Phantom Limbs
by Brandon French
The room is completely empty, except for the expensive wood dollhouse behind the tilted closet door which has come off its slider. The only other evidence of past life are the indentations in the cropped brown carpet where the full-size mattress has rested. There may also be a leftover scent, but only Mike can smell it. They stand in the doorway staring at Tanya’s absence, which is represented now by a balletic dust sculpture backlit from the high rectangular windows above the bed’s absence, the left-behind-mother and the left-behind-dog in the left-behind-room that the child, no longer a child, will never live in again.
Mike interrupts the tableau by stepping inside. He circles the room several times, trying to make sense of what has become of his former life. He looks over at Heather with his immense brown eyes, immense because his Afghan head is so small but also because his Afghan soul is so great.
“She’s gone,” Heather says gently, distracted from her own distress by Mike’s, which lacking words or explanations is even more profound.
“Where is my bed?” she imagines him asking. “Will it be back by tonight? And where is the girl? Did she go out for a walk and get lost? Will we find her? And if not, what will become of me?”
“Oh, Mikey,” Heather says, overwhelmed by so many questions, by so much distress.
Later she will close the door to the room, believing that will make it easier for both of them, not to be repeatedly confronted by its vacancy. But Mike will whimper and scratch at the door insistently, imagining that the room has been restored if only the door would reopen and he can resume his life. So Heather will relent. And Mike will enter and circle and sniff and remember, the rumpled sheets, the raggedy blanket he chewed when he was a pup, the leaky pillows whose feathers made him sneeze, the place where he hid half a roast beef that he’d carried soundlessly in his soft birder’s mouth, down from the counter, past the dinner party guests who were about to ask for seconds, and up the carpeted steps to the sanctuary he shared with the girl. Like Proust, he is haunted by temps perdu until finally he drops down with a beastly sigh on the carpet where the bed used to be but will never be again and closes one troubled eye.
The room is completely empty, except for the expensive wood dollhouse behind the tilted closet door which has come off its slider. The only other evidence of past life are the indentations in the cropped brown carpet where the full-size mattress has rested. There may also be a leftover scent, but only Mike can smell it. They stand in the doorway staring at Tanya’s absence, which is represented now by a balletic dust sculpture backlit from the high rectangular windows above the bed’s absence, the left-behind-mother and the left-behind-dog in the left-behind-room that the child, no longer a child, will never live in again.
Mike interrupts the tableau by stepping inside. He circles the room several times, trying to make sense of what has become of his former life. He looks over at Heather with his immense brown eyes, immense because his Afghan head is so small but also because his Afghan soul is so great.
“She’s gone,” Heather says gently, distracted from her own distress by Mike’s, which lacking words or explanations is even more profound.
“Where is my bed?” she imagines him asking. “Will it be back by tonight? And where is the girl? Did she go out for a walk and get lost? Will we find her? And if not, what will become of me?”
“Oh, Mikey,” Heather says, overwhelmed by so many questions, by so much distress.
Later she will close the door to the room, believing that will make it easier for both of them, not to be repeatedly confronted by its vacancy. But Mike will whimper and scratch at the door insistently, imagining that the room has been restored if only the door would reopen and he can resume his life. So Heather will relent. And Mike will enter and circle and sniff and remember, the rumpled sheets, the raggedy blanket he chewed when he was a pup, the leaky pillows whose feathers made him sneeze, the place where he hid half a roast beef that he’d carried soundlessly in his soft birder’s mouth, down from the counter, past the dinner party guests who were about to ask for seconds, and up the carpeted steps to the sanctuary he shared with the girl. Like Proust, he is haunted by temps perdu until finally he drops down with a beastly sigh on the carpet where the bed used to be but will never be again and closes one troubled eye.