Melody for a Place

Ross Gormley

 

I’m walking down the dunes right now. It’s cold and windy, mid-May on Long Beach Island, two weeks before the official summer season starts. The traffic lights blink yellow. Cars pass and go. Orange lights overhead dot the streets, cast light onto dark facades, blackened windows. No one is home.

I’m walking with my best friend, AJ, who just seven months ago returned to a civilian life after six years in the Air Force. Our sandals sit at the street, our bare feet are wet, stuck with sand. Traffic lights rock with each gust. He’s talking about suicide.

AJ has never talked to me about suicide. This surprises me because I’m his best friend. And as his best friend, he’s talked to me about his night terrors, his PTSD, his hypervigilance, his latent-inhibition syndrome. These are conditions he owns—not on purpose. He lives with them, has to make room for them. But I never want my best friend to take ownership of the word he keeps saying: making it “his suicide.”

If there is a time and a place, I admit, this is it. We are alone, drunk, walking, and talking. We are walking down the dunes right now, have reached a stretch of hard-packed sand the color of a cigarette butt, no longer sink with each step. We’ve spent the day together, driving five hours from Connecticut. We took, it seems, every wrong turn, welcomed each mistake. We have no schedule here. Eventually we will sleep. At some point we’ll eat, drink. And we’ll spend time at the beach, looking at the water, nursing beers, glasses of whisky.

For the weekend, this island is not so much a vacation destination as it is a museum. Exhibit A: an indelible piece of AJ’s childhood. Exhibit B: a relic of our friendship, twenty years in the making. And exhibit C: vestiges of my father, whom AJ loved and called Uncle Bruce. Uncle Bruce, who died of cancer two years and one month ago. Uncle Bruce, whose ashes I scattered two years and two weeks ago on this very beach we are walking from.

Perhaps AJ has come to terms with another finality: the death of my father. AJ was away in Afghanistan when a doctor diagnosed my father with cancer. And administered chemotherapy. And diagnosed him with cancer again. And administered radiation. And diagnosed him with neuropathy and dysautonomia. And finally death. It did come as a surprise to AJ.

Perhaps AJ, by walking on this beach, just got the closure he wanted. And part of that is a memory of why he called my father his uncle—as in, my father acted as a sort of father figure to him, without the sternness of a typical father, and with the openness of a friend. AJ often e-mailed my father, expressing concern, anxiety, peace. And my father copied and commented on each sentence:

The breakup has started to kind of affect me, after a short period of not caring so much.
My father: Time erases everything. It was good while it lasted.

But it’s still really easy to be content, especially around other people and when I take trips with people around Germany.
My father: You are a naturally happy contented person – fortunate!

And it’s kind of fun to get lost in work and then come home to relax in my underwear.
My father: I know the feeling well. I think you could be happy almost anywhere anytime. I got a kick of how you were happy in a combat zone. I laughed thinking of it. You said “we were in combat but it didn’t last long … Then I came home and relaxed.”
      You are
            so lucky

After six years away, AJ and I are revisiting a tradition, trying it on, letting alcohol bring up a mirage of past feelings, experiences, memories—every inch of this island layered with story. That corner where AJ’s skateboard wheel hit the curb and sent him flying. The street I crossed all by myself at the age of three. The outdoor shower I had my first kiss in. The steep dunes that acted as a signpost for my father’s strength as the cancer wracked his body, with his huffing and puffing, his frequent breaks, his small, shuffling steps.

There is the diner we got the fisherman’s special. There is the video game arena. Miniature golf. A dock we used to drink under. There is my father, eating ice cream with us, laughing at comedies. There is AJ, before his deployment, sitting on a chair, getting a tattoo of waves, sand, and sun below his left collarbone. There is me, away from the island, communicating between the two, forwarding e-mails.

AJ and I are past the dunes now, walking on the street. Shards of recycled glass in the pavement glow in time with the traffic lights. They appear as blinking nodes, lit from below. We are drunk. Images, objects, feelings flood our brains, project this mirage onto the barren streets. I imagine what this was once like, walking to and from the beach before the war, before my father died, before things like tradition had to be revisited.

Our brains are flooded, and we are walking on the street and AJ is talking about suicide. He is talking about suicide and I am listening because my father listened. And in the absence of my father, I must now do my best to copy and comment on everything he says.

Imagine a triangle with my father on top. Imagine what happens when the top of the triangle falls down and breaks into ash. The bottom two points can no longer look up, but only at each other. After six years, AJ and I—we are revisiting this whole friendship thing again.

AJ talks about suicide like he has compartmentalized it as a piece of his past, an exhibit he may revisit with me here and now, which pisses me off. It took here and now and the memory of my father and this place for him to tell me. When my father always allowed us and encouraged us to be vulnerable. When at the time AJ was having these feelings, I was interviewing him about his PTSD and hypervigilance. And this would have been a convenient time for him to say, Hey, here, right now, during this interview, one month back home, living with my parents, I’m feeling these feelings and we’re already talking about PTSD. I thought my best friend should know, this might be serious, my life might be at stake. Had I known then I wouldn’t have joked so much about him living with his parents. I would have screamed over Skype for his mom or dad to hear. Help him, help your son, I’d say.

I’m wondering if this, here and now—we are walking down the road; it is cold and windy—is an accident. Like the words are slipping out of his mouth, over his lower lip, onto his shirt and into my ear. An accident like the one in Vermont, when two years into his training, he kicked me in a hotel. We were sleeping side by side. Our friends were drunkenly sprawled all around us on couches and floors. We were sleeping and he kicked me. Night terrors, he said, ever since SERE training. SERE being Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—which I find fitting, because now in civilian life, with no enemy, all those things seem to still be going on within my best friend. As in: in his civilian life, AJ was struggling to survive because he wanted to escape. Fortunately, he could muster up enough resistance to not act on his life-evasion plan, which is a shoddy term for suicide.

My point: AJ has been trained in many ways: to kill, to want to live and survive, to want to help his brothers, to want to live to kill. He can do things that I never dreamed of, like squat some three-hundred pounds, or talk to planes while they are flying. And while they are flying very fast he tells them when and where to shoot and bomb. But for whatever reason, he cannot come to me for help and instead he thinks: kill, survive, escape, resist. And he weighs each one and asks: What has my training taught me?

But what do I know? I never fought abroad. And I was never trained to fight. In those six years AJ enlisted, I went through college and got a job. I was trained in my own way. As in, before I make a decision I ask myself, Hmm, what has my four years of a liberal arts education taught me about this? In the very least, I am more circumspect, conscious of my subjectivity. And so I add this disclaimer: all of what I know is gleaned from the changes that I’ve seen in my best friend. And what he told me, which, I would say, is apparently not enough.

I hope when my best friend contemplates suicide he still considers my father’s training. Training—to be vulnerable, compassionate, empathetic—which may have gotten him killed in Afghanistan. But training—to be honest, communicative, self-assured—which may save his life here. My father enforced in us the strictest of regimens: eat lots of fiber, be here now, always laugh with yourself. He led by example. Once on a car ride he told us about his experience with gonorrhea. We laughed and laughed. Laughed at his swelling, his discharge, his burning. He said he muttered to his penis “c’mon!” and we laughed again. And then he mentioned he contracted it from his fiancé in the week before they were to get married. And before divorce was even possible, they got divorced, which is just called breaking up. My father had no problem appearing sad and lonely in front of us.

We are walking. Orange lights hum overhead. The ocean surf stirs behind us: a muffled crashing, a soft, deadening hiss—then the wave receding—and repeat. If any one friend will help you and listen to you, let it be me, I want to say to him. Please review my necessary qualifications. I’m sure you already know, but we have been best friends since second grade. Remember we used to wear identical tie-dye t-shirts together? And those sweaters people call drug rugs? Remember long car rides with my father? Remember at 3 a.m. asking who the hell are all these people on the road? And my father, your Uncle Bruce, saying something wise like, “Well AJ, it takes a lot of people to run this world.”

We are walking. Accidents are spilling out of my best friend’s mouth and I’m afraid he will look down. He will look down only to see this mess he’s made on his shirt. And he’ll think, Man, this is embarrassing, I need to clean this shit up. But before he can continue, we are bathed in bright white light. Our mirage is broken. Our pupils shrink, contract. The world around us becomes darker, smaller. The headlights in front of us switch off. Our four friends step out of the car, greet us. Cue excitement. Cue hellos. Cue alcohol. Cue beach chairs. Cue starlight. Cue nostalgia. Cue shenanigans. Cue drunken sleep. Cue brunch. Cue hair of the dog. Cue beach. Cue surfing. Cue sitting, staring. The whole time thinking: we were walking and talking and getting somewhere. And now I have this admission. I have his shame. And I’m not sure what to do with it. I didn’t even have time to copy and comment.

▱

I don’t see AJ after that weekend. We travel many states away. But I keep thinking: suicide for my best friend—it’s compartmentalized, a thing of the past. Our friends interrupted, and that’s okay. But what if? The logic being: What if I don’t reach out to my best friend and he thinks, Well, that’s the last time I confess something like this only to not be supported! And he falls back into depression and he kills himself? I think: all of that. I think: that’s my worst fear. I think: what if I have the power to save a life? I think: what if? The what if seems to come in the voice of my father, channeling me, saying: hell with decorum, hell with masculinity, hell with awkwardness. I skirt around this concern. I don’t want to pry. I don’t want to be the serious one in a non-serious, on-the-surface context. AJ can appear so hardened sometimes.

Sitting at my computer, I consider the power of responsibility, of knowledge, of vulnerability. And I write the e-mail. The subject is “suicide.” No, delete that. The subject is “that night at LBI.” No, still too serious. The subject is “talkey talk about serious things.” That’s funny and light enough. I begin to write:

We had that conversation in LBI, we were walking back from the beach. And you mentioned suicide. Perhaps just as a thought. And this is in the past, but you still mentioned it. I wasn’t offended you didn’t tell me, more concerned. No, come to think of it, I’m your best friend, I was and am offended. I thought I was prying to begin with, and I don’t want to pry now, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t send this. Sorry if this is too heavy to bring up again, but please, please talk to me next time you have those thoughts. Your suicide would crush me beyond understanding. Don’t bottle that shit up.

A day later, he responds:

It’s a good move on your part to have brought that out because recently there have been some little struggles – nothing major – but struggles nonetheless. Struggles with my thoughts, the whole readjustment process, and maybe some mild depression if any at all. Long story short, I told Erica about them and had a little bit of a breakdown to her late last week. I decided I’m going to take advantage of the VA mental healthcare program and talk to someone about all of this. Had Erica not been here, your email (timed perfectly I might add) would have pulled me out of the dark, so you should know that. Prying isn’t bad.

▱

An interesting thing happened when I scattered my father’s ashes on the beach. I had thought in the weeks leading up to my pilgrimage to the shore that my father’s ashes would dilute into the great big mass of sand. And that was the point of scattering them there: the natural world would do the living for him, pick up where he left off. But in a strange twist of alchemy, the opposite happened. The symbol of my father’s ashes proved so potent, his finality so absolute, that it had the power to turn all of the beach into his ashes. From the five-foot circumference of the initial scattering, my father’s ashes had come to stand for all eighteen miles of shoreline. I had never imagined symbols could be so powerful, capable of such transference. And I realized, walking its shoreline, that we supply their energy, imbuing meaning where needed, when needed.

I often wonder what Long Beach Island would be like divorced of its meaning: its beaches, roads, and waves sanitized of symbolism. Free from the weight of symbols, would it float in the air? Would the hulking mass of land hover magically above the water? I have tried to wash this place clean, to approach the sand for sand and not as my father’s ashes. It is not that it hurts to see all the symbolism. I just wonder if I can be happy or happier without it, living in the total present, everything light and sunny.

But I always fail. From the house I walk in bliss, in presence, bathed under sunlight, and then I step onto the sand. The color of salt and pepper, its grains stick to my feet, ankles, legs, and I think this is the crack where meaning seeps out. And when I sit, the wall breaks, I cannot hold it back any longer. I am again in a world of abstraction.

When I consider AJ’s admission, and the alchemy needed to turn an entire beach into ash, I think: this must be the place. This must be the place where the potency and meaning of symbols are inevitable, sweeping—so overwhelming and profound that my best friend can go against his training and muster the courage to say the word suicide.

 

Ross Gormley currently lives, writes, and teaches in Boston. He holds an MFA from University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a BA from Wesleyan University. His fiction appears in Redivider Journal, and he received Honorable Mention in the 2018 AWP Intro Journals Project for his nonfiction work. This is his first nonfiction publication.