Lydia Netzer - Shine Shine Shine

Sunny moved into the bedroom, where she found yet another giant flat-screen television on its face, smashed against the floor. There were piles of newspapers and books, discarded clothes and boxes, an ancient dresser overflowing with linens. The huge bed, covered in what looked like tapestry, was broken. The legs of the top end had collapsed or been furiously kicked out, so there was a steep slope down to the headboard, against the wall. But it was made up with a pillow where it belonged, next to the wall on the low side, the side that had fallen down.

In the pillow was a dent, shaped like a head. Next to the pillow was today’s paper. Today’s. She had to acknowledge this. At this depth of her extremity, she had to come to terms with this visual, and accept the fact that as she went about her nightly rituals, taking off her eyebrows, taking off her wig, arranging it on her dresser, considering herself safe for another day, Les Weathers of Action News Reporting was three houses away, sleeping upside down. Les Weathers, the last bastion of urban normalcy, of the square jaw and flawless skin, of the resonant voice and signature finger point, was sleeping upside down in a house where a herd of giant televisions had met their violent end. There was no terrible twin. There was no secret robot. He and this were real at the same time. He was, in fact, just another lunatic. Sunny had to laugh. She laughed, looking out the window on their neighborhood, because it was such a ridiculous thing. All the wives, drooling over him. And all the while, him taking a bath in that tub.

She laughed until another contraction came, and when it had passed, she went back into the hall. She had to find him. Maybe he was in a basement. Maybe he was just now emerging from his Lexus, slamming the car shut, trotting toward her over the pavement. Les Weathers. Looking like the cover of a magazine. She heard a sound from the third floor and put her foot on the first of the attic stairs.

She found him in a room that had been intended for a nursery. The beautiful curtains and the drape around the bassinet were dusty and still. He was sitting on a rocking chair. It was the squeak of the chair that she had heard. In the bassinet was nothing. All around, the things a baby needs: a box of diapers, a dresser with a lamp, a changing pad on a wicker table, a stuffed purple rhinoceros standing watch. Les was wearing his anchorman clothes but his jacket was off, his tie gone, his sleeves opened at the wrist. When he spoke, his voice was low.

“Hey, Sunny, are you all right?” he said.

“Fine, fine,” Sunny choked. “Just going home.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come down to let you in.”

Sunny saw that Les Weathers had been crying.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“Is it bad, this house?” he asked.

“It’s not good,” Sunny said. She went to the window to look out, but as she reached it, she felt the pain tighten around her back, and she went to her knees with another contraction. Just trying to breathe a little bit, she let herself feel the rolling spasm. Her belly, hard as a rock, brushed against the floor as she leaned down and grasped the rug, trying to get the pressure off her back. Les Weathers sprang out of his chair and knelt beside her, holding her in his arms.

“She died, you know,” he said, his voice a moan. “I’m sorry, but she died. She died inside Teresa.”

Teresa was his wife. Sunny, raw to the core from the pain of labor, felt the twist of fear tighten into a need to flee. She was afraid of Les Weathers. She was afraid for Les Weathers.

“Teresa didn’t leave with the baby. She left when the baby was already gone. Dead. Dead inside her. We tried to hide it…”

Sunny rolled onto her side and curled around her alive baby. Les Weathers threw his hands out in an expansive gesture.

“This is what happens!” he said. “This is what happens, Sunny! We tried, but this is what happens!”

As soon as the contraction let go of her and she could move, she began to crawl. She crawled to the door, dragged herself up on the frame, and got out into the hall. She went down the stairs on her butt like a toddler, one at a time. She wished just to get back into her own house, close the door, and be safe. But her pelvic bones were grinding on themselves, and she felt that if she went too fast, she might fall apart, literally, into pieces.

“Do you need to go to the doctor again?”

“Don’t feel good,” Sunny groaned. “Talk later.”

Les was beside her, tall and strong. But inside him, a baby was dead. He had raged around his house to get it out, but it was still in there. He took her by the arm, supported her down the next staircase, his face a perfect rendition of care and concern.

“Can I drive you to the hospital?”

She stared up at him. He looked to her like a gargoyle, some hideously gross miscalculation. And yet he was there, and human. The same man. The same man that lived in all these houses. Even hers. Just a person. Does everybody have to have a bathtub with footprints? Does everyone have his mangled hand, his bald head, his Quasimodo hump?

“No, no,” she said. She knew if she could get her creaking, straining body out the door, down the step, past one sidewalk square, and then the next, and then four more, she would be at the edge of her yard. She felt as though her hips were splitting apart, her pelvis on fire. She wanted to get to her yard before another contraction came. On the porch, she knew she was leaking fluid along the concrete, but she kept her eyes up, kept herself moving along. He followed her.

“Sunny, should I carry you?”

“No,” she said firmly, as she dragged herself across the yard. She was embarrassed for him, that she had recognized him, but she could not undo it. At what point do you say, “It’s no big deal, nothing to be ashamed of” to a person who is sleeping upside down. Is that nothing to be humiliated by? What about head banging? What about murder?

“That was not the right thing to say, Les Weathers. Call an ambulance. Then get back in your house. I’m fine.”

Sunny had seen Maxon humiliated once, but she didn’t tell him, so he didn’t know. It was long after his father had died, but his brothers still treated him like a hired hand and his mother did nothing to stop them. Sometimes he had to fight them, and if he could get away, he did. Sometimes he had to do what they wanted. There were days when he didn’t answer Sunny’s summons, and she knew that he was either stuck doing some kind of chore, or AWOL, either way unavailable.

It was on one of these days that Sunny was out riding by herself. She was thirteen, the summer after Maxon’s first year in high school, when she was about to go to high school herself. It was August, hot, and the horseflies were bad. She let Pocket pick out his own way, after a canter down their dirt road. He went down the deer paths through the meadows where he could lean down and chew on comfrey and mint growing wild, unencumbered by a bit in his rebellious little mouth. When Sunny got too hot in the sun, and too irritated with his loud crunching and munching, she turned him toward home through the woods and urged him into a canter. Down the logging trail they flew, a welcome breeze in her hair and his mane, and the flies gone, replaced by swarms of gnats that they blew right through.

The light came down through the trees in filtered shafts, yellow on the ferns, and the trees moved over each other as she passed them in layers. Sunny heard a shout before she saw anyone out in the woods, and slowed her pony to a walk. She didn’t want to be seen, but she could see a little clump of people in the trees. They were shouting into a hole, and had not noticed her approach. Not knowing whether to turn around and run or go and see what they were doing, she let Pocket keep walking, his feet making soft thuds on the pressed dirt.