It's Such a Beautiful Day Page #3

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(power increasing

and decreasing)

When Grandma would visit

and he'd show her his drawings,

she'd often imagine how easily

she could toss little Bill

into the fireplace,

or even through

a thin window,

for he was still young

and quite small and floppy,

and she reckoned light enough

for a woman

of her size and strength

to hurl across the room

several yards or more.

In the middle of the night,

she opens the drawer

to find the preserved

cat head from last week.

She can feel the fish

smothering her brain,

and the magic scrubbing

of their furry little heads

across her skin

is doing less and less good.

(voice layering)

And she decides this is

because the little heads

are of low quality,

and she needs more of them.

She needs more of them

from higher pedigree cats,

little heads with better hairdos

and cleaner little ears

and clearer eyes.

(static)

They said she had a tumor

and was suffering from seizures

and dementia.

Bill didn't know

what those words meant,

but he had ideas.

Grandma was born

in Bootblack, Wyoming,

two years after the great mud

storms drowned all the hogs.

Her father serviced

electric machines

and once strangled a rock in

a fit of religious excitement.

He enjoyed wood

and telling the children

late night stories

of how his own papa

used to tame the wilderness.

He was a quiet, unassuming man

who was eating an onion one day

when he was cut in half

by a train.

(train horn blaring)

Grandma's older brother

became a preacher

who grew his mole hairs long

to purify his soul.

In his early years,

he secretly fathered

an illegitimate child

and smothered it one night

in the abandoned stable.

As he aged, he became

plagued with fire bugs,

and once claimed to have seen

an aquatic creature

make off with the sheriff's

prized cow.

He was eventually crippled

with lead poisoning and polio

and was killed by a train.

Grandma's little sister Polly

had beautiful golden hair

and pounded at imaginary animals

with a hammer.

She died at the age of eight

after contracting yellow fever

and catching on fire.

After Polly's death, Grandma's

mother cut out her tongue

and vigorously enjoyed

taking health tonics

and prescription medications.

(wind blowing)

(slowed down screaming)

A wild man wandered into town

that summer

and beat the church organist

with a shovel.

He defecated what looked like

a pile of blueberries

on the family porch

and disappeared,

howling into the marsh.

Nobody knew that this wild man

was in fact Grandma's

great uncle,

a forgotten, unwanted child

who'd been fed carbolic acid

and abandoned in the northern

woods 52 years prior.

He ate mud and sticks

and knew only how to say

the word "Bible."

"Bah ball!"

He died alone in the field

one summer morning

while dreaming of the moon.

Six weeks later, a sunflower

grew out of his head.

In their later years,

Grandma's family

moved to the big city

where her mother lived out

the rest of her days

making jam

and persecuting Jews.

(clinking)

There was a bush in front

of their building

in the shape of a heart

that made her cry

every time she saw it.

She died alone while Grandma

was away at boarding school,

surrounded by visions

of phantoms.

(eerie sounds)

Grandpa died 11 years

before Grandma did.

He used to sit next to her

every Sunday,

but now she plays

his bingo card for him.

Last night, Bill dreamt

he was young again

in a field with friends

at the seaside.

A big, happy seal barked

at them

and bounded from the water

to play soccer.

He was pretty good.

It was like an animal movie.

Then the seal hit the ball

a little too excited

and it flew over

everyone's heads

and struck a little boy

in an adjacent field

really hard in the chest.

It seemed like maybe he had

a heart condition or something

because he wasn't moving.

Everyone sort of froze.

The seal retreated

to the sea.

Nobody knew what to do.

(birds chirping)

He'd slept on his arm funny

and it felt sort of numb.

(whispering voices)

Sometimes it sounds like

there's voices in the water.

He's been putting

some weight back on

and his doctor had said

that was good news.

At the bus stop,

his left testicle ached

for no apparent reason,

and it almost made him

feel dizzy.

Not much happened at work.

Bill made a pyramid

out of three staplers,

and the new guy

swallowed a paperclip

and was rushed out

in a wheelchair.

The guy in the next cubicle over

told Bill about a thing

he saw on TV

about identical twins

who were separated at birth

but had individually grown up

to be serial killers.

It was as though

they didn't have any choice

in what they turned into.

"Genetics is pretty messed up,"

he said

as his chewing gum

flung itself from his mouth.

At lunch he told Bill about

a physics book he was reading

about time,

how the passing of time

is just an illusion

because all of eternity is

actually taking place at once.

The past never vanishes away,

and the future

has already happened.

All of history is fixed

and laid out

like an infinite landscape

of simultaneous events

that we simply happen to travel

through in one direction.

Bill made a joke

that he could have sworn

he'd been told that

somewhere before,

but the guy just stared at him

like he didn't get it.

At home, Bill watched

the microwave spin his food

and daydreamed about

the Galpagos Islands.

He'd purchased the new brand

of paper towels

that had hundreds of little

raised bumps across every sheet.

(microwave running)

(microwave beeps)

He found a message

on the answering machine

that was sorry to inform him

his mother had just died

that morning.

They said she'd launched

into a fit of senile hysterics

after skipping her medication

and was hit by a train.

She'd reserved her own funeral

plot years in advance

in order to be buried

alongside her parents,

but due to a clerical error

had to be placed 50 yards away

between a coffin full of rocks

and a rich woman's

golden retriever.

After the funeral, Bill went

through her old storage boxes

and was surprised to find

a hundred-year-old photo album.

Among the many pictures

of relatives

and people he never knew

were several photographs

of bacon and lumber.

He also found an old series

of strange portraits

that had been neatly labeled

for unknown future reference.

Scattered throughout the box

were forgotten photos

of himself as a young boy.

He'd read once how each cell

in the body replaces itself

and dies as the years pass;

how everyone is

slowly reconstructed

out of continuously changing

pieces.

It depressed him how foreign

the pictures seemed to him now,

how his ridiculous ingrown cells

had long ago stolen

this happy dead kid's identity

and with his own life

made a complete mess

of it.

Beneath the album

was a folder

of his mother's

medical records.

Attached to

her initial diagnosis

was a physician's note

that strongly recommended

she never have a child.

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