Jasper’s Here

A short story

An uninvited fly slipped into the dark bedroom in the middle of the afternoon. Blackout shades were drawn and old star stickers glittered upon the ceiling with the little phosphorescence they maintained; the bug made unimpressive dashes at the cloaked window and sidled up a ruffle of one the curtains. It was too forgetful to retrace its trajectory and go to the kitchen downstairs, where soft bananas and an array of food-crusted dishes might better satisfy its brief existence.

The girl in the bed raised herself upon the intrusion, exploring the room before her through her bangs. She reached to her nightstand, securing a half-smoked cigarette, and relit it with a hand still weak from sleep. Her name was Stormy, and she was nineteen years old and badly in need of rehabilitation.

It was strange that something as subtle as a fly should wake her. She and her father lived on a busy street that was not immune from brazen trucks and the crackle of arrogant Dodge chargers. She had trained herself over a lifetime to treat the engine of the neighborhood as inconsequential white noise, but the buzz of a fly unearthed her from her sleep and held her where she sat now, baffled in a haze of fatigue and dimness. She covered her chest with her covers, inhaling the cigarette and wondering what time it was, and reached to the windowsill near the right side of her bed to draw back the blackout curtains. The sun was halfway through its afternoon descent and nestled ripely between the neighborhood houses, all of which slumped with weak architecture, hosting inhabitants as reclusive and mysterious as herself. She cursed, wishing it was nighttime, and sank back into the pillows with the cigarette sticking straight up out of her mouth.

The fly must’ve noticed the stirring of the hibernator. It flitted to the surface of a dresser littered with coins, hair clips, empty vials of polish, and faded Polaroid pictures. The fly explored its real estate, but was disappointed by the prospects and retreated to the other window by the girl’s bed.

Stormy watched it perch on the edge of the sill and rub its silky paws together with mischievous intent. Her father coughed from his bedroom, and an argument ensued in the walk below her window.

“What now,” she whispered to herself, hoisting herself back up ad peering bleary-eyed to investigate. Her brother, Jasper, who she had not seen in two years to the week, was wriggling away from the vengeful grasp of a girl in a tank top and too much eye shadow. She screamed, “You’re not leaving me!” Among other expletives, she said his betrayal would invite many future visitations, but Jasper slipped through the open door before she could wrangle him back into custody.

Stormy rolled out of bed all the way, laying her feet on the hardwood floors and flicking the newly dead cigarette somewhere into the covers. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around her big brother being back inside the house—the old hero who was driven out into the blinding sun so long ago. She’d gotten used to the thought that he might not be alive. That was almost better than hoping he’d come back someday.

Now Jasper was at the bottom of the stairs, gasping for breath, and then came up the stairs as if he was scared Dad would dart out of a closet or something and grab him by the scruff of his neck.

He crept into Stormy’s room and went straight to the beanbag in the corner. He ran into her TV stand so a couple of his old Star Wars bobbleheads fell off. Stormy blinked at him, leaning back a little bit upon his entry. He sat down with his knees raised up, elbows resting on the caps.

He probably wondered where his bed was. They used to share the room, after all. Dad had moved it out mere hours after Jasper ran off, presumably never to return, and used it to “patch” a hole in the fence in the backyard to deter the neighborhood cats from coming in. They still entered. Small, lean creatures always got into the places you don’t want them to, in the end.  

“Well, Stormy, how the hell are you?” Jasper said, still staring at the floor.

Stormy almost wondered if she was still dreaming, and the man’s apparition had come to visit her to punish her dislocation from reality. To punish her flight into numbness. She looked at the fly, still dormant on the windowsill, and sighed.

“I’m all right,” she said. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“I’m just great!” Jasper said. He clapped his hands together, grinning at the ground. Then he leaned back on the beanie bag and put his hands behind his head.

Stormy stood up, straightening out her T-shirt so it went below her knees. She had to steady herself using a bookshelf with not very many books in it, and itched her foot while quizzically appraising the specimen before her. He had a buzz cut, which was different. He had a lot of tattoos on his arms. That wasn’t different. He smelled like cigarette smoke and sweat. She wobbled again, and then leaned over to her nightstand to turn on the lamp.

“I guess you’re wondering where I’ve been all these months.”

“Years,” Stormy corrected. “You’ve been gone years.”

“You don’t sound like you missed me.”

“I missed you. I’m just very very tired right now.”

“You’re tired and you’re something else, too. What’ve you been up to, sis? You were always such a sweet soul back in the day. Don’t do what I did.”

She laughed, shrugged, and sat down on the edge of the bed with her small hands joined in her lap.

“Why are you back?” she asked.

“Ouch. Just to say hello.” He sat up. He scratched the back of his head and let his shoulders relax. “Is Dad home?”

“Yes. Sleeping before his night shift.”

“So he’s still working there.”

Stormy shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“He never said he’s not still working there.”

Jasper nodded. “He ever mention me?”

“No.” She sighed, then added, “I mean—I hardly see him. He sleeps all day and is gone all night. You know. It’s the same stuff. But where have you been?”

“In Cantor, if you can believe it.”

“Why would you move to Cantor?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Let me guess. That’s where your girlfriend is from.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. Wait, you saw her?”

She nodded. “She doesn’t quite look like your type, if you ask me.”

“Oh yeah?” Jasper leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Who’s my type?”

“Some girl who’s nice. And actually cares about what you care about. You know, someone normal.”

He gestured to himself. “You don’t think I’m normal.”

“That’s not what I said.” She hankered for another cigarette and unearthed the one she’d tossed in the covers.

“You think I attract the worst kind of women.”

She shrugged, lighting her medicine again. “I just think you have a type, and that’s not it.”

“What do you care?”

“You’re my brother.”

“Ah.”

 Jasper stood and clapped the ball of his fist against his palm, then complained about how dark it was in the room and asked if he could roll up one of the shades.

“No! Leave them down, please. It’s my room—it’s the least you can do.”

“I thought it was our room, but whatever.” He didn’t pull down the shades, but sort of melted into them, dressed as he was in a dark hoodie and jeans.

“You’re not going to be able to stay here,” she said.

“You said you never talk to the old man. He would probably never realize I was even here. And you know, I could slip out in the daytime and try to, you know, find a job or something.” He turned around, trying to attain some of the lamplight.

“He’s going to find out.”

“Why does he hate me?”

She hated that all she could do was shrug, but all she did was shrug, and give an innocent frown. Then she said, “He doesn’t hate you.”

“Yes, he does.”

“You have to say that.”

“Are we really going to talk about this?”

“What else is there to talk about?”

“You haven’t told me anything about your life for the last two years.” Her cigarette expired, and getting another one would mean a trip to the kitchen downstairs, where she had left the pack next to the stack of unpaid water and electric bills.

“I didn’t have a life, Stormy,” said Jasper, with a groan that revealed the real extent of his misery. “Isn’t it obvious that I have no other place to go? I mean, don’t you want me back?”

“There’s not much life here, either,” she said. He looked at an empty pill bottle of prescribed opiates on the floor and picked it up, studying the label. “Jasper, don’t…”

“You have a prescription?” he said. “You’re kidding. What for?”

“Hmm, I don’t know…how about debilitating pain? Ever think of that?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You’re in pain? What kind of pain? Huh?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She rubbed her knees and scanned the room briefly for her phone. It was buried somewhere in the covers, and too knotted up in the sheets for her retrieval. “Let’s talk about you,” she said. “What do you feel like?”

“What do I feel like?”

“Yeah. It’s been two years. You’ve probably been feeling a lot of things. I, however, haven’t really managed to feel anything since…” She cocked her head and drummed her fingers on her chin. “Oh, yeah…two years ago. Around, coincidentally, of course, when ya left.”

Jasper returned to the beanbag and shucked his shoes off, rubbing his feet and wincing. “What do I feel like,” he mumbled. “Do you know how old we sound right now? We never used to talk like this.”

 “Yeah we did,” his sister whispered. “We really did use to talk like this.”

“Fine,” he said. Then he paused in silence for a little while, the one ray of light escaping the shades and throwing itself like a sword over his close-cropped head. Stormy saw the scar on the scalp from the time she threw a frying pan at him when they were kids.

 “I feel like a stupid waterfall. Or no, that’s not it. I feel like I’m floating in a pool at the top of a waterfall but never falling over it. Always kind of circling around and around in this pool, on my back looking up at the sun, but never falling over.”

“Oooh, you need a soothsayer to interpret,” said Stormy.

“Yeah, maybe. Anyway, I’m just floating next to the edge of this giant waterfall, and every time I circle back around I think, ‘this is it. Now I’m going to fall over.’ But I never do.”

“What’s at the bottom of the waterfall?” Stormy asked.

“Great question. I always thought it sort of represented when my life was going to really start. You know? That finally I’d go over the edge, leave it all behind, and start something.” He shook his head. “Nothing ever starts. No matter how long time goes by.”

“That’s an interesting way to feel,” Stormy affirmed, stroking her chin, imagining she had a philosopher’s beard. “From my perspective, you went over the waterfall a really long time ago. And I was like, whoa, hey there, Jasper, you’ve gone off the deep end a little bit, and I don’t see you anymore, and we used to kinda be pals.”

“You’re mad at me.”

“What? Mad? No way, man! Like I said, I haven’t felt—” She raised her hands and gestured quotation marks when she said “felt,” and went on, “—angry, sad, hopeful, disgusted, excited, in quite a long time. You’re off the hook.”

Jasper twiddled with the cross necklace below his neck, studying the silence and the room with his large gray eyes, and they heard a door downstairs close and the chatter of a talk show host emanate from the unfortunate source.

“Crap,” Jasper whispered, jolting upright. “He’s up. It’s only four in the afternoon. What’s he doing up?”

“Probably getting a snack and a beer. You’ll be fine.”

The shuffling steps halted. The video stopped. Dad’s voice arrived groggily, only half there, going, “Stormy, why the hell is the front door open?”

 “Your little scuffle outside must have roused him after all,” whispered Stormy. Jasper, meanwhile, had crouched between her bed and the wall, right beneath the window, breathing hard and quiet. Stormy slipped into the stairwell and flicked on the light so Dad, a remarkably skinny man of forty, peered up at her in the phosphorescence. He was just in his boxers and all his tattoos of anchors and buxom women stood out against his pale body.

“The door?” said Stormy. “I don’t know. I’ve just been up here sleeping.”

“The door was wide open.” He mumbled something else, then closed the door and clicked the lock. Looking at the door, he ran the chain into its sliding groove and turned back around. “The door was locked. I know I locked it. Your brother here? He’s the only one I can think of who got another key.”

“No,” said Stormy. She put her hand against the wall. “Why would he be here?”

“Because the door’s open, and we always lock the door.” He started up the stairs.

“Dad, c’mon—he’s not here. Why would he be here? He hasn’t come around in two years. Don’t you gotta get some sleep?”

“Smells bad up here,” he said, brushing past her and into the bedroom. “And God, dark as hell. What are you doing, hibernating in here?”

Stormy followed him, arms wrapped around her baggy shirt. Her father rubbed his eyes and kicked through the dirty clothes on the floor. He picked up the beanbag and tossed it so it upset more bobbleheads, then flung the door open to the closet and rooted through her private wardrobe as if he had every right to do it. “I’m sorry, baby,” he sighed, after coming up empty. “Sometimes I miss the kid, you know? He’s a total failure, and I’d bust him up bad if he were right now, but man, wouldn’t it be kinda nice to be a whole family again.” She smelled whiskey on his breath when he passed her again, and once he was gone, she fled to the restroom and vomited.

“You sick, honey?”

“I’m fine.”

“All right. I’m goin’ back to bed. Got that late shift again. Don’t screw with me no more, all right?”

Stormy lay next to the toilet for a few minutes, hand resting somewhat inside the bowl and the excess refuse dribbling from her nose upon the floor. There were no windows in this bathroom, so the darkness was final, complete. Only a band of grayness bled under the door. But she felt a little bit better. The withdrawals were excruciating, yes, and there was only so much cigarettes and sleep and valium can do for you, but she felt a bit better. She got up and rinsed her face, then, still dripping, went back to her bedroom. She had to squint, pull her hands over her eyes. The window above her bed was open, curtains ripped apart, with a hot August wind teasing the bedsheets. She recovered from her disorientation, then scrambled over her bed to peer into the waxing afternoon. She didn’t see him. There was a child playing in a sprinkler across the street, leaping and laughing and falling joyfully into the sweet tang of freshly mowed grass.

Jasper was a fast runner. He always outran her to get to the front seat of the minivan, when Mom was still around. He probably dashed around the corner the second she’d gone into the bathroom. It was about a twelve-foot drop from the window to the asphalt. It would have hurt at least a little bit. Too bad there wasn’t a pool of water at the bottom.

She brushed the hair from her eyes and settled her chin on her forearm. The cars and the birds and the wind whooshed in the trees—all this, right outside her window?

Of course, by that time, the fly had buzzed to freedom, and would try to avoid dark rooms for the rest of the twenty-four hours it had left to live.

“He’ll come back,” Stormy whispered to herself. “I’m pretty sure of that.” And she fell asleep in the sunlight that now flowed into the darkness behind her.