Glass Shatters

by Michelle Meyers

  October 22, 1996

  Age Eighteen

  Charles sits at the small wooden desk in his dorm room, working quietly and methodically on a problem set for genetics. His room is sparse, austere—a thin twin mattress with gray bedding, a dresser filled with folded socks and shirts, a poster of the periodic table of elements above the desk. Charles stands and walks over to the window to try to push it open farther. Although it’s late October, the weather is unseasonably warm for Northern California. Charles wears checkered boxers and a Star Trek T-shirt. A pair of navy pants and a white dress shirt lie draped over the head of the bed. He has the radio tuned to the World Series, the Yankees versus the Braves, although Charles doesn’t really care about the outcome.

  He told his parents there was no need to come for the weekend. It was a long drive and there wasn’t much to show them. Besides, the campus would be overrun with other parents dawdling around. But Charles’s mother insisted on coming anyway, and that was that. Charles certainly couldn’t tell her the truth, that he wished they would never visit, that he was tired of his father being sick and of his mother pretending everything was fine. He wishes Julie were coming instead. He hasn’t seen her for three months now, and even though they talk all the time, he wants nothing more than to see her face, to look into her eyes, to hold her in his arms. The last time they spoke, she said she had something to tell him. Something she wanted to wait to share until they were together.

  Charles gets up for a glass of water and checks the clock over the dresser. He was so absorbed in his problem set that only now is he realizing his parents are over two hours late. Just then, Charles hears a knock on the door.

  “One moment!” he calls out, yanking on his pants. The shirt will have to wait.

  When Charles opens the door, however, it’s not his parents but the dorm’s residential advisor, an awkward girl with a blond ponytail and freckled cheeks. She tries to speak but every time she opens her mouth, nothing comes out.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a policeman here. He wants to talk to you.” As Charles follows the girl down the hall, his mind runs through all of the offenses he committed in the last week or so. He’s not a bad person but a mischievous one, and he and his cohorts in the engineering department have spent the past several months one-upping each other with various pranks. Could it be about the swimming pool? Or the sheep brain gone missing?

  The police officer takes off his hat and clutches it in his hands when he sees Charles turning the corner. His face is pale, ghastly. And instantly Charles feels sick. He wants nothing more than to run the other way. But instead Charles stands there, entrapped, as the officer tells him that there’s been an accident. The officer continues talking, but Charles doesn’t hear any of it. He sinks to his knees and feels his chest crushing in on itself. Soon everything turns black.

  The funeral takes place the day after Halloween, the weather having turned dark and morose, a sudden cold front. Several of the graves are still strewn with toilet paper from the night before. Charles has hardly spoken a word over the last week or so. He cannot believe his parents are dead. Charles remains fixated on the broad-shouldered man in the back of the crowd, holding a photograph of Charles’s mother. He imagines his mother resting peacefully in this man’s arms, kissing his thin, soft lips. He thinks of Plato and the allegory of the cave, of how nothing about his life has been any more real than a couple shadows cast against a wall, and what is worse is that he understands, he understands why his mother made the decisions she did, why she looked beyond her marriage for affection, for love. At the same time, Charles knows that every day he is becoming more and more like his father, and he fears that he’s destined to be left behind as well.

  “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

  Iris has her hand against my forehead. My face is damp, a trickle of sweat running down my temple. I seem to have dropped the model car on the hardwood floor. The front has cracked apart, little bits of glass from the headlights scattered around it.

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t lie to Ava. About my father.”

  Iris throws the car in the trash and wets a paper towel. “It’s okay, Charles, it doesn’t matter what you said.”

  “My parents are dead, Iris. They died in a car crash when I was eighteen.”

  Iris crouches, wiping up the glass. When I say this, she stops what she’s doing and sets down the paper towel.

  “And the man living at your house?” she asks. She frowns slightly. I sit down at the table, folding my hands together. I see my parents’ graves, two flat, gray headstones, their lives reduced to names and dates. The walls feel like they’re narrowing around me, tilting, about to fall over.

  “I don’t know,” I finally say. “I don’t know who the man is.”

  PART II

  May 4, 1996

  Age Eighteen

  The night air is warm like fresh honey, the grass calm beneath his bare feet. The stadium feels monolithic, and Charles imagines he is Julius Caesar, carrying his empress across treacherous terrain. Julie giggles at his chivalry, although eventually she demands to be let down so that she can run around the field herself, doing cartwheels and somersaults, twirling around the football field’s yellow end post. Her dress flies around her, emerald-green fabric overlapping on itself so that it looks like forest leaves. Normally, when there’s a game, the stadium is packed with at least five hundred people, yelling and hooting and waving their arms beneath bright fluorescent lights. But tonight, it’s all theirs. Everyone else is inside the gym, disco balls spinning, streamers flying, music bumping, “This Is How We Do It” and “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “I’m Every Woman” filtering out across the field.

  Charles has tried his best to be a proper prom date. He donned a tuxedo for the first time in his life, trimmed the dead ends off his shoulder-length hair, shaved the scruff, and slapped his cheeks with cologne. He arrived at Julie’s house with a proper corsage made from white roses and baby’s breath, sliding it onto her slender wrist, placing a blanket on the passenger seat of his father’s car in case Julie got cold. But the prom itself seemed impossible. It was too loud to talk, too crowded to see, and it soon became clear to Charles that with all of his twisting and turning and flailing out of time with the music, he was most definitely the worst dancer in the entire room. After three songs, he ripped the knees of his pants, after five, he elbowed a girl in the nose, and after six, overwhelmed by the noise and the sweat, by the guilt he felt for the toes he crushed, Charles was sure he was going to faint if they didn’t duck outside.

  On the football field, Julie sneaks up on Charles and pounces on his back. They spin in a circle, swirling until they are both on the ground, dizzy and breathing hard, the stars pirouetting angels in the night sky. Charles slips off his jacket and lays it over Julie’s shoulders. His hand inches infinitesimally closer to Julie’s until his pinky finger is touching hers. She takes his hand. And then, before he knows what he’s doing, Charles leans over and kisses Julie. It is his first kiss. Ever. The kiss is wet and strange and soft and wonderful. Charles pulls away, wanting to tell Julie everything he feels for her, how much he loves her, how he cannot imagine being lonely when he is with her. But instead, he sneezes, a large, elephant sneeze right in Julie’s face, and they laugh, and the moment is over, and he realizes he doesn’t know how to say anything.

  “I can’t believe you’re leaving. What am I going to do without you here?” Julie says.

  “It’s not for a while. Not for a few months.”

  “But still …”

  Julie pulls up several blades of grass, creating a little nest in her palm. Charles tucks his knees against himself.

  “You should call CalArts. Tell them you changed your mind. It’s not too late, and then at least we’d be in the same state.”

  “I wish, but I can’t afford it.”

  “There must be a—”

  “It’s fine. Really. I’ll
stay here, work and save up for two years, get some classes out of the way, and then I’ll transfer and it won’t matter.”

  Charles looks into Julie’s eyes. “Promise me you’ll visit this fall?”

  “You’re not even going to miss me. Not after the first week or two. You’ll have a bunch of new college friends, and your brain will be so full of biology and chemistry and physics that you won’t have time to think about girls.”

  “But you promise you will?”

  Julie gives Charles a peck on the cheek. “Of course.”

  Charles opens his mouth, wanting to profess his true feelings for her, but all the words get stuck in his throat and he lets out an awkward croak instead. Julie doesn’t notice. She’s looking up at the stars again, lost in thought.

  “I can’t believe Steve isn’t here,” she says finally.

  “Yeah, I know. I mean, I know why he had to do it, but still. I thought we were all going to have one last summer together.”

  “I hope he finds a cute boy. I hope he finds a way to be happy.”

  Steve had a bad few months. His parents kicked him out. Sometimes he slept at Charles’ house, sometimes at Julie’s, mostly at his uncle’s. He became quiet. He lost weight. His grades dropped. Then one morning there was just a note on Charles’ doorstep, in Steve’s handwriting: “Took my life’s savings. Don’t try to look for me. Sorry …” Charles was disappointed but not surprised.

  “I’m so afraid of losing you, Julie. I don’t know what I would do.”

  “You won’t lose me.” Julie wraps her arms around Charles’ chest, resting her chin against his shoulder. “I promise, you won’t lose me.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” Charles says. Suddenly he’s grinning, and he rolls Julie over, kissing her again and again.

  THE SUN FEELS INVASIVE AND DANGEROUS AS I SHIELD my eyes, stepping out onto my porch, a briefcase slung over a sore right shoulder. I tried to climb the wooden trellis to the second story of the house, but halfway up, my foot slipped against the crumbling plaster and I tumbled down onto the lawn. I was lucky to have only gotten a few bruises and scrapes, narrowly avoiding the thicket of rose bushes. I’ll have to figure out another way up to the second floor.

  It rained all last night, but the puddles have evaporated and the lawns are laundered dry, as if the rain never existed. Little children run and squeal through sprinklers as dads recline in lawn chairs, wearing polo shirts and leather deck shoes. They reach up to kiss young wives who set fresh lemonade and sugar cookies on patio tables. I glance back at my house. A plank of wood is missing from the window to the right of the front door. I wonder if one of the neighborhood kids pried it off, if they dared each other to peek in through the window, if they’ve seen the old man, if he’s a ghost to them, a specter, if he’s less than human to the outside world too. I doubt the old man has noticed the sunlight streaming in through the crack, and I doubt he’s noticed that it’s spring and that the birds are chirping and the kids are playing and that all around families are rejoicing together. I don’t know what to do with him. Even if he’s not my father, the resemblance is there, an uncle, a grandfather, a cousin on my father’s side. He’s mine, my blood, and there’s nothing else for me to do.

  I rub my thumb against the prom photo still tucked into my left palm, Julie nuzzled into the crook of Charles’s arm, wearing his tuxedo jacket, her head pushing his bow tie askew, their smiles all flash. It’s the only photo I could find of Julie and Charles together.

  I keep thinking of this past Charles in the third person. It’s like I’m watching some sort of majestic, surreal film featuring an actor who looks identical to me. But I can’t enter this film, there’s a screen preventing it, and as much as I’d like to stick one foot in, it’s impossible. Because it’s not my film. It’s not my life. Not anymore, at least.

  “Charles!” a voice calls out, and I turn to see Iris, watering the azaleas on her front porch. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  “Was I walking fast?”

  “Like your life depended on it.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize. I guess I’m just nervous. I’m going back to work.”

  “Charles, you can’t walk there, it’s three miles away, and in this weather, you’re going to drown in your own sweat before you make it.” Iris shakes out the last few drops from her watering can onto the grass, rolling up the muddy cuffs of the men’s overalls she wears. “Come on, it’s my day off and I was going downtown anyway to run some errands. Just let me get changed and then I’ll give you a ride. What time are they expecting you?”

  “There’s no rush.” I follow Iris into the house. The truth is that they’re not expecting me. I don’t even really know where I’m going. I had a dream last night where I paced back and forth in front of a generic beige building with the address 1247 Shelby Ave., wearing a lab coat with a bloody handprint on the pocket. When I woke up this morning, some part of me knew that’s where I needed to go next. The blood, I hoped, was just a product of my imagination. My plan was to wander toward downtown and find the lab. While this plan partially resulted from the fact that there was no computer at the house I could use to look up a map on Google, no phone that I could use to call a cab, I also liked the idea of exploring Hillston on foot. Maybe I hoped that investigating my surroundings might provide some sort of useful information. And maybe I liked the idea of getting lost. But I was being naïve. I should go with Iris. I needed to continue to be practical, to rely on logic if I was going to make any progress.

  “You ready?” Iris asks. She’s put on chinos and a clean linen blouse. I startle, dropping the photo of Julie and Charles onto the kitchen’s tiled floor. I scramble to my knees, picking it up with a quick swoop. If Iris notices, she pretends she hasn’t.

  The neighborhood feels foreign as Iris drives us down the street. The evidence so far suggests that I grew up here, that there should be memories everywhere. Instead, everything feels off. The blue of the sky is too saturated, the neighbors’ smiles threatening. There’s a breeze blowing and yet the air is still. I feel dozens of sets of eyes on me, although I can’t tell whose eyes they are.

  But then we approach a house down at the far end of the street, a house overgrown with green ivy, a gray thatched roof leaning low. A cobblestone pathway leads up to the front door. A colony of hang-headed scarecrows, worn with age, congregates in the yard. The front windows are made of stained glass, casting bright, slanted shadows across the living room’s hardwood floor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a house with so many stained glass windows before. A plume of smoke curls up from behind the house, and a warm feeling rises in my chest.

  November 7, 1984

  Age Six

  The young boy Charles runs as fast as he can, although he can no longer remember from whom or what. The lenses of his glasses begin to fog up. He pauses for a moment to catch his breath. Suddenly he realizes where he is and who’s watching him.

  “Hello there,” says Mrs. Hollingberry, glancing up at Charles from beneath the wide brim of her gardening hat. She notices Charles staring at the strange vegetable in her left hand, the one she has just pulled from the ground. She smiles. “It’s a root vegetable. Yucca.”

  Charles continues to stare. He has never seen somebody who looks at all like her. His parents own pastel sweaters, khaki slacks, and straight-cut skirts that pinch at the waist. But this woman wears deep violet robes that cover her shoulders, mint green tights that cling to her slim legs, goldenrod slippers turned up at the toe, all of which shimmer in the grinning sunlight. Standing in the midst of the garden, her shoes slightly sunken into the earth, she almost seems to be growing herself, her feet rooted into the soil. Smoke rises from a stone pit behind her, and Charles expects the smell of meat, of hamburgers and hotdogs roasting over hot coals. Instead, it’s something else, an herb, a floral scent, and as he breathes in, he feels himself grow calm.

  “Would you like to come in for a snack?” Mrs. Hollingberry asks. Charles hesitate
s. His parents have always warned him very strictly not to trust strangers, and some part of him is sure that his mother has a specific dislike for this woman. Mrs. Hollingberry has been mentioned in passing, at dinner, on the way to school. But there’s something compelling about this woman as well, something irresistible about the yucca and the clothing and the strange smell drifting through the air around him.

  “Sure,” he says. Mrs. Hollingberry takes his hand. As Charles walks inside, it’s as if he’s entered a different universe. His feeling of serenity edges away. Marionettes hang down from the ceilings, gazing at him with wide eyes and impish grins. Plastic dolls lie in dismembered piles, hundreds of arms and legs, heads peeking through the gaps to try to gasp for air. The strands of the carpet are crusted over with old paint, clay, and mud.

  Charles and Mrs. Hollingberry pass by a dining room. The table and chairs are much too high for any normal human being, perhaps seven, eight feet tall. A machine sitting on top of the table projects images of food onto the ceiling, turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Another room sits completely empty except for a miniaturist painting all along the bottom edge of the walls, detailing the entirety of human history. There’s a strange pattern to the images, and years later, while looking at the same painting, Charles would realize it was done in a wholly reversible fashion, the images constructed such that moving in either direction from a single point, history would appear to both progress and regress in time.