Бен Маркус - Notes from the Fog - Stories

“Where did you hear that?”

“From our dad. He called them hitters. He said we were only babies and they tried to bounce us like basketballs. One of them kicked me in the face.”

“By mistake,” the little one added. “That’s what Mom said.”

I held the elder boy’s face in my hands and studied it closely. What a soft and sweet and smooth little face. I squinted. I pretended to think. “Yes, hm,” I said. “I believe I do still see a footprint.”

He pulled away from me, giggling. “Liar!” he shrieked.

The little one wanted to look. “I want to see the footprint!” he shouted.

I thought back to the few times all of us had been together—morose, drunken, silent, family time, with the exception of Drew’s explosive, alienating cheer, while the kids had squirted off to god knows where. All of this was possible, but if someone was truly kicked in the face, even a young boy, I’d like to think my daughter was provoked.

“Well, listen,” I said to the boys. “If they had tried to beat you up I’m sure they would have succeeded, because they were bigger than you, and stronger than you. Still are. So no funny stuff. Have you ever heard of a teenager? Have you ever seen one? I’m not sure if they have them around here.” I looked up and down the street. I pretended to be afraid.

“You’re weird.”

“I’m your aunt. That’s how it is.”

“Girls are smarter and faster and better at everything than boys,” said the littler one.

“Oh? Who told you that.”

“Our mom.”

“Oh, yeah. Your mom. I really miss her a bunch. In fifth grade she wore a cape all year, and she wouldn’t answer to her real name.”

“But boys aren’t bad, are they?” the eldest asked me.

“Oh, sweetie, no, they’re not. Not even close. And you know what your mom meant when she said that, right?”

No, they didn’t, neither of them. The looked up at me, waiting.

“That the two of you,” I said, poking each of them gently in the chest, “in your own ways, are going to be special and great and fantastic at brand-new things, things no one has even heard of yet.”

When their bus came the little one hugged me and the big one ran off without saying goodbye.

When I got backto the house, Drew had already left for work. On the table was a neat stack of cash. I counted it. Two hundred dollars exactly. I left it there.

It took me a little while before I felt like I could masturbate in that house, but soon I had a good system set up, and I grew more comfortable with my visit. If you’re staying somewhere over an extended period of time, and you cannot masturbate, not ever, then you start to plot your exit. It’s just untenable after a while. I have no trouble in hotel rooms, what few I’ve stayed in, but somehow it’s different in a home other than your own. It feels more obviously complicated, although I’m not sure why. We take shits in other people’s homes. That’s arguably far worse than touching oneself delicately in the shower. I’d taken a shit right under Drew’s nose the other day. We were making dinner, and suddenly I had to go, and I was gone for a while—ten minutes, maybe, more. I read several op-eds on my phone while sitting on the toilet. I definitely wasn’t peeing that whole time. He knew for a fact that I’d taken a shit, or tried to, and I’m sure he didn’t care. I guess I don’t know for sure. But still, I’d been nervous about masturbation, even though it was part of my routine at home, and that had made me less inclined to do it. I can’t succeed at it when I’m afraid or tense. But then I decided that if Drew wasn’t home, and the boys were at school, with hours before anyone was expected to return, I could add this to my schedule, in between sorting and storing my sister’s clothing, jewelry, and papers.

There was very little left to do with respect to Sarah. I organized her clothing according to type, then packed each group separately—sweaters, pants, socks. I boxed up her jewelry, leaving a few favorite pieces out for Drew, which he said he would keep in a dish on his dresser. I wasn’t sure if Drew had a special dish in mind, so I just dumped the jewelry there, a tangle of metal and colored stones. Drew also wondered if Sarah’s coats could be given away, and I took care of this, driving them down to a clothing donation center. I went through Sarah’s computer and dragged her files to a folder Drew had set up in the cloud. It was called “Sarah.” Would anyone ever open this folder? Would the boys grow up and one day decide to look through it, and would there even be computers by then? Instead of carefully going through her papers and everything else she filled her drawers with, I put most of it in boxes and tried to label things as accurately as I could. Holiday Cards. Pictures. Letters. There were fabric swatches and catalogs stuffed with yellow Post-its. Big plans. These went into a box called “Ideas.” But soon her things were boxed away and that was that. I’d cruise through the house looking for objects that were explicitly hers, and eventually I found none. I’m not the first person to observe how little evidence people leave behind when they die. Or, I don’t know, maybe I am. Sarah was just a few boxes, and the boxes were moved out of sight.

My husband called,wanting to know what was up. When was I coming home? The girls missed me, he said, which was poorly encrypted code, and he should have known better. He didn’t say “we” miss you. And by saying the girls missed me—since they were not exactly capable of believing that either of their parents were fully human—he meant that the technical side of their upkeep, which mostly meant the coordination of schedules with the intolerable parents of their friends, people he often refused to even name, suffered during my absence. I was needed to receive and relay signals, mostly, to rehearse concern with other parents over the frequently uncertain whereabouts of our children, who would soon be gone. A metal tower might have served the same function, and it wouldn’t need to eat. What was true was that I sort of missed the girls, but if I was home their doors would be closed, and I wouldn’t even be knocking. I’d stopped trying. I could miss them here, or I could miss them there. I wasn’t sure it mattered.

I asked my husband about homework and bedtimes and food and screen time, in relation to our fiercely willful children, and he gave short, empty answers, assuming each question was a veiled accusation, designed to expose his inattention, which perhaps it was. I loved and trusted him, which turned out to mean that sometimes I also did not.

“So is Drew just a mess?” my husband asked. “Is he a disaster?”

“You know, he’s okay. He’s either in shock and holding it all in, or this is the extent of his reaction. I don’t know him that well. It’s sort of hard to say.”

“I can’t imagine,” he said, which is often what we say when we obsessively imagine something all the time.

“The boys seem okay,” I said, and he said, “Oh right, the boys. Holy crap. I forgot about them. The boys. Jesus. Are they just? Are they just so?” And he wasn’t really able to finish the sentence. A silence bloomed on the phone. The boys. They were and they weren’t, I thought. That’s how I would answer that question. They were just the boys and that was all.

At dinner that nightDrew explained that there would be a sum of money from the hospital. Accidental death, is what they called it. No one wanted a lawsuit, Drew told me—which I’m sure wasn’t true. I’m sure there were lawyers living in the walls who pined with their pants down for any lawsuit, anywhere, ever. How much money would it take, the hospital apparently asked Drew. How much do you have, he answered. They named a number and he named a number, and those two numbers entered the sunless, dank bodies of a team of lawyers. Out came the shiny, fresh-smelling settlement, more than enough to keep the two young boys in bright new helmets long into their dotage. Mouth guards, helmets, visors, Doritos, and game consoles: a full, rich, satisfying life on this planet.