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"You have one new voicemail from Foggy Nelson," the assistive voicemail interface chirped. "'Hey, Matt, it's me. You know what day it is, right? We're going out tonight. We have to. And not just to Josie's, either -- we gotta do it big. Since you skipped out on your last few, you have a deficit running. A party deficit. We're fixing that. Bye.'"
Matt yawned and sat up in bed. He frowned. He tapped his phone's wide touch screen in a few key places on its surface.
"The current time is: 7:27 AM EST," the screen reader stated. "Today's date is Friday, Octob--" Matt swiped the screen with a finger. The reader shut off. He pressed the phone's power button, putting it in sleep mode, a function that, after the subpar, to say the least, last night's rest, he desperately wished his brain had.
He shifted up and out of bed, zipping his jacket up to his neck, ambient autumnal cold exacerbating already sore, rigid muscles and scraped, scabbing skin. He dragged himself to a narrow shelving unit in the corner of the bedroom, and rifled through the contents of the top shelf's canvas crate.
"Springsteen," Matt murmured, fingertips stopping at the softly worn, creased edges of the record. "Yeah, okay. That works."
He placed the vinyl on the turntable by the shelves, set the needle on the right groove, and dialed the volume up. Warm, fuzzy scratchiness dissolved into music.
"'I get up in the evening/and I ain't got nothing to say...'"
Matt hummed along. He knew the lyrics by heart -- not rote memorization, but heart -- but every time he tried to sing, the distinct memory of seeing his father in the kitchen, cooking dinner for the both of them and belting out the song a-cappella, came back to him.
It was a distorted memory. The scents of the usual weeknight meals his father would make, of sharp, pan-seared chicken breasts and dollar store lemon pepper, almost filled his nose, fresh and live. The sounds, from his father's gravelly, sometimes shaking, wistful singing voice -- back then, Matt had no real concept of what that meant, of why his father would hang on the ends of certain lyrics, and bellow out others, strained -- to sizzles, boiling bubbles, and the labored click-click-click of the electric coil burners heating up, were clear. The salt taste of his father's sometimes overly seasoned food, or the saccharine malt richness of Ovaltine in 2%, nearly lingered on his tongue. The feel of a plasticky placemat under his forearms, or his father's broad hand ruffling his hair in response to another impeccable report card, ghosted over him, sensations akin to phantom limbs.
Yet, for all of this detail, his father's face became harder to recall with each passing year. His own face, as a child, before the accident, became more of a distant thought. He knew his father's height, build, weight, not so much from his posted stats, but from how he carried himself, how his feet made the floorboards subtly creak with each step, how his old robe draped over his own adult frame.
Matt shook his head, snapping himself back into the present. He felt satin on his skin, against the nape of his neck. He sighed. He slipped the robe off, carefully, before he hung it back up, toward the back of his closet, out of sight, as all things were, in a sense, but not out of mind.
In the bathroom, Matt ran a hand over his cheeks. Rough blades of stubble met his palm.
"You always had stubble, dad," Matt said. "If I go a half a day without shaving, so do I. Must've inherited that from you."
As he ran the razor over his skin, more glimpses into the past resurfaced: his father, in their shared bathroom, attempting to show him, his newly blinded son, how to shave, "just so you know how, when you're older." The gesture was prescient, Matt thought, but he, in his ten-year-old-ness, didn't take the lesson seriously enough.
"Wish you could've taught me when I needed it. You'd have been a far better, and more patient, teacher than Stick."
Matt recalled a straight razor, a sliced cheek, and proclamations of how, if he couldn't figure out how to use a razor, he'd never be able to figure out how to use any actual weapons.
"Yeah, much more patient."
He rinsed the residual shaving cream off of his face. On the counter, his phone buzzed. A text.
"'Outside your door with bagels and coffee. Good coffee. Very good bagels,'" the phone read.
Matt typed out a response using the flat, tactile Braille keyboard attached to its back.
"Matt. Breakfast. It's your bday. Come on."
Matt sent another reply.
"You're not doing this again. I am going 2 cheer you up 2day. Let me in."
Matt huffed out a breath. He shuffled to his front door, and opened it, gingerly.
"¡Feliz cumpleanos, my amigo!"
Matt laughed, muted, throaty, dry. He stepped back, and let Foggy, and his stack of bagels and coffee balanced on one arm, in past the door. Foggy settled in at the small dining table.
"What was so funny?" Foggy asked. "That's how you say that, right? I looked it up to double-check. I tried!"
From the open kitchen area, Matt replied, "You have the right phrase, but your pronunciation's a little... off. It's 'cumpleaños.' AHN-yohs."
"What did I say?"
Matt walked over to the table, two saucers in tow.
"I think I shouldn't tell you right before we eat bagels."
Foggy scrunched his face up. He grinned.
"'Least it got a laugh out of you."
"Matt?"
Matt tilted his head toward the direction of the gentle voice. He halted his speed reading.
"Yeah?"
Karen continued, "I - I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm sorry. I can come back later..."
"You're fine. Was just refreshing myself on some Title 18 chapters. If only I had my partner's memory for details," Matt replied, half-smiling. He folded his hands atop the open book. "What's up?"
"Well, it's 2 PM, and you haven't eaten lunch yet, so I brought you something. From this one diner that Foggy said you guys used to go to all the time. I wish I could take credit for magically knowing what you'd order, but he told me exactly what to get."
Karen set the waxed paper box down on the desk with one hand. Matt opened the box, brought it up to his face, and inhaled.
"California grilled chicken sandwich with melted swiss," Matt said. He placed the box back down. "See? He's detail-oriented."
"So much for 'Foggy,' huh?" Karen remarked. A beat. She hovered by his desk, her other arm hidden behind her back.
"I also got you a little something. It's not much, but I thought pretty hard on it. I hope you'll like it," Karen presented a gift bag to him, tissue paper subtly crunching. "Happy birthday!"
Matt smiled. He took the bag and quirked his lips.
"You shouldn't have," he said. "I mean, we don't pay you nearly enough for you to spend your hard-earned money like this. So, honestly, you shouldn't have."
"Oh, shut up. It's your birthday. Everyone deserves presents on their birthdays," Karen asserted. Matt could hear her heart flutter slightly as he felt himself smiling wider. "Anyway, I'm going to get out of here before you attempt to argue with me more about this. Happy birthday, again."
"Hey," Matt said, quieter. He looked just past her, enough to be direct without arousing suspicion. "Thank you."
Her heart upticked.
"My pleasure."
"Remember when baseball cards were the most important thing in the world?"
"Not really," Matt replied. "That was a long, long time ago. A little over two decades, maybe?"
"Fuck, we're getting old." Foggy sighed.
They meandered down the sidewalk side-by-side, Matt with his cane, Foggy steering Matt around potential obstacles whenever deemed necessary.
"You're telling me. I'm the one confronting 32 before you."
"It could be worse. You could be turning 30 again. Nothing to dampen the spirit like the end of the Roaring Twenties."
"I don't know. I'd rather be turning 30 again," Matt paused. "Besides, being in your 20s isn't always so fun. My dad, for instance, had to deal with me for most of his."
"You know, for as long I've known you..." Foggy started. "Ah, forget it."
"What?"
"I don't want to pry. I've always respected your privacy, where it counts, and I'm not going to stop doing that now."
Matt slowed his pace to a stop. He tapped his cane against splitting pavement, tree roots pushing past concrete. He tapped it on the winding roots. He closed his eyes, processing the differences in tone.
"Is it about my dad?"
"Yes."
"It's okay. I never talked about him much before, because it's. There's a lot to talk about." Matt rapped his cane on the rounded edge of the sidewalk. "Sometimes, if I start thinking about him, it takes a while to stop, and before I know it, I've been doing things on autopilot, and the whole day's gone by."
Foggy reached out and squeezed Matt's shoulder.
"It's okay. It's okay. It's starting to dawn on me that, if I don't work through this, I'll dwell on it, indefinitely. My specialty isn't mental health, but something tells me that isn't healthy."
"We don't have to go out tonight," Foggy said. "We could have a little therapy session, instead. I watched The Sopranos. I got this."
Matt chuckled.
"As tempting as that offer sounds, I'll have to sit it out. I think I'm going to have a quiet night in," Matt said. He didn't have to have enhanced senses to detect Foggy's disappointment; his whole aura changed. "But, maybe tomorrow, you, me, and Karen can do something fun. We haven't properly bonded as a company, and outings are a good morale booster, or something."
"Man, you took that Management 205 course to heart," Foggy said, shaking his head. His heart upticked. "And I'm holding you to your word on that. If you don't drop by tomorrow, Karen and I are both going to fight you. Like, physically fight you. In the streets. Dunno if you've noticed or not, but that girl seems like she has a mean right hook."
Matt tutted.
"You guys wouldn't beat up a poor, defenseless blind man. An old, poor, defenseless blind man, at that."
"Try us," Foggy teased.
His voice changed, lowered, measured. "Seriously, though -- don't be a stranger. We're in your corner, all right?"
"I'll call you tomorrow morning. We'll figure out the first Nelson & Murdock team-building activity, then," Matt offered.
"Holding you to your word."
"I'm a Murdock. We always live up to our word."
Matt lit candles.
The candles were not atop a frosted cake, but encased in frosted glass. Affixed with ribbon around the largest candle in the set was a note, written in ballpoint, pressed into card stock. He read it, touching each groove and ridge:
"'Matt,
I feel like you could use some relaxation, and I believe these might help.
Don't stress so much. You're not at this whole thing alone.
Happy birthday, boss.
xoxo - Karen.'"
Matt chewed his cheek.
"If only you knew how alone I truly am," he whispered, as if to reiterate the words to himself.
Eucalyptus and spearmint swirled into the air in feathery plumes. Matt inhaled, sitting on the floor, legs crossed.
His father was tall, but his perception of that was skewed by being, until he hit his teen years, comparatively small. His father's arms, which he'd helped bandage many times, were bulkier than his, the products of pure boxing training, and not the multi-hyphenate hybrid of martial arts and gymnastics that Matt used. His veins were never so prominent that they were unsettling, though, when he was about four, he wondered, aloud, why his father had worms trapped under his skin. His father delighted in that, and let him prod at his veins curiously. The sick irony of Matt, at age four, believing there to be worms under his father's skin, and Matt, only six years later, losing his father to the worms, lingered in the core of his bones, in the hollows of his body, mind, heart.
Pages turning. The acrid pungency of highlighter fluid and generic Wite-Out. Paper cuts being, for a brief period, the only regular injury he incurred. Metal coils sinking into his arm, during the times when the left-handed spiral-bound notebooks were hard to find. The embossed matte hardcovers of classic fiction works checked out from the public library. The comforting scent of dollar paperbacks from the secondhand store. Pie charts, diagrams, photos of rainforest animals, artwork from ancient civilizations, the anatomy of the human body laid out in a laminated sheet.
Matt exhaled.
His father's face. He honed in on his memories, then on his father. His mind's eye was as damaged as his real eyes. With time, the vividness of his sighted memories gradually, progressively faded, and his other senses reinterpreted the objective visual aspects subjectively, filling in the gaps. His father's face, seen far too few times. His father's face, swollen and bruised and bleeding. His father's face, fire.
Matt tensed. He clenched his jaw. Tears crept through his shut eyes.
His father's voice, reassuring him after every lost fight that he would be okay, that he was invincible, that they were both invincible, because he is -- was -- his father's son. His father's voice, demanding, but, in retrospect, pleading for, him to hit the books, not his schoolyard aggressors. He had to go on to do the things his father couldn't, to become the man he couldn't be, to become invincible, in a different light. His father's voice, wounded, not from a physical blow, but from the crushing weight of perceived inadequacy, of ostensible failure. His father's voice, in his bedroom, behind a shut door, crying, very, very hushed, one night after the accident. His father's voice, praying to God to watch over his son, to protect him, to help him to a better path and life than he could ever give. His father's voice, gossamer, then gone, forever.
Matt's chest heaved. He shook, breathing ragged, fingernails digging into his palms, fists squeezed tightly.
A dedicated speech and a diploma at his high school graduation, along with a speech of his own, delivered without rehearsal. A dedicated speech and an honors degree, with a clap on the back from the University's President, at his college graduation. A dedicated speech, a degree with prizes and awards, handshakes from "important" figures, and subsequent invitations from top firms at his law school graduation.
He was noted, portrayed as an inspirational figure at his schools, and for the community. He was the boy who didn't give up, despite losing his sight and his father before his first school dance. During his youth, at those transitional points, he was held up as an object of encouragement for other kids, a conversational reference point, the embodiment of, "if he can do it, then why can't you?" Ceremony guests breaking into rousing applause after his special introductions. Blubbering words of pity masquerading as sympathy from overbearing parents in the crowd. Rows and rows of heartbeats, but none matching his father's. Rows and rows of chairs packed full, to the point where he couldn't discern an empty one in which to imagine his father seated, beaming up at him, having had his goals for his son finally achieved.
Matt stirred out of his meditative trance. His chest spasmed, choked down sobs overtaking him, rising up his throat. He cupped his hands and covered his face, tears spreading across his cheeks and jaw. The hollows in him were pried apart to canyons, vast expanses of resentment and remorse tunneling through him.
He inhaled, then exhaled, forced, anything to regulate his breathing, anything to distract him from the vaguest image of his father's possible face as the life drained from it. His heart pounded relentlessly. He extinguished the candles with cavernous, quaking sighs, and pulled himself up to his feet, then to the closet, then down to the chest.
His first kiss, strawberry Lip Smackers. His first real kiss, faint mango on his tongue, fingers woven in thick, wavy hair. His first day of college. His first, and, to this day, best friend. His consistently exceptional exam scores. His office and practice, shared with said best friend. His first place, completely on his own. His first legal drink. His first correct, clean shave. His first time at Fogwell's. His first job. His first internship. His first time flying. His Easters, Thanksgivings, Christmases. His 13th birthday. His 16th birthday. His 18th birthday. His first time voting. His 21st birthday. His 30th birthday. His 32nd.
Matt tied his mask behind his head, and went out into the night.
Iron and fermented grain.
At his dining table, Matt sipped scotch straight from the bottle. The alcohol stung his split lip, while blood seeped through his grit teeth. He held his head in one wrapped hand, bottle in the other. Impenetrable quiet cloaked the room, the static of the surrounding city muted with every sip.
Then, through the quiet, a colic cry. Matt jolted up. The cry ended. Matt stilled. Silence.
"I'm getting old," Matt thought. "I'm getting old; I'm losing my mind, and I'm alone."
He took a long drink from the bottle.
"If I -- if 32 is old, it's easier. People die when they're old. Natural causes. Old age," Matt nodded to himself. "32 is old. I used to think that you were so old, at 30. I couldn't imagine what life would be like at that age. Three decades. Unimaginable. I spent two of them without you, dad. But I made it. I did what you told me to do. I practice law and practice faith. What you wanted."
The dull stabbing sensation in his abdomen reemerged.
"Almost what you wanted," Matt held his sides with his arm. "I fight. Often. After you died, I started to train, and fight. You did it, and you kept me from it, but by you doing it, by you literally killing yourself to prove a point to me, all you did was push me into it."
"I'm sorry, dad. I'm sorry I haven't been talking to you. I'm sorry for becoming so much like you, as if you were something to be ashamed of. My mistake. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa," Matt tilted his head back and up. With one gesture, he was 11 again, telling his father every night before bed about what happened at school that day, or what his new interests were. He swallowed back saliva and blood.
"I loved you, so much. I still do. I wish more than anything that you'd have realized that, fully. It didn't matter to me whether or not you won, what your record was, how 'well off' we were, or not. We always got by, always managed, before, and would've -- we could've continued to manage, fine," Matt rubbed his eyes, bandage wraps scratching tender skin.
His head was clumped cotton, was a storm cloud, was solid lead.
He folded his arms on the tabletop, and rested his head on them. The procession of his thoughts slowed, beta waves sliding into theta.
His father tossing a ball to him at the park, the arc of the ball near-perfect, as he smiled down at his son, corners of his bright eyes crinkled, a year before integral parts of his son's life, like being able to watch the sun set, or to eat dinner with his father, games on in the background, were eliminated: a memory.
Matt slipped further and further into sleep.
With the remainder of his energy, he murmured, muffled by his arms, "You were what mattered. You were what I was most proud of."