Before My Eyes

by Caroline Bock

  Quick! What’s the body’s largest organ? Skin. And mine will remain safe and water-free. Thoughts ricochet from one side of my brain to the other. My eyes ache. My forearms are bruised from the attack on Jackson, the white turning a purple-black of ugliness.

  When I return to my bedroom, I double-check that the door is locked behind me. I log on and read the poetry from Claire again. Her words are even more indecipherable than before. All words are. They leap on the screen. Grammar, which should control the sentences, is not present.

  I will save all her poems for later. Force order on them. Add commas and periods. Show her what matters in this world is a sense of right and wrong, especially in a sentence.

  I will check my other messages. Maybe they are better. Among the promotions for video games, for cheap prescription drugs, among the old headlines from various news sources I subscribe to and never read, the updates from environmental groups who are always asking for donations or for petitions to be signed, the reminders about overdue library books, my local library now hunting me down via e-mails, threatening fines—among all these messages, not one from the state senator.

  There is an automatic response from the Environmental Protection Agency. This starts with, “Thank you for your concern.” This I don’t need to read. I understand that my so-called “concerns” are being ignored, passed on, and flipped to a nameless bureaucrat. This is my cause, not my concern. I could write my congressman or United States senator or even the president, but this elected representative, Glenn Cooper, said he was here to listen and provide answers to me.

  I want results, but first I am hot. I pull off my sweatshirt. My stomach hangs over my sweatpants; the sweatpants pinch me at the waist. Everything is too tight against the largest organ of my body.

  I must refocus. I must begin the screenplay.

  The white screen glares at me, asking for a title. The screen undulates. Why must a title come first? But the program is asking for a title and there are rules to follow. Time slows. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Thirty of white, white screen.

  I need a cigarette. Coffee. Claire. I make the white small and then blow it up to 500 percent, but no words appear, only more white. I pound the keyboard and no words appear, only chaos and gibberish.

  Last fall, Glenn Cooper came and spoke to my political science class at the community college and said that I would be heard. He said to write him. He gave us his e-mail and his snail mail address. This is the class where the professor mumbled things, like that the personal is political. All politics is local. Live free or die. He was another who didn’t teach; he spoke in sayings culled from a hundred years of teaching the same course. I asked Glenn Cooper then, directly, man to man, about water bottles in our oceans, and he said, “Very good question.” Nevertheless, he begged off a specific answer, said that was a federal as much as a state concern. He had an American flag pinned to the lapel of his dark blue jacket.

  I type, hunting down the correct letters from my carefully routed Brent account. The untitled screenplay must wait.

  Dear Senator Cooper:

  I am writing you with my latest concern: this is a new, global concern about the lack of basic grammar education in our schools. Sentences, like citizens, need rules or chaos ensues.

  RESPOND. IT’S TIME.

  Brent

  My writing will not be rejected again. The community college con artist, Professor Rosen, the so-called English professor, was over six-foot-six. His hair, in a thin ponytail, snaked down his back. He rejected me. He was not even a professor, but he liked the title and made us call him that. He was only a graduate student at the local university, only a few years older than me. He rejected my analytical essay on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and then rejected my persuasive essay on the effects of plastic debris in the ocean waters just as he had rejected my personal essay entitled “This Is Just to Say.” He asked that I consult the school’s “wellness center.” I explained that I was “well,” that our disagreement was one of ideas. He would not discuss this with me. My paper was grammatically correct, wasn’t it? He was not considering my grammar; it was my ideas—they were, to quote him, “jumbled and disturbed.” I railed against this insult. Threw a chair at this so-called professor. Called him a fake and a con artist to his face. Screamed that he couldn’t even write an essay with proper noun and verb agreements. Backed him up against the wall. Yes, I was thrown out of his borrowed adjunct office by a security guard, and soon after expelled from community college. Yes, my parents had to intervene so none of it would be on any permanent record.

  I do not care about permanent records.

  My mother texts me: “Gym. Home soon.” My father: “Plane. To L.A. Have fun.”

  I am starving. Shut down all computer programs. All white becomes black.

  No more writings. We have prepared for this time, the voice soothes.

  “When?” I can smell the Glock, so sweet and so cold, fresh like a plum.

  Max

  Saturday, 8:30 P.M.

  As soon as I’m home, my mother is following me down the hall asking about my party. “How many kids do you think are coming? I don’t know how much food or drinks to have. I just want to order pizzas, Max. How many?”

  At my bedroom door, I finally say, “I’ll take care of it, Mom.”

  “You’re not treating this party like it’s important, Max.”

  “The last time a birthday party was important to me I was seven, maybe eight.”

  “Max, what is going on with you?”

  “I don’t care about this party.”

  “We love parties in this family.”

  I open my bedroom door. My mattress is stripped down. My desk and dresser drawers are flung open. The insides of my closets are exposed and rummaged through. Shoes that I never wear are scattered about like someone’s been trying them on. King barks and scrunches out from under the bed. I stroke his head.

  “How can that be? It’s your birthday,” she responds. “You always have a party.”

  “I never wanted a party, not this year.” I’m not angry. Being angry is too exhausting. “I don’t care if it’s my birthday. And what’s happened to my room?”

  “Your father. He thinks you might be doing drugs.”

  “Only him?”

  “He tore apart your room, not me.”

  “Did he find anything?”

  “No.”

  I drop down onto my bare mattress. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Is there anything to find?”

  “I thought we were talking about the birthday party?”

  She shimmies next to me in her lemon yellow suit. She even smells fresh and lemony. “We always have a birthday party. Remember when you turned six? Two dozen kids bowling? Or when you turned seven? Laser tag. Three dozen kids.”

  All I want to do is stretch out on the bed with King and not think until school starts.

  “Wednesday school starts,” she says with that trick of reading my mind. “Excited?”

  I want to turn off my brain. King nuzzles me with his wet nose. He’s hungry, and he knows I know it. If I think about it, I’m hungry, too. I should let her make me dinner.

  So, of course, she says, “I know it’s late, but do you want me to make you some dinner?”

  I shrug. “I have to feed King.” But I don’t move, and neither does she.

  “Your father does want to talk to you when he gets home.”

  I close my eyes.

  “You okay, Max?” she asks, interrupting my thoughts. I blink at her. I don’t think I’ve been alone with her all summer. “You probably need something healthy in your stomach after the Snack Shack all day. And today was your last day! I bet you’re not going to miss it.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I say, not wanting to talk about the Snack Shack ever again.

  “Speaking at a VFW meeting.”

  I glance over at her. He loves speaking to fellow veterans. I shift, call for King. I feel awkward having her on my mattress. I’m so muc
h taller than her these days. I look more like my father, though I have her dimples. On her, I’ve got to admit, they look good, not like mistakes, potholes in each side of my cheek. The dimples make her look young and friendly.

  I drop my face into the space between King’s collar and head. His stomach growls.

  “When are we going to be able to talk about you, Max? You’ve got your whole future happening now. College applications. Senior year.” This sounds like a campaign speech, though I don’t know what she’s running for. “Your father and I are worried.”

  I shrug. I have the pills from Barkley in my backpack. They didn’t find anything.

  She presses her eyes closed. “Max, you know this would be a very bad time for any negative press.”

  “So, what does that have to do with me?”

  “Just look me in the eyes and tell me again that you are not using drugs.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Your eyes are closed now.”

  She opens her eyes as if they ache to look at me. And she doesn’t look at me. “I have a splitting headache. I just took something for it, but it hasn’t kicked in yet. You think you have all the answers, Max. But you don’t. You should know that your father is under a lot of pressure this election.”

  “I don’t have any answers.”

  “Don’t you? You should see some of the e-mails your father is receiving.”

  “Why?”

  “He won’t let me read them all. But people are crazy in the world. Nuts. They think they have all the answers. And on top of it all, your father’s opponent wants a debate, and you know your father is not the greatest debater. In high school, he was on the football team. I was on the debate team. Have you thought of what you want to do, Max?”

  “When?”

  “For college and after. Your future. You need to start thinking about it. The future is going to be here before you know it.”

  “You should be the one running for office, Mom.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about that.”

  King whimpers. I sigh. I don’t want to think about anything. I hope she doesn’t ask me if I have plans for the night.

  “I have to feed him,” I say. “And walk him.”

  “You love this dog, don’t you?”

  King rests against my leg. He wags his tail.

  “I should have fed him. I’m sorry, Max.”

  “I’ll feed him and walk him.”

  But neither of us moves.

  Barkley

  Saturday, 9:00 P.M.

  I stir, glance at the clock next to my bed—and fall back to sleep. At least it is a kind of sleep. I find myself dreaming that I have been transformed into a gigantic insect.

  In the dream my sight is poor, even worse than when I am on the computer for hours at a time. All is gray and in shadows. I click my antennae together. The garbage overflows under the desk: candy wrappers, apple cores, recyclable coffee cups, the crusts from a tuna sandwich, the tuna salad green with mold. I find it all enticing.

  I strain, uncomfortably large. A hard, armor-like cover tightens across my abdomen. My legs and arms no longer exist. Three appendages on each side have replaced them. Antennae, compound eyes, wings on my back—yes, I am a bug. Vermin. I twitch. Through the walls, I smell my mother cooking. She’s burning what she’s cooking.

  I am hungry, very hungry. I wave my legs, all six of them, in the air, trying to flip myself over, to get off this bed, to reach the door and call for her. My chest tightens. I sway from side to side to throw myself off the bed. Doesn’t work. My stomach churns acids. I have to get up. I heave against the wall, rocking back and forth, using all my strength, which is considerable for an insect. I push with my antennae against the wall and topple out of bed, landing, as if by some miracle of perseverance, upright.

  I hear another’s voice, a voice outside the dream, outside my head. “Barkley, I’m home. I did another spin class. I amaze myself. Two spins in one day. Maybe you should think of exercising more? Have you thought of that? Would you like us to buy you your own treadmill or elliptical? I’ve noticed that you’ve been putting on weight. All the junk food at the Snack Shack.” She sighs. “Barkley, can I come in? Let’s talk face-to-face. I saw you took a shower. You have to know, Barkley, that no girl likes to pick up her guy’s wet towels. But I’m glad you did what you promised.”

  In my dream state, I scurry toward the door, or at least toward where I think the door is, sensing it by smell more than sight. And then I remember, of course, I locked the door. How will I open it now? Why didn’t I consider that I could have woken up as a bug when I locked it?

  “Everything okay in there?”

  I raise my antennae. Backing up, calling out to her, I am shocked to hear only a series of peeps and snaps and clicks that are far from my own voice. I stumble back onto the piles of papers and dirty clothes.

  “How about I make you something to eat, Barkley?” she asks. The sound of her voice is unpleasantly high. “What exactly is going on in there? Barkley?”

  I want to scream. I am in the dream, buried in the dream. Scurry to the door—and up the door. I can stick to the walls. Climbing to the top of the wall and onto the ceiling and hanging upside down, I am more agile as a bug than I was as a boy. There is a certain joy in being a bug. I am free to climb the walls and across the ceiling and look down on my bed and drop into the covers.

  Her fingernails tap against the door. “Are you ignoring me, Barkley? I can’t take this anymore. Please open the door.”

  I scuttle up the wall by my bed and over to the window and feel uncomfortable moisture on my underbelly.

  “I can’t understand what you’re saying, Barkley. Are you playing video games in there? I’m calling your father if you don’t answer me.”

  I want to tell her that I am trying to get out, not necessarily to go to her, but to be free of this room and find some food. I peer out the window at the sky. It is supposed to be a scorching ninety-five-plus-degree weekend. But maybe these clouds and the smell of dying leaves and grasses will not burn off. Maybe everybody will lose Labor Day weekend to rain. Up until this summer, I loved the rain. I wonder if that love will return now that I am a bug.

  When it rained this summer, and the water crashed against the wet sand, empty and endless, and everyone at the Snack Shack begged to be let go early, Phil, the so-called manager, showed up and ordered everyone around. He always had tasks to assign—inventory or cleaning the grill or ice cream machine, tasks that were supposed to be done on a daily basis, but except for me counting the water bottles, rarely completed. Phil never showed up unless it rained. Spent the whole summer on his boat, drinking beer. I should have been the manager, not him. I should have been in charge. Instead I was demeaned, again, forced to work for someone like Phil.

  I flatten myself against the pane, wanting the outside world, for the first time in a long time, more than this room. In less than a moment, I slide off the glass—the world outside falling away. I scramble up on my legs, all six of them.

  “Barkley, I’m going to call the fire department. I’m going to have them break down this door if you don’t open it. Barkley, please.”

  I fall. A free fall.

  I land hard on the floor beside my bed. Two ordinary arms and legs drop down, and an unwashed sour smell, my own man smell, reaches my nose, a flat wide nose in the center of my face. My skin is raw, bruised. I scratched deeply along my arms and stomach. I realize that I was scratching myself. That I wasn’t a bug at all. I was scraping myself in my sleep and pulling off my clothes. My uncut nails are brown with dirt or blood.

  How I wish I were a bug.

  “Please, Barkley,” the voice on the other side of the door begs. “Why are you doing this to me? Wait until your father returns from his trip—”

  In the past months, I have often thought about this peculiar, though safe, feeling of having my own and another voice in my head. The voice is the nucleus; my atoms re
volve around it. I wait for the voice to tell me what to do, while I itch my arms from shoulders down to wrists, tearing the dead skin off, shedding the outer layer, the dead atoms.

  Careful, the voice finally says.

  To survive, one must adapt and change. I can make this change happen, in myself, and in the world. I have been chosen to do this. I am being given guidance. I don’t have to think too much about where the voice originated, do I? Surely, it is a good place.

  “How about some eggs?” she asks. “You should be hungry after working all day. Sixty minutes of spin, and I’m starving, but I don’t want to eat. I’ll make them for you. Barkley, please, I don’t know what to say to you anymore. Help me out.”

  “What kind of eggs?” I ask, staring at the ceiling, yearning for the other voice.

  “Egg whites, scrambled,” she answers. “They’re healthier for you.”

  “I hate egg whites.” I force this sentence out of my mouth. It is hard to talk at all.

  “Exactly, you hate egg whites. I’ll make you regular eggs, any way you like them. Just open the door. Please, Barkley. What’s going on in there?” She sounds desperate for some reason. She must be, if she is offering to cook. We haven’t eaten a meal together in months. Spring and summer are her “upfront” season, when selling her television advertising comes first—selling and exercise. I understand. But I would like eggs. My stomach churns, empty, yearning, groaning. I scrunch along the floor instead of standing. It takes both hands, awkward as they are now, to unlock the door, spin the doorknob, but I want to help her. I want to open the door.

  On the other side, she is in black running shorts and a black, skintight tank top. Her hair is gathered back in a ponytail. She is shaking, crossing her arms across her chest, as if something is wrong.

  “Stand up, Barkley.”

  With an effort, I do as she asks.

  She backs up against the wall outside my bedroom.