Lucas A. Blume

The miss and rope

It is summer time and Matthew felt like a dog. In that, he wanted to go up to a complete stranger and give them a hug. Nuzzle into them inexplicably. He would wish them all a glorious day, overembellished smiles. He didn’t do any of this, just wanted to. Matthew felt really good. Good in a way he hadn’t, exuberant in a way that only comes after having not. It had been too long. He walked down a street of the city: the cafes seemed to have color, chatter had character, the fluorescents of bodegas looked bright with offering, not oppressive, the parks were earnest green, the bookshops held secrets, bars didn’t bottle sadness. The sun was shining, maple leaves moved by wind with something that resembled grace.

He had just left a lunch with his aunt. A woman he admired and, both admitted, had been too long since they had seen each other. She was in the city for some work related thing that she didn’t elaborate on. Matthew didn’t press her about it. At one time, he had been doing some work for her, a kitchen remodel, and one of the other trades asked him: how does it feel to have a rich aunt? He’d shrugged, pretty good and she throws work my way. The aunt had picked up the bill after lunch. And that wasn’t even a bit a part of it, he realized. The thing that had put him in this mood. Not the free lunch.

It wasn’t in seeing this relative that he hadn’t seen for well over a year and for all intents and purposes ‘loved.’ He did, he reckoned, more than in some family-obligatory way. Matthew did have genuine love for his Aunt. But this, too wasn’t why he wanted to be all inappropriate with the passerbys, hug a stranger. It was uncharacteristic. Matthew wasn’t a touchy person even with those he was familiar with, not that there were too many of those lately. This mood was seeded from something else. At lunch, it was something he had said— solicited advice.

His aunt was talking about her daughter. They were sat outside on the street, Aunt’s pizza had come, they were drinking a red blend, it was about two in the afternoon. They sat next to, almost into, a palm variety. The leaves blocked out the street and gave this feeling of seclusion, like the sidewalk was on the other side of this fantasma of a jungle, glimpsed only slightly through curls of deep green. It made their conversation feel like it was the only thing going. It wasn’t, it never is. Reflectively, Matthew cherished the illusion.

Aunt’s daughter was adopted from China when she was an infant. They went over there to get her and everything. This was back during the whole one-child policy thing that used to happen, and the girl was just sort of found on the corner, and none of that really matters. Aunt is no longer with the husband she had when the little Chinese girl became their daughter. He isn’t her first ex-husband. That doesn’t matter either. Now that she is eighteen, the daughter doesn’t even stay with the ex-husband any more. Now he’s something of an ex-father. Ex-father is still trying to cling to some of those fatherly responsibilities. That is a form of love. The ex-father is planning a family meeting because Chinese daughter is starting a new job, an internship really, and to get to the job she has to take the L train through the not-so-prosperous side of Chicago and that makes him worried. Him being mostly-ex-father. This is a bit convoluted.

Aunt is upset about the family meeting and thinks the whole thing is a bit racist and trivial. Something that could be sorted with a phone call or even a brief message. Irrelevant to the point that Aunt thinks it insults adopted-chinese daughter’s self-reliance and where-with-all. This is probably part of the reason he is ex-husband, but Matthew doesn’t pry. Aunt looks over before taking a bite of mushroom pizza and says: what do you think I should do?

Matthew takes a sip of wine and says: I’d like to tell you a little anecdote.

When I was on a backpacking trip. Matthew starts and Aunt can already tell he is going to ramble.

We were out near Yosemite National Park. I’m with Dad and his friends. I got the invite to come along after one of their other friends canceled, and thought, how could I pass up a trip like that. Dad is the brother of Aunt for the family dynamics. So I am out there on the side of a mountain camping out with Dad and three of his friends, sleeping in tents, carrying all our gear for a week, cleaning ourselves in rivers and alpine lakes, eating freeze dried meals out of our metal cookpots, looking at these gorgeous mountains, catching glimpses of mountain goats, walking through fields of wild flowers. It’s beautiful. I’m not typically like this, sappy, but I crested this one peak and alone, fell to my knees and shed a tear over how beautiful it all was. Matthew then realized he was rambling.

But that’s not really the point. The bit is about one of Dad’s friends, this guy Garrett, I think you’ve met him, Dad probably had him and his wife over once or twice. Anyway, Garrett has this thing he does. I never heard him do it because I tended to pitch my tent a little ways away from the old guys and I sleep like a rock, especially after walking over a dozen miles. Dad had warned me about Garrett. Warned me for more than one reason. He said he did it the first time they went backpacking together. It was in the middle of the night, just the two of them, and Garrett started screaming, really screaming, wailing like a dying pig. And this time, their first time doing this, Dad and Garrett are alone, and this is deep in bear country, out by Yellowstone and the Tetons. Dad thinks Garrett is getting eaten by a bear, he’s screaming that much. There could be a grizzly outside the tent. So Dad, being a pragmatist, he keeps quiet for a little while. The screaming stops, he doesn’t hear anything, lets a moment past, then he sort of whisper-shouts: Garrett, Garrett, are you ok? And Garrett responds, yeah, I think so, just a cramp, it was a  really bad one. Like that was supposed to help any. Then Dad groans and says something like: I thought you were getting eaten by a bear and go back to sleep. Keep it to yourself is what he’d probably wanted to say. And he tried to roll over and get some more sleep thinking the whole time— what am I doing with the weird guy in the middle of the woods and who in their right mind screams like that over a leg cramp?

They’ve been on many trips since then, and what Garrett lacks in, well, I don’t even know how to describe his awkward abrupt, talks to much, says off-putting things, screaming in the dark antics, he makes up for it in planning and logistics, earnest compliments, and his ability to rally the guys together. Plus Garret is a touch sicofantic; he just about worships Dad. And he’s jewish by the way, but that doesn’t matter or anything, it's just another characteristic.

The point of this: on this backpacking trip in Yosemite. Aunt still had three slices of pizza and Matthew paused to take another sip of wine. After camping for four nights or so, there was this hut, it was a shared accommodation bunk room, and the three guys took one room and me and Dad took another one with a few strangers. We had a freshly cooked meal and sat around a fire drinking beers for a bit. At least I did, the other guys turned in early. I talked some non-sense, confessed my failed relationship. Told them about my job opportunity in Scandinavia. There was this South African who told me to do it and that I was all in the right and to never, not for a second let love hurt you and something else about not backing down from a challenge and who needs anyone when there’s great expansive nature like this. And I couldn’t help thinking the whole time— there’s probably more than one reason this guy is on another continent, out hiking alone. But I nodded and agreed with everything he said. He had a great accent. I wanted to keep him talking. Then I crept into the room and slept in an instant.

Matthew paused and took a deliberate sip of wine. Aunt had a slice and a half of pizza left. It was a personal pizza and she wasn’t eating her crusts. Aunt asked Matthew: why are you telling me all of this? I asked you a question about my daughter. Matthew replies: I’m getting there, just give me another moment. This seemed like a nice way to tell you a bit about my life, and sometimes, you know, stories are like jokes, the punch-line only exists if you give it space to breathe, build up to something.

Fine, fine, I’ll indulge you, Aunt said. And Matthew took another sip of wine.

I wake up the next day and we’re huddled at this little table drinking cheap coffee. I’m pretending to be a bit hung over for the fun of it. And Jack, that’s one of Dad’s friends, he walks out of the woods, pacing, I ask him how he’s doing, good morning and such. And he goes: I am going to kill him, seriously, I think I’m going to kill him, leave him in the hills for the vultures. He’s all beat red, and honest angry, fuming. But I know he’s the type and it’s all harmless steam. What happened? Jack just says: Garrett happened and let’s out a big exhale.

His night went like this: he turned in a little after the others and is having trouble sleeping because he’s older and I guess when you get older and after a drink or two your sleeping pattern is disrupted. And Aunt shakes her head in agreement with a mouth full of pizza.

He is just about to fall asleep, floating in the in between state of wakefulness and full paralysis, and Garrent, two beds away. Rolls over and knocks the light switch with his arm somehow. Now all the overhead lights are on and everyone wakes up. Everyone but Garrett, he’s still sleeping. The guy has ear plugs in and this full-diva sleep mask on. He’s in complete sensory deprivation. The other guys start yelling at him, he doesn’t wake up. I imagine a few moments pass till the other friend gets up and turns the switch off, gives Garrett's bed a good kick to push it a bit away from the switch. The guy still doesn’t show any indication he woke up in this whole mess. But that wasn’t what set Jack off, kind of an accident. Not entirely forgivable, but he let him have it. It was the next part that did it.

Jack still can’t sleep and he keeps fighting the urge to look at the time or get up. And then Garrett does it again, he starts screaming. Hooting, hollering, bloody murder, screaming in a room full of two people he kind of knows and three others he doesn’t know at all. Garrett is screaming in the dark. Pitch dark, bougie eye mask dark. Jack jumps to his feet, sweating with panic, thinking there’s a fire or a snake or something. It’s nothing. Garrett is having a leg cramp. The whole thing last about ten seconds and quiets to a whimper. But ten seconds is a long time to scream in the dark.

Jack doesn’t get any sleep. He says Garrett got up around a half a dozen times after that, and he couldn’t even do that quietly. Bumping into things, slamming doors. Garrett couldn’t even manage to piss quietly. So Jack never makes it to sweet oblivion. Now it’s morning and he’s still raging, he’s tired and he wants to scream at Garrett over sad scrambled eggs, but he keeps on biting his tongue and drinking cup after cup of coffee tinted water.

After that we walk on for another dozen miles or so before getting back to a road and a bus and a shower and a plane. The whole way, Garrett is complaining about a bad ankle and pretending to limp when people look his way. He talks to the other hikers around more than our group. But really, the rest of us, we make a decent day of it. And it was such a good trip, spending time with Dad like that, seeing his friends in a new light. There’s a level of depth that comes to conversation on the trail or by a campfire lit by the whole milky way of stars.

The Aunt says; Yes, that all sounds really nice and I’m happy for you both. But I still don’t get it. What does any of that have to do with my daughter or my ex-husband?

What makes Garrett scream in the dark?

I don’t know, low pain tolerance. They say men have a much lower pain tolerance than women.

That might be part of it, but I think it’s something else.

What then? I don’t get it.

Garrett wants to be seen. Do you know what I mean? Garrett wakes up in the dark and there’s nothing, no one, void. And he can’t take it. He feels like the whole universe is crashing down all around him. There’s no escape. Not to sound dramatic, but I was reading this physics book; it’s like what they talk about. The big bang, the expanding universe, if gravity is strong enough to pull everything back together again, a great collapse, a rubber band. And it’s happening all at once, its happening now because time is a product of gravity and general relativity and the like. And we are existing in the omnipresent moment of space time and nothing matters because it’s velvet void in every direction and at every passing moment there’s more velvet void because the universe is expanding and maybe, unconsciously we are all hoping and dreading this moment when it all folds up back in on itself. Because that will both give us god and make us hate god and none if it will matter because it’s all so much bigger than even the biggest minds on the planet. And then there’s someone like Garrett and when he wakes up in the dark and it hurts, he just can’t seem to handle it, how big it all is.  And that’s not the point either.

 Matthew took an exasperated sip of wine, the last gulp. He then realized he was a bit drunk at 2 in the afternoon, that didn’t even make sense.  Aunt sat there in perplexed, anticipatory silence, just looking at him. The plate in front of her was littered with eight, precisely bitten pizza crusts.

What I am trying, stumbling, to get at, Matthew says. Is that when your ex-husband wants to meet with you and your daughter and talk about this ‘fear’ he has. It’s not about your daughter. It’s not about you. It’s about him. He’s shouting in the dark. He just wants to be seen. He just wants to feel like he matters. He’s clinging to something the resembles father-hood and with it, relevance. Maybe this is a human-condition. And before you say it, maybe this is a male condition thing. Low pain tolerance and all. And it might be, I don’t know, I’m a man. I can’t see outside of my own head. What I wanted to say, and it felt better with a story is this: Let him shout in the dark. Your daughter will be fine, we both know that, she knows that. Hell, your ex-husband probably knows that too. But he probably feels ever increasingly useless to both of you. He might be waking up in the dark with nothing to hold on to, no one that needs him, not really. And the universe goes on expanding with or without him. And He probably wants to scream. So let him. Just a little.

Aunt frowns then looks down at the napkin on her lap before taking a sip of water.

Tell your daughter to give him some grace. This isn’t about her. It’s about him. And it’s probably earnestly, from the heart, love. He only wants her to be safe, and more he wants to be seen, heard, felt as he’s drifting further away from both of you.

Matthew looks up, he’d been looking down for that last bit. His aunt was crying. Not out loud, just tears silently welling up and falling from her eyes, The arms she held crossed on the table were pin pricked, goose flesh. Seeing this Matthew caught the chills himself, moved with emotion.

So many ways to love, he said.

Now Matthew is walking down the street, feeling mighty good about himself— humanity. He had this experience at lunch. That’s not the right way to put it. He felt that he taught himself something, that his words didn’t come from him as much as the words went through them and the experience of saying them and hearing them was happening at the same time and entirely novel.

The rest of the lunch has passed quickly and mostly in silence. They both used the toilet. Rich aunt paid the bill. She asked offhandly about Matthew's love life and inquired about his now, it was still fairly recent, ex-partner. She had met her way more than once. Said she liked her, but obviously was on Matthew’s side. This was a chide that was supposed to get a smile but got a bit of a groan. That sort of thing doesnt help. Matthew tried to say it was more complicated than that. Aunt asked what he was going to do next, about the job offer and he shrugged that off too. I am in New York. That’s was all he said.

They said good-byes on the corner. Aunt gave him a long tight hug and whispered in his ear: thank you. When they separated, Matthew said: what are you thanking me for, you just bought me lunch. She waved and said: you know what I am talking about, stay wise, favorite nephew. Then she got into a black sedan and pulled off out of sight.

Cut to—>

and it is seven months later,

Matthew did it and he didn’t. He’d taken the job. He was living in Norway and now it is the dead of winter. He hasn’t seen the sun in weeks, and he still hasn’t really made any friends. Matthew wants to call his ex-partner for no other reason than just the longing to hear her voice and hold onto the memory or shred of that warmth. But he doesn’t ever do it. He sits at a desk and it feels cold, aesthetically cold. And he does his work drawing up electrical diagrams and it feels distant and heartless and cold. And he talks to his colleagues about practical work related things and it feels impersonal and callous and cold. Then he walks home from work and he hates that he calls it that because it is a studio apartment above a store that sells washing machines and it is without a lick of clutter or home furnishings because he bought everything from Ikea and he isn’t sure if he is going to stay and thinks every night, that if he can just last the winter, he’ll buy a plant or a piece of art or collect something. He thinks he’ll even talk to the girl in 3B or the other woman he sees at the restaurant bar down the street. He even feels like maybe in the spring he could drink again without it making him all sad and heartsick and cold. And when he walks home from work he too does that alone.

Matthew is walking now. It’s a stretch of straight road, sides piled high with snow. The side walk has transformed to a trench. The snow rises to just below his waist, banks of it. There’s sea off to his left. It’s dark out because it’s always dark out.

It was even before the lunch with his aunt, Matthew is remembering, feet trudging through slush. That wedding. The wedding where he and his ex-partner were both there. Both friends with the bride and the groom respectively. That’s what happens when two lives are intertwined so long. They get all woven up together with other lives that don’t fall apart and instead become quilts.

 At this wedding the two sort of orbited the now married couple like two moons. Both around, circling, constantly there, but never too close to one another. At the after party. Matthew was playing a game of pool in this stately, leather, mahogany, old books, library. He was only half playing, a way to keep up a doomed conversation. His ex-partner, the person he knew better than any other person in the world, was in the other room singing karaoke. It was a hip-hop song, and it was terrible and hilarious. Matthew tried not to listen. This odd acquaintance came up to him then, gave him a little elbow and goes: I want to tell you an anecdote. He was drunk. This guy was the brother of the bride, a guy Matthew knew but didn’t really care for and hadn’t seen in years. He looked like he was doing well enough, obviously a bit drunk, understandably so, the guy’s little sister just got married and he was there alone and no one asked him to give a speech. Bride’s brother, the guy, without waiting for Matthew to respond, swaying slight. He says this:

I’ve been doing this new thing recently. I just take the blame for everything. You know, swallowing all my pride, gone, getting rid of it all together and just being wrong. Completely wrong. Apologizing, not needing it be accepted or nothing. Just putting it out there. And you know, it feels really good, not being right, not dying on some petty hill, just being fully irrevocably, wrong. You know, about certain things. The important things. Being right is pointless, that’s what I am saying. And telling the people I love just that—- I was wrong, I am sorry. It feels really good It’s really been working out for me. Just thought I’d say that to you.

Matthew gives him a funny look. That’s not an anecdote, he says, that's just an unsolicited opinion. And the bride’s brother genuinely laughs.

You’re right. And he gives Matthew an over emphasized wink.

You get what I am saying, yeah? How are you at karaoke? Got any duets in you?

Yeah, that really isn’t an anecdote.

Matthew takes another shot at pool and sits down in a nook. He got this look plastered all over his face. He couldn’t help it, he was reliving memories, dying on little hills over and over again, dozens of instances flashing across his mind at once. The karaoke song ends, there’s scattered mocking applause and a few hoots. The brides brother looks at Matthew, sees the look that he’s got stuck on his face and laughs again.They catch eyes, and a beer is raised in a mocking sort of cheers. Matthew hasn’t had a drink in his hand all night. The bride's brother, through a laugh, says: To being wrong, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

He didn’t end up doing anything close to resembling that. He couldn’t. Matthew keeps trying to tell himself that. Even now as he is walking, freezing slowly. He couldn’t just be wrong. Seven years was too much time, there’d be too many wrongs. And they weren’t all his. And Matthew, somewhat self-aware of this, couldn’t be wrong. He wasn’t wrong. He had too much pride, was steeped too long in a bit of self-righteousness. Too many people had told him how smart he was, starting from a young age. Three people had told him he was the most intelligent person that they had ever known; his ex-partner was one of those people. He couldn’t be all wrong. He was on another continent with this prestigious world shifting job, drawing up electrical stigmata. He was re-engineering the battery. Matthew mattered. He kept telling himself that. He told himself that now, behind a shiver and a yawn.

He thought about his Aunt and her adopted Chinese daughter, his cousin. She was in Singapore now, bet that was hot, too hot, sounded nice. He remembered a time when his cousin was younger and he told her to keep up with the classical violin and her mandarin studies. She didn’t. Matthew thought about how somebody had told him the same thing— to keep on with the piano and to not let the world slowly eat away at his soul. He hadn’t listened either. And isn’t that just how it is? We are all here, spinning through space at unfathomable speeds wading through more regrets than we can remember. And aren’t the northern lights pretty. And how did that shade of purple end up in the sky? And it is getting colder and colder still. And is that a star in the eastern sky? It’s shining so bright through the greens and purples like that. It must be a planet and reckon that planet must be Venus.  And the road keeps on going, snow piled on either side, nature’s fireworks lighting up the sky. And his hands are numb, and he’s so tired.

Most nights were like this, feeling progressively more alone on this walk back to town. Alone and hopeless and wrong. So far from that summer stroll in New York, where he felt happy and wise and like everything was going to work out for him. That his work was going to make him feel good, like he mattered. And by doing something that mattered, that would make his life meaningful and through that meaning there would be happy.  And it did and it didn’t. He missed the feeling from that day, more than any other. He missed liking people. All of them, humanity.

There’s a word for the way Matthew felt, Greek. The way a person can get after being jaded and alone and in the cold dark. The kind of feeling that makes a person want to scream out into velvet void even if there is no one there to hear. The feeling a person gets after they’ve been screaming, silently, for maybe even years. Maybe all the way back before love was lost, and long before the world stopped being green. It wasn’t that Matthew didn’t like people, he was friendly enough. He didn’t hold this revulsion for the individual, more for the all of it. The whole great mess called humanity. And in that, he hated the feeling more. He loathed what he let himself become. What he was becoming. The word: misantrope.

The woman at the desk of his office told him it was going to be cold when he left. She broke off her conversation in Norwegian, told him it would be colder than the other days in a that’s-how-it’ll be sort of way. Matthew had thanked her, wished her good night, see you tomorrow, pleasantries. She just nodded unemotionally and went back to the conversation in her mother tongue. This type of exchange was common for Matthew at work. And now, as he’s walking, he thought: should have listened and got that other layer, or waited for the bus. No cars passed on this stretch of road, not this direction. His feet had completely succumbed to the cold and he felt as though he were floating as much as walking because all sensation was gone. He looked down and his feet kept moving. He put in  headphones. A slight warmth came in the form of a trumpet solo.

And that’s just about when it happened— the enigmatic thing. The event in Mattews life that kind of means nothing and everything and changes nothing and then changes everything. Something that he could never unlive and never forget. It left Matthew stopped, inert, half leaning half lying in a snow back on the side of the road in Norway. The lights of town were visible but still a ways off, the lights of the office factory complex were gone and mostly off. The sea to his left gently slapping against a frozen shore a few hundred meters away. Matthew’s jaw dropped and his breath caught. All he could do was look.

The sky to the east with that bright star and the brush strokes of greens and purples that moved and didn’t. That seemed to have dimensions of their own like particles and waves. All that magnificent light, it appeared to coalesce and form into something and from that star fly towards and then over him, fly through him, across the sky and the world, soaring, spirling, fixed in form and omnipresence. It looked like a serpent with wings, larger than life, unbound by dimensions of time or space or anything. It was and it couldn’t be. It was a feathered serpent with wings, all light, He was both sure and unsure what he was witnessing. It was the purest light and every color in the world, colors he’d never seen before, colors he couldn’t see, and it flashed through his eyes and miles over his head. His vision was  and became wholly stars and fireworks and waterfalls and then it was black. It was over and passed. Matthew didn’t really know why, maybe it was a half remembered idea, something from a school book, but he said it all the same. Before he lost all balance, in the last whip of a cosmic tail. Matthew mouthed a word: Quetzalcoatl. Then he fell over..

He might have hit is head, he couldn’t tell. It was cold and his eyes were closed. There was only black. And there he was, just a thought in the void. And all there was to do was to think and then there were thoughts. He thought about what that meant. If what just happened made any difference. Did he just witness some deity? A cosmological phenomenon? Was that a god? And if so what would he do now? He guessed he should just get up and keep walking home and if gods or dragons or rainbow serpents were flying around that he would probably still go to work on Monday. He laughed with a thought at the thought of how crazy that sounded. That it would be so insignificant. The how or why or anything he could, would, ever do in the great expanse of time and the endlessness of the sky above him would just— And what was he even anyway? Just a thought in a dark room, but he didn’t want to scream. He didn’t need to scream. His mind just kept running, reeling from a flash of light he couldn’t absorb or comprehend. He wished he’d have a good idea or some novel life changing insight. Nothing came to him. He just thought about all of his missed chances, the things he missed, his misses, ex-misses, how much more he’ll miss. Thoughts about poor little me.

Then he thought about rope. This stupid mathematical paradox. It goes: if you put an ant on a piece of rope. It’s a stretchy piece of rope and it’s a kilometer long. The ant is walking along at a normal ant speed. Then for what ever inexplicable reason, every second the rope stretches another kilometer. The ant keeps going at ant speeds and the distance keeps getting further, exponentially. Will the ant ever reach the end of the rope?

That’s why it’s a paradox. Because the ant does make it in the end. Mathematically, one uniform increment after another because the whole rope stretches uniformly and something about incremental percent change onward, infinity. And Matthew thought about how that was such a stupid thing to know. And what's the point of knowing anything when it is such a small percent of everything that it is basically nothing. And he figured that he’d make it eventually.

What are you doing with that stupid rope?

And if Theseus ship is replaced one board at a time so that it’s entirely new or different. And doesn’t the same thing happen to all the cells in our body every seven years. And who is this Theseus? And if Matthew was with his partner for seven years, does that mean that all of him, every cell belong to her and if so now what? And if it is still Theseus’s ship, what about the rope? Because a sailing vessel is really all about the rope, the rigging. It would probably just flip over and sink without it. It would be impossible to tie a boat up anywhere without rope. And does all the rope belong to Theseus too? Matthew was at the end of his. The end of his rope. He realized it then. And then the thought in the velvet void stopped and it was just—

He feels his heart beat against the cold, with rhythm. Like there’s soul in jazz. Matthew still had his headphones in. It was his heart, not his mind that listened, that remembered. He felt it, music played by people, composed by people that’ll he’ll never meet and for all he knows were dead, so it might as well have been all of humanity singing to him even though it was just Billy holiday.  And the sky swirls green for reasons and science but none of that even matters because it’s so damn cold. And Matthew remembers: so what if it’s all bullshit. Let the gods do as they will. And no one belongs anywhere until they do.

And isn’t that like most of our lives?

Not much of anything happens if you zoom out far enough.

Northern lights keep going.

New York city streets are still moving.

And on and on and on.

Don’t be the misanthrope!

Matthew makes it home in the end.