"A good neighbor is never around, except when wanted." Beatrice said sagely. She always had such original quotes that sounded old. But only in Micah's backyard did such wisdom transpire.
"I do need you around. You are the only person that could even begin to comprehend what this is about." Micah looked from her to his work. He was digging a perfectly round hole in his backyard and it was already three feet and one and sixty-eighths of an inch deep. He had just finished measuring it electronically. He set down the Mititoyo device on the rim of his pit.
"Is it about work? I know you lost your job." Beatrice knew Micah had lost a lot of things. Not just his job. His son was gone to live with the grandparents and the wife was dead, killed in a car crash. Micah drank the days away and the job had gotten lost in a cascade of envelopes full of debt and a company that didn't care about the human-experience.
"It is about work. I am doing something important."
"Digging a hole in the ground? One that is perfectly round and constantly under measurement?" Beatrice asked.
Micah looked up at her and thought about telling her she could be a good neighbor.
"Do you want me to try to explain it?" Micah shook his head.
"Estar en misa y tocar la campana" Beatrice told him.
"Whatever that means, I didn't hear yes or no." Micah responded.
"Say whatever you want. It is a hole-in-the-ground." Beatrice shrugged. "I said you cannot be in church and also ring the bells at the same time. You can't tell me what it is and it still be a big secret, what you are doing."
"Well, that is true." Micah realized. He shoveled more dirt from the hole and tossed it up onto the side of the shallow pit.
"I am going to go now." Beatrice was not so young to stand outside in the heat all day. She went back inside and watched the strange activity from in her house.
Micah worked on his round hole all day until he had it at nearly seven feet. Then he used his small step-ladder to climb out where the sides still had the grass of his dead lawn.
Back in his house he cracked open a cold beer and drank it unceremoniously. There was nothing to eat so he went to bed hungry. That night he awoke from dreams of the Pleiades to the shuffling of a pile of clothes nearby.
It was a pile of his wife's clothes on the floor. He could hear her voice telling her restless husband "Come to bed" and he watched them manifest her and move about in the darkness.
The next morning he tried to call his son before school but there was no answer. A tow truck had arrived outside for the remains of the car, with his wife's blood staining the interior. He had to go out to the driveway and sign over the title. They gave him seventy dollars and drove off with it.
Micah folded the money into his wallet and walked to the convenience store and bought some cheap whiskey and some more beer. He drank one of the beers of the six-pack on the way home and tossed the empty can into the lawn of his other neighbor, Ferrel.
Ferrel found Micah napping on his front porch and offered him a bottle of beer with the lid off. Three of the six-pack had made it inside while one of them had gotten finished on the porch. The other had a dead fly on the rim and sat getting warm while he slept there on the front porch as the sun climbed again into the sky.
Micah didn't remove the dead fly before he finished the warm beer and then switched the empty can with where he had set down the cold bottle.
"You know I hate my own wife. It isn't fair." Ferrel told Micah.
Ferrel's pity for Micah was more than Micah could stand.
"That is the only thing that you say to me anymore." Micah grimaced.
"It is the only truth I think about. I won't look at her or touch her. I hate her." Ferrel told Micah.
"What is her name?" Micah asked, sipping the cold bottle.
"Call her anything you like. I don't want her in my house anymore." Ferrel sounded strangely deadly. "Her effect on me and my daughter is toxic."
"I don't understand." Micah leaned away from Ferrel's grim-tone.
"You must be very hungry and your house must be a mess." Ferrel was making some kind of apology, Micah realized. He didn't know how to take it so he just sat there and listened to Ferrel:
"I took care of your house payments. You haven't gotten your mail, just letting it pile up. The other bills, I am sorry." Ferrel turned and looked mournful.
"You are sorry?" Micah felt numb, it wasn't Ferrel's fault, not really. People blamed themselves for things they didn't do while guilty people accepted no responsibility. That is how it seemed.
"Well I kinda own this place as long as I am paying for it." Ferrel pointed out, but it wasn't mean sounding. This was still part of some kind of elaborate recompense. "So it should be cleaned up and you should get fed and taken care of. It is the best of both worlds. I get rid of her and also I know you are getting taken care of."
"I have no idea what you are talking about." Micah got up, went inside.
He looked at his drawings of the hole he was digging and compared his notes from yesterday to where it needed to be to be complete. He had to get a much larger ladder from the garage and take it to the pit in the backyard. He lowered it in and removed the step-ladder and tossed that up onto the side. He started digging and climbing, removing dirt with a five-gallon bucket. Then he got to the rocks and had to climb with those. Finally he hit a layer of clay. This was at nine feet and point seven-sixths of an inch, as he measured. He got out of the hole or rather a pit, and carefully measured the sides to make sure it was perfectly round on all the sides.
It was and so he noticed that it was getting dark outside. He went in and was surprised to find whats-her-name in his kitchen and the power was back on. She was a terrible cook according to her husband but she had made some kind of casserole for him.
"Thanks." he accepted the food and ate it with two of the beers off his six-pack.
"I have to stay here." she said flatly. Micah looked at her finally.
She looked a lot like Carole somehow. The lights flickered and he blinked. She even wore Carole's clothes. Micah shrugged.
"Mi Casa Su Casa." he stumbled on something Beatrice might say.
"Apologizing isn't enough. I can't forgive myself. I have to know you are alright." she told him.
"Whatever. Do whatever you want." Micah shrugged. "I am going to bed."
And he took a shower with the hot water he had actually started to miss and then went to bed. That night he saw the apparition moving around in his room again. It was the disturbed pile of his wife's laundry shuffling around, doing something in the darkness. He got up instead of watching it and also he turned on the lights. It was gone.
He went out of his room and got the last beer of the six-pack and drank it with the plastic rings of the rest of the dead soldiers still around it's neck. He looked around for Mrs. Plancer and saw her on the couch watching him. He could see her eyes there in the dark, but the rest of her was just a silhouette of a woman on the furniture. It was creepy the way she stared at him from the dark like that so he turned on the kitchen light.
She sat up, exposed.
"Sorry if I woke you up." Micah kept drinking and made a fake-sounding apology.
"I wasn't sleeping." she said strangely.
"Whatever you were doing, I could see you there awake." Micah admitted.
"I know." Mrs. Plancer nodded. Her gaze followed him around, almost with cruel precision.
Micah stopped and examined his plans, his pacing had taken him to opposite her in the living room. He appreciated that she hadn't asked about the work he was doing. She minded her own business and asked nothing from him.
"Mrs. Plancer?" Micah looked up after she sighed loudly.
"Don't call me that. My husband took away my ring and won't look at me. He won't touch me. He won't let me come home."
"Okay." Micah looked at her. She looked sleepless and disheveled, Carole's dress that she wore slipping from her shoulder with vulgar exposure. She stared at him without blinking or looking away. Like she was insane or something. "What do I call you then?"
She took her hand out from under the blanket and rested it on the couch and laid back down. She said: "I don't know. I feel like I don't have a name anymore."
"Everyone has a name." Micah defended her in some way. She did smile for one second at that and closed her eyes to the light from the kitchen.
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"I don't want to hear mine anymore." she insisted, then pretended to sleep.
"Tomorrow we will go out and get you one then." Micah decided, finishing his beer. He left it there on the floor of the living room with several other empties.
Then he got up and went back to bed. He managed to sleep, despite the heat in the house, by opening a window to the cool night air.
The next morning he awoke to find Carole in bed next to him as though nothing had happened. She wasn't killed in a horrific car-accident by his neighbor's wife. His son was still asleep before school. The alarm for them to get up and get ready for their jobs hadn't gone off yet. It was like any other morning when the house was cooled off from the night and the sprinklers' rattles and crows and garbage trucks outside woke them early.
Then he sat up in cold sweat alone. Carole was dead and his son was gone. He went and found his phone, realizing he hadn't paid the bill for the phones. He still had service though, because someone had called Verizon and talked to customer service. They had extended his service again and again, somehow considering the human-experience, unlike his job. Of course his job might have gone over better if he had called them or something but he had just stopped showing up for work. Micah didn't care.
"Hello?" he thought the call went through but again there was no answer.
"Come eat breakfast." the woman in his house was there in the doorway. She didn't come into his bedroom and he appreciated that. She somehow knew he wanted to be left alone in there.
She must have left to get groceries because she had cooked an omelette for him. He noticed she ate nothing and said:
"Aren't you hungry?"
"I ate leftover casserole." she spoke dutifully.
"Oh." Micah shrugged as he said, between mouthfuls.
"I bought beer for you too." she told him.
This made him smile, but he had suddenly decided he didn't want to drink today. Somehow removing the ritual of going to the convenience store took all the magic out of the beercans. They sat on their own shelf in the fridge and he stared at them while she sat at the table staring at him.
"Not thirsty right now. Got to get to work." Micah closed the fridge and turned and pointed to the big freaked out hole in the backyard.
She said nothing, showed no reaction to this. He started wondering what she thought of it. It was as if she accepted it like he was just going to work or doing something normal and routine.
In the backyard he worked all morning until the sun shone down into the hole. He had cleared away the clay and hit some kind of sandstone. He started breaking off chunks of it with his pick, with just enough room down there to swing it.
After awhile he got tired and climbed back out. He went inside and looked at his plans on the floor of the living room. He then looked up and noticed the house was relatively clean. He looked to his pile of empty cans and was relieved to find they were still there. She had left his project and the spoiled old beer cans undisturbed. The rest of the house was clean. He wasn't sure where she was until he heard some water running in the shower. She hadn't gone, then, whatever her name was.
Micah got two beers from the fridge and drank both of them without any ceremony. Then he fell asleep next to them on the floor in the living room while staring at the hand-drawn plans and numbers. He had forgotten to take any new measurements today.
He dreamed of holding Carole while he slept. Some warm comfort of lying next to her and sleeping soundly. Then he awoke where he had fallen asleep, the carpet. He realized he needed for the person to have a name so he called her: "Seline"
"Seline?" she asked. She was sitting across from him on the couch, under her blanket again. She had just laid there watching him sleep. Or whatever. Micah ignored her habits as closely as she ignored his. She took her hand out from under the blanket and placed it on the couch as before.
"Yeah it is what comes to mind. You can be Seline." Micah offered her a new name.
She was crying. "Thank you." she squeezed her eyes shut and couldn't look at him anymore.
He wanted to go hold her, but her shuddering was all her own. He couldn't change her human-experience any more than anyone could change his. He realized that her being in his house was some kind of purgatory for her. He accepted her presence and knew that he had not looked at her enough, spoken to her enough. A little more was required. She was not a ghost like Carole.
"Come on." he stood up and offered her his hand.
"What?" she took it with resistance. Wanting to be touched but denying she deserved it. He led her from the couch to the bedroom and they both slept there. It was just sleep; but it was not the lonesome and troubled kind.
The next morning she woke him up by nudging him awake.
"You let me sleep in here, in the bed." Seline reminded him.
"Yes, so what?" he opened his eyes and saw she was not Carole.
"Thank you." Seline looked moved by this. Rested, restored somehow. Like she felt whole for just a moment.
"I don't like being alone in here. It isn't anything else." Micah thought he was being assuring.
"I wish it was." Seline said honestly.
"Well you are going to have to trust me that I know it should just be sleeping next to each other. That way this can all be over and we won't regret anything." Micah heard himself say. Some animal part resented this statement, but Micah knew what he was doing and knew better. The man ruled the beast in his home.
"This can all be over?" Seline did trust him and that thought amazed her.
"I am looking for something out there." Micah told her.
"In the ground?" she asked. There was terrible reluctance in her voice to ask anything about his work in the backyard, but he had brought it up.
"I appreciate that you haven't said anything. But no, not in the ground. In the sky."
"Okay." Seline asked nothing else. Clearly she had decided not to question him.
"I will make breakfast." Micah decided.
"Wait." Seline said, almost pleading with him. "Could you do it just once, pretend I am Carole?"
"I told you to trust me; that we should not do anything like that." Micah got out of bed.
"Then stand there for a moment." Seline said with resolution. She put her hand under the blanket and stared at him while she did whatever. Micah did stand there while she did, but felt like he might get back into bed with her after-all. Then she was finally done and he left her there and went to go cook something to eat.
"Good-morning." he said when Seline emerged from the bedroom.
"Yes, good one." she agreed but had a guilty look on her face.
"What is it? Be honest with me." Micah asked, serving her some bland breakfast items on a plate.
"I feel bad about doing that." she admitted.
"Then you see what I meant. You have to trust me. You wanted me to take you and I said no and that is because I already knew what it would feel like...afterwards." Micah explained.
"Thank you." she apologized.
"It is okay. I can't get drunk around you because I don't trust myself." Micah said this. "So you are keeping me sober. It means a lot to me, having you here. But you don't have to sleep on the couch if we have this agreement. When this is over you can go home. You will be healed."
"Healed?" Seline was crying again. She felt very awful. She didn't want to believe in this because it was too frightening to accept. She had actually forgotten her real name somehow. She was just as broken, being here, as he was.
"I have work to do. Don't clean that laundry or the living room, please." Micah said. It was an unspoken rule before, but now it was official. Seline nodded and ate her breakfast.
She felt very small and childish somehow. Micah left her there and went to do his thing in the backyard.
Then they fell into a kind of routine. Her actual husband was taking care of all the bills of both households and she actually started to believe that Ferrel might take her back. She was outside mowing the front lawn, wearing Carole's clothes, and saw Ferrel and Maggie with their feet in the pond at her own home next door. One empty beercan left by Micah was still sitting there. The grass was greener on that lawn.
Maggie waved and smiled as though it was nothing unusual to see her mom living next door for over a week. Ferrel was looking at her and it felt wonderful. Seline held her chin up, feeling his eyes on her.
Then she looked over and they were gone. They had left to go somewhere and she hadn't seen. She remembered that Maggie had piano recitals today and felt some kind of regret that she could not be there. Ferrel had told her not to bother them until it was over. Whatever it was and whether it could or would be over she had not known then.
Micah had made it clear that as long as she followed his rules it could be over. She couldn't interfere with his work in the backyard, she had understood that at the beginning without being told. She had known not to disturb Carole's things or the room but had ended up in the dead woman's clothes. There was nothing else to wear and Micah hadn't said anything about the dresses. Just the pile of dirty laundry.
Then there was the other thing. She realized she had thought that would somehow get her out of trouble but Micah had protected her from herself. It would have made things worse if they had slept together and it would have resolved nothing. Just added confusion and a kind of uncleanliness to what they were doing together. Just healing each other and both households. She always felt childish having such a need for his attention.
Micah got out of the shower after he came back in and went straight to bed. Thirteen days he had gone without changing their routine or drinking. She ate alone and then climbed into bed next to him. She needed to feel warm and often did something for herself right next to him but he never reacted except to pretend to be asleep. This night he watched her and when she was finished he said quietly:
"I wish you would stop doing that. It torments me." Micah said to her.
"You could do it too, or do something to me and pretend I am Carole." she still felt hot and couldn't help it.
"Wait a little while then, wait until you feel different and then say what you really feel." Micah rolled over, away from her and waited patiently for her to cool down.
Then Seline did cool down and felt awful for saying those words. She was very glad he had done nothing but scorn her the way he had. She felt safe lying there beside him and she had abused the sanctuary of it. This was Carole's bed, Carole's husband. Her own husband was next door waiting for her to get through her guilt and shame of texting while driving and killing someone in a car accident. But she felt a little bit angry and a little bit defensive and said:
"You are scorning me." quite plainly.
"Would you rather I put my hands on you, or ignored you?" Micah already had his words prepared. Clearly he was annoyed by her nightly routine.
"No." she realized. "I am sorry. It is all I can do to feel good. I want you to feel good too."
"It wouldn't feel good." Micah assured her.
"You stopped drinking because of me. Because you think you would do it too." Seline muttered distractedly. She wasn't sure where she was going with that and resented the entire conversation. She felt small and childish again and went and got up to go back to the couch. Being out there and alone felt worse somehow, "But it is where I am going to sleep from now on", she decided.
Another week went by with the new routine. Micah drank now and seemed almost finished with his project. He had dug a pit that was over twenty feet deep and had a ladder he had borrowed from Ferrel in it now. And then a pump for the water he had hit. He needed special cement for the bottom and beams to brace the sides before he could call it done.
That night he woke her from the couch. She hadn't touched herself in the entire time since she had moved from the bed back to the living room. His hand on her made her tremble.
"What are you doing?" she asked softly. She thought he was drunk and was going to do it to her on the couch but he wasn't. He was waking her up for something else and he was sober.
"Come and see this." he said. He took her by the hand and led her to the pit of darkness in the back yard.
He climbed down first and lit her way with a flashlight. She followed him and then he turned it off and said:
"Look up."
And she did and she could see some infinite distance, feeling claustrophobic, buried alive, the only warmth the body of a man she trusted after their time together, trusted in his forgiveness and sincerity. But besides the context of those feelings she did see what he was showing her. A single star stood out very bright and red and next to a blue star and a very yellow one. All around were numerous white stars and unknown constellations.
"It is strange." Seline was crying again. Somehow being surrounded by such a dark and earthen pit and standing up the her ankles in mud she felt very clean and whole.
"I think you know this feeling." Micah told her.
"I do know it. I know where I am right now." Seline's eyes were blurry with starlight.
"I think you can go home." Micah offered.
"Okay." Seline chirped. He handed her the flashlight. She climbed out of the pit, like emerging into another world.
"What about you?" she asked. There was no response.
She shone the light down into the darkness. She couldn't see him down there at all. Then she heard his voice saying:
"I am just going to stay here...for awhile..."