Glass Shatters

by Michelle Meyers

  Glass Shatters: A Novel

  Michelle Meyers

  She Writes Press (2016)

  * * *

  PRAISE FOR

  Glass Shatters

  “Glass Shatters is a puzzle, one that both the reader and the book’s narrator pick apart, deliberately circling a set of images, mere reflections, and shadows hinting at the truth, until reality comes devastatingly into focus. Meyers busts the detective story into pieces and digs through these shards to dissect memory, identity, and what it means to be alive.”

  —Brandi Wells, author of This Boring Apocalypse

  “Glass Shatters is unlike any novel I’ve read before. It’s an inventive, daring, and remarkable debut that pushes the edges of fiction with tremendous success. Michelle Meyers is certainly a writer to watch.”

  —Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street

  “Bold ideas explored with verve and imagination. Meyers is unafraid of taking the reader to bizarre and unexpected regions of this and other realities, along the way exploring the strangeness of existence.”

  —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

  “Glass Shatters swept me up from the get-go. About a trail of lost and found memories in a world of genetic science, each sentence is as crystalline and vivid as recall can get. Tightly-plotted, it carefully walks and then fancifully deviates from the scientific through line, making both the novelist and science journalist in me applaud. Good work, Michelle Meyers!”

  —Rebecca Coffey, author of Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story

  “A puzzle and a page-turner, Glass Shatters invites readers into a dark investigation of one man’s attempt to recover his memories and identity. Michelle Meyers has expertly crafted an engrossing novel with a sophisticated blend of art, science, and emotion, one that is ultimately an imaginative elegy on the arresting forces of love and loss.”

  —Gallagher Lawson, author of The Paper Man

  “Glass Shatters, the truly uncanny, memorable novel of (among other things) memory presents itself as a transparent tale that soon (it does grow on you) transmutes into the translucent transcendental shades of Poe and Dick and James at his supernatural-est. This is domestic hyper-realism, turning ever irreal at the edges. The book is a magnificent machine, machining the senses and sensation. Michelle Meyers splinters feelings, running them through the ringer, a sieve so fine-tuned one begins to see the tinge and tint that spark, right there, off the spectrum, just out of insight.”

  —Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Winesburg, Indiana

  G L A S S

  S H A T T E R S

  Copyright © 2016 Michelle Meyers

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2016

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-018-1 pbk

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-019-8 ebk

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954334

  Book design by Stacey Aaronson

  Cover illustration by James R. Eads

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1563 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  For my mother

  Don’t tell me the moon is shining;

  show me the glint of light on broken glass.

  —Anton Chekhov

  PART I

  I’m not sure if I’m awake. Colors, shapes, smells, and sounds meld together like an impressionist painting. Staticky voices ricochet through my head, the words indiscernible. I can’t tell if the voices are my own or someone else’s. Each heartbeat rattles inside of me as if I’m a machine that hasn’t been used in a very long time. I know that something is irrevocably wrong. I know it the way people know their own mothers and fathers.

  Rays of sunlight fight their way through the slits in the curtains and my pupils shrink to oily pinpricks. The living room gradually sinks into focus around me. I push myself up into a sitting position on the couch. A button on my back pocket snags, ripping a tear across the muslin fabric to reveal the yellow cheese foam underneath. Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights plays on a small black-and-white television. Just as the Tramp and the Flower Girl touch hands on screen, their palms quivering against one another, a petal floats down from a vase of dead roses on the windowsill behind the TV. I blink once and then twice. There’s a photo album sitting on the coffee table. I reach for the album and flip through the pages. Every single page is blank.

  Then it floods over me, this realization, this fear, like a child who’s lost and thinks he’ll never be found. I don’t remember anything about myself. I don’t know my name, how old I am. I don’t remember what I did yesterday, the last person I spoke to. I can recall the names of the things around me. And I remember that Woodrow Wilson was the president of the United States during World War I and that Watson and Crick discovered the double helix. But when I close my eyes, I see nothing, only a vast, empty void wrinkled by memories once had and now gone. The darkness is palpable, viscous black paint, and my thoughts are sticky, held in suspended animation. I open my eyes again and my attention is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. My tongue feels like a dry lump of clay in my mouth. I lap at the air, desperate to breathe. I will myself to relax, to allow my lungs to fully expand and contract. I’m going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay. I want to convince myself of this, even though I don’t believe it.

  A fat orange tabby cat struts across the living room, his tags jangling with each step like he’s king of the place. He meows and bumps his head against my leg. I scratch behind his ears, try to keep my hands from shaking. He jumps into my lap, cooing for more. I check his nametag. Einstein. Not surprising given his wild mane of hair. I again breathe in deeply, counting to five before releasing it. All I can feel is sadness, a sadness that makes me wonder if I’m thirsty, and even that sadness is tepid, lukewarm. At least I think I’m in my own house. Einstein seems to enjoy my company, and while I don’t remember anything, it all feels familiar somehow, the way the couch smells faintly like almonds, the slight springiness of the blue fiber rug.

  There are no mirrors in sight. I look down at my hands. They have fine blond hairs across the knuckles, well-trimmed nails. My limbs are long and lanky, and my feet look like ships in the brown socks I’m wearing. I’m male, white, most likely in my late twenties or early thirties. I touch my face. Slight stubble. Not wearing any glasses but probably supposed to be. I’m dressed in jeans and a gray plaid shirt that’s tucked in. There’s something on my head. I raise my fingers and find that it’s a soft knit cap. My head throbs and I wonder if I was in an accident.

  There’s a pair of muddy footprints across the hardwood floor, leading to a pair of leather shoes by the couch that seem about my size. My gaze follows the footprints back to the entryway of the house. The front door is wide open and rattles with each gust of wind. I hear children screaming and playing, and with Einstein tucked in my arms, I approach the door. It’s a brisk spring day, highlighted by sprays of bright pink rhododendrons in bloom, the sun occasionally peeking o
ut from behind a thick layer of cumulus clouds threatening to rain. The maple trees are just starting to get their leaves back, and everyone’s front lawns are crisp and green, standing at attention. I step down off the porch, watching a little girl with bright red hair tumbling in her yard a few doors down, doing somersault after somersault. A pattern of plump red strawberries stretches across her dress and she wears sparkly ruby-red slippers to match.

  I look back at my house. It seems out of place in such a peaceful suburban neighborhood, a Gothic mansion like something out of Poe. Its peeling wood panels are covered with purple wisteria, its windows boarded up, the shutters hanging off their hinges. The paint is chipping. I can’t even guess at its original color. The houses around it, in contrast, are friendly colonial revivals, modest and unassuming, painted rich reds and blues, perhaps to evoke American patriotism. They’re the types of houses that have basketball hoops in the backyard and barbeques throughout the summer.

  “Chaaarles!” a voice cries out from the distance, and the small bundle of the strawberry girl comes careening at me, her braided pigtails flying out behind her. She wraps her arms around my legs in a big bear hug. In my surprise, I drop Einstein, who scurries back into the house. At first I wonder if the girl will ever let go, but then she steps back, a strange look on her face, as if in her joy she’d forgotten she was angry with me. I reach out my hand, let it hang in midair between us, waiting, wanting to feel her warm, tiny hand against mine, the Tramp and the Flower Girl. She folds her arms against her chest, biting her bottom lip. I finally let my own arm drop.

  “Where were you?” she asks.

  I say nothing.

  “You were gone for six months. You missed my birthday. I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”

  “I’m sorry.” I want so desperately to tell her that I don’t remember. But I’m not sure it would be a good idea, so I don’t.

  “You could’ve said something. Before you left.”

  “I know.”

  “You hurt my feelings.”

  “I’m sorry. Truly.” I mean it. I am sorry. I don’t know why I would have left without telling.

  “You hurt my mom’s feelings too. She said you’d probably moved away. Did you forget about us?”

  I wish I knew the girl’s name. If I could just say her name. I look beyond her shoulder, out to the clouds sinking in a sky growing dimmer. I feel alone without my memories. I feel like a dinghy floating adrift.

  “Why are you wearing a hat?” the girl says.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never seen you in a hat before. It looks weird. And are those bandages underneath?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  “You look like you’ve been sick.”

  “Do I?”

  “You’re skinnier than before. And your skin is really white.”

  I kneel down so that the girl and I are face to face.

  “Is there anything I can do to make things up to you? I really need you to be my friend right now.”

  “Promise never to leave again?”

  “Okay. I won’t leave.”

  I hold out my hand, and this time the little girl takes it, her handshake firm for a child her size. I realize I have no idea how old she is. Maybe five? Maybe eight?

  I pause, willing myself to keep my voice steady, to not let it crack. “There’s a game I’d like to play.”

  “A game? What kind of game?”

  “Let’s pretend I don’t remember who I am.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been in an accident.”

  The little girl’s eyes flash. “Or maybe there was an evil wizard who cut out part of your brain!”

  “Yeah, let’s go with that. That’s much more interesting.”

  “And who am I?”

  “Who do you want to be?”

  “How about I’m a magic fairy who knows everything about you? And I find you wandering in the middle of the woods?”

  Woods. Trees. Tall trees like redwoods, towering around me. I see flashes of gray, shadows, my own heaving breaths as I’m running away as fast as I can.

  “Charles? Are you ready?” the little girl asks. I nod. The girl ducks out of sight for a moment and returns with a pair of leafy stalks that she tucks into the back of her dress as wings. She dances toward me, a ballet through the imagined woods around us, until she comes upon me, her small green eyes reflected in mine.

  “You don’t remember me?” she says.

  I start to open my mouth, but then stop, simply shake my head no.

  “I’m Ava, Ava Queen of the Fairies.”

  “Ava, what a beautiful name. And who am I?”

  “You’re Charles Lang,” she says. She pretends to rub a magic ointment on my wounds.

  “What year is it?”

  “2012.”

  “And the date?”

  “March. March something.”

  “And do you know how old I am?”

  “Thirty-four. We had a birthday cake for your birthday in December even though you weren’t here because I said we had to and my mom made sure there were thirty-four candles on the cake.”

  I take a breath, then: “And when I left, I didn’t tell you why I was leaving?”

  Ava frowns and acts as though she hasn’t heard the question, picking red and yellow blanket flowers from the garden around the side of the house. “Would you like to eat some of these flowers?” she asks, approaching me. “They’ll help you recover from what the evil wizard did.”

  I take the flowers and pretend-eat them. Ava looks pleased.

  “How do we know each other, Ava Queen of the Fairies?”

  “You’re my neighbor and you’re friends with my mom. You help her with stuff like fixing the roof and sometimes you let me play with your lab mice even though I’m not supposed to.”

  “Lab mice? Why do I have lab mice?”

  “Because you’re a famous scientist,” she says, “like almost as famous as a movie star. Mommy says you make people new hearts and lungs and livers so that when they get sick, they can still stay alive.”

  “Ava?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know why I feel so sad?”

  Ava tilts her head down, stares at her feet. “Because you used to have a wife named Julie and a daughter named Jess but they disappeared one day and never came back.”

  “Ava!” a woman’s voice calls out.

  “I have to go, I have dance practice.”

  “Okay.”

  Ava hugs my legs again. “We were just playing a game, right? You remember who I am?”

  “Of course, Ava. It was just a game.”

  “Good. Don’t forget to feed Einstein. We were feeding him when you were gone but now you can do it.”

  “Okay.”

  I stand paralyzed as I watch Ava skip home, a fairy’s bounce to her step. I close my eyes. A fragment of a memory—again I can see myself running through the woods, mud on my shoes, every breath lurching in and out like shards of glass pressing into my chest, distant flickering lights fading until I can’t see anything anymore. I open my eyes. I wonder if this is all I have left. Why was I running? Was someone chasing me? Was I trying to escape from something? Or from somewhere? And why would I have disappeared six months ago without saying anything? I watch two boys playing catch across the street, listen to the thwap of the baseball each time it hits their gloves, and I wonder if maybe the memory loss wasn’t the result of an accident after all.

  “Wait!” I shout out after Ava. I don’t want to be alone. Maybe her mother knows something more. I hop over a set of flowerbeds as fat raindrops begin to topple down from the sky. I run across the neighbor’s front lawn. An old green Volvo station wagon rumbles in their driveway as Ava slides into the backseat, barefoot and carrying her ballet slippers. Just as Ava’s mother is about to pull out, I jump behind the car, the Washington State license plate practically colliding with my knees. Ava’s mother catches my eye in the rear
view mirror. She slams on the brakes. Her mouth hangs open.

  “Charles?” Ava’s mother is out of the car now, a sweater over her head to block out the rain, both of us surrounded by the creeping smell of wet concrete. Her hair is curly and red with streaks of gray swirled in, and her pastel green eyes remind me of soap, clean and soft. She’s dressed in pink nurse’s scrubs that are slightly too long.

  “I … I don’t remember your name.”

  “Iris. It’s Iris,” she says with a controlled calm. Iris takes my hand as if she needs to feel the weight of it to confirm that I’m really there. Before I realize what I’m doing, I blurt everything out in a great tidal rush, about how I don’t remember who I am, how I don’t know where I was, how afraid I am. My eyesight blurs with tears as she gives me a hug, patting my back as a mother might for her son. She then lifts up my hat and examines the bandages underneath.

  “It’s going to be okay, Charles. We’re going to figure this out. These bandages look clean, so my guess is that you were recently treated at a nearby hospital. I’ll do some investigating at work today to see if I can pull up any records for you.”

  “Thank you. Thanks, really, I appreciate it.”

  “You know, in most cases, amnesia is a temporary condition. Your memory will likely return soon.”

  “Hopefully.” My voice wavers. I’m not very convincing. “Iris, do you think there’s any chance that someone may have injured me on purpose? I mean, what if it wasn’t an accident? Should we call the police?”

  “Usually when head trauma is caused by foul play, it’s a lot messier. More bruising, more bleeding, fractures.”

  “Okay. All right.” I breathe in deeply. “You’re sure?”

  Ava squirms in her seat, calling out for Iris.

  “I’m sorry, Charles, I have to take Ava to dance and then start my shift … you can come with us if you don’t want to be alone.”