by Val Emmich
“My dad’s plants started coming back to life. It was pretty amazing.”
I tried to be as caring and diligent as he was. I really tried.
“But there was one plant I couldn’t fix. It kept getting sicker no matter what I did. I couldn’t figure out what kind of plant it was. I searched online, but I couldn’t find any information. I asked my mom, but she had no idea. I sent a photo to Daphne, but she didn’t know what it was, either. I even went to the library. That’s what Daphne told me to do. But I couldn’t find anything. Not a single mention. It made me so angry—that no one could help.”
Mac’s chest swells, and in the sigh that follows I feel his empathy.
“My mom kept trying to comfort me, ‘It’s all right. It’s just a plant. It’s not important.’ But it was important. It was to me. How could she not get that?”
Mac answers what was only superficially a question. “I understand why you’d be upset.” He lets this settle before daring to continue. “But if I can push back a little…”
“I’ll allow it,” I say.
“The other extreme isn’t any better. When someone’s constantly focusing on the negative. Blowing every little thing out of proportion. It drives you mad in a different way.”
I tilt the can, trying to encourage another drop of water to come out. “I guess I can see that.”
“Honestly, I don’t know that my mom could carry on without my dad. As much as she complains, she’d crumble without him. Your mom sounds pretty tough.”
I’ve always thought of her as oblivious or in denial. Never tough.
“I don’t want to make it seem like I hate her,” I say, lowering the can. “Of course not. It’s just hard to talk to her sometimes. I’m not sure she really gets it. Not like my dad did.”
Now, back at home, my mom has access to the whole raw truth.
“She found the emails I wrote to my dad,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. Why I haven’t wanted to go home.”
There, I’ve said it. Mac nods slowly, repeatedly, as if systematically crossing out each of his now incorrect theories about why I might have come to the museum tonight. When finished, he angles his head with puppylike confusion. “Is there something bad in the emails?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. That’s not the point.”
“Okay,” Mac says, still processing my big reveal that’s maybe not so big after all.
But it is big. They were private, those emails between me and him. Or, me and me. I brought him back from the dead, and keeping him alive was a delicate act. The illusion can’t continue if I can’t forget it’s an illusion. She made something special feel laughable, just by her knowing. I can never bring myself to send my dad another email now. Because of her, he’s died all over again.
“Those emails weren’t meant for her.”
He’s still confused. “But you sent the emails to him, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“She probably has access to his account. I mean, I’m sure she needed to get in there at some point. Maybe she’s known about the emails the whole time.”
Mind. Blown. I’ve been teleported to one of those copy Earths where everything is almost exactly the same, but not quite. What Mac is saying makes total sense, and yet I can’t wrap my head around it.
“Why wouldn’t she say anything until now?” I ask.
Mac mulls it over. He’s had plenty of experience trying to solve his own domestic puzzles and seems at ease tackling this one. “Is there something you wrote recently that would alarm her?”
I can’t remember the last thing I wrote. It’s been a while since I sent my last message. Lately, talking to him hasn’t helped me the way it once did.
“So wait,” Mac says. “My mom thinks I’m home right now with my dad. Does your mom even know where you are?”
I glare at him.
“Tegan, she’s probably freaking out.”
I look up at the clock. It’s past one in the morning. I’ve been gone for over eight hours.
It’s official: I’m the worst person ever.
10:47 AM
A presence arrived in my bed and forced open my sleepy eyes. Mom crawled in next to me and laid her face in front of mine.
I groaned dramatically.
“Oof,” she said. “Your breath.”
But she didn’t seem bothered by it. Bad smells and poor hygiene are her daily reality at school. Her tolerance is mega high.
“You said you wanted to drive today,” Mom remembered.
I pulled the blanket over my head. I recently got my learner’s permit. I’ve been driving with Mom mostly on weekends because I’m not comfortable driving at night yet and during the week we can’t seem to fit it in before it gets dark.
Our first time out on the road together was rough. We were stopped at a red light and I turned to her. “Am I going to have an aneurysm?”
“No,” Mom said emphatically.
“How do you know?”
“Because I won’t allow it. You’re my everything.”
“That’s not an answer,” I said, waiting for the light to change. “Can you at least acknowledge that it’s a possibility that I could have an aneurysm at some point?”
“Fine, it’s possible,” she conceded. Then almost immediately, she added, “But it’s not going to happen.”
I felt exasperated by her. But the light turned green and I kept driving, and I’m still driving a month later. I guess she had something to do with that.
Now, in my bed, Mom was telling me to get up. “Come on, kiddo,” she said, climbing off the mattress. “The weather is supposed to get bad later.”
With my head still under the blanket, I heard the room turn quiet and I wondered whether she’d left. I pulled the covers off my head. She stood at the foot of the bed staring at me.
“What?” I said.
“I’m just watching you,” she said.
“That’s creepy.”
“I can’t look at you?”
“Not like that you can’t, you weirdo.”
I kicked my foot at her through the blanket. It was merely for show. My foot couldn’t reach her.
“I have an idea for tonight,” she said. “A surprise. It’ll be nice.”
I sat up. “Why do I doubt that?”
“Because,” Mom answered, “you doubt everything I say.”
This was clearly a joke, or at least it was clear from her face that it was meant to be a joke, except it couldn’t be just a joke because of how truthful we both knew it was.
With a playful smile, she said, “So you’ll get dressed?”
I got dressed, although I didn’t put much effort into it since I didn’t anticipate we’d end up stopping at the mall. We went driving because I like to drive and she knows I like it, which is why she dragged me out of bed to do it. I maneuvered through the super-tight Starbucks drive-through so she could treat me to my first Frappuccino of the day. And when she grew frustrated by my muteness and remarked that maybe she’d have better luck getting a response out of me if she sent me an email, I didn’t even think twice about the comment.
Dad,
I haven’t written for a while. I’ve done something bad. If you knew what it was, you’d be so disappointed. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Love,
Tegan
Tegan,
I think it’s best that you stop.
Love,
Dad
Dad,
I’ve been doing everything you taught me not to do. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been bitter and jealous almost to the point of insanity. I don’t want to feel this way.
Love,
Tegan
Tegan,
You don’t have to. You can stop.
Love,
Dad
Dad,
I’m going to stop. I promise. I didn’t mean for it to go on this long. It’s just hard. I finally found something I’m good at.
Love,
&nb
sp; Tegan
Tegan,
Please stop. Now I’m begging you.
Love,
Dad
1:30 AM
The tiny phonograph,” I say, remembering why we decided to remove the glass covering to begin with and, more to the point, hoping to shift our attention away from my mom and the emails.
Mac follows me into the back room. We poke our heads through the doors of the miniature laboratory. It’s there, the phonograph, right where my coworkers claimed it would be. I had my doubts.
Our hands are too big to fit through the doors of the model. Mac, with great care, checks the roof to see whether it detaches. It does. He places the roof gingerly on the ground. We now have a clear view of the inside of the lab. There is indeed a tiny record resting on the tiny phonograph. But there’s no mechanism to make it spin, let alone produce a sound.
“We had to see for ourselves,” Mac says.
He’s trying to make me feel better about the glass catastrophe, and I appreciate it, but I don’t need cheering up. Even though the tiny phonograph doesn’t play, discovering that it actually exists still feels like some kind of miracle.
“Edison invented the phonograph all alone after working on it for months,” I say as Mac reattaches the model roof. The wind outside shakes the side of the building, as if threatening to tear off the real roof overhead.
“That’s the story we tell,” I say. “But in a book I read, I found out what really happened. Edison had a whole team of engineers that helped him. They’d work through the night, take a quick break for midnight lunch—literally what they called it—and get right back at it. They named themselves the Insomnia Squad. One night, in the wee hours, they invented the first phonograph. They did it together. But when Edison wrote about it in his notebook, he didn’t mention anyone else on his team. He made it seem like he did it all by himself. And no one doubted him. Why would they? It was his voice on the first ever recording.”
It’s a simpler story this way and people like a simple story. Mac said so himself earlier. But in this case, the truth seems cooler than the lie.
“Can you imagine the feeling? Sitting there in the middle of the night, exhausted, and together you suddenly create something that no one in the world has ever created?”
“They must have thought they were dreaming,” Mac says.
“Yeah.”
We share a look. With all the emotional destruction I’ve caused beyond these walls, to Mac and others, and the physical destruction I’ve caused right here in this museum, piled up now in the trash can, I can’t deny the strange sense that something new is being created tonight between Mac and me. Another kind of late-night invention.
“The Insomnia Squad,” Mac says. “I like that.”
“Me too.”
I smile and he smiles back. It took so long to learn how to speak to him, and now after that initial clumsiness, it’s as if I can tell him anything. Almost anything. We’ve revealed so much to each other in such a short span of time and it gives me this powerful urge to go even further, to know all there is to know about him.
“Tell me, Durant.”
“Yes, Everly.”
“If this tiny phonograph actually worked and it could play anything, what would you want to hear?”
His mouth contorts as he ponders. “I’m not sure.”
“Come on. Your dad is a music freak. You’re telling me none of that rubbed off on you?”
“I can’t think of anything. I like all kinds of stuff.”
“Oh, please don’t say that. When people say that, it either means they don’t listen to music at all, or it’s the worst stuff you’ve ever heard.”
He tries to laugh, but it seems forced. “I actually have pretty eclectic taste, believe it or not.”
“Great. Name something eclectic you listen to.”
He shifts awkwardly. I’ve struck a nerve. “Tell me,” I demand.
“What?”
“Just say it.”
“It’s nothing, it’s just—the first thing that comes to mind is not what you’d expect.”
Shy Mac is something I’ve never witnessed before and it’s my new favorite thing. I will wait forever for him to come clean and he knows it, too.
“Fine,” he says.
“Lay it on me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Salsa.”
“Salsa?”
“Yeah. Salsa.”
I’m not sure how to feel about this.
“I used to take salsa lessons,” Mac confesses.
The hugest smile forms on my face.
“Don’t laugh,” says Shy Mac.
I’m not laughing, really. It’s just so adorable, the thought of him.
“I saw an interview with Didé Santos. He’s one of the best soccer players in the world. He said he took salsa lessons when he was young. It helped him with his footwork. Good cardio, too.”
“Don’t try to make it sound better.”
“I’m not,” Mac says.
“Are you serious? You really took salsa?”
“Why would I lie about something like that?”
“Prove it. Show me.”
He walked right into that one. “No,” Mac says.
“Yes. Right now.”
Shy Mac has become super fidgety. There’s no way I’m letting him wiggle out of this. “I’ll beg if that’s what it takes.”
“Beg away,” Mac says.
“Please, please, please, do some wicked salsa moves for me right now.”
“I need way more than that.”
“I beg of you. I must see this salsa you speak of. I must. I need it.”
Shy Mac seems to be slowly caving. Time to go in for the kill. “I will do anything you ask in return,” I say.
Now he’s beat.
It is with extreme reluctance that he finally says, “I would need the right music.”
I rush to the front room. Behind the counter sleeps the museum’s prehistoric computer. I awaken the screen and click on the first suitable playlist I find. Salsa music begins to play through speakers in both rooms. I push the volume to its meager limit.
I return to the back room. Mac is seated on the bench as if he thought I might let him off the hook. Sorry. No mercy.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I say, taunting him.
He shakes his head and says, “I hate you,” the way only someone who likes you can say. And then, like the gamesman he is, he sacrifices all and begins to dance. Mac Durant is salsa-ing, for me and me only, and it’s goofy and glorious, and I’m giddy and gobsmacked. The music does most of the work. It dances by itself. He ends with a half swing and holds his final position, waiting for my applause.
“Wow,” I say, giving it up.
“It’s much better with a partner.”
My smile vanishes. “Not a chance.”
I realize from his sudden change in expression that he wasn’t suggesting me as a partner. But now that I’ve mentioned it…
“I’ll show you,” Mac says.
“No.”
“You said you’d do anything.”
“Not this.”
“No one’s around.”
“You are.”
“I’m no one.”
“You are the opposite of no one.”
He steps to me. “It’s only fair.”
I’m a terrible negotiator. I promised too much and now I have to pay up.
I retrieve the vodka and take a quick swig. The taste hasn’t improved. He grabs the bottle from me and does the same.
We meet on the dance floor. Awkward smile to awkward smile.
He reaches his right arm behind me and grips my back.
“Okay,” Mac says. “Now you put your left hand on my back.”
My left? He nods. Yes, my left. No mercy.
I wrap my arm around his body, but I don’t touch him. I hover my hand over his back.
He raises his left hand and gestures for me to meet
it with my right hand. I feel hot. I want to run. I repeat my mantra for the evening: Go with it.
I take his hand. A tingle down my arm. Two untouchables, touching.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m a little sweaty.”
“It’s okay. Ignore the music. Just take it slow.”
I breathe.
“First, you’re going to step back with your right foot. Then forward with your left. Forward with your right. That’s the first half. Back right, forward left, forward right. Ready?”
“No.”
“Here we go. Back, two, three.”
I fail to move and he steps on my foot. We both apologize and laugh at ourselves.
“One more time,” Mac says. “Slowly. Back… two… three…”
I do it and wait for his approval.
“That was great,” Mac says, even though we both know it was objectively awful. “The other half is this. Forward with your left. Back with your right. Back with your left.”
He talks me through it. We take it slow.
“You’re a natural,” Mac says.
A lie. I’ll take it.
We settle in. Little by little, we climb up to speed. The music demands that our bodies join it. All the while, Mac counts it out. His chin is held high, but to keep up, I have to stare at my feet. I’m focusing so hard that I don’t even realize my left hand is firmly placed on his back until the music changes and a different song begins. This one has a dreadfully slow tempo. A ballad. I look up.
“I clicked on the first playlist I found.”
He doesn’t let go.
“I’m not slow dancing with you,” I say.
It’s already happening. We’re slow dancing, officially, but holding our salsa pose, a safe distance apart.
His hand slides down my back as we sway. My heartbeats are seismic shakes. I’m weak as an unwatered plant. These are the symptoms of a meltdown, but I’m rising. The feeling takes hold. It makes me light-headed. It makes me dance. He does.
