Spark
I’d just bought a set of rubber devil ears from the stationery store.
How hard could it be to put together a Mister Spock costume?
The ears were red—but nothing a can of spray paint couldn’t fix. My dad, a professional stove repairman, could make them Caucasian in five minutes flat.
Dad wasn’t interested in color-correcting devil ears.
‘Not now, Chrissy.’
Chrissy.
A male name that took a nosedive into femininity the moment you slapped a ‘y’ on it.
‘But Dad—’
‘I can’t spray that in the apartment, Chrissy.’
‘We can do it downstairs?’
Painting devil ears white didn’t hold the same attraction to him as losing the rent on a slow sulky at Yonkers Raceway.
He nodded toward Mom, stationed at her usual post, browning garlic on a stove that never seemed to work right. Then he went back to the racing section, and handicapping the trotters.
‘Ma, I got these ears and—’
‘Aw, they look cute red, Chrissy. Leave them.’
She caught the whole paint-can conversation with Dad—right through the crackle and pop of sofrito.
‘I like the red,’ she said, squinting with conviction. ‘You look like a devil.’
That was the planet I lived on—wrong names, wrong facts—the whole universe twisted just enough to make you doubt your own name.
According to my parents, we were locked in a military conflict in Vietnoun.
Billy Joel was Bobby Joe.
Chevy Chase? Chubby Chase.
Mom chimed in again from Sofritoville.
‘You know, Chrissy—your sister loves Doctor Spark from Star Track. I think it would make a lovely costume.’
Ah yes. Doctor Spark. The intergalactic pediatrician.
‘Ma, his name is Mister—’
Too late. She was tractored in.
‘Look what Jean found for your Spark costume!’ she beamed.
Jean was my sister—twelve years older than me, yet somehow still my size.
Mom held up what looked like a clump of dirty red cotton candy.
‘Look, Chrissy! This shirt goes with the ears! Look!’
It wasn’t a shirt. It wasn’t anything from Earth. It was a hairy, sleeveless, red faux-fur vest. From hell.
‘I can’t wear this, Ma. Ginsberg and the rest of the guys will rank me out.’
‘No… they… won’t!’
‘Why do you call him Ginsberg, Chrissy? Why not his first name?’
‘That IS his first name, Ma.’
‘Where’s that Magic Marker, Jean? Never mind. Here! This’ll work. Put it on, Chrissy—put it on.’
As Jean helped me into the vest, Mom grabbed a long eyebrow pencil and began pressing greasy letters into the fur.
‘But Ma, I really think his name is Spock.’ One last desperate plea for cultural accuracy.
‘What do you mean? What kind of name is that? Spock. It’s Spark, right Jean?’
Jean was in her room, digging for vest-matching slacks.
Mom finished her lettering and spun me toward the mirror like a red Tribble.
‘There! Done! Wait—you can’t go out like that in dungarees. You need a full costume.’
Faster than you could say, ‘I love that Archie Bunkman,’ she produced the rest of the ensemble:
—Navy-toned First Communion pants that hadn’t fit in a year.
—Black shoes that had never fit to begin with.
No Starfleet logo.
No phaser for self-defense.
Just S-P-A-R-K across my chest, in ten-foot type, courtesy of Maybelline.
The sky was just about dark as I wobbled down Bronx River Road in my tiny black lotus shoes, looking more like a red-eared gnome with a gait disorder than a Vulcan.
‘Look! It’s Spark the devil!’
Okay—that was Mr. Ballard. He was 86. Nothing to panic about yet.
Nathan Hatcher was next—polite, inquisitive.
‘Hey Chris, who’s Spark?’
He squinted, about to say something—then caught himself. With a confused smile, he just kept walking.
Then came the real test: the neighborhood kids.
A full semi-circle of Ben Cooper plastic masks, cork-faced bums, and pirates.
Eight of them, their eyes stuck on me, phasers set to overload—one of the masks sucking in and out with each breath.
‘Hey guys.’
They didn’t know where to look first:
—The ears?
—The vest?
—The shoes?
Mark Halpern cut to the chase. ‘Who the hell is Spark?’
‘You know—Doctor Spark from the TV show. Star Track.’
I knew it was wrong, but it just came out.
My face went hot. I didn’t know where to look.
For a moment, I thought I’d been spared. Maybe the tight Communion pants had triggered some kind of divine immunity.
Then the tremble began.
Their faces compressing into critical mass—my forcefield already weakened by Starfleet Command in apartment 4B.
They broke all at once—laughter folding over itself, louder than anything I’d ever heard.
A thousand photon torpedoes blasting straight through me.
The chubby Beelzebub limped home in his ill-fitting shoes, away from the echoes—ears flopping, feet aching.
But it could’ve been worse.
None of them called me Chrissy.
About the artist
Patrick Carella writes fiction and creative nonfiction about family, memory, advertising, obsession, and the strange dignity of American life. He is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at El Paso. His work has appeared in Wicked Shadow Press, CafeLit, Gorko Gazette, and is forthcoming in BULL, Hobart, The Eunoia Review, and The Hooghly Review. He lives in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, with his wife and their pit bulls, who remain unimpressed by literary publication.
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