Glass Shatters

by Michelle Meyers

February 28, 2010

  Age Thirty-Two

  Charles hears the moving trucks before he sees them, feels their vibration as they rumble past the house and stop at the corner. It’s been days since he’s really gotten out of bed, almost a month since he’s worked at the lab, a month since his breakdown. Charles’s pajamas are sticky and sour against his skin. His bedroom is littered with discarded food wrappers, the little bits and pieces he’s forced himself to eat. The only thing that keeps him going is Einstein, who rests his squashed, orange tabby head in Charles’s lap.

  The curtains are pulled tight, protecting Charles against the sun’s invading rays, and when he stands, stiff and sore, and pushes the curtains aside, he’s surprised that the world has continued to go on around him. A neighbor takes his husky on a walk. A young boy sits bundled up in his mother’s arms. And down the street, in front of Julie’s childhood home, two moving trucks idle outside, their tail pipes pouring steam and diesel fumes into the early morning air. The moving men slouch on the porch, taking notes on a clipboard as Mrs. Hollingberry stands in the doorway, sipping a large thermos of hot tea, wearing something in between a long coat and a robe. Charles watches as the men enter the house and bring out wide card-board boxes, stowing them in the back of one of the trucks. They take furniture as well, couches and floor lamps, canvases wrapped in thick brown butcher paper to protect the paintings inside. She’s moving. She’s actually moving. Charles wonders if Mrs. Hollingberry planned to say anything to him or if she was just going to leave, let him discover the change once a new family moved in.

  Charles shakes his head and grabs his coat from the chair. He knows he looks terrible, that his hair is in tangled thickets and that his beard is growing in shabby, stubbly patches. He knows his breath must smell awful and that he should change into something besides his wrinkled pajamas covered in cat hair. He knows that he’s a mess and that with every step he takes, he’ll feel the sharp, biting pain of losing Julie and Jess. He knows these things and yet he cannot let Mrs. Hollingberry just disappear. They’ve hardly spoken a word to one another the past several months. Perhaps they haven’t spoken at all.

  When Julie and Jess first went missing, Charles and Mrs. Hollingberry consoled one another, kept each other company through the long nights, were open and honest about their emotions. But slowly they grew apart, each believing the other was somehow to blame. Every day Charles became more convinced that Mrs. Hollingberry had known what was going to happen, that she had seen into the future yet failed to prevent it. Mrs. Hollingberry, of course, vehemently denied this power of foresight, not in all circumstances but certainly in this one, and she harbored the belief that Charles was responsible, accusing him of pushing Julie and Jess away. And then there was the matter of the funeral, a funeral that Charles refused to have. Mrs. Hollingberry couldn’t forgive him for this, for failing to lay their souls to rest. For Charles, a funeral would mean he had to stop looking. And until he found them, he would never stop.

  As Charles trudges down the street in the chilly morning air, wishing he had worn something more than slippers, he realizes he has nothing to say to Julie’s mother. He’s still angry, and he imagines she is too. But when Charles sees her up close, standing in the doorway of a house that will soon no longer be hers, he finds that she’s just as diminished as he is. She’s even thinner, frailer than she was before, to the point where she seems capable of breaking at any moment. Her coat is gray and drab, and the makeup she wears is protective, trying but failing to conceal how much she’s aged over the past six months. When she sees Charles, she nods to him, neither smiling nor frowning. They stand next to one another, not saying anything, as they watch the movers take the furniture from the house. Finally, when everything is packed away, Mrs. Hollingberry turns to Charles. She gives his hand a squeeze.

  “Good-bye, Charles,” she says.

  Charles tries to speak, but instead he remains silent, nods his head. There’s nothing else he can say at this point.

  I CALL MRS. HOLLINGBERRY FROM THE PHONE IN Eduard’s office, the plastic curlicue cord twisted through my fingers, the ringing shrill and abrupt, reverberating through my whole body. Eduard has excused himself, ducking into the storeroom to check on the inventory. My breath feels both hot and cold inside my chest. Nobody picks up, just an answering machine. A metallic voice says that the number I’m trying to reach is currently unavailable and to leave a message after the beep. I hear myself stutter as I speak, my tongue a foreign appendage. I manage to croak out that it’s Charles. I ask for Mrs. Hollingberry and give her Iris and Ava’s number if she’d like to call me back. I know that I should say good-bye to Eduard, thank him for his help, but instead, I sneak up to the tavern and slip through the raucous crowds of German tourists.

  I head out into the brisk night air. The rain has dissipated but black snarls of thunderheads still loom overhead. The winds begin to howl, screaming like harpies, the darkness sinking in around me. I have no idea where I am. The town has transformed into forest and underbrush, the mulch squishing under my shoes, the tree limbs weighed down with rain, bending in the wind. I look up at the stars peeking out through the clouds, hoping for help, but I don’t know what to do with them, these yellow flecks in the night watching me like eyes. I turn around and blindly select a direction to follow, hoping that it’s the right way. I hear the heaving of thunder, a deep, throaty growl, and then the sky breaks open, the rain pouring down in torrents like I’ve never seen. There’s no keeping the water out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth.

  I trudge farther into the wilderness. I squint my eyes for a light, a house, a car, any sign of town. But I’m swallowed by the trees, the wasteland. The rain grows so dense around me that I can’t see even a few inches forward. I hold out my arms, grabbing in front of me, trying to gain my bearings, and then my foot slides and I catch an unearthed root with my hand. My feet dangle in midair, my body hanging down into a deep ravine, and somehow I’m able to pull myself up, slathered in mud, tears streaming down my face. One more step and I would have fallen to my death.

  Shaken, I keep walking as the underbrush thins out and a lake spreads out before me, the water churning, a lone dinghy toppling under the waves. A long, wooden pole leans in the ground, a battered sign reading Birch Lake Pass.

  August 22, 2009

  Age Thirty-One

  Charles wakes up tangled in the covers, his eyesight bleary, the moon a yellow crescent in the night sky. He hears rustling beside him and turns to discover Julie lacing up her tennis shoes, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. But Julie doesn’t look like Julie. She looks like Iris, freckles across her face, her hair auburn, her stance more heavyset. Charles doesn’t seem to notice, though. He rubs his eyes and looks at the clock. It’s already midnight.

  “Julie, sweetie, what are you doing?” he asks, his voice thick and groggy.

  “I can’t sleep, and neither can Jess. She’s been up for hours.”

  “Have you tried giving her warm milk? Or turning on the radio?”

  “We’ll be back soon.” Julie leans down to tie her other shoelace.

  “Come back to bed, Julie. It’s too late to be hiking.”

  “Not a hike, just a little walk around Birch Lake. We’ll be careful.”

  “Please?”

  Julie leans in and plants a kiss on Charles’s forehead. “Go back to sleep, darling, and I’ll come snuggle with you when I get home.”

  Jess stands in the doorway, waiting for Julie in a pair of light-up Velcro sneakers. Except she doesn’t look like Jess. She looks like Ava.

  “Just be safe, okay?” Charles is too tired to know what else to say, too tired to even be fully awake, and he rolls over in the bed, closing his eyes, falling into nothingness.

  Charles wakes up alone the next day, wakes up to the sound of rain. At first, he thinks that maybe Julie and Jess are up early, that they’re out running an errand, out for breakfast. But there’s no note. Jess’s bed isn’
t made. The car is in the driveway, and when Charles checks the hamper, Julie’s hiking clothes aren’t there, nor are her tennis shoes back in the closet. After calling the police, Charles steps into the bathroom, lathers up his face with shaving cream, and as he drags the razor across his cheek, he cuts himself deliberately, just to feel something. But the pain isn’t enough. Why didn’t he stop them? Why didn’t he know? When the police arrive, two burly men with grizzly voices and grizzly beards, Charles finds that he can’t speak. His words are like a snake, slithering back down his throat.

  I LIFT MYSELF OUT OF THE MUD, RUNNING, CLEARING snarled roots and vast, swampy puddles. Why did Julie and Jess look like Iris and Ava in the memory? I can’t even begin to come up with an answer for this. The rain roars around me, beating my face, my back. My wet shoes suck against my feet with each step I take. Nobody else is out. Everybody is home. The asphalt along the road smells like chemicals and earth, the trees twist in the wind, the grass is drowning, silt and debris flood the storm drains. I see Iris and Ava’s house in the distance, light pouring out of the windows like warm honey, the shutters chattering against themselves like teeth. I splash across the driveway, the water up to my ankles, and as I climb the stairs up to the porch, the rain turns into hail. A particularly large hailstone dents the hood of a nearby car. Another clatters off the mailbox.

  Iris answers the door, her hand over the receiver of the phone, her forehead knit into a furrow. “Charles, are you okay? There’s someone—”

  I take the phone from Iris, the line crackling and rasping until a faint voice breaks through from the other side.

  “Charles? Is that you? Charles?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “It’s been so long. I never thought I would hear from you again.”

  Mrs. Hollingberry sounds like a porcelain vase about to shatter apart. I look down at my feet.

  “It hasn’t been that long, has it?”

  “Over fifteen years.”

  “Fifteen years?”

  “Since I moved down to New Mexico … are you okay, Charles? You sound … well, I’m concerned.”

  A feeling like seasickness sways through my gut. “You’ve been living in New Mexico for fifteen years?”

  There’s a hesitation from the other end. “Yes, Charles, in Santa Fe. I moved there after Julie died. You know that.”

  It takes all the effort I can muster to speak again. “After Julie died?”

  “After Julie died in the car accident. You’re sure you’re all right, Charles?”

  The phone drops from my hand and clatters against the hardwood.

  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 game, 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 starts to feel sick. He wants nothing more than to run the other way. But instead Charles stands there, entrapped.

  The next thing Charles remembers, he is at the scene of the accident. He must have blacked out. He doesn’t know how he got there. Sirens cut through the night air, the area cordoned off with yellow tape. He pushes through the firefighters and the paramedics, his hands shaking so hard that he can barely walk. All he wants to do is look away but he can’t. He sees large claws of jagged metal twisted in on themselves. A rubber wheel engulfed in flames. The accordion hood smashed in, the front bumper contorted into a mangled frown. Shattered glass from the windshield, shards like teeth crunching under his feet against the asphalt. His parents’ bodies have already been removed from the car, zipped into black body bags, stowed in the ambulance. But Charles sees Julie’s reflection in the glass from the windshield, bloody and fragmented, her lips blue without oxygen, splinters of bone and gray matter stuck to the seat cushions, a single eye still open, the pupil dilated. Julie wasn’t supposed to be in that car. She wasn’t supposed to come, to surprise him. Charles turns and before anybody can say anything, he sprints away from the accident, into the trees by the side of the road, as fast as he can, as far as he can, not wanting to believe, not wanting to think.

  It’s only later that Charles finds out what Julie wanted to tell him in person: she was pregnant. A girl, four months. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It wasn’t. It wasn’t …

  THE NEXT THING I REMEMBER IS RUNNING UP THE driveway, a large swathe of purple wisteria against my back. I rattle the key in the front door but the lock is sealed shut. I pound my fist, yelling to be let in. Finally, I throw myself against the door with a leap. The wood splinters, my sleeve ripping as I hurtle into the entryway. The room is silent, dark in a thick and airless sort of way. Something is different. I realize that all of the marionettes are gone.

  “Charles? Charles!” I call through the house, turning on the lights. I don’t know why I didn’t realize the truth sooner. No missing persons report. No news articles. No school records. No photographs. Julie didn’t go missing three years ago. Julie died in 1996, at the age of eighteen, the fall of Charles’s freshman year of college. Every memory of Julie after that was a fabrication, a delusion. And Jess? Jess was never even born. Maybe, deep down, I knew the truth. Maybe I knew but didn’t want to believe it.

  I wind my way back to the entryway. In the wisps of moonlight that break into the house, I discover a set of paw prints, caked in white plaster, leading to a bookshelf by the front door before vanishing. I steady myself, squaring my feet and lowering my center of gravity, ready to heave the shelf aside. But when I push against the side panel, the shelves immediately slide aside with no resistance. I take a book from the shelf, examine its empty husk. It’s fake, they’re all fake, hollow
on the inside. I push the bookcase aside and of course, it’s there, it’s been there all along, a hole in the wall, about three feet by three feet, the drywall crumbling along the edges. I crawl inside and begin climbing the stairs to the second story, dusty, wooden stairs that creak with each step. My hair stands on end. I wonder if I’m hallucinating the smell of smoke in the air. But with each step I take, the smell grows more acrid and pungent. And it’s warmer than it should be.

  “Charles?” I call out again. The upstairs is small, more like a studio apartment, with a bedroom, bathroom, and closet. The carpet in the bedroom is matted and stained, with imprints of where the bedposts used to sit. Cobwebs drape in the corners and the only furniture in the room is a large wicker trunk, lid open, spilling over with old patterned housedresses. Smoke pours out of the bathroom, clinging to the ceiling.

  “Charles? Are you in there?” I duck into the bathroom, covering my mouth and nose with my shirt, pulling back the moldy plastic shower curtain. I find the marionettes in the bathtub, flames charring and melting their faces, their bodies crinkled and unrecognizable as Julie or Jess or Charles. I grab a sooty glass cup from beside the sink and fill it again and again, scooping brown, rusty water over the marionettes until the fire smolders, the smoke mixing with steam. The marionettes are no longer recognizable.

  I step out into the hallway. My chest feels like it’s collapsing. I hear a faint moan from above. There’s a fraying string hanging down in front of me and I pull hard, a step-ladder unfolding from the ceiling, leading up into the attic.

  I’m blinded by the effect, by the enormity of it all. Charles sits cross-legged in the middle of the attic, illuminated by the fluorescent lights above, blood seeping out of his ears and nose, his eyes glazed over, his limbs twitching with convulsions every few seconds. The walls are plastered with photograph clippings from newspapers and magazines, thousands upon thousands, hanging from the rafters, spread across the wooden floor, photographs of women who look like Julie, of little girls who look like Jess, of men who look like Charles. There’s one from the New York Times of a blond man and a brunette woman meandering across the beach at Coney Island, hand in hand, their pants rolled up to their knees. Another from Newsweek of a blond scientist in the lab, his eyes stark against the white of his lab coat. There’s one from Mothering magazine of a grinning baby girl, her hair only fuzz, her cheeks plump and pink, holding a sign that says, “Happy Birthday, Daddy!”