Michael | Alexander Voorhees

We recently reviewed submissions for our winter 2023 journal — there were far too many stellar submissions and wanted to highlight a couple of these submissions on the blog.

Before reading, here’s an excerpt from the author, Alexander:

I’m a first-year Philosophy and Biology Health and Society major with a heavy interest in creative writing.  I originally wrote this piece as an assignment for one of my classes, and later revised and progressed with it for my own sake.  It was first written within a 36-hour timespan fueled by nothing but caffeine and orange cranberry muffins.  This is an important piece for me because it’s the first fully thought-out story I’ve ever written.

Enjoy!

***

Michael sat in the bay window of his parents’ bedroom — it was his now, but still, he only thought of it as theirs.  He could never spend enough time there for it to feel like his own.  It’s been years since they passed — old age takes a sharp toll.  Michael had been living here since his mother died, but he still felt like the didn’t house didn’t belong to him.

He had been the couple’s youngest son — they were both sixty years old when they had him, but his father passed when Michael was twenty-five, just barely getting started in life.  Two years after that, he said the last goodbye to his mother.  Now, he sat in their bedroom, alone, watching endless snow fall upon the home of their memories.

⁂

When his father passed, Michael wasn’t there.  He hadn’t been close with his family after leaving for college; though to be fair, he hadn’t been particularly close with them before that anyway.  Instead of staying in touch, Michael worked towards a doctorate in philosophy.  

For all of his life, Michael had been invigorated by nothing but knowledge — by nothing but conscientiousness.  Something about his mind made it so that he constantly needed to feel productive; in the uncomfortable times where he couldn’t work any longer, he felt nothing but dread and exhaustion.  And so, he was reading when he got the call from his mother.

His phone was lying on the bedside table.  He heard the vibration of each ring — but he was focused on his reading.  He decided not to answer the call.  Michael had always placed priority on his academics, and so in the rare moments that he understood what he was reading, he couldn’t afford to lose his focus.  Suspicions occasionally filled his mind with the idea that he had ADHD — but for some internal pride, he never resorted to treatment.  Around two in the morning, after finishing his reading, Michael listened to the voicemail his mother had left.

“Michael, I’m sorry to call you so late in the night — but something’s just happened.  I need to talk to you as soon as possible, okay?” she said.  

Her voice was smooth and dulled.  It didn’t hold the bitter quivering of someone in grief — but rather, the tone of someone who’d lost something of themselves.  Michael only heard the distinguishment looking back.

His mother’s voice was dignified; it was dark and warm.  Michael once heard his grandmother say its overtones held the timbre of a cellist playing Elgar.  The comment stuck in his memory because he felt its accuracy.  But now, as Michael listened to the message, he heard something beneath the melody — a strain, a raised pitch.  Something of pain had tightened her vocal cords, and Michael recognized it.  Her voice sounded the same as it had in the weeks after Michael’s grandmother died.

After listening to the voicemail, Michael didn’t sleep evenly — his thoughts wandered.  He might not have gotten any sleep at all; he couldn’t tell.  The last time he checked the watch perched on his nightstand was at four in the morning, and when he woke around 8 a.m., the first thing he did was call Stacey back.

⁂

“Hey mom.  I got your call, is everything alright?”

“Well, no, Michael.  It’s your father,” she said — tension seeped through her words.  “I found him last night, laying on our kitchen floor.” 

And then she paused, the way someone does when they’re overwhelmed by what they know they need to say.

“He had a heart attack, Michael,” another pause.  “The doctors thought he would stabilize overnight.  But he died, Michael, thirty minutes ago.”

He couldn’t find the words to respond.

“Michael?”

“Sorry, I’m here.  Thank you for telling me,” was all he could think to say.

The two of them sat on the line for what felt like a few minutes, silence.  And then Michael ended the call, “I’ll start packing.  I’ll be home tomorrow.”  All that filled his voice was exhaustion.

⁂

When Michael was ten, he once stayed at his grandmother’s house for a night.  She was a tired woman.  Age had left her with exhaustion, which, to everyone but Michael, disguised itself as impatience.  Her mind had reached its limit of burdens in life a long time ago.  And now if something gave her discontent, she couldn’t hold whatever pain it caused within herself; she had to express it — to pass it on to someone else,  as if their awareness of it would remove her own.  

Of course, back then Michael was still a child, one who’d hardly been separated from the privacy and familiarity of his home at that.  This night had probably been one of the first few of his life that he’d spent away from home.  And so as he lay in bed, discomfort kept him awake. 

Anxieties manifested themselves in restlessness — and he tried for what seemed to be an endlessness to fall asleep.  Eventually couldn’t lay any longer.  He had to stand, to move, to let time tire him enough to drift off in ease.

It was about four in the morning when Michael wandered out of the guest room, aimlessly — and then he heard something.  Steps, a shuffling — someone sitting down.  He assumed it was his grandmother, and so he went to look.

⁂

Michael stood from the window and walked to the widespread mirror above his parent’s dresser, pressing his palms into the cold mahogany once he got there.  The surface of the dresser was mostly empty, save for a black, mid-sized jewelry box in the center and a few framed drawings Michael had done as a child.  Michael stood in front of the jewelry box, and leaned in toward his reflection.  He stood there and stared into his own eyes for a moment — examining their blue pigment, their pattern — but, more than that.  He searched for something within them — something of himself that he already knew was gone.  

He didn’t know what it was when he had it — and now he only felt its absence.  When it left him, it had probably faded in waves; he couldn’t recall how long it had been missing.  All he could remember was realizing he felt the emptiness one day — some long time after it appeared. 

Since then, he’s done this every once in a while, in his solitary moments — searched in his reflection for what he’d lost.  He looked to recognize whether he was still himself, or whether he’d lost something more.  In the end, Michael doubted he would find what he’d lost, but searched anyways.  Whatever it was, he couldn’t name.  Without it, he felt nothing but the cold.  He opened the jewelry box and took out a palm-sized pocket watch; it was the only thing there.

⁂

As he looked for his grandmother, Michael went towards dining room — it seemed to be where the shuffling had come from.  When he looked through the open door, he saw her there, crying.  Michael couldn’t remember seeing an adult cry before.  Some bottle of pills was set on the table in front of her.  As he stepped into the room, she brushed the tears from her eyes, and set on a smile.

“Michael, what are you doing awake so late?”  She asked, in a shaky, nonetheless sweet voice.

“I couldn’t fall asleep,” he replied, “the room here doesn’t feel like home.”

“Well here, have one of these — it’ll help you sleep,” she opened the bottle of pills and handed one to him, “I was just about to have one myself, it’s a good thing you caught me in time.”

“Thank you,” Michael replied. “Would you mind if I slept in your room too?  I’d probably be more comfortable there.”

“Oh of course, Michael.  We both need to get some rest.”  Her face seemed to have lost any evidence of tears then.  She took one of the pills for herself and set the bottle away.

It was only a few months after that when Michael heard that she died.  That was his last memory of her.

⁂

Michael grew up as an only child in the ways that mattered.  His four siblings were all in their twenties and thirties when he was born, so he grew up alone in the house, aside from his parents and a few dogs over the years.  His brothers and sisters never visited for anything besides the holidays, and they didn’t have the time, nor really the energy to get to know Michael as he matured.  But Michael only saw the situation as normal; it was how he was raised — he was content with that.  As a result, he never reached out to his brothers and sisters either.  He was brought up in a way that seemed to irreversibly separate him from them — mentally, and physically.  And by the time he’d become an adult, it was as if he was nothing more than a strange acquaintance to them.  

When their mother went into her coma, Michael was the last of the family to know.  His siblings didn’t know how to tell him — they never talked to him, they weren’t close with him — they put it off out of discomfort.  The four of them stayed in the hospital at their mother’s bedside while Michael didn’t even know something had happened.  Two days passed — their mother’s condition only got worse.  On the third day, her doctor said the family should think about saying their last goodbyes; only then did the eldest brother call Michael.

⁂

When Michael turned eighteen in the December of his senior year, his parents’ gift to him was an antique pocket watch.  It was gold, ornate.  Delicately thin swirls carved the design of a Celtic tree on the front — a small hourglass placed in its center.  The back held Michael’s first and last initials, engraved in a cursive font.

It was a rare sight for Michael’s parents to do something as a pair anymore.  From what he’d seen, his parents were rather independent of one another.  Perhaps because of their age, a lack of emotional energy, or a fade of love — the two had simply grown distant over time.  His father would sit at a desk downstairs and do some sort of stock analysis each day after work, while his mother lay in the upstairs living room browsing her social media.  Michael stayed in his room studying for most of his time — but when he wasn’t there, he practiced piano while his father worked, or played with the dogs in the living room.  The lack of closeness his parents had with one another was apparent to him, but he didn’t think much of it — he just saw it as normal. So when the two handed him the watch together — Michael was slightly surprised.

It was sometime between seven and eight in the morning, early for a weekend, when he stepped into the kitchen for breakfast.  He saw his mother take something out of her pocket and hand it to his father — she held his arm after passing it to him, looking happily at Michael.

“Careful with this Michael, we can’t replace it if something happens,” he told him, and then he shook Michael’s hand, leaving the watch in his palm as he let go.  “Happy birthday.”

Michael might not have noticed anything had slipped into his hand at all, if it weren’t for him having seen it in his father’s palm before they shook hands — the watch was unexpectedly lightweight.  

His mother started breakfast while Michael’s father went downstairs to check the news.  She told Michael that the watch had originally belonged to a relative of the family with the same name as him, Michael.  Michael’s father and her had decided on using the name specifically so they could give him this gift later in life.

“Why let it sit and turn to dust without having any purpose,” she said.  “It’s such a waste to have nice things and not to use them.  So your father and I decided to make a use for it, and we named you after Michael so at least someone would be properly fit to use it, our own son.  What a nice name it is anyway, Michael.”

Neither of his parents ever clarified which side of the family the watch had come from.  The last initial engraved on the back didn’t say much, as his mother’s maiden name held the same initial as the family name.  Michael never thought to ask.  All his father ever said about the watch was that he’d polished it himself just before Michael was born and then set it away, knowing it would be a gift for his last son.  Michael had been enamored enough with the elegant design; the filial history of it wasn’t a particularly interesting topic to him anyway.  All he saw that mattered was that it was his, and so he went to his bedroom to set it on the nightstand.

That night, after seeing the two of his siblings that were able to visit, along with the subsequent nieces and nephews, Michael lay in his bed, staring at his watch.  He still hadn’t opened it — and actually, he realized he didn’t know how to yet.  As he eyed the crown, he planned to ask his dad about it in the morning.

⁂

He arrived in the middle of the night — it had been a six-hour commute, but he made it there; his mother was still alive.

“I’m here mom.  I’m here this time.” His voice had a tightness to it.  “It’s Michael, mom.”  He held her hand in his.

⁂

Michael was sixty now; it was his sixtieth birthday today.  He studied the pocket watch in his hand, turning the gold over to look at its design.  He hadn’t touched it since his mother died.  When he clicked the crown, the cover flicked open.  On the inner side of the watch lid, there was an inscription:

Today is the mark of a new beginning.  

This watch should remind you to

do all you can with the life you have left.

Time is fleeting.

We’re proud of you, and we love you, Michael.

Happy birthday.

Before then, Michael had never really read the message; its words had only passed through his mind.  He never asked his parents whether they were the ones who put the message there, or if the inscription was in the watch to begin with.  He felt he’d be better off not asking.  It didn’t matter to him anymore.  The words brought him back to his parents, standing together in the kitchen on his eighteenth birthday — the last time the three of them were ever close to one another.

Tears threatened to pierce his eyes as he looked back into the mirror.  And as he looked within himself — he recognized something, filling in the space he’d lost so long ago.

He placed the watch back in the box and set it aside — resting it for some future relative to find a use for one day.