When the Prisms Go Away

"Unfortunately you have a prolapsed mitral valve." Said the doctor putting the echocardiograms back in the envelope.

"Is it dangerous?" Forrest asked.

"No. But you have to be careful and keep your heart rate low."

"Is it serious?" Forrest insisted.

"Not if you stay away from stress and intense physical action."

Forrest liked to think that he knew everything there was about SoHo. When he left his doctor's office in the afternoon, which was located near Canal Street, and drove home, which was near South Houston Street, he would look at all the different types of stores and chain markets and inevitably feel proud and pleased with himself at knowing all this and being a part of its history. His eyes greedily climbed up the tall Cast-iron buildings. Behind red lights where others felt frustrated, he took pleasure in watching classy boutiques by the block and busy people moving in and out.

He lived in one of these buildings and among these boutiques. He parked his car at one side of the street and crossed to the other. A little girl sat on the pavement in the empty space by a boutique. Her clothes were poor and slightly torn in several places. The boutique sold antique stuff such as old clocks or novelty items and a few people walked around in it, browsing. Forrest sat by the little girl and picked up a pack of gum. She had all sorts of flavors but he went for his usual; strawberry. He paid slightly more and kindly patted her on the head then got up and went inside with a smile on his face. He never wondered whether she slept there at nights too or she had a
place to go. For him it stopped at a pack of gum from time to time

He lived on the highest floor of a Cast-iron building. The house simply consisted of a large open space with huge windows and then a little room by the side. This design was particularly famous for being mostly occupied by artists. Sometimes he'd buy frames and canvases and carelessly throw paint at them. He didn't want to admit it but everything one needed to know was up there on the canvas and that was nothing.

He slept in the little room. The large open space had no use and contained nothing of significance. He simply liked the empty-open space. It gave him a pleasure he couldn't get from boutiques and markets. In the mornings, he stood by the large window with a cup of coffee as the weak morning sun stroke at his face and torso and looked down on his beloved town and the busy people. He liked the contrast of a vast and quiet space against the hustle and bustle of the town.

The little room was very crowded. Closets full of clothes and books, most of which were still brand new. The brick wall was covered with pictures from his days in the college and his swimming bodies. He was in the varsity swimming team. It was something he was proud of and each week those of them who had stuck around went to a pool together.

His real estate license was on the nightstand along with a pack of cigarettes, a picture of a small girl and the keys to his car, which he had gotten as his eighteenth birthday present from his parents. The guys at the auto repair shop had been telling him to sell the old car, but he never did because he liked how it smelled like the old days.

The girl in the picture stood beside her mother with a wide smile. A pair of blue and clear eyes stood out and her blond hair was impeccably in synch with the rest of her face. Someone had written a phone number at the back of the picture. He recognized the handwriting; it was the mother's.

The doctor's news didn't properly hit him until late that night. By midnight, the only thing he had done was to throw some black paint on a relatively large canvas. He had cancelled his real state appointment to stay in the large empty room and obsess over his bad luck over a bottle of bourbon. 'Why me?', he asked himself. He had been on the varsity swimming team and his body was ship-shape. Nevertheless, when he checked himself out in front of the mirror he would almost intentionally ignore the fact that he was a middle-aged man now and that over the years he had let himself go a bit.

The next morning as he grabbed that cup of coffee and stood by the window as he usually did, he felt that something was different. Steam rose from the hot coffee and went straight up before his eyes and disappeared above his head. His mood was that of a king's who is soon to be taken away from his people; or was it the other way around? People were on their daily struggle much like the day before and he simply stood there feeling foggy.

An old analog clock went off on a solitary desk all the way on the other side of the hall, reminding him of a house he had to turn over for this afternoon to exhibit to the buyers. After that, he and his varsity buddies were supposed to go swimming. He dragged himself to the desk and shut the clock off. "Property of Donald Niremaan" was engraved in gold on the clock. It was maybe the only thing left of his father's belongings.

Private Donald Niremaan served his country well in the war and after taking a few injuries he had gone AWOL. Of course in those days such an act of treason was punishable by death, but given his golden record and the fact that he had shown undeniable acts of courage and valor, his sentence was reduced to exile from land. And so he was sent to the island of Saint Helena in the Mediterranean and Betty, Forrest's mother, stayed in the states for almost two years raising him, who was only nine back then. But she couldn't bear being so far away from her husband, who had fallen ill by then, and decided to take the road less traveled by. She left Forrest with his aunt who lived in SoHo in hopes of a better future in the land of opportunities and left forever.

SoHo and its people were all he had seen and cherished for years. He had adored all those buildings and their strange designs. Now he was in one of those buildings, looking at those people and couldn't help but feel distant.

The house he was supposed to turn over was fairly old but it was kept clean and he didn't drive as slowly as he used to do so that he could watch the neighborhood thus, he had enough time to give her a makeover. He dusted the walls and the floors, patted the furniture, then set out the table and fresh cookies for the buyers.

To him, the house seemed easy and thick with rich feelings. Old paintings pertaining to the Romantic era hung on the walls with maroon wooden frames. The painter's names were signed on the paintings; a Church here and a Constable there. He didn't recognize the names but they felt good to look at. There was an antique hearth, animal heads on the walls and an old shotgun hung above the hearth. As soon as the people started to roam around inside the house it got even better. He talked to the possible buyers and lost himself within the air of involvement in his love. Real estate wasn't his love, but that house had become his love.

But it seemed as though his joy didn't last long. Customers as they were, they started to point out what they thought was wrong with the house one by one. "There is a crack on the wall over there!" or "the garden is ugly" or even "there seems to a crack in the foundation". These impediments sat in his heart like poisonous arrows and broke him.

"This house is not for sale!" He shouted in a sour mood. "Get out of here! All of you!"

Customers left in a shock, which was unfortunate because a few of them had put down an offer and there were good offers among them too. He then grabbed a bottle of wine and a plate of cookies and collapsed on the sofa. He sat there and wallowed in depression. He never told any of the customers how close he felt with the house. Perhaps that's why he felt so heartbroken and decided to drown his sorrows in alcohol.

In his drunkenness he remembered the small girl in the picture and pitied himself. He was on a sofa, drinking alcohol with cookies alone in a house that wasn't even his. Her name was Lily. Her mother had sent him this picture two years ago. The picture didn't say anything, but it was a door, albeit a closed one. Still, he could have tried knocking on it. It was a rusty-old door, but he could have opened it some way or the other, even if he had to kick it open. But what did he do? He left the door to a new life closed and now sat alone all drunk and pathetic.

Until two years ago he didn't even know that she existed. As soon as he got the picture he remembered Becky. He remembered that he had met her in a bar over ten years ago and the night went along well enough for them both to enjoy it in the end. And then, in the morning he quietly left and never heard from her again until two years ago.

He remembered the feeling he experienced when he saw the picture for the first time, still as fresh as it was then. What he felt was really hard to put into words. It was like winning the lottery and then realizing that you have lost the ticket. Deep down he cursed himself for being such a coward. He sat there and drowned his sadness under oceans and oceans of alcohol; it was a burial at sea.

***

Forrest woke up in the middle of ice. At first, he didn't know where he was. He just put the palms of his hands on the ground and felt the surface while his eyes were closed. It was cold and slippery. Then, he tried peeking out the corner of his eyes. That's when he realized that he was on ice.

He tried using his palms but he couldn't get up that way, so he leaned on his left side and then pushed himself up with his right hand and sat up. He wanted to rub his face but he had gloves on, so slowly and patiently he took them off and then realized that he was so cold that having the gloves on and not having them didn't make a difference. The back of his head felt strange. He rubbed his left hand on the back of his head and then brought it back. He moved slowly, as if he had woken up from a year-long hibernation. There were pieces of clotted and frozen blood on his hand. He turned and looked at where he laid. There was a small and frozen pool of blood where his head used to be. He closed his eyes and let out a sigh of despair.

There was a name tag made of steel around his neck. It read: "Forrest E. Niremaan". That was when he realized that he couldn't remember anything. He sat there poking at that frozen brain, but it was useless. He could pretend that he knew Forrest Niremaan. Maybe Forrest had a wife and three kids and lived outside the city. Why three kids? He didn't know. That's just the first thing that popped into his head. A boy and twin girls. The boy would go after him and have green eyes and dark hair. On a sunny Sunday he would play
catch with the boy and the girls would sit with their mother in the grass. That was a scene he'd want to paint.

A mild and painful smile came creeping over his face. He felt the deception of this mirage. There was no house in the suburbs. There were no kids. And even if there was, at that moment, he was nothing to nobody. All he was and all he saw was walls of ice that hit him in the face like the cold and harsh reality surrounding him. There was no breeze coming in the cave but it was cold, as if he was trapped in a freezer.

He looked around. His snow goggles were on the ice a few feet away. There was darkness on his left side and there was light coming in from the right side. He struggled to stand up and put his hands on the wall of ice that was in front of him and with much difficulty stood up. Then, he wobbled toward the light. As he walked he noticed that the masses of ice surrounding him weren't all the same color. Some parts were white and some other were blue and crystal clear. He thought that he liked the blue and clear ones better.

The light hurt his eyes and he squinted, but once he got passed the glare from the opening he almost got used to it. He stopped where he couldn't go forward anymore and stood at the edge of the cave in a mountain of ice. The sky in front of him was clear. There were red lines expanding over the heavenly high and a bloody sphere sank behind an icy mountain, peeping at him and everything around him. There were mountains of ice as far as he could see. He was trapped at the bottom of a crevasse. Behind him in the crevasse was an endless pit of inexistence and in front of him laid an open-clear sky and he stood on no man's land.

He looked back and decided that he didn't want to go in there so he sat on the edge of the cave with his feet hanging as the weak-red afternoon sun stroke at him. The opening of the cave was too high and if he jumped he was sure to die so he just looked at the beautiful scenes the sun created by tickling the hard and rock-solid mountains of ice.

At that moment, he discovered that maybe it was a good that he didn't remember anything. Had he remembered anything, now he must have been sad and anxious to get away. But, with his memory gone, he simply sat there carefree without worrying about anyone or anything. Now he could deeply appreciate the beauty of nature. Now he perceived it the way it was meant to be perceived. It was beautiful and the beauty of it was utterly unaccountable.

He always felt drowsy in the cold and he felt drowsy then and he didn't know whether it was the cold getting to him or he simply wanted to sleep. The sun was now closer to completely falling and so were his eyelids.

"Are you up yet?" A soft and warm voice said from behind.

"What?" He asked, unsure whether he had actually heard someone or not.

"I asked if you were up yet."

Now he was sure that someone was in there. He got up and went back in. The cold had made him numb to the pain but his legs hurt from hanging weightless from the ledge for so long. With his left arm on the wall of ice he slowly made his way back inside the cave.

"Is anyone here?" He asked and as he did, a little girl walked outside the darkness on the other end of the crevasse.

"Hello." She said innocently, as little girls do. Forrest felt warm. He took off his dark blue windbreaker while he wobbled toward the girl. His brain felt bigger than to be confined in his cranium and he had almost lost his balance.

"How old are you?" He asked. He felt a severe twinging in his head with the utterance of each word.

"That's cerebral edema." The girl said. She looked at his confused eyes and continued: "You have been here for a long time, haven't you?"

"Who did...How did you get here?"

"From where you came from." She said. She wore a green parka with a varsity team sign pinned on her chest. She had small and yellow boots and pink gloves. "Didn't you see me?" She asked as she walked toward the opening to the cave.

"No...I was..." He mumbled.

"Mom talks about you a lot. She misses you."

Forrest didn't say anything.

She stood at the ledge. "I love you, dad. Don't you want to come with me?"

Forrest looked at his pair of gloves which laid on the icy floor of the crevasse and wondered how was it that he was still warm. Then he looked at the darkness at the other end of the pit. Finally, he turned and looked at the girl with strangeness and confusion. "I'm sorry." He said as his eyes became bright with tears. The girl hopelessly turned around and stepped outside the cave, and as she did, Forrest yelled with a fear and a tone that sounded like a scream.

***

He woke up just in time for his date with his swimming buddies. There were tiny beads of sweat running down his face. The pain from the hangover came in waves; once strong, once light. The empty plate of cookies was on the sofa. Fortunately, being a single man for most of his life he was able to "handle" the situation. He wobbled outside and, without remembering to even lock the house, went toward his car and with too much trouble got in. Every now and then the hangover poked at his brain and he coped with it by almost involuntarily putting on a deep frown and squinting. The car only slightly swayed from the road as the "party wine", used for customers, wasn't that strong and he'd had much stronger ones over the years.

He didn't even park across the street. He simply pulled over and went straight into the building, neglecting the poor little girl. The elevator was right there but he, in his drunkenness, decided to take the stairs and when he finally struggled his way up the stairs to the seventh floor with his short-drunk breath, he was too tired and fell asleep on the floor where his sack of swimsuit was.

The old analog clock went off announcing that it was seven P. M. and its sharp-ringing sound echoed in the emptiness of the large hall. For him, it felt as if someone suddenly dropped a heavy sledgehammer on his head, perhaps the heaviest sledgehammer in the world. He instantly sat up. His buddies must have gotten all wet about an hour ago. He stood up as fast as he could and grabbed the sack with one hand while tucking his shirt in his pants with the other. He was wearing only one shoe. He couldn't find the other one in the apartment. It must have dropped off somewhere along the stairs.

He nervously ran through the stairs, carefully scanning every corner and trashcan. At the ground floor when he realized that it wasn't in the building he angrily kicked an aluminum trashcan and dented it. It was his varsity team buddies and he had attended it each week for the last thirty years. He would never miss it so he immediately ran outside and got in his car. The little girl sat on the cement pavement looking so tediously, watching Forrest wobble inside and then an hour later pace back out. No gums this time.

The car slipped through the traffic like a fish. Now, with what seemed only to be a ghost of the splitting headaches he used to get, he steered the car. He had never realized the significance of it until he actually got to the point where he was on the verge of missing it; a session with the boys, hands moving wide open, chests hitting the surface and water splashing around. Horns honking, red lights pointing; yet it didn't matter, there was a fish out of water.

He didn't even remember when and how he changed into his swimsuit, but he was there on the edge of the pool. The big-digital clock in front of him on the wall with its red digits insisted that there was only fifteen minutes left. Without any delay, he ran toward the edge as fast as he could and proceeded to make a long dive into the water and hit the surface hard then went under. He had eaten a lot of cookies and felt a bit sick in the stomach. He threw his hands forward as fast as he could, as wide as he could and with a sudden, yet coordinated move of his legs and his hands he lunged forward. Immediately afterwards he felt a little twinge in his chest. But it didn't feel important enough to stop him from being a part of the varsity team so he kept lunging forward. He had to use every second left. His swimming buddies from the varsity team sat on the edge, getting ready to leave.

Once at the other end, he gathered all he had, and putting his feet on the wall of the pool, pushed himself away. It truly was a great push and carried him all the way to the middle of the pool. After that, as he floated away he felt a burning sensation start from his heart and envelop his whole body. A man had been swimming in the opposite direction. Forrest had his head under water and lay still on the surface. The man kept swimming toward Forrest, thinking that he had started on a clear path. Inevitably and finally, the man crossed Forrest and they both lost their balance. The other man came back up fast but Forrest, overcome by the pain, took a few moments to find a footing and got his head out of water.

"Can't you see I'm swimming here?" The man said with an undertone of anger and continued down the pool.

Forrest stood there motionless. His eyes were red and his skin was a bit pale. There was a ringing in his ears and he felt hazy and unclear in the head. He saw the man swim away in a blur and recognized the dark-blue wall of the pool a few steps in front of him. He took slow and unsure steps, trying to keep his balance and at the same time control the pain. At the wall, he turned around and leaned against it. He definitely didn't have the energy to call for the lifeguards. He just stood there with his back to the wall, hoping that it would go away. Instead, the pain got worse. He felt as if a hand had reached out into his chest and was holding his heart tight, keeping it from beating freely. He felt the slight pressure of the water against his chest, coming in little waves and hitting against his heart one after the other.

With each breath it hurt a bit more. A few moments later he felt that his entire heart was on fire and then he realized that he couldn't feel his feet anymore. He couldn't move his hands or head either. The pain had almost paralyzed him. Finally, his feet gave in and slowly and involuntarily he collapsed and sat on the floor of pool. He looked at the prisms and the broken lights, and over that, the misshapen figures of his varsity swimming team buddies, busy talking to each other at the other side of the pool. He sat looking at their reflections bounce and dance with each little wave for seconds. The digital clock was about to go off. Big-red digits stopped at zero and lifeguards asked the few people who had gone to a swimming pool at that hour to leave. In a few moments there would be no one left in the pool and he thought that they are going to turn the lights off soon and that the prisms would go away.