The Third Fire
(part 4 of 5) © by Quarkscrew Jones
It was freezing that day in Osaka, at the most it was thirty degrees,
and yet he wore open-toe sandals, flip flops we call them in the states. Shower
shoes you wear at the beach, or in the shower at the gym. I thought nothing of
it until the train approached. Watching it stampede toward us, the Japanese
gentleman suddenly dropped his bags, stepped out of his thin shoes and jump in
front of it. Like a flash, his lower body disappeared under the crushing machine
to the tracks below, while the top half of his body popped up to wedge in the
doors.
As we were standing next to him, only Susan and I saw what really happened and she, in two
words, "lost it". She screamed and cried and pulled at her hair. Her eyes were
wild with shock and horror. The Japanese stared silently at her. Thankfully,
Martin was there to hold her. He hadn't seen what we saw, so he was able to
concentrate all his energy on calming her down. Me, I had no Martin, I was the
third peg on this jaunt. Thus, I did what I always do. I suffered in silence,
not commenting, not expressing, no tears. I just stood there, existing in a
calm, somewhat pensive state. To the outside world I appeared soulful and
mature, but inside I was dying, too. After the initial telling of the tale to
horrified friends and family, I never spoke of it again.
Thus, that night in Paris, the night of the third fire, it was
finally my turn to "lose it", to scream and shriek and feel the burning lining
of my gut drip into my knees. Sobbing uncontrollably, I circled my tiny room in
hysterics, not sure what to do or where to go. I fell to my knees and cried like
it was the first time. I cried so hard I vomited and almost blacked out. Never
before had I felt so sick and so alone. Fuck the novel I'd moved here to write;
fuck adventure, and a new languages and all that crap, and fuck Hemingway, too !
I was in pain and I wanted out. Wanted off the roof of that filthy, teeming
Parisian pyre, and also that freezing Japanese train platform. I wanted a fresh
pair of eyes and most of all, I wanted answers. From God. I was so furious.
Damn you, why me?! I screamed. Why twice? Hadn't I seen enough? What
fucking lesson was I supposed to be learning now?!
Because I needed to talk, needed warm and nurturing and companionship, I acted on pure
instinct, and did something I never thought I'd do.
Paris is nine hours ahead of Philadelphia, so my call did not wake
them, but it did shake them. Their daughter, the adventurer, the brave one, the
one with the wit and the good grades, the one who never brought shame to their
door, was screaming, sobbing and losing her mind. It's been said you can't
choose your family and lord knows I've had enough events in my childhood to
rethink the one I inherited, but in the end, if you live long enough and you
keep your heart open, you're rewarded with the answers you seek. And here they
were; my answers, in flesh and blood, disguised as parents.
The lesson I was to learn from that third fire was more of a
reconfirmation: not a lesson at all; rather, it was a reconfirmation of
something I'd always been told and always knew: my parents love me and they will
take care of me whenever I cannot take care of myself. For the next several
hours, they calmed me down by speaking to me, crying with me and sharing their
own stories. In short, they renewed my hope. They couldn't erase what I saw, but
they sure helped to put it into context. They shared stories they'd never told
me before, revealed family secrets and horrors that surely would have gone to
their graves had I not needed to hear them. I wasn't alone, after all. Each of
us, it seemed, had been through some kind of surreal nightmare; the kind of
twisted REM sleep that you just never talk about because you don't think others
will understand.
Well, I understood now and I was deeply humbled. At least my events
had been with strangers. To this day I can't imagine scrapping a friend off a
rice patty in Vietnam or finding my older brother murdered. My father had lived
through all that. And I can't imagine being 17 years old, taking care of a dying
mother, feeding her lunch, going to wash the dishes, and then returning to find
her dead. That was just one of my mother's stories. "We've all been there,"
my father said to me at one point, "whenever you're feeling alone, just come
home."
Nine months later, I did.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
go to part 5...
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