lets-develop-stuff

[lets-develop-stuff]

The Hole

Moments ago, there were screaming lights, pens scratching on rough paper, photographers sauntering, and the snapping of latex gloves that doubled as a sickening air-freshener. The white dust was dancing around the room but now it’s dead. The room is motionless except for my hands, which can’t even stay still long enough to hold my glass of water. The silence is broken when she walks in. Her keys rattling in the lock for a second sounds so familiar but I don’t get up to let her in, nothing else will be the same anymore. “Hi, honey,” she chirps as she drops her keys on the side table, “how was your day?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before I hear the click of her heals on our newly tiled kitchen floor. God, she begged for that renovation, said they were easier to clean and what not, and with the baby she didn’t want any dirty accidents. I stay seated and say nothing. She can’t even sense my worry. . I’m going to have to do a lot of talking pretty soon and there just isn’t anyway to lead up to it. 

Click, click, click. I hear her head towards the stairs, the banister creeks just a little in a way I’ve never noticed before. “I picked up some chicken for dinner, I was thinking we could get rid of those peas, you know?” 

Click, click, click. “Hey did you manage to call Cheryl back? You can make up any excuse; I just know that if I talk to her we’ll all end up going. I mean, we have a six- month-old for Christ’s sake, what does she think we can bring him to a five-star restaurant and expect him to stay quiet?” She chuckles. 

Click, click, click. “Uh, honey, where’s Ethan? Did you wake him up early again? You know that means he’s off his sleeping schedule.” She makes her way down the stairs and stops in the doorway. 

“He’s not here anymore, Cathryn.” 

“What do you mean, Cal? Where is he?” 

“Cal, you’re going to bring me to tears, where is he?”

“Cal?” 

“Where did they take him?” she whispered. 

“What?” I reply, slightly taken aback. 

“Oh god, Cal! I should have checked! I thought I heard something last night, remember? Call the damn police!” 

“Honey, there’s nothing they can do. It’s just us now.” I’ve already signed all the dotted lines. They took my statement, and told me they’d contact Cathryn at a later time. He told me not to worry, that accidents happen and it looked like a pretty open-close case. 

“You can’t make this a personal job, ya know? It’d drive you crazy. Speaking of personal, with cases like these we don’t offer any statements or anything, okay?” 

I nodded.  

“We try to protect your privacy and all, the only people we speak to are you and your wife, sir, so I strongly suggest you keep this hush hush or one of you’s gonna break down.” He made it sound simple and it was almost comforting. Almost. 

“Fuckin’ right it’s just us! Come on, Cal, we’re leaving NOW.” 

She doesn’t understand, I think, it just gets harder. I reach out for her hand but she swings aside and I catch her arm instead. She looks back at me. Her eyes still glossy, her cheeks flushed and little beads of sweat are dancing in her hairline. She feels weak in my hand, as if I squeezed any harder she just might break. I pause for a moment. I need to tell her she’s wrong. I need to tell her he’s gone. Our baby, Ethan, can’t be found. I need to tell her there was no sound last night, not even the breath from our bundle of joy, but I can’t. “I’m getting you a coat, Cathryn, I’ll meet you outside.” 

The next morning I lay in bed awake, like I had all night. I felt like a performer, stripped of his passion. I’m still breathing, but it’s all a show, I’m not really alive. Not on the inside. There are always complaints about their efficiency but I’m sure the police have called Cathryn by now. I shut my eyes for a second. Brace yourself, I think. The door slammed shut: she’s back. 

“Still nothing,” she unraveled her scarf and tossed it on the bed, “I searched the street, there’s no tire tracks on our driveway either.” 

She slumped down beside me. I blinked twice. Jesus, they are slow. “Get some rest, Cathryn.” 

“I can’t just rest when he’s not here, Cal!” 

“Well your exhausted self won’t find shit. I’ll look for a while,” I turned to see her already asleep. I don’t go looking of course, I know exactly where he is. I should really leave the house anyway but I’m too tired. I thought waiting would give me time to find the words but now I’m even weaker than before, I still can’t tell her. I haul myself out of bed and wobble all the way down the stairs. I made it to the living room. I clicked on the morning news. I felt my eyelids get heavy and I stopped listening. It was hours before my gaze left that screen but I can’t for the life of me remember anything that was said. 

That night I got Cathryn’s coat and we searched the closest park, the next: a further one, after that every night was the same. I would get Cathryn’s coat and drive around the city until she asked me to pull over. We’d carry flashlights down alleys and spend the next day with black bags under our eyes. When it was my shift to look I’d wait to hear the deep inhale of Cathryn’s sleep driven breathing. Then I’d open the door she never did and sit in the rocking chair next to Ethan’s russet crib. Back and forth, I’d rock, back and forth. It was days before I did anything else in there, but I needed more. Being in there just wasn’t quite satisfying anymore, so I went into his crib and unfolded his soft blue blanket right into my nose. The very second those indulgent fibres hit my skin sweet baby smell rushed into my lungs and filled my entire body. I breathed deeper and deeper until I hit the climax of bliss. I exhale every last bit of breath I have to make room for the only thing I have to feel but the blanket unravels in my hand and I hear the innocent tinkle of ordnance hit the floor. Bliss flees my body faster than it rushed in. I kneel down and pinch a diamond between my finger and thumb; it’s sharp edges indenting my skin. This was half of a pair of simple delicate earrings that I bought my wife when we found out she was expecting. They were the pair she wore just a few weeks ago when her parents took us out for dinner to celebrate her birthday. They were the pair she wore when she kissed baby Ethan goodnight that evening. They were the pair she forgot to think about that night when one went missing. It was that earring that soothed Ethan to sleep as he clenched it in his tiny fist, and it was that earring that ended up blocking his airway until they removed it from his esophagus. This is the earring I’ve been worried Cathryn would go looking for, only to realize the truth. I held my breath to stop the vomit from making its way out. I trooped to the front door, yanked on my jacket, slipped the breathtaking diamond into my pocket and walked down our quiet street, until I hit the noise of the city. 

“Cathryn, Sweetie, wake up,” my hand brushes a mass of her frail hair from her face to the pillow, “I need to talk to you, Cathryn.” 

“What, Cal?”  

“I think I found something, let me get your coat.” 

It was during my shift one morning that I asked a pimply teenage boy wearing an oversized customer service shirt outside a gas station if he’d seen any suspicious activity in the area. I gave him a quick description of Ethan. My speech came out clear and fluidly. I’d delivered it to almost everyone in the area and my confidence usually warranted dedicated attention. But this kid, he just looked at me and pulled out a cigarette. 

“I’m on my break, man.” 

“This isn’t exactly a transaction, kid. My son is missing.” Just a glance and the flick of his lighter. 

“How old are you?” I asked.
He inhaled.
“Don’t you know how bad smoking is for you? Why even start habits like that?” 

He ignored me. Some people live in denial. Everyone chooses what they want to believe in. 

“There was a guy, a little while back. Looked kind of... I dunno, sketchy,” he mumbled. After hours of following a loose description, Cathryn and I stopped to regroup. 

“How do you even know he’s not just being an irritating little teenager getting a kick out of us for following his bullshit lead, Cal? This is ridiculous, we’ve been looking for hours.” 

“You’re giving up?” 

“Shouldn’t we? It’s been almost a year, Cal. We wouldn’t even recognize him if we did find him.” 

“You can give up, Cathryn, not me,” I spat, “he’s out there. I know you can feel it, and giving up is not the parent I ever wanted to be.” I turned my back and waited for Cathryn to follow but I heard her start the car instead. She’s going home. At some point she’d lost her will to find our son. One day she was wildly convinced we would find him and the next she was angry, or hurt, or tired, or whatever. Now she was idling in the car, waiting for me to jump in beside her as if she already knew I would, like I was playing some sick game and she already knew my next move. Even the wind was cold against my face, making it hard to walk forward and leaving my skin red as if just smacked. For a moment I thought of doing just that, whirling around to climb into the passenger seat, turning my back against the biting wind. I tightened my jacket closer to my neck and pushed my hands deep into my pockets. I felt a sharp edge, the curve of a cut diamond. My chest stiffened. My fingers dropped the earring back into its place, but my eyes caught a glimpse of shine as it fell to my feet. I shoved my hand deeper into my pocket, and my pinky finger slid right through the bottom seam. There’s a hole in my pocket. I looked back at Cathryn, still idling with the window drawn looking exhausted.

 “Cathryn, I’m just not ready to stop looking.” 

She exhaled, and her fists tightened on the wheel. She turned and looked at me like a mother about to tell her child that no matter how many times he asks, he’s not getting that toy. Instead her gaze shifted to my feet. Shit, the earring. I stepped on it in hopes that she couldn’t remember, but of course she would. Brace yourself. She winced and one by one she released her fingers from her grip on the wheel. 

“You’re right, Cal. We’re here for each other and it’s just us now.”
“We have a better chance of finding him together. But I need a new coat.”

[lets-develop-stuff]

Foreign Place

I wonder away. That’s what my Dad calls it. “Get your head out of the clouds, bud,” he says, “how are you going to make any money with your face stuck to that pole all the time? You sure as hell know I won’t be a free lodge for you when you graduate.” “Stop calling it a pole, Dad.” “Telescope, whatever. It’s not even as useful as a pole. I was being generous.”

Source 

This is the extent of our bonding. We never played catch or went to hockey games, but he did buy me a telescope for my eleventh birthday and he considers it one of his biggest mistakes. There’s really nothing stereotypical about my life and my relationship with my Dad doesn’t break that ground. I first got my hands on an astronomy book when I was just a toddler. My dad used to flip through the pictures with me before bed. He didn’t like reading stories, and pictures of stars and planets were interesting for him too. I knew the name of all the planets, their relative sizes, and their distance from Earth before I was six. When I started going to school I chose space missions to write my book reports on. “You’re well versed, Mr. Benet. That’s an impressive report. You must want to be an astronaut one day, is that right?” asked Mr. Edwards, my fifth grade teacher, who really wasn’t interested in my answer. It was, however, the first time I’d really thought about it and realized that Earth is not the only place for people. My dad was just as engrossed as Mr. Edwards was when I told him later that same day. “That’s great, bud,” was all he said on the matter, “there’s dinner in the microwave.” The next year he got me my first telescope. It was birthday gift he’d bought last minute when I’d accidentally found the new bike he’d gotten me and crinkled my nose. That’s when I really started to notice a difference. I saw a T.V. special on climate change and global warming. They kept saying things like “killing the environment”, but what is Earth if not for our environment?

Source

Source

 The other kids at school were so focused on the here. They got excited about architecture and law school. They were investing time into a progressively dying planet and I felt like I was floating above them, like I could see a picture that they wouldn’t acknowledge, and the only thing that brought me comfort was knowing about the world beyond ours. The world we would call our new home one-day. After years of observation, I felt like I was already one of its inhabitants. So I wonder away. And I’ve been wondering all the way to senior year.

Source 

“I saw Greg’s Dad this afternoon. He said Greg already got his acceptance letter. Are you sure you haven’t heard yet?” my dad grumbles at dinner. “I’m sure.” “Maybe you should call the admissions office?” “That won’t do anything, Dad” “Can’t hurt. You’ll call after dinner.” “I can’t.” “Why’s that?” he chuckles. “I didn’t apply. They won’t know what I’m talking about.” He stops eating. His fingers lock around his fork, “Dad, it’s not even worth it. We won’t be here in the next thirty years anyway.” Saying nothing, he pulls his plate to the edge of the table. Eyeing me, he picks it up. “This table is your world, and this plate is you. It will fall if the table does not support it. Just like you’ll fall if you play by the rules of some hokey mars law. You’ll end up a homeless conspiracy theorist. You’re smarter than that.” “Poetic, Dad. You just don’t get it” “No, it’s you who can’t seem to get your own feet on the ground. This is my home, and it can be your home too, but you have to help out. Carry your own weight. I won’t take responsibility for a dead-beat kid because he’s too lazy to put in a little work. You’ll start paying rent after your graduation next month, or else you’re on your own. Understood?”

He’s always telling me I’ll grow out of it. But I won’t, and really, everyone else should feel the same way. I have trouble collapsing my telescope, and the zipper of my suitcase is strained around its metal frame. I leave my schoolbooks stacked in the middle of my bedroom. I don’t have time for tradition or papered certificates. I don’t have the same values as my father. I don’t have the same view as my classmates. I take the night to prepare to leave. I don’t belong here. Neither do you.

[lets-develop-stuff]

The Rorschach Sweater

https://giphy.com/gifs/hospital-prisoners-gyllenhaal-i7D91bc25gxig

Gif creator: David Goertsen. Prisoners (2013)

[lets-develop-stuff]

CRWR Draft

Not only am I in grade school, but I’m waiting to use the public telephone to call my mom. There’s something nostalgic about being young and recalling a memory, but its amplified by the naive bliss of being almost technology free.