On Such a Full Sea (18 page)

Why, in the life of a community, does a certain happening or person become the stuff of lore? You would probably say great accomplishment is the reason, such as when one of our B-Mor children triumphed in an event for the first time ever in the biannual regional track meet (in the four-thousand-meter event), this against a field of intensively coached, superprimed Charters. We will note the historical significance of the achievement, basking in the reflected glory, for naturally we would like to think how it is emblematic of the best qualities of our kind, even if we ourselves can hardly summon the effort to jog half a block in pursuit of a candy wrapper skittering away on a sudden gust of wind.

It’s our common character on display, which is why we invest so much of ourselves—often totally beyond reason—in particular figures and performers, both fictive and of flesh. And when that display is unsettling or notorious, we can collectively wring our hands and wail and then try to assuage the disquiet in our hearts by more coolly interrogating its antecedents, the conditions and causes of its expression, and debate about how we might curb a future recurrence, none of this cynically posed but subtly servicing the final hopeful notion that This Is Not We.

Yet sometimes, as in the instance of our dear Fan, the talk lingers. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have much actual footage of her, unlike that of the long-distance runner, or even of Joseph niftily curling a shot into the goal. There’s no more to see on our handscreens after that first surveillance vid of her exit, nothing at all, and so the secondary rumor and conjecture continues to root and grow. We reshape the story even when we believe we are simply repeating it. Our telling becomes an irrepressible vine whose hold becomes stronger than the originating stock and sometimes even topples it, replacing it altogether.

And while we shall resume our trailing of what happened to Fan et al. after Miss Cathy’s intervention, we feel the need to return at least briefly to B-Mor, where rumors had spread about imminent cutbacks in the production facilities because of the oversupply of fish and now produce and then even some outlandish scenarios about the eventual shutdown and closu
re of B-Mor itself. For after the price of fish dropped precipitously, so, too, did the prices on our succulent vegetables, the markets of our neighborhoods for a time selling produce by the crate, the obvious explanation being that Charter suspicion of our products had widened, branding even those perfectly sheened and plump tomatoes that Reg and his coworkers would pick to be somehow perilous to their health.

As with what occurred with the falling price of fish, our first impulse was to buy as much as we could of normally very expensive Charter-bound fresh peas and cucumbers and sweet corn, most everyone freezing and salting and canning whatever their households couldn’t consume, so much so that the price of pickling jars tripled and then quadrupled before the containers of new jars finally got trucked in. By that time, the supply of ripened, ready produce had more or less equilibrated, our facilities adjusting accordingly to the lowered Charter demand, and the unfortunate B-Mor fellow who remortgaged his clan’s row house to bring in the jars was ruined, as the price suddenly dropped below what they used to cost.

In fact, we just heard of his body being discovered blocking one of the intakes of a pond in West B-Mor; he’d come up from the bottom, having drowned himself by tying dozens of jars filled with gravel to his wrists and ankles. Apparently the pond fish had pecked enough at his body to release him from the twine, and not just where he was anchored, which precluded any traditional viewing of the body at his funeral. There were whispers that his clan had done him in, in retribution for being saddled with a now enormous, multigenerational debt. There was also a spate of ironic, off-color comments on the boards and in the neighborhoods, about how the fish were developing their own taste for “B-Mor prime,” for the truth of the matter is that there has been a noticeable rise in the number of people choosing to do away with themselves, and then selecting the park ponds for the site of their demise. Firearms are banned in B-Mor, and the only widely available lethal weapon is a kitchen knife, which is no easy instrument when contemplating suicide. Most people have neither CO-producing vehicles nor garages, there are few accessible, assuredly high-enough places from which to jump, pills are strictly regulated and meagerly dispensed, and so the waters beckon the hopeless and desperate (plus the fact that very few of us can swim). In the commentary there were jests about the tenderness of the cheeks of Jar Man versus those of Popped Rice Cake Lady (who rashly sold her successful kiosk and invested in opening a fancy health-smoothie shop), or the likely gamey flavor of another fellow who was known to spend whole mornings eating slices of blood sausage dipped in pepper salt while he wagered on New China cockfights streaming live on his handscreen.

We know of others who, perhaps shaken by the soured spirit of our community, have also chosen the nether path. There are no official directorate numbers—never would such things be published—but it seems that everybody has heard of someone from the block or the neighboring clan who has chosen to depart. Maybe they would have done so anyway, maybe their own demons were inevitably going to consume them, but we have to wonder why there have been so many in such a relatively brief period, and what this might suggest about the relationship between the public realm and private lives in our settlement.

Some have proposed that we need to do more in encouraging individual interests and pursuits, even if they don’t appear terribly useful or practical, to bolster and deepen those inner reserves that “make” a person into who she is, and how, by extension, she identifies and values herself. Other, more conservative, voices balk at this, countering that we need, in fact, to strengthen the bonds of the commune, so that to end one’s own life would be tantamount to a grievous assault on us all. Still others have begun to take a nihilistic approach, posting their skeptical thoughts and going on about the futility of doing much of anything in the face of what they clearly view as a pointless way of life. All these and other opinions smack of some truth, and if they ultimately fail to convince, it’s probably because they can never quite acknowledge the other aspects and sides. But if we calm ourselves and open our eyes and step back far enough, we have to admit that our society, if not fundamentally unwell, has been profoundly wounded.

You need look no further than when you’re at the underground mall, as a glance across the main food hall will confirm. For you can’t help but notice the awful marks on some of the faces, the bruises and scratches and sometimes outright swellings and suppurations, most often on women and children and even on a few of the men.

Just the other day we saw a young woman working at a dumpling counter who, we are sure, could not see through one of her eyes, for how badly swollen it was. It looked like a mashed jelly doughnut. If she’d not had to work, no doubt she would have stayed in her house that day or the whole week, but there she was, in her smart pink and gray uniform and white gloves, and her otherwise wholesome, pretty face, and then there was this monstrous marring that made you want to cry and get furious at once, and somehow, even more monstrously, also direct your feelings at her. Why was she just standing there, why was she still folding the dainty pockets of filling and dusting them with flour as she set them aside, when what we really wanted to see her do was smash each one flat?

The odd thing, the funny thing, is that there has been very little chatter about any of this, when, of course, if there was the simplest outbreak of lice going around, there’d be a wild cry of concern from our citizenry, along with a round of alerts and recommendations from the authorities. And while the posts go on and on about the fluctuating food prices, or the latest schedule of mandatory furloughs for certain facility workers, or (as ever) how the evening programs are once again cycling repeats, will there be—disregarding some very crude adolescent jokes about people needing to use more makeup—a single serious voice on the matter? Will there be one honest, substantive remark about what is happening?

Which we find not just in the vicinity of the food hall, or way down the block, or in a slightly down-in-the-mouth section of West B-Mor, but perhaps close enough to be right here in our household.

For during the past month, have we not periodically seen some dark purple markings and blotches on the skinny arms of one of our elders, Cousin Gordon? Did he not come to breakfast with a fat lip a couple of weeks ago? Or gingerly drink from his mug of tea the other day with two crooked, swollen fingers? These days he doesn’t say more than a few words at once, but back when he was still strong and spry, Gordon was a bit of a trickster, never too serious, a bright, talkative fellow who liked to tell tall stories to anyone who would listen but especially to us younger ones, though always purely for entertainment. We remember how he had pretty much convinced us that we were descended from Old China royals because of the rounded shape of our earlobes, or how the harbor waters of B-Mor were once as clean and fresh as our facility fish tanks and bristling with millions of sweet-fleshed blue crab.

The adults all seemed to like Gordon, too, and one never heard anything negative about his presence or contributions at work, and his wife and children seemed to adore him, though it has come to be that in our large and intimately integrated households the significance of who is whose has diminished over time, such that we’re all a kind of cousin, even across generations, direct blood having no deeper feeling for one another than for the rest of us.

This is all to say that Gordon was pretty much like anyone else in the household, simply going about his days from the morning meal to the facility to lounging around with the rest during the evening programs, the rhythms kind and unsurprising. And even when he began to decline a couple of years ago—he was not extremely old, not yet sixty—nothing much changed in the way people treated him. Sure, he seemed to age very quickly, all his hair thinning out and going white and the flesh on his face and neck drawing off. And at first it was amusing how he began to mix up people’s names and confuse opposites like stop and go, cold and hot, but he’d quickly correct himself and make a joke, and you could put it down to his being a bit tired after his shift. Or maybe it was somewhat enervating to have to walk with him around the underground mall, as his normal stride shortened and he began to take these mincing little steps, as if he were checking the firmness of the ground, clearly being afraid of losing his balance. Or when later on he would not speak until spoken to, and then when engaged, offer no more than a standard response or truncated phrase, it was a bit disheartening, and perhaps a few times his son or wife or one of us might mildly chide his silence and passivity, our frustration borne clearly from our simple wish for him to get back to his usual ways.

There were no brain scans or tests ordered for Gordon at the clinic, for in B-Mor aging is aging and there’s nothing to be done about it, even when people are stricken well before their time. That’s fine, we know the score. And we know, too, that because of the composition and character of our households those in need will be clothed and fed, washed and groomed, and generally upheld as deserving of our ministrations. Yes, times have changed and demonstrations of filial attention have no doubt diminished in frequency and quality, but it’s still practiced, still genuinely unconditional, being ingrained into our basic strands. But after Charter demand for our goods suddenly dropped, and the entire community fell into a state of anxiety, we seemed to see less of Gordon around the household, and then when we did, we began to notice the first of those telltale signs.

We recall getting up to fetch a drink in the middle of the night and hearing the water running in the far hall bathroom. No matter how often we remind them, the younger children will often neglect to jiggle the flush handle and turn off the light, and when we went to fix it, we saw instead through the ajar door that Gordon was at the basin, the faucet running, pulling on one of his front teeth with his fingers. His expression was not one of distress or pain but instead a kind of dulled regard, his eyes staring at the fellow in the mirror as though his were a familiar but meaningless face, a random person he’d seen before at the park. There was an ugly color to his lip and some bloody spittle trickling down his fingers, and with an off-key grunt, he tugged and the tooth came free, root and all. We would have said something then, asked him if he was all right, but he saw he was being watched and shut the door.

At the morning meal he was there as usual beside his wife eating a cob of leftover corn and although it was glaring that one of his canines was missing and his lip was bulged, no one mentioned it. He worked slowly through the cob, if favoring one side of his mouth, and when everyone was done and idly chatting and picking at their gums with toothpicks, Gordon did the same but remained ensnared in the silence that was steadily webbing his mind.