From the book: THE DAY WE BLEW UP THE CAT: And other stories from a normal childhood (here’s the Amazon link)
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I’m running.
It’s August and it’s the Berkshires and I’m having the time of my life thinking only of jumping into that deep blue swimming pool so I run as fast as my nine year-old legs can carry me through the lobby of the resort and then I turn and race through the restaurant where I see far off my cousins jumping and splashing so I pump my little arms up and down and dream of the perfect cannonball and I never see the sliding glass door.
I fly past a waitress and she sees the tragedy a moment before it happens and she screams and drops a tray of wine glasses and in that tiny instant I wonder why she would do that on such a nice day.
I hear glass shatter.
Feel glass shatter.
And I’m blown backward.
The images from that day are like snapshots taken with a camera flash—glints and fragments; disjointed, disconnected, hot, burning moments where nothing moves and everything happens all at once.
I see my bare feet in a sea of shining slivers.
Shards hanging like glinting daggers above me from the busted plate glass door.
Crimson, dripping.
Me, dripping.
Into the dark red carpet the drops disappear. Maybe they aren’t real. Maybe this isn’t happening. I just want to go swimming.
I hear shouts.
“Don’t move!”
The sound of shoes, of crunching. Feel hands on me. Many voices, talking, calling out.
Then I’m sitting on some steps and I see white towels and I feel them being pressed all over me and they’re all turning bright red.
More crimson drops disappear into crimson carpeting.
In the distance I hear a rotary phone being dialed quickly—zzzzip, clickety, clickety, zzzzip, clickety clickety clickety….
A car horn blows in the parking lot. Then more horns. Then all the horns on all the cars. The horns scream out the alarm to my father who is across the valley hiking on an old ski slope, enjoying this late summer day.
Then I feel my Mom’s voice at the back of my neck; her breath warm, soothing.
As I sit, dripping and oozing.
Sure, confident, and calm, she holds what’s left of my ear to the side of my head with yet another white towel.
“You. Are. Okay.”
She whispers each word by itself, each with its own ending period, as if by sheer force of punctuation she can make her sliced-up little boy whole again.
I’m being carried now. Voices shouting. Doors held open. Sliding into the car. I’m a gooey, slippery mess. But no one cares. There are so many towels.
Driving very fast.
Mom holds my left earlobe in her lap, wrapped in a tissue with an ice cube.
Then I’m lying on a stainless table.
Fluorescent lights buzz.
A big white sheet is pulled over me and holes are cut into it with scissors. A hole goes over each laceration—a patchwork of windows to see and stitch through. I stare out as if through Swiss cheese.
I’m at a tiny country clinic and the doctor is a kind lady and she talks to me so gently as she arranges her tools.
“I hear you have pet snakes!” she says, feigning great enthusiasm.
Numbing pricks of Novocain, then needle and thread—pulling me back together.
Quiet now. Very warm. No more shouting. No more pain. Just dull numbness. And I’m falling asleep, dreaming of the perfect cannonball.
Needle and thread. Pulling me back together.
I. Am. Okay.
Over forty-five years have passed since that terrible day. The fear and pain have long receded and I rarely think of the wine glasses and the towels and the shouts and the crimson drops. But sometimes, in the shower or at the beach, I catch a glimpse of white, rubbery scar tissue, and the images come flying back. But, like frames clipped from a film, they have no motion—they’re just slices of time and try as I might I can’t run them together. I can’t play the movie. Except for one scene—a scene that, oddly, I never saw.
I am sitting on those steps, being held together by strangers, looking down and watching my own life leak onto the floor. And out of sight beyond the dripping shards, on that hill far across the stretching valley, sprinting through the tall grass as fast as his legs can carry him, arms pumping and racing toward the blaring car horns, I see my father running.