Things to Make and Break

by May-Lan Tan

  Coney’s parents worked a lot, so she was always over here playing Xbox. She was class valedictorian and better than your average girl, but otherwise normal, waiting for the school bus in her mittens, and swimming in our pool until her hair turned green. The summer we were fifteen, her face and body appeared. My brother started a band with her, like he always does. Coney streaked her hair pink and sang lead vocals, and Marc programmed the drums, played synth, and sang backup. The weird thing was, they were tight. They sounded like a real, grown-up band. Their songs were all about love and machines. They never wrote anything down.

  We passed our driving tests around the time DD-MM-YY started booking gigs. I was their roadie. One night, coming back from a show, Marc and Coney were fighting about a girl. Marc was driving, and Coney and I were in the back seat with the MIDI keyboard across our laps. I could see tears falling on the white notes. I held her hand underneath them. After they broke up, I started going to see her whenever Marc was at judo. She gave it up to me on the second try, and I was boning her on a regular basis by the time they got back together. She was such a good lay, because in the sack she’s just like she is in life, she puts up a fight. She pushes back.

  Marc and Coney were always making out in front of me. It kind of killed me and I asked her to choose. She knew I was so into her, and Marc was fucking all those other girls. Of course she chose him, and I kept seeing her. For this I didn’t hold her quite as guilty as me. She was leveling things out, while I was tipping a scale that could never be righted. My brother is one blackhearted, amoral fucker, but he would never do anything like that to me. I used to wonder what was in it for Coney. Why bother cheating on Marc with someone who looked exactly like him? It just seemed like double the work. Now, I think she was trying to make one person out of the two: the one she loved and the one who loved her.

  One night on the way to the movies, Coney ran a red light and we plowed into the side of another car. Marc and I were sitting in the back and we were OK, but Coney’s forehead was split open. You could see bone. Her teeth were clacking and her lips were white. Marc phoned for help, and Richie Bauer, from the grade above, limped over and said he thought his mother was dead. Coney became hysterical. She started crying and saying all kinds of shit. When she began making sense, I realized she was confessing her sins. I covered my eyes and prayed she’d skip the one about us.

  When the words came out of her mouth, Marc picked me up by my clothes and dragged me away from the car, to the edge of the road. He asked me if it was true and I said yes. He started beating my face in. I threw punches and managed to land a few, but Marc spent his weekday afternoons training to hit and to be hit. I knew I was fucked. When Richie tried to help me out, Marc split his lip and went back to decking me. I could feel bones crack. The paramedics arrived and pulled him off me. I couldn’t see for a couple of hours, and I ate through a straw for a month. The only good thing was this bone in my nose didn’t fuse properly, so I had to have it rebroken and reset a few times. Now you can tell us apart. For the rest of high school, people called me Picasso. I took up drawing and painting so it would seem like they were complimenting the art.

  My brother had fractured Richie’s jaw. He got two hundred hours of community service and my parents had to pay a fine. Mrs. Bauer survived. She’d been an amateur marathon runner, and now she would walk with a stick. Coney had a rail of stitches and went to juvie. Her license was suspended for a year. She came back with a long, puffy scar bisecting her forehead, and something fierce and glittery that hadn’t been there before.

  Coney used to cane it harder than both of us put together, but after the accident, she couldn’t drink without getting a headache, and she could only do a little bit of drugs. For her seventeenth birthday we did microdots. Coney got a nosebleed and then she blacked out. We were still finding the balls to dial 911 when she came to. We checked for brain damage by asking her to do math and quizzing her general knowledge. She knew the answers, but she stuttered when she spoke. When we asked her what the date was, she said a year a few years ago. She asked me what had happened to my nose. Marc and I locked eyes. We’d found the reset button. He raised an eyebrow and I nodded. He told a story of how we’d gotten into it with some guys from another school in the parking lot behind the movie theater.

  After this, Marc and I were golden. If things had been reversed, it wouldn’t have been enough for me. I guess I’d care more about losing his respect than hers. I sometimes thought that even though Coney didn’t remember, her body did. I felt it in the way she arranged herself around me. I was still bent up about her and she had no idea, so she was always toeing that line, but I’d been given the chance to start over and I took it seriously. Marc and Coney were better this time. He was the same, he just didn’t rub it in her face as much.

  It was senior year and Coney had forgotten everything she’d learned in high school. The stutter didn’t go away, and she lost her place on the debate team. When her GPA plummeted, her parents hired a tutor and forced Coney to drop out of the band. We didn’t see her much after that. At Christmas, we found out Coney’s mom had had an affair with our dad. It blew our minds. You never suspected old people were up to anything. I was just glad they hadn’t hit it off and turned us all into a Greek myth.

  That was when Coney’s family moved upstate. Marc hadn’t found anyone good enough to replace her, so he turned DD-MM-YY into a concept band, recording the drum and synth parts as a guy with sandy hair, and the vocals in full drag. He Photoshopped the band pictures. When he gigged he sang in drag and I played the synth in sunglasses, pretending to be him. I still talked to Coney on the phone every day. Last spring when Marc and I were raking in college acceptance letters, Coney found out she would have to repeat the last year of high school. In the summer, Marc graduated as class valedictorian. I haven’t spoken to Coney since I started art school in the fall.

  The pills haven’t taken. I go to the living room to pour myself a scotch. When I drink it, they finally hit. My bones blush and a thudding cloud expands in my head. I refill the glass before going to my room and clicking on the desk lamp. Coney flips onto her back and her body comes out of the sheets. She’s wearing a tank top and underpants. The ribbed cotton is stretched thinner across her tear-shaped tits and her nipples show through. I stand there staring at her like a loser pervert. I haven’t been laid in forever. Art school is crawling with horny, experimental girls, but the only ones who want to get with me are two-baggers. And I’m never smart enough to look at them and know that. I always have to test it out in a way that’s humiliating for us both.

  You wouldn’t think a nose would be such a big deal, but apparently it is. I read somewhere that it reminds people of your cock, so maybe it’s like bad advertising or something. I mean, it’s the only difference between Marc and me, and he’s always up to his eyebrows in pussy. I only ever get it when I’m back here for the holidays. The girls here know how I’m supposed to look. If I went to Galen’s right now, I could have my dick in someone by midnight, easy. The crazy thing is, I’d rather get a bottle of lotion and jack off and think about Coney. I wonder if Marc is done with her. She opens her eyes and blinks at me. Her hair sticks to her cheeks and her makeup’s clotted.

  “Come here you little bitch,” she says, her hard, wet eyes slipping.

  I don’t know who she thinks I am. I set the glass on the nightstand and take off my t-shirt. I climb into the fever bed, pressing up against her and breathing in that coolant-like scent that emanates from people’s skin when they’re fucked up and you’re not. I pull back to look at her. Her eyes are closed and her breathing’s deep and even. Her mascara’s flaking off and there are black crumbs on her cheeks. She’s put concealer on the scar but you can still see the raised surface. I push on my boner and roll onto my back.

  Now and then, Coney would tell us she’d recovered the missing swatch of memory. Marc and I would start sweating bullets, and she’d describe three years in the life of a Tunisian goat herder, Tokyo elevat
or girl, or favela capo in Rio. It was as if the missing time had been replaced by a collective memory of what everyone in the world had been doing those three years. Not all the memories belonged to people. There had been a giant sea turtle, and a Paris schoolgirl’s satchel. At times I wondered if it was an elaborate joke. If it was, I thought it was beautiful, and I admired the research.

  “Adam?” Her voice sounds like cotton candy. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.”

  She smiles and hugs me. I wonder if she thought she was dreaming earlier.

  “How’ve you been?” I say, keeping the lower half of my body away.

  “Good. I gg-graduated.”

  “Congrats.” I sit up, fluffing the blanket, and reach for the glass.

  I take a sip before offering it to her. She props herself on her elbow and I can see sideboob as she downs it in one. We both turn as a Siamese cat slinks into the room. It’s wearing a black collar studded with blinking blue LEDs. The lights stop when the cat stands still. It meows loudly, showing its fangs. Its eyes glow in a spooky way.

  “Aw,” Coney says.

  The cat turns and leaves, the lights flashing.

  “I’ve never seen that cat before in my life,” I tell her.

  “Oh,” she says, chewing her mouth. “You saw it too?” She lies back down and sets the glass on the bed.

  I move it to the nightstand. “Have you had any new memories?”

  “Uh-huh,” she says softly, “it was bizarre. I was in love with a mm-musician who was fucking around on me.”

  I look at her.

  “I was fucking his brother. We were all as bad as each other.”

  Shit. “When did you remember?”

  “Marc told me.”

  “When?”

  “He didn’t mean to.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I mean, fuck,” she says. “You’re supposed to be better than him.”

  I was about to apologize, but now I just want to punch something. I look at my knuckles. “Don’t compare us. We’re nothing alike.”

  “The difference is, you screw people over to get what you want.”

  “Great,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “You’re selfish, but least you want something. Marc doesn’t want anything. He just wants to win.”

  I can feel her looking at me, but I can’t look at her. “Adam,” she says and starts bawling.

  I don’t know what to do. The sound comes from deep inside her. I get up and find my t-shirt and give it to her. She sits up and blows her nose. We sit, not looking at each other. Every now and then, she hiccups.

  “Was this one of your sick games with your brother,” she says in a thick voice, “or did you want me?”

  “You,” I say, getting hard again.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I was crazy about you.”

  “Oh. He didn’t tell me that.”

  “He doesn’t know. He probably thinks it was all about him.”

  “Did I know?” I nod.

  “Then why didn’t I pick you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looks at my tented jeans. “Were we any good?”

  I lean over and start kissing and biting her neck. I tongue her mouth, cupping her breasts through her shirt. She makes small sounds and her nipples knot under the cotton. She pushes me back onto the pillows and straddles me, pulling off her top. I just look at her for a minute. I’d forgotten how beautiful. She unbuttons my jeans and takes me out. She holds me in both hands, circling the tip with her thumb.

  “Unh,” I say, “think it’s OK?”

  She doesn’t answer, she just rubs the pre-come around. I sit up and push her tits together and lick them. I lift one, and bite and suck the underboob the way she likes. She wriggles down under the blankets and pulls off my jeans and skivvies. I lie back and her hair tickles my stomach, her mouth wrapping over me. I’d forgotten this about her: she has the smallest, hottest mouth, as if she’s storing lava in her cheeks. I shut my eyes, holding her hair by the roots. My bones start to liquefy.

  When I’m about to come, I flip her onto her back and take off her underwear. I roll her nipple on my tongue and rub her clit with my thumb until her lips get slippery. I glide my middle finger in and out, then fold her legs up and push in. God. It’s like sticking your cock into the sun. I fuck her deep and slow, watching her mouth and feeling her move. When I get too close, I pull out and let my dick cool. She pushes me off and climbs on top of me. She straddles my ribs and puts her breasts on my face, squeezing them together so I can’t breathe. I see television static and my cock starts throbbing. I spurt a little and I’m just about to shoot my wad when she releases me and I get an oxygen rush that stops it. She fits her pussy snugly over my cock and I almost lose it again. I grab her hips and hold her still for a second. Her cunt feels warm and muscular. She rocks back and forth, her breasts swaying and knocking together. Her pussy tightens and the flesh around her bellybutton quivers when she gets close. She comes and comes, waves of hot silk—I grit my teeth and push her off. I bend her over and really give it to her. Our skin smacks and she arches her back, tipping her ass up so it looks fucking peachy, and I can feel a ridge of muscle or bone across the top of my dick and she squeezes—I pull out and stroke it, rubbing the head against her ass cheek, my body buckling as I squirt up her back.

  Hollowed out, we fall onto the bed and zone out for a while. Coney doesn’t turn around. I find the snotty t-shirt and use a clean part to wipe her back and hair. I should have worn a rubber. Marc and I are monozygotic, so if one of us ever knocks her up, we’ll never find out which one it was.

  “Are you back together?” I say.

  “I haven’t fucked him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I don’t think she’s a liar, but I don’t believe her. I just can’t imagine her saying no to him. “Still. We probably shouldn’t say anything.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” she says.

  She turns over and I rest my head on her tit. Her heart’s ticking like a drum machine.

  “Your pulse is too fast,” I tell her. “What are you on?”

  “I kittyflipped. You?”

  “Nothing.” My tongue feels swollen. “A couple of dolls.”

  We get out of bed and look for our clothes. When I bend down to pull a shirt from the drawer, the Seconal washes over my head in a wave. Getting dressed, I can hear fabric rustling and carpet fibers crunching underfoot.

  “Sorry I fell off the map,” Coney says, zipping her skirt. It sounds like a passing car. “I just needed to get through the year.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Her bangles chime when she slips them on. I rub my face in case there’s makeup on it and we get back under the covers. The bed starts to sway.

  “Adam.” She sounds like she’s underwater. I open my eyes.

  “I’m scared of the future.”

  I stretch and look at her. “But you’ve caught up now. You’re all set.”

  “I need more time in high school. I tried to flunk out at the last minute.”

  “No one remembers half of it. I’m sure you’ve come out even.”

  “I feel like a fruit you cut open to find it’s rotten inside.” She lays her head on my chest. “I’m just not ready for life, the way I used to be. Something’s wiped the specialness out of me.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re the most special person I know.”

  “I’m not,” she says. “I used to be. When I was little, I could always feel the promise of it, like a tooth. A germ that would develop into something no one in the world has ever seen before. It’s not there anymore.”

  “You’re just depressed. It’ll come back. And you’re great without having to do anything. Just doing fuck-all with you feels like the best thing I’ve ever done. Maybe the germ is gone because it’s already propagated. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re that astonishing, heart-stopping thing.”

  “No,” she
says.

  We’re quiet for a while.

  “We’re all scared,” I tell her. “I mean, nobody’s not scared. But that’s part of it, you know?”

  She moves her head to the pillow and blinks at me.

  “You’ll be great,” I say. “But hey, take it easy out there, OK?”

  “I know.” She smiles, showing little teeth, so sharp they’re see-through at the tips. I hold her hand under the blankets as she starts to duck out.

  “Wake up, virgin.”

  The overhead light’s in my eyes and my brother’s sitting on my chest, holding a bong. I push him off. Coney’s rolled in a ball at the far edge of the bed. Marc kneels on the carpet and puts the bong to his mouth, covering the carb and lighting the bowl. The water bubbles and the piney, velvety stink fills the room.

  “Dude,” I croak. “She’s asleep, you fuck.”

  He clears the cylinder with one breath and holds the hit like he’s suppressing a laugh. Clouds bleed from his mouth.

  “What time is it?”

  “Time to do a hit.” He shoves the bong in my face.

  I sit up and look at the clock on my desk. I lie back down. “Can you fuck off,” I say, “and turn out the light?”

  He comes over and starts jabbing me in the ribs. I swing at him, trying not to shake the bed. I get up and shove him and he takes a quick step back, knocking the lamp off the desk. I cover Coney with the blanket and turn off the overhead light. I step into the hall, and when Marc comes out I pull the door shut behind him. I leave him standing there and go to my parents’ bathroom to take a slash. I hold my dick, watching the beam of piss. I swallow another doll and go into their room. I flop on Dad’s side of the bed. I can feel the shape of his body in the mattress.

  It’s so weird to think that every man in our family has fucked a woman in their family. It kind of makes you wonder. If it was just about sex, we could have picked anyone. There must have been something each family had that the other family needed. Can families fall in love, like the opposite of a feud, and why isn’t there a name for it? Maybe it’s called before the feud. Marc comes in and sits on the carpet, his eyes shining like dimes. He hits the bong, and I notice he’s switched out the water for mouthwash and ice cubes.