The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

carols. When Kay pulls into the parking lot of First Corinthians in Roseland, her mother’s church, Avi glares at her.

“What is this, Kay?”

“It’s not a big deal,” she says. The moment they’re inside, Emmeline is whisked away by one of the church’s numerous old ladies, who separates children from their parents and herds them to the back of the church. Kay and Avi take seats next to her mother, who is buzzing with excitement. As the preacher starts in on the nativity story, Kay finds Avi’s hand and squeezes it reassuringly. He doesn’t respond, doesn’t return the ping she’s sent him. She has him trapped, with no way to express his anger. So he seethes, bolted into the pew.

A couple comes to the front of the church dressed in robes. His brown, hers blue. She holds a baby. When Emmeline steps out of the choir entrance, clutching a shepherd’s crook, a stuffed sheep tucked under her arm like a football, Avi’s hand gives Kay’s an involuntary squeeze. They will always be joined by the live wire of their daughter.

A dozen shepherds, none taller than Emmeline, mill about the front of the church, singing “Angels We Have Heard on High,” followed by “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” flanked by taller kids in brilliant white robes and paper wings. The sound they create, thirty kids without a tenor or baritone among them, has weight and light. It’s a physical thing, a new presence in the church, and for a moment, watching his daughter become part of it, Avi feels a calm settle over him, a thin sheath of joy protecting him from the world and the world to come.

After the pageant, families flood into the cold. Kay’s mother makes the three of them pose for a picture in front of the church. Kay and Avi huddle around Emmeline as if they can protect her from the cut of the wind. They close ranks on her instinctively, and the naturalness of the motion makes Avi think, We’re going to be all right. They should have been better than all right. On some parallel earth, versions of Kay and Avi lead fantastic lives. They communicate through telepathy rather than hand squeezes and glares. They have flaws, but they don’t feel broken. They don’t exhaust each other. When Avi smiles for the picture, it’s with resentment of and resignation to the state of being all right.

“I’m sort of hungry,” Emmeline says as they reach the van.

“It’s late,” says Avi. “We should get her home.”

“There’s a place right up the road,” Kay says, stepping around him to unlock the driver’s side and take the wheel. She drives them past the wreckage of Salem Baptist. In the dark, it’s only a lump of scrapped wood, but Avi wonders how Kay can fail to notice it. It glows in his awareness, a site that’s taken on such importance in his life that the last month feels as if it’s emerged from that crater, a new and stumbling thing fallen to earth. They pass the Roseland Rest and pull into the parking lot of a strip mall where the neon of Planet Chicken bleeds under the streetlights.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Avi says.

“It’s zero degrees out here,” Kay says. He’s earned some points with her by not complaining in front of her mother, but her threshold for annoyance with him is set low.

“Daddy, barbecue sauce,” Emmeline says as if Avi were unaware of the invention. Kay shuts off the car, and they go in. Planet Chicken is brightly lit, white fluorescent lights verging on blue. Emmeline orders nuggets, a mode of conveyance for barbecue sauce. The girl behind the counter slips Emmeline two extra packets, then looks up at Avi to take his order.

“Hey,” she says. Avi gives her a quick chin up of recognition and orders a wing combo, looking down into his wallet as he pays.

“I was disappointed you weren’t an angel,” Kay says in the booth. “But you were the most amazing shepherd I’ve ever seen. That sheep didn’t make a peep.”

“You have to whisper to them,” Emmeline says. She spoons deep crimson sauce into her mouth via nugget. “Quiet in their ears. Especially in front of big crowds. Sheep hate crowds.” Avi was so caught up thinking about the pageant as an attack against him, he failed to register its effect on Emmeline. The girl beams in a way they rarely see at home, where she usually only glows. The little candle of her happiness becomes a flare.

Emmeline isn’t a blip. She’s more like a flare.

Avi excuses himself and walks swiftly toward the bathrooms, his mouth swimming in saliva. He dry heaves, then checks himself in the mirror. His eyes are glassy with tears, the way they get when he smokes pot or throws up. Kay gives him a what the actual fuck look when he gets back to the table. He sits down and puts a napkin over the remainder of his wings. He doesn’t speak for the rest of the meal.

They wait until Emmeline’s asleep to have the argument. Whoever moves first decides what the fight will look like, what will be the terms and the limits. Generally this is Kay, but tonight it’s Avi.

“Was that supposed to be some kind of ambush?” he says. “Dragging me to church like that?”

“To see your daughter,” Kay says. “It was a surprise.”

“Bullshit it was a surprise,” he says. “You and your mother and your evangelical shit.”

“What are you even talking about?” Kay says.

“How did Emmeline know all those songs? Those hymns?” Avi says. “You’ve been indoctrinating her.”

“I’ve been taking her there to practice once a week all month,” says Kay. “Not that you fucking noticed we were gone. Besides, everyone knows those songs. You know those songs.”

Avi thinks of a Seder they took Emmeline to last year at the home of one of the partners at Kay’s firm. Avi, empty-stomach-drunk, tried to teach Emmeline the words to “Dayenu” even