Laura Adamczyk - Hardly Children

Dearest Father,

Hello! How are things? It was nice seeing you at Christmas—and your box of light and how much you still like eating mashed potatoes. I’m sorry I didn’t get you a present. We should certainly get together more often. I miss you. I miss the way you like to tell the same jokes and stories over and over. Your eyes had a way of revealing nearly everything. Or nothing! Do you think it’s possible to ever really know a person? I like the way you made me think about that. I like how you thought jokes were more real than the truth. And how you liked going on walks. And how you never wore dresses. Because you didn’t want to! I miss you every single day.

CARLA PICKED ME UPin her tan SUV. I thought, You were a mom before you were a mom. Her belly was nearing the steering wheel.

He hasn’t been answering his phone, she said. Haven’t you noticed?

I looked out the window. Snow wisped along the edges of the interstate. Dad hadn’t replied to my letter, which I took to mean not a whole lot.

True, she said, you’re more of a call answerer than a call maker .

I shrugged.

And even then, she said, rubbing her stomach.

So is that like your personal genie in a bottle? Are you making a wish every time you do that?

Well, you’re still here.

When we got to Dad’s, Carla knocked, called, then used her key. The air was close and still inside. There was a half-eaten sandwich on a paper towel near Dad’s chair, mugs caramelized with coffee residue beside it, and in the dining room, the lights of the infinity box glowing dully, the wooden side warm to the touch. It was vaguely reassuring.

Dad? Carla called out.

Hey, Dad, I said, like I was calling a dog.

We peeked into the bedroom, his closet-sized office, and my old bedroom, which had become Mom’s old sewing room, which had become a collection of lopsided stacks of magazines and plastic tubs filled with fabric. The dust smell of the old calico was as memory-inducing as an LSD flashback.

We walked through the kitchen and began downstairs. A drill started up and I tensed.

Dad? Carla yelled.

Girls?

Dad poked his head up the stairs. It looked like he’d just woken from a nap or was in the midst of flaming out on a cocaine binge.

Um, let me come up there.

Dad, what’s going on?

I followed Carla down.

He disappeared from view.

Go back upstairs, girls. There’s, uh, broken glass down here.

We curved around the bottom of the stairs to find Dad shuffling backward into an eight-foot-tall metal cube with a polygon top; it came to a point that nearly grazed the ceiling. He hung his head and clasped his hands in front of him.

Dad, what is that? Carla asked.

It’s nothing. Just a project. He scratched the back of his head. He was wearing an old quilted housecoat, and his glasses were cloudy with dust.

The thing had a bulky crudeness—like a metal playhouse or toy spaceship a child might construct from refrigerator boxes—though, to Dad’s credit, the seams were sealed with dark caulk and it was rather shiny, which held a hypnotizing allure. He turned his back to us, hands on hips, then back around. His face wavered between sheepish and defeated.

I’m not quite finished yet.

What is it? Carla asked, circling around it and stepping over a pile of laundry to the back.

Oh, no, don’t, Dad said.

Andie, c’mere.

Carla stood hunched inside the thing. I ducked in beside her. The interior panels were made of the same dark, oily glass as Dad’s box upstairs, the floor and ceiling seams lined with the same dim lights. Balled in a corner were candy wrappers and a deep-blue sleeping bag. I imagined zipping myself up in its dark womb and staying there for as long as my body lasted. One year, Mom and Dad and Carla and I drove downstate for the fair. Elephant ears and lemon shakeups and farm equipment flea markets and the Gravitron. The thing spun and spun before the floor was released and our bodies stuck to the wall. But Dad hadn’t stuck. Or he had at first, then he inched down the rubber wall until his feet hit bottom and stood in the unmoving middle while the rest of us whirled around him.

Oh, Dad, said Carla.

He was standing just outside the entrance.

I didn’t think you’d understand it.

Sure we do, Dad, she said, stepping out to him, touching his shoulder. Dad, how about you come upstairs with us? Get some daylight. We’ll fix you something to eat. She was leading him away by the shoulders, as though the thing were a murder scene.

I don’t want to trouble you, he said. I can fix my own food.

I know, but sometimes it’s nice when someone else does it for you, she replied.

I watched the two of them trudge upstairs. I felt very tired.

WE STRAIGHTENED UPhis magazines, ran a damp rag over the bathroom’s surfaces, and threw away anything iffy in the fridge. Carla made him a grilled cheese while I heated a can of soup. He ate it all dutifully at the kitchen table, telling us both what wonderful chefs we were.

In the car, we waved to Dad’s shape, visible behind the storm window. Carla drove slowly out of town, switching on her headlights on the highway.

We need to do something.

I’m not so sure, I said.

Andie.

Look, he’s happy, he’s eating, he’s alive.

He’s not happy.

He’s alive.

It’s not healthy. Sleeping in that metal box.

Who’s to say really?

We need to do something.

I say we leave well enough alone. Maybe he just wants to disappear a little.

Come on, Andie. I need your help here. She put her hand to her stomach, moving it back and forth.

Why are you doing that?

What?

Rubbing your stomach like that.

It feels good. It comforts me.

She kept her gaze ahead of us. The snow fell in fat globs and disintegrated on the car windows. On the bean and corn fields, it was accumulating into something like winter.

You know, you disappeared, she said. I never saw you. You didn’t take my calls.

I didn’t take anyone’s calls.

I’m not anyone, she said.

She had a point, but it was dumb fighting in a car. Especially an SUV.

How fast are you going? I said. You’re driving like a goddamned grandma.

CARLA DROPPED ME OFFwithout a word outside Jay’s building. I watched her vehicle disappear down the street. Or rather, I watched it until it was too far away to see, which is, I suppose, different from disappearing, but not by much. I preferred the idea of her hurting me more than I had her, but such a thing was nearly impossible to quantify. Before I’d left that afternoon, Jay had taken my hand and, sick with seriousness, said, Let’s talk when you get back. I imagined him choosing one of three acts: suggesting we bind ourselves together until one of us disappeared, banishing me into the cold like a Dickens orphan, or performing a one-man intervention. None was preferable. I walked through the park and into the neighborhood center. My subway line was half-elevated, half-underground. I liked when it emerged; I liked when it went under. I had a little bit of money left. I could live for a while and not talk to anyone. Just ride the train like people do. In the grand scheme of things—even in the minor scheme of things—it wasn’t a big deal. One speck of a person. I thought of Carl Sagan saying, Billions and billions . I thought of Carl Sagan saying, We are made of star stuff . I thought of Carl Sagan wearing a turtleneck, the most reassuring and restricting of all the necks. I wondered about the odds of the entire car dissolving from existence like certain infamous airliners in the ocean. I took the train as far north as it would go, getting off in a border neighborhood that people didn’t always feel safe in. There were alley robbings and assaults and too many men hanging out on the street with bad purpose.