I wonder what those priests and counselors must think of us. Day in and day out, hearing and holding the darkest parts of humanity. They go back to their warm home, cook a quick dinner while they watch Idol, but do they sleep? Wringing hands in the moonlight, biting their lip apart for answers to questions that aren't even their own. Secrets make head cases of us all, but we seek them anyways. Seek and Hide. Hide and Seek. We want to know everything about everything, without anyone knowing anything about us. This is essential.
“From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.” wrote Updike. I believe in this, but I would go further. If you are the things you do, then we lose ourselves in the trivial when we go digging for secrets. Soon our own secrets are forgotten, locked away in some attic of our mind, or kept by another. One who is safeguarding it until you are ready, or they think you are ready, to be yourself again. These moments of forced revelations can be fatal if you aren't.
We want to know what other countries are doing at all times. We assume the worst and do so rightfully, because we know what we would do in private. When a third of the world was shrouded by Communism, we went cold turkey on secrets and with this came all the symptoms of withdrawal. We saw monsters in our neighbor's closet, drew theories up based on nothing in particular, and deployed the willing soldier spies into the front lines of paranoia. That need to know gave rise to the use of a very real place.
There is a bridge in Germany that crosses over the invisible barrier of the once mighty Iron Curtain. Like Korea's DMZ, this waterway was no man's land for the whole of the Cold War. Hovering over the Havel River, the structure was a symbol of espionage and secret dealings between the U.S. occupied West Berlin and the Communist stronghold in the Eastern half of the city. In the four decades of atomic silence, there were only four publicized prisoner exchanges that we now know of. Pictures have hinted that there may have been many more, along with almost daily briefcase exchanges, and a body bag or two. Those living along the Havel on both sides quickly began to call this landmark “The Bridge of Spies”.
I was born a month after the wall fell, and just days before the famous Brandenburg Gate was opened – the real symbol of divided Germany. And like that, the world exhaled. My generation lives without knowing the constant fear of annihilation. We don't practice fallout drills. Our parents don't get sauced right before the nightly news just to handle what the president has to say. Sure, we all watched the towers fall, but that's physical. That was a culmination of extremist planning coming to a head. Terror came to us, we went to war, but the public ultimately forgot. Our parents experience was that of anticipating a life or death band-aid pull for 40 years, only to have it fall off painlessly.
America tried to be as open as possible with its citizens to push themselves away from the image of secret hoarding Communism, and in the 1960s the Freedom of Information Act was signed into law. A flood of declassified documents between dignitaries, generals, and cabinet meetings gave the public something to chew on while we entered into Vietnam for unclear reasons. To this day, a steady stream of secrets are being made available to the public, either by the government's consent or by private groups like Wiki-Leaks who have their own motivations.
Where are the last of the real secrets kept? What do they pertain to? Who guards the bridge between the life we think we lead and the shadows at the edge of our vision. They are hidden for a reason, and without knowing it the ones you love are protecting you from these prisoners that they have been holding captive for years and years, until an exchange must be made. I did not ask for these secrets, and like I said earlier, they can be fatal. But they happen regardless and when you least expect them.
Its those long winter nights when the satellite TV fizzles in and out to the tune of the wind, that I found myself faced with infomercials and those truths. A bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough resting on my rising belly, I shake myself out of a staring contest with the screen and notice that she is there. A reading lamp has been turned on, probably has been for minutes without me realizing it, and unlike her son she can't seem to transition into nothingness.
“Can't sleep?” I muster.
A simple nod in return. I try to concentrate on the set, but a wet ring has formed straight through to my undershirt. A glance at the clock on the VCR tells me its been three hours since I scooped this soup that is currently laying on my chest. No, that can't be. I remember licking it clean.
“How'd you manage that?” my mother asks when she sees my confused eyes. “I came in here two hours ago, turned the TV off, and put your bowl away.”
“What?” I try not to pay attention, hoping to God she wasn't slipping into a senior moment already.
Changing the channel I see the familiar faces of Ronco and their amazing knifes. Audience members Ooh and Ah while they sit on top of their checks. I wonder if they have used the filet edge yet. I wonder if they've cut the Coke can in half already. I wonder if she is still watching me.
“You never wake a sleep walker. They always say that.” she lazily licks her finger to turn the magazine page and continues. “I always thought it was funny. Your father wanted to film you, but he was never awake when it happened.”
Some unknown part of me shudders, and I find myself turning the system off to listen.
“You must be thinking about Zack.” My younger brother always seemed to be the butt of strange childhood stories as far back as I remember. Looking up from the page our eyes met. She could tell I was more scared than annoyed. I listened to her tell me how I clawed at the doors when Sarah would push me into the dark living room with its dust covered couches and unplayable piano, begging between sobs to be let out.
“I remember that. I hated that room.”I said, slowly coming to.
“We only used that room three times a year, because you put up such a fit. You didn't even want to go see your toys on Christmas mornings!”
“Yeah, yeah. I was a little bitch. What does that have to do with sleep walking?” the sailor in me let out, much to her annoyance.
“I was getting there. I'd be up feeding Zack in the playroom, this would be at midnight or even later than that sometimes, and you would do loops around the room and go back to bed. But some nights you'd walk straight to that door, and we always kept it closed because you'd fuss about it.”
“Wait, the living room?” I asked.
“Yep, and you'd throw it open and just strut on in there and I was amazed you never bumped into everything. It was so dark, I was afraid you would smash into the china cabinet.”
“Why...why didn't you lock it? Why didn't you lock the door?!” I half way yelled.
“What if we had a fire? You were fine. I would put Zack to bed and then come pick you off the floor and do the same for you.”
“I would fall asleep on the floor?”
“Always. Always in front of the mirrors.” she said, returning to her article about topiaries.
Nothing terrified me more in my childhood than the living room to our house on Hilltop Drive, and the only thing remotely scary about it was the mirror lined wall that greeted you when you entered the front door. Its purpose was to make the room seem bigger I suppose, but I still have vivid nightmares where I'm looking into their reflection and seeing the rotten corpses of dead relatives gripping onto the door frame, one foot in the house, and asking me if my parents were home.
Other nights, a secret or two would float out of on my father's rotten apple breath and I would have to sit and listen to other shameful things that might or might not have happened in his hazy mind.
“You threw your toys all over your room looking for some noise. Kept telling me you saw a bug. Ha!” The Woodstock documentary played on in the background and ever so often he would hit the couch wildly when Neil Young even appeared for a second on the screen.
“What noise?” I tried to say over the roaring crowd of thousands next to us, all making mud pies for peace.
“Music, or something like that. I dunno, Sport.” he said as he went back to the screen.
Like reading a book without it's first chapter, I was given a chance to peek at what I'd missed. This sounded like the start of a problem that has plagued me for years. I fished the rest of the story from him to get a better clue on how it started, and for a while I think it all came back. I had played Pokemon for days on end that summer of '99. After finding most of the battery operated appliances in the house empty after the second week, my mother bought me a straight plug in jack to feed my addiction. When the game finally ended one night, I turned my friend off with a satisfying click and rolled over with hopes of sleeping well into the next afternoon. Before I could sink any deeper into my pillow, I turned back over to check to see if it was really turned off. The in-game music was louder than usual and I didn't want to wake my brother who was asleep on the bunk below me. Our shared room soon swelled with the 8-bit sounds of Cinnabar Island and Victory Lane. I jerked the plug from the wall and pulled the cartridge out of the system, hoping it would stop before my parents found me awake at this hour. But it didn’t.
Then it made sense. They must have secretly bought Zack a Game Boy too and he had left it on. Over his delicate little snores, I shook the bed to wake him. He snorted, coughed, and groggily answered this common signal for attention.
“What?” he emitted with a yawn.
“Turn it off!” I hissed.
“Turn what off?” he asked while fluffing his pillow and plopping his stupid head back onto it.
I knew I would get nothing from him so I jumped over the side, and without looking, landed safely on the mass of bean bags in the middle of the room. The only cushion in an otherwise smattering of sharp plastic objects. Tip toeing through the minefield, I reached for the overhead light to find the source of the music. Nothing. Not in plain sight at least. Tearing apart the room, my brother watches something he doesn’t comprehend take place under the safety of his sheets.
“I found you crying in the closet because you were afraid you were in trouble.” my father adds to the legend.
There is no fear in his voice, only amusement as he rehashes his version of the story. I stop asking about it because I realize I don't want to know. I've gotten to an age where my parents want me to share in their nostalgia of my own childhood, but how do I cherish what I don't remember? How do I cherish what I am afraid of? How do I cherish what I don't understand?
Some secrets they tell me are of their own lives, that exhale like when the Cold War ended. I've lived long enough in their eyes to be a confidante to secrets that not even their life partner can cope with. I am their blood, I am their son. This means I can handle it or I've earned the right. It's none of my business as far as I'm concerned. They say love is when you see all the warts of someone and don't bat an eye. I think a bigger part of love is making sure that doesn't have to happen. I sit on the Couch of Spies and listen to her tell me they were on the verge of divorce when I was still crawling around on the floor, when she was pregnant with yet another child. He tells me about the Colonel's daughter who got away, describing each strand of her blonde hair to me in some hope that I can find her replicant. That I might right his wrong. She tells me his brother is gay, lived as a beggar on the streets for a while, and is going blind from the disease. I'm sick of it. There is a bidding war between the two of them with the currency of secrets. I just want to forget the things I've learned about myself, the other matters fall to the wayside.
Mrs. Marshall confided with me one Sunday after the rest of my Confirmation class left the room for doughnuts. She sat me down close to her and began to tell me things about her own life that she couldn't explain.
“I left the hospital and came straight to the prayer room, the tiny one off of the Sanctuary.” she shook as she spoke. I don't think it was conviction. It was clear she had never told anyone this before.
“The doctors told me the cancer would eat me up in 6 months and there was nothing I could do about it. So I prayed, Will. I prayed like my life depended on it, because it did. It really did.”
Some kids came back in to pick up their Bibles, and she dropped her head in shame thinking they overheard. They looked at each other in bewildered and left in silence. She sat for a while breathing deeply, trying to collect her thoughts.
“Oh, this sounds so stupid. It didn't happen. It couldn't have. This was 8 or 9 years ago, and here I am! Look at me, puttering away just as good as anyone else.”
She looked up with a thin smile that pointed straight to the dark circles under her eyes. The usually so well put together woman of 40 did not sleep the night before. Not one wink. I knew the symptoms.
“Mrs. Marshall, that's not all of what you were going to tell me, was it?” I asked, not sure at all what she was getting at. In hesitation, she let out a sigh of relief and continued.
“No. I guess not. I don't want to keep you any longer, so I guess I'll just give you the facts. I sat in that prayer room for an hour, tears just coming and coming. I had to stop for water once or twice just to have something to cry out.”
During all this her white knuckles choked their way around a pink handkerchief, ready to be summoned if they moment presented itself.
“But after a while the air conditioner just shut off, and I could hear myself and I sounded a mess. So I stopped. Right when I did, a voice outta nowhere said “Let it Go, Indy.” I nearly fell off the cushion I turned around so fast. You know how those janitors are, always sneaking up on you.”
I wanted to laugh in her face then and there. This sweet lady who had been through so much and had picked me out of a sea of immature schoolboys to tell her mysteries to. She could see it in my eyes.
“That's from Indiana Jones, Mrs. Marshall. Sean Connery says it when...” I started.
“Yes. Yes, I know. I told you it was ridiculous. After I heard that voice I left the room and I've only gone in with other people since. I've told no one. But that's not the strange part. The strange part is that I've never seen that Indiana Jones. Well, that's not true. I hadn't seen it until last night.”
What good is a secret we don't know the meaning to? How can we decode something if we don't have all the pieces. My parents showered me with theirs in hopes of something in return, maybe some tell tale reassurance that they did alright by me. Mrs. Marshall told me hers when I slipped up and commented on the chimes next door being played. She told me there were no chimes next door, and that room was empty. In this we rubbed our secrets together like twigs to keep warm in a world that grew colder with every moment of absurdity.
I look around in my classes, in supermarkets, and at bars for others with secrets. I spy dark circles with my little eye. Demons we can or can't explain, dance on our sheets while we search for answers at night, hoping that if we dream we will meet at the bridge. Looking behind us at all we know and comprehend, we turn to make that step into No Mans Land, where dossiers change hands and codes are broken. If we sleep tonight, even for a bit, we may be one step further in ending the Cold War of Everything.
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