The Smash-Up

by Ali Benjamin

  Her arm bends. Between her elbow and waist is a diamond of empty space, framed by flesh. The diamond begins to stretch. It elongates, then returns. Maddy’s arm is moving. Up and down.

  Ethan watches the slow stretch-and-return of the diamond.

  The guitar wails, drums thump, the Axis of Perdition singer, or maybe there’s more than one, screams. Beneath Ethan’s feet, the floorboards shake. He could take one step to the side, just one, see everything.

  You can watch if you want.

  There’s nothing stopping him from walking in. Just walking right into the room, standing there, taking her in, all of her, Maddy Silver. As long as he doesn’t step into the frame of the camera, he could.

  Would she look at him as she moved, or would her eyes be fixed on the computer screen? Maybe she would stare past both viewers, toward something else altogether, toward nothing at all.

  No.

  If Ethan were to enter the room, he’d walk straight over to that laptop and close it. Poof, the other guy would be gone, and then it would be just the two of them. Ethan would step right up to Maddy. He’d reach his hand through that diamond, wrap his arm around her waist, rest his fingers on the small of her back. Pull her toward him, breathe her in, the whole of her, all at once.

  It would take nothing at all.

  But Ethan doesn’t do any of those things. He stands motionless in the hallway, eyes fixed on that shifting diamond, watching without watching, his feet as unsteady as if he were standing on the hull of a ship. His chest rises and falls. He’s unsure where the music ends and his own blood, pulsing urgently through his veins, begins.

  * * *

  —

  The first time he walked Maddy home was nearly six weeks ago, mid-August. The night was balmy and overcast, officially the start of the Perseid meteor shower, though not a speck of light could be seen through the clouds. Ethan had taken Hypatia for a longer walk than usual, hoping that the sky might clear long enough that he could catch a glimpse of a meteor or two. He’d been so busy looking up that he hadn’t even noticed Maddy walking up Schoolhouse Hill Road, didn’t see her until she was standing right next to him.

  They’d fallen into step together naturally, and as they made their way uphill, he told Maddy about the show he’d been hoping to see. He told her everything he knew: that the Perseids, like all meteors, are tiny, smaller than mustard seeds. That meteors are remnants of disintegrating comets, and that comets, back in the Middle Ages, had been considered the smoke of human sin: full of stench and horror, set ablaze by an angry god.

  When they reached the driveway, Maddy had stopped, pointed up toward the blank sky. “Oh, hey, look,” she’d said brightly. “There’s one!”

  He was sure she’d been mistaken. Nothing up there but cloudy haze.

  Maddy hopped onto the hood of his Subaru, leaned back against his windshield. “Look, there’s another one. You see it?”

  Ethan gazed up at the emptiness. He felt the late-summer air on his skin, listened to the crickets whir. He was vaguely aware of his wife, moving inside the house.

  “Yeah, actually,” he said, catching on. “I think I did see that one.”

  He climbed up next to Maddy, and for the next hour, maybe more, Maddy pointed out imaginary celestial fireworks streaming overhead. “You see that one?” she asked, again and again, and pretty soon it was almost like he could see them: streaks of light burning across the sky, fireballs that exploded, bright and green, some sort of magic visible only to them.

  Every time Maddy asked, Do you see it? he said the same thing: Yes.

  * * *

  —

  After Ethan finally turns around, heads downstairs, feet shaky, fingers gripping the banister the whole way—after the music snaps off, after the godawful screaming guitar gives way to the stifling Starkfield silence—he decides that this is what he will do tonight: He will say yes.

  It’s early still, barely five p.m. Zo and Alex won’t be back for at least twenty-four hours. He will say yes to wherever this evening goes, whatever is offered.

  Yes to pizza, even if it’s from that place Zo is boycotting. Even if he has to drive the box downtown to throw it away so his wife never sees it.

  Yes to the thrum in his head, the pounding in his chest. To knowing that his heart is in there, his telltale heart, and sure, it might feel like it’s buried under layers of snow, frozen beneath soil, but it’s still beating with the force of life, and he can finally feel it again.

  Yes to choosing to see meteors instead of gray sky, to doing what Jarrett says: refusing to accept the decline of his own life. Because what is the point of trying your whole life to be good—a good guy, good husband, good father, good neighbor, good sport—if you end up lumped in with the creeps anyway? Because yesterday he watched his wife slip into the back of a police cruiser, she wanted to be in that police cruiser, she chose it over returning to the car with him, driving back home, to everything they’d built. Because it was Jackie, not Ethan, she wanted at the station with her, because apparently Zo has decided her own husband is unnecessary, inessential, like some vestigial organ: an appendix, a coccyx. A male freaking nipple.

  Yes, because who can say what’s right and wrong anymore? Once, he knew, or he thought he did. But the old order’s all torn to shreds, scattered in the wind, knocked clear in the sky like a construction cone in a two-lane highway. It doesn’t even feel like there are any rules anymore. The world’s just a bunch of people staking out their own territory, society be damned, and if that’s true, then why shouldn’t he, too, stake out a little something for himself?

  He will say yes, because everything will dissolve, will crumble into nothingness, his life will be rounded out by permanent sleep sooner than he ever understood. But not yet.

  Not tonight anyway.

  He will say yes, because Prufrock might have been a coward, but Ethan does dare. He dares eat a peach, dares disturb the universe, dares blast everything he’s known to smithereens if that’s what it takes to continue feeling something. He will say yes, because #YOLO or whatever, because if he’s going to morph from Good Guy Dad into one of the villains, if no matter what he does, people are going to lump him in with this dumpster fire of a president or any of his disgusting kakistocracy, then maybe Ethan should at least enjoy the fucking ride.

  He will say yes, just for this one night. He will say yes and see where it takes him.

  Yes to the question “Do you like my hair?,” which is what Maddy asks when she finally comes downstairs. She’s rubbing the top of her head, and the question is apparently ironic, because for some reason there is no hair, not anymore, that’s the point. Her long blue waves are gone, entirely: shaved down to stubble.

  Ethan gapes. “Was that…a Ten-Spot request?” he asks. The words “Ten-Spot” feel sour in his mouth, but what else could this be?

  “Nope,” says Maddy. “Just felt like I needed a change. You like?”

  “Yes.” And actually, he does like it, quite a bit. Maddy looks like Natalie Portman in that V for Vendetta movie, or like what’s-her-name from Mad Max: Fury Road. Freaky, sure, but also kind of weirdly super hot.

  “You look badass,” he says.

  In response, Maddy makes a movie-poster face, eyes narrowed and lips pressed into a pucker. She points finger guns at him.

  “Bang.”

  * * *

  —

  Yes to eighteen-year Lagavulin, single malt and aged in oak casks. Maddy pulls the bottle from a lower cabinet, gives it a shake, grinning. Probably has no clue that those 700 milliliters cost him upward of $400.

  And, yeah, why not drink it? The bottle has been sitting on the shelf for years, a relic from a brief scotch phase he and Zo went through. They’d read about malting and mashing, peat and smoke, nose and finish, unironically used words like “earthiness” and “hint of pepper,” and “subtle not
es of coffee and seaweed.” They’d planned, someday, to host some sort of tasting party: maybe they’d set up tables in the backyard, in roughly the shape of the Scottish Isles, with each bottle placed in the location of its distillery. The party never happened. Maybe their interest waned, or they realized that drinking made them feel crappy the next morning, they discovered Breaking Bad on AMC, who knows why. Point is: a fat lot of good the booze is doing on the shelf.

  So yes. Might as well enjoy it.

  Ethan digs out the proper glasses (shaped like a tulip, a little narrow at the rim), but Maddy brings the bottle straight to her lips. She takes a swig, then shakes her head as if she’s Hypatia fresh from a bath.

  “Whoa,” Maddy says. She smacks her lips, then shakes again. “Holy shit, that’s intense.”

  She holds out the bottle to him, and he takes it.

  Yes.

  * * *

  —

  Yes to pizza straight from the box, to hand-feeding crusts to Hypatia. Ethan lets Hypatia lick the oil from his fingers, then he wipes his hands on his jeans. He and Maddy are both seated on the ancient marble counters (yes to this, too), facing each other with their backs on opposite walls. Their knees are bent, their toes just inches apart on top of the stove.

  “Know what I read recently?” Ethan asks (because yes, too, to repeating for Maddy the same thing he recently said to his wife). “Britain just appointed their first-ever Minister of Loneliness.”

  “That’s the greatest job title ever!” Maddy says. She tosses a piece of crust to Hypatia, who fails to catch it. Going blind, the poor creature.

  “Personally, I think there ought to be one for all the dark emotions,” Ethan continues. “Minister of Despair. Minister of Envy.” Maybe that’s the screenplay to pitch to Randy when this lawsuit thing is over: The Ministers. An anti-superhero film.

  “Minister of Douchebaggery,” Maddy suggests.

  “Hey, you talking about me?” he jokes.

  “You, Ethan, would be the Minister of Affability.” The way she says it isn’t necessarily a compliment.

  “And you’d be, what?” he asks. “The Minister of Don’t-Give-a-Fuck?”

  She flutters her eyes, all innocently. Her voice sweet, she says, “Or maybe the Minister of Go Fuck Yourself?” Then she nudges his foot with her own. Leaves it there.

  Yes to that. Yes.

  * * *

  —

  Yes not only to flirtation, but also to real talk. About Maddy, her future. About what she wants, and doesn’t. About whether she’ll ever marry, or have children, or settle down.

  “I’m just saying,” Ethan says. “Don’t rule anything out. When I graduated college, I thought I was going to be an itinerant journalist. Never thought I’d get married. Never thought I’d be a dad. Definitely never expected to settle in a town like this.”

  Maddy peels a layer of cold cheese from the top of her slice. “And yet here you are.” She pops the cheese in her mouth, drops the rest of the slice on the counter.

  “I’m just saying, someday you’ll be somewhere, too, Mad. Actually, you know what? I bet you become one of those PTA moms. You’ll drive a Range Rover a little too fast, yell at the other moms for taking too much time in the school drop-off line. Maybe you’ll stand at the side of the soccer field with a thermos of cocoa and a tin of hand-baked cookies for the team.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Maddy says. Like it’s simple, like a person can predict where they’ll wind up, and how they’ll feel about it. Like life is something you choose instead of the thing that sort of just happens, in increments so small you don’t even notice, and by the time you really get it—this is it, this is your one and only life—it’s too late. “For one thing, who wants to be with the same person for, like, a century?”

  Ethan laughs. “It only feels like a century sometimes.” (Look at him! Sharing his own real talk too!)

  “No, Ethan. I mean an actual century. Like, literally. I read that people my age might live to be a hundred and fifty, assuming we don’t OD on heroin or blow our brains out or get nuked by a rogue state or whatever. So let’s say I’m the ripe old age of thirty-five when I get married. That’s still a hundred and fifteen years of marriage for me.” She downs a long swig of single malt—probably twenty-five bucks, gone, just like that. “No thanks.”

  A hundred and fifty years. Ethan was twenty-six when he and Zo married, a baby, really. He tries to imagine being married for a hundred and twenty-four years: literally, he’d have more than a hundred years left with Zo.

  “Jesus,” he says. Then he points to the bottle. “Gimme some of that.” When Maddy hands it to him, he slams a shot, just like she’s been doing.

  Because, man: maybe he does need to blow his fucking brains out.

  * * *

  —

  Yes even, apparently, to talking about Zo.

  “I just wish I knew what it accomplished, you know?” Ethan says. It’s the whiskey that’s making him talk, it’s the warmth of his belly, the way his head is spinning just a little. “All that protesting. An endless stream of protests in the middle of Starkfield, Massachusetts, population next-to-nothing, and for what, exactly? Is it performance, or does it actually make some sort of difference?”

  “Protest is the new brunch.” Maddy shrugs. “At least, that’s what Zo told me.”

  “See, but that’s what I mean. If it’s your alternative to brunch, how impactful can it really be? I mean, if someone could tell me, ‘Yes, your standing out there and shaking a sign that you made with pasteboard and Sharpies that you bought at the local Rite Aid, in a downtown that barely anybody even drives through absolutely helps change the world,’ I’d be all in.”

  “Right? I’d be like, great. Lemme join you.”

  “But what difference could it make in a town like this? Also, for the record, I did go a couple of times. At the beginning, I did.”

  “And?”

  “And when it was over, the world was exactly the same as when we started.”

  He lifts the bottle again, swirls the brown liquid around, watches the eddy it forms. “Anyway,” he says. He wants to stop talking about Zo, but something inside of him can’t stop, not yet, almost like his wife is some sort of problem he needs to solve, a circle that he might get square, he can’t move on until he does. “Sometimes I wonder if Zo’s having a nervous breakdown.”

  Maddy considers this. “I guess that depends on if she’s getting closer to who she really is, or further away from it.”

  This seems like a pretty good insight, actually—one he’d stop to think about a little more if only his head weren’t so woozy. “Meanwhile, she’s not even trying to finish her film,” he continues (and is he slurring his words a little now?). “God, she was such a good filmmaker.”

  He’s telling the truth: Zo’s documentaries were gorgeous. In Zo’s hands, a snoozer of a story of a mathematician who explained non-Euclidean geometry through crochet became candy-colored, exhilarating, filled with wonder. Another, about an eccentric philosopher turned bus driver, got a brief mention in The New York Times, which called it “transcendent…as offbeat as it is sublime.” Zo’s shorts had made it into some good festivals: New Hope, and Vero Beach, and that one that Michael Moore runs in Traverse City. But her last big work was back in the early 2000s. Some family-owned pharmaceutical company in Stamford, Connecticut, had paid her what seemed like a gobsmacking amount of money to make some corporate videos about a breakthrough product for pain management. The family behind the company—famous billionaire philanthropists—loved her work: they promised to introduce Zo to important people at the Tate, the Smithsonian.

  “So what happened? Why’d she stop making films?” Maddy asks. Ethan shakes his head. What happened? They left New York, that’s what happened. They had a great kid who required a lot of work to raise. Zo still came up with terrific ideas, for
both documentaries and features—one that Ethan remembers in particular was called The Muses, about an alternative-reality world in which the women behind famous artists had never met the men they supported—but she could never find the funding she needed to bring them to screen. A few years ago, she tried to get back into commercial work, but by then, the wonder drug she’d worked on was at the heart of a growing opioid crisis, which meant she couldn’t even show that film, among her best, in her reel.

  She bid on dozens of jobs, coming close every time, but never actually getting them.

  “It’s hard, the film world,” Ethan tells Maddy. “But she’s got a real chance with this Trilling thing. This could be her ticket back into the business, and I think she knows that. Maybe that scares her, because instead of working, she…punches things. In fact, she changed gyms specifically so she could punch things.”

  “Well, she didn’t exactly change gyms, Ethan.”

  “She did. Her gym used to be right here in town, the one over on Broad Street, out near your friend’s dispensary.”

  “Right, I know. That was her gym. Until they kicked her out.”

  “Wait…what?”

  “They canceled her membership, said she couldn’t come back. You don’t know this story?”

  Ethan’s incredulous. “Why?”

  “She kept flipping off the TV. I guess there were all these television screens all over the gym, and apparently every time she saw the president’s face on any of them, Zo gave the guy a double-barreled salute.” Maddy hops off the counter, stands erect, raises her arms above her head, and lifts her two middle fingers.

  Ethan thinks about the women in his living room two nights ago, all in that same stance. Is Zo seriously so wrapped up in her rage that she doesn’t realize a person can’t actually do that at the gym?

  Maddy climbs back up on the counter, downs another $10 or so of Lagavulin, then smacks her lips. “The gym owner gave Zo a bunch of chances, he apparently talked to her several times, but she didn’t stop. So they booted her.”