Such was the Epiphany of Theodore Beasley

A short story

He broke the law by being angry. The law allowed Theodore Beasley to carry the gun—which was the only name he knew for the gun, except to believe it couldn’t be a revolver as it lacked any mechanism to revolve—allowed, as long as he carried it openly, which he supposed he’d achieved, with the brown leather holster attached to his snakeskin belt, and as long as he wasn’t angry, as if this weapon of deadly intent rendered every wielder a pacifist who came in peace with guns a blazing, killing you with joy. Smile, motherfucker. Smile. If only he could smile and hide the torrent of pain and humiliation throbbing within his ruined face and betraying his indignation at the dignity he’d been denied, not once but always. Always. He could trace back life like a timeline, one infraction to the next, and anyone with such a view would see the same as he, the relentless apathy he’d engendered, the rejection of those who’d weighed his soul and found him wanting. Today he’d end the question, prove them right, and cut short his days in a blaze of ignominy, not of glory and of no surprise, for all who knew him would have seen this day coming.

He stood his ground before the damned and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, and before he could understand why nothing happened, a uniform tackled him to the ground and held him there until the police arrived. Handcuffed in the backseat of a cruiser, he watched them laugh among themselves, wiping tears from the corner of their eyes and glancing furtively in his direction, dedicating to memory all the details they’d tell at home and to their friends at parties for years to come, until their children rolled their eyes as well-rehearsed words tumbled out with premature laughter, asking, did I tell you about the gunman who couldn’t…

Couldn’t what? He couldn’t even say, still not understanding what went wrong, not with his moment nor with his gun, but he could say what went wrong with his life and count off the steps, one-by-one, not knowing that even in that, he was wrong. He wouldn’t see he was wrong until his twelfth group session with skinny Mr. Rimsdale, the prison’s once-a-week counselor, and then Theodore would see it all, all at once, and break down weeping with tears and snot and trembling, which the others would see and tell—and for which he’d be beaten in the prison laundry and sent to the prison infirmary and from there to the hospital and the ICU, where for several days he’d hope he’d die.

Such was the epiphany of Theodore Beasley.

#

Theodore Beasley bought a gun. No, Elizabeth didn’t want to hold it. No, it wouldn’t solve her inability to sleep at night—nor the lingering certainty that safety was an illusion. Instead, it meant death had a place in their home, in the drawer of Theodore’s nightstand, beside the bed they shared and where she lay awake at night, staring into the ceiling and thinking not of this ceiling which was smooth and still but of her childhood bedroom and the popcorn ceiling that came alive in the interplay of shadows and the lights of cars passing with the hiss of freshly-fallen rain as dragons, knights, and princesses danced across her midnight canvas. Sometimes she was the princess, sometimes the knight, but often the dragon, and she wished she could be the dragon now: fierce, eternal, and unafraid.

But she did hold the gun. It spoke to her in the sleepless dark, over the whisper of Theodore’s machine as it breathed against his apnea, in and out, like an old man dying of emphysema or an infant struggling to know a second day. She took the holster from the drawer and the gun from the holster and stood by the bed at Theodore’s side, not pointing the gun but feeling its weight and staring at the face hidden beneath straps and hose.

She wondered if he’d snored in that woman’s bed.

Once, long ago, dragons distracted from voices raised and doors slammed. Elizabeth had never been a shouter, was afraid to shout, afraid to scream, even when there were reasons to scream, so many reasons held under so much silence. Her whole life was a series of moments, each echoing the last like footsteps down a hall, footsteps in a prison hall, and she from her cell saw neither those to come nor those gone, but only the present prison guard, wearing a different face but the same clothes, the unchanging uniformity of life.

No one could be trusted, and she found herself alone, awake but dreaming of Theodore dead, air sucking through a mask splattered and intermingled with bone and meat, a few teeth dangling at the edges of his jaw.

No one had ever loved her, and every moment was like the last, guards on parade.

#

Skinny Mr. Rimsdale, the second-most-frightened man in prison, minced his way into their lives once a week. Theodore Beasley recognized his own kind. Neither man belonged here nor understood this world, but Mr. Rimsdale tried. In his best and most official capacity, he tried, and every session, about halfway through, something somebody said would distract him from his fears, connect him with his own thoughts; and he’d transform before them, the child becoming the man.

Theodore envied him that, and in his tenth group session, he told him so.

In the eleventh session, Mr. Rimsdale answered, begging Theodore not to take it wrong, that he would never say this to another living soul in any other situation, but in this case he thought it proper, if Theodore could accept the present his wounded face presented.

“You lived, and the strength it took to overcome, you’ve got no choice but to let the whole world see. The men look at you, and they know. What you’ve been through commands respect.”

Theodore slept on those words for a week, a pillow lighter than air and softer than down. He ate his meals without fear and walked the yard without flinching, such was the culmination of his life’s journey, bringing him to this moment—fierce, immortal, and unafraid.

#

Elizabeth waited. Their therapist waited.

“He said he’d be here,” Elizabeth said. “He said he was buying a gun, but he said he’d be here.”

“Theodore’s buying a gun?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Is this something the two of you discussed?”

“It’s the first I’ve heard him say.”

“So you don’t know why he wants a gun?”

“Well, I don’t know. Last night, he was saying he’d protect me.”

“Do you need protecting?”

“It doesn’t matter. I said that to him. I said, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?”

“Because he’s all talk and always has been. He said he’d be here.”

Alone, Elizabeth exited into the waiting room where the damned lingered before the gates of hell. The uniform lifted his eyes. Spurred by an unthinking reflex, Elizabeth looked away.

On the street, Theodore texted his apologies, and a light dusting of pristine snow met with sullied mounds, remnants of the season’s final storm. The sun was shining, and earlier, temperatures had peaked above freezing. Elizabeth considered taking the bus, even though Theodore was on his way. Across the street, spring’s first green trolley jollied along the tracks in no great rush and going nowhere important. She watched it pass, full of nostalgia for a time no one remembered, but the trolley couldn’t take you anywhere useful, only from shopping to shopping, commerce to commerce. The bus could take her home, but she’d had enough of the bus and slipped into the little cafe where she and Theodore always treated themselves and decompressed after a couple’s session, a routine their therapist recommended.

Elizabeth chose the cafe because the tables and chairs were delicate and petite, declaring this a space that didn’t make you feel protected but where protection wasn’t necessary. Dangerous men wouldn’t rob a place so girly, the very act being a threat to their manhood and contaminating their gain.

Here, the frills of girlhood never died, and each visit became a rebirth. She ordered a cup of vanilla chai and a tiny cake dusted with sugar and sat in her favorite spot in the back of the cafe, far away from the windows, her back against the wall, the cafe becoming a delicate barrier between her and the outside world. Theodore was part of that world now, she thought, that outside world, and the interior retained its integrity without him, like snow untarnished by the smut of the street.

She remembered when Theodore seemed little more than a boy—cute, delicate, and untarnished by smut—or so she’d assumed. Maybe she’d been naive. The Washington Post ran that piece about the pervasiveness of perversion. The Internet had claimed the childhood of nearly every adult her age, but she refused to believe it. The fallen always held that the world was in their hole. It wasn’t, or Elizabeth didn’t want it to be. Her cake tasted lonely.

The phone buzzed. Theodore wasn’t coming.

#

Embrace your emotions, Mr. Rimsdale said. They're valid. Name them. Understand them, but never forget that emotions possess a will to live. They’ll lie to you and, through their lies, linger, feeding off you like a parasite. Embrace your emotions, but let them die their natural death.

#

Green-and-jolly trolleyed down the track.

Elizabeth waited at a serious-minded bus stop while shoppers waited at their little green stop, cheering their trolley’s approach. Elizabeth had places to be. She waited for her serious-minded bus which would deliver her to her serious-minded business, and today that business was—

—what? Preparing dinner for Theodore? Fuck Theodore. Fuck his dinner.

She waited and searched for a reason to wait, a reason to need to go where she needed to be, and the trolley drew closer, and its bells clanged a happy hello, but her bus turned the corner, full of ugly certainty and approaching at speeds the jolly trolley would never require.

It would be nice just to go and have nowhere to be.

The bus hissed like a cat and sighed like an old man. The doors folded open. She stared up at the disinterested driver. The driver stared back. She smiled apologetically, sorry to be a bother, an inconvenience, and a taker of space, and she bowed ever so slightly, hurried away, and joined the little green line as the jolly trolleyed to a stop.

Can a trolley trolley? she wondered. In London, one could get trollied on a Friday night, could get so drunk they needed to push you home in a shopping cart—a buggy—a caddie—a trolley.

She felt drunk on the possibilities.

Push me anywhere you wish me to go, she thought. I have nowhere to be.

“No charge,” said the trolley man.

The bench seats formed conversation groups, one side facing the other, and Elizabeth sat facing backwards, giddy in her participation with even the tiniest rebellion. A woman sat opposite her, colorfully clothed and middle-aged, fifteen years Elizabeth’s elder, if Elizabeth had to guess.

The woman smiled the widest of smiles and introduced herself. “I’m Theodora.”

Elizabeth’s smile broke across her chin.

“You wanted to be alone,” said Theodora, rising from her seat.

Elizabeth held up guilty hands of protest. “It’s not that. Please. Really.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Your name. I know someone... It took me by surprise. That’s all.”

Theodora settled back into her seat, her smile a bit smaller now, but gentle and kind.

“I’ve never ridden the trolley,” Elizabeth guilted, shaming the biggest shame she could shame.

“It’s a pleasant get-about for a day shopping,” Theodora said. “When I was a child, the original trolley still ran to the river, down Old Brewster’s Camp Mill Ferry Road. Of course, it wasn’t called that back then.”

“It wasn’t?”

“You must not be from around here.”

“Transplanted from Virginia.” Elizabeth’s voice caught in her throat, choked by all she’d left behind.

“Well, Brewster’s Camp was a settlement across the river with eyes on becoming a town,” said Theodora. “The mill came in, but they situated the mill where it wouldn’t bother the camp, and the town grew there, around the mill, not the camp. When the ferry started, that’s where it crossed, to Brewster’s Camp Mill. For a good fifty years, the Brewster’s Camp Mill Ferry Road Trolley took you from the city to the ferry and back. The mill’s gone now, and Brewster’s Camp became Brewsterton, and the old road is nothing but a deserted set of tracks on the way to the water. There’s a New Brewster’s Camp Mill Ferry Road, but it’s just a name, not connected with anything it signifies, and being such a mouthful, the locals call it Memory Lane.”

“I’ve heard people mention Memory but had no idea what it referred to.”

The trolley jiggled and swayed as pedestrians passed them by.

“The road takes you nowhere it claims, and the trolley has nothing to do with the road. Every few years, someone petitions to make Memory Lane official, but the officials don’t cotton to our reasoning, I suppose.”

“Does this trolley have a name?”

“I never asked. Wouldn’t matter none. The old road told a history and took you through it, but when history’s history, all you have left are names. They get strung along like something of significance, yet have no meaning.”

“Like Elizabeth Beasley.”

“What’s that, dear?”

“Nothing significant,” Elizabeth said. “Nothing of any meaning, whatsoever.”

#

Mr. Rimsdale looked quietly at the group. It was Theodore’s twelfth meeting, and the moment had come when inspiration filled skinny Mr. Rimsdale, leaving no room for fear or trepidation. Theodore sat a little taller and felt a charge sweep through the room, prickling at the hairs at the back of his neck as Mr. Rimsdale looked into his soul like the prophet of God calling out sin from among the people, his wisdom falling from a place mortal men could never touch, a vaulted wisdom of birth and ruin which ruled the paths that carried man from each to each, which set him upon his way, which took him down again, and which wiped from all minds the remembrance of his habitation within the glories of a blind creation.

“Never forget that emotions possess a will to live,” said Mr. Rimsdale. “They’ll lie to you and, through their lies, linger, feeding off you like a parasite.”

Theodore closed his eyes and let the truth wash over him like a man in a river reborn. His thoughts whispered to themselves in praise of all he’d heard. It’s true, all true. Emotions lie, and the father of lies is the devil, sinful and vile. The holy man feels nothing, and nothing touches him. It was by emotion that I fell into this pit and by emotions all men are made undone. Cauterize the heart and steel the mind. Set ice upon thy veins, for the casting off of all emotion is the key to acceptance before God, His angels, and the parole board.

“Embrace your emotions,” said Mr. Rimsdale, “but let them die their natural death.”

Theodore’s thoughts fell silent, but from the fullness of his heart, his mouth spoke. “I don’t need that shit.”

“Your emotions are valid, Theodore.”

“You said emotions are lies. They can’t also be valid. They can’t be both.”

“Emotions are good and valid for their time and their purpose. The emotion itself isn’t the lie, but rather the vision it presents of your life. Memories link one to another by the emotions associated with them, and a strong emotional experience triggers a foreshortened timeline, made up of only its kindred moments, creating a vision of your life that’s only that one thing.”

Only that one thing, echoed Theodore’s thoughts.

“Only that one thing,” echoed Mr. Rimsdale. “When things are bad, they’ve always been bad, and if they’ve always been bad, they’ll always be bad, forever.”

They’ll always be bad, forever, echoed Theodore’s thoughts.

“Life is more than your darkest moments,” said Mr. Rimsdale, “but in the dark, the dark is all you see.”

The choirs of heaven fell silent. Fluorescent lights flickered and dimmed, and the faces of the men turned pallid, like old paper, their eyes a faded ink in which time had written all their darkness, tattooed forever upon the iris of their eyes.

Rimsdale talked, but the words washed over Theodore, almost without sound, a distant whisper about life beyond the negative moments. No such life lived within these walls. The punishment of prison was the cessation of time, frozen in that instant when Theodore had seen nothing beyond the dark.

“Embrace your own damn emotions,” Theodore whispered, his voice rising to more than a whisper, breaking, catching, and returning as a shrieking roar. “Hold them as they die. Bury them if you need to. Another day awaits you, but no new day awaits us. There’s no awakening from this darkness. No uncurling of a foreshortened timeline. There’s no escape but death.”

Tattooed eyes watched him and watched themselves, having become aware for the first time of the judgment scratched into their surface, and as they saw him through that judgement and despair, some distant part of his mind recognized their hatred and knew what was to come.

After the beating, as he lay in the temporary respite of the ICU, he prayed to the bright, white darkness. He prayed, and he waited.

For death.

And on the third day, the bright, white darkness answered—speaking without words but as clearly as any Sunday sermon, for what were heaven and hell but another moment in a foreshortened timeline: See, I have created new heavens and a new earth; the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

Death is no escape but only another lie, said the darkness. One last, eternal, kindred moment.

“If things are bad,” Theodore whispered, “they’ve always been bad, and if they’ve always been bad, they’ll always be bad, forever.”

He saw her again. Elizabeth. The phantom dream of Elizabeth. The gun and the blood on the day everything went dark, and he wished he could speak to her, to tell her he was sorry, to say he wished he could undo all the things which can never be undone, to ask for forgiveness, but that forgiveness would never come.

#

Maybe on a day like this, a little shopping could be excused. If Theodore could buy a gun, Elizabeth could make an impetuous purchase to bolster whatever perceived impotence belittled her that day. Only, she didn’t see herself as impotent or castrated or whatever phallus-centered thinking drove men’s actions.

No, that wasn’t enough. That was a coward’s complaint.

On the face of it, the thought was true, but it didn’t answer the underlying question. Was she compensating, and if she took the answer for granted, whether or not she could present testimony or proof, then how was she compensating and how would she know? Maybe no one knew such things about themselves, no matter how obvious it appeared in others.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

Elizabeth stirred to soft music playing within the alley-like store—a boutique, they called it—nothing like when she was a kid and the grand department stores still clung to the remnants of a former glory, like the old southern matron who couldn’t let go of the debutante she’d once been. Did such women still exist or had her grandmother been the last? Times changed but never willingly.

“Everything seems so impractical,” Elizabeth said. “My grandmother raised me to be enamored with Edith Wharton. Every extravagance had its purpose. One would fly to Paris to buy clothes but not wear them until they were out of fashion.”

Theodora wrinkled her brow. “You bought your clothes in Paris?”

“Not me. Not us. Those who came before. Maybe I’m not making any sense.”

'“They had fewer possessions,” Theodora said, “but what they had was beautiful and soundly built.”

“You do understand.”

“And everything today feels disposable.”

“Exactly.”

Theodora touched her hand. “You can’t buy back the past so pick the slacks.”

Neither bus nor trolley jolleyed down the tracks, and in every car sat a lonesome driver beside an empty seat. The cold planted itself into the earth of Elizabeth’s coat and germinated, blossoming into snowberries and frostweed. She could call Theodore and demand a pick up, but he’d want to know why she wasn’t home already. It wasn’t worth the call.

“Where are you parked?” asked Theodora.

Elizabeth said she’d take the bus.

“Not on a day like today. I’ll drive you.”

Elizabeth said she couldn’t.

“You can and you must. After such a perfect day, I couldn’t possibly settle for anything less.”

Elizabeth hadn’t settled. She’d named and claimed her future, but what was in a name but the prickly thorns of a wilted rose?

Theodora drove an electric hearse
that sang an aria in reverse.

“I thought for us, it’d be different,” Elizabeth said. “I thought we’d have the relationship my parents lacked, a return to the old ways and the values society forfeited in trade for plastic.”

“What values are those?”

“Our therapist asked the same thing.”

“How did you answer?”

“I didn’t. We moved on.”

“Can you answer now?” Theodora asked.

Elizabeth stared out the window as they rode the on-ramp to an elevated interstate, as if they would fly out of the city and into the cold gray heavens.

Theodora answered for her. “You think your troubles come from failure, but I suspect they come from your success.”

“I don’t feel successful.”

“Most people don’t.” Instead of merging, Theodora took the off-ramp back into the city. “Let’s not go home just yet. I want to show you the old trolley road.”

“Theodore will worry.”

Theodora laughed, and Elizabeth realized it was the first time she’d said his name out loud, as if it were a summoning spell and he were her familiar.

“Oh, we’re definitely going to the river,” Theodora said. “It’s where I used to go when I had the world to solve.”

“Don’t you go anymore?”

“The world’s lighter than it used to be.”

“Doesn’t feel that way.”

“You’re carrying it for me, darling. You’re carrying a weight once carried by others before you, generations of women gone and buried, and it’s far too much for your tiny shoulders.”

From the gray heavens they descended into a city of cities, low and high, sprawling and spotted green, aging its way to the river. They drove through the city to the preserves, and through the preserve ran a forgotten road. They stopped short of the slope down to the river. Theodora said they’d come back in better weather and stand by the ruins of the pier and watch the gray waters and snowy egrets. Nothing else in all the world calmed the soul like a river.

They stood at the bluff’s edge and watched those waters through the tops of winter-bare trees.

“You know why you don’t feel successful?” Theodora asked. “We’re taught to pursue the desires of another people and another time, and then we’re surprised that what we have isn’t what we wanted.”

An eagle circled and swooped out of sight. Elizabeth could talk in a place like this, away from people, away from men, free to simply exist and say whatever truth had for too long been denied—and that truth was that she barely existed at all.

“I’d say I feel empty, but there isn’t even a form to be empty or full. There’s just nothing.”

She saw all her life as it trailed behind her, moment to moment, nothing to nothing. She was as she had always been, an absence where the universe had opened a person-shaped hole. No one else had this problem, just her, a catastrophe too undefined even to call broken, a momentary witness to the lives of others, a sadness for all that would never be.

“What you are,” said Theodora, “is a new page ready to be written.”

Tires struggled against the ice. An old Studebaker skidded into the dirt and a dozen boys piled out of double rows of bench seats like clowns at a circus, howling and hooting, some pulling rifles from the trunk, and some circling like hyenas laughing at the kill, their eyes wide with a mocking lust.

The boys circled, and the circle tightened. Hands brushed at Elizabeth’s coat and tugged at her hair, and then one of the boys with the rifles whistled. The circle fell apart and fell away, and their howls and their laughter vanished into the woods, taking with them something Elizabeth couldn’t define. It felt like silence.

#

When Elizabeth was home and dry, Theodore comforted her with the gun, pushing it into her hands with promises that here she’d find her safety. Here she’d find her strength. She let it roll off her fingers and drop to the floor. Theodore screamed. His limbs coiled like ribbons around a maypole, becoming his own caduceus. He stared at her, open-mouthed, pale, and breathless.

Safety, she whispered, is an illusion.

She’d half hoped to see the gunshot her ears would never hear, but the gun did nothing at all. It offered nothing and could save her from nothing, not the boys by the river and not a life spent with Theodore.

Violence was no substitute for voice. Her silence was gone, lost in the depths of the woods, and her voice was rising from those depths. Surging. Inevitable.

And she knew that when her voice found her, the sound of it would shape her world.

And it did.

Theodore’s machine breathed.

She stood over him as air sucked through a mask splattered and intermingled with bone and meat. Teeth dangled at the edges of Theodore’s jaw, and his eyes opened. He looked at her, his face undamaged, the gun unfired, and she felt the weight of the gun in her hand. His eyes followed her, and she replaced the gun in the holster and the holster in the drawer. He said nothing.

She thought she’d said enough.

In the morning, Elizabeth awoke to find the bed empty and the house quiet, like an omen of days to come. Healing and measured progress no longer mattered. The finality had come of its own accord, with no way back and no way forward. The fantasy of Theodore’s death assured her their shared life had come to an end, and for the first time in months, the anger passed and she felt only sadness and mourning for something beyond resurrection.

Theodore’s tube hung loose instead of terminating in the cleaning machine. The mask lay, unprotected, on the wooden floor. Above it, the drawer hung open, holster and gun gone. A smile twitched at her lips.

Scared him, I guess.

She stared out the back window at the abbreviated lawn, as if looking for him. Something fell in another room.

“Theodore?”

Nobody answered, and the sound of the impact played in her mind. She didn’t know what a body falling would have sounded like, but it sounded like a body falling, and now there was only that same still silence.

“Theodore?”

She eased through the double doors into the living room where everything seemed in place and undisturbed. The spare bedroom door swung open on silent hinges. Theodore sat on the end of the bed, his head bowed as if in prayer to the gun he cradled.

“Theodore?”

He didn’t look up. He didn’t move. “Therapy is a waste of time. You can see that right? We can do this without her interference.”

“Do what?”

“Save our marriage.” He still wouldn’t look at her, but the gun muzzle pointed vaguely in her direction.

A feeling like a voice, external to her own, told her to be afraid. Negotiate for peace, it said, even if peace is an illusion. Stay silent. Stay kind.

She listened as best she could, knowing every warning and every word like an old friend, but she had no negotiation left. No silence and little kindness. All she had was an unspoken rage, ready—even now—to find its voice.

Theodore turned his face to hers, his eyes bloodshot and darkly hollowed, and he tapped the gun to his chin. “Promise me we’ll try. Promise me, or I’ll end it.”

And the rage within her boiled.

“There is nothing left to try,” she said. “There’s no trying left. Gather your things and go. I don’t want you to die. Just go and discover who you are without me. For both of us, there’s something out there that we’ll want more.”

“I want this,” he said. “I know you want it, too.”

She answered and the gun fired. The bullet ripped through Theodore’s chin, teeth, and nose, unzipping his face like God undoing his creation. He fell to the floor, ruined but alive, the insistence of life to live striking harder than cowardice.

Elizabeth picked up the phone.

-End-