At Sea by Andrew Bennett

In the muted afternoon light that leaked through the curtains high on the cellar wall the old man, sweaty and disoriented, reached out from a nap he had not planned to take. He lurched forward and tumbled headfirst out of his recliner and up against the television, two feet in front. He cursed himself. 

It was too quiet. The TV was off. Was he responsible? He liked the TV on, always. He would mention it to Joan. No. 

Eventually, he brought his legs beneath him and shambled back to the recliner. He fell and sank to full extension. The fabric of the chair had been bright blue when he had purchased and installed it in the other house. Now the blue was grey all over except for the spots where his body met the fabric, which were bald and shining, or broken through. This was his chair. 

He slipped his hand between the cushion and arm on his right side and extracted the tape recorder from within the recess there. In the silence, which he didn’t like, the sound of the record button shocked his ears. He let the tape run a moment before speaking.

“The right leg”­—he paused to peer down at it—“the right leg does not respond. Not well.” He raised a hand to cover his left eye. “The right eye: floaters? Muscae volitantes? Weiss ring on the vitreous humor? No.” 

He stopped recording, rewound for a moment, pressed play. The right eye: floaters? He pressed stop. The sound of his voice was too loud.

He fast-forwarded and began again. “The right leg does not respond well at all. The right eye is dimming. Stool: meager. Urine: same. Appetite: same.” 

He stopped the recording again abruptly. Something was off. Something, something: he found it. 

“The television was shifted upon impact. Judging from the indentation, three inches approx. Was the recliner shifted also? Will have to reassess.”

He gathered himself and stood, then paused to survey. From left to right: chifferobe, sideboard, settee, grandfather clock, whatnot, armoire, rolltop desk. 1923, 1938, 1929, 1903, 1910, 1919, 1925. Beyond the small and shabby island populated by the recliner and TV stood a gleaming navy of their things. Joan’s things, well-kept. 

“The right leg is responding, now. Standing it responds. The recliner was purchased in 1964. It was not shifted, after all.”

They were all at right angles, except for the TV. He stepped towards it, lowered himself upon his right knee. Three inches, yes. It could be done. 

He reached behind to pull it forward, and did so with ease, guiding the front of the set to settle back into the cleft in the carpet. 

Triumphant, he gripped the TV and hoisted himself upwards with such force that he lost his balance and went crashing backwards, into the chifferobe. It did not shift, he was sure.

“Joan! Joan!” There were footsteps on the stairs beyond, someone racing down the hall. He did not face the door. “Joan, get me up, I’ve fallen!”

The steps stopped in the doorway. It was not Joan.

“Hello? Who’s there? Cole? Tommy. Tommy that’s you, isn’t it?”

The boy did not respond. He stepped forward to see the old man better, standing well to his blind side.

“Tommy, you must answer your father! Go get your mother, you can see I need help, can’t you?”

The boy turned and fled. The old man could hear him charging the stairs, mounting them without slowing. Tommy, yes. He was sure.

Above him he heard movement and the noise of voices, and he wondered again who had turned off the TV. 

The movement and voices reached the stairs and descended, then entered the room in a rush.

“Ay, Mister Howard, what has happened, are you okay? You must be more careful, I have Mani here with me today and so much to do before Mister Thomas come home, so no more falling, okay?”

The boy from before was not Tommy. The woman upon him was not Joan. She was squat and dark and her face was full of concern. She lifted him up easily and sat him back down in his recliner.

“Ah yes, thank you Lupe,” he said. “Do you see the remote control? I can’t find it.”

She did and passed it to him, then left. The boy slipped out with her. 

The old man turned on the television. He turned up the volume and let the sound fill the space. Then he turned the television off and reached for his tape recorder.

“The right eye: floaters? No. The right leg clearly cannot be trusted. The chifferobe could have been damaged. Joan’s mother, whose name was Helen Turner, purchased the chifferobe in 1923, when Joan was seven years old.”

“Nine.”

He stopped recording. He waited, then pressed the button again.

“Nine. When Joan was nine years old.”

He rewound the tape and played it back. Was there a voice? He wasn’t sure. 

In a rush he turned the television on, turned up the volume. He closed his eyes. The day darkened. After a while he turned the TV off.

He stood to survey. 1923. The woman Turner, his mother-in-law, had never known him. She died in 1935. 1934?

“35.”

35. He met Joan a little less than two years later. An old twenty. Not old: aged. Too mature for twenty. It had been hard to make her smile, at first.

“But I did, didn’t I?” He directed his question at the chifferobe. “I could make her smile. A little silly, sure. Whatever it took.”

The chifferobe did not respond. The settee, however, was much more accommodating. 1929. 

“My dear,” he said to it, “you can’t imagine the dream I had. The boys were lying flat on cracked and broken ground, naked, watching clouds that passed behind me. I was hovering invisible above them. Only I could see the ants start welling up from the cracks in the ground and rise to where they lay. So young and perfect! Untouched! I screamed but couldn’t materialize, I pitched forward and woke up here . . . “

He trailed off. Were these floaters inside or out? He should have turned the volume up again. The light was softening, and the shadowed spaces between pieces yawned like tunnels for his mind. 1929.

“When Tommy gets here,” she said, from just beyond the whatnot, “you must remember to be brave.”

He bristled. “I am always brave.”

She laughed quietly in response. 

There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, a man’s tread. 

“Dad, what’s this about you falling over?”

This was Tommy then. Was he sure? So tall!

“Are you okay, Dad?”

He rewound a bit, and played.

The right eye: floaters?

“Do you hear another voice here, Tommy? Can you?”

They listened together. Nine.

“Dad, why don’t you sit down. It’s so dim in here.” He went towards the light switch.

The old man reacted at once. “No! No lights!”

“Why not?”

“No lights.” 

Tommy shrugged, and sat down on the settee. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll sit in the dark.”

They sat in silence for a moment. It was dark. Tommy coughed..

“Why do you stay down here in the dust, Dad? You have the whole house to live in, and you insist on staying in this room all day.”

He took offense. “I prefer to be near my things. Your mother’s things.”

Tommy paused a moment. “You remember about tomorrow, right?”

“Remember about tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

He did not remember about tomorrow.

Tommy sighed. “All this stuff goes tomorrow. Into storage. I’m going to open this up for you, make it suitable. Move your bed down here. Make an ensuite.” He paused. “We’ll leave the recliner, okay?”

“1923, 1938, 1929, 1903, 1910, 1919, 1925.” The old man took a breath and started louder. “1923, 1938—”

“Yes,” said Tommy. “Yes. But even so, it goes tomorrow.” And he stood and left.

The sharpness of his leaving set all the floaters spinning. The old man stood to survey, and turned to address the room.

“Don’t be afraid,” he started, then paused, unsure of how to continue. The chifferobe was dismissive, while the settee needed comfort. He decided to sit on it.

He started forward but realized too late that the right leg would not respond. He toppled forward into the sideboard. He heard the tape recorder as it skidded away. 

He did not cry out. He lay in twilight for some time. The pieces whispered to him with the voices they’d absorbed. He reached out to hold the sideboard and clung to it like a man lost at sea. 1938. He was sure. His mother coughed, and read the paper to him from her place at the table. Joan was there, too, but silent.

The button clicked beyond. He heard himself: The right eye is dimming. The button clicked to stop. Fast forward: Will have to reassess. The button clicked again.

“Tommy? Cole?” 

The boy stepped forward. 

“Help me to the recliner. Please.”

He was nine, but strong. The old man leaned his full weight upon the boy’s shoulder. He guided the old man to collapse back into his chair. 

“And the remote? We must turn on the TV,” the old man said. “We must turn up the volume.”

The remote was nowhere to be found. The boy moved to turn on the light to search for it, but the old man grabbed his arm. 

“No light!”

The boy shook the old man off and fled, the tape recorder still clutched in his hand.

“You were too rough with him.”

“Boys need a strong hand, sometimes.”

“And you are strong. And brave.”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“You don’t need the television.”

“No. Not really, I suppose.”

“Or the recorder.”

“I just need to keep my place.”

“Yes.”

The thought struck him: had the sideboard been shifted? He struggled up to see, but quickly realized that now neither leg responded. 

“It would help,” he admitted towards the sideboard, “if the lines were straight. It would make it easier to navigate.”

He squinted. In the near darkness the pieces were being swallowed up and lost in a rising, murmuring tide. She was wrong. He did need the television. 

“1938. My mother bought it. Ordered away for it. It stood in the dining room until she died in 1971. That’s when it came to us. Went to the dining room in our house. The old house. The boys were careful with it, I made sure. 1971 until . . .”

He paused to think and found he couldn’t. The murmurs grew but he found the strength to look anyway, into the sea tunnels where he knew the pieces were. The floaters were outside his eyes, he was sure. 1938. His mother. Joan. Just there. 

“Mister Howard, what happened? Why is Mani so upset? He says you scared him.”

She flipped the switch and the world exploded into light. He shrieked as the sea was sucked inward. The chifferobe was incredulous, ashamed of him. The settee was heartbroken. He could see them all, but the murmuring continued. So did the floaters, treading water, awash in his eyes. He was sure of it all, and he shrieked again. 

“Turn off the light! Turn up the volume! Please!”

Andrew Bennett

Image: Dictating machine with tape casette. Black suqre device with a little window to see the tape. Gophi, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons