The Nobody People

by Proehl, Bob

“Fuck yes, we saw her,” Fahima says.

  “Emmeline isn’t a blip,” Bishop says. “She’s more like a flare. Your daughter is very powerful, Avi. Or she will be.”

  Avi looks at the steel door that contains Owen Curry, a broken boy who disappeared twenty-one people out of the world with half a thought. He thinks of all the words he would use to describe Emmeline and how incompatible each is with the word powerful.

  My little Emmeline, he thinks. What will she become? It’s a thought any parent might have about any child, but now, with nothing left as impossible, its implications are bigger than Avi can fathom.

  When Emmeline was a baby and Avi had her with him at the park or the food co-op, people remarked on how she never cried. Avi assured them that when he got her home, all hell broke loose. It was a thing to say to other parents that said yes, I am in the parenting trenches like you, fighting to survive. But it wasn’t true. Even at home she was preternaturally calm.

  She used to follow Avi from room to room. She climbed the big red chair in the attic as he read through editor’s notes. She played on the kitchen floor while he made dinner. One day, when she was three, Avi put water on to boil and turned away from the stove to wash dishes. Emmeline snuck behind him and pulled the pot of boiling water off the stovetop, spilling it down her arm. Avi ran around the kitchen like a cartoon character with his ass on fire. Emmeline sat in a puff of steam as if she were floating on a cloud. Avi snatched her up off the floor and plunged her arm into the cold water in the sink, casting the scalded flesh of her forearm into the whorls and dunes it’s been set in since. Emmeline looked at the scarred arm quizzically, observant.

  Days later, when Kay could register anything other than fury at Avi for letting it happen, she worried that Emmeline might be one of those kids who didn’t feel pain, who had to be trained to understand the dangers of heat and sharp edges in the abstract. Avi countered with a list of Emmeline’s childhood injuries and their appropriate squeals and crying jags. While they argued, Emmeline sat on the couch, gazing through the cling wrap the doctors had put over the burn at the new alien landscape of her skin.

  Avi often thinks about Emmeline, sitting with the steam dissipating around her. He imagines the control and the strength it took to remain calm. It was the kind of thing he’d read about in mystics and fakirs. People whose faith let them stick their hands into fire, walk across coals. And there it was, possessed by a three-year-old child. Avi wonders what his daughter is.

  Kay calls to say she’ll be late. She’s calling to remind him to pick up Emmeline, but she doesn’t say it out loud. Emmeline is quiet in the car, staring out the window at the bare trees that line the streets of Rogers Park. She mumbles something about homework and goes straight to her room. Avi stands in the foyer with his jacket in his hand.

  The minute he goes upstairs, something will end. He thinks about his life in terms of turning points. Rubicons. Marrying Kay. Emmeline’s birth. The burn. Mosul. They took on their importance afterward. Even with marriage and Emmeline’s birth, things he knew were coming, he hadn’t conceptualized their impact on his life. He hadn’t understood the extent to which his old life would become a country to which he could no longer return. This is bigger. The whole world pivots on a point. The point happens to be his daughter.

  He stands outside Emmeline’s door. There’s no sound from inside. He knocks gently, and Emmeline tells him to come in. Emmeline’s walls are bare, and her room is cluttered without being messy. There are books in piles and drawings everywhere. A blue car, the circular heads of two girls sticking out of the windows. One is obviously Emmeline from the spiraling curls. A city block with a towering black building at the center. Emmeline is lying on the floor, drawing concentric circles. She’s started with a dot, and now they tangent the edges of the page. She has changed into a tee shirt, which she wears only when she’s gotten to her room at the end of the day with no intention of leaving. She never comes downstairs in short sleeves.

  “How was your day, Daddy?”

  “It was a tough day,” he says. “Strange.”

  “Oh,” she says. She sits up and crosses her legs underneath her. She looks down at her hands. With her index finger, she traces a path through the maze of her scar. It winds and loops from her elbow to her wrist.

  “Leener,” Avi says. “Are you—” He can’t locate the words. If he says them aloud, he’ll make them true. Emmeline looks at him, then back down at her arm.

  “Today’s the day you find out,” she says. Her voice trembles.

  “Find out what, honey?”

  “I’m like the people you met today,” Emmeline says. “I can do things.”

  Avi is scared. This is the dark room full of snakes. This is the bridge in the movie, made of ropes with slats missing, suspended over a river of crocodiles. He was less afraid as the IED went off, the moment he knew what was happening and knew he couldn’t stop it. He felt less afraid stepping across the threshold of the door in the attic into what should have been open air.

  Avi looks at his daughter. When she was a toddler, he understood that she would always be small to him. He would see the baby she’d been even when she was an adult. Her past would echo off her present.

  Resonate, he thinks. The word becomes capitalized, scared out of its former meaning.

  “What can you do, Leener?”

  No answer will make it all right. No strange ability his daughter can possess that can be ignored and forgotten. Avi braces himself for what comes next.

  “I don’t know yet,” Emmeline says. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” She tosses herself at him, crashes like a wave. She’s crying, little hitched breaths. “Do you still—am I still yours?”

  Avi’s arms come up from his sides slowly, in shock. He wraps them around Emmeline. Downstairs, the front door bangs against the wall. “Hey, guys, I’m home,” Kay calls. Emmeline inhales deeply, a snuffling sound against Avi’s shirt. She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  “Hey, Momma,” she calls, leaving Avi alone in the bedroom. Her question hangs in the air. For the rest of his life, Avi will regret not grabbing his daughter immediately and saying Yes, Emmeline, yes, always.

  * * *

  —

  Kay holds Emmeline aloft, swishing the girl back and forth like a wiper blade. She sets her down and smooths the short sleeves down over Emmeline’s shoulders, her hands stopping at Emmeline’s elbows.

  “You must be cold,” Kay says, pushing the door shut with her foot. A wedge of snow has blown in with her, but it’s not the cold she’s remarking on. After the accident, Emmeline wanted to keep her scars covered all the time. Avi argued that they should discourage this, but Kay shot him down. “Let the girl feel normal,” she said. Avi wonders when the last time Kay saw Emmeline’s arms bared was.

  A white box sits by the door. Avi recognizes it as a comic book long box, the kind he used to keep in his closet at college.

  “I have a present for your dad,” Kay tells Emmeline. “You want to show it to him?” She points to the box.

  Emmeline strains to pick up the long box, then carries it in front of her to the base of the stairs, and Avi sits on the bottom stair to inspect it. Kay walks behind Emmeline, hands resting light on her shoulders. She’s going to be tall. She’ll get her height from him, although she’s gotten everything else from Kay. Except those blue eyes. Her inexplicable eyes.

  “I had something weird today,” Kay says, taking off her coat. “Leenie, hon, open the box.”

  Emmeline takes the lid off the long box. “It’s comics,” she says.

  “Pass one to Daddy,” Kay says.

  “Which one?” Emmeline asks.

  “You pick,” Kay says.

  Emmeline flips through a couple, pulling some up out of the box to look at the covers. She settles on one and carries it over to Avi, pinched between two fingers by the corner like a dirt
y Kleenex.

  It’s bagged and boarded, the way Avi used to keep his comics despite Kay’s cracks about it. Avi was better at taking care of things than he was at taking care of himself. He inspects the cover. “The trial of the Perfectional,” he says. “This issue’s a classic, Leener.”

  Emmeline looks at him, questioning. He knows what the look is asking, and he nods. What he needs to say to Kay, what they need to share with her, is too big to put into words. With this look and this nod, they seal it away. He hands the comic back to Emmeline, and she carefully puts it back in the box.

  “You would not believe my day,” Kay says, heading for the kitchen. Emmeline trots behind her, giving Avi one last look over her shoulder to confirm their pact.

  “You went binge buying at Alleycat?” he says, forcing a smile. She grabs a bottle of white wine from the fridge and deftly uncorks it. They used to hit up the comic book store on North Clark together once they’d cautiously told each other that they were fans, a revelation no less intimidating than the second time they’d seen each other naked. The first time, they jumped into bed. The second time was a series of nervous uncoverings. Finding out about their mutual love of comics was the same. Avi was more shy about his fandom than about his body and never would have brought it up if Kay hadn’t found the long boxes in his closet after she’d moved in. He came back from an assignment to stacks of comics laid out around the living room as if she’d found a stash of pornography or busted a drug ring. “You were a Timely Zombie?” she asked him. He nodded sheepishly. “More of a National fan,” she said. “When I was a kid.” She was, if anything, a bigger fan than he was, picking up new issues on Wednesday and stowing them at her office. On their first Wednesday “date” to Alleycat Comics, all the clerks knew her name. They gave Avi awkward nods even after years as a regular.

  “Those are from a new client,” Kay says, pouring him a glass. “This guy, I am not joking, hired me to read comic books.” Emmeline sits at the kitchen table, paging through an OuterGirl comic older than she is. Avi leans heavily on the counter, and Kay comes up behind, slipping her hands around his belly. His body tenses when she touches it. “This guy comes in, first thing this morning, with this box of comics. He says he’s interested in the legal issues around superpowers.”

  Wine catches in Avi’s throat. “That’s weird,” he says. “What does that have to do with immigration?”

  “He said he was a friend of one of the partners,” Kay says. “Mr. Salazar told him I would be perfect for this project he’s fiddling with.”

  “What’s the project?” Avi asks, too casual.

  “Unclear,” Kay says. “But he put me on retainer to read a bunch of comics and just think about them.”

  “He paid you?”

  Kay produces a check from her back pocket, trifolded and snow-damp. She presents it to Avi.

  He should note the amount first. There’s that sound the van makes when he takes a hard left, and the other day when he finally took the bins of summer clothes down to the basement, he was sure he saw a leak under the hot water tank. They could use some extra cash. But what he sees first is the signature line. Kevin Bishop.

  He holds the check, one more impossible thing thrown into his day. Once the borders fall, everything can come through. Kay, not noticing how he’s staring at it, takes the check and tucks it back in her pocket.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asks, looking around at the bare counters, the empty table.

  “I got caught up with some work,” Avi says.

  “We’ll order in,” Kay says, scrolling through her phone. “Which one’s the good Indian place? Dinner is on Mr. Bishop.”

  They spread out a buffet on the living room carpet and pass comics around. Avi opens another bottle. He tells Emmeline about the Ferret, the R-Squad, and the Freak Phalanx. He’s evangelical, although he’s never tried to rope Emmeline into his habit. Music, yes. He’s played records for her since she was an infant. “This is the Beatles,” he’d say. “This is Aretha Franklin.” As if the baby were filing these things away. He’d take her up to his office and play records for hours, giving Kay a chance to sleep. She preferred to sing to Emmeline, whispering songs into her ear. When Emmeline started making sweet atonal mumbles, it was the songs Avi played that she regurgitated. “Under My Thumb” rather than “Row Your Boat,” “Trouble Man” instead of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

  When Avi pauses to breathe or eat, Kay tells Emmeline the stories as if they were ancient myths or Just So stories. How the Astounding Family got their powers. How Red Emma swore revenge. How the Visigoth ended up in space and how he fought his way back to earth to discover centuries had passed.

  “What happened to all his friends?” Emmeline asks.

  Avi side-eyes Kay. They forget how little Emmeline is. They forget to shield her from sadness because she’s so able to take it in stride.

  “He makes new friends,” Kay says. Emmeline pretends to be interested, but it’s a show she puts on for them. By the time the food is eaten, it’s close enough to her bedtime that Kay doesn’t bat an eye when she asks to go to bed. Avi wonders if she’s tired or needs to get away.

  “Sure thing, Leener,” he says. “Who do you want to tuck you in?”

  “Momma,” she says. Avi pretends to be hurt to cover up his surprise. He expected that Emmeline would take this chance to give them a moment to debrief, to finish the conversation they’d been having when Kay got home. Kay, a little drunk, holds her fists up like a victorious prize-fighter. She does a victory dance and hoists Emmeline onto her shoulders, teetering. As they start up the stairs, Avi struggles to get up off the floor, scooting backward so he can use a chair for support. He catches Kay looking back at him, wanting to help, knowing it’s not what he wants from her.

  Avi puts the comics away. He moves all the superheroes from Timely Comics to the front of the box. These are the characters who are, in their grand ridiculous way, human. They can fly but also have to pay rent. They can shake the earth under them but can’t hold together a relationship. Kay prefers National Comics. Icons and archetypes. Gods in the shape of humans. He shuffles those toward the back. By the time Kay comes down, he’s got the Timely Comics in rough chronological order.

  “She’s asleep?” he asks.

  “She’s a brick,” says Kay. “We done with superheroes for the night?”

  “I found some good ones,” Avi says. He takes one of the comics out of the box. An old issue of OuterMan. “This one, OuterMan is on trial for de-aging the Ruminator with a, what is it, it’s like a—”

  “It was a ray,” she says. “It was the Ruminator’s device. A de-aging ray.”

  “Right, right,” says Avi. He hands it to her and pulls out another. “This one has Medea sued for using her psychic powers to rig the New York mayoral election.”

  “She was dating the candidate,” Kay says.

  “Who turned out to be an evil time traveler,” says Avi.

  “Eternus,” Kay says. Her voice goes dreamy. Before Emmeline, they’d lie in bed together, stoned, recalling details of old comic book plots. The reveal of Red Emma’s father. Iota body switched not with OuterWoman, as Avi remembered it, but with She-Savage. They built on each other’s knowledge, filling in their gaps.

  Avi pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I need your help with something,” he says. Kay looks at the phone, wary. “Something’s not clicking in my head on this. I need your eyes.”

  It’s something they used to say to each other. When Kay was stuck on a case. When Avi couldn’t get a piece to read right. They were careful not to overuse it. They both dealt with terrible things. They both trucked in horrors. It was important to protect each other. Sometimes you needed to get out of your own head. They developed a code, a safe phrase so they’d understand when it was truly important: I need your eyes.

  On the screen of the phone, there’s th
e church, midday sun streaming through the stained glass. Pastor Baldwin in the front. At the right edge of the frame, the little girl. A triangle inscribed in a circle hung over the middle of the image.

  “I can’t,” she says.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” says Avi, “but I need something to break open on this, and I’ve lost my eyes.”

  He intends it as a way to get her to the other thing. To start the conversation that will lead them back to their daughter. Kay puts her wine down on the coffee table. She puts her hand over her face. “Avi, I can’t,” she says. “If I put that shit in my head, it’s going to rattle around in there forever. Don’t ask me to.” What she means is, Don’t ask me again. Don’t call this promise in; don’t hold me to it.

  “No, it’s fine.” He pockets the phone. He tells himself he will try again tomorrow by some other route. But he knows he won’t. He had another obvious way in, through the check, the comic books, Kay’s new client. But that would make all this about Kay. Her story instead of his. It’s also possible he picked the path he knew Kay would refuse so he could tell himself he tried without risking success. “I think there were some old Red Emma issues in there,” he says, pointing to the box. “You used to love her.”

  They spend an hour reading the adventures of a prosecutor who swears revenge on organized crime after her entire family is gunned down. They each hold one side of the comics, reading them together like children’s books, each of them pressed gently into the other’s side, until Kay yawns and Avi follows her upstairs.

  When she’s asleep, her body leaden heavy with wine, Avi slips out of bed. He goes to Emmeline’s room and eases the door open. A wedge of light from the hall falls across her sleeping face. Every decision he makes has become weighty and permanent. It’s felt that way since she was born, a change, the introduction of consequence. It’s what people mean when they say there’s the kids to think of. But that implies the option of not thinking of one’s kids. When Avi made the worst decisions for himself, he was thinking about Emmeline, if only with guilt that even she was not enough to get him to stop or that it was in part the responsibility of her and to her that necessitated the bad choices.