By Newton "Salem" Brophy
Rayleigh Waves:
-Type of Surface Wave
-Cause the ground to roll
-Slowest velocity
-Last to arrive
-Most Destructive
February 2017
“I want it back!”
Zach and I are shouting in each other’s faces. We’re playing with the escalation of the scene as Alex, our director, urges us on, only making a note every few beats for us to push harder. It’s a fairly mundane acting exercise: two scene partners competing to see who can be meaner, scarier, angrier. Although an actor’s toolbox is eclectic, this is usually achieved through volume. The louder you can roar, the more you feed the fire in your lungs, and the more you can make the audience sweat. The objective is to burn your partner more than he burns you. A common (and helpful) game of chicken for actors.
I don’t realize anything is wrong until Zach is screaming an innocuous line that I will never remember, and suddenly he does not sound like my castmate, or my friend that I have known for four years, but a man, and that’s all he becomes, a Man that is Yelling.
All the fight blows out of my bones and I go rigid and small, and the stage manager and the director see my stillness and my quiet and my friend sees the salt in my eyes and the tremble in my chin and they all know now that something is terribly wrong and I am left exposed and vulnerable and stupidly weak, unable to muster up anything more than smoke.
“... Let’s take five,” Alex says. I don’t look at anyone when I leave.
I am stricken, paralyzed by my own clumsy ghosts.
When I return, I assure Zach it was not his fault. I’m telling the truth; his only crime was being a man capable of raising his voice.
November 2016
There’s another hour left of the show. Having seen the second act at least seven times by now, Rick and I are in his office, goofing off. I am his student and employee, though our rapport is more that of a father and son, which we have been mistaken for multiple times. Our conversations can quickly turn into ping-pong matches, each of us trying to get a good hit on the other. At least, that’s how I’ve been taught to play.
“... It’s not that I like to argue, I’m just blunt and tactless and that’s how I get myself into trouble with people. Take with my mum's husband, for example,” I say, lightly defending myself from a good-natured mischaracterization. “I have trouble filtering myself with everybody, but he takes it so goddamn personally. So really, I don’t start anything with anybody.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” He snickers, and it’s like a record has scratched on a gramophone in my head. This is the part where I laugh and say, “Haha, fuck you too, man,” or “Pot. Kettle. Black,” but something about his harmless little tease has struck a nerve I’d forgotten I had, and now, I’m not playing anymore. I let a beat pass.
“Did you know that the reason I became homeless was over bathmats?” I ask, the temperature in my voice dropping. He blinks at me.
“What?”
“Did I ever tell you,” I repeat, the studied casualness of my tone the only warning of danger I allow him, “that the whole reason why I became homeless was over wet bathmats.”
I can see him carefully consider his response. I know he knows he’s stepped onto thin ice, and he can feel it cracking under him. Finally:
“No. No, you did not.”
“See, you’d think a guy wouldn’t mind bathmats getting wet, right? Kinda the point of them.”
“... Yeah.”
“My last years of high school, there was this bottleneck-- I was so close to getting the fuck out… that was when he was the worst. He’d corner me, and--- the bathmats. He hated when they got wet. But he hated it more if the floor was wet. That was the hill he wanted to die on, I guess. He had a lotta those. He could turn everything into a reason why I was a conniving, manipulative little bitch. They could both leave cups in the sink overnight to wash in the morning, but if I did it? I’m a lazy slob. If I didn’t fold towels without being told to? I’m a selfish, entitled brat who thinks the household revolves around me. If I wasn’t the first one to say hi when I came home? I’m disrespectful, rude, insolent.
I thought after I went to college, I’d never have to deal with it again. Stupid. One morning, summer after freshman year, he bangs on my door while I’m getting dressed and shouts at me to come out. He starts up again about the bathmats being wet. This time I don’t let him push me around. I don’t raise my voice, just keep calm and talk to him and defend myself, not letting him shout over me. Not letting him intimidate me. I’ve never seen him so mad. He--- stormed out of the house. And that’s when I packed my shit and got the fuck out.”
I don’t remember any of the events, but the script of my life is so well-rehearsed that memory is rendered unnecessary. The only tangible history I have of most of my childhood now is the oral testimony my lips have given so many times. When I relate it once more, it is dispassionate, careless, as though I am explaining how to use a circular saw. I don’t look at him as I speak; I am embarrassed that I am punishing him with this, but I can’t make myself stop.
“But I didn’t start this, and I didn’t do anything to deserve it,” I grate out, voice shaking with anger, with desperation to make him understand what I don’t realize he already knows, never doubted. “I never deserved any of what he did to me and I certainly didn’t do shit to provoke it. I promise I didn’t.” My voice breaks and so does everything else. He quickly leans over to hold me.
“No, of course you didn’t.”
Love Waves:
-Type of Surface Wave
-Shake the ground in a snake-like movement
-Fastest Surface Wave
October 2013
“You’re picking again.”
I startle, looking up at Ker. She looks more like a tattoo artist in California than a graduate student in psychology, but she makes a good therapist, down to the quirk of a long-suffering eyebrow. I look back down to see red spots all over the skin on my arms, chest, the backs of my hands, and I know there must be some on my throat, where I’ve just been pinching.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize. I just wanted to know if you were aware that you were doing it again.”
I shake my head sheepishly. My legs are curled in front of my chest, a barrier between me and her. She smiles kindly, eyes wry.
“You know, the way you pick at yourself like that, it’s sort of what you do to yourself as a person.”
“What do you mean?”
“You look for anything that isn’t perfect and you hyperfixate on it. You pick at it. Just like that.” Her voice is husky, the cadence soothing.
I unfold my legs, crossing and uncrossing at the knees.
“The more perfect I can be, the less I have to worry about people hating me.”
“Did he expect you to be perfect?”
Silence.
“Did it ever work? Being perfect? Did it ever make him stop picking at you?”
Without meaning to, I pinch the elastic skin on my neck again.
June 2013
“How long have you had this combative relationship with your stepfather?”
I bite at a hangnail and try not to scoff. This intake appointment is meant for dumb questions; I can’t expect the older man across the desk to deduce my family history just by looking at us. My mother tenses beside me; she knows which answer is coming, and she hates it every time it comes out of my mouth.
“Always. Even before he married my mum. He’s hated me since I was eight.”
My mother opens her mouth to protest, but Dr. Marino holds up his hand to stop her, then motions for me to continue. It’s rare that I am treated as anything more than a hysterical child by adults outside of my high school English department, and I waffle a bit in surprise before continuing on.
“I mean, I get it, I was a bad kid, but that was almost ten years ago. I’m older and I’ve learned, but he --”
“What do you mean, a bad kid?” My mother interrupts, startled and unable to restrain herself any longer. I blink.
“I mean, I admit it, I was shitty. I know I wasn’t a good kid, but I just think it’s unfair to judge my character based on who I was when I was little--”
“Amanda, you were a good kid,” She enunciates sternly, concern in her eyes.
The office falls quiet, the whirring of the ceiling fan above our heads the only sound to be heard.
“What makes you think you weren’t a good kid?”
Secondary Waves:
-Type of Body Wave
-Shake transverse to the direction of propagation
-Little damage
January 2016
I am about to leave the office of Professor Davina Lopez for the last time. She has been my inspiration, my role model, and until a few minutes ago, my sponsor for the Ford Scholars’ Program. I gather my things, wiping away the last of the tears. She is silent, pensive. The air in the room is thick and cold. I hate that I’ve let her down by leaving the program, but it’s hard for me to be truly sorry, now that I know for sure what I want out of my education.
I hear her inhale and I look up, freezing between her desk and the door.
“You know,” She says icily. “You can’t spend your entire life running away from things you don’t want to do.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t tell her that of course I can, watch me, it’s my life and I will run from anything I like. I can’t tell her that running away is how I’ve survived so long, is why I’m standing here and not in some graveyard by the interstate in New England.
I can’t tell her that running is all I know how to do. I can’t tell her that this is not running away, I know what running away looks like, and this is not it.
I can’t tell her that running away looks like hiding in a sweltering, decrepit brownstone in Woonsocket, wondering if you’ll be sucked into the black hole of your family’s legacy, a cycle that only ends on a MISSING poster in Wal-Mart. I can’t tell her that running away is staying out long past your parents’ bedtime several nights a week, walking around the town just to avoid going home. I can’t tell her that running away looks like wandering the empty neighborhood alone in the lavender night, where time no longer moves, listening to the muted echo of silence off the dirty snow in the streets. I can’t tell her that running away looks like the spare bedrooms of the families and the parents who will take you in and won’t hide their indignation at your treatment, and will let you stay up with them until three in the morning to watch old movies and talk about Sherlock Holmes.
I can’t tell her that this isn’t what running away looks like, because running away disappoints your mother, running away is a last resort, running away isn’t a resolution, just self-preservation. Running away is not a choice.
I can’t tell her that this is not running away, and even if it is, that will not stop me, because I have done far more shameful things.
Primary Wave:
-Type of Body Wave
-Fastest velocity
-Little damage
-First to arrive
June 2004
My mother has just finished loading our beach bags and suitcases into the trunk when her cell phone rings. I can tell by her voice when she answers that it’s him. I put my face close to the air-conditioning vents, feeling like a hot, shaggy dog, and probably smelling similarly. My sweaty hair sticks to the nape of my neck. She gets into the car while she’s talking, preparing to back out of our driveway. We’re going to the coast.
The next time I see my house, she will be a wife again, and it will not be my house.
“Panda, he wants to talk to you.”
I straighten, attention roused. Curious, maybe expecting honey or sugar, I hold out a hand for her Nokia, and then put it to my ear. It is unprepared for vinegar.
“Amanda,” He says, without hello or asking how my morning has been, “Tomorrow is your mother’s day. So you need to behave. Don’t be a brat and don’t be selfish. This day isn’t about you. This isn’t for you.”
I don’t say anything other than to indicate that I understand.
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