Speechless, by Paul Shirley

Brooklyn, New York

A hand on the nape of my neck. She pulls me down to her face, closing her eyes as she does. I can’t help but look over her shoulder, at the blue light coming from beside her bed.

12:36

Pompeii, Italy

The sound of his feet drumming against the pavement warns of his approach.

She opens the front door with a laugh.

“Why the rush? It’s only leftovers tonight.”

He stops short of the doorway. Panting, with his hands on his knees and his face aimed at the cobblestones underfoot, he manages to say,

“The mountain. Exploding. The town…”

Six hours.

Six hours until a cab that’ll take me to La Guardia and a plane that’ll take me away from here, from this, from her.

I close my eyes and relax my lips, like she taught me.

She laughs again.

“What do you mean, exploding? Mountains don’t explode.”

Hands still on his knees, he turns to look behind him.

“Ours does, they say.”

He stands, wiping a cascade of sweat from his brow, and raises his eyes to meet hers.

“Now.”

“What’s wrong?” she says. She steadies my face with her hands.

I can’t tell her, not really. Not all the way.

“Well, I, um…”

She looks past him, toward the town square. Maybe there’s a little less movement in the air. But it’s just as hot, just as stifling, just as it was yesterday.

She goes to him, pulling on his elbow.

“Now? What does ‘now’ mean?”

“I don’t know, but-”

He shrugs out of her grasp. He points into the house.

“-we must get our daughter.”

I bury my head in her neck, finding the top of her head and all that hair, that glorious hair, with a hand.

“I’m really happy to be here with you.”

The truth, but not all of it.

I can feel her smile. I can imagine the dimples.

“I know you are.”

The man and woman, the husband and wife, the mother and father, all of them race to the bedroom, where their daughter waits. She’s not crying when they arrive, but when she sees the look in her father’s eyes, she wails.

I want to ask her when I’ll see her again, what we’re going to do, if this means as much to her as it does to me.

I smile and run my fingers across her chest.

“Let’s sleep,” she says with a smile of her own. She pushes my shoulder. I yield and she pulls the comforter toward her chin. I become a shadow, curled in behind her.

“What do we do?” she says.

Outside, the stillness is gone, replaced by the howl of a day splitting in two.

He doesn’t know the answer, because who would? But he has to say something. His head swiveling, his eyes search for hope in their daughter’s tiny room.

“There,” he says, pointing at the wood table he’d hacked out of an olive tree that had died on her mother’s farm on the hill. “We get under there.”

My fingers trace figure eights on her arm. I look past her again.

12:42

She’ll be worthless in the morning. If I’m going to say anything, it needs to be now.

She squints at him. But then, seeing how much it has taken for him to muster this resolve, she relents.

She points to a stack of blankets that’s been in the corner since they bought the place two years before, from his father.

“Okay. Hand me those.”

Rehearsal.

I’m going to miss you more than..

I need you…

I lo..

I lift my head, aiming my mouth at her ear. “Hey,” I whisper.

He crouches. Throws the first blanket to his wife. Now, the second.

Now, a third.

The clock moves.

12:43

White dust at the window. Moving fast. He sees it and covers his mouth with the edge of his shirt.

“Cover your mouth. Cover her mouth!” He’s screaming now.

Her breath. Smooth, simple, unworried.

Otherwise, silence.

It hits. He lunges, to his wife, to his daughter, to his world.

I reach.

His daughter, hopeful to the end.

My arm stops.

His wife, her gaze.

My hand hovers.

And him. Arm outstretched, eyes wide, lungs full.

I pull back. She needs the sleep. I’ll say it next time I see her.

And a mouth, frozen around words that will never get out.

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