In Laymon's Terms

I was almost alone with only a street sweeper, a few early morning commuters, and paper delivery trucks to accompany me in my misery. Even so, the quietness of the city during these moments was the therapy my over-medicated body required. Like a psychic salve, the very lack of humanity stilled jangling nerves that were too much like the frenzied traffic of midday.

Fourteen blocks later, shoulders hunched, eyes down and hands shoved deep within my pockets, I noticed the man standing upon a stepladder in the middle of an empty sidewalk. I slowed, then shook my head to give the image a chance to dissipate before I actually began believing it, certain I was in the midst of one my thrice-weekly flashbacks.

I closed my eyes.

But when I reopened them the man was still there, now reaching into the air with his right hand. His face held a smile of such splendor it made my heart ache. I remembered one of my more lucid moments, when I’d worn that very same smile as I placed my five-year-old son upon the bus on his first day of school.

Above me on the stepladder, the man’s gaze alternated between joy and sadness, all the while spotting the concrete sidewalk with tears. He mumbled to the air, threw back his head and laughed.

I slowed, curious about a man whose dementia seemed to match my own. My city-raised instinct for tragedy was well-honed and I knew that behind the precariously perched man atop the ladder in the empty city morning there was a story. Still, rather than disturb him, I would have stood there and allowed the man his privacy as I tried to imagine what thing could have driven him to such an end.

Ultimately, he over-balanced and fell hard to the ground. I hurried over and offered my hand, but jerked it back as he began first giggling, then laughing, until his uproarious guffaws echoed down the empty street.

Although my empathy was strong, I have to admit that discovering somebody on the higher end of the Fucked Up Scale made me feel better. Sandy-haired, blue eyes, slim with a blue pinstriped button-down shirt and blue jeans, he seemed to be just an average Joe.

He could be me.

He could be an accountant.

Just goes to show, I suppose. The domesticated were so terrified of the squeegee men, the homeless, and the crack heads. It would rock their world to know that death and insanity preferred not to dress down.

Although I felt guilty staring at this spectacle of a man as he fought with his personal demons, I was unable to move on. I was too curious. So I stood there and empathized, my arms askew and ready, not knowing if in the next instant I would be helping or warding off an impending blow. He saved me from my indecision.

“Have you ever seen what happens to a body after a long fall?”

Before I could answer the strange question, he continued.

“People think that skin is such a weak and tender thing. A husk too fragile to contain the incredible miracle of life. Sure, we all remember the skinned knees and the stitches of our youth, but falling is so much different. God or whatever malicious being created us knew what He was doing. One would think a person would explode, you know?”

He rolled into a kneeling position. His hand caressed a section of the sidewalk as if it were a child’s cheek, and he stared at a spot high in the air, seeing something I couldn’t. I was uncomfortable, embarrassed, and the humanity in me demanded I walk away. But the voyeur within took charge and held me fast.

“I used to be a father,” he sighed. “There’s something special about being a father. The perfect love you see in the most casual glance of a child. The knowledge that your every word, every action, has tremendous consequence. Being a father is all about love. It’s a scary love, you know?”

“Yes,” I said before I even realized the word had escaped.

He turned and stared at me as if he was just realizing he had an audience. The pained icy-blue of his eyes pierced me and we shared an intimacy that sliced far deeper than love. I didn’t even breathe.

Why had I spoken?

Why?

It was the Scary Love comment, of course—such a perfect description for the terrifying reality of fatherhood. So much could go wrong. You didn’t need to be there. A father’s influence transcended time, space, and reason. Scary Love indeed. The tragedy, of course, was that the child didn’t know enough to be scared as well.

The man’s eyes were now focused firmly upon me as if he was reading my thoughts. He smiled wistfully and nodded, then gazed up at the high windows of the thirty-story building behind us.

“You really never know what’s going to happen. You can plan. You can sign them up for the best schools. Buy them the finest clothes. Partition them from the vulgarities of life. But after all that, you better be sure to pray that whatever fickle entity is in charge of the universe that day is busy enough to leave you alone.”