Glass Shatters (17 page)

“Where were you? Julie and I couldn’t believe you’d just left us.”

Steve turns to watch Ava for a moment. She loops back toward us, chattering away to the marionette. “I bummed around Europe for a while, Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic, crashed on couches or in the street, did odd jobs for folks. Eventually I saved up enough money to get to London, applied to school, got a scholarship. I studied bioengineering, met Richard. We decided to move back to the States. I called you when I got back. I thought you would hate me. I was kind of afraid you wouldn’t even remember me. I know that sounds crazy but it had been over ten years since we’d last talked. You were kind, though. Empathetic. You got me an interview with Genutech.”

“What did I say? Did I tell you about anything that had happened since you left?”

“A little. Not much. I really had to pull it out of you. You told me that your parents had died, that you were living in their old house. That you had married Julie. That you had a daughter named Jess.”

“Did you meet her? Did you get to meet Jess? What was Julie like then?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get to see either of them when I moved back, before they …” Steve frowns. “Well, I kept suggesting we all get together but it never quite worked out, and then a few months later … I think you were too nice to say it, but I’m pretty sure Julie wanted nothing to do with me. Which I get. Ultimately it was my fault. I just took off. It was a selfish thing to do.” Steve checks his watch. “Sorry,
Charles, I have a meeting to get to, but I’m glad you’re back.”

“Steve?”

“Mmm?”

“Do I seem different to you?”

Steve’s smile sinks, his words anchored down. “I have to go, Charles. I’ll see you soon.”

Before I can say anything else, Steve has already disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the discarded stirrer from his coffee. Ava abandons the marionette, bored, and tugs on my sleeve. “Can we go see the jellyfish?”

“Sure thing. It’s about time I updated my notes.”

Ava claps her hands together, grinning as I unlock the door to my room at the lab. The blinds are open on the windows above the tanks and shades of orange and pink smear across the wall in the early morning light. Ava presses her face up to the glass, mesmerized by the luminous bodies of the jellyfish, the way they swoop around each another, their tentacles reacting warmly to one another’s touch.

“They seem so peaceful. They’re like angels,” Ava whispers, as if talking any louder will disturb the jellyfish. I can see what she means, the way the jellyfish just sway from side to side with every vibration of the water. I make my rounds, recording the progress of my experiments, examining marine samples in petri dishes under the microscope, thinking about how grateful I am that the memory loss left my scientific knowledge un-harmed. The tanks are so tall that I have to stand on a footstool to reach into each one, rubber glove up to my right elbow, taking each jellyfish into my hand so that I can inspect it more closely and describe any changes in coloration, size, or
behavior. Several of the tanks hold the jellyfish that are part of the control group, while others have been exposed to various chemical catalysts. About two-thirds of the tanks appear empty, but in reality, each contains a tiny sample of undifferentiated cells in a miniature incubation chamber at the bottom. I make my way around the room until I reach the last tank, my eyes fastened to my clipboard, searching for patterns.

I almost don’t notice it, distracted by the numbers and figures already written down, but just as I’m about to step down from the footstool, I see a slight glint out of the corner of my eye. Inside the incubation chamber is a tiny, iridescent jellyfish, shimmering silver and purple in the water. I blink once, twice, wanting to make sure I’m not imagining it, that I don’t have something in my eye. But no, the truth is that from just a few transdifferentiated cells, I’ve created a life.

January 29, 2004

Age Twenty-Six

J
ulie asks Charles to meet her in the park. The day feels like January, the air clear and crisp, slightly wet. Charles pulls his scarf more tightly around his neck, checks to make sure the rose is still safely stowed in his breast pocket. Charles finally spots Julie standing beneath a broad oak tree, her cheeks pink with the cold. He jogs up to her and wraps his arms around her, pecking her on the lips. Charles takes out the rose and hands it to Julie.

“What’s this for?” Julie says.

“I know it’s probably silly, but it’s been exactly a month since we saw each other at the tavern, and I just wanted to give you a little something,” Charles says.

“The color is … well, it’s brilliant. I’ve never seen a color quite like it.” The rose is somewhere between deep violet and blue, a color that seems to shift in the sunlight. Julie smiles and tucks the rose into her bag. She takes Charles’s hand and leads him to a bench to sit down.

“Charles, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I—I’m pregnant,” Julie says. For several moments, it feels like time freezes. The wind grows still, the birds perching silently, the woman by the drinking fountain pausing midstep. Charles holds Julie in his arms, brings her close into his chest so that her head is burrowed into his shoulder. Julie looks up at Charles and when their eyes meet, they both grin.

“We’re going to have a baby,” Charles says, barely able to contain his excitement.

“Yes, we are!” Julie starts to laugh. “I was so scared to tell you. I don’t know why. I thought maybe you would freak out or be angry or something.”

Charles takes Julie’s chin in his hand and kisses her. “I love you, Julie. I want to marry you. I want to have children with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and the fact that we’ve created something beautiful together is just, it’s spectacular.”

Julie squeezes Charles’s hand. “I feel the same way.”

“So that’s that,” Charles says.

“That’s that,” Julie says. “Except—”

“Except?”

“Well, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about. My room is so cramped, your apartment is so small … we should clean out your parents’ house, Charles. It’s just going to waste right now and if we’re going to have a family together, we’re going to need space. Not to mention how nice it would be to still live so close to my mother.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“I just, I don’t know. I don’t know.” Charles stands up. He feels his chest closing in.

“Charles, I can be patient. We can take it really slow. We have time to figure this out,” Julie says. “Come on, sit down. Take a deep breath.”

Charles lets Julie guide him back down to the bench. He breathes in and out, trying to push away the panicked feeling.

“I haven’t been back since the funeral,” Charles admits. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re going to have to face it eventually, though,” Julie says quietly.

“I know it doesn’t seem rational. But the last time I went, it just felt like the house was toxic, like every object, every photo, every piece of furniture triggered some sort of terrible memory. I told myself I never wanted to feel like that again.”

“I understand, Charles. You have to trust me on this.”

Charles hangs his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can.”

“You know, everyone assumes that my mother has always been alone, that she was never married, that my father was never around,” Julie says. “They don’t know that my parents were happy together, that my father had cancer and died when I was five. I started having panic attacks right around the time he died. I had no idea what they were at first. I was convinced I was dying too. I would have stomachaches and headaches, and it felt like my chest was caving in on itself. At a certain point, my mother figured out that they were always triggered by the objects I associated with my father—his old razor sitting on the bathroom counter, his pants hanging in the closet, his paintings on the living room walls.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I don’t know how I didn’t—”

“Because I didn’t tell you. I don’t tell anybody.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says again. Then, “What was his name?”

“Rolf. He was half German, half British, with long, lanky limbs and hair blonder than anybody else I’d ever seen before.”

Charles takes Julie’s hand in his. He gives it a warm squeeze. “And what was he like?”

“My mother says he was quiet and contemplative, an honest person. He didn’t know any other way to be but genuine. He was a painter. He would paint in our living room, just in his jeans. He liked to work with his shirt off. He liked the feeling of getting splattered with paint and having to scrub it off in the shower at night. I thought he was invincible. He was the tallest, strongest man I knew.”

“What else do you remember?”

“He always read to me at night, and my favorite book was an old, worn copy of
Peter Pan.
At that time, my greatest fear was that I wouldn’t be able to be a child forever. One day my father took me in his lap and said he had a secret to tell me, a secret I must not tell anybody else. He told me that even if he looked like a grown-up, he was really a child at heart, and that these sorts of things tended to run in families so I really had nothing to worry about. And I believed him. I used to believe that.”

“Do you miss him? Uh, sorry, that’s a dumb question. Of course you do.”

“I think about what my life would’ve been like if he were around. My mother started hosting the artists’ colony at our house the year after he died. She couldn’t stand to be alone so she tried to surround herself with as many people as possible. And I loved the company, really, I did. It’s just that sometimes I wished I could have been enough for her.”

“I know the feeling,” Charles says. The wind has struck up again but the sun feels warm against his face.

“What about you?” Julie says. “Do you miss your parents?”

“I have nightmares about them all the time. I’ll have the same one over and over again, or at least the same type. I find out, after the funeral, that they’re still alive. But they’re injured or ill, and I know that they’re going to die again soon. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to tell people. I just don’t.”

Julie scoots in closer to Charles. He pulls his thick wool coat around her to block out the wind. Julie takes Charles’s hand and guides it to her abdomen. He places his gloved fingers against the cotton of her shirt. She puts her hand on top of his.

“Julie, sometimes I think I don’t remember everything from the accident. That there’s something important, something I blocked out.”

“Forever is composed of nows,” she says. “Nothing is going to replace your loss. But love and life and fate have enabled us to create a life together. There’s something extraordinary in that, something miraculous. All you need to remember is that.”