Geek Love (9 page)

“Are you saying,” Al stretched out a hand and carefully picked up the hairpin, “that the baby did that? Hoisted you up like that?”

Mamas eyes snapped with anger. “I told you he was hungry!”

The tiny fist, like a spider on a sand dune, clenched and opened and clenched against Mama's breast. The suckling sound went on.

Papa was staring at that hand. His lower jaw looked oddly soft and slack beneath his mustache. He got slowly up on his knees and picked up two more hairpins. He found another pin on the windowsill and stood up, looking at the hairpins in his hand. Mama concentrated on the small face at her breast. She seemed calm, forgetful of the tears and the ragged, dangling remains of the brassiere.

“Well,” Papa cleared his throat, “we need to think a little bit, Lily. I'm going to drive on up the road. We'll find a rest stop and pull over for the night.” Mama nodded peaceably.

The twins went back to sleep and I crawled into my cupboard and Arty humped his way into his bunk and Mama and the baby went back into the bedroom. Al drove in the dark until he came to a pulloff surrounded by high black firs. Arty and I stayed awake for a long time listening to Papa and Mama in their bedroom. Papa cleaned and dressed Mama's knees and put a cold pack on her thick blue eyebrow bruise. He put the sleeping baby into the crib beside their big bed, and they sat watching together and saw the thin flannel blanket curl slowly up in a twisted bundle and then push toward the headboard of the crib, where it lay twitching and scrubbing back and forth all by itself while the baby slept.

Arty and I both heard Papa say, “He moves things. He moves things.” We heard Mama start to cry again softly when Papa said, “He's a keeper, darling. He's the finest thing we've done! He's fantastic!”

Things were quiet after that, except for what the dark trees were doing among themselves outside. “Poor Arty,” I thought. “He'll be miserable.”

We stopped on an edgeless plateau that stretched to nothing on all sides, making the eye desperate, shriveling the brain to dry hopelessness between the dreary sheets of sky and ground. Papa climbed out of the drivers seat, threw back the side door, and jumped down. Mama was in the bedroom with the door closed, still sleeping. Elly and Iphy were huddled on their neat bunk with a puzzle. I was trying to read over Arty's shoulder as I turned pages for him. None of us looked out the windows. We all hated the bleak, flat stretches. Papa had left the door propped open and a rip of wind twisted into the van, mussing our pages and carrying dust and the rough sting of sage with it. Papa was out there, walking in the desert.

He'd been silent all morning, and excited. He wouldn't let any of us sit up front with him. We'd squared away our beds and the twins put out cold cereal for breakfast and handed a mug of coffee up to Papa. Arty had been quiet too.

Papa's boots crunched on the gravel outside and his head came through the open door.

“Step out here, dreamlets,” he said, then disappeared. None of us wanted to get out into that wind but we went, silently. Arty came last and just slid down onto the step and lay there blinking at the grit in the air. The twins leaned on the van and I stood near them watching Papa. He paced in front of us. Just a few steps in each direction and then back. The wind thumped and whacked at his jacket flaps and lifted his black hair against the grain. He looked away most of the time, out over the plain at the waving stubs of brush and broom. When he glanced at us, between phrases, his eyes were dangerous. We listened gravely.

“Your mama and I have decided to keep the new baby.”

Each of us, he said, was special and unique and this baby looked like a norm but had something special too. He could move things with his mind.

“Telekinetic,” said Arty flatly.

Yes, telekinetic, Papa said. And he explained that it was a thing he didn't know about, that none of us knew about, and that we'd have to be very careful for a while until we figured out how to deal with it and what it was good for.

“We'll join up with the show by morning and discuss the situation with Horst. Horst is a trainer and training is what we need. Horst can also keep his trap shut. Now here's the important thing.” And he said we were to act as though he were just a norm baby, even with people in the show who we liked and trusted.

“The army will want him,” said Arty.

“Well, they aren't going to get him,” said Papa.

We all had to stick together like troopers, said Papa, and the baby's name was to be Fortunato, which means Lucky.

Though his body did only the normal cherubic things, Fortunato's effect on the environment at the age of three weeks was already far beyond that of a hyperactive and malicious ten-year-old. He had to be confined to the cubicle we called our parents' bedroom. Mama moved everything breakable, shreddable, or toxic out of her room so the baby wouldn't destroy it or himself. Our tidy van became a heaped bunker. Platoons of makeup bottles and boot-polish cans stuffed the cupboards. All the sequined clothing hung over the twins' bunk. Lamps, clocks, and framed photos littered Arty's unmade bed. Papa's medical magazines and books were stacked everywhere. Mama's sewing machine moved under the sink with me. I slept with my knees touching my chin.

Six of us could live comfortably in the thirty-eight-by-ten-foot van only by dint of religious housekeeping. The mess wore us down. We hated it. Obviously training had to begin immediately for this seventh member of the family.

With some well-placed hints from big brother Arturo, my ingenious father hit upon the expedient of glycerin and black tape for wiring Fortunato's little buttocks to a miniature electric train transformer and a battery pack. Whenever Fortunato broke dishes or pulled hair or lifted Lil in the air and held her against the ceiling, Papa would gently turn on the power. In a matter of days, however, the precocious Chick, as we called him, learned to unplug the transformer and whip Papa's curly pate with the cord.

Deprivation techniques were substituted, Clyde Beatty style, but Fortunato had to sleep in a heavy wire cage during that experiment because, when Lil refused to nurse him, he would simply yank her toward him and reenact his debut performance.

The raw potential of Fortunato's abilities spurred my parents to research. By the time Chick was four months old, Al introduced the behavioral principles of B. F. Skinner and reinforcement theory successfully replaced deprivation.

Mama finally dared to bring him out of the Chick-proof bedroom. It was several weeks more before she could actually step out of the van with the baby in her arms and walk through the camp without his moving every bright-colored thing in sight.

Green-as in Arsenic, Tarnished Spoons, and Gas-Chamber Doors

The real trouble, as usual, was Arty. He'd always been jealous. He didn't mind me so much because money was the gauge of his envy and I didn't make any.

The twins, however, drove him wild. After every show he would hook his chin over the edge of his tank, spraying me with the overflow, to demand the number of tickets sold at the gate. “How many?” he'd holler. But it didn't matter -- thirty in Oak Grove, three hundred in Phoenix, a thousand in Kansas City. What he really wanted to know was how he had done compared to the twins. If they had as many or more in their audience he was furious.

Sometimes in those days he would flash to the bottom of the tank and sulk, holding his breath for incredible minutes, eyes bulging outside the sockets so they hid the lids entirely.

When I was five and first took over the duty of helping him after his shows, he terrified me with this tactic. He muttered, “I'll die. I might as well,” and I wailed and hopped in agony as he sank, staring through the glass.

I ran shrieking to Papa. He clapped his cheek and bellowed at me not to humor Arty when he was “playing prima donna!”

I ran back dithering, chewing my hands in fright, until Arty finally allowed himself to roll slowly over and drift, belly up, toward the surface, where my short arms could reach him with the crook and tow him to the side. I patted and smoothed his water-swollen scalp and kissed his cheeks and nose and ears, weeping and begging him not to be dead because I, useless though I was, loved him. At last he blinked and sighed and let his breathing become visible and growled for his towel.

All this over a few tickets one way or another when he was ten years old. I knew he wouldn't take to the Chick.

Nearly dawn. The show was closed down. Lil and Papa were asleep. The twins were snugged in their bunk snoring. Fortunato, the Chick, lay silent in his crib with the blanket twitching around him in his dreams. But at this end of the van twelve-year-old Arty sat propped against the table looking over the ticket-count sheets. I crouched on the floor with my back to the cupboard doors. If he was angry I would pop open one of the doors and creep inside bawling, shut myself into the blackness and pull my cap down over my eyes so I could cry into the wool, and pull Lil's old sweaters over me. He shook his head. The yellow light gleamed on his skull and I began to sniffle a little. He threw a look at me -- sharp -- I gulped down my snot and grinned at him feebly. He turned back to the ticket sheets. His voice started slow and soft.

“Now, you know very well what I'm seeing here.” He wasn't looking at me but I nodded, ready to cry. He was looking at the papers in a sad, doubtful way. His voice dripped regret. “Nobody expects you to bring in the kind of money that I do.” I shook my head. That would be absurd. “Or even,” he pursed his mouth, “what the twins manage.” I put my eyes down onto my knees and sighed, my whole worthless body quivering. “It isn't your fault that you're so ordinary. Papa accepts the responsibility for that.” The moment of silence told me that he was looking at me. I could feel his eyes on my hump.

As I cried he pointed out the discrepancies. When I did the talking for his show the tickets were to 50 percent less than when Al did it. We both knew that Al only let me do it when we were in Podunk burnt-out towns for a quick stopover and that the sales were down all through the midway in those places. Still, there was some ghastly truth in Arty's needling. Some probing of my guilt that was right no matter how he lied about it.

Then he would threaten me with the “institution,” which was the place that I would be sent to if I didn't shape up. “No matter how generous and kind Papa and Lil are -- they wouldn't have any choice,” he would say. His sympathy and understanding washed around me with razors caught in the flow. Arty's depiction of the “institution” scared me more than death or snakes. The institution was a cross between an orphanage and a slaughterhouse. Worst of all, it was run entirely by norms. The word alone would set my chin trembling. I would beg and grieve and he would allow that I deserved another chance.

“We don't have to keep new kids,” Arty sneered. “Sometimes we don't keep 'em and sometimes they don't last.” He was in his mean lecturing mood, twisting his head to look at me over the back of his chair as I pushed him through the grey dawn to visit the dog act. “You don't know about the ones before you,” he warned. “The ones that died. Papa and Mama don't talk about them, but I remember.”

“I help Mama with the jars in the Chute.” I grunted, shoving hard to force the chair wheels through the sawdust. Arty snorted and shook his head. “There were three before me and two more before the twins. There was another one just before you. That's why Papa let her keep you, because the other one died just before. It gets her down. You wouldn't have been a keeper if the other one had lived. She gets low when she loses one and it bothers Papa to see her like that.”

He was trying to make me cry but I didn't care. I was happy to have him talking to me. He'd been cranky and sullen for a long time. He went about his work, did his shows, ate, slept, read books, and didn't talk much except when he was laying weasel trails for Mama and Papa. “Which one was it? Just before me?”

Arty rolled his eyes and dropped his voice. “Leona.” He drew it out like a moan, watching me. I ducked my head and pushed his chair. Leona with the alligator tail would definitely have been a keeper. Leona would have had her own show tent and glow-in-the-dark posters in silver and green. Arty mused wistfully, “Papa was very excited about Leona. He thought about showing her in a tank. He was hoping she'd stay hairless but he could have depilated her if she'd started sprouting. He even thought about putting her in with me. Papa saw the billing as tadpoles. Different stages of tadpoles.”

He was light and airy about it. I stopped pushing and walked around to face him for a minute. He was nodding and blinking, pretending nostalgia for poor Leona.

“That must have scared you, Arty.” I grinned.

A slow smile spread gradually across his rubbery mug. He wriggled his forehead at me, for all the world like Papa dancing his eyebrows. “Poor Leona. She just went to sleep one night and never woke up. Mama was just about crazy when she found her the next morning.” Arty's round, wide head did its snake dance, turning on his neck in mock grief, and I knew the taut slide of his skin over tendon and meat, and loved the shadow dip of his bones underneath and the wide smooth roll of his lips. What I felt was fear. Arty saw it in my face and slid into his whip-master act fast. “Onward, Jeeves,” he snapped. “To the dogs!” I scuttled back to push, wading through the sawdust and keeping my butt muscles clenched to avoid filling my pants.

“Is it O.K. if me and Arty play with Skeet?” I asked. The dog reek from the trailer door might have been Mrs. Minutis breath. She swallowed and tried to focus through her hangover. Her hair was short and spiky with a clot of last nights supper caught above her ear. She pulled her nightgown out from her chest and belched softly. “Sure,” she nodded. She didn't complain about the hour or the fact that Skeet was her star poodle because we were the boss's kids and dog trainers are easy to come by. She disappeared inside the trailer and Arty stared tensely at the open door. The dog came scratching around the doorway and jumped down beside me, with his long leash trailing up to Mrs. Minutis shaking hand. She gave me the leash and told me not to let him wander loose.

I hooked the leash on a back post of Arty's chair and wheeled him toward a hard-packed grassless stretch behind the booths. The dog bounced along nosing everything, pissing ten times in two minutes.

By the time we got to the clear spot the dog seemed to have calmed down a little. “You just stay close and be quiet,” Arty told me. I sat down to watch. Arty called the poodle to him and the silly dog put a paw up on Arty's chair and cocked its ears at him, wagging the pompom on the end of its skinny tail.

Arty hadn't explained what he had in mind. I sneered, “Arty the wild-beast trainer,” to myself. On the other side of the booths the camp was just beginning to wake up. An occasional trailer door slammed. A voice or two sounded faintly. A mechanic turned over one of the ride engines and let it sputter to death.

Arty looked the dog in the eye. The dog sat, obediently alert, directly in front of Arty, watching his face. Arty froze with his eyes open, focused on the dog, but his face sleep-smooth, expressionless. At first the dog was happy as an idiot-short confidential flips of tail against ground, a swiveling of sharp ears, tongue-dripping grin. Gradually the dog lost confidence, licking its chops and closing its mouth, tilting those ears questioningly forward at Arty. An anxious burst of tail rapping. Then Skeet shoved his nose forward, sniffing worriedly at Arty, letting a thin, high whine out through his nose, skootching his ass nervously against the dirt. Arty sat with his fins curled and still, his face thrust slightly forward and down. The poodle didn't dare look away from Arty's face but began to lick his own nose repeatedly, stand up, then sit down fast with his tail under him, letting his ears droop. Finally, whining, ears flattened, head down and wobbling moron eyes wincing at Arty, the dog slid to the side with a yelp as though he'd been kicked.

Arty threw himself against the back of his chair, breathing deeply with his eyes closed. Skeet backed to the end of his leash and did his best to slink out of his collar. Arty sat back up and looked around for the dog.

“Skeet! Come here!” he ordered. The dog bolted to the end of the leash, snapping himself into the air. He flopped onto his back and lay there, belly up, and began to yowl. Arty laughed a little to himself and said we could take him back. “I can practice my hate thoughts on the norms in the midway, too,” he said.

Arty never bad-mouthed Chick openly. Anything that obvious would have shocked Papa and Mama into the blue zone. But I knew. I was the one who did the most for Arty. I spent a lot of time with him and a lot of time thinking about him. I loved him.

Privately I thought that Mama and Papa loved him only because they didn't know him. Iphy loved him because he wanted her to and she couldn't help it. Elly knew him and didn't love him at all. She was afraid of him and hated him because she could see what he was like. I was the only one who knew his dark, bitter meanness and his jagged, rippling jealousy, and his sour yearnings, and still loved him. I also knew how breakable he was. He didn't care if I knew. He didn't care if I loved him. He knew I'd serve him absolutely even if he hurt me. And I was not a rival to him. I didn't have an act of my own. I drew the crowds to him rather than to myself.

I was supposed to listen for Chick. He was asleep on Mama's bed and I was supposed to stay inside and wait for his waking squeak. I would change his diaper and give him some apple juice and play with him until Mama was finished with the twins' piano lesson.

But the sky was blade-blue, the windows were open, and the redheads were spinning tales just outside. I could hear them laughing. They were lying on blankets in the sun, drinking soda and slathering themselves with oil. The whiff of coconut and lanolin came drifting in through the window.

I was supposed to sit inside by myself and read but Peggy's soft voice began a story, and the other redheads quieted to listen. I couldn't make out what she was saying. I went out through the screen door and around the van to flop on the grass beside the blankets. With the window open I thought I'd hear Chick as soon as he woke. I picked and chewed grass stems as Peggy talked.

It was about a very young boy, fourteen or so, and Peggy claimed it was true. He died for love, she said. His family was poor. He was cut out for heavy work and bad pay, but he was a sweet kid, and he loved a cheerleader in his school. She wouldn't even look at him, of course. Her life was different. But then she got sick and the doctors said it was her heart. She would die, they said, unless she could get a new one. The word went around the school that she was waiting for a donor. The boy was terribly sad for a while, but then he told his mother that he was going to die and give his heart to the girl. His mother thought this was just his sweetness talking. He was healthy. But a few days later he dropped dead. Instantly. A brain hemorrhage, they said. Surprisingly, the doctors found that his bits actually were compatible to the cheerleaders, and they transplanted his fresh heart into her. It worked. Now she dances and cheers again with the poor boy's heart.

The redheads were impressed. Vicki said it would be weird to feel your life pumping through this heart that had loved you. Lisa wondered if the cheerleader would be haunted.

“He was probably worth three of her,” said Mollie. “A heart like that.”

Then from the bedroom of the van just behind me came a single loud slam like a twelve-pound hammer on sheet steel. In the fading echo Chick was screaming.

I was halfway around to the screen door before the redheads even started telling me that my baby brother must have fallen out of bed. Peggy and Mollie were up, following me. By raw luck the screen door latched behind me as I whipped through.

Chick was on the bed, purple-faced and howling. I jumped up beside him and pulled him into my arms. He was shaking and gasping between shrieks. He couldn't make so much noise if there was anything stuck in his throat. I felt for his diaper pins. Were they sticking him? Then I saw Arty.

He was crumpled face down on the floor in the narrow crack between the bed and the wall. He wasn't moving.

“Oly, is the baby all right?” Mollie was rattling the screen door. “Oly?”

Chick subsided to unhappy burbles and hiccups, and I slid him back onto the blanket. “Arty?” I whispered. No answer. No movement. At the foot of the bed lay a big rumpled pillow with a grey spot of dampness in its creased middle. The pillow had been tidy at the head of the bed the last time I'd peeked in. Chick could have moved it, but Arty's talk about Leona the Lizard Girl hit me again. I knew. Arty had tried to smother the Chick.