“Are you—”
I realize that the old man has stopped crying and is now asleep, curled against my shoulder, his arm around Einstein. I slide out from under him and tuck him under a blanket, resting his head against a pillow. For a moment, his eyes blink open, and his face stretches and contorts. But then he closes his eyes again without saying anything, and within moments, he’s fast asleep. I feel the couch beneath my fingers, the soft silky fabric against my touch.
August 9, 2009
Age Thirty-One
Little girls shove their airy bodies against the couch, straining themselves until the couch has been pushed to the side. They adjust their leotards and tights, turquoise leotards, fuchsia tights, sequins, wands, fairies swooping across the living room. The young man sits with the young woman on the floor. The woman’s fingers squeeze those of the man. He rests his head on her shoulder.
“You looked tired,” the young woman says.
“I can’t sleep at night,” the young man replies.
“It’s gotten worse lately, hasn’t it?”
The man shrugs. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks.
The woman turns back to watching the girls. “Don’t you love how children can dance without music?” she says. “And how they can have wild parties without needing a single other person?”
“I was never like that,” the man says. “I could never do that.”
The woman looks into the man’s eyes, then takes his long-fingered hands in hers. They rise from the floor, and as the little girls leap and plunge around the room, the man and the woman waltz soundlessly around them. The man’s footsteps are clumsy, awkward, but the woman is patient and graceful. When they stop, the man dips the woman down and then brings her back up, slowly, until her arms are around his neck.
“I love you, Julie,” he says. “I love you so much that it almost hurts sometimes.”
“But it’s the best feeling, right?” she says. Her grin becomes menacing. Her arms tighten around the man’s neck, until he is almost choking. “Isn’t it a better feeling than anything else?”
I CAN TELL I’VE BEEN IN THE MEMORY LONGER THIS TIME. The old man has disappeared, and I can see through the curtains that it’s now dark outside. For a few moments, whenever I close my eyes, I continue to see the little girls, swooping through the air in a way that defies gravity, to see the woman’s malevolent grin, her teeth fading to nothingness. A shudder ripples down my back. I try to push the image away.
The memory still felt distant, as if I were watching something that belonged intimately to somebody else, and it’s hard to imagine that I’m this young man. My stomach gnarls, my palms sweat, a chalkiness coats the inside of my mouth. I need to do something. I need answers. There must be a way to figure out what has happened to me, who I am, why I’ve lost my memory. I pull on a gray wool coat from by the door, stepping outside. I’ll talk to Iris again. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go see what else she knows.
The air is surprisingly cold, stinging against my cheeks, and it isn’t until I’ve walked halfway down the block that I realize I’m only wearing socks. I think about what I must look like, a shoeless, unshaven man prowling the street at night, and I catch a brief glimpse of myself in one of the windows. I’m shocked by how gaunt my cheeks are, like a skeleton just rising from the dead. My eyes are empty wishing wells, and my shirt is slack, hanging off my shoulders. I’m still Charles, still the same young man from the memories, but some sort of terrible transformation has occurred, leaving me a desiccated husk of my former self. I consider heading back but instead continue a few houses further down the block, careful to stay hidden in the shadows. And then I see them, Ava and Iris under the warm lights of the kitchen, eating dinner, talking and giggling. I’m surprised by how similar they look when sitting side by side, their cheeks blushing pink and then red with laughter. I can’t help myself. For several minutes I just stand there, watching them, waiting, wishing that they would notice me. I want to knock on the door, to ask if I can join. I can’t help but feel angry, resentful, jealous that I wasn’t invited. I understand, though. We’re friends but not family. Julie and Jess were my family, and now they’re gone. Finally, Iris and Ava clear their dishes from the table, and I trudge home, pebbles jabbing into my feet, the woodsy smell of the nearby wilderness only making me feel lonelier than before.
I hang up my coat, then wander down the hallway, still wishing I had invited myself over for dinner. Suddenly I notice I’m standing in the middle of a room that feels like a dollhouse, a perfectly preserved and static world. A turquoise leotard sits atop the dresser, folded and pristine, the tags still on. There are wood block letters on the outside of the door painted with squiggles, polka dots, and black zebra stripes—JESS. For a moment I imagine movement in the room, but it’s only the wind pushing a branch up against the window. The room itself is still, silent. The carpet is lavender with velvet curtains covering the windows, the edges uneven. The canopied bed is short and narrow, and the lacy white sheets are tucked neatly over the pillows. Posters of Russian ballet dancers are taped above the bed, holding difficult poses under bright stage lights. Along one wall sit dozens of porcelain dolls. Even knowing this was Jess’s bedroom, I feel like the room has always belonged to the dolls. I sit down on the bed and take a worn fleece blanket from the end, wrapping it around my shoulders as I look around.
There’s one doll in particular that strikes my interest, wearing a lingering white wedding dress with puffed shoulder sleeves and jeweled embroidery along the bodice. The dark hair is pulled back to reveal black eyebrows and eyelashes painted with mascara. A veil drapes down her back, a bouquet of flowers clutched in her hand. I realize that the doll looks exactly like Jess.
August 4, 2010
Age Thirty-Two
The young man lies in Jess’s bed, tossing and turning in the midst of a bad dream. He clutches Jess’s teddy bear against his chest, wishing that his daughter would come back, just come back. His clothes are soaked through, his forehead covered with perspiration. He’s in the throes of a nightmare. The chime of church bells strikes midnight. There’s the looming presence of an altar, of an omnipotent God. An organist plays “Here Comes the Bride” but more of the pitches are off than on. The church’s interior is obscured by darkness—all that lights the room is a single candle glowing from behind stained glass.
Jess walks down the aisle in her turquoise leotard and ballet slippers, wearing a veil torn at the edges and holding a bouquet of petrified flowers. Her skin is white as bone, her teeth yellow and decaying. Two large drops of blood have dried along her jaw, one just below each ear. Her hair is knotted with twigs and pine needles, and she’s covered with bruises. She’s five, maybe six years old at the most. A specter of a man stands beside her, a man that does not and could not ever exist, his arm around her shoulder, his hand squeezing tight. Jess squirms, trying to duck out from under him.
The lights rise to reveal the young man wearing a priest’s robes. He thumbs through a Bible and begins reciting verses in a language that is at once incomprehensible. In fact, it is not a language at all, and what should be words are actually something less than sounds. Jess approaches the young man, pulling on his robes. The young man stops. He looks down at Jess.
“Daddy, why am I getting married?” Jess asks.
“Because you’ve grown into a beautiful young woman and that’s what beautiful young women do,” the man replies.
“But Daddy, I don’t wanna get married now.”
“Well why not, sweetie pie? If not now, then when?”
“I wanna run around the kindergarten yard. I wanna pet rollie pollie in a plastic bag. I wanna believe boys have cooties until they get their shots, and I can’t become a famous ballerina if I’m married to him.” She points at the specter, the invisible man. He tries to brush her hair out of her face. Jess flinches away. “Please, Daddy! When I’m older? When I’m grown up?”
“Oh, but don’t you know? That’s never going to happ
en, sweet pea. You’re going to be five years old for the rest of your life.”
“But—”
“It’s a fact, my sweet darling. It’s a fact, it’s a fact, it’s a fact …”
I’M IN JESS’S BED, MY CLOTHES ICY WITH SWEAT. ONE OF the scabs on the back of my head has bled all over the pillow, smelling brown and tinny. I turn the pillow over even though nobody will notice. A nightmare. Just a nightmare, somebody else’s nightmare, I tell myself, breathing hard. I can’t help dwelling on how small Jess looked, how desperate, existing somewhere in between life and death. Even if she is just a figment, a vestige of something dreamed long ago, I can’t help but feel she deserves better than this, that she deserves family dinners and board games and strolls in the park. I can’t help but be afraid that I’ve done something to cause this.
I get up from the bed, wiping away any last bits of the memory. I have to become methodical in my actions. Something tells me there’s a logic to this house, a logic that should eventually become decipherable. I take a piece of paper out of my pocket, the one with the list of questions from earlier, and find a sparkly pink gel pen on the dresser. I draw on the back of the paper, a diagram of the rooms that I’ve already visited and the doors that I haven’t opened yet.
So there are four rooms left to investigate on the first floor, and of course, there’s also a potential for an entire second floor. I say potential because thus far I haven’t found any way to get up there, no stairs or ladder or anything like that. From the outside of the house, however, it’s clear that there’s at least one more story to explore.
I decide to start at the furthest end of the hallway and work my way back toward the living room and kitchen. The hardwood floor creaks with each step I take. I notice that the faint yellow walls are lined with empty picture frames. Some of them hang lopsided, as if someone rushed to remove the photographs. Others look like they’ve never been touched in the first place. I half expect the army of marionettes hanging by the front door to untie themselves from the rafters, to begin stalking me around the house. A part of me wonders if the old man is a ghost. I shake the thought out of my head. I’m a scientist. I can’t believe in those sorts of things.
I turn the peeling lacquered knob to the door at the end of the hall. Nothing. I position my shoulder against the door and on the count of three, I heave my weight against it, turning the knob at the same time. The door groans open, and there’s a rush of air, the room releasing a long held breath. The room feels like an artifact. I can’t tell if it belongs to a ten-year-old child or a forty-year-old man. There’s a queen-sized bed with a forest-green duvet folded over the sides, a vase of dried flowers once alive, a bookshelf featuring dense volumes on hydrozoans and cell mutation. But there are also baseball jerseys in the closet clearly sized for a young boy, an ant farm tipped over on one of the shelves, a Ouija board leaning against the books, worn copies of Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. The wallpaper, a faded striped pattern that’s also forest green, feels decades older than the springy gray carpet covering the floor. A pair of men’s dress shoes sits next to a couple of scuffed sneakers, a framed Matisse print next to a Felix the Cat poster. I pick up the men’s dress shoes, brown oxfords that lace up on top, and slide them on my feet. They fit perfectly. I feel a draft filter through the room and pull back the blinds to discover a broken window, right in the center, a circle with jagged edges about the size of a mouth. I wonder if it was just an accident, a neighborhood kid hitting a baseball too far. I suppose the hole is also the size of a fist.
A compartment in the headboard of the bed rests slightly open and I reach my hand in. There’s a stack of old newspapers going back chronologically in time. I read over the headlines, the black ink rubbing off against my fingers.
“Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret to Immortality?
Charles Lang Thinks So”
(January 26, 2008)
“Charles Lang: How 3-D Printing Body Parts
Will Revolutionize Medicine”
(October 15, 2004)
“Charles Lang Awarded the Overton Prize in Biology”
(August 13, 2001)
I turn back further, back through the 1990s, the late 1980s. The papers are yellow and moth-eaten, and I’m concerned that they may just spontaneously disintegrate. I’m most shocked by the photographs of me, shaking hands with professors, pointing and gesturing at scientific charts and graphs. I’m grinning in all of them, absolutely beaming. I look happy and healthy, young and optimistic. I realize that Ava wasn’t kidding when she said I was famous. I keep hoping to see Julie in one of the photographs with me, but there are none with her.
I finally stop at an article printed in September 1986. There’s a large black-and-white photograph of a teacher in the center, a group of forlorn third-graders huddled on the auditorium stage behind her. One of the children is the small boy from my dream, Charles, the one who was curled up on the couch, waiting for his father. Of all the children, his face is the most absent, the most destroyed.
September 25, 1986
Age Eight
To I know that many of you may be wondering why we’ve gathered here today. Why are there so many people in suits with big cameras and microphones? Why are there big black vans in front of the school? Why did the mayor come by this morning to raise the American flag?” The teacher pauses to collect herself. She wears a black dress and black flats, her hair pulled back into a stiff bun. One of the students raises his hand, then slowly lowers it as he looks around the auditorium, realizing that the teacher was not expecting an answer to her questions. Reporters continue to bustle around the students as a middle-aged couple poses for photographs on the stage.
“The reason for all of this is that ten years ago today, a man came into the school and shot several children, and one of them died. His name was Gordy and he was in my third-grade class, just like all of you are. Gordy was very smart—he wanted to grow up to be a veterinarian—and he was also very kind. He was always sharing his lunch with other students, and he earned many merit badges in Cub Scouts. The man and woman standing on the stage are Gordy’s parents, and even though they are very happy that we are all gathered here today to remember what a wonderful person Gordy was, it still makes them sad to think about him sometimes.”
The small boy with the glasses raises his hand, squinting his eyes. The teacher hesitates but decides to call on him.
“Charles?”
“Why did he kill Gordy?” Charles asks without looking up.
“I don’t know, Charles. Nobody does. It just happened. Gordy went to the bathroom to get a drink of water. The man who walked into the school was very angry and depressed. It could have been anyone.”
“But he must have done something. He must have. He must,” Charles insists, too quietly for the teacher to hear. For the rest of the day and the rest of the night, Charles doesn’t say another word.
I’M STILL HOLDING THE NEWSPAPER IN MY HAND. THE article continues on page four. I turn to read the rest of the article, the columns blocking in a large photograph of Gordy, his second grade yearbook photo. He looks uncannily similar to Charles—the shock of blond hair, the round glasses, the missing front teeth—and I can see why Charles would have been disturbed. It’s like looking into an alternate reality, a reality just as arbitrary and just as likely as the one that happened.
I squat down and examine the dusty bookshelf. There are books about Copernicus and Aristotle, Darwin and Newton, Einstein and Hawking. All of these suggest a young scientist in the making, someone who was determined to discover rules to the way the world works. I slip the newspaper article about Gordy into my back pocket, sure that if I were to leave it in the bedroom, it would somehow vanish. I don’t trust permanence to be a rule in this house.
I then enter the room next to Jess’s, on the side closest to the living room. The door is already slightly agape, and when I open it further and flip on the lights, I discover something completely different from the previous room. While bot
h are sterile, appearing untouched for weeks or months, there was an asymmetry to the bedroom, to the way that it was laid out. In contrast, this room, which appears to be an office, supports an equilibrium, a balance to all of its disparate parts. Then again, how can there be asymmetry when the room is essentially blank? The walls are empty, a fresh coat of white. The bookshelves are empty, sterile metal. There are ten pens on top of the mahogany desk, five red pens on one side and five blue pens on the other, two fake leafy potted plants, each in opposite corners of the room. An expansive navy blue rug covers the floor. A small window hovers over the desk. There is no computer, no printer, no phone. There are no signs of modern technology.
I sit down in the desk chair, handsome black leather. I try to pull open one of the drawers but it won’t budge. There’s an iron lock on the left-hand side. I attempt the other drawers. The next two are both locked as well. When I try the top right-hand drawer, it slides open effortlessly, though, and inside I find a key next to a tin of paperclips and a roll of postage stamps. I take the key, sliding it into the iron lock. The first half of it manages to go in, but as I push further, the rest of it jams and then won’t come out.
Glass Shatters Page 3
