Helplessness, I said to myself. I said it again, out loud, in the empty living room. Uselessness, I said next, hoping someone would answer, knowing there was no one. Mr. Fuzzmister, King Cotton Candy, and Eric sat next to me, slumped, their hard black eyes blank. I heard thumping. I thought it was coming from my own chest and then realized how idiotic and dramatic that was. I lifted my head, the thumping kept coming, and I knew it was coming from outside, Adam’s doing.
The thumping was rhythmic, almost soothing—THUMP, silence, THUMP, silence, THUMP. Sometimes the silence went on a little longer than the previous one, but without fail that THUMP returned. I got up and put the stuffed animals on the couch, linked their arms together. The thumping continued, and I walked to the sliding door, hesitated, unsure of what was a violation of Adam’s aloneness; after a beat, I pushed the door open wider, stepped outside.
The backyard was small and mostly dirt. A stack of bright-green squares of grass rested in one corner. An empty pool in another, with sludge and a couple Hot Cheetos bags at the bottom. A barbecue collected dust in the third corner, a sale tag still hanging off it. In the fourth, Adam stood, throwing a baseball against the back wall of the house.
His throws weren’t casual, the throws of someone just having some fun, working off daily boredom. His throws were hard and direct. His mind was not wandering, it was focused—each thought connected to his arm, passing through his fingertips, heaved along with the ball and smack against the wall. The ball would bounce back to him and he’d scoop it up cleanly, throw it again, all his strength and will being used to snuff out the next thought that dared flit across his vision. Sweat dripped off his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped away nothing, just blinked and shook his head sharply, like an animal furious at the weakness of his body, that it would distract him from the task that lay ahead.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you have a glove? We can play catch?”
THUMP. “I don’t want to play catch.”
“How about we go inside?” I pulled out my phone, looked at the time, tried to close my ears off to the sound of ball meeting wall. It was starting to make my head hurt; each thump was echoed by a throb from my left temple. “Have you eaten dinner yet? We can order delivery, or I can pour us a couple huge bowls of cereal. Even I can’t mess up cereal.”
“You could pour too much milk in it.”
“You could pour your own milk if that would make you feel better.”
“I can barely reach the counter.”
“We don’t have to pour the milk into the bowls on the counter. I could put the bowls on a lower surface, the floor.”
“You don’t have to be here. This isn’t the first time I’ve been home alone.”
He said all this without stopping his throwing. I had the urge to stand in front of the spot he was hurling all his frustrations toward and wondered if this would be enough to stop him or if he would continue, baseballs being thrown against my body, bruises blooming like deadly flowers beneath my skin. I could picture that happening without flinching. I could also picture him there night after night, the only sounds the thumping and his breathing, the small muscles in his arm twitching, exhaustion hanging over him like a fog, determination clearing it away. This made my hands shake, the cold Panda Express I’d shoveled down for lunch threatening to come up in a heap of chunky brown panic. Where was Jenny and did she know about this? If she did, how could she be driving? How was she able to grip the steering wheel with her shaking hands? What did the back of her throat taste like?
There was a bucket of baseballs by the sliding glass door. I picked one up and walked back over to Adam, stood by his side. The wall he was throwing at was covered in scuff marks, scars from his nights alone. Most were centered in one spot, but there were a few marks that lay solitary, off target, up high, down low, wildly to the left. Accidents, or bursts of desire to change things up, do something unexpected? I wound up and threw the baseball as hard as I could, at an untouched section of the wall.
I’d never liked the feel of a baseball. The game itself I didn’t mind. I went to lots of Billy’s games, cheered, clapped until my hands stung when he struck someone out or sent a ball sailing over the fence. When I held a basketball, I felt magic. Footballs didn’t make me tingle, but they made sense to me, there was a comforting solidity when I gripped their laces. Baseballs were too small and hard, throwing them released nothing inside of me, I quickly grew bored.
That night, I threw the baseball with fluidity and ease. Each time the ball left my fingertips, I was crouching down, aching to have it back in my hands. The first few throws, I just marveled at the comfort of having simple, achievable tasks, a light, warm jacket wrapped around me, throw, catch, repeat. Look at my body, look at what it can do— Then my phone started buzzing and ringing in my front jeans pocket.
I didn’t have to pull my phone out to know who was on the other end. There were only two possibilities and I didn’t want to talk to either of them.
The ball bounced back into my hands and I threw it a little harder; that jacket of calm slipped off my shoulders. Did they get home from work and sit in front of the clock? They must’ve been huddled together on the couch, waiting until the time on the DVD player told them that there was no reason why I shouldn’t be home. Who decided who would call first? Billy? Mom? Did they flip a coin or did they fight over the opportunity, hungry stray dogs clawing each other over spoiled ham straight from the dumpster? Did they know how grating my ringtone was, what vibration felt like against skin?
The phone kept ringing and the throws piled up and all my unvoiced questions and thoughts became as much a part of the ball as the cork in its center, the rubber casing, the layers of wool and leather, each of its lacings. It was weird that Billy called my mom “Mom.” It broke my heart how Mom drank her coffee every morning, how she so carefully put her lips on the rim and drank deeply, like she was grateful for every sip. Dad would pour pepper over all his food, and now I was afraid to put a sprinkle of the stuff on anything, even though scrambled eggs looked weird without it. If food could change people, I didn’t want my baby to eat anything. I wanted it to exist on air alone and take in deep gulps of it, power born from within, no outside sources.
I started to picture the world without me in it.
I saw Billy at USC around other blond, broad-shouldered boys, smiling, blending into a crowd, his hardest job deciding whether he was going to go to his next class or take a deep, long nap on the campus lawn. Mom quitting her job at Kmart, a house with only her inside, dates with men who acted their age and wore suits and had nice cologne slathered on their necks and wrists, woke up every morning before she did, their briefcases full of things of worth. Dad was dead, buried at a cemetery by the highway—this was how it was and how it would always be. I didn’t have to think of the baby: if I didn’t exist, neither did it. The lack of my existence eliminated the need to imagine it, to wonder how it would do in the world, to see it crawling, walking, stretching to its full height, doing and saying things that I would have no control over, and becoming a person I had no doubt I would continually fail to understand, despite shared DNA. I added nothing—I had no hopes, no real tangible dreams that would make any lasting impact. If I was gone, worst-case, some pizzas wouldn’t be delivered on time, Jenny would have to find another pizza girl.