There was a morning my father was pouting at the table. When I pouted like that, my father said, I’ll wipe that pout from your face. He said, You’re acting like a child. But I was a child when I pouted like one, so there was a difference between my pout and his because the food wasn’t yet on the table.
When my father’s woman walked past me at parties, I whispered, Dumb bitch. I whispered, Dumb cunt. Yes you, I whispered. She was always at the parties. She was always dressed like that. Always following my father around like a pet. Fuck you, I whispered when she walked past. Fuck you, walking by her family’s house. Fucking piece of shit, as I threw a rock as hard as I could at whatever window.
But I only threw a rock once. So the night really began with this. Finding the rock in the garden. Not aiming, just throwing wildly. Then, after a second of nothing, I heard the crash. The girl and I were like fuck, and we ran. It was more than we’d expected. It was like something big was going on. A different kind of trouble. So we ran to the boardwalk and drank our sodas and waited.
I often wondered if others feared, as much as I did, what lay beneath their beds. Or if I was the only one who watched the ceiling lighten, thinking of God, of how little I knew about God.
I often wondered if others thought of an ocean moving backward. An ocean pulling into itself. Then nothing but sand all the way back. A tidal wave building far from the shore. The longest wait.
I moved my leg to touch the guy’s leg. I did this by barely moving it. I pretended it was accidental. The cop said he would walk me home. He extended his hand, and I looked at it. The guy said he would walk me. The cop didn’t care who did it. I said I wasn’t going home. I was going to the boathouse, I said. The cop and the guy looked at each other. Guys did this when you were difficult. But the guy walked me to the boathouse. He held my arm like I was old. We walked so slowly. Like the speed of trees, I almost said. I knew better than to say something dumb as that. When we got to the dock, I wanted to sit there with the guy. I knew every inch of that dock. I knew every house around it. I knew every rich bitch inside every house. I would tell him all I knew. There were stories, and some were scandals. There was our scandal, too, and I could point to her family’s house. He said we shouldn’t go on the dock. It was late, he said. You should lie down, he said. But I was already feeling better. It was that kind of pill. Like a sudden explosion in your head. Like all the stars exploding at once. Then a black hole pulling. Then nothing.
My father was the one who told me there was no soul. One died then rotted, my father said. Like fruit, he said. And don’t expect more than that, he said. My mother always said not to listen to him. Just because he would rot, she said, didn’t mean that I would rot. My father said not to listen to her. Of course I would rot, he said.
But I heard that a man died in an airtight box made of glass. That when the man died, the glass shattered. I heard this from the girl who would drown. It was the only night just me and her. It was a night I meant to be alone. I was lying on the dock, looking at the sky. And then she was lying there too. And what was I seeing this time, she said. The same planets as last time, I said. And did I believe in something more, she said. There was nothing more, I said. So next she was talking about this man. She said his soul burst through the glass. And I could believe a man died in a glass box. I could even believe the glass shattered. But only because the body, after death, still can violently move.
I understood why my father would want to wipe a pout from a face. He looked pathetic, pouting like that. I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes. And he looked up at me with his face still in that awful shape. That dumb sad shape.
There were guys on the boathouse lawn. The girl was there now too. I thought, at first, to join them. I would tell the guys I fell. I would tell them the girl ran off. She’s a bitch, I would say. Such a bitch, I would say to her face. One of her eyes was bigger than the other. Now would be the time to say it. But I was with the guy from the haunted house. And the girl would have to deal with that. And the guys would have to deal with her. Because here we were walking inside.
I told my mother my father’s woman could kill. My mother said she couldn’t kill. Your imagination, my mother said. But it wasn’t my imagination. My mother didn’t see her staring at me, so many nights, from across a room. My mother didn’t see her shape her hands like a gun, raise the gun, and shoot me.
And my mother didn’t see me throw the rock. She didn’t hear the window break. She didn’t hear the woman’s screams from inside the house. Saying she was coming to get me. Saying she was going to kill me. And not to worry, she would find me.
We went upstairs and into a guest room. The guy said I should lie down. On the ceiling was a shadow in the shape of a dog. It looked like a dog I knew. The guy said he could stay for a while. We can talk, he said. Then let’s talk, I said as a joke, like what was this, school. He sat on the edge of the bed. He said we could talk about the weather. Then he said something about the weather. He said he knew the weather was good when he felt nothing. That is to say, he felt neither hot nor cold. I wanted, at first, to laugh at this. But I understood what he meant. I told him that was the kind of weather my mother, before she turned into a bitch, called delicious. It was then the guy touched my arm. And I had what felt like a life-changing thought. But soon I would hear the footsteps. The madman coming to get me. So the guy would leave. And the thought would too. And so my life would go on, for this time, unchanged.
I snapped again in front of my father’s eyes. He looked up at me, and I thought he might actually talk. But he grabbed my fingers and squeezed until I could hear my fingers cracking. I screamed so hard my mother walked in looking like God don’t make me say. She said, What the hell. My father let go. He left the house.
My mind, I’d been told, was above average. My father’s, I’d been told, was superior. But his mind was not superior. It turned out to be an inferior mind. Meaning mine must have been far less than that.
The girl who would drown said they timed how long it took the soul to burst the glass. It took just seconds, she said, but I was done. I mean I wanted to believe her. But to believe her, I needed to be her. And to be her, I needed to be something so far from what I was. So I said, There is no soul. But your hair will still grow in the grave, I said. And your nails will still grow in the grave. And your body will twitch and seem alive. And I wanted to stay there longer with her. A part of me did, I now can admit. But I stood and walked away. And the night, like so many, went somewhere else. And the summer went somewhere else.
There was never a madman beneath my bed. But you know this already. The coast was always clear.
So it wasn’t a madman coming into the room. No madman on top of me on the bed. No madman’s weight pressing into my ribs. The bedsprings pushing into my spine.
So what should we call it. Just madwoman. My father’s woman. Her one hand on my chest. The other raised in a fist. Like some kind of climactic moment. Like she was the bad guy, and I was the girl. Like she was out of her mind, saying into my face, You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead.
And I thought to scream. I knew I should. I knew the speed of sound. How it traveled through rooms. Through pictures on walls. Through wires in walls. Down stairs, through doors. So I knew the guys would hear me. The girl would hear me too. Then she would have a decision to make. Save me from my father’s woman, or be a bitch. I know what I would have done.
But I didn’t make a sound. Because as her fist reached my face, I felt like I was floating. I could look down from the ceiling. I could look down at her hair, her dress. At my body sticking out from hers. My body looking like I’d been dropped. My hair like vines on the pillow.
And I now want to ask the girl who drowned was that the soul. Some scared thing that leaves the body when the body needs it most.
Later, my father’s woman would lift a heavy chair from our lawn. This would be after my mother officially knew. After everything went to shit. She would hold the chair over her head.
Someone would see her do this. Our neighbor out front walking her dog. She would be absolutely terrified. Too terrified to stop my father’s woman from throwing the chair through a window.
Later, my mother would say I was right. She could have killed you, she would say. But she didn’t, I would say. I lived, I would say.
And I only lived because the sky was turning light. And the boathouse help arrived. I could hear them downstairs moving things around. I could hear them coming upstairs. And did she want them to find us like that.
So all that happened was a transfer of power. My father’s woman climbing off the bed. My father’s woman running to the terrace, slamming the terrace door.
All that happened was my rib cage falling back into place. The bedsprings creaking upward.
When a line of light came into the room, I watched it move across the floor. I watched it bend around everything. And I thought God. And thinking God made me think God again.
When there was nothing more to say about the weather, we were quiet. Then he touched my arm down to my hand. His mouth was at my ear. His hand was in my hair. I looked for the shadow in the shape of a dog, but the shadow was now in the shape of something else.
And I thought about the tidal wave. This isn’t a metaphor for bodies. Not for the things that bodies do. I wanted to hear an actual roar. To be in the shadow as it started its break. And us just lying there like that. Us just drowning there.
My mother once said, The weather is delicious, and held out her arms and spun. I must have been about four then. I must have been ecstatic when I was four, not knowing that each thing that touched me would leave its mark.
The story starts with a thing you’ll never remember. Then a wide-open mind. Then words as something other than words. Then everything else. The same story for us all.
The story starts with a body rising. A door slammed hard. Pictures shaking on the walls. The heavy picture above the bed. This heavy picture coming loose, now coming down.
The story ends with brace yourself. It ends brace yourself for pain. But it’s all for nothing. You’ve been saved again. The picture just dangles from a wire. Some dumb waste of a miracle.
Saviors
This is a story about context. About things being out of context.
There’s no closer read to do than that.
Starting with my brother being out of context. A night my brother is on a dare. It’s a nightly thing, this kind of dare.
Get in a stranger’s car, they say.
Or, Get in a stranger’s car, they say, and drive.
Parts of my brother’s brain, these days, don’t connect with other parts of his brain. It has something to do with synapses, something to do with neurons.
Think of it as short-circuiting. Fried wiring.
Think fork in the socket. Blow dryer in the bathtub.
Or just think the pills he takes that are our mother’s pills for something. They’re in a drawer by our mother’s side of the bed. Our mother has said to us both, more than once, Don’t ever touch this drawer.
But my brother is getting into everything that isn’t his. Like other people’s cars, and now our mother’s drawer that our mother specifically said not to touch.
The market is always open. The locals are the ones who shop there. We only shop there when we’re desperate and it’s late. When we’re out of something absolutely essential.
The cars outside the market are often unlocked. Sometimes the cars are running. The locals make it too easy for my brother. He gets into the cars like he owns them. It’s a whole big show, my brother getting into the cars. And his friends just laugh, all fucked up, across the street.
My brother will only drive a car away once. That night, he’ll be missing for hours, and my brother’s friends will all pretend they aren’t worried. They’ll make it into a joke how they often do with things that make them feel.
He’s probably in another state, they’ll say.
He’s probably picked up a girl, they’ll say.
But they’ll drive around looking, all night, for my brother.
The cop will drive around all night.
He’ll tell me to wait at the boathouse.
In case he goes there, he’ll say.
So I’ll wait on the boathouse lawn for my brother who I know will never show up.
On all of the other nights, my brother just stays in the lot. The locals come out of the market, see my brother sitting in their cars. They tap on the windows. Some of them pound their fists. Some of them open the doors and try to reason with my brother.
But most just stand away from the car, too confused by my brother to do a thing.
And it doesn’t matter what they do, besides. My brother won’t get out of their cars. The owners have to call for help. And when the cop comes, my brother’s friends, assholes that they are, run.
This time, the owner is a woman. She’s standing by a wall, holding a bag of groceries. My brother is in the passenger’s seat. The cop is standing by the driver’s side.
Some nights, the cop has to approach the car slowly. He has to make sure my brother isn’t wild. Some nights, he’s too worked up. Some nights, he takes swings at the cop. One night, he broke a windshield.
Some nights, he says things that make no sense. Like the time he spoke a series of numbers. The cop was like, what was that.
Some nights, my brother is passed out cold on the seat. On these nights, the cop has to call for backup, then other cops stand there, radios hissing on their shirts.
On these nights, the cop says I should go home. They can take it from there, he says.
On this night, though, my brother is awake. He’s looking at the cop through the window. He makes his fingers into a gun. He points his gun at the cop. He points it at the cop’s gun.
I hadn’t noticed, before this, the cop’s gun. I’m sure the cop doesn’t use it. Because he isn’t a real cop, but a summer cop. He looks too young to be a real cop. He isn’t a cop who shoots at things.
When the phone rings, nights, our mother ignores it. My brother and his friends have turned, this summer, our mother says, into trouble.
My brother is pushing it, our mother says.
He is treading, she says, on thin ice.
But my brother is just fucked up in the way that most of us are this summer. The difference is he’s learned how not to care. Or he’s learned how not to feel.
Blame our mother’s pills or blame some skill not all of us have. But our mother has reached her limit. She’s at her absolute edge.
So I’m the one who answers the phone each time it rings. I’m the one who helps the cop with my brother sitting in some stranger’s car.
I’ve been spending time, alone, in our father’s study. Our father’s study smells like apple tobacco, which doesn’t smell like apples.
I was once attracted to the picture of the apple on the bag. So I once tried to eat pieces of tobacco when our father was putting it into his pipe.
Our father said, Go ahead.
He said, It won’t hurt you.
The tobacco tasted like dirt.
Our father said, Go ahead.
He said, It won’t kill you.
The woman who owns the car is a local. You can tell this by her car. And by what she’s wearing. And how she’s standing against the wall.
She says, Get him out.
The cop says, Calm down.
She says, I will not calm down.
She hugs her bag and looks at her car, at my brother sitting inside it. But looking at him like that won’t break him down. He’s been known to sit for a very long time. And the cop has been known to stand there, useless, for just as long.
The night before our father left, he grabbed our mother’s wrist as she was walking through a room. To talk, he said, but our mother said she had nothing to say and tried to pull away from our father.
Our father seemed to forget where we were. Not physically. But more in terms of schedule.
He seemed to for
get he was scheduled to leave us the following day. That he was leaving us to be with his woman. That we were in the process of adjusting to his leaving.
• • •
My brother’s friends will find the car my brother took stuck in sand by the water. They’ll find my brother inside the car, his head pressed to the wheel.
At first, it’ll look to his friends like my brother is sleeping. They’ll make some jokes like wake that lazy fucker up. And they’ll go on like this, as they often do, for as long as they can.
The cop knocks on the window. He has one hand on his nightstick.
I’m scared, I admit, of what might happen. Bad things have happened, and the cop, too, is likely scared.
My brother presses his face to the window.
He says, Call my fucking mother.
He says, Call my fucking sister.
We have your sister, the cop says.
He says, This is your sister right here.
The cop shakes his head and looks at me. He laughs and wants me to laugh as well. He wants this to be our private joke. My fucked-up brother not seeing that I’m right here.
But the cop isn’t even a real cop. So I’m not going to have a joke with him.
Instead I tell him to get my brother out of the car. It’s his job, I say, to get my brother out. Or I’ll call our father, I say.
The cop doesn’t want me calling our father. Even the locals know what our father is like.
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