Glass Shatters

by Michelle Meyers

  “It’s okay,” Charles says as he lays Julie down in the backseat. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  Julie looks up at him. “What if I lose her?” she says, her question somehow accusatory. “What then?” Charles remains silent. He doesn’t know how to respond. This isn’t supposed to be happening. She’s at least five weeks early. Charles turns on the car radio.

  “Turn it louder,” Julie says. Charles turns the volume loud enough to discourage any thoughts, any fears, turns it so loud that the words of the song become static in their ears. The streets are empty in the early morning, with only the shriek and lights of a passing ambulance rippling through the stillness.

  When they reach the hospital, everything flashes by in a blur. The emergency room, the nurses, the doctors. Julie gets whisked away to the delivery room just as her mother arrives. Mrs. Hollingberry wafts into the hospital like some sort of fairy-tale creature, a loose, flowing dress sifting around her body. The doctors direct her and Charles to the waiting room. Julie has insisted on being alone. Not even Charles will be allowed in until after the birth.

  Mrs. Hollingberry and Charles share a cherry Danish and an instant coffee from the vending machine, watching the sunrise through the narrow windows. They’re the only ones in the waiting room except a lone janitor swooping his mop across the floor. Mrs. Hollingberry’s gaze drifts toward the ceiling, searching for something. Charles wonders if Mrs. Hollingberry realizes why Julie wants to be alone. That Julie doesn’t want anybody else to see if the baby is born dead.

  After several hours of reading Newsweek and Time, absorbed in speculations about the November elections, Charles turns to Mrs. Hollingberry and taps her on the shoulder. For hours she has been staring out the window, her eyes hardly blinking. It’s as if something of her is no longer there. She doesn’t seem to be herself.

  “Do you think it’s a bad omen? That the baby’s this early?” Charles says. Mrs. Hollingberry’s eyes are almost violet, sparkling in the morning light. Charles folds his hands together, twisting in his plastic chair. Even though he asked, he doesn’t want to hear the answer. Normally Charles isn’t one to believe in these things, omens, fate, and prophecies. At the same time, however, the sick feeling in his stomach persists, and there’s something noxious about the air around him. His thoughts are polluted as he imagines Julie screaming in pain, blood pouring over the bed, a gray infant body resting between her legs. He sees no future without them.

  Mrs. Hollingberry doesn’t respond.

  “Mr. Lang?” It’s one of the doctors, a young man with thick blond hair and a wide smile.

  “Yes?”

  “Congratulations. Your wife has just given birth to a healthy baby girl,” he says, reaching out to shake Charles’s hand. “Because she was born prematurely, your daughter will have to be kept overnight in the neonatal ICU for observation, but so far, everything looks great.”

  Charles exhales. He’s in a haze as he follows the doctor and Mrs. Hollingberry down the hall. Charles takes Julie in his arms, planning never to let go. Mrs. Hollingberry watches from a distance, murmuring something under her breath to herself.

  “I don’t know what I would’ve done if …” Charles feels Julie against his cheek. Her skin is so pale, dark circles under her eyes, but she is more beautiful than she has ever been.

  “Shhh. It doesn’t matter now,” Julie says, nuzzling Charles’s shoulder. A nurse walks into the room with the baby in her arms, freshly cleaned and wrapped in a white blanket, her eyes sealed shut.

  “Would you like to hold her?” the nurse asks. Before he knows what he’s doing, Charles is holding his daughter, a baby so small she’s hardly bigger than a honeydew melon. He holds her against his heart, feels her faint breaths. She feels like nothing, and a part of Charles is afraid that if he blinks, she’ll disappear.

  “Jessica.”

  “What?”

  “I think we should name her Jessica, after my mother,” Julie says. “What do you think? We could call her Jess for short.” Charles turns around to discover that Mrs. Hollingberry has vanished from the room.

  “Yes, of course.” Charles holds Jess in one hand and squeezes Julie’s shoulder with the other.

  Later that day, when Jess has been taken to the ICU for observation, Charles sits in the recovery room, watching Julie sleep. He feels himself close to drifting off when he notices a book of baby names on the counter next to his chair. He takes the book, flips it open. The name “Jessica” appears on the first page:

  “Jessica, based on the original Hebrew name Yiskāh (), means ‘foresight,’ or being able to see the potential in the future.”

  And for a moment, Charles wishes he could just know. He would give up excitement, give up surprise, he would give it all up if he could just be sure that everything was going to be okay.

  I COME TO ON THE COUCH IN IRIS’S LIVING ROOM, A wool blanket tucked around my chest. Iris stands at the stove, still in her baby blue nurses’ scrubs. Steam swirls up around her as she stirs a pot of chicken soup. Ava sits perched on my thigh, her feet disappearing under her skirt like a mushroom. Her face is inches away from mine, her lips slightly parted, carrying an intent expression. I can tell she’s been sitting there, waiting, watching for me to open my eyes.

  “I thought you were dead. You just fell down, like—” Ava makes a splatting motion with her hand. I notice my right arm, the sleeve rolled up, the scrape on my elbow red and brittled from the asphalt. “It was really scary.”

  I take Ava’s hand in mine. Her small fingers wrap around my thumb.

  “Ava, sweetie, can you go start getting ready for bed? PJ’s, teeth, you know the drill. It’s already way past your bedtime and you have school tomorrow,” Iris calls from the kitchen.

  “Can Charles sleep at our house tonight? And can we have blueberry pancakes in the morning?”

  “We’ll see. Now go brush your teeth.”

  Ava swings her legs off the couch and lands on the floor with a slight thump. Before she ducks into her bedroom, she plants a small kiss on my stubbled cheek.

  Iris sets the soup down in front of me with a wedge of French bread. “It’s hot but you should be able to eat it without burning your tongue.” The aroma of dill and rosemary is intoxicating and I have to resist licking the bowl clean when I’m done. Meanwhile, Iris settles herself down on the couch next to me. She slides off her white orthopedic shoes. Her face is the lightest of pastel pinks. “Are you all right, Charles? Because if you’re not—”

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Iris. I’m sure I was just dehydrated.”

  “Oh yeah? And what about the gash on the back of your head?”

  I touch the spot, just above my neck. The wound has been cleaned, covered with a swatch of gauze.

  “Do you know how many bits of glass I picked out of that? What happened?”

  “A fight. But everything’s okay. Really.”

  “Is it? You’re falling apart, Charles, and last time that happened, you disappeared.”

  I pause. “I miss them, that’s all. Julie and Jess. I keep thinking about them. All the time.”

  Iris sets a hand on my arm, her gaze drinking me in. “Look, I understand, Charles. Believe me, I do. It’s not like I stopped loving Rory once he died. But you’re still a young man. You still have a full life ahead of you, if you just let yourself stay in the present.”

  I sink back, full and sleepy. “Did I ever tell you the story of how I proposed to Julie? It was our first time hiking up Birch Lake Pass, out by Mount Christie. The yellow and orange wild flowers were just starting to bloom and when we got to the top, the day was so clear that we could see all the way out across the lake until it descended into the horizon. I knelt down and my knee sank into the silty mud and I slid my mother’s ring onto her finger. I felt so sure, Iris. How am I ever going to feel that sure again?”

  Iris’s expression falls. “Did you say Birch Lake Pass?”

  “I remember the sign. The one in blue letters w
ith the hand-painted sun in the background, right?”

  “And you’re sure that’s where you proposed to Julie?”

  “Yes. What’s this about?”

  Ava calls out from the other room. “Mom, I’m ready for you to tuck me in!”

  “One moment!”

  Iris turns her attention back to me. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

  “But?”

  “But it’s just that last year, when I did that hike with you and Ava, I could have sworn you said you’d never been there before.”

  “Mom?” Ava stands in the doorway, wiping at her eyes. She wears matching pajama tops and bottoms, light purple speckled with a universe of silver stars.

  Iris takes my empty soup bowl and sets it on the countertop in the kitchen, then scoops Ava up into her arms. Before whisking Ava down the hallway, Iris turns to me and says, “It’s been a long day, Charles. I very well could be remembering wrong. I could’ve sworn, though …”

  I SPEND HOURS THAT NIGHT STARING UP AT THE CEILING, at the grooves undulating across the paint. Shadows from the trees outside waver like witches gathering in the nighttime. A black cat clock ticks above the sink, water dripping from the faucet. Iris sleeps in the other room, small sighs just approaching snores. I try not to make any noise as I tie up my shoes, folding the wool blanket into a neat corner on the couch. I leave a note on a Post-it on the fridge, the chicken scratch handwriting barely legible, and let myself out the back door without a sound. The night air sits crisp against my face, like the first bite of an apple. I like the feeling of being alone, of knowing that everybody else is asleep.

  When I let myself into the house, I immediately sense something’s wrong. All the lights are off and I hear the loud rush of water from the bathroom, too loud. My shoes crunch against something hard. I look down and staring back up at me is the fractured face of a marionette, its blue eyes and blond hair a near replica of myself. The body has been split in two, the wood splintered like monsters’ teeth. Marionette parts are strewn across the floor, limbs and bodies and strings, clothes torn, tossed aside, the remnants of a massacre, the last of the marionettes finally wiped out. My heart beats in my throat. I avoid the rest of the marionettes and approach the bathroom.

  Charles sits on the toilet lid, scrubbing remnants of blood out of the bowl of the sink. He hasn’t yet noticed the splatters on the floor. His left wrist is wrapped in gauze. A razor leans up against the toothbrush holder, the blade already sparkling clean. He looks up at me, his eyes like pools of water, a murky image of myself distorted by ripples. I look at him, crouched over the sink, nothing but fear, and I realize he’s less human than me at this point. There’s something so diminutive about him, so defeated and hollow. Earlier this evening, lying awake and seething with anger at mistaking Ava for Jess, I tried to plan something to say to this Charles. I wanted to be cruel, to punish him. But seeing him again, I realize there’s nothing left. He’s tissue paper floating in the wind.

  I take the washcloth from Charles’s hand and turn off the faucet, guiding him from the bathroom to the living room couch. I tuck the blanket around him as one might swaddle an infant. He seems barely aware of what’s going on. When he attempts to speak, nothing comes out. Einstein appears from the darkness, circling and plopping himself down in Charles’s lap. A film crackles on the old black-and-white TV, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr embracing at the end of An Affair to Remember. They wipe the tears off of one another’s faces as they kiss, Grant’s chiseled jaw against Kerr’s smooth and creamy skin.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” she says. “If you can paint, I can walk. Anything can happen, don’t you think?”

  I WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING ON THE LIVING ROOM rug, tangled among a shamble of pillows and blankets as Charles sleeps on the couch, his breath coming out in little tufts of air. Einstein cuddles into his chest, cooing in time with each breath. A sheet gathers in a tangle at Charles’s feet. I pull it back over his shoulders. He twitches slightly with a dream. I wonder what he’s dreaming about. I wonder what it would be like if I could see into his mind, if he even realizes who I am.

  I pack a bag for the day—a brown bag lunch of peanut butter and jelly, a thermos of coffee, my wallet, a foldable umbrella. Black storm clouds roil in the wind, like charcoal smeared against the sky. Before I leave, I gather anything that Charles may use to hurt himself. I take the knives from the kitchen, the razors and pills from the bathroom. I pass the marionettes, the loose bits of string scattered across the floor. Their faces express everything and nothing at the same time.

  The air outside is brisk and cool. Leaves swirl around my feet. I concentrate on my steps, on the way my shoelaces curve around one another as if they’re holding hands. Finally I reach my destination, the stairs of a public library near Ava’s elementary school. It’s an ornate brick building in the colonial style, two white Ionic columns as sentinels beside the front door. I made a mental note of the library’s location the first time I passed by, imagining that it may be of use at some point. For someone at the forefront of modern technological research, it has seemed unusually hard for me to connect with the outside world, but the library is an answer to this, an emporium of books, microfiche, and interconnected networks.

  I pass by the novels and collections of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, of Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick, and my heart longs for these familiar words. Images flash across my mind, men burning books in blazes of fire, robots hurtling through the skies, World War II veterans whipping through time, electronic sheep bleating from the rooftops. I want to sink into one of the brown leather armchairs with a dozen books in my lap and never move again, never acknowledge the outside world. I want to escape into the words of others, words that would allow me to pretend to be human and happy and loved. Instead, I continue to the back room where Jurassic-age computers are hooked up to cables coiling around the tables’ legs.

  I’ve decided that I will no longer be complacent. I will find out what happened to Julie and Jess. I reason to myself that there’s nothing to lose, since if I never know what happened to them, I’ll only assume the worst. I imagine Julie here with me, sitting at the computer across from me, flipping her dark hair back as she grins, chewing the end of her pencil. I imagine Jess flying up and down the children’s aisle, her leaps and bounds like a dance, taking every book on ballet that she can get her hands on and flopping into her mother’s lap. I shake my head. A cursor on the computer pulses, waiting for me to make my next move, the bright Google logo uncomfortably cheery as I type in, “How do you find out if someone is dead?”

  I glance over my shoulder, at an old lady humming to herself, at a group of young moms reading to their toddlers, hoping nobody has seen what I typed. I wonder what I would think if I came upon someone who wrote what I just did, if I would judge that person, if I would find the question unsettling. But for all I know, there’s no mystery to what happened to Julie and Jess. Perhaps the mystery only exists in the world of Charles Lang’s mind, the only mind to which I have access.

  I click on a link to the Social Security Death Index. It takes me to a page where I’m asked to fill out information for a search. The questions are objective and uninvolved, and I can’t help wishing there were more to be asked, more than their first and last name, their date and location of birth. What was her greatest wish? What was his deepest secret? What did she dream about at night? What was he most afraid of? My hands shake as I type the information into the form. I realize how little I know about Julie, about a woman whom I love yet who is barely more than a name to me. I don’t know when she was born, nor where, though I can guess. All I know is Julie, Julie, Julie.

  I breathe out a deep sigh as I press the enter key. The first list has over one thousand people. Julie M. Lang. Julie Lynn Lang. Julie A. Lang. Women who have died in Ogle, Illinois, in Miami, Florida, in the Bronx, in Missouri, in Ohio, women who died fifty years ago and young girls who died a week before. I shift the mouse, click “Refine Search,” limit it to women born b
etween 1973 and 1983. I try again. The closest to come up is a “Julie H.” who died in California in 1996, ten years before my Julie disappeared. I click on the link, wanting to know this other Julie, wanting to know where she was born, how long she lived, her cause of death, if she was happy, if she was fulfilled, if she believed there was meaning in life. But of course, the website cannot tell me any of these things. All it can tell me is that there once was a Julie H. who died in California in 1996.

  I type in Jess’s name now, willing the computer to go faster. The results pop up onto the screen. The only Jess Lang died in Boulder, Colorado in 1986. I release a breath long held, the air claustrophobic in my lungs, forgotten within me. I must have been loud because the old man sitting at the table across from me puts his finger up to his mouth in a shushing gesture. But if only he could know the relief that I feel, that at least there is a possibility, however small it may be.

  I refresh the browser and navigate to the missing persons section of the police department website. Blurry, pixelated people stare back at me from photographs, pleading with me, wishing to be found. The first is a man named Robert Vincent Butler, an old man in a plaid shirt leaning back in a rocking chair. I click on the photograph and here the details are abundant, more than I expected. Male, age sixty-four, of Caucasian descent, six feet, 170 pounds, gray hair, brown eyes, reported missing on March 21, 1998. The circumstances: “Mr. Butler was despondent over his health. On the day he was last seen he failed to keep a medical appointment. Mr. Butler may be a patient of a medical facility or be in the care of a boarding facility.”

  I click on another photograph, a black-and-white photograph of a young girl with a bright, mischievous grin on her face, two front teeth missing, a tabby cat nestled in her arms. Karen Lane Jacobs, female, age eleven, of African American descent, black hair, green eyes, four feet eleven inches and only 55 pounds. She was reported missing on November 18, 1961. The circumstances: “The missing person was last seen on November 18, 1961, at approximately 3:00 p.m., leaving the Ridgewood Elementary School grounds. The missing person was en route home where she was never seen again.” I close my eyes and try to think about what she would look like now, how her face would have transformed with age, sleek and seamless in her late teenage years, fuller and more mature in her twenties and thirties, a few wrinkles creeping in around her forties and fifties before people began to think of her as wise in her early sixties. This woman, this child, would be over sixty years old if she were still alive. In the time she has been missing, she would have gone through adolescence and adulthood, motherhood and her middle years. Or maybe she didn’t see any of this part of her life. Maybe the last day she saw was November 18, 1961, and she has been left to linger like a ghost on this list.