That first moment was like the popping of a can of soda inside my chest — shocking and yet absolutely clear, a prelude to the relief of some bodily requirement to be satiated.
I must have said something because my wife woke up. Perhaps she heard the groan and fizz as I did, but I doubt it. She rolled over, mumbling, eyes still closed. The disruption had lasted just for a moment.
I stood there, frozen in an alarmed Pledge of Allegiance and watched her sleeping face. She looked so peaceful. I hated to disturb her.
By the time my face hit the Berber carpet, I had, for the most part, resigned myself. It was fine. There was nothing to do. I watched my fingers clawing at the little nodules of beige and wondered why our alarm clock had blue digital numbers instead of red. The blue made my fingers look dead already.
My father had died this way. He had collapsed picking the Sunday paper up off the front stoop. Fatal arrhythmia. I was diagnosed ten years ago. Heart disease. Sent to a special doctor. A cardiologist. Coincidentally, my sons pitched in and gave me a computer for my birthday that same year. They included the cost of a class on basic computer usage and the Internet and a year of AOL. They did it because I needed a hobby. I used it to look up the terms the doctor used. Ischemic heart disease. Atherosclerosis. Myocardial infarction. My sons thought I was very progressive. They bragged to their wives (whom I suspect had frowned upon the lavish purchase) that I'd become quite the "surfer."
Sons.
My wife never liked the thing. Said it made the spare bedroom look junky. It did require a shocking tangle of wires and cords and of course it was rather irritating about its clogging up the phone line. I couldn't blame her there.
She'd probably get rid of it.
Or one of my sons could take it back.
I didn't want them to fight over it, though. Then again, they had their own. Maybe neither of them wanted it. In any case, it didn't matter.
God, it was noisy. Miracle it wasn't waking up my wife. We never should have bought in a flight pattern. We wouldn't have if we'd realized. We would have stayed put. Kept the big house for the grandkids. But that wasn't practical. So for seventeen years we'd lived with this infernal noise overhead, this horrific exhalation of aircraft that sounded like the great suffering machines were groaning away on their last breaths. For some reason the thought struck me as funny. I wanted to laugh.
But of course I couldn't.
Since the sound was me.
Once I had gone to the ocean. Only once. I was twenty-four and newly married. No kids. We hadn't taken a honeymoon so when we bought our first car we drove it east, far as you could go, all the way to Atlantic City. There were no casinos then. Just the boardwalk. And big, plush hotels we couldn't afford. We bought a box of salt-water taffy and sat on the sand in our coats and watched the sandpipers run back and forth in the surf. It was cold. October. The ocean was grey and temperamental and the wind numbed our faces. We held hands and watched it, hypnotized. It sounded like the breath of God. That's what my wife said. I remember because as we were leaving she told me to stop one last time and listen in case we might never hear it again. I swept her into my arms like I was some sort of movie star and promised we would. I promised the way a newlywed promises: boldly, as if eternity was possible. We took a few photographs and stayed in a HoJo off the highway on the way home. After that there were kids and jobs and relatives to visit on holidays. Always something else to do. Stupid. We should have gone back. I should have listened more closely while I had the chance. At least I could have downloaded it off the Internet and listened to it. My sons could have showed me how.
They got me speakers, too.