I see my mother naked every other Tuesday now. It is the day my sister cannot be there to look after her, when she is not around to walk our terminally tumor-ridden mother up and down the stairs before feeding her brothy soups by the spoonful. It is a day for bathing, for thin washcloths, citrus-scented soaps, and the cable television playing on loud. I balance the small box set on the corner of the bathroom sink, wedge it beneath the vanity mirror, and keep the evening news running on repeat. Rapes, muggings, murders, the uglier the better. I find I need the distraction.

I ignore my mother then as my hands drag across where her old used-up breasts used to be. The skin is wrong there. It is loose and empty, without any weight behind it, and the water slips straight off her front, falls into the tub with several slopping splashes.

My mother twists herself around when I ask her to. She shows me her back, and I think of my sister and about the sort of schedule that could keep her so routinely occupied on Tuesday afternoons. I am thinking, Where would she even?, and with who, and I am beginning to wonder if the curve of her spine goes this same way, if the tracks of it make these same shadowed valleys, what that must feel like to hold from underneath.

 

I am thinking this way still when I see my sister next. I am looking at her in that same way, seeing how she reaches tip-toe-tall for a glass in the kitchen cabinet, watching her sweatshirt crawl up her stretched-out back and trying to piece it all together from there, the bends and bumps, the shape, the angle of the thing. I am really looking, studying her now, checking for discrepancies and where the skin disappears down to, and my sister says, What? What is it?

It’s not right, I say. I say, I can’t do it anymore. I won’t. I tell my sister that she can’t know what this is like, that I’m losing sleep over it, thinking bad thoughts. I say I’ve stopped having most meals now, started reading the obituaries.

It just happens like this, my sister says, and she tells me it is all of this natural, a part of life. It’s what families do, she says. Don’t you remember Dad with Grandma at the end, my sister says, and I tell her to bring me a drink of water. And fast, I say, because the truth is I remember very little of my father before he left us. I can’t put together his face, or see our first house from the inside, either. I can’t say which rooms went where, how the walls were covered, what the paint looked like in the early morning. I know that backyard, though. I know its green hose hooked up to the spigot behind the garage, its coiled-circle rubber and kinked-up stops, and my sister running through the foot-flattened grass with her swimsuit on, a younger sister then, a sister when our father was still in the picture and she was made of dark hair leaking down the length of her back and long-going legs that showed clean and raw and new in the white sun’s glare.

I know that summer’s heat, the slick of water slipping through my fingers. I know her shiver and splash and squeal.

 

I run the water too cold in the tub now. I tell my mother one more minute, tops. I say, That’s all. I say, You can handle those parts yourself. My mother wants something else on the TV. She is saying that all this bad in the world will turn us wrong. There is a layer of wet collecting on the screen, a beaded film, and I draw my thumb across the crawl line, smudging it clear. My mother is asking whatever happened to that Shannon of mine. She is wondering out loud about how long it has been since, if that was the last, if there isn’t some nice girl my age I could settle up with.

Grandchildren, she is saying. You and your sister, she says. You would play house with her and her dolls. You did doctor and telephone and all the rest. So many games you made up. So many kids you had you could’ve been rabbits, she says, and I see that there has been a multi-car pile-up on the eastbound Expressway, rush hour, six miles outside of Newark, New Jersey, an 18-wheeler toppled over, ambulances on scene, two lanes shut down, spilled oil, burnt metal, bloody body parts, and it is still not enough. I am thinking still, tracing those lines on a back like mine, and remembering times of Truth or Dare in the dark. I can hear her whispers now, feel her short breaths when she says she won’t, that it’s too far, not fair.

You have to, I told her. It’s the rules, I said. No one is going to know.

“Do your job,” he said, casually tossing the keys. “Just do your job.”

Calico tried his best to multitask—catching them while trying to register what the man dressed in a prim and proper suit had just mentioned.

They landed in his hand.

“Yes, sir,” Calico said, as he watched the man walk away, hair slicked and shiny.

Even in the dark, he noticed the sparkle of the jeep—polished and clean, quietly gleaming under a starry night.

You need this job—you’re finally back on track. Stable. Rhythm—routine. Just do your job.

The engine sounded smooth and calm. Calico headed toward the parking garage at the back of the restaurant—he turned the corner and hit a pedestrian. It was horrific enough that he ran into someone on the street, but it was that much worse when he stopped and looked at the body on the ground.

“Mom?”

He hadn’t seen her in five years.

Calico looked around—there was no one, just the two of them in the alley. He rushed out the car.

“Mom? Are you dead?”

A grunt and a cough—she turned herself over, her back against the road.

“No, you fuckin’ idiot.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Yes.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Who are you?”

“Calico—you’re son.”

“What the fuck.”

“I know.”

Calico crouched down and put his hand on her shoulder—she shrugged him off with another grunt. There were scrapes on her face and palms—those that were visible, at least. He looked back at the car, wondering if there was any damage.

“Are you looking at the car?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know.”

The night sky looked like a series of waves—tides and ripples eroding the stars.

“Let me help you,” Calico said, pulling her up by the arm.

He brushed off the bits of gravel stuck on her clothes.

“You look great, Mom.”

“Thanks, son.”

He turned back around and looked at the jeep again, shuffling his feet. The headlights were still on, creating this ghostly shadow of his mother.

“Where you’ve been, Mom?”

She rubbed the back of her head.

“Yeah—sorry about that, son. I’ve been staying low these days.”

Years, Calico thought.

“Have you seen Dad? Have you talked to him? Where is he?”

“Never.”

Mom jumped up and down a few times and pulled out a cigarette from her coat. Calico took out a lighter, holding it up to her smoke and flicked it a couple of times before the flame sparked.

“Is that your jeep?” Mom asked.

“It’s my job—I work valet for that restaurant,” Calico said, pointing to the side of the building.

“Job?” she replied. “Well, look at you—all grown up and working. I’m proud of you, son.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

They both looked up, as if the moon was waiting for them. Calico studied her face, glowing in the headlights. She looked younger to him—the creases of her skin appeared to have faded away, and her voice sounded stronger and less hoarse.

“Say, Cali,” Mom said. “How about a ride to the bus station?”

He immediately thought about his job and the owner of the car, and how he was so happy to get this new position with steady pay—steady enough to pay rent and pick up groceries, however meager.

“I don’t know, Mom—I’m back on track, and I want to stay that way. It feels so nice.”

Mom laughed—a mother’s laugh.

“I understand.”

They stood in silence, barely looking at each other. Calico’s thoughts wavered as he looked at his mother’s nose and chin—her wrists and her waist, one that he would cling to when she was around, and he was much younger.

“It’s good seeing you, son,” Mom said. “Just watch out for those turns.”

She patted him on the back—the headlights revealed her teeth, bright and sparkling. Calico took himself back to when he was in the classroom—young—and learning about time in math class. He calculated, mouthing numbers as he figured out how long it would take to get to the bus station and back—forty minutes or so, thinking that the owner of the jeep would still be dining. Clocking off for his thirty minute break—telling the supervisor that he forgot to log it in if she asked when he returned, all in all, he would be about ten minutes over. That wouldn’t be too bad, he thought. He watched his mom turn the other way.

“Hold on, Mom,” Calico said. “I can take you.”

“Now, son—I don’t want to get you in any trouble. You go back to the restaurant—it looks fancy, too. We don’t even know each other anymore. You’ve moved on, and I haven’t crossed the street yet.”

Calico walked to the jeep and opened the passenger door—he smiled.

Without speaking, Mom sat inside—looking angelic to Calico as she walked toward the headlights.

On the way to the bus station, Calico asked her how much trouble she was in.

“It’s probably best you don’t know, son.”

“Did you kill anyone?

“No—of course not. Well, no.”

Calico assumed it had something to do with money.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“It’s probably best you don’t know, son—the less you know, the better. I mean that for your sake.”

“You’re still my mom, aren’t you?”

“Every now and then,” she said, laughing. “I’m sorry, son—but it looks like you’re much better off without me. Look at you.”

They pulled into the parking lot—Calico was correct in his calculations, if not, a bit earlier than he had expected.

“I’m sorry I hit you, Mom.”

“I’m not, Cali—it was the best thing that has happened to me in years.”

“Do you need some money?”

“No, son.”

Calico took out his wallet—all he had was twenty-two dollars. He was going to buy dinner and breakfast with that, but maybe he can get some tips when his shift ends at the restaurant. He hoped so, at least.

“Here, Mom.”

It was dark, but Calico thought that he saw tears in the hint of a distant light, just as she would happily cry when they lived in a home together years ago, like the time he made her a card out of construction paper and glitter. Or, he pretended to see tears as the night heavied itself upon them.

“Maybe a hug?” Calico said.

Mom shook her head, giving a nervous chuckle.

“Not yet, son, but I promise we will—we will when I’m better. I’m not sure when that will be—a year, two years, five years. We will when I feel like a mother. I promise. I’ll embrace you and never let go.”

“You’re always my mom, Mom.”

Taking the cash, she broke into a full cry, and rushed out the jeep toward the bus station, and that was it. Calico watched her walk away, hoping that she would turn around. Nothing. He still waved as she disappeared into the hollow night.

As he was driving up to the restaurant, just as he was about to make the turn, he saw the owner of the jeep step outside, and Calico pulled up in front on him.

His slick and shiny hair was unkempt—there was a grin on his face as Calico stepped out the car.

“Now that’s perfect timing, son,” the man said. “That’s how you make your way to the top, like me. Just do your job.”

“Yes, sir,” Calico said.

The man patted him on the shoulder and took his keys. No tip. He watched the man speed off, but it didn’t matter to Calico. He wasn’t hungry—he wasn’t worried about dinner or rent or anything else. His thoughts were with his mother—a family reunion like no other, and he pictured her face as she sat on the bus heading toward every direction away from him, but he knew his mom never broke a promise.

Once, covering a war on an assignment for the New York Times Magazine, I stood inside a house whose face had been sheared off by a thousand-pound bomb. A structure of delicate red brick that did interesting things with the light, now less a house than a skull. We climbed through it, an interpreter and I, inviting ourselves in. A kitchen, a bathroom, a living area, no family photos. A blanket covered in rubble, where a husband and wife and some number of children had just sat down to dinner when the ceiling was peeled back by a warhead invented in Texas. 

The interpreter saw my eyes catch the blanket, and he gave a little smile. He said something dark and funny, and he and I became bonded in a contract. As if we’d just agreed: so this is the way we’ll cope, being inside a sudden tomb. 

But he tried to chew the smile down, and his expression shifted in a meaningful way. A flicker of self-amusement moved down his face, and then this strange thing happened: For an instant, standing inside the half-house, I saw my mother, then my grandfather, then my interpreter again. Perhaps I was having a flash hallucination, my mind jagged by violence and jetlag, or perhaps some aspect in the eyes they all happened to share, this person I’d only just met and members of my own family. Something mathematical, some coincidence in a ratio of tendon stretched over bone, similar ridgepoles of sinew and skin that make up a face. Maybe a Joni Mitchell “we are stardust” kind of thing, a buried genetic relic, some falling grain a billion years ago sucked up into gene sequences to bang against code and beacon some silent chain reaction in early animals, flashing now as matching choreography on faces continents apart. Or maybe something more troubling was happening in me. 

*

There was a girl I’d been with just before I’d left for that war, a few drunken nights and then she told me she’d lost a sibling to suicide. For a year afterward, she said, she kept seeing this dead sibling everywhere. “How strange,” I’d said, but she said no, it actually wasn’t strange at all. She’d studied this. She said when loved ones vault away from you too fast, they often return. You see them, holograms of them; sometimes you see them in people full of color and blood. A stranger blowing on a cup of coffee across a chattering café, a stranger in a store window you’re hurrying past. The familiar corner of a person turning away. There are shamans who explain it as the departed coming back to the present realm, borrowing a body to check on you. Scientists and psychiatrists and the more ardent explainers call it a trick of the mind, a projection. It’s you, bringing your loved one back, so you can add something to your goodbye, or maybe say one you never got the chance to. The mind is a lonely inventor, they explain, cabined away and building itself a robot companion, and that too was a theory I considered for why on strangers’ faces, in warzones, I’d started to see members of my own family, before I knew they were leaving. 

*

I must have already seen things by then. In my mother, symptoms that mostly camouflaged themselves against a history of messy desks and a capacity for rapid anger. She was fighting it, she could fake it, at least to me, at least for a while. Before we learned that the front two lobes of her brain had decayed so quickly and so severely that when a doctor finally saw it—territory marked in troubling colors—he just shook his head. “Devastating” was all he could say, and that would turn out to be as good a diagnosis as any. An early, aggressive Alzheimer’s, or perhaps FTD, maybe DLB, PD, a grab bag of bad acronyms—all we knew for certain was that her mind was in the process of disconnecting itself, and we wouldn’t know the precise cause, not until the autopsy.

We would begin a process of simplifying my mother. She’d once been the fissioning orb at the center of the party, a relentless weapon of thrillingly over-the-line jokes. Now we paid a neighbor to be her friend. We down-converted her into an assembly line item that could be wheeled through halogen rooms and pistoned in and out of clanking machines, and it was in that same eerie season that her father—my grandfather—a picture of health and a lock to reach ninety, gave in. He fell one night in his Florida apartment and decided to stay there. A diagonal man filling up the home office floor, dying a week later of we’re still not sure what. Of having decided life was alright but he didn’t really need any more of it, though he held on for an extra day or two because he was worried about abandoning his wife. We agreed to keep it from her. My sunlit grandmother, charming the staff at her memory care facility. I went across West Florida as Pop winced through his last hours, eyes clenched but alive for now. My grandmother seemed unbothered when I stood by her bed and told her she couldn’t see her husband of seven decades because he was on a business trip. She smiled, went into congestive heart failure, and then she was gone too. Another grandfather died too, then an uncle. People were simply dying. 

These things were in process, and I suppose I must have known, as I stood in a faraway warzone staring at this smiling figure in traditional head covering, a young man whose face had, for a second, turned into my mother’s, my grandfather’s. Already, they were trying to tell me something, from the other side of the world. 

That, or I was trying to say something to myself.

*

It was soon after I returned from that war that we decided it was no longer safe for my mother to be at home. My older sister, Margot, found a facility that seemed bright and nice enough, and we told mom she was going to a spa, a nice place to eat well and get her weight back up. We didn’t tell her she would probably never leave.

My younger sister, Jenna, joined Margot in the car that day, two spies aligning a cover story, everyone going to get their nails done, or something like that. The three of them singing Simon and Garfunkel on their short commute to Mom’s new life, Margot and Jenna alternating breaks, pretending to forget the lyrics because if my mother heard them crying, the cover would be blown. 

We thought we were prepared. We’d gone through storage units and the basement and garage, we pulled out furniture that my mother would see and realize was hers, as a way to ease her into her new life, but the facility’s Helpful People shook their heads. Don’t use furniture she might recognize, they said. She was going to a foreign place now. It was going to be strange for her, but it’d be stranger if there were flecks of remembered life. A clean break was best, this was a relinquishing. Let her fly across this ocean untethered,  without holding on too tight. 

We collected happy family photos for her bedside table, so that every morning she’d see the people who loved her, for as long as she recognized us. And so that once she no longer could, we’d at least when she woke up in the morning and turned over, the strangers she saw in the picture frames would be smiling.  

And then we kept almost all the photos from her. This was supposed to be a spa. Wouldn’t it be confusing if you went to a spa and saw photos of your family? Only later, once she’d absorbed a sense of routine, comfort—only when she’d resigned herself to the fact that this was home could we bring fragments of her old home to her. 

That first day, my sisters went into the memory care unit with her, the decor at first cooperating with the ruse: A fake French café, a theater with antique movie posters promising simple pin-up sexism, the nostalgia of an era before my mother’s. A bar with fruit juice in wine bottles, a post office. Everything casino-chic, but too clean, streamlined and sanitized. A salon. 

And when it was time to leave the facility, and to leave my mother inside, my two sisters, advised to calibrate their goodbyes more for a long weekend than forever, were mostly stoic. Jenna said, “Mom, isn’t this place kind of like a lodge in Montana?!” Mom hugged her, but muttered something a little off.  Jenna heard “I’m really open to this.” As if Mom might know what was going on, as if maybe, behind whatever fog she was seeing through, she wanted to comfort us. “I’m open to the experience.” 

But when she turned toward Margot, Mom’s tone had changed entirely. “I’m really scared.” Margot was knocked off-center and tried to recover. “It’s going to be OK,” Margot said. “These people are going to help you get better.” But this was a thing you don’t get better from. Margot and Jenna stepped back across the threshold, smiled, cocked their heads, and waved. 

The doors swung closed, an electric lock hummed, a bolt slid into place. 

My mother must have wondered what kind of spa had locking doors. Or maybe she knew.

*

I thought I was managing just fine for a while. I was tending helpfully to a family crisis. I was home from war, maybe for good. I’d spent much of the last two decades sifting through shattered cities, and the cloak of a celebrated profession was beginning to wear thin. I liked to think of myself as a link between worlds, helping the one I came from understand the ones I went to, helping hemispheres connect, two worlds communicate, finding the food or word in one country that corresponded to one in the other. I liked the idea of “correspondent.” There were other things I liked. I liked the rush, the danger, the creativity and reinvention of it all, the rebel-territory chess game to get over borders and behind enemy lines. The middle-managing on steroids, middle-managing with guns and sometimes drugs and always language barriers to add a challenge. I sometimes felt I was doing honorable work, I always felt I was doing hard work.

But more and more, my trips to warzones felt like strip-mining, as if other people’s sudden pain was a mineral wealth I was after. I went to flammable places and pickaxed the soft parts of minds, looking for specks of value. Now, for once, I would mind my own business; it was time to be there for the family I’d frightened and done little before to support; time to help with my own family’s trauma and leave other people’s wars alone for a change. But there was one war that wouldn’t leave me alone.  

*

We’d just locked my mother away, when, out in the world, the American president announced the end of America’s longest war. In a few months, he said, by the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that had first drawn American troops into Afghanistan, the last of them would finally leave, and the country would be on its own. 

I knew what that might mean. I’d written a book about people preparing for the day the troops left, but I still didn’t fully believe they would. Afghanistan was the first warzone I’d set foot in, my deepest cut. The place I had friends so close I couldn’t really call them anything other than family, perhaps my fucked-up vision of a second home. And the people in Afghanistan I was closest to happened to be the ones who were now in the most trouble. A teacher, Aziz, who started a school in a slum. Aziz had come to America with me once, and stayed in my parents’ house. He’d started calling me “My Jeff,” sometimes used the suffix Agha for me—”father”—though he was my senior in every relevant way. Until he saw The Hunger Games, after which I became “my drunk Haymitch” because Aziz himself was “Katniss, in the Arena.” Aziz had become like a father figure to me, or something between that and brother, so I sometimes forgot why he was so visible to so many others: The school he built was almost aggressively coeducational. They had art classes and a radio station, a singing group and a television channel. He’d spent twenty years pushing girls to yell and dance and sing, to do martial arts in public and broadcast their faces. He publicly aligned the school with the American mission, and he ridiculed Taliban ideology on talk shows. All of it despite the fact—maybe because of the fact—that he and nearly all the students belonged to a despised ethnic minority, and that they were Shia, a sect of Islam that conservative Taliban Sunnism considers apostate, worse than Christians, worse than Jews. 

My mother loved him, she was moved by him. She got a hold of a photo of students at his school, blew it up to poster size, and hung it in the living room. And now Aziz was in the crosshairs. If US troops actually pulled out, it’d be up to Afghanistan’s own shaky security forces to keep the Taliban from taking over. 

Those were not great odds. 

And if the Taliban took over, Aziz and his family would be first in line for retribution. 

As my American family crumbled under a different kind of rubble, I threw myself into the project of trying to find Aziz a safe landing place in America or Europe. It was not selfless; I didn’t think it was humanitarian. It was perhaps a useful diversion, but it was also a maybe biological drive, the survival of a man I loved. I threw myself into trying to get him out. 

*

Again and again, we locked my mother in. Taking her out on walks, locking her back in. Taking her to the mall, which she used to despise, but was now ecstatic for, locking her back in. Browsing the aisles of Michaels, to the rhythm of lapping conversations about how often to water plastic plants, locking her back in.

We expected, each visit, that this time would be the detonation. This would be the time she refused to go back without a fight. This would be the scene,  a pulsing alarm, her body thrashing on a gurney, hustling orderlies with syringes and wrist restraints. 

But each time she just hovered on the other side of the threshold, waving, while the doors closed and sealed her in. Each time peaceful; each time resigned. 

We found ourselves wishing she would detonate. Put her shoulder down, charge through, pull a runner so we’d at least recognize her. The facility had a word for that—”eloping”—I guess because “escaping” made it sound too much like prison, but she never once tried. And when our visits with her ended and we left, she let the curtain drop on her life, fade to black, without a fight. 

There would be crises later. She spent hours in front of the TV without knowing that she was watching the same episode of the same show on a loop, so much time sitting that her hips inflamed and ratcheted her body down into a hardened arc. 

She threw things. She beat her chest. She yelled. She spat at people, and we found bruises on her arms. Meds were adjusted. Doubled, tripled, halved. She calmed down. She became her sweetest self, which wasn’t entirely herself, or hadn’t been for a while. Each time we visited, each time we said goodbye, she met our eyes and smiled, as the swinging doors shut, the electric lock hummed, a bolt slid into place. We went outside and wept.

All of us did, each time, except for me. For me grief came in strange ways, waves, and didn’t identify itself on arrival. It came first as weaponized memory. Sharpened nostalgia, weighted slate arrowheads coming from nowhere and striking my diaphragm, a catch in my breath, but mostly I was protected. By my mother’s flaws, which had for a time risen to the level of caricature because of what was going on in her brain. Her anger had become cartoonish, child-like and dismissible. I was protected also by the gravel of her past, deposited in our laps like sediment from a receding flood, as we sifted through her emails and shelves of letters, and her secrets stopped being secrets. I found all the flaws I needed, her wanderings and trespasses. I built a precision-tooled view of her life, proof pulled from private letters for the case I was assembling against her. This was a neat way to see it, that all my pain came from things she did to me, and therefore she was a guilty party, not a victim. She was the beggar easily ignored for surely having sinned to earn her station, easier to deal with than the idea that bad and permanent things happen to good people. The weaker she became the easier it was to dislike her. To hate her even, because she deserved what she was getting. 

And I was protected, perhaps most of all, by the demands of a task at hand. Troops were now leaving Afghanistan, embassies were closing. My mind was occupied. I was having long conversations with asylum attorneys, and with people who managed networks built for threatened scholars. I was writing to universities and think tanks that might like having Aziz in the building. A small team of Aziz’s friends around the world was forming, trying to find ways of spiriting him out of the country before the last of the troops left. Congresspeople assigned us their most nimble aides, I was speaking to retired ambassadors and current ambassadors, to baronesses, lords, and speakers of various houses. A conspiracy of powerful people who all wanted to help this one family exit, but few universities knew how to get visas from countries that no longer had functioning embassies. There was no playbook for this.

Things kept getting worse, and the project of finding Aziz job opportunities in the West “just in case,” became a more urgent push to get him out of his country before it was too late. More foreign workers left. Foreign aid organizations operating there shut down. Doors were beginning to close. 

My weeks spent finding polite ways to ask favors of friends and elders funneled into a sleepless week directing an action-movie extraction. Coordinating a series of hidden trips across Kabul for a family that at some point had shifted from people I loved to chess pieces; I was no longer a brother/son but a middle manager trying to decode incentives, putting employees in positions to maximize outcomes according to strengths and weaknesses. 

And somehow, miraculously, a manic-sounding plan I’d devised in the middle of the night actually worked. An operation that involved retired generals, active-duty generals, intelligence assets, a team of Marines and a sympathetic Talib. I was moving at light speed by then, I couldn’t remember how I knew all these people, or, more to the point, how I’d convinced them to pay attention to me. But they did, they were, and the moment we learned Aziz and his family had made it safely into the Kabul airport compound, where they’d soon board a cargo plane to safety, the impromptu team following along live on Zoom letting out a whoop, a shared flood of pent-up emotion. Too blinkered to cry, but we watched each other on the computer screen saying “Oh My God, oh My God,” the part of the film where the credits begin to roll, and then a coda shows the leads on a beach clinking neon drinks with large garnishes appropriate for their accomplishment.

But this was not the end. The crisis had abated only momentarily, and only for one family. 

I was receiving messages from Afghanistan on every single social media channel I had an account on. Everyone was desperate to get out, or to get someone they knew out. I’d written one book about Afghanistan that barely registered, and now it felt as though everyone in the country knew who I was and knew how to reach me. The mission continued. After three months trying to get Aziz out, we took fifteen minutes to bask. Before the sun came up, we were already talking about what we owed the rest of the school, now that we’d helped deprive it of a leader. 

We surged forward with wild, sleep-deprived plans. We negotiated the purchase of a bank-repo military transport plane. We’d hire a crew to duck in under the radar, land under cover of darkness in a field outside of Kabul, and pick up a group of at-risk girls. 

The plan fell through. We were promised entry for a few dozen girls via bus to the Kabul airport gate one morning, only to call it off at the last minute, and then negotiated complex feelings when a bomb detonated at the crowded airport gate right where the bus would have passed, killing almost two hundred people, but not our girls. 

We chartered a plane from a businessman we half-trusted to fly out of a smaller city. We played God, picking favorites for the limited seats, and made the people we’d chosen promise not to tell anyone they were going, not even their families. We sent them north by road, through dozens of Taliban checkpoints, only to find we couldn’t get them into that airport either, and sent  them back through dozens of checkpoints, back to Kabul to work things out with the families we’d made them abandon.

Nothing worked. My energy faded. Everything aggravated me. I flung dirty looks at people talking too loudly or too quietly. I felt murderous toward people scraping their chairs back from tables. Unclear text messages were crimes against humanity. My reservoir of adrenaline flagged, or it had long since flagged and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The Impromptu Team simply didn’t stop. I grew more easily disoriented. I was having a hard time keeping up with which list of girls was supposed to go to what potential savior. I made mistakes that filtered upstream and became mistakes made by important people who were doing us favors. I was angry and tired. Why should this be my job? I was resentful of other members of the Impromptu Team for continuing to put so much time into this; I desperately needed other members of the Impromptu Team to continue putting so much time into it. I desperately needed to be free of them, I desperately needed to feel a part of them. I was in love with this effort and being poisoned by it. I messed up more spreadsheets. I confused names, and sent the wrong lists to people. I couldn’t keep it all straight. The need was endless. The girls were stuck. People heard I’d helped Aziz, and more requests came in, but almost nothing from our one successful mission was relevant anymore. Afghanistan was no longer solid land; it was a constantly shifting ocean, changing so quickly that a helpful contact from a moment ago was now irrelevant and miles away from any possible doorway. 

*

And it was around that time, as I was beginning to split apart, that I realized I was missing my mother’s last lucid months. I flew to Philadelphia to be closer to her, but I never saw her. She was disappearing, dormant and confined in her confusing new home. In the last moments when my mother was my mother, I abandoned her. I slipped out from under a family burden and let it crush down on my father, my sisters, while I distracted myself trying to evacuate Afghans. Then I realized what I’d done and tried to return, backing out of evacuation efforts and letting that burden crush down on teammates. 

I let everyone down everywhere. I couldn’t decide where to aim my flagging attention. The pressure to choose right was massive, existential, because a new sense was settling in, a feeling, an obsession, that time was running out. Time to reconcile with my mother, time to be with a family that was crashing through the atmosphere and breaking up. Time to get Afghans to safety, time to hit rapidly approaching book deadlines that now felt both frivolous and like the last bastion of self. 

I fell behind on professional responsibilities while working on the evacuations, I fell behind on the evacuations while trying to make progress on the professional responsibilities. Messages from Taliban-occupied Afghanistan came in on every single messaging platform, the phone in my pocket a fuel rod flinging off all the unhelpful isotopes, a block of poison that went everywhere with me. When I came back to evacuations, to the daily calls and constant messages, I was nearly useless. Everyone was working hard now to help a group of 450 girls stuck in limbo. My teammates were giving up progress on their own professional obligations and on time with their families. Why did I deserve to be an exception? I weakened more. I was beginning to seize up, the propeller slowing. A blackened engine sputtering, coughing up the last of its life and flaming out. 

And then I went into a tailspin.

*

I couldn’t remember names; I couldn’t remember tasks. Three words into a sentence, I couldn’t remember why I’d started talking. My ability to function around people ground to a halt, took extraordinary effort, moving a boulder out of the way just to muster some grunt of a hello. Matching the blasting steam engine in my head with the movement of air through my diaphragm and the flexing of an embouchure—having a conversation—required impossible coordination, it was landing a triple axel during a hurricane. How had I ever done it?

I couldn’t muster the effort to speak; I couldn’t bear silence. I wanted to be left alone; I needed attention. The thought of doing anything—eating, dressing, moving, sleeping, waking—made me physically ill and sent panic through my limbs, wild electricity in my elbows and fingers. The thought of sitting still did too. I was put on new meds, my new meds were adjusted, doubled, tripled, halved. I calmed down, but it was an illusion, a circadian lull, and then the flames came back. 

My father had me make cocktails. He said they were really good, asked me to have one, asked me to have two, asked me to stop drinking. I wandered onto the roof of his house, then the roof of my apartment, which was three floors up. I laughed. I came down. I drove a little faster than I should’ve. I noticed sturdy-looking trees. I called my mom. “Remember to do something fun for yourself every day,” she said. Locked away, but had she ever been so comforting? A lifeline, a connection, some frizzled frequency of hope. God, she really did know me, and stripped of pretense by rotting coils in her brain, there was love. She asked what I was working on. She made a noise. “Remember to do something fun for yourself.”

Loss was everywhere. 

Community exploded. I couldn’t find friends; I couldn’t even picture them. I was lost in self-absorption. Everyone was experiencing loss, but I felt alone with mine. A mother, a plan, youth, friends. I’d lost a country. My first war zone. I’d gone with a bit of a sense to help and mostly to extract, to feel adrenaline, sex, violence. I’d gone with a death wish, and I’d fallen in love. Not with girls—though I did that too; I always did, even if they didn’t always know—but with a school, a community. Can you fall in love with a country? If it’s a place you despise, can’t stand, are compelled to return to, what is that but family? I’d lost that too. I’d lost a war. For my whole long catalog of mental health struggles—my deep, monstrous depressions, obsessions, wild ion storms of panic—I was certain that trauma wasn’t one of them. War is hell, but I’d sailed through all my wars without injury. It was the end of one that did me in. I carried around a backpack of pills. I realized I was grieving at the exact wrong time. I ignored my mother. I stopped visiting. I called her again. Again, she asked what I was working on, and this time the question leveled me. How had it taken this long to realize that “What are you working on?” was cover for “What do you do for work?” A step or two from “Who are you?”

 She made her voice sweet. “Remember to do something fun for yourself every day.”

*

When I first went to Afghanistan, just out college, my mother wrote me a letter. I was shipping off to to be a freelance war reporter. It was reckless, wild, a thing that should’ve never worked. I was drawn to conflict like some young people are, but I think my mother sensed, even then, that I was running from something too. I think she may have sensed, even then, that what I was running from might have been her. We were crouched on a sidewalk, Mom helping repack my suitcase. It was in these moments, often in the leaving, sometimes in the escaping, that she seemed most like I had a mother, but it’s only now that I’ve begun to summon those things, memories breaking the surface like bodies coming up. I think I know why. As best we can tell, as we look back, plumbing old text messages and arguments for signs, my mother’s illness began right around the time my career as a war correspondent did. At least her physical disease, the organic damage to the tissue holding the whole territory of her mind. And even before that, I now know that her own season of grief began right around the time I became old enough to form memories. Her middle age of resignation that sometimes tipped into rejection, of a family in which she was no longer worshipped, or even respected, or perhaps even recognized. That must’ve been the time she realized she was living the rest of her life. Her home, her work, her children and spouse, the whole estate of her existence was only what she could see. So my memories are mostly off the flash and cloud that came from that. I saw a person making noise out of the last of mortality, the radiant spectacle of a dying star. I remember her anger, her mistakes, the bolts of errant energy, the bladed way she sometimes spoke to loved ones. I remember her always angry, or maybe needing to see she could inflict pain to make sure she still existed. 

The things from before all of that, the artifacts of her being her, have mostly escaped me, or maybe I’ve always been able to escape them. Only now am I beginning to remember. I remember mom kneeling on the sidewalk, unconcerned that her pants are getting dirty. I remember getting sick on bathroom floors, Mom on her hands and knees scrubbing, cancelling my plans for me. Mom helping me to pack, for a sleepover or summer camp. Showing me to roll rather than fold, to tuck socks into shoes for space. To always pack something dark because you never know when you’ll have to attend a grim-toned event, always pack quick-dry fabrics and some matching black so you’re ready for a hike or an impromptu funeral. 

On the sidewalk hunched over my duffel, she squeezed her knees into the meat of the bag and wrestled the zipper closed. She stood up, and handed me the envelope without fanfare, without eye-contact even, my name in her offhand scrawl. 

She looked like she wanted to explain something. I could tell she’d been looking for a way of walking next to me, keeping a hand on my shoulder as I moved farther from her. She’d spent a lot of time thinking about what to say, how to say it just right.

And I knew as she handed it to me that I would never read it. I worried about contamination. I thought of her as a jinx, she needed to be sealed off from me. So I carried the letter around with me, near the bottom of my suitcase, and eventually, inevitably, I lost it. She brought it up a few times over the years, but she must have sensed I never read it, and eventually she got the message and stopped bringing it up. She must have wondered why I never spoke to her about it. Or maybe she knew. 

Choices

Emma buried him under the azaleas. Michael had become argumentative, vetoing every last paint color and sofa textile swatch. He thought he was right to decide everything. So, she knew what she had to do.

Jen buried him under the oak tree. All Johnny did was sit on the couch and watch football. He even canceled his gym subscription. So, she knew what she had to do.

Daphne buried him under the lilac bush. Jim just had to go and grow that ‘hipster’ beard. The last thing she needed was hair in places it shouldn’t be. So, she knew what she had to do.

Courtney buried him under the stars. Tom loved gazing at the night sky, with its mysteries and the arms of the Milky Way painting a stroke over head. But when the illness whittled away at him, he couldn’t get outside without her help. His eyes begged. And so, she did what she had to do.

I glanced out the passenger side window of Francine’s Jeep through my sunglasses.

“Oh, we stopped,” I mumbled. 

I had assumed that Fran had pulled the jeep over to allow me – no, us – to bask in my beautiful but also kinda tragic moment of self-actualization and vulnerability. I had, after all, just come out as non-binary and gay. When she started to cry, I believed the tears to be very much for me. 

“Fuck, Sadie,” she said, sobbing. Her head was bowed on top of her steering wheel. 

“I know. It’s ok. I’m totally good with this. It’s so liberating for me,” I whispered.

She tried to turn toward me but she was crying too hard.

“Fuck, Sadie,” she said again. “This is all too much right now.”

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time,” I said. “It’s nothing to be sad about. I’m really happy with this.”

“I’m so overwhelmed right now.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of fucking everything.”

“Is it about what I just told you?”

She shook her head and didn’t answer.

Please understand that I had never experienced Fran like this. Prior to this car ride, I would have said that she was one of the warmest, most bubbly, and care-free people I’d ever met and I would have meant it. 

That said, Billy and I were always close with our cousin Julian and we were a bit uneasy when this mysterious girl only referred to as “Francine” entered the picture as Julian’s new pretty redheaded girlfriend. 

The Julian we knew was aromantic and jaded in everything except his raw spontaneity and specific interests. 

 He was, after all, the seven year old who jumped off the high dive at the Slackport pool without thought.

 the ten year old who tasted the slimy Danger Eel Patty at the Coastal Grille in Kurtistown, the first of us to smoke weed and drink booze. 

He’d always been a video game obsessive and a skateboarding fanatic.

A rabble rouser. 

A lone wolf.

And now, out of nowhere, he had a girlfriend. 

Julian? A girlfriend? 

Our Julian? This can’t be.

Yet, as was her way, this devil known as Francine managed to disarm Billy and I right off the bat. The first time we all met her was during Thanksgiving a few years back – or actually it might have been the night before Thanksgiving. After dinner Fran led Julian, Billy, and I to this bar called Patricks down the road in Slackport and we all did drunken karaoke. I don’t want to remember what I sang but I recall at one point that Fran belted out a sultry version of I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys.

Just like that – from mysterious, faceless ‘Francine’, the devil to chill as fuck Fran the angel – from the old dynamic to a new, better one. 

It was a steady escalation in much the same way most modern friendships seem to be. It wasn’t long until we exchanged numbers, then a few weeks later she sent me a text asking me to hang out one-on-one. We got dinner at the Slackport Diner. Our texts became more frequent. We hung out a whole bunch with Julian and Billy and also one-on-one. It got to the point where she confided in me things about Julian and her own life and then one thing led to another and she asked me to be a bridesmaid at her and Julian’s wedding. 

So this was naturally somebody I thought I could trust with my own vulnerabilities. She was someone I would dare say I looked up to and admired, not only because of her wisdom, kindness, and flowing ethos but also for her dark sense of humor and ability to drink the world under the table. 

But what did I know? I have a way of idealizing people sometimes. She’s actually a lot like the first person I ever came out to. 

“I lied to you,” continued Fran in the Jeep.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. The beach.”

“What?”

“Fran. What is going on?”

“We’re not having a beach day.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to the beach.”

“But we’re not having a beach day.”

“I am scared and I need someone to be with me,” said Fran. “He’s cheating on me and I need you to come with me.”

“Ok,” I said. I knew she of course meant my cousin, Julian. He and Fran were engaged and scheduled to marry in the autumn. 

“I’m just really fucking overwhelmed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I mean about what I said earlier. About being queer. I should have picked a different time.”

She waved that away, shook her head, and restarted the car. 

“I just can’t deal with that right now.” 

“Ok.” 

 

This story actually really kinda starts a decade ago, or at least some of it does. Or maybe none of it does, depending on your perspective. 

Let me take you on a trip to Slackport High School – my junior year, to be exact. 

“It’s Sadie. Look who decided to join us?” exclaimed my twin brother Billy as I took a seat across from him in the S.H.S. cafeteria. He was munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich our stepmom had packed. 

“Let’s not make a big deal about it,” I replied, giving him the finger. 

The usual crew was there – Billy, our friends Peter, Seth, Ashley, and Maya, and now me. I hadn’t yet noticed that someone new was sitting directly to Billy’s left.

“Where have you been?” asked Billy.

“Bathroom,” I said. “And then I had to get my medicine from Ms. Green. Some of us are mentally ill, sweetie.”

“Did you, like, take a shit?”

“Fuck off. I never take shits at school.”

“Well, Rita is joining us today.” 

“Who?” I asked.

He presented her like a game show model would, both arms extended and with a wide smile. “Rita.”

“Oh, hey,” I said, catching a shy glimpse of her. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Rita, this is my sister, Sadie,” said Billy.

“Hey, I’m Rita.” Her voice was light but kinda smoky and raspy – it caught you by surprise in a really pleasant way if you weren’t used to it.

“Is today your first day?” asked our friend Ashley.

Rita nodded, her attention fixated on picking away at a packet of M&Ms – I’ve never seen someone make eating little chocolate candies look cooler.

This new girl was cool as fuck and I was shaking. It took me so long to get over this first impression. 

The details are all kind of fuzzy now. Who the fuck honestly knows when and why I finally opened up to her. It had a lot to do with our senses of humor, which were seamlessly compatible in ways that surprised me. Like me, she had an appreciation for the weird and surreal, a fondness of wit. Our exchanges tended to be as playful as they were absurd. 

“Sadie?” she’d call from across the second floor hallway, maybe during the middle third period on a Tuesday when the halls were quiet and cleared. She’d be but a speck in the distance but she was probably doing something like outstretching her arms or giving me the finger. “Do you have a goddamn hall pass?”

Startled – half really, half mock – I would probably stop in my tracks and look around like I was really under attack.

“You want me to call my lawyer?” Semi to full non-sequiturs were common during these charades.

“Mine lives across the street.”

“You want me to call the police? I’ll get Principal Taylor to arrest you right now, bitch.”

“I dare you to try.” 

And then we’d pass each other and try our absolute damnedest to keep a straight face – me on the way to the water fountain, she on her way back to class from the bathroom. 

She connected with Billy as well. We became kind of an inseparable triumvirate for a while.

“I fucking hate Owl City,” blurted Rita one time during lunch.

“But you’ve been singing it all day.”

She laughed hard. “I know. I hate it.”

Billy started singing Fireflies and soon Rita made it a duet.

“YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE YOUR EYES IF TEN MILLION FIREFLIES SOMETHING UP THE WORLD WHILE I FELL SOMETHING—”

“Fell asleep,” said Billy.

“WHILE I FELL ASLEEP,” bellowed Rita.

“What a wonderful song,” I commented sarcastically, but also kinda half serious tbh.

The three of us spent a lot of time in each other’s company but I also really valued the one-on-one time I got with her. We had one class together during junior year, a film elective where we mostly watched old movies and joked around. It was my favorite class. One day, toward the end of the school year the teacher, Mrs. Peich took us on a field trip to see a special showing of Lawrence of Arabia. Rita picked me up early and we destroyed a blunt. We spent the whole movie making jokes and laughing – about halfway through we slipped into the bathroom and smoked another blunt. It’s a miracle we weren’t expelled.

Days like that would make me feel like I was floating above the stratosphere. Just unbridled, teenaged exuberance. But, on the other hand, if things were ever mundane and uneventful in our interactions at lunch or in class or even while hanging out outside of school, I would perceive that Rita hated me and that I was just completely doomed. A few times I was so miserable after one of these latter lunch periods that my history teacher had to send me to the school’s psychologist’s office.

And then I would make it my mission to “win” her back. If I could just get her to laugh especially hard at one of my jokes at lunch and/or throw me some kind of compliment, all would be ok, at least for a little while. It took me many years to appreciate just how insanely unhealthy and narcissistic this was. 

 

Rita Kingston was a tornado and I was a shabby barn on the Oklahoma plains. 

She was so cool.

She was hilarious.

She cursed. A lot. Fuck this and fuck that and all that shit.

She typed fast on AIM. Way faster than me.

She acted older than she was. SoCal thing, I think.

She smoked weed. Wow.

She seemed to think I was funny and cool. Me?

I just really, really liked her as a friend, I guess.

She was my teenaged femme messiah. 

 

The seagulls were orbiting and squawking above, and when I wasn’t watching the pattern in the sand created by Fran’s bare feet, I was looking up toward the birds to make sure they were not about to poop on me, or worse – swoop down, land on my shoulder, and peck at my skull. 

Actually, I take that back – I probably would have welcomed that latter scenario. 

“I’m so overwhelmed right now.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of fucking everything.”

The sun had disappeared sometime during the drive over and everything felt dull and gray, even though little hot beams of light peaked through the cloud cover, not quite reaching the seashore. There were no sandcastles to be seen, no frisbee exchanges, no colorful kites flying in the wind; only the sand, the clouds, the distant waves, a few stragglers and a quiet family or two.

“I’m just really fucking overwhelmed.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I mean about what I said earlier. About being queer. I should have picked a different time.”

“Is it supposed to rain?” I asked.

Fran looked at the cloudy sky for a hot second and shrugged.

“I think it’s gonna rain,” I said.

The breeze was light but picked up every so often and when it did, the air smelled of salt and seaweed. It was low tide and down toward the shallow water were many little blue and brownish seashells stuck in and just above the sand, completely unattended. 

“Fuck, Sadie.”

“I know. It’s ok. I’m totally good with this. It’s so liberating for me.”

“Look,” said Fran, finally, pointing toward a dark stick-like figure that appeared to be levitating in front of a cloud of sand. 

I half-near bumped into her, not aware that she had frozen in place.

“I don’t know what that is,” I said, squinting and cupping my hands over my eyes.

“It might be them.”

Fran resumed leading the way as we sauntered toward this mysterious, wavy speckle. Then, once more, she stopped.

“I think they’re coming this way,” said Fran.

“I can’t tell.”

“I’m gonna wait. Let’s wait. Yeah, they’re coming this way. We should wait.” 

Fran fell to the sand and sat cross-legged, inspecting the distant figure or, in her mind, figures with obsessive focus. The seagulls continued to squawk and the waves wooshed and receded.

“Is that Julian?”

“There’s two of them.”

“I only see one person. It looks like a dude.”

“I see a boy and a girl.”

I don’t know what the fuck Fran was imagining, but by this point I very distinctly saw one (1) singular person with tiny twig-like legs (not to scale), brownish swim trunks, and a bare, semi-muscular chest. 

“Fuck, Sadie. This is all too much right now.”

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time. It’s nothing to be sad about. I’m really happy with this.”

“I really don’t think that’s him,” I said. 

Fran (and by proxy, I) waited, and waited, and waited, until the guy came into sharp focus and grew big and tall like a true-to-life human being. He turned out to be a conventionally attractive, anonymous fuckboy carrying a surfboard. 

“Have you seen any guys with long dark hair,” asked Fran as the surfer finally passed. “hanging out with a woman with, like, curly blonde hair?” 

“No, sorry,” he smiled and didn’t so much as blink, shaking his head as he walked.

“Fuck,” muttered Fran. 

“Wait,” said the guy, turning back to us. “Does this person surf?”

“Not that I know of,” answered Fran. “The dude doesn’t. I don’t know about the girl.”

“I don’t know any female surfers so yeah, I’m sorry.”

I watched this surfer closely until he shrunk back into the voided blob we’d first met him as. 

Fran did nothing for a while, and then, as if compelled by a flipped switch, sprang to her feet. She stood waiting, with hands on her hips, for me to get up from the sand. I took my sweet time.

 

One time early on during our senior year at Slackport High, Rita Kingston decided to tell me her “deepest, darkest secret.”

We were sitting in her room late at night; me cross-legged on the floor, she lying down on her bed. Her room may not have seemed like much to a neutral observer but to me it was pure magic. It was always slightly unkempt, what with her shriveled, unmade sheets; the perpetual foothill of laundry by the window; and the spare candy wrappers and isolated chip bags lying on the floor here and there. She had a shitty old TV on top of her dresser that barely worked but nonetheless was almost always switched to Comedy Central or the Discovery Channel or something silly like that. 

Her room also happened to have a wonderful view of the New England sea – you couldn’t see the sand but you could see and sometimes hear the ocean and the waves. On nights like this, it was just me, Rita, and the ripples.

It was well past midnight. We’d been laughing really hard, I don’t at all remember about what. It was one of those bouts of laughter where you can just look at the other person for a split second and burst into hysterics. You are imminently connected to the other person in the convulsions; it’s like, for five, ten, fifteen minutes, you are united as one holy being transcending space and time. 

These moments always inevitably come to an end, though. You both laugh yourself out and it gets quiet as you both mourn the return to earth. These, I now understand, can become highly dangerous situations, especially if both parties are too naive to accept what has been lost. Once you’ve laughed yourself out, you’re damned if you’re gonna recapture the rapture. 

The main light source at this late hour was from the muted infomercial playing on Rita’s TV. The infomercial was just bright enough that I could see the frameless polaroid she had hanging on her wall of me, Billy, and her sitting together on a park bench, all making faces like we’d smelt thirty thousand farts. 

“I have a secret to tell you,” she exclaimed, startling the shit out of me. Her voice was like a samurai sword in the late night quiet.

“What? What?” I answered, practically jumping out of my body.

She laughed, and I laughed, but not as hard as we had been before. 

“I want to tell you a secret. A deep dark secret.”

“What is it?”

“Guess.”

“Is it about my brother?”

“Noooooooooooo.”

“Is it about me?”

“Noooooooooo.”

“Is it about somebody I know?”

“Maybe.”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, Sadie McPhriosun. I am here to tell you today that…”

“Yes?”

“…”

“I’m waiting.”

“…”

“…”

“I’m gay.”

We said nothing for a few moments, and then we did what always seems to happen – we laughed some more. 

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Wait, ok. Ok ok ok,” she said, catching her breath and releasing her grin a bit. “You know Reed, right?” asked Rita.

“Not super super super super super super well.”

“Reed Harrison.”

“Vaguely.”

“Yeah, we’ve been hanging out.”

“And?”

“That’s all. That’s my secret.”

“You’re hanging out with Reed Harrison.”

“Yup.”

“Titillating stuff, Rita.”

She let out a big yawn and stretched all about. 

“I’m so tired,” she said.

“Same, I think,” I said. 

It was when we were both beginning to fade off into sleep – her on the bed, me on a sleeping bag she’d lent me – that I decided to reveal my secret.

“I actually have a secret for you,” I said. 

“What is it?” she asked, half asleep and mumbling.

“I’m not actually joking though.”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, I’m gay. Like actually. Not as a joke.”

But she took it as one. She snickered and then of course I snickered, and then we fell asleep. No further comment from Rita, not then, not ever.

She was the first person I’d ever told. 

 

Fran led us down a secret passageway I hadn’t been through since I was a teenager. 

It could very well be the worst kept secret in all of New England. Just about everyone ‘round these parts knows about the little marshy area at Featherstone Beach not far from the main parking lot; the one with the winding planked path that leads to a semi-steep hill which overlooks a random-ass park with an old white steeple up along the side. You see a big open field with a lot of artificial grass and some tall trees down the far end – and then smack dab in the middle is some imported (I assume) sand and two yellow volleyball nets with bulky black poles side by side. 

Maine is the only place maybe in the entire universe where you are going to find a beach volleyball court that is not actually on the beach. It’s not even like there isn’t a literal beach with plenty of open space on the sand, like, right there.

I stood at the top of the hill feeling just about nothing inside as Fran skidded down and approached the court. There were about a dozen of them down there playing volleyball – or at least it seemed like that many. Thinking back, it may have been fewer. Maybe it was more like six or seven people… I don’t fucking know and frankly it’s not that important. 

However many people there were, what I observed from up high was a pretty ruckus party atmosphere. Beach volleyball seems like the one sport you can play extremely inebriated. Their music was just loud, their weed dank, their debauchery, from what I could tell, all encompassing. They were all pretty young – probably around Fran’s and my age, if not a little younger. Only one or two of them had bothered to wear bathing suits and even they had kept on a tee shirt. The rest of this group were regularly dressed as they might be at the grocery store or at a family BBQ, in plainclothes hopping around and spiking the ball like the angsty deviants they surely are. 

What any of these people had to do with Julian or Fran, I still do not exactly know. My mind was sorta elsewhere.

There did seem to be one person of interest: a short curly-haired blonde with high arching eyebrows. I do not know if her eyebrows are permanently that way, but they sure seemed to be fixated high on her forehead as Fran talked to her.

Fran’s body language was alternatively agitated, spastic, and paranoid. She waved her arms all around but kept taking a few steps from the curly-haired girl whenever the latter seemed to be speaking. Then when Fran decided it was her turn to talk, she’d take a few steps toward the girl and get all up close and personal. It was certainly more animated than I’d seen Fran act all day, at least since the drive over to Featherstone.

Whereas I was just kind of numb to the whole thing, the other party animals down there had been too busy with their edgy little volleyball game to much notice the fracas developing between Fran and their friend. They were about as divested from this whole ordeal as I was.

Eventually, the blonde girl kinda shrugged and Fran shook her head and departed back up the hill.

Then, in a flash, Fran took my hand and dragged me back to the beach.

“He’s not fucking here,” she said. The partying resumed behind us, as did the volleyball game. 

 

Before I understood just about anything about myself, my bodily functions would do a good deal of talking for me. 

One time, I was like a baby dragon breathing spittle fire. The vomit got all over my hand cuz I had to prop the little garbage flap open somehow or else I’d be getting everything all over the McDonalds’ floor. I closed my eyes and melted into nothingness, and everything around me appeared green, yellow, and gray. It felt like all the skin on my face was being tugged backwards and I lost some sensation in my neck. 

The next thing I knew Billy and Rita were up on their feet, laughing and applauding. I did a cute little bow and curtsy for them and anyone else watching.

“Go Sadie,” cheered Rita.

“That was epic,” said Billy. “Truly epic.”

I had been so desperately trying to avoid soiling the McDonalds’ floor tiling but I couldn’t help it when I vomited a little bit more on the way back to our table, worst of all splashing my new purple Doc Martens.

I realize now that this was an unconscious, poetic expression of infatuation and desire. 

“But wait,” I blurted, wiping away various forms of condensation from my face. “Are you guys a couple now?”

Our table looked out on Prospect Avenue in my hometown of Slackport, Maine. The summer sun was just beginning to set and the seagulls were orbiting and squawking above. Cars wooshed by in both directions and the cross-town bus stopped to pick up whatever passengers were waiting by the curb nearest to us. It was clear enough that if you squinted a little, you could see the luscious hump of Sapphire Hill beyond the fenced off Walgreens parking lot across the way. 

Neither Billy nor Rita immediately jumped to answer my question. They looked at each other but did not exactly meet each other’s glances. Rita was straining to smile, and Billy rubbed the back of his head. 

“Wait wait – are you ok?” asked Rita.

I glanced at my stained Blink-182 tee-shirt and swiped away at some discolored drool by the collar. 

“Oh, I’m great.”

“Are you, like, sick?” asked Billy.

I shrugged. “No idea.”

“That was fucking legendary,” said Rita. 

“Thank you, thank you.”

We got quiet again and I watched a mom and dad carry two heavy trays over to their over-eager kids who were sitting at the table next to ours.

Rita reached over and patted me on the shoulder.

“Do you have any more fries?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

She laughed for some reason, and of course that meant me and Billy laughed as well. 

“You know how much I love the McPhriosun twins,” said Rita. “You guys know Reed right?”

I felt another jolt in my stomach. 

“Reed Harrison?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’ve been hanging out.”

“I know,” I said.

“You did?” asked Billy.

“Can we go?” I howled. “I’m starting to feel kinda gross again.”

“You know that I love both of you guys,” said Rita. “I just started hanging out with Reed. I can’t cheat on him.”

It was then that I spit up whatever was left to be disposed of. My Doc Martens were now completely ruined; as was the floor; as was my reputation at this Prospect Ave McDonald’s we’d been frequenting all summer.

 

“I’m breaking off the fucking engagement,” said Fran, back on the Featherstone sand, near the parking lot. 

I didn’t know what to say. All I know is that I was happy we were finally leaving. I was numb and confused and couldn’t consider much of anything. 

Fran ranted and vented the whole way home and I mostly just “ah-huh”ed and nodded through it, pretty much what I’d been doing since my botched attempt at coming out to her. 

When I got home I got real high. I took some Adderall and Xanax and then rolled a half-decent blunt and I was soaring through the Milky Way and beyond. 

I couldn’t feel my arms and I loved it. It’s a burden, always having to carry your flailing arms around. I sat on the floor of my room with my legs outstretched as a numb, staticky ball of bliss rolled down my spine. My head was feeling super light, like I could punt it across the street, or kick it up to the sky… lose it in the bright shiny blue and catch it on the way down softly like a mother rescuing her baby out of a burning apartment. 

I’m telling you – I was fucking baked. 

Something about that weird fucking trip to the beach had made me nostalgic. Or maybe it was just all the toxins I had rushed into my body. Probably drooling, my eyes heavy and red, I got up from the floor and approached my bookshelf, pulling my junior year high school yearbook from it and nearly dropping it. I stood there just staring at the cover for a long while, taking in the smooth red cover, the big black lettering, the polaroid style pictures of that year’s seniors. Then I finally flipped it open, skimming the autograph section, taking in all the little drawings and sarcastic musings from friends and acquaintances alike. There wasn’t so much as a single positive, unironic, heartfelt statement to be found – that is except from Rita Kingston, who wrote, “Bonjour Sadiekins. I better be seeing you a whole lot this summer. XOXO Rita.” She drew a little caricature of herself smoking a cigarette around her name. 

 Then I went straight to the “candid” section in search of a photograph I had not seen in many years – a photo of the old gang –  Me, Billy, Rita, Peter, Seth, Ashley, and Maya – all sitting together at our lunch table in the SHS cafeteria. I looked and looked and looked, just staring at the page like I could melt it with laser beams, and I could not find it. Then I realized that I had not seen this photograph in many years because it did not exist, or if it did, it was not in this yearbook. I resolved to ask Billy about it, and then slammed the book shut and kind of dropped it with a little thud.

Did I take to her because she would disappear?

Do I take to everyone because they will disappear? 

Do I take to myself because I disappear?

I thought back to the last time Rita and I had spoken.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” I said out loud. We were halfway up the incline. 

Rita, riding next to me, turned and said, “Are you alright?” 

“It’s not the Roller Coaster,” I shouted, eyes closed, probably lying. I felt like I was about to be flung off the thing and that no seatbelt or restraint could possibly be safe enough.

When I dared to open my eyes, I found Rita having the time of her life, both arms extended way up into the air, screaming her goddamn head off. I wanted to cry at the sheer loneliness of all this but all I could think about was how when I was a little girl I’d kind of imagined that this was how my wedding day would feel. 

It was raining and the billion little drip drip drips were beige colored, maybe a little like dirt. 

I had a total meltdown when we got off. Screaming, crying, cursing, all that. She told me we could just talk and at first I felt really nurtured. And, like, I convinced myself I was so fucking happy to talk to her, but not really. She was being limiting; a part of us was closed off to each other, not because I wasn’t willing to open myself, rather because she was afraid. She was afraid, not me. That’s what I’ve told myself all these years.

Anyway, this is all to say that I probably won’t be coming out to anyone for a while.

 

I haven’t spoken to Fran nor my cousin since that day on the beach. It’s been a couple months and I’d like to see Julian again soon. 

I doubt I’ll ever see Rita again. 

The billboards are a diversion.

Oblong and rectangle plaques littering Route 13. Meeting drivers headlong on their travels through the wastes in hues of dusk. The billboards scream of insanity. Intrusive thoughts become tangible. LSD dreams used as street signs.

Each message is more unhinged than the next. Watch Your Children; Portal to the Spirit World: 10 Miles Ahead; Embrace the Mystery; This is A Slow Peaceful Road; Extraterrestrial Crossing; You Must be Born Again; Beware: Big Pumpkins Ahead; Whoever Stole My Cactus U R A Piece of S***; Warning: You Are About To Enter Someone Else’s Dream.

They are meant to distract from the billboard miles and miles back wallpapered with ongoing desert-depicting imagery; the sand-ridden expanse of the desert, build up out of mesas and the occasional cacti dotting the terra cotta terrain. An illusionary twin to the surrounding environment. It repels both humans and rumors. Seeing as the latter have never reached civilized society.

You wouldn’t even notice the billboard is there until you walk up to it, and when someone is close enough to touch it, they’ll find themselves promptly back at the starting point where their car is parked. Inexplicable occurrences that feed conspiracies. All of it means employed to keep the town behind the billboard-wall hidden.

Strange Vale.

The promise of another hot day is palpable in the air. Clear skies so blue they’re almost grey. No clouds. Sweat cascades down my back as I climb down from the telephone mast. My grip calloused by the routine of climbing this thing every single day at dawn.

I much prefer the heat to the freezing hallways of the military base. The eyes that are everywhere and the cameras that never catch a break, not even to blink. Always watching.

The red terrain rises to meet me, the mesas towering overhead as I make my way to the wall. Where half a mile out of Strange Vale’s perimeter a small trapdoor lies hidden. A tedious job of sawing out a square big enough to admit me leave. I use the key to open the lock of my self-made exit. Many broken screwdrivers saw their death to attach the latch system to keep it closed.

I heed my back before I slip through, casting a glance to Strange Vale behind me. It is a ghost town, not a single thing apart from the heat stirring the image of the air.

I find my way to the gas station as I always do. In secret. The small building, with its diner, service store, and its few gas pumps are located on a mesa just a bit away from the Billboard Boulevard.

I tried plenty of times to see whether I really could not catch a glimpse that might tell of the wall on the other side. But the engineering is immaculate. The way the skies blend in with the wall. The climate feeding into the illusion as the wall’s façade seems to move in the imagery of desert heat.

I walk into UFO Boy’s Extraterrestrial Coffee Roasters and plop down in my favorite booth and ask for an iced cold brew. Or at least I want to. The glass is already in front of me, with a blue and white swirly straw. I look up to say something of it, but before I can speak, the straw changes colors into red and white.

I chuckle. “Nice.”

The brew washes its cold aura down my insides as I set the glass to my lips and drain it almost instantly. Like every other day, no one else is in the gas stations’ diner. A fact for which I am grateful. I like to pretend it is unique to be alone in here. Having come in at just the right time to enjoy the quiet of the leather red and white-booth interior. Before the rush hour, before the chatter that holds volume but no sound.

The familiarity of how no amount of cranking up the A/C can cool down this place brings me a certain ease; the perpetual warmth lined with the idea of effort to cool it down. It’s like someone saying, “Hey, I’m trying,” and you know it’ll never work, but at least they’re doing what’s needed. They’re trying. And sometimes, that’s enough.

“How’s the day going?” Xavier, the diner’s cook and barista, pops up behind the space-ship-shaped service counter. He puts the portafilter back into the coffee machine that stands at attention like a vessel of energy. He turns the knob of the steamer, and a cloud of fog erupts from the machine before quieting down.

I shrug, fixing him with a levelling a look for trying to scare me, but I don’t flinch as I keep sucking at the straw and let the coffee flood my cheeks before swallowing it down. “Yours?”

He shrugs as well, playing with his apron ties. He sits down opposite me. “Same as always.”

“Like a funeral parlor, then.” Slurping the dregs from the bottom, I emphasize each rattle-snake-pull, swirling the ice around and keeping the suction going long after the coffee is gone from the glass.

“How’s that brew?”

“Tastes like routine.”

“You must hate it then.”

“Absolutely loathe it.” I set down the glass, the insides all fogged up. Reaching inside my pocket, I toss a uranium pill onto the table. He slams his palm on the table to catch it.

“Watch it,” I hiss.

Xavier gingerly picks up the pill with his thumb and index finger. The oblong glows a fluorescent yellow in his touch. His glasses mirroring the highlighter hue. His eyes go wide. He studies it for a beat, then looks up at me.

“How –”

I hold up my hands in defense. “Just be glad I got it all the way out here.”

He pockets it in his jeans. Then he scoots closer to the table, leans in towards me and I do the same. Our bodies forming a little tent.

“Before you ask,” he starts, and I straighten. My days here are spent with the pretense of a cold brew and the continuation of small talk finalized by the answer to a question I ask time and again.

He shakes his head.

I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up like this, but I cannot fathom closure when my cranium was cracked open with an infinite equation of which the solution remains a mystery. “That’s fine.”

Xavier makes to grab my hands and I promptly pull them into my lap. My gaze fixes on him for a moment, eyes drawing to slits. “I’m fine, Xavier.”

Xavier gives me a pained smile which I pretend not to notice, the blue of his eyes reminding me of a particular desert night I wish rather to forget than remember.

I look away, take the straw from the glass, and start prying at the paper, nitpicking it apart until it lies in a heap of ripped bits on the table.

A moment of silence passes between us. Until a commotion from outside draws Xavier from the booth and towards the door of the gas station. “Uhm, Augustine.”

Detonating hour.

With a groan I stand up. “Thanks for another lovely brew, Xav. Next time I’ll try to stick around longer.” I climb onto the table right when military officers sporting big guns kick in the door to the gas station diner. That’s the seventh time this week.

“Comrades,” I say, arms wide. “Really? The door? Again?”

The barrels lock me in their tunneled gazes. They’re filled with tranquilizer darts.

My voice is a record on replay. “Fix me up, lads.” With my arms wide and face pulled into a smirk – I feel like a rockstar. I kick the brew-glass their way. The removal of the guns’ safety echoes through the diner.

The first dart hits me in the chest.

I fly into the window behind me, my head whipping backwards, and I can hear the rattling of the rolled-up shutters. I slide down into booth-bench, my head resounding with a high-pitched whistle. The world blurs before my eyes.

In the vignette of the fading diner I can see the soldiers reaching for me.

Darkness drags me down before they can restrain me and carry me back to Strange Vale.

*

I wake with a drugged headache and atrophied muscles.

I am surprised to find myself in my room. Not the laboratory broom-closet in the underground compound, but the one in the Nuclear District on the other side of the plains. Which is divided by a running track that lies between it and the military barracks.

If I focus, I can hear the midnight drills going on there right now. The many soldiers keeping in gear as they run laps time and again. I hate it whenever they make me run laps. Not on the track, but levels down beneath the mesas, sand, and desert floor. In a lab-room stowed away in the depths of the labyrinthine cold cement hallways and linoleum floors. All made stark by fluorescent lighting. Where wires get taped to my body, attached to a machine monitoring my heart rate.

At least I have great stamina.

I reach my hand up to my chest, the dart that hit me is still embedded there. I palm it, closing it into a fist and pull it out. I do not wince, a bead of blood that trails into a line from the entry wound. It has healed before I can properly sit up.

The outside world is the deepest shade of midnight. Stars flecking the skies. The heat is still oppressing even now, summer only having started two weeks ago. But Nevada might as well always be wearing its summer attire.

I often wish I was somewhere less pounding. Somewhere wind might stir more during the day than being a rare appearance at night. When the sand is a shade of blue in the twilight. As if someone has turned the saturation to the opposite side of the color spectrum. The world a canvas of midnight blues, my mood shifting into a darker corner of existence along with it.

I mind my desert bound life. The scientists, soldiers, and anyone who works at the compound knows it. I would never have chosen this life, nor the experiments that are inherently tied up with it.

I have always lived in Strange Vale, the little town that was a bit away from Billboard Boulevard. But when the invasion happened at the military compound two miles from the Nuclear District. The government began building a wall of sorts, to keep us from ever telling a single soul what we witnessed that day. Seven years ago.

I remember screaming. Things that looked too human while not being human at all coming out of UFOs and ransacking places all over the Strange Vale districts.

It was a weird momentum of everything happening at once. A green man came into my house. He took a hold of my father. Jammed a finger right into my dad’s skull. I watched the alien’s black eyes become television screens projecting my father’s thoughts and memories. I saw myself and my mom there often enough. Whatever the alien saw, was enough for it kill my dad. To watch him evaporate into ashes and drift out my bedroom window.

The creature had found my mom and did the same to her. Rifling through all memories she had ever suffered through. He saw something there. He left her alive.

He had not bothered with me. One look, and he had backed off.

Leaving me standing in our living room, shaking.

A lot of people died that day. And some UFOs left us alone again, but Strange Vale’s density had grown by an extraterrestrial few.

Some of the aliens who orchestrated the Strange Vale raid stayed. The one who killed my father, who christened himself Jeff, did. He and my mom ended up falling in love. Mom even got a second child out of it. She moved into the compound with them. I chose to remain back at the house. Occasionally visiting. When forced to. Sedated.

I look out through my window, my eyes traveling along the length of the desert mountain. At the top – my eyes delude me. It can’t be.

Someone is standing there, looking down at me. It is hard to see in the dark from this distance. But I can feel their weighted gaze. The person standing there is pointing to the other side of the billboard.

I open my window, pushing the lower part up and open. Heat rolls into my already sweltering bedroom. Suffocating me even more

Augustine, a voice like granite runs past me. As if someone has crept up on my bed next to me and put their lips to my ears. I turn around to find my room empty. I look back up at the mesa. Whoever was up there, is so no longer.

*

At the top of the mesa, I am alone. The person who I thought to have seen just before, nothing more but a mirage. Maybe my partiality towards my drug mosquitos isn’t the best way of getting a good night’s sleep. Xavier might be right about something for once.

I can see all of Strange Vale up here, every little part that makes up its peculiar nature. I can also look out over the billboard-wall, which is so high that I can only see the gas-station because it is far enough back and elevated. It looks small and infinitesimal from here. A little speck of twinkling light in the dark.

I can make out Xavier taking out the trash bags, at least I think it is Xavier. He always tells me that his co-worker, Marco, is very handsome. He is one of the aliens that came with the invasion, but he never took part in the raid, he was a youngling back then who had climbed aboard a UFO wherever it came from and stumbled out when they had landed on earth. Marco’s existence is a secret I keep, crossed my heart and hope to die, as per Xavier’s request.

I have never seen another employee at the station but Xavier.

I watch the figure’s lanky movements and recognize Xavier in it. Watching as he hauls a trash bag, half dragging it across the desert floor and tries to throw it into the container.

In between one blink and a next, a bright light suddenly hangs over the gas station, and I can see Xavier halt in his motions, dropping the trash bag and looking up at the spotlight falling on him.

From the skies, a flying saucer sheds its camouflage and its chrome exterior, green and blue flashing lights, comes into view.

My body locks into place. I am myself seven years past again.

I watch how the spotlight materializes into a glowing forcefield, and Xavier is sucked into the spacecraft like a piece of dust being sucked into a vacuum.

The spacecraft is there one moment and gone the next. Xavier with it.

*

Back at the house I upend my room looking for my ID-card to grant me access into the Division’s inner world. I got it when my mom first moved down there, as to easier grant me access to visit. I had thrown it into an old shoe box then and never looked at it again. My way into the compound usually paved by sedation and restraints.

I find the oblong card in an old Adidas shoe box. My red hair a stark contrast against the black, blue, and green coloring of the card itself. Inside the box I also find some polaroids showing an old friend and myself. The friend is painted over with white paint, made to look like a little ghost in each image.

A pang hits me in the chest when I hold up one polaroid, taken inside the gas station. It is me and Xavier. The ghost the one behind the camera, but the way I seem to look over the lens, into the spectral eyes – it does something to my insides. I appear oblivious to Xavier’s arm around me and the kiss he jokingly drops on my head.

I drop the polaroid back in the box and kick it under my bed, I pocket the ID tag in the front of my shortalls and make a run for the base.

There’s no time to waste.

The Nuclear District is connected to Division 45 by a small western town.

Tumbleweed.

A long stretch of road littered with old buildings. A church, a graveyard, a saloon, an old library, a cult-society building, and the old barn house. I used to visit this part of Strange Vale all the time, until I no longer felt I had anything left to visit here.

At the end of the road, there is a long stretch of asphalt leading towards Division 45. About two miles. A motel and the crater of a UFO crash site pass me on my jog there. It takes me about an hour to make it to Division 45. Where a small concrete shed greets me.

A sleek black door is installed into the front, with a keypad on its right side. A red light blinking every odd minute. I take out my ID-card and touch it to the pad. Division 45 opens its cold hallways to me.

An iron spiral staircase leads me down into the depths of the compound, I can hear the locks of the door above slide shut, a hundred little clicks sounding all at once.

A long hallway illuminated by fluorescent lights draws me forward. I can hear the buzz of the laboratories and the movements of the scientists that never fades come up to meet me. I walk up to the service counter and a woman in a pin stripe suit gives me a slitted-eye one-over.

“Miss Strange,” she glances at the clock on her computer screen. “What are you doing here at this hour?”

“I need speak to Roach, now.”

Her eyes widen. “Absolutely not.”

“Call him.” I press out through gritted teeth. But the woman doesn’t move.

I reach down over the counter and snatch her telephone. She tries to grab it out from under me, but I am faster. I pound Roach’s code into the phone and the line starts going over. He picks up on the third ring.

“Samantha?”

“It’s Augustine Strange, I have a UFO sighting at the gas station, someone was abducted.”

Silence. Murmurs on the other side of the line.

It cuts out. Dial tone.

“Hello?” Nothing.

I toss the phone across the counter and hold out my hand to the woman. “I need your key card, please.”

“No way in Hell.” She hisses before punching the big red button in a hidden compartment of her desk and an alarm starts sounding throughout the hallway. Samantha vanishes in the room behind the counter, leaving me alone.

Shit.

The alarm is blaring, and a red light is flickering in the ceiling. One of the doors opens and some scientists and nurses come out. Roach is with them.

“Miss Strange,” he says, his voice sweet, solemn. “Your next appointment is in two days. I suggest you go back home. Or, if you want, you can spend the night in our guest quarters.”

I ignore his words. “You heard what I said on the phone.”

“Augustine,” one of the nurses holds up her hand, trying to touch me. “You need to calm down.”

“I am calm. Rather more annoyed because you’re not listening to me.”

The bell of an elevator dings. I turn to see who is admitted on this floor. Of all people to come out – Jeff and my mom. His dark gaze is set in a sad frown. Her face is a mask.

The nurse uses that moment to take a hold of me, her grip stronger than I had anticipated as she takes me into a lock. I start kicking, bucking my head back. I can hear a nasty crack and a groan as she lets go of me. I’ve broken her nose.

“You have been stirring up quite some problems these days, Augustine.” I turn around to face Roach. He is holding a sedation gun. Pocket sized. “Maybe we should reconsider therapy.”

I scream as he levels the gun with my chest. Trying to duck out of his way. But another nurse catches me. “No!”

Roach doesn’t hesitate as he empties the gun’s sedative cache into my chest.

The cat-shaped condensation of Loretta’s breath curled across a book she’d read before but couldn’t remember, rediscovery one of the joys of old age. The wood stove was out, the power down a week courtesy of a polar vortex, all very sci-fi. She had camped in the cold all her life and who would keep the pipes thawed if she left? She shucked the blanket, donned parka and boots and grabbed the wood basket for the last splinters of the woodpile.

“Freezing to death in your own home smacks of bad planning,” said Sidney, who always spoke when least wanted.

Coming back through the side door, she caught a pant leg on the tusk of driftwood that looked like a mastodon and nearly went down. 

“Serve you right breaking a hip on trash you should be burning,” Sidney said.

Burls, driftwood, stones, shells, fossils and flotsam occupied every room of a house otherwise too big for one person. The mementos contained the images of those departed, species gone extinct, places that no longer existed. A record of her life without which she might feel lonely. 

“I’ll manage,” she said.

“Parabolia is a degenerative disorder,” Sidney said. “The cure is to face reality.” 

”It’s ‘pareidolia’ for chrissakes.” For all his yammering he never said it right. She’d seen wild ponies charging across storm fronts and tiny villages in the moss caps of stumps since she was little. “And it’s a gift, not a disease.” 

But Sidney, two years dead — or was it five? — wasn’t listening. 

She forced the back door open against a drift, wading through deep snow to the half-dead apple tree that produced a dwindling crop of sour fruit thanks to Sidney’s over-pruning. The nubs of two lopped branches captured his owl-eyed stare, the slash across the bark the same slant as the mustache that made his mouth crooked. 

“You were impossible to talk to even when you were alive,” she said. 

“You’re arguing with a tree in subzero temperature. I’d say you’ve totally lost it, but you were never entirely there in the first place.”

 When they lay out in the tallgrass meadow decades ago he claimed to see the same shapes in the clouds as she did. Sometime after the sex went tepid and the boys left home, he refused to acknowledge that the electrical socket in the attic resembled Hitler, or the center of a wilting rose contained a skull, or even that the great face on Mars was a face. 

“I don’t regret my imagination,” she said.  

“You’re the same as that pathetic old Japanese man who presented a paper at a paleontology conference claiming the microscopic shapes he saw in limestone inclusions proved people and animals existed in current form since the Silurian, just increased in size by five hundred percent. Seeing things that aren’t there is the definition of feeblemindedness.”

Sidney enjoyed repeating what he found on the internet regarding her ‘disorder.’ He also claimed that vaccines contain mind control chips and celebrities and politicians gather to drink the blood of children to stay young. 

“Get yourself to the old folk’s home,” Sidney said. “Where it’s warm.”

Warm did sound good, but she wasn’t giving in yet. “I should saw you up instead,” she said. 

“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You’re too old for that.” 

A gust of vortex jangled the icicle daggers on the branches. She retreated inside. 

She warmed up by taking the maul ax to the sideboard that once belonged to her mother-in-law, who always complained about Loretta’s housekeeping for Sidney, who never lifted a finger at home. The oak burned steady. She spent the afternoon baking crescent rolls, the house fragrant with yeast.

Around dusk, she snowshoed a mile down the road with a basket of rolls to check on the young couple that Sidney claimed ruined the neighborhood. Janice said the rolls looked like dolphins, Hannah saw humpback whales. They invited Loretta for soup, hot toddies and Monopoly. She snowshoed home tipsy under the rabbit in the full moon, no headlamp required. 

Next morning, short of furniture she detested, Loretta amputated dead limbs from the apple tree with the pole saw. She continued cutting and splitting well after the power came back, the exercise better than a health club. The section of trunk with Sidney’s mug provided a good little side table for her tea. When Sidney told her she was being pathetic, she nodded at the wood stove and he changed the subject. 

She Is There

That is what my mother dreamed:

That when the slave catcher called her, she was far away from the master’s house, in the center of the sugar cane plantation, and that his voice was just a distant noise. Here!, Now!, he said, so she rushed toward him. The plantation embraced her, the leaves like razors cutting into her legs, her feet already bruised by the stony earth. But his voice did not come any closer. A green, pathless labyrinth colored by moving blood. Here!, Now!, but without knowing where, there cannot be now. Silently, she ran away from freedom toward him. Sure, that her wounds now itched and burned, that many stitches would be necessary, that she would need to ask the master to go to the hospital in the village later today. Where the hell are you?! Don’t make me go in there! Was that the familiar sound of the whip among the rustling of the cane leaves? Yes, in that direction, within a minute, the wounds now hurt much more, they now burn much more, but she is almost there, yes. She is there. His long arm raises the whip over her in one long gesture. As always before. Her eyes see the whip and the burning sun. And the master’s house. And his tools. For a long second, she contemplates the world of sugar where her childhood was consumed. His footsteps are now only a distant noise, the leaves like razors cutting into her legs, her feet already bruised by the stony earth, the wounds do not hurt anymore, they do not burn anymore, she is almost there, yes. She is there. She is running toward it.

Note of a Native Son

When you were born your hair was smooth and straight. You looked like an indiozinho. Now look how bad your hair has gotten. Like the hair of the people in our family. Black folk’s hair. Because your father’s family was an Indian family, yes. Black too, for sure. It seems your grandfather, Eraldo, was a cafuzo. Your uncle Alexandre looked exactly like an índio. I don’t know what tribe they were from, your grandfather came from Alagoas. When you were little, your father sought to teach you how to use a bow, but you injured your finger on the arrowhead. It bled. He was sure you were a fag. I don’t miss how he used to beat us. Someone told someone on the island that someone has killed him. Every nigger deserves it, I have been told, but that your father deserved it a little more.

E. Madison Street is a decayed and neglected home in one of Baltimore’s many lower-income neighborhoods. It is more than dilapidated—the place is an abandoned house with working utilities and residents, including my friend Katya. She was originally living under a bridge close to my house before moving to the inner city. When I pull up to her house in my red Hyundai Elantra, she’s usually out on the stoop smoking a Maverick cigarette with her waist-length blonde hair wrapped around her as the fall wind blows. She hops in my car, ready to go cop heroin a couple blocks down. I give her whatever money I have and watch as she ventures out past an empty playground and to a stoop occupied by an unfriendly looking dope dealer. I give her a couple caps of my stash since she is the one going out to cop. People in her neighborhood usually try to rip me off when I go by myself because I look out of place with colorful clothing and big clear glasses. We make the short drive back to E. Madison Street and race inside, wanting to get well. She lives with her mom who has a thyroid disorder, which profoundly affects her moods like salt on an afflicted wound. She screams at us through the walls while we are locked in Katya’s room. Her room consists of a leather chair and a mattress on the floor covered in blankets with various holes—the result of burns from Maverick cigarettes, heroin cookers, and crack pipe residue.

“I cleaned up. It was actually a lot worse before you got here,” she says as if I’d find it impressive that she lives tidier than some other drug addicts do. I’m not sure what she cleaned up. I cannot sit on the chair because there’s a mountain of dirty clothes and junk on the cushion. I’m resigned to take a place on the grimy carpeted floor.

Katya takes out her phone and goes on Spotify to play the song “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction. There are no speakers, so the song plays on her phone with the ambience of muffled static. I feel like I’m in the background of a disturbing movie that’s in the middle of being filmed.

“Jane says I’m going away to Spain/when I get my money saved/gonna start tomorrow/ I’m gonna kick tomorrow.”

I cannot help but think how apropos this song is to our lives. I empty some of the contents of my pink Guess purse on the floor because it’s time to prep a shot. I eventually find myself holding onto a needle and sucking up the heroin from the cotton used in the cooker. I resolve that it’s all okay because I’m not sharing a needle; but it’s a dull one that I’ve used a dozen times. It’s the only working one I have on me. When I aim the needle and inject the contents into my vein, I imagine that it’s a gun to my head instead. There’s always the chance my life will end right then and there.

“This is Rockefeller. It’s really good shit,” Katya murmurs as she gets on.

“Mm, it’s pretty good. The high creeps up on you,” I concur.

I catch myself staring at her hands. They belong to a circus freak. Her hands don’t show a typical case of cellulitis or irritation. They are so diffusely swollen that they are disfigured. Puss seeps out from underneath the bandages, barely covering the infection because the swelling is obscenely immense. There’s even black crust on the knuckles of both hands and her fingers are as thick as sausages. The right one is uglier than the left one.

“Are you going to get that taken care of or looked at?” I ask out of nervous concern. “Trust me, I know from experience not to wait until it gets worse than you ever could imagine.”

I subsequently show her my own big moon-shaped and purple scar on my forearm, the spot where there used to be an abscess that turned into an actual hole in my arm. At the time, I thought I was going to lose my limb, but put off going to the doctor right away. Denial overwhelmed my sense of reality and fear overpowered my ability to rationalize. My mom ended up taking me to the hospital where I had surgery and my arm was saved. I had been lucky, but very stupid. I picture Katya going to the doctor whom I saw at Union Memorial and the harsh procedures she’d have to endure. She might even lose one or both of her hands. They gave me Oxycodone, despite being an addict and they will probably prescribe them to her too. She fears that she won’t be given any pain medication and doesn’t want to be dope sick while she’s in the hospital indefinitely. She cares more about being well than saving her hands.

“Please go get help. I can give you the name of a hand surgeon.”

“I’m fine. I’m on these antibiotics I found in my mom’s drawer. I think they’re working, but I do think I’ll see a doctor one of these days.” Katya picks out another song to play on her phone, music that reminds me of the Crystal Castles or something eerie and ethereal.

I watch her with familiar nonchalance as she packs her glass pipe with a vile of crack. She starts taking deep hits from the stem, blowing out hazy clouds of smoke.

“Can I have a hit?” I don’t usually use crack anymore, but the urge to get even higher is overwhelming because there’s something magnetizing about watching her smoke in front of me.

“I’ll shot-gun you. I’m really good at shot-gunning.” She displays a confident smile. She’s eager to shot-gun—not to hookup with me, but to save all the smoke for herself.

The most interesting people you will ever meet are the worst people you will ever meet. There’s no way the tears will fade. They remain ready to fall down my face at any given time. The past seems like the only thing alive in this world. Change is necessary, but drugs help keep me in a cycle that is all too familiar—a relentless infinity symbol of self-destruction. Katya only contacts me when I’m using dope or have money to waste. She sits in her room most of the day, waiting for her boyfriend, Georgie, to come save the day by bringing her dope to get well. Sometimes she tries to sleep all day when she’s sick, but all dope-fiends know you’re lucky if you’re able to sleep when you’re sick. I try to be there for her, giving away pieces of my stash—fat capsules of dope and little plastic garbage cans of crack. We create memories together, but they don’t hold us together. I try to help her get well when my wallet is full.

I’d never want to trade places with her.

The Irrigation Installation Specialist explained his plan to me. It was thoughtful and thorough, as plans go. The original watering system for my lawn had broken down and it was time for an upgrade. As we toured the yard, pointing at things and talking, our feet crunched—poignantly—on dry grass.  

“The neighbors,” I was saying, “well, they haven’t actually said anything about my lawn, but I can tell—”  

“Uh huh. Where do you—sir?—where should I install the system controller?” 

“—I can tell they aren’t happy with me.” 

“Over there? Behind the oil burner?” 

“Can you believe—no, not there please—at the last HOA meeting the board made reference to the yard-upkeep clause from the HOA agreement—” 

“Behind the hot water tank?” 

“—and I swear the treasurer was looking straight at me.” 

“I’ll just put it behind the tank.” 

“But I only moved in last November. When was I supposed to have fixed it? Over the winter? When the ground was frozen?” I scoffed, though I couldn’t help glancing across the property line. The neighbors’ lawn was lush green and lie-down soft. Mine was a desiccated hellscape. “Still,” I admitted, “I understand their point of view. Your lawn reflects who you are as a person, I always say. But it’s not my fault if the previous owners didn’t understand that. I just need time to undo the mess they left me. And, well, I know you get it. That’s why you’re here.” 

“Um, sir?”  

“Hmm?” 

“Are we good?”  

He began his work while I went back inside my house. From my bedroom I watched the installation process through an open window. If you haven’t seen it done before, irrigation lines go into the ground using a specialized machine that saws the ground apart and lays a hose down in the resulting trench. 

It was a joy to watch, so I was surprised when pangs of anxiety began forming in the pit of my stomach in response to some unconscious signal, some subliminal warning that, despite all evidence to the contrary, something was wrong. But what? 

The answer came in the form of a memory.

It was six months earlier. “Do you know,” my real estate agent was saying, “what one of the nicest features of this neighborhood is?” 

“Is it all the wonderful lawns?” 

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not everything is about lawns, okay? No, it’s that this neighborhood has underground utilities.” In most of the surrounding areas, electricity and internet were delivered by means of pole-suspended tension wires. Not here. “Isn’t it marvelous,” she emphasized, “how uncluttered [with wires] the space over this neighborhood feels?” 

 

The memory ended there, but its meaning was clear. I knew what I’d forgotten to tell the Irrigation Installation Specialist about my yard. I leapt to my feet and sprinted outside, shrieking, “Stop the machine!” as I went.   

But the memory had come too late to make any difference.  

Before he could switch it off, the machine’s circular saw snagged on an underground obstruction and then lurched onto its side. I knew what had happened even before the Irrigation Installation Specialist bent over to grasp both ends—one end in each hand—of the severed, underground internet cable, i.e. my source of connectivity to my job and to the world.  

“Oof, sorry,” he said. “Guess you’ll need to call your cable company.” 

I felt cold inside, and it must have shown on my face. 

“Whoa, are you… Are you okay? Why is your face like that? It’s just an internet cable.”  

I let out a puff of air. “No, you’re right. It’s no big deal.” I relaxed my shoulders and unclenched my teeth. After all, I had never mentioned the underground cables to him. How could he have known? If anything, this was my fault, not his. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.” 

“Right… Okay. Thanks, man.” He departed with some urgency, depositing a pair of rubber tire marks at the end of my driveway along the way.  

 

I rubbed my temples and steeled myself for what was next. It was time to call my internet service provider. There could be no delay. For my job I worked remotely, from my home. Without cable internet, I couldn’t do my work. There was no avoiding this.  

I called my provider from the landline, which used a separate cable that had survived the installation process. From there, I navigated through the automated prompts and was put on hold. 

“Your—” 

“Oh hello! My name is—” 

“—call is important to us…” 

“Oh.” 

Sometime later, I was connected to a human being. “Hello, you’ve reached—” 

In the interest of anonymity, I’ll substitute a fake name for the company. Let’s go with ‘Dumbcast’. 

“—Dumbcast. How may I be of assistance?” 

“Yes, hi, my internet cable was cut. Can you please send someone to fix it?” 

“Certainly, sir.” 

 

Two days later a white van showed up between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. The man who emerged from the vehicle joined me at the side of my driveway. I pointed at the ground. “Thanks for coming. Here’s where the cable got cut.” 

The man thought about it and then pointed at the same spot. “This,” he said, “is an underground cable.” 

“Yep,” I said. And you can probably see where this is going. 

“I don’t do underground cables.” 

“O… kay? Do you, er, know anyone who does?” 

“You gotta call Dumbcast and tell ‘em. They wouldn’t have sent me, you know, if you’d told them that to begin with.” 

“Er… I’m sorry about that?” 

He skidded out of my driveway, adding his own rubber tracks to the pavement there.  

I scowled into the middle distance. At least I had functioning irrigation now though. To console myself, I planted some grass seed and watered it in. 

Days passed. Days without internet or television. I watered my seeds. Little sprouts began to poke through the dirt.

 

When the next technician came, he looked down at the severed cable and said, “Well, now… But this is an underground cable.” 

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is,” and my eye started twitching.  

“I don’t do underground cables.” 

“But… I told Dumbcast about the cable being underground. Why didn’t they send someone who—?” 

“You need to request an underground specialist crew.”

“But I told them it was underground.”

“Did you request an underground specialist crew?

“Well, not in so many words, but…”

“They wouldn’t have sent me if you’d requested an underground specialist crew. Thanks for wasting my time.”

He peeled out of my driveway. Seconds later, the smell of burning rubber found me. By the time it had dissipated, I was already watering my grass sprouts again. “And how are you all doing today? Thirsty?” 

Thinking back, it’s possible the lack of connectivity had already begun affecting my state of mind.

 

Two weeks later, weeks without internet or television, weeks in which I’d literally been watching my grass grow (and strangely, had begun enjoying it), the underground specialist crew emerged from their commercial van into the rippling August heat in slow motion, like the awesome fucking heroes they were. Within minutes they had carved a new trench for my internet cable. Hot tears of relief splashed down my face. I could hardly believe it. Soon I would be a man with both an irrigation system and internet connectivity. Soon I would be complete. 

Which was when they cut my irrigation hose clean in half.  

I found the crew leader holding the severed ends of the hose, one end in each hand. “Oh, hey man,” he said, “you never told us you had an in-ground irrigation system.” 

I blinked at him. 

“Sorry, bud,” he said, “I think you’ll need to call your irrigation installation guy.” 

And then I blacked out. 

 

When I came around, the underground crew wasn’t anywhere to be found. Where their van had been parked there was now a lot of broken glass, and some fresh skid marks.  

Also, there was a steaming, water-filled crater where my lawn used to be.  

And I? I was floating in the center of that crater, face up, seeing nothing the ultra blue summer sky, arms and legs spread wide, with a slight smile twitching at one corner of my mouth. The spray from a broken irrigation line poured down over my torso. Wads of tiny, severed grass blades littered the surface of the water around me like so many corpses. 

 

That was six years ago.

I’ve been off the grid since then. No more municipal water. No more cable internet. 

No more lawn. 

No more job, either. 

I admit, things got a little ugly for me when I ran out of money. I began making raids on the local grocery store just to survive. I got arrested, but luckily the owner didn’t press charges. I’m forever grateful to her for that. 

With time I’ve become self-sufficient. I grow things to eat. I’ve learned useful trades and services and have a healthy bartering network in place. I sleep deeply, every night. I have those little lines between my abdominal muscles. I know the constellations by name. I regularly visit the library. I grind my own wheat into flour with a mortar and pestle, both of which I shaped from a stone I unearthed while sowing potato seeds. I have a network of accountants who collectively pay my property taxes in exchange for any number of services—gardening, handywork, pool cleaning, closet reorganization, and there’s one nearly-retired CPA who simply asks that I read novels out loud to him at night. In the summer months, ducks swim in my crater. My neighbor—the treasurer of the HOA—sits with me and feeds them. 

All of which is why I find myself needing to say something. It might be unexpected, or maybe it’s the most obvious thing in the world by now.  

What I need to say is this: 

Dear Dumbcast: you took everything that mattered away from me. You pushed me over the edge of an existential chasm from which there could be no return. I’m not the same person I was before. Thank you.