by Joe Meno
AMELIA IS UNABLE to concentrate on anything that whole morning: she bites at her nails, scratches the odd blisters on her neck and arms, and keeps glancing up at the clock. It is 10:47. When Mrs. Dennison calls on her in her third-period physics class, Amelia has no idea what the question or the answer might be. From Mrs. Dennison’s expression of disbelief on her rotund, pasty face, Amelia can tell that her teacher is both delighted and disappointed. “I’m surprised, Amelia,” Mrs. Dennison says, now smiling. “I thought you had all the answers.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Dennison,” Amelia says with a false laugh. “I think I’m developing lactose intolerance. I’m having serious medical issues at the moment.”
“Do you want to go down to the health office?”
“No, Mrs. Dennison. I’ll try to persevere.”
Mrs. Dennison smiles and nods, then goes on with her physics problem, something about the law of inverse reaction. Amelia hasn’t taken a single note in her notebook, which lies open to an empty page in the middle of her desk. From the corner of her eye, Amelia glances up at the minute hand once again as it crests toward the top of the hour. She feels like she herself is about to explode. She thinks of Mr. Wick, sitting there dopily behind his desk, eating his powdered donuts, unaware of the danger only a few yards away. Maybe today is the day he decides to go over the photo layouts. Or the day he accidentally falls asleep. Oh, shit, what if he’s in there napping right now? What if I made a mistake? Amelia immediately imagines the sound of Mr. Wick’s primitive snores. A swell of panic begins to vibrate through her chest. She tries to jot down the formula Mrs. Dennison has written on the blackboard but the letters and numbers all look completely unfamiliar to her. What does any of this mean? What does physics have to do with how people live? Isn’t it just another expression of white masculine power, trying to tyrannize the natural world? Just like Mr. Wick. Mr. Wick. Mr. Wick. If the bomb goes off and Mr. Wick dies, accidentally, well, that will be one less spineless white male to repress an entire generation. But what if it’s someone else? Like Max? Or Heather? Or someone you can’t even think of, like a janitor, some poor working-class father with three children to support? What if you accidentally kill an innocent janitor? No. No one’s going to be hurt. Why are you even thinking about this shit right now? Just stay calm. Imagine yourself as a poster, as an actress in the small-budget movie of your life. Be fearless. Try and imagine this moment as being important.
When Amelia has finished copying down the formula, she looks up, watches as the black minute hand slides closer to the numeric 12 at the top of the clock. It is 10:56. Something in her chest is screaming. It can’t possibly be her heart. She is sweating. Her forehead feels slick. She glances from the blackboard to the clock again. It is 10:57. For some reason, she is raising her hand right now. For some reason, she is speaking. She is saying that she needs to go see the nurse. The words, simple, without inflection, tumble from her tongue as she stands and takes the hall pass from Mrs. Dennison’s chubby hand. Already she is running down the hall. She is flying down the tiled stairwell, sliding around the corner, her thin legs moving as quickly as they can, hurtling her small body toward the school newspaper office at the end of the hallway. The clock in the middle of the hall reads 10:59. She lunges for the doorknob. The door to the newspaper office is open. Mr. Wick, his fat face full of white powdered donuts, is sitting behind his desk, reading through a pile of new student stories. He mutters her name in surprise, choking a little on a donut as she dashes toward the subscription desk. She unlocks the filing cabinet drawer without responding. The bomb lies before her, a patchwork of wire and leftovers: matches, a wristwatch, a toy. Without another thought, Amelia pulls the green lead wire, immediately disconnecting the timer. She glances up at the clock. 11:00. The bomb does not explode. The newspaper office is silent, except for the awful chewing of Mr. Wick at his desk. The school bell begins to ring. When it does, its unpleasant drone vibrates along with the shaky tone of Amelia’s heart and she very nearly collapses. As soon as the bell has finished its trebly announcement, Amelia shoves the filing cabinet drawer closed, her knees shaking, her hands shaking, her heartbeat still pounding vainly in her ears. She steadies herself against the subscription desk. Mr. Wick looks up from his papers and asks what it is she’s doing. Amelia turns then, and with as much false confidence as she can muster, she says, “I was looking for my notebook. I guess it must be in my locker.” Mr. Wick nods. Amelia turns the small silver key in the lock then slips it into her pocket. She decides she will have to return after school to get rid of the bomb, as she’s shaking too much to try and do it now. Amelia takes a long, deep breath and, miraculously, she somehow manages to stumble out without fainting.
FOR THE FULL five minutes between classes, Amelia stands before her locker, not sure what it is she’s supposed to be doing. She is searching for something, a book maybe, unsure as to what class she’s supposed to be heading to next. The second bell clangs loudly above, announcing her tardiness. She does not hear it. She is staring at the photos she has pasted in her locker, photos of Che, of Fidel, of Marx. Their somber faces all frown with disapproval. What just happened? Why did I fail? Maybe the newspaper office was a bad idea—of course I’d be suspected. It’s better, in the end, that I backed off. Or is it? Maybe I am only lying to myself right now. Maybe this is exactly what every coward in history has ever thought. No, I’m no Weatherman. I’m no Patty Hearst. I have tried to stage a revolutionary moment and I have completely blown it. I’m a failure. I’m a phony.
Two boys—freshmen, probably—hurry past Amelia, one of them colliding with her left shoulder, knocking the stack of unsorted books from her arm, scattering them all across the hallway. The boy shouts an apology from over his shoulder and keeps on running, while Amelia stops, bends over, and scoops up her belongings from off the dirty tile floor. For the first time in as long as she can remember, she does not curse out loud. Instead, a soft pattering of tears begins to trickle from her eyes. This crying jag is only the latest of her unending, secret failures. Before she trudges off toward her next class, already tardy, she stops and itches her reddened neck. Mr. Hansen, her English teacher, will definitely give her shit for being late again. At the door to the classroom, Amelia distractedly glances down at her nails and sees, along her fingertips, there is blood.
AFTER HER CLASSES have ended that Wednesday afternoon, after ditching the bomb in the dumpster near school, Amelia waits in the university faculty parking lot, once again hoping to see Professor Dobbs. She does not care if it is pathetic, her coming up here every day after school to try and find him. Instead, she sits beside his lustrous Saab, thinking up different excuses for running into him. But, of course, he does not show. Maybe he is avoiding her. Maybe that’s why he never gave her a way to get hold of him, no cell phone number, no email, nothing. Maybe he saw something about her, something she can’t see in herself, something predictable, something desperate and incredibly weak. Maybe he carries on with students like this all the time and, in the end, she is only a plaything to him, a piece of soft plastic, a disposable product. But at the moment she is just too depressed to be angry. Still she waits and waits and waits, and when it finally gets dark, when she checks her watch and it reads 6:00 p.m., when she has finished imagining the young professor fucking some undergraduate student—someone just like her but more dynamic, more self-aware—she stands, exasperated, and begins hurrying home. Usually Amelia does not like to walk at night by herself. Most of the time she feels that she is being followed by someone menacing—a maniacal sexual predator or an FBI surveillance team. Amelia often believes she is more important than she actually is, and that secretly, behind every corner, every parked car, every tree, someone, some important observer of history, is almost always watching. But today is very different. Walking home, defeated, her book bag slung low across her back, limping sadly beneath the bare arms of the autumn trees, she does not imagine herself as an image in some future history book or a reenactor in the documentary of
her life.
AFTER AMELIA GETS HOME, after she kicks off her shoes and collapses onto her bed, she stares up at the photograph of Patty Hearst on the wall above her bed and something in her heart goes sick. No. She is no revolutionary. She is a coward. She is done trying. She is done pretending. Like the rest of America, like everyone else she knows, she is giving up. She is done trying to do something great. She is done trying to change things for the better. She pulls herself to her feet and seizes the photo from the wall with one quick swipe, splitting it down the middle as her blue eyes begin to swell with tears. She rips the image again and again until it is a dozen tiny pieces of colored paper, until, like her, it has become nothing. When she has finished, she snatches the torn pieces from the floor and quickly shoves them into her bottom dresser drawer. There the pieces lie—inconsolable, inconsequential—a sad hum rising from her collection of other tragically useless objects.
Nineteen
AFTER SCHOOL ON WEDNESDAY, AFTER CHORUS PRACTICE has ended, Thisbe pedals down the shady twilight streets, down the Midway to her block, and then walks her bicycle around the side of the house to the garage. Thisbe opens the garage door and is jubilant to find her mother’s Volvo parked there. She runs inside the house but her mother is nowhere around. She finds her father hunched over a stack of maps and documents in the den, and says hello. Her father nods, without looking up, and whispers, “I’m going to see Grandpa tonight. If you’d like to go, I’ll be leaving in an hour or so.”
“Is Mom home?” Thisbe asks.
Jonathan looks up from his work for a moment, and then nods, without a sound. His eyes meet his daughter’s and Thisbe feels an exquisite sadness for her dad. She smiles at him, then turns and runs up the stairs as quickly as she can. She knocks loudly on her parents’ bedroom door, calling her mother’s name, but no one answers. She gives the doorknob a turn and finds it is locked. Why would her mother lock it? What’s going on in there? What’s her mother so afraid of anyway? Thisbe knocks once more and then begins to back away, unsure of why her mother won’t answer. She sits silently beside her parents’ door for an hour or two, then gets tired and wanders off toward her room.
AROUND TEN OR eleven that night, Thisbe gets hungry and traipses downstairs. All she finds in the refrigerator is spoiled milk and some wilted celery. She finally uncovers some old crackers and munches them dryly in her mouth. She heads down the hallway to watch television and finds her mother sitting there in the dark, looking messy in her robe, staring out the window into the shadowy backyard.
“Hi, Mom,” Thisbe whispers.
“What are you doing up, sweetheart?”
“I had a bad dream that I didn’t have any arms. And then I was hungry. And then I had to go to the bathroom. And then I couldn’t go back to sleep.”
“Me neither,” her mother sighs. Thisbe sits down beside her and offers her some crackers. Her mother nods and quietly nibbles along the cracker’s salty edge. “These are pretty stale,” her mother whispers.
“Yeah,” Thisbe says with a grin.
They both chew in near silence, mother and daughter, staring through the window at the dark shapes moving as shadows in the backyard. Thisbe glances over at her mother’s face and mutters, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Are you…are you planning on leaving us?”
“Oh, Thisbe,” her mother says with an unsure smile, shaking her head, her dark eyes looking sad and full of uncried tears, glowing in the faraway light from the kitchen. “I would never. Never. I just…it’s just hard for me to be here right now. Your father and I…well, we…” Her mother smiles again, sadly. “We just don’t know what to do with each other.”
“He loves you. I know he does.”
Her mother smiles again.
“Thank you, Thisbe. But it isn’t that.”
“What is it?”
Her mother fingers a thread that has come unloose from the corner of her robe. “It’s complicated. Your father loves me but he’s also in love with his work. I feel like I’m always in competition with it. And he wants me to give up a lot of things to take care of you guys but he doesn’t want to give up anything himself. And he can be so selfish…sometimes he can act like we’re not even here. I know he loves me but I’m afraid it’s because he needs me to take care of him. I don’t know, honey, like I said, it’s very complicated and I just don’t think it should be all that complicated.”
Thisbe nods, chewing another stale cracker.
“Oh.”
Her mother nods, too, staring back out the window. She then turns, her smile big and beaming. “What if you and I, what if we take the day off tomorrow?” her mother asks.
“And do what?”
“I don’t know. We could go shopping. Or get some lunch in a fancy restaurant or something.”
“I don’t know,” Thisbe says. “I have chorus after school. And a test in English. And then I’d have to get the homework from someone and I don’t really know who I could ask.”
Her mother nods, touching Thisbe’s knee.
“Well, you’re definitely your father’s daughter,” her mother says with a smirk.
Thisbe’s face goes red for a moment. She realizes, too late, that she’s hurt her mother’s feelings. She shakes her head and says, “I mean, I bet I could find somebody. Or I’ll just make up the test on Friday. It’s no big deal.”
“Are you sure?”
Thisbe nods.
“Okay, don’t tell your father.”
“What about Amelia?” Thisbe asks, hoping her mother will not invite her older sister as well.
“Amelia will probably want to go to school instead.”
“Probably.”
“Okay?” her mother asks.
“Okay.”
“Okay, now, why don’t you head back up to bed? We’ll have a nice girl’s day tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Thisbe says, quickly kissing her mother’s cheek. She grabs the empty box of crackers and stands, picking crumbs off of her pajamas. She starts off down the hallway and then turns, thinking, staring down at her feet, unsure of something. She thinks of Roxie, of missing the chance to see her, of once again lying with her in the field.
“What is it?” her mother asks.
“Nothing. I just…well…maybe…”
Her mother smiles. “It’s okay if you think you should go to school instead. We can go out together some other day.”
“Are you sure?” Thisbe asks.
“Sure.”
“Okay,” Thisbe says and hugs her mother again. “Thanks Mom,” she whispers, then rushes off, climbing awkwardly up the stairs. Her mother sits in the dark, staring out the window, looking for the answer to something, anything.
Twenty
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, THE NURSING HOME STAFF informs Jonathan that his father may be nearing the end. He has refused to speak or eat anything for two days now. That evening, the nurses do not bother Jonathan when he arrives after the visiting hours have ended. Jonathan thanks them for this small, thoughtful concession. When he walks into the darkened room, he sees his father lying there in the white hospital bed, the old man now hopelessly small and delicate. His thin eyelids flutter as he sleeps, his mouth whispering dull, indistinguishable noises. Jonathan takes a seat in the uncomfortable blue chair beside his father’s bed and carefully takes hold of his father’s limp hand. “Hello, Dad,” Jonathan whispers, but his father does not seem to notice. Jonathan softly squeezes Henry’s palm but there is no response. The nurses have left the television on to keep the old man company: a history program about the Wright brothers flashes from the TV set in the corner. Jonathan leans over and stares at his father, murmuring the single word, with the soft appeal of a question. “Dad?” But there is still no answer.
Jonathan squeezes the tiny hand, the skin, the knuckles so weak, so brittle. “Dad, don’t go. I need you. Please.” The eyelids flicker but do not rise, do not open.
“Dad. Please. I need you. Dad?”
His
father is silent, breathing heavily. One of his eyes opens, then another. He glances up at his son and then smiles.
“Please, Dad. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
His father’s lips move without sound.
“The girls, and Madeline. I think I’ve lost them, Dad. I think I’ve lost them and now I don’t know what to do. You’re the only person who I can talk to.”
His father’s eyes blink and his lips continue to move soundlessly. There are only two words left, two words that remain before he vanishes for good. He wants to speak. He wants to use these two remaining sounds to help his son, but he is unable. They are gone. All the words he has ever known have disappeared—along with the clothes he has given away, the photographs he has discarded, the fantasies of flight, the old and unsure memories. Henry turns on his side, facing his son, then motions toward the nightstand. There beside a disposable plastic cup is his notebook and pen. Jonathan grabs them and carefully places them in his father’s hands. Struggling to open the book to a blank page, Henry slowly scribbles a single straight line, then a dot, then a wavy line, then a dot, then one more straight line, ending with a third dot, three marks that aren’t words at all, only a feeling, not even a single sound:
!?!
Jonathan stares down at the scribbling and shakes his head.
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, Dad. I mean, Dad, she’s leaving me. Madeline’s leaving me. What should I do? What should I do, Dad?”
Dad?
Henry hears the single word Dad again and again. The single word resonates a long way, somewhere through the distance of ten, then twenty, then nearly forty years, the sound reverberating in Henry’s weak ears, a solitary echo making its way down an empty, carpeted hallway toward the den in the back of the house in St. Louis, where Henry, sitting on a pale green sofa, does not answer. It is an afternoon late in 1966 that Henry would prefer not to remember. And yet he is now remembering it, hearing that particular word resonate with uncertainty again and again.
