All This Life

Finding the right words to text his parents proves difficult. Or the reason he can’t come home proves impossible to find. An illness will not suffice. This he knows from years of watching him and Tracey with stuffy noses and swollen tonsils, coughing and wheezing on the school bus. His parents won’t accept any sickness as an excuse, their father always prescribing Tylenol as the cure for every ailment.

He sends this message to both his parents’ phones: I got beat up and can’t travel. Sorry.

Does his dad even know how to text? His mom certainly does, often lobbing phrases in the third person to make him feel like crap as he reads them: Mothers would sure love hearing from their sons soon. Or: Experts say that sons should call their moms regularly to lead fulfilling lives. A million others like these. She used to do it over email, a cyber-nag, but last year she switched to an exclusive text-only assault. No one can make you want to cut your heart out quicker than your mother.

But wait.

He’s already made a mistake.

Seconds after sending his text to his parents he realizes his error.

What he should have done is disable the tone that alerts him he’s received a new text, should have minimized any temptations to analyze responses from them.

He’s still standing in his bedroom, right in front of that splayed suitcase, its black material looking like a filleted seal. He’s wondering what you do with this two-ton guilt and how you’re supposed to live through this suffering and endure a life with constant grief, those sounds wheezing in his head like an old coffee maker, and then his BlackBerry beeps.

He knows that the text is from one of his parents, probably his mother, and he knows that reading a message from either of them is a bad idea, and he knows that if he reads it he won’t be able to sever the conversation there, and yet he can’t stop himself. He so badly wishes that he could resist this bait, but he’s not strong enough.

Here’s his mother’s response: What happened, sweetie?

Got mugged. I was punched and kicked a few times. Broken nose. Cracked ribs. Etc.

Hold on. .

There’s about forty-five seconds of nothing, time for Noah911 to put his phone down. Go outside. Take a shower. Eat something. Do fifty pushups. Don’t read any more of their texts. All these directives whirl around his head and yet he does nothing except sit there.

Another alert.

This is your sister’s fucking funeral!

That’s his father’s foray into the conversation, and it sends a shudder through Noah911. A rictus jimmies onto Noah911’s lips. Finding it funny, actually, reading and rereading the inaugural text from his father; he can’t help but hear the message in his father’s voice. Like he’s in the room. Yelling it. That exclamation point is like a lightning bolt. Many a time in Noah911’s formative years he’s seen his father’s exclamation points in person, punching holes in walls, chucking china. He never put his hands on his wife and kids, but he governed through fear and the possibility of violence.

Noah911 texts back: What can I do? I’m injured.

Be injured on the plane. Be hurt here.

I can’t even walk.

Get your ass to the airport!

If he had it to do over again, he might have tried something surgical. An appendectomy. Or an exotic disease, like dengue fever. That’s a thing, right? The kind so contagious that the authorities wouldn’t allow him on a plane for fear of infecting others. He should have thought this through more.

From his father: Call us.

My jaw is sprained and broken nose kills when I try to talk.

Call us!

My jaw is SEVERELY sprained and nose throbs like crazy.

From his mom: We’re worried about you.

And then this from his dad, barely a second later: Prove it.

Prove what?

I want to see your beaten-up face.

Camera on phone is broken.

Then let’s Skype.

No response from Noah911 for over a minute.

From his father: Hellooooo!!!

Noah911 does what he should have done five minutes ago, before this fiasco started. He puts his phone down, actually placing it in the empty suitcase, if only he can send that as his proxy. He turns and leaves the room, the apartment, and heads out for a drink. A glass of vodka. At the very least it gets him away from the phone and the parents and the press conference and the suitcase and the flies.