Blue Like a Fake Place on TV

Read at Medium

Daryl was born blue. His skin a deep lustrous indigo, the palms of his hands and the bottoms of his feet pale grey. He had two faces but only three eyes, the middle one bulging in the center of his broad double-face. He had two mouths to gurgle and two noses to run with mucus. Two arms and two legs. They did not bring him back swaddled and napping to his mother's bed. The doctor had stood with Daryl's father, looking in on the nursery as half of the child cried and the other half slept.

“They're coming home tomorrow,” Uncle says, sitting next to Joey on the couch. From the lazy-boy in front of them, Dad raises a hand, then puts it down and changes the channel. His chair used to be off to the side, but it creeps closer every day. From Uncle's spot on the couch he can't even see the screen. Half of the room, apartment-white and low-ceilinged, is dedicated to TV. The other half, closest to the windows, is almost bare: a bookshelf with some CDs and a cardboard box full of Joey's toys.

“Have you seen your little brother yet?” Uncle asks. Joey is fiddling with the guts of a toaster he found in the street. He doesn’t know how it works, but running his finger along the stone-like coils he gets a sense of how they go orange with electricity, how they get hotter and hotter but never melt.

“The lady wouldn’t let me see him,” Joey says, confused. The nurse said that it might give him nightmares, but he’d be seeing Daryl for life. “Grown-ups never let you see.”

Joey looks up at Uncle. He’s had a beard forever, it’s three colors but mostly grey and there’s spots where Joey can see through to his face.

“You know, people are going to say a lot of things,” Uncle says. Dad lets the channel rest on a maniac car dealer, he shouts that it’s everyone’s last chance to get in on the deal of a century.

“What do you say?” Joey asks.

“I say there’s something in the water.”

Joey fits one of the metal sides back onto the toaster, there’s little flanges that catch and the screws are there just to make sure. It’s like the radio in Mom’s bedroom, except that one’s made of plastic and she’ll yell at him if he takes it apart again.

“Then how come we ain’t blue?” he says.

+ + +

Joey sits on the living room floor in the square of dull sunlight coming through the window. Uncle and Dad have gone to get Mom from the hospital. Before he left, Dad turned off the television and got up from his chair to tell him that he didn’t know how long it would take. Uncle waved to Joey from the kitchen doorway and they were gone.

Joey has taken the antenna off the top of the tube and is trying to straighten out a coat hanger, but he has a hard time working his fingers on the metal. If the antenna is metal, and that’s where the TV comes in, it seems like more metal ought to catch even more TV out of thin air. Sometimes in school he says something like that, like if we’re making snowflakes why don’t we use a bunch of pieces of paper and make a bunch of snowflakes at once. Sometimes Ms. Cooper smiles at him, sometimes she sits him in the corner.

They’re coming up the stairs. Joey hears Uncle’s clomping steps first and then the door opens to the kitchen out there. Boards creak and keys jangle in someone’s pocket and then Mom comes into the living room carrying a bundle of towels. The lines of her face look like magic marker and Joey has never noticed how skinny her calves are.

“What are you doing?” Dad says, like a child being poked by a bully. His black cowlick bobs over to Joey and he grabs the antenna. Uncle brings a glass of water for Mom and standing behind her he shows it to Joey with a wink. They watch the bubbles dissolve. Mom lays the towels on the couch and Joey moves closer to see a dark rectangle that must be Daryl’s face, or Daryl’s faces.

“Damnit, Joey, leave your Dad’s television alone,” Mom says, and gently lifts Daryl to unwrap him. Jesus does she look tired, but Joey isn’t supposed to say that.

Dad has reconnected the antenna and turns on the television. He scoots his chair closer and the metal wheels grind. It’s the same noise that sometimes pulls Joey right out of a dream in the middle of the night. Weird how he can hear that all the way in his room. Daryl starts crying and Joey steps right up next to Mom kneeling there at the foot of the couch.

Daryl is so dark blue it makes Joey scared, a feeling in his chest like jumping into cold water — it’s hard to breathe. Daryl’s left eye is open, the lips of his left mouth are twisted and crying, but the right side is peacefully asleep. The eye in the middle fights between the two. Each face looks like a tiny little boy: rubbery button nose, round cheeks. It’s the blue skin that is scary. How can he be like that and not have something wrong inside?

Joey cranes his neck to look up at Uncle. He nods down at him, something like a smile under his beard.

“Mom . . .is Daryl going to be alright?”

Mom stands upright and walks into the kitchen. Uncle squeezes Joey’s shoulder, a little too hard for affection, and they breathe in Daryl’s hospital smell.

“It’s enough to send a man to church,” Uncle says, “if I didn’t think it was His fault anyway.”

Joey thinks that it wasn’t God that put stuff in the water, and He didn’t make things that color. Daryl’s blue is like something he’s only seen on a sign, or in some fake place on TV.

“Is this our fault?”

“It’s no one’s fault really,” Uncle says, “or everyone’s. Depends on how you look at it.”

Dad turns the volume up on a Mexican soap opera. Onscreen, two women argue with their big boobs heaving under their shirts. Joey can’t understand a word.

Mom comes back with a huge white bag from the hospital. She drops it in front of the couch and crouches over to open it.

“I don’t care what anyone thinks. . .he’s beautiful,” Mom says to Uncle, eyes fixed on her baby as she digs in the bag. “Daryl is going to be the best thing that ever happened to this family.”

Uncle’s heavy hand pats Joey on the shoulder. Joey reaches in to help Mom find the diaper and their hands touch. His is small, hers veiny and hard.

“Joey, get your dad a snack and stay out of the way.”

+ + +

Joey lies in bed and goes through his constellations. One time, Joey heard the Egyptians or the Greeks had names for the stars. That night he awake until dawn making up stories about the splotches of traffic-light and streetlight and headlight coming through the ratty blinds and making patterns on his walls. The rough trapezoid of orange and the thirty seconds of red that made a long thin handle became the Meat Cleaver. And the shadow of his empty hamster cage nestled in a blob of light became the Camel, all spindly legs and top-heavy.

In the living room, the sound of Dad’s chair like a mechanical mouse. Since Uncle started being around, Dad has slept out there in front of the television instead of in the bedroom with Mom. The two bedrooms share a wall, and sometimes Joey hears Mom giggle and a noise like furniture being moved to music. One time, Joey asked Mom why Dad doesn’t sleep in his room and she said ‘all the really good TV is on late’ and ‘Uncle needs a place to sleep too.’ The light under Joey’s door blinks with a channel change, Dad now watching a show with a soft-voiced narrator and twinkly music.

The story goes that the Meat Cleaver decided not to kill the Camel, because the Camel told him a joke about the Cowboy on the other side of the room. The Cowboy is really just a hat glowing on the wall right above Joey’s head that stares down at him all night. No one likes the Cowboy, especially Joey.

Through the wall, Daryl cries and Mom hushes him. Mom said Joey is going to have to grow up now that Daryl’s here. She called Dad ‘your father’ and told Joey that he was going to have to look after him. ‘Make sure he eats,’ she said, ‘and clean up after him.’

Joey sits up in bed and rubs his eyes. When Mom forgets to tuck him in, it takes Joey a long time before he can sit still. After he goes through the constellations he tries to count sheep jumping a fence like they do in cartoons. It’s hard though, his mind chases after every little sound. Eventually, he gives up on sheep and tries to think of the last thing Dad said to him. Sometimes it’s really hard to remember, sometimes it’s the same thing for more than one night.

+ + +

Joey and Uncle sit on a bench watching children play tag in the park. Joey goes to school with some of them, but they never knock on his door. Though the sun is out, it’s getting late in the year for their usual snow-cones and Joey’s teeth chatter. It tastes good though, he picked blue raspberry this time.

“I’m starting to look like Daryl.”

Joey giggles and sticks out his tongue.

“That’s not funny,” Uncle says.

“It’s not?”

Uncle slides down the bench and rests his arm behind Joey’s head. He gets so close lately; it makes things better sometimes, but mostly it’s hard to tell what Uncle is up to. Joey looks down at the sidewalk and chews his ice. This is even more confusing than the wink.

“I’m sorry about what your Mom said to you,” Uncle says, and looks back toward the house.

“It’s okay.”

Joey doesn’t want to hear those words again: ‘There’s something wrong with you too,’ she said as she shuffled him out of the kitchen and sat him on the couch.

“This thing with Daryl has been tough on her,” Uncle says, “she’s not thinking right.”

“Why’d she say it? Is something wrong with me like Daryl?”

Uncle touches Joey’s chin and he turns to look up at him.

“Look at me, Joey. I’m going to be the first person to tell you this and maybe you won’t hear it again for a long time, so try to remember it: there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re the smartest kid I know.”

“Really?”

Uncle looks out at the children playing, a shift in his beard from the slight breeze or a change to his hidden expression.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he says, “but being smart doesn’t mean things are going to be easy.”

“Sometimes Mom says I’m stupid.”

Uncle sighs and tips his head back to drink from his cup. Joey peers into his snow-cone: a quarried landscape of fake blue, standing water at the bottom where the dig has flooded. It looks like a place maybe Daryl would be at home in.

“What if being blue is a good thing? Like being smart?” Joey asks.

“I wish I could say that.”

“In comics, they have superpowers. But I don’t think that happens for real.”

“No. You’re probably right.”

+ + +

Joey’s house looks lonely squatting there, a sad lump of brown brick trapped between a weedy parking lot and a bank. They live in the top half, some ‘lonely old bugger’, as Mom calls him, lives below. Uncle unlocks the door to their stairway and as they start up the steps, Joey hears a weird voice. It’s a woman, kind of loud, almost singing — but it isn’t Mom.

“Sounds like a wake,” Uncle says as they come into the kitchen.

The voice is in the living room. A strange woman stands there in a purple robe, tilting her face to the ceiling. She sees Joey watching her, stops praying, and swishes over to greet him. “I’m your Aunt Dee,” she shouts, and bends to kiss him on the forehead. Joey shrinks away. He barely remembers her, last Christmas she sat drinking wine and reading a Bible in the corner. Today she smells like dust and her face is so thick with make-up it’s like she tried to suffocate herself in it.

“Are you as full of joy as I am on this day?” she asks, and turns to Mom changing Daryl’s diaper on the couch, Dad flipping channels so quickly there’s just flashes of static between them.

“Your mother has brought God into this house,” she says, stretching out the word God. She turns back to Joey and pretends to pinch something from her hand and sprinkle it on the floor.

“And this house be blessed,” she says, “your little brother is the sign of something. A new time is beginning.”

She spins to the front of the couch on shaky knees, her robe threadbare in places so Joey can see bits of TV through it. Mom, done changing his diaper, sits on the far end of the couch and watches Daryl.

“Can’t you see it?” Aunt Dee and Mom share a glance. “With this child, all shall be made right with the world. He comes to enrapture us with his beauty, a marvel to the works of God.”

Joey moves closer to the couch, small reluctant steps. Aunt Dee is scary, but she’s focused on Daryl anyway and Joey wants to get one more look at him before going to his room. Aunt Dee goes on, praying again to the ceiling, saying God has given them Daryl as a message. But Joey doesn’t understand why He’d send a sick little boy if He wanted to say something, anybody else with something to say is on TV. Joey stands in front of Mom and they watch Daryl writhe under the swaddling, Mom’s bony fist pressed to her lips.

“He has a fever,” she says, and closes her eyes.

“Just the normal kinks of new life, dear, just our little miracle adjusting.” Aunt Dee squats and brushes Daryl’s cheek with the back of her fingernail. “We cannot know what wonders this child shall produce.”

Daryl goes rigid with her touch and cries so hard that he will surely burn out. Like when the car died in the heat last summer, belching smoke as things dislodged.

“Joey, go find that baby tylenol for your brother,” Aunt Dee shouts over the crying, “and when you return, we will bask in his glory.”

+ + +

Joey tiptoes out into the room and sits on the couch. Uncle and Mom are still arguing in the bedroom, but now they’re just voices without words underneath the sound of TV. Uncle had been insisting in his beard-voice that she take Daryl in for observations or something. And then Mom raised her voice back at him and said something about Aunt Dee. And then Daryl started crying and Uncle and Mom went back and forth getting louder but saying the same things. Uncle said: ‘Daryl is very sick’ and Mom said a swear. And then Uncle said that she should be taking care of her son, that Joey needs her help too. Then Joey snuck out of bed so he wouldn’t have to listen anymore.

On TV, there are two men in suits. One sits behind a desk and the other in a comfy chair. The city behind them is a big drawing, or maybe a photograph, but it is not really there. The men talk about breasts and laugh at each other. Dad doesn’t laugh, TV never seems to crack him up or make him shout in excitement. Sometimes Joey isn’t sure if Dad even sees what’s onscreen. One night like this, he tiptoed out and on TV there were just colored rectangles — they didn’t even move. Dad was awake too, Joey snuck around in front of him and saw all the colors of the rainbow there in his glassy eyes.

Joey watches for awhile, through the commercials and on until the show starts again. He wishes Dad would wave him over to come sit on his lap. And while they watched together, maybe Dad would tell him who these people are or what his favorite show is. He wants Dad to explain to him what makes TV so much better than the stars or dreams.

“That guy on the left looks like he pees in the tub,” Joey says. And he does, things like that written all over his face. Dad’s cowlick quivers and the chair swivels. In the dark he’s just his left side, where light from the television outlines him like a comic book. He wrinkles his nose and sniffs and then turns back around and switches the channel through more men in suits talking to each other. He stops on a sweeping shot of a river, brown women wrapped in purple dipping their children in.

They watch TV until Dad starts snoring. Joey creeps over to touch his cowlick and tiptoe back to his room.

+ + +

Joey wakes up to the alarm clock, the sound so heavy with dread like robots marching that he rushes to turn it off. He looks for clothes on the floor and thinks of free lunch french-fries, so salty they sting his tongue. His schoolbooks are all in a stack on the desk: arithmetic, which was fun at first but then got easy and boring; the plaid-covered English reader which had some cool stories; the shiny new history book that had even better ones, but were flat and didn’t give you much to see. He’s left a book about trains out on the bed. There’s a few more days before he has to return it, but he wants it to read during recess. It’s about how trains work, and the people that invented them, and how everybody used to be crazy about trains. He opens it to the page he’s bookmarked, all the details of a steam engine pointed out, little arrows showing you how it works. Joey puts everything in his backpack and safety-pins it shut.

In the hallway, the house is too quiet: just the low buzz of the television. Then a floorboard squeaks somewhere and Joey peeks into the living room, sees a group of people encircling the couch like they are all dipping soup from the same pot. Uncle once said that in some places people don’t know how to form lines. It’s mostly women wearing shabby bath-robes, but there’s also three strange men in nice clothes whispering by the windows. Mom stands apart from everyone with a rare smile on her lips.

Aunt Dee’s face separates from the crowd, her purple against grey and black and brown. Her excitement from yesterday is not gone, but the room feels like the quiet shuffle to Communion. Between some of the robes, Joey can see Dad watching TV. It’s a news report on Daryl that spells out possible causes for his blue skin and two faces in a brightly-colored chart: industrial waste, genes, TV itself. Joey does not see God on the chart.

Aunt Dee ushers Joey over with one long finger. The women make an aisle for him and he walks up to the couch. She puts her hand on top of Joey’s backpack and the group begins to sway gently. Old knees cracking. One of them starts to hum with her raspy throat and all of the women hum with her. For a long second, Joey thinks Daryl is dead. Then the left side fidgets, the eye in the middle looks around lazily.

The hum of the women grows and Dad turns up the television. Joey can’t see it, but he knows how Hugh Bondsworth sounds and can picture him sitting in the anchor chair, his brown suit, his silver hair. He’s promoting the more in-depth coverage of Daryl that they will broadcast on the evening news. “We’ll talk to some experts,” he says, “including an economist who says Daryl’s birth was good for the stock market.” One of the women cries into her hands, and the hum grows louder. Dad turns up the volume again. “More on that tonight at six. For now, I think I can speak for WTZB that our prayers are with Daryl and his family. We hope that he is otherwise healthy and happy.”

Dad turns down the volume and the women all work their way to a kneel. It seems like they know what they’re doing. The crying ricochets through the small crowd, like a yawn, and they praise God and Daryl and Mom. Joey reaches out and touches Daryl’s sleeping face — it is as cold and smooth as polished stone, it does not wake up. Aunt Dee snatches Joey’s hand, grabs his hair, and bends his neck so his face looks at hers. Joey says: “there’s something wrong with — ” and Aunt Dee hisses: “there’s nothing wrong with the boy.”

Then Mom is there. Aunt Dee lets go and the crowd shuffles Joey away from the couch. He stands by Dad’s chair and watches Mom lift Daryl’s tiny body to her shoulder. The women say “hallelujah” and some of them still cry.

Aunt Dee: “Thank you, Lord, for eyes to see his color and your goodness.”

+ + +

Coming home in the afternoon there is a big crowd in front of the house. Joey hugs a small, wooden catapult to his chest and tries to get to his front-door. Some of the people have signs and others are saying prayers in groups of two or three. A man bangs on a plastic bin like it’s a drum and people dance around it. A dark-eyed woman bends and asks him: “have you seen the boy? have you?”

Uncle meets Joey at the door and takes the catapult from him. Silently following him up the steps, Joey can hear the women singing. In the kitchen, Uncle sets the catapult on the table and Joey hears Aunt Dee speaking out there, her voice low and muffled. He makes out only the words: “blue is a sign of peace.” The women mumble and the house creaks in agreement.

“I made it in class,” Joey says. He folds his arms behind his back and teeters on his feet. Ms. Cooper had made him take it home because it was dangerous. It’s about a foot tall, made out of dowel rods and molding, scrap wood he found around the house. He fastened it all together with thumbscrews. Evan Barnes sat on it and nothing happened at all.

“It’s a beaut, Joey. Show me how it works,” Uncle says.

“You push this down, it’s really hard ‘coz I got like twenty-three rubber bands on there,” Joey says, and pushes down the shaft of the catapult, locking two pegs into notches. It’ll shoot a ball of paper clear across the room, it’ll shoot a stone halfway across the soccer field — he likes everything about it.

“You smuggle this stuff in or what?” Uncle asks with a wink. He looks down on the catapult and ruffles Joey’s hair.

“It’s just stuff laying around. . .it’s okay. I do it on recess.”

“It’s good, kid, real good.”

Someone starts fighting with the doorknob downstairs, shouting that they must see Daryl.

“You’re da Vinci and no one cares,” Uncle says, “what does it shoot?”

He walks over to the top of the stairs and looks down them with his fists on his hips.

“I shot super-balls with it. . .it could shoot marbles or rocks or whatever,” Joey says, but Uncle has stopped listening. He ducks under Uncle’s elbow and yells: “Go away!”

Uncle closes and locks the door at the top of the stairs — but Joey has looked at that lock, it’s as flimsy as the one on the bathroom door. Uncle clomps out into the living room and Joey follows, losing him for a moment in all the people. There are twice as many as yesterday, and now even the men have tried to dress the part: one in a trench-coat, another a sheet with a hole for his head, the others in raggedy bath-robes.

Joey shoves his way through and sees Uncle pulling Mom away from the window to talk. Mom is in a robe now too, it’s bright blue and silky and long. Uncle holds onto her arm and they head back to the kitchen. She smiles at the people who make room for her and they all turn to squint at Uncle after he’s passed. Joey wants to say that Uncle lives here, not them. He follows the blue of Mom’s robe, squeezing between two old ladies and saying “excuse me” but not really meaning it.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mom says as she sits.

“Yes,” Uncle says, “your son’s little project is a work to behold, you might say.”

She eyes the catapult on the table.

“Oh, I mean Aunt Dee. All these people,” she says. The crowd in the room rejoices something again and the clamor in the yard rises like maybe the women are showing Daryl at the window. The brassy swivel of the doorknob downstairs turns to kicks.

“Listen to me,” Uncle says, and leans over her. She bends her head to the side, away from the beard. Maybe this is what Uncle is always winking about. He’s probably got a plan to get these people out of here and take Daryl to a doctor and unplug the television. “Daryl is very sick. He needs doctors and tests and — .”

“He doesn’t need a doctor.”

“ — and I don’t know what all. That’s why he needs to go to a doctor.”

“He doesn’t need a doctor,” she says, “God is waiting to see if we accept his gift. He needs your prayers.”

“He will die. God didn’t do this, Linda. This isn’t whatever bullshit Dee is feeding you.”

“I’m tired of your lies and your garbage. You are a sinner and I want you out of this house.”

“Daryl is very sick.”

“Aunt Dee says — ”

“Aunt Dee can go to hell.” So loud it hurts Joey’s ears.

The crowd in the living room goes silent, just Daryl’s gurgley cry and the door splintering downstairs. And then the quiet mass of women creaking closer. Joey moves toward the hallway as Aunt Dee slinks into the kitchen, the deep lines of a scowl on her face: “Kiss the son,” she whispers to Uncle beneath the banging. “Lest he be angry and ye perish from the way.”

+ + +

The crazy few that made it into the house were invited to stay. Uncle said you could tell they were crazy because of the look in their eye: ‘Grown men and women ambling in here like lost fawns,’ he said. Joey thought they were crazy because they kicked the door in.

Joey sits on the floor next to Dad watching a long commercial for a tool that can pop a dent out of your car. It’s just a funny-looking suction cup with a lever to make it stick. Joey thinks that the space under the suction cup must be larger when it’s sticking. It’s trying to suck in more air to fill itself up, but it can’t get to any because of the surface. Dad changes the channel.

All over the room, mounds sleep under their robes. Daryl is on the couch under a tapestry the size of a place-mat, plastic rubies glinting along the edge. It’s like church that never ends. A woman coughs and then rolls heavily onto her back breathing hard. Her bones must ache from lying on the floor all night.

Uncle comes into the room, walking carefully in his socks and putting one finger to his lips when Joey looks at him. This is it. He steps over one of the sleepers and squats, whispering to Joey:

“I’m taking Daryl out of here. To a doctor first and then who knows. I’ve got a right to, and he needs help.”

“He’s been sleeping all day.”

Uncle stands and then rubs his beard, looking down on Joey like he’s the catapult sitting on the kitchen table. He squats again.

“Sorry, Joey. . .I might not be seeing you much after this.”

“I’ll go with you,” Joey says. Him and Uncle and Daryl. They could just go.

“Can’t do that, son,” Uncle says, “things were different maybe I would try. Your Mom’s not going to have nice words for me, but remember what I told you.”

His wink looks funny in the dark, a shadow on his face shrinking and then growing back. He’s said so many things that Joey can’t decide which one this wink is for: eat your vegetables? do good in school? I always got your back, kiddo?

Dad turns in his chair, hands folded in his lap and glancing at Joey. Uncle takes a baby blanket from the growing pile of gifts and stoops to pull off the rubied-thing. He touches Daryl’s face, reaches underneath to touch his chest. After awhile, he stands up and puts his hand to his beard.

“Daryl’s dead,” he says, and Joey will remember that one.

“Daryl’s dead,” he says louder, “you can all get out of here now.”

The people closest to the couch wake up and nudge others until out in the far corner of the room they’re coming to their feet and whispering. Uncle picks Daryl up, the plastic gems of his cover clattering on the floor, and the two of them are carved out of the darkness by the television. Joey remembers that Uncle once said ‘everyone deserves a chance,’ and then Grandpa died and he said ‘when people are gone, they’re just gone.’ Joey starts to cry.

Mom comes into the room and people step aside so she can come up to the couch. Aunt Dee appears there waiting for her. They look at each other and then Daryl limp in Uncle’s arms.

“The devil has touched this child,” Aunt Dee says, and a gasp shutters through the robes.

Mom takes Daryl from Uncle, hugs the bundle to her chest. Uncle picks Joey up and walks toward the kitchen, Joey rubbing his eyes on Uncle’s shirt and watching over his shoulder as the people crowd the couch. Faces all twisted, hands out in front of them as though they are being given something. And then the volume on the television goes up and the house is hushed by blaring white noise.