Shame

laughter started and went on for ten seconds before it abruptly cut off. Caleb stepped back. He didn’t want to start the recording again.
    That’s not his voice, Caleb told himself. Some actor had spoken those lines, someone with a dramatic voice and laugh. It wasn’t even close to his father’s voice. Even after all those years, Caleb remembered exactly what that sounded like. Of late, he’d been hearing it all too often in his head.
    All the old feelings returned: his embarrassment, his fears. For so long he had tried to bury those emotions, but now they overwhelmed him. It was as if every good thing in his life had been stripped away and the only thing that was real was his past.
    Caleb hurried out of the Hall of Shame, but before leaving the room, he threw a quick glance back. What he saw made him all the more afraid. His father’s eyes were following him, not like the Mona Lisa’s, but like those of the devil himself. Even when hewas outside the hall, Caleb had the distinct feeling that his father was still watching him and that no matter where he went, no matter how fast he ran, he wouldn’t be able to escape those eyes.
    The encounter had ruined the vacation. He had pretended that all was well, but the more he’d made believe that everything was fine, the more tension he’d created. Even after returning home Caleb wasn’t able to shake the pall of the Hall of Shame. His everyday life had felt futile, as if he knew the tide was eventually going to go out and pull him with it. That’s why his encountering Teresa Sanders’s body hadn’t really surprised him. It was just the other foot dropping on him.
    God, he was hot. Caleb felt his forehead. He was burning. Some people were talking nearby. Didn’t they know how late it was?
    I’m so tired of all this.
    A hero is someone who somehow hangs on just a little longer.
    Is that what you think you are, some kind of hero?
    No.
    Then why are you hanging on? Everyone knows about your father now. Your dirty secret’s out. Even if you convince some people that you didn’t kill anyone, they’ll still never look at you the same way again.
    I’m not my father.
    When are you going to learn that doesn’t matter? Remember when you were young and you tried so hard to be perfect? You brought home perfect report cards, and you put on your mask that you called a brave face, and you let the townsfolk spit on you, and the boys beat you up, and you never retaliated. But no matter how good you were, it never helped your situation. No one forgave you for being Shame’s son. And that’s what you are again. That’s what you are always going to be.
    I can be more than that.
    Or less than that. You’re a victim of the proverb “What you’re afraid of overtakes you.” It has. It did. And the person you might have been, we’ll never know.
    No.
    Oh, yes.
    The conversation gave way to chattering teeth. Only moments before Caleb had been so hot, and now he was freezing. He was aware enough to know he was out of control but not aware enough to do anything about it. It felt as if he was on a roller coaster, and it was all he could do to hang on.
    Her legs opened. She wanted him. He saw Earlene reaching for him. And then she was offering up her neck and telling him to squeeze it.
    Earlene’s head changed, became raptor-like, a harpy’s, then her sharp beak was driving into him, savaging his chest and pulling out his heart.
    And his father was laughing, but it wasn’t his father’s laugh. It was the mechanical laugh from the museum.
    “Go away,” said Elizabeth Line, but she wasn’t saying it to him, she was waving off the harpy and trying to stuff his heart back into his chest.
    “Mine was taken in almost the same way,” she told him, and then she shook her head in great sadness.
    “I know,” Caleb said.
    Elizabeth’s face changed, became Lola’s. She stared at him. He could see her compassion. For the first time he noticed how pretty she was. She looked like a woman, a beautiful woman, and he reached out to touch her hair, but as he did her hair changed into a headdress of feathers, and he pricked his finger. Lola had changed. She was still Lola, but she was a brave now.
    “My name is Osh-Tisch,” she said.
    “You’re different.”
    “No. I just had to dress for battle.”
    “You gave up your makeup for war paint.”
    “Yes.”
    Caleb wanted to reach out and touch the designs, but he remembered his bloody index finger.
    His bloody index finger. That