by Chris Pellizzari

 

I visited my grandparents last night in Chicago Heights. They needed me to come over and sign some documents. I decided to spend the night because my front left headlight was out and I didn’t feel comfortable driving all the way back to Willowbrook. I slept in the room that used to belong to my father. As I made the bed, I told myself it was unlikely I would get a good night’s rest. I have insomnia. If I had a hard time falling asleep in my own bed, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep in my father’s old bed. For one thing, it was too small. My father was only five-foot-ten. I’m six-foot-five and my ankles and feet dangled over the edge of the bed. The other thing was my father’s presence. I knew he was in the room with me. He died eight years ago and it was hard for me to get over it at first, but in the last few years I made a lot of progress. In fact, I hadn’t thought of him much in the last year. I had a feeling he didn’t like that. I was in his room, in his very bed, and he was going to remind me that he was always my father, whether he was in this world or not.

As I stared at the ceiling and adjusted my eyes to the darkness that was darker than my own room in my own house, I talked to my father in silence. I asked him how life was on the other side and I waited for a response. As I waited, I looked around the room. I could start to make out the chair and the desk to my right in the darkness. That’s where he did his homework when he was in high school. I told myself that maybe I should leave one of my published poems on the desk for my father. I read once that Chinese religious folklore says our world and the supernatural world live side by side and that it is proper to give offerings from this world to the supernatural world. The Chinese will leave out a piece of fruit for a dead relative and that relative will devour the essence of the fruit. After the essence of the fruit has been absorbed by the relative, the Chinese will either eat the fruit or give it to the poor. Perhaps my father can absorb the essence of my poem and forgive me.

To my left was the large wooden crib I slept in when I was a baby. My parents spent many nights here at the beginning of their marriage, even though they had their own apartment in Willowbrook. They used to be close, my parents and grandparents. They had a falling out about twenty years ago over money, but I spent a lot of my childhood in this house. The bars of the crib were unnaturally long. My mother was overprotective. She wanted to make sure I wouldn’t fall out. I was told I slept in that crib even when I was two years old and was growing too big for it.

I closed my eyes again and remembered myself in the crib. It’s strange that I could remember sleeping in the crib. I remembered the gentle touches from my mother, her hand gently touching mine or her finger rubbing against my cheek. I remembered later in the night, two strong hands lifting me into the darkness and walking out of the room and into the light of the hallway. I must have been crying. I remember the strength of the hands and the warmth of his chest, the warmth of my head against his T-shirt. That was my father.

I anticipated those strong hands as I lay in bed. I was waiting for my father to lift me up and carry me into something better, better sleep, a better life. I was waiting to be lifted up from the bed, from the world. I really thought it was coming, the great lift. I thought that maybe I was the Chinese offering to my father, that me in this bed was the offering and my father would devour some small essence of myself and it would be good for both of us. 

Instead, what came was sleep. Thinking about myself as a baby in the crib was really knocking me out.

Right before I fell asleep, I thought I would dream about him, that he would come to me in my dreams and we would have a long conversation about my life since he died and he would try to offer me the best advice he could and even if it wasn’t great advice I would be happy to take it because it came from him. But when I woke up in the morning, I knew I hadn’t dreamt about him. I dreamt about stupid things like steak dinners and dead rock stars. I looked around the room in the glaring light. I didn’t think he was there anymore. I knew he wasn’t there anymore. I wanted to tell him that I would think about him more often, like in the months after he died, but I knew he wouldn’t hear it. And I’ve never been great at keeping promises anyway.

 

Chris Pellizzari is a writer from Willowbrook, Illinois. His work can be found at Lake Effect, Hobart, and Gone Lawn. He is a member of The Society of Midland Authors.