By Sarah Robert
ArtSci ‘14
Neil was lying on his futon, covers kicked off to one side, socks dangling from his toes. It was a few hours past midnight. The window was wide open but the curtains lay flat and still. Bugs made noises at one another just beyond the screen, arguing. The air in the room clung to his skin, pushing down on him with sweaty palms. Upstairs, in the cupboard above the sink, was a bottle of red codeine syrup. Neil thought about lifting it to his lips and sipping from it.
He heard footsteps on the stairs; she went, stopping and starting. Neil held himself very still. The footsteps got louder as they came closer to his bedroom.
He wondered where she’d chosen. His mother had always been fond of San Diego. Although, she hated the heat of this summer; had spent most of it within the 10-metre radius of the electrical fan in the living room, drinking homemade lemon iced tea and reading paperbacks. She could be headed north.
She reached the bottom of the stairs. Neil heard her set her bag down beside her. It must’ve been the old brown leather one her mother had given her. He tried to picture the contents of the suitcase: her blue dress, the worn copy of The Secret Garden, the bracelet his father had given her, and her port.
Neil rolled onto his back. He wished ardently for a ceiling fan. He kicked his socks completely off his feet, kicked them off the futon as far away from him as he could.
The front door creaked. She should have oiled the hinges. Next he heard her open and close the trunk of the car — the red sedan. She got into the car, shut the door. She started the car. “You should have got the muffler looked at,” he would have told her. He would have known to do things like that. It was loud. She stepped on the gas pedal. He could see the headlights through his curtains.
Neil got up. He walked to the front of the house. He opened the screen door and stepped out onto the front porch. The humidity was palpable. He put one hand against a and watched as his mother drove away, staring at the red of her receding brake lights as if making eye .
When Neil got up his father was standing at the window. He was looking outside but not at anything in particular; his face was freshly shaved but his lips were chapped. His posture seemed better than usual.
Neil ed him and walked into the kitchen. On the table was a cup of black coffee. He bent over and pulled a black frying pan out of the cupboard. He turned on the stove element and scooped some margarine onto the pan. He tapped the eggs on the edge of the kitchen counter, opening them, egg whites spilling over his fingers. He made four fried eggs, poking the yolks with his spatula until they broke. The sizzling of the eggs reminded him of the sound of cicadas. Neil thought about how he always heard cicadas but he never saw them. He knew they were supposed to be big.
He put two eggs on one plate and two on another and then put them down at opposite ends of the table. Neil’s dad came into the kitchen.
“Thank you,” he said to Neil. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and black slacks.
Neil looked up. Neil was wearing only a pair of plaid boxer shorts.
“Did your mother go out to get the newspaper?” asked Neil’s dad. His cup of coffee had stopped steaming. He picked up the mug and held it. He didn’t look at Neil as he spoke.
“I don’t think so,” said Neil.
“Oh. Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” said Neil. “I didn’t ask.”
Neil’s father went to work. Neil had a job as a dishwasher but he had the day off.
Neil went outside, intent on finding a cicada. He took his bicycle out of the garage and he rode it down the street to a dollar store. Neil really liked riding a bicycle because he could feel his energy being translated into mechanical energy beneath him and it felt good that things could be simple. He leant his bicycle against a parking meter. He lived in a town where bikes sometimes got stolen, but not enough to care to bike locks.
Neil went into the store. He walked down some aisles until he found a butterfly net. It was red. He also found a Mason jar.
Neil walked to the cash ; he recognized the girl working the cash from his high school but he didn’t know what her name was. She had a stud in her nose.
After the person buying candy left Neil put the net up on the counter along with the jar. He pulled out the folded $5 bill he had nestled in his back pocket and unfolded it and handed it to the girl.
“Do you know what a cicada looks like?” asked Neil.
“I think that they’re big and maybe black and green,” said the girl.
“Have you ever seen one anywhere around here?” asked Neil.
“No, but you should look in the forest,” said the girl.
“Okay,” said Neil. “That’s where I was going to start anyways.”
“You should have looked it up on the Internet,” said the girl.
Neil took the change that the girl was holding out.
“I wasn’t thinking about it,” said Neil. “It was spontaneous.”
Neil tucked the butterfly net under his arm and walked out of the store. His bike was still where he had left it, leaning against the meter. He picked it up. It was hard riding a bike with a butterfly net and a Mason jar and a couple of times he almost dropped one, or both, on his way to the forest.
Neil dismounted and propped his bicycle against a tree. There was a dirt trail leading in. He walked into the forest. Neil wandered around. He walked further and further into the trees. Occasionally he would rest a hand on one of their trunks.
He could hear insects and birds in the forest. He saw a blackbird and a bunch of mayflies but no cicadas. He also saw a stream with tadpoles swimming near the rocks. He took his shoes off and stood in the middle of the stream for a few minutes. His feet were cool but the rest of his body revolted against the heat.
The sun started to get lower in the sky but still no cicadas. Neil was just starting to think he would quit when he found one, big as his fist, sitting on a tree. It seemed larger than Neil had conceived cicadas to be. Neil whipped down the net around the cicada. The cicada just sat on the tree. Neil pushed it off the tree with his net. The cicada sat in the bottom of the net. Neil reached his hand inside and pulled out the cicada. The cicada was still not moving much; it seemed alive but full of ennui.
Neil unscrewed the top of the Mason jar and deposited the cicada inside. He paused and then bent over, picking up a few leaves and twigs, placing them in.
He began to walk back in the direction he thought he had come in, looking out for the stream he had stood in. He held the jarred cicada out in front of him.
“My mother left last night,” Neil told the cicada. “My dad hasn’t realized it yet, I don’t think. He will soon, though. She’s left before — twice. Once she disappeared for two months and the other time it was about six months. She just walked back in the door. My dad likes her a lot. I’m okay when she leaves — I mean, after the first time — but it’s him I worry about. He just shuts down. He’s a pretty quiet man as it is but when she’s gone he’s dead silent.” Neil came to the stream he’d seen before and headed left. “I imagine she just goes to places she likes. And you can’t talk to her about it — you have to pretend she never left, or she’ll do the same shut down that dad does. … He’s just so grateful to see her back.” Neil walked out of the forest. His bike was still against the tree. “I understand. It’s okay. I cook, I clean. I do my own laundry and dad’s laundry. And I know she’ll be back; she’ll just walk back in the door.”
Neil sighed. He looked up for the moon but it was somewhere he couldn’t see. Finally, it was just a little bit cooler. He tucked the butterfly net in his armpit and picked up the bicycle with one hand. His hands trembled slightly. He got onto the bicycle and then scraped the back of his heel on the metal teeth of the pedal. Neil winced and rode to the side of the asphalt. He stopped to wait for a car to go by.
As he got ready to ride across the road, Neil dropped the jar. The jar shattered. The cicada, in a fit of pique, shook off the shards of glass with his wings and flew away. The cicada made a noise that Neil could only describe as the sound of the sky meeting the highway at the horizon in the middle of August.
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