There Will Be No Miracles Here: A Memoir

by Casey Gerald

People always underestimate the power of children and that is probably why the world is so messed up right now.

The car was so long that its wings hung out the back of most driveways, so wide that I could lay my full body across the backseat, and so old that when I did, I would sit up with periwinkle-blue dirt all over my clothes, smelling like a home that should have been condemned by the city.

It was simple, really: identify who was in charge, find out what they want, give it to them immediately.

Still didn’t know what was going on, what chain of events had turned a smiling husband and wife into a fork-wielding man chasing a screaming woman. Still don’t know. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of a slippery slope and find, instead, a cliff. Maybe that’s what happened to them that night or maybe, bless their hearts, they had spent a great deal of energy keeping it together—since my tenth birthday, since the seizure, since the beauty convention or the move to Columbus or the first time they met. Who knows? It’s amazing, either way, how quickly you can become a thing you’d never thought of being and may not even want to be.

I remain one of the very best liars you will ever meet, thanks to my mother and father, who also taught me never to ask anybody for anything.

I’m pretty sure middle school was awful for everyone, and I’ve come to believe that the general role of school in American life is to introduce young boys and girls to inescapable misery at an early age so they won’t complain too much when they reach the workforce.

another Oak Cliff neighborhood where boys had nothing but the pride of a few blocks they had inherited—blocks that, absent any other cause to believe in, were worth dying for, I suppose.

And for that entire, surprisingly pleasant journey, we pretended that we were not a group of people who had destroyed one another, but a family. Maybe there’s no difference between the two.

palimpsestic chalkboards.

Ehrgood hardly ever said great, rarely said words like amazing, and never, as far as I can remember, said perfect. To him, confusing something that was feasible with something that was plausible, something that was good with something that was great, was damn near as bad and just as dangerous as setting out for spice in Asia but, instead, landing in the new world (another misnomer). And with so much lost language all over the place, he could not imagine anything being perfect.

Don’t do that. Don’t do that. When you are unsure, speak louder. Sit up straight. Look into our eyes and say it. Whatever it is—SAY IT. Okay? Yes. Now. Do you understand?

You have to know that if you don’t understand, it is the author’s fault. Not yours. It’s not your fault.

Grant was one of the larger of us, six feet, three inches or so, maybe 250 pounds, with a head the shape of the old G.I. Joes and the personality of many boys I’d come to know at Yale who wanted deep down to be president, but would likely peak at, say, governor of Maine.