Electric Elizabeth: A Novel

by Vincent C. Martinez

  Then, one day, Dad says it's time to go home, and Mom says nothing, just one thing: Take me sailing. One more time.

  And he did.

  The sky was clear, blue with small clouds that looked like little drops of whipped cream. Never saw skies like that, Milton. You and me? We're used to the Blackbridge sky, that weird darkness it has, but not Mom. From the moment we cast off to the moment we were halfway across the bay, Mom held my hand and sat beside me on that wooden deck, her legs dangling off the side, water spraying against her feet. And she smiled at the sun the whole time. I thought her hair was catching fire in the light, that her freckles were multiplying and darkening.

  Then, she stood up and kissed me on both my cheeks. She said, You be a good boy, Honey. You look at those stars and you think of me. And I watched her walk to the bow, her feet bare, her hair blowing in the wind. She stared out at the water, then turned to me. Dad was at the stern, flipping through a book. He was tapping his foot. I remember that. That tap-tap-tap. Always did it when he was impatient.

  Mom smiled, blew me a kiss, and then there was this bright light, this explosion, this sound like a belt snapping. These fingers of electricity reached out and touched every metal part of the boat. Some hit the water. I'd never seen lightning hit water. Pieces of wood blew back over us, these small, sharp splinters. I grabbed onto this rope as the boat took this deep dip forward then bounced back up. We were all spread out on the deck, people screaming and shouting, Dad running over and grabbing me and pulling me away from the edge of the deck. The pulpit was glowing this cherry red and was scorched black. The jib was flapping, half of it shredded. The place where my mom stood? Just a narrow hole in the deck, maybe no wider than a silver dollar, but all around it, burn marks, splinters, the smell of burning wood. There was no damage to the hull, and we didn't take on any water, but we were floating in dead circles as the crew ran around trying to fix the jib, one of them screaming into the radio, calling for the Coast Guard.

  And my dad . . . my dad's running all over the boat, screaming my mom's name, looking over the sides. He dived into the water, tried to look into that deep blue all around us. A crewman jumped in after him, and they kept shouting Mom's name, kept dunking themselves under the water, but they found nothing.

  The Coast Guard pulled up about twenty minutes later. They called in boats. They called in helicopters. They laid out a grid and searched all afternoon and all night for her. Nothing, Milton, absolutely nothing. Just a small hole in the deck of a yacht, some burned wood and metal, some burned sail fabric, and nothing else. In a second she was gone. There were no explosives on that boat, no gas, nothing combustible. In the area of the bow where she stood, nothing.

  Dad knew what it was. We both did. We both saw the electrical fingers reaching out and stabbing at the metal on the boat and at the Chesapeake. We knew it was lightning, Milton. Lightning from a clear, blue sky.

  We stayed near the bay until the end of the summer, Dad renting this condo until I had to come back to town for school. I thought he'd send me off to Scranton Prep or some other private school, but he kept me in Blackbridge Middle, kept me close to home. Every weekend he'd make a trip to the Chesapeake Bay and have a boat take him out to the same coordinates where Mom vanished, like he thought the sky would open and she'd drop right on the deck as if nothing happened. Week after week he'd head to the bay, and week after week he'd come home and lock himself up in the house.

  One day, Dad and I were sitting in the living room. We had the television on. It was a Monday in November, I know that. We had a football game on. We're just sitting, watching the screen, Dad just staring straight ahead. Everyone was saying how Mom fell overboard or how Mom was blown up by something, but he knew—we both knew—that that's not what happened. And we let what we knew fester between us, this strange unspoken thing that was like a glacier moving between us, slow and silent.

  But we were sitting in that living room watching that television, and then the station dropped out, like someone pulling the plug. Just static like over on your television right now. There's just this static, and then there's this voice, quiet and whispery, like someone telling a secret joke to someone. This voice gets louder and louder, and then it starts talking to us. This woman's voice that said, Honey, are you thinking of me when you look at the stars?

  That voice faded in and out, but we could tell whose it was. We could tell it was Mom.

  Dad unplugged the television thinking it was some sick joke, but it kept happening. All the televisions in the house, day and night, whether there was a program on or not. Mom's voice asking if I'm thinking of her over and over. We'd unplug the televisions, and they'd turn on again, electricity from out of nowhere. When we walked past televisions in stores, she'd break through, when the house was quiet at night she'd break through. She came through whenever she wanted.

  Sometimes Dad would shout at the screens, telling whomever it was to knock it off. Sometimes he'd just sit and listen. He called the police, friends in the electronics and broadcasting business, and none of them could find anything. We were getting transmissions from everywhere, but nowhere. Some guys came to the house with vans full of equipment trying to pinpoint the signal, but the broadcasts shifted position in seconds, one moment from the east, the next from the south, the next moment from inside the house. Months went by of this. Lots of questions, no answers.

  Dad would start throwing things at the televisions, screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking at the screens, sometimes putting his feet through them. There would be months of quiet, then Mom would break through again for days, weeks on end. Dad stopped telling the voice to stop and started asking the voice why Mom left. Started telling it that he gave her everything she needed, everything she ever wanted. Started saying things like, You're a helluva' mother walking away like you did. And she'd pause, maybe there'd be a soft laugh or something that sounded like a sigh, and she'd start talking again, just to me. Honey this and Honey that.

  Dad had one-way conversations with the screens, talking at them, accusing Mom of cowardice because the voice never responded to a single question. Me? I didn't say anything. Just stared at the televisions, or covered my ears and stared out the window, stared at those damned wisps that would empty out of the old asylum like kids going home for the day. Dad wanted answers and wasn't getting any. I wanted peace, and Mom wouldn't give me any.

  Dad started having all these television antennas installed. More sensitivity for better reception. He placed a television in every room, kept them tuned to dead channels, you know, like what you're doing with your television, Milton. If I heard Mom speaking through one I was to let him know so he could run over to it and yell at it or demand answers. Sometimes he'd say That's it, I've had enough, and he'd start unplugging the televisions and say he was going to get rid of them, but the next day, he'd plug them in again.

  My room? You know what he did to my bedroom? Had the walls lined with metal sheeting, floors, walls, ceiling. Wanted to make a Faraday cage so nothing electronic could get through. He wanted to do it to the whole house, or that's what he said, but every hour he'd be back to listening to Mom through the television speakers.

  He started taking me to the Lightning Field in New Mexico, to Florida during the stormy seasons, even to Venezuela, the Catatumbo River right where it empties into this big lake that all these rivers feed into. Every night, we'd be out on the lake, the sky exploding with lightning. Non-stop. Blue and green and purple lightning. Never seen anything like it before or since. Dad would stand on the deck of the boat soaked with sweat from the humidity, and he'd stare at the lightning with his fists all balled up like he was challenging it to a fight.

  That was my life for, what, maybe five years. Televisions, lightning, electricity, Dad getting quieter and quieter, even seeming to get smaller.

  One summer we took another trip to the Lightning Field. Dad looked worn out by then, tire
d all the time. He stopped paying much attention to the family money, just handed it off to advisors who put everything on auto-pilot while Dad screamed at the televisions or at the late summer storms. He took me on this trip, and I remember how the sky looked when we flew into New Mexico. It had this gray, metallic look to it. We drove out there, just he and I in a rented truck. We stayed at the cabin there and sat in chairs watching these tall metal poles casting this grid of shadows. That afternoon, the storms built up in the western sky. I love those skies out there, how you can see clouds at the edge of the earth.

  The storms moved closer, built higher until this black mass swallowed up the flat landscape, just eating it up as it moved toward us. And Dad . . . he started walking to the field and told me to stay next to the cabin, that he wanted to see something. He kept walking, kept walking, kept walking. The storm kept getting closer and closer, the clouds flickering with all this purple lightning. Here was Dad, now this dot in the center of the field as the rains started to fall, this cold, hard rain. The wind was horizontal, blowing everything over the flatland, so I ran back into the cabin. And then, I'll never forget this, this blue lightning bolt crawled to the ground, just crawled, and stopped right next to where Dad had been standing. There was this glow in that same spot for minutes as the whole sky turned black from the clouds and rain, lightning hitting the ground over and over, that thunder so loud it was like getting punched in the chest.

  Then, after fifteen or twenty minutes, the storm passed. The winds died down, the clouds moved on, and the sun was setting, leaving everything all blood red. I left the cabin, looked for Dad, and I saw him walking toward me, completely soaked and dazed. He walked up to me, dripping wet, and looked past me as if I wasn't there, and he said, Pack your things; we're going home.

  He didn't say anything on the way back to the airport, nothing on the way back to Pennsylvania. Over the years he'd been getting quieter and quieter, and then, he just fell silent. I asked him what he saw out in the field, and he never said. If he said anything, he'd say, Rain, then look away.

  But Mom's voice stopped speaking through the television. For a long time, I didn't hear a word from her, no matter how long I sat by a television and listened. It's like one day she just up-and-left. Again. Dad never spoke to the televisions again, never took us to New Mexico or Florida or Venezuela again. Just sat at home looking out the window like Mom used to do. Sometimes he'd have one of Mom's blouses or pieces of jewelry in his hands while he sat there, touching them, looking at them, maybe remembering when she wore them. But that's all he did for months after while his hair got grayer and his face got longer. He didn't eat much, just maybe some toast or something like that. When I was at school, he probably ate nothing, I don't know.

  You know where I found my dad one morning? Under one of those antennas on the hilltop. All by himself, dressed in pajamas, all covered in ice. He'd died sometime in the night. Died on a winter night under a big tower of steel in a patch of weeds. I shook him and shook him but . . . nothing. Wasn't even halfway through high school, and I'd lost one parent to exposure and one to lightning.

  My dad loved my mom, Milton. Really did. I didn't see it until she was gone, how Dad had become unmoored, pushed around by the waves. I didn't know Mom had kept him anchored. I didn't know he needed her so much, but he did, Milton. We all do. My dad. Your dad. My mom. Your mom. You. Me. For some of us, when we lose that, we lose everything. Like my father.

  ***

  "I'm hoping you won't put that in one of your essays, Milton. I've kept it quiet for years. Even Claire's in the dark about it, and I don't think she needs to know yet."

  I leaned forward. "You're saying I'm going to become your father," I said.

  "I'm saying you are my father, right now. It took him a couple of years before he started looking as bad as you do now. Granted, he wasn't injured like you, but some injures you can't see."

  I rubbed my knees with my hands. "You ever find out what your dad saw in the field?" I asked.

  Bentley nodded. "Dad left it in a note, a short note, maybe four, five lines. It said, 'Mom said she's sorry. She said her life was too small. She said to keep thinking of her'. Isn't that something, Milton? Keep thinking of her. Some people," Bentley said, shaking his head.

  "Nothing more specific?" I asked.

  "Does it matter, Milton? Does it, really? My mother left for her own reasons. Dad got his answers, and I saw what that did to him." Bentley stood up and started putting on his gloves. "Liz is out there, up there, sending you messages. I heard the recording Claire made, and it sounded just like how Mom would talk through the television. She wants you to find her, so find her, but all I can say is this: Get your answers, Milton, get them fast. Then move on. Don't let your life become this," he said while pointing to the wires over the loveseat.

  He began to walk to the front door.

  "I don't know how to find her," I said.

  Bentley stopped, hand on the doorknob. "I'm sure she wants you to find her, Milton, and if you can't find her, she'll find you. Keep looking, but be careful. Sometimes answers are worse than mysteries."

  He opened the door, stepped through, then closed it, leaving me to sit on the loveseat, living room illuminated by the electric blue of a dead-eyed television.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Around me the machines buzzed and crackled. I heard the tidal-like waves of Jupiter's magnetic belts, the shouts of Pacific mariners, the icy placidity of women reciting groups of numbers. At times the cosmos crashed through, an errant beam of radiation, an oscillation of energy, and as suddenly as it struck, it would fade.

  During high winds, the antennas and cables would sing atonally to me, rising and falling. They'd call out as I listened, my fingers on dials, my ears cupped by headphones. Their songs howled and beckoned, broken only by the percussion of trains coupling and uncoupling in the railyard.

  I carried cordless telephones with me, turned them on, listened to the dial tone. Sometimes I'd speak to the dial tone then listen for a slight waver in the tone, a static burst, a hum that ended with a soft laugh before the telephone company's computerized voice implored me to hang up and dial a number. I sat in the study tuning radio dials in the darkness, listening to the static in the speakers and the hum in the circuitry, feeling the warmth of the cables and the amplifiers. I thought of how she'd return home: leaping cloud to cloud, cable to cable, tower to tower.

  My ears became attuned to electrons slipping through cables and energy slamming into antennas. My fingers could turn a dial a hair's distance without trembling. My eyes could track the smallest quiver of a meter needle or the slightest bump in bars on a television screen.

  I'd recorded her voice on magnetic tape, on video tape, on digital cards and solid state memory. Her whisper, like wind through a dark alley, carried through dish and cable, outlet and antenna. She could ignore filters and insulation to find a way, as she always had, to enter my life. She filled wires with words that sined on oscilloscopes and ghosted on television screens. Lights flickered with her laughter, bulbs burst when she erupted in song, so I kept a flashlight in each room just in case. On stronger days, she'd trip the circuit breakers in the basement and become blue arcs in the streetlight out front.

  For a while, I didn't see vapors or wisps floating past my house at night. My only visitor was Liz, and I followed her signal wherever it took me, even when I forgot my boots.

  I'd forget them when the signal was strong and sudden.

  I'd race out the door with a radio direction finder in one hand, a hand-held radio in the other, and an electric field detector hanging from a looped lanyard around my neck. On the coat rack next to the front door, I'd have a heavy coat if the day was cold or a small jacket if it was warm, and my old messenger bag packed with a notebook, a pen, a camera, a digital recorder. I'd grab what I thought I needed and head out into the street, my eyes on the direction finder, one ea
r tuned to the slight beeping of the field detector, the other to the staticky voice from the radio speaker. Sometimes I'd have casual shoes on my feet, sometimes I'd have sneakers. Often I needed boots, which I'd leave somewhere on the kitchen or living room floor.

  On some days, the signals and fields were steady, pulsing from one direction, and on others, they'd swap directions wildly, and I'd wind up walking in circles, walking over the same pavement, sidewalks, or empty lots over and over. Sometimes the signals would lead me into an empty alley then vanish. Sometimes they'd lead me to the riverbanks or railroad tracks, intensify, then fade. Other times, they'd call from the hillsides, strong and urgent, her voice and laughter rising and rising in volume. I'd track the signal, follow the needle. I'd pass the treeline, get swallowed by forest, then trudge up the steep hillside, feet slipping on leaves and water-worn stones and sinking into snowmelt or rainfall ponds. The sun would disappear under the canopy, whispers would speak from the shadows, unnatural things would brush against my skin with icy coldness, and then the signal would fade again.

  I'd find myself halfway up a hillside surrounded by dense forest and unseen things watching me as I'd spin in a circle trying to reacquire the signal, shoes caked in mud, socks waterlogged, feet feeling the creeping cold, and I'd think about the boots on the kitchen or living room floor and remind myself to keep them next to the door the next time.

  But a few days later I'd find myself running out the door again with radio and detector and finder, casual shoes or sneakers on my feet.

  I'd sit in the kitchen and heat toast and brew coffee for dinner or eat dry breakfast cereal out of the box. Before midnight I'd work on essays for the Banner, send them out, then sit by the radios again. I'd sleep a few hours before sunrise, waking just before the horizon became a line of ghostly light.