02. SALEM

Presented for your consideration: The Hermans. A portrait of the all-American family. 

John Herman is a paramedic. An insomniac. An alcoholic. He’s batshit. That's what everyone in town says behind his back. But John doesn't care. He’s happy so long as gets to spend time with his wife and daughter. He’s a family man. But family is hard. And John Herman is Batshit. I can't stress that enough. The line between reality and hallucination is blurring. John doesn't know what's real anymore. But that's step one on the long journey of repairing his relationship with his teen daughter, Azzy.

This episode features Pete Madden Jr. as John Herman, Katie Needs as Eve Herman and Azzy Herman, and Terri Lynn Davis as President Joanna Wolff. No artificial intelligence was used in the making of SIRENS.

Transcript

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New England is easy to romanticize. On the surface, it’s all red-and-orange leaves and ski trip weekends. Flannel blankets and beach sunrises. Huddling around warm hearths. Waiting out winter storms. Sailboats. Big houses. Bay windows. Ball games by day. Crickets at night. Family. Friendship. Fishermen in yellow slickers. Lighthouses. Lobster. Loons on glass lakes. Glasses half-full of good beer or expensive chardonnay, and sure, maybe that’s how life is on the coast from Cape Cod to Casco Bay, but those rules are conditional. The rest of New England is terminal. Null. Void. 

Blue-collars. Duct-taped barstools. Divorce. Gossip. Medication. Tradition. Breathalyzer tests and reciting the alphabet in reverse. Accidents. Opiates. Funerals with low attendance. Ground so cold you have to wait for spring. Red skies at mourning. The tonic of wilderness. Choppy waves. Shipwreck. Debris. A sign hanging in the kitchen reads, “Family is the anchor that holds you down.” Tourists. Tourists. I hate these damn tourists. An apple orchard, barren. Foliage like fire. Seaside towns surrounded by flames. You can’t help but watch it burn. 

Now, I could tell you how pretty the North Shore Medical Center looked on the morning of October 27th. How the hospital courtyard was all autumn leaves clinging to gnarled branches turning gently in the breeze. How a canopy of curdled clouds drifted overhead, pink with the first inklings of a blood-red sunrise. I could describe the rooftop of the hospital parking garage, how the cars were dusted white with snow, or a hundred other platitudes about autumn in Massachusetts, but that would only be a distraction from the truth.

And the truth is this: New England is a moon. A dreamy destination with a dark side which it never shows visitors. But the truth is like the moon. Eventually, it always comes out. 

Always.

The truth is also this: On October 27th, the hospital was packed with dour people. Their morning was anything but beautiful. Doctors under-slept, visitors pacing, patients dying. And yes, of course: above the autumn leaves, below the canopy of pink clouds, on the rooftop of the parking garage, John Herman’s beat-up blue jeep with wood panel siding was dusted white with snow. And bird droppings. Seagulls were gathered on the hood, squawking and talking shit. John shooed them away and climbed behind the wheel. 

He was pleasantly surprised to see his wife Eve waiting in the passenger seat, yawning, stretching her arms out at the dashboard. John pecked her on the cheek.

“Careful,” she said, covering her mouth. “I got dragon breath.”

“You been out here all night?” 

“Just about. Figured you could use the company.” She yawned again. “Sorry, I must look like death.”

John buckled in. He could feel Eve staring, gazing lovingly at him, and even now, after all their years together, he blushed. “What?” 

“You look like shit, is all.” 

“You shoulda seen the other guy.” He looked in the rearview. He removed his ratty Red Sox hat and ran a hand through his hair. It had been months since his last trim, but if he brushed it back and combed a clean part, he could pass for new money—a bohemian yuppy. Salem was full of them lately.

His hair was still thick. Brown, no grays. But the same could not be said of his beard—Patchy, silver, somewhere between mountain-man and raving-mad-derelict. John didn’t care. He had no one to impress anymore.

He turned the key. The engine cleared its throat, and they left the parking garage.

North Shore Medical Center was built like mansions on a cul-de-sac. Big brick buildings fit to fix any kind of sick. The only way in or out was a rotary road which circled the courtyard. The courtyard was flush with flower beds, concrete benches, beech trees. In the center of the courtyard, a water fountain, filled with dead leaves and dying wishes. 

John drove past the ICU building. The radiology department. The emergency wing where several ambulances were parked crooked on the sidewalk. They passed the maternity ward. The pediatrics building. The neurology department, where, last night, John took part in an unsuccessful sleep study. 

Highland Station was the last building on the roundabout. More co-workers there: paramedics shooting the shit with police, smoking with the firefighters. Steam rose from their coffees and mouths, complaining about the job or the weather or whatever first responders talk about when they’re not dealing with Dodders. John honked the horn and waved as he passed. Eve waved, too.

“Suckers,” she said.

“Suckers.”

“Bet you’re glad to have a day off with me, huh?”

John shot her a hopeful glance. “Whole day?”

“Hope so.”

“Time will tell, I suppose.”

Of course it would. It always does. Always.

“You gonna tell me how it went or what?” She asked.

“It didn’t,” said John. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh no.”

“Not a wink. Don’t know how anyone does it with all those wires they stick on you. And there was a camera in the room. Who sleeps like that?”

Eve clicked her tongue. “So what happened?”

“Well, I just, closed my eyes, and pretended all night.” 

She reached across the cabin to scratch the back of his head. “You must be exhausted.” 

He was. The truth is: John hadn’t slept since his accident. 

A month ago or so, John got a nasty concussion while on duty. He was responding to a 911 call at a fancy new apartment building downtown. A command line of dodders had cordoned off the emergency exit door, and behind it, the victim screamed bloody murder. The dispatcher said the victim was a tenant of the building. That he had fallen down the stairs on his way to the basement. That he thought he had a severe leg injury. That he thought he could feel his shin bone sticking through the skin of his leg but couldn’t confirm it visually. That he couldn’t see anything at all. That the bleach he had been carrying during his accident had ended up in his eyes. And the victim also told the dispatcher that it was laundry day. 

John could no longer stand the screams. He ran full force at the Command Line, HotShot drawn. Next thing he knew, he was on his back, staring up at the sky, watching his partner, Redd, run smelling salts under his nose. 

John’s helmet absorbed most of the blow, but his brain shook violently during the fall. Hard enough to reboot. Hard enough to damage his random access memory. He hasn’t so much as yawned since. A sleep study wouldn’t magically change that, and ironically enough, the neurology department didn’t seem like it was designed to cultivate sleep in the first place. 

Salem had recently updated North Shore Medical Center. They rehabilitated the emergency department. They refreshed the machinery in the ICU. They built Highland Station, a brand new building big enough to house all of Salem’s Police, Fire, and rescue departments. But then, the budget went dry. The rest of the hospital, including the neurology and sleep department, remained of another time. 

John’s sleeping quarters last night had all the trimmings of a cheap motel room: lumpy mattress, scratchy sheets, dated golden floor lamps with tinged yellow shades, cigarette burns in the carpet from a time when nowhere was off-limits for a smoker. 

And so, John didn’t sleep. But so what? None of that mattered now that Eve was here to lick his wounds. 

“I’m okay,” he said, pressing his head back against her fingernails. It had been a long while since she got him there. 

Salem was no longer the town John knew as a kid. If he had left and just returned, he'd say he hardly recognized it at all. Jefferson Avenue used to be a long stretch of abandoned factories and stout cinderblock buildings—package stores, moving van rentals, auto shops, and the like. Now, it’s all cafes, craft breweries, rock-climbing gyms, and yoga studios. 

Wealthy transplants started snatching up property shortly after Salem was chosen as the home for the country's latest Flora Farm. The other eight farms had revived eight different ghost towns, defibrillated back into living, breathing cities. Salem’s heart was beating again. 

The Jeep passed a new condo building. Luxury living with a hip rustic bar on the ground floor. Eve pointed out her window. "Broom and Cauldron," she said. "When did that go up, I wonder?"

"Couple weeks ago.” 

"Looks cute.”

“Yep.” John focused on the road. He saw the building's construction daily on his routes and didn't need to look now that it was complete.

“You been yet?" 

“No.”

“You don't have to drink to enjoy the atmosphere. Christ, you still go to Mother's all the goddamn time."

“Because Mike goes to Mother’s. Only place I can catch him.”

“Mikey,” she said. "How is Mikey?”

John shrugged. "He's Mike."

"You'll have to tell him I said hi." 

He wouldn't. John couldn't tell Mike or anyone else he was driving around with Eve. The whole town would say he's crazy.

Batshit.

His daughter called him that during one of their recent morning screaming matches. John couldn't recall the specifics—their arguments all blurred together these days—but he remembered Azzy calling him batshit. She said he was a lousy dad, losing his mind, falling into a state of early-onset dementia. She said his lack of sleep was causing him to become detached, that he needed a shrink or pills or god-knows-what-else.

Maybe she was speaking out of anger, the annihilatory kind only a seventeen-year-old girl can muster, but Azzy wasn't wrong. John's insomnia was ruining his life. He knew that one sleep study wouldn't fix him, but it might prove to his daughter that he was trying to be a good dad. And he was trying, but Azzy didn't seem to notice. 

Snowflakes were gathering on the windshield. John flipped on the wipers. 

At a red light, he looked in the rearview again. He stretched the wrinkles at the corner of his eye and let them snap back into place. Eve was right. He looked like shit. 

“You think maybe I should just lie to her,” said John. “Tell her I slept like a baby? Daddy's okay? Ship-fuckin-shape?”

“Oh, no,” she said solemnly. “Don't lie to our daughter, John Herman. That'd only make things worse between you.”

“I’m not batshit.”

“I know that.”

“But Azzy doesn’t.”

“Give her time.”

The light turned green. Washington Street became Lafayette Street. John stared at the Old Firehouse as they passed. It was quiet and dark, an ominous building even in the morning light. Chipping black paint from belfry to bay door. Daunting like a haunted schoolhouse. Those cursed gothic qualities made it the only remnant of old Salem left standing on Lafayette. Everything surrounding it was shiny and new, yet somehow more bleak—fake like a movie set. But the Old Firehouse was still real.

Eve nudged John. "Wanna stop by?”

“Maybe to throw rocks through the windows.

“Now there’s an idea.”

“What do I say?”

“I don’t think you have to say anything. Just throw a rock and run.”

“No. To Azzy. How do I make her stop hating my goddamn guts?”

“She doesn’t.” 

“Says she does. Says it all the time.”

Eve reached over and scratched John's favorite itch again. "You seem to forget—she’s a teenager. Kids don’t mean half of what comes out their mouths. They say they hate our guts, and, well, we just have to take it." 

"Easy for you to say. She never hated your guts." 

"Of course not. I’m her mother."

"Not exactly the advice I was looking for."

“Oh, all of a sudden, you want my advice?”

“Just this once.”

“Let Azzy enjoy being a kid. This time next year, she'll be off to school, then that'll be that. Give her some space.”

“Space?”

“Space. Make her miss you a little, y'know? Make her want to come home for Christmas."

“For chrissakes. She hasn’t even gotten into a school yet and you’re talking about missing Christmas?” 

"You have to think about it sometime. Her leaving is inevitable. And you have to let her spread her wings.”

Flurries fell faster. It was really coming down now. John turned up the wipers.

"Used to be easier, huh?" He scoffed and shook his head. "Sometimes, I wish she could've just stayed little forever." 

"No, you don't, John Herman!” Eve made a face like she had just drank expired milk. She laughed. And when she laughed, her subtle New England accent reared its head. R’s became ah’s. “You hated being a toddla’s fatha. 'I wish she stayed little.' You're a funny guy, John Herman."

But John remembered it differently, because parenting is a perpetual state of grief—incurable nostalgia for the kid you had yesterday, a constant knowing that you’ll never see that person again. The days in which John and Azzy got along were long gone, and they were never easy, but from what I understand of human parenting, everything sparkles in hindsight. 

He sighed. “I just miss her, is all.”

John turned onto Summit Avenue and parked along the curb in front of his house. An asymmetrical two-story Queen Anne with a turret on the right corner and a peaked witch's hat on top. The windows were dark except for Azzy’s. He stared at it dreadfully. 

Her room was on the second floor of the turret. John could see her through the sheer red curtains, darting around, getting ready for school. There was a time when he was her alarm clock, chauffeur, head chef, and biggest fan. She couldn't function without him, but these days, Azzy didn't seem to need John for much.

"Just talk to her," said Eve.

"And say?"

“Sorry for being so overbearing. Tell her you’ll loosen up, but you have to mean it, okay? That kid can smell bullshit from a mile away.”

“She gets that from you.”

“A skill I developed shortly after meeting you.”

“Alright. Then what?”

“I—I don’t know. You’re overthinking it. This ain’t rocket surgery.  Just show her that you’re just trying to be a good dad.”

“I am trying."

“Then try harder.”

“By doing less?”

“Yeah?”

“Your advice sucks."

“It’s tough love, pardner. You need it, or else she’s gonna fly out the door the first chance she gets.”

“She’s gonna fly out the door anyway.”

“Yeah, but this way, you’ll get to see her off.”

John leaned back against the headrest and rubbed his eyes. 

Eve continued, “I know you, Herman. I know this is what your version of sorry looks like. You just want to make up for not being around when she needed you. But our daughter doesn’t know the John I know. And if she did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“You’re right.”

“I love hearing you say that.” 

“Okay, there it is.” They laughed together. He reached for Eve's thigh but felt only the cold leather of the passenger seat. He opened his eyes. The seat was empty. She was gone. 

John didn't have to remind himself that Eve was dead. He noticed her absence every minute of the last three and a half years. These days, he was only surprised at how quickly she would disappear, especially like that, right in the middle of a conversation.

When the hallucinations began, John chalked them up to DTs. Delirium Tremens. A side effect of getting sober. 

The DTs can be violent. Can make you see and hear things that aren't there—shadow people. Voices whispering. Bugs crawling out of the walls. John quit drinking shortly after Eve died, but ever since, his hallucinations have only grown stronger, more vivid, more frequent. 

Being inside John’s mind was like being inside a funhouse flickering between dimensions, as if God took up set design and painted a plastic sheet and draped it over his whole world. Sometimes, the hallucinations were curious and mind-bending. Sometimes, they were terrifying. And sometimes, they were Eve. 

The windshield wipers were squeaking against the dry windshield. It hadn't stopped snowing. It never even started. Faux-snow. It always snows when the hallucinations come on. 

I'm fuckin' batshit, he thought. 

And he was, but he liked it when he got to see Eve again.

John cut the engine and walked to his modest castle, a king without a queen, terrified of a princess.

The front porch was all-American. A flag on the overhang. Dead leaves on red Adirondack chairs. Two pumpkins on the steps because Azzy was suddenly too old to carve jack-o-lanterns that year. Three seagulls perched on the railing. 

They didn’t fly away when John approached. Eve would’ve considered that a bad omen. She told him once that birds can sense your soul. 

“If they see you coming and they don’t take off, it means you and your spirit are out of sync.” John thought it was all woo-woo bullshit until the day she died when a murder of crows gathered on the sill outside their bedroom window. 

He slapped the porch railing and stomped the steps. The gulls took off.

Woo-woo bullshit.

He thumbed through the letterbox. In between the junk mail and bills, the bank statements he’d never open and restaurant menus he’d never order from, the LL Bean catalog addressed to Eve, and voter information for the upcoming election, John found a letter addressed to Azzy. The envelope was midnight in color—black like the wrong kind of magic, like ravens, like powerless beach towns after summer storms. It was a DODPOP draft letter. John had seen one before, back when Eve was drafted.

He took it around the corner of the house, tossed it into a garbage bin, and closed the lid. He lifted the lid and closed it again. He lifted and retrieved the letter. He would have to give it to Azzy eventually, but he wasn’t ready for that conversation now, especially not in the morning before school, especially not on an empty stomach. 

He shoved the letter down the waistband of his jeans and headed back to the porch. The gulls had returned. They watched him unlock the door and go inside.

The Herman kitchen was a project in disarray. Countertops covered in sawdust. Power tools. Cabinet doors off their hinges and lying flat on the dinner table awaiting another coat of stain. 

A calendar hung on the wall next to the back door, still showing August, a picture of a clear summer sky over a candy-striped lighthouse. Behind the calendar was a hole in the drywall. 

The morning news was on the kitchen TV. The anchor reported an explosion. John didn’t know where. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t care much for news, but the talking heads kept him company, so the TV on the kitchen counter was always on. 

He pulled Azzy’s draft letter from his waistband and tossed it in the doorless cabinet above the stove, behind boxes of baking soda and cake mix, bags of rice and dried beans, salt, and seasonings. 

He grabbed his favorite mug—navy blue ceramic with a faded logo of the New England Patriots. It was a gift from Azzy on some hallmark-esque Christmas morning. She was five, smiling—her crooked teeth growing in like an abandoned cemetery. She gave it to him unwrapped. The tag read: TO DADDY FROM AZZY, in chunky blue crayon on pink construction paper. John kept the tag, too. It’s still taped inside his work locker. 

Sink. Kettle. Stovetop. Burner. Coffee. Press. Snow, falling from the ceiling, melting into his forearm, and collecting in his favorite mug. 

The sounds of morning at the Herman house—hot water pipes clanging, TV news anchors rattling off sob stories in that uniform tone that could only be learned at news anchor university, the tea kettle bubbling on the stove, and the crackling snowflakes drifting into the fire beneath it—all of it melted into a blanket of white noise. 

John could hear a scratching sound from the front door—TSH sh sh. Slow and steady in a three-four rhythm over and over again. He looked down the hall. Outside, night had fallen. The porch light was on, blue and flickering like a dime-store bulb in a haunted house, casting a silhouette through the curtain on the door lite. Someone was out there. 

John crept down the hall. The scratching sound grew louder. 

TSH sh sh

He lifted the curtain and looked out. The woman on the porch was sweeping broken glass. She was no taller than her broom, hunchbacked, and wearing a cloak—blue velvet shimmering like diamond Lamé. 

TSH sh sh

Snow was falling down the back of John’s shirt. His beard was frozen. He reached for the doorknob, and the woman stopped sweeping. She turned to the door and drew back her hood. Her hair was a cold cascade of silver feathers, and a handful drifted down to the porch. John blinked, and the woman was bald. The feathers, now burying her to her knees, had turned black. 

Slowly, she raised her head. John’s brain tried registering something familiar there, but it wasn’t natural. No nose, no mouth, just a single eye glowing ruby-red. It flashed like ambulance lights. It flickered like flame.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He tried to run, but his muscles were frozen. He could smell death, the stench of burning hair, and—from the kitchen, the teakettle screamed. 

Morning returned. 

John turned away, back against the coats on the wall. His chest heaved. His pulse pounded. He was relieved but only briefly before he found himself face to face with another horror, this one undeniably real and standing right in front of him: Azzy was at the bottom of the stairs. 

She was wearing Eve’s old clothes—a motorcycle jacket beat up like the skin of a pack-a-day witch. An old Ramones t-shirt, faded pink and full of holes. Her copper hair, hazel eyes, her freckles and where they fell on her face— all of it was more her mother than Azzy these days. For a fleeting second, John thought she was Eve. 

“Morning, John,” she said.

“Morning,” he panted. “You scared the heck outta me.”

“Water’s ready.”

Then John heard the high-pitched wail of the tea kettle, so consistent he forgot it was there.

He darted to the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder down the hall to make sure the front porch was empty. It was. 

John poured the kettle into the coffee press. He was shaking. Sweating. Azzy watched from her stool at the kitchen island. “You good, John?”

“Shipshape. Just a little hungry is all.” He pulled a slab of bacon out of the refrigerator and dropped strips into a frying pan. “You hungry?”

“Bobby’s on his way.”

John looked at the clock on the stove. “He’s late.”

“I could go for a cup of coffee.”

“You drink coffee now?”

Azzy didn’t respond. She was on her phone, mentally checked out. John poured her a mug and brought it over. 

The TV droned on about a FLORA plant that had been destroyed in Palm Springs. PROGRE33 was working.

“—cause of the explosion is TBD, but moments ago, President Wolff said: ‘The FLORA safety team is the best at what they do. If any farm has so much as a screw loose, they’ll tighten it.’ The president is planning to address the nation tonight—“

John scoffed. “Wolff.” 

“No politics,” said Azzy.

“She doesn’t need a second term.”

“I can vote however I please. I’m an adult now.”

“Not ’til tomorrow, you’re not. And 18 hardly makes you an adult.”

“It does in the eyes of the government.” 

“Unfortunately, true.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter afraid to look at his daughter, terrified she’d deny his eye contact request. “Wanna do anything special tomorrow?”

“Nah.” 

“Y’know, normally, teenagers make a big deal out of their 18th birthday.”

“Normal teenagers don’t have to share their birthday with their dead mom.”

“You’re a normal teenager.”

Azzy’s phone chimed—Deeleedoo!

She smiled and tapped away at it. 

“What kind of cake do you want?” John asked.

“Dear god, please, no baking.”

“It’ll be better than last year.”

“I already have plans.”

“What about tonight, then? Scary movies, popcorn? Still got those pumpkins I bought. We can carve up some jack-o-lanterns.” 

“Sure,” said Azzy. “Wanna go trick or treating, too? ”

“I wasn’t aware there was an age limit for fun.” 

“Well, there is. And I can’t anyway. I have to help Bobby write his stupid college essay tonight.”

“I thought those had to be submitted already.”

Her phone chimed again. 

Deeleedoo!

It was the latest model Raven, the best phone John’s credit could buy. It was almost worth every penny to see that cemetery smile of hers come creeping out again, even if only for a screen. 

Azzy loved her Raven. She nourished it and provided everything it asked for: passwords, retina scans, fingerprints—things she wouldn’t willingly give away to her physician or the police. And her Raven reciprocated by recording every freckle on her face—bits and pieces of you saved for a rainy day in the cloud known as SIREN—a serpent in this techno-garden full of bad apples, rotten to the core. But even rotten fruit attracts flies. 

John didn’t understand. He grew up with landlines. Cell phones were like bricks. Text messages cost fifty cents to send and five minutes to type. He witnessed the beginning of the Internet and the decline in human interaction that came with it. And now, in his own kitchen, the latest model Raven was stealing away his little girl. 

Deeleedoo!

He set his mug down on the counter and stared at Azzy. “I hate that damn—darned thing. Takes you out of the room when you’re on it, you know that?” No response. “You hear me?” 

John slapped the countertop and yelled. He reached across the island and stole the phone. He thumbed through her apps because Azzy’s Raven knew more about her than anyone these days. Nothing incriminating. Texts from someone named Sam.

She wrestled it away from him then reclaimed her throne as champion of the Raven, phone conqueror, spoiled Little Princess of Herman Kitchen Island. “What’s your fucking problem, dude?” she muttered. 

“Language,” said John. “And who’s Sam?”

“Why don’t you just trust me?”

“I do.”

“Then don’t go through my phone. It’s the only privacy I have.”

“Fine.”

“Thank you.”

“Just so you know, since I pay for it and all, I have a right to see what’s happening there—in the eyes of the government, anyway.”

“Not in the eyes of me, John.”

“Stop calling me John. What’d I do to deserve this attitude?”

“You stole my phone.”

“You were ignoring me.”

“You were babbling.”

“I just wanted to talk. Forgive me for thinking maybe we could get through a whole morning without biting each other’s head off. ”

Azzy placed her phone face down on the countertop. “Okay, let’s talk.” 

“No, forget it.” 

“Oh, c’mon, dad. Let’s talk, dad.”

“Alright. Who’s Sam?” 

Azzy’s face went blood red. 

“Weird. You’re texting a person named Sam.”

“Next topic.”

“You being safe?”

Azzy put her face into her palms and squealed. “Fucking Christ.”

“Language.”

“Boundaries.” 

John retreated to the stove, smirking. 

“Next topic,” said Azzy. “Where were you all night? Out boozin’, I presume?”

“‘Boozin’?’ No. I did the sleep study thing.”

“You actually went?” 

“Yeah.”

“How’d it go?”

“Good. Wicked good.” 

“What’d they say?”

“Y’know, it’s the damnedest thing. Slept all night. Nurse said I didn’t toss or turn at all. Said I slipped into REM real easy, whatever that means. Guess it’s a good thing, and, yeah, I’m feelin’ real good. Refreshed.”

“What’d they give you? Xanax? Ambien?”

“I don’t take drugs, princess.”

“There’s a difference between medicine and drugs.”

“Not to me, there’s not.” 

“They can prescribe you something. I’m sure lots of addicts are insomniacs.”

“Yeah.” 

“What’d they say about the hallucinations?”

“Y’know, contrary to you, I’m not going crazy.”

“I didn’t say crazy. I said batshit. You’re going batshit.”

John winced. “Whatever you said. I heard it. Loud and clear. And I went for help. So.”

“Glad you actually heard something I said for once.”

“I hear everything you say.” 

He smiled at her, but Azzy had already turned her attention to her phone. 

She looked up to smile at John, but he had already turned back to the stove.

“So, what happens next?” she asked. “Did they say you’re good to work?”

“Yeah, they’re going to email me the results in a few days. The nurse wasn’t clear about all that. Guess we’ll wait and see.” 

John laid a paper towel over a plate and started forking bacon out of the pan. Behind him, Azzy sipped her coffee. She let out a yawn so hard she shook, and her eyes watered. 

“Tired?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

“You look it.” John tried to ignore the tension. He kept cooking, hoping she hadn’t heard him, but of course, she had. 

“Cool, John.” 

“I just meant you look a little sleepy, is all. I worry about you.”

“You don’t have to. I’m not like you.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Deedledoo! — text from Bobby. 

“Saved by the fucking bell,” said Azzy.

“Language, goddamn it, language,” John threw his fork into the frying pan, splashing bacon grease on the stove, the wall, the counter, himself. He kicked the oven, rattling the burners, the pans. He was ashamed of his short temper. Each time he lost it, he lost Azzy a little more. 

“I’m glad the sleep study went well,” she yelled from the hallway. “Maybe next, you can see someone about your anger issues.” 

John reached for his mug and chugged black coffee as if it were whiskey. “I’m not angry. Just the grease. Hurt like hell, is all.” Then he headed after her, catching her in the foyer, pressing himself between the door and the jamb, blocking her exit. “Wait. Don’t leave like this. Let’s talk.”

“I don’t have a car, remember? I leave when my ride shows up.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“You really are batshit, huh?”

John became her chauffeur after Eve died. He drove her to and from school every day until one hungover Monday morning when he backed into the side of a school bus. The police were there for hours. The bus had to be towed. She hasn’t allowed him near campus since.

“Listen. I know better than to tell my teenage daughter she looks tired. I may be batshit, but I’m not a fuck—a freakin’ moron. It’s just that we were talking, and lately, we yell more than we talk, and I wasn’t thinking. I’m just tired, okay? I didn’t sleep a goddamn second last night. And I’m starvin’, and. You know how I get when I don’t eat, and what I’m trying to say is, I’m trying.”

John strained to smile. The tired lines on his face creased like some long-forgotten atlas in the backseat of his heart. Happiness was foreign. The road to joy was an abandoned thing anymore. Still, he smiled. 

“Language,” said Azzy.

“I said freakin’.”

“You said you didn’t sleep a goddamn second last night.” 

John hung his head and stared down at his mug, his ashamed reflection bobbing up and down in the coffee. He was toast, and he knew it. 

“Did you even go?”

“Of course I did. Just trust me.”

“I can’t.” Azzy pushed past him, through the door, and toward the street. 

“I love you,” John called out from the porch.

Bobby waved. Azzy climbed into his car. They drove off, tires pounding down the asphalt until they were out of earshot. 

John closed the door and sat on the stairs in the hallway, cradling his favorite mug.

Never bullshit a bullshitter, and she, my friend, can bullshit amongst the matadors. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they? Just try, John. Just try.

The smell of burning wafted into the foyer. The Smoke alarm started blaring. John jumped to his feet and ran down the hall. The kitchen was on fire. 

The bacon plate had jumped when he kicked the oven. A corner of the greasy paper towel caught. Now, it was all flames. Puffing like a chimney. Stovetop inferno. The sawdust covering the countertops didn't help slow things down. 

There was no time to think. 

John clicked off the burner, flung the plate to the floor, and stomped it out with his bare feet. He reached over the stove, through the smoke, blindly batting at the open cabinet. Ingredients fell out: spice shakers, cake mix, instant rice, a box of baking soda, and the can of Morton salt he was looking for. He flipped open the pour spout, doused it all, suffocating the flames, and then threw the empty container into the sink.

Most of it had melted into a mountain of burned food and blackened bric-a-brac. Still, some things were salvageable: four glass spice jars, two hot sauce bottles, a canister of breadcrumbs that had cleared the flames and rolled to the back door. John put it all away. The black envelope was sticking out of the cabinet. He wished that had burned, too. But even if it had, another would come, then another. The government is persistent. Azzy has been selected. She’s a Dodder now, just like Eve.

“Fuck it.” 

John held the envelope over a burner and clicked it on. Flames climbed from corner to corner, devouring the draft letter and curling it to ash and ember. He dropped it into the sink, where it wheezed to death under the faucet. He blinked, and the envelope was white—the color of honesty, the color of God’s palm, the color of cemetery smiles in the crooked mouths of children. John fished it out of the sink, shook off the water, tore off what remained of the envelope, and examined it. Azzy hadn’t been drafted. She had been accepted to college. NYU. 

He leaned over the sink, feeling nauseous and weak, staring at the empty Morton container among the dirty dishes. The cartoon girl on the label looked like Azzy. Salt in the wounds. When it rains, it pours.

He plucked the container from the sink and threw it in the trash. He tossed in Azzy’s acceptance letter—still white, not black, never was—too. How could he give it to her in this condition? How would he explain the scorched paper? The running ink? 

The kitchen TV was playing a Carewell Wireless commercial. A soft voiceover relayed the importance of sticking together, connectivity, the latest model Raven, family plans, etcetera. John kicked the garbage can. He punched the wall by the back door—a second hole in the drywall below the lighthouse calendar. Then: TSH sh sh! The sound was back. The sweeping woman’s silhouette was cast on the foyer curtain. The world outside was blood red.  

John stormed down the hall and ripped the door open. “Get the fuck out of here,” he shouted. 

The seagulls perched on the banister didn’t flinch. The woman was gone.  The sky was gray. The porch was the same as before. Empty. All-American. Nothing but a flag, Adirondack chairs, and two pumpkins, because Azzy was suddenly too old to carve jack-o-lanterns that year.