Robert Lennon - Familiar

The era was short-lived, of course. The helmet was always a little too small, and then Sam hit a growth spurt. Washing his hair one night, Elisa noticed twin wounds on either side of his scalp: scabbed and bloody tracks, as though he’d been scratched by some animal. She picked up the helmet, which lay on the floor behind her: its interior was filthy, greasy, crusted over with black deposits on two reinforcing ridges that matched Sam’s scrapes.

It had to hurt him even to put it on. The ridges worrying at the wounds all day long, the cuts struggling and failing to heal themselves. Sam winced as she applied disinfectant to the cuts, and then, later, silently watched her clean the inside of the helmet with rubbing alcohol, apply strips of felt to the ridges with double-stick tape. Elisa dreaded the day he had to give it up; she thought he would cry for weeks.

But it didn’t happen. For a little while Sam carried the thing under his arm, like an astronaut walking across the launchpad after a successful mission, and then at last he relegated it to his closet. Silas took up, once again, his efforts to torment his brother. Elisa tried to interest Sam in other helmets, none quite the same, but he shunned them.

On the one hand, it was as if he were determined to put it all behind him — not just the toy itself, but his need for its protection. He seemed, in this one small way, very adult.

On the other hand, there was something perverse about the totality of his resignation. Come on, she wanted to say — if a plastic helmet made Silas stop, then anything could make him stop. The helmet isn’t magical. This last, she did say to Sam, while she sat on his bed trying to talk him to sleep. It’s not the helmet, it’s you. But the boy shook his head — she could hear it in the dark, his hair scraping the pillow — and she thought, but didn’t say, Come on, Sam, fight back. Fight back.

Now they’re on the freeway and her son exudes that same grim acceptance of circumstance. She doesn’t even know what the circumstance is, but she can feel herself bristling in the presence of his capitulation to it. It’s midafternoon, not yet rush hour, and their progress is swift. Sam says, “I guess you’re not going to talk, then.”

It is the same conversation she had hours ago with his father.

“Fine then,” he says, without giving her a chance to reply. “So you’re here, and in a while you’ll go home, and I’ll never know what this was all about. And yet here I am driving you around.”

She says, “It isn’t anything in particular.”

He has no response to this. Minutes pass.

She says, “Things are changing at home.”

Nothing. She is fixated on his heavy thigh, sunk into the driver’s seat. Tears are pouring down her cheeks, though there is no tightness in her throat; she is able to keep her voice steady.

“Forgive me, Sam. I don’t really know why I’m here.”

Possibly he makes a small grunt of acknowledgment. His body shifts against the vinyl seat. She goes on: “There’s something… wrong with me. It might be best if you — if you pretend I’ve got amnesia. That I don’t remember anything about the past few years.” She turns to him. “I know that your father and I apparently decided to — to put you behind us. I don’t understand how we came to that decision. I accept that we did, but… do I owe you some kind of apology? I think I do. May I apologize to you?”

It takes him a few seconds to come out with, “What do you mean something’s wrong with you.”

She lets out a sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t even know. But I don’t remember anything that happened. Not for years now.”

There’s a minute during which his breathing seems to quicken and deepen. He is so strange to her, bovine and implausible.

“You can do whatever you want,” he says quietly.

“Do what?”

“You wanted to apologize, go ahead.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. It doesn’t sound like she means it, but she does, she does.

He nods. She takes a tissue out of her bag and wipes her face.

The car pulls up in front of a motel, and Sam parks. “I have to go back to work,” he says. “Silas is having you over for dinner. Some people are coming. You should be there at eight — it’s just a couple of blocks.” He pushes his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose; his entire face is slick and sweating. “I dunno. It’s fucked up. It’s fucked up that you’re here.”

She can’t speak.

“I don’t mean to be mean. You know. But I just… I really don’t get it.”

“I don’t either.”

“Okay, well…” He puts the car back in gear. “I really have to get back to work. Silas needs me to do some shit.”

She can’t stop herself — she says, “You still work with Silas.”

He lets out breath and tips his head back. “Jesus. Yes. I still work with Silas. I do the books at Infinite.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he says, but she doesn’t know what he means by this and he doesn’t seem to either.

She gets out of the car, takes hold of her bags, and shuts the door. The tires bark on the pavement as Sam drives away.

The neighborhood they live in is called Silverlake. She learns this from the motel clerk, who is a young black woman with pierced nose and tongue and an ostentatious straightened hairdo. When Elisa asks if there’s a place nearby to get coffee, the girl points and says, “Five blocks.”

But first she checks in. It’s four thirty in the afternoon. Her room is cold and dry. She takes a nap, then wakes up shivering half an hour later, her skin pulled tight, wondering where on earth she is.

The café is staffed by people who look like the girl at the motel. She sits at a wobbly table sipping her coffee and examines the maps she printed from the internet. The boys live on a narrow winding street several blocks from the main drag; she memorizes the route to their house, then tucks the papers into her bag and walks there.

A Spanish-style bungalow in apparent disrepair, the white stucco cracked and falling off, the shrubbery unwatered and half-dead. She stares at it from across the street for a while. No cars pass, though she can hear, faintly, the noise from the main street, blocks away. She contemplates returning to her motel but instead walks across the street and climbs the steps onto the wide shaded porch. A table and chairs are set up, and on the table lies a half-full ashtray and a bottle opener. A wind chime hanging in the archway is silent and still.

The driveway is empty of cars and the broad front window lacks any curtain or shade. She walks up to it and peers inside.

Elisa is surprised — the living room is quite tidy, perhaps to a fault. The Swedish-style furniture is new; the jute rug is clean and lies on even bleached floorboards. There’s a glass coffee table, an insectile aluminum floor lamp, and a sofa and two chairs draped in matching white slipcovers. Beyond this arrangement is an open door frame that leads to a bright kitchen, with black-and-white tile floor.

There appears at first to be a blanket wadded up on the sofa, partially covering a reddish-brown pillow. Elisa blinks, and the blanket and pillow rearrange themselves into the image of a naked red-haired girl.

The girl is asleep. She looks nineteen or twenty and is dangerously thin. Her flesh is pale and she has no breasts to speak of. One arm hangs down to the floor and the other is pinned under her body. Her legs are spread, her genitals in plain view. Elisa draws in breath and the girl opens her eyes.

At first, the girl appears not to have seen Elisa standing in the window. She makes no move to cover herself, and anyway there is nothing, no robe or towel nearby, for her to use. But the longer she lies there, eyes open, the clearer it becomes that she has seen Elisa and is staring at her. The eyes are bleary and the face freckled; the girl’s lips are parted and between them lie small yellowish teeth. She is like a rare, damaged specimen of some endangered species, some strange rodent or bird.