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Cyrus Shams
Keady University, 2015

Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke back to him after twenty-seven years of silence, what Cyrus wanted more than anything else was a do-over. Clarification. Lying on his mattress that smelled like piss and Febreze, in his bedroom that smelled like piss and Febreze, Cyrus stared up at the room’s single light bulb, willing it to blink again, willing God to confirm that the bulb’s flicker had been a divine action and not just the old apartment’s trashy wiring.

“Flash it on and off,” Cyrus had been thinking, not for the first time in his life. “Just a little wink and I’ll sell all my shit and buy a camel. I’ll start over.” All his shit at that moment amounted to a pile of soiled laundry and a stack of books borrowed from various libraries and never returned, poetry and biographies, To the Lighthouse, My Uncle Napoleon. Never mind all that, though: Cyrus meant it. Why should the Prophet Muhammad get a whole visit from an archangel? Why should Saul get to see the literal light of heaven on the road to Damascus? Of course it would be easy to establish bedrock faith after such clear-cut revelation. How was it fair to celebrate those guys for faith that wasn’t faith at all, that was just obedience to what they plainly observed to be true? And what sense did it make to punish the rest of humanity who had never been privy to such explicit revelation? To make everyone else lurch from crisis to crisis, desperately alone?

But then it happened for Cyrus too, right there in that ratty Indiana bedroom. He asked God to reveal Himself, Herself, Themself, Itself, whatever. He asked with all the earnestness at his disposal, which was troves. If every relationship was a series of advances and retreats, Cyrus was almost never the retreat-er, sharing everything important about himself at a word, a smile, with a shrug as if to say, “Those’re just facts. Why should I be ashamed?”

He’d lain there on the bare mattress on the hardwood floor letting his cigarette ash on his bare stomach like some sulky prince, thinking, “Turn the lights on and off lord and I’ll buy a donkey, I promise I’ll buy a camel and ride him to Medina, to Gethsemane, wherever, just flash the lights and I’ll figure it out, I promise.” He was thinking this and then it—something—happened. The light bulb flickered, or maybe it got brighter, like a camera’s flash going off across the street, just a fraction of a fraction of a second like that, and then it was back to normal, just a regular yellow bulb.

Cyrus tried to recount the drugs he’d done that day. The standard bouquet of booze, weed, cigarettes, Klonopin, Adderall, Neurontin variously throughout the day. He had a couple Percocets left but he’d been saving them for later that evening. None of what he’d taken was exotic, nothing that would make him out and out hallucinate. He felt pretty sober in fact, relative to his baseline.

He wondered if it had maybe been the sheer weight of his wanting, or his watching, that strained his eyes till they saw what they’d wanted to see. He wondered if maybe that was how God worked now in the new world. Tired of interventionist pyrotechnics like burning bushes and locust plagues, maybe God now worked through the tired eyes of drunk Iranians in the American Midwest, through CVS handles of bourbon and little pink pills with G 31 written on their side. Cyrus took a pull from the giant plastic Old Crow bottle. The whiskey did, for him, what a bedside table did for normal people—it was always at the head of his mattress, holding what was essential to him in place. It lifted him daily from the same sleep it eventually set him into.

Lying there reflecting on the possible miracle he’d just experienced, Cyrus asked God to do it again. Confirmation, like typing your password in twice to a web browser. Surely if the all-knowing creator of the universe had wanted to reveal themselves to Cyrus, there’d be no ambiguity. Cyrus stared at the ceiling light, which in the fog of his cigarette smoke looked like a watery moon, and waited for it to happen again. But it didn’t. Whatever sliver of a flicker he had or hadn’t perceived didn’t come back. And so, lying there in the stuffy haze of relative sobriety—itself a kind of high—amidst the underwear and cans and dried piss and empty orange pill bottles and half-read books held open against the hardwood, breaking their spines to face away—Cyrus had a decision to make.

Two Years Later
Monday
Keady University, 6 Feb, 2017

“I would die for you,” Cyrus said alone to his reflection in the little hospital mirror. He wasn’t sure he meant it, but it felt good to say. For weeks, he had been playing at dying. Not in the Plath “I have done it again, one year in every ten” way. Cyrus was working as a medical actor at the Keady University Hospital. Twenty dollars an hour, fifteen hours a week, Cyrus pretended to be “of those who perish.” He liked how the Quran put it that way, not “until you die” but “until you are of those who perish.” Like an arrival into a new community, one that had been eagerly waiting for you. Cyrus would step into the fourth-floor hospital office and a secretary would hand him a notecard with a fake patient’s name and identity on it beside a little cartoon face on the 0–10 pain scale where 0 was a smiling “No hurt at all” face, 4 was a straight-faced “Hurts a little more,” and 10 was a sobbing “Hurts worst” face, a gruesome cartoon with an upside-down U for a mouth. Cyrus felt he’d found his calling.

Some days he was the one dying. Others, he was their family. That night Cyrus would be Sally Gutierrez, mother of three, and the face would be a 6, “Hurts even more.” That’s all the information he had before an anxious medical student in an ill-fitting white coat shuffled in and told Cyrus/Sally his daughter had been in a car accident, that the team had done all they could do but couldn’t save her. Cyrus dialed his reaction up to a 6, just on the cusp of tears. He asked the medical student if he could see his daughter. He cursed, at one point screamed a little. When Cyrus left that evening, he grabbed a chocolate granola bar from the little wicker basket on the secretary’s table.

The med students were often overeager to console him, like daytime talk-show hosts. Or they’d be repelled by the artifice of the situation and barely engage. They’d offer platitudes from a list they’d been made to memorize, tried to refer Cyrus to the hospital’s counseling services. Eventually they would leave the exam room, and Cyrus would be left to evaluate their compassion by filling out a photocopied score sheet. A little camera on a tripod recorded each exchange for review.

Sometimes the medical student would ask Cyrus if he wanted to donate his beloved’s organs. This was one of the conversations the school was training them for. The students’ job was to persuade him. Cyrus was Buck Stapleton, assistant coach of the varsity football team, devout Catholic. Staid, a 2 on the pain scale: “Hurts a little bit.” The little cartoon face still smiling even, though barely. His wife was in a coma, her brain showed no signs of activity. “She can still help people,” the student said, awkwardly placing his hand on Cyrus’s shoulder. “She can still save people’s lives.”

For Cyrus, the different characters were half the fun. He was Daisy VanBogaert, a diabetic accountant whose below-knee amputation had come too late. For her, they’d asked him to wear a hospital gown. He was a German immigrant, Franz Links, engineer, with terminal emphysema. He was Jenna Washington, and his Alzheimer’s was accelerating unexpectedly quickly. An 8. “Hurts a whole lot.”

The doctor who interviewed Cyrus for the job, an older white woman with severe lips and leaden eyes, told him she liked hiring people like him. When he raised an eyebrow, she quickly explained: “Non-actors, I mean. Actors tend to get a little”—she spun her hands in tight circles—”Marlon Brando about it. They can’t help making it about themselves.”

Cyrus had tried to get his roommate Zee in on the gig, but Zee’d blown off the interview. Zbigniew Ramadan Novak, Polish Egyptian—Zee for short. He said he’d slept through his alarm, but Cyrus suspected he was freaked out. Zee’s discomfort with the job kept coming up. A month later, as Cyrus was leaving for the hospital, Zee watched him getting ready and shook his head.

“What?” asked Cyrus.

Nothing.

“What?” Cyrus asked again, more pointedly.

Zee made a little face, then said, “It just doesn’t seem healthy, Cyrus.”

“What doesn’t?” Cyrus asked.

Zee made the face again.

“The hospital gig?”

Zee nodded, then said: “I mean, your brain doesn’t know the difference between acting and living. After all the shit you’ve been through? It can’t be like . . . good for you. In your brain stem.”

“Twenty dollars an hour is pretty good for me,” Cyrus said, grinning, “in my brain stem.”

That money felt like a lot. Cyrus thought about how, when he’d been drinking, he’d sell his plasma for that much, twenty dollars a trip, his dehydrated hangover blood taking hours to sludge out like milkshake through a thin straw. Cyrus would watch people arrive, get hooked up, and leave the facility in the time it took him to give a single draw.

“And I’m sure eventually it’ll be good for my writing too,” Cyrus added. “What’s that thing about living the poems I’m not writing yet?”

Cyrus was a good poet when he wrote, but he rarely actually wrote. Before getting sober, Cyrus didn’t write so much as he drank about writing, describing booze as essential to his process, “nearly sacramental”—he really said it like that—in the way it “opened his mind to the hidden voice” beneath the mundane “argle-bargle of the every-day.” Of course, when he drank, he rarely did anything else but drink. “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you!” Cyrus would announce proudly to a room, to a bar, forgetting from whom he’d lifted the line.

In sobriety, he endured long periods of writer’s block, or more accurately, writer’s ambivalence. Writer’s antipathy. What made it almost worse was how much Zee encouraged Cyrus whenever he did write something; Zee’d fawn over his roommate’s new drafts, praising every line break and slant rhyme, stopping just short of hanging them up on the apartment refrigerator.

“‘Living the poems you’re not writing?’” Zee scoffed. “C’mon, you’re better than that.”

“I’m really not,” Cyrus said, sharply, before stepping out the apartment door.

When Cyrus pulled into the hospital parking lot, he was still pissed off. Everything didn’t have to be as complex as Zee constantly made it, Cyrus thought. Sometimes, life was just what happened. What accumulated. That was one of the vague axioms from his drinking days to which Cyrus still clung, even in sobriety. It wasn’t fair that just because he was sober, everyone expected him to exhaustively interrogate his every decision. This job or that job, this life or that. Not drinking was Herculean enough on its own. He should’ve been afforded more grace, not less. The long scar on his left foot—from an accident years before—pounded with pain.

Cyrus signed into the hospital and walked through the halls, past two nursing mothers sitting side by side in a waiting room, past a line of empty gurneys with messy bedding, and into the elevator. When he got to the fourth-floor office, the receptionist had him sign in again and gave him his card for the afternoon. Sandra Kaufmann. High school math teacher. Educated, no children. Widowed. Six on the pain scale. Cyrus sat in the waiting room, glancing at the camera, the “Understanding Skin Cancer” chart on the wall with gruesome pictures of Atypical Moles, Precancerous Growths. The ABCs of melanoma: Asymmetry, Borders, Color Change, Diameter, and Evolution. Cyrus imagined Sandra’s hair crimson red, the color of the “Diameter” mole on the poster.

After a minute, a young medical student walked into the room alone, looked at Cyrus, then at the camera. She was a little younger than him, wore her auburn hair behind her head in a neat bun. Her impeccable posture gave her a boarding-school air, New England royalty. Cyrus reflexively hated her. That Yankee patrician veneer. He imagined she got perfect SATs, went to an Ivy League school, only to be disappointed by Keady as her medical school placement instead of Yale or Columbia. He imagined her having joyless, clinical sex with the chiseled son of her father’s business partner, imagined them at a fancy candlelit restaurant dourly picking at a shared veal piccata, both ignoring the table bread. Unaccountable contempt covered him, pitiless. Cyrus hated how noisily she opened the door, sullying the stillness he’d been enjoying. She looked at the camera again, then introduced herself:

“Hello, Miss Kaufmann. My name is Dr. Monfort.”

“Mrs. Kaufmann,” Cyrus corrected.

The medical student glanced quickly at the camera.

“Erm, excuse me?”

“Mr. Kaufmann may be dead, but I am still his wife,” said Cyrus, pointing to a pretend wedding ring on his left hand.

“I, I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just—”

“It’s no problem, dear.”

Dr. Monfort set down her clipboard and leaned her hand against the sink she’d been standing near, as if resetting. Then, she spoke: “Mrs. Kaufmann, I’m afraid the scans have revealed a large mass in your brain. Several large masses, clumped together. Unfortunately, they’re attached to sensitive tissue controlling breathing and cardiopulmonary function, and we can’t safely operate without risking severe damage to those systems. Chemotherapy and radiation may be options, but due to the location and maturation of the masses, these treatments would likely be palliative. Our oncologist will be able to tell you more.”

“Palliative?” Cyrus asked. The students were supposed to avoid jargon and euphemism. Not “going to a better place.” Saying the word “dying” as often as possible was recommended, as it eliminated confusion, helped hasten the patient through denial.

“Uhm, yes. For pain relief. To make you comfortable while you get your affairs in order.”

Get your affairs in order. She was doing terribly. Cyrus hated her.

“I’m sorry, Doctor—what was it? Milton? Are you telling me I’m dying?” Cyrus half-smiled as he said the one word she’d yet to speak out loud. She winced, and Cyrus relished her wincing.

“Ah, yes, Miss Kaufmann, ah, I’m so sorry.” Her voice sounded the way wild rabbits look, just on the cusp of tearing off out of sight.

“Mrs. Kaufmann.”

“Oh right, of course, I’m so sorry.” She checked her clipboard. “It’s just, my paper here says ‘Miss Kaufmann.’”

“Doctor, are you trying to tell me I don’t know my own name?”

The medical student glanced desperately back at the camera.

A year and a half ago in early recovery, Cyrus told his AA sponsor Gabe that he believed himself to be a fundamentally bad person. Selfish, self-seeking. Cruel, even. A drunk horse thief who stops drinking is just a sober horse thief, Cyrus’d said, feeling proud to have thought it. He’d use versions of that line later in two different poems.

“But you’re not a bad person trying to get good. You’re a sick person trying to get well,” Gabe responded.

Cyrus sat with the thought.

Gabe went on, “There’s no difference to the outside world between a good guy and a bad guy behaving like a good guy. In fact, I think God loves that second guy a little more.”

“Good-person drag,” Cyrus thought out loud. That’s what they called it after that.

“Of course not, Mrs. Kaufmann, I’m absolutely not trying to argue,” the medical student stammered. “The paper must have misprinted your name. I’m so sorry. Is there anyone you’d like us to call?”

“Who would I have you call?” Cyrus asked. “My principal? I’m all alone.”

Dr. Monfort looked clammy. The red light on the camera was blinking on and off, like a firefly mocking their proceedings.

“We have some great counselors here at Keady,” she said. “Nationally ranked—”

“Have you ever had a patient who wanted to die?” Cyrus interrupted.

The medical student stared at him, saying nothing, pure disdain radiating from her person, barely bridled fury. Cyrus thought she might actually hit him.

“Or maybe not wanted to die,” Cyrus continued, “but who just wanted their suffering to end?”

“Well, like I said, we offer a wide range of palliative options,” she hissed, staring at Cyrus, Cyrus-Cyrus, beneath Mrs. Kaufmann, willing him toward compliance.

He ignored her.

“The last time I thought I wanted to die, I got a fifth of Everclear, ninety-five percent alcohol, and sat in my bathtub drinking it from the bottle, pouring out a bit on my head. One pull for me, one for my hair. The aim was to finish the bottle that way and then light myself on fire. Theatrical, no?”

Dr. Monfort said nothing. Cyrus went on,

“But when I’d finished maybe just a quarter of the bottle, I realized suddenly I didn’t want to burn everyone else in the apartment complex.”

This was true. That little flicker of lucidity, light, like sun glinting off a snake in the grass. It happened a few months before Cyrus had gotten sober, and it wasn’t until he was already good and drunk that he even remembered the existence of other people, and the fact that fire spreads, that if he lit himself on fire in a first-floor apartment bathtub, everyone else’s apartments would likely catch fire too. Booze worked that way sometimes, clarifying—briefly—what his mind couldn’t. It was like sitting in the optometrist’s office, booze flashing its different lenses in front of your face and sometimes, for a second, it’d be the right prescription, the one that allowed you to catch a glimpse of the world as it was, beyond your grief, beyond your doom. That was the clarity alcohol, and nothing else, gave. Seeing life as everyone else did, as a place that could accommodate you. But of course a second later it’d zoom past clarity through a flurry of increasingly opaque lenses until all you were able to see would be the dark of your own skull.

“Can you believe that?” Cyrus went on. “I needed to be drunk to even consider that a fire that consumed me in a bathtub wouldn’t just go out on its own.”

“Mrs. Kaufmann . . . ,” the medical student said. She was wringing her hands, one of the “physical distress behaviors” Cyrus was supposed to note in his evaluation.

“I remember actually sitting there in the bathtub, doing the calculus of it. Like, do I even care if I take other people with me? These strangers. I had to work out whether or not they mattered to me.

How fucked up is that?”

“Mrs. Kaufmann, if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, we have resources . . . .”

“Oh c’mon, just talk to me. You want to be a doctor? I’m sitting in front of you, talking. I ended up walking myself outside the apartment complex, wet with the alcohol, though not too wet, it evaporated quickly I think, I remember being surprised at how wet I wasn’t. There was a little grassy patch between our building and the one next to us, a picnic bench with one of those built-in charcoal grills. I remember thinking that was funny, lighting myself on fire next to a grill. I brought out the Everclear and the lighter, I remember—this is bizarre—it was a Chicago Bears lighter. I have no idea where it came from. And I sat there at the bench feeling, despite the Everclear in and on me, I remember sitting there feeling, not happy exactly but simple, maybe? Like a jellyfish just floating along. Someone said alcohol reduces the ‘fatal intensity’ of living. Maybe it was that.”

Outside the clouds had grown fat and dark with rain, the whole sky a wounded animal in some last frantic rage. The hospital room had a tiny little window high on the wall, probably placed there so people from the street couldn’t look in. The medical student didn’t move.

“Do you have this organ here?” Cyrus asked her, pointing at the base of his throat. “A doom organ that just pulses all the time? Pulses dread, every day, obstinately? Like it thinks there’s a panther behind the curtain ready to maul you, but there’s no panther and it turns out there’s no curtain either? That’s what I wanted to stop.”

“What did you do?” the medical student asked, finally. Something in her seemed to have relaxed a little, conceded to the moment’s current.

“I went back inside my apartment.” Cyrus shrugged. “I wanted to stop hurting. Being burned alive felt suddenly like it’d hurt a lot.”

Dr. Monfort smiled, gave a tiny nod.

Cyrus continued: “I took a shower and passed out. I remained. But so did the dread. I thought getting sober would help, that came later. Recovery. And it did, in its way. Certainly it made me less a burden to the people around me, created less dread in them. But it’s still in me, that doom organ.” He pointed again at his neck. “It’s in my throat, throbbing all day every day. And recovery, friends, art—that shit just numbs it for a second. What’s that word you used?”

“Palliative?”

“Right, palliative, yeah. All that stuff is palliative. It stills the suffering, but it doesn’t send it away.”

The medical student paused for a moment, then took a seat on the chair across from Cyrus. She was tinted with black-blue rays from the window as if marked by some celestial spotlight. She said, very deliberately, “You know, Mrs. Kaufmann, it’s entirely possible, common even, to have psychological co-morbidities. It sounds like you’ve been getting help for addiction issues, which is great. But you may also have another diagnosis alongside it that’s going untreated, an anxiety disorder or major depression or something else. It could be useful for you to seek help for those as well.” She smiled a little, then added, “It’s not too late, even with the tumors.” It was her way of inviting Cyrus back into the performance, and he obliged. He felt suddenly flush with embarrassment.

Cyrus behaved agreeably through the rest of the act. When they finished a few minutes later and the medical student left the exam room, he wrote her a quick but glowing report before rushing out of the hospital in a flurry of shame.

The post Not All of His Problems Are a Performance appeared first on Electric Literature.

Once upon a time, I had a terrible marriage. We couldn’t stop fighting. We fought all night. We fought so loudly the neighbors complained. We threw things and called each other “prick” and “cunt.”

Of course it was a very lonely time. The shame was unbearable and black and continuous. We agonized constantly about how to stop it, and the life we could have if we could just get along. But anything we tried would start a fight. Then we’d be screaming like children, throwing things, terrified, in the filthy kitchen that never got cleaned—when you fight like that, there isn’t time for cleaning. Everything’s dirty like your life.

At the tail end of one of these fights, in the little hours, both of us exhausted and sick on adrenalin, fuck you, it’s you who, cunt, prick, idiot—I suddenly saw how absurd it was and said: “Well, you’re a skoo! And whatever you say, you’ll never be anything but a dirty skoo!”—skoo being a word I’d made up on the spot.

My husband got the joke and rolled with it, saying, “Well, you’re a ca! You’re a low-down ca, and that’s all you’ll ever be! A ca!”

We went on for a little while—you skoos are all, you’re like every other ca—both laughing, grateful, all rancor gone. We even believed we’d turned a corner. We’d had an insight that could stop the fights, and we just had to cling to that knowledge.

In the months that followed, we elaborated skoo and ca into a game. The skoo, we decided, was a weasel-like creature. We imagined a whole folk culture of skoos, where skoos told tales of a trickster figure called the Mandrake Skoo. The ca, meanwhile, was a monotheistic bird that worshipped the Great Ca on the mountain. I called my husband “Skoo.” He called me “Ca.” They were the nicknames we used when we were alone, which no one else was supposed to know.

Most of all, we made their cries to each other. The skoo’s cry was, “Skoo!” delivered with a honking plaintiveness. We skooed to each other as if across a distance, a cold swamp in which a skoo could be imagined to be stranded in a rowboat slowly taking on water. He skooed and I skooed back. We also ca-ed, which was higher in pitch, and had a falling note. One might imagine a ca to be plaintively crying from a mangrove tree in that same swamp, where she’s woken alone, confused, bird-brained, and can’t grasp where her mate has gone. My husband would skoo from the other room. I would ca back. Or we would skoo back and forth. Skoo! Ca! Skoo! Ca! It was amazing how it made us feel better; like singing.

But if we spoke in English, we would fight.

We broke up at last and became good friends. We never fought again, as if a spell had been broken. But we also never said “skoo” or “ca.” His name still came up as “Skoo” on my phone, but I never called him “Skoo.” We had other lovers and eventually spouses. That particular closeness had to come to an end.

Then it felt as if “skoo” was a magic that grew more potent with not being used. Our friendship was sacred and powerful because of it. Our friendship was not like anything else.

Here’s another story to explain what I mean. A few days after 9/11, my friend Michael was dancing in a gay club when the power went out. From one second to the next, the room went black. The music cut out and the only sounds were stumbling and muttering and nervous laughter. Soon even these died away. Michael couldn’t stop waiting for the bomb to hit. He had the irrational feeling that the world outside was gone.

Then out of the void, a frail voice sang: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide . . . no escape from reality . . . .”

Another voice joined in, and another. Everyone there knew “Bohemian Rhapsody;” soon the whole club was singing along. They sang the song through to its end. Then they filed out together into the night, gently bumping into each other and laughing, and found the city still there, its lights still shining, as if their song had conjured it back.

We reach to each other across the abyss. We try. We skoo. We call across the abyss.

So, essentially, this is a happy life. The worst things happen, but we stand by each other. At bottom, humanity is good, not bad. The ca flies out to the skoo in its rowboat and the two of them paddle together to shore. There are other voices singing in the dark.

My skoo husband died a few years ago. The last time I saw him, we were in a restaurant, and he said to me, “Looking back on our lives, what regrets do we have?” and then he told me his regrets.

He didn’t tell me his heart had gone into tachycardia. He just picked at the terrible pasta dish the restaurant served him, for which they will burn in hell, then went home and told his wife he needed to go to the hospital.

They put him on a ventilator immediately. He never spoke or ate again.

His regrets were not having children and having stayed in academia. I had already known these regrets, of course, because we’d known each other such a long time. I don’t remember what my regrets were. My main regret now is not saving his life, though there isn’t any way I could have saved his life. Still it’s hard not to have this regret.

I’ve recently been in the part of town where this happened, so I went on a pilgrimage to the place and looked at the subway station where I watched him go down the stairs alone.

I can’t believe you can’t save people. I can’t believe you ever hate or harm them. I don’t know how it could really have happened. I want to say it’s not true.

The post You Look Like a Skoo and You Smell Like One, Too appeared first on Electric Literature.

In the beginning there is Adina and her Earth mother. Adina (in utero), listening to the advancing yeses of her mother’s heart and her mother in the labor room, vitals plunging. Binary stars. Adina, swaying in zero gravity. Térèse, fastened to the operating table. The monitor above the bed reports on their connected hearts: beating heart, heart, beating heart, beating. Térèse’s blood pressure plummets as Adina advances through the birth canal; she has almost reached Earth. At this moment, Voyager 1 spacecraft launches in Florida, containing a phonograph record of sounds intended to explain human life to intelligent extraterrestrials.

It is September 1977 and Americans are obsessed with Star Wars, a civil war movie set in space. Bounding to the stage after hearing her name, a Price Is Right contestant loses her tube top and reveals herself to a shocked Burbank audience. In the labor room of Northeast Philadelphia Regional, no one notices Térèse’s plummeting blood pressure. Something lighter and more conscious detaches and slips beneath the body on the table, underneath the floor and sediment, landing in a corridor of waist-deep water. Behind her, unembodied darkness. Far in front, over an expanse of churning waves, a certain, cherishing light. Térèse wants the light more than she wants health, more than she wants this baby’s father to become a shape that can hold a family. She forces one leg through the water then the other, trying to paddle herself like a vessel.

The contents of Voyager 1’s record were chosen by Carl Sagan, a polarizing astronomer who wears natty turtleneck-blazer combos and has been denied Harvard tenure for being too Hollywood. Carl and his team have assembled over a hundred images depicting what they decided were typical Earth scenes: a woman holding groceries, an insect on a leaf. The sounds include Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” the sorrowful cries of humpback whales, and recordings of the brain waves of Carl’s third wife. Footsteps, heartbeats, and laughter. Destination-less, Voyager 1 will travel 1.6 light-years: farther than any human-made object. At a press conference Carl says that launching this bottle into the cosmic ocean is intended to tell “the human story.”

The astronomers hoped to include the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” but Columbia Records asked for too much money. It’s hard to make human beings believe in things.

Also not included is 1977’s top hit “Barracuda,” though every story hummed that year over the upholstered dividers of United States of America or yelled between cars pinned atop Auto World pistons or delivered through the eldritch mists of Beautyland’s perfume section is told over the twinned guitars of the two-sister band from Chicago. It plays on the radio in the nurses’ station at Northeast Regional. A speck of Panasonic rustle between songs.

The current is too strong; Térèse makes no progress. The light remains distant. She cries out. The fright of a huge suck pulls Adina through to big white. Térèse regains consciousness under unfriendly lamps, baby on her naked chest. The baby is too small. Her skin and eyes appear lightly coated in egg. She is placed under a phototherapy lamp. Lit blue-green by the mothering light, yearning toward its heat, she appears other than human. Plant or marine life, maybe. An orchid or otter. A shrimp.

Adina: noble

Giorno: day

Térèse watches through the nursery window as her new daughter fails to reach the light.

Adina will hear this story several times in her life and in her imagination Térèse will wear a strapless red corset and capelet like Ann Wilson on the cover of Little Queen, only Sicilian, and with roller skates, humid late-season wind blowing through the doors. Her hair will glisten darkly with Moroccan oil, too coarse to relent to the popular feathering style.

In reality, Térèse has been arranged into a wheelchair by the nurses, feeling retracted to Earth by an unkind thread. The collar of her hospital gown falls beneath her collarbone. Her baby unrolls a tiny fist and she thinks of her unchained friends, Adina’s father among them, on their way to the club. She is too tired to realize that pursuing him is following the promise of a dead star. The nurses chat about the Price Is Right contestant. Did it on purpose, one says. The first part of Térèse’s life is over. He will never again beg to hold her perfect nipple in his mouth. She will never again be wild Térèse dancing on the lit floor at Bob and Barbara’s. Her parents will not support her. She is this tiny baby’s mother, mother, mother. The she in Adina’s head.

In Adina’s imagination, her mother will gaze through the nursery window, electric guitar chevroning behind her. In reality, Térèse is perforated by exhaustion, parentless, barely returned from death’s corridor. Even the hospital gown refuses to help; its foolish smile exposes half a perfect breast.

But the womb is Adina’s second lost home. The first has already tumbled three hundred thousand years away. A planet in the approximate vicinity of the bright star Vega, in the northern constellation of Lyra. Intelligent extraterrestrials have sent their own probe in a form and to a location no academic—not even Carl Sagan—could anticipate.

It is an interstellar crisscross applesauce. Two celestially significant events occurring simultaneously: The departure of Voyager 1 and the arrival of Adina Giorno, early and yellowed like old newspaper. If like a newspaper Voyager intends to bring the news, this baby is meant to collect it, though no one knows that yet, including her. Even as the spacecraft breaches the troposphere, the delicate probe stretches her fist toward a heat lamp in the pediatric ward of Northeast Regional, having just been born—or landed—depending on perspective, premature. Wriggling, yearning, recovering in heat, full head of thick black hair, at the moment she is still mostly salt and feeling.

This family, trying, lives across from Auto World in Northeast Philadelphia. Their apartment comprises the bottom floor of a two-unit brick building attached to another brick building, attached to another brick building, and so on, et cetera-ing down the highway. These are starter row homes. This is a starter family. The complex’s lawn, newly mowed, emits a pleasant fecund smell to the cars speeding by and to Adina’s father, where he crouches, glaring at a screwdriver. If he keeps his city job they’ll move to the suburbs where within years he will not rent but own an unattached house. They’ll have a yard that’s only theirs, a grill, a tree, and enough space for each family member to do things alone. There is no solo activity in the row home across from Auto World. Being a father is alien to this man but he’s trying. Today, he will use metal to add wood to wood and produce a swing, the way a man plus a woman and baby makes a family.

Each row home is designed like a cadaver lying flat on a table: at the prow of the apartment is an abbreviated entryway that normally holds Adina’s kicked-off boots and her mother’s neatly arranged work pumps, hallway like a throat leading to the open kitchen, the torso a family room big enough to hold a couch and a half-moon table covered in the open faces of their books, a fart of a bathroom, two small back bedrooms. Wood paneling. Everything possible painted beige. In front of Auto World a flying man twists and gyrates, making Adina and her mother giggle as they pull into their driveway.

Four-year-old Adina wakes from a nap and moves through the apartment, surprised to find the family room empty. Where are they? She believes she is the nucleus of every interaction and while she sleeps her parents pray for her to wake. She is still inactivated. She is still upturned to the sun. She cannot stop thinking about the bunnies she saw on the lawn the previous day under a bush, heads pressed together in a soft shamrock.

There are no cookies in the jar and the fridge is filled with off-limits bottles. Kid math: if her mother is rustling in her bedroom then her father must be in the backyard. There is still as much chance Adina will go to her father as her mother. She pauses. The home itself—every crock on the shelf, every bill—seems to pause.

The swing wins. Adina longs to sit weightless on a piece of oak fastened to rope. The vehicle of upward thrust. There is no reason to have a swing. This makes the swing an anomaly because in addition to its intended purpose every object in the apartment must also function in two or three other ways. Everything repurposed, everything salvaged. Even she, the child, was meant to fulfill several things at once: to be silent, useful, hardworking, a credit to her father.

That morning, her mother pulled a fax machine from a neighbor’s trash and, holding it aloft like a prized marlin, engaged in conversation with herself. “Why would anyone throw this out? Probably because they want the latest model. But it could clearly be a planter!” (Anything about to be trashed was first tried as a planter.) “It even comes with paper!” (She unearthed the roll from the trash, brandishing it in front of herself and Adina.) “I’ll bet it works. Paper! People are crazy.” (People were always crazy.)

Her father said it was ugly and no one he knew had one in their home and it should stay in “the child’s” room.

“Fine,” her mother said in her not-fine voice and carried the fax machine to Adina’s room where it claimed most of her bureau’s top. Except for the paper tray, city-pigeon gray, the machine was the color of the orthopedic shoes the employees wore at her mother’s job. A slim phone posed beside a bank of flat buttons with scripted numbers that glowed when her mother plugged it in. Portals to the business world.

Adina’s mother slid a sheet of paper into the tray. “Who should we fax?”

Adina didn’t know any phone numbers except her own. Her mother dialed: 215-999-1212. The machine whirred to life, trembled pleasantly as it pulled the paper through itself, went silent.

“What happens now?” Adina heard her father in the backyard, readying his tools. The woosh of cars on the street. A clicking sound from a private place inside the machine. A sheet of paper launched from an internal chamber Adina and her mother had not anticipated. An error message: no answer.

Adina’s mother’s eyes were wide. “Incredible.”

It is impossible to be unhappy on a swing. Even at four, Adina knows this. She wants it to be finished so she can be as happy as she needs to be. She wants her father to swing her until she is high enough to reach the porch’s tin ceiling.

“Is it finished, Daddy?”

But some immeasurable slanted expression over breakfast has dug a divot into him. Her mother thinks he’s weak or unable to build a swing. She thinks she’d be better off alone. He is. He is. She would be. Even though the plates are his, the table his, the yard, the everything is provided by him. The nail’s failure to find purchase in the flaccid wood has dug that divot even farther. Now this brown berry kid wants to check his progress? Is he finished. Thank you, how about.

Her father’s neck bulges with veins in an unmatchable shade of red. He pushes Adina out of his space. Maybe he forgets the five concrete steps leading to the shared yard when he pushes her again. The concrete and the trimmed grass offer little to cushion her brief fall. Falls.

In the kitchen her mother lifts a glass of water to her mouth. She drinks eight a day, soundlessly, one after the other. She hears a neighbor call her name and hurries to the backyard where Adina is a quiet lump on the pavement.

How long does Adina stay outside the realm of human voices? Seconds? A century? She wakes to her mother shaking her, screaming go back inside to a constellation of worried neighbors. Earth to Adina. Come in, Adina. Adina reboots. Some things return immediately and some take time. A tin taste sours her mouth. Her mother’s steel grip on her shoulders, helping her stand. Her father’s gaze locked on the abandoned tools on the ground. Adina is activated.

That night, Adina “wakes” in a room designed to appear as a classroom. The English alphabet borders the walls. An aquarium with blinking blue fish and a shelf filled with globes. The scene is stitched from what she has seen from classrooms on television and the visit she made to the grade school she will attend the following year. They are using human objects so she will understand.

Her superiors are an area near the front of the class that shimmers and evokes the sense of the singular plural. Multi- souled, multi-personed Shimmering Area. The closest human word for how they communicate is intuiting. They intuit toward Adina and she receives the message. This is her native tongue. It makes sense that she dreams in it and that using it fills her with ease. She intuits the Shimmering Area is both a location and a doorway.

The lights dim. An ivory screen descends from the top of the chalkboard and fills with projected images. A switchboard operator pulls a line from a connection. Two housewives talk on the phone. A formally dressed man ducks into a telephone booth to make an emergency call. Adina consults the Shimmering Area for whatever is next.

A familiar object flashes onto the screen, the fax machine her mother pulled from the trash. A disembodied hand feeds a sheet of paper with nondescript handwriting into it and presses the large green key. The paper churns through the mechanism. As it emerges on the other side, the machine and paper glow. Joyful sparks beam out.

Adina wakes in her Earth bedroom, nostrils filled with the tang of cleaning supplies. She lazes in and out of sleep, considering a space near the door where morning light has collected into the shape of a ship. Seeing the fax machine on her bureau, she remembers the images from her dream.

She writes on a sheet of paper:

I am an Adina.

After thinking about it, adds:

Yesterday I saw bunnies on the grass.

She feeds her note into the machine and presses the green button. The paper jolts through the tumbler with a robotic scanning sound.

It is so early even the boulevard is silent. Her mother is asleep in her bedroom and Adina is awake in her own, hovering next to an office machine, unsure what to hope for. After a moment, a red light she hadn’t noticed activates. Incoming fax! A sheet of paper squeaks through the tumblers.

DESCRIBE BUNNIES.

The post Humans Are the Most Alien Creatures appeared first on Electric Literature.

My America is skin. Hide. The red
hair periodically in my mustache.
The sun’s inability to burn me
past the color of bread,
whole wheat. My America
is Guatemala. El salvador.
My America is Chile. My America
is unsure whether to pronounce
Chile like the country
or the admonishment you give
the child misbehaving
on the front porch. Chile. The Texas home
my great-great-grandfather built
to be burned down
in my lifetime. The cemetery where
he is buried with all the others
with Mexican last names
in that flea bite of a town.
My America is living almost
every day of my life with a sea of white
& yellow lights called Tijuana, a crack
in my bedroom window. My America
is the hard stone my grandmother
wrapped in a baby blanket
& hid in a Phoenix
basement. My America is the glowing
black waters beside Detroit’s midnight
lights: paradoxical beauty, tide, swift
current. My America is any place
where someone docked their boat
in the sand saying, This
is mine now. Minha. Mijne. Mine.

Once

We will love each other only once. The word for this is cathecting, but we’re young still & high on our own diction, leaving those words sharp with meaning back in the classrooms we were grateful to escape. Lucky. My arm around you, asleep, I imagine what our stories would be like 100 years ago. 100 years ago two people like us would never be in the same city, same province, separated by oceans. Our parents & parents' parents savor these secrets like hard candy clinking against the backs of their teeth, the silent hiss of their mouths refusing to open for the fear of losing something. Their accents something we must summon for certain stories. Would we still share the same tongues? My hair underneath your fingernails, your hair in between my fingers. Our breaths stink of skin, sunlight in dusty blinds. What would we have done to be with one another, then? Would it have been worth it for one night—the coal-fueled train, relentless desert heat, a sailboat passing Greece to a larger vessel ready to cross the Atlantic? The months it would take. The pain of leaving the rivers where your family story started, the pain of the rivers redirected from a homestead where my ancestors live in the form of blue asters. The horses I would have in the burning dust. The horses I would have buried in the ground. The horses we wouldn’t own, either way, together. Touching each other’s faces would risk a necklace made of rope, the judgment of gravity from a tree. Touching each other’s faces always risks something, even now. Together, hours in bed dissolve like sugar in water. There’s more clean water in the kitchen than we can ask for. How many nights did our parents' parents snuff out the light worrying for such things to stay alive, to stay hydrated while outrunning hate? Even still none of us, as children, could imagine having a palm with a blue glow & so much power we could fit the world into our fist, much less them. For once I wish I could explain this to you, to us, to everyone wondering why we’re like this loving someone we know is gone before the body has left the bed, no matter how much our mouths thirsted for each other, sharing stiff drinks & making loose plans to nowhere. No, this isn’t what they imagined for us. Neither did they imagine our chiseled faces, the glow we’ve made of these skins that would surprise them with their smoothness, their color in the dark. Let every night like this be a toast to the names of those before us whose names we don’t know & didn’t have the chance to be this free, committed to finding a future of our own making, even if it’s only once.

The post In America, I Am Whole Wheat Bread appeared first on Electric Literature.

When Pan Ruliang was studying, he had a bad habit: the pencil in his hand would not stay still—right there in the margins of his book, it was always sketching a little person. He’d never studied drawing and it didn’t interest him much, but the moment his pencil touched paper, a line would start bending around, all on its own, drawing a face in side-view profile. Always the same face, always facing left. He’d been drawing that profile since he was little, it was so familiar it flowed. He could draw it with his eyes closed, or draw it with his left—in which case there’d be one difference only: the profile drawn with the right hand was rounder and smoother, the one drawn with the left more jaggedy, the points sharper, the hollows deeper—a picture of the same person looking thin, after a serious illness of some sort.

No hair, no eyebrows, no eyes, just a line running from the top of the forehead to the underside of the jaw, a simple line really, but you could tell it wasn’t a Chinese—the nose pushed out a bit too much. Ruliang, like the good young man that he was, loved his country, but the people of his country didn’t impress him overmuch. All of the Westerners that he knew were movie stars, or the sparkling, debonair mo-te-er who graced cigarette or soap advertisements; the Chinese that he knew were his father, his mother, and his brothers and sisters. His father was not a bad man, and he was out all day long working at his business; Ruliang saw him so seldom, it couldn’t amount to actual repugnance. But his father, after dinner, would sit in the living room, drinking on his own, with a side of fried peanuts, and then his face would turn all red and shiny and oily, just like a typical small-shop boss. His father did run a shop that made and sold pickles and fermented sauces, and in that sense had to count as a shop boss; but still . . . seeing as the man was his father, he ought be an exception to that type.

It wasn’t the drinking—Ruliang had no problem with that. Someone who’s been dealt a great blow, be it in love or at work, can stumble into a liquor-lined bar, groping walls as he goes, then climb onto a stool and hoarsely call out: “Whiskey, hold the soda.” Bracing his head in his hands, he can fall into a daze, one lock of hair falling forward, dolefully, into eyes that stare straight ahead, unblinking, totally empty . . . all of that makes good sense and merits sympathy. Drinking too much isn’t good, of course, but when it’s done like that, it has to count as a classy kind of degeneracy.

His father, on the other hand, had this miserable way of pouring rice wine out of the tin can in which he’d warmed it and into a teacup with a broken-off handle, and then, sitting with Ruliang’s mother while she ran the day’s accounts, he’d drink his wine while they chattered, he going on about his things, she about hers, neither of them heeding the other. And if he noticed the kids hankering for something to eat, sometimes he’d dole out a few peanuts each.

His mother, as was usual in such a case, had no education and was a piteous woman who, crushed by the oppression of old social norms, had sacrificed her entire life’s happiness; and she loved her son dearly but had no way of understanding him; the only thing she knew how to do was cook for him, urge him to eat more, then sadly see him off at the door, where her thin, wispy white hair was ruffled by a bleak breeze.

Annoyingly enough, Ruliang’s mother’s hair was not white, at least not yet, and if she did get a white hair or two, she plucked it out. And you never saw her crying when she was frustrated; instead, you saw her turning on the children till they were the ones crying. Then, in her spare time, she’d listen to Shaoxing folk opera or clack away at mahjong.

Ruliang’s two older sisters, like him, were in college. They wore face powder and rouge and were not particularly good looking yet refused to accept the obvious. Ruliang rejected any woman of his sisters’ sort.

But it was his younger brothers and sisters who were the most annoying: all those dirty, useless, clueless, utterly childish children. It was their existence that made his parents and older sisters go on lumping him with them, forgetting that he’d already grown up; that, for him, was the most hurtful, distressing part.

He never opened his mouth at home. He was a sole, solitary observer, looking at them with cold eyes, and his eyes, owing to the immensity of his contempt and indifference, turned light blue: it was the greenish blue of a little stone, or of someone’s shadow, early in the morning, on frosty ground.

But nobody noticed. His disapproval did not cause a moment’s discomfort to anyone. He was not a very consequential person.

Ruliang spent almost no time at home. When his classes were over, he went to a language school to study German, partly because he was studying medicine, for which German would be helpful, but also to avoid having dinner with his family—night school classes ran from seven to eight-thirty. Today, for instance, it wasn’t yet six-thirty, and already he was in the student lounge, sitting close to the charcoal brazier and looking over his homework.

A handful of magazines and newspapers were strewn across a long countertop in the lounge, and on the other side, hidden by a newspaper, sat someone who surely was not a student—reading a newspaper in German had to be beyond the level of even the most advanced students. The red nail polish on the fingers holding the paper was cracked and splotchy. It must be the woman typist who worked in the school director’s office, he decided. The woman put the paper down, turned the page, folded it over, and leaned over the countertop to read it. A thick spill of curly yellow hair hung down; her coat, made of light wool in a narrow plaid, had a green pocket-handkerchief that went nicely with her green blouse.

A shadow fell across the newspaper, cast by her own upper body. Furrowing her eyebrows, she turned sideways to get better light. When she turned her face away, Ruliang felt a shock of surprise: she had the exact same profile he’d been sketching here, there, everywhere, ever since he was little, the only profile he knew how to draw—it was unmistakable, that line running from the top of the forehead to the underside of the jaw. No wonder he’d thought that the Russian woman he’d seen when he was registering for class looked somehow familiar. It had never occurred to him that the face he’d been drawing belonged to a woman—and a beautiful woman no less. The line that ran from the top edge of her upper lip to the base of her nose was a bit too short—a sign, people said, that a person wouldn’t live long. The winsome charm of a woman destined not to live long wasn’t something Ruliang had ever mused over, but he could feel right away how the brevity of that line suffused her face with childlike beauty. Her hair was not exuberantly yellow; sunbeams would be needed, probably, to make it the genuinely golden blonde of Mother Mary. But it was that very vagueness of her hair, at the temples and in the eyebrows, that made her profile stand out so clearly. A marvelous feeling of joy rose up high in his heart: it was as if he’d created, with his own hands, this entire person. She was his; whether or not he liked her couldn’t even be a question for him, because she was part of himself. It was as if he could just walk over and say, “Oh, it’s you! You are mine, didn’t you know?” Then gently pluck her head off and press it into his book.

She seemed to have noticed the dazed way he was looking at her. Ruliang hurriedly dropped his gaze and looked at his book. The upper margins of those pages, everywhere filled, on the left and on the right, with a face drawn in profile: he couldn’t let her see that, or surely she’d think it was her face he’d been drawing! Ruliang grabbed a pencil and started scribbling, urgently, over the faces, but the scritch-scratch he was making only drew her attention. She leaned over, took a good look, and smiled. “That looks right, it really does look like me.”

Ruliang mumbled something indistinct and the pencil in his hand went on storming across the page, scribbling and scribbling till a good half of it was blackened out.

She reached over and pulled the book towards her with a smile. “Let me have a look. I wouldn’t have known how I look from the side if I hadn’t had some photos taken the other day and one was a profile pose. That’s why I could see right away that it’s a sketch of me. It’s a nice sketch, but why aren’t the eyes and mouth drawn in?”

Ruliang couldn’t figure out how to tell her he couldn’t draw eyes and mouth, couldn’t draw anything except this one side-view profile. When she looked at him and saw how embarrassed he was, she thought it was because he wasn’t used to speaking English and couldn’t formulate a response. To keep things going, she changed the question: “It’s really cold today—did you come by bicycle?”

Ruliang nodded. “Yes. It will be even colder tonight, after class ends.”

“That’s right. Doesn’t sound fun at all. Who is your teacher here?”

“Schmidt.”

“Is he a good teacher?”

Ruliang nodded again.

“But,” he said, “the class is too slow and I get bored.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t have much choice. The students are at different levels, and some can’t keep up.”

“That’s the trouble with group classes. It’s not as good as having a private tutor.”

Using one hand to prop up her head, she leafed through his book in a causal manner. “How much have you covered already?” She turned back to the first page and read his name aloud: “Pan Ruliang . . . my name is Cynthia Rubashov.” She picked up a pen to write it for him in a blank space somewhere, but there weren’t any left: each and every page of the book was filled up with faces drawn in profile—her profile. Ruliang, staring, was in a fix: he couldn’t just grab the book from her and yet his whole face had turned bright red and his cheeks were burning. Cynthia was blushing too—like a pink-winged moth resting on a lampshade, the faintest, most fleeting hue of rosiness touched her cheeks; she closed the book quickly, with a pretended show of nonchalance, and found a place on the cover where she could write out her name for him.

“Have you lived in Shanghai your whole life?” Ruliang asked.

“I lived in Harbin when I was little. I used to speak Chinese but now I’ve forgotten it all.”

“That’s a pity!”

“I’d like to start learning again, from the beginning. If you’d be willing to teach me, we could do a language exchange and I’ll teach you German.”

“I’d love that!”

The bell rang right then for the start of class. Ruliang stood up and reached for his book; Cynthia pushed down on it and slid it towards him. “How’s this?” she said with a smile. “If you’re free tomorrow at noon, we can try having class together. You can find me at Yih Tung Trading Company in Ssu-shêng Tower, on the ninth floor. That’s where I work during the day. No one’s there at lunchtime.”

Ruliang nodded and repeated, “Ssu-shêng Tower, Yih Tong Trading Company. I’ll be there.”

Then they parted. Ruliang couldn’t sleep that night, not till very late. This Cynthia . . . she had misunderstood, she thought he’d quietly fallen in love with her and was secretly drawing her face in his book, her face only, over and over again. She thought he’d fallen in love with her and yet she was, in a very obvious way, giving him a chance like this. Why was that? Could it be that she . . . .

She was a capable girl, worked in a trading company by day, then part time at a night school—but still she was, at most, his older sisters’ age? And yet she was utterly unlike them. A well-behaved girl, as everyone knows, should stay away from a person whom she is sure likes her, unless she plans to marry him. That’s how things are in China, and in other countries too. But . . . doesn’t everyone like spending time with someone who likes them? How could she be expected to spend time only with those who did not like her? And maybe, for Cynthia, there wasn’t anything more to it than that. He’d better not misunderstand; that’s what she’d already done. Best to avoid heaping even more misunderstanding onto this situation.

But was it really a misunderstanding?

Maybe he did love her but hadn’t even glimpsed that possibility. She’d seen it before he had—women, they say, are more intuitive. The whole thing was rather strange—he’d never been one to believe in foreordained encounters but really, this whole thing was quite strange . . . .

The next day, Ruliang put on his best Western suit then felt a bit of a fool, getting so smartly dressed to go see her; at the last moment, purposely sloppy and nonchalant, he threw on an old faded scarf.

As he headed to school in the early morning, all the little trees’ wintertime leaves seemed to have crystal-gelled into golden beads. He pedaled facing the sun, with his book bag swinging from the handlebar; strapped to the rear rack was a bare bone, T-shaped and chemically preserved. It had, at some point in the past, been the leg of a person—a leg that had once pedaled a bicycle, perhaps. Ruliang, facing the sun, pedaled on, and all around his warm body, the wintry wind blew. The sun that shines on the living doesn’t reach the bodies of the dead.

He grabbed hold of a tramcar that was speeding past and spun alongside it, almost flying. He could see, through the window of the tram, two women inside sitting face-to-face, chattering on about something, heads nodding after each sentence or so, their black eyelashes glazed white by the sunlight. Face-to-face they sat, wrapped up in some fascinating story they shared, and their lashes in the sunlight were blinking and white. The sun that shines on the living doesn’t reach the bodies of the dead.

Ruliang had a belly full of bubbling-hot breakfast and a heart full of happiness. He’d often felt it before—this happiness that had no particular reason—but today he thought: it must be because of Cynthia.

From somewhere off in an empty field came the sound of a dog’s loud, repeated barking. From a school, the ringing of bells. The bell sounds were golden, floating aloft in a linked chain, a small, fine line drifting along in the clear sky. In just one lock of Cynthia’s yellow hair, up there, each curling tendril was a little bell. Cynthia, adorable Cynthia.

He skipped the last of his morning classes and raced home to change his scarf instead, the bright white, brand new one now deemed, through dint of much deliberation, the better fit.

On his way he passed, in the middle of some open, unmanaged land, a newly built Western-style house, quite fancy; much to his surprise, this radio too was playing Shaoxing folk opera. Flowing through the curtains of coral-pink lace, a broad, bland voice belted out “Eighteen Pull-Drawers.” The last gasp of a dying culture! Here in these gloriously elegant surroundings the woman of the house was exactly like his own mother. Ruliang did not want a woman who was like his mother. Cynthia, at the very least, was from a world entirely unlike that one. Ruliang put her in the same category as everything clean and lovely, like college scholarships, like football matches, like German-made bicycles, like the New Literature.

Although Ruliang’s studies were in the medical division, he was a lover of literature. He felt sure that if he weren’t so busy, and he drank more coffee, he could write poignant, powerful things. His total faith in coffee was inspired not by its aroma, but by that complexly constructed, scientific silver pot with a crystalline glass lid. In much the same way, it was the constantly bright, brand-new gleam of doctors’ medical devices, when taken out, one by one, from their leather cases—all that ice-cold metal in intricate little shapes that could do anything–that inspired at least half of his devotion to medical science. Most awe-inspiring of all was the electrotherapy machine—its exquisite, toothed gears spun tirelessly, making a spark-lit jazz tune that was crisp, clear, uplifting. Modern science was the only indisputably good thing in an otherwise defective world. Once a person had become a doctor and put on that clean white coat, a father who ate fried peanuts with his rice wine, a mother who liked Shaoxing folk opera, and snobby older sisters in tacky face powder—none of them could have a hold on him.

Ruliang’s sights were set on that future. And now a Cynthia was added to that future. Reaching his dream would require, he knew full well, a great deal of hard work over a long period of time. A medical degree took seven years and he still had far to go: getting into a relationship with a Russian girl while still in the midst of his studies—it didn’t make any kind of good sense, no matter how you looked at it.

He cycled past yet another fancy house where Shaoxing opera was spinning out from the radio, that wide, flat, quavering voice in which nothing could be bright as day or dark as night; it was like a room in broad daylight, with a lamp turned on—confounding, buzzy, not natural.

The Shaoxing opera damsel was singing “The more I pore over it, the more upset I fee-eel!” The beats were steady, entirely predictable. It suddenly struck Ruliang that the world of Shaoxing opera audiences is a steady, predictable world—and he himself was not steady at all.

His mind was a-whirl. When he got to Ssu-shêng Tower on the Bund, he was still fidgety, worried now about a different thing. If he arrived too early and any of her officemates were still there, wouldn’t that be embarrassing? But if all of them had left already, that would be embarrassing too. He loitered about for quite awhile, then finally took the elevator up. When he pushed the door open, there was Cynthia sitting alone at a desk by the window. He was caught off guard—she seemed different from the person he remembered, though it couldn’t count as a memory per se, since it’d only been one day since they’d met. Still, over this short while, he’d been thinking about her intensely and at great length, an over-thinking through which he’d lost touch with reality.

The person he saw now was an ordinary, somewhat pretty young woman whose hair was indeed yellow, but with layers of light and dark yellow and, at the roots, an oily chestnut color. Apparently she’d just finished a quick lunch; when she saw him coming, she crumpled the wrapping into a wad and tossed it in the waste basket. While talking to him, she kept dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a handkerchief, unsure about any breadcrumbs that might’ve gotten stuck in her lipstick. She dabbed carefully to avoid smearing lipstick over the edges of her lips. Her feet, hidden under the desk, were clad only in flesh-colored stockings; for the sake of comfort, she’d kicked off her high-heeled shoes. From where Ruliang sat, on the opposite side of the desk, his own feet kept hitting either her feet or the empty shoes; it was as if she’d grown an extra pair of feet.

He got annoyed, then quickly blamed himself for that: why this resentment towards her?  Because she took her shoes off in front of people? Working all day at the typewriter, her feet must get numb from all that sitting, one could hardly blame her for relaxing a bit. She was an actual human being, a person made of flesh and blood, not some phantasmic dream he’d invented: there was a heartbeat in the rose-purple sweater she was wearing—he could see that heartbeat, and feel his own heart beating too.

He decided that from now on he wouldn’t talk to her in English. His pronunciation wasn’t good enough! He didn’t want to give her a bad impression. Once he’d become fluent in German and she in Chinese, they’d be able to talk freely. Right now, all he had at his disposal were phrases from the textbook: “Are horses more expensive than cows? Sheep are more useful than dogs. New things look better than old things. Mice are very small. Flies are even smaller. Birds and flies can fly. Birds are faster than people. Light is faster than anything. There is nothing faster than light. The sun is hotter than anything. There is nothing hotter than the sun. December is the coldest month.” All these solid, unshakeable maxims so sadly lacking in subtlety, wholly inadequate for conveying his meaning.

Will it be sunny tomorrow?
Perhaps it will be sunny.
Will it be rainy this evening?
Perhaps it will be rainy.

They all sounded old, these conversation textbook writers, each and every one of them solemnly droning along.

Do you smoke cigarettes?
Not a lot.
Do you drink alcohol?
Not every day.
Don’t you like to play cards?
No. I hate gambling.
Do you like to go hunting?
Yes, I love getting exercise.
Read. Read a textbook. Don’t read fiction.
See. See a newspaper. Don’t see a play.
Listen. Listen to instructions. Don’t listen to rumors.

All day long, and for all he was worth, Ruliang turned these phrases around, back and forth, this way and that, and the lamentable thing was that they couldn’t be made to imply even the barest hint of tenderness. Cynthia, however, was not constrained, the way he was, by textbook talk. Even though her Chinese wasn’t very good, she’d get the general gist and, with no fear of embarrassment, just let her mouth do the talking. If she ran out of things to talk about, she’d tell him about her family. Her mother was a widow who’d remarried, and Rubashov was her stepfather’s name. She had a younger sister named Lydia. Her stepfather worked in a trading company too; his salary wasn’t enough to support the family, so things were hard for them. Cynthia’s vocabulary was limited, her grammar clumsy and bold; this regularly made the things she said a harsh, utterly unvarnished reality.

One day, she started talking about her sister: “Lydia is very worry.”

“Why?” Ruliang asked.

“Because get marry.”

Ruliang was shocked. “Lydia is married already?”

“No, because no boyfriend. In Shanghai, not many good Russian man. British, American, also not have many. And all gone now. German can only get marry with German.”

Ruliang fell silent. After awhile, he finally said, “But Lydia is still young. She doesn’t need to worry.”

Cynthia, with a very slight shrug of her shoulders, said, “Is right. She still young.”

Ruliang was getting some understanding of Cynthia now. It was something he’d rather not be doing, really, because once he did understand her, he wouldn’t be able to go on dreaming.

Sometimes, when they still had time left after class, he’d invite her out for lunch. Dining together in a restaurant was not a big deal, the most anxious moment coming when it was time to pay the bill, because he wasn’t sure how much tip he should leave. Sometimes he bought a box of snacks and brought it to class: she’d spread her book flat and use it as a plate, and after the candy bits and walnut pieces had gotten scattered across the whole desk, she’d close her book with the crumbs still in it, not minding in the least. He didn’t like those sloppy manners of hers, but he forced himself to turn a blind eye to all that. He picked out only what was most poetic about her to notice, and to savor mentally. He knew that what he was in love with wasn’t Cynthia. He was in love with being in love.

He looked up “love” and “marry” in the German dictionary, and secretly taught himself to say, “Cynthia, I love you. Will you marry me?” He never said it aloud to her, but those two sentences were always on the tip of his tongue. If, for a single moment, his attention wavered, he wouldn’t be able to keep those fatal words from slipping out—fatal because, as was perfectly clear to him, it was his own fate at stake. A hasty, rushed marriage could easily ruin his whole life. But…just thinking about it was very exciting. If she heard those words, then no matter how she answered, she too would feel how exciting it was. If she accepted, he’d be provoking, for sure, an enormous uproar in his family; it’d be world-shaking even though he’d never counted for anything before.

Spring came. Even the textbook said: “Spring is the prettiest season in the year.”

One evening, as dusk fell, rain came drizzling down so he didn’t ride his bicycle home from school; he took a tram instead. While on the tram he once again leafed through that German language textbook he carried with him everywhere. It said:

I get up every day at five o’clock.
Then I get dressed and wash my face.
After I wash my face, I take a walk.
After I walk, I eat breakfast.
Then I read the newspaper.
Then I work.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, I stop work and go to exercise.
Every day, at around six o’clock, I take a shower. Then, at seven o’clock, I eat dinner.
In the evening, I visit friends.
At ten o’clock at the latest, I go to bed. I get a good rest so I can work hard the next day.

An entirely standard kind of day. Getting dressed and washing one’s face—that was for the sake of good form at a personal level. Reading the newspaper, absorbing governmental directives and crusades—that was for the sake of fulfilling one’s responsibility to the country. Work—that was for the sake of fulfilling one’s responsibility to family. Visiting friends—that was an “extracurricular activity,” worth a few points as well. Eating, taking walks, exercising, sleeping—all for the sake of maintaining efficiency in one’s work. Showering—that looked to be extraneous. Maybe, for those who had wives, showering was for the wife’s sake?

This schedule could appear to be theoretical, but the truth was that the vast majority of those who’d formed a family and built a career, even though they couldn’t match that pattern exactly, didn’t fall too far out of step with it. And this, Ruliang knew full well, was the root of his criticism of his father: it was because his old dad didn’t care much about good form and good taste. A son had the right to find fault, when his father was like that and, from higher up, so did the man’s wife; and, above that, society.

The textbooks put it this way: “Why are you so slow? Why are you rushing around? You were told to go, why didn’t you go? You were told to come, why didn’t you come right away? Why are you hitting people? Why are you scolding people? Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you do things the way we do them? What’s the reason why you do not follow rules? What’s the reason why you do not behave properly?”

After that, the textbooks gave submissive pleas: “I’d like to go out for two hours, would that be okay? I’d like to go home early today, would that be okay?”

And then the sorrowful, self-admonishing lines: “No matter what, don’t let yourself get reckless. No matter what, don’t expect to get everything you want.”

Ruliang put his hand down on the book and, the moment he looked up at the fine rain outside the tram window, saw a movie billboard advertisement that proclaimed in huge lettering: “The Soul of Freedom.”

He fell into a long trance. The tram ran along, shaking and rattling, all the way from Mohawk Road to Avenue Road. There were two willow trees on Avenue Road, their remaining leaves now golden beads, crystal-gelled. Dampness stretched along one great swathe of gray wall. The rain had stopped. The evening sky streamed up and away, into the expanse. Young people’s skies are boundless, young people’s hearts fly away to far-off places. But in the end, human beings are timid. The world is so big, they need to find something in which to get tangled up.

It’s only the young who are free. As people get older they slip, inch by inch, into the swamp of habitual life. Refusing to marry, refusing to have kids, avoiding a fixed way of life: that won’t work either. People who live all alone have their own kind of swamp.

It’s only the young who are free. Once they start learning about the world and the rarity of their freedom first dawns on them, they can’t keep it in their grasp. It’s the very preciousness of freedom that makes it seem to burn in one’s hands—a person who has freedom goes around knocking his head on the ground, submissively, to others, begging them to take it from him.

It was the first time Ruliang had seen this far into things. He swore off, immediately, the idea he’d had of asking Cynthia to marry him. He wanted to go on being young for a few years yet.

He couldn’t go on studying German with her, it was too dangerous. He prepared a little speech to explain things to her. That day at noon, he went to her office as usual. When he opened the door, she was at that moment on her way out, hat on head, purse in arm, nearly running straight into his chest. She gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “What a memory I have! I meant to phone you and say not to come today, but I’m so mixed-up I forgot! I have to do some shopping during my lunch break so we’ll have to skip class today.”

Ruliang went out to the street with her. In a nearby dress shop, she looked at nightwear, morning gowns, and slippers, and asked about the prices. There was a three-tiered wedding cake in the display window of a coffee shop, with a price tag of 1500 yuan. She stopped and looked, bit her fingernails awhile, then kept going. After they’d covered a little more distance, she said to him, with a smile, “I’m getting married, you know.”

Ruliang could only stare at her, unable to speak.

“You should say ‘Congratulations to you,’” Cynthia smiled.

Ruliang could only stare at her—was it relief that he felt? or just shock?

“Glückwunsch zur Hochzeit,” Cynthia smiled. “It’s right there in the textbook, have you forgotten?”

“Glückwunsch zur Hochzeit,” Ruliang said, smiling weakly.

“I’m quitting my job at the trading company and at the night school. We’ll have to put our studies aside for now, and later on—”

“Oh, of course,” he said quickly. “We can see about that later on.”

“Anyway, you have my phone number.”

“That’s for your mother’s place. Where will you two live after you’re married?”

“He’ll move into my family’s place.” Cynthia spoke very quickly. “Just for now. It’s hard to find housing these days.”

Ruliang nodded in agreement. They were walking past a shop whose display window had been painted over in green, almost to the top. Cynthia was looking straight ahead, and that profile that he knew so well was cast into sharp relief by that theatrical backdrop of green; it seemed that her face was a little red, but it wasn’t the glow of happiness.

“Tell me, won’t you,” Ruliang said, “what kind of person he is.”

Cynthia’s large, pale eyes could not conceal a small edge of worry. Her reply came with something self-defensive, alert: “He works at a police station in the Ministry of Industry. We’ve been together since we were little.”

“Is he Russian?”

Cynthia nodded.

“He must be good-looking,” Ruliang said with a smile.

“Very,” Cynthia said with a small smile. “You’ll see him at the wedding. You have to come.”

It did seem like the most natural thing in the world—a young, good-looking Russian, a junior-rank policeman, someone she’d known since childhood. But Ruliang knew for a certainty that if something better had come along, she would not be marrying this man. Ruliang was himself sufficiently the fool, what with this falling in love just for the sake of falling in love. Could it be that the woman he’d loved was making a more irreparable mistake—getting married just for the sake of getting married?

A long while passed without an invitation arriving, and he thought she must have forgotten to send him one. But then it did come—for a date in late June. Why had they delayed all this while? Was it finances, or was she struggling with her decision?

He decided he’d go to her wedding feast and drink himself into stumbling stupor. It never occurred to him he’d have no chance to drink at all.

The pointed top of the Russian church dome, seen through the blurry mist of drizzling rain, was like a pale green garlic bulb in a glass jar, steeped in white vinegar. There weren’t many people in the church, but still it was full of rainy-day shoe-leather stink. The priest had thrown on a vestment made of satin that was heavy and gold-brocaded, like a tablecloth; his hair flowed down over his shoulders, long and profuse, intertwining with his gold-yellow beard, and the sweat poured out, making the damp hair stick, in layer after layer, to his face and scalp. He was a big, tall, handsome Russian man, but his face was red and bloated from drinking too much. He was a lover of drink, spoiled by women in bed—and at this moment so close to dozing that his eyes were barely open.

The choirmaster who stood next to the priest had the same look and attire although he was a smaller, shorter man. He had a big voice, though, and led the choral response with such force that his forehead was clenched and the sweat streamed down from a head stripped bald by heat.

An altar boy slipped out silently from behind the altar, bearing a platter. He was a dark, pockmarked Chinese, wearing a black cassock over white hemp-cloth pants, scuffing along in shoes worn without socks. He too had long hair, oily dark and draping down, half-curtaining his cheeks, like a ghost—not the kind of ghost in Tales of the Supernatural from Liaozhai Studio, but the kind in a pauper’s barely interred corpse, with pale grubs wriggling in and out.

After he’d brought the two wine goblets, the boy next brought out two wedding crowns. The crowns were borne aloft, as custom required, several inches above the heads of the bride and groom, by two tall men who’d been chosen from family and friends. There in the shadowy dimness of the odorous church sanctuary, the priest kept on reciting the litany, the choir kept on singing. The groom looked uneasy. He was an impetuous, yellow-haired young man, and while he did have a classically shaped straight nose, he didn’t look like someone with much promise. He’d thrown on an old white suit, faded and fairly ordinary, but the bride was in a magnificent white satin formal. One of the two old women sitting next to Ruliang said the bride’s dress was rented, the other was sure it was borrowed; huddled together, they argued it out for what seemed like hours.

Ruliang had to admire Cynthia—and by extension, had to admire women everywhere. Cynthia was the only beautiful person in that entire wedding ceremony. She seemed determined to make for herself something beautiful to remember. Holding in both hands a white candle, she bowed her head piously, the upper part of her face in shadow cast by the veil, the lower part in light cast by the candle: in the flickering of that shadow and light, a pale smile could be seen, just barely. She had made for herself the air that a bride should have, all that mystery and solemnity, even though the priest was sloppy and listless, even though the altar boy was unbelievably dirty, even though the groom was on edge, and even though the dress was rented or borrowed. This was her day, and she had to make something memorable out of it, something to reminisce about when she’d grown old. Ruliang’s heart ached and his eyes misted over.

When the ceremony was over, everyone rushed forward and, one after another, exchanged kisses with the groom and the bride; then they were gone. A tea was to be held at the home, for a small group of relatives only. Ruliang hung back, far in the back, lost in a trance. He could not kiss her, couldn’t just shake hands either—he was afraid he’d start crying. He slipped out on his own, quietly.

Two months later, Cynthia phoned him to ask if he’d help her find a little work teaching English, German, or Russian, or maybe typing, because she was getting bored from staying at home. He knew she needed money.

A little while later, he had a classmate who wanted a tutor in English so he called back to tell her, but she’d fallen ill, and it was serious.

He hesitated a day and a night, then decided to risk the forwardness of a visit to her place, just this once—knowing full well that a stranger wouldn’t be allowed into her bedroom, but feeling he had to make this attempt, had to do something. As it happened, the only other person home that day was her sister Lydia, a free-wheeling, romantic girl, pressed from the same mold, it seemed, but the dough this time was a little too yeasty; she was bulgy and billowy, not trim and tidy like her older sister. Lydia led him right into Cynthia’s room.

“Typhoid fever,” she said. “The doctor said, yesterday, she’s made it through the critical phase. It was a close call.”

At the head of her bed, on a little chest of drawers, was a photo of her with her husband. They were facing the camera, so the picture didn’t show his straight, classically shaped nose. The room smelled like Russian people. From where she lay on the pillow, Cynthia looked over at him, eyes dim and lethargic, barely open. A filmy indifference coated her gaze as she looked out at the world, turning her light blue eyes colorless. She closed her eyes and turned her head away. Her jaw and neck were extremely thin, like a jujube after it’s been sucked clean, with only a skim of fruit flesh still on the pit. But the line of that profile was still there, it had scarcely changed at all, the same line that he’d drawn till it flowed, all in one stroke, from the top of the brow to under the jaw.

After that, Ruliang no longer made sketches of little people in the margins of his books. His books now were always perfectly clean.

The post Perfection Sketches Easily for the Young appeared first on Electric Literature.

I loved you, and when you left, you left a Space. And I fell in love with that Space. Not right away, I mean, but over time. At first I hated the Space. It was just always there! But then I somehow got used to the Space. Then I started to appreciate it, and then I missed it when it was gone. 

Before I knew it, the Space and I had become friends. I started really enjoying hanging out with the Space; I liked talking to it, and listening to it too—to its opinions, hopes, doubts and worst fears. This might sound strange, but the Space and I even sort of had our own secret language.

One night, the Space and I ran into some old friends of mine, David and Iris—I don’t think you know them—walking out of the movie theater. “David!” I said. “Iris!” I hugged them both. “I want you to meet someone.” I gestured to the Space. “This is the Space.” 

David and Iris looked at me, and then at each other, and then at the Space. 

“And this,” I said to the Space, “is David and Iris.” 

The Space smiled. 

“I’m sorry,” said Iris. “What?”  

“Iris,” said David. 

“This is the Space,” I said.

The Space waved.

We went our separate ways, but a few hours later I texted David: So what did you think?

Of the movie? he responded. Yeah good.

No of the Space! I wrote. We’re just friends now but I think there might be a real connection here?

And I was right about that. The following week, the Space and I went for a walk behind the college when it started to downpour. I took the Space’s hand and we ran for cover under a nearby tree, where I stopped abruptly against the trunk and the Space sort of stumbled into me. Before I knew it, the Space was looking into my eyes and I was looking into the Space’s eyes. Then the Space put its arms around me and kissed me, and I kissed back. 

The weeks that followed might have been the best weeks of my life. Some nights the Space and I went on proper dates—skating hand-in-hand at the university ice rink; hiking up Mt. Geryk—and other nights we just spent hours on my couch talking to each other and kissing. It really didn’t matter what we did as long as we were together. One night that summer, I told the Space I was falling in love with it, and the Space said it loved me too. That was our first night together; I fell asleep in the Space’s warm embrace.

Soon the Space and I were basically living together; it kept its own place, but it was at my apartment all the time. We got used to each other’s daily rhythms and habits; we ate our meals together, exercised together, watched TV or read together every night. I grew accustomed to falling asleep next to the Space, and waking up to find the Space still there beside me.

Admittedly, sometimes the Space would get quiet—distant. At times I felt like the Space was right there with me, focused and present, but at others it seemed vacant and removed. In those moments, as strange as it sounds, I almost felt lonely—despite the presence of the Space.

One night that fall, the Space and I were watching a science fiction movie when my phone rang. It was you. I was taken aback; I hadn’t talked to you in months. “Hold on a second, will you?” I said to the Space, and I took the phone into the other room. 

You asked if we could meet and talk. “Yeah, sure we can,” I said. “But I should tell you that I’m seeing someone.” 

“Oh,” you said. “You are?” 

“Do you remember the Space that you left when we broke up?” 

“The—what?” 

“There was a Space—a really significant one,” I said. “And while we didn’t get along at first, we eventually became friends, and—” 

“You and—who now?” 

“But the relationship, you know, evolved,” I said. “And now things with the Space are going really well.” 

“Oh-kay,” you said. “Well, I—OK.” 

“But listen—how are you?” I said. “Is everything OK?”  

“Yeah,” you said. “I’m fine.” 

“Good—I’m really glad to hear that,” I said. “It’s really nice to talk to you,” I added, because it was. I’d missed you—maybe even more than I’d realized.

When I got off the phone, though, the Space sat me down and said it needed some time apart. I was flabbergasted. “I don’t understand,” I told it. “I thought things were going great.”

But the Space said it needed space. I asked the Space how long it had felt this way, but the Space wouldn’t elaborate; it just sat there silently, an empty expression on its face.

“We’ve built a life together,” I told the Space.

The Space didn’t even reply.

“How can you not have anything to say to that?” I said. 

The Space left my place that very night. I was so bereft I couldn’t sleep. I called you early the next morning and you came right over to console me. “I just miss the Space so much,” I sobbed into your shoulder. 

“I know,” you said. 

“I honestly don’t know how I’m going to live without it.”

“I know it seems impossible,” you told me. “But tomorrow, you’re going to realize that you don’t need the Space as much as you thought. And there’ll be less of the Space in your mind the day after that, and the day after that. Until one day you realize you’ve forgotten the Space completely.”

I nodded as if I understood, but inside I knew I’d never get over the Space. I vowed right then and there to keep its memory close, and to hold a place for the Space in my heart.

The post I’m in Love with My Ex’s Absence appeared first on Electric Literature.

For my grandmother, Estelle

My Name Is Not in Existence (1975/1983)

After CooXooEii Black

The post Grandmother Knows All the Devil’s Pressure Points appeared first on Electric Literature.

I was a child of the 1960s. Three network stations or fresh air; take your pick. No pocket computers for entertainment in dark-age suburbia. We read our comic books ragged and played catch with Dad in the backyard. He created shadow puppets on the wall to amuse us before bed. Elephants, giraffes, and foxes. The classics. He also made some animals I didn’t recognize. His hands twisted to form these mysterious entities, which he called Mimis. Dad frequently traveled abroad. Said he’d learned of the Mimis at a conference in Australia. His double-jointed performances wowed me and my older brother, Greg. Mom hadn’t seemed as impressed.

Then I discovered photography.

Mom and Dad gave me a camera. Partly because they were supportive of their children’s aspirations; partly because I bugged them relentlessly. At six years old, I already understood my life’s purpose.

Landscapes bore me, although I enjoy celestial photography—high-resolution photos of planets, hanging in partial silhouette; blazing white fingertips emerging from a black pool. People aren’t interesting either, unless I catch them in candid moments to reveal a glimmer of their hidden selves. Wild animals became my favorite subjects. Of all the variety of animals, I love predators. Dad approved. He said, Men revile predators because they shed blood. What an unfair prejudice. Suppose garden vegetables possessed feelings. Suppose a carrot squealed when bitten in two . . . Well, a groundhog would go right on chomping, wouldn’t he?

If anybody knew the answer to such a question, it’d be my old man. His oddball personality might be why Mom took a shine to him. Or she appreciated his potential as a captain of industry. What I do know is, he was the kind of guy nobody ever saw coming.

My name is Randall Xerxes Vance. Friends tease me about my signature—RX and a swooping, offset V. Dad used to say, Ha-ha, son. You’re a prescription for trouble! As a pro wilderness photographer, I’m accustomed to lying or sitting motionless for hours at a stretch. Despite this, I’m a tad jumpy. You could say my fight or flight reflex is highly tuned. While on assignment for a popular magazine, a technician—infamous for his pranks—snuck up, tapped my shoulder, and yelled, Boo! I swung instinctively. Wild, flailing. Good enough to knock him on his ass into a ditch.

Colleagues were nonplussed at my overreaction. Me too. That incident proved the beginning of a rough, emotional ride: insomnia; nightmares when I could sleep; and panic attacks. It felt like a crack had opened in my psyche. Generalized anxiety gradually worked its claws under my armor and skinned me to raw nerves. I committed to a leave of absence, pledging to conduct an inventory of possible antecedents. Soul searching pairs seductively with large quantities of liquor.

A soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend offered to help. She opined that I suffered from deep-rooted childhood trauma. I insisted that my childhood was actually fine. My parents had provided for me and my brother, supported our endeavors, and paid for our education; the whole deal.

There’s always something if you dig, she said. Subsequent to a bunch more poking and prodding, one possible link between my youth and current troubles came to mind. I told her about a game called Tiptoe Dad taught me. A variation of ambush tag wherein you crept behind your victim and tapped him or her on the shoulder or goosed them, or whatever. Pretty much the same as my work colleague had done. Belying its simple premise, there were rules, which Dad adhered to with solemnity. The victim must be awake and unimpaired. The sneaker was required to assume a certain posture—poised on the balls of his or her feet, arms raised and fingers pressed into a blade or spread in an exaggerated manner. The other details and prescriptions are hazy.

As far as odd family traditions go, this seemed fairly innocuous. Dad’s attitude was what made it weird.

Tiptoe went back as far as I could recall, but my formal introduction occurred at age six. Greg and I were watching a nature documentary. Dad wandered in late, still dressed from a shift at the office and wearing that coldly affable expression he put on along with his hat and coat. The documentary shifted to the hunting habits of predatory insects. Dad sat between us on the couch. He stared intently at the images of mantises, voracious Venezuelan centipedes, and wasps. During the segment on trapdoor spiders, he smiled and pinched my shoulder. Dad was fast for an awkward, middle-aged dude. I didn’t even see his arm move. People say sneaky as a snake, sly as a fox, but spiders are the best hunters. Patient and swift. I didn’t give it a second thought.

One day, soon after, he stepped out of a doorway, grabbed me, and started tickling. Then he snatched me into the air and turned my small body in his very large hands. He pretended to bite my neck, arms, and belly. Which part shall I devour first? Eeny, meeny, miny moe! I screamed hysterical laughter. He explained that tickling and the reaction to tickling were rooted in primitive fight or flight responses to mortal danger.

Tiptoe became our frequent contest, and one he’d already inflicted on Greg and Mom. The results seldom amounted to more than the requisite tap, except for the time when Dad popped up from a leaf pile and pinched me so hard it left a welt. You bet I tried to return the favor—on countless occasions, in fact—and failed. I even wore camo paint and dressed in black down to my socks, creeping closer, ever closer, only for him to whip his head around at the last second and look me in the eye with a tinge of disappointment. Heard you coming from the other end of the house, son. Are you thinking like a man or a spider? Like a fox or a mantis? Keep trying.

Another time, I walked into a room and caught him playing the game with Mom as victim. Dad gave me a sidelong wink as he reached out, tiptoeing closer and closer. Their silhouettes flickered on the wall. The shadows of his arms kept elongating; his shadow fingers ended in shadow claws. The optical illusion made me dizzy and sick to my stomach. He kissed her neck. She startled and mildly cussed him. Then they laughed, and once more he was a ham-fisted doofus, innocently pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

As with many aspects of childhood, Tiptoe fell to the wayside for reasons that escaped me until the job incident brought it crashing home again. Unburdening to my lady friend didn’t help either of us as much as we hoped. She acknowledged that the whole backstory was definitely fucked up and soon found other places to be. Probably had a lot to do with my drinking, increasingly moody behavior, and the fact that I nearly flew out of my skin whenever she walked into the room.

The worst part? This apparent mental breakdown coincided with my mother’s health tribulations. A double whammy. After her stroke, Mom’s physical health gradually went downhill. She’d sold the house and moved into a comfy suite at the retirement village where Grandma resided years before.

The role of a calm, dutiful son made for an awkward fit, yet there wasn’t much choice, considering I was the last close family who remained in touch. Steeling my resolve, I shaved, slapped on cologne to disguise any lingering reek of booze, and drove down from Albany twice a week to hit a diner in Port Ewing. Same one we’d visited since the 1960s. For her, a cheeseburger and a cup of tea. I’d order a sandwich and black coffee and watch her pick at the burger. Our conversations were sparse affairs—long silences peppered with acerbic repartee.

She let me read to her at bedtime. Usually, a few snippets from Poe or his literary cousins. I’ve gotten morbid, she’d say. Give me some of that Amontillado, hey? Or, A bit of M.R. James, if you please. Her defining characteristics were intellectual curiosity and a prickly demeanor. She didn’t suffer fools—not in her prime, nor in her twilight. Ever shrewd and guarded, ever close-mouthed regarding her interior universe. Her disposition discouraged “remember-whens” and utterly repelled more probing inquiries into secrets.

Nonetheless, one evening I stopped in the middle of James’ The Ash Tree and shut the book. “Did Aunt Vikki really have the gift?”

Next to Mom and Dad, Aunt Vikki represented a major authority figure of my childhood. She might not have gone to college like my parents, but she wasn’t without her particular abilities. She performed what skeptics (my mother) dismissed as parlor tricks. Stage magician staples like naming cards in someone’s hand, or locating lost keys or wallets. Under rare circumstances, she performed hypnotic regression and “communed” with friendly spirits. Her specialty? Astral projection allowed her to occasionally divine the general circumstances of missing persons. Whether they were alive or dead and their immediate surroundings, albeit not their precise location. Notwithstanding Dad’s benign agnosticism and Mom’s blatant contempt, I assumed there was something to it—the police had allegedly enlisted Vikki’s services on two or three occasions. Nobody ever explained where she acquired her abilities. Mom and Dad brushed aside such questions and I dared not ask Aunt Vikki directly given her impatience with children.

“I haven’t thought of that in ages.” Mom lay in the narrow bed, covers pulled to her neck. A reading lamp reflected against the pillow and illuminated the shadow of her skull. “Bolt from the blue, isn’t it?”

“I got to thinking of her the other day. Her magic act. The last time we visited Lake Terror . . . .”

“You’re asking whether she was a fraud.”

“Nothing so harsh,” I said. “The opposite, in fact. Her affinity for predictions seemed uncanny.”

“Of course it seemed uncanny. You were a kid.”

“Greg thought so.”

“Let’s not bring your brother into this.”

“Okay.”

She eyed me with a glimmer of suspicion, faintly aware that my true interest lay elsewhere; that I was feinting. “To be fair, Vikki sincerely believed in her connection to another world. None of us took it seriously. God, we humored the hell out of that woman.”

“She disliked Dad.”

“Hated John utterly.” Her flat, unhesitating answer surprised me.

“Was it jealousy? Loneliness can have an effect . . . .”

“Jealousy? C’mon. She lost interest in men after Theo kicked.” Theo had been Aunt Vikki’s husband; he’d died on the job for Con Edison.

I decided not to mention the fact that she’d twice remarried since. Mom would just wave them aside as marriages of convenience. “And Dad’s feelings toward her?”

“Doubtful he gave her a second thought whenever she wasn’t right in front of his nose. An odd duck, your father. Warm and fuzzy outside, cold tapioca on the inside.”

“Damn, Mom.”

“Some girls like tapioca. What’s with the twenty questions? You have something to say, spill it.”

Should I confess my recent nightmares? Terrible visions of long-buried childhood experiences? Or that Dad, an odd duck indeed, starred in these recollections and his innocuous, albeit unnerving, Tiptoe game assumed a sinister prominence that led to my current emotional turmoil? I wished to share with Mom; we’d finally gotten closer as the rest of our family fell by the wayside. Still, I faltered, true motives unspoken. She’d likely scoff at my foolishness in that acerbic manner of hers and ruin our fragile bond.

She craned her neck. “You haven’t seen him around?”

“Who?” Caught off guard again, I stupidly concluded, despite evidence to the contrary, that her thoughts were fogged with rapid onset dementia. Even more stupidly, I blurted, “Mom, uh, you know Dad’s dead. Right?”

“Yeah, dummy,” she said. “I meant Greg.”

“The guy you don’t want to talk about?” Neither of us had seen my brother in a while. Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder.

“Smart-ass.” But she smiled faintly.

In the wee hours, alone in my studio apartment, I woke from a lucid nightmare. Blurry, forgotten childhood images coalesced with horrible clarity. Aunt Vikki suffering what we politely termed an episode; the still image of a missing woman on the six o’clock news; my father, polishing his glasses and smiling cryptically. Behind him, a sun-dappled lake, a stand of thick trees, and a lost trail that wound into the Catskills . . . or Purgatory. There were other, more disturbing recollections that clamored for attention, whirling in a black mass on the periphery. Gray, gangling hands; a gray, cadaverous face . . . .

I poured a glass of whiskey and dug into a shoebox of loose photos; mainly snapshots documenting our happiest moments as a family. I searched those smiling faces for signs of trauma, a hint of anguish to corroborate my tainted memories. Trouble is, old, weathered pictures are ambiguous. You can’t always tell what’s hiding behind the patina. Nothing, or the worst thing imaginable.

Whatever the truth might be, this is what I recall about our last summer vacation to the deep Catskills:

During the late 1960s, Dad worked at an IBM plant in Kingston, New York. Mom wrote colorful, acerbic essays documenting life in the Mid-Hudson Valley; sold them to regional papers, mainly, and sometimes slick publications such as The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post. We had it made. House in the suburbs, two cars, and an enormous color TV. I cruised the neighborhood on a Schwinn ten-speed with the camera slung around my neck. My older brother, Greg, ran cross-country for our school. Dad let him borrow the second car, a Buick, to squire his girlfriend into town on date night.

The Vance clan’s holy trinity: Christmas; IBM Family Day; and the annual summer getaway at a cabin on Lake Terron. For us kids, the IBM Family Day carnival was an afternoon of games, Ferris wheel rides, running and screaming at the top of our lungs, and loads of deep-fried goodies. The next morning, Dad would load us into his Plymouth Suburban and undertake the long drive through the mountains. Our lakeside getaway tradition kicked off when I was a tyke—in that golden era, city folks retreated to the Catskills to escape the heat. Many camped at resorts along the so-called Borscht Belt. Dad and his office buddies, Fred Mercer and Leo Schrader, decided to skip the whole resort scene. Instead, they went in together on the aforementioned piece of lakefront property and built a trio of vacation cabins. The investment cost the men a pretty penny. However, nearby Harpy Peak was a popular winter destination. Ski bums were eager to rent the cabins during the holidays and that helped Dad and his friends recoup their expenses.

But let’s stick to summer. Dreadful hot, humid summer that sent us to Lake Terron and its relative coolness. Me, Greg, Mom, Dad, Aunt Vikki, and Odin, our dog; supplies in back, a canoe strapped up top. Exhausted from Family Day, Greg and I usually slept for most of the trip. Probably a feature of Dad’s vacation-management strategy. Then he merely had to contend with Mom’s chain-smoking and Aunt Vikki bitching about it. Unlike Mom and Dad, she didn’t do much of anything. After her husband was electrocuted while repairing a downed power line, she collected a tidy insurance settlement and moved from the city into our Esopus home. Supposedly a temporary arrangement on account of her nervous condition. Her nerves never did improve—nor did anyone else’s, for that matter.

We made our final pilgrimage the year before Armstrong left bootprints on the Moon. Greg and I were seventeen and twelve, respectively. Our good boy Odin sat between us. He’d outgrown his puppy ways and somehow gotten long in the tooth. Dad turned onto the lonely dirt track that wound a mile through heavy forest and arrived at the lake near sunset. The Mercers and Schraders were already in residence: a whole mob of obstreperous children and gamely suffering adults collected on a sward that fronted the cabins. Adults had gotten a head start on boilermakers and martinis. Grill smoke wafted toward the beach. Smooth and cool as a mirror, the lake reflected the reddening sky like a portal to a parallel universe.

Lake Terron—or Lake Terror, as we affectionally called it—gleamed at the edge of bona fide wilderness. Why Lake Terror? Some joker had altered the N on the road sign into an R with spray-paint and it just stuck. Nights were pitch black five paces beyond the porch. The dark was full of insect noises and the coughs of deer lurching around in the brush.

Our cabin had pretty rough accommodations—plank siding and long, shotgun shack floor plan with a washroom, master bedroom, and a loft. Electricity and basic plumbing, but no phone or television. We lugged in books, cards, and board games to fashion a semblance of civilized entertainment. On a forest ranger’s advice, Dad always propped a twelve-gauge shotgun by the door. Black bears roamed the woods and were attracted to the scents of barbecue and trash. And children! Mom would say. The barbecue set the underlying tone; friendly hijinks and raucous laughter always prevailed those first few hours. Revived from our torpor, kids gorged on hotdogs and cola while parents lounged, grateful for the cool air and peaceful surroundings—except for the mosquitos. Everybody complained about them. Men understood shop talk was taboo. Those who slipped up received a warning glare from his better half. Nor did anyone remark upon news trickling in via the radio, especially concerning the Vietnam War; a subject that caused mothers everywhere to clutch teenaged sons to their bosoms. “Camp Terror” brooked none of that doomy guff. For two weeks, the outside world would remain at arm’s length.

Mr. Schrader struck a bonfire as the moon beamed over Harpy Peak. Once the dried cedar burned to coals, on came the bags of marshmallows and a sharpened stick for each kid’s grubby mitt. I recall snatches of conversation. The men discussed the Apollo program, inevitably philosophizing on the state of civilization and how far we’d advanced since the Wright brothers climbed onto the stage.

“We take it for granted,” Mr. Mercer said.

“What’s that?” Mr. Schrader waved a marshmallow flaming at the end of his stick.

“Comfort, safety. You flip a switch, there’s light. Turn a key, a motor starts.”

“Electricity affords us the illusion of self-sufficiency.”

“Gunpowder and penicillin imbue us with a sense of invincibility. Perpetual light has banished our natural dread of the dark. We’re apes carrying brands of fire.”

“Okay, gents. Since we’re on the subject of apes. We primates share a common ancestor. Which means we share a staggering amount of history. You start dwelling on eons, you have to consider the implications of certain facts.”

Mr. Mercer shook his head as he lit a cigarette. “I can only guess where this is going.”

“Simulation of human features and mannerisms will lead the field into eerie precincts,” Dad said.

“Uh-oh,” Mr. Schrader said. “This sounds suspiciously close to opshay alk-tay.”

“Thank goodness we’re perfecting mechanical arms to handle rivet guns, not androids. Doesn’t get more mundane.”

“Mark it in the book. Heck, the Japanese are already there.”

“Whatever you say, John.”

“Researchers built a robot prototype—a baby with a lifelike face. Focus groups recoiled in disgust. Researchers came back with artificial features. Focus groups oohed and ahhed. Corporate bankrolled the project. We’ll hear plenty in a year or two.”

“Humans are genetically encoded to fear things that look almost like us, but aren’t us.”

“Ever ask yourself why?”

“No, can’t say I’ve dedicated much thought to the subject,” Mr. Mercer said. “So, why are we allegedly fearful of, er, imitations?”

“For the same reason a deer or a fowl will spook if it gets wind of a decoy. Even an animal comprehends that a lure means nothing good.” Dad had mentioned this periodically. Tonight, he didn’t seem to speak to either of his colleagues. He looked directly at me.

“Shop talk!” Mom said with the tone of a referee declaring a foul.

Mrs. Schrader and Mrs. Mercer interrupted their own conversation to boo the men.

“Whoops, sorry!” Mr. Mercer gestured placatingly. “Anyway, how about those Jets?”

Later, somebody suggested we have a game. No takers for charades or trivia. Finally, Mrs. Mercer requested a demonstration of Aunt Vikki’s fabled skills. Close magic, prestidigitation, clairvoyance, or whatever she called it. My aunt demurred. However, the boisterous assembly would brook no refusal and badgered her until she relented.

That mystical evening, performing for a rapt audience against a wilderness backdrop, she was on her game. Seated lotus on a blanket near the fire, she affected trancelike concentration. Speaking in a monotone, she specified the exact change in Mr. Schrader’s pocket, the contents of Mrs. Mercer’s clutch, and the fact that one of the Mercer kids had stolen his sister’s diary. This proved to be the warmup routine.

Mr. Mercer said, “John says you’ve worked with the law to find missing persons.”

“Found a couple.” Her cheeks were flushed, her tone defiant. “Their bodies, at any rate.”

“That plane that went down in the Adirondacks. Can you get a psychic bead on it?”

Aunt Vikki again coyly declined until a chorus of pleas “convinced” her to give it a shot. She swayed in place, hands clasped. “Dirt. Rocks. Running water. Scattered voices. Many miles apart.”

“Guess that makes sense,” Mr. Mercer said to Mr. Schrader. “Wreck is definitely spread across the hills.”

Mrs. Schrader said under her breath to Dad, “Eh, what’s the point? She could say anything she pleases. We’ve no way to prove her claim.” He shooshed her with a familiar pat on the hip. Everybody was ostensibly devout in those days. Mrs. Schrader frequently volunteered at her church and I suspect Aunt Vikki’s occult shenanigans, innocent as they might’ve been, troubled her. The boozing and flirtation less so.

The eldest Mercer girl, Katie, asked if she could divine details of an IBM housewife named Denise Vinson who’d disappeared near Saugerties that spring. Nobody present knew her husband; he was among the faceless legions of electricians who kept the plant humming. He and his wife had probably attended a company buffet or some such. The case made the papers.

“Denise Vinson. Denise Vinson . . . .” Aunt Vikki slipped into her “trance.” Moments dragged on and an almost electric tension built; the hair-raising sensation of an approaching thunderstorm. The adults ceased bantering. Pine branches creaked; an owl hooted. A breeze freshened off the lake, causing water to lap against the dock. Greg and I felt it. His ubiquitous smirk faded, replaced by an expression of dawning wonderment. Then Aunt Vikki went rigid and shrieked. Her cry echoed off the lake and caused birds to dislodge from their roosts in the surrounding trees. Her arms extended, fingers and thumbs together, wrists bent downward. She rocked violently, cupped hands stabbing the air in exaggerated thrusts. Her eyes filled with blood. My thoughts weren’t exactly coherent, but her posture and mannerisms reminded me of a mantis lashing at its prey. Reminded me of something else, too.

Her tongue distended as she babbled like a Charismatic. She covered her face and doubled over. Nobody said anything until she straightened to regard us.

“Geez, Vikki!” Mr. Mercer nodded toward his pop-eyed children.

“I mean, geez Louise!”

“What’s the fuss?” She glanced around, dazed.

Mom, in a display of rare concern, asked what she’d seen. Aunt Vikki shrugged and said she’d glimpsed the inside of her eyelids. Why was everybody carrying on? Dad lurked to one side of the barbecue pit. His glasses were brimmed with the soft glow of the coals. I couldn’t decipher his expression.

Mood dampened, the families said their goodnights and drifted off to bed. Mom, tight on highballs, compared Aunt Vikki’s alleged powers of clairvoyance to those of the famous Edgar Cayce. This clash occurred in the wee hours after the others retired to their cabins. Awakened by raised voices, I hid in shadows atop the stairs to the loft, eavesdropping like it was my job.

“Cayce was as full of shit as a Christmas goose.” Aunt Vikki’s simmering antipathy boiled over. “Con man. Charlatan. Huckster.” Her eyes were bloodshot and stained from burst capillaries. Though she doggedly claimed not to recall the episode earlier that evening, its lingering effects were evident.

“Vikki,” Dad said in the placating tone he deployed against disgruntled subordinates. “Barbara didn’t mean any harm. Right, honey?”

“Sure, I did . . . not.” From my vantage I saw Mom perched near the cold hearth, glass in hand. The drunker she got, the cattier she got. She drank plenty at Lake Terror.

Aunt Vikki loomed in her beehive-do and platform shoes. “Don’t ever speak of me and that . . . that fraud in the same breath. Cayce’s dead and good riddance to him. I’m the real McCoy.”

“Is that a fact? Then, let’s skip the rest of this campout and head for Vegas.” Mom tried to hide her sardonic smile with the glass.

“Ladies, it’s late,” Dad said. “I sure hope our conversation isn’t keeping the small fry awake.” His not-so-subtle cue to skedaddle back to my cot left me pondering who was the psychic—Aunt Vikki or Dad? Maybe he can see in the dark was my last conscious thought. It made me giggle, albeit nervously.

Greg jumped me and Billy Mercer as we walked along the trail behind the cabins. Billy and I were closest in age. Alas, we had next to nothing in common and didn’t prefer one another’s company. Those were the breaks, as the youth used to say. The path forked at a spring before winding ever deeper into the woods. To our left, the path climbed a steep hill through a notch in a stand of shaggy black pine. Mom, the poet among us, referred to it as the Black Gap. Our parents forbade us to drink from the spring, citing mosquito larvae. Predictably, we disregarded their command and slurped double handfuls of cool water at the first opportunity. As I drank, Greg crept upon me like an Apache.

He clamped my neck in a grip born of neighborhood lawn-mowing to earn extra bucks for gas and date-night burgers. “Boo!” He’d simultaneously smacked Billy on the back of his head. The boy yelped and tripped over his own feet trying to flee. Thus, round one of Tiptoe went to my insufferably smirking brother. Ever merciless in that oh-so-special cruelty the eldest impose upon their weaker siblings, I nonetheless detected a sharper, savage inflection to his demeanor of late. I zipped a rock past his ear from a safe distance—not that one could ever be sure—and beat a hasty retreat into the woods. Greg flipped us the bird and kept going without a backward glance.

The reason this incident is notable? Billy Mercer complained to the adults. Dad pulled me aside for an account, which I grudgingly provided—nobody respects a tattletale. Dad’s smirk was even nastier than Greg’s. Head on a swivel, if you want to keep it, kiddo. He put his arm around my brother’s shoulders and they shared a laugh. Three days in, and those two spent much of it together, hiking the forest and floating around the lake. The stab of jealousy hurt worse than Greg squeezing my neck.

Near bedtime, we set up tents in the backyard, a few feet past the badminton net and horseshoe pit. The plan was for the boys to sleep under the stars (and among the swarming mosquitos). Mrs. Schrader protested weakly that maybe this was risky, what with the bears. Mr. Schrader and Mr. Mercer promised to take watches on the porch.

Odin stayed with me; that would be the best alarm in the world. No critter would get within a hundred yards without that dog raising holy hell. And thus it went: Odin, Billy Mercer, a Schrader boy, and me in one tent, and the rest of them in the other. We chatted for a bit. Chitchat waned; I tucked into my sleeping bag, poring over an issue of Mad Magazine by flashlight until I got sleepy.

I woke to utter darkness. Odin panted near my face, growling softly. I lay at the entrance. Groggy and unsure of whether the dog had scented a deer or a bear, I instinctively clicked on my trusty flashlight, opened the flap, and shone it into the trees—ready to yell if I spotted danger. Nothing to corroborate Odin’s anxious grumbles. Scruffy grass, bushes, and the shapeless mass of the forest. He eventually settled. I slept and dreamed two vivid dreams. The first was of Aunt Vikki spotlighted against a void. Her eyes bulged as she rocked and gesticulated, muttering. Dream logic prevailing, I understood her garbled words: Eeny! Meany! Miny! Moe!

In the second, I floated; a disembodied spirit gazing down. Barely revealed by a glimmer of porch light, Dad crawled from under a bush and lay on his side next to the tent. He reached through the flap. His arm moved, stroking. These dreams were forgotten by breakfast. The incident only returned to me many years later; a nightmare within a nightmare.

Over blueberry pancakes, Dad casually asked whether I’d care to go fishing. At an age where a kid selfishly treasured an appointment on his father’s calendar, I filled a canteen and slung my trusty Nikon F around my neck and hustled after him to the dock. Unlike the starter camera I’d long outgrown, the Nikon was expensive and I treated it with proper reverence. Film rolls were costly as well. Manual labor, supplemented by a generous allowance and a bit of wheedling, paid the freight. Mom, a stalwart supporter of the arts, chipped in extra.

She encouraged me to submit my work to newspaper and magazine contests, in vain. Back then, the hobby was strictly personal. I wasn’t inclined to share my vision with the world just yet, although I secretly dreamed big dreams—namely, riding the savannah with the crew of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

The sun hadn’t cleared the trees as we pushed away from the dock. Dad paddled. I faced him, clicking shots of the receding cabins and birds rising and falling from the lake and into the sky. He set aside his paddle and the canoe kept on gliding across the dark water.

“This is where we’re gonna fish?” I said.

“No fishing today.” After a pause, he said, “I’m more a fisher of men.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Time to begin reflecting on what kind of man you are.”

“Dad, I’m twelve.” I inherited my smart-Alec lip from Mom.

“That’s why I don’t expect you to decide today. Merely think on it.” He could see I wasn’t quite getting it. “Ever since you showed an interest in photography, I had a hunch . . . . ” He cupped his hands and blew into the notch between his thumbs. Took him a couple of tries to perfect an eerie, fluting whistle that rebounded off the lake and nearby hills. He lowered his hands and looked at me. “I planned to wait until next year to have this conversation. Aunt Vikki’s . . . outburst has me thinking sooner is better. Sorry if she frightened you.”

“Why did she fly off the handle? Are her eyes okay?” I hoped to sound unflappable.

“Her eyes are fine. It’s my fault. The Vinson woman was too close to home. Anyhow, your aunt is staying with us because she can’t live alone. She’s fragile. Emotionally.”

“Vikki’s crazy?”

“No. Well, maybe. She’s different and she needs her family.”

“She and Mom hate each other.”

“They fight. That doesn’t mean they hate each other. Do you hate your brother? Wait, don’t answer that.” He dipped his paddle into the water. “What’s my job at the plant?”

“You build—”

“Design.”

“You design robots.”

“I’m a mechanical engineer specializing in robotic devices and systems. It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds. How do you suppose I landed that position?”

“Well, you went to school—”

“No, son. I majored in sociology. Any expertise I have in engineering I’ve learned on the fly or by studying at night.”

“Oh.” Confused by the turn in our conversation, I fiddled with my camera.

“Want to know the truth?”

“Okay.” I feared with all the power of my child’s imagination that he would reveal that his real name was Vladimir, a deep cover mole sent by the Russians. It’s difficult to properly emphasize the underlying paranoia wrought by the Cold War on our collective national psyche. My brother and I spied on our neighbors, profiling them as possible Red agents. We’d frequently convinced ourselves that half the neighborhood was sending clandestine reports to a numbers station.

“I bullshitted the hiring committee,” Dad said. He seldom cursed around Mom; more so Greg. Now I’d entered his hallowed circle of confidence. “That’s how I acquired my position. If you understand what makes people tick, you can always get what you want. Oops, here we are.” Silt scraped the hull as he nosed the canoe onto the shore. We disembarked and walked through some bushes to a path that circled the entire lake. I knew this since our families made the entire circuit at least once per vacation.

Dad yawned, twisting his torso around with a contortionist’s knack. He doubled his left hand against his forearm; then the right. His joints popped. This wasn’t the same as my brother cracking his knuckles, which he often did to annoy me. No, it sounded more like a butcher snapping the bones of a chicken carcass. He sighed in evident relief. “Son, I can’t tell you what a living bitch it is to maintain acceptable posture every damned minute of the day. Speaking of wanting things. You want great pictures of predators, right?” I agreed, sure, that was the idea. He hunched so our heads were closer. “Prey animals are easy to stalk. They’re prey. They exist to be hunted and eaten. Predators are tougher. I can teach you. I’ve been working with your brother for years. Getting him ready for the jungle.”

“The jungle?” I said, hearing and reacting to the latter part of his statement while ignoring the former. “You mean Vietnam?” There was a curse word. “But he promised Mom—”

“Greg’s going to volunteer for the Marines. Don’t worry. He’s a natural. He’s like me.” He stopped and laid his hand on my shoulder. Heavy and full of suppressed power. “I can count on your discretion not to tell your mother. Can’t I?”

Sons and fathers have differences. Nonetheless, I’d always felt safe around mine. Sure, he was awkward and socially off-putting. Sure, he ran hot and cold. Sure, he made lame jokes and could be painfully distant. People joke that engineers are socially maladjusted; there’s some truth to that cliché. Foibles notwithstanding, I didn’t doubt his love or intentions. Yet, in that moment, I became hyper aware of the size of his hand—of him, in general—and the chirping birds, and that we were alone here in the trees on the opposite shore of the lake. Awareness of his physical grotesqueness hit me in a wave of revulsion. From my child’s unvarnished perspective, his features transcended mere homeliness. Since he’d stretched, his stance and expression had altered. Spade-faced and gangling, toothy and hunched, yet tall and deceptively agile. A carnivore had slipped on Dad’s sporting goods department ensemble and lured me into the woods. Let’s go to Grandma’s house!

Such a witless, childish fantasy. The spit dried in my mouth anyhow. Desperate to change the subject, perhaps to show deference the way a wolf pup does to an alpha, I said, “I didn’t mean to call Aunt Vikki crazy.”

Dad blinked behind those enormous, horn-rimmed glasses. “It would be a mistake to classify aberrant psychology as proof of disorder.”

He registered my blank expression. “Charles Addams said—”

“Who’s that?”

“A cartoonist. He said, ‘What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.’ He was correct. The world is divided between spiders and flies.” He studied me intently, searching for something, then shook himself and straightened. His hand dropped away from my shoulder. Such a large hand, such a long arm. “C’mon. Let’s stroll a bit. If we’re quiet, we might surprise a woodland critter.”

We strolled.

Contrary to his stated intention of moving quietly to surprise our quarry, Dad initiated a nonstop monologue. He got onto the subject of physical comedy and acting. “Boris Karloff is a master,” he said. “And Lon Chaney Jr. The werewolf guy?”

“Yeah, Dad.” I’d recovered a bit after that moment of irrational panic. The world felt right again under my feet.

“Chaney’s facility with physiognomic transformation? Truly remarkable. Unparalleled, considering his disadvantages. Faking—it’s difficult.” One aspect I learned to appreciate about my old man’s character was the fact he didn’t dumb down his language. Granted, he’d speak slower depending upon the audience. However, he used big words if big words were appropriate. My desk-side dictionary and thesaurus were dog-eared as all get-out.

While he blathered, I managed a few good shots including a Cooper’s hawk perched on a high branch, observing our progress. The hawk leaped, disappearing over the canopy. When I lowered the camera, Dad was gone too. I did what you might expect—called for him and dithered, figuring he’d poke his head around a tree and laugh at my consternation. Instead, the sun climbed. Patches of cool shade thickened; the lake surface dimmed and brightened with opaline hardness. Yelling occasionally, I trudged back toward where we’d beached the canoe.

He caught me as I rounded a bend in the path. A hand and ropy arm extended so very far from the wall of brush. A hooked nail scraped my forehead. Look, son! See? Instead of pausing to peer into the undergrowth, I ran. Full tilt, camera strap whipping around my neck and a miracle I didn’t lose that beloved camera before I crashed through the bushes onto the beach.

Dad sat on a driftwood log, serenely studying the lake. “Hey, kiddo. There you are.” He explained his intention to play a harmless joke. “You perceive your surroundings in a different light if a guardian isn’t present. Every boy should feel that small burst of adrenaline under controlled circumstances. Head on a swivel, right, son?”

I realized I’d merely bumped into a low-hanging branch and completely freaked. By the time we paddled home, my wild, unreasoning terror had dissipated. It’s all or nothing with kids—dying of plague, or fit as a fiddle; bounce back from a nasty fall, or busted legs; rub some dirt on it and walk it off, or a wheelchair. Similar deal with our emotions as well. Dad wasn’t a monster, merely a weirdo. Aunt Vikki’s crazed behavior had set my teeth on edge. The perfect storm. My thoughts shied from outré concerns to dwell upon on Dad’s casual mention that Greg planned on going to war and how we’d best keep on the QT. Not the kind of secret I wanted to hide from Mom, but I wasn’t a squealer.

He remained quiet until we were gliding alongside the dock. He said, “Randy, I was wrong to test you. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again. Scout’s honor.”

It didn’t.

Toward the end of our stay, the whole lot of us trooped forth to conduct our annual peregrination around the entire lake. We packed picnic baskets and assembled at the Black Gap. Except for Dad, who’d gone ahead to prepare the site where we’d camp for lunch. Another barbecue, in fact. Mr. Mercer brought along a fancy camera (a Canon!) to record the vacation action. He and I had a bonding moment as “serious” photographers. Mr. Schrader, Dad, and a couple of the kids toted flimsy cheap-o tourist models. Such amateurs! Mr. Mercer arranged us with the pines for a backdrop. Everybody posed according to height. He yelled directions, got what he wanted, and joined the group while I snapped a few—first with his camera, then my own. I lagged behind as they scrambled uphill along the path.

We trekked to the campsite. Hot, thirsty, and ready for our roasted chicken. Dad awaited us, although not by much. None of the other adults said anything. However, I recall Mom’s vexation with the fact he hadn’t even gotten a fire going in the pit. She pulled him aside and asked what happened. Why was he so mussed and unkempt? Why so damned sweaty?

He blinked, pushed his glasses up, and shrugged. “I tried a shortcut. Got lost.”

“Lost, huh?” She combed pine needles out of his hair. “Likely story.”

That winter, drunken ski bums accidentally burned down the Schrader cabin. Oh, the plan was to rebuild in the spring and carry on. Alas, one thing led to another—kids shipping off to college, the Mercers divorcing, etcetera—and we never returned. The men sold off the property for a tidy profit. That was that for our Lake Terror era. Greg skipped college and enlisted with the United States Marine Corps in ’69. Mom locked herself in her study and cried for a week. That shook me—she wasn’t a weeper by any means. My brother sent postcards every month or so over the course of his two tours. Well, except for a long, dark stretch near the end when he ceased all communication. The military wouldn’t tell us anything. Judging by her peevishness and the fact she seldom slept, I suspect Mom walked the ragged edge.

One day, Greg called and said he’d be home soon. Could Dad pick him up at the airport? He departed an obstreperous child and returned a quieter, thoughtful man. The war injured the psyches of many soldiers. It definitely affected him. Greg kibitzed about shore leave and the antics of his rogue’s gallery of comrades. Conversely, he deflected intimate questions that drilled too close to where his honest emotions lay buried. Dumb kids being dumb kids, I asked if he killed anyone. He smiled and drummed his fingers on the table, one then another. That smile harked to his teenaged cruelness, now carefully submerged. More artful, more refined, more mature. He said, The neat thing about Tiptoe? It’s humane. Curbs the ol’ urges. Ordinarily, it’s enough to catch and release. Ordinarily. You get me, kid? We didn’t speak often after he moved to the Midwest. He latched on with a trucking company. The next to the last time I saw him was at Dad’s funeral in 1985. Dad’s ticker had blown while raking leaves. Dead on his way to the ground, same as his own father and older brother. Greg lurked on the fringes at the reception. He slipped away before I could corner him. Nobody else noticed that he’d come and gone.

Aunt Vikki? She joined a weird church. Her erratic behavior deteriorated throughout the 1970s, leading to a stint in an institution. She made a comeback in the ’80s, got on the ground floor of the whole psychic hotline craze. Made a killing telling people what they wanted to hear. Remarried to a disgraced avant garde filmmaker. Bought a mansion in Florida where she currently runs a New Age commune of international repute. Every Christmas, she drops a couple grand on my photography to jazz up her compound. I can’t imagine how poster photos of wolves disemboweling caribou go over with the rubes seeking enlightenment. Got to admit, watching those recruitment videos shot by her latest husband, my work looks damned slick.

And full circle at last. My coworker startled me; nightmares ensued; and creepy-crawly memories surfaced. Cue my formerly happy existence falling apart. Two AM routinely found me wide awake, scrutinizing my sweaty reflection in the bathroom mirror. I tugged the bags beneath my eyes, exposing the veiny whites. Drew down until it hurt. Just more of the same. What did I expect? That my face was a mask and I peered through slits? That I was my father’s son, through and through? If he were more or less than a man, what did that make me?

On my next visit, I decided to level with Mom as I tucked her into bed.

“We need to talk about Dad.” I hesitated. Was it even ethical to tell her the truth, here at the end of her days? Hey, Ma, I believe Pop was involved in the disappearances of several—god knows the number— people back in the sixties. I forged ahead. “This will sound crazy. He wasn’t . . . normal.”

“Well, duh,” she said. We sat that there for a while, on opposite sides of a gulf that widened by the second.

“Wait. Were you aware?”

“Of what?”

Hell of a question. “There was another side to Dad. Dark. Real dark, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. What did you know, ma’am, and when did you know it?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“Bank robbers don’t always tell their wives they rob banks.”

“The wives suspect.”

“Damned straight. Suspicion isn’t proof. That’s the beauty of the arrangement. We lasted until he died. There’s beauty in that too, these days.” Mom’s voice had weakened as she spoke. She beckoned me to lean in and I did. “We were on our honeymoon at a lodge. Around dawn, wrapped in a quilt on the deck. A fox light-footed into the yard. I whispered to your father about the awesomeness of mother nature, or wow, a fox! He smiled. Not his quirky smile, the cold one. He said, An animal’s expression won’t change, even as it’s eating prey alive. May sound strange, but that’s when I knew we fit perfectly.”

“Jesus, Mom.” I shivered. Dad and his pearls of wisdom, his icy little apothegms. Respected, admired, revered. But replaceable. A phrase he said in response to anyone who inquired after his job security at IBM. He’d also uttered a similar quote when admonishing Greg or me in connection to juvenile hijinks. Loved, but replaceable, boys. Loved, but replaceable.

“He never would’ve hurt you.” She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into her blankets. Her next words were muffled. I’m not sure I heard them right. “At least, not by choice.”

Mom died. A handful of journalist colleagues and nurses showed up to pay their respects. Greg waited until the rest had gone and I was in the midst of wiping my tears to step from behind a decrepit obelisk, grip my shoulder, and whisper, “Boo!” He didn’t appear especially well. Gray and gaunt, raw around the nose and mouth. Strong, though, and seething with febrile energy. He resembled the hell out of Dad when Dad was around that age and not long prior to his coronary. Greg even wore a set of oversized glasses, although I got a funny feeling they were purely camouflage.

We relocated to a tavern. He paid for a pitcher, of which he guzzled the majority. Half a lifetime had passed since our last beer. I wondered what was on his mind. The funeral? Vietnam? That decade-old string of missing persons in Ohio near his last known town of residence?

“Don’t fret, little brother.” Predators have a talent for sniffing weakness. He’d sussed out that I’d gone through a few things recently, Mom’s death being the latest addition to the calculus of woe. “Dad told you—you’re not the same as us.” He wiped his lips and tried on a peaceable smile. “They gave me the good genes. Although, I do surely wish I had your eye. Mom also had the eye.” The second pitcher came and he waxed maudlin. “Look, apologies for being such a jerk to you when we were kids.”

“Forgotten,” I said.

“I’ve always controlled my worse impulses by inflicting petty discomfort. Like chewing a stick of gum when I want a cigarette so bad my teeth ache. I needle people. Associates, friends, loved ones. Whomever. Their unease feeds me well enough to keep the real craving at bay. Until it doesn’t.” He removed a photo from his wallet and pushed it across the table. Mom and Dad in our old yard. The sun was in Dad’s glasses. Hard to know what to make of a man’s smile when you can’t see his eyes. I pushed it back. He waved me off. “Hang onto that.”

“It’s yours.”

“Nah, I don’t need a memento. You’re the archivist. The sentimental one.”

“Fine. Thanks.” I slipped the photo into my coat pocket.

He stared at a waitress as she cleared a booth across the aisle. From a distance his expression might’ve passed for friendly. “My motel isn’t far,” he said. “Give me a ride? Or if you’re busy, I could ask her.” How could I refuse my own brother? Well, I would’ve loved to.

His motel occupied a lonely corner on a dark street near the freeway. He invited me into his cave-like room. I declined, said it had been great, etcetera. I almost escaped clean. He caught my wrist. Up close, he smelled of beer, coppery musk, and a hint of moldering earth.

“I think back to my classmates in high school and the military,” Greg said. “The drug addicts, the cons, and divorcees. A shitload of kids who grew up and moved as far from home as humanly possible. Why? Because their families were the worst thing that ever happened to them. It hit me.”

“What hit you?”

“On the whole, Mom and Dad were pretty great parents.”

“Surprising to hear you put it that way, Greg. We haven’t shared many family dinners since we were kids.”

“Take my absence as an expression of love. Consider also, I might have been around more than you noticed.” He squeezed.

As I mentioned, despite his cadaverous appearance, he was strong. And by that, I mean bone-crushing strong. My arm may as well have been clamped in the jaws of a grizzly. I wasn’t going anywhere unless he permitted it. “They were good people,” I said through my teeth.

“Adios, bud.”

Surely it was a relief when he slackened his grip and released me. I trudged down the stairs, across the lot, and had my car keys in hand when the flesh on my neck prickled. I spun, and there was Greg, twenty or so feet behind me, soundlessly tiptoeing along, knees to chest, elbows even with the top of his head, hands splayed wide. He closed most of the gap in a single, exaggerated stride. Then he froze and watched my face with the same intensity as he’d observed the waitress.

“Well done,” he said. “Maybe you learned something, bumbling around in the woods.” He turned and walked toward the lights of the motel. I waited until he’d climbed the stairs to jump into my car and floor it out of there.

A long trip home. You bet I glanced into my rearview the entire drive.

In the wee desolate hours, short on sleep due to a brain that refused to switch off, I killed the last of the bourbon while sorting ancient photographs. A mindless occupation that felt akin to picking at a scab or working on a jigsaw. No real mental agility involved other than mechanically rotating pieces until something locked into place. Among the many loose pictures I’d stashed for posterity were some shot on that last day at Lake Terror in ’68. The sequence began with our three families (minus Dad, who’d gone ahead) assembled at the Black Gap and waving; then a few more of everybody proceeding single-file away and up the trail.

I spread these photos on the coffee table and stared for a long, long while. I only spotted the slightly fuzzy, unfocused extra figure because of my keen vision . . . and possibly a dreadful instinct honed by escalating paranoia. Once I saw Dad, there were no take-backsies, as we used to say. Dad hung in the branches; a huge, distorted figure hidden in the background of a puzzle. Bloated and lanky, jaw unslung. Inhumanly proportioned, but unmistakably my father. His gaze fixed upon the camera as his left arm dangled and dangled, gray-black fingers plucking the hair of the kids as they hiked obliviously through the notch between the shaggy pines. His lips squirmed.

Eeny. Meeny. Miny. Moe.

The post The Family Game I Never Wanted to Win appeared first on Electric Literature.

When I wake up, Kai has a hump jutting out of his back. Except, when I wipe the sleep from my face, I see the hump is a McDonald’s restaurant about the size of a backpack. He’s bent over in the snail position, naked except for a pair of boxers, inspecting himself in the mirror door, his face creased with concentration.

I love McDonald’s. I love it so much, in fact, I use it as an emotional measuring stick. For example, I do this thing where I say I’d rather have McDonald’s than X, where X is a variable, which stands for someone or something unpleasant. Usually, the X is also someone or something of considerable importance. Last night, the X was Kai. 

He got home two hours late from the video game night with his friends and, to top it off, he forgot it was his turn to pick up dinner.

“We were stuck on the final boss,” he said. “The guys get weird when I bail.” 

Recently he’s been pulling these stunts a lot. So I threw the TV remote across the room and stormed off to fill my wine glass in the kitchen. There, propped against the counter, I fed him my favorite line, implied a McRib and order for French fries would offer more emotional fulfillment than him. 

“Anybody in there?” he asks, neck craned at the building in the mirror.

I slump off the mattress and crawl over beside him. My fingernail taps one of the tiny glass windows. Inside, there are booths, ivory plants, a pair of soda fountains, trash cans with plastic trays stacked on top, a counter, and overhead menus.

“I didn’t mean what I said last night. About the McDonald’s and McRib. I didn’t think my wish would come true.”

“What are you talking about?” Kai asks. “What wish? I got out of bed and this growth was coming out of my back, but I think it’s starting to look like a building.”

“Do you want me to call for help?” I ask. “This seems serious.”

“Saw is in the garage. We can cut it off.”

Of course, in this instance, “we” means “you,” as in me.

“Let me move you to the backyard,” I say, grabbing his foot. “Weather’s beautiful this afternoon.” I drag him outside into the grass. He grunts and wheezes, but he doesn’t protest.

Despite my apprehension, Kai seems unperturbed by me playing surgeon. I pour beer in a glass and set it beside his arms. I’ve brought out some of his favorite comics, so he can distract himself while I work. He wiggles his arms and tells me not to worry.

He smells like cheeseburgers and dollar-menu apple pies; much better than the cologne he wears. He’s radiating familiar warmth, which reminds me of what it feels like inside a busy kitchen. Unlike his usual aroma, it’s comforting.

I nurse him some beer and torture the jagged blade across the building’s base. Metal grinds against brick and he yelps like an injured dog. My breathing grows labored. This goes on for twenty minutes and I don’t make a scratch.

“Coming along great,” I lie.

He’s started to stretch like he’s a bear skin rug with a coffee table in the center, except the coffee table is a McDonald’s. Little ceiling lights have illuminated the restaurant’s interior and I see uniformed employees at the registers. Their faces are too small to discern, but they wave like they want me to open the door. 

Kai grunts my name and tips over the beer glass. He looks up to meet my face, but his head has gone pancake flat like it’s sinking into the lawn.

“I’m almost out of beer,” he says.

I want to say I love you, but the lie pushes beyond the bounds of my comfort zone.

So I grab him another beer. While he dozes, I prop his head atop his favorite comic book. “I’m sorry I wished for the McDonald’s,” I say, and as I say it, I wonder if it’s true.

Back inside the house, I call up my old work friend, Vanessa. She has an interest in manifestation, intention setting, wishes. She’s not full-blown new age, but she does tarot and astrology readings. She claims she manifested an ex’s orgasm from five hundred miles away. One time, when money was tight, she purchased a jacket containing a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills in the pocket, a wish she’d been making for weeks.

“Is it possible to manifest a person into something else by accident,” I ask. “Kai’s had a bad morning.”

Unfortunately, my question prompts an interrogation. Vanessa doesn’t believe in accidental manifestation. She volunteers to lend me some books from her library, let me do some independent research if I’d rather not go into detail, but without specifics, she can’t share insight. 

“I think my boyfriend is turning into a McDonald’s,” I say.

“Oh, I used to date a man like that. He went through an Arby’s phase. Couldn’t get him to eat anything else. Doubt it involves a wish or intention. Give it a month, and if he doesn’t change up his diet, consider an intervention. A lot of guys are resistant to therapy, but if he’s depressed, maybe you can talk him into group therapy. Remember to visualize him as the best version of himself, and when you visualize, express gratitude. Gratitude’s important.”

“Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.”

When I hang up, I try to visualize Kai, the wish, and taking back the wish, but I never ate breakfast, and lunch time has passed. My stomach gurgles and I visualize a McDonald’s quarter-pounder haloed by a golden glow. Each time I attempt to picture my boyfriend, the image sharpens, and the light intensifies.

Is it normal to get hungry during a crisis?

I Google the question, but I refresh the search page before the results can populate, because I don’t want to know the answer.

By the time I return to the backyard, the McDonald’s is as big as a shed. Kai’s feet stick out from the bottom, like the building fell on him, like he’s the dead witch in The Wizard of Oz. There’s a flowerbed, containing his favorite comic nestled inside some petunias, at the part of the building where his head used to rest. His limbs must’ve sunken into the gravel parking lot or fed into the grass medians around the perimeter. The Golden M sign grows out of the spot where his left hand had been placed and, beside it, the glass of beer I poured for him sits untouched.

I sniff around the restaurant’s dumpster, the hedges, and black-top oil slicks, searching for the scent of him, a clue he was here and I didn’t make it up, but the whole yard smells of grease and grilled meat, salty French fries. It smells like McDonald’s. I cup my hands around my mouth and call his name, ask him to let me know if he’s okay, though I don’t anticipate a response and, after an hour, my voice grows weak.

It takes a long time of sitting there brooding on the gravel to accept my situation. It takes me longer to stand and work up the nerve to pass through the glass doors. Sundown, and Kai is the same size as any McDonald’s across America.

“It’s the smell,” I say to the cashier, when she asks what brought me here this evening. She looks like Kai. All the employees look like Kai, or watered-down clones of Kai. Or I miss him. Or I love McDonald’s and he has become McDonald’s, so in a way I have come to love him and my memories of him too. 

“Are there any other customers?” I ask.

“No, but there will be other customers.”

“But what if I don’t want to share?”

“Then don’t. This is your McDonald’s.”

I don’t know if there’s any grief to eat my way out of, because right now, for the first time in a while, I feel content. I order a McRib, the extra-large fries I’ve been craving all day, a large fountain soda, and two of the dollar-menu apple pies. The restaurant is open twenty-four hours. It has reliable wifi, immaculate bathrooms. It will keep me fed and see to my needs regardless of circumstances. I wish I could speak to Kai over the intercom, hear his voice, but I take it back, because I know I’m better off longing after the possibility, letting it linger like an echo in my mind while I dine in the peace of a corner booth, feet kicked up on the table. I slurp through my straw, nibble on my pie, yawn like I have nowhere to go.

I figure this is good a place as any to stay the night.

The post I Turned My Lover Into a McRib appeared first on Electric Literature.