Far Off Potential

In front of a stranger’s TV, on a stranger’s scratchy, tangerine carpet, my brother Chris and I sat side by side, criss-cross applesauce. We were watching a movie called “Midnight Offerings.” It starred Melissa Sue Anderson as Mary Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie. In “Little House,” Mary was a darling, a sweetheart, but a nerd. She got solid straight A’s, wore glasses everyone gave her shit for and then went blind anyway. In “Midnight Offerings,” Melissa played a high school cheerleader named Vivian. Vivian was a bitch. She had a shag haircut and a perm. She socked her mom in the face when they argued. She also had telekinesis, which Vivian used to fling nails and saw blades at the new, pretty girl who giggled too much around Vivian’s ex-boyfriend. 

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “I wish I could do that.” Six years old, I wasn’t interested in Vivian’s bloodthirstiness, but simply the scope of her power, by the potential it gave her to do whatever she wanted. I might not whip nails and sawblades around, but I’d let everyone know that if I wanted to, I could. 

Chris turned to me.  “Oh, I can do that. I can do what she’s doing.”

I turned to him, searching for cracks in his gaze, for a hint he was lying. There was nothing. I brushed my hands back and forth on the carpet. Bright tangerine burned my fingertips. “Really? You can do that?”

“Want me to teach you?”

---

“We should do something fun for Spring Break,” Mom had said. “Get out of the house. Get in the car and just go. What do you boys say?” Chris and I were six and nine; we turned to rubber. We bounced from living room to kitchen, and finally, to our bedroom, swept up in an ocean of joy. It was a Monday, the first day of Spring Break. Had Mom ever taken us on vacation? We didn’t think so. We roared through the house fueled by our glee. “Make sure you pack socks and underwear, too,” Mom had said. “Chris, help your brother.”

In the car, Mom tapped her thumbs on the wheel as she drove. No radio, only the tense, muffled taps of her skin on the steering wheel. 

Tump… tump tump… 

“Can we have the radio?” Chris asked from the back seat.

Tump! “No.” tump! tump! “I need quiet, okay? Mom needs to think.”

No radio, only the tense, muffled taps of her skin on the steering wheel. 

Out of town, Mom parked her car in the lot of a grocery store I didn’t recognize. She turned to us. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She got out and hustled into the store, her arms chopping the air as she moved. I drifted away in my seat, watching cars come and go, hypnotized as their shadows melted into the late April sunlight. The sudden jerk of the driver’s side door broke the spell. Mom slid in then turned to us. “Here.” She thrust out a hand. M&M’s for me, Starburst for Chris. Mom rarely bought us candy, no matter how hard we begged or bawled or threatened to die. Chris and I snatched it from her hand, and she turned back to the highway. 

Two browns, one yellow, and an orange. I always ate my M&M’s in fours—that was the best and only way to do it. I was crunching my way through the bag when I heard the metallic scrape of a lighter. And then the swift, sour sweetness of nicotine. A thin stream of smoke burned my eyes.

“Mom! Are you smoking?” Chris asked.

Mom plucked the cigarette from her mouth. She dangled it between her index and middle fingers, glancing between the smoldering paper and her son’s shocked reflections in the review mirror. She shrugged. “I’ve always smoked.”

I shook my head. “No, you haven’t.”

Mom exhaled a slender ghost from her lips. “Yes, I have.”

“Okay,” I said. But she hadn’t. 

---

In a bedroom that wasn’t our bedroom, on the floor in sleeping bags, Chris whispered. “Take my hands.” I turned on my side and reached for him, hunting blind in the darkness. My fingertips brushed against his fingertips. His hands wrapped around mine. 

“Okay. Are you ready?”

In the stillness, I nodded. Chris couldn’t see me nod, but he heard it, my hair scratching back and forth in the sleeping bag. I heard it too, along with the giddy, hammering thrash of my heartbeat.

“Okay,” Chris said. “Now think…”

He squeezed my hands. 

“Think of my skull. Think about what it looks like. Try and make yourself see it.” Seeing skulls was one of Vivian’s tricks. From afar, she could rip someone’s skin off in band-aid size chunks. Up close, touching you, she’d peer through the flesh of your face and into your skull, see what it was you were thinking. There wasn’t a thing you could hide from her.

I conjured Chris’s skull in my mind. In silence we stared at each other, his face, my face, just round, blurry outlines. I felt my heartbeat in my breath. Chris leaned close to me.

“Can you see it?”

“Your skull?”

“Yes.”

I squinted, waiting for his flesh to evaporate, for the bony white of his skull to become visible. Holding hands, I wanted to say, yes, oh my God, I saw it, the way Vivian saw it. I wanted to feel that potential.

“I can’t see anything.”

Chris kept his grip on my fingers. “I can see yours.”

In a bedroom that wasn’t our bedroom, in sleeping bags that weren’t our sleeping bags, the darkness closed in on me. Cold, like fat, winter rain on my skin. My brother said he could see my skull. I believed him. Fear ignited every one of my senses – I smelled my skin and heard my breathing and felt the air swirling around me. My spit tasted like steel in my mouth. Under that fear, at the base of it, was more than a little excitement. And potential. I latched onto it. “You can see it? You really see it?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep practicing. You just have to be calm. You just have to concentrate. You’ll do it.”

My brother said he could see my skull. I believed him.

Letting go of my hands, Chris turned away from me. In school, Chris had played soccer one year, basketball the next. His favorite tv shows involved cowboys, war planes, and gun fire. His favorite toy was his pocketknife. My favorite toy was my stuffed, puppet monkey. My favorite hobby was drawing flowers on construction paper with glitter pens and crying over drowned flies in the toilet. Chris was tall, tan, with dark, wavy hair. I was small, blonde, and as pale as the bones Chris said he saw in my body. Physically and personally we were opposites, but suddenly, now, we had this one special thing. In the darkness we were alike.

---

The steady hum of the highway had knocked me unconscious. Gravel popping and crunching awoke me, Mom turning up a long, narrow driveway. A frumpy, one-story house sat at the end of it. Foreign hills cut into the sky and I knew we were nowhere near home. Mom brought the car to a stop. We swung our doors open as someone inside of the house did the same.

“Boys, this is Patty.”

Mom didn’t get many phone calls at home, but when the call was for her, it was Patty. Neither Chris nor I had seen her before. We stared. Patty had long, dark hair pulled back in a pony. Her bangs erupted from her head like a claw. Heavyset, in a white, short-sleeved blouse tucked into her belted, high-waisted Levis. She was standing still on her porch, gripping the railing, smiling a polite but not entirely welcoming smile at my brother and me. When Patty shifted her gaze to Mom, she softened.

“C’mon, Mel. Grab your stuff. Get inside.” Patty turned to Chris and me. “Make sure you wipe your feet on the doormat.”

Patty’s house was roomy, yet cluttered. There wasn’t a wall or shelf that wasn’t choking on pictures, books, or dime store antiques. One table in her living room was dedicated solely to an army of miniature, porcelain dolls. I recognized them as the same porcelain dolls owned by our grandmother – dainty, parasol twirling ladies that twisted apart at the waist to reveal the musty, Avon brand perfume in their bellies. By their just-so arrangement and unblemished features I knew Patty didn’t have children. The air stunk with the dueling aromas of cinnamon candles and cigarettes. I squinted. Heavy, rust-colored curtains hid the windows, blocking the sunlight. Outside Patty’s house it was the brightest, warmest part of the day. Inside, it was dreary, and damp. Unease slowed my walk to a crawl, wary of what was hiding in corners, out of sight.

 Patty showed Mom to her bedroom, then took Chris and me to ours. There were two sleeping bags on the floor and a dresser next to the closet. On the walls, grim, black and white photos of people I didn’t recognize glared straight ahead. I felt their eyes on me, the weight of their blank, lifeless stares, and I wondered if Patty knew anyone who smiled. The bedroom carpet was bright tangerine, the same as every other room in the house. The blinds on the windows were closed. Dead flies lay mummified on the sill just beneath them. I sighed.

Mom saw the questions taking shape in her sons’ eyes and answered before we could ask.

I felt their eyes on me, the weight of their blank, lifeless stares, and I wondered if Patty knew anyone who smiled.

“Think of it like camping, except we’re staying in a house instead of a tent. And did you boys see?” Mom ushered us outside through the sliding glass door in Patty’s kitchen. She pulled us outside to the back of the house and pointed. Close by, a colossal explosion of oak trees.

“You boys can explore the forest all you want. Climb the trees, build a fort. Whatever you want.” Mom glanced at Patty, who nodded. “Why don’t you guys go explore for a while and when you get back we’ll have lunch? Sound fun?”

Chris and I nodded. More rare than Mom buying us candy was Mom letting us go off alone.  And that did sound like fun. I couldn’t imagine any of this being fun for Mom, though, since Mom hated camping. Before Chris and I took off I made a request. “Can I have something to drink?”

“Oh,” Patty said, disappearing back into her kitchen. She reappeared with a pair of mini juice boxes. “I guessed when I bought these.” She shook her head at Mom. “I mean…boys like apple juice?”

Straws clamped in our teeth, Chris and I made our way toward the forest. I stopped for a moment, looking back toward the house. I saw Patty and Mom through the sliding glass window. I thought Mom was laughing. Then Patty put a cigarette to her mouth with one hand and with the other grabbed Mom by the shoulder. Mom threw her hands over her face like a mask made of fingers. Her head and her shoulders began shaking. I held still, swallowing syrupy sweet apple juice, watching Mom as she sobbed. 

---

A pair of delicate, pint-sized ladies faced south. They were supposed to face north. Chris had turned them that way. With his mind, he’d told me, just before we’d walked into Patty’s living room. It was my job to turn them north again.

“With your mind,” Chris said. 

As the older brother, Chris was inclined to be bossy, to give orders. For the most part I ignored him, but since his Midnight Offerings revelation, I didn’t question his demands. Inches away, I stared down at the figurines. I focused. I imagined them turning slowly around, and hearing the faint scuff of their stiff, pastel dresses on worn, lacquered wood. I imagined the thrill if I did it. I balled my hands into fists. Focusing, focusing.

“What are you two doing?” Patty was standing behind us. She’d given Chris and me instructions to spend the day in our room. In our bedroom at home we slept in bunkbeds, which did double-duty as our impromptu playground. On bad weather days, we’d climb the frame like a jungle gym or hang blankets to make it a fort. Now, with just sleeping bags and a floor, there wasn’t much we could do. And our backs hurt from sleeping on a hard, itchy carpet.  

“We’re just playing,” Chris said.

Patty pushed us aside, turning the wrong facing ladies around. A few days in her presence was all it took for Chris and I to learn to avoid Patty. Whenever she looked at us, whenever she spoke to us, it was as if we were pets she’d reluctantly let inside. “These aren’t toys,” she said. “These aren’t things you play with. Get back to your bedroom right now. And stay there.”

Whenever she looked at us, whenever she spoke to us, it was as if we were pets she’d reluctantly let inside.

Mom had been on the phone most of the day, unapproachable. Her voice had been coming in and out like the tide in a hurricane, crashing and pounding. I’d never heard her so loud before. With her decommissioned, we were at Patty’s mercy. Walking back to our room, I leaned into Chris. 

“You should have told her,” I whispered. “You should have shown her.”

Chris whispered back, “We’re not showing anyone yet.”

Shutting the door to the bedroom, I heard Patty shuffling her dolls. Arranging and rearranging, assuming if Chris and I had been messing with two of them, we’d been messing with all of them. They clacked and tapped on the table, and I concentrated on them, still focusing, focusing, imagining the tiny dolls on the table, their dresses, their bonnets, their fans and their flowers, exploding before Patty touched them. I tried not to smile at the thought of it. 

---

Mom was sitting by herself on the couch, a cigarette smoldering in her mouth. I’d thought the cigarette she smoked in her car days ago was a fluke. But she was a pro after all. She flinched when she saw me, as if the world were hidden behind the smoke she was making. She grabbed a yellow, sludge coated ashtray and crushed her cigarette into it.

“Can we go to the store?”

Mom shook her head. Her mouth became a tight, anxious line. “No. We don’t need to go to the store. Not right now.” She spoke quickly, anxiously, as if she might crack if I asked hard enough. “Go outside and play if you’re bored. Ask your brother to go with you.”

“Can we go later?”

“No, we don’t need to go later. Go watch tv. Or go outside.”

Watching tv and going outside is what Chris and I had been doing for days. Patty had come and gone several times –  to the store, to the bank, to the gas station – but Mom had stayed put and kept Chris and I with her. It was like being shipwrecked on an island – confined in a limited, desolate space, with Mom the ocean surrounding us. And except for the sliding glass doors, Mom demanded we keep every curtain in Patty’s house closed.  

“What about tomorrow?” 

“I said no.”

“Why can’t we go anywhere?”

Squinting, I willed them to move. An inch. A half inch. A centimeter. Just the tiniest movement, that’s all I wanted.

“Because…” Mom said. And now her whole body was twisting. She blinked, as if her thoughts were visible behind the blue of her eyes and she didn’t want me to see them. “Because we have to stay put for a while.”

“Because why?”

Mom grabbed the ashtray and flicked through the butts. Mom, who would squirm at dust on her fingers, now dragged them through ashes. “Because for now we just have to.”

---

I had the bathroom door locked. Standing in front of the sink, I stared at the handles of the flecked, metal faucet. Squinting, I willed them to move. An inch. A half inch. A centimeter. Just the tiniest movement, that’s all I wanted. A sign that all my practice was working. A hint that I had some potential. The last several days I’d tried to move cups and silverware. I’d tried twisting the knobs on the oven, opening the doors to the fridge and the closets. Nothing. Now,  I imagined invisible hands reaching out from my head, grabbing the nobs on the sink by the base and then twisting. I tried to feel it, these mental appendages, this force, flowing out from my brain like an anchor sinking into deep waters. My heart raced as I held my breath in, pouring every bit of my will, every bit of my hope, into trying to make the nobs swivel. They held still.

Beyond the bathroom door, there was shouting. Mom and Chris, their voices butting heads with each other. We’d only packed clothes for this vacation. All of our toys, our games, everything we used to pass the time when indoors, had been left back at home. Our home. Where Chris and I had our own bedroom with actual beds and curtains we pulled open to let the light in and no smoke at all anywhere. And no Patty to loom over us. Chris had been complaining to me, and now he was complaining to Mom. Mom wasn’t happy to hear it, which made Chris complain even louder. Their shouting was like quick stabs of lightning, charging the air with its energy. Behind a locked bathroom door, in silence, I waited. Waited for Chris to tell Mom what he’d told me, about what he could do with his mind. I was waiting for him to show her. Maybe the same way Vivian had shown her mom when they fought. I was waiting to hear her shock, the commotion it would cause. Waiting for Mom, terrified, to come banging on the locked bathroom door, shouting that I let her in. I was waiting to see if I’d let her.

---

Mom and Patty were laughing. Above the sound of the TV, above the sound of my thinking, above it all was the sound of their laughter.  

Slowly, this Mom was becoming the woman behind her, someone who didn’t seem to know much about me and someone I didn’t know at all.

I found them both in the kitchen. Mom was sitting upright in a chair, a white, ragged towel engulfing her neck. With gloved hands, Patty was squirting a brown, stinking something all over Mom’s shoulder-length hair. Her hair had been as blonde as my own. Now, it was buried under a mud-colored slime. It dripped from Mom’s head to the towel, staining it in BB-sized droplets. In her hands, a glass filled with ice and something clear. Patty had the same sort of drink next to her on the counter. She took sips as she messed with Mom’s hair.

“What are you doing?” I asked. 

“Patty’s fixing my hair,” Mom answered. She brought her drink up to her mouth. She sipped, wincing as she swallowed. “You’ve seen me change my hair color before.”

“No I haven’t.”

Mom smiled, but it was Patty’s porch smile, neither friendly nor welcoming. “Yes, you have.”

Chris was still in the living room, watching TV. And I wanted to go back to him. When he laughed it was still him. When he spoke, it was still him, even if we were arguing. Here Mom was laughing and talking but there was nothing about this Mom, right now, that I recognized. When we’d first arrived, Patty had insisted we eat dinner every night at her dining room table. At first, Chris and I were part of their conversations. Soon enough, Mom and Patty excluded us. They smoked and laughed and drowned us out with their volume, leaving Chris and I to finish our dinners in silence. Slowly, this Mom was becoming the woman behind her, someone who didn’t seem to know much about me and someone I didn’t know at all.

“How come you’re changing your hair color?” I asked.

Before Mom said anything, Patty spoke up. “Because your mom gets to do what she wants.” 

Mom took another drink from her glass. I turned to go back to the living room. Mom shot out a hand. “Wait…” she said. She pulled me close to her. Her hair and her breath made my eyes burn. “I’m still your mom. You know that? You know I’m your mom?”

I nodded my head. “I know.”

“And we’re here to have fun. Remember? Are you having fun?”

I nodded my head again. “I guess.”

“Okay,” Mom said. She took another drink from her glass. “Okay, good. Me too.”

---

The weather had changed. Clouds flocked into silver-gray clumps like paint spilling over a canvas. Abruptly, Spring felt and smelled and tasted like Fall. Mom had said there were miles of forest. Mom had told us to explore, and we had. Chris and I had found our way to a meadow. No coats at Patty’s, we shivered in our T-shirts and jeans. The trees surrounding us cast dark, cooling shadows. The wind through the forest sang softly at first, building into a chant, then a choir. Together, we watched the trees dance to it. 

“I’m so tired,” Chris said. He picked up a stick from the ground, stabbing it into the earth. Outside, we smelled how much we both smelled like smoke. “I’m tired of sleeping on the floor. I hate being here. I want to go home.” The last day of Spring break had been on a Friday. That had been days ago. Chris wanted to be back in school, with his friends. I didn’t share his concern, didn’t mind not being in school, but I felt the tug of time slipping by me. How many days would Mom keep us out here? How much of this vacation was left?

“I hate being here too,” I said. And I meant it.

I imagined those invisible hands again, reaching out from my mind, wrapping around him.

I picked up a stick of my own, and, spiked with a small burst of anger, I threw the stick at the woods. It flew end over end, bouncing off a tree with a smack. A fresh burst of wind rushed around us just then and with it, the first drops of rain bit my skin. Tree branches whipped and shuddered. I looked from Chris to this tantrum of bad weather, startled. And delighted. Maybe I couldn’t move dolls or faucets or peek inside flesh, but maybe I could make wind and the rain that it carried. And maybe that’s what I needed to practice. Days ago, Chris had said I had to be calm to do things with my mind. Maybe I had to be angry.

---

Chris and I saw it together. A cat under Patty’s back porch. Gray, with black stripes and emerald eyes. It stared at us from between the slats of the stairs. We called and called for it, trying our best to sound friendly, but it just stared at us, flicking its tail in the air. Patty didn’t have any pets, so its arrival was thrilling.

“Use your powers,” I said to Chris. I hunched down to make myself smaller, hoping, from the cat’s point of view, this would make me less threatening.  “Make it come out to us.”

Chris turned to me. He half grinned, half grimaced. Then he sighed. “I don’t have any powers. C’mon. That was just a game we were playing. I don’t want to play anymore.”

He said it as if I’d never believed him. He said it as if I’d known all along it was all make believe. Like playing hide and seek or freeze tag in the yard. Just another thing we were doing to kill time. Chris said he didn’t have powers as if it were nothing, but his words knocked the wind out of me. I glared at him. I imagined those invisible hands again, reaching out from my mind, wrapping around him. I imagined tossing him back, sudden wind and rain rushing, the shock on his face when he realized he was wrong, wrong, so terribly wrong. I focused and focused, pushing, driving, prodding with my mind, waiting for my anger to do what I wanted, what I willed it to do. But there was nothing. No potential. 

Chris played soccer and basketball. Chris liked warplanes and gunfire. Chris walked around with pocketknives. All the things that I hated, all the things that screamed out the widening gap in our interests, in each other. For a handful of days I’d felt that gap close. Though it was just Chris and me side by side on the floor, just Chris and me enduring a stranger’s house together, I still understood we were separate. Then he told me he’d teach me to be special. He’d told me that I had potential. And then, as if it were nothing at all, he took it all back, and the gap between us tore all the way open.

That afternoon, in front of Patty’s fridge, I was helping myself to a juice box. It was one of the few amenities I hadn’t grown tired of. Chris was off by himself in our bedroom, and I was happy to leave him that way. I chewed on the straw of the juice box, staring into the fridge, at nothing at all, until Mom’s screaming slammed into me.  

“Hide!” she shrieked. Mom stormed into the kitchen, her feet hitting the floor in the unmistakable thunder of panic. With her newly brown hair, she was just an impersonation of Mom. Close, but not quite the real thing. She grabbed me and flung me into her bedroom. Through my delayed shock,  I realized it was the first time I’d stepped foot inside it. I was stunned to see she had an actual bed. And a lamp. And a chair in the corner. It looked like a nice place to sleep. She left me in front of her bed, dragging Chris back seconds later. 

“Get under the bed!” she screamed. “Both of you hide!” There was no room to question Mom in her screaming. We crawled under the bed. It was like we were playing a game, some strange Hide and Seek. My nose pressed against the thick, wooden slats of the bed frame. In my fear I focused on their smell, earthy and sweet. Again, I heard the fast rumble of feet on the floor. Then Patty was inside Mom’s bedroom. Like Mom, she was shouting. Something big was roaring fast up her driveway.

“He’s here!”

More rumbling, Mom and Patty sprinting out of the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind them. Chris and I crawled out from under the bed. We walked over to the window, pushing the curtain aside. 

I realized, in dumb fascination: I hadn’t once thought of Dad since getting to Patty’s.

There he was, standing in Patty’s rough, gravel driveway: Dad. Even from far away he was formidable. He seemed as tall as the oak trees and easily as wide. His arms strained out from his T-shirt, his heavy work boots kicked the dirt. Behind him, growled his behemoth 4×4 pickup. 

“Mel! Get out here! Now!” 

Shock worked its way through me as I realized, in dumb fascination: I hadn’t once thought of Dad since getting to Patty’s. I’d been too caught up by Mom and her strangeness and the allure of being like Melissa Sue Anderson’s “Vivian” to consider him. Chris hadn’t brought him up, either. It was as if we’d been under a spell this whole time. Under this spell, nothing existed beyond Patty’s house – no stores to shop at, no schools we should be going to, and no Dad’s who’d been searching. But Dad was here now, in Patty’s driveway. He shouted again. “Get out here, Mel. Get my boys out here!”

Mom appeared in the driveway. With her back to us, her brown hair in a braid, it was only her voice that revealed her. “Get out! Get out of here! Get out of here now!”

Dad stared at Mom. He laughed, but he didn’t seem funny. “You think changing your hair would fool me?”

Mom screamed again. “Get out here!”

Chris had said it was just make-believe. He’d said it was all just pretend. But we’d both seen Mom and Dad fight. We’d both seen and heard them scream at each other, throw words at each other, until words became plates, became glasses, became fists. Chris had said it was only playing, but we’d both seen Mom and Dad’s power. We’d felt it our whole lives, over and over and over. 

Patty stomped out and stood next to Mom. Her fists were stuck to her hips. “Get the hell off my property! I’ve called the police!”

And when Dad punched his truck, when he kicked at the earth with his boots, I felt his power in the air, wild and dangerous, and I worried about what would come next. I let go of my side of the curtain, moving away from the window, from Chris, and crawled back under the bed. Whatever was coming would come fast. I knew it. Chris could watch if he wanted to, but I’d protect myself under the bed and I’d wait. Eyes closed, I’d pretend I had the power to make it all stop. Focusing and focusing, I could make it all go away.