Lara Hughes
The Faraday Cage
That day, Riley sat in the principal’s office with her son, Noah, and decided on the move as the principal thrust out Noah’s cellphone, almost ramming it into her face. She decided to accept her brother’s offer. Onscreen, a girl knelt. She pushed her lips out in a pouty kiss and angled her naked legs open. Noah’s reply sat in a small green bubble under the picture: u r beautiful.
The girl, a senior at another high school had, unprompted, sent this self-portrait to a handful of Dematha’s freshmen boys. But here in the office with its timeless air of pencil shavings, only Noah was rebuked for explicit material. One of his friends had shared the photo in a group text, responses batted back and forth, and now that pack of boys faced expulsion with only a month left in the school year. Zero tolerance. The girl, the principal said, would meet with a counselor every week. Noah sat with his head in his hands. Tufts of dark hair stuck up through his fingers.
If his father were here, called to appear in the office at once as if he himself had broken the rule, Dean would tell the principal: bullshit. Easy way out, he’d say, the school not dealing with the real problem. He’d sit in that office until Noah returned to physics. “All the time in the world, Mr. Principal.”
Riley stood and tried, like Dean would’ve, to coax this waxy bureaucrat into reason, to admonish him for unfairness. She could hear Dean’s chummy protest. “What was she expecting? Offered herself right up.” Hear the scrape of the razor against his lifted chin the next morning, after he’d settled the matter. “Sad, really, her needing all that.”
But as Riley tried to channel Dean’s convincing words, the principal slid Noah’s phone across the desk. He folded his thick arms and widened his stance into an impenetrable wall. Her protests failed, met only with silence. The bell rang. It screamed through her. Quick feet and laughter flooded the hallways as if a spigot had burst.
“Pretty shitty, kicking a kid at rock bottom.” She snatched Noah’s phone. Dean often said she backed down one moment too soon.
“Again, we’re so sorry about your husband’s passing.” The principal shrugged. “But rules are rules.” His eyes zigzagged down the freckles on Riley’s chest, pausing on the tiny anchor she wore on a chain. Then they dropped to a button she’d realize, only later, had popped undone.
She waited in the car while Noah emptied his locker. As she deleted the photo from his phone, rhythmic messages flashed across the screen:
we can sue
dude no school
she wasn’t even that hot
A ladybug trudged up the window. Riley opened it partway, urged the thing outside with a fingernail. She arched her neck back and inhaled the leaden heat. A move, yes. West Virginia. Her brother had called it idyllic. That was the word he used, and she supposed that somehow meant great. Unbelievable quiet, he’d said last month on the phone. Maybe there she’d sleep.
Since March, she’d awoken in the night with stuffed ears and a tightness clamping her head. She’d see the unmoored cargo ship, Decisive, heavy in waters far off Curaçao. How, knot by knot, it pulled itself toward some country in need of cables, or grains, or car parts stored in its rainbow-colored steel containers.
“Weird name for a ship,” Noah had said before Dean left for the job.
“Great name.” Dean had winked at her. “Perfect in fact.”
Perfect, because Dean had been so indecisive about the original assignment. Down at the union hall, there were whispers. Fellow merchant mariners believed the vessel might dock midway in Guantanamo to deliver classified goods. Dean passed the physical, the piss test, the background check and then bailed out, waited for a different hitch, a different ship. “Not going to offload in that hell and stay deaf. Pretend there ain’t screams a mile away. Not helping put weapons in those hands, no sir.”
Riley would never forgive his cheap adherence to principle.
Across the school’s lawn, students grouped themselves in small constellations. Riley double-checked that the photo was truly deleted and stopped herself from scrolling through prior months. She flipped down her visor and thumbed away smears of mascara. In the mirror, she watched Noah shuffle toward the car. His lanky frame hunched like a septuagenarian over a walker. But once he dumped his bags in the trunk, he slammed it with all the force of an angry fourteen-year-old. Months of rage shook the car.
As Riley pulled out of the parking spot, he stared ahead at a single point on the asphalt.
“It’s not right, babe. I’m sorry.”
He shut his eyes until they were home.
* * *
Over the next weeks, Noah said goodbye to his friends, his ballfield, his lifelong dentist. He grumbled about Riley inflicting such punishment. He packed his room and, despite a few outbursts, the entire kitchen. He packed his father’s belongings, scrawling huge D’s on the sides of each box.
“I guess,” Riley said, “we’ll sort his stuff there.”
“Yeah, there.”
Noah helped load sold furniture into strangers’ trucks, wiping his neck with the navy bandana he now carried everywhere like his father. The house in West Virginia was furnished and money for their old furniture would pay the rent. The first month, at least. Riley quit her job as receptionist at a doctor’s office, thrilled to be rid of rude and impatient patients. Lately, if someone had pestered more than twice, she’d smile, urge them back to their seat, then add their details to Send Me More Info on religious websites that appeared aggressive in the pursuit of new blood.
During breaks from packing, Noah lay in the yard with his hands clasped on his belly and studied the sky. Sometimes she’d lie beside him. Sometimes she’d start a shanty, hoping he’d join in a round, singing like they did back when they flicked each other with dish soap hands or a loosely wound towel. Back when Noah ate cookie batter. Now, he ate only the cookies. Beside him on the ground, Riley squinted into the brightness until her vision broke into small orbs. Noah’s stillness scared her these days. The way he blinked less.
Since the school incident, Noah’s phone charged in the kitchen each night. Over a Schlitz, she’d thumb through his texts—though it hardly mattered now.
so fucked up. she sent it 1st
Nothing eye-catching. She scrolled up and passed a video of Dean on the back patio. His profile stares offscreen, unaware of the camera. Its jagged zoom soon closed in on his stubble, his dense eyelashes, the scar on his ear. Dean’s stare is far and unfamiliar until the camera arced in front of him, breaking his vacant look. He snaps into a smile. “All right, Spielberg.”
Noah giggles behind the camera.
“Enough of that. Come help me fix the—"
Riley tapped the screen still.
* * *
The drive from Maryland was only four hours, a swirl through the Alleghenies. Riley held her breath when the trailer hitched to the car pulled into centrifugal force, threatening to tip. When big rigs closed in behind her on the two-lane highway, she squeezed the wheel until her forearms trembled. Pressure filled her ears like a balloon. They burst, as if pricked by a needle, on each downhill. Noah scanned through the radio, lasting ten seconds on each station before he surrendered and pecked away at his phone. His hand rebuffed hers when they reached into the McDonald’s bag at the same time, both after the wettest fry. Riley knew she was ripping him from the town where he was born. Maybe they’d get a cat. Perhaps he’d settle for a turtle? Maybe she’d raise his allowance, somehow. If she could.
Finally, they descended onto a narrow road between slopes so steep that the trees on both sides bowed, as if to one another. Her brother Mike and his wife had moved into a new house about twenty miles from the place he’d rented for Riley. Mike told her it was “in the zone,” whatever that meant. He’d found the rental, signed the lease, set up the utilities, and harassed her for all the paperwork to enroll Noah in school for the following year.
Looks like you think I need a man.
Noah’s whole life, Dean had worked four months on board a ship, four off. Having him around was a luxury. A bonus. Sometimes a nuisance. She and Noah knew how to survive quite fine on their own.
Just extra hands. Let people help.
So, she did. She turned the move over to Mike, let him brother her in a way she never had before. The rent was bafflingly cheap, and Riley was grateful. On the phone, he’d tried to tell her about the place—something science-y, about the radiator, maybe. But after a few minutes most of his words drifted by, lost to the foghorn in her skull.
He had a job for her, too. Secretarial. He’d tell her about it when she arrived.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Noah whispered when they stopped at the base of a long driveway. Bright pansies lined the border, their faces upturned like owlets. The brick house at the end had an inordinate number of windows.
“Hey. Clean it up around Uncle Mike, okay?”
When Noah rolled his eyes, Riley pretended not to see. She might fail on allowance, but she could grant this teenage rite. She parked alongside the driveway’s entrance, pleased at her forethought to avoid backing out or smashing flowers. Mike appeared in the yard, waved a hairy arm. Flab draped over his belt-cinched shorts and a gold necklace shined out from his collar.
“Welcome, welcome.” He squished Riley into a one-armed hug.
Meredith stood in the doorway, wiping her hands with a dishtowel. Riley tipped her head and signaled Noah to hug his aunt. “Made stroganoff,” Meredith said, with a squeeze of his biceps. The creaminess of the meal seemed heavy for the day’s sunshine. Riley felt like she’d swallowed a fist but figured Meredith intended something else with the early dinner. Something kind.
Riley had usually cooked stroganoff on the nights Dean returned home from a stint. It was his favorite, even in hot weather. After a scalding shower that emptied the tank, he and Noah would play chess while she sautéed the beef.
“Getting good, kid,” he’d say, then checkmate Noah. When the stroganoff was ready, they’d sit around the table, Noah tripping over piled-up words, cramming four months into one meal. When he paused for a true breath, his noodles were cold. The smell of sizzled mushrooms hung in the air long after the leftovers were stored.
Certain kindnesses, Riley had found, became fragile gifts. She hadn’t seen Mike and Meredith since the casket-less memorial.
“Come tour the house.” He patted Noah’s back and guided him inside, which was awash in pale tans—muted neutrals, according to Meredith. Fake ivy lolled down from empty bookshelves. Plaques with phrases about faith, family, and food decorated the walls, most in cursive. The place looked more expensive than Riley expected. Mike had been in charge of—was it media operations?—for a local college, filming speakers and weekend ads. But now he’d started something new. Riley wasn’t sure what. Meredith stayed home each day, likely keeping all the beige clean. Riley swatted Noah’s hand when he fingered the dried fronds of a cross on the wall. They both gave nods of tired interest to each boasted faucet, each flaunted dimmer.
“Wish we had guest rooms, really do,” Mike said as he led them past a long hallway with several closed doors. Meredith cooed in agreement and tucked her sandy bob behind her ears. She’d already asked if Riley wanted a hair appointment, directing the question to Riley’s yarmulke of brown roots as if it might accept.
The basement showcased a whole film set-up: tripods at varying heights, intricate video cameras, pull-down backgrounds for portraits. Boxes overflowing with clothes lined the walls. A water gun poked out from one. Lights stood tall, cables looped like tails behind them.
“All these puppies,” Mike gestured to the entire room with a game-show host’s flourish. “Worth more than the house.” In the corner, giant monitors and computers sat upon a wide L-shaped desk, along with a messy tower of business cards that Meredith rushed to straighten.
“So, this is the office. The studio.” He pointed to the desk. “You’ll check emails, keep records, mail checks. Stuff like that.”
Riley nodded. Easy enough.
“You guys make movies now?” Noah pulled down a neon green background, but it shot up with a whir.
“Sort of. Educational content.” Mike’s cheeks looked pink and overheated, despite the air conditioning. He glanced at Meredith, who shook her head. She asked Noah to help brew iced tea upstairs.
Riley sensed Mike waiting, that he expected her to ask something. She didn’t. Silence didn’t heckle her the way it did others. And she didn’t care what the job was, only that her brother could pay her. Not fire her.
“Want to go over everything next week? Unpack first, all that?”
Riley nodded. She wondered if she could wear sweats to the job but didn’t ask.
“You read the house stuff I sent, right?” He led her upstairs. “You ready?”
“Of course.” These days, she found herself smiling when she lied, forcing on her most pleasing face, the one most acceptable to others. The rest of her flapped so hard underwater it made her sweat. She hadn’t had time to read what he’d sent. There were so many papers, too many—half a ream maybe—in that manila envelope.
Whenever Dean returned from sea, he’d kiss between her brows. “You sure do hold down the fort.”
At dinner Riley crunched the stroganoff’s underboiled noodles, drained too soon. She vowed to herself to read the papers that night.
Later, in the car, the radio fizzled in and out in spurts. Noah reached in his pocket and removed a business card from the basement desk. She glanced over: Bespoke Media. His nimble thumbs flitted over his phone’s screen. “Holy shit,” he said, then laughed.
“Jesus. Language, Noah.”
“Shit.” He grinned. “You have to see this website.” When Riley exited the highway, Noah held the phone over her lap. The screen blackened. It relit when he tapped it, but whatever he wanted to show her had disappeared. “Man. No service.”
Behind them, an antique car honked mere seconds after the light turned green. Noah twisted around and rattled off possible automakers, searched for its brand. A Buick Skylark, Riley saw. But she stayed silent, grateful for this puddle of distraction into which he could splash around.
Signs with U.S. Government and Private Property streaked by, the text under the headings too dense to catch. They passed a museum, a phone booth, and a large arrow pointing toward Green Bank as the gauzy light faded into shadows. Hills overlapped, their tops curving like a braid. Beneath those, smooth farmland stretched for miles. She pulled over. Thank god Mike had forced a map on her. Once she had her bearings, Riley returned to the thin road. Ahead, a tremendous white structure rose from the horizon. As they drove nearer, it looked more like a colossal satellite dish, the whole thing cross-hatched as if made of scaffolding. A long L-shaped arm, bent like a construction crane, shot out of the disc’s edge and aimed up at the sky. The crane reached as high as the Washington Monument. Two flashes pulsed at its top. A mist of rosy light encircled the dish, which could hold football fields.
“Whoa,” Noah whispered. Other smaller, imitation discs dotted the fields.
They drove even closer. The contraption sat far back from the road and was centered on a circle of tan and pristine dirt, like a super-sized pitcher’s mound. A high chain-link fence surrounded the whole thing. Riley turned away from the machine, onto a dirt path. They jostled toward a weary cabin. The headlights caught pale regrowth reaching up from splintered trees. In a shallow marsh, branches jabbed though nets of moss. Light seeped from the windows of the lone house next door. Its porch teemed with hoses, crates, and overturned plastic chairs. Cheery decorative plates hung from the siding, most intact.
As Riley parked between the two houses, a pickup truck with a surplus of antennae pulled in behind her. Its amber siren flung out a series of whoops. A rickety man in a Hawaiian shirt and paint-stained jeans emerged. He left the engine running. Riley’s taillights lit the badge pinned to his chest, which gleamed in her rearview mirror. Noah cracked one knuckle, then another.
“It’s fine, babe.” She locked the doors. “We’re fine. Totally fine.” Riley inched the window down.
“You the new renters?”
“Yeah, but my brother’s the one who—”
“You know you can’t drive this thing in here, right?” The man jutted his chin toward their trailer.
“Just for moving in, sorry. Unpacking it tomorrow.”
“The car.”
“Sorry?”
“Runs on gas. Can’t have it here at all. Going to have to tow it out for you in the A.M. at this point.” He ignored Riley’s confusion and ripped a red sheet off a notepad, stuck it to the home’s front door. “Just a warning this time. Cause you’re new.”
Noah turned on his phone’s flashlight. He hovered it over her shoulder as they approached the door to read the harsh capitals:
NRAO INTERFERENCE PROTECTION GROUP WARNING
VIOLATION OF ORDINANCE ITU-R RA.769 AND ITS MANDATORY PROTECTIONS FOR RADIO ASTRONOMICAL MEASUREMENTS.
ALL UNINTENTIONAL RADIATORS ARE FORBIDDEN IN ZONE 1, INCLUDING:
A list ran down the rest of the page, a blank box next to each item. One was checked:
GASOLINE-POWERED MOTOR VEHICLES (ENGINE SPARK PLUGS PRODUCE RADIOACTIVE INTERFERENCE.)
The words made no sense. Riley read fragments aloud, trying to thread them into meaning. She ground her back teeth together. Since Dean, she’d promised herself not to lose it in front of Noah. So far, she hadn’t. When she turned around, she hoped to catch the quack. But the lit-up truck rambled away, its bulbs and dials receding into a legion of stunted pines.
The house smelled of Windex which, despite its strength, failed to overpower the mildew. Scrapes curved across the floorboards of the open living and kitchen area. A wobbly coffee table sat in front of an olive sofa, a neat array of blankets on one side. The oven looked twice Noah’s age. Riley found yogurts and a case of club soda arranged in the fridge. She must thank Meredith tonight before she forgot. She’d never moved into a new place without Dean, without his humming as he double-checked sink hoses, fiddled with the circuit breaker.
Noah was already offloading boxes. He stacked those with D’s into a high tower in the corner, a ripped international postage label still pasted to one’s side. The shipping company had mailed items from Dean’s cabin—sweatshirts, a few historical novels, and his toothbrush, its bristles wrapped in tissue.
Riley pulled out her cellphone but, like Noah, had no service. A landline hung on the kitchen wall with a curlicue cord that drooped to the floor. As she dialed, Noah took a break and stood beside her. He coiled excess cord around his fingers again and again until his fingertips turned a reddish-purple. No, she mouthed, shaking her head as she reached over and undid some of the cord. Mike answered. She thanked him, thanked Meredith, then railed about the Margaritaville gestapo, that crazy loony.
“I told you about the diesel. The telescopes? God, Riley.”
She edged away from Noah so he wouldn’t hear.
“Three times. Didn’t you—? You said you read the stuff. The whole place, that’s why it’s so cheap.”
When Riley hung up, she found the paperwork he’d sent last month. Coffee-rings and doodled mazes covered the manila envelope. She sank into the couch. Noah knelt on the floor beside her. They fanned the papers across the table. When she reached for one, she grazed the back of his neck. He, too, hadn’t had a haircut since the news of Dean. Shaggy locks covered that telling line where skin met hair—so soft and exact on a boy, only to roughen with age.
The lease noted the property owner as “U.S. Government.” A peppy brochure welcomed its reader to Green Bank, part of the 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone. Diagrams of circles within circles surrounded pictures of the satellite contraptions and declared them radio telescopes, in bold. They didn’t look for stars. They listened for them, detecting their sounds, and searching the places even light failed to reach. Riley scanned a page-long list of rules, then another page of no’s. No: microwaves, radio, television broadcasts, cameras, cellular devices, spark plugs, WiFi—all were banned by law.
“Wait. No cell? No WiFi?”
She’d sworn to Noah the move was not a punishment.
“Mom? Come on.”
Asterisks dotted a few items: approved dial-up modems, approved devices with protective shields and, only in outer zones, approved microwaves. She remembered, just then, a phone call with Mike and his description of the enormous touchy machines, during which she’d carved split-open Oreos into phases of the moon with her fingernail.
“It’s like a candle in total darkness,” he’d said. “Our eyes, they say, can see that flickering a mile away. A mile. All of a sudden, you shine a spotlight? Candle disappears.”
She’d lined up the cookies in order as he rambled, waxing to waning.
“Those sounds up in the stratosphere the telescopes find? They’re so weak—any other signals drown them right out.”
After she’d eaten her work, she dreamt of a distant burning dot. Then the floodlight that erased it from view.
Now, in their new home, Noah reread the brochure several times before resting his forehead on the table’s edge. “Mike has freaking WiFi. Can’t we just live with them?”
“No room.” She forced a smile.
“Sure.” He glanced again at the brochure.
“It’s not forever, Noah.”
“There’s no way,” he said, before huffing off to the shower.
His phone was plugged in across the room. Riley tapped it to life. As she opened the texts, someone banged on the front door. “Dealing with the stupid car tomorrow, okay?” she yelled, not wanting the guard’s flashlight in her face again. “Diesel. I get it.” After another series of knocks, she cursed the man, then answered.
But a squat woman in a frayed teal robe stood outside, barefoot. Her hair hung in limp, gray pigtails. The light bounced off her glasses, made it hard to see her eyes.
“Turn it off. You have to turn it off.” She splayed her fingers as if showing off a manicure. “See? Already they’re swelling.”
Riley said nothing, wondered where one could buy beer.
The woman pointed at the phone Riley held. “Please.”
Unsure what else to do, Riley slid the phone in her back pocket.
“Electrosensitives, we’re called.” The woman repositioned her glasses farther up her nose. “Rashes, chest pain, trouble speaking—you name it. Doctors don’t much believe us, but it’s a dang jackhammer to the head.”
Riley was grateful for the landline, 911 within easy reach.
“Got so bad, tried putting Faraday cages around the culprits. You know, shields? Block those frequencies. But this old body, well, it still shrieked if anyone fired up a TV. Left Pittsburgh, left my bakery, moved here, got gas lamps.”
Feet padded down the hallway behind Riley. A door slammed.
“My kid, sorry.” Why she apologized to this fretful stranger, she didn’t know.
“Lookie there. Thought the old cat had your tongue.” The woman tried to peer through the doorway, but Riley blocked her view.
“Anyway, even looked into a repurposed spacesuit, so I could leave the house, not feel the pain. But they’re oodles of dollars. Heard about this place three years ago, and it’s the only place I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t feel the pain. I’m Kit by the by.”
A sliver of robe slipped open. Riley sensed Kit was naked underneath. The revealed skin looked like crumpled-up paper, flattened anew.
“So, we got the three types here—telescopers, us, and the folk whose folks have been here long as the land. Which are you?”
“Don’t know.”
Kit inspected Riley’s face then turned away. She walked back to the house next door, navigating patches of mud with heavy sidesteps as if she wore the pined-for spacesuit. “I know it’s still on. Don’t think I can’t feel it.”
Before Riley turned off the phone, she saw Noah’s most recent text: holy shit guys my uncle makes porn. Thankfully, Not Delivered and a red exclamation point accompanied his words.
That night, Riley dreamt again of a distant circle, orange and aglow. Her own shallow breaths woke her, the gasps loud in the stillness.
* * *
It wasn’t porn. Not exactly. Or at least not always, she’d discover when she began work the next week. They were “customs.” Go ahead, ask for anything. Mike and Meredith set a price, contacted their actors, then produced the video. Their website gloated they’d fill any and all requests, which was true, mostly. If they didn’t like the vision or it was violent, they trashed the email, pretended it never came through.
“Market’s saturated with the normal stuff,” Mike said. “People are immune. Some, anyway. Takes something unique, that they’re shy about maybe, to make them feel—”
Riley didn’t care. He let her wear sweats and Meredith usually sent her home with two plates of pale tan food.
Each morning she’d unroll the windows on the diesel clunker that Mike helped her buy on trade. She’d back out past Kit’s car, which never went anywhere. Its tires had sunk into the ground. Torn bumper stickers, plastered atop each other, covered the backside. Their rectangles reminded Riley of bright, stacked shipping containers. She never asked Dean but assumed loud colors equaled visibility. After she pulled onto the road, she’d speed through the valley where air from the open window dried her tears.
As promised, the job was easy—a lot of loading and unloading for scenes shot on location, a lot of records, a lot of emails. At the start and end of each day, she called out requests to Mike, one by one. While he fixed lights or edited videos, he’d set prices.
“Rubbing mayo through hair?”
“Standard.”
“Squishing a bug with a loafer?
“Standard. No, plus fifty for karma.”
“Burning a stamp collection?”
“Fire. Plus four-hundred.”
Sometimes, she fielded prickly messages from clients who felt cheated, that the product wasn’t right. “She was supposed to be pinched on the elbow, not the upper arm.” Sometimes Riley opened florid and effusive thank you’s, paragraphs more suited for therapy. And whenever performers arrived, she would excuse herself and flip through tabloids in the kitchen, uninterested in the shape of others’ secrets.
After one Wednesday of slinkys and ice-baths, she scrolled through emails, ready for the typical call-and-response. There was one sent at 3:22PM, no subject. Riley read through twice, unsure how to summarize it for Mike.
Hi. wondering how much it would cost to have someone a woman I guess say really close to the camera, say nothing’s that bad, or gonna stay bad, or your fault. Or this is the place for you. Or something like that maybe I don’t know. maybe just say it a lot. Doesn’t need to be naked or nothing just asking how much. thx
The sender’s address was only jumbled letters and numbers. Riley read the note aloud, verbatim.
“Standard.”
She was careful in her reply, double-checked her spelling. “Don’t you think it’s a touch . . . I don’t know.”
In one hand Mike held a bag of charcoal and feather duster. In the other, a knee brace and chocolate sauce. He shrugged.
Riley wanted to add a tender extra to the reply. Something uplifting, perhaps. But Mike crossed behind her, impatient for more messages.
When she returned home, Noah wasn’t there but his phone was—plugged in and encased in some silver mesh bag. She removed it, turned it on. His chessboard laid open on the table, both sides mid-game. There was only one message from that morning, outgoing and undelivered, offset by the red exclamation.
WV sux. can’t take this place anymore- its like amish
Her mouth went dry. She should have brought him to Mike’s each day instead of leaving him alone here, a place that even birds avoided. There was a café in an outer zone with guarded, nosy locals, who’d likely offer puncturing opinions about his all-day presence. Why hadn’t she learned chess? She’d tried, but still.
“Noah?” He was without his phone, his useless phone. Riley checked his room and called for him again. She hadn’t raised his allowance, hadn’t bought a turtle.
Outside, laughter overlapped, followed by the back-and-forth wheeze of a saw. In front of Kit’s porch, Noah bent over a plank while she supervised. Sweat soaked the back of his t-shirt. Riley covered her nose and mouth so as not to inhale the mist of rising sawdust.
“Figured you were home when these puppies got all swole,” said Kit. She waggled her fingers in the air and scowled. She was, as usual, in her robe.
Noah wiped his forearms with his bandana. “Helping make a giant Faraday cage. For the electromagnetic waves?”
Riley shook her head. “For the electro—”
“Signal hits, electrons in the metal realign to an opposite charge, and boom! Cancel it out. Building one around her house.”
“Whole place.” Kit’s glasses had darkened into sunglasses which she tilted down, revealing her eyes so she could scan the road. “Cars drive through, radios still scanning. Idiots don’t know there’s nothing for them out here.”
“Mom, you know the telescopes? They’re so sensitive they can hear a snowflake hit the ground.”
Kit leaned against a dent on her car. “You’re on Neptune and your phone’s even on, they hear it.”
“A lot of phones on Neptune?” Riley asked.
Noah sighed.
She tried again. “Telescopes ever hear anything?”
Kit said nothing. Instead, she reached for Riley’s necklace and scrutinized the small anchor. “Not yet.”
Riley put her hand over Kit’s, removing it from the chain.
That night, as she slept, Riley’s ears filled as they always did in a sudden altitude shift. Tentacles of kelp on the ocean floor encircled the body before it swirled up, pulled by a funnel that spit it back through the surface—the thunk of a head, maybe a knee, against the ship’s keel—all rewinding to the ripples that first pooled around the warm and un-sunk body. Rewinding to the splash. Then the hole. Always a hole. Always a filmstrip with one darkened square: Dean at the railing. Leaning, perhaps. Flicking cigarette ash into the sea. He’d be in filthy coveralls, a hard hat maybe, or maybe mussed hair, and weeks-worth of softening stubble that would have scraped her chin. In pictures—he’d sent so many pictures—there were three railings. The highest stood level with his heart.
But there was no body, only the blank, dark square filled with freak accidents and failed organs. Something inside him perhaps shut down. So many nights, she’d held his novels by their spines and shaken them, but nothing ever fell out.
* * *
The next morning, Noah was in Kit’s yard before breakfast, drilling large veils of metal net into wood. Kit watered the plants that had fallen prostrate over her porch’s edge. Riley set a box of granola bars by the toolbox. Noah said something she couldn’t hear, and Kit threatened him with the hose. Noah’s buoyant laughter belonged on a playground. So did Kit’s. Neither of them glanced at Riley’s car as it pulled away.
At Mike’s, she hustled downstairs instead of lingering over her usual mug of weak coffee and awkward smiles with Meredith, smiles that dared the other to fold. Riley searched the inbox for the jumbled email address. Still no response. No response that evening nor the day after that. When she asked Mike if they should reach out, he chided her. “We only respond, and we responded.”
Over a belated cup of coffee, she spoke to Meredith about the note.
“A lot of our business is minding it, Riley.”
“Tell that to my neighbor.” She tugged at the pilled fabric of her sweats.
Meredith stayed silent until Riley’s eyes lifted and found hers. “You ever scream?”
Riley brushed the picked-at bits to the floor. “At Noah?”
“No. What kind of mother—” Meredith dampened a paper towel, cleaned the wood floor by Riley’s feet. “I mean get in the car where no one can hear you and scream ’til you’re out of air.”
“You do that?”
Meredith cleared away their half-full mugs. “Only saw it on a talk show. Supposed to help.”
Figured. Hard to see her eking out a yowl. “Just one more message, in case?”
Mike overheard and shouted from the hallway. “Leave it, Riley. Not up to us to chase after reasons.”
At night, she listened for the steady in-and-out of Noah’s fuzzy snore. Riley couldn’t stop picturing the sender typing the note, thick pointer finger by finger. She placed him in different rooms, unpuzzling the possibilities of things gone wrong. Though she tried to contain him to an imagined house, he always ended up at the railing. Greedy black waters below. She’d called the shipping company, talked to the captain even. She called again. But each time, all they revealed was he’d been on break. A watch stander heard the splash, saw the ripples, dispatched the rescue. It returned empty. They were sorry—so, so sorry.
* * *
On the tenth day without a response, Riley emailed.
We’ll do it for free. Please be in touch.
She didn’t tell Mike, figured he could take it out of her check.
That evening, the telescope brimmed with pink light. How it repositioned itself, and at what times, she didn’t know. Never saw. When she returned from work, the Margaritaville guard was sweating alongside Noah, raising posts to cover Kit’s roof. Noah steadied the ladder while the man climbed high to hammer in more armor of metal netting. Riley sat on her doorstep and nursed a beer. She worried about Noah’s strength, his wispy arms unprepared for a grown-man’s fall. Kit’s hands stayed glued to her hips as she issued orders. Her upturned nose followed every hammer strike. Sometimes, she’d yell to Riley who didn’t hear the words but lifted her can, toasting a cheers anyway.
Later, over Meredith’s plates of tuna casserole, Noah bubbled with statistics: efficacy, distance, percentages. His words floated away. After he went to bed, Riley turned on his phone, opened the texts and searched for attempts. She found none. He’d stopped. Surrendered to this place. Or learned to delete them, she supposed. On the couch, she hugged a cushion to herself and found the last video of Dean. Riley squeezed the worn fabric as she watched the few seconds. After the eleventh play, the screen froze right before he realizes Noah’s there with the camera. Before his all right, Spielberg. She thought she knew all Dean’s faces, but this one was foreign. The stiffness in his eyes, the sunken corners of his lips. She shook the phone, trying to make the picture disappear. The image remained. She turned the phone off and when she looked up, Noah stood in the hall. He said nothing.
* * *
The next morning’s rain clung to the mesh shielding that now encased Kit’s house. As Riley left for work, she saw Kit and Noah on the porch. Both held teacups aloft. They waved, wide and high, as if from afar. Noah pushed through a flap in the mesh. “You like it?”
“Quite the eyesore. Think it works?”
Before he could answer, Kit hollered, asked if she wanted tea.
She did not.
Nor did she want Meredith’s weak coffee. Riley sat at the computer until lunch, rereading the note, clicking refresh. No response. That evening, still nothing. She left with a Tupperware bowl full of macaroni salad. But instead of starting the car, she sat with the chilly plastic on her thighs. She dropped her forehead to the wheel and tried to scream, but nothing more than a stilted aaah escaped, like the doctor’s depressor flattened her tongue. Ridiculous, this cure. Plus, they might hear. Not that bad, not gonna stay bad, not your fault. She grabbed a blanket from the trunk, then returned inside.
“Forgot something. Sorry!” A sugary votive burned at dinnertime, like a mouth might mistake scent for taste. Muffled acknowledgement came from the back dining room. Unseen, Riley hurried to the basement. She grabbed a bulky video camera and folded tripod, swaddling the blanket around the equipment. On the balls of her feet, she crept up the stairs and scurried out the door. Before it clicked shut, Meredith appeared.
“What’d you forget?”
Riley didn’t turn. Instead, she wriggled her torso, hoping the blanket undid itself so her haul looked less secretive. “Mike said Noah could borrow some stuff.”
“Hey, Mike?” Even her yell was thin.
“Please.”
Meredith arced around Riley, faced her. “Does he know how to use it?”
“What do you think?”
Mike’s footsteps and mutters of middle of dinner grew closer.
“Accidents happen, you know.” Meredith pursed her dry lips.
“Come on, Mer.” Riley looked past her and repositioned the blanket. “Please.”
Meredith studied the goods Riley held. “It’s nothing,” she called, before pulling the door shut behind her. “Hope he only needs it one night. That way Mike certainly can’t miss it.” She raised her penciled-in brows. “One night.”
Riley nodded, overwhelmed by the urge to hug Meredith, yet relieved the load in her arms prevented it.
At home, Riley set up the tripod in the living room, screwed in the camera. She brushed her hair into a loose ponytail, changed from her t-shirt into a sleeveless shell, the color of daffodils, and even shaved her armpits. Not her legs. She’d shoot waist-up, so the sweatpants stayed. She powered the camera, hit record. As Riley backed against the living room wall, she took a breath, puffed it into her cheeks. The words. What to say. Not that bad, not gonna stay bad, not your fault. She began. A high-pitched screech interrupted.
Noah barged into the house. “Jesus, Mom. Stop.” He shut off the camera, squinted at her as though she were a dog in need of housebreaking. “Kit can feel that.”
“In that fortress?” Riley chuckled. All that metal, all that time. “Too bad.”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
The word struck like a match, illuminating an unbearable thought, a Loch Ness monster of a thought—one others, better others, could pretend out of existence. Pretend away. But there it rose, looming: She hated his hair, hated his eyelashes, the way his wrists hyper-flexed. Any part of him that was Dean’s, she hated. Hated him for having it, holding it, stealing it. Noah kept a bit of Dean forever. Not her. He was water gone through her cupped, now drying, hands. Noah would sleep and wake with permanent, unforgivable souvenirs, while Dean’s boxes would dwindle one by one to the trash, weekend by weekend to the thrift store, emptying the corner he still held, until he was no longer a part of this place.
Another shriek pealed outside the window. Somehow, impossibly, decibels louder.
Riley turned the camera back on. Bile rose in her throat. She searched Noah for traces of herself but found only Dean. “Doctors don’t—actual doctors don’t believe in this shit. It’s in that woman’s head, okay?”
He squeezed his eyes closed in response, Dean’s curly lashes on display.
“Whatever she thinks she has, Noah, it doesn’t exist.”
“Prove it.” Again, he turned off the video camera.
The allegiance pierced her. Neither moved as they stared at each other. Riley willed herself not to back down her usual moment-too-soon, though he’d think less of her either way. They stared until her eyes grew watery and his outline wavered, and Riley saw herself, tiny as a pencil tip in his pupil. She broke first, dropped her gaze to his beautiful wrist. After a moment, she shouldered past him and undid the camera. She hoisted the equipment, wrestled with the door, and tramped outside as night unspooled from the hills.
“Hey, it’s pitch black out there,” Noah called from the open doorway. “What are you doing?”
With each step, mud spurted up the calves of her sweatpants.
“Mom?”
Riley crossed the empty road.
“Mom, come on. Come back.”
Her nose ran. She tried to wipe it, but her arms were too full. An unexpected chill tightened her shoulders as she waded into the thick silence—no crickets, no owls, no cars. No breeze either as though that, too, gave wide berth to the machines. She walked a rigid line, not sure how far was far enough, until she reached the vapory glow of the telescope and its base encircled by the well-groomed sand, all chained in by fence. Along it, signs with slashed circles forbade entry and all electronics. She stabbed the tripod’s feet into the wet dirt.
After Riley attached the camera, she turned it on—then off and on a few more times, hoping its radio-magnetic-electro-whatevers somehow doubled in power next to the telescope and that Kit indeed felt the jolts. A red button blinked as she stepped backward, recording. Her eyes fixed on the dot. “Hi.” Her whisper cracked. She cleared her throat. Say really close.
Riley forgot the exact words but started to speak, her voice trembling and open in the quiet. Her words spilled out faster. She didn’t see the telescope behind her pop with light, or the flashes that skittered like gravel over its cupped center. She couldn’t know what sounds, what echoes beyond light’s reach, the telescope grasped, or that the swollen heave of the machine’s rotation and its searching tilt drowned out her voice. As Riley spoke, she inched toward the camera. She didn’t see Kit emerge from her metal veil or drop her hands from her ears. She didn’t hear Noah, out of breath, approach with his uncharged phone which he angled at the tremendous disc before panning the sky. She didn’t stop talking, stepping even closer to the lens as insistent flashes from the telescope multiplied behind her. She also didn’t remember the video camera’s empty slot. She hadn’t checked for a memory card so didn’t know the night, and whatever it heard, would escape uncaptured. She didn’t see the guard in his Hawaiian shirt or hear him slam the truck door, his Maglite grazing over her to aim, instead, at the camera’s blinking red dot.
Lara Hughes is a fiction writer who was born in Germany and raised on various military bases. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University. Her work has received support from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and an honorable mention from Glimmer Train. She lives in Nashville, where she is currently at work on a short story collection.