Another Planet

Because for the longest time I hated the thought of hitting any sort of ball, I always swung wildly at even the easiest pitches. So I often trudged home through the park after school, still filled with the groans and taunts of my gym class teammates. Once, trying to drown out the laughing contempt of those voices inside me, I kicked at the gravel in the path, and after all these years I can still remember how those tiny pebbles looped in the air. My little sister Molly, following me home again, watched briefly and then she stopped to examine a twig. I stood there and tramped down on the ground until I began to enjoy those curious crunching sounds. They reminded me of the clicking odometer on my dad’s latest project in the basement, his machine designed to determine just how many miles a shoe will last.

I kicked again and walked on. Molly was scribbling invisible marks in her notebook with that twig and didn’t notice I was leaving her behind. So I stepped faster, and then I ran a weaving route through the park, imagining that I clicked away miles. I sped past old people and mothers with their babies as if they were trees planted in the gravel path, trees with no fruit, no blossoms, no birds’ nests, nothing to make me pause, and I ran until I had to kneel in the grass, my lungs heaving. I felt as if my body could not contain me, my arms and legs potential explosions, my fingers and toes flames, and as I crouched there, trying so hard to keep still, I gave in to the forbidden thought of sneaking downstairs to Dad’s workshop.

When I arrived home Molly was already settled in front of the television in the living room, and while cartoons raged she clutched the ragged whiskbroom she habitually preferred to her dolls. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, preoccupied with one of her How-To books, her long legs crossed, a hand sweeping through her wavy hair.

“Where have you been, hon?” she asked, her book down, her arms out for a hug.

“Just the park,” I said into her firm embrace.

“Have a good time?”

“Uh-huh,” I said and slowly slipped from her arms. When she turned back to her book I darted around the door to the basement. I waited. She hadn’t heard me. So I walked quietly down the steps, guiding myself by the sun filtering through the narrow basement windows. Already I could hear a muffled clatter. I opened the workshop door, quickly closed it behind me, and I flicked on the light.

There it was, Dad’s Electric Shoe Scraper. The demonstration shoe in the metal harness slowly rose and lowered onto a rotating band of sandpaper—80 grit, which Dad said was the roughness closest to concrete. The odometer ticked along, the sole and heel wearing away while the shoe went nowhere, and on the floor was an eerie halo of sandpaper shavings and rubber dust.

The sandpaper was worn, and I supposed Dad would have to change it when he came home that night. I knew that when the bottom of a shoe was finally a ragged mess he clocked the total. Then he could quote the shoe’s impressive mileage to prospective customers. I closed my eyes and listened to the regularity of the machine’s clank and scrape, which Mom always said drove her nuts when she loaded the clothes washer in the basement. I loved that sound, but I instantly regretted the thought because I could just make out Mom anxiously calling me upstairs as if she had read my mind.

“Sammy?”

I heard her start down the steps. I turned off the workroom light and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

“Sammy?”

She was downstairs now, her footsteps approaching, and I hid behind stacks of empty shoe boxes. Hunched low in the cramped space, my hands on the floor for balance, I felt a fine grit, and I realized that I’d left behind me a line of indicting footsteps from the circle of dust around Dad’s machine. Then I heard the door open and the light was on.

“Come on out, honey,” Mom said gently. I rose from behind the boxes to face her disappointed eyes. I waited, but from the way her lips were pressed together I saw that she wasn’t going to say anything further, at least to me. I was grateful for that, and when we walked up the stairs I hoped for even the smallest glancing touch, on my shoulder or hair.

*

I joined Molly on the living room carpet and watched cartoons into the late afternoon. In the darkening room the black-and- white images cast swift shadows on our faces as a flying cartoon fox, eyes screaming in its sockets and tail flaming, plunged to its awful, temporary fate. Beside me Molly ran her hand across the edge of the bristles of the whiskbroom, making a dry, rhythmic sound like a movie projector.

Mom was in the kitchen, cooking spaghetti yet again, and I could tell from the sharp little bangs of the pots and the staccato crunks of the can opener that she was trying to contain her anger while she waited for Dad. My parents usually argued about why the car couldn’t go into the shop this month, why we still didn’t have a color TV, or how terrible it was that Molly and I had to share the same bedroom. Just the day before they had fought over the tangled web Molly made from Mom’s spools of thread. Now I was sure they would soon argue over me, and I was filled with a shivery anticipation.

Dad’s car slowly entered the driveway. Molly and I hurried to the window and watched, silent and motionless as if we were one child, the cartoon mayhem behind us. Dad stepped out of the car, his lips pursed from whistling some song that always stopped when he opened the front door.

“Hey, kids,” he said, glancing at the TV and then bending to kiss us, “plenty of excitement tonight, huh?” We offered our small faces to his lips. As he held us his palms gave off the faint scent of shoe polish. But what I remember most about his hands were those drastically bitten-down nails, which I worried might never heal.

We heard a crash behind us and we turned to the television. The fox lay flattened beneath a boulder, its bushy tail poking out and slightly waving, like a flag of truce. Molly flicked the bristles of her whiskbroom.

Dad stroked Molly’s hair and she pressed her head against his hand. He punched me gently on the arm. “What’s your secret today, skipper?”

Instead of my usual, disappointing silence, that evening I had an answer for him. “I’m sorry I went down to your workshop.”

“That’s okay. Didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

“No…”

Mom clattered a colander in the kitchen. “Well, I’ll see you guys later,” Dad said, and he started down the hall.

“Daddy, your shoes,” Molly said.

“Oh, of course, honey.” He leaned down and carefully unlaced them. They were a shiny black, with tiny air holes that Molly loved. He stepped out of one and Molly rubbed her cheek against its pocked surface. Dad called out, “Allll aboard!” and he walked off in his socks to the kitchen. Molly followed and pushed the shoes across the rug, chanting, “Chugga-chugga, chugga- chugga,” racing the right against the left.

Without turning from the burners, Mom arched her head for Dad’s kiss, a formality that I suspected was meant only for us. Molly circled the shoes around our parents and I dawdled at the door. We both knew they wouldn’t start in until we were back among our cartoons. With a significant glance our way, Mom then stared down the hallway, where she wanted us to go. Dad, as usual, was busy with some mail lying on the kitchen table.

“C’mon, Molly,” I said, and she abandoned Dad’s shoes in the middle of the floor with a sigh.

On the television a family of mice ran from a peg-legged pirate cat, and I could just hear Mom say, “I thought you promised to lock the door to that room down there.” The eye-patched cat snarled and slashed at the mice with a cutlass as they sped up the ship’s rigging, and I couldn’t make out Dad’s reply.

“Take it to the store where it belongs,” Mom said, her voice rising.

“What, and alert the competition?” Dad replied.

Mom laughed her bitter laugh. “Who else would want a machine that ruins shoes?” The mice easily jumped on the swinging blade and slid down the cat’s tattooed arm. Surprised, it gaped at the mice, who huddled and prepared their next move.

“Maggie, you just don’t understand, that shoe will help me sell many more.”

I was nowhere to be found in their angry words and I turned up the sound on the TV. “Louder,” Molly said. The mice pulled the cat’s tricornered hat down over his eyes. Our faces were flickering masks, continually changing as we watched that endless cartoon feuding, where no matter what terrible things happened everyone miraculously survived.

*

As always, when dinner was ready we all sat at the table as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t stand the sight of the spaghetti, which we’d already eaten twice that week, and I closed my eyes.

“These new shoe styles, who makes them, anyway?” I heard Dad complain. “Each one sells worse than the last.”

“Somebody must be selling them, somewhere,” Mom said, as if talking to herself.

I listened to the sucking sound of spaghetti lifting from the bowl, and when I opened my eyes I saw Mom scooping a large portion onto my plate. “Why do we have to eat this stuff all the time?” I blurted out, immediately knowing the answer.

No one replied. Molly stared at me, surprised. She was usually the one who made the awkward mistakes. Then Mom said quietly, “Ask your father.”

But I didn’t, and she repeated, “Ask him.”

I stared at the spaghetti on my plate. I wanted it to disappear.

Mom couldn’t help herself. “Go on, Sammy,” she said, “ask him why.”

“Because it’s delicious!” Dad yelled at her. Then they both rose and shouted, and when Mom cried out, “You sell things people walk on, why shouldn’t everyone walk over you too?” Dad held his ears and moaned, “No more!” He ran from the room and she followed.

Molly pushed away from the table, her fork and knife clattering on the floor, but I stayed and twisted the spaghetti strands around my fork, making little splatters of tomato sauce on my plate, and I forced myself to eat as a punishment for my foolishness. This was the first time my parents’ disputes had spilled into dinner, and I was shocked at what I had wrought. Even now, when I think about that night, those harsh words seem solid, as if they have always existed.

The bathroom door suddenly banged open. “Sammy?” Molly peered into the kitchen. Her arms and legs were covered with Band-Aids of all sizes, and little pink circles dotted her face. She flashed a conspiratorial grin that transformed into a mock grimace of pain, and then she ran down the hallway. I rushed after her into the living room, where Dad was roaring while Mom held out her wrists and cried, “Handcuffs!”

Molly pushed between them. “I hurt,” she cried, “I hurt!”

They stopped, amazed to see us. Mom collapsed on the couch, her hands grasping at her face, and Dad crouched down to comfort Molly. “Where does it hurt?” he asked.

“Everywhere!” she wailed into his shoulder.

“Well,” he said, picking her up, the grim line of his mouth easing, “the Tickle Bug can fix you.” Molly squealed and struggled in his arms.

*

Dad retreated to his workshop for the rest of the evening, Mom scrubbed everything imaginable in the kitchen, and Molly and I were left to ourselves. Later that night, after Mom tucked us in and turned off the light she lingered in our room. Suddenly she was repeating, “I’m so sorry, my darlings, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I murmured. Molly said nothing.

“It’s just that, how are we going to manage?” Mom said. “I mean, what can we do?” She stood so still in the middle of our dark room.

Molly turned away under her blankets.

“I only want the best for you both,” Mom kept saying, “only the best.”

“I know, Mom, I know,” I replied, hoping to draw her to my bedside for one more hug. I waited. Then she opened the door and before I could say good night she was gone.

Molly fell asleep easily with a faint, satisfied grunt. Though I was annoyed at her stubborn silence, I relished those pauses between her steady breathing, for it was only at such moments that I could pretend I had my own room. Finally I reached under the bed for my box of tennis balls.

Under the covers I held a flashlight between my chin and shoulder, and with a pen I drew on one of the balls. My pen sometimes catching on the fuzzy surface, I mapped out continents, river systems, and mountain chains, creating a strange world I could hold in my hand. It looked like none of the planets on the mechanical model of the solar system that spun so wonderfully when my science teacher cranked it up, and on my planet there was only one town, only one house. Inside lived my family, and spaghetti was our favorite treat. We ate and joked noisily at the table, and we all asked for seconds. I allowed no bitter words to escape from anyone. After our meal was done and we cleared the table and washed the dishes together, I put the tennis ball away under the bed with all the other happy versions of my family. I was careful to rest it only on an ocean, for I didn’t want to crush anyone. How optimistic I was, to think our troubles could be solved, and yet how pessimistic, to think they could only be solved on another planet.

*

The next day after school I easily slipped away from Molly when she began jumping on cracks in the sidewalk, and I headed for town instead of home. I worried about Dad and his store. It had been so long since Mom had taken us there, ever since Dad had motorized his display tables to turn in circles. “To better serve my customers,” he said, but Mom claimed they just made her dizzy, especially when Molly raced around them.

I ran almost all the way, so that Mom wouldn’t ask where I’d been for so long when I finally returned home. Each swift step made me feel both weaker and lighter, and to encourage myself I pretended I was closing in on somebody, though a few of the adults on the sidewalk seemed to think I was being chased. “Hey you, stop,” someone yelled out behind me, but I never looked back, leaving behind imagined miles as my shoes slapped on the pavement.

When I arrived, heady from all that intoxicating running, I noticed something new: a little speaker above the glass door blaring out some sort of tap dancing music. It almost seemed to accompany the steady rasp of my breath. Standing there before the storefront, for a moment I felt like Dad. I remembered one rare morning when Mom dropped him off and I watched from the car as his head turned slowly to take in all those varieties of shoes on artfully arranged pedestals in the window, and above them the neon sign—Frank’s Fancy Footwork. Dad loved that shoe store; I can’t recall him talking about anything else. Now I think I understand why, and I can say this because I’ve thought a lot about it: all that brick, the wide glass panes, and the sign with his name reflected something inside him. So when he entered the store each morning somehow he also stepped inside himself, into everything he wanted to be.

My face still flushed from running, I opened the door. One of the fluorescent bulbs was out. Another flickered erratically, and the display tables revolved for the dimly lit and empty store. Dad came out from the back room, his shirt sleeves up. He stood by the cash register. He brushed back his hair.

“What’s up, Sammy?”

“Nothing …”

“Well, you look bushed. C’mere.” He whirled the rack of shoe polish on his desk counter and reached for a drawer. “Have a lollipop.” Dad’s were special, in the shapes of animals. He handed me a bright green octopus.

“Thanks Dad, great,” I said, even though a few of the arms were broken and stuck to the clear plastic wrapper.

He took me to the back room, where orderly shelves filled with shoe boxes rose up to the ceiling. “Well, kiddo,” he said, straightening a few boxes, “I’m glad to see you, I’m here all by myself today. I had to fire another salesman. A real winner, that one was. No wonder sales are a little slow. Nobody cares enough about shoes, for them it’s just a job.” He paused and stared at me steadily, as if I didn’t believe him. I nodded.

“Y’know, Sammy”—he grinned—“I’ll tell you a little secret: no shoe ever completely fits. That’s why it’s so important to relax your customers.” I nodded again and he gestured out—toward the stool he would sit on while serving customers, and the cool metal plate that measured foot sizes.

“If a woman wants her shoes to be a size seven,” he continued, “just sell her whatever fits and tell her it’s a size seven. Y’see, you have to know how to fit with your customers, like they’re shoes too. Praise a mother’s child. If a man’s been to college, draw him out about what he studied, compliment the college life. You have to share something, and quickly. A customer can say ‘No’ easily to a stranger, but not so easily to a new pal.” He tapped his fingers against one of the shelved boxes. “It’s as easy as that,” he said.

The front door opened. A fat man looked in, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Hello?” he called out, and he took a few hesitant steps inside.

Dad turned and whispered to me, “Here’s your chance to see how it’s done. You won’t find me trying to sell any shoe polish before I’ve sold the shoes!” He set off for the showroom.

Dad stood close to the fat man, who kept backing away from one display to another. I peeked out at them, and finally the customer stopped to examine a pair of heavy, official-looking shoes, near enough for me to hear Dad say, “Those will last you over twelve hundred miles, and much longer if you do most of your walking on carpets.”

“Really,” the man replied. His mouth almost wrinkled into a smile, and then he moved on.

I imagined I was a salesman and, thinking of Dad’s secret, I plotted my approach: I would casually mention my favorite candy bar to the fat man and discover it was his favorite too! I saw myself seated before him, tying the laces of his new shoes, while he wriggled his toes inside and we gabbed about caramel and chocolate.

“Excuse me?” I heard Dad say.

“Maybe next time.” The man sidestepped Dad and bumped into one of the display tables, which stopped turning. Then, with a low squeal it lurched back into its circular motion and the fat man was out the door.

Dad flopped down into a chair and covered his face. I stood in the back room doorway, unsure what to do.

“Look, Sammy,” he said quietly into his hands, “let’s not tell your mother about this, okay? It’s our secret.”

“Dad,” I said quickly, “let me help. I can sell some shoes.”

“Sure, son,” he said. He smiled across the room at me, a weak smile that also meant No. I turned away, determined not to cry, and I noticed for the first time an odd and irritating hum coming from the revolving tables.

*

I’m sure that no more than a few weeks passed before the afternoon when Molly and I came home from school and Dad was already there, sitting on the couch. His hands were cupped on his lap as if they had just covered his face, and I immediately remembered my visit to his store. Mom sat beside him and they both looked weary. When Molly asked, “Daddy, why are you home, are you sick?” they stared at us as if we were strangers.

That evening Dad didn’t talk about his store and Mom didn’t complain about it. But their silence had no feeling of peace, and I worried that the words they held in were too terrible to be spoken. From then on Dad was always home when we returned from school, and during dinner I almost wished my parents’ arguments would start again, their quiet disturbed me so.

Waiting on line one day in the school cafeteria, I stood quietly when one of the older boys began to push in front of me, somehow certain that he was about to turn around and say, loudly, “Hey, are you some kinda poor boy now your old man’s store’s closed down?” I imagined that even if he laughed and shoved me I wouldn’t reply, but instead he just swaggered ahead and cut in line even closer to the chicken chow mein. I considered walking into town but I didn’t have to—it was terribly easy to imagine Dad’s store with the window displays gutted, the neon sign shut off, and the tables inside immobile.

Over dinner that night our parents’ silence continued in every tense passed plate, and the effort of their restraint seemed to exhaust Dad. His eyes wandered, and finally he said, “The most amazing thing happened at the store today.”

We turned to him, our forks and knives motionless. He was still working, I thought. Mom dabbed at her lips with a napkin.

“Mrs. Mitchell came in today,” he continued. “I saw her shoes hadn’t come from my store, and, I don’t know, I couldn’t help myself, I said, ‘Mrs. Mitchell, long time no see.’ She didn’t miss a beat, though, she said, ‘Happy to see you’ and asked after the kids. Anyway, she wanted an ordinary pair of flats, nothing special, and I went to the back room for her size. Now you won’t believe this, but all the boxes on the shelves were kind of twitching, like the shoes inside were kicking to get out, or something.”

He paused significantly. Molly sat across from me in mid-chew, her mouth open.

“I had to run back and forth with the ladder to push them all back in place, but they …”

“Frank!” Mom leaned over and shook his shoulder. Suddenly silent, he gazed at his plate and fiddled with the edge. Mom rose and took his hand and he let her lead him from the table. Molly and I were left alone with the macaroni and cheese. Mom was on the phone that night, whispering to Aunt Cissy—Dad’s sister—but she fell silent whenever she heard me approach. And later, in my darkened bedroom, I created a planet where no one spoke because they were too busy thinking good thoughts.

*

Dad started grinding his teeth at night, producing a gnawing worse than any snore. It drove Mom to the living room couch, and it drove me there too. Finally Molly nestled among us, and we all crowded our legs and elbows as best we could. My own teeth ached from the grating that seemed to exude from the walls, and I pushed my face against the couch pillows and rustled my legs together, anything to drown it out.

“Please, stop it!” Mom whispered. “We don’t need any more noise.” So we clung to her quietly in the dark and fell asleep only from sheer exhaustion, our lullaby the crackling of molars.

When we awoke the next morning Dad was already up, buttering a piece of toast at the kitchen table. How could he have slept at all, I thought, when he was the closest to the sound of his own grinding? But what seems so strange now is that none of us mentioned our grueling night, as though Dad always gnashed his teeth and the three of us always slept together on the couch. Even Molly was unusually subdued, sipping slowly through her orange juice.

That week my body ached from sleeping each night in improvised and awkward positions, and I dreaded the sight of the afternoon shadows lengthening into the evening. One night, twisted on the couch, I dreamt that my parents were muttering to each other in a darkened room. I couldn’t hear what they said, but Mom’s voice sounded frightened and angry. “Please, stop it,” I heard her plead. Then I was awake, afraid I had been rustling my legs again. My body was cramped against empty space, for Mom sat at the edge of the couch. Dad was bending down before her, grabbing at her feet. She kept kicking his hands away.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

Mom turned her unhappy face to me. “I don’t know,” she whispered, kicking her foot again at Dad’s grasping hands.

“I promise you,” he said, head bent, “it’s a lovely shoe.”

“Sammy, help me,” Mom said.

Dad smiled, and I sat up terrified: he was back at his shoe store, and Mom was a customer. Now, when I think back to that night, I believe that even then I knew Dad had somehow turned himself inside out, so that the lost store he imagined surrounded us.

He edged toward me. “Welcome in! We have a sale today.” I couldn’t retreat: Molly was curled beside me and I didn’t want to wake her. And then his hands were on my bare feet.

“Frank,” Mom moaned, but he didn’t listen.

“Well, sir,” he said, his fingers working at my feet as if he were unlacing shoes, “I see you’re a size five.” I nodded. He looked up at Mom. “Madam, you have a fine boy here,” and he tousled my hair. “Here’s a beautiful new shoe that just came in today. Why don’t we try a pair on?”

I glanced at Mom. She shook her head.

“I don’t think so, thanks,” I said.

He peered at me, confused and earnest. “Excuse me?” he asked.

I hesitated—I’d long wanted to be a salesman, but now that I was a customer I could finally help him make a sale. “Sure, let’s try them,” I said. Mom’s hand was on my shoulder, and I forced myself not to look at her.

From an invisible box by his side Dad carefully lifted out an invisible shoe, and just by the way his fingers framed it I knew it would be a perfect fit. His hands slid around my foot. He held them still and I sensed his satisfaction, though this false sale saddened me. When he started to tie up the invisible laces I couldn’t bear to extend the moment.

“They’re great, I’ll take two pairs,” I said—anything to make him stand up. Mom’s tight grip on my shoulder released, and I believe now that this was the moment when she no longer doubted that she had to protect her children from her husband.

She pushed him away. “That’s just about enough!” she shouted, and Molly woke up. Dad struggled to his feet, his face pale and bewildered, and I doubt even now that he knew what was happening: why such anger from this oddly familiar customer? She pushed him again and Molly howled. I tugged at Mom’s arm but she kept shoving him away, out the living room and down the hall. At their bedroom doorway Mom pushed him again and he fell inside, his head just missing the edge of the bedframe. We stood there at the threshold, stunned. Mom slammed the door shut.

Molly whimpered. Then we heard Dad talking in there, a kind of vigorous mumbling. His voice rose. “Steady there, steady,” we could make out. “Quit it, quit that kicking.” He pounded a wall.

“Don’t listen,” Mom said.

“Get back in the boxes!” Dad shouted. We heard him fling himself about the room and I begged Mom to open the door. She just stood there, unable to move. But when Molly rushed to the door Mom lunged at her, slapping her hands.

“Daddy, Daddeee!” Molly shrieked, and she slammed her head against the door. Mom dragged her away and they grappled down the hall in the dark.

I was alone, listening to Dad. How easy it would be to open the door and help him, I thought, and I extended a hand. Mom called to me from the living room, “Sammy, are you still there? You mustn’t listen to that!”

I hesitated. What if I opened the door and actually saw those shoes free of their boxes, tramping across the rug with a fierce anger and cornering Dad against a wall?

“Keep away, keep away!” Dad shouted from inside.

I rushed to my bedroom, where I tried to calm myself by drawing slowly on a tennis ball, hoping that carefully drawn lines would erase Dad’s frightened bellowing and my vivid images of his store in revolt. A world with three continents appeared, the middle land mass the largest, and in its center was my town, and in my home Mom was opening the bedroom door. It was morning and Dad was rubbing his eyes. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked. They were about to kiss, but as Mom approached she began to blur. Molly ran to them, smiling with some foolish trick that would make them laugh. Yet I couldn’t imagine what it was, Molly’s wailing down the hall distracted me so, and I held the tennis ball in my hand and squeezed it until the tendons in my wrist began to hurt.

It was a terrible mistake, leaving Dad alone with that invisible rebellion, and it still frightens me to think what he went through. When Mom finally opened the door we found him trembling on the carpet, and he only looked like Dad. Mom knelt down and held him with a tenderness that shocked me, and she called softly, “Frank, Frank.”

*

The man who resembled our father almost never spoke and at dinner rarely ate. He grew thinner, seeming even less familiar, and sometimes, looking at no one, his mouth moved but no sound came out. Mom made us walk barefoot, and so we moved with muffled footsteps through the house. Once Molly made a trail of silverware on the kitchen floor and she walked on it toward Dad, carefully balancing herself, bending the spoons and forks beneath her feet. But no game could make him Dad again, and while Mom scolded Molly into tears he smiled at them as if they were very far away.

When our Aunt Cissy came to visit she cried all night. Molly and I lay awake. In the sudden, brief silences we could hear Mom’s tense whispering, and then Aunt Cissy started up again. I secretly hoped that if she finally stopped then Dad would be better, but I fell asleep to her sobs. The next morning Aunt Cissy put her shoes back on at the front stoop and walked to her car with a red-eyed, crushed face.

The Electric Shoe Scraper disappeared from the basement workshop soon after. The empty shoeboxes were cleared out, even the eerie circle of dust was wiped clean, and I didn’t dare question Mom since I wasn’t supposed to know. And then one day Dad wasn’t lying as usual on the couch when Molly and I arrived home from school. Mom bustled about the kitchen, making us a snack, and I forced myself to watch her spread jam on the crackers while Molly called to Dad from room to room.

Mom stirred chocolate syrup into three tall glasses of milk and I stared at the darkening swirls chasing each other.

Molly appeared in the kitchen. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Mom said.

“I hate you!” Molly screamed. “Where’s Daddy?’

“We’re here,” Mom said, her back to us, her head resting against the refrigerator, “isn’t that enough?”

I left them for the worlds waiting under my bed. They lay snugly together in the cardboard box, and all of them had failed me. I took out a tennis ball and threw it against the wall. As it bounced back over my head I wondered which continent I had crushed, which happy family I had snuffed out.

That night I walked out onto the back porch with my box of tennis balls. At the edge of the lawn I picked out a thick, broken branch, and by the fluorescent light from the kitchen window I smacked one of those balls high in the air over the woods behind our yard. I watched it briefly sail off in an awkward curve before it descended into the trees, landing with a dull thud among the moist leaves on the ground. I picked up another. I slammed them again and again, listening to each one fall through the distant branches. When I was finally done I peered out into the night and realized that I couldn’t let all of them go. I walked into the woods, and the branches seemed to grab at me from nowhere with gnarled and frightening fingers. I bent down to avoid them, skimming my hand across the moist dead leaves, and my hand was wet and cold when it finally gripped a round, yielding thing. This was the one I would keep. The rest could stay hidden. I worked my way back through the thicket of trees, and though the lights of my house served as a beacon, I held my little world as if I would be lost if I let go.

*

Our determined mother quickly earned her real estate license, with the hope that selling houses would better serve her children. Neighborhoods were rising up everywhere, transforming empty fields, and this suited Mom well because she always preferred to sell new homes. Even now, when I think of Mom I sometimes imagine her standing before a pristine and empty house, its fresh lawn dotted with the tiny shadows of newly planted saplings.

All Mom’s wanting, all her fierce desires for us came true. We soon had a color TV, and when we moved to a larger house we had one for the living room and for each of our separate bedrooms. During the rare moments when we were all together in the same room Molly would suddenly clench and crackle the knuckles of her toes, which sounded so much like grinding teeth. This always drove Mom away. Then Molly nestled in her chair as if it were the lap of a parent, embracing one of the upholstered arms, a solid support that would never squirm with anger or impatience. Though I wanted to stay I followed Mom, knowing that she was alert to any sign of desertion.

I let Mom think I was who she wanted me to be, for I was all she had left. But I discovered there were an alarmingly large number of places inside myself that should be kept from her. My most hidden secret was my belief that if I closed my eyes and just walked I would be able to find Dad, no matter how far away he might be, and I often imagined myself marching down sidewalks like some clairvoyant blind child.

I actually attempted this once or twice, but with my eyes closed I could only manage a few hesitating steps, afraid that my face was about to hit a wall. How could I endure this disturbing anticipation for miles, even to find my father? And what if I did find him? Sometimes I imagined Dad alone in a little room, sitting on a cot beside a barred window, and when I entered he would look up only to see a small stranger; other times his smile of recognition would envelop me as he carefully, perfectly recounted the peculiar path that had led me to his room. These were the thoughts that fought inside the boy who dutifully made sure for his mother every night that all the doors and windows were locked.

I remember one evening Molly made a face out of her mashed potatoes, using broccoli as hair. “Daddy,” she whispered.

“You can leave right now, young lady,” Mom said, “since you can’t eat food like a normal child.”

Molly pushed away from the table, her face fisted up and tearless. I glanced over at her plate, at that face and the sunken sockets of its eyes. Then I grasped my knife and fork and proceeded to eat my food like a normal child, hoping that meant that I was one.

After dinner I helped with the dishes. “You’re so careful, Sammy darling, even the edges are dry,” Mom said, as she did every night. When I was done I went upstairs and stood in the hallway. I could see under Molly’s door the television light rampaging in her darkened bedroom. I wanted to join her, but as I listened to the frenetic music and gunshots, her high laughter and the rattling of a whiskbroom, I once again decided to stay a good boy.

I padded to my bedroom, where I sat among my collection of model airplanes, my television, stereo and records and everything else I could possibly want. And through the long evening I listened to the car squeals and crashes of Molly’s television coming through the walls, competing with the monotonous, canned laughter from the television Mom watched down in the living room. They slowly notched the volume up to drown each other out, and there was only one place I could escape this noise. I took out my last remaining tennis ball, closed my eyes, and imagined I was in Dad’s beloved shoe store. He still worked there, business was good, and the display tables revolved so silently and slowly no one noticed. And then we were all visiting him and he wasn’t shamed before us by an empty store.

We visit even now. I can’t help myself, it’s something I have to do whenever Mom phones me in the middle of the night, or when I realize Molly isn’t going to answer my latest letter. Once again Molly and I are children, and Mom’s hair is still dark and glistening. Dad’s so busy he shouldn’t be able to pay us any attention, but he does, with a wide grin that Mom actually returns, and their embrace is good enough to end even the longest absence. Molly and I hold on to each other and our parents, a happy knot of reconciliation, and together we stand on the smallest patch of a little world that hurtles in orbit through a clear and welcoming sky.