Wonderland (23 page)

Maybe he knew everything.

Maybe he had made her up, given birth to her himself. Maybe he had sat in that dark inner office of his, in all that silence, and imagined her into being. A genius of a daughter. And a genius of a son. And now an adopted son, whom he obviously loved more than he loved his real children.…

In the dress store.

The saleslady’s smile wobbled like Jell-O. “Good afternoon, Dr. Pedersen,” she said. Hilda’s father greeted her cheerfully. He then sat with care in a gold-cushioned chair with curving arms that was a little too small for him. Crossed his legs and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically, as if this little outing into a women’s dress shop was quite an adventure for him. The saleslady brought out three dresses. Very large sizes. Hilda shut her eyes for a moment. At the front of the store two women shoppers were watching.

“The green dress,” Dr. Pedersen said.

The saleslady led Hilda back to the dressing room. “Would you like help?”

“No.”

“Let me unhook your dress for you.…”

“No. I can do it myself.”

Hilda turned away.

She tried to close the curtain to the dressing room, but it was not wide enough. For a moment she froze. The space inside her cringed … she had all she could do to keep from counting, multiplying, dividing, imagining a mountain of numbers.… She could imagine a pyramid of numbers that was fourteen feet at its base and eleven feet high.…

The saleslady was trying to help close the curtain.

“Nobody will come back here,” she said.

“Somebody will see me.…”

“No, dear, really … nobody will come back here.…”

“Don’t let anybody come back,” Hilda said.

The saleslady smiled and left. Hilda tugged at the curtain again. But if it closed on one side it was about two inches too short on the other. “Oh, damn it, damn it,” Hilda whispered. She gave up on the curtain and decided to try on the dress. The fitting room was very small, like a cage. She didn’t understand how anyone could dress back here. Mirrors on three sides—she tried not to look into them. It was hard for her to unhook the dress. She had sewn the little hook in herself and now she had trouble getting it undone. Then the zipper. What if the zipper broke? Her elbow bumped against the wall and shocks ran up her arm. “Please, God, let me do this all right. Don’t let Father be angry with me,” she muttered. She had gotten the zipper down and now the dress was around her hips. It was strange that this dress was so tight, when she had made it herself as a joke, just a sack—but, yes, already it was getting tight. She pulled it down over her hips. She held her breath, hoping it would not rip. Then it was safely past her hips and down around her ankles.

Sweat.

Now the other dress! She hurried to get it on before someone came back and happened to see her. What if a delivery boy were to come back here? What if Father himself came back? Sometimes the back of her head tingled, she was so certain someone was watching her, and it never did any good to turn quickly and see—knowing that no one was there did not erase the guilty tingling sensation. She got the dress off the hanger and saw with dismay that it looked too small. Too small! She held it up against her body, staring down at it. A green dress with a white velvet bow at the neck, a party dress, it would make her look enormous … a huge cow.… Her armpits itched as if beetles were stinging her.

“Hildie. Hildie.”

Her father was calling in a perfectly flat, uninflected voice.

“Yes, Father,” she cried.

Ah, to get this new dress on!—she decided against bringing it down over her head and stepped inside it instead. She tugged at it. It was too small at the hips. But she had to get it on, she had to get it on.… Her father was calling. “Hildie. Will you hurry.” She didn’t know if he was really impatient or if he was just teasing. Her cheeks belled out in despair. She wanted only to shut her eyes, go blind and deaf, let her arms and legs float out anywhere, and imagine numbers: a cascade of numbers that multiplied themselves cleanly, without bodies, without substance, needing nothing that was flesh. Numbers.… But she shook herself awake. She was in a fitting room at the rear of Modern Fashions, her father was waiting for her, she had to get this dress up on her body.… She lost her balance and almost fell, she stepped forward abruptly and the dress caught her legs short at the knee.…

But it hadn’t ripped!

Slowly, ah, slowly, she drew the dress up. She avoided looking in the mirror. Over her hips, slowly, slowly, but what a bright green it was—too tight—a droplet of sweat fell from her face onto the front of the dress—

“Hilda.”

“Yes, Father. Yes.”

Suddenly the saleslady was back, on the other side of the curtain. “Do you need any help with the dress, Miss Pedersen?” she asked timidly. “I’d be glad to—”

“No! go away!”

It was a terrible strain, getting the zipper up. She had to reach up behind herself, her arm twisted, her shoulder contorted … then, suddenly, she felt the dress rip under one arm.… She hesitated. Then she regained her courage and this time she got the zipper all the way up.

The dress was on!

She seemed now to be deep inside a body wearing a very tight green dress with a white bow in front.

Could she breathe? No time for that. The dress was too small, but there was no time, no time—her father’s time was expensive and in the morning they were to fly to the MacLeod Institute—She hurried out
to her father, whose suit coat was buttoned tight across his stomach, straining with impatience.

“Oh, no. No,” he said.

He shut his eyes.

Back in the fitting room. Straining, struggling. In a few minutes she was stuffed inside another dress, two sizes larger than the green. Good. This was a brown dress with a small girlish collar. Fiercely she returned for her father’s approval, hunted and panting in a body that had been measured, according to the clothing merchants of the world, as demanding a size 23 dress. Numbers whirled in front of her eyes, on the back of her eyelids, but she did not give in to them. Not yet.

Her father smiled this time. “Ah, yes, that is much better,” he declared.

And so the dress was bought. It was only $29.98, in spite of its size.

Because she had been such a good girl, Dr. Pedersen took her to the Royal for a sundae. She did not mind people staring at them as they walked on the street. Alone, she would have been ashamed—she almost never went out by herself. But she was proud to be with her father, whom everyone knew. She considered slyly how striking they were, father and daughter, how terrible it must be for ordinary people to see them—Dr. Pedersen and his daughter, on the drab ordinary streets of Lockport, New York. The city was not large enough for them. It was not imaginative enough. Hilda felt as if her deepest self would explode, bursting open like a star, like a tiny seed in a speeded-up botany film. She was very happy.

They each had a sundae. Then Hilda had a banana split, because tomorrow was a special day. She was served the Banana Royal, which cost fifty cents: an enormous dish of puffs of cream, walnuts, dyed cherries, strawberry ice cream, chocolate ice cream, peppermint ice cream, and large bruised slices of banana. It had to be eaten quickly or it would melt. Hilda’s mouth watered with hunger. There was no use now in thinking of numbers, the bodiless purity of numbers, adding up a column fifty digits high, reducing the galaxy of numbers to one—there was no use thinking of anything except the Banana Royal, which had to be eaten quickly before it melted.

She discovered that she was ravenously hungry.

As she ate, her father spoke gently: “If anything should happen to
me, Hilda, you must remember the strength I have tried to give you. Always remember me like this, Hilda. That way you will always be strong. You will have me inside you, in a way, even after I am gone—inside you, carried around inside you. Do you understand?”

She stared.

“Do you understand, Hildie?”

She nodded. She understood, yes.

He talked and Hilda nodded as she ate. The ice cream seemed to be making her hungrier. Why was that? Of course she understood what her father was telling her. He knew about the tiny sac inside her, that elastic, magical emptiness that could never be filled no matter how much she ate. It was the size of a universe.

“It will go well tomorrow, my dear, don’t worry. You are my good, good girl.”

Her mouth watered like tears.

The doctors, the professors, greet me with those faces I have come to expect. I stare past them coldly, I don’t talk, I let Father do the talking. There, there is my opponent … I find myself staring at him, my face going bright and tense while the doctors chatter their instructions. It is “Dr. Pedersen” this, “Dr. Pedersen” that. They are anxious to please him. They talk about me, around me, as if I can’t hear
.

Certain facts are stated and restated: This body I inhabit is fourteen years old
.

The man at the other end of the table from me is thirty-four years old
.

My name is Hilda Pedersen
.

His name is Oscar DeMott
.

Father is beside me, always beside me. I glance out at the audience in the little amphitheater—they are doctors, medical students, professors with curious faces. Jesse is sitting in the first row, large as an adult. One of the doctors is introducing us to the group. He is saying something about mimeographed material that has been passed around. Down at the other end of the table sits my opponent—that isn’t a nice word, but it is true—and he looks younger than thirty-four. He stares at me and maybe he thinks I am older than fourteen. Well, we have not chosen our ages. We have not chosen our bodies. Oscar sits humped over in a wheelchair; his mother is sitting beside him, but unnaturally close to him, and she stares down at Father and me. The doctor is talking about Oscar now, who has come all the way up from Gainesville. I pay no attention to this but suck on a piece of hard candy. My mind teases me, anxious to escape. I run up numbers in the
shape of a pyramid, as if flexing a muscle, set the pyramid upside-down, then on its right side
.

“—Hilda?” the doctor is saying. He must have asked me a question. I didn’t know that the examination had begun and I can only stare at him. I see in his face that look—that certain look—that everyone shows to me
.

Father answers the question for me
.

A long gleaming table. Ashtrays in front of all of us, even me. The brown dress feels too tight for me already, especially under the arms. Oscar is wearing a new bright blue suit and a striped tie. His mother, a gray-faced stringbean of a woman, is wearing a new yellow dress, obviously bought for this trip. Oscar DeMott: parchment skin, his teeth turned slightly inward and tainted, his nose long and skinny and nervous. I can see tiny hairs in the nostrils. His eyes are shadowed, like bruises. Perhaps he rubs his fists into his eyes. There is a tic in his cheek, hardly visible; I wish I couldn’t see it. I see lots of things. My face tries to make itself smile across the table at Oscar’s face
.

Why isn’t he Jesse, so that we could fight face to face?

Wired up. We are being wired up, Oscar and me. Lucky that the sleeves of my dress are so short. A strange device is put around my forehead. I ignore it. I ignore the young man who is wiring me up. I am back of my forehead, hiding. Oscar is too close to the surface of his skin, even if he is thirty-four years old and should know better—the tic jumps in his cheek, he seems frightened of the apparatus. They tell him it won’t hurt. “It won’t hurt, Oscar,” his mother whines. She glances out at the audience, embarrassed. The lights glow. I pay no attention to them or to the men in the audience, not even to Jesse; I am dark and safe inside myself, multiplying numbers, crossing them out and multiplying them again
.

“… a casual session, chiefly conversation.… I hope you will look up and speak clearly.…”

Here we go
.

The doctor is preparing to hold up a large white card with numbers on it. He stoops to get something else and in that instant I notice that there are forty-seven numbers on the card. I add them up at once and say the answer: “Five thousand, nine hundred, and—”

“Five thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-three,” Oscar interrupts
.

The doctor looks around at us, startled
.

I shut my eyes and say loudly: “Multiplied in a series: four hundred and seventy-three million, seven hundred thousand—”

“Four hundred and seventy-three million, seven hundred thousand, two hundred—” Oscar cries shrilly
.

—“and ninety-one!” I cry
.

The audience stirs
.

The doctor smiles nervously at us. “I hadn’t intended the examination as such to begin yet,” he says. “First, I thought we might begin with a simple demonstration of your ability to memorize numbers.… However …” He consults something in front of him, a batch of papers. He is uncertain. He must be looking up the answers; but we have already given him the answers. A few seconds pass awkwardly. I unwrap a candy bar and eat it in three swift bites. “Yes … I believe your answers are correct.…” the doctor is saying. “Now, Hilda, can you tell us how you came to your conclusion? Your first conclusion, the addition of those numbers?”