Placed into Abyss (Mise en Abyse) Read online

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  There was supposed to be a cameo somewhere in Birdie’s bedroom, but no one could find it. They’d gone through all the jewelry and keepsakes. All they’d found was her sapphire ring, loose in a cookie tin, along with a bundle of sepia photographs showing people crowded around the hotel that Birdie’s family had owned when she was a child during the Great Depression. Lily and Harold argued over the identities of the people in the pictures, but came to no consensus.

  The cameo was a Civil War heirloom. Birdie had made a point of mentioning it whenever she talked to her children and grandchildren about their eventual inheritance.

  Marian frowned at the empty closet. Could it have accidentally gotten packed with Dad’s suits in the bags for Goodwill?

  Her twin, Lily, whipped toward her with an angry expression. She’d packed those bags. Is that an accusation?

  Marian crossed her arms defensively. I’m not blaming anyone. I’m trying to figure out what happened.

  I’m not stupid.

  I didn’t say you were stupid.

  Why don’t you drive to Goodwill and get the bags back if you’re so sure that’s where it is?

  Marian rolled her eyes extravagantly. She turned to their older brother, Harold. Tell her she’s being crazy.

  Harold opened his mouth, but failed to speak before being interrupted.

  Lily ground her teeth. I’m being crazy?

  I’m sick of both of you. Harold grabbed an armload of Birdie’s shirts from their hangers and slung them on the floor. I’m not missing my flight home on Monday. We need to get this done.

  Chris stood in the corner, pressed against the armoire, wishing he could disappear into the nicotine-stained wallpaper so he wouldn’t have to hear his aunts and uncle arguing. He hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself too small and insignificant to be drawn into the fight.

  The room was drowning in muggy summer heat, only vaguely stirred by the air conditioning. All six of them who had flown out to help pack the house were crammed inside. Chris hated the bedroom’s claustrophobic pressure—the looming, oversized furniture; the weird, weak light that penetrated the dirty glass of the ceiling lamp; the mud-brown curtains into which that light disappeared and mutated into shadow. It felt as though they were falling together into a black hole, time and space deforming around them as Lily, Marian, and Harold circled each other in unstable orbits.

  Chris’s cousins, Pearl and Jim, sat on the edge of the bed, whispering to each other. They’d been smoking pot earlier, squatting in the herb garden and staring through the fence slats at the neighbor’s chickens, idly joking about breaking into the coop to steal dinner. Jim giggled. Pearl made eye contact with Chris and gestured for him to sit beside them on the dusty comforter, but Chris declined with a small headshake.

  It’s ridiculous that we have to do the whole place at once. We should have gotten Birdie to let us pack up Dad’s stuff years ago. Harold threw down another armload. Where are the empty bags?

  We ran out when we packed the last load. When I packed the last load. Lily’s lips pinched together. There might be more in the garage.

  Chris mumbled that he’d go look for them. Harold gestured him toward the door without turning away from his sisters. Chris slid past Pearl and Jim, who ignored him, scrutinizing each other’s faces intensely as they played a hand-slapping game that Chris had never learned.

  There was little light in the hallway apart from the murmur of yellow underneath the master bedroom door. The continuous cough of the air conditioner rattled vintage frames against the walls. In their black-and-white high school portraits, his twin aunts, Lily and Marian, regarded the camera with pouting lips, imitating movie stars. Harold looked disgruntled, unkempt hair falling in his face. Chris’s father, Trapper (who had broken his leg on a ski trip three weeks ago, which was why he hadn’t flown out to Buffalo to help with the house), wore a dreamy look, his head cocked to one side, his gaze aimed diffusely upward. It was always odd, looking at old pictures of his father from the days when he’d been beardless and firm-chinned, when his eyebrows had still grown straight instead of woolly.

  The collages of Birdie’s grandkids were all in color, taken with varying equipment and skill. Some were bleached by too much light, others glaringly oversaturated. Pearl and Jim in a wading pool. Chris crying over a scraped knee after winning a soccer game. Pearl leaning out of a window at a historical park in Boston. Jim showing off a science fair ribbon. All of them smiling awkwardly next to their parents, and their aunts, and their uncles, in endless recombinations of pasted grins.

  Chris blurred his gaze before it passed over the holiday photographs of his grandparents, who had posed together year after year in the same position, distinguished only by hairstyles, clothes, weight, and wrinkles. All he caught was Birdie’s silhouette in the leftmost one, her head tilted as she stared into her husband’s face. Beside her, the gloss of the glass transformed Grover into a burst of empty light. Chris rapidly turned away, his vision stippled with afterimages.

  The hallway was T-shaped, with the left branch leading to the master bedroom, and the right branch to the old children’s bedrooms. As he took a step toward the perpendicular fork that led to the front of the house, a fathomless dread began to itch down his neck.

  Behind him, he heard a knock coming from one of the back bedroom doors. It came from the right. To the left, Chris could still hear his family’s raised voices coming from the master bedroom. There was no one else in the house. The knock was a soft rap, as if testing to see if the person inside the room was awake. It made the door vibrate and the knob ring.

  Chris’s stomach tightened. He felt suddenly as if he were very high up, and the hallway behind him had become a pit. Vertigo swept through him. He fell a few steps backward. The knock repeated, and this time he was close enough to distinguish the rattle of wood against the door frame. He braced himself against the wall, refusing to let himself plunge. The sense of gravity increased, wildly, angrily, before finally subsiding. He stood breathing heavily for a moment as up and down gradually returned to normal.

  He continued through the hallway and emerged into the living room. He surveyed the last pieces of furniture that hadn’t been hauled away. The orange arm chair was broken, its footrest permanently canted at an uneasy angle. On the sofa table, an empty bowl sat next to its twin which held the wrappers from empty Hershey’s kisses.

  There was the sound of a glass being set down, and Chris saw that two fingers of scotch now stood in a rock glass on the table, still mildly sloshing from being moved. The wall clock above chirped as it hit six o’clock, the hour when Birdie had begu
n closing the day with one drink, just one.

  Rose-and-jasmine perfume fogged the air. If I were you, I wouldn’t have children either, said no one. The scotch began sloshing again as if the glass had been raised in a gesture. With your problems, you wouldn’t be doing them any favors.

  Into the following pause, Chris did not murmur yeah so quietly that the sound barely colored his exhale.

  Through an open window, evening breeze came in, smelling of buckwheat and autumn decay. No one gave a sharp cough, and then there were lipstick and fingerprints on the glass, and it was empty except for amber residue. Chris picked it up on his way into the kitchen. Lily and Marian would be furious if they thought someone had been drinking while the work wasn’t done, not knowing Pearl and Jim were surviving on smoking pot and drinking vodka in plastic water bottles.

  At the breakfast table, Chris’s mother was laying out a game of Solitaire. She flipped the cards slickly, skilled from the year she’d spent in Atlantic City before marrying his dad. Don’t just stare at me, no one said. Sit down if you’re going to. Have you eaten breakfast yet?

  The light coming through the window was high and emphatically yellow. Spring was opening the primroses.

  Chris set the glass on the table, then grabbed a cereal bowl from the cabinet and a carton of whole milk from the fridge. On the table sat a box of Lucky Charms, the brand he’d insisted on eating from ages four to ten, and hadn’t touched since.

  He sat across from his mother and shook out the cereal, then poured in the milk. She wasn’t paying him any attention. She’d found a burst of moves and was slapping down her cards.

  Her hair was in the pixie cut she’d worn when Chris was little, until she’d started complaining that she’d gained too much weight in her face. Her hands were smooth, with no arthritis in the knuckles, and she was still wearing the modest wedding ring she’d returned to his dad after the divorce.

  Where’s Dad? Chris didn’t ask in a piping voice.

  No one replied, On the roof, checking to see if he can fix it himself or if we need to call someone.

  I saw him crying this morning. The spoon was too big in Chris’s tiny, chubby fingers. He dug it into the cereal like a shovel, and forgot to chew with his mouth closed.

  Mmhm. His mother’s expression was tight. She stared fixedly at the cards.

  Chris didn’t ask, Why do we still come here?

  Your grandparents need help.

  So what?

  His mother’s hand paused, hovering over the deck. She lifted her eyes, gently but firmly, to his. Your father wants to.

  Sudden anger surged through him, and he couldn’t choke it back. So what! I don’t want to!

  Chris’s throat tightened and he burst into tears. Snot ran disgustingly down his face. He banged his fists on the table, and the milk jostled, splashing out of the bowl. The Lucky Charms got soggy as he punched and sobbed, and then they were gone, and the spilled milk had disappeared, and so had the cereal box.

  He put away the carton, which hadn’t disappeared, and put the bowl and glass in the dishwasher. Someone, probably Pearl, had left a pile of the good dishes in the sink, the ones that had to be washed by hand. There was no reason to do that except to aggravate everyone else; Pearl was like that when she got stressed out. He squirted dish soap onto a sponge.

  The cupboard beside him swung open, the half-empty scotch bottle sitting alone on a low shelf. You shouldn’t feel bad that you can’t find a girlfriend, no one said. You’re just hard to like.

  Chris continued scrubbing, but his hands had gone wrong again. They were the same size as they normally were, but his fingers were thin and knobbly, not yet fleshed out by adulthood. Hail rattled against the window. The plate fell and smashed.

  You remind me of my sister’s kid, no one continued. There was a small sigh of reminiscence. God, that boy was annoying.

  The cabinet slammed shut, and there were departing footsteps, and a lingering clot of rose perfume. A voice came from the breakfast table behind him. Don’t let it get to you. Just ignore her. Chris looked back, but his mother was no longer sitting there playing Solitaire; the table was empty, surrounded by lifeless chairs.

  With hands that were adult again, he cleaned up the broken pieces of the plate and threw them away. He left the other plates in the sink where someone less stupid could finish them. Marian would probably yell at him about it. She yelled a lot when things were going wrong.

  Chris passed through the kitchen into the garage. His shoulders slumped as he looked at the unsorted boxes piled next to his grandparents’ old car. There was so much left to do.

  He took the box of trash bags off of the shelves that held the cleaning supplies and tools. The box was empty. He peered into it, then put it back on the shelf. Someone would have to get more—perhaps he could—but even as the thought formed, a nauseous feeling told him it would be impossible. In his skin, he could feel the pull of the house. It had him trapped. It wouldn’t let him go.

  The engine of the old Camaro revved, and Chris felt sick again, unsurprised by the sensation of hands shoving him toward the car. Birdie’s perfume clouded around him as his body hit the door. He was the same height as the rearview mirror, and it clipped his ear.

  He screamed and threw himself on the ground. His elbows smacked painfully against the cement, and he remembered the bruises he was about to get from hurling himself around, which had bloomed black and lasted until Valentine’s Day.

  He didn’t say, I don’t want to go I don’t want to go I don’t want to go I don’t want to go.

  He looked up at the distorted, tree-like limbs of his father and grandmother. His father’s face was clenched and pink. He hated how his son still raged like a toddler.

  Christopher! Knock it off! No voice paused. No voice continued. I’m sorry he’s making a scene. I don’t know why he’s upset. He likes the library.

  You can’t spoil children. You kids would never have done this when you were young.

  Things are different these days.

  That’s what they say.

  A man’s hand dragged Chris upward by the shoulder. The car door groaned as his father pulled it open. Apologize to your grandfather.

  Blinding light poured out of the car. Its searing color overloaded Chris’s vision, seeming to smolder with blue and then white and then purple as his eyes struggled to make sense of brightness beyond their ability to see. It was like staring into the sun—but a wrong sun, a sun he should never have encountered.

  The hand prodded Chris. Apologize.

  I’m so— I’m sorr— I’m—

  Angry tears burned his throat, choking him with shame and fury and impotence. He couldn’t do anything, he could never do anything, it didn’t matter what he tried, he was a stupid kid and they’d ignore him. He sagged, and the tears stopped, leaving him with a sore throat and the feeling that everything in him had been hollowed out. He was disgusting. He should find a way to be someone else. But he’d tried before, and no matter how hard he tried to hammer himself down, the badness leaked out.

  I’m sorry, Grandpa.

  No voice splintered within the blaze. Get in the car.

  Bile rose in Chris’s throat. His head swam. He wretched as his stomach convulsed. He fell forward, catching himself with his hands. His fingers dug into the cracked faux-leather seat, plunging into the spongy stuffing within.

  The light disappeared. Slowly, Chris’s stomach settled, though his tongue still felt bloated in his sour mouth. The garage was quiet again, and he was the right height, so he pulled himself straight. The old car was empty except for plastic and fake leather. He closed the door.

  As he went back into the house, he heard crying from the sitting room, and drifted toward it, hoping it wasn’t Harold or Lily or Marian wanting him to take sides.

  Instead, it was his cousin Jim, red-eyed and clearly drunk from the vodka he’d been passing back and forth with his sister while they were supposed to be packing. He whimpered miserably, and his wh
ole body was a pathetic whine, his shoulders hunched and his eyes welling. His face was slick with sweat from the summer heat. I hate being here.

  Chris looked away. Jim had made him uncomfortable ever since the suicide attempt. He was the fragile one, and Pearl was the angry one, and Chris had an easier time with her because she never wanted anything from him.

  How can you stand it? Jim’s eyes were pleading.

  The air conditioning stuttered. Chris raised his shoulders in a tiny fraction of a shrug.

  Jim chewed his bottom lip. He swayed unsteadily. Tears overflowed his bloodshot eyes, but his glazed look remained blank. Chris could remember when everyone had expected Jim to be the bright star of the family. He’d been the smart one, the one who was going to Georgetown and headed to law school, but that had been a long time ago. He worked a variety of service jobs now, which he couldn’t keep for more than a few months. He was late and absent and unreliable, but good at everything and nice to everyone, so he’d kept getting new chances, so far.

  Humans are time travelers. Jim’s gaze wandered over Chris’s face.

  Chris shifted uncomfortably. He hated it when people stared at him. It made him feel stupid.

  We can’t stay in one timeline, people like us. People with trauma. All the bad things tunnel through. They tunnel through to each other. Do you know what I mean? A ragged breath caught him, forcing another sob. I’m so sick of traveling in time.

  Chris coughed. Maybe you should lie down on the couch.

  The couch? Jim’s eyes widened as if this were a new and startling idea.

  Chris helped guide him to the threadbare sofa. It creaked as Jim lowered himself. Its flat cushions had once been overstuffed, but now, deflated, they clung to the hard, wooden frame. Jim murmured sleepily as he shifted into a fetal position, clinging to his knees and curling his head toward his chest.

  When Chris looked up, he saw Pearl standing on the coffee table, ten years old and rickety with her t-shirt on backwards and a tangled nest of hair. She smacked her fist into the opposite palm and snarled.