Glass Shatters

Glass Shatters: A Novel

Michelle Meyers

She Writes Press (2016)

PRAISE FOR

Glass Shatters

“
Glass Shatters
is a puzzle, one that both the reader and the book’s narrator pick apart, deliberately circling a set of images, mere reflections, and shadows hinting at the truth, until reality comes devastatingly into focus. Meyers busts the detective story into pieces and digs through these shards to dissect memory, identity, and what it means to be alive.”

—Brandi Wells, author of
This Boring Apocalypse

“
Glass Shatters
is unlike any novel I’ve read before. It’s an inventive, daring, and remarkable debut that pushes the edges of fiction with tremendous success. Michelle Meyers is certainly a writer to watch.”

—Ivy Pochoda, author of
Visitation Street

“Bold ideas explored with verve and imagination. Meyers is unafraid of taking the reader to bizarre and unexpected regions of this and other realities, along the way exploring the strangeness of existence.”

—Charles Yu, author of
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“
Glass Shatters
swept me up from the get-go. About a trail of lost and found memories in a world of genetic science, each sentence is as crystalline and vivid as recall can get. Tightly-plotted, it carefully walks and then fancifully deviates from the scientific through line, making both the novelist and science journalist in me applaud. Good work, Michelle Meyers!”

—Rebecca Coffey, author of
Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story

“A puzzle and a page-turner,
Glass Shatters
invites readers into a dark investigation of one man’s attempt to recover his memories and identity. Michelle Meyers has expertly crafted an engrossing novel with a sophisticated blend of art, science, and emotion, one that is ultimately an imaginative elegy on the arresting forces of love and loss.”

—Gallagher Lawson, author of
The Paper Man

“
Glass Shatters
, the truly uncanny, memorable novel of (among other things) memory presents itself as a transparent tale that soon (it does grow on you) transmutes into the translucent transcendental shades of Poe and Dick and James at his supernatural-est. This is domestic hyper-realism, turning ever irreal at the edges. The book is a magnificent machine, machining the senses and sensation. Michelle Meyers splinters feelings, running them through the ringer, a sieve so fine-tuned one begins to see the tinge and tint that spark, right there, off the spectrum, just out of insight.”

—Michael Martone, author of
Michael Martone
and
Winesburg, Indiana

G L A S S
S H A T T E R S

Copyright © 2016 Michelle Meyers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2016
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-018-1 pbk
ISBN: 978-1-63152-019-8 ebk
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954334

Book design by Stacey Aaronson
Cover illustration by James R. Eads

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

For my mother

Don’t tell me the moon is shining;
show me the glint of light on broken glass.
—Anton Chekhov

PART I

I
’m not sure if I’m awake. Colors, shapes, smells, and sounds meld together like an impressionist painting. Staticky voices ricochet through my head, the words indiscernible. I can’t tell if the voices are my own or someone else’s. Each heartbeat rattles inside of me as if I’m a machine that hasn’t been used in a very long time. I know that something is irrevocably wrong. I know it the way people know their own mothers and fathers.

Rays of sunlight fight their way through the slits in the curtains and my pupils shrink to oily pinpricks. The living room gradually sinks into focus around me. I push myself up into a sitting position on the couch. A button on my back pocket snags, ripping a tear across the muslin fabric to reveal the yellow cheese foam underneath. Charlie Chaplin’s
City Lights
plays on a small black-and-white television. Just as the Tramp and the Flower Girl touch hands on screen, their palms quivering against one another, a petal floats down from a vase of dead roses on the windowsill behind the TV. I blink once and then twice. There’s a photo album sitting on the coffee table. I reach for the album and flip through the pages. Every single page is blank.

Then it floods over me, this realization, this fear, like a child who’s lost and thinks he’ll never be found. I don’t
remember anything about myself. I don’t know my name, how old I am. I don’t remember what I did yesterday, the last person I spoke to. I can recall the names of the things around me. And I remember that Woodrow Wilson was the president of the United States during World War I and that Watson and Crick discovered the double helix. But when I close my eyes, I see nothing, only a vast, empty void wrinkled by memories once had and now gone. The darkness is palpable, viscous black paint, and my thoughts are sticky, held in suspended animation. I open my eyes again and my attention is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. My tongue feels like a dry lump of clay in my mouth. I lap at the air, desperate to breathe. I will myself to relax, to allow my lungs to fully expand and contract. I’m going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay. I want to convince myself of this, even though I don’t believe it.

A fat orange tabby cat struts across the living room, his tags jangling with each step like he’s king of the place. He meows and bumps his head against my leg. I scratch behind his ears, try to keep my hands from shaking. He jumps into my lap, cooing for more. I check his nametag. Einstein. Not surprising given his wild mane of hair. I again breathe in deeply, counting to five before releasing it. All I can feel is sadness, a sadness that makes me wonder if I’m thirsty, and even that sadness is tepid, lukewarm. At least I think I’m in my own house. Einstein seems to enjoy my company, and while I don’t remember anything, it all feels familiar somehow, the way the couch smells faintly like almonds, the slight springiness of the blue fiber rug.

There are no mirrors in sight. I look down at my hands.
They have fine blond hairs across the knuckles, well-trimmed nails. My limbs are long and lanky, and my feet look like ships in the brown socks I’m wearing. I’m male, white, most likely in my late twenties or early thirties. I touch my face. Slight stubble. Not wearing any glasses but probably supposed to be. I’m dressed in jeans and a gray plaid shirt that’s tucked in. There’s something on my head. I raise my fingers and find that it’s a soft knit cap. My head throbs and I wonder if I was in an accident.

There’s a pair of muddy footprints across the hardwood floor, leading to a pair of leather shoes by the couch that seem about my size. My gaze follows the footprints back to the entryway of the house. The front door is wide open and rattles with each gust of wind. I hear children screaming and playing, and with Einstein tucked in my arms, I approach the door. It’s a brisk spring day, highlighted by sprays of bright pink rhododendrons in bloom, the sun occasionally peeking out from behind a thick layer of cumulus clouds threatening to rain. The maple trees are just starting to get their leaves back, and everyone’s front lawns are crisp and green, standing at attention. I step down off the porch, watching a little girl with bright red hair tumbling in her yard a few doors down, doing somersault after somersault. A pattern of plump red strawberries stretches across her dress and she wears sparkly ruby-red slippers to match.

I look back at my house. It seems out of place in such a peaceful suburban neighborhood, a Gothic mansion like something out of Poe. Its peeling wood panels are covered with purple wisteria, its windows boarded up, the shutters hanging off their hinges. The paint is chipping. I can’t even guess at its
original color. The houses around it, in contrast, are friendly colonial revivals, modest and unassuming, painted rich reds and blues, perhaps to evoke American patriotism. They’re the types of houses that have basketball hoops in the backyard and barbeques throughout the summer.

“Chaaarles!” a voice cries out from the distance, and the small bundle of the strawberry girl comes careening at me, her braided pigtails flying out behind her. She wraps her arms around my legs in a big bear hug. In my surprise, I drop Einstein, who scurries back into the house. At first I wonder if the girl will ever let go, but then she steps back, a strange look on her face, as if in her joy she’d forgotten she was angry with me. I reach out my hand, let it hang in midair between us, waiting, wanting to feel her warm, tiny hand against mine, the Tramp and the Flower Girl. She folds her arms against her chest, biting her bottom lip. I finally let my own arm drop.

“Where were you?” she asks.

I say nothing.

“You were gone for six months. You missed my birthday. I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”

“I’m sorry.” I want so desperately to tell her that I don’t remember. But I’m not sure it would be a good idea, so I don’t.