Copyright © 2023 Johann Tienhaara
Dad came home one night and poured himself a drink. Which was extraordinary, because he had never before flowed into a glass, or into any other liquid receptacle, for that matter. That night, he drained his left hand into a glass on the kitchen counter, and stood before the sink with his jaw agape, and whorls of shock, wonder, horror in his eyes.
At twelve years old I saw my father helpless for the first time, his hand a swirl of colours in the glass, his eyes glazed with uncomprehending fear. He clenched his teeth and turned his face away from me to stare at the glass. Then he moved abruptly, dragging the glass of hand along the counter with his still attached wrist pulling liquid strands, and he reached into a cupboard for the large metal bowl in which mom would mix morning glory muffins, and into which my sister or I would vomit, whenever stomach flu kept us home from school. But he was too late: abruptly his whole left arm transitioned to liquid state, and splashed to the counter, dripping to the floor, meandering down the surface of the cupboard door beneath the counter, all still attached by long glistening streams to his solid flesh shoulder.
"Help me," he whispered.
Dad looked at me with the eyes of a fearless warrior whose left arm had just flowed away. Panic, hope, love, goodbye.
I stood like geography as hope rivered away from my heart and mind.
Dad opened his mouth, but the transformation quickened now. His jaw dropped in a froth and splash. Then his permanent chest, that temple of muscle and soul I'd known to be beyond the groping black-gloved thieving fingers of time, his whole torso was a rippling, spreading pool on the linoleum. The flesh that had always scarred over from every tool wound, or from scraping through the spruce with my sister and I during our woodland adventures, would not be staunched. His eyes were last to go: the fear flowed into resolve. Then a glint appeared, and I swear my dad was smiling in his final precipitation.
We kept him in the bathtub. The potamologist told us dad's bends and reaches were those of a young river, a white-water, so the chances of a successful reverse transformation were high. Hope poured into our hearts and watered our eyes.
We stirred him and fed him algae and brine. We read him stories, I the Asimov novel he'd been reading to me a few days earlier. Mom would pat and massage the liquid in the bathtub, and utter mantras: "Come home to me, my man. Come home. Come home to me."
The potamologist gathered us together in dad's work room, with the books about sailing and knots and diesel engines and Einstein and Newton and Feynman; and the medals and photos of running races; and the sealed off fireplace, neighboured by a broken dismantled espresso machine, and mantled by school photos of my sister and I and pictures of our family cats; and a utilitarian desk with a computer and screen and stacked scribbles and to-dos and notes, and the pen that our cat Pooch always knocked on the floor still there, by one of the metal legs; and the potamologist explained the reverse transformation procedure, the "solufactus" operation, in potamological terms, and the risks and the side-effects, and what we could expect and what we absolutely should not expect if the reverse transformation were successful.
A date was set, and we went on stirring and feeding dad and hoping. My mom, never a sound sleeper to begin with, and perimenopausal to boot, would spend her nights by the bathtub with her man dripping between her fingers as she massaged his liquid form and softly communed, in her way.
I began working on a comic that I would present to dad once he was solid again. It was as funny as I could manage, all the quirky characters of our family gently ridiculed by 12 year old satire, though the intense undercurrent of melancholy streamed out with such force of gravity I have never been able to capture it since, however banked with experience, suffering and joy, the dimensions of melancholy. That spring of feeling and of purity erupted, but ran dry with exhaustion and time. I coloured the comic with Prismacolor™ pencil crayons, my favourites, and I shaved them, and with tissues I rubbed the colours into overlapping pools on the page, and I kept it secret from everyone because it was my gift, because it would be my way of saying congratulations and welcome home after the reverse transformation, and because all my longing went into it. I would grind this looking glass into an avatar. The pressure built in my chest as I dammed perfection, time and again. But the centre could not hold. I could not create a comic funny enough, colorful enough, to be worthy of this giant of a man, though he'd always been proud of my meanest efforts. This giant of a man had grown in my mind since his transformation, and now even his true pride could never contain the ocean frothing in me. I rained perfection and failure into that comic. Then he was gone.
"Shit," mom said.
The bathtub was empty.
The potamologist came to talk to us.
It happens, he said. Sometimes a man's transformation happens so suddenly and completely that he flows to his own. Listen, he said. I can tell you nothing for certain. But chances are high he has flowed his way downhill to the nearest stream, and joined his new own kind there.
We waded and we talked to the Velloa, the little river down the hill, at the back of the yard. We felt its soul with our fingers. But it was never the same soul twice.
We planted a betula nigra on the bank, into ground fishbone in a hole. We nurtured the tree for years.
Mom lives with my sister these days, out west. Every year they make the trip, and we visit the birch together, and we contemplate man's advantages -- and disadvantages -- compared to a river. And we celebrate the two lives of my dad, who experienced both.