The Categorical Universe of Candice Phee (12 page)

“I'm more of a
theoretical
scientist,” said Douglas Benson from Another Dimension.

“Oh,” I said.

“I don't do physical experiments or mess around in labs,” he continued as if such practices were vaguely unpleasant and undesirable. “I
think
. All my science is in my head.”

I examined Douglas's head. It was certainly a strange shape. He wore his hair very short, and this allowed all the peculiar bumps and depressions of his skull to stand out in relief. Imagine a face drawn on a potato and you'll get the general idea. It was easy to imagine this knobbly orb internally overcrowded with splendid things, jostling for room and position and bulging out due to lack of space. I considered what he said, and it struck me that being a
theoretical
something was a perfect state of affairs.

Take Darren Mitford, for example (see “C Is for Chaos”).

He doesn't bother with actually
being
a student in any practical way, like listening or writing. This saves him time and effort. Maybe he is a
theoretical
student and it is all in his head (I don't think there is much in there, mind you, but a theoretical student wouldn't have to prove it). I could be a theoretical supermodel or a theoretical postie. The possibilities were exciting.

“Nonetheless,” continued Douglas, “such a machine would not be difficult to build.” He put one finger to his mouth and rubbed at his lumpy head with the other hand. “An automatic fish-food dispenser. Hmmmm. A simple timer that releases a valve once a day, which in turn dispenses a programmed amount of food directly onto the water's surface. Child's play, really. Why do you want it, Candice?”

“I worry about Earth-Pig Fish's religious temperament,” I replied. “I am attempting to encourage any atheistic tendencies she might have.”

Douglas Benson from Another Dimension stopped scratching his head and looked at me as if I were mad. In practice, rather than theoretically.

“I see,” he said in a way that showed me he didn't.

“Would you like to come to my birthday party on Sunday?” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied. “Is it going to be a big party?”

“You, me, Mum, and Dad,” I said. “So twenty-five percent bigger than previous years.”

“I think you'll find that is thirty-three-and-a-third percent bigger,” said Douglas.

“Oh,” I said. “I'll take your word for it. It's going to be full of drama, though.”

“Why?”

“Because there is a chance I might die a violent death,” I said.

Douglas scratched his head again and squinted at me. I could almost see his thoughts squirming under the surface of his scalp. His head theoretically rippled.

Saturday was sunny, so I put on a dress with a bright floral pattern. Rich Uncle Brian bought it for me a while ago for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained. I looked at myself in my closet mirror. Dirty-blonde hair (though I'd just washed it), freckles, flat chest, and stick-thin arms and legs. I didn't look like a theoretical supermodel. I looked like a practical one.

I found a fancy hat tucked at the back of a shelf in the closet and secured it, as best I could, with hairpins. Rich Uncle Brian had once taken me to a horse race and had bought it for me. I hadn't worn it then because it looked like a television antenna stuck to my head and I was sure it would have scared the horses. It still looked like a television antenna stuck to my head. I finished my outfit with a pair of bright red plastic sunglasses and examined the final effect.

I resembled a scarecrow with a television antenna stuck to its head.

It would do. I went down to the kitchen, prepared for an unpleasant scene. It didn't happen.

Mum and Dad were already there. Dad was getting in pacing practice. Mum was dry-eyed, probably because she felt she was an expert in tears and didn't need to rehearse. Dad wore his only suit, which was dark and shiny. Mum wore a black dress. She was as thin as me, but her skin was pale, like sunlight hadn't kissed it in years. It reminded me of cheese left too long in the fridge.

Mum looked me up and down and a tendon bunched in her arm. Her mouth opened. Her mouth closed again. Earth-Pig Fish couldn't have done it better. There was silence.

“We'd better go,” she muttered finally.

It was a ten-minute drive to the cemetery and no one said a word. Dad parked and unpacked the picnic blanket, a backpack, and a bunch of flowers, and we trooped through the small gate and along a path winding among headstones. Still no one said a word.

Sky's plot was in the middle of the cemetery, and I was pleased about that. I liked her at the center, rather than relegated to the wings.

Dad put the backpack on the ground, unfolded the blanket, and laid it across the grass at the end of her plot. Mum removed the shriveled flowers in the vase by the headstone and carefully arranged the new flowers in their place. Then
she filled the vase with water from a bottle she carried in her purse.

Dad started pacing. Mum knelt on the blanket. No one said a word. Again. Mum's shoulders started to shake, though she made no sound. I read the inscription on the headstone, but I kept the words in my head. I always do. I have my routine as well. “Frances, beloved daughter and sister.” Then the dates when she lived. A short time. Sadder, somehow, for being chiseled in stone.

I stood. Dad paced. Mum knelt.

I wondered what lay beneath the mound of grass. Was there anything left of Sky by now? Worms, and skittering things that like the dark and the damp and the soil, would have been busy. Bones, probably. That's all that would be left. A tiny skeleton, a jumble that could never be put back together. It is difficult to pay respect to bones. Or to words on a headstone. Because Sky could be somewhere—I hoped she
was
somewhere—but I knew the somewhere wasn't here.

I looked up. The sky was fretted with the silhouettes of leaves. Toward a hidden horizon lay a canopy of light, all powdery blue. But over our heads a dark and heavy cloud loomed. I watched the way smoky tendrils curled and shifted in its center. Suddenly a fat blob of water smacked my forehead and made me flinch. And then another. And another.

Dad stopped pacing and hurried to the backpack. He took out three umbrellas, the kind that telescope open
at the flick of a switch. He opened one and gave it to Mum. She took it automatically. She held it above her head, but other than that one action, didn't move a muscle. Dad handed me another, took the last one for himself, and opened it. He resumed pacing.

I switched my gaze from the cloud above to the tightly furled contraption in my hand. The rain was falling harder now. The silence in the cemetery was replaced by the pitter-patter of falling drops. A lock of hair plastered to my cheek. I liked the rain. It felt as if I was under the world's largest shower. Cold. The leaves on nearby trees shone greener, washed and polished by rain.

I flicked the switch on my umbrella and it bloomed into a canvas flower, bright with yellow and green stripes. I twirled it so the stripes merged and blurred into each other. Mum knelt in her little cone of dryness. Dad paced and took his dryness with him. I felt the rain trickle under my collar and run down my back. The umbrella spun before my eyes.

I danced.

I watched a movie once. An old movie. A man was dancing in torrential rain, jumping and splashing in puddles. He used his umbrella, not to keep dry, but for balance. I loved that dance. It made words. It said,
I don't care. I am happy and the rain cannot change that. The world is wonderful. Throw whatever you like at me, I refuse to bend before it. I am happy
.

So I danced. I jumped in puddles. I swung the umbrella in swooping arcs. I smiled and held my head up to the crying sky, welcoming it.

Mum knelt. Dad paced. I danced.

You know the phrase
dysfunctional family
?

Welcome to my world.

Douglas Benson from Another Dimension gave me breasts for my birthday.

It was certainly a change from gel pens, and I told him that.

“It's certainly a change from gel pens,” I said.

He switched from one foot to another. I had never seen him embarrassed before, but I had read about the signs. Flushing a strange and unnatural shade of red, shifting from foot to foot, unable to make eye contact. Douglas scored three out of three.

“They're very nice,” I said, gazing at the two strange items on my lap. “They are the nicest artificial breasts anyone has ever given me.”

That was true, but he spotted the flaw in my statement immediately, probably because he thinks a lot and has strange knobbly lumps on his head.

“I bet they're the
only
artificial breasts you've ever received,” he pointed out.

“That is true,” I replied. “Certainly.”

He shuffled some more.

“I made them myself,” he muttered.

“Fancy,” I said.

“It's just that . . .” He went in for more shuffling. I started to worry about bald patches on the carpet. “You've mentioned . . . you know . . . how you were worried about . . . you know . . . things not happening . . . you know . . . 
there
.” He made a general nod to where my chest might be, though, to be honest, the nod was so general and directionless he could have been indicating the cabinet where Mum keeps a collection of glass animals. I couldn't remember mentioning my lack of breasts to Douglas Benson from Another Dimension but, then again, I can't remember
everything
I've ever said. Douglas blurted on, like he had a speech and wanted to get it out before his courage deserted him. “So I did research on the web about . . . you know . . . and what they should be made of. Then it was a simple matter of engineering. They inflate . . .” He said this with pride as if inflation would win over the most cynical of bosomless doubters. He
almost
made eye contact. “. . . so you can go from . . . you know . . .” He held his own hands against his chest and then moved them out a considerable distance. If I inflated them to that size I'd fall forward and puncture them. I didn't mention this because it would be ungrateful. “Whatever you want,” he finished.

“They are very nice,” I said. “I will wear them to the party.”

“Really?” He was so happy he looked at me for a couple of seconds before his eyes slipped away. “Facsimile
Mother said I was mad. She insisted I get you something else.” He handed over another present and I unwrapped it. It was a calligraphy set, which was brilliant and an exciting variation on gel pens.

“Thank you, Douglas Benson from Another Dimension,” I said. “They are lovely presents.”

Douglas had turned up at nine in the morning because I had planned a day out for my birthday. Mum and Dad wanted something simple and straightforward like chicken parmigiana at a local restaurant followed by a birthday cake, a chorus of “Happy Birthday to You,” and an early night. But I insisted. It was
my
birthday, after all.

“You want to wander around a marina in Brisbane, Pumpkin?” said Mum. “Why?”

“Because Rich Uncle Brian will be there,” I said. “And he wants to see me on my birthday.”

Mum scratched her head. “Well, I can understand that, but couldn't you arrange to see him separately? You know he and your dad don't see eye to eye. Couldn't he take you out first and then the three of us could do something later? Go to a restaurant, for example.”

“No,” I said. “It's my birthday and my choice.” This closed the discussion, as it was designed to do.

At nine-thirty we were in the van, heading off to Brisbane. I had my false boobs on under my sweater. I hadn't inflated them and that was a sensible decision. Even so, they made peculiar bumps. My chest looked like Douglas's head. Mum glanced at it (my chest, not Douglas's
head) and her mouth opened, then closed again. Then she opened her mouth and closed it again. Another brilliant impersonation of Earth-Pig Fish. In the end, though, she said nothing and simply sat in the front seat.

Douglas was next to me in the back. I tried to get everyone singing, but no one was interested. I remembered, in the dim and distant days of family harmony, that we used to sing “The Wheels on the Bus” at the top of our lungs. Dad would do all the motions, putting on the windshield wipers and tooting the horn at appropriate moments. He didn't care then about the reaction of other drivers. I was tempted to try it, but settled for “Killing Me Softly (With His Song)” instead. After the first chorus, I got the feeling I was killing them hardly, so I stopped. Mum and Dad stared through the windshield, as if reading the road scrolling beneath the wheels. I talked to Douglas.

“Are you still jumping out of trees?” I asked.

He sighed. “Of course,” he replied. “But without success, I'm afraid.”

“You fail at jumping out of trees?”