Glass Boys (28 page)

Toby shook his head. His body was filled with helium, and he thought he might float away. “You're funny, too, Angie Fagan.”

“So, what can you do? What's the most specialist thing about you?”

“Nothing.”

“There's got to be something.”

“I'm not much good at nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Toby stuck his too-long thumbnail into the fleshy part on his other hand, wished he had something better to say. He struggled with every subject at school, couldn't make anything with his hands, couldn't talk his way out of a Tupperware container, and had the skinny body of a sailor adrift on a raft. “Nope.” And then he thought of something small, offered it up. “I likes to saw wood. And my dad says I makes a neater stack than any other soul he knows.”

“Oh.”

“I knows it don't matter. But I likes to saw wood. You starts with a pile of something, something you can't really use. And then you ends up with something else. Something you can use. And it's quiet, and you can be alone, and you know, you can think about stuff.” Thumbnail jabbed in even harder, and the sudden pain stopped his rambling.

“That's cool. Me too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She lit another cigarette, coughed. “Your go.”

“Um. What's it like living with your old man?”

“My dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, I suppose. He's alright. He don't say much to me. He don't say much to anyone.” She shrugged. “He looks at me, though.”

Toby leaned forward. “Like what?” Controlled tone.

“Like it hurts him. Hurts him to see me exist in the world, you know?”

Back against the tree again. “I know.”

“Deep down he's really a good person. But it's hard for people to see through all that build-up.”

“Yeah. Build-up. Crust.”

She laughed. “What about you? What's it like living with the fuzz? Does he go all cop on you all the time?”

Toby laughed lightly. “Nah. He's alright. He's a bit tough, yeah. Especially on Mellie. Don't know why.” Scratching his chin. “I think he don't like Mellie cause he's soft.”

“Soft? You're trying to tell me Melvin Trench is soft? On what planet? Pluto?”

“He is, Angie. I know he don't act it. He's kind of, um, wolf on the outside, but just sheep underneath.”

“Well, I'll take your word for that.” She pushed up her glasses with the back of her hand, glanced at Toby. “You go.”

He didn't have another question ready, tired of the game, but was surprised when one burst from his mouth. “Did you get a good mother?” And as soon as it was out, dangling in the air between them, he wondered if she might think the question was more about his own heart rather than hers.

“What?”

“Nothing. Dumb question.”

“No, it's not. No question is ever dumb, Toby. She's decent, I guess. I don't know that I'd call her motherly. We gets what we needs. Food and clothes and stuff for school. But my brother is her favorite. She's thinks he's something special.”

“Garrett?” Clearing his throat.

“Yeah. She don't say it, but you can tell. You'd think he'd be gone by now. Out living on his own. But no, he's still up in his little room. Like a freak.”

“Really?” Toby resisted the urge to snort.

“Yeah, she makes his bed and irons his clothes. Picks up his socks. Kisses his cheek, and checks his teeth before he leaves for work. It's pathetic. I tell you, if she weren't old enough to be his mom, you'd guess they were husband and wife.”

“You two don't get along?”

“Get along? He's been nothing but an ass to me since I can remember. So, no, we don't play checkers or nothing.”

Toby shook his head, felt a small checkmark of relief.

She took a deep drag, waved away the smoke. “Do you miss your mother?”

“My mother?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Nope.”

“Not at all?”

“I don't remember even having one.”

“Do you think she'll ever come back?”

“What?”

“Come back. See what you growed into.”

“How could she come back?” Toby folded his arms across his chest. “She's dead.”

“You think?”

“Well, she just as well be dead. And Mellie'll say the same, I can tell you that.”

“I heard she's living in a store somewhere.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Yeah. Selling all sorts of, well, crap.”

Toby jumped to his feet, cracked his head on a low branch.

“Who told you that?”

“No one. I don't know.”

“Who told you?”

“I can't remember. I just listens, that's all. I hears stuff.”

“Well, it idn't true.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest, stuck her cigarette into the damp earth.

“Okay.”

“It idn't true. You hear me?”

The rain had stopped, the world had opened up again, and they were no longer the only ones in existence. Toby looked at Angie then through sober eyes, saw how she really was. Tough mouth, glasses too big for her face, hair that needed washing, raccoon rings of eyeliner around her eyes. He stepped out from underneath the tree, felt exposed, and quickly checked to make sure the zipper of his jeans was fully up.

Who were they kidding? The two of them, meeting there in secret, pretending there was something sturdy beneath both their feet, as though they could walk across air, find each other in the middle.

“I just remembered,” Toby said. “My dad wanted me to do something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn't mean nothing. By what I said. I really didn't.”

“That's alright. I don't care where's she at. Don't need her.

Don't give a shit.”

She cocked her head, took off her glasses. And even though she didn't squint, he knew she saw him, too. Lanky, and shy, and ears that no amount of hair could hide. He had told her he liked to saw wood. And what seemed sincere and decent then now brought a flush to his cheeks. He liked to saw wood. So stupid. So nothing. So him.

25

TOBY USED A pen to write the note, even though he had to cross out several mistakes, and ink globbed as he paused over certain words. He wondered if she might notice that, how his writing slowed when he had to write the important parts. The parts about being together for a whole year. The parts about fighting and making up. The parts about falling in love.

Someone rummaging in the hallway, and he folded the paper rapidly, jammed his hand into the closet. Found what he thought was his jean jacket, slid his fingers down until he located a pocket, and he hid his feelings there.

DEEP IN THE woods behind his house, Melvin knelt on the forest floor, leaned forward, blew on the glowing twig positioned just under the shredded newspaper. The paper smoked, then caught fire. Without smothering the flame, he constructed a tiny teepee with the dried splits he had stolen from the shed. Fire gaining momentum, he layered on a couple of logs, patiently poking the base, balling the rest of the paper, tossing that in. When it crackled with strength, Melvin stood up, went down the slope to the stream where he and Toby played as a child, and filled his cut off apple juice can with water. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a handful of small mushrooms someone from school had offered him, beige with nipple tips, dropped them in with the water, stirred with a stick. He hooked a length of wire through holes in either side of the can, twisted, and hung the can over the crook of a hefty branch. Bringing it up to the fire, he suspended it, then sat down, branch balanced over his knee, waited for his special tea to boil.

“Fuckin' wild trip, man,” a boy named Jarrod had said about the mushrooms he'd plucked in a field riddled with cow manure. “Be whatever you wants to be.”

“Do it work?”

“Yeah, it works. Works good. Fuck, man, I was sure I'd turned into an orange. Fat and juicy like. And I was freaking right out when I thought Russ the faggot was trying to peel me.”

Melvin snickered. “Yeah, right. You sure there idn't shit on these?”

“Shit? You won't give a fuck about eating shit when it hits you right here.” Hollow knocks to the skull.

“How do I know these idn't poisonous? That you're not trying to poison me?”

“Look,” he said, grabbing one from Melvin's hand. He pinched the edge gently. “See, it turns bluish. Like a bruise. That's the real deal.”

“Man,” Melvin replied. “You should be a frigging scientist.”

“That's your department, buddy. Not mine.”

“Not no more. I idn't got no fuckin' department, man. I am department-less.”

Although he'd heard about the high before, Melvin was doubtful, figured he'd end up vomiting. Or give himself the runs. But he was willing to try. After twenty minutes or so, he removed the can, stuck his nose into the steam. Nothing. Not even a hint of a smell. When it was cool enough not to burn, he gulped the tasteless tea down, felt it coat his empty stomach. Then he tossed away the heads and stems, even though Jarrod told him he could eat them. Make his journey last a little longer.

“Yes, I is the mushroom man, the mushroom man, the mushroom man,” he sang quietly while he waited for something to happen. “Yes, I is the mushroom man who loves to, to, to... I don't know what I love.” Head bent, murmuring. “I don't know what loves me.”

As he sat cross-legged, smoking a cigarette, Melvin's stomach gurgled, and he burped. Tasteless, though his eyes still reacted, and they stung. The back of his throat tickled, and he knew that if he didn't get up his digestion would course in the wrong direction. So he stood, put his hand against the cool trunk of a silver birch, and didn't bend at the waist. If he gave gravity a chance, he would throw it all up. Melvin decided he had wasted his time. This was right up there with Jarrod's other ideas, to smoke banana peels or black tea, inhale bathroom freshener sprayed into a garbage bag, or swallow a tablespoon or two of ground nutmeg.
Try it,
he'd say.
It's wicked.

Melvin was about to turn and walk home when he heard the stream, such a pretty tinkling sound, and when he looked he noticed the surface of the water sparkling in the moonlight. Just a quick look, he thought, and as he made his way down the slope, the trees began to lean in towards him. Wrinkled bark, almost faces. Could they be smiling, nodding? Hey, cool. Hello. And for a short moment he was aware that his trip had suddenly commenced, and that he was stepping through a forest door. Lifting one foot over the threshold. Then the other. In this new place, branches lifted and fell, and Melvin could see that they were caressing each other, rubbing knobs, pine-covered mittens slipping into holes in the bark, rooted toes curling. Holy shit, he thought. So much for propagation with cones. Trees actually fucked. Then Melvin laughed, and the trees laughed back, their afterglow eyes weeping turpentine.

When he reached the water he stared down at his reflection, watched for a while how the water skeeters stretched his skin, turning his head into a prickly burr. He thought to sit down, as the edge of the crystal stream was breaking apart, and Melvin had the vague notion that a liquid he had swallowed was creeping upwards, drowning his brain. He watched the rippling water, flickering patterns of light and sound, and using his mind power he slowed down the sparkles to a near standstill, could identify individual shapes. And he grew excited, trying to take it all in, every math principle, sine and cosine in full bloom, waves and bell curves, infinity repeated infinitely. All the secrets of the physical world were right there, floating on the surface of the water, theorems and truth about time and space. In plain view. What a clever hiding spot.

He had to see where he was, how he fit into this heavenly reveal, and he looked down, fingers in the water, touching his reflection. At the same time his hands were moving through the stream, he could sense his hands gliding over his face. Opened his mouth, fuck-off finger poking into the watery hole, no tongue, no teeth, and Melvin snapped his limb back. A moment or a lifetime of panic, compressed. Wanting the lights again, he waded out into the stream, fabric sucking up the water, but all the light collapsed into a pinprick, everything now contained in a point so small, so bright, his knees buckled. Here he was, Melvin Trench, witnessing the origin of the universe, the primeval atom, and the Big Bang about to happen.

He carried himself backwards, allowing room for the explosion, but he was cold, took deep breaths through the open wound in his face, knew that if the sun didn't shine soon, his ears would freeze, fall off. Tumble away like leaves caught in a blustery day. In the sky, an enormous crescent sun obeyed, and Melvin stood, walked straight across the black water, a solid shiny table, reflecting the blinding light. But he moved too close, and soon his skin was peeling, onion layers, and Melvin began moving backwards through his own flesh. He could see the cells and the nuclei, and feel the bags of cytoplasm cushioning whatever form he had adopted. Continuing his journey towards the light, towards full understanding of this new nonphysical realm, he realized that there was nothing to leave behind. That his very genes had unraveled, and he had now become light.

He willed his mother to appear, and she hovered before him, a knotted star. But he was unable to touch her, to feel her, to untangle the cluster and comprehend her betrayal. Suddenly, he was back inside a body, a mass of night and shadows, metal skin inches thick, his entire being suspended in a layer of gelatin. “Go.” Inside his consciousness, her voice arrived. “Go see what's in the barn.” Easy enough for you to say, he would have shouted. If he had a tongue. He wanted to pull mounds of darkness down around her. But when he reached, the drapes skirted sideways. He could not do it. Could not harm her. Up until the moment she had vanished, so many years ago, she had been a perfect, perfect mother.