There Is No Year (15 page)
Authors: Blake Butler
They would be happy.
The mother could already taste the sweet indulgence of the low-fat imitation butter and sugar-free jam spread on the one-quarter wedge of a low-fat coupon-bought whole-wheat bagel that had been the mother’s breakfast every morning for seven years. The mother worked her hand in circles of contentment across her belly, as she had while pregnant with the son.
The mother walked through the bedroom past the bed into the hallway and stopped. From the doorway in the hall there the mother could see into the son’s room.
The son spread-eagled on the mattress, his hands clasped against his mouth—his thin arms stretched all taut through his pajamas emblazoned with shapes the mother had thought were Mickey Mouse heads when she bought them, though on closer examination she saw the ways the shape wavered from the popular icon into a thing she could not name—
and yet she let the son use them for sleep
. The son’s torso seemed to have expanded—swollen perhaps, the mother thought first, reeling, with relapse, with new disease—though as she crossed the room she saw how the son had pulled on several layers for protection, as had she that other evening, every sweater that he owned, all ringed and hot and worn and chubby, the outermost sweater showing the son’s name in neon puff-paint like the one the mother often wore, a pair of garments bearing their names, each, which had been given to them both at the same time, some occasion, though the mother could not think of who or what or when.
Around his neck the son had wrapped a scarf. Over his head he had a ski mask. Around his feet he’d wrapped old T-shirts and on his hands he had baseball gloves, one turned the wrong way to fit the thumb. The fabric on the son’s hands and legs was smeared with something runny. The son’s hands clutched a shovel. The son didn’t answer when she shook him. She found dirt nuzzled in his clothes. She stripped him clean layer by layer, like peeling some huge orange. The son was not opening his eyes. The mother said the son’s name—again, again—her voice all flat. The son’s skin was stretched and splotched in spots as it had been most of his sick year—a year now carried in the mother’s flesh memory as a tiny colored lesion, one polka dot.
This child. This child. This child here. The mother inhaled and touched the son. She touched the son again a different way and said the son’s name and touched her forehead. She spread her arms and said the name and held the son and kissed his fingers and tried to sing the song she’d always sung—a song she’d dreamt up when the son was still inside her, a song she used to calm their blood—though now she could not quite hear it—she could not think of all the words.
The son lay in his bed. The mother downstairs, the mother having coaxed the son to waking, having held and wished and prayed above him until the son opened up his eyes.
The son had told the mother about the ants. He said it over and again until finally she’d lifted him up and led him through the house to see how all was well, nothing was there, not a thing, no ants. Not even one. Nor inside him, she said. Never.
Again alone, around the son the air was clear.
Alone the son lay cocked still and looking up, transfixed with something there above him, in his thoughts—
breath burnt like scratched black barns in yards of long grass smudged and smoldered
—
the son crimped and creaming
—
the son as a thing not in the room but of it
—
the son as a field of cells
—
the son
—
the son’s backbone
—
the son’s miles of intestine, fat with grease and shit and knitting
—
The son stopped thinking for a second and when the breath inside him broke he swung, sat up.
The son heard something near him moving. The lights inside the room were on.
The son moved and put his feet down. He turned around and saw behind him where ants were still there coming right in through the wall—through cracks, in hordes of slow procession from the bathroom to the closet where they’d gather in a mass. The son sneezed. He smiled. The ants. He’d said it. His mother did not know.
The son rose up from his chair and crossed the room.
The son moved into the closet with the ants beneath him and stood and looked among his stuff—the leagues of old dolls he’d once collected against his father’s will, with sets of eyes each, the outgrown clothes, the many knives, the clippings of local outbreak he’d collected since his own sick, spread on the air—sick that since had kept a certain air about him, dirt and pickles—as well the snips he’d taken from his hair in private for safekeeping,
as had the father
, stashed in little baggies marked with dates—so much the son had stowed, not knowing.
The ants were not after these things.
The ants were swarming the black package.
They were all around it.
Mashing. Massive.
Clicking eyes.
Click clack
.
The son had had the package in the closet all this time.
The son had stepped over it naked, getting dressed.
The box had seen his dick.
He’d walked around it like something that’d been affixed for ages, something built into the house and in the son’s life—common as a keyhole or an eye.
The ants were all around the box. The son could hardly see. He could hardly remember where it’d come from.
He could not remember.
With the flat skin of his small hands, the son brushed ants’ bodies from the box.
At his touch the ants seemed to die or stiffen or go dumb, sloughing off the box in crippled hordes.
The son lifted the box against his body and carried it back into his room.
In the exact center of the carpet he held the box between his knees.
The box’s outer lining was a silky, stretchy putty that would not quite come off with his nails. The son stretched the stuff in strands of sheeting, slurring his cuticles, stuck deep. It burned.
The son went to the closet, hearing nothing. The son got out exactly the right knife.
There were no markings on the outside of the package except for two small watermarks the son could not see.
Under the black lining was another lining.
Under that lining was a box.
The box was a cloth-wrapped package, blackened, and kind of smashed along the sides. The addressee’s name had been removed. The son split the seam edge on this new box with another certain kind of knife. He opened this new box as well and found inside it yet another. This next box was bubble-wrapped and wound around with tape. This box had a new address that had also been marked out.
When the son shook the package he could hear something in it move.
In the third package was another package.
In the fourth package was another package.
And the fifth, the sixth, the seventh.
What came out of the seventh package seemed too large to have fit inside the others. It was nearly four times the size of even the original black package. It was writ with words, which ants were still swarmed over, crawling up the son’s arms and in his armpits and his teeth.
Across the street, the
enormous box
upon the neighbor’s yard—a mirror image of this seventh box, here—was changing shape.
The son had a tattoo now on his back. The tattoo was of a tree. It discolored the son’s already discolored skin. The tree’s branches spread up his shoulders, up his neck toward his eyes.
As the son unwrapped the center of the seventh box the tattoo sunk into another layer.
The son was made of layers, too.
In the seventh box’s single center—fat and
bloodred
—there was a nodule.
The nodule had a lever.
The son pulled the lever and the center bloomed—bloomed out into a light—a light as large as many rooms—
—& the son could not stop shaking.
He could not stop.
???EGAKCAP EHT EDISNI SAW TAHW
Something wrapped in matte white paper.
Paper had no seam or sealant. Paper tasted clean.
The son scratched the paper with another knife till there was room to use his fingers.
Inside the paper there was another box—
the son was getting tired
—a black box just like the first of all—
exactly the same box.
Inside the box, inside more paper, the son found a photo of himself.
In the photo, the son was older than he was now, but the son could still see that it was he. The son had his mother’s eyes.
The photo was an 8" × 10" headshot printed on photographic paper. The son’s autograph appeared at a slight angle across the gloss. The son’s autograph touched the divot in his image’s Adam’s apple. The son could not tell if his autograph was actual or stamped on. The son traced his autograph with his ring finger. Then he could no longer feel his arm.
The son’s photo was the first of many photos stacked together in a pile.
The son shuffled through the pictures in the pile one after another, placing each thereafter on the bottom of the stack.
In the pile there were photos of
Antonin Artaud,
1
Sharon Tate,
2
Andy Kaufman
3
&
Heather O’Rourke.
4
The son recognized these first four from a film he’d seen somewhere, though he could not remember where or when.
In the pile there were photos of
Chris Farley,
5
Heath Ledger,
6
Krissy Taylor,
7
River Phoenix,
8
Bill Hicks,
9
Cliff Burton,
10
Christa McAuliffe,
11
DJ Screw,
12
Timmy Taylor,
13
Flannery O’Connor,
14
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
15
Wesley Willis,
16
Marc Bolan,
17
Bobby Darin,
18
Charlie Parker,
19
Tupac Shakur,
20
Ol’ Dirty Bastard,
21
Simone Weil,
22
William Burroughs Jr.,
23
Srinivasa Ramanujan,
24
Ian Curtis,
25
Aubrey Beardsley,
26
Bas Jan Ader,
27
Joan of Arc,
28
Kaspar Hauser,
29
Egon Schiele,
30
Bruce Lee,
31
Brandon Lee,
32
Tim Buckley,
33
Jeff Buckley,
34
Malcolm X,
35
Pier Paolo Pasolini,
36
Ann Quin,
37
John Belushi,
38
Jean-Michel Basquiat,
39
Jonathan Brandis,
40
Keith Moon,
41
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
42
&
David Foster Wallace.
43
Photos near the bottom of the pile contained people the son had never heard of. Some were named with names that didn’t even sound like normal human names. Some were dressed in obscure clothing and yet still wore tasteful makeup and a photogenic expression. Some of the photographs appeared to have been ripped or shredded and then taped back together or laminated. The son’s fingers did not leave prints along the gloss.
The son held the pictures looking at them. The son felt his arms make paste.
The son felt nauseated trying to move past certain pictures. Some pictures caused sores to open on the son’s head.