Leaving in Pieces

“Humpty dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty back together again.” English Nursery Rhyme


**********


Albert Gooney discovers that somewhere along the way he had become like Jimmy Hoffa…invisible. Only his name remains, evidenced by recurring American Express bills and occasional snippets of gossip at dinner parties.

He wasn’t surprised. In fact, it had been happening for years. Slowly but surely, he was breaking up, coming apart. Life was diminishing him, inch by inch. Bits and pieces were breaking off like fragments of a burned-out asteroid, flying off at the seams, scattered indiscriminately in the vast darkness of space.

He had once considered the alternative…exploding himself. One quick second, bang! All over. A suicide bomber, go out in style. One second of fame, lots of news press. No more attrition, the drip, drip, drip torture, the wasting away into irrelevance in miniscule pieces.

He meditates on the post-explosion idea. He imagines the scene. He would scarcely recognize the colossal wreckage and scattered scraps of himself. They would lie strewn in careless, disorderly disarray. He thought of his poor wife. She obsessed on perfect order. She would never approve of the body placements. He would never be able to explain this unthinkable legacy.

Still, the idea intrigued him. He remembers lines from an obscure poem, “We leave in pieces.” They circumambulate in his brain like a stupid song, one that’s stuck on a 45 rpm record, spinning round and round on a ‘50’s turnstile.

He spots a couple of finger digits embedded in the wall. One wears his wedding ring. It whispers, “I’m a metaphor.” He assesses the situation as if it were symbolic of his marriage, remembering how the silent spaces slowly sapped the substance of relationship. It seeped out little by little until saying ‘goodbye’ was all that was left.

Across the room he recognizes his once-enormous mental data base, a memory repository brimming over with the sum total of his life’s events. Including every golf shot he ever made. It now resembles a wad of wet spaghetti that’s been slung against the wall. Its empty essence slowly trickles down the wall in tiny crimson rivulets into a pool of oblivion.

He considered that ‘one and done’ is not nature’s way. It thrives on comedy, and the joke is always on us. It laughs hideously when the numbered hairs of our heads retire slowly south, one at a time, until they number zero.

He also knew that most things didn’t just pack up and leave all at once. Like visits from Flake, his third cousin twice removed. He wished family were more like money…here today, gone tomorrow. But no, Flake was like inflation, a voracious parasite that eats one out of house and home.

Just recently he had kissed goodbye to his wisdom teeth and his wallet. The dentist said hello to a new BMW. Even the Tooth Fairy shafted him, leaving only a prescription for amoxicillin under his pillow. One man’s loss is another’s gain. Some even say it refers to divorcees.

He’d heard about Age and Gravity, formerly wastrel angels. Cast out from their first estate, they set up a shop in Hollywood, posing as artists. The diabolical duo specialized in re-crafting faces and bodies into caricatures and grotesque remnants of the former tenants. Albert cursed every time he looked at his sagging skin, his widening wrinkles. Somewhere in the distance he heard the demons laughing at their masterpieces.

Albert remembers skipping out on his college girlfriend. The torrid affair was too much. In retrospect, leaving her early was good insurance against getting left. Fortunately for Albert, he dodged getting left holding the bag or the baby…all leaving is not necessarily a bad thing (but some puns are!).

**********

He lingered long amid that horrific scene of the former Albert Gooney. The only solution to his dilemma was reinvention of himself with whatever parts he could scrape up. It would dawn on him soon.

This is the land of new beginnings, the international capital of reincarnation…all that’s needed to start again is a name, real or fictional. Is America great, or what?

Bud Hearn
August 15, 2014