Final Call
The screen flickered in the hush of enveloping dark,
Michael Douglas pacing, his fate unraveling—
Fatal Attraction, a movie about consequence,
its shadows pressing forward.
But beneath the flickering flames, something was wrong,
settling into my gut like a held breath,
bending the air—quiet rupture, breath held too long.
Five minutes home, five minutes into loss.
Five minutes stretched thin and hollow,
filled with the weight of dread and waiting,
filled with the road wounding back to her—
wounds layered in time, mapped upon fragile feet,
circling through lineage, waiting in blood.
Filled with my world shifting.
My world already shifted.
The neighbors had already assembled in solemn witness,
most tight-lipped, others yielding to grief in sobs and silence.
There was Bill Edwards, the neighbor across the way,
broad-shouldered, his southern drawl flickering,
caught between words. Marlene, his portly wife,
her red hair dimmed beneath the porch light.
Bernie, their next-door pal, shifting, too large
for the doorway. Shirley, his second wife, thin,
arms folded inward, already bracing against absence,
looking like she had lost the most fragile thing in her life.
Then movement—the EMTs carrying her body past them,
in a white nightgown that ended primly just above her knees,
not in the grandma style she hated,
but with a quiet grace between youthful innocence
and the dignified ease of womanhood,
an elegy stitched into fabric, neither ostentatious nor meek,
reflecting beauty that lingered, pride that refused to fade.
The gown bore food stains but no blood. And
as she passed fully before me,
her eyes were wide open, lips parted
in a smile caught between a gasp
and the ghost of a smile—everything
lingering between this world and the next,
frozen, like her, in a moment that never completed itself.
Ed, my stepdad, stands lost in the doorway,
his shock sealing him in place,
his body answering to nothing,
his stare hollow until it finds me.
And there—her beige Lazy Boy,
its footrest still half-kicked from the final trembling,
handgrips marked by the last imprint of her touch,
the whole chair pressed with her final form in the fabric.
The matching chair was untouched, still waiting.
The television murmurs onward,
Tom Brokaw, his voice unfazed, reciting history,
the U.S. and Soviet Union signing a nuclear treaty…
The world still carrying on.
2
The ambulance pulls away, its lights dim,
not flashing, just retreating—
just driving away,
first a roar, then an echo, then silence.
The neighbors start to leave,
offering the usual condolences,
the usual earnest offers of help,
the gestures of grief that
vanish with the closing of doors,
leaving my stepdad and me
in the almost empty house,
the quiet hum of the house…
And with my younger mentally disabled brother, Casey—
alone upstairs, unaware of mom’s death below,
the murmurs and hands clutching shoulders,
oblivious to the slow procession of mourning,
unaware of the neighbors streaming in and out
in shocked sobs that fold into the walls,
unaware that the one thing that loved him the most
is gone.
I want to call to him, to tell him—
but the weight of it presses against my throat.
How do you explain absence to someone
who has only ever known unconditional presence?
How do you break the world open like that,
cut a line through someone’s understanding of love
and expect them to move forward as if nothing has changed?
I watch as Ed wipes the last streak of tears
with the tips of his fingers,
then drag his hand through his forever-gray hair—
gray since the moment my mother met him,
gray for every memory I carry of him.
The tears have left his face shallow,
heightening his resemblance to Herman Munster
that my mom, myself and the other two kids-
a sister who lives in Alaska, and a brother
lingering between a move from Texas to Colorado-
would kid him constantly about.
The joke was effortless then—
a source of warmth, an anchor of familiarity.
Now, I see only the exhaustion in it,
the quiet collapse of something once harmless,
the way grief distorts even the gentlest things.
But tonight, the joke is hollow.
the house, emptier than before.
And within it, everything that laughter has left behind.
He stumbles into the next big concern,
letting every one know what had happened—
my brother and sister, his two sons
from his first marriage,
one in Chicago, the other chasing Hollywood dreams.
Yet, before he speaks,
he exhales—long, slow—
as if steadying himself against the weight of it all,
his hand hovering over the chair’s armrest,
uncertain, unwilling to disturb
what was left exactly as she had last touched it.
Then, the decision.
He reaches into the left-side pocket
of her Lazy Boy, pulling out her old address book.
Its worn pages, folded corners,
the ink of her handwriting still pressed deep.
He stares at the first number.
A breath. A pause.
Then, he dials.
3
Her absence lingers, curling into corners,
softening the edges of untouched cups,
settling into the folds of sheets that will not be remade.
Her scent—warm spice and detergent—
clings to the hallway,
woven into the fabric of the chair that held her.
Not entirely gone. Not entirely here.
Even in silence, she speaks:
A pair of socks with grip bottoms under the table,
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation left spine-up on a nightstand,
a grocery list half-scribbled in her hurried hand—
as if time had paused mid-thought,
as if the world had allowed one last unfinished line.
But time does not pause.
The television hums forward,
Tom Brokaw shifts to the next news report,
something beyond the treaty signed,
ink binding nations to restraint.
And yet, no restraint was given here—
not to the body unraveling,
not to the moment that collapsed too soon.
In a world of precision, she was a miscalculation,
a faltering equation wrapped in fragile flesh,
a quiet failure against something too vast to undo.
I wonder if what I inherit is more than memory,
something beyond the way illness carves paths,
the denying the way blood carries warnings.
Each footstep echoes hers,
each glance at my own hands
reveals the future she left behind.
All conversations we never had,
All questions I never asked—
Did she know?
Did she wonder if I would carry this weight?
Did she hold her own hands in the quiet and wish
they were not the blueprints of mine?
And yet, the world is unmoved.
It does not ask. It does not answer.
The road outside hums with motion,
cars rolling forward into the evening.
Neighbors retreating indoors,
their grief folded into the rhythm of routine.
And still—
The world carries on.
4
Upstairs, the television hums—Baryshnikov gliding
in white, his movements sharp yet fluid,
an elegance sculpted in repetition.
Casey mirrors him, his fingers tracing
the weightless air, his feet shifting softly—
a language of motion, untouched by grief.
I stand in the doorway, the words heavy
on my mind. The room is a collision—
rolled up Disney posters on shelves,
glossy brochures of concept cars on his desk,
beige ballet slippers folded neatly beside
die-cast models of Mustangs, Corvettes,
on his bureau and nightstands
the sleek curve of imagined speed.
Each piece of his world, a fragment,
a comfort—unchanged, unshaken.
“Are we leaving soon?” he asks,
his eyes locked on the screen,
his breath syncing to the tempo
of a dancer who understands flight.
I nod, my throat tight.
His mind is ahead of me,
chasing movement, chasing the next step,
the space between absence and understanding
still unformed, untouched.
He twirls his fingers, slow, deliberate.
He smiles. “I want to show Mom my routine.”
His joy untouched, whole.
I inhale. How do you tell someone
that everything has shifted?
That love remains, but presence does not?
That the shape of memory now holds
all that she was, all that she’ll ever be?
A flicker—his face tightens,
a brief tremor, his brows furrowing
as if the rhythm has faltered,
as if something in the air has unsettled
the shape of his movements.
For a second, I see it—
a shadow of understanding,
a glimpse of absence—
and then, the rhythm returns.
His hands lift again,
his feet shift, gentle echoes of Baryshnikov’s grace,
not the jumps, but the hands,
the sweep of fingers across invisible space,
the pull and release of breath
as if the dance itself could replace
what is missing.
And then: “I have rehearsal tonight.”
His voice steady, matter-of-fact.
The world is still moving.
I nod again. “Let’s go.”
The strip mall is quiet,
the dance studio tucked between
a dry cleaner and a bakery,
its windows humming with light.
Casey steps in—comfortable, certain,
a boy in motion, a boy untouched by hesitation.
The music begins, soft and nostalgic,
not ballet, not classical precision,
but something simpler.
A slide, a rhythm, a quiet homage.
His feet move with certainty,
his body following something beyond technique—
something felt, something known.
The instructor watches, nods.
"This is the best he's ever done."
And I stand there, unmoving,
watching him, watching the echoes of her
in the way he lifts his arms,
the way his posture carries an unspoken grace.
My chest tightens.
He is more than what they expected.
More than the limits they imposed.
More than the shape of words
they used to measure him.
The duet begins—the instructor guiding,
Casey following,
his body folding into something
greater than motion, greater than memory—
a love pressed into every step,
every shift of weight,
every breath between the beats.
He danced for her.
And will dance for her always.