Blake Butler - There Is No Year

The cursor went on, silent beeping.

The father stood up, turned off the computer screen. He hesitated, glued. The way he was standing, the blank box looked straight on at his belly, an enormous glassy eye. It had such good warmth coming off it. The father rubbed his typing hands. At home, he knew, his wife and son were waiting, stuffed full of days that had just passed — days that as they accrued with those incoming would form wrinkles, pustules, new hair on their skin. These imperfections did not yet appear there in the older image of their faces hung on the wall above the father’s desk — mother and son side by side there, smiling, in a room the father did not recognize. The father had not taken the picture, nor had he hung it there.

Beside the picture, sized just like it, a small square window in the building looked onto the outside. The window looked upon no other shore or building, but more light — the same color, grain, and sound of light as the machine’s. Above the window, a small placard: There is no year.

The father grunted, made his hands fists. He swallowed on his spit, frothing suds between his cheeks in makeshift milkshake. He drank.

The father, feeling fatter, fuller, sat back down on his cube chair.

Into the black machine, with the screen off, the father typed as if he were at an organ, performing some small song.

And now the son had squeezed out all the toothpaste screaming.

And now a blurt had opened in the floor.

And now the room contained one billion windows.

And now the son felt sore.

And now the son felt his backbone shift slightly, pinching taut the skin around his cheeks and lids.

And now the son moved to turn around inside the room and found he was too large to turn around inside the walls.

And now the son felt his flesh compressed on all sides by something growing in and off the house.

And now the son could not stop coughing, and the tremor, and the ants.

And now the son was off the floor by inches and now the son’s head compacted with his neck and his neck compacted with his ribcage and his ribcage puttered cream and the son felt his voice inside him slushed to zero and he felt his teeth grinding in his eyes and the son felt his bones becoming blubber and he felt the liquid in him brim.

And now the son spun around in one continuous direction, though from outside him he looked still.

And now the son’s flesh could not contain his girth.

And now the son was more than tired and the son coughed up an enormous log of chalk and the son coughed up a pane of glass, a set of keys, and a door without a knob, and now the son’s mouth sprayed out graffiti, the son gushed gold and gray and green, the son gushed glue and blue, and now the son coughed up a TV and now the TV screen was glowing and in the glow there someone stood and the house was shaking and made of money, and now the son coughed up a massive book, and the book began to read itself aloud into him, full of his words, and now the son would sing, and now the son coughed up a vein of hair he’d worn in styles of other years and the hair was drenched with grease he’d eaten and sugar he’d drunk and the hair wrapped around his head in coils, and now the son coughed up the sand of all the beaches and the heat of the son warped the sand down into glass, and through the glass the son saw other houses, and now the son coughed up wet and wax and coffee, and now the son coughed up more money by the sheet, and now the son coughed a length of pipe, a bulb of moss, a flock of birds, a box inside a box, a travel guide with all blank pages, and now the son coughed up his sleep and now the son coughed up reams of endless skin still growing older and the son coughed up the son.

When the mother woke the following morning her body was as sore as it had ever been. In her sleep she’d drooled and sweated like the son and there the fluids had formed a kind of crust across her body and the bedsheets and the air. The mother’s hair stuck to her cheek skin. The crust had spread across her eyelids and down her nostrils and in the grooving of her ears so that it took almost an hour with her nails digging as at blackboards before she could see well enough to cross the room.

In the bathroom the mother washed her face and body in the shower with the coldest water the house could make, holding her head against the pressure close with her mouth open, sucking spray. She could not seem to bring her mind and body out of sleeping. She could not quite bring her mind to think. The coldest water rinsed the mother and slicked bits off her body into the drain. The shower water exited the shower and the bathroom and the upstairs and the house. In its exit the shower water traveled deep into and through the ground, met with other water that women and men within the neighborhood and others had used to clean or clear their bodies, water which would later be filtered and fertilized and redistributed on the earth — it would be mixed with bourbon in a dark room to help take the shaking out of a certain kind of man — it would be mixed with sugar and Kool-Aid powder at a young lady’s seventh birthday party for the pleasure of the young lady and her seven guests, each of whom would bring a gift — it would be given to the sick to help with sickness. The water, via the mother and her others, would taste delicious. One day the water would return to rain.

While the mother dressed and did her hair and makeup— even in sweat she kept a way —she imagined a set of unseen hands lifting objects from rooms in the house. The mother had already begun packing the house up for moving in her mind. It hadn’t been that long since they packed the last time. A certain percentage of the family’s belongings were still boxed in the garage and attic — things the family did not need really except to help them remember who they’d been at other times — things that could have been removed and burned or melted down and the family would not have known the difference. Material of this nature comprised 62 percent of their belongings’ mass. She imagined massive hands wrapping the beds and chairs and sofas in brown paper and sealing them with tape. She imagined the house lifted off the ground — brought to hover above the next house. She imagined the house turned on its side — the house turned fully over — its contents raining into place — the contents in the new house and the house made of years as yet to come, congealing and all else et cetera gone away. The family would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy.

They would be happy.

The mother could already taste the sweet indulgence of the low-fat imitation butter and sugar-free jam spread on the one-quarter wedge of a low-fat coupon-bought whole-wheat bagel that had been the mother’s breakfast every morning for seven years. The mother worked her hand in circles of contentment across her belly, as she had while pregnant with the son.

The mother walked through the bedroom past the bed into the hallway and stopped. From the doorway in the hall there the mother could see into the son’s room.

The son spread-eagled on the mattress, his hands clasped against his mouth — his thin arms stretched all taut through his pajamas emblazoned with shapes the mother had thought were Mickey Mouse heads when she bought them, though on closer examination she saw the ways the shape wavered from the popular icon into a thing she could not name— and yet she let the son use them for sleep . The son’s torso seemed to have expanded — swollen perhaps, the mother thought first, reeling, with relapse, with new disease — though as she crossed the room she saw how the son had pulled on several layers for protection, as had she that other evening, every sweater that he owned, all ringed and hot and worn and chubby, the outermost sweater showing the son’s name in neon puff-paint like the one the mother often wore, a pair of garments bearing their names, each, which had been given to them both at the same time, some occasion, though the mother could not think of who or what or when.