Immobile

The truck rolled slowly and perilously up the icy hill. Dark trees, miles of snow and the endless night sky panned and dipped slowly across the vehicle's windows as it plodded upward. Eliot Moon refused to expose his fear to his father, and feigned nonchalance as he caressed the steering wheel, but it took all he had to rein it in with even the slightest bump or swerve. His knuckles were as white as the evening snow. "Positively gothic," judged Dr. Moon from the passenger's seat. He was most likely referring to the looming convent in the foreground, a structure built by pious innocents a century ago, which now resembled something a lazy teamster might've painted onto the backdrop of a 1950's B horror movie: all steeples and archways, missing only the token bolts of lightning overhead. There would be no lightning tonight to disrupt the cold stillness of most other nights that this region had to offer come winter.

Dr. Moon had been surprisingly quiet up until now, which was itself a small blessing. Perhaps the sight of the convent in this dark wilderness, which lacked subtlety in a way that probably offended him, triggered his gruff.

"The flu," he mumbled to himself. "An entire convent gets the flu. These women live in the Dark Ages. Deluded old virgins, forgotten by time."

Eliot said nothing, because deep down he feared nuns. He never met one, so the fear was irrational. But the idea of nuns terrified him. Dr. Moon despised all churches and religious figureheads, but had occasionally admitted to a grudging respect for the ladies of the cloth. They generally lived simple, healthy, long lives, which in his medical book spoke great volumes. That is why he agreed to respond to this late call, an act of great rarity on his part. He admired the nuns' lifestyle, not their calling.

The truck nearly sputtered a sigh of relief after it was parked into a small lot behind the convent, which looked much smaller up close than it did from the bottom of that high hill. Eliot opened the door for his father, who leapt spryly onto the snowy tar of the lot. The older man belonged on the cover of a baby boomer magazine: he was fit and strong, his bald head and knife-sharp silver beard only accentuating a potent masculine prowess. Eliot passed the leather black medical bag to his father and began to follow him around to the front door, but halfway Dr. Moon spun to face him.

"You're not going in there," he told him. "This abominable place is a holy Petri dish of contagions. I will not have you loafing about the house, whining and spreading around your foul smoker's phlegm, and missing more work. Start warming the car in twenty minutes, and don't you dare smoke any of those damn cigarettes that I'm supposed to pretend I don't know you have."

Eliot watched as his father leapt up the icy steps to the front door with abandon. Was there a surface on earth strong enough to crack the old man's skull if he fell? Was it even possible that he could fall?

Convinced that he was finally out of Dr. Moon's line of vision, Eliot lit a cigarette. He had made his way slightly downhill and off the path, now finding himself in the dark, cold, silent forest. Eliot spent his days crunching tree trunks into particle board at the mill, and tall trees in the wilderness often made him feel guilty, threatened and unarmed. But better to smoke beneath these evil trees than in sight of his father, whose venomous medical sermons cut him deeper than any saw. As he puffed on the little burning knob, the usual thoughts crawled lazily through Eliot's mind. He wished the mill would go union; a rumor had spread that a guy at the union mill several towns over had "accidentally" severed the tip of his finger on the head saw and was given a lifetime of disability payouts.

He wished he could be back in New York City, in Greenwich Village with bohemian Aunt Peggy, where he spent the happiest fourteen months of his young life while his mother was sick so many years ago. The memory of those lights and colors, songs and smells; those happy drunk college students and their sidewalk bric-a-brac, were now fading into half-recalled dreams.

He wished that he didn't have the face of a horse and the voice of a dormouse, so that he could get the nerve to spark up a conversation with the check-out girl at the Mobil Station off of Exit 21, who was the only pretty girl Eliot had ever seen within twenty miles in any direction. He wished he could be anywhere else and anyone else but Here and Him.

The first scream was so muffled and quick that Eliot just assumed he hadn't heard it. It couldn't be a scream; it was an afterthought. He smoked on.

The next one came long seconds later. It was a bleating, inhuman wail, undeniable in its awful eeriness. It came from no direction, and had no discernable proximity. It dropped a hard chill onto Eliot, who froze in place, mind and body.

The third scream brought more purpose and less mystery. Perhaps it was just Eliot adjusting to this new stimulus, but he could now read more from it. A woman, deep in the woods, beneath the hill, away from the convent. A woman in pain. A woman being raped. Murdered. Mauled.

The cigarette butt fell to the ground. Eliot heard his heavy breathing and felt his heart thump wildly in his ribs. He was making a crunchy mess of the snow beneath him as he began running in one direction, stopping, backtracking, beginning in a new direction, stopping, backtracking, etc. Where should he go and what should he do? The convent. His father. Cell phone. Police.

The fourth scream pulled him blindly into the dark woods below him like an invisible claw. He had to act. He had to stop this. Where was he going? His brain clattered within his skull like a coin in a shaken bucket. What would he do? The dark trees whipped around him as he leapt down over roots and branches, stumbling, slipping, but not falling. What was he prepared to see? His mind floated above his body, but the body soldiered downward, following the fifth scream.

The trees cleared and Eliot stopped running, and was now sliding down an icy hill, on the soles of his boots, like he was roller-skating. Here was a cemetery. A fucking cemetery, beneath the ledge he had landed on. A sixth scream rose from below him, and Eliot was so scared that he almost began to cry. Then he looked down.

In the deep snow bank beneath his icy-rocky perch, some yards from the gravestones, lay a large figure, seemingly making snow angels. It took a long moment for Eliot to summon back control of his organs to determine what he was seeing. It was a heavy woman, lying face down in the snow. She was not making snow angels, she was merely clawing feebly at the snow around her to try and regain leverage, but she was failing. She had fallen. And now she was screaming.

Eliot hated himself when he realized he was stifling a laugh. Perhaps it was out of relief that the big reveal had not proved more dire, and that he did not have to fight a bear or a murderer. Perhaps.

After a mercifully brief moment of pondering, Eliot slid down this slope with the same ease as the one above it. He began to silently marvel these stuntman athletics of his, triggered in a moment of chaos. Who knew? Ankle-deep in the snow bank, Eliot jogged to where the large woman lay.

"I'm here," he announced breathlessly as he approached, "I'm here." The woman began to cry when she heard this, but could not angle her head to view her savior. Eliot stooped low to meet her gaze. Her dark eyes were pink and puffy, and her round, childish face was deathly pale. Her mouth was agape with sobs.

"What happened?" Eliot asked.

The woman was trying to formulate words between her blubbery bleats. "I fell," was all she could legibly muster. She repeated this several times. Eliot reached for her wide hands, which were spread out before her. "No!" screamed the woman pathetically. "You can't get me up by yourself! I'm too big! Get help!"

On a normal night, these words would've moved him to pity and embarrassed obedience, but tonight Eliot was feeling cocky. So he took a firm grip of her wrists and began to pull her up. She was heavy, but the adrenaline that pumped through his body made Eliot into a human forklift. Soon the woman was slumped over his shoulders, and then standing before him more or less on her own, but she was wobbly and continued to tightly clutch his hands. She proceeded to shake and sob. "I was trying to take a shortcut to the path over there," she finally warbled after regaining an inch of composure, motioning with her head to a small footpath going up a side of the hill leading up to the road that, sure enough, would've made Eliot's downward journey a lot more practical. "I don't know why I walked here. The snow is so deep. I don't know what I was thinking."

Eliot furrowed his brow in puzzlement. "It's not so deep," he replied. The woman burst into new tears, and now Eliot finally felt the good-old fashioned guilt reclaim his body, stifling the adrenaline rush down with a forceful wallop. He had said the wrong thing.

"Let's go," he told her, and began to release one of her hands, but she held on for dear life.

"I can't, I'll fall again," she whimpered.

"Okay," he answered, "Okay. Let do this."

Hands locked with hers, Eliot began to pivot the pair of them in a circular fashion towards the path, side-stepping. She followed his lead in this strange little dance. When they finally reached the relative safety of the path, the woman cried out in relief and hugged Eliot tightly. "You saved me," she whispered. "You saved me, you saved me." A strange warmth basked over Eliot as she cooed this into his ear.

The slow march back up to the convent proved relatively quiet as the woman began to regain her composure. By the time they had been let in by one of sisters, pale and unresponsive in her illness, she gone quite silent. Perched on a bench in the waiting room, the woman silently gasped, eyes closed, exhausted. Her entire body was damp from the snow and the sweat. The simple cotton muumuu she wore clung moistly to her folds, and her surprisingly bare legs dripped small rivers through her fleshy crevices. The rolls of her leg fat draped over her ankles, nearly hiding her slippers.

The older nun who let them in lingered only briefly before retiring to her chambers, too sick to stand there and tend to them. Eliot caught glimpses of other nunly figures spiriting down hallways in flickering movement, younger ones pushing older ones in wheelchairs with remarkable speed.

Dr. Moon had been summoned, and was now questioning the woman as he tapped her brow with a cloth and pulled a thermometer from her mouth. He was trying out his best bedside manner with her, but even this was fraught with chilly sarcasm.

"Well, you are very lucky to have escaped diphtheria, Virginia," he told her, calling her the single name she had given him earlier when pressed. His reeked of adult condescension, and clearly Virginia immediately knew what she was up against and hated him.

"Your son saved me life," she replied simply. Dr. Moon merely took a mental note of the mercury in the thermometer before returning it to his bag.

The youngest and healthiest nun in the convent, a silent woman in her fifties, was now swaddling Virginia's bare legs with paper towels, mummifying them. It was grotesque and sad for Eliot to behold, but his father's lack of response to Virginia's declaration made it seem all the more depressing.

"And what brought you to the cemetery at this hour?" the doctor finally continued with half-interest. Perhaps his father could get some sort of punchline out of this line of questioning, Eliot pondered.

"I realized I had forgotten to put flowers on a grave," she answered curtly.

"Ah, I see, I see," Dr. Moon added with a dramatic nod. "A lost lover, perhaps? Husband?"

"My mother's. I'm not married."

"Of course." Dr. Moon then balked as if he caught himself in an outward display of obvious cruelty. This was not his style, at least not with anyone other than Eliot.

"And where do you live?" he proceeded, switching gears.

"Half a mile down the road, off Exit 19."

"Well, that's quite a walk for you."

Virginia flashed him a cold stare. "I took a taxi."

Dr. Moon nodded again. "I see, I see. Well, you live, for now. But, Miss Virginia, I must warn you that a person of your immobility must really consider some serious lifestyle changes before deciding to go on a late-night gallivant through a cemetery snowdrift."

"Dad," Eliot heard himself interjecting. The nun had stopped her swaddling and looked up at the doctor coldly.

Dr. Moon quickly turned back to his son, sporting a stoney frown, but Virginia held up a hand, nodding patiently.

"It's okay, Eliot," she announced sadly, "It's fine. I've had this conversation a thousand times with a thousand men just like this one. And I'm tired of discussing my glands, my diet, and everything about my body. It's pointless, and it's not worth it. So, I'll just call a cab and be on my way. Thank you again, so much, Eliot."

Without once looking back at the woman, Dr. Moon leaned in to whisper to his son. "Take her home, and come right back. Don't listen to a thing she tells you. Just drop her off and get right back here. I'm tired of this nonsense, and these people."

Despite her ordeal, Virginia now smiled sweetly from the passenger's seat of truck where she was precariously squeezed into. She was murdering the vehicle's suspension and the truck nearly scraped the tar, but Eliot did not mind so much. He was transfixed by the sudden change of mood from his passenger as the convent dropped out of sight behind them.

"How did you find me?" she asked, staring at him with her warm chocolate eyes and her sunny round face, framed under strawberry bangs.

"I was out there smoking," Eliot responded sheepishly. What's going on here, he wondered.

"Thank God for that," Virginia said with a gentle laugh. "Thank God you smoke."

Eliot awoke from a strange, pleasant dream with a cruel chemical jolt, darting upward from the couch where he normally slept. Dr. Moon hovered by him, fully dressed for a day at the office, shaking his resigned head. He was absently stuffing the remnants of the smelling salts back into his pockets.

"Go to work," he commanded before quickly exiting the house.

The day had passed languidly, and Eliot was surprised to get through it uninjured, given the state he was in. His thoughts had been darting awkwardly between wanting to know why Virginia had seemed so at ease with things last night in the truck, and what the inside of her house looked like. And he had never seen eyes so wide or a smile so kind. And no one had ever called him a hero before.

"These are for a friend," Eliot heard himself telling the checkout girl in the Mobil station. "She's going through a rough time. These should cheer her up, right?" This had been the most he ever said to the checkout girl. Or to any girl, more or less.

"Sure," she replied, not even looking up at him. "That'll be eleven fifty."

"The kettle doesn't whistle anymore," Virginia called from the kitchen, "But I always know when it's ready. Eliot fidgeted on the puffy couch adorned with an Afghan rug. His gas station bouquet spread modestly from a jar, newly perched on the little coffee table before him. The house was a descent size, but dilapidated. Many chachkies adorned shelves and surfaces, depicting animals at play or rest. The woman emerged with two blue mugs and their flapping tea bag strings hanging from them, and sat down on the loveseat across from him.

"No one's brought me flowers in a real long time," she said with quiet sincerity after a pause.

The worst thing about blushing is the tingling heat one feels in their cheeks.

"I dunno if their considered nice or not," he babbled, "it's not my thing."

"They're nice," she assured him with a smile. "And if if you didn't bring them, it's so nice that you came to check up on me. You're just nice, I guess."

Eliot nervously sipped the tea. "This is good."

"Yes. You bought it for me, sort of. Welfare, I mean. It's from the taxpayers."

Eliot looked up at her.

"I have to be honest," she continued gravely. "I'm not proud of it. I have three undergraduate degrees: Library science, computer science, English. But no one wants to hire me. And I don't know if I could get to a workplace if they did."

Eliot didn't quite know what to say, so he said the first thing that came to mind. "Never did college."

She eyed him curiously. "How old are you again?"

"Twenty-two."

Another kind smile. "And you can't guess my age. No one can. I like it that way. It's one of the perks of being like this."

She was correct, but Eliot could never guess anyone's age. He wasn't good at that sort thing.

"You should give college a thought," she continued. I mean, you're father's a doctor. You can afford a great school. I had to do the community college. And even that wiped me out."

This was not a conversation he wanted to have. "Not for me." She searched his soul with a warm, penetrating gaze, then suddenly shivered, and clung her large sweater tighter around her shoulders. "It's cold in here," she said. "That air conditioner over there is rusted into the wall. I threw a blanket over it, but that didn't do much. I hope these flowers make it through the week."

The flowers lasted about three days, but they remained wilted in the jar when Eliot returned. On the fourth week, it was Eliot himself who decided the brown rotted things must be tossed.

He did not care much for the opinion of others, regarding who saw him with Virginia or who did not. Not like there was much to worry about if he did: Virginia always preferred his visits at her place. The home she inherited was cluttered, but she kept it neat enough, and it always felt inviting and safe compared to Dr. Moon's stark little house.

Eliot did not fully understand his attraction to Virginia. She was certainly not the physical type he had become familiar with in women, and by all means was raised to resent anyone who "did not take care" of themselves physically. But truthfully, Virginia actually led a pretty healthy life. She ate well, exercised to the best of her ability, and was hygienic. But she was born with problematic glands, and there was nothing she could do about that. He admired her acceptance of this, and appreciated how devastating a setback like the night in the cemetery could be.

He had to admit that Virginia's constant reminders of his heroic acts that night, as well as her regular reassurance of his attractiveness, intelligence and overall goodness, had become a bit of a drug. He caught himself becoming less embarrassed with her compliments over time, and this revelation nerved and thrilled him.

Aside from this ego boost, conversations with her were also intoxicating. She listened well, and she spoke of interesting things, like places she'd like to travel to and jobs she'd like to have in those places. Eliot began to see himself in other places around the world, away from this nowhere town, for the first time. Perhaps he and Virginia could leave this place behind and get their fresh starts somewhere else entirely. The only person he went out of his way to hide his friendship with Virginia from was his father, of course. It wasn't so much that Dr. Moon had any sort of power over him per se, but the man had a way of producing such a vicious turn of phrase. Eliot did not think he could listen to the awful things the hateful doctor had to say about Virginia.

It was on the day that Eliot was finally able to wrestle that damn rusted air conditioner out of the hole in Virginia's wall that life became even more interesting. It started with her hand on his shoulder, which turned into a caress of his arm.

All the things that Dr. Moon had to say about fat women were wrong. Everything about her body was soft, warm and inviting. He fell into her, and with every inching movement there was another part of her to explore. She roared with delight. It was wonderful.

Love consumed him, for the first time. There was no point in calling it anything else. Virginia opened up even more after this first lovemaking; she became more real, more human. Her encouragement and praise never stopped, but he found that she had begun to gently prod him into a forward movement. Where could they take this? What should they leave behind? What did they need to do to make this into an actual life together?

"I heard about you and your friend," Dr. Moon told Eliot one day as the younger man was rushing out. Eliot froze and eyed his father, who stood with his back to him, gazing out the window, a cold little marble statue. Such a small figure, casting such a large shadow.

"What's that, now?" Eliot asked, knowing full well where this was going. "A doctor friend of mine told me all about it. I'm surprised that behemoth of yours still manages to come in for check-ups. She went on and on to him about her new young lover. I obviously knew right away. I was repulsed, but I knew that only you could ever be so stupid as to-- I can't even say it. I can't even imagine it."

Eliot hung his head, ashamed of his shame. "I didn't think you doctors were aloud to talk about that stuff," was all he could say. "No one but fools live here, in this town. If that weren't the case, I'd warn you against the social improprieties of being seen with such a person.

Eliot flashed with angry heat. He just wanted to get out of this house, forever and ever.

"Well, if that's the case, then you really don't have much to complain about, Dad. I'm just another fool."

The doctor turned around. Eliot was expecting those beaty little death orbs burrowing hatred into his chest, but was instead surprised to see that Dr. Moon's eyes were opaque pools of sadness.

"You don't remember you're mother's illness all that well," he began. "I sent you away at the worst of it and I don't regret it. The meningitis twisted her spine into a an abstract thing, and she screamed herself to unconsciousness, and I was right there screaming along with her. And then she screamed herself to death, and I was left wondering whether or not our twenty years of relative happiness together was worth it for me, to have to see her in those final moments."

A lump formed in Eliot's throat, and he was rendered mute. He had only the vaguest, most idealized memories of his mother, but the image of her as a screaming, knotted pretzel was too much for him to process. He had never really been told this before.

"Falling in love with a sick person is the height of folly," Dr. Moon continued gravely, sad eyes lost in thought. "You will be left alone, questioning the point of everything, and you will grow into a cold person."

Eliot recovered as quickly as possible. "Virginia isn't sick. She's just gotta different shape, is all. She's healthy enough."

Dr. Moon shook the languidness from his expression and frowned familiarly. "And what does she want to do with her life, this Virginia? What are the great plans you two have for the future?"

"I dunno. We'll work something out."

"I am sure you're convinced she's self-sufficient, but I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that she's on assisted living, is that correct?"

"Just for now, but she's gonna get a job soon."

"She will get no job," Dr. Moon growled emphatically. "She will continue to blame the world for her problems, and she will suck the resources out of everything and everyone around her. She will leave you a dry husk, and you will be stuck in this town you hate so much forever and ever."

Eliot felt dizzy, and slumped onto the couch. Nausea crept its way up into the pit of his stomach.

Perhaps, for a fleeting moment, something resembling pity could be traced in his father's expression. Eliot remembered the first and last time he saw this look, years ago, as the doctor faded from view while the train carried young Eliot to New York City.

But the moment was indeed fleeting, and the gears turned again in the doctor's presentation.

"Do as you must. I don't own you. I did a rotten job of raising you and there's no point in starting now.

"But you should know this. Your Aunt Peggy called a few weeks ago, and wondered if you had any interest in working as a superintendant in that maddening little building of hers in the East Village.' Eliot shivered. This was too much.

"I wasn't sure what to tell her," the doctor continued. "You've been out of the house more than usual these past few months. I thought perhaps you were finally resigning yourself to life in the particle board business here, and that this rural idiocy was maybe your real calling. "Tell me. Was I wrong in drawing that conclusion, Eliot?"

Eliot was frozen in the truck. Every exterior and interior square inch of the vehicle was packed with items, wrapped in paper and plastic and tied with bungee cords.

Virginia's house loomed in the passenger window, looking smaller and colder in the moonlight this evening then he had remembered. He hadn't spoken to Virginia in weeks, leaving her voicemails unanswered. Avoiding her proved alarmingly easy, despite the pleading, desperate confusion of her messages. Listening to Virginia's recorded raves and rambles as she tried to work out the reasons of his betrayal in monologue form infused Eliot with a detached coldness, like he were listening to an avant-garde radio play. He knew that his father's words had gotten to him: perhaps she really was a being of endless need and limitless blame. Perhaps she had been about to reveal these to be her true colors. Perhaps he was getting out alive while he could. If that was the case, it did not explain why Eliot could never bring himself to actually explain to Virginia why he had her cut out, or that he had officially cut her out at all. It did not explain why the mere idea of saying goodbye to her would completely paralyze him.

He gave the little house one last look. Perhaps she had already forgotten him by now. Maybe she'd find the strength she needed to gain her mobility, and move on to better things. Or maybe she'd remain in that house, in this town, until the end of her days. Eliot hoped that wasn't case.

Realizing he was crying, Eliot drove off, accelerating more with each mile, praying for the moment to arrive when this frosty little town would drop out of the rear view mirror for the final time.