Thirteen Ways of Looking at Twilight
1
Like many stops on the way down, it was an epiphany. For one thing, he wasn’t hot, and for another, it was only in that one place.
The sweat he had been feeling for several days, he realized, couldn’t be sweat.
The disturbing thought sent his hand reflexively to the base of his neck, then to his eyes for a quick inspection. No, not blood. It looked like water. He rubbed his fingers together. Felt like water. He sniffed his fingers. No smell—like water. He ran his fingers up his neck to a wet clump of hair. Nope, couldn’t be sweat. He could feel it trickling out. From what?
Bathroom mirror. No cut, no puncture, didn’t look like any kind of injury. Just a pink miniature volcano secreting moisture, wetting the surrounding hair and dribbling down his neck.
He parted the hair around it, then grabbed his razor and clumsily tried to shave away a little circle. He got a round band-aid from the band-aid box and pressed it firmly over the place. For a few minutes that appeared to have done the job—until he noticed the band-aid bulging a bit in the center and leaking around the edges. He got three more round band-aids and surrounded the first one with them. For a few minutes that too appeared to have worked. But by the time he noticed new bulges and new seepage, he was already distracted by another leak, on his left forearm.
He didn’t take half measures this time. He found a gauze pad and fastened it tightly with adhesive tape. When the pad got soggy he stuck another one on top of it and wound the adhesive tape all the way around his arm.
The makeshift tourniquet held. For a few minutes.
Mid-afternoon. The Laz-Y-Boy was calling. He settled in, began to drift away, trying to ignore the new moisture on his neck and the sopping wet gauze on his arm. Too much to fight—he let himself snooze, seeing a menagerie of animals with human faces in his hypnagogic reverie, at last returning to waking consciousness to find a spreading wet place on the sweat pants of his right leg, and an eruption on his bare left foot.
He used up all the gauze and most of the adhesive tape, and thought about calling Doris and asking her to pick up some more from The Dollar Tree on her way home from Garden Club—but, really, it would be better if he could leave her out of this. It was a weighty thought, but if he left now he could be back before her, get himself taped up, and keep it to himself.
So that’s what he did, but it didn’t work.
When Doris got home, he had sprung five new leaks. She yelped and took him straight to the doctor.
“You’re leaking, I’m afraid,” the doctor told him. “There’s nothing I can do. At least you won’t need sponge baths. Stay hydrated.”
“Mercy,” said Doris.
* * *
The days and weeks went by. New leaks spouted regularly—so many, all over his body, he found himself in an unending battle. He avoided people. Leaving the house for any reason was like a mission to Neptune, and if anybody were to drop by what would they think when they saw him like this—wrapped in gauze bandages and taped like a mummy, roofing tarp on the furniture, wet towels lying all over the house?
But there was nothing he could do about the grandkids. They came to visit, gave him water to drink, then laughed as the water spurted out of him like a garden sprinkler.
“That’s enough for today,” their mother would tell them.
And they would chant, “One more glass! One more glass!”
He didn’t feel ill, just tired—but he had already been tired. Maybe just more tired than usual.
What was Mother Nature trying to tell him?
If this is the end, he thought, I’m starting all my bad habits back.
And spent long stretches of the damp afternoons trying to remember what they were.
March 11, 2022