“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you soon.”
“I’ll come check on you either tonight or tomorrow,” Iris says as she slides back into the front seat. A moment later, the Volvo drives away, exhaust steaming through the cold air. I turn back around. My house looks more imposing than before, somehow reaching even further into the depths of the sky in the past few minutes. It’s the type of house children would call haunted, that would have its own mythology. It’s the type of house that would be reluctant to let go of its secrets.
I wipe the mud off my shoes on the fraying welcome mat. It says “Home Sweet Home” in curlicue letters. When I close the door behind me, I’m struck by how dark it is inside the entryway. It’s as if someone has inhaled all the light in the room. I feel nauseated, my stomach turning, flipping over, and my vision gives way as if I’m walking through a fog late at night. Images flicker around me like old film spinning through a projector. A young girl in a ballerina outfit does pirouette after pirouette until finally she slips and falls, cracking her wrist against the floor. A woman in sweatpants reaches out to me, her glossy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wipes away a smear of blood from a gash on her forehead with one hand as she reaches out to me with the other. She’s never quite able to reach me. I close my eyes, sliding down against the wall. The woman and the girl eventually fade.
I stumble into the living room and lower myself onto the couch. They weren’t real. It was just my imagination. Maybe Ava was lying. Maybe I never had a wife and a daughter. My brain feels sluggish, my feet like bricks. And I know, deep down, that what Ava said was true. I rest my head against a pillow and close my eyes, wanting everything to be the way it once was. I sleep a dense, dreamless sleep, yearning for a wife and daughter I don’t remember, wanting to hold them against me, warm and happy and healthy.
I end up dreaming after all, of a small child curled up on a couch, his thumb in his mouth, his small glasses pressed up against his forehead. His blond hair is pushed up in sweaty tufts of sleep, and his cheeks are a warm pink. The television screen glows bright blue. The boy has his arm wrapped around a video game controller as if it were a stuffed animal.
The dream continues. The front door opens and closes. There’s the slight crinkle of a coat being pulled off, the clack of business shoes against the hardwood floor. A tall man enters the room, sighing and loosening the tie around his neck. He spots the boy and nudges his shoulder. The boy opens his eyes and smiles.
“Dad—”
“Why aren’t you in bed, Charles? It’s past your bedtime.”
The boy stands up on the couch. He’s wearing pajamas with constellations on them, and he’s missing one of his front teeth. “I beat it, Dad! All forty-two levels in Super Mario. There was this boss in the end who was super tough. Bobby and Andrew haven’t even gotten past level thirty-five yet.”
“That’s enough, Charles.”
“It’s a really hard game, Dad.”
“Charles—”
“I’m just saying, it was hard.”
“Charles, video games are designed to be beaten. You haven’t accomplished anything that tens of thousands of other children haven’t already.”
The boy frowns. The man gives him a pat on the head. “Go to bed, Charles. I’ll see you in the morning.”
When I open my eyes again, I can’t tell whether it’s nighttime or morning. I can’t tell how long I’ve been sleeping. I can’t shake the feeling that the house has something to hide. The dream with my father confuses me. Was it a memory? And why were we in this house? Why would I now be living in my childhood home?
I sink down to the living room rug, my legs sprawled out in front of me. I try to say my name so that it sounds real: “Charles Lang, Charles Lang, Charles La—”
With each attempt, though, the sound of the name dissipates in my mouth, the letters evaporating before I reach the end. The name doesn’t feel like mine. I try again.
“My name is Charles Lang. I’m thirty-four years old. I’m a famous scientist. I had a wife named Julie and a daughter named Jess, but they disappeared one day and never came back.”
As I say this last sentence, a chunk of white plaster falls loose from the ceiling, cracking against the coffee table. I watch as the bits of white powder gradually clear the air. I want to go home, to a home far away from here, to a living room where I can sit on a couch with Julie and Jess and watch cartoons and eat too much popcorn. I don’t belong here.
My head feels like it’s swelling, my scalp sweaty and irritated. I return to the entryway, hoping to find a mirror. No such luck. I know it’s probably not a good idea to take off the bandages, but I can’t help myself. The itching is unbearable. I search for a loose edge on the gauze and begin to peel the bandages away. They spread out in my hands like a snake’s molted skin. The bandages are stained with eight small circles of brown blood, the circles oddly symmetrical. With each bandage I unravel, I feel an intense stinging pain. I bring my fingers up to one of the circles and feel the tender, oozing skin. It has the texture of a burn. But what would have created a pattern of burns like this? I replace the bandages around my head, worried that otherwise I’ll get an infection.
I tilt my head back, close my eyes, and exhale a stale breath. I just want to find familiarity, to find out the truth. I open my eyes, and as they adjust to the light, I realize that I’m not alone. Instead, just above me in the rafters of the entryway are dozens of marionettes, beautiful young men and young women twisted around one another. I feel something shift in me, turning like cogs in a clock, as I descend into what I recognize could only be a memory.
August 1, 2004
Age Twenty-Six
A beautiful young man and a beautiful young woman sit in the living room, their limbs intertwined around one another. Their smiles are doused with light from the setting sun. The young man has brilliant blue eyes and thick sandy hair cropped close to his head. He wears a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, a white-collared shirt, and a pair of light-washed blue jeans that should’ve been thrown out last year. The woman has round hazel eyes and high cheekbones like apples. Dark hair pours over her shoulders. She wears a dress flowing down to her ankles and a necklace with heavy beads around her neck.
The young woman pecks the young man on the cheek and then stands, bending over the old leather trunk beside her and brushing the dust off the top. The latch has rusted over. The woman attempts to lift the latch. No luck. But then she puts her foot against the trunk and heaves backward, and the chest rattles open. The woman pulls out three wooden marionettes. They are simple, painted by hand—a woman, a man, and a child. Their hair and clothes are sewn from scraps of flannel, frayed pieces of denim, squares of cotton. The lack of uniformity in their outfits somehow makes them seem more alive.
“Do you remember? My mom used to tell us stories with these when we were kids,” the woman says. She works at unknotting the marionettes’ strings.
“Yes, I remember. But don’t you think it’s kind of disconcerting? I mean, the way they resemble us now?” the young man says.
“Oh, I don’t know, I think that’s just coincidence.” The woman finishes with the strings and stands the male marionette and the female marionette next to one another. They look almost identical to the man and the woman. The child marionette lies immobile by the trunk.
“Now, let’s see,” the woman says, and she sits the male marionette and the female marionette next to one another on the couch. She positions their small painted hands so that they’re touching, just slightly. Their faces are turned toward one another and their posture is relaxed, casual and comfortable.
“May I?” the man asks. The woman pauses, then hands over the marionettes.
“My favorite story was the one that began on a rainy night in December,” the man starts.
“A man and a woman are curled next to each other, soaking wet, gazing up at the stars from the dry depths of a
cave. They’ve admitted they love each other for the first time that night, even though they’ve known each other for years and years.”
The man stops. He looks into the woman’s eyes and plants a small kiss on her forehead. “And they’re happy,” he says, more quietly now. “They are happier than they’ve ever been.”
I’M BACK IN THE ENTRYWAY, MY NECK CRINKLED BACK. I can’t tell how long I’ve been in this alternate state. An hour? A day? But as I breathe out the claustrophobic air stuck inside of me, I can tell it’s only been a few seconds, a minute at most. I take my face in my hands and rub at the heaviness that’s still in my eyes. It was something like a memory. That’s certainly the word I would use to describe the experience. And yet, if it was a memory, it didn’t feel like my own. It didn’t feel like something I lived but instead almost like a video recording. I could see the time and date imprinted, and it was as if I were an observer, watching someone else’s home movies on a television screen. Except who else would the young man have been if not me? And who else would the woman have been if not Julie?
I look up above me, searching for the male and female marionettes from the story. They seem like they might be important, like maybe there’s some sort of implicit knowledge stored in their wooden bodies. The marionettes are organized in rows of ten each, at least fifty altogether, their strings tied around the splintering rafters. I take a solid wooden chair from beside a bookshelf and balance myself on top of it, my head in among the marionettes. A layer of dust coats each one of them. The tips of my fingers are black within moments, my nose tickled, on the verge of a sneeze. I discover that the marionettes are, for the most part, different permutations of the same three figures—woman, man, and child—dressed up for different occasions, wearing different expressions. Some of the marionettes seem very happy—red grins are carved into their faces and their glass eyes gleam green and blue. Others are nearly destroyed. Pieces of their arms and legs have gone missing, their expressions scraped clear away. I move the chair back and forth among the rows, examining each of the marionettes. Eventually I realize that the ones I’m looking for, the male and female marionettes who confessed their love on a rainy night in December, no longer exist.
Back in the living room, Einstein greets me with a hair ball false alarm, hacking and coughing and then ultimately burping. I sit down on the couch and pick up a pen from the coffee table. I tear out a piece of paper from the blank photo album, writing in an unsure, chicken-scratch scrawl.
THINGS THAT APPEAR TO BE TRUE
1. My name is Charles Lang.
2. I’m thirty-four years old.
3. I’m a famous scientist.
4. I have a wife named Julie and a daughter named Jess who have disappeared.
5. I’m living in my childhood home.
6. I disappeared from my house six months ago and this is the first time I’ve been back.
7. I’m friends with Iris and Ava down the street.
QUESTIONS I HAVE
1. How did I lose my memory?
2. Where did I disappear to six months ago? And why didn’t I tell anybody?
3. What happened to Julie and Jess?
4. Are the memories I’m experiencing in fact my own? Or could they actually be somebody else’s?
5. Why am I living in the house I grew up in? What happened to my parents?
The walls creak around me as I write. I imagine that they’re sympathizing with my frustration and exhaustion. I think for a moment, then add another question to the list:
6. What has happened to all of the photographs?
I don’t know that I would’ve even noticed the absence of photographs if it weren’t for all the empty frames scattered around the living room. All the paintings have been left behind, or at least the sorts of bland pastorals one might find in a doctor’s waiting room. There are landscapes of beach sunsets and French villas in the countryside, watercolors of hot air balloons and white horses traipsing through Central Park. But there are no photographs, only tilted frames, cracked glass, and fingerprint smudges left behind as detritus in an otherwise clean house. Whatever was previously placed lovingly and thoughtfully into these frames has since been torn away and ripped apart in a hurry.
I stand up again and lurch forward, grabbing the arm of the couch. My skin feels dull and clammy, stars bursting across my field of vision. I smell pancakes, fresh blueberry pancakes sopping in yellow butter and maple syrup, and I see Julie again, perched by the windowsill in the kitchen, wiping her hands on a flowery apron, her shadow slowly seeping into the hardwood floor. The smell disappears. My stomach gurgles. I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.
The door to the kitchen is cracked open and when I step inside, the first thing my eyes are drawn to is the cast iron stove, heavy against the wall. Initially I imagine that the stove is just an artifact, a relic of the past, but when I touch the surface, it’s warm, recently used. Strange. The china in the cupboards looks like something out of the early twentieth century, handcrafted and chipped, the enamel worn beige in places. A faded daisy pattern winds around the rim of the ceiling. There’s also a sleek metal refrigerator humming with electricity, though, and the hardwood floor looks like it’s been refinished sometime in the past year. A series of cobwebs haunts the windowsill.
I open the refrigerator, expecting everything to be spoiled, the milk sour, the cheese moldy, a few cucumbers limp and rotting in their own juices. Instead, the refrigerator is fully stocked with fresh produce, lettuce and tomatoes and an enormous bunch of green grapes. There’s a Tupperware of spaghetti sauce and another Tupperware filled with beef stew. I take out the carton of milk and give it a sniff. Nothing. I check the expiration date. It doesn’t expire for another week. Meanwhile, Einstein stalks into the kitchen, his sleepy yellow eyes gazing up at me expectantly. He then turns around the edge of the counter and disappears, and when I follow him, I discover that he’s gorging from a can of tuna. I nudge Einstein aside, much to his displeasure, and touch the tuna with the tip of my pinky. It’s still wet. Has somebody has just opened it? For a moment I wonder if maybe Iris bought groceries for me, but that would make no sense. She hadn’t known I was coming back.
I check the cupboards next, pulling them open one at a time. Every possible inch of shelf space is full, and I can’t help thinking that this house would be well-prepared for an apocalypse. There are hundreds of cans of beans, soup, meats, and vegetables, their bright, bombastic labels perfectly aligned with one another. The cupboard adjacent to the stove is filled with plastic water tanks. A thought occurs to me. Before I left six months ago, when was the last time I’d left the house? Was I a recluse? Could I have been some sort of danger to myself?
Next I open the door to the freezer, curious and slightly frightened to see what else I might find, but the freezer is nearly empty except for a tray of ice cubes and a plate wrapped in tin foil. I unwrap the parcel, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is. But then I see the figurines on top, a little man in a tuxedo, a little woman in a wedding dress. This is a slice from my wedding cake. The ripples in the white icing are still perfectly preserved, a single pink flower swirling across the top. I hold the slice out in front of me, studying the spongy yellow cake, the buttercream icing, and most of all, the figurines, forever dancing together atop this slice of cake. This was me once. I was once the man in a tuxedo. I was once married to the woman in the wedding dress. I once ate a bite from this very same cake.
Suddenly I have an urge to throw the cake to the ground, to stomp on it, again and again, until the cake is nothing more than a few thick smears against the sole of my foot. If I could just remember what exactly Julie looked like, what exactly it felt like when she put her hand against my cheek … but instead, I have nothing more than a stupid slice of cake.
My stomach protests, acidic and foul, and I set the cake down to make a sandwich for myself. But even though the bread is fresh and the tomatoes are crisp and there’s more than enough cheddar cheese, I can’t take mor
e than a couple bites before setting the sandwich down, tired and disheartened. Einstein leaps onto the countertop, nibbling on a slice of cheese that’s hanging over the side of the bread. As I’m scratching him behind the ears, I hear something from the other room. Laughter. Deep, throaty, trundling laughs. Old timey music plays from the television, followed by more laughter. I scoop up Einstein with one hand and grab a steak knife with the other.
“Hello?” I call out, inching toward the doorframe.
The laughter continues.
“I have a knife. I could hurt you.”
The laughter continues.
“I’m coming out, on the count of three.”
Music and more laughter.
“One, two—”
I step into the living room, feeling a bit ridiculous, and find an old man sitting on the couch, slapping his hand against his knee as he watches a clip from Casablanca.
“Play it again, Sam!” he howls. He doesn’t even notice me come into the room, his attention so focused on the television. I can’t understand what’s so funny. The man wears a dingy blue bathrobe, and his thin, clumping hair looks like the result of a chemical treatment gone wrong. His skin is purple, bruised and blotchy, his right forearm dense and creviced with scar tissue. A ratty scarf curls around his neck. Einstein jumps out of my arms and immediately hunkers into the old man’s lap. I set down the knife and touch the man on the shoulder to get his attention. He turns, staring up at me, his big, blank eyes looking bewildered in spite of all the laughter. The old man doesn’t seem fully alive, an echo of a human being.
“Hello?” I extend a hand, but he just continues to look at me, through me. Out of nowhere he starts to cry, tears streaming down his wrinkled face. I sit next to him on the couch and put an arm around his shoulders, feeling a warm wetness seep through my sleeve. The old man seems so familiar. I think of the principle of Occam’s razor—the simplest answer is usually correct. There are millions of different people this man could be, of course, but the evidence only really supports one conclusion. Maybe it’s odd that neither Iris nor Ava mentioned anything about me living with my father, but given his resemblance, his familiarity, I can’t think of who else he could be. I begin to construct a narrative for myself, in which I’m living with him, caring for him as he experiences the advanced stages of dementia. I wonder how long my father has lived with me, how long he’s been like this. I wonder who cared for my father while I was gone. I wonder what has happened to my mother.
Glass Shatters Page 2
