Electric Elizabeth: A Novel

  One day, I found myself bouncing over antennas around Scranton, sometimes able to slow myself down, sometimes not. Then, like someone grabbing a hold of a branch in a flood, I forced myself into this circuit, and I cycled through the wiring over and over again. I heard this woman shouting as things were sparking up around her, but then I slowed, and I found myself above this front porch, looking out at this gravel lot with a road that twisted down the side of this hill. And, for some reason, I stopped, looked around, realized I was in this light bulb, and felt myself floating in place. I concentrated, really concentrated, but then I fell back into myself in my room.

  The next day, I concentrated on that light bulb, and a second later I'm in it, testing the impedance, the voltage, testing how I could slow myself down. And then I see this car pull up in the lot, this cranberry-colored car. And out steps this young man who looks so scared, so . . . haunted. And he speaks to the woman on the porch. He talks about how this bright light bulb drew him up the hillside for almost no reason. He talks about the Coxton Clarion. He talks about himself. He talks about his father's death. His mother's suicide. About his days of running home to safety, of running up to his bedroom to hide.

  And I watched this young man, this young man with so much pain that it just seemed to spill from his eyes, write down everything about this woman's daughter. Her life. Her loneliness. Her death. I saw him excuse himself and go in the bathroom to cry. I saw him looking into this mother's eyes, almost falling into them.

  And then . . . he was gone. I was there in that circuit for over four hours, Milton. I watched you and listened to you and followed you as you left that house. I was like a child who'd had the training wheels removed from her bicycle, and I floated back over Scranton, this atmospheric charge who flew like a glider over thermals.

  You know you gave me the sky, Milton? I never told you that before, but it's true.

  I wrote you that letter, I saw you outside that classroom, and when we talked at the coffee shop and when we walked through the campus, I felt safe with you. Anchored and steady. I remembered how it was before that day you showed up, when I couldn't control myself, when everything flew by at the speed of electrons, when I felt like my atoms would spin out into the universe and never take shape again. But being with you stopped that. Maybe it was because I found you handsome, maybe it was because I met someone who'd had his own pain and could understand mine. There are any number of reasons why I loved you, just like there are your reasons as to why you loved me. And when you got on a knee and proposed to me under the stars, I felt a steadiness that I'd never felt before.

  But the problem with the sky, Milton, is that when someone gives it to you, everything else seems so small.

  For months, I was happy to be with you. For months, I was happy to sit with you and lay with you as you got lost in your past. All those hurts, Milton. All that loneliness and pain. Etched into you like carvings in a stone. I wondered why you looked at the ground so much, why you never spoke of friends, why you continually hurled yourself back into the pains of the past, and no matter what I could do, Milton, you seemed locked. Locked in your own circuit.

  You loved me so much. I know that. Every time I felt you close to me, every time you held me, I knew it was genuine. I knew you'd never hurt me, that you'd give me whatever I needed, even if you had nothing to give you'd find a way to give it to me, rob a bank, jump from an airplane, it didn't matter. I knew I was everything to you. I knew you smiled every time you saw me, and I knew you sank into sadness when you didn't. Every night I'd see you waiting for me, and every day I'd know you were thinking about me. You were once my anchor, Milton. But then I became your only reason for living.

  And, Darling, you can't share a life with someone unless you have a life of your own.

  I started becoming electricity again. When you were asleep. When the door to the study was closed. I found myself above Blackbridge one second, then in Chicago a few seconds later. Cloud to cloud. Wire to wire. The things I could see in a few minutes, Milton. The things I could see. . . .

  And I'd come home again. You, asleep in bed. Outside that streetlight buzzing like the ones outside my childhood homes. And I'd feel empty again, no matter how much you loved me.

  I met others in the clouds. Others from everywhere. They watch, they explore. Some have seen so much in hundreds of years I can't begin to imagine. I realized no class could teach me that. No degree could offer any comparable education. So I dropped graduate school and spent my nights alone, riding the sky and the circuits after parking my car off the side of some road, or I'd just lock the study door and push through the window. Every time I pushed into the atmosphere, every time I pushed through homes and forests and cities or over mountains and rivers, everything here in Blackbridge, everything at home with you just seemed . . . limiting.

  I wanted to tell you, Darling. I wanted to make up an excuse and have you divorce me. Anything. But I never wanted to hurt you, hurt someone who loved me so much, and I worried what would happen if I left you. All that loneliness growing up. I didn't want to make you lonely again.

  But that last day we walked through town, the streets and buildings seemed to close in on me, smothering me. I knew I had to leave, Milton. I had to leave Blackbridge. My old life. You. The sky was waiting for me, and like the day I said Yes when you proposed to me, I made a choice as fast as I could, a choice that if I didn't make then, then I never would, a choice that . . . a choice that I knew would hurt you, but not like that.

  I didn't know you'd be in the hospital.

  I didn't know you'd be spending your days in that empty house, not eating, not sleeping, not living.

  I knew I had to come back again, that you had to know everything. And I knew that I had to finally say Goodbye.

  ***

  Liz lowered her eyes to the ground.

  My breathing became shallow, and I looked at her through tears, her form blurring and darkening.

  "Goodbye?" I said. "Goodbye? You"—I pointed at her, clenched my teeth—"you decide you've just had enough and then say Goodbye?"

  "I know you don't understand," Liz said, "but—"

  "Don't even think of saying that! Don't understand. What don't I understand? That you never told me about this? About this, what, thing you do? About you deciding that once you got everything under control that you could move on? About how you thought you could spark up and throw me through a plate glass window—"

  "I never meant to do that—"

  "No, my turn, Liz! My goddamned turn. You send me through a plate glass window, you almost kill me, you send me to a hospital in a coma where they had to open up my back and fix the mess you made. You send me back to an empty house to clean up another mess you made, back into a house where I didn't know where you were or what to do? Tell me, what part of that don't I understand?" I stepped closer to her, pointed at her face. "Do you know what I've been through the past few months? Do you even have the faintest idea what the hell I've been through?"

  "I know, Milton."

  "The hell you do. All this time I'm thinking something took you from me, and come to find out you were just kicking me to the curb once you got what you needed."

  "I've watched you every day, Milton. It was difficult—"

  "Do you know how every minute and second of my life the past few months was spent on trying to reach you?"

  "I know."

  "No you don't!" I screamed. "I'll tell you what you know, Liz. You want to hear what you know? Okay, here it is: You know there's something you want, then you grab it, then you move on. You walk away when something gets a little uncomfortable for you, and you walk over others when they don't serve a purpose anymore. You were happy that your folks were gone because that was one less piece of baggage, and I was just another piece of baggage to be dumped alongside the road."

  I turned away, started back to the road, but Liz instantly appeared in fron
t of me, blocking my path.

  "Don't hate me, "she said.

  I stopped and looked away from her. The trees whipped angrily in the wind while violet lightning flashed around the town below. "You know," Liz, I said, "when my mom died, I thought about what I might have done wrong, that maybe I did something to make her jump off that bridge. Then I said, 'No, Milt, it's not you. You were an okay kid'. Took me a while to start thinking that. But . . . maybe I wasn't an okay kid. Maybe I'm not an okay man. And maybe . . . maybe I give everyone reasons to leave me—"

  "What she did had nothing to do with you, Milt." Liz put her hands on my cheeks. "And what I'm doing has nothing to do with you. Look at me," she said, and I did. "You're a good man, Milt. The best I've ever known. I think about all you've been through and all you've done on your own, and I think about how much you've loved me and how lucky I was that I was with you. Sometimes, Milton, people make choices that hurt others, no matter how hard they try not to. But those choices have to be made. Milt, I had to move on, and no matter how much you love me you have to move on. You have to put your past to rest somehow, you need to see that you're not alone, that people care about you, that there's a whole world for you, and if there's anyone in this world who deserves that, it's you."

  I shook my head. "I don't have anyone," I whispered.

  "Yes you do, Milt." She let go of my face. "You've got people all around you, people who want to be in your life. And there are people everywhere just waiting to be met, just waiting to be loved. And, Milton, you deserve to be loved."

  Elizabeth put her arms around me, stood on her toes, and lightly kissed me on the lips. For a moment, I smelled the scent of air cleansed by rainstorms and the scent of vanilla wafting on the wind. She then released me and backed away.

  "Please don't go," I whispered.

  "Goodbye, Milton," she said, slowly stepping away. Two steps. Three steps. Four. Five.

  "Please, Liz—"

  "And I want you to go home and I want you to live, Darling." She stepped farther away. Six steps. Seven. Eight. Nine. "I want you to throw away the radios and the telephones and the antennas. I want you to put your past into the past. I want you to build a life with someone who gives you all the love you give them.

  "Liz," I said, shaking my head, "I don't have anyone."

  "Yes you do, Darling. And you will." Ten steps. Eleven. Then she stopped, tall brown grasses swallowing her legs like water. "And I want you to be the man you want to be." The winds whipped around her, cyclonic and steady.

  "No," I said. "Just give me a chance."

  "It's not about you, Milton. But I want your life to be about you." The winds built to a deep roar, and Liz shouted: "I want you to have everything I can't give you, Darling. Everything."

  "I just want you, Liz," I shouted, walking to her.

  "Someday—someday we'll see each other again. I promise."

  She lifted her right arm, brought her hand to her mouth, and, smiling, blew me a kiss.

  All around her, the light became blue, then white as a narrow bolt snapped and small balls of ghostly plasma bounced in the air like embers, sending a shudder of thunder that rolled downhill over the rivers, the streets, the cemetery, and my house at the southern edge of town.

  And then, once again, I was alone.

  ***

  I stood beside my car, staring at the driver's side door, the rain pouring off the roof and off my head. The cold air turned my breath to clouds, the cold rain turned my hair flat and ragged. I looked at my reflection in the window, the unshaven face, the pale skin, the coat and T-shirt dark with water. In my left hand, I held the car keys, in my right I held the radio direction finder.

  After a few minutes, I pulled my right arm back and hurled the finder and the keys through the window then kicked at the door, my foot smashing through the plastic door panels. Somehow I pulled the door open and threw it forward as if trying to tear it from its hinges, but it would only bounce back, and I kicked at it, smashing the speaker housing and hurling the side view mirror onto the gravel lot.

  Claire shouted something behind me, but I kept kicking at the car, its doors, its headlights, its trunk, kicking as the rain poured in sheets, as the lightning illuminated the hillside and the hulking abandoned asylum, as my right leg finally gave out, and I fell to the gravel where I sat with my back against the rear bumper, my head on my knees, Claire and Bentley running toward me, umbrellas in their hands.

  ***

  Every countertop in Bentley's kitchen seemed covered in dark marble, every cabinet and cupboard in mahogany. I sat at the long main table and stared at the coffee cup between my hands, the dark wood floor under my feet. Rain sprayed and washed over the windows above the long sink and basin, throwing watery shadows over the walls. Bentley and Claire sat in silence after I told them about Liz, about how she held my hands and my face, about how she said goodbye. Claire attempted a wan smile. Bentley only looked down, a mirror image of myself.

  "You need dry clothes," Claire said.

  "I'm fine," I said, but Claire got up and walked out the kitchen, her heavy boots thumping down the hallway. Bentley looked through the doorway, then the window, then at me.

  "I know you don't want to hear this—" he said.

  "You're going to say I told you so," I said.

  "No," Bentley said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "I would never do that. I was hoping I was wrong, that maybe it'd be different for you, that Liz would come back and everything'd be fine, but deep down I knew that wasn't going to happen. But even though I knew something like this would happen, I only have to say this: You're lucky. Yes, I know you don't feel lucky. I know you feel like a truck just ran you down on the highway. Maybe several trucks. And it's going to hurt for months, maybe even years to come, but you've got this: You know. When Liz could, she came back to you, she gave you the answers you needed, maybe not the ones you wanted, but the ones you needed. With my mother, it dragged out for years. I watched my father just turn into this husk with nothing inside. I lost a mother and a father on the Chesapeake, Milton. And she never came back to me. Never. Sometimes I know she tries to pop up through the television, small sentences here and there. Claire thinks it's interference from the antennas, and I just say, 'Sure, it has to be, Honey', but I know it's Mom. I know she's up there and out there, seeing and doing things I can't imagine."

  Bentley stood up and walked to the window. Shadows of rain rivulets crisscrossed his face like black veins. "You wanted to know why I came back to Blackbridge," he said, "why I bought the Banner. It's because I accepted who I was and where I came from. This is my home, where most of my family's buried, where I used to sit with my mother and talk about everything under the sun. And I didn't want to wake up one day and find that despite all the money I had in the bank that I really had nothing. With the Banner, maybe I'll leave behind something good. With Claire, maybe I'll leave behind a good family. I really think you can't expect much more out of life."

  "Do you worry about Claire?" I asked. "If she'll decide, one day, to just step outside, realize there's something else out there that she wants, and then just, you know. . . ."

  "Every day," Bentley said. "But all I can do is my best, just like you. If she ever decides to leave me for whatever reason, all I hope is that she tells me why and she tells me before she goes. You can't force someone to love you, Milton. You can't force someone to stay." He stared out the window, the rain slowing, the house popping and creaking in the wind. "Some people," he said, "just can't be contained. Not Mom—" he turned to me "—and not Liz. We just let them go, we hope they come back even though they never will, and we move on."

  "I can't move on anymore," I said, rolling the coffee cup between my hands. "I'm tired of moving on."

  "That's life," he said. "We have the lives we have. We can either build them into something or let them stay hollow. You see, Dad thought he'd built up a life,
but he was just finding identity in other things. Cash. Real estate. Mom. When he lost Mom, everything else just fell away. I don't want that for me." Bentley took in a deep breath, then exhaled fog on the window pane. "Build a life on your own foundation instead of on other people's foundations, Milton. Took me a while to learn that; watched my father wither away because he never did. Make sure it doesn't happen to you."

  The rain stopped, and the only sound in the kitchen was water dripping off the eaves and hillside runoff trickling through the forest.

  ***

  I stood in my living room among the boxes and the wires and the cables and the antennas. Throughout the house, radios buzzed and crackled as the storm passed to the east, lightning pulses ripping through the frequencies. The air was cold and dense with dust. I walked through the house in the blue sweatshirt and sweatpants Claire had loaned me, walked through every room, ran my hands over wires strung through the hallways, brushed my fingers over radio tops and the television screen, plowing furrows in the dust. Through the front window, the blue spruce Elizabeth and I had planted gently rocked, raindrops falling from its needles like diamonds.

  I walked up to the study and stopped in the doorway, seeing her in my memory, hunched over the desk, scribbling away, looking back at me with a smile. But all that remained was the empty chair, the powered-up computer on the desk, the radio equipment on the bookcase, and Liz's textbook sky strewn all over the floor.

  And I collapsed in the chair and wept.

  ***

  "What should I do now?" I asked.

  Maria cleared her throat and said softly into the phone: "I think you should do what you need to do, Milton. Have Liz declared deceased, and, don't be angry with me saying this, move forward with your life."