a sip of my scotch and realized I had left it on the desk in my office.
“What’s wrong, Jeff?”
“Did you see anything on your drive over, by chance? Here on Manchester? A guy in a black robe?”
“No. Why?”
I had no immediate response to that. Did I want Emmy to think I’m nuts? My vanity was as such that I grudgingly abstained from wearing a suit for her arrival, and now I was positioning myself to intimate to her that I’m losing my mind.
“I… I…” God, what do I say? Just be honest, old Jeffrey old chap, old bean. Pip Pip! Tell the lass the ripping good yarn of a man in black who haunts you.
Emmy leaned forward and put a hand on my own, peered sympathetically into my eyes, conveying to me that I could say anything to her and she’d be just fine with it; go ahead and tell me you’re gay, Uncle Jeff, I won’t judge you; thirty four is a little old to have no prospects of a wife, isn’t it? Tell me you have pancreatic cancer and caught it too late, and your days are numbered, I’ll be here for you. Tell me you struck and killed a vagrant with your car on a dark stormy night and instead of reporting it to the cops you buried him in the wood, as to preserve your good name. There’s nothing you cannot confide in me, Uncle Jeff.
That endearing gesture works like gangbusters in the movies, but it doesn’t do shit in the real world. Truth be known, it made me wish I was wearing a suit and I don’t know why. God bless her heart for the thought, but what I needed wasn’t her sympathetic blue eyes reaching into mine, but a few more fingers of that damned scotch. It’s easier to confide in Johnny Walker than Emmy Jacobs—no offense, Emmers.
“Just a second,” I said and left the couch.
I returned a minute later with two stout glasses of scotch; one was quite heavier than the other. I retook my seat and proffered the glass with less scotch to Emmy. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I didn’t need to take no for an answer. She accepted the glass, drank the scotch with me staring pie-eyed at her, then sat the empty glass on the coffee table.
“Now tell me!” She said with a faint grin.
I took a sip of my own, leering at her.
“You better not tell mom I just drank that.”
That little interaction was far more endearing than what she had done with the hand and sympathetic eyes. It wasn’t show, it was real. She just confided in me that she does indeed drink, if only for sport or socializing or whatever may be the case. And I’ll tell you something else, she didn’t have a whisky face when she swallowed it. You know, the ugly wrenching of the face that comes from swallowing such an intense flavor. Apparently she had inherited her uncle’s tolerance for scotch—tolerance, ha! I cherished scotch.
“Have I ever told your mother anything you’ve confided in me? We’re friends, Emmy. Friends first, uncle-niece second. I’m sorry for forcing that drink on you. I just… well I worry what you’ll think of me after you hear what I have to say. It’ll be easier for me to say after a drink, and figured it would be easier for you to hear after one, too.”
“You’re gay, is that it?” She said with a sober face. I was stunned by her supposition. She erupted in laughter. I then laughed too.
“I wish it were that simple. Here’s the thing, Emmy.”
I proceeded to tell her of the figure in black. I contended that apparently I was the only one who could see him, or it. I related the trip to the market where I found him all the way out on Longview Avenue. I said he was getting nearer and nearer every time I encountered him, and what could that possibly mean? I admitted that I hadn’t left the house these last two days, hadn’t so much as looked outside until five minutes ago when I peeked through the blinds, and I didn’t see him then, so that was a good sign, was it not?
I took a deep breath and awaited her response.
“Well…?” She said. “Are you going to tell me or what?”
Okay, so I didn’t tell her anything, but I said it all in my head and I sounded like a lunatic even to myself.
Notwithstanding, I told her everything, only the subject matter wasn’t the man in black but of my high school sweetheart Anna Macintyre. I told her how I never really got over her, how much she meant to me. I laid it all out on the table, all right. I was misty-eyed toward the end. It was the first time I’d ever confessed my love for her to anyone, and damn if it didn’t feel therapeutic to do so. But I was wasting Emmy’s time. I didn’t need advice about Anna, I need it about the man in black. But I came to the conclusion that I was too chickenshit to admit to her that I was seeing things.
“Uncle Jeff,” she said exasperatedly, “why did you want me to come over, really? To tell me about Anna? What was your purpose in asking me if I saw a man in a black robe? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Em. Maybe I just needed some company, and I miss you. We don’t spend as much time together as we once did. It’s great to see you. I still can’t get over how you’re a woman now. No more cute little Emmers in pig tails, lapping up a Flintstones push-pop.” She smiled. “You look a lot like your mother did at your age. Very pretty.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Stop changing the subject. Is there a man stalking you or something?”
“I doubt it. Yeah, there is a man in a black robe and I’ve been seeing him around lately, but I don’t think… it’s not a big—”
“If it’s not a big deal, why did you invite me over, and don’t give me that bullshit about missing me.” She grinned disarmingly.
I stared into her eyes for a moment before mindlessly saying, “Ever think about your mortality?”
“My mortality?” Her brow had arched. “I suppose.”
Have you ever noticed that when you write—or sometimes it happens when you talk to someone about your personal thoughts—you begin to learn things about yourself? Or things start to make more sense? It happens often with me, and it did just then.
“Yeah, mortality. We’re all going to die someday, and I’m sure it won’t happen to you for eighty years, but still, it’s going to happen to us all. We each owe God a death, and He is the only one who knows when that day is. For the sake of the argument let’s just say that I know my day is forty years from now, to the day. In forty years I’ll die. I picture a guillotine, the slanted sharp blade of a guillotine miles and miles above me; heck, thousands of miles above me. It is falling now, you see. Eventually it will enter the earth’s atmosphere and ultimately it will chop through the clouds and fall, fall, fall down to Manchester Lane where it will cut my head off. Obviously that’s not how I’ll die, but you understand what I’m saying, right? Maybe I’ll die of a heart attack—I do have high blood pressure and cholesterol—but a death is a death. That blade is descending upon every single person on earth. For you that blade is eighty or ninety years above you, but it’ll find you one day. When you see an old man at the hospital, that blade is so very near. I’ve often thought it would be wonderful to know what day that blade will arrive so I could milk the most out of life before then. But then again, knowing that date would be all-consuming. It would be more of a det
“Is that the scotch talking?” She said and grinned measuredly.
“Maybe it is,” I said and matched her grin. “This guy in the black robe just reminded me of that concept, of the guillotine, because the couple times I’ve seen him he’s been a little closer from the last time. Encroaching. Maybe he’s just a stalker; more than likely I have some bad wiring in my eyes and what I’m seeing is just a shadow. I guess the impact it has had on me is the idea of mortality.”
“How’s your health, other than high cholesterol and blood pressure? You look to be in good health.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t mean to tell you that I think I’m dying. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m scared.” That last tidbit snuck by my filter. I didn’t want to alarm poor Emmers. “I shouldn’t be, but it is what it is.”
“Where’s the last place you saw him?”
“In the middle of the road, just outside here.”
She patted my knee and stood up. “Come on. We’re going outside. I’m going to show you that you have nothing to be worried about, Unc—Jeff.”
“Nah, I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
She took me by the hand and pulled me off the couch.
“You’re an awful lot like your mother, you know that?”
She said shush. I saw my prescription sunglasses on the table and took them before Emmy pulled me away in her haste.
“You don’t need sunglasses, it isn’t that bright out.”
“They’re prescription: I don’t have my contacts in.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
I felt like a delinquent child being pulled grudgingly along by the hand. I tried to free myself of her grip but to no avail. She was intent on holding my hand through this. I think it was a gesture of solidarity, that we were in this together. Bless her heart for thinking so, because it definitely wasn’t the case. I was to suffer this nightmare alone, and the enormity of Emmy’s heart wouldn’t change that.
She unlocked and opened the door. Together we stepped along the porch. A UPS truck was across the street. Cathy was signing for a package. Strength in numbers. And she was at least two people, more like three. She saw me and the pretty young girl attached to me at the hand and probably thought some shenanigans were taking place over at the Jacobs’ residence. She waved at me: I waved my free hand back at her.
I saw Emmy’s Honda Accord in the driveway parked behind my Explorer. I continued looking at it as we traversed the walkway. There was a sticker on her rear window which was a rainbow with some glittery words below it that I couldn’t decipher. Rainbows… how simple her life must be. She was free to dance and prance under rainbows, with her guillotine blade light years overhead, as I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the guillotine blade not light years overhead but something much less. How much less only God knew, and He can keep a secret.
I thought her palm felt sweaty. But on second thought, it was my own palm which was sweaty. The slack between our linked arms tightened as she said, “Come on, mister, no dallying.”
“Yes, mother.”
We stopped at the curb.
“There. You see? There’s no bogeyman. No stalker. It’s just you, me, the UPS driver,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “and that morbidly obese lady across the street.”
I would have chuckled over her choice of words had we been in another circumstance. Morbidly obese is what she was, but I thought it was cute that she chose such a diplomatic pair of adjectives to describe what most kids her age would have used. Something like disgusting fatty, or fat bitch, heifer, or etcetera et cetera.
“I guess so,” I replied. “Maybe I just needed my contacts in after all.”
She was smiling broadly,