Hardly Children

by Laura Adamczyk

  Oh, Dad, Carla said. Oh, sigh.

  You always say, Oh, sigh. Why not just sigh?

  She squinted at me. Your lips are all purple.

  * * *

  WE COULD HEAR the television as we walked up—Jay, me, Carla, and Tom. A laugh track pulsed through the door. The wind slapped me into an unwelcome awareness.

  Hello, hello, Dad said, letting us in. Between his stick-straight hair gone gray and wire glasses forever in need of alignment, he looked like a community college physics instructor. In truth, he had been one of those baby boomers occupied with any manual labor that had kept our stomachs filled and his hands busy. He shuffled into the living room and, digging a remote out of his chair, muted the television. The resulting quiet compressed the room in a fast inhale. Each visit revealed the progression of a silent, certain spreading, as an anesthetic weighting one’s limbs. Surfaces grew new objects: cellophane bags of processed foodstuff Mom would not have bought and glossy magazines whose covers bore menacing interrogatives—Are Russians Reading Your Email Right Now? With Impending Food Crisis, Will Humans Be Forced to Eat Dirt? What Plans Does the Galaxy Have for Earth?

  Dad led us to the wall in the dining room. On it there was a wooden spoon the length of a cane, a cross-stitch of a brown squirrel, and, at head height, a wooden box. Its walnut frame surrounded a square of black glass that reflected back to us colorless versions of ourselves. From the bottom right corner of the box hung a white electrical cord that ran behind the chest where Dad kept his cribbage set and playing cards. He flipped a switch on the cord, and a square of lights lit up around the box’s inner perimeter. Inside the lights, what was once dull became a glossy darkness that unfolded in a series of illuminated squares, deeper and deeper, as though an unending hallway.

  Cool, Tom said.

  You made this? Carla asked.

  I did indeed, Dad said.

  That’s really neat, she said.

  Jay leaned in, bending his knees into a standing squat. He had the wide stance of a veteran ballplayer. He worked as an office building’s facilities manager and was used to taking things apart and putting them together.

  What do we have here? he said. Two-way mirror?

  Maybe, Dad said, smiling.

  LED lights?

  Dad squinted. What’s your name again?

  At dinner, the two of them had talked about fermentation for half an hour before Dad realized that Jay belonged to me and not my cousin.

  Carla said, It’s Jay, Dad.

  Andie tells me you like to make things, said Jay.

  I’ve got a whole workshop. I’ll take you down into my basement sometime.

  I would love to get into your basement.

  I stared into the box and blinked. The lights fuzzed then realigned to illuminate the box’s depth, the line of them pointing farther and farther away. It was really quite pretty.

  Billions and billions, Jay intoned.

  Sagan? Dad asked. Jay nodded and Dad patted his shoulder. We had been watching Cosmos and were filling our silences with Carl Sagan impressions.

  So what’s the point of this, Dad? Carla asked.

  Well, you know. He eyed Jay. I looked at Carla and back to Dad. The lights twinkled in stars off his glasses.

  Just a neat thing to look at.

  * * *

  IT HAD ALL GONE a little something like this: There was golf on the television and a bunch of us sitting around. Me, Dad, Carla, Tom, aunts, cousins. They’d moved the couch into the dining room, a wheeled bed where the couch had been, Mom in the bed. For two weeks, Dad performed a circuit. He stood touching Mom’s ankles, went into the kitchen, ate a chip, descended into the basement to work, came back upstairs, ate a chip, went into the living room, touched Mom’s ankles. I found myself in the corner by the TV, ceding the spot nearest the bed to someone more aggressively watchful. Her breathing’s changing, Carla would say. She’s having trouble breathing. A man occasionally sank a putt and a crowd clapped politely.

  My phone pinged every time a website I followed posted an update. A jet plane had gone missing. Two hundred souls misplaced. Everyone suspected a plummet into the ocean, but I had other ideas: Mom was going to pass from this life to the next, and the airliner would emerge from nothing. Light would flash, magnetic ions would rearrange themselves, and then blammo—the thing would rip out of a wormhole, a wrinkle in time, what have you. I didn’t know how the science worked, but something was hanging in the balance, that was for sure.

  Near the end, Mom’s schoolmarm sister sang a hymn. She pulled a chair to the foot of the bed and told about going on a walk with Jesus. There had been a time when Mom worshipped, and even I recognized the refrain, but she hadn’t stepped inside a sanctuary in years. She had preferred walking very fast, and alone, on Sunday mornings, releasing some sweat, and eating as much breakfast as she could.

  As she sang, my aunt looked deep into Mom’s face. If anything registered in her eyes it was ironic misery. Who knows if she had any thoughts besides, This sucks, the last words she’d spoken to me before falling into her uncomfortable silence. My aunt’s voice rose to an ungodly high. I tried to step into an emotion that that kind of thing might have unlocked, but I couldn’t do it. She was an awful singer. I shot a look to Carla that said, If you ever sing when I’m dying it had better be Talking Heads or Nirvana or full-on ironic ABBA and not some schmaltz I don’t believe in anymore. Her face reflected all the pain—high and low—that the situation merited. I appreciated her very much in that moment. The difference between us is that just then she started crying and I stepped outside.

  I wandered down the block. I thought, Isn’t life funny? A woman’s about to slip out of the world, but it really is a beautiful day. It was warm for December—sun and breeze and whatnot. Cars were driving, squirrels were squirreling, everyone was going about their business just the same. It all countered but not quite erased the emotional disturbance I was feeling, like when people hang piney discs from the rearviews of their smoke-ridden cars.

  When I returned, everyone’s eyes were freshly red.

  She’s gone, honey, my aunt said. She’s gone.

  I missed it, I said. Like falling asleep before midnight on New Year’s.

  We went through the usual arrangements. My aunt sang her hymn in front of a black-clad crowd, and Dad, Carla, and I split a large jar of gray dust. A week later, aquatic experts surveyed a cloudy square of ocean floor, but all they found were a few pieces of silver wing sunk deep to its fathomless bottom.

  * * *

  CARLA CALLED the day after Christmas, her voice full of sighs and intention.

  Dad said it reminds him of Mom.

  What?

  The box. The infinity box or whatever. When we talked on the phone just now.

  I walked the apartment, from front to back. Jay said he’d take me out for dinner when he got home. I hadn’t been gainfully employed for some time, and I’d been spending my days taking baths and listening to men jackhammer who-knows-what across the street. I was ready to catapult out of myself. I walked into the kitchen and moved the dishes in the sink.

  You don’t think that’s weird? she said.

  I found a block of cheese in the refrigerator, ripping off chunks and stuffing them into my mouth. I said, He’s probably just thinking metaphorically.

  Metaphorically? About your wife? Why not just put up some pictures?

  Why don’t you suggest that?

  You could. You should call him. He always says that he never hears from you. You know, in his own cheerful, nothing-ever-really-bothers-me sort of way.

  I just saw him.

  Before that.

  I picked up the cheese brick and let it fall on the counter in dull, loud thuds.

  Hey, I should run, Carla. Gotta get dinner on the table!

  My man wouldn’t like the crumbs, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything. It was just like me to make little messes. I met Jay a few months after my aunt had put on her show in the old church. I’d been
doing fine with a number of fellas whom I didn’t know very well but with whom I had agreeable understandings. Every few days one would bring over something to drink, and I’d relate to him the most pleasant version of my day, skating along the slick surface of our conversation, and then we’d go into the room where I usually slept alone. I had, at that point, stopped talking to the people who knew me best. When Mom was in her living room bed, my thoughts had felt very clear. I drank pale tea and spoke with Carla in slow, careful sentences. After she gave me my share of Mom’s dust, I felt a persistent head muddling. I didn’t want anyone to poke deeper than What did you do today? Carla insistently noted my absence in voicemails, emails, text messages, and even a buzz on my apartment’s call box. I’d eventually reply in short missives confirming my existence.

  Jay had caught me alone in a bloodred bar one night when I’d had more than the recommended dosage. The next morning, my chemicals all mixed up, he started asking the getting-to-know-you questions we’d skipped the night before. One of the questions was Mom, and I, as they say, lost it. It, in this case, being the ability to keep from weeping on a stranger. Yes, he looked afraid. But then there was hugging and talking and, at his suggestion, the watching of a DVD of my choosing. The following night he asked to see me again, the following night the same until it became hard to entertain other guests and even rude to do so. Too I had quit my job, and money was at a dangerous low. Not long after our falling together, I fit my life into his apartment and, for reasons I can’t quite explain, started answering my phone again.

  * * *

  THE DAY AFTER New Year’s. Or the day after that. Hot hangover sweat, mouth film, and the requisite stooped walk from bed into the living room. Jay blinked at me from the couch.

  Do you want to know what happened? he asked.

  I sat down, covered myself in a ragged fleece, and shoved my feet beneath his butt. There was an insistent pang in my side.

  You kind of got into a fight.

  Those girls?

  I remembered a trio of dumb heels and legs like plastic. Short skirts that didn’t fit the pool hall venue. I recalled asking one of them if they were a package deal or if you had to pay each by the hour.

  You made a few comments.

  I put my hand up.

  You don’t want to know? Jay asked.

  I shook my head.

  Do you want some coffee?

  I shook my head.

  Food?

  Head.

  Water?

  Head.

  Shelter?

  I rested my head on the back of the couch.

  He put on Cosmos. Sagan told how long a Saturn year was, sweeping along its orange rings on the deck of his ship. His sonorous voice dropped me into a black hole.

  I don’t think I smoke enough pot to enjoy this, I said.

  You don’t smoke any pot, he said, holding a lighter to his bowl, his bowl to his face. He inhaled, exhaled, and offered it to me. I wrinkled my nose.

  It’s a different way of feeling good, he said. Jay had become so adept at euphemism that he barely said anything anymore.

  I’ll just get paranoid and fall asleep, I said.

  But you’ll have one good idea.

  Last time, I had an idea for a show in which people were kidnapped, forced to ride roller coasters for twenty-four hours, and returned home without explanation. Another time it was an art installation that was a dimly lit staircase filled with fog and people crawled up and up and they had no idea when it would end and the staircase was so long that people eventually got too tired or hungry to go on, so they’d give up and walk back down.

  Oh, look, Jay said, turning. His apartment was on the second floor of a two-story graystone, and the tall windows behind the couch beveled out in a half polygon.

  They put in a new sidewalk where they tore up the old one, he said.

  What happened to the old one? I asked.

  Dunno.

  I started tearing up thinking about it. I went into the bathroom, where I kept a bottle of Listerine filled with off-brand whiskey under the sink. I did my worst in private. I was losing memories before I had them. I took a swig and looked at myself in the mirror. I sat on the toilet and took another pull. The floorboards in the hallway creaked, and Jay’s knock came, like I knew it would, then, Hey, Andie. He always said it the same way: concerned with not sounding overly concerned. I used to love watching him come out of the shower. Those few moments when he’d zip himself into jeans and walk the apartment damp and shirtless. It had nothing to do with his body or how it looked, but rather how he lived inside of it. Ragged, like how some men toss logs into the bed of an old truck, not worried if they beat it up. It had given me the feeling of, if not security, then sturdiness. Like it wouldn’t be easy to knock him over.

  You okay in there?

  Yes, I said, running the bathwater.

  I heard the door creak as Jay leaned against it and slid down.

  I always said I didn’t want to have a baby, he said. I was afraid I’d crush it or something. But now I know that I can take care of things. And eventually the child would take care of itself. Take the training wheels off, you know?

  Can we talk about this later?

  Your sister seems so happy, he said.

  I thought that she was more impermeable than happy. She whisked bad news right off of her. Maybe that’s what being happy meant.

  It might be a good time to think about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, he said.

  He kept on as the tub filled. I took off my clothes and lay down in the water, submerging my ears so that every sound came to me muffled and from a distance.

  * * *

  I PREFERRED THE OLD WAYS of communicating or not communicating, so the next day after my baths, I wrote Daddy a letter.

  Dearest Father,

  Hello! How are things? It was nice seeing you at Christmas—and your box of light and how much you still like eating mashed potatoes. I’m sorry I didn’t get you a present. We should certainly get together more often. I miss you. I miss the way you like to tell the same jokes and stories over and over. Your eyes had a way of revealing nearly everything. Or nothing! Do you think it’s possible to ever really know a person? I like the way you made me think about that. I like how you thought jokes were more real than the truth. And how you liked going on walks. And how you never wore dresses. Because you didn’t want to! I miss you every single day.

  Very best to you and yours,

  Andie

  * * *

  CARLA PICKED ME UP in her tan SUV. I thought, You were a mom before you were a mom. Her belly was nearing the steering wheel.

  He hasn’t been answering his phone, she said. Haven’t you noticed?

  I looked out the window. Snow wisped along the edges of the interstate. Dad hadn’t replied to my letter, which I took to mean not a whole lot.

  True, she said, you’re more of a call answerer than a call maker.

  I shrugged.

  And even then, she said, rubbing her stomach.

  So is that like your personal genie in a bottle? Are you making a wish every time you do that?

  Well, you’re still here.

  When we got to Dad’s, Carla knocked, called, then used her key. The air was close and still inside. There was a half-eaten sandwich on a paper towel near Dad’s chair, mugs caramelized with coffee residue beside it, and in the dining room, the lights of the infinity box glowing dully, the wooden side warm to the touch. It was vaguely reassuring.

  Dad? Carla called out.

  Hey, Dad, I said, like I was calling a dog.

  We peeked into the bedroom, his closet-sized office, and my old bedroom, which had become Mom’s old sewing room, which had become a collection of lopsided stacks of magazines and plastic tubs filled with fabric. The dust smell of the old calico was as memory-inducing as an LSD flashback.

  We walked through the kitchen and began downstairs. A drill started up and I tensed.

  Dad? Carla yelled.
>
  Girls?

  Dad poked his head up the stairs. It looked like he’d just woken from a nap or was in the midst of flaming out on a cocaine binge.

  Um, let me come up there.

  Dad, what’s going on?

  I followed Carla down.

  He disappeared from view.

  Go back upstairs, girls. There’s, uh, broken glass down here.

  We curved around the bottom of the stairs to find Dad shuffling backward into an eight-foot-tall metal cube with a polygon top; it came to a point that nearly grazed the ceiling. He hung his head and clasped his hands in front of him.

  Dad, what is that? Carla asked.

  It’s nothing. Just a project. He scratched the back of his head. He was wearing an old quilted housecoat, and his glasses were cloudy with dust.

  The thing had a bulky crudeness—like a metal playhouse or toy spaceship a child might construct from refrigerator boxes—though, to Dad’s credit, the seams were sealed with dark caulk and it was rather shiny, which held a hypnotizing allure. He turned his back to us, hands on hips, then back around. His face wavered between sheepish and defeated.

  I’m not quite finished yet.

  What is it? Carla asked, circling around it and stepping over a pile of laundry to the back.

  Oh, no, don’t, Dad said.

  Andie, c’mere.

  Carla stood hunched inside the thing. I ducked in beside her. The interior panels were made of the same dark, oily glass as Dad’s box upstairs, the floor and ceiling seams lined with the same dim lights. Balled in a corner were candy wrappers and a deep-blue sleeping bag. I imagined zipping myself up in its dark womb and staying there for as long as my body lasted. One year, Mom and Dad and Carla and I drove downstate for the fair. Elephant ears and lemon shakeups and farm equipment flea markets and the Gravitron. The thing spun and spun before the floor was released and our bodies stuck to the wall. But Dad hadn’t stuck. Or he had at first, then he inched down the rubber wall until his feet hit bottom and stood in the unmoving middle while the rest of us whirled around him.