Yellow Mama E zine

The Eyes Have It

 

by Bruce Costello

 

 

          I’m 101 years old and I sit here every day with my face on, waiting for visitors who never come.

          The nurse helps with my make-up every morning, when she does my catheter.

          Grandma used to say ‘a girl’s not fit to be seen without her face on.’

           Not that I talk to anyone here, because they’re all gaga. Nobody talks any sense. They sit around the lounge all day, completely gaga.

          Like that chap over there who keeps calling for his mummy. You can’t get any sense out of him. Or that fellow over there with the red beret—they reckon he was once the mayor, and he was married to that lady in the green cardy at the end of the row. She looks about 110, and they don’t even recognise each other.

          But this old chap wearing the air force jacket who always sits in the chair next to me, he says he was a pilot and shows everybody photos of an aeroplane, but I don’t think he’s gaga. He has a grand moustache and always wears a blue uniform jacket that makes him look smart. The nurses and the doctors all call him ‘Squadron Leader.’ He and I did have a little chat yesterday. I think he’s still got a working brain.

         Apart from him, I’m the only one here who hasn’t lost my marbles, or at least, not many. I feel just the same inside as I always did.

         Only thing is, I can't stay awake. In fact, I’m never sure if I’m awake or asleep. Or dead. I keep having these thoughts, more like pictures or flashes that come into my head. And I have bad dreams, only I'm not sure if they’re dreams or not, or actual memories or half memories, about what was, or might have been, and did it actually happen? Is it happening now? The things that have already happened sometimes seem to be happening again.

         I wake up and if I’ve been having a young dream, I keep on feeling young till the dream wears off. Which is weird. Like it’s actually happening. I can relive old times, and the same feelings come back and hang around, like time travellers from the past that end up here in the future with me.

         I can drop off to sleep any time and disappear into another place. Can’t do nothing about it. It just happens.

         Couple of minutes ago, I had a dream about a girl. I’m dashed if I know where it came from and I’m blowed if I know who she was.

         What was I saying? What was I talking about? I’ve lost my thread.

         Anyway, you were asking about my mum and dad. My mum was said to be a nice person, but she had a vicious streak. Dad was alright, though. Can't remember what they looked like, but they were big people. They knew it all and there were two of them and only one of me.

         I try to remember my dreams. They’re the only action I get these days. Nothing else happens in my life. Dreams come in snatches and vanish in pieces.

          Here’s one I had just a few minutes ago. A girl and a man. The girl broke away from the man and ran up the hallway to the front door, and down the garden path to the gate, but it was stuck shut. The hedge was punching the gate with its fists and saying ‘let her go, let her go, can't you see she's done nothing wrong?’ Then the gate said ‘no, it’s her fault alright, she led him on.’             The girl jumped over the gate and fell on the footpath, like a fallen woman, her head full of nonsense, then she ran home where a lioness grabbed her and would’ve bitten her head off, but a lion came along and rescued her. The lioness began to laugh and sob something awful, then it scratched at the girl and the girl punched it. Someone called the screaming zebras, who took the girl to a bad girls’ home.

          Mum put the fear of God into me. ‘You shouldn’t ever go back to the dark places you fought to get out of,’ she used to say.

          I wonder if the squadron leader was in the war. I knew a bomber pilot in London, a Flight Lieutenant. ‘I love you to the moon and back,’ he said. I loved him the same, but he dumped me really quick when I wouldn’t let him do it and he wouldn’t drive me home, so I had to catch the bus. It was after midnight. I cried for days, and I got sent home from the factory because of it.

          I fell madly in love with a New Zealand sailor who’d been in destroyers. We came out to NZ after the war, but he was a rotten sod. Died of something in the end, good thing too, because he used to beat me black and blue. After him, there was a whole lot of men in my life, but none for long. As soon as they got serious, their aftershave turned to vinegar, and I’d give them the shove. I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding being close to other people, men and women. People can be so cruel.

          I used to be pretty. I fell in love a lot and it didn’t ever last, but it was always great while it did. Some days I feel quite good now when I look back and manage to get my mind off these gaga people and remember the good times before they turned to poo. I think about the past because it’s all I’ve got. I have no present and no future.

          Falling in love used to be a great feeling for me. Even if it didn’t last, it was nice while it did. And the falling apart, the crying, yelling and arguing, it was all part of being alive, which now I’m not, not really.

          Feeling special with another person, being close, belonging, it’s a good feeling, even when it doesn’t last, which it never does, because nothing ever does. Everything comes to an end. Except saveloys, which come to two ends, as one of the fellas used to joke.

          At my age I don’t look for long term things. In the past I’ve pushed men away to save myself from being hurt in the future. Because they all hurt you eventually. But now I have no future to speak of.

          When I look at the squadron leader, I think, it wouldn’t last but then I won’t last either and it would be ever so nice and what’s to lose?

          I’ve seen how he looks at me and it would be lovely to hold his hand and get hugged. The trouble with being old is you don’t get enough hugs.

          I feel something stir within me as he leans across, looks at me with his blue eyes and takes my hand.

           Robert Grimshaw had always wanted to fly. As a boy, he’d lie on his back, his blue eyes gazing at the drifting clouds, dreaming of escape from the misery of his life with drunken, violent parents. To vanish into the clouds was his fantasy, to life beyond torment, to fly happy and to be cared about.

          Then the war came. Robert joined the RAF and learned to fly.

           In 1944, 70 years ago, Robert and his crew flew 50 bombing missions in Lancasters. That was two and a half tours of duty, at a time when few bomber crew survived even one tour of duty. It was the worst of times.

           It seemed unspeakably hellish looking back. Flying over occupied France and Germany with flak and fighters trying to shoot you down, struggling to keep flying on course for target or for home, despite battle damage, sometimes with wounded or dead crew members, watching other planes go down in flames.

           It was the worst of times, but it was also the best of times. Robert flew with the same crew throughout this period. He lived on base with them, ate with them, partied with them, went on leave with them. They were closely attached to each other, their friendships forged in war through shared suffering. Sure, there were times when they quarrelled, but the connection was never broken, and the trust was never lost.

          The feeling of togetherness, of belonging, of living and working with men prepared to sacrifice their life for you….he had no words for it….only the four-letter word starting with “L” that none of them spoke out loud.

          It showed in their eyes.

         Robert’s distress came after the war ended. His nights were full of screaming, fires and crashes, of shells bursting so close they seemed to shake the bed.

          Robert took to alcohol and couldn’t keep a job. He married four times.

          The crew stayed in touch after the war, supporting each other through whatever life threw at them, marriage, family, divorce, illness, accident, addiction and aging.

          They are all dead now. But Robert remembers them as young men. He particularly remembers their eyes, unchanging with age, windows to the soul.

           Now he sits in a room full of gaga people. But the woman who sits beside him, he’d seen her looking at him. There’s nothing to her, just skin and bone, practically bald, smothered with cosmetics but her eyes mirror his own, yearning for love, longing for connection. Robert reaches for her crab-like hand and smiles to see her face light up.

The end

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       In 2010, New Zealander Bruce Costello retired from work and city life, retreated to the seaside village of Hampden, joined the Waitaki Writers’ Group and took up writing as a pastime. Since then, he has had 162 short story successes— publications in literary journals (including Yellow Mama) anthologies and popular magazines, and contest places and wins.

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Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Ángeles. His artwork has appeared over the years in Medusa’s Kitchen, Nerve Cowboy, The Dope Fiend Daily, and Rogue Wolf Press, Venus in Scorpio Poetry E-Zine.