Soap Healing

I sat in my car across the street from a “For Sale” sign, hung on the lawn of the house I was born in. I don’t mean the house my mother lived in at the time of my birth. I mean literally she gave birth to me in that building rather than a hospital or her own home. Everything happened early. Her water broke a full three weeks before the due date, surprising her during a visit to meet the new baby of her friend. Then, after her hosts called the hospital and were told they needed her contractions much closer together before bringing her in, the move to full contractions happened almost instantly. Before they could get her in the car, the operator was already advising against moving her, instead saying to make her comfortable while an ambulance was dispatched. The birth itself happened all at once, over before the paramedics arrived. My mother and I were both healthy, but she would teasingly ask me every year around the holidays why I’d felt the need to rush.

Maybe I’d gotten excited about seeing the world or the celebrations of Christmas a few days before my birthday had unsettled me somehow, but I’m glad I did hurry. The due date was after the New Year. In a world where I arrived on schedule, I’d become a 90s baby, and more importantly, I’d get put in a different school year from Phil. She was my best friend growing up—that baby, the daughter of the former owners of the very house I was staring at now.

I got out of the car and crossed the empty, suburban street. Even walking up the path, the smell of the grass evoked countless tussles on the lawn and tumbles from the Crimson King Maple. The real estate agent introduced herself, (Kirsten or Kristen?) saying that I’d arrived early for the open house. I’d hoped to slip in, visit the site of my birth, and leave. But since we were alone she seemed intent on giving me a guided tour.

As we passed through the house, memories arrived in clusters like grapes on a vine, bunched together by space rather than time. The kitchen came with the banging of pots and pans on the linoleum floor, dinners with Phil’s family full of itchy table manners, and illicit missions to steal oatmeal cookies or later, unwatched Labatt Blue beer bottles. Krista showed me what she called the living room, but I knew as ‘The Good Room.’ The blue patterned couches and armchairs, forbidden for children to sit in, had gone, as had the piano, companion for our youthful lessons, the only time we were allowed in The Good Room at that age. I’d often wished to gain full access to this space. The day that I finally did was at the reception after the funeral for Phil’s grandmother. I’d sat next to my friend in my scratchy, collared shirt while the adults talked and she quietly cried.

Upstairs, in the second bedroom another memory cluster hung, waiting for me: childlike spying on Phil’s older sister Jen, trying to pick her doorknob lock, the day she’d let us inside to see her computer—the first in the neighbourhood that a kid owned. That era when, despite denying it to Phil, I realized the most exciting thing the room contained was not a computer, but Jen herself, a real-life teenaged girl. The few times we came in here after Jen moved out, only to find all the mystery gone.

The third bedroom had been converted into an office with a bookcase and folding desk built into the wall. “Do you have children?” Kristy asked. “Yes,” I lied thoughtlessly, “two.” She went on to explain how easily the space could become a bedroom. I already had the clear image of how it used to look. The wood parquet flooring that had been the staging ground for the construction of myriad LEGO castles and outer space settlements. The closet, stuffed with Phil’s clothes and toys, which I had suddenly lost access to around the time that Phil started using her full and more feminine name, Phillis. It took months for me to get used to that change, but I eventually did, at her request. Phillis is the name of the teenager I hung out with and the woman she became, but my childhood playmate remains Phil in my mind. I moved to the window, and Kitty pointed out some of the features of the backyard, though my attention was fully occupied by the portion of the roof visible from here. Phil had once delightedly explained to me that this was the second exit from her room in the event of a fire, out the window and onto the roof. The summer we were 16, her parents went to Hawaii for two weeks. We crawled onto the roof to lie in the sun, listening to pop-punk on burned CDs and pretending to enjoy stolen beer.

Finally the master bedroom, the reason I’d come, the room I was born in. I stepped inside and took a deep breath. I felt nothing. No connection, no epiphany, just a sense of intruding into Phil’s parents’ space, even if their furniture, their clothes, their smell, their taste in wallpaper had long disappeared. I left the room of my birth dissatisfied. I had no reason to end the tour without explaining this, so we continued, and I resolved to just enjoy the nostalgia.

We moved to the downstairs hall. I tried to conceal my expectations and act surprised when Katie put her hand to the corner of one wall and swung it open, revealing the hidden staircase to the basement. I think it was only half performance, really. No matter how many times I descended with Phil into this room—sent there as children so her parents didn’t have to listen to our nonsense or fleeing there so her parents couldn’t listen to the things teens share that they think their parents don’t know—I always got a little tingle at passing into this hidden space. It thrilled with a kind of magic, even to teenagers too cynical to use that language. The owners after Phil’s parents had completely redone this space. The carpet had been replaced with hardwood and the walls painted off-white. They’d installed a bar, complete with wine glasses hanging upside-down from their stems above it. The centre of the room stood empty. Kaylee explained that they’d kept a pool table there but had since moved it away. I wondered what had happened to the huge comfy couch. We’d climbed it as children to escape floor lava and piled teens onto it, forming body puddles by lying on, over, or interlocked with each other as we pretended our focus was on a movie, rather than who had chosen a seat next to or on top of whom.

An unwelcome memory, blurred by hazy eyes and tasting of rum and vomit. Awkward fumbling with zippers and snaps. My ill-formed request to continue, Phillis’ hesitant acceptance. The big comfy couch converted into the site of… what? A crime, or just a mistake? At that age I’d heard the phrase ‘no means no’, and I’d heard her say ‘yes.’ I hadn’t yet heard the phrase ‘drunk means no.’ Phillis and I didn’t stop talking after the awkward conversation that night, or the confused phone call the next day. We stopped a few years later, after we went to different colleges. Did we gradually drift apart because of the distance? Or did our friendship die on that couch, simply stumbling forward a while through inertia from the weight of years behind us? Did I go from being her best friend, who’d known her as long as either of us had waking memory, to being another name on the list of men who had treated her as less than she is and didn’t deserve any more of her time?

I turned away, done pretending for Kayla’s sake. I hadn’t found what I’d come for, and the memories that had drawn me to stay had soured now, pushing me away. But the sight of a cupboard in the wall stopped me. “What about this?” I asked, opening it. “Just storage,” Kylah answered. “It’s handy if you make this into a games-room, or just good for long term stuff.” That’s how Phil’s family had used it: sparkling Christmas tinsel, colorful Easter baskets, tried and true Hallowe’en costumes, things to be brought out and loved for a day or a week or a month, and then stored away again the rest of the year. I poked my head in, and remarked “Oh, it goes up quite a ways,” as if I didn’t already know that, “right to the ductwork.” I glanced back to Kyra. “Do you mind if I climb in and look?” She seemed hesitant, so I added “I’m in HVAC. I’d love to take a peek.” at which she nodded, her friendly smile returning.

I climbed up into the cupboard itself, the base of which was a good three feet off the ground. Wooden racks close on either side of me meant I had to stand fairly straight, but the space was so much shorter than I remembered that I did need to duck a little. Above the racks sat the ductwork I’d mentioned. I turned on my phone flashlight and pretended to examine it, instead reliving whispered conversations held on top of these dusty, metal tubes. Phil and I sitting on opposite sides, peeking through the thin cracks between the joints in the stairs above. This had been our hideout in a dozen hypothetical home invasions. Doubly protected by the secret door to the basement, and the fact that the upper part of the cupboard wasn’t obvious at first glance, we could spy out from here on the unknown attackers if they happened to be in the front hall. We’d put the plan to the test more than once, watching Jen getting ready to go out, or Phil’s dad polishing his shoes.

Part of me knew it couldn’t still be there. It would never have survived a remodeling and deep cleaning. And yet, who would think to look here? Who, other than Phillis, me, and whoever did the ductwork even knew there was a “here” here? I reached to the cache between two boards of wood, and drew out a thick fold of papers, a prize far beyond some psychic link to my birth room. It was all I could do not to open and examine it here and now, but I tucked it in my back pocket, and descended with a cheerful “All looks good!”

As we walked back upstairs, I told Kira that I was definitely interested. I guess I didn’t want to make her feel like she’d wasted her time. I added that I’d have to discuss it with my wife, to give myself an out. “What’s your wife’s name again?” she asked. “Phillis.” I answered, without considering that it could be anything else. I’d initially pretended to have a partner and kids because it made more sense than a single man viewing a house this size, but as Kirsti and I chatted, her asking me about my family, I knew that imaginary person had been Phillis from the start. Who else would I possibly be considering living in this house with?

I waved to Kirsten as she welcomed some more guests, and crossed back to my car. I got inside, and unfolded the paper. Spread before me was the map of Imagiland. The first page showed a forest of talking animals and woodland fairies, mountains populated by fierce trolls and clever dwarves, swift-flowing rivers, and vast grassy plains. More sheets had been attached with scotch tape, as the medium of choice turned from crayon to colored. Imagiland became part of a large continent, itself a small oasis in a mighty ocean, filled with more lands populated by more creatures and people: the fungal druids on the isle of Rakesh, the desert continent Sechnia with its nomadic Sandswimmers, the clockwork kingdom of Ak’tok, and Gemon—the floating city populated by gas-breathing Dorians. Our games of pretend built these lands. Our creative writing assignments at school detailed the struggles of these people. We invented homemade role-playing games set here. I unfolded right to the edges of the map, where the most detailed art lay, and the struggles of the beings became more complex – resource scarcity, xenophobic indoctrination, uncontrolled waste emission, and dangerous magical addictions. More than the house I’d just toured, this map showed the spaces Phil and I had moved through together.

Visions of the past are created new in the brain, not recalled. So plucking those memory clusters had been as much an act of imagination as drawing this map. That creativity couldn’t transport me to other worlds like it did as a child, but what if Phillis were here? Would the magic have worked again? To dream ourselves into another place, or an earlier time? Or into my invented timeline, where we were thinking of buying the house together? Better yet, a timeline where we were still best friends.

Back at my apartment, I stepped over the side of the tub, and turned on the shower. I splashed the cascade of luxuriously warm water into nooks and cavities, inside joints, behind ears, and let it soak through my hair before turning the stream off. I grabbed the bar of soap from the ceramic holder down by my knee. It slid from my wet hand.

The soap hit the base of the tub with a crack, splitting apart. Giving a grunt of exasperation, I bent over and snatched up the pieces. The bar had broken into two roughly equal halves. The edges were jagged, but clean, no smaller shards had broken off. I fitted them together pretty easily, but they would clearly fall apart again the moment I set them down. Transferring the cracked bar into one hand, I let some water drip onto it. With the added moisture the pieces clung together more tightly, but the break point was still visible. I brushed it gently, feeling a little oil on my skin, and leaving a trace the width of my fingertip, then I squeezed it together. A thin line emerged, whiter than the white surrounding it. It settled over the split. I gave it a tentative prod, and saw the line darken in colour as the crack started to re-emerge. I gently squeezed again, and passed my hand across the surface of the bar, drawing out the same oily film over the whole thing.

Switching hands, I got the underside as well. Soon a thick lather covered it, and I gave it another light squeeze. I turned the water back on briefly, to wash away the foam and see how it looked. As I did, a strange feeling came over me, familiar, but slightly tilted, out of context. Like the first time I met someone else with the given name ‘Phil.’ I grinned as I realized the odd feeling came from completing the exact action of washing my hands, but focused on the soap, usually just a tool, instead of the hands themselves. A glance told me the damage had improved, and I rubbed the soap down my arms and into my armpits. I cleaned my whole body with it, still holding it carefully, then rinsed it off and placed it in its holder. The damage had vanished as the newly released oil solidified the connection. Rinsing the bubbles off, I chuckled. Not many things can be fixed just by using them as intended. I longed good-humouredly for a world where the trick to bicycle repair was to ride the damaged bike around the block a few times, and a split pair of pants just needed to be worn once or twice to reseam themselves. I imagined the people of that undiscovered land, the Soap People. No matter what agony or injury they had endured, no matter the depth of the cracks life had driven through them, simply treating them as a person, showing them kindness and respect, would begin building the oily lather that could make them whole again.

I stepped out of shower and started drying, the towel rubbing faster and faster as I filled with a sudden energy. I tucked it hastily around my waist, rushed to the bedroom, found my laptop, and sat down at the desk to write an email. Finding the address took a minute. I hadn’t written to it in a long time.

Dear Phillis,

I’m so sorry.

I don’t think I ever actually said so. Probably out of fear. Fear that, if I did, I would have to accept that I’d hurt you, and I didn’t want to live in a world where that was true. But if that’s the world you’ve been in, I need to join you. If you’ve suffered at all over the years from my actions back then, I deserve to feel it too. If that’s the case, I don’t expect anything from you, I just apologize and wish you the best.

I hope not. I hope that you remember that night as a stupid, mutual mistake. That you’ve barely thought of me these past years. It feels awful to hope that you’ve forgotten me, when we used to be closer to each other than anyone else in our lives. But that’s the world I hope for. Because then my crime is just being lousy at staying in touch. If you ever want to remedy that, or if you have anything you need to say to me, I’m here for it.

Look what I found today. It’s part of the reason for this email. For the sake of the kids who drew it, I’d love to talk to you again. But you know whether I deserve to or not. And soon I will too.

I attached a photo of the map. My cursor hesitated over the ‘send’ button for a moment. Then a drop of water fell from my nose onto the keyboard. I sent the message, wiped up the water, and stepped away to towel-dry my hair. My deodorant sat in the bathroom. When I came back from applying it, I found myself putting on clean clothes. Despite the fact that I had no plans to go out again that night, it felt right to have new underwear, fresh pants, and a smart shirt. After pulling on socks, I looked back to my computer, the webpage still open. A colored bar had appeared across the top of my inbox, indicating a new message. I tried not to rush on my way over to the desk, but I could feel my heart accelerating eagerly as I saw it was a response to the email I’d just sent. I fumbled the with the touchpad, and opened it.

Hello!

Your message wasn’t delivered because the domain Phillis.Shue@promail.com could not be found. Check for typos or unnecessary spaces and try again.

If you are still unable to connect, either that account has been deleted or the user has blocked your messages.

Feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

The Promail.com Support Team

My eyes ran over the message several more times, not taking in any new information. Then I dazedly straightened up, and went into the bathroom to hang up the towel. The bar of soap sat gleaming in its holder. No trace of the damage remained. I suppose that if I’d been slower to act, water would have smoothed the jagged crack marks anyway, leaving two smaller bars. If I hadn’t performed the soap healing technique, using it how it’s meant to be used, it would have healed without me, but as separate halves instead of a united whole.

The next day I returned in the middle of another open house. The place was much busier, and I had no trouble slipping off on my own. Not to the room I was born in, but to the basement to access to the cupboard again. I could see feet walking up and down the staircase through the thin gaps, and hear people asking polite questions and getting cheerful answers. Someone would buy this place soon.

I tucked the folded map back into its hiding place. Maybe another child would be born in this house. Maybe they’d play up inside this hidden space with their friend, and stumble on the map. They’d find all the worlds we’d dreamed up, and visit them too. They’d notice the newest addition, the nation of Soap People, who you can help to heal just by treating them like a person. They’d play pretend, working the soap healing themselves. They’d imagine a world where everyone did.