Before My Eyes Read online

  When King leaps off the bed, I gasp for breath. If I lie still, the pain will subside. If I had a pill—I’ll take something over-the-counter as soon as I get up, and not just two, I’ll take three, three is a lucky number. But if I had one of my father’s pills, I wouldn’t be feeling any pain. I wouldn’t feel anything. Maybe I could take one more without him noticing.

  I hold my head up, dig my elbows into the bed, and steady myself. Steady. I can do this. One last weekend.

  King is on alert. A fly lurches by his head. With a bolt, he snatches it between his jaws. Good boy. I tell him to stay, that I’ll be right back, that I’ll walk him in five minutes, as if he understands all this. He seems to understand. He swallows the fly and raises his blind eyes toward me. “Good boy.” I open my bedroom door, and in the hall, my father is twitching his thumbs. He’s sending a message off, probably the first of many to his staff. He has two identical devices, he says, so he can keep his personal life and business separate, and he doesn’t know how to work either one smoothly. His thumbs jab at the screen.

  “What are you trying to do?” I ask.

  “Forward texts.”

  “I didn’t know you even knew how to text.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Let me.”

  He hesitates. He’s clueless about this stuff. I know it, and he knows it. “I got it, Max. Don’t worry.”

  I shrug. I have no interest in politics. None at all.

  “I’m having my staff draft a reply to these, but they need my input. Damn it, I don’t think what I sent made sense…”

  I slouch against the wall.

  “You okay, Max?”

  “Just need this summer to be over.”

  “Me too,” he says, distracted by the device in hand, flickering and buzzing, the fly you can’t kill in the room.

  Barkley

  Friday, 7:00 A.M.

  I do not sleep.

  No need. I check again. The Glock model 19 is in the bottom of my desk drawer, under the stack of schoolwork, specifically under my fifth-grade book report, “Soccer in Many Countries,” on which Mrs. Larkin noted, “A plus. Perfect grammar.”

  I stare at my keyboard. Letters invert. Lose their proper location on the screen. Better to compose with a pen. The computer is for games. The pen understands that there are rules. The pen fits into my hand as well as the semiautomatic pistol.

  I double-check the bolted security locks on the inside of my bedroom door. All is well. I turn up the music: metal, guitar, drums pounding. Reverberations. I do not even need the actual sound. I can listen to what is in my head and be fine. Absolutely fine.

  My parents, of course, worry about school, but I will go back. I will return to a university, not that community college, that false city upon a hill. Not those teachers, those con artists of grades and procedures and rules. I am the future that they have been waiting for. I will teach them.

  It was remarkably easy to buy the Glock. I drove out of state to a gun show. I listened to the voice. Careful. Smile. Walk perfectly. Purchase the Glock 19.

  I shared my official New York State driver’s license with them, offered the funds earned from all my summer work at the Snack Shack as well as assisting Jared, and purchased the gun, legal and unremarkable. Once you turn twenty-one, the world opens up to you.

  On the other side of my locked bedroom door, my mother and father hush each other, believing that I am in bed, asleep. I have spent the last ten hours and fifteen minutes at my desk, in the game zone. The world is at war, enemies at every turn. Yet I can split myself. See myself from the outside, at the computer, and hear my parents, now tap-tapping on the locked door, urging me to wake up.

  My mother is sure to be impeccable. She is a gym fiend, petite and naturally athletic. She is a perfectionist about her looks, her work, her home. Her goals in life are: a size zero, another promotion, and me. I am her project.

  “He hasn’t showered in I don’t know how long. I’m telling you, something is wrong, Dan.”

  “Nothing. He’s working hard. He’s an unbelievable kid.”

  “Exactly, but he’s got to take a shower. How long has it been? Two or even three months since he’s showered?”

  “Can’t be.”

  “Dan.”

  “You’re not with him every minute of the day, Kate.”

  “He is breaking my heart.”

  A perfect heart. Perfect blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass index, she will tell anyone that admires her, and she is often admired.

  “Nothing is wrong, Kate. Stop being overdramatic. This is all part of growing up. He’s an awesome kid.”

  My father likes to unfurl words: Awesome. Unbelievable. Phenomenal. I am often described this way, and it has become meaningless. He speaks, but is no longer heard. He is indiscriminate with language, throwing around adjectives like confetti.

  He, like my mother, is in advertising sales at a cable television network, different networks, neither of which I will watch. In fact, they only watch the commercials, not the shows. For these cable networks, they sell sixties, thirties, and fifteens. This is the breakdown of commercial airtime. Their lives are measured out in units of seconds. Air is not what they breathe but what they sell. We create new meanings when we must, but how can I listen to these people who sell air and time?

  “Not showering all summer, Dan? Shaving his head? Asking us about guns? Something’s got to give. You know what’s going to give? Exactly. Me. I’m going to give.”

  I shoot one last enemy alien on the screen in a blaze of light, and turn away. Life is about the odds of survival, about the seconds in the minute in which to make a decision.

  “Believe me, he’s a good kid. An amazing kid. He’s just a little caught up in those video games.”

  “We should threaten to take them away, shouldn’t we?”

  “He downloads them from the Internet.”

  “He’s online for hours. I’m talking seven, eight, nine hours at a time. That can’t be normal. Is that normal?” She does not wait for an answer; she has it. “Exactly, it’s not normal.”

  “Okay, maybe it’s the games. Or it’s the Internet. Every other parent blames that, why shouldn’t we? He likes these games, I don’t know why. Don’t all the kids? It’s not like he’s going to go out and buy a gun. Believe me, he’s not.” My father sighs. He is careful to retreat from her perfect wrath.

  “Will you talk to him, Dan?”

  “I’ll talk to him, but I think you’re overreacting.”

  “Exactly, I’m overreacting. Your answer to everything.” She bangs on the door. “Barkley, honey, time to get up. You okay in there? Mommy and Daddy have to get to work, but we want to make sure you’re going to be home tonight so we can talk.”

  Where else would I be?

  My father pops open his first diet soda of the day. He drinks diet soda all day. We all have our addictions. His addictions are diet soda and outsized adjectives.

  “I’m up. Getting ready for work,” I finally call out as I relock my desk drawer.

  “Is anything wrong, Barkley? Answer Mommy.”

  “Nothing is wrong.”

  “See, Kate, he’s up. He’s getting ready for work. And why are you talking to him like he’s a kid? I got to tell you,” and here he raises his voice so I know that he is really talking to me, “that’s an awesome young man in there. He spent his whole summer working. You think jobs like his, at the beach all summer, are easy jobs?”

  “Now you’re blaming me for making him work?”

  My mother pushed me to take this job after I was expelled from the community college. I wanted to join the army or navy. I found a recruitment center. They gave me a slew of tests. But they know nothing, the army. The navy. The Defense Department. The government of the United States. They told me I was unfit for service. I didn’t want to hear it—not from someone behind a desk—not from someone who never shot a gun.

  I plan to be a filmmaker now—to control the images and the sounds.
I should dream big. Small men dream small. Be a famous director of superheroes, the next generation of a Batman or Superman or Ironman, and in my spare time advocate for the environment. In interviews, I will say that the reason I create is to save the world by any means possible. At that community college there was an intro to cinema studies class—and a waiting list for the class. I will not be wait-listed again.

  “I just think he’s plain old terrific,” says my father in too loud a voice. “And we should be telling him that. You hear me, Barkley?”

  More bangs on the bedroom door from my mother, wanting me to come out, to inspect me. I growl under my breath. The dank smell of sweat, skin cells, dying off, and saltwater comfort me.

  Her rapping stops as abruptly as it started.

  “I’m telling you, something’s wrong with our son, Dan. Why, all of a sudden, is he hanging out with that nephew of yours?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. And your father.”

  “You worry too much, Kate.”

  “And what about your father?” I can detect everything: her shallow breaths, his thrumming reluctance against a can of soda, the whoosh of central air chemically scented with roses, and the sense that we may lose it all in a blink of an eye. “Have you done some more thinking about him?”

  “No, he’s dead. And I have a lot more to worry about right now. I have that trip coming up to L.A., and I feel my whole job is riding on it. Can we look into this after Labor Day? Come up with a strategy?”

  “Exactly, he’s dead,” she says. “Didn’t he kill himself with his hunting rifle?”

  “I don’t know, Kate. Nobody ever said. My mother wanted him buried in a church cemetery, and that couldn’t happen if it was a suicide.”

  “Nobody ever said what it was. Dan, open your eyes, there’s history here. Your family’s. We need to look into this.”

  “I was never very good at history,” says my father, a lame joke.

  “And that nephew of yours. Jared. A pothead. I’ve smelled it on Jared, and so have you. So, what exactly am I missing? We have to face facts, maybe our son is into drugs. Maybe we have to consider that. What do you think of that? He’s very close to that nephew of yours.”

  Tell them that you abhor drugs. You do not pollute your body. You will not be found floating in the oceans of the world like an empty plastic bottle. You will walk perfectly. You will show others the way. This is the voice of rationality in my head.

  I hunch over the screen. My father never hunches. He is a trim man with a swagger. He wears crisp, monogrammed shirts; expensive ties; and even more expensive designer suits. He wears it all like they’re brand-new or borrowed, his shoulders stiff as if to say, “No one is taking this suit from me.”

  “Let me tell you, I know young guys like Barkley and like Jared. Barkley is not Jared. He’s not into anything like that. We’re living the dream here—great neighborhood, fabulous house, good jobs, and I plan on doing everything I can to make sure I stay in this dream. Jared’s had a hard road with my sister’s divorce. Maybe it’s time we trust Barkley?”

  “Exactly. I don’t trust anybody, is that the issue?”

  “We are going to miss the seven thirty-six train,” my father says with finality. The soda can crunches and crashes into the far-off kitchen garbage. “Let’s continue this later? Timing is everything in life.”

  I have to hand it to my parents—time is both precious and a commodity.

  They never miss that train. The world ends if they miss that train into Manhattan. Ninety-eight percent of success is showing up, or so says my father.

  Even more so, their morning routines—the workouts on the elliptical machines, the cans of diet soda, their Long Island Rail Road—define them. I even respect them for their adherence, no matter what, to their schedules. “We love you, Barkley,” says my mother. “You hear us? Answer.”

  Neither of them waits for a reply. The front door slams shut. And the interior assault, the surge, the rush, begins. I rub my hands over my head. The precision of skin instead of hair sends chills. No need to shower. No need to change my clothes. I find my sunglasses and take a few moments to align them evenly across my face. I even practice smiling with them on. Film directors wear glasses like this. All the world is reflected off these glasses. I am safe behind them, readied and armored for my own ascent into the outer world.

  Claire

  Friday, 10:00 A.M.

  Everything about the beach is anticipation.

  Izzy can’t decide what she should wear: The pink bathing suit? The pink-and-white? The pink one with stars? I’ve made her swear to tell our father that we went to the movies.

  “Wear your favorite,” I call out from my bedroom to hers next door.

  “They are all my favorites,” she says, laying out each one on her floor, studying them. “Which one did I wear last time?”

  “Green with frogs. That’s my favorite.”

  “That’s my favorite, too!”

  Sometimes I wish my life were like Izzy’s again. That the biggest choice I had to make was like hers, over a bathing suit: pink with stars or green with frogs? I have to help her into the bathing suit, which is perfect on her. Her build is the exact opposite of mine and my mother’s. She’s wispy, delicate, and fair. I brush her hair into a ponytail, and she insists on a pink rubber band—as she reminds me, her absolutely favorite color.

  But I’m fine. I can handle all this. It’s a mantra I’ve repeated to myself the past three months.

  I yank on my dark blue Speedo. Unlike Izzy, I have three bathing suits: light blue, dark blue, and orange. I have no favorite color. I hate to shop for myself. Nothing ever fits right. Even at six years old, Izzy is a better shopper than I am.

  I hurry into the kitchen. No one has done the dishes in a week. My mother would make us French toast or scrambled eggs with bits of green pepper and tomato for breakfast. She would know how to get the laundry washed before it piled up in baskets like used-clothing donations nobody wants. She would be able to get Izzy into her bathing suit, brush her hair, spray her with sunscreen—and get the dishes done—before noon. Before we go, I’ll push the vacuum through the house and make sure all the windows are open wide. I’ll dust her tables crowded with knickknacks on lace doilies, and at least the house will smell like my mother’s house, of summer breezes and lemon oil.

  “Izzy? If you don’t come now, I’m leaving you.” I shake some stale cereal into the last clean bowl. Before my mother had her stroke, I never had to think of dishes, or laundry, or the sun burning Izzy, or me.

  There is the “before” for everything. Before the stroke, my mother worked as an adolescent psychologist, part-time. My father always kidded her that part-time meant full-time to her. She loved her job, though. She’d run through the day. She did everything fast—her job, her cooking, her talking. I don’t ever remember her still, or sitting, until I saw her lying on the bathroom floor, by the toilet, that morning.

  One minute before she was fine.

  Izzy was in her bed. My mother had woken up with another headache. But she hadn’t even drunk her morning coffee. The kitchen was full of the scent of fresh coffee.

  “I’m taking a cup of coffee,” I said from the kitchen. I had just started drinking coffee in April, on my seventeenth birthday. I liked it fresh-roasted with cream and two sugars, the same as my mother. I had convinced her to spend a little more and buy “organic fair trade” beans.

  “I want to blow-dry my hair, so I’m unplugging the coffee pot,” I called out to her. I didn’t want a fuse to blow again. This house is old and the rooms boxy and tight, even the electricity seems to be set up for a time and place when everything moved slower. My mother never complained, even though, if anyone asked where we lived, she often conveniently dropped the “South” part from “Lakeshore.”

  That late May morning, I hung in the kitchen for a moment or two longer, daydreaming, breathing in the coffee as much as drinking it, running my han
ds through my tangled hair, thinking about nothing, and everything, a moment when my mind filled up with the enormity of myself. I heard a crash but I thought it was something else—the garbage being collected—roofers on top of someone else’s house—I wasn’t paying enough attention, not to my mother, not to someone who was always there. She always had everything under control. That morning, I had one of my writer’s notebooks out, a black-and-white composition notebook, nothing fancy, and was thinking about a poem, or a string of words, or I don’t know what.

  “Before” is a strange, curious word—both prior and next—both what preceded and what is about to happen—both memory and what will be. “Before” is the kind of word my English teacher would spend lots of time on as if there were time in the world anymore for one word, any time for anything but what has to be learned now. And the now is over and gone in a blink, without a moment to reflect, or to foresee what’s coming at you—because there’s always something else.

  Now, I can’t stand the smell of coffee. I can’t drink coffee. I can’t eat coffee ice cream or fancy desserts like tiramisu. I can’t hang out with everybody else in the local coffee shop. One minute, she was fine. I didn’t hear her fall. I didn’t hear her body hit the floor. The world was all there, too much with me, and I wasn’t paying attention at all.

  And when I found her, when I finally finished that cup of fair-trade organic fresh-roasted coffee and wanted to blow-dry my hair, I don’t even know how many minutes had passed (the ambulance guys asked, and I could only guess: Five? Twenty?). I didn’t even know what I was seeing.

  My mother was on the floor. Her body was sprawled on the tiles. Her body had hit the floor.

  My father would later point out that I had Red Cross first aid training, as if bandages and antiseptic could have fixed her. My mother had made me take those classes so I would be prepared to babysit. I didn’t want to babysit; I never babysat for other families. Didn’t I have enough of little kids with my own sister? However, to make my mother happy, I took the course.