The copy dog looked into the father’s eyes. The copy dog lay at the copy father’s feet and struggled just to breathe. The dog had come down with diabetes and fell into the mud in the backyard. The dog was an exact copy of the dog the father and mother had had before the son-a chubby Dachshund, dust-gray and well groomed, with a bell around its neck. The father smushed his face against the glass. The son asked to take his leftovers out to the dog. They felt their bodies rumble, squealing. There was even a little cheesecake wrapped in black plastic.
The mother found the copy family’s TV dinners in the freezer and from the floor the family ate: defrosted veggie medley, veal cordon bleu. Later they hooted and shook their arms, made fire. They waited to see if the copy family would simply disappear or go away. He had the family play Pretend To Not Be There. In the new house wrung with coarse light, the father locked the doors and sealed the eaves.
Sometimes the only thing about the son at all was all the itching. Sometimes the itching spread into his knee. The son’s hands and fingers always itched. Sometimes he found he could convince the son to come out into the yard, though no matter how soft the father threw the ball or how close they stood together, the son could never catch. The father also bought the son a football on the father’s birthday, a form of begging. The father bought the son a new neon football for Christmas and his birthday every year. The father hated when his son played girl games. The son wanted to play dress up with his copy body but the father smacked the son across the head.
The copy family’s breath came out cold and made no sound. The only thing that made the family different from the copy family was instead of teeth the copy family’s mouths were lined with mold. The copy family members did not wink or speak or cause commotion. The skins of the two families smushed together grunting. The father carried the copy father and the mother the copy mother and the son his. The family took the copy family and they set them on the back porch. There were many things the father did without his wife’s permission. From the outside the new house looked like many other houses. He could not remember what he did not remember-nor would he want to, would he ever. The father could not remember where he’d found the listing. He wanted a house described by all of who he’d been-or who he’d been then-or that other time-or-and/or-who? The father had not asked the mother or son what she or he thought before he bought the house. The father wanted a certain kind of life to give his family.
The grain in the glass in the windows in the frames in the walls in the rooms in the houses in the yards in the streets went on and on. In one house he’d seen someone reading about a father at the window in a book. He’d seen people in their beds-sometimes moving in the darkness to the bathroom or the stairs. In the nights before the new house, the father walked up streets peeping through windows. He could have maybe settled for just appearing on a show sometime- any of them-though he had no mind for trivia and his reflexes were just sad. He’d wear a bolo tie and comb his hair this way and that way the mirror, rehearsing his scripted text. The only thing the father’d every really wanted, the only thing, was to host a game show on TV. He had enough now in his stomach to open a small store. Throughout his life during sleeping the father’d swallowed many things-spiders, dust and dirt, wood shavings, pillow lint, eggs, hair, and rings. Sometimes the father looked at porn or ads or sports scores, but mostly just the light. Mostly all he did all day any day was look into a blank screen flush with light. If asked he could not say for certain what the work was. The father’d bought the house with paper money.
In the copy father’s copy eyes the father could read his other’s current scrolling copy thoughts: The copy father’s fat ring finger had on thirteen copy rings. The father watched the copy father flinch. The father flicked the copy father on the arm there by the window in the kitchen-the window where on so many coming days the father would look out onto the yard-the yard where the copy family had moved and laughed and dug and thought and fought and seen the sky change color. Their copy eyes were wet and stretched with strain. The copy family would not speak when spoken in to-though they had heartbeat, they were breathing. The copy family members stood each in a room alone unblinking. An exact copy of their family-a copy father, mother, and son. When the family came to live in the new house, they found another family already there.