The Society of S (10 page)

From the corner of my eye, I sensed motion. But I saw no one, when I turned to look.

It was a gray morning in early October, and I was in my room upstairs, getting dressed for the day. Even though I’d be seeing no one but Mrs. McG and my father — and perhaps Dennis, if he ventured out of the basement — I took trouble with my appearance, and I’ll admit to spending long minutes before the mirror, admiring myself. That summer my hair had grown rapidly, nearly halfway to my waist, and it had developed a slight wave. My body had changed as well — I felt embarrassed by it, to be honest. Even my lips seemed fuller, more womanly. Perhaps I should note here: my mirror image was wavering, indistinct — as if it I were viewing it peripherally. It had always been that way. I knew from reading the term “mirror image” in books that reflections were ordinarily clearer, more distinct; mine wasn’t, but then all the mirrors in our house were old. I blamed the mirrors.

When my skin began to tingle, I turned around again. No one was there.

Dennis returned from Japan one night, and his jovial careless vitality enlivened the house. I’d been seeing less of Kathleen since her school resumed; she’d made new friends among her fellow eighth-graders, and although she telephoned once or twice a week, I sensed distance growing between us. Spending time alone didn’t feel as natural to me as it once had, and for days now I’d been feeling rather listless.

Dennis had walked into the living room, wearing a wrinkled suit that smelled faintly of alcohol and perspiration, his face ruddy, eyes bloodshot. My father sat in his usual chair, sipping Picardo, reading. My father, I realized, did not smell. He had no odor whatsoever. His face never flushed, his eyes were never streaked with red. His hands, the few times when mine had brushed against them, were cool, while Dennis seemed to radiate heat.

Dennis took one look at me and said, “Wow.”

My father said, “Meaning?”

“Meaning that Miss Ariella has grown up just in the month I was away.” Dennis bent to squeeze my shoulders. “It must be all that bike riding, Ari. Am I right?”

I hugged him back. “Obviously the bike riding,” I said. “You could use a little of that yourself, am I right?”

He patted his stomach lightly. “The middle-age spread continues,” he said, “aided and abetted by exotic cuisine and some fine Japanese beer.”

Dennis was in his early forties at that time, and his face and body had creases that my father’s entirely lacked.

“How was Japan?” I asked.

“Japan was fantastic,” he said. “But the work didn’t go quite as we’d hoped.”

“What exactly were you working on?”

Dennis looked at my father.

After a moment’s silence, my father said, “We’re conducting some research into a class of compounds known as perfluorocarbons.”

I must have appeared puzzled. “We’re attempting to emulsify them,” he went on, “to enable them to carry oxygen.”

Normally I would have asked a hundred more questions, but this level of technical detail was beyond me. All I said was, “How nice.”

Dennis changed the subject abruptly. “Tell me, Ari. What’s that thing around your neck?”

I pulled the little flannel bag away from my neck for him to inspect. “It’s lavender. It’s meant to bring me good luck.”

My father said, without emotion, “I had no idea that you were superstitious.”

For weeks I’d been hoping that my father would resume our conversation about Poe and bereavement, but he always directed our lessons elsewhere. I’d arrive at the library armed with two or three provocative remarks guaranteed to reengage him in personal revelations. Within seconds we’d be deep in a very different conversation — about Alexis de Tocqueville or John Dalton or Charles Dickens. An hour or so after lessons ended, I’d remember my resolve and marvel at his ability to deflect it. At times I was convinced that he hypnotized me. Other times, I realized later, he distracted me by extended metaphors; he launched into them easily, spinning them as he spoke.

“In
Hard Times
, Louisa looks into fire and contemplates her future,” he said one afternoon. “She imagines herself spun by ‘Old Time, that greatest and longest-established Spinner of all,’ but acknowledges that ‘his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.’ But if his factory is secret, his work and hands are mute, how does she know Old Time? How indeed do any of us know time, except through our imagining it?”

He seemed to have made an extended metaphor of an extended metaphor.
Was there a special name for that?
I wondered.
Perhaps metametaphor?

Sometimes he made my head ache.

Nonetheless I was a persistent student. Finding out something, anything, about my parents and their past seemed far more important than Dalton or Dickens. So I concocted a plan.

On a Wednesday afternoon, when Dennis was scheduled to lead me through a zoological lesson focusing on eukaryotic cells and DNA, I said that I had a related topic to discuss: hematophagy.

Dennis said, “Oh yeah?” He gave me a quizzical look. “Yeah,” I said — a word I’d never use around my father. Dennis’s teaching style was considerably more relaxed.

“I read about it at the library,” I said. “You know, animals who drink blood. Like worms and bats and leeches.”

Dennis opened his mouth to interrupt, but I pressed on. “The encyclopedia said hematophagy has two classifications: obligatory and optional. Some animals feed only on blood, while others supplement blood with additional fluids. What I need to know is —”

Here I hesitated, not sure how to proceed.
I need to know what sort my father is
, I thought.
I need to know if hematophagy is hereditary
.

Dennis put up his right hand — the gesture he’d used to signal me to stop when he taught me to ride a bicycle. “That’s a topic you’ll want to broach with your father,” he said. “He’s worked with leeches and such. In that area, he’s the expert.”

In frustration I raked my hands through my hair — and I noticed how closely Dennis watched me. He noticed me noticing him, and his face reddened.

“Ari, what have you been up to while I was away?” he said.

“I had my first kiss.” My words weren’t planned.

Dennis tried to smile. It was a little painful to watch. He clearly felt uncomfortable, but he wanted to hide his feelings.

“I know that you’re growing up, and that you have questions,” he said, sounding exactly like my father.

“Don’t talk down to me,” I said. “You’re my friend — at least I always thought so.”

He blushed again. “I’m your fine freckled friend.” But his voice sounded doubtful.

“Please,” I said. “Tell me something. Tell me something solid.”

His face resumed its normal easygoing expression. “Let me tell you about Seradrone, about our research.”

He talked about the growing need for artificial blood, as fewer people are willing to volunteer as donors. Although Seradrone had produced blood supplements, so far neither they or anyone else had been able to develop a clinically effective blood substitute.

“We thought we were onto a breakthrough,” he said. “Unfortunately, what our studies in Japan showed was the potential for retention in the reticuloendothelial system.”

I put up my hand, to stop him. “You’ve lost me.”

He apologized. It was enough for me to know that the promise of perfluorocarbons had proven rather limited, he said. “Now we’re back to looking at hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers — and so far none of them can replace whole blood, either; they merely supplement it.”

I didn’t want to ask any more questions. He’d told me more than I could understand.

Again, he was watching me closely. “Let’s schedule a checkup for you tomorrow,” he said. “You look pale.”

The next day Dennis took a blood sample from me and ran some tests on it. He later reemerged from the basement with a large brown bottle in one hand and a foil packet and a hypodermic needle in the other. He said that the test hadn’t been conclusive for lupus. But I was anemic, he said, and I should take a tablespoon of tonic twice a day.

After he handed me the bottle, I unscrewed its top and sniffed. “Yuck,” I said.

“Take it with a large glass of water,” he said. Then he opened the packet, removed a swab, cleaned my skin, and gave me an injection. I asked him what it contained, and he said it was a hormone, erythropoietin. He said it would bolster my red blood count. I did feel a surge of energy afterward.

Later I remembered what Dennis had said: the test hadn’t been conclusive for lupus. But hadn’t my father told Mrs. McG that there was no blood test for lupus?

The following morning I got into trouble at the library.

On a rare October morning without rain. I’d ridden my bike downtown to use the computer. Why should I pester my father about hematophagy? He’d only change the subject.

It took me all of a minute to find a link to “human hematophagy,” and two more to learn that many humans drink blood. African Masai, for instance, subsist largely on cow blood mixed with milk. The Moche society and the Scythians indulged in ritual-istic blood-drinking. And stories of human vampirism were abundant, although whether they were fact or fiction was a matter of fierce Internet debate.

My next link took me to a series of sites related to “Real Vampires.” These sites described some of the differences between the vampires of folklore and fiction, and those of contemporary reality. The sites disagreed about whether real vampires were dependent on drinking blood, about whether vampires could “evolve,” about whether they could bear children, and if they could, whether the children would be vampires. In short, they didn’t offer me any real answers.

One article by someone called Inanna Arthen concluded: “Furthermore, this article is not intended to mislead — real vampires, even evolved ones, do sometimes drink blood in order to obtain their energy. Those who understand the many ways that life ‘gives way’ to nurture more life will see this as no more unnatural than eating live vegetables or animals for food.”

I was musing about this when the librarian put her hand on my shoulder. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked. She was an older woman with wrinkled skin. I wondered how long she’d been standing there.