Smoke
Superheroes and Breakfast
“All he asked for was a bit of silence, a bit of shush so he could concentrate. He wanted it to be perfectly quiet and still, like the inside of an empty confessional or the moment in the brain between thought and speech.”
-Zadie Smith, White Teeth
“How did you find me?”
“Called mother. It’s quite easy to get an answer when you ask a question, generally. She would like for us to get along.”
You light your cigarette with forced steadiness, lean back in your chair. You’d eaten a couple Vicodin, stealing off to the bathroom after River had promised to tell you everything if you’d only agree to go inside your apartment. You’d ended up on your porch, staring at shrubs and trees, all slim and dusted with leaves in brackish yellow light.
“How do you know what I’m experiencing?” you ask.
He rubs his cheeks and chin, chafing against the stubble there. “I see them. Forrest saw them. You could say it’s a Smith legacy.”
“You talk about it like it’s a good thing.”
River takes a cigarette out of your pack, lights it with your lighter.
“It is what it is.”
“Is it why Forrest…you know?” you ask, acutely aware of the way River has of making you feel fourteen again, young enough to lose every argument, every fight.
“Sure,” he says. “He wasn’t as strong as we are. Or he was braver. I don’t know.”
“It’s hell. There’s nothing good about it.”
“Jews don’t believe in hell,” he says, taps his cigarette against the ashtray, even though there’s no ash to slough off.
“So mom sees them, too? And dad?”
“No, but grandma did.”
You sit in silence for moments, maybe minutes. You don’t know. You don’t count. What is it about emotions that they get all tangled up when you most need to identify them? Make them make sense.
“I know a guy who can force fire do what he wants. Do you know anything about that?”
“Of course. People like that are rare though. The way grandmother described it you’d think they’re mythological. Perhaps there’s been a resurgence. I heard recently they’ve found a rainmaker.”
You’re smashing the end of your cigarette against the ashtray when he says it, and you must look at him with such a funny expression.
“A rainmaker? As in, he can make it rain?”
River nods.
“Who’s they?” you ask.
“A network of people with gifts. They disseminate information to people like us and provide safety.”
“Safety?”
“Safe houses, places where people learning about their gifts can stay, sort of like the schools in X-Men, you know,” River says.
“X-Men,” you say, and it comes out on the heels of a breath.
There’s a whole world out there of hidden people with “gifts”? People can make it rain.
Superheroes really do exist.
“But why do other people get to do things like make it rain and control fire, but we get to see dead people all the time?”
River blinks, untangles his hands from behind his head, says, “Is that all you’re seeing?”
“What do you mean ‘is that all I’m seeing’?”
“I thought you’d be able to see auras. I can. But maybe it just hasn’t manifested yet. Or maybe you need some training to make it happen.”
“Okay, stop. I feel like my brain’s going to melt.” You grab another cigarette. The flame of the lighter transfixes you for a moment. Inhale. “Answer this first: what do you mean by ‘see auras’?”
Auras are colors that surround a person’s body, and they tell you about the person’s being. It’s like a reflection of someone’s soul, River proceeds to explain.
You are aware that the Vicodin and the possibility of not being alone in this, of not having to doubt your own sanity anymore, combine to lighten the weight of the information that threatens to crush you.
“What do you see in my aura?” you ask him.
He shuts his eyelids for a moment, and when he opens them again his face has taken on a statuesque kind of thoughtfulness that lets you know you can’t doubt his sanity either.
“It’s blue. Strange. It means you’re…taking this awfully well,” he says, cocking his head. “Why is that?” He snatches your chin, squints into your eyes, and it’s like looking at yourself. “Are you stoned?”
You shove his arm away, stagger back into your chair. “You can crash on the couch if you want,” you say, turning and crossing back into the apartment. You leave the door slightly open.
In the hallway, you run into Sam, who is only in sweats, padding barefoot to his room. You contemplate swiveling your body to avoid touch but too late the contact’s already been made with marble blues and you come to a standstill instead (you hadn’t said more than what necessity dictated for more than a week, hadn’t touched each other, not since Sam had told you to kiss and make up with your cunt brother) and you’d tamped it all down until now—the yells, the insults, the emotions that attempted to claw their way up your throat.
Because men don’t talk about their feelings.
Fuck that.
“Brody—“
“River’s here, and I know you had something to do with it. You want to know how I know? Because he would never call our mother. He blames her more than he blames me, even more than he blames himself.”
Sam stands straight, rearing his shoulders back, rearing for an argument, for you to act like a pissant again.
“I don’t care how you did it. Or why. But this is what’s going to happen. You are going to take me into your room, and you’re going to fuck me like you’ve never fucked me before. Whatever frustration you feel about my stubbornness you’re going to take out on me, and I’ll do the same to you. And then, tomorrow morning you’re going to make us breakfast, and I’ll make us coffee, and we won’t talk about this again because there are bigger things we have to talk about, things bigger than us,” you say.
Sam looks at first like you’d said what he’d dreaded and then like you’d said what he’d hoped for, his shoulders relaxing, expression transforming and settling into excitement. His fingers twine through and wrench strands of your hair, and he smashes his mouth into yours.
And this is it, the difference between actions and words. You can either consolidate or ignore.
Forget.
You were never good at doing what you should.
--
River sleeps with his mouth gaping, his head jammed in a corner of the couch, arms vaguely hugging each other. You lean against the wall at the entrance of the kitchen, sip your coffee, the sound of food sizzling from one side. You wonder if you’ll be him in five years—single, sleeping on someone’s couch, unable to wrestle with your guilt. Unable to become reconciled to the person you are.
But maybe you’re only seeing what you want. Or what was, not what is. You were out of his life, and now you’re a tourist. How can you know?
“Food’s ready,” Sam says, and that’s when River’s eyelids flicker and unfold. He notices Sam and darts upright, as if he hadn’t been motionless in sleep only seconds ago.
“I’m River—“
“You don’t have to introduce yourself. I know you’ve already met. Breakfast’s ready, if you’re hungry. There’s coffee, too,” you say.
You eat at your small table among the clinking silverware and the quiet. River takes great gulps from his mug, wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
“This is good, really good,” he says.
You glance at Sam to see his reaction. “Thanks.” He smiles. He deserves the way River eats like the roll of each morsel across his tongue is a new sensation. Because you don’t show it enough, or say it, just put food in your mouth, chew, swallow to make the emptiness of your stomach stop complaining.
“Everything Sam makes is really good,” you say. “He’s an excellent cook.”
“Is that why you suck his dick? Because he’s such a good cook?”
A long silence stretches between you, River just staring. “I mean, you can’t be with him because he cares about you—“
“It’s none of your business, River,” you say, your teeth clenching behind the last word.
“You think he told me where you were because he cares, because he wants to see you mend things with me? Come on. He wanted to see what you’d do, how we’d treat each other.”
Your eyes track to Sam sitting next to you. He’s staring at River with a kind of scared awe, and he turns to you, parts his lips as if to say something.
“I can see it,” River says.
It was only a matter of time. Before things blew up. Before River blew things up.
“Curiosity killed the cat, Sam.”
“Shut up,” you say.
Sam remains still and silent, his eyes no longer on you but latched on River.
“He’s not denying it.” River smile-snarls, and you remember its contours from back then. It’s the smile of a kid tyrant with the height and weight you didn’t possess, the anger you didn’t know could grow in someone so young. Throwing rocks at pigeons and squirrels or chasing after you only to tackle you and force your nose into the dirt and leaves in the woods behind your house, he’d wear that look, and you could remember it like it had its own sound, too, its own smell.
Your fingers contract into your palms, and you fight the urge to slam the resultant fists on the table. The ache of the cuts across your knuckles joins the jumping of your heart. Out of breath, you feel faint, your vision narrows to a point on River’s forehead, and your skin begins to buzz. There is the sound of things rattling against each other. Either you’re shaking or the table is, and you have the pleasure of seeing the whites of River’s eyes broaden as dishes and silverware hover into view. They quiver in midair.
“Whoa.”
Blink. Everything collapses against the table. The black recedes from your eyesight.
“What just happened?” Sam asks.
A fork sticks straight up from the table, its tines embedded in the wood. And you want to laugh, laugh until your cheeks hurt and your head thrums and your abdominal muscles throb. But everything’s stuck inside now, suddenly.
“Good question,” River says.