went, across the fading miles, it seemed as if Death sat alongside her and the medical technicians. As Alex sat there, inches away, he seemed to be drifting further and further inward. Michael was driving in to meet them from work as the ambulance galloped across both the countryside and the developments. Lauren was in shock, and still no tears came to her eyes, but her heart was fit to burst. For the rest of her life, the stretch marks on her soul from the weight of such a day have remained.
A stroke. More specifically, a subdural hematoma.
The corner of the block had punctured a vessel in Alex’s brain. The blood had hungrily escaped the vein, the pressure from the fluid internally squeezing the child’s precious mind. Death cackled as fate flooded the situation in red waves: Lauren had been on the phone with the sender of the blocks; Alex’s vitality was killing him slowly. After the procedure, during which surgeons removed a portion of Alex’s skull, drained the blood, and repaired the vessel, saving his life, Lauren and Michael were informed: if another hour had passed without intervention, Alex would have died.
Michael only saw his son post-operation. Alex’s head had been bandaged, his breathing adjusted with machinery. If he made it through a couple days, he could come home, good as new, except with a scar on his head as a reminder, a roadmap for the next 13 years of his life. Michael never forgot standing in the hospital room, the lights slanted, illuminating a tragedy which grazed a family.
Michael, his striking blue eyes looking down upon his son, had whispered a promise:
“As long as you’re alive, I’m going to take care of you.”
In that moment, an infant of 11 months made a man of a 35-year-old child.
Alex watches the flat screen television as his grandparents pull into the driveway, the sun blinking off the polished crimson of their car’s hood.
3
Michael McGregor stands on the wooden deck looking out over his front lawn, leaning against the railing, the sun beating on his head. A lit cigarette is sandwiched between his right index finger and middle finger. The smoke drifts up over his head and trails off into the sky to go and choke some member of the avian population. Michael has been smoking since the age of nine, meaning it will be 38 years come September. Michael brushes his teeth exceptionally hard, but they still yellow. He’s smoked a lot recently. He smells the lovely, fresh air of the day as he takes another drag.
He stands atop everything he’s ever desired. He’s cast in the shadow of a house, a Palace with 13 rooms. He has a wife for whom his love is boundless, and a son who he will die to raise. The three possess loving family on all sides. They take vacations together. Gossip about the family stands nonexistent in the local community, and in all the pictures, everyone always smiles.
Michael does not consider the depth of his happiness. Not today. It’s already been a week since Lauren moved back in. Thus, the beauty of his foundation shines once more, like how the cigarette casts a little light as Michael lifts it to his mouth.
Lauren. He recalls the first time they met. The two had worked in the marketing section of a small business. It had been raining. She had been walking, and Michael had offered her a ride. She’d politely declined. The following day, it rained again, and Lauren had decided to trust him. The two married a year later. The world behind Lauren’s eyes had become Michael’s, and their planets collided. The two bought the house together, and their child came five years later. Lauren nearly died from preeclampsia. God decided it would be the three of them and the dog, Roxy, the Corgi who is nestled against Alex’s legs. One Big Happy Family, Version 2000, batteries included, white picket fence sold separately.
Lauren and Michael don’t talk like that anymore. Her eyes, once misty, are muddled and tepid. Once people live together long enough, they learn how to talk without speaking. After bringing Alex home on that day long ago, no oration had been needed. After Michael’s sister, Eve, had moved to California and cut ties with her family, no eulogy was delivered. Nothing has been said between Michael and Eve for seven years.
After Lauren’s brother Jim committed suicide by locking himself in a garage and passing out inside his Cadillac Escalade, a whole lot had been said, but none of it made any noise.
Even if the owner keeps the packaging, nobody can guarantee, once the family set is broken, that there are instructions for placing it back together.
Jim had been a man of small sayings. He did not act in the weakness of words. Lauren has become less of herself and more like Jim since August 17, 2004. No amount of money Michael makes can fill the holes in her soul. Michael does a lot to hold their Palace up; he’s Coopersburg’s version of Atlas. Using emergency money to try to pay credit debt while lying to his parents about the source hadn’t lightened the burden. Each dollar bill seemed to scoff at him, for as he works, it leaves his hands. The Palace is a hungry beast, and when Michael can’t feed it money, it likes to eat the lining of his soul. Mortgage refinancing. A shitty septic system. Lauren and he had fallen in love with the place, and with the area, so his soul pays the price for the affection. Now, Michael considers the merits of taking a blowtorch to the red paneling, mixed with gasoline and combustibles, sending the Palace up in flames like the lit end of his handheld stress managers.
The credit incident, the emotional embargos. Michael teaches his son about trust, the lies rolling off his own lips as sweet venom. He wonders at the possibility of obtaining the integrity he tells his son to value.
One time, he and Lauren argued about who was going to buy meat for a grill. Lauren compared Michael to other men, how he wasn’t a traditional father with a golden retriever and a can of baked beans on ESPN. Michael yelled about her silence, and his verbal blows rooted themselves in her disconnection. Michael complained how he worked all the time, and how Lauren did nothing but stay at home and watch the child instead of parenting, and Lauren bit back and tore parts of Michael’s person away with remarks regarding his past.
Lauren always starts with raindrops, and Michael knows they’re the preludes to hurricanes.
Alex is the miniature mediator. Ever since the age of seven, he’s engrained himself in his parents’ idiocy. Michael tells him how the repeated involvement isn’t normal, typically after yelling for hours on end for the 2nd time in as many months. Alex is usually the sanest one involved. He selflessly tries to make sense of their language of volume, trying to decipher words from emotional static.
Nobody in the family speaks of those arguments, except when Michael talks to Alex. Michael preaches how his points in the war are correct and Lauren’s are misguided and misfired instead of misunderstood. Her medication is another detriment to the funds of the home. His is a necessity. Alex has no medication.
He’s fine.
The landscape of the front yard hasn’t changed in a decade. The sun shines. The television breathes its nonsense, and Alex laughs along. Michael sighs, and then coughs hard. He’s probably developing a cold, and for a second he looks at the cigarette in his hands. He clutches it tighter and raises it to his lips. Taking one more lengthy drag, he puts it in a bottle of Poland Spring next to him, the water murky and brown from the residue of the cigarettes, dead bodies in a well.
Harlan’s old, beautiful car coasts into the driveway. It seems to meet the pavement as a familiar friend, moving into the spot next to Michael’s 2001 platinum Buick LeSabre. The silver and crimson gently play a contrast as they sit in front of the cluttered shed, the shelter of aborted home improvement projects. Lauren’s car, a 2005 dark blue Toyota Corolla, sits diagonally to the other cars, with direct access to the rest of the driveway.
Harlan and Cynthia emerge from the Impala, with Cynthia leaving
