A Paradigm of Earth (15 page)

Authors: Candas Jane Dorsey

Tags: #Science Fiction

BOOK: A Paradigm of Earth

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If he didn’t say that others were, she could infer it, and said so, and he nodded. “But those are the ones I promised to keep off your back, and I’m doing that. The rest is up to Blue, isn’t it? Frankly, as long as Blue chooses to stay here, there’s nothing any of them can do.”

Morgan asked Blue later, “Why do you stay here?”

“You are here,” said Blue simply. “I chose you. You named me. I was glad. I was young, I had no words for names, I couldn’t find one for myself. Someone had to help. I wanted it to be you.”

“Why?”

“You are the one I most like to touch.”

“You do, eh? Why is that?”

“You are empty, like me.”

Morgan asked for no more meanings; she went away into her room.

It isn’t good to hate, and so Morgan refused to hate: to hate her mother’s unexpected cowardice, her father’s desertion into death, or even her brother’s apt tears; the hospital’s slide into social Darwinism she had always considered beneath her notice, and with her new self-hatred she had considered Vik’s defection only her due. So she was left with nothing to feel except absence.

Far away, and in another country, and the wench is dead from the ass both ways,
Morgan thought wryly. She remembered Jung’s words:
neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
Just as the shoemaker’s children have bare feet, her neuroses were visible to her trained perceptions, but unassailable.

It is far easier to help others than to undo one’s own lies.

Morgan was unprepared to remember she had history. Still, when her friend Judith, passing through on the way to Vancouver, took time to look her up, Morgan found herself putting weight on the old connection, trying to explain to Judith the sweet burden of her recent thoughts.

Looked at one way, Morgan mused, her mother also refused to suffer: she preferred to die violently in the crash rather than face the ruin of her dreams. Morgan, who felt holier than that, had to admit she hadn’t even had dreams, only illusions.

“Don’cha hate that?” said Judith lazily, throwing stones into the shallow water for her dog to retrieve. “Makes you seem petty and her seem right.”

“But she wasn’t,” said Morgan.

“No?” Judith grinned at her. “You sure?”

“I’m sure. I just have to figure out why.”

Judith laughed and called the tiny dog, who came bouncing back to them, wet, tongue lolling, to shake water over them. “Look at that thing,” said Morgan fondly. “It’s a real dog!”

“What did you think?”

“That it was a toy. It’s so damn cute, it takes a while to realize it’s a dog like any other dog, except tiny.”

“No drooling, though.”

“Maybe it’s like the line in the Jane Siberry song:
Then you’d miss the beauty of the light upon this earth, and the sweetness of the leaving …
”

“Why my dog doesn’t drool?”

“You goof. No, why she was wrong. The light upon this earth.”

“But she didn’t leave sweetly, did she?” asked Judith.

“Whole point.”

“Good for you!”

But Judith was not complimenting Morgan on her tiny insight, but the tiny dog on a tiny perfect “sit.”

John had only been in the house a few months and already Morgan had received complaints from the others about, and had herself become irritated with, his slovenly habits. Especially since the coming of Blue, she had no time nor patience for such nonsense, and she called John into the kitchen in the evening. Blue, as usual after dinner, was sitting in the breakfast nook by the window, watching the yard. The dishes were heaped in the sink.

“What do you see?” she said to John.

He looked around in puzzlement. “Nothing. What’s the matter?”

“The sink is full of dishes.”

John looked blank, waited.

“It’s your turn to wash the dishes,” Morgan snapped.

“Oh! Gee, sorry. I’ll get right at them,” and he turned to the sink.

“Sorry’s not enough,” Morgan said sharply, and he turned back, bewildered.

“What?”

“Sorry’s not enough. It has been your turn for a week. First Russ did your dishes. Then I did. Today Delany did—”

“Then I did,” said Blue quietly.

Morgan carried on: “These are just today’s supper dishes. In addition, there is the vacuuming. It’s your turn. Has been for ten days. No-one feels like rescuing you there. The trash needs taking out and the trashcan needs cleaning. It’s your turn. The household laundry needs running through—you know, placemats and dishtowels and napkins. Everybody else has done it twice. You haven’t done it at all. It’s your turn.”

She was almost enjoying seeing him wilt.

“See this chart on the fridge? It tells us all what needs doing. There should be an equal number of initials beside the tasks. Do you see your initials there? I don’t. That means you haven’t been doing the household work.

“I explained all this to you when you moved in. I also explained that no one will make you do it. You are an adult. There are no parents here. Personally, I resent being put in this position where I have to give you a lecture, but there have been too many complaints. I also explained when you moved in that there will only be three warnings. This is warning number one. After number three, you move out.”

“Okay,” said John. “I’m sorry. I’ve been busy on this video project …”

“We’re all busy,” said Morgan severely. “Nobody has time to clean up after you.”

“I’m sorry—” John broke off, blushing. He looked sideways at Blue, but Blue, seemingly indifferent, had stood up and was drifting out toward the doors to the back deck.

“Well, just do what you are supposed to do, and that will make up for it.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“One more thing—”

He paused on his way to the sink. “Mmm?”

“Quit using other people’s towels. It’s very rude. Wash your own. Pay attention. Only use your own.”

“Right!”

Leaving the kitchen, Morgan looked back, to see John regarding her with that hooded, resentful look that reminded her of a time when she worked with teenage petty criminals in a locked unit. Well, it gave me some skills, she thought, and smiled blindingly at him. After a moment he smiled back, weakly, and she gave him a thumb up signal as she left.

She climbed the stairs, thinking,
I did that on autopilot, all of it. There was a time I would have resented being put in that position, just as I pretended to him that I was. Now, it’s just another chore, done and out of the way. We won’t have trouble from him for a while. Too bad, he’s a talented guy.
She had called up some of his videos on the house system. Not her cup of tea, but brilliantly done.

Dream: image of Morgan, shoulder against the rock, struggling up a hill. Image of the rock slipping, not to roll back but to crush against her. She is crying with frustration and anger, but refuses to let go. She struggles to right herself and continues to roll her burden upward slowly, slowly. She is having a furious dialogue with herself about whether it is more sensible to carry on or let go. She lets go. The rock has nested in a slight depression in the hillside and tilts there, mocking her passively. She snarls and pushes mightily. The rock will not move. She stands away from it, swearing. The rock tilts back and is free, rolls slowly away along the hill, neither falling back nor advancing. Morgan runs after it. It goes faster. She leaps and catches hold, clambers on, rides it like a lumberjack rides a birling log down a rushing stream. The wind tugs her hair out behind. The footwork is demanding, no less than was the force of progress uphill. Morgan glances up and sees the crest of the hill approaching. A lifting sense in her heart. The rock hits a bump and she falls off. Pain. She stands, rubs her ass, watches the rock build up speed, roll on, and disappear over the crest of the hill, defying gravity and her. She straightens her back and begins to walk slowly after it, knees aching with the climb.

If it’s not one goddamn thing it’s another goddamn thing,
she thinks, and wakes herself laughing.

Jakob was giving Morgan a massage, his hard fingers almost unbearably pressing into Morgan’s knotted back. Morgan could feel Jakob’s fingernails snag the folds of her shirt and pull as his hands crossed her back, and she shivered with their slightly-out-of-sync motion. As she shivered a sob erupted and stopped in her throat, and she began to cry, quietly and without ceremony, a new tear crossing her face every time Jakob’s now more tenderly probing fingers hit a particularly tough muscle knot.

“You are so tense,” said Jakob soothingly. “You are like a person after backpacking. What have you been doing?”

“Just the usual,” said Morgan, “staying alive.”

“I feel like the pool of expertise is too small,” she said to Mr. Grey. “Too few of us were ever trained in this. I read as much as I can, and I still feel inadequate to be your expert.”

“You are familiar with the research stating that stupid people are self-satisfied, and intelligent people doubt themselves?” he replied.

“Stuff that. I’m serious.”

“Fine. Let me think. What about having some staff meetings with the people we worked with at the Atrium?” the grey man asked. “They know Blue.”

“Well, maybe Shelley and Brandy. They were pretty good. But Alice just saw it as a weird zoo, and Howard liked his own reflection in the mirror too much.”

Mr. Grey laughed. “I’ll set something up.”

“Not here at the house,” said Morgan hastily.

“No,” said the grey man. “I want to keep the world away from here as long as I can.”

Morgan went to the meeting hoping to be able to spread responsibility, but what she learned was that she was on her own. Though she liked her co-workers as much on rediscovery as she did when she’d worked with them, they were not so much Blue’s friends as hers. Shelley had another job, far less troublesome, and had kept her Atrium secrets even from her husband. “He thinks I’m at the library,” she explained. “I can only stay half an hour.” And indeed, in twenty minutes, she began to pack up, thanked the grey man for the double espresso, and scurried away with relief.

“Never mind her,” said Brandy. “You know how she is.”

“I didn’t, really,” said Morgan. “I was hoping to find that the two of you had some, well, different perspectives on Blue’s learning. Something I could add to what I’m doing.”

“Well, honey, I’m not gonna be much more help. Sorry, but you had the point at the Atrium too, you know. All I ever did with Blue was carry out the daily orders you left me, and she pretty much did what I said.”

“She? Blue?”

“Yeah. Look, you wanna have tea, I’d love to talk to you. Listen to you vent. Hug you, whatever. But I never really hit it off with Blue. I like the kids I’m working with now a lot better.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at an AS group home over on the south side.”

“Oh!” said Morgan. “Do you have a Briannon Flynn there?”

“Yeah, cute kid. She’s one of our older ones. Seventeen. You know, they weren’t expected to live that long. Her mom started that ASPS thing. Her husband’s a bit of an asshole, but she’s great. She’s quite the organizer. They did a big fund-raiser, fancy dinner thing, you know, made a shitload of money and bought a bunch of equipment for the house. A hoist for the bathroom. You know them?”

“Yes, I knew her in college. We just got connected again.”

“Small world!”

After Brandy left, the grey man moved his chair closer. “As it was my idea, I guess I should say I’m sorry,” he said. “But you know, she’s right. You were on the point there. We all mostly followed you too. Maybe you just have to face that you know how to raise this kid. You seem to have an instinct about what Blue needs.”

“It’s just common sense.”

“That’s what people say who have it. People who don’t have a clue trip over their own feet. From the reports we get, nobody else’s Visitor has developed this well. You’re a good parent. Accept it.”

“She said it was a small world,” said Morgan. “How come it feels like more than I can chew?”

The grey man smiled gently. “Have another one of these Vietnamese iced coffees. You’ll be able to deal with anything.”

“Okay,” said Morgan, then, as he raised his hand to the server, “No, not the coffee. Okay to the small world. I’ll quit whinging and do the best I can.”

“That sounds like something a parent would say.”

“It’s my father’s voice. Or my mom’s. They used to quote some saying, ‘Do your work as well as you can, and be kind.’”

“Sounds like a good plan,” said Mr. Grey.

“I wasn’t proposing it as a plan!”

“I know. But it is your plan, know it or not. So just do it.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Morgan. “Better get me that coffee after all. I probably won’t sleep tonight anyway.”