Brian McMahon

This Isn’t About the Television

“This isn’t about the television. You get that, right? Brooks?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t look up at her to say it. She wondered how the television had stayed in place, given the magnitude of the noise she’d heard from the kitchen.

“We need to talk about what happened and why it happened.”

“I pressed the wrong button.”

“What?”

“I pressed the wrong button on the controller.”

He pointed to the ground with a little finger. The white controller had rolled onto a pile of clothes and sat there upside down. She thought it looked like a sea creature and wondered about the design process, chalked it up to ergonomics.

“You pressed the wrong button, and that caused the television screen to shatter? Help me out here, bud.”

He sighed. She was thankful for his embarrassment. His older brother would have simply sat there and defended the action, conjured some excuse, and stuck to the bullshit story until she ran out of energy.

“I hit the wrong button and so it was an interception and I got mad because it meant I lost. I was down three with thirty-six seconds left. I just needed a field goal to force overtime.”

She hadn’t thought to ask if he was playing against an actual person online or a computerized opponent. She wasn’t sure which was worse, more shameful.

“That doesn’t make the reaction OK. We’ve talked about this, Brooks.”

Brooks crossed his legs and leaned back into the wall. She could see the street from the window and stepped forward for a clearer view. He looked up to watch her look out. She watched a couple push a stroller and stop in front of the neighbor’s house, which she accepted was more interesting than her own. He knocked his head backward into the wall, producing the sound of handiwork done slowly, poorly.

“Stop that.”

“I get angry too easily.”

From a young age, Brooks’s intelligence had been clear. She was proud of him. She was enjoying his ascent toward young adulthood, which he would reach faster than his older siblings, she was sure. When he was little, friends told her he took after her: eyes, mannerisms, disposition. She wasn’t sure if it was true now or if it had been then. Those friends had known it was polite to say, that if they had to choose her or the husband for the sake of comparison she was the easy pick.

“There are so many frustrating things in the world, Brooks.”

She moved to the television and craned to grab the controller. She rolled it in her hands, surprised to discover how much the game caused him to perspire.

“This shouldn’t be one of them. This is supposed to be fun.”

He sniffled, though he did not seem close to tears. For a precocious child, he sometimes looked so much younger than eleven.

“I was mad about other stuff, too.”

“Like what?”

“Jake and I fought yesterday.”

As she stepped forward and plopped onto the bed beside him, she tossed the controller at his pillow. It bounced gently and landed back in place. He uncrossed his legs. They almost reached the edge of the mattress. His heels dug into Aaron Rodgers’s chin. A picture of the same mug hung over the television. Like the man it depicted, it had proved adept at avoiding contact. The damage to the television was focused in the center, but a crack spiderwebbed its way into the top left corner.

“What did you fight about?”

He sighed, but before he could speak, they heard the front door close and, four seconds later, yelling. At first, they could not make out the words.

Brooks, you hear me? That crap better be cleaned up by the time I get in there. Understood?

The boy looked to his mother, who reassured him without a word.

“What do we do with bad things?”

He rolled his eyes and mumbled, “I don’t think the rule counts if I do the bad thing.”

“It counts more than ever when you’re the one who did it. What do we do?”

Now she could tell he was close to tears, but he held them back. Only a deep breath kept them from falling.

“Learn from them.”

“What was that?”

She bumped him, hip to thigh.

“LEARN from them.”

The yells were closer now. The stairs creaked. She rose and strode to the half-closed door. She shut it. Brooks could tell they were arguing but couldn’t decipher the specifics. He preferred it that way. He always closed the door at night.

When she reentered, he was lying down. The sticker, the huge Packers helmet, stared back at him from above.

“Am I grounded?” he asked a little hopefully. Grounded wasn’t the worst thing to be.

“Sure.”

She sat next to him again, lifted his legs so she could slide under them. Returned them to the bed, draped over her knees.

“Why did you fight with Jake? I’ve never seen you two fight.”

“I don’t know.”

She leaned back now, a few inches closer to the window than he had been. The pillows were askew at the head of the bed. Brooks was uncomfortable. He fidgeted until he was on his side, and she grimaced privately at the new weight distribution. He looked to the door.

“He’ll calm down, don’t worry,” she said. “He was just already frustrated from work.”

They stared at the door together. The poster had fallen down, but the tape’s blue residue remained in the corners.

“What happened?”

A good question, she thought. He didn’t know how good. He didn’t know how hard it was for his father to answer. Most days, she didn’t bother asking it. The explanations came out eventually or not at all and were never particularly satisfying.

“Nothing. Just a long day I think.”

He pushed himself toward a seated position, leaning awkwardly against the wall, the pillow in the middle of his back.

“What do you and Dad do when you’re mad at each other?”

How mad?

“We try to talk about it. Say how we feel, you know, get on the same page as much as possible.”

The sun had ducked behind a tree across the street. Brooks’s reach was barely long enough to flick on the lamp that sat on the nightstand.

“That works?”

“Yeah. It works.”

She was afraid to look at him, at first because she didn’t want him to see the lie but then because she was sure he already sensed it, anticipated it even. The other two were at hockey practice for another forty minutes, but they wouldn’t have seen it anyway. They didn’t know where to look.

Brooks! Are you listening? I need you to come down here and talk to me.

He rolled off of her legs and off the side of the bed, landing nimbly on his feet. A quick glance at the television was all he could handle. In the broken monitor, his face was obscured, kaleidoscopic.

“You want me to come down there with you?”

She started to scoot herself forward, but he shook his head.

“I’ll be OK.”

“I’ll be up here.”

He left the door open behind him. She fixed the pillows but stayed sitting, knocking her head gently into the wall, which refused to take her in.

About the Author

Brian McMahon is an MFA candidate in the Fiction concentration. He grew up outside of Boston and graduated from Georgetown University with degrees in English and psychology. In 2020, he published Seaview Road.