by Val Emmich
A hiss as the song ends.
My teeth unclench and I sit up. His jaw hangs open, total shock. Any pain he feels from my sudden shoulder attack he keeps inaudible.
“You bit me,” Mac says, eyes enormous.
I did. “Is that cotton?” I say, referring to his shirt. “It’s delicious.”
I stand up, pretending as though it’s no big deal for one person to take a small chomp of another. As I return to the player, I deftly move the conversation along. “I feel like we need to hear that song a third time. You were yapping through it.”
Still recovering from my attempt at cannibalism, Mac accepts the lie I’ve just told.
I cue up the cylinder, and on my way back to the floor, I refuse to look at him. I shut my eyes for full concentration.
By the light of the silvery moon,
I want to spoon.
To my honey I’ll croon love’s tune.
Honeymoon, keep a-shining in June,
Your silvery beams will bring love dreams.
We’ll be cuddling soon,
by the silvery moon.
When it ends, I look over. Mac’s eyes are closed. I wait for him to speak first.
“My dad will stop at every flea market, every garage sale, looking for records. He was into vinyl before it was cool again. He was never not into it.”
While I’m over here trying to find creative ways of ignoring the obvious ocean between us, Mac just dives right in.
“My mom hates the smell of old records, so she made him move all his stuff down to the basement.”
That cozy feeling of home fades as I think back to peering around the curtain in Mac’s basement, into his father’s listening area.
“I feel like he’d like this place,” Mac says, opening his eyes and gazing into the black hole of the tornado-shaped horn. “I wonder if he even knows it’s here.”
I imagine having to give Mac and his dad a tour. Hi, I’m Tegan and I’ll be your guide. Come now, let me show you how I ruined your lives. I adjust my butt so I’m a little farther away from him.
Mac’s chin points up as he rests his head back. In his silence I hear the creaks and cracks of our little home trying to stay upright. It might be just the wind outside, but somehow I think not.
The song has been over for some time, and the player is hissing. I stand up and power down the machine for good.
When I turn back, Mac’s chin has fallen, his troubled eyes cast down at the powerless phone he’s removed from his pocket. He can’t totally forget the outside world no matter how hard he tries. “You got a charger here somewhere?” he says.
I tell him where to find it, in the front room plugged into a socket next to the register. He leaves and I exhale. I can’t bear to listen to him talk about his dad. I have to find a way to get his mind on something else.
My eyes land on the model of the original Edison laboratory that once resided on this property. It was made with incredible detail: a shingled roof, two chimneys, and curtains in the windows. Not overly exciting on the surface, but it gives me an idea.
“You want to see something, like, really amazing?” I say when Mac returns, struggling to heighten anticipation.
“Obviously,” Mac says, as if he’s been waiting for me to finally bring the excitement.
“Okay, well, on the tours we give, we always mention that the people who made this model put a tiny phonograph with a tiny record inside the model lab. Supposedly the phonograph actually plays. But I don’t know if it’s true.”
He bends over, hands in his pockets, and peers into the glass enclosure at the miniature world inside.
“I’ve always wanted to see for myself, but I’ve never been able to,” I say. “Do you want to look now… together?”
Mac seems indifferent.
I smile pathetically. “I like to keep it real boring. We are in a museum after all.”
“I’m not bored,” Mac says.
He offers it as plain fact, but I take it like a gift. Mac holds his stare. I look away, but not fully. The tops of my eyes watch him.
He turns his focus to our task. “How do we do this?”
“We have to lift the glass top off.”
Mac nods, no big thing. There are no handles, so we shove our fingers under the glass through the narrow gap at the bottom.
“Ready?” Mac says.
“I think so.”
“One… two… three.”
It’s lighter than I expect, although I didn’t have time to expect anything. It’s been that way since I ran out of the house hours ago. Surprise after surprise. I barely have time to process the first one before the next one comes. It’s exhilarating, the unpredictability, and terrifying all the same.
I’m doing it again, thinking too much, not paying attention to the direction Mac is steering us. The weight dips, my sudden sweatiness not helping, and my weaker hand fails me—the glass strikes the ground.
Shattered.
The floor is a sea of sparkle. Fragments everywhere. The look of a dream. If only.
I take a single crunchy step. The sound is louder than any speaker Edison ever produced.
“It’s okay,” Mac says.
I turn, remembering his presence. The crash sent him backward and away. The distance between us feels immense.
“It was an accident,” he says.
It makes me laugh. First quietly, then like a lunatic. I laugh with coughing. I laugh with gross spittle. Exhausted, I offer my verdict: “Holy shit.”
He squats down and surveys the wreckage. No problem, the hero is here to save the day. He begins to string words together, but it’s all nonsense. I barely hear him. I look down at my special hand. I shut my eyes and try to stop time, reverse it, end it.
Mac drones on. “Trust me. It’ll be all right. It’s just glass.”
“Expensive glass. You think this place is raking in money? No one comes here.”
“Fine, but in the scheme of things, this is just—”
“You don’t understand,” I say.
As if addressing a child, he asks, “What don’t I understand?”
“Me. You don’t understand me. You will never understand someone like me.”
He shakes his head, smiling that breezy smile. “You’re fucking impossible, you know that?”
I want to dip my hands in all the tiny glass crystals and drag them across his jolly cheeks. I walk straight to the bathroom and shut myself inside.
“Really?” Mac says. “You’re hiding in the bathroom?”
Yes, I’m hiding in the bathroom with the lights off—for the second time tonight.
“Just say what you want to say already,” Mac hollers.
I had planned to ignore him, but now I can’t. “This is what I mean. You think you can tell people what to do because… because you’re you.”
“Who am I?”
I roll my eyes, but Mac can’t see me, which only irritates me more. “You don’t have to deal with the things I have to deal with.”
“You’re really going to say that after everything I’ve told you tonight?”
“Okay, but what about at school?”
“What about it?”
If I have to spell it out for him: “You actually exist. People like you.”
An overdone laugh. “They don’t even know me. All they know is the small part of me I choose to show them.”
“I see. So you’re fake.”
Silence, a little, then a lot. Now some alien resonance through the wall stirs to life, making it hard to hear. Enough time passes that I wonder whether I’ve missed his response. Or he left.
Maybe that was unfair, the comment about being fake. I keep doing that: saying mean things I don’t really mean.
Finally, Mac speaks his mind: “It’s simpler that way.”
I press my ear to the door.
“It’s simpler being what people want me to be.”
I was preparing to agree with whatever he said next, because I’m tired of fig
hting. But I can’t agree with him. He’s wrong.
“It’s not simpler,” I say. “It’s harder. It takes up so much energy. All that effort, performing, pretending, it’s nonstop. What are we doing it for? Why do we care so much what people think of us? Why can’t we just say what we want to say? Instead we talk behind each other’s backs. That’s all everyone does. It’s exhausting. It’s really exhausting.”
The alien drone putters out and allows my embarrassing speech to resonate. The loss of sight heightens my sense of hearing. I don’t like the sound of myself.
“Just go already,” I tell him, shutting my eyes in the dark.
“No,” Mac says.
He’s the impossible one here.
“Come out,” Mac says. “Let’s clean up this mess.”
Let’s. A contraction of let and us. It’s the second part, the us, that gives me the courage I need to do what he’s asking. He already had a mess at home tonight that he didn’t feel like cleaning up; I wouldn’t blame him one bit for walking away from this one. But for some reason he won’t.
I open the door and step around him. Inside the utility closet, I find a broom and dust bin. Without making eye contact, I pass the broom to Mac. I slide over a trash can and squat down with the bin in position. He begins to sweep the glass in my direction. When the bin gets heavy, I dump the shards into the trash can.
After enough time has passed, Mac dares to speak. “Just tell them you were cleaning the glass and the thing toppled over.”
“I’m not supposed to be here. I wasn’t working today.” Now I’ve admitted it.
The trash bin shimmers with diamonds. They clatter and crunch when they strike the bottom of the can.
“I’m the one who’s fake,” I say.
A tiny admission. Not enough, not even close.
“I think you’re the opposite of fake,” Mac says.
I stare down at the endless glass, my bin pressed to the floor, awaiting his broom’s next delivery.
“You have something in your hair,” Mac says.
I rise and face him—in pieces.
He reaches his hand to my head. I ache for him to place his open palm to my cheek, to rest it there until he’s made me whole again, or for the first time. But he barely touches me as he picks out a piece of glass. Debris from the crash that must have shot through the air.
Mac holds up the glass between us. I stare through the jagged window back to him.
“I can take the blame,” Mac says, tossing the debris in the garbage. “Everyone likes me.”
He smiles. I find it hard not to smile back. Not every joke makes you laugh. Some just remind you that laughing may still be possible.
Dad,
We started reading Romeo and Juliet in English. All the years you went on and on about Shakespeare and now I’m finally reading him.
Love,
Tegan
Tegan,
Warning: It’s a tragedy.
Love,
Dad
Dad,
I asked Ms. Baker what the poison was that Juliet drank, and she said it was “incidental.” I know if I asked you, even if you didn’t have the answer, you wouldn’t tell me it was “incidental.” All that little stuff means something, right?
P.S. I did some digging. People say the poison was probably nightshade.
Love,
Tegan
Tegan,
Of course the details matter. In my opinion, Ms. Baker is incidental.
Love,
Dad
Dad,
I started reading King Lear. One of your favorites. I don’t understand a lot of what I’m reading honestly. But this Regan girl is nasty. I’m a little offended you used to compare me to her.
Love,
Tegan
Tegan,
That was just a joke. I never said I had a good sense of humor. Also, we all have a dark side. There’s no denying that.
Love,
Dad
12:54 AM
On my hands and knees, I wipe down the floor with a wet paper towel. Mac drags the heavy trash can to the back door and leaves it there. There’s nothing more we can do. A garbage bag wouldn’t hold the glass, and the snow outside is too deep to lug it to the shed. I’ll be forced to look at my latest mistake for as long as I stay here.
Mac sits next to me on the wooden bench along the wall. We stare into the room.
“I broke something, too,” Mac says. “Something I haven’t been able to fix.”
I look down at the checkered floor, his large sneakers next to my small ones. “Yeah?”
“It was that same night, the night my team and I were at the Cheesecake Factory.”
My stomach turns. I don’t think I’ll ever eat at that restaurant again after tonight.
“I got home after the dinner. I went down to the basement and took my dad’s favorite record off the shelf. This album no one’s ever heard of. Meet Muggy Benson. He would listen to that thing over and over. I slid it out of its sleeve and I dragged my key over it—one long scratch.”
It seems no matter what I do or say Mac returns to the subject of his dad. Maybe the only way to take his mind off of it once and for all is to let him get it out of his system.
I ask him, “Was he mad?”
“He was furious. But he never said a word to me. He mostly took it out on my mom. She tried to convince him he scratched it himself and didn’t remember. But she knew. She knew it was me. She must have. Because the next time we were alone she told me the story behind it. I knew my dad loved that record, but I never knew why it meant so much to him. It belonged to my grandfather. It was one of the only things my dad had left of his father’s.”
It’s awful. I think of what’s left of my dad’s things in the house: books, plants, a mason jar full of used wine corks from memorable family meals.
“The thing is, my dad and I have always had a good relationship. He comes to all my games. Never misses one. But he and my brother, they’d bump heads a lot. James could never let anything go. I never understood why he had to be like that.”
He drops his elbows to his thighs and props his chin on his clasped hands.
“I’ve been wondering lately. Maybe my dad and I are only cool because I let him do whatever he wants. Because when James was here, as much as they’d get into it, at least my dad behaved. So my brother leaves and then what? There’s no one left to call out his bullshit.”
The discomfort of hearing about the inner workings of Mac’s household is offset by the gratitude I feel for his trusting me. If he thinks I’m worthy of being let inside, I want to step in.
“Do you ever talk to him about it?” I say. “Tell him what’s bothering you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Okay, but—”
“I just want to do my thing.”
“But he’s your dad.”
“And? Does that mean he gets to act like an asshole?”
He rises from the bench, too restless to sit. I feel a deep desire to help him find a solution. I’m invested in his story in ways he can’t understand.
“When we called 911, you said you thought he was trying to hurt himself. Do you really think he would do that?”
“No,” Mac says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“It sounds like your dad has a real problem.”
“You think? Shutting himself in a garage with the engine still running? Yeah, I’d say he might have a slight issue.”
“What happened after your dad shut the garage? You said you were cleaning up the mailbox.”
He holds up his battered hand.
“That’s when you smashed the brick,” I say, playing his game of charades.
He mimes verification. He’s become the silent one now. It’s like he’s suddenly lost interest in his own story, and now he’s eager to rush to a new topic.
“Then what did you do?” I say.
He paces around, a tiger in a zoo. My questio
ns are like stones whipped into his enclosure. “What do you want me to say, Tegan?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to make sure he gets inside safe, make sure everything’s okay. It’s what I always do. Why? Why is that on me? No,” he says through gnashed teeth. “He wants to get himself killed, let him do it already.”
Now his words are stones whipped at me. “Don’t say that.”
“I mean it.”
“I mean it. Don’t say something so stupid.”
“You have no idea, Tegan. No offense.”
“You have no idea.” I burst off the bench. “Do you even hear yourself? You act like you have it so hard, like there’s nothing you can do. It makes me sick the way you talk about your dad.” I’m almost yelling, unable to push down the anger. “My dad, he was just sitting there, alone in his car, at a stoplight, and like that, he’s gone. An aneurysm. Out of nowhere. He was in perfect health. If that happened to you, if you knew what that felt like, you would do anything you could to save your father, and you wouldn’t sound like such a heartless fucking jerk right now.”
He stares at me.
I fall back onto the bench. I fold over and bury my face.
The baseboard creaks, struggling to bring warmth back into the room.
“I’m sorry,” Mac says.
His tone has softened, the same way everyone’s tone softens when the subject of my dad comes up.
“I knew…” Mac says. “I forgot.”
It was once common knowledge at school. For weeks after it happened, I was no longer “the girl with the hand”; I was the “dead dad girl.” I seriously heard someone call me that. I had a feeling Mac wouldn’t remember. Maybe part of me wanted to make him pay for that. Now it’s hard to show my face.
“I’m trying to imagine that happening,” Mac says.
