Breaking

John seals Shawn's room in black

Transcript

We fumbled around in the house for about a week, doing nothing sometimes, sometimes just falling apart alone or in each other’s arms, and mostly just sitting and staring and craving the onset of silence and the night.

I woke up feeling different on Wednesday though. I rented a dumpster from the big place out on Commerce Road. It was brand new, an excruciating orange. The black lettering on all sides read HUMPSTER’S DUMPSTERS, and I made the delivery guy park it right by the side of the house. Flowers were ruined, but I nodded at the guy and handed him a twenty-dollar tip. The gears grinded and there was a billow of ugly dark smoke as the truck made its way back down the street. I could still smell it as I walked into the house.

I made my way up the stairs and had to stand at the door for a full minute before being able to enter Shawn’s room. The window was already open, and when I looked down I was staring approvingly right into the maw of the dumpster. Sadee had told me explicitly and repeatedly not to do this, but …

I didn’t have any system as I went at it. I took an orienting look out the window to gauge the target, and then just let a few objects drop, and heaved some others. They plonked into the dumpster. It was a bit of a frenzy after that as I went about emptying the contents of the entire room. The smallest was a platinum letter S tossed out nonchalantly. The largest: a dresser where Sadee had meticulously folded all of Shawn’s clothes. The drawers made crisp splintering noises as they crashed onto the harsh metal, but I had to kick the frame of the dresser to pieces, and then beat at it with its own cracked-off limbs. I went at it for five solid minutes, choosing the weak spots, like a boxer, pounding for a while, and then drawing back slightly to rest and to re-evaluate strategy, and then to hone in for the kill. I laid it on its side and then rushed it, pounding it into the wall. Something cracked.

I stood up, the sweat now literally dripping onto the floor, my body drenched as if just out of the shower. There was one remaining fine line, perfectly straight, running down the top of the dresser, and I laughed and cried as I charged at it for one last time, splitting it in two. A large splinter of the wood, about a foot long, also now stuck out ludicrously from my bicep, and I pulled it out and watched the blood run down an arm, mixing in with sweat and dirt and debris from the floor, all forming a rivulet which ended at my elbow and dripped from there. I pulled off my T-shirt, then pants, and stood there in socks and underwear. I wrapped the shirt around the cut, pulled it tight, tied it in a knot.

I surveyed the room. The dresser was the only thing of any substance remaining, and I forced the biggest two pieces of it out the window, and the sound reverberated, like it should when something gets destroyed obscenely, like it should when a child dies, like it should when it all comes to a crashing end. An hour and a half later, the room was completely empty.

I headed for the basement, got the paint and brushes, and went straight back to Shawn’s room. I wanted it all black, including the floor. The carpet was already gone, discarded in a hundred pieces of various sizes in the dumpster. The walls were bare, the closet empty of even hangers, the light bulb and its cover both now also removed and lying in the dumpster. I started with a wall, slathering the paint on with a large brush, the light blue giving way easily to the black, the rainbow which I’d meticulously, lovingly painted over the door—the rainbow was also soon lost in blackness. All the walls were done in an hour.

I sat on the floor in the middle of the room and stared up at the ceiling. The sun was just starting to go down outside and I started in at the floorboards. Soon everything was black except the area I stood on at the doorway. I stepped into the hallway, dipped the brush one last time into the paint can, and made it all one, dark, black, negative, evil, the last memorial to my dead son.