There Is No Year - Blake Butler [2]
The only thing that made the family different from the copy family was instead of teeth the copy family’s mouths were lined with mold. As well, the copy son appeared exhausted, sticky. He had dark meat around his eyes. The copy family’s breath came out cold and made no sound.
The son wanted to play dress up with his copy body but the father smacked the son across the head. The father hated when his son played girl games. The father bought the son a new neon football for Christmas and his birthday every year. The father also bought the son a football on the father’s birthday, a form of begging. Sometimes he found he could convince the son to come out into the yard, though no matter how soft the father threw the ball or how close they stood together, the son could never catch. Even right there. Even touching.
The son’s hands and fingers always itched. Sometimes the itching spread into his knee. Sometimes the only thing about the son at all was all the itching. The son was older than he looked.
PRETEND TO NOT BE THERE
In the new house wrung with coarse light, the father locked the doors and sealed the eaves. He had the family play Pretend To Not Be There. They waited to see if the copy family would simply disappear or go away. They waited several hours, peeping. Later, they hooted and shook their arms, made fire. The copy family would not retort.
The mother found the copy family’s TV dinners in the freezer and off the floor the family ate: defrosted veggie medley, veal cordon bleu. There was even a little cheesecake wrapped in black plastic. The family felt run through. They felt their bodies rumble, squealing. The copy family outside in the night. The father, mother, and son each with one wall between them and their copies, eating.
The father sent the son to bed. He and the mother went with the son into the certain room they’d let the son himself select—he could have had many other rooms. The bed was deep and clean and padded. The parents took turns kissing the son on the brow, the wrists, the thumbs, the mouth, the teeth, the back, the stomach. The son went right to sleep. Just after, in the hallway, the father touched his hand against his lips, feeling for the cells that’d come off in transference—what parts of himself he’d left upon the son.
THE COPY MOTHER, IN PARTICULAR
The father and the mother stayed up well into the evening watching the copy family stand. The father and the mother agreed they had to do something—something—what? They could not go on like this, even a little. The copy family had not moved an inch. They could call police but what would happen? Light from the backyard’s sensor-triggered flood lamps clicked on and off without clear provocation.
The copy family would not go away. The father worked himself into a state, shouting curse words, splaying arms. He went out to the car and got a softball bat he’d used for pickup games in college—he’d not once had a hit, though he’d been beaned more times than he could count on all the hands in all the houses on the street where his house stood—he could often still remember how the ball felt each time, banging fast into his muscle—how his chest would scrunch and then expand—how he sometimes seemed not there at all. The father stood at the window with the weapon. He threatened legal action. He spoke in unintended rhyme. He said his own name to the copy father. The copy father seemed to have more hair than him.
By the time the morning came on gnawing, the father had collapsed. He lay fetal-curled on the laminated kitchen floor, his back against the fridge door, shook. The mother stood over the father. The mother took the softball bat away. She smoothed a blanket over her husband. She covered up his head. She turned on the radio in the intercom that’d been wired to broadcast through the house. There wasn’t music, but people talking—many people all at once. She turned the volume louder. The speech sound filled the house—filled in on the air around their breathing bodies.