I Sing the Body Electric (18 page)

Her gaze fixed upon my brother.

“You must be—?”

“Timothy. Tim,” he offered.

“And you must be—?”

“Tom,” I said.

How clever again of the Fantoccini Company.
They
knew.
She
knew. But they had taught her to pretend not to know. That way we could feel great, we were the teachers, telling her what she already knew! How sly, how wise.

“And isn't there another boy?” said the woman.

“Girl!” a disgusted voice cried from somewhere on the porch.

“Whose name is Alicia—?”

“Agatha!” The far voice, started in humiliation, ended in proper anger.

“Algernon, of course.”

“Agatha!” Our sister popped up, popped back to hide a flushed face.

“Agatha.” The woman touched the word with proper affection. “Well, Agatha, Timothy, Thomas, let me
look
at you.”

“No,” said I, said Tim, “let us look at
you
. Hey…”

Our voices slid back in our throats.

We drew near her.

We walked in great slow circles round about, skirting the edges of her territory. And her territory extended as far as we could hear the hum of the warm summer hive. For that is exactly what she sounded like. That was her characteristic tune. She made a sound like a season all to herself, a morning early in June when the world wakes to find everything absolutely perfect, fine, delicately attuned, all in balance, nothing disproportioned. Even before you opened your eyes you knew it would be one of those days. Tell the sky what color it must be, and it was indeed. Tell the sun how to crochet its way, pick and choose among leaves to lay out carpetings of bright and dark on the fresh lawn, and pick and lay it did. The bees have been up earliest of all, they have already come and gone, and come and gone again to the meadow fields and returned
all golden fuzz on the air, all pollen-decorated, epaulettes at the full, nectar-dripping. Don't you hear them pass? hover? dance their language? telling where all the sweet gums are, the syrups that make bears frolic and lumber in bulked ecstasies, that make boys squirm with unpronounced juices, that make girls leap out of beds to catch from the corners of their eyes their dolphin selves naked aflash on the warm air poised forever in one eternal glass wave.

So it seemed with our electrical friend here on the new lawn in the middle of a special day.

And she a stuff to which we were drawn, lured, spelled, doing our dance, remembering what could not be remembered, needful, aware of her attentions.

Timothy and I, Tom, that is.

Agatha remained on the porch.

But her head flowered above the rail, her eyes followed all that was done and said.

And what was said and done was Tim at last exhaling:

“Hey … your
eyes…
”

Her eyes. Her splendid eyes.

Even more splendid than the lapis lazuli on the sarcophagus lid and on the mask that had covered her bandaged face. These most beautiful eyes in the world looked out upon us calmly, shining.

“Your eyes,” gasped Tim, “are the
exact
same color, are like—”

“Like what?”

“My favorite aggies…”

“What could be better than that?” she said.

And the answer was, nothing.

Her eyes slid along on the bright air to brush my ears, my nose, my chin. “And you, Master Tom?”

“Me?”

“How shall we be friends? We must, you know, if we're going to knock elbows about the house the next year…”

“I…” I said, and stopped.

“You,” said Grandma, “are a dog mad to bark but with taffy in his teeth. Have you ever given a dog taffy? It's so sad and funny, both. You laugh but hate yourself for laughing. You cry and run to help, and laugh again when his first new bark comes out.”

I barked a small laugh remembering a dog, a day, and some taffy.

Grandma turned, and there was my old kite strewn on the lawn. She recognized its problem.

“The string's broken. No. The ball of string's
lost
. You can't fly a kite that way. Here.”

She bent. We didn't know what might happen. How could a robot grandma fly a kite for us? She raised up, the kite in her hands.

“Fly,” she said, as to a bird.

And the kite flew.

That is to say, with a grand flourish, she let it up on the wind.

And she and the kite were one.

For from the tip of her index finger there sprang a thin bright strand of spider web, all half-invisible gossamer fishline which, fixed to the kite, let it soar a hundred, no, three hundred, no, a thousand feet high on the summer swoons.

Timothy shouted. Agatha, torn between coming and going, let out a cry from the porch. And I, in all my maturity of thirteen years, though I tried not to look impressed, grew taller, taller, and felt a similar cry burst out my lungs, and burst it did. I gabbled and yelled lots of things about how I wished
I
had a finger from which, on a bobbin, I might thread the sky, the clouds, a wild kite all in one.

“If you think
that
is high,” said the Electric Creature, “watch
this!
”

With a hiss, a whistle, a hum, the fishline sung out. The kite sank up another thousand feet. And again another thousand, until at last it was a speck of red confetti dancing on the very winds that took jets around the world or changed the weather in the next existence…

“It can't be!” I cried.

“It
is
.” She calmly watched her finger unravel its massive stuffs. “I make it as I need it. Liquid inside, like a spider. Hardens when it hits the air, instant thread…”

And when the kite was no more than a specule, a vanishing mote on the peripheral vision of the gods, to quote from older wisemen, why then Grandma, without turning, without looking, without letting her gaze offend by touching, said:

“And, Abigail—?”

“Agatha!” was the sharp response.

O wise woman, to overcome with swift small angers.

“Agatha,” said Grandma, not too tenderly, not too lightly, somewhere poised between, “and how shall
we
make do?”

She broke the thread and wrapped it about my fist three times so I was tethered to heaven by the longest, I repeat, longest kite string in the entire history of the world! Wait till I show my friends! I thought. Green! Sour apple green is the color they'll turn!

“Agatha?”

“No way!” said Agatha.

“No way,” said an echo.

“There must be some—”

“We'll never be friends!” said Agatha.

“Never be friends,” said the echo.

Timothy and I jerked. Where was the echo coming from? Even Agatha, surprised, showed her eyebrows above the porch rail.

Then we looked and saw.

Grandma was cupping her hands like a seashell and from within that shell the echo sounded.

“Never … friends…”

And again faintly dying: “Friends…”

We all bent to hear.

That is we two boys bent to hear.

“No!” cried Agatha.

And ran in the house and slammed the doors.

“Friends,” said the echo from the seashell hands. “No.”

And far away, on the shore of some inner sea, we heard a small door shut.

And that was the first day.

And there was a second day, of course, and a third and a fourth, with Grandma wheeling in a great circle, and we her planets turning about the central light, with Agatha slowly, slowly coming in to join, to walk if not run with us, to listen if not hear, to watch if not see, to itch if not touch.

But at least by the end of the first ten days, Agatha no longer fled, but stood in nearby doors, or sat in distant chairs under trees, or if we went out for hikes, followed ten paces behind.

And Grandma? She merely waited. She never tried to urge or force. She went about her cooking and baking apricot pies and left foods carelessly here and there about the house on mousetrap plates for wiggle-nosed girls to sniff and snitch. An hour later, the plates were empty, the buns or cakes gone and without thank you's, there was Agatha sliding down the banister, a mustache of crumbs on her lip.

As for Tim and me, we were always being called up hills by our Electric Grandma, and reaching the top were called down the other side.

And the most peculiar and beautiful and strange and lovely thing was the way she seemed to give complete attention to all of us.

She listened, she really listened to all we said, she knew and remembered every syllable, word, sentence, punctuation, thought, and rambunctious idea. We knew that all our days were stored in her, and that any time we felt we might want to know what we said at X hour at X second on X afternoon, we just named that X and with amiable promptitude, in the form of an aria if we wished, sung with humor, she would deliver forth X incident.

Sometimes we were prompted to test her. In the midst of babbling
one day with high fevers about nothing, I stopped. I fixed Grandma with my eye and demanded:

“What did I just say?”

“Oh, er—”

“Come on, spit it out!”

“I think—” she rummaged her purse. “I have it here.” From the deeps of her purse she drew forth and handed me:

“Boy! A Chinese fortune cookie!”

“Fresh baked, still warm, open it.”

It was almost too hot to touch. I broke the cookie shell and pressed the warm curl of paper out to read:

“—bicycle Champ of the whole West! What did I just say? Come on, spit it out!”

My jaw dropped.

“How did you
do
that?”

“We have our little secrets. The only Chinese fortune cookie that predicts the Immediate Past. Have another?”

I cracked the second shell and read:

“‘How did you
do
that?'”

I popped the messages and the piping hot shells into my mouth and chewed as we walked.

“Well?”

“You're a great cook,” I said.

And, laughing, we began to run.

And that was another great thing.

She could
keep up
.

Never beat, never win a race, but pump right along in good style, which a boy doesn't mind. A girl ahead of him or beside him is too much to bear. But a girl one or two paces back is a respectful thing, and allowed.

So Grandma and I had some great runs, me in the lead, and both talking a mile a minute.

But now I must tell you the best part of Grandma.

I might not have known at all if Timothy hadn't taken some pictures, and if I hadn't taken some also, and then compared.

When I saw the photographs developed out of our instant Brownies, I sent Agatha, against her wishes, to photograph Grandma a third time, unawares.

Then I took the three sets of pictures off alone, to keep counsel with myself. I never told Timothy and Agatha what I found. I didn't want to spoil it.

But, as I laid the pictures out in my room, here is what I thought and said:

“Grandma, in each picture, looks
different!
”

“Different?” I asked myself.

“Sure. Wait. Just a sec—”

I rearranged the photos.

“Here's one of Grandma near Agatha. And, in it, Grandma looks like … Agatha!

“And in this one, posed with Timothy, she looks like Timothy!

“And this last one. Holy Goll! Jogging along with me, she looks like ugly
me!
”

I sat down, stunned. The pictures fell to the floor.

I hunched over, scrabbling them, rearranging, turning upside down and sidewise. Yes. Holy Goll again, yes!

O that clever Grandmother.

O those Fantoccini people-making people.

Clever beyond clever, human beyond human, warm beyond warm, love beyond love…

And wordless. I rose and went downstairs and found Agatha and Grandma in the same room, doing algebra lessons in an almost peaceful communion. At least there was not outright war. Grandma was still waiting for Agatha to come round. And no one knew what day of what year that would be, or how to make it come faster. Meanwhile—

My entering the room made Grandma turn. I watched her face slowly as it recognized me. And wasn't there the merest ink-wash change of color in those eyes? Didn't the thin film of blood beneath the translucent skin, or whatever liquid they put to pulse and beat in the humanoid forms, didn't it flourish itself suddenly bright in her cheeks and mouth? I am somewhat ruddy. Didn't Grandma suffuse herself more to my color upon my arrival? And her eyes? watching Agatha-Abigail-Algernon at work, hadn't they been
her
color of blue rather than mine, which are deeper?

More important than that, in the moments as she talked with me, saying, “Good evening,” and “How's your homework, my lad?” and such stuff, didn't the bones of her face shift subtly beneath the flesh to assume some fresh racial attitude?

For let's face it, our family is of three sorts. Agatha has the long horse bones of a small English girl who will grow to hunt foxes; Father's equine stare, snort, stomp, and assemblage of skeleton. The skull and teeth are pure English, or as pure as the motley isle's history allows.

Timothy is something else, a touch of Italian from mother's side a generation back. Her family name was Mariano, so Tim has that dark thing firing him, and a small bone structure, and eyes that will one day burn ladies to the ground.

As for me, I am the Slav, and we can only figure this from my paternal
grandfather's mother who came from Vienna and brought a set of cheekbones that flared, and temples from which you might dip wine, and a kind of steppeland thrust of nose which sniffed more of Tartar than of Tartan, hiding behind the family name.

So you see it became fascinating for me to watch and try to catch Grandma as she performed her changes, speaking to Agatha and melting her cheekbones to the horse, speaking to Timothy and growing as delicate as a Florentine raven pecking glibly at the air, speaking to me and fusing the hidden plastic stuffs, so I felt Catherine the Great stood there before me.