The son had the TV up as loud as it would go. He’d hoisted the glowbox off the stand into his lap. He’d wedged himself between the wall and sofa. From most major angles a person passing would not see him in the room. When the screen went black between certain scenes or before commercials, the son could see his head reflected with a warp.
The son had spent all morning brushing his teeth and gums and tongue and still couldn’t get this certain taste out of his mouth. There were matted knots in the son’s hair the size of horse apples, though usually the son’s hair was beautiful and straight.
The TV had a name but no one ever called it by it.
The son kept pressing the volume up button though he already knew it was as loud as it could be. He’d tuned into a certain movie on a certain channel that for some reason came in clear. On the screen, there was a woman, pictured only from the back. She wore a dress, tight and red like the fabric on the sofa. The dress was slightly translucent in a way that caused the son to feel aroused. The son did not understand arousal. The woman was walking down a hall. Her strange shoes clacked on the tile so loud around the woman and the son that he could feel it in his chest. The hall’s walls were long and dark and smooth. The woman did not pass any windows, any people, hangings, doors. The skin of the woman’s legs was bruised.
The son stayed in the TV room for three days, days counted unnamed. He felt air or fabric move around him, but he did not get up to see who or what was there. The son could not get up. All that happened was he watched the woman walk down halls. The TV movie did not break for commercials. The son had to think to even breathe. The son knew he wanted a roast beef sandwich but could not bring himself to get up and go make it — his stomach speaking words — writing words along his flesh inside him — ageless, lightless. The son could feel the TV’s weight and heat burning deep and deeper through, warping layers, peeling skin. No one came looking for the son.
Over several hours the son managed to slip his fist around the TV’s extension cord. With concerted effort and metronomic breathing over several further hours, he used his will to tug the cord out of the wall, the tendon of his arm meat seething with the heat of the cord curled up around him and the electric flood sent there inside it through miles of wires through the outlet to the screen, which when pulled as prongs out of the two holes made no stutter — the woman went on walking in the long light. In the light along the woman’s dress the son could read small embroidered script of words he’d said or would say later, stitching down her, near her skin. The woman was getting older. Her hair molted from blond to gray to black. It grew in inches parallel to her encased backbone, thousands of elevators, strands in packs. There was a wet spot between her shoulders, leaking.
At some point, in some hallway, the woman passed a door. She didn’t pause or stutter in her walking. She didn’t stop to try this passage in this unending hall after all these hours. Just as quick, the door was gone. The son had seen the door. The door was white with a white knob and had a number. The son could not think which one, though he could see it. The woman’s new long bone-white hair dragged behind her on the hall tile.
THE SON’S FINGERNAIL
Looking closely at the son’s nail — the ring finger on his right hand usually, though sometimes the left, and sometimes on a toe or chewed to slivers in his stomach — one could distinguish a certain shape that in certain kinds of light became another hallway or a wall.
Other times one could see the son himself there embedded with his face cracked down the middle on the run of weird cell-matter the son’s disease had cut into the nail—the gloss of certain weeks the son had spent upside-down or in a prism — the rings the son would one day wear — the blip — the years uncoming, the windows sloshed with sun.
Other times there was absolutely nothing and you’d be a fool to think in wonder.
Look again.
POWER EXIT
The father lay on the bed. He lay beside the sleeping mother. Into his mouth he’d stuffed ten cigarettes. He gripped their gather like a bat. He inhaled through his mouth and out his nostrils. Filled with smoke, he fainted briefly—a second smoke inside him—and woke up. The house’s power had gone out. There was no light from in or outside. The moon had moved behind something or another, or someone had blocked it, or it was no longer even there. The father’s pupils began expanding.
In the bed the wife sat up. She asked what happened to the light. The father asked what did she care, she was sleeping. The mother said the light had gone off inside her sleeping also. She said she’d been talking to someone in there and they were looking at one another and happy and things were good and then the light went off and she could not find this person no matter how loud she called into the dark. The father said, How nice.
Through the air vent to the downstairs they could hear the son’s voice, shouting, though neither said anything about it. The father inhaled his cigarettes and blew more into the cloud over the bed. The father didn’t say anything further about the mother’s sleeping or the light or what else they should do. The mother breathed the smoke without complaining. She didn’t ask when he’d started smoking. She moved to get up out of the bed and the light in the house came on and she was naked.
The father had not seen the mother’s body in a decade. He found her appealing still, despite her marks. The mother had been through long cycles of weight loss and gain. Some months the mother would eat as if there were someone else inside her. Some months she couldn’t hold a glass of water. The mother’s breasts were huge and white. The father felt his body stirring. The father raised his pelvis off the bed.
The son wasn’t yelling anymore. The mother said something about the room seeming much smaller. The mother got back in the bed and covered up. She turned her back toward the father. Her back was ridged and knobby and had pockmarks all around it which when connected made a number. The father did not try to touch — he knew better — but still he kept his body flexed. He kept himself suspended as much as possible off the mattress and soon his muscles stretched with ache. It was a game. The sweat sluiced off his back onto the bed sheets. He was grunting. The smoke encombed his head. He could breathe still without coughing.
The lights went off again. The mother sat up. The lights went on and off and on in quick succession. Outside, they heard the sound of metal against metal. The mother went to the window to look down. She stayed at the window for some time, her breath all foggy. She didn’t say anything about what was there. The father noticed now she had a scratch mark down the center of her chest.
In the hallway, the father heard the son talking in a strong, high voice. Then the son was laughing. He had a very peculiar laugh. The mother turned away from the window and went to stand facing the wall.
On the other side of the wall, though the mother could not see him, the son came into the adjacent room and stood. The mother and the son became parallel to one another, a wall between them. The mother moved her legs a certain way. The son moved his legs in mirror, spreading. There they held an endless posing pause — a wet erupting from the son’s mouth, then the mother’s, twin rivers glinting of a light.
Behind, the father watched the ashes fall off on his tired stretch-marked belly. He lit another pack. The lights went off and on and off and on. Their power bill would be enormous.
RELAX
Over many weeks, once they had settled, their copies nowhere, the house fell into feeling, often, fine. The house had an oven, stairs, some ceilings. The family began to loosen. They put their things where they belonged in this new system. They unwrapped the crap they used the most first, then on to baubles. They changed the grade of light in certain rooms. They hung up pictures of things they wanted to remember or identified with or just liked to look at while passing in the hall. The family tried to make the house their home.