Bookmark

There are two types of people in this world: people who wake up to find themselves as a giant insect, and people who wake up with the book under their back.

After our son died, Melanie found a copy of Metamorphosis under his mattress. The boy was always a little off—putting literature in porn’s most cherished hiding places. Melanie fanned through the book and a small piece of paper fell out, curling against the air in its descent like a dried leaf. I crouched down and picked it up. Some handwriting: sea within us.

“See within us,” I said to Melanie.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Frank misspelled the word S-E-E,” I said, pointing at sea. “He meant to write see within us.”

Melanie sobbed. Ever since what happened, her nerves have been shot. Okay, bad choice of words. “What kind of thing is that to write? That doesn’t even make sense!”

“That kid was always a little off,” I said.

When a sperm penetrates somebody’s egg, life begins. When a bullet goes through somebody’s brain, it ends. The logistics in between—my son’s life—is littered with minor details: a boy with a hernia; a boy coming back from school with bruises; a boy who covered the walls of his room with drawings of shoes; a boy who was never a man.

I made fun of him about his inferior prowess with girls, nicknaming him ‘little pickle’ after I caught him masturbating one night, his back facing the crack of the door, panting girlishly. I always encouraged Frank to acclimate to women as earliest as possible. There was a dance once in 7th grade. I dropped him off in the school parking lot. “Just go over and talk to them,” I said. He looked at me sullenly with borderline wet eyes. “Thanks Dad, I’ll try.”

“I’ll try.” That was his favorite line.

Melanie couldn’t bring herself to go to the funeral. Everyone knew he blew his brains out with my shotgun. That’s the thing with a hole in the wall and a closed casket, the truth blisters. When I got back, Melanie was standing there in the middle of the kitchen. “Was he trying to say that we should’ve seen within us, or him?

“How long have you been standing here?” I asked.

“See within us—but who is us?”

“You’re thinking too much about it. He was just being dramatic.”

Melanie’s eyes were bloodshot from crying. “Who is us?”

Seasons come and go, the leaves of trees in a fast forward loop from spring green to winter’s invisible. Melanie is better now, though she does grasp in the middle of the night.

Our marriage counselor—or more accurately—her marriage counselor wants me to read this Metamorphosis book. I’m told I need accept my son and this would be symbolic. I ‘get’ the book, but I’m not impressed. Basically, Kafka is a loser. He’s a bug, big deal. If he had a real job, he would have had real problems, with real people. There is no such thing as art, only assholes who try to make it. There are two types of people in this world: people with real problems, and people who make problems for themselves because they don’t have any real problems.

I don’t feel sorry for Frank. I never did.

I can only read a dozen pages or so at a time. Then I put the book down on the bed and fall asleep on it. Every morning I wake up with a red rectangle on my back. Last night Melanie says she can’t keep the piece of paper anymore and hands it to me. I tell her that he probably used it as a bookmark.

It’s so funny how sometimes we never see what’s on the other side of things—like only half of the universe is known. This morning I turn the bookmark around. Some handwriting:

a book should be the axe for the frozen