Eliza and Her Monsters - Francesca Zappia Page 0,50
this side is a moth-eaten couch and a large, old television. Wallace leads me to the other side of the room, through the opening. The darker side. There’s a mattress here on the floor covered with rumpled bedsheets, a lamp plugged into a power strip, and books and papers piled around it, including the Children of Hypnos series and chapters of Wallace’s Monstrous Sea transcription. A pool table takes up a lot of the space. Just to the left of the lamp on the floor is an old recliner. Behind that is a large poster of Dallas Rainer standing on a beach, looking over the ocean, and the words THERE ARE MONSTERS IN THE SEA sketched into the shadow he casts on the sand. Pinned beside the poster is an old football jersey that says WARLAND and the number 73.
From the opening in the wall, Wallace pulls a heavy, sliding wood door and locks it on the other side of the doorframe. It cuts off any residual noise from upstairs, and even from the rest of the basement. He presses his forehead to the door and closes his eyes.
“I am so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think he would do that.”
I shift from foot to foot. The room is cold, and my jacket is upstairs. “Does he usually?”
“Sometimes. He’s—he’s a great guy, and he’s a good person, but I hate it when he starts saying things are meaningless.” He pulls his head away from the door and starts to pace. “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to freak you out. I didn’t think he would be like that if you were here.”
“It’s fine. I get it.” I’m just glad I can breathe again.
Wallace balls his hands together at his sides. I’ve never seen him so angry. Not like this. He looks like he could break something. Maybe the pool table. “What’s the point of being alive if you don’t do what makes you happy? What good is a career that makes you money if you hate yourself every day you do it? I don’t have a family to support, I don’t have bills to pay, at least not right now. Sure, I’ll have to pay student loans, but we only have enough money for me to go to community college anyway, so I’ll pay it off with whatever job I get after that. I don’t need to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever important job he wants me to get. I just want to write.”
I watch him pace and feel myself growing to the floor, feet rooted in place, uncertainty creeping its way through my veins. I’ve never seen him like this—I don’t know what to do with him, so I stand there and stare until he finally looks up at me and says, “I’m really sorry” again.
“Do you need something to scream into?” I ask.
He considers. “That would be nice.”
I pluck the pillow off the mattress and toss it to him. He presses it to his face and lets out a muffled scream. Probably the loudest sound that’s ever come out of him in my presence, and the pillow makes it no louder than his usual speaking volume.
He throws the pillow back to the bed and follows it. He is much less intimidating while supine. I sit on the edge of the mattress and turn toward him.
“I’m sorry he has to be like that,” I say.
Wallace covers his eyes with his hands. How easy it would be to lean over and kiss him now, but it doesn’t feel like the time. Maybe it will never be the time. It will never be the time because I’m Eliza Mirk, great avoider of life and all its consequences. How can I want something so badly but become so paralyzed every time I even think about taking it?
“I’ve already spent twelve years of school doing what other people have told me I have to do,” he says. “And I know what happens when someone’s forced to do something they hate. Is it too much to ask for a few years of what I want? Do your parents do this to you? Are you really going to major in graphic design?”
“Oh, no. I said that so Tim wouldn’t throw me out of the house.”
Wallace snorts.
“I don’t know what I want to major in. I just don’t want to be . . . here. My parents like to remind me that I still have to finish high school to know if I get