Glass Shatters

by Michelle Meyers

  Maybe I should just leave this drawer alone. It’s most likely nothing, office supplies, paper, or literally nothing, an empty drawer. But I want it to be the right key. Keys are supposed to fit into locks. That’s what they do. I continue staring at the small, mangled key, willing it to transform into something useful. But then the desk catches my eye. It’s slouching. The right side of the desk is notably lower, the wood warped and sagging. I lean down, placing my hand underneath the edge of the locked drawer, wondering if I can just pull it out, but I realize that I won’t have to. The wood underneath is thin, worn through. I take off one of my shoes, pull my arm back and smash the thick leather sole against the bottom of the drawer, once, then again. The wood gives, and I smile at the destruction before me, the pile of splintered wood and debris. It feels good.

  I dig through the fragments of wood and come upon a small oil painting, about four inches by six inches. The paint is peeling around the edges, revealing a yellowish canvas underneath. Two boys sit in the upper corner of the painting, so far away that they’re barely discernable. One is tall and awkward, with rivers of blond hair spilling over his shoulders. The other is rounder with a head full of dark, curly hair. They sit by a lake, the sky swirling above them, as if it’s about to rain. On the right side of the painting, a girl stands barefoot, gazing out at the viewer, only she doesn’t have eyes, just empty sockets. There’s something beautiful and delicate about her expression, yet haunting at the same time, and I just keep looking at the girl, imagining that she’ll say something if I stare long enough.

  May 11, 1994

  Age Sixteen

  Charles! Dinner’s ready!” Charles’s mother calls out from the dining room. She enters carrying a large pot of spaghetti and a salad made with iceberg lettuce and blue cheese dressing. She wears a gingham dress with a frilled apron pulled around the front, beige high heels. Ringlets frame her round face and her eyes move back and forth across the room, taking in everything at the same time.

  Charles’s father sits at the end of a long oak table, tamping his pipe. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to just below his elbows, and the hair at his temples is beginning to gray. A Count Basie record plays in the background, and when the pin slips, Charles’s father shakes his head, rising to flip the record to the other side. A bookshelf filled with leather-bound classics stands against one wall, The Iliad and Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities. On the adjacent wall is a painting of the family sitting in a studio with emerald-green drapes hanging behind them. In the painting, the father’s expression is stern. The mother purses her lips together, holding a baby bundled in her arms.

  Charles trips into the dining room, his limbs awkwardly long and gangly. He wears a sweatshirt and sneakers, a pair of bulky headphones around his neck. He’s older now and although he’s not nearly as tall as his father, he’s no longer a child either. His hair has darkened slightly and comes down past his shoulders. The edges of his jaw are covered with acne. And yet he has become handsome, in an academic sort of way. He pushes his glasses up with one hand as he holds his place in a scientific textbook with the other. His nose remains in his book as he sits down.

  “Charles, not at the table,” his mother says, and Charles places the textbook under his seat. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

  Charles’s mother and father sit at one end of the table, Charles at the other. As they pass the spaghetti, Charles’s father takes a final puff from his pipe, then sets it down. Charles’s mother squeezes her husband’s shoulder. His eyes are milky blue, clouded and glossed over, and his right hand shakes as he brings a bite of spaghetti to his mouth. The spaghetti noodles topple off the fork and into his lap. Charles’s mother discreetly wipes them away and plants a kiss on her husband’s cheek.

  “You know, I read in the news today that South Africa just swore in their first black president. Nelson Mandela. Isn’t that something?” Charles’ mother tries. His father shrugs and picks at his teeth.

  “Well, how was work then?” she asks.

  “It was all right. You know, work.”

  “Any new studies?”

  “I spent the day washing all of the lab equipment. The beakers are very clean now. Very, very clean.”

  “It can only get better, right?”

  Charles’ father turns stiffly to his wife. “How was your day, darling?”

  “Hectic. Went to the market. Ran errands. Oh! And as I was walking home, I bumped into Julie’s mother.”

  “I don’t know who Julie’s mother is.”

  “Yes you do. Mrs. Hollingberry. Today she was standing barefoot in the front yard, wearing an African robe and ‘reading’ her wind chimes. She invited me in for a cup of gingko nut tea and when I tried to say no, she insisted on giving me a pouch of herbs to heal the incongruities in my aura. Last week she offered to do my astrological chart, and the week before she roped me into a tarot reading only to warn me of my ‘impending doom.’ There are puppets and marionettes scattered all around the house. I can only imagine what she keeps behind closed doors.”

  “Right.”

  Charles’s father takes a large bite of salad. Charles’s mother continues. “It really is too bad. I mean, poor Julie. She must be so embarrassed. At the school play last fall, Mrs. Hollingberry was sobbing by the end of it, and you could hear her throughout the entire auditorium.”

  “No father?”

  “No, just the two of them.”

  Charles’s father looks up from his food. “How does she support the child without a husband?”

  “I heard that a few years ago she published a very popular book on the occult, and I imagine there must be some sort of inheritance as well. Plus, from the looks of her house, they live on nothing.”

  “Mom, can you pass the spaghetti?” Charles asks. There’s an edge to his voice. His mother hands him the pot without seeming to notice.

  “Charles, you’ve been spending a lot of time with Julie lately. You should invite her over for dinner. I don’t imagine Mrs. Hollingberry devotes much time to grocery shopping or other more practical matters.”

  Charles’s father looks up from his plate and gives Charles a strange smile. “Aren’t you glad your father is a scientist and not some sort of spiritual quack? Let me see that book you were reading.” He reaches across the table. “What are you studying up on? Electromagnetism? Stoichiometry?”

  “Nah, it’s okay. No books at the table, right?” Charles says, pulling the book away.

  “Come on, Charles, show me the book.”

  “I said no.”

  “What, you think I won’t understand it?” Charles’s father slams his fork against his plate. “You think you’re smarter than I am just because—”

  Charles stands up. “Mom, I’m not hungry anymore—may I be excused?”

  “Charles, you answer me when I speak to you!”

  Just then the doorbell rings. “Why don’t you go see who that is?” his mother says. Charles picks up the textbook and takes it with him. He hears his father from behind him, stuttering, his voice catching, the snuffling of Charles’s mother in tears.

  When Charles reaches the front door, he peers through the peephole and then draws back. He runs his fingers through his hair to smooth it out.

  “Charles, is that you?” calls out a young woman’s voice.

  “Yeah, one sec!” Charles says, trying to smooth out his hair more vigorously now. It’s impossible.

  “Whatcha waiting for?” the voice calls out, and Charles opens the door. They stand for a moment, neither saying anything. The girl is Julie, around fifteen years old, wearing a purple paisley dress and hemp sandals that wrap around her ankles. Her hair is short and springy, a daisy tucked behind her left ear. She carries a knapsack filled with carrots and art supplies, and her perfume smells faintly like almonds.

  “Want one?” she asks, handing Charles a carrot. “They’re fresh from the garden.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Charles says. Charles puts it in his pocket with the green stem sticking o
ut. “I’ll, uh, I’ll save it for later.”

  “So did you finish it? What did you think of the end?” Julie asks. Charles opens the textbook and pulls out a comic book from the middle.

  “Cause of your dad?” Julie says.

  “Yeah, he’d think it was a waste of time. Or at least, he would’ve. Now that he’s crazy and all doped up, I don’t know what he thinks,” Charles says. He hands the comic book back to Julie.

  Julie nods. “What did you think?”

  “It was really great. I, uh, I loved the illustrations.”

  “And the story? Isn’t Raven a fucking badass?”

  “Yeah, she was pretty awesome.”

  “But?”

  “But what?”

  “You’ve got that look on your face. You hated it, didn’t you?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t hate it, it’s just … you know, it was pretty implausible. I mean, it had a lot of great moments, but, I don’t know, I didn’t really buy the ending. It didn’t really make sense.”

  “That’s the point of comics—you can do whatever you want! Who cares if the likelihood of getting bitten by a cybernetic spider is a million to one or if you can’t, like, teleport or shoot laser beams in real life?”

  “I guess I care.” Charles looks down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “Duh, you don’t have to apologize, Charles,” Julie says, sliding the comic book into her knapsack by the carrots.

  “I want to like it.”

  “I know you do. We’ll find something you like—you know how many comic books and fantasy novels I own?”

  “A lot,” Charles says, smiling.

  “You’ll like one of them. I can guarantee it.” Julie reaches for Charles’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze.

  “I was planning to meet Steve at the reservoir,” Charles says. “You wanna come?”

  “Yeah, sure thing. I just need to go home to grab a sweater.”

  “You can take mine. I’m never cold.” Charles peels off a purple sweatshirt with the University of Washington logo and hands it to Julie. They walk in silence, weaving through backyards until they find the dirt path that leads down to the reservoir.

  “So how is your dad doing?” Julie finally asks. The sun is starting to set, but they’ve been down to the reservoir so many times that they have no trouble finding their way.

  “I don’t know, better? He’s back at work, so that’s good, and he’s not having delusions or hallucinations anymore, or at least not that he’s telling us. But the clozapine also makes him kind of like a zombie, except for when he’s angry. Then his temper’s way worse than it used to be … Oh, and I have news—my mom’s having an affair. She thinks I don’t know but I do.”

  “Yikes. Your parents remind me of a repressed 50s couple gone horribly wrong.”

  “Right? It’s like they’re out of another era. Sometimes I just want to stuff them back into a black-and-white TV set where they belong.”

  They’re getting nearer to the reservoir. The air has an earthy smell to it. “Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Julie says, tucking her hair back behind her ears, “my mom told me yesterday that I was an accident. I mean, whatever, accidents happen, right? But you know what the worst part is? She said she wishes I wasn’t born because some voodoo witch doctor something or other said that if my mom did have a child, the child would die young in a horrible accident. Ergo, every time I go outside, she’s convinced a plane is going to fall on me or an earthquake is going to hit.”

  “Ouch. Well, you better not tell her about all the heroin you’re doing or all the knife fights you’ve been getting into.”

  Julie shoves Charles in a playful way. “Haha, very funny. I’m surprised she lets me out of the house without a full suit of armor and an EpiPen.”

  “You two think your parents are bad?” a voice chimes in behind them. “Try being gay in a household of evangelical Christians. I woke up last night to my mother standing over me with a feather duster. She was trying to give me an exorcism. I swear, next time I wake up in the night, she’s gonna come at me with a butcher knife, speaking of knife fights.”

  “Hey Steve,” Charles says. He gives Steve a big pat on the back. Steve is short and stocky, his skin smooth and cherubic compared to Charles’s pockmarked face, a hedge of curly black hair on his head.

  The group reaches the reservoir, and as Steve and Charles sit down by the water, the scene looks almost exactly like it did in the oil painting. The thunderclouds above are thick like sludge, but still Julie slides off her sandals, burying her toes in the dirt. She pulls her sketchbook and a charcoal pencil from her knapsack and begins drawing.

  “You know, we don’t have to settle.” Julie continues to sketch, shading in one of the figures. “We could run away together. We could start our own family, just the three of us.”

  The last of the sun drips down below the horizon, and they lay back under the twilight blue sky. Charles’s shoulder presses up against Julie’s. He knows he could shift away but leaves his shoulder against hers.

  Charles closes his eyes. He imagines what life would be like if they ran away together. He imagines living in a small cabin in the forest, away from civilization, chopping their own wood, growing their own food. Most of all, he imagines waking up every day to see Julie sleeping beside him, and at that moment, he realizes this is something he’d very much like to happen.

  By the time they get up, it’s already dark out, and Charles can’t get enough of Julie’s face in the moonlight.

  I TURN THE PAINTING OVER. HER SIGNATURE SWIRLS across the canvas in a stream of black ink: Julie H., 1994. I trace the letters with my index finger, wondering why Julie wasn’t sitting with Charles and Steve in the painting, wondering where her eyes have gone. I think of the memory with the marionettes, of the rainy night in December. When did we finally admit our love for each other? How did I feel when she said she loved me back? I set the painting on the windowsill, hiding it behind the curtains, hoping that it will be there when I return. I close my eyes, giving in to an enormous yawn, the painting warping in my mind, Julie cowering beneath my open hand, her empty eye sockets elongating into screams. I shake the image out of my head. What if Julie and Jess didn’t disappear but left? What if they were running away from me?

  I tell myself not to think about this anymore. It’s too late. I’m too tired. I plod back down the hallway, slipping off my shoes at the entrance to what I’ve now come to think of as my bedroom. Through the window, I can see the sky has become almost orange, like the flesh of a peach. I’ve stayed up nearly all night long. But the room is still dark, and the rising sun casts gaping shadows across the bookshelves and the wall.

  I climb into bed without even taking off my clothes, the exhaustion like a lead apron, weighing me down. I slide under the quilts and sheets, but as I dig my feet under the warmth, the bed is even warmer than I anticipated. My left hand comes across the old man’s shuttering chest, rising and falling with each breath, so frail that each rib is completely distinguishable from the next. I curl up next to him, resting my head against his shoulder, the peaks and valleys of whatever relationship we may have had irrelevant in this single moment. I imagine I’m a little kid again, and this time, I get along with my father.

  With a jingle and a thump, Einstein jumps onto the foot of the bed. He makes his way up to the pillows and wedges himself between the two of us, letting out a satisfied lawn-mower purr as he settles into a more comfortable position that of course takes up the majority of my pillow. Our heartbeats all fall in sync together.

  For the first time since I’ve been in this house, I feel safe. I feel at home.

  I WAKE UP THE NEXT DAY ALONE IN THE BED. THE pillows are covered with a layer of cat hair. When I stretch across to the other side of the bed, I’m surprised by how cold the sheets are. I think about what it must feel like to lose a spouse suddenly. I wonder what that first morning without Julie felt like for me, losing that warmth, that love. I get up and peer
through the window—the children outside squeal and laugh as they splash through the puddles, mud soaking through white T-shirts, parents in rain boots squashing around after them, teeth chattering in the blustering wind.

  I then hear a loud, oaky knock, followed by the echoing chimes of the doorbell. I take a peek through the broken window and see Ava standing on the steps. She has on rainbow galoshes and a ladybug umbrella, and her hair is pulled back in pigtails. She holds a basket of homemade chocolate chip cookies in the crook of her arm, ringing the doorbell again and again. I smooth down my shirt, trying to push away the wrinkles. I touch my short hair. It’s standing straight on end. My lips are dry and cracked like sunbaked clay. I need to wash up.

  Ava looks me up and down when I answer the door. She hands me the cookies with the very tips of her fingers, attempting to keep the greatest distance between her and me.

  “You really don’t want to get close to me, do you? How awful do I look? Hopefully I don’t smell that bad.”

  “Your head,” she says, staring at my scalp as if it’s covered with flesh-eating insects. I realize that the bandages must have slipped off while I was asleep.

  “What does it look like?”

  “What happened to you? Are you dying?”

  “I don’t remember what happened, but I’m not dying. One sec,” I say, and I pull the knit hat off the front rack, sliding it over my ears. I had never even thought of that possibility, that I have some sort of chronic illness, that maybe I’ve had surgery for cancer, a brain tumor. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t have been left alone with my father. Unless I sneaked out from the hospital? No, probably not. I slow down, tell myself again that the simplest answer is most likely the correct one.