Catch My Fall

by Wright, Michaela

  I headed upstairs and unplugged my phone to check my messages. Meghan had offered lunch, Jackie had asked how I was doing, but it was the other texts that startled me out of the warm euphoria.

  I miss you, baby. Please talk to me.

  I need to see you. Can I call?

  Every little nuance of grief, every night I’d cried myself to sleep, every memory I’d been told to sweep aside – they all came flooding back. These were the messages I’d been waiting for. Yet I was there, floating atop all that grief with a strange serenity. Yes, a part of me still ached and hurt, and I missed being close to someone, but something had shifted in me.

  Stellan had shifted in me. He’d worked this strange magic, and he had no idea.

  I stared at my phone, took a deep breath, and responded.

  No.

  I exhaled and pressed send.

  “Fayeninator!” Stellan called from downstairs.

  I stared at my phone, waiting for the message to read Sent, then called back. “Yeah?”

  “You comin down? I got something I need to run by you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I held my breath on the couch beside him. The bastard took another half an hour to get on with.

  We were halfway through an episode of Castle, before he stiffened for a second, then glanced my way before suddenly slamming his empty can down on the table and turning his whole body to face me. He had his iPhone in his hand before I even saw him reaching for it.

  “Ok, so – I’m working on something right now -”

  “When are you not?”

  He smiled. “True enough. I’ve been working on it for a couple weeks now, kinda fine tuning it and testing it out.”

  This was his hobby – programming apps. Just last week he’d shown me a D&D character generator he’d banged out over the course of one evening. D&D, for you unwashed masses, is Dungeons and Dragons – a role playing game that many a geek delved into hard whilst meandering their way through life. You shake the iPhone and it rolls for attributes. I appreciated his excitement, and let’s be honest, what he does over the course of one evening sounds like absolute rocket science to me. Yet, this excitement was different. A project taking him more than a few hours was something to take notice of.

  “So what is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a game. A prototype right now, but it’s a kind of strategy game. See -”

  He pulled it up on his phone. He showed me the details; how to shoot the different weapons, how to aim. I took it from him, finding the bare screen surreal. He liked flare, big letters and logos and sound effects. This looked like something a twelve year old drew, something he would have been playing on his Atari when we were kids. Still after a few minutes of trying to bring the tower down, I was hooked. When he took it back from me, I was hard pressed to give it up.

  “Nicely done, hon,” I said, wondering when he was going to get to the point. “Is that your first game?”

  “Second. You remember Tight Corners?”

  I did, and I said so. He’d made his first game about a year ago – an almost hybrid of Tetris and Minesweeper and Mouse Trap. As I recall, it was another mind-numbingly addictive game, and it had sold decently from what he told me. Stellan wasn’t one to brag about numbers, so I never knew how much ‘decently’ translated to in dollars. It was none of my business, as far as I was concerned.

  “So when do you go live with this one, then?”

  “That depends…” The tone was a dead giveaway, and I was about ready to smack him for avoiding his point. Finally, he sighed. “I was wondering if you would help me animate it.”

  I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped.

  Stellan wanted me to animate a game?

  “Stell, I haven’t even sketched in years.”

  “Bull shit, you doodle constantly.”

  “Yeah, doodle. That’s not animation.”

  “Whatever, F-Bomb. Your ‘doodles’ are fucking masterpieces. Say yes!”

  I stared at him. “I don’t want to disappoint you –

  “What did you originally go to school for?”

  I stalled. I felt cornered. “That was only for a year.”

  “And it was? That’s right, Animation.”

  I paused. “I just drew comics, single panels – nothing like this.

  “You lying sack of shit.”

  I tensed in exasperation. How the hell was I going to say no to this man, but how the hell could I say yes? I was a hack, didn’t he see that I was a hack?

  “Fine! One five minute cartoon. Once! Once, Stellan.”

  It was coming up on the twelve year anniversary of the day I had my early mid-life crisis and decided I needed to buckle down and pursue something that would pay bills. I dropped my art classes, changed my major to business and marketing and never looked back. Well, alright – hardly ever looked back.

  “You wanted to leave Matt Groening in the dust, as I recall.” I stared at him, dumbfounded. The notion that anyone ever paid that close attention to my dreams was almost unheard of. Well, anyone other than my hyper supportive mother.

  He smirked, seeing the fight fade in my expression. “That’s what I thought.”

  He handed me the iPhone again. The new game was open and taunting me with its nearly destroyed structures. I wanted to slaughter, rain terror, but I nonchalantly glanced down at the barren screen.

  “See, I’m a programmer. That’s what I’m good at. Every other app I’ve made, if I needed design done, I made due with stock. But I’m not like you, I don’t have your imagination, and this is too big a project - I need this to be streamlined. I mean, this is only one level of the game -”

  “I guess if you tell me what the premise is -”

  He frowned. “That’s part of the reason why I need you. I don’t know.”

  I stared at him. “How can you trust me with something like that?”

  He smiled. “Because I know you.”

  I shook my head. I’d worked under constant pressure for near to a decade in my marketing job, but nothing came close to the way I felt at that moment.

  He fidgeted with the phone, averting his eyes. It was so rare to see Stellan shy like this. I almost wanted to give him a hug.

  “Alright -” he paused. I knew it was coming. “Will you say yes?”

  I pursed my lips. “What if I can’t do it anymore -”

  “Not fucking possible, dove. I know you could come up with something great. If you need a while to do it, there’s no hurry. Even if you just help me brainstorm, sketch some shit up-”

  “Don’t you have friends who could help? Some of those geniuses at MIT? Christ! Ask Evan!”

  He laughed. “Yeah, bunch of regular Picassos, those homos. Not the artsy types, babe.”

  “But I’m not the artsy type either, Stell. Not anymore.”

  “What?! You think you can shut that off?” His face brightened. “I remember those comic strips you used to draw, they were fucking hilarious!”

  “That was a decade ago, Stell.”

  “So? Have you somehow stopped being funny?”

  My throat grew tight. “I don’t even know!”

  He paused, watching my face. “Just say you’ll try. Please?”

  He looked at me hopefully, and I couldn’t keep his gaze. I stared down at my hands, thinking of the years I spent with nearly permanent black smudges on my fingertips from the hours I spent sketching and inking my own work, or of stealing a camera from the art department to take pictures of my stills and running them on a projector for my Art Final. I hadn’t even looked through my supplies since I moved back home. I didn’t tell Stellan the ancient things were all in the basement, drying out and weathered with time because my mother didn’t have the heart to toss them out.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d been grieving over the idea of new art supplies just a few hours earlier.

  “I don’t want to disappoint you, Stell.”

&nb
sp; He seemed to sense my resolve fading, because he put his arm around me and shook me like I’d already agreed.

  “Then say yes!”

  “That’s not what I -”

  “Walt fucking Disney, woman!”

  Oh, that dick! That dick! My mantra. My go to response to every single naysayer who told me my dreams were silly when I was a kid. I’d summon up the name of the most successful animator of all time. People usually shut up at that point.

  Just like I did at that moment, staring at Stellan as though he’d betrayed everything I loved.

  “Besides – I’d love to see you sketching again.”

  That summoned a smile, though he couldn’t see it, given that I was back to staring at my pristine fingertips. I’d agreed to this, internally if not out loud, but he still knew. Without even waiting for verbal affirmation, he slumped back, put his feet up, and turned on the television. I stared at the cartoons that came on the screen, and for the first time in years, acknowledged to myself that I was critiquing the cartoonists work.

  After a few moments, I procured Stellan’s iPhone, claiming I was happily ensconced in the Atari caliber visuals of Stell’s new prototype. My intention was to research under the guise of game play, but halfway through the first level, I truly was ensconced. I played a couple times, using strange weapons represented by simple shapes and dots as America’s Funniest Home Videos played in the background.

  Stellan distracted me for a split second, laughing at a video of a baboon startling small children by pressing his backside against the window of his enclosure in proud display.

  I laughed. Then I was off.

  I hopped up from the couch and hurried down the hallway toward the kitchen only to stop just before, throw open the basement door and careen down the steps in my socked feet, slipping on the lower steps as I hit the cement. I searched the shelves along the ancient stone wall, searching for cardboard, for smudged paper or protruding brushes, something to declare its presence, something to lead me to what had once been my treasure trove of inspiration.

  I found the boxes on the highest shelf, betrayed only by the smallest corner of an old ratty sketchbook page that had somehow shifted out from my portfolio case. Here was everything I had once been – lead and colored pencil sets, sketching pens, acrylics and charcoals. I grabbed one box of what looked to be unopened pens and an ancient sketchbook and hurried back upstairs, only to be met by Stellan at the top step. He saw me coming, and he stepped aside.

  “It’s a zoo,” I said and slid the magazines off the coffee table.

  “What’s that now?”

  “The tower thingy? I don’t know what you had in mind, but tell me if this fits.”

  He launched himself over the back of the couch to sit beside me as I flipped open the sketchbook. The pages were tattered and some were dusty and yellowed with time, but they would take ink and that was all that mattered. I cracked the seal on the unopened pen set. I removed the cap, letting the tip pass just close enough to my nose so I could smell it.

  I paused a moment at the smell. I’d nearly forgotten that habit. I’d always loved the smell of a new pen. I tested the pen on the corner of the paper and the perfect black line bled cleanly. I went to work – a wall, a few branches with vines, a giraffe face looking all concerned from over the wall. Stellan leaned into the paper, waiting, watching the image take shape. Normally hovering bothered me, but rarely with him. Besides, I was too riled up to care how well I could draw at that exact moment.

  “There!”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the barricade you have to destroy,” I said and snatched up his iPhone from the table and pointed.

  “Ok, it’s a pile of broken chairs and – is that a foot?”

  “Yes!”

  He laughed. “Whose foot is it?”

  “One of the zookeepers who’ve been taken hostage by the animals within.”

  He moved closer on the couch. “What? What?”

  I scribbled brick and mortar and madly gleeful chimpanzee faces above their climbing tower. “The towers – they’re the climbing structures – the, like, jungle gyms of a chimpanzee enclosure.”

  “Oh man.”

  “And they’re in a zoo that’s been taken over by the animals. You have to infiltrate and take back the zoo.”

  “Oh man, we need Charlton Heston in this shit.”

  Stellan folded his hands in front of his face, pressing his lips to his knuckles. This was his clear sign of ‘I’m thinking.’ The smile under those knuckles betrayed how deeply he was thinking.

  He pointed to my banana gun. “So how does this one work?”

  I sat there with him for several minutes, brainstorming different weapons that could be used against angry chimps. This moment made it very clear that I’d spent a fair share of my life playing, tag teaming, or watching my male friends play video games. My geek flag was flying.

  I finished sketching a placated chimp munching on a banana when Stellan spoke.

  “I love you, you know that right?”

  I beamed at him and quickly started drawing another ape, this time an orangutan, his eyes bright with violent glee as he dangled from a tree branch. Stellan laughed, his eyes getting brighter as I sketched each idea on some new dingy corner of paper.

  “Well, what are you two kiddos up to?”

  We looked up from our project, still laughing as my mother raised her eyebrows and smiled at us. She turned for the closet and glided across the room, her long tasseled shawl flitting behind her. I wondered how long she’d been standing there waiting for us to take notice.

  “I’m going to need to take over the living room. Bit of a day, so I’d like to get my yoga in before dinner.”

  Stellan glanced at me, smiling, his expression betraying the disappointment of our pow wow being cut short. I smiled back, and felt a strange pang of regret to close my sketchbook.

  Stellan asked to take it home, and I begrudgingly said yes. I was sure there were more hidden away in the basement.

  I watched him shrug into his coat, then stood in the open doorway as he climbed into his jeep and drove away. I’ve no clue how long I’d been standing there when my mother snuck up behind me.

  “Alright you. Would you like to join me? I’m telling you, there’s nothing like a bit of yoga to lighten the spirit.”

  I turned to find my mother standing behind me, topless, her long gray hair up in a bun.

  I startled, averting my eyes. “Jesus, mom! Don’t sneak up on me naked! The door’s wide open. Mr. Hodges could see you!”

  She smirked. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Her yoga mat was stretched out across the hardwood a second later. As she settled down, she gestured toward the closet, where she secreted away several extra yoga mats.

  I took a deep breath. “Alright, but I’m not taking my shirt off.”

  Mum sat in lotus position, eyes already closed. “Whatever, square. Turn on the stereo, will you?”

  I did as was asked, collected a green yoga mat with a symbol of Ganesh across it, and settled onto the hardwood beside my topless mother as some Yanni caliber smooth jams oozed from the stereo.

  I was halfway through downward facing dog before I began to chuckle softly. It was as though I’d just realized how strange my life was. In my thirties, home with mum, doing yoga in the living room, completely desensitized to her tatas being out and about. How many kids grow up with such crunchy mums and rebel against it, hiding their boobs away from the world? Yet here I was, feeling overdressed while in salutation of the sun. These existential notions faded with every flash of my mom’s knockers, soon replaced by visions of chimpanzees -

  Chimpanzees and Stellan.

  Mostly Stellan.

  God damn it.

  CHAPTER Seven

  “Morning, hon,” my mom said as I entered the kitchen.

  It was Saturday morning, several days since our last topless yoga ses
sion and Stellan’s project proposal. I hadn’t worked on it since. Something about it turned my stomach every time I tried to sit down at my old drafting table. I had ideas – I had a million ideas for sketches, but without Stellan there, I half feared the house would burst into flames the second I put a pen to paper.

  I paused in the hallway, part of me feeling guilty to look like a ragamuffin that morning especially after a week or more of what I was sure she saw as ‘making progress.’ If she was disappointed, she didn’t show it. She loved her weekend mornings, sitting at the counter, drinking her coffee, reading her book, or on Sunday’s, her morning paper.

  She smiled at me. “You put the drawing desk back together, I see.”

  I yawned. “That was Stellan.”

  She smiled into her coffee cup. “What a sweet thing.”

  I agreed and turned to head back upstairs.

  “Have you been drawing then?”

  I stopped and considered my answer. Telling your mother you’ve potentially rediscovered an interest in art when she spends her days breathing it – it’s just asking for a supportive exchange. She’d always loved finding my comics around the house, pretending to get my obscure humor. When she couldn’t make sense of it, she praised my technique or use of color, acting as though she’d discovered the lost Vermeer at every napkin doodle of mine she found.

  I shrugged and leaned against the wall. “Stellan asked me to work on some sketches.”

  “Is it for an app?”

  My mother loved her gadgets. She owned an iPhone – Christmas gift from me the year before. Stellan had taken it from her and given her every application a near sixty year old woman could find use for. She prided herself on her savvy.

  “Yeah. Some game he’s programming.”

  She shifted again, and I could see the excitement, like steam rising at the hourly surge of Old Faithful. I slowly faded down the hallway, but there was no dodging my mother when it came to art.

  “Can I see what you’re working on?”

  I pursed my lips. “I haven’t really gotten started, honestly.”