The History of Luminous Motion Read Online Free PDF Page B

Meanwhile the ruptured
gelatin Seconal capsules lay scattered on a sheet of Kleenex on the desk in my
room.
    I
finished my diet soda and went in to see how he was doing. He looked warm and
peaceful, his face flushed and puffy, his vital bodily organs sailing along gently
and intrepidly and slow. All the long steel kitchen knives were unsharpened and
dully glimmering in the kitchen cabinets. There was no heavy cord or rope
anywhere to be found, and though I suspected there might be some in the
basement, it was dark down there, cold and damp, and I wasn’t wearing shoes. Then,
like weather, I felt it, just the heavy simplicity of it, a faint steel resonance
underneath Pedro’s bed. For a while I stood and appreciated that strange,
almost tactile presence. It was very solid. It was useful and perfectly
designed. It had been there all along. And clearly it would do the job.
    After
a while I pulled Pedro’s toolbox from under the bed where it waited for me like
history. I lifted it to the foot of the mattress. The toolbox contained
hammers, screwdrivers, ratchets, Allen wrenches, hacksaws and spare, gleaming new
replacement hacksaw blades. I knew that Pedro wanted a world as secure as the
things he constructed in the backyard, a world with perfectly articulated joints
and level, sanded surfaces. I knew that Pedro deserved a world like the worlds
he built out there, like the worlds he built inside himself and Mom. “Death is
the hard song, Pedro,” I told him. “We only sing it once, and none of us ever
sings it exactly right.”
    Even
as I inaugurated my secret ceremonies of redemption that night, I knew
something vaster and more important than myself was responsible for all my
actions. Me, Mom, Pedro, and Mom’s vast world were all just fragments of a
process that would soon consume us all. I didn’t want to give into that
process, you see. I wanted to leave something behind, like the pyramids of
Egypt, or the heads on Mount Rushmore. I wanted to build something formidable
and good for all of us, but especially for Pedro. All that long night as I
feverishly worked, what I wanted more than anything was to build something for
Pedro that would last forever.

LIGHT
    __________

 
 

 
 
 
    6

 
    I thought when Mom saw
what I had done to Pedro she might stop loving me, but from that night forward
she may have started loving me even more. When she emerged expressionlessly
from the master bedroom I was sitting on the living room sofa, gently stroking
my wet clean hair with a brown towel, still stippled and muggy after my long
mournful bath. She didn’t pause or speak to me. She just began packing our few
belongings into pillowcases, and after a while I dressed and helped her carry
everything out to the garage where our old Rambler had sat gathering dust these
many months, sluggish and thick with its unstirred oils and rusty water. It
started up on Mom’s first try. Then she held down the accelerator for a while
and we sat there sleepily in the dark garage, staring out at the brighter and
more opaque darkness beyond the roar of our Rambler’s V-8. We were lifting off.
In a moment, we would be hurtling through space. Mom released the emergency
brake and the V-8 subsided to a rough, hesitant idle. Then we glided down the
long cement driveway while Pedro lay asleep in his calm and remorseless home,
dreaming his dreams of barbiturates, beer and the soft biting blades of tools
and things. God, I was filled with light that night. I was filled with Mom’s voice
and the very light of her. We were moving again. We would never die. We would
travel together forever in the world of inexplicit light, Mom and I.
    “The
history of motion is that luminous progress men and women make in the world
alone,” Mom said. “We’re moving into sudden history now, baby. That life men
lead and women disavow, the sure and certain sense that nothing is wrong, that
life does not beat or pause, that the universe expands relentlessly. You