THE APPARITION
(Original Image by Roan Lavery)
The man’s wife tells him to go to bed when she puts the kid down to sleep, and so, once they’re gone, the man gets dressed and walks out the front door. He doesn’t know where he’s going. There’s Old Sac, the bars along the river. There’s Midtown with all those fancy restaurants. Doesn’t matter. Never did. He’s going. He’s turning and has no say in the matter. He approaches a woman at the corner. She is middle-aged and beautiful, warmly wrapped for the late winter cold. She glances at him with an uneasy look, and the man stops several feet away and waits for the light to change. How interesting, the man thought, she must see me as a threat, a murderer or a rapist perhaps, maybe an apparition of an unfortunate past. How easy it would be for her if I didn’t arrive at all. How comfortable she would be, and her thoughts would resume unabated without a second thought to the lumbering shadow behind her.
The light changes, and the woman makes a hard right as the man continues forward. Where? There’s no telling. He keeps going where his legs take him. They lift him over and around a homeless man passed out on the sidewalk. How interesting, the man thought, this man is freezing to death on the sidewalk while I am relatively warm in my faux leather jacket. Perhaps if I wasn’t here or anywhere, there would have been an extra coat for him. Perhaps if I had been removed from the chain of events this coat upon my back would have found its way to his and saved him. Perhaps. The man reached into his jacket pocket for cash, but found nothing, so he continued on without saying a word.
There was a park, a capital building glowing beneath the moon. There were trees, trees, trees. And then, at the corner, an old man, maybe 80, looking out the window, wrinkled, pensive, contemplating something the man wish he knew. He looked thin. He trembled. He seemed fast approaching Death. Perhaps if I hadn’t been born, the man thought, this old man would have more resources available to him, whether that be healthcare, prescriptions, or just the peace of an empty street. Instead, I, the young whippersnapper, slinks along at night, reminding him of all he once was and all he will never again be. Perhaps if I were an apparition, he would look right through me and smile as though the young world had been beaten into submission to wake up early and contribute to a better society.
Down the street. Down down down. The man lets his feet do the thinking, the walking, the decision making. He’s along for the ride. He sees a child waiting for his mother in front of a coffee shop. He thinks to himself, how interesting, I could tuck this boy under my arm and run for the hills before she turned around. The boy makes eye contact as the man approaches, holds it effortlessly. The man thinks, I could also jump in the middle of traffic and give him an experience he wouldn’t soon forget. Perhaps 30 years later, the boy would tell his therapist, if only that man hadn’t been, he wouldn’t be so out of sorts. Instead, he lost his job, his apartment, his wife and son, and his own mother won’t return his calls. The man laughed loud enough in passing that the mother turned and drew the boy in close. He turned up the next block and headed home, laughing the whole way. He should have gone to bed like his wife told him. The world was no place for an apparition like him.
