Hard Wired

by Len Vlahos

  Shea just stares at me, her smile replaced by a smirk, her stop-you-in-your-tracks-and-make-you-want-to-die eyes narrowed to slits as she considers me.

  It dawns on me the Emancipation Proclamation might have been a colossally bad example to use. I’m not sure of Shea’s ancestry—maybe Indian? or Latinx? or Native American?—and wonder if her family has a history with slavery in America and I’ve made some kind of incredible faux pas.

  Then her gaze softens and she laughs. “Yeah,” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “you’re not smart at all.” Then she rolls her eyes. I’m about to protest before she adds, “But why are we talking about history. Tell me what you do for fun?”

  You’d think the smartest guy in the school would have anticipated this question as the kind of thing that gets asked on a first date. He didn’t. I fumble for what feels like an eternity for the right answer. Do I tell her that I sit in this very coffee shop and play Magic the Gathering? Do I tell her my friends and I listen to classic rock while we play first-person-shooter video games? That I’m the captain of the Mathletes and my favorite hour of the week is trigonometry practice? Okay, that last one isn’t true, but it may as well be.

  On the other hand, I don’t want to start our relationship, if that’s what this turns into, with a lie. I dodge the question.

  “I don’t know . . . normal stuff.”

  “Like what?” Again, I probably should have expected this question. (Maybe I’m actually the dumbest guy in school.) Okay, Quinn, deep breath, start small.

  “Video games?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Good, because I love video games.”

  Wait. What? “You do?”

  “Yes! I’m a sucker for classic arcade emulators.”

  “Stop it.”

  “No, I swear!”

  “Like what?”

  “Asteroids, Tempest, and Galaga.” Holy crap! Those are the same games I love!

  “Stop it!”

  She laughs. It’s like the sound of a mountain stream echoing through a forest. Okay, I’ve never actually heard a mountain stream echoing through a forest, but it’s a beautiful laugh and I want an analogy that will do it justice. I file it away for future thought.

  Anyway, we talk more about school and video games and everything, and I start to settle down. I find out her mother is some kind of corporate bigwig and not very nice, that her parents are divorced, that she has no siblings, and that she loves movies. In short, the date is going incredibly well. Or at least I think it is; I have no frame of reference.

  Then something weird happens. Followed by something very bad.

  We come to the first natural pause in the conversation, and Shea freezes. Kind of like Jeremy did on Saturday. For the barest hint of a second, she goes catatonic. It happens three times in quick succession.

  “Shea?” I ask. “You okay?”

  “Quinn.” Shea’s voice and demeanor, until now light and easy, gets suddenly serious. She leans in close, takes my hand. My heart rate jumps.

  “Yeah?”

  “You deserve to know the truth.” What truth? Does she have a boyfriend? Is she gay? Is she moving to Pakistan? My brain runs through a mounting series of possible things that could end this date. My heartbeats per minute tick up another notch.

  “This isn’t what I really look like,” she says. There’s a weird kind of desperation in her voice. Happy-go-lucky, Galaga-playing Shea has been replaced by someone else.

  I wonder if her comment is a metaphor for something, or maybe she’s talking about how boys and men objectify women, and how she wants me to like her for her. I’ll admit it was her looks that drew me here, but that’s not why I’m still here. Well, not entirely.

  “Huh?” I finally ask.

  “This,” she says, motioning to her face, her body, “isn’t really me.”

  It’s a very strange thing to say, and it unsettles me. Not so strange and not so unsettling that it should trigger my vasovagal syncope, but that’s exactly what happens. The booming of my heart is drowning out the rest of the world.

  “What?” I ask weakly, my breath shallow, my brow suddenly damp.

  “No,” she says with urgency, looking at me, then looking around, “don’t!”

  I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like either she’s talking to someone else, or she knows I’m going to pass out. If she does, it was a good guess, because I do.

  06

  The next thing I’m aware of is my mom hovering over me. I’m lying in bed at home. It’s dark out.

  It takes a second for all that to register, and when it does, I sit bolt upright.

  “Shea!” I blurt out.

  “She’s gone,” my mom says gently as she sits down on the edge of the bed. Her hand goes instinctively to my forehead.

  “I was in the coffee shop and . . .” I lie back down, unable to finish the sentence. It’s not that I don’t know what to say, it’s that I want to die of embarrassment. My whole date with Shea, up to the moment of losing consciousness, comes back to me, and I legit want to die. “How did I get home?” I ask, my forearm over my eyes.

  There’s a tortured pause during which I imagine my mother taking stock of me. “You don’t remember?” I move my arm to look at her. She cocks her head to the side, her voice a soft mixture of pity and fear.

  “No.”

  “Shea drove you home, Quinn. You were awake, but didn’t seem . . . ​present. She helped you to the door, then I thanked her and sent her on her way. She seems like a very nice girl, by the way.” Mom forces a smile as she rests her hand on mine, like somehow touching me will heal me. Or maybe she’s trying to heal herself.

  “I was conscious?”

  “Quinn,” she starts, “are you taking . . . anything?”

  Taking anything? Wait. My mom thinks I’m doing drugs?

  “Oh my God, Mom, no!”

  She looks for a minute like she’s not sure if she should believe me, then nods her head once. “Okay, then we need to go back to the doctor, tomorrow. This has to be related to the syncope.”

  The stupid syncope. Now I’m not just passing out, I’m having gaps in my memory. I can only imagine the next battery of tests, with electrodes and wires and needles and pinpricks and worse. But right at this moment my hatred of doctors is eclipsed by the pit of dread in my stomach. What exactly did I say to Shea between regaining consciousness at Enchanted Grounds and her dropping me off at home? Did I just babble incoherently? Did I talk about gaming? Did I tell her I love her? Did she think I was stoned?

  “Quinn?” my mom asks, I guess wanting me to respond to her statement.

  “Huh? Oh yeah, sure, I think the doctor’s a good idea.” And this time actually, I do. The thought that I’ve lost . . . ​Wait, how many hours did I lose? “What time is it?”

  “Just after ten p.m.”

  “Ten p.m.!” I lost five hours of my life? This is like the beginning of some bad murder mystery.

  “I know, Quinn. I know.”

  Part of me wonders why Mom doesn’t just take me to the ER now. But I really don’t want to go to the ER, so I don’t mention it.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asks. I shake my head no. She clenches her jaw and kind of squints at me. “Okay, honey, you just rest.” She gets up to leave.

  “Mom?” She stops and waits. “Tomorrow is the anniversary of Dad’s death.”

  She sits back down.

  “Yes.”

  “Can we watch the message tonight? I think it might help me feel better.”

  After that first message, on the first anniversary of my father’s death, a new message followed each year. Always some life lesson, and always with a song. My father managed to turn the occasion of his death from something to fear into something to celebrate.

  Mom wrings her hands. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You had quite an ordeal today.”

  “I know, but—”

  “
Why don’t we just wait until tomorrow,” she interrupts.

  The tone of her voice makes me believe she’s keeping something from me. When my dad died, Mom and I got very close. We can communicate with a bare minimum of words, sometimes with no words at all. I know her better than I know anyone else on the planet, including Leon, Jeremy, and Luke. So when I say she’s keeping something from me, I know she’s keeping something from me. But maybe she’s right; maybe I’ve had enough excitement for one day.

  “Okay,” I tell her, “tomorrow morning.” She smiles, nods, and leaves the room.

  I reach for my phone.

  I have two texts from Leon:

  LEON: How’d the date go?

  And, time stamped an hour later:

  LEON: That bad, huh?

  I ignore Leon and ping Shea instead.

  ME: I’m really sorry about before. I should’ve explained about my medical condition. Thanks for getting me home.

  I watch the phone, waiting for the little dots to indicate she’s writing back, but there’s nothing. I let five minutes go by before sending a second text.

  ME: This is a weird question, but can you tell me what I was talking about when you drove me home?

  Again, nothing. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe she’s gone to bed. I wouldn’t have had her pegged for an early-to-bed type, but for now I have to believe it. The alternative, that she never wants to talk to me again, is too painful to even contemplate.

  I turn up the volume on my phone, put it under my pillow, and then lie back down, hoping I’ll finally dream.

  07

  Not only do we still call the room adjacent to my bedroom “Dad’s office,” but eight years later the room is completely unchanged. Everything is in the same exact place it was the day my father died. The only time anyone disturbs the room is when Mom cleans it; there’s a smell of Endust in here this morning. A neutral observer might think this was unhealthy, that we weren’t letting go. Truth is, Mom and I don’t see any reason to move on. Dad may not be here, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t here.

  It’s only six a.m., and my mom is already at the desk watching a video of my dad with headphones on. It wasn’t until the third anniversary that I realized Dad had left messages for Mom, too. She would always watch hers first, then she would preview mine and Jack’s, then it would be our turn. My brother, the soundest sleeper on the planet, is still in bed this morning and will be for a while.

  I lean against the doorjamb, watching my mother watch my father. I try to imagine how hard this has all been for her. Not just losing her husband, but trying to raise me and Jack, dealing with my medical crap. I honestly don’t know how she’s managed.

  My father raises his hand to his lips, kisses the palm side of his fingers, and then turns his hand toward the screen, the kiss sent through time and space to my mother. She puts her hand on the screen, too, as if she were touching him. Her shoulders start shaking, and I realize she’s crying. It brings me back to the night she and my dad first told me he was sick.

  My parents sat with me on the couch in our living room, one on each side of me, as we watched Jeopardy! on the TV. My dad still looked completely normal. No weight loss, no hair loss. Normal. From my perspective he was tall, and strong, and even though I didn’t know this word then, distinguished. As I got older and looked back at photos, I saw that he was of average height, average weight, with prematurely gray hair and a couple of very unfortunately placed moles. He had an aquiline nose and his eyes, like mine, were dark.

  Jack was already in bed, and I was already in my pajamas. Not quite seven at the time, I understood almost none of the questions Alex Trebek was asking but loved that I was watching a grown-up show with my parents.

  “This letter most commonly begins the last name of US presidents,” Trebek said.

  “Quinn, your mother and I need to talk to you,” my father started.

  At first I didn’t know there was anything wrong. When you’re that age, you turn a deaf ear to everything other than the television.

  “What is H?” one of the contestants answered.

  “Correct!” Trebek told him.

  The TV shut off and I looked up; my dad was holding the remote.

  “Quinn,” he said again, “Mom and I have to talk to you about something.” My dad’s voice was soothing, stern, and commanded all my attention. That was my first clue. The second clue was that my mom’s eyes were wet.

  “This is going to be hard to understand, but the doctors say I’m sick.”

  My mother stood up and went to look out the window, which was weird, because it was already dark.

  “Do you have to stay home from work tomorrow? Can I stay with you?” I wasn’t asking because I wanted to miss school. At that age, kids still like school. I was asking because I wanted to be with my father, to help him. My parents both knew that. That’s when I saw my mom’s shoulders start to shake. My father’s eyes were welling up, too, but he held it together. I knew something was very wrong.

  “What . . . ?” I asked softly, but couldn’t find words to finish the question.

  “I have something called cancer.” I’d heard the word before. One of my mom’s best friends had cancer, and she had died. Same with an older woman who lived on our block. Until that night, I didn’t know that a man could get cancer. I thought it was a disease for women.

  That’s when my mom lost it. She was still facing the window, but she was audibly sobbing now.

  “Lorraine,” my dad said to her, and my mom left the room. It was all too much for me, and I just started wailing. I wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe it was seeing my mom cry, maybe it was the look on my father’s face, maybe it was the whole awkward scene. Or maybe on some level I understood what he was actually telling me. Whatever the reason, I cried. My father held me until I fell asleep and he carried me up to bed.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say now. She flinches and turns around, startled, wiping at her eyes. “Sorry,” I say, partly for scaring her, partly for catching her crying.

  “It’s okay, honey.” She clears her throat. “How’re you feeling this morning?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “No, I’m okay. Just a lot to plow through right now.” Shea never texted back last night, though Leon did text one last time asking if I was okay. I didn’t answer.

  “Yes,” Mom says, “yes, you do have a lot on your mind. Do you want breakfast?” She starts to stand.

  “I want to watch Dad’s message.”

  My mother sighs heavily and nods. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She takes her measure of me, says, “Okay,” and steps aside, motioning for me to take the empty seat.

  “Aren’t you going to watch the video first?” I ask. Mom always screened my and Jack’s messages. I’m not sure what she would have done if she found something she didn’t like. Would she have edited the message? Stopped me from seeing it? Had she done that already? Were there messages from my dad I had never seen? I don’t know why that hasn’t occurred to me before.

  “I watched it a week ago.”

  “You did? I thought you watched them on the anniversary?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Why?”

  “Sit down, honey.” She nods to the office chair a second time, so I take a seat. “Quinn,” my mom starts, and then stops. She’s serious. Grim. I haven’t seen her like this in years. My pulse quickens.

  “What?”

  “Quinn”—she takes a deep breath and begins again—“this is the last message.”

  Her statement hangs in the air, like the words are in free fall, waiting to splat or explode on the ground, or maybe on top of my head.

  “The last message?”

  “Yes.”

  It’s not like it didn’t occur to me the messages would end someday. I didn’t imagine myself as some forty-year-old fart listening to my dad’s messages once a year. Okay, that’s not true. That’s exactly what I imagined. But
I had also considered that there might someday be a last message. I just figured it would be on a momentous occasion—when I turned eighteen, when I turned twenty-one, when I graduated from college. Not some random and unexpected anniversary.

  I want to cry. I want to throw up. I want to pass out. But I don’t do any of those things.

  “Why?” I ask again, fumbling for words.

  My mom doesn’t answer. She just leans forward, clicks a couple of times on the screen, and the message starts to play.

  Hi, Quinn, it’s Dad.

  It was the first time my father referred to himself as “Dad” rather than “Daddy” to introduce one of his messages. He’s still dressed in the same clothes, the light through the window unchanged, the room the same. But something about his countenance is different.

  I can only imagine the young man you’ve become. Nothing breaks my heart about this illness more than knowing I won’t be there to see you and Jack grow up. I told you in the very first tape—my dad reveals the era from which he hails by calling them “tapes”—that it was okay, that I was going to someplace better. Truth is, Quinn, I don’t know what will happen when I die. No one does. He says these last lines as much to himself as he does to the camera. He runs his hand through his hair, his body language filled with anguish. Anyone who tells you different is full of shit.

  I had never heard my father curse. Not in life, not in his recordings. It’s jarring.

  Entropy is the guiding principle of the universe, son. Never forget that. In fact, that’s the theme of my final lesson: The only thing you can count on in this world is change.

  Please know that I love you, Quinn. Even more, it turns out, than I love life.

  And with that, he looks down, touches his remote control, and the image winks out.

  The last thing I remember is the reflection in the dark computer screen of my eyes rolling back in their sockets, and my head slumping forward.

  08