Glass Shatters (4 page)

“Hello?” I extend a hand, but he just continues to look at me,
through
me. Out of nowhere he starts to cry, tears streaming down his wrinkled face. I sit next to him on the couch and put an arm around his shoulders, feeling a warm wetness seep through my sleeve. The old man seems so familiar. I think of the principle of Occam’s razor—the simplest answer is usually correct. There are millions of different people this man could be, of course, but the evidence only really supports one conclusion.
Maybe it’s odd that neither Iris nor Ava mentioned anything about me living with my father, but given his resemblance, his familiarity, I can’t think of who else he could be. I begin to construct a narrative for myself, in which I’m living with him, caring for him as he experiences the advanced stages of dementia. I wonder how long my father has lived with me, how long he’s been like this. I wonder who cared for my father while I was gone. I wonder what has happened to my mother.

“Are you—”

I realize that the old man has stopped crying and is now asleep, curled against my shoulder, his arm around Einstein. I slide out from under him and tuck him under a blanket, resting his head against a pillow. For a moment, his eyes blink open, and his face stretches and contorts. But then he closes his eyes again without saying anything, and within moments, he’s fast asleep. I feel the couch beneath my fingers, the soft silky fabric against my touch.

August 9, 2009

Age Thirty-One

L
ittle girls shove their airy bodies against the couch, straining themselves until the couch has been pushed to the side. They adjust their leotards and tights, turquoise leotards, fuchsia tights, sequins, wands, fairies swooping across the living room. The young man sits with the young woman on the floor. The woman’s fingers squeeze those of the man. He rests his head on her shoulder.

“You looked tired,” the young woman says.

“I can’t sleep at night,” the young man replies.

“It’s gotten worse lately, hasn’t it?”

The man shrugs. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks.

The woman turns back to watching the girls. “Don’t you love how children can dance without music?” she says. “And how they can have wild parties without needing a single other person?”

“I was never like that,” the man says. “I could never do that.”

The woman looks into the man’s eyes, then takes his long-fingered hands in hers. They rise from the floor, and as the little girls leap and plunge around the room, the man and the woman waltz soundlessly around them. The man’s footsteps are clumsy, awkward, but the woman is patient and graceful. When they stop, the man dips the woman down and then brings her back up, slowly, until her arms are around his neck.

“I love you, Julie,” he says. “I love you so much that it almost hurts sometimes.”

“But it’s the best feeling, right?” she says. Her grin becomes menacing. Her arms tighten around the man’s neck, until he is almost choking. “Isn’t it a better feeling than anything else?”

I
CAN TELL
I’
VE BEEN IN THE MEMORY LONGER THIS TIME
. The old man has disappeared, and I can see through the curtains that it’s now dark outside. For a few moments,
whenever I close my eyes, I continue to see the little girls, swooping through the air in a way that defies gravity, to see the woman’s malevolent grin, her teeth fading to nothingness. A shudder ripples down my back. I try to push the image away.

The memory still felt distant, as if I were watching something that belonged intimately to somebody else, and it’s hard to imagine that I’m this young man. My stomach gnarls, my palms sweat, a chalkiness coats the inside of my mouth. I need to do something. I need answers. There must be a way to figure out what has happened to me, who I am, why I’ve lost my memory. I pull on a gray wool coat from by the door, stepping outside. I’ll talk to Iris again. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go see what else she knows.

The air is surprisingly cold, stinging against my cheeks, and it isn’t until I’ve walked halfway down the block that I realize I’m only wearing socks. I think about what I must look like, a shoeless, unshaven man prowling the street at night, and I catch a brief glimpse of myself in one of the windows. I’m shocked by how gaunt my cheeks are, like a skeleton just rising from the dead. My eyes are empty wishing wells, and my shirt is slack, hanging off my shoulders. I’m still Charles, still the same young man from the memories, but some sort of terrible transformation has occurred, leaving me a desiccated husk of my former self. I consider heading back but instead continue a few houses further down the block, careful to stay hidden in the shadows. And then I see them, Ava and Iris under the warm lights of the kitchen, eating dinner, talking and giggling. I’m surprised by how similar they look when sitting side by side, their cheeks blushing pink and then red
with laughter. I can’t help myself. For several minutes I just stand there, watching them, waiting, wishing that they would notice me. I want to knock on the door, to ask if I can join. I can’t help but feel angry, resentful, jealous that I wasn’t invited. I understand, though. We’re friends but not family. Julie and Jess were my family, and now they’re gone. Finally, Iris and Ava clear their dishes from the table, and I trudge home, pebbles jabbing into my feet, the woodsy smell of the nearby wilderness only making me feel lonelier than before.

I hang up my coat, then wander down the hallway, still wishing I had invited myself over for dinner. Suddenly I notice I’m standing in the middle of a room that feels like a dollhouse, a perfectly preserved and static world. A turquoise leotard sits atop the dresser, folded and pristine, the tags still on. There are wood block letters on the outside of the door painted with squiggles, polka dots, and black zebra stripes—JESS. For a moment I imagine movement in the room, but it’s only the wind pushing a branch up against the window. The room itself is still, silent. The carpet is lavender with velvet curtains covering the windows, the edges uneven. The canopied bed is short and narrow, and the lacy white sheets are tucked neatly over the pillows. Posters of Russian ballet dancers are taped above the bed, holding difficult poses under bright stage lights. Along one wall sit dozens of porcelain dolls. Even knowing this was Jess’s bedroom, I feel like the room has always belonged to the dolls. I sit down on the bed and take a worn fleece blanket from the end, wrapping it around my shoulders as I look around.

There’s one doll in particular that strikes my interest,
wearing a lingering white wedding dress with puffed shoulder sleeves and jeweled embroidery along the bodice. The dark hair is pulled back to reveal black eyebrows and eyelashes painted with mascara. A veil drapes down her back, a bouquet of flowers clutched in her hand. I realize that the doll looks exactly like Jess.

August 4, 2010

Age Thirty-Two

T
he young man lies in Jess’s bed, tossing and turning in the midst of a bad dream. He clutches Jess’s teddy bear against his chest, wishing that his daughter would come back, just come back. His clothes are soaked through, his forehead covered with perspiration. He’s in the throes of a nightmare. The chime of church bells strikes midnight. There’s the looming presence of an altar, of an omnipotent God. An organist plays “Here Comes the Bride” but more of the pitches are off than on. The church’s interior is obscured by darkness—all that lights the room is a single candle glowing from behind stained glass.

Jess walks down the aisle in her turquoise leotard and ballet slippers, wearing a veil torn at the edges and holding a bouquet of petrified flowers. Her skin is white as bone, her teeth yellow and decaying. Two large drops of blood have dried along her jaw, one just below each ear. Her hair is knotted with twigs and pine needles, and she’s covered with bruises. She’s five, maybe six years old at the most. A specter of a man stands beside her, a man that does not and could not ever exist, his arm around her shoulder, his hand squeezing tight. Jess squirms, trying to duck out from under him.

The lights rise to reveal the young man wearing a priest’s robes. He thumbs through a Bible and begins reciting verses in a language that is at once incomprehensible. In fact, it is not a language at all, and what should be words are actually something less than sounds. Jess approaches the young man, pulling on his robes. The young man stops. He looks down at Jess.

“Daddy, why am I getting married?” Jess asks.

“Because you’ve grown into a beautiful young woman and that’s what beautiful young women do,” the man replies.

“But Daddy, I don’t wanna get married now.”

“Well why not, sweetie pie? If not now, then when?”

“I wanna run around the kindergarten yard. I wanna pet rollie pollie in a plastic bag. I wanna believe boys have cooties until they get their shots, and I can’t become a famous ballerina if I’m married to him.” She points at the specter, the invisible man. He tries to brush her hair out of her face. Jess flinches away. “Please, Daddy! When I’m older? When I’m grown up?”