Behold the Void

by Philip Fracassi

  Mary froze mid-swallow and stared. Her eyes darted from left to right, as if having woken up in a strange place and trying to understand her surroundings, to locate the direction leading home. Adolf wondered if she only just now realized it was a mistake to come into a stranger’s room alone.

  “Do you think your mother loves you?” Adolf said, his body rigid, his sweaty palms now flattened against the cushioned seat of the couch.

  Mary didn’t answer at first, but her eyes twisted oddly, as if her thoughts were caught between confusion, fear, and sadness. “I think so,” she said quietly. Her words were flittering butterflies caught in a fast wind.

  Adolf continued to watch her, wondering what would become of her. Without protection, without the love of our mothers, we were helpless, alone. Open to any threat. “If she loved you, she would never leave you,” he said, his high, cracking voice quivered with emotion. “She would be here right now, protecting you. Taking care of you.”

  Mary didn’t reply this time, but looked down and away, her sun-kissed skin prickling unpleasantly in the overly-cool air, her face flushed and pale. “I want to go,” she said, not meeting his stare. Not understanding.

  “Go where, Mary?” Adolf said. “I just said nobody wants you. There’s nobody out there to take care of you. Your mother is just another whore who doesn’t care about her child. Right now, when you need her the most, she’s left you alone.”

  The Beach Boys crooned softly, the drowning melody seeping into the furniture, the slurring chorus an old, deadly warning.

  Mary began to cry, the Coke forgotten in her cold hand. She looked to the patio door, where the last wilting rays of light burned away.

  Adolf stood, took a small step toward her, his looming frame monstrous, his reflection on the shaded patio doors a black, shimmering pool. “There’s nowhere for us to go, Mary, because nobody wants us.” Adolf tried to smile, but realized he couldn’t. There was nothing further he could do to comfort her. “I’m sorry, but it’s just you and me now. We’re on our own.”

  Mary started to stand.

  With alarming quickness Adolf strode across the room, his hands already reaching for Mary’s head. He stuck two large fingers into her mouth with his right hand while he squeezed her head with his left, his thumb pressing down and into the socket that once held a bright blue eye. He felt her biting down on his fingers. Perhaps an attempt to scream. He grunted and something snapped. He opened his mouth as wide as he could.

  As wide as a crocodile.

  * * *

  Steve was giggling while digging through his sandy backpack for the room key.

  “Did you lose it again?” Agnes teased.

  “No, damn it, it’s here somewhere. So much sand!” he said, laughing. “Ah, here it is.”

  Steve jammed the keycard into the door’s entry slot and the mechanism above the handle flickered from red to green. Steve pushed the door open, extended a chivalrous arm. “After you, my lady.”

  Agnes snickered and shuffled into the ice-cold suite. “My lord, Adolf must have the air-conditioning put on arctic mode.”

  Steve followed her inside, closed the door behind him. His eyes darted around the room. He saw one of the chairs had been shoved against a wall. A spilled can of Coke lay on the carpet, a dark stain emanating from its top. He saw all this, then tried to smile, his voice steady. “Where is the old boy?”

  “Oh, he must be by the pool,” Agnes said, the slightest warbling of worry in her voice. “Adolf!” she yelled, as if he were hiding in one of the adjacent bedrooms.

  Steve and Agnes checked the suite, then the pool. They called the front desk and walked through the two restaurants, gift shop and three bars the resort offered.

  No Adolf.

  “Why, of all the things. Where did the boy go?” Agnes asked.

  “I have no idea. Think he might have gone to the ocean? Maybe a walk along the beach?” Steve said, his tone sounding careless to Agnes’s ears. “Maybe he took up surfing,” he said with a bitter little laugh.

  Agnes turned her head quickly to catch the face behind that laugh. She saw the feigned innocence of his eyes and the sneaky upticks of his mouth, as if he were fighting off a smile.

  “You knew this would happen!” she wailed, her voice cracking. “You made us take that late boat. You said Adolf would be okay. But he’s not okay, he’s gone. Why did you make us so late! You did this on purpose!”

  Steve looked at Agnes sharply, his mouth agape. “What are you talking about, Agnes? I didn’t think we should cut our fun short because of Adolf. After all, he’s the one that didn’t want to go snorkeling. How did I know he’d disappear?”

  Agnes shook her head, tears flowing down her sunburnt cheeks. Steve rested a hand on her shoulder reassuringly. She held back a sob and looked at him. His hazel eyes were twinkling, his temperament calming, his arms offering protection.

  She gave an apologetic smile. “Oh, ignore me. I’m just...”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” Steve said, again noticing the disturbed furniture, the spilled soda, the dark spots in the fabric of the chair. “I’m sure he’ll come back soon from his walk or whatever it is he’s off doing. He’s a big boy, Agnes. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  He kissed her broad bare shoulder, licked the salt of her from his lips. “He knows what to do.”

  Mother

  I know Julie loved me once. I know it as fact, like the warmth of sunshine on my skin.

  We met at our university’s freshman mixer, and afterward became lovers. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. Such an innocent, pale face. Her dress, simple and used, was patterned with brown leaves that matched her wide hazel eyes, so large and hopeful you wondered how something so fragile had survived so much of life, traveled this far without being scarred by one of the hard stories the fates wrote so carelessly. In time we discovered each other’s hidden scars, old wounds buried beneath the skin, embedded near the heart.

  Julie’s parents were tragically killed when she was a baby. It was her grandmother—an herbalist of some kind—who raised her.

  My father left when I was a teenager. I became reckless and bitter during those formative years. The only piece of him I kept was a watch he gave me on my tenth birthday. It had a scratched glass face and a worn leather strap that left a two-inch gap of air around my thin wrist, even when tightened to the last bolt hole. I wore it every day until the day he left.

  My mother raised me strict, home-schooled me during my elementary years, using antiquarian tomes as textbooks. When I turned fourteen, she reluctantly sent me to the public high school. Left too long without peers, I struggled in the school system, a misfit. Meanwhile my body sang the deep, hitching song of puberty, an anti-cancer changing me from the inside out. I hated her for making me different, and as my cells rearranged that hatred became a deep part of me, growing along with my bones, and just as permanent.

  Mother wasn’t a doting person. Her favorite recitation was along the lines of how I was “just like my father.” She had different versions of the same phrase, some loud and brash, some whispered and private, but always meant as an insult, and always taken as such. When I finally left home, I was sure to throw the line back at her before she could open her twitching lips. I gave her the watch with the worn leather strap as a token of my thanks.

  Yet somehow Julie and I persevered through our difficult childhoods, making it to that moment, that night, huddled in the corner of the university cafeteria, perched on the edges of two plastic folding chairs like chittering parakeets, talking for hours while staring into each other’s eyes, as if the secrets of the universe lay within.

  Three years later I proposed, planning it around an annual carnival that came into town at the end of each school term. Julie loved carnivals, loved the escape into daring and magic they offered. Her favorite ride was the Merry-Go-Round, twirling in soft, lazy circles with a concordance of decorative beasts, their hollow bodies rammed through by tw
isting unicorn shafts into the dimpled steel floors, the baroque mirrored ceilings. We sat in a carriage, staring at the plastic ass of a particularly bright blue steed while sitting on the coarse wool of a Navajo blanket her granny had knitted. When I showed her the ring, she laughed and cried, and we said all the usual things. I was happy, and still remember the blur of the carnival surrounding us, the hovering black sky dotted with silent stars creating a perfect backdrop to the swirling colors and sounds.

  When the ride stopped, she ran to tell the first person she saw: the Merry-Go-Round operator. He was a frail old carnie in a frayed ball cap, his long gray hair resting in a twice-bound loose ponytail forgotten down the middle of his back. He smiled and hugged her. Frankly, it was unsettling for me, standing there watching the hysterics. It was the first time doubt crept into my mind about the decision. But Julie didn’t notice my trepidation, and when the old man invited her for a spin on the makeshift dance floor the carnival had laid out, complete with bordering haystacks and a four-piece hick band playing forgotten cowboy songs, she barely spared me a glance before agreeing.

  So she danced with the old man, a surrogate father perhaps, while I watched. That gold-toothed old timer even smiled and winked at me once, and I hated her for it. Standing there like an idiot, I gave the occasional wave and smile. After a few moments, however, I became far more interested in the stars. I was wondering if it would burn your fingers to touch them.

  And so I stood on aching feet and stared into the infinite, holding the homespun blanket and an empty ring box while smiling Julie danced in circles with the damnable Merry-Go-Round man.

  We married the day after graduation, exchanging vows in the campus church and holding the reception in the shadowy back room of a local pitcher-and-pizza place called The Piper, the offered buffet being the house special stacked in warm boxes atop a tattered pool table. All of our friends attended. It is a day I will never forget, because it was the happiest we ever were. The happiest we would ever be.

  * * *

  After the wedding we moved to my hometown in West Virginia, a small city near Charleston. In hindsight, this was a mistake. I knew she missed her grandmother, and moving to the South with me was a sacrifice. But the reality was I had a job waiting—a teaching position at a community college—and, being newlyweds, a job meant security. It would cover the costs of a small apartment while Julie finalized her own career path, already an uphill climb. Julie had received her degree in history, but it was the art world that held her captive and would not let go, oblivious to the pain it would eventually cause.

  Believing herself a painter, but also relatively pragmatic, Julie hoped to find work at a gallery, possibly as a curator, where she could learn the business aspects of the trade while still furthering her own talents. Her skills were imperfect, but it was an idea she treasured, a world she believed in, and she hoped to improve with time and study. To be truthful, I never fully understood her desire. It seemed naïve. Whimsical. Daydreams are nice when you are a bored child, but for a married adult it is an impractical pursuit.

  Our happiness wilted as those first years of marriage fell away like petals off a dying rose. Much of our conjugal tension had to do with my upward career trajectory, compared (as it inevitably had to be) to Julie’s own stagnant professional life. Cocktail parties became sour affairs, reunions where everyone compared the thickness of their wallets and readied profiles of their success. Ours was slim on both counts, filled solely with my own contributions. Julie had yet to find her niche, or even a temporary job to fill the time. When there were no galleries left to leave resumes with, she looked for work as a teacher, then as a volunteer. Anything to keep her in the field of arts she adored. As time passed, however, even she realized those wishes were conceived in the bright dreams of daytime after all, dreams that became bitter pills she swallowed more and more of every day, poisoning her while steadily increasing the rancor between us.

  I remember one evening vividly.

  I had come home late from a long day of conferences and wanted nothing but a hot meal and a warm brandy. I entered our apartment and was surprised at the silence. The silence and the dark. I called out for Julie, thinking she must have gone out (with whom I have no idea). Her thin voice came from so nearby that I jumped. Following her voice, I found her murky outline lying prone and silent on our stiff rattan couch, sunken in the shadows like a thing in wait for prey.

  “What are you doing?” I said, flipping on the light. Her eyes squinted momentarily, her pupils adjusting, stung by the stark contrast. Despite the light, she remained as motionless as a corpse.

  “I’m lying down, Howard,” she muttered. “Why?”

  “Because it’s a bit odd,” I said, adding a hint of anger to hide a cold thread of discomfort. “How long have you been lying there? You frightened me.”

  She looked at me. A subtle tilting of her oval head, so round and frail beneath her brown hair. I shuddered at that empty glance. It was a dead thing.

  I turned my back to her and closed the door, chiding myself for creating tension. I took a breath, tried on a docile smile, and went to her. I kneeled down, put my hands on her head, kissed her dry, still lips.

  “What is it, Jules?” I said, using my most affectionate tone. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, looking past me to the ceiling. Then her eyes slid to mine, dilated, as if just now aware of my presence. She sat up quickly, waking from the trance, ran a hand through her hair, sticking the end of one strand into her mouth, something she used to do when studying. A tick I used to love. “I was just realizing I’ve made some poor decisions, and now I’m afraid it’s too late. Too late to repair the damage.”

  I was stunned. Stunned and—to be frank—annoyed as hell. A buzzing filled my head. I drew away from her.

  “What decisions are those, Jules?” I asked, reddening. “To move here? To marry me?”

  “Please, Howard, you’re overreacting,” she said dismissively. “I was just reflecting.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” I kept up, still tacky with venom, “and while you’ve been reflecting I’ve been working. Working to keep this apartment, working to put food on the table—or in this case, the freezer, as I doubt you’ve thought to prepare a thing for my dinner.”

  And then (and this detail I’ll never forget, even in these last moments of my life) she smiled at me. It was an ugly thing, filled with mockery and scorn, something she dragged from a dark closet of her mind I had never seen open before. Had never known existed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, still wearing that dreadful look. Then she stood and went to the kitchen.

  I went to the bathroom and when I returned she handed me a brandy, her horrible mask now put away, returned to the web-strewn cellar of her mind she had released it from.

  * * *

  I began spending long hours at the college, going to events and intellectual gatherings with students and peers. I had little interest in spending time at home with Julie, who was becoming more reclusive and sluggishly despondent.

  Truth be told, she was a bore. It was one thing to try and fail, but to just give up, to allow her lost dreams to devour her insides, leaving only the reflection of hollow lethargy in her once-sparkling hazel eyes, was more than I could bear. It was depressing for both of us, and I began to avoid her. Sad—maybe cruel—but the truth.

  And yet I still held hope for our institution. I made every effort to hold up my end of the bargain as it pertained to our vows, unrelenting in my desire to mend what had torn between us. We needed a change.

  When my career made the funds viable, I purchased a proper home—a place nestled deep in the country. It was nothing fancy, a two-story colonial with faded yellow siding and peeling bone-white trim. The house was pressed up against a dense patch of yellow poplars that chased an army of long grey-barked oaks up a rising hill, their acorn droppings littering a worn wooden deck that spawned off the French doors of the upstairs master bedroom. In the
mornings I would stand at the moist, pockmarked railing and look out upon the acres of thick, tangled growth, land we owned but would never use. There was a spindly blue creek that trickled deep within the throat of the forest, an afterthought to the wild swath of vegetation, a varicose vein in Mother Nature’s swollen green thigh, creeping its way beneath the coarse hairy thatch of leafy trees. But the air itself was fresh and cool, and overall the surroundings were peaceful. I prayed the serenity would lift Julie’s spirits.

  I went so far as to donate one of the rooms to be utilized as a painting studio. It was the attic, true, but it had been remodeled. The exposed beams now covered in birch sheeting, the porous wooden floors sanded down and glazed smooth. There was a small window for light and an inspiring forest view. It had all the privacy a young artist could hope for while developing their ideas of fancy.

  When she returned from a short trip to visit her grandmother, I surprised her with the remodel. “Oh, Howard!” she exclaimed. “It’s lovely, it really is.”

  She looked at me like the Julie of old, with love and a sparkle of affection in her eyes. I was proud to have pleased her, and a gush of satisfaction released inside me, punching through a wall that had been dammed for many years. She kissed me on the cheek and asked if she could drive to town and buy new supplies. I withdrew my billfold and happily gave her what she needed.

  For many nights thereafter I’d come home and hear Julie up in the studio, scurrying around like a beastly-sized rodent. I was so pleased that I didn’t even bother her to make my dinner.

  There were other nights, however, when I’d come home and Julie would be sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, the room glowing numbly with the pale, fading sunlight stealing in through the curtained windows.

  She would be waiting for me. Sitting there like a scolded child, pots unused on the stove behind her, the house untidy. I’d try to talk to her. To reason with her. She would just cry, spewing nonsense about wanting a job, that she needed to work outside the house, that it stifled her, as if I were a jailer arriving with the key to a damp prison cell.