The Dream of Doctor Bantam (24 page)

She doesn’t have anyone else to sign for her, said Gregory. She broke off her identity with her mother three years ago.

What did you say? Julie asked.

He quickly went for his coffee—he’d gotten a fucking refill while she was in the bathroom; she hoped that the gawky barista had remembered to spit in it, as planned—and took a swallow.

It’s something we ask students to do, he said. If their family identities are considered toxic to their growth away from timebound thinking. Students can start over.

She remembered Tabitha’s room: the sourness of the sheets, the tree outside the window. The cigarette butts by the cold iron burner on the kitchen stove of Linda’s house, stacked on a plate, waiting for her to throw them away.

Julie took the pen Gregory was offering.

This looks so boring to read, she said, looking at the triplicate form. What does it say?

Gregory squirmed.

Basically it says that the Institute wasn’t responsible for any of this, he said, his voice cracking. And that no one is allowed to sue anyone. You need to sign it in three places.

Julie paged through the form and signed. Gregory handed her another form.

This one says that she has no legal claim to the property you two were managing, he says. Also you need to sign that in three places.

Julie signed it again. Gregory started to pull out another form.

Jesus, said Julie. Just forge my signature or something.

Okay, said Gregory, and he put the form away. Then he sat where he was, squeezing his fingers tight together, woven knuckles turning white. He was hyperventilating, nearly about to cry.

Quit breathing heavy, said Julie. Man up, okay? If you’re going to kick someone out on the street, you should at least have a little dignity.

It’s for the best, Gregory said. She needs to rest. And she can come back if she wants then, maybe. If she feels ready.

You’re going to go to hell, said Julie. Do you know that?

Gregory looked into her eyes, swallowed, stood up. He looked at her again.

Goodbye, he said. Thank you for answering my call.

He started down the stairs.

So where am I supposed to take her, said Julie. If we don’t have any claim to the apartment where, you know, she lives. Can we rent it from you or anything?

Gregory looked back at them.

Take her with you, he said. You’re the one who takes care of her now.

And he disappeared down the stairs, his wet-look hair still plastered neatly to his shaking head.

Julie sat on the couch and looked at the brown puddle of Gregory’s spat-in coffee and at the rain coming down hard now over the trees on the campus across the street, bright green against a gray-washed sky, and almost directly below her now, in the bathroom, she swore she could hear it: Patrice’s heart, beating in perfect, inescapable time.

9

There were two lights on in the Thatch family kitchen: the incandescent under the vent hood and the thin circle of blue fire underneath the teapot. The hot chocolate Julie was making was taking a long time. She shouldn’t have added the powder to the water first.

And how long do you want this girl to be staying with us? Michael asked.

I don’t know, said Julie. Would it be maybe possible to talk about this with Mom?

Your Mom wanted me to handle it, said Michael. She says you like me more than you like her.

Julie smirked. Then she stopped and added more sugar to her coffee.

I’m sorry, she said.

It’s fine, said Michael. I got it from your sister all the time.
I expect it from you, too.

Julie closed her eyes and swallowed a bitter mouthful of coffee, black. She lit a cigarette.

Don’t smoke while I’m talking to you, Michael said.

She looked at him. Then she set her cigarette on the edge of the plate and put her head down in the crook of her folded arms.

So talk, she said. Quickly.

You’ll need to get a job, Michael said. And you’ll take the GED. So you don’t want to go back to school. Fine; I can’t make you. But you can’t just let your life stall out.

Oh God. Okay, she said. Okay, yes, fine. I wouldn’t let my life
stall out
.

People don’t plan to, he said. You’ll need to kick in some money from the job for utilities.

You can’t pay your own utilities? she asked. On this house?

I can, said Michael. I want you to pay them, though. I want you to get used to it.

She opened her mouth to protest, then nodded.

That’s fine, she said.

And it’s not forever, said Michael. We were actually planning
to rent out one of the bedrooms, you know. So it’s a little
inconvenient.

She doesn’t need her own bedroom, said Julie.

The cigarette had burned down enough that it rolled freely onto the plate; she picked it up and let it burn in her hand, let her coffee smolder in the other, her eyes on Michael’s eyes. Then Michael closed his eyes and nodded.

Okay, he said.

She smiled and took a long drag. He opened his eyes and smiled back at her. He was so young, she suddenly realized—thirty, Ira’s age. Seven years older than Patrice. Why had she never wondered about this before? Where had her mother even met this person? What did he even see in her?

Anything else you want to ask me? she smiled, twirling her cigarette smoke.

He put his hands on the back of his head.

What do you want to be when you grow up? he asked.

Alive, she said.

I’m glad to hear it, he said. What else?

She set her cigarette hand on the table, dropping ashes in the wood grain, and she watched the smoke come off in question marks and whirls until the teapot started to scream and Michael got up to turn off the burner—then to scrape the undrinkable chocolate sludge free from the concave metal sides.

They moved into Tabitha’s room. Julie spent a day with Michael clearing out her old furniture, saving the things she wanted to save—not many things, books, shirts, a trunk, one yearbook—and incorporating them into Tabitha’s total stock of possessions. They made signs for a yard sale.

We can probably hang on to some of these things, Michael said. We don’t have to literally sell off your entire childhood.

No no, said Julie. Sell everything. Everything must go. Gotta get those utilities paid.

Patrice spent the day in bed, the new sheets pulled up to her chin. Julie made some Campbell’s soup for her at one o’clock and brought it to her in an old Snoopy bowl. She was smoking in Tabitha’s bed; five cigarette butts were resting on the bedside table, next to the purple vibrator. Julie cleaned them up and put the purple vibrator away.

How are you feeling? she asked.

I’ve failed and everything has turned into a ruin, said Patrice. Everything has always been a ruin.

Except my soup! chirped Julie.

She waited for Patrice to respond, then left the bowl and went out the door.

Michael was coming down the hallway. He was bringing Campbell’s soup in a red and black Chinese bowl down the hall to Linda’s bedroom. Snakes of Dunhill smoke were rising from beneath the door. Michael gave her a sheepish smile. Julie avoided his eyes.

The garage sale brought in eighty-five dollars, which she and Michael split. Julie spent her forty-two on a carton of cigarettes from the gas station. She sat on the swing Michael had built in the yard, smoking them and kicking herself back and forth, until the ropes finally rotted out and she landed on her ass in the fire ant pile. The ropes were swinging close to the ground, dirty like leftovers from a botched midget hanging, like frontier justice had gone crazy here on some poor child.

She sat in the bathtub, a hunk of ice from the freezer floating with her, using up an old bottle of calamine lotion from Tabitha’s abandoned medicine chest. Patrice sat on the toilet beside her, smoking, wrapped in a blanket. She hadn’t said anything for an hour.

It was wrong of me to react the way I did, she said. It was what a timebound person would do.

I’m going to kill you with this chunk of ice if you talk about Institute bullshit again, said Julie. You’re well out of there.

Patrice stopped talking. She was thinking about the Institute instead. Julie could see it in her ugly, cowardly eyes. She crossed her legs in the bathtub and applied more calamine lotion.

She got a job at the Retrograde. It was easy. She typed up a resume at the big library downtown, implying but not actually stating that she had a GED, and handed it to the gawky barista.

You’re hired, said the barista, after looking it over.

Julie looked at her.

It’s that easy? she asked.

I have to go in like, two hours, said the gawky barista. And you’re here all the time anyway. And you seem like … you always seem so cool.

The gawky barista had huge eyes behind her glasses: cinnamon pudding eyes. She fluttered them without meaning to as she looked away. Julie suddenly realized that she was young, beneath the patently illegal ear piercings—that she was pretty hot. That she seemed pretty hot and sane.

Julie excused herself, went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and stared at herself in the mirror. The tampon dispenser was still empty. There was a clock on the other side of this wall; she could hear it ticking.

I seduced a barista today, she said to Patrice after she got home from what ended up being a first half-day of work. Patrice was still in the bedroom, still wearing the same pair of Tabitha’s old panties, Tabitha’s old lace-and-rhinestone blouses. She was sitting on the floor with Tabitha’s tarot cards spread out in front of her, listening to Tabitha’s music. She had a Dunhill between her lips.

You were gone all day, she said.

I had to get a job, said Julie. You know. Workin’ for a living. Takin’ care of business.

She sat down on the edge of Tabitha’s bed and put in one of Tabitha’s old Smashing Pumpkins CDs. Reverb-soaked piano music started to play.

Will you turn that off please? asked Patrice, quickly. It’s
distracting me.

Julie looked at her, then turned the CD player off.

So have you figured out what you’re going to do, now? asked Julie. Maybe go back to school? Maybe get a job yourself?

I don’t know, said Patrice, dreamily. I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking these cards.

She switched the positions of two of the cards and hummed to herself, lighting a new cigarette off of the old one.

Your mother has good cigarettes, she said.

I guess that’s true, said Julie. So what do the cards say that you’re going to do? Do they say you’re going to get a job? Maybe a place of your own?

I think this place is okay, said Patrice. She squinted down at the cards. The Empress, and the Queen of Cups. And the Moon.

Awesome, said Julie. Queen of Cups. Like a waitress, or a barista.

It’s about pregnancy, Patrice said. It’s about building a new life.

She looked up at Julie.

When will we adopt a baby? she asked.

Julie turned on the CD player again and lay back on the bed. She pressed her hands into her eyes and tried to lose herself in the guitar effects.

We can’t have a baby together, she said. It’s totally impossible. I guess the Institute really doesn’t believe in science! Ha haha. We can’t have a baby together.

You said we would adopt one, said Patrice. She got up on the bed. That’s what I want to do. If I can’t be in the Institute, I want us to have a baby. You could work to support it, and I could take care of the baby at home.

We can’t take care of a baby in my parents’ house, said Julie, getting off the bed and sitting on the floor.

We can make enough money to move somewhere else then, Patrice said. She was so happy, fielding all of these trivial objections. She crouched over the edge of the bed, her cheek next to Julie’s like a cat rubbing scent. Do you still have any of the money I paid you?

I don’t want to have a baby, said Julie.

Patrice processed this, somehow, nodded to herself, let her head swing back to the cards. The cigarette was turning to ash, unsmoked, in her mouth. Julie put her hands on her stomach, then took them away, made herself press them flat onto the floor. She lit a cigarette and dragged on it furiously, trying to force nicotine into all of her cells, all of her blood.

Do we have anything to drink? She asked. Like, beer, or harder alcohol? Harder stuff would be better.

Patrice rolled on her back and looked at the ceiling.

I want to raise a child, she said. I want to raise a child without any alarm clocking or corruption of identity or any of the things that make children bad and timebound. I want to raise a pure child who can be happy in the world. That’s the only thing I have left to do. I w-want to care for someone.

Julie dragged on her cigarette again. Out of the corner of her eye she could see what Patrice looked like, staring at the ceiling. She tried to remember what she used to feel like when she saw this expression on Patrice, this total belief, this crazy conviction. She tried to remember what it must have been like, once, to believe in someone. It must have been a pretty good feeling, she guessed.

I’m going to go get something to drink, she said. Do you want anything?

Patrice shook her head.

I’m okay, she said.

Julie closed the door behind her and searched every drawer of the kitchen, looking for liquor. She found a box of ancient, warmed-over wine coolers in the garage; she made it through two and a half of them before she had to go into the kitchen and get a glass of water, three glasses of water, to get the horrible sugar taste out of her mouth.

She went into her old bedroom. The furniture was gone; everything was gone. The carpet was pressed in where her bed had once been. She lay down on the carpet within the depression and she closed her eyes, and it seemed like it was only a moment before
she opened them again and it was daylight outside, it was time to go to work again.

Michael was assembling a plate of French toast for Linda. Patrice was sitting at the breakfast table, an empty plate in front of her. She looked up at Julie expectantly.

Will you pick up cigarettes on the way home? she asked.

Julie held up her finger,
wait one minute
, and ducked into the bathroom. She slipped into the bedroom to get changed. Her old copy of
The Dream and Reality of Time Travel
was sitting open on the table next to the bed. The note from Tabitha was inside, the last thing of Tabitha’s left—that and the ashes, still waiting in the garage.

She picked up the paperback, slipped out the front door, and got on her bike, holding the book tight against the handlebar. She threw it into the first trashcan she passed.

She and the gawky barista were working together today. She learned how to foam milk, how to make decaf espresso drinks, how much of the special syrups to use. She figured out how to use the store iPod and she put “Constant Craving” on infinite repeat because she wanted to be alone.

That’s a lesbian song, said the gawky barista. So are you … you know …

She went outside to smoke on the street. If she turned her head to the right she could see the Institute building. She turned her head to the left and watched the homeless people work the street, watched the students flutter back and forth, watched the whole mess burn in the same southern sun.

Does Patrice have any other CDs? asked Michael. Besides that one? Because I’ve heard it several times now. And I was wondering if she wanted to maybe, I don’t know, switch it up.

Julie cackled.

Imagine how I feel, she said. No, she doesn’t. She just has that French one.

French one? asked Michael. So she does have more than one?

No, said Julie, confused. She sang:
Je ne veux pas travailler
.

That isn’t French, said Michael. It’s a fake, a novelty song. It’s by this band Pink Martini.

It isn’t a real French song? asked Julie.

No, laughed Michael. It’s some kind of grammar textbook
parody.

That night she lay in bed with Patrice, watched the sheets rise and fall above her ass, the tree outside in the yard, Linda’s TV burning down the hallway.

You don’t even know who Pink Martini is, she hissed into the darkness.

Patrice shifted under the covers and turned toward her, her arms like shrimp claws, defenseless against the night. Julie made herself turn away.