Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (11 page)

When Lucy's registration fully passes, as when all samers are fully registered, the Department issues the parents their Parents Producers Number—theoretically valuable, even if they still have to go to the back of the line to submit for another project. The feeling is that these will be increasingly harder to obtain. My parents have been told that there is some sort of black market for these numbers, but wouldn't know what to do with theirs if they wanted to. But they don't, and know that they're too old now for it to be any good for them, so they've talked about the whole thing like some ugly but old photo to be stored in a damp drawer, curling and forgotten. Still, it's necessary for Tommy's files.

~

I'm seven now. Lucy is four. And tonight, my parents are a bit worried. They're in bed now, but I'm in my room with the light on, so I can talk to you.

When we all came home after eating, they all sat down to watch the Thursday Night Comedy Show. Every minute or so I could hear their laugher in time with the show. I was sitting at the table near the kitchen, as usual. My parents never liked me to disappear into my room, as it was unnatural. I don't remember what it was that I'd just thought through. I've got several interests at the moment, but I limit myself to two developments an evening. More than that, and I tend to get a little excited and mumble a bit to myself, and the effect on the family is too great.

They were laughing. The show was halfway through. I know because that sequence where people do funny things with their bodies was on. A man stuck quarters up his nose last week. For days afterward, Tommy tried unsuccessfully to store dimes in his ears. His current ambition is to be on that show one day.

I'd looked up momentarily, between projects, and someone was pulling handfuls of loose skin from his face.

Tommy was beating his hands against his chair, making choking noises. This was his favorite part.

My parents chuckled a bit condescendingly. They'd hoped to be above this, but missed.

Lucy got out of her chair and wandered around the back of the room, pacing with her head lowered. This was the first time in her three years of viewing that Lucy had ever taken her eyes off the screen for longer than it took to sneeze. My mother got of her own chair to see what was wrong. My father turned around in his big chair, his eyes steady, his forehead creased up the middle. Tommy suddenly found his own lap fascinating.

The show laughter, like a museum clock, ticked on.

My mother stopped Lucy in midpace, and gave her a cuddle. "Her forehead feels a bit warm," she said, and my father got up from his chair.

"Come on, honey," he said to Lucy. "It's a big school day tomorrow. Why don't I tuck you into bed with a story?"

"Daddy—" Lucy said, as my father scooped her up in the air with a "Weeee."

My mother got up and made a slow rush for Tommy, hitting her knee against the sofa on the way. Tommy was already out of his chair, and my mother and he sang the "Better with Beacon" ditty loudly all the way to his room, where she was unusually chatty putting him to bed, and Tommy was unusually ready for sleep at that hour.

Over the din, Lucy opened her mouth again, but she didn't have to yell, because my father put her down, and put his head down close to hers.

"Let's play whispers," he said.

"Daddy," Lucy whispered, but she looked cranky at all the interruptions.

"What if, instead of the man pulling at his face, the show showed the people laughing at the man who pulled his face."

"Why would they show that, honey?"

"Because it would be funnier," Lucy said. She put her thumb in her mouth, something she quit doing when she was six months old.

My father was still as an old tree.

Lucy's thumb came out of her mouth with a pop caused by a gust of tinkly laughter. "And Daddy, what if the people watching -"

"Oooh," he scratched his head like Mr. Monkey, Lucy's favorite character. He looked at his watch like it was a bird that just flew onto his wrist. "It's ice cream time again."

Ice cream is Mr. Monkey's favorite food, and Lucy's too, but it didn't work. In fact, her chubby face mottled.

"Daaddy. Lissen. What if the people watching -"

My father knelt in front of her again, and took her hands. "Lucy. It wouldn't be funny."

She took her hands out of her fathers and folded them in front of her chest, grown-up style. "Why? You don't know."

I caught my father's eye.

"Why don't we find out what silly Edward has been doing?" he suggested. That was the private fun the family—actually Tommy and Lucy—had daily. I'd tell them briefly what my projects were that day, and my parents would lead the laughter.

It wasn't at me. It was with me they said—but also—it's the family joke program, for no one else. Tommy and Lucy knew this was so, and obeyed. If Tommy were older, he would have beaten me up, but reserved his interactions to laughing with me when our parents were around, and at me, with Lucy or by himself.

By the time I finished lightly telling Lucy and my father my evening's projects, he chuckled, just like at the face-puller. Lucy laughed her tinkly little girl laugh. She'd forgotten her thoughts about the show.

With a tickle-tickle session all the way down the hall, Lucy was easily put to bed. I gathered up my papers and went to my room, and a few minutes later my parents came in to kiss me goodnight.

Their room is next to mine. It is now three o'clock in the morning, and I can still hear them talking.

~

Tonight was Friday Drama of the Week on Channel 7. A big treat for Tommy and Lucy, as it's the night to stay up late till the movie finishes.

This one, "Disaster at Sea," had been advertised for weeks, and we'd come home from eating in time for my father to make a bowl of popcorn, and my mother to hand out big checked handkerchiefs to Tommy and Lucy, and arm both herself and my father with a box of tissues. They all had a last trip to the bathroom, and the movie began.

It was about a ship that sank with most of its passengers. Everything had been going fine. My parents each had a pile of used tissues beside them, and my father was blowing his nose, my mother making little sobby noises. Tommy was bawling so loud that my father had to up the sound to hear the screaming.

Lucy started laughing. "Look at that silly woman," she pointed. She opened her mouth to say more, but rolled off her chair onto the floor, unable to watch, she was giggling so much.

My father clicked the screen off, but Tommy had already left for his room. In less time than it would have taken to fetch it from the closet, my mother had the fever strip against Lucy's head. Her mouth tightened as she read, "Normal."

My mother put Lucy to bed, and it took a while before she joined us again at the table.

My father looked at me, and his eyes asked. My father is a doctor. My mother is a human resource assessor.

"Flu?" I offered, and my mother laughed mirthlessly before he could even second my suggestion.

"Good try, you two, but she's not just minor aberrating. I've never seen anyone go this far. Except Edward."

"What happens to your reports, Grace?"

"Minor aberrators go for treatment, then return to unit. Serious cases like Lucy's lateralizing, I just report. I've never asked ..."

Suddenly my mother couldn't talk. Only blubbery sounds came out, as her face crumpled behind her hands.

~

Saturday night now. Lucy and I spent it playing in my room. While the laughter reached out from the living room, I was to do my bit, amusing her with a report of my day's projects.

She didn't laugh. Not only that, but on the second project, she offered a solution I'd thought of myself, but discarded.

Tonight my parents' laughter was so perfectly in synch with the program that it was hard to distinguish, except that I know my father's little snort, and it was particularly sharp, and my mother coughs at the end of her program laughs.

Tommy pounded his chair and made his choking noises as usual, but maybe a bit more uproariously.

I put Lucy to bed myself, after reading from her favorite storybook. But she didn't finish any of the memorized phrases, or sing the song at the end.

Tommy was in bed by nine. When my parents walked, hand in hand, back to the living room, I followed. They were waiting for me at the table. My mother primed my father to be ready, but now I was the expert. I knew more about full personality peels than even my mother. After all, she was not meant to be exposed to them any more than Tommy. But, for me, finding them somewhere constituted the bulk of my hopes for my future.

I told them the bad news. Part of the shock was the fact that it just couldn't happen. My parents had followed every Guideline to make both Tommy and Lucy. Pending registration of samers was viewed as a time-and-money costly hassle—a clunky administrative hurdle. Just more money for jam for the Government, and a way to keep the public service union happy. No one seriously contemplated a samer not being a samer. This time no one could blame the Department. Not with a me-too.

"Just how infectious is it, Grace?" my father asked.

My mother shrugged stiffly. "I don't know. Never had a chance to find out."

~

It's Monday night now. My father visited Lucy's preschool this morning. "Lucy has an attack of something viral," he told her teacher. "I'm keeping her home until I deem that she is not infectious."

Mrs. Bradley was very pleased with my father's social responsibility. She said she wished all parents would be as considerate. And she gave my father a coloring book for Lucy to work on.

Tommy was told that Lucy was sick, and to keep away from her. Also, not to talk with his friends about Lucy's virus, or he would have to stay at home, too. Tommy liked meeting his friends at school more than anything else, so could be relied on to shut up.

My father canceled all his appointments for the week—easy with a virus in the family. My mother called in sick.

We met, the three of us, at the table after Tommy's bus picked him up. Lucy was in bed surrounded by her stuffed animals. My father had given her some spiked cherry syrup. She'd sleep for the day.

"When can you take her?" my mother asked. They were holding hands, my father's face as wet as my mother's.

"Now. As soon as you'd like," I said.

"Do you think we should move?" my father asked me.

"It would give Tommy the best chance. At least he's got his registration number. Somewhere new, you could be just an amateur couple with one registered. There's enough of those around."

My mother looked at my father. "Do you think we could bring it off, George?" She didn't look like she could.

"Yes, if we go to, say, a place like where your folks were born—someplace really hick. Like where Edward is registered to work. Or instead, we could try a big city. Maybe I could get a hospital job. We'd have to live -"

"Lower, I know that George," my mother cut in, a bit high in the voice. "I've already thought of all that. It's Tommy I'm worried about. Suppose he tells."

"Look, Grace," my father answered, but then ran out of words.

They looked angry with each other. And then they both looked to me.

If they weren't so flustered, it would have been obvious. "Tommy hates being left out of anything," I reminded them. "He goes to school just to see his friends. He thinks I'm embarrassing. He doesn't want me to drag him down, so his friends don't even know I exist. The only time he thinks of me is when I'm around and he can have fun at me. He'll feel the same with Lucy if you tell him to, but you won't have to tell him what his friends would think if they knew about his brother and his sister. He wants to fit in more than eat."

Both of my parents sat back in their chairs. They knew Tommy. His conformance was still model-perfect, even to his reaction to Lucy's strangeness. My father gave my mother a kiss on the cheek and smiled. "He was a successful product."

My mother leaned over awkwardly to put her head on his shoulder. "I'm sure you're right."

It was settled. I would take Lucy within a few days, just enough time to make sure Tommy looked down on her at least as much as he did me.

In the meantime, I would formulate my plans. The hardest thing was my parents getting used to the idea of losing Lucy. They'd had years to come to terms with me.

Lucy is still in the unaware stage, and it would be too dangerous to break that until she's far enough away (on some pretext up to me to figure out).

There was a good deal of crying this morning and early afternoon. My parents consoled each other in their bedroom while Lucy dreamed in her drugged sleep, and I sat at the table—and thought.

~

At 3:30, as usual, the bus rumbled past our house, and at 3:32, Tommy banged through the front door and threw his bag on the floor. He always made for the fridge, but today he detoured to the table and took a chair.

The skin around his left eye looked like a bruised banana. "Edward, why is everyone at school so dumb?"

We talked for a long time. The door to my parents' room opened but Tommy didn't notice. I made a hand movement, and the door shut again. There was a new confusion of noise from there. But again, it didn't catch Tommy's attention.

About 8 p.m., I fed Tommy, and shortly after, put him to bed.

Then it was time for my parents.

When I told them about Tommy, my parents looked at each other angry-faced.

"Is it you or me or both of us, Grace?" my father said, putting both of their thoughts into words.

I figured we'd find out soon enough.

"Get some sleep," I said and I kissed them both.

I've got a busy night ahead. Tomorrow, I'll have to take them all. I have to admit, I'm kind of excited, even though I don't know where we'll all end up. But once they've all peeled, I might find those people I need who can think.

Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies

Kate jerked the sheets and woke me. I can't blame her, as somehow I'd rolled myself into a shroud, and it was soaked. Four-thirty, but with what I could remember, this was no time to go back to sleep. I fumbled for a track suit, added her robe, grabbed two pairs of socks, and then almost broke my neck getting down the stairs. Found my duck boots in the hall closet, the warmest thing I had, pulled my gloves out of my coat pocket. On second thoughts, pulled the coat off the hanger so fast that it clattered to the ground, but I was halfway to my study by then.

The dream was a gift, the best present I ever got. And at this time in my life, I needed it like ... well, I just did. I don't keyboard first drafts, so the only thing I turned on was the light. As usual, the desk was neatly laid out with a pile of clean sheets, and my pencils were all sharp—I hate impedances. I was ready to record the outline of my dream, at least the outline. The story was a blockbuster.

"Death fluffies," I wrote, without thinking. So then I slowed to think. But I must have done something bad to someone, or maybe it's just my luck. The plot I knew so perfectly as I raced down the stairs, now slipped from my waking like batter held in my cupped hands, with me running to throw its full serving onto a sizzling griddle.

Little more than the smell of the batter remained, so I put my hands to my face. I didn't dare open my eyes, but breathed in the dregs of warmth from my dreaming skin.

Sweat chilled the small of my back, but memory was coming ...

The usual morning sounds happened, but I tried to shut them out. Kate slammed doors louder than need be, and Joey's usual sounds were muted. I couldn't help smiling as I imagined him tiptoeing, then biting down on his cornflakes with less chomp so as not to disturb Daddy.

They left, and the house was still again—the only sound, that of me breathing, and the pencil as it bit into paper.

~

A giant, waddle-gaited caterpillar the size of a lapdog—the antagonist. It bristled with fire-poker-length spikes that stuck out all over its body with the regularity and pattern of a bottlebrush. Rainbow-catching, each spike was of silicone and looked brittle, but was really quite resilient due to its incredible thinness. If you touched one, even on its impossibly sharp point, you couldn't feel a thing. The fine point would pierce your skin before you knew it, with no sensation at all, as if your fingertips were made of the coarsest iron and this stiletto were a piece of dandelion fluff. The point would pierce and then slide out so easily that blood would never flow. Sometime later, how long I couldn't recall, you would die. I heard someone dying in another room, but didn't enter, though it was only a wall away.

People find these caterpillars irresistible, think the tales of their deadliness are just planted scares, like cigarettes causing blindness and ground glass being put into ecstasy pills—lies spread by
them
to frighten
us
into stopping doing things they think we shouldn't. So as far as these caterpillars go, with the rainbow light shooting from their snowysoft fur, and the rippling toddle that endears, and their soundlessness—no nip, growl, or chitter—and with their covered eyes that make it impossible to know which end is the head, and their lack of hint of teeth—it is laughable to think that they are dangerous. With cuteness of this magnitude, people know there must be more to these "oosome little floorsweepers" (I remember the phrase, but not who said it) than the authorities are saying. The caterpillars probably have properties that they would rather
we
never discover.

If you got a heart, you just gotta pet 'em!
Now, that would win first prize in a Cliché of the Day contest. Everyone says that's what they'd do, if they came across one.

There is even a thrill of doing something anti those over-the-top tombstone announcements in billboards looming over every highway, and deep-voice intoned in primetime, so much and so serious that they are first, hilarious, and then as irritating as fridge buzz if you listen to it.

For some reason—maybe the element of illicit excitement—handling the caterpillars particularly appeals to teenage boys. "Death-fluffies"—yes, this is their talk.

I don't know how I know, but I know that for anyone, just one touch means that if the person makes it to the hospital, he will be put behind sight and sound barriers ...

The nickname "Warner" came to mind. It was me.

No!
I shouted ...
Don't!
I screamed, then pleaded ...
Keeeep awaaaay!

But no one listened. (That fanatic!) The caterpillars are so beautiful, so soft—the hospital stories
so very
predictable.

~

I was getting somewhere, but my stomach was starting to ache. It was lunchtime, anyway. I always made my own lunch, and today it was a can of tomato soup, four pieces of toast, and two cups of coffee. I read the paper and felt refreshed, the first time I felt I really earned lunch in quite a while, so I gave myself a bowl of ice cream.

Then it was back to work. And it was just like before—before I caught the flow. I closed my eyes and put my hands to my face, then looked down at the last sentence. I remembered, and the relief brought a grunt out of the silence. A couple of paragraphs flowed, and then, suddenly, the very act of writing destroyed. Now, twice as fast as the words flowed at the tip, the other end of the pencil erased the air between my memory and the paper of all clear traces of the outline.

I tried clutching this time, my squeezy toy, but the first squeeze made an unexpected cartoon blurp, and that somehow zapped even the dregs of the dream, and then there was just clean spare blankness—like the afternoon light from the window, beamed into the room with not even dust-specs floating.

The rest of the plot? I know it was complex. So many people. So much action. Joey was in the story. But what part given? I can't remember. But it was a blockbuster, I know. Incredible drama, too. And from what I wrote so far, this was only the beginning ...

Damn it all to hell. The rest leaked away. Now I'll have to think up something on my own.

~

But time has flown. I hear my son slamming the door, back from school. At least this gives me a break, as he always comes for "our time," still at that "I love Daddy" stage in life, that I wish, but know won't, last forever.

Often he brings me presents. Special rocks, a leaf all red on one side and white on the other. He brought home a puppy once, but Kate said she had enough Mom duties, with her job and the house, and I can't have any distractions or that scepticism I get from her about my "full-time hobby" would mean I'd have to clean the house as well as clean up puppy poo when I need to have a day with no interruptions, or I just can't produce. When, the day after the puppy episode, he asked for a cat because "they take less care" someone told him (thank you!) I said, "talk to Mom." She was pissed off with me for that, but we both have our responsibilities when it comes to saying 'no'. The only interruption I allow myself, besides the half-hour for lunch, is the precious hour when Joey comes home.

As usual, he sounds like four little boys at once, pounding his way up the stairs. I love this part, when we try to coordinate his entrance into my room, and my swivelling my chair, to exactly collide. Today, it's perfect.

He's got scratches all over his neck, and inside his sweatshirt is a moving bundle the size of a large shoebox. "Look Dad," he bubbles. "You and Mom will really really love it, it's soooo cute. Can't we keep it?"

My heart is trying to leap out of my chest. Rats are running all over my scalp. I want at the same time, to leap out of the window, to crawl under the desk, to protect Joey from this thing that I already know is a fluffy. And to shove Joey into the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and lock it forever. Because Joey, with those scratches, is already dead, though he doesn't know it.

Instead, I sit in my swivel chair, stupidly, silently looking at my son—the person I realize at that moment to be the only person I really love—besides myself. The loves fight against each other, squeezing my heart, as I sit. Words? I have no voice, let alone words. The seat of my pants is clammy against the carved cup of the old chair's seat.

Joey is staring—hopeful, pleading, confused. Suddenly, his shirt convulses in front of my eyes, and two feet from my body. Joey clutches the cloth to his chest—too late, and a white fluffy thing the size of a large cat spews out from the shirt's neck-hole and leaps, leaving a net of blood on my son's neck.

"Catch it, Dad!" Joey screams, to his tortoise of a dad whom he is so used to seeing sitting, sitting.

My son, my living dead son, was going to embrace that thing again. He dropped to the floor where it cowered in the dark corner between desk and file cabinet. The sight of Joey's arms, scratched and held out towards the thing, his small skinny legs stretched out beside the strong metal legs of my chair, the flesh against the metal—or maybe my own fear—opened my arms for him.

I could hardly see. Salty tears stung, but I picked up my boy like he was a bundle of papers, and flung him out the door. I slammed the door behind him, and grabbed the huge mass of—what was I looking up?—my new Oxford English Dictionary (volume 1, A to Bazouki), flinging it with all my force against the thing. It hit. I could see some white fluff above the skew of the tumbled rectangular covers, those thin, crumpled pages.

A sound emerged from behind the destruction, a garbled, unidentifiable sound of rage and pain. I scooped two more volumes from the tabletop, and could hear the rest cascading heavily to the table and floor. Volume 2 and 3, I bent and threw at the piled volume 1. They landed haphazardly short. So I sat on the floor and with both feet, pounded the books into the other books, into the fur, stamping until the wall above was blotched with spatters of what looked like human blood. The only sound for a moment was the creak of broken volume covers, sagging.

This thing, at least, was over. I turned to go to Joey, but he is standing behind me, towering over me, crying.

He reaches out his hand and I don't want to, but against my love, my head wants to jerk away. Instead, his hand moves away, back to his side, without touching me.

I can smell myself. He must know that I fear him, of his living death, of whether he can give something to me.

The time for courage has passed, and he knows it. My little boy. My beloved boy looks at me in a way I want to crawl away from.

"I'll try not hate you," he says in a horribly un-little boy voice. "But it's not fair, Dad. Just because you hate cats ..."