Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories Read online

  "The price of dependents," I say, and then realize that since Larry is worried about his daughter, calling our dogs dependents may suggest that I think they're as important as Caitlin. But Larry grins.

  Larry is wearing a suit, which makes him look very different. His dog clothes change him, make him accessible and a little silly, the way men's casual clothes do. He isn't silly at all in a gray suit. He makes me uncomfortable, but interested somehow.

  I expect him to start talking about Caitlin, his daughter. I am braced for him to do so, but instead he starts talking about his job. He runs the graphics and design department for a stationery company. He used to be an artist, but, he says, lie sold out for the promise of a mortgage and a family. "Not really such a bad idea," he explains. "I really don't have the right temperament for a fine artist. I hate to be by myself. You know, working in my studio, nothing but me and my muse. My muse doesn't carry on much of a conversation, I guess."

  He likes his job, something that comes through even his talk of too-short deadlines. He likes working with the young designers, he likes their music and their strange haircuts.

  He is really much more interesting than I expected. We never actually do get around to talking about Caitlin.

  I'm a little sorry when he doesn't kiss me before I get into my car. I hope he is, too.

  Michael is in the air, but that is all. I don't know if that is good or not. I'll have to pick. Michael has never made me pick before. It isn't fair that he is going to make me pick, because I've only gone out with this man for dinner and that was only just as friends. Why is he doing this? What if I pick Larry and it doesn't work out?

  "Puppy," I whisper to Smith, looking for comfort. Smith holds my fingers in her mouth, not biting, not really. Smith is happy, lying there on the couch, holding on to my fingers.

  In the kitchen, something hits the floor and shatters. Smith starts. The plate I ate dinner on is broken on the floor. My glass slides off the counter, shatters on the hardwood.

  "Michael," I say.

  The refrigerator door opens and a jar of mustard slides out and hits the floor, but does not break. It rolls toward the cabinet.

  He has never done anything like this.

  "Michael," I whisper. "Stop it."

  Nothing else happens.

  Smith cowers behind my legs. "It's okay, baby," I say. I sit on the floor and she runs to me and stands on my lap, sixty pounds of dog.

  "You scared the dog," I say accusingly to the air. Michael likes Smith. At least, I think Michael likes Smith.

  If Michael starts doing things like this, what will I do? I can't leave Michael; it isn't some building he haunts, it's me. Anywhere I go to live, Michael will come with me.

  Imagine life without Michael.

  I cannot, I cannot.

  "You use me." That's what it says in the steam on the mirror the next morning.

  I don't know what it means, so I pretend not to see it.

  I open my closet and look at my clothes. I can't wear my city clothes anymore, I'm too fat. My gypsy skirts and silk shirts. All I can wear are the things I have bought since then. My wardrobe of suburbia, my fatassed jeans and sweatshirts.

  "Arc you warning me?" I ask the air. "What's so different about Larry?"

  The indifferent air doesn't answer.

  Choose. Choose the living or the dead. Put like that, it should be easy.

  I have to do something. I call Larry, half expecting that when I pick up the phone, the contents of my desk will go flying across the room, or the file cabinets will open and spill tongues of manila. But nothing happens.

  Larry sounds as if I woke him up. Eight-thirty on a Saturday morning, maybe he was asleep, but Smith won't let me sleep that late.

  "I was just wondering if you wanted to bring Cruise over and do some practice," I say.

  "Sure," he says. "Yeah. What time is it?"

  "Maybe you can come over in a while and leave Cruise here and we'll go get breakfast. Unless you've eaten." Although I know he hasn't eaten.

  "Okay," he says.

  "He's coming," I tell the room after I hang up the phone.

  There's no response. I don't expect one.

  I let Smith out in the backyard. I turn on the television and flip through the channels, turn off the television. I start to put dishes in the dishwasher and decide to make tea first, and then while the tea is brewing, I go upstairs and make my bed and forget about tea. The house is empty.

  Where does Michael go when he isn't here?

  It is forever before Larry calls back and says he's awake now, that he's on his way, should we eat at Bob Evans?

  Does the room air stir as his car pulls up, or am I only anticipating?

  "You want a cup of coffee before we go?" I ask, standing on my front step.

  "Sure," says Larry. He's wearing khaki shorts, and briefly I think of Tony, but Tony always wanted to look like he was on his way to a Soho gallery opening and Larry looks like a department manager. What is different about Larry? Why does Michael suddenly want me to choose?

  Cruise leaps exuberantly into the foyer. Larry looks tired. From work? From getting up in the morning? What do I know about this man?

  The air stirs. Smith harks, and Cruise whirls in ecstasy. I look for Michael, but I don't see anything.

  "Cruise!" Larry says. "Jesus, why does he always do this?"

  "No," I say, "it's okay."

  I can't see Michael. Has there ever been a time when Smith could see Michael and I couldn't? There've been times Michael left just as I got there, but never a time Smith could see him and I couldn't.

  I feel sick.

  Cruise hounds and rears to put his paws on Michael's chest or shoulders or something-and falls through. The dog's astonishment would be comic if I weren't so frightened. Smith barks, tail happy and delighted.

  Larry watches without comprehension.

  Cruise tries again, then tries to shove his nose in Michael's hand.

  Larry goes over to see what's going on, walks into the space where Cruise is trying to get to Michael. Are Michael and Larry occupying the same space? The idea makes me feel ill, Michael within Larry, Larry within Michael.

  I cover my mouth with my hand, but I can't think of anything to say. For a moment, I feel so angry at Larry. Bumbling, unwitting man in my house! Outsider! But Larry is on one knee, trying to calm Cruise.

  "Hey, hey, hey," Larry is saying, letting Cruise lick his face and dance and just be the big, black animal that he is. Larry likes Cruise. Of course Larry likes Cruise, but somehow every time I see Larry, he's worried about whether or not Cruise is behaving.

  Smith flops down, tongue out. Is Michael gone?

  And if he's gone, is he ever coming hack?

  Michael. Michael. Don't leave me!

  Something thuds upstairs, and for a second I think it's it body. Something big and heavy. Suicide! But Michael doesn't really have a body. I run upstairs and find my bookcase pushed over.

  So he's not gone.

  I don't mind that he's angry, as long as he's not gone.

  Larry comes upstairs slowly. "What happened?"

  "The bookcase fell over,' I say.

  There's no earthly reason for the bookcase to have fallen over, and vet, there it is. As we stand there, looking at it, my tall, tour-drawer tiling cabinet tips slowly and majestically forward, drawers sliding open, papers just beginning to spill when it completely overbalances and fills.

  "Oh my God," says Larry.

  "It's a ghost" I say. "It's the ghost of my brother. We're having an argument about you."

  Larry looks at me, frowning.

  "I'm really sorry," I say lamely. "Michael, stop it, you'll scare the dogs." And then to Larry again, "He likes dogs. At least, I think he does."

  "Is this a joke?" Larry asks. He looks at the wall and then at the four-drawer. Probably wondering if this is some sort of bizarre humor. Like I'm David Copperfield or Penn and Teller or something, and this is what I do to all my prospecti
ve boyfriends.

  Michael is standing in the middle of the room, chest heaving from exertion. "Don't ignore me," he says to me.

  Larry is standing gape-mouthed.

  "Do you see him?" I ask.

  "What," Larry says, "what's going on?" He does see him! No one has ever seen Michael before!

  "Larry." I say, "this is my brother, Michael. Michael, this is Larry."

  I feel light-headed. Looking at Larry, I don't know if he'll leave or if he'll stay. I don't know what either of them is going to do. But I don't care. I am oddly, in fact, deliriously, happy.

  The Cost to Be Wise

  1.

  -the sun was up on the snow and everything was bright to look at when the skimmer landed. It landed on the long patch of land behind the schoolhouse, dropping down into the snow like some big bug. I was supposed to be down at the distillery helping my mam but we needed water and I had to get an ice axe so I was outside when the offworlders came.

  The skimmer was from Barok. Barok was a city. It was so far away that no one I knew in Sckarline had ever been there (except for the teachers, of course) but for the offworlders the trip was only a few hours. The skimmer came a couple of times a year to bring packages for the teachers.

  The skimmer sat there for a moment-long time waiting while nothing happened except people started coming to watch-and then the hatch opened out and an offworlder stepped gingerly out on the snow. The offworlder wasn't a skimmer pilot though, it was a tall, thin boy. I shaded my eyes and watched. My hands were cold but I wanted to see.

  The offworlder wore strange colors for the snow. Offworlders always wore unnatural colors. This boy wore purples and oranges and black, all shining as if they were wet and none of them thick enough to keep anyone warm. He stood with his knees stiff and his body rigid because the snow was packed to flat, slick ice by the skimmer and he wasn't sure of his balance. But he was tall and I figured he was as old as I am so it looked odd that he still didn't know how to walk on snow. He was beardless, like a boy. Darker than any of us.

  Someone inside the skimmer handed him a bag. It was deep red, and shined as if it were hard, and wrinkled as if it were felt. My father crossed to the skimmer and took the bag from the boy because it was clear that the boy might fall with it and it made a person uncomfortable to watch him try to balance and carry something.

  The dogs were barking, and more Sckarline people were coming because they'd heard the skimmer.

  I wanted to see what the bags were made of, so I went to the hatch of the skimmer to take something. We didn't get many things from the offworlders because they weren't appropriate, but I liked offworlder things. I couldn't see much inside the skimmer because it was dark and I had been out in the sun, but standing beside the seat where the pilot was sitting there was an old white-haired man, all straight-legged and tall. As tall as Ayudesh the teacher, which is to say taller than anyone else I knew. He handed the boy a box, though, not a bag, a bright blue box with a thick white lid. A plastic box. An offworlder box. The boy handed it to me.

  "Thanks," the boy said in English. Up close I could see that the boy was really a girl. Offworlders dress the same both ways, and they are so tall it's hard to tell sometimes, but this was a girl with short black hair and skin as dark as wood.

  My father put the bag in the big visitors' house and I put the box there, too. It was midday at winterdark, so the sun was a red glow on the horizon. The bag looked black except where it fell into the red square of sunlight from the doorway. It shone like metal. So very fine. Like nothing we had. I touched the bag. It was plastic, too. I liked the feeling of plastic. I liked the sound of the word in lingua. If someday I had a daughter, maybe I'd name her Plastic. It would he a rich name, an exotic name. The teachers wouldn't like it, but it was a name I wished I had.

  Ayudesh was walking across the snow to the skimmer when I went back outside. The girl (I hadn't shaken free from thinking of her as a boy) stuck out her hand to him. Should I have shaken her hand? No, she'd had the box, I couldn't have shaken her hand. So I had done it right. Wanji, the other teacher, was coming, too.

  I got wood from the pile for the boxstove in the guest house, digging it from under the top wood because the top wood would he damp. It would take a long time to heat up the guest house, so the sooner I got started the sooner the offworlders would be comfortable.

  There was a window in the visitor's house, fat-yellow above the purple-white snow.

  Inside, everyone was sitting around on the floor, talking. None of the teachers were there, were they with the old man? I smelled whisak but I didn't see any, which meant that the men were drinking it outside. I sat down at the edge of the group, where it was dark, next to Dirtha. Dirtha was watching the offworld girl who was shaking her head at Harup to try to tell him she didn't understand what he was asking. Harup pointed at her blue box again. "Can I see it?" he asked. Harup was my father's age so he didn't speak any English.

  It was warming up in here, although when the offworlder girl leaned forward and breathed out, her mouth in an 0, her breath smoked the air for an instant.

  It was too frustrating to watch Harup try to talk to the girl. "What's your kinship?" he asked. "I'm Harup Sckarline," He thumped his chest with his finger. "What's your kinship?" When she shook her head, not understanding all these words, he looked around and grinned. Harup wouldn't stop until he was bored, and that would take a long time.

  "I'm sorry," the girl said, "I don't speak your language." She looked unhappy.

  Ayudesh would he furious with us if he found out that none of us would try and use our English.

  I had to think about how to ask. Then I cleared my throat, so people would know I was going to talk from the back of the group. "He asks what is your name," I said.

  The girl's chin came up like a startled animal. "What?" she said.

  Maybe I said it wrong? Or my accent was so bad she couldn't understand? I looked at my boots; the stitches around the toes were fraying. They had been my mother's. "Your name," I said to the boots.

  The toes twitched a little, sympathetic. Maybe I should have kept quiet.

  "My name is Veronique," she said.

  "What is she saying?" asked Harup.

  "She says her kinship is Veronique," I said.

  "That's not a kinship," said Little Shemus. Little Shemus wasn't old enough to have a beard, but he was old enough to be critical of everything.

  "Offworlders don't have kinship like we do," I said. "She gave her front name."

  "Ask her kinship name," Little Shemus said.

  "She just told you," Ardha said, taking the end of her braid out of her mouth. Ardha was a year younger than me. "They don't have kinship names. Ayudesh doesn't have a kinship name. Wanji doesn't."

  "Sure they do," Shemus said. "Their kinship name is Sckarlineclan,"

  "We give them that name," said Ardha and pursed her round lips. Ardha was always bossy.

  "What are they saying?" asked the girl.

  "They say, err, they ask, what is your-" your what? How would I even ask what her kinship name was in English? There was a word for it, but I couldn't think of it. "Your other name."

  She frowned. Her eyebrows were quite black. "You mean my last name? It's Veronique Twombly."

  What was so hard about "last name"? I remembered it as soon as she said it. "Tawomby," I said. "Her kinship is Veronique Tawomby."

  "Tawomby," Harup said. "Amazing. It doesn't sound like a word. It sounds made-up, like children do. What's in her box?"

  "I know what's in her box," said Erip. Everybody laughed except for Ardha and Inc. Even Little Sherep laughed and he didn't really understand.

  The girl was looking at me to explain.

  "He asks inside, the box is." I had gotten tangled up. Questions were hard.

  "Is the box inside?" she asked.

  I nodded.

  "It's inside," she said.

  I didn't understand her answer so I waited for her to explain.

  "I d
on't know what you mean," she said. "Did someone bring the box inside?"

  I nodded, because I wasn't sure exactly what she'd said, but she didn't reach for the box or open it or anything. I tried to think of how to say it.

  "Inside," Ardha said, tentative. "What is?"

  "The box," she said. "Oh wait, you want to know what's in the box?"

  Ardha looked at the door so she wouldn't have to look at the offworlder. I wasn't sure so I nodded.

  She pulled the box over and opened it up. Something glimmered hard and green and there were red and yellow boxes covered in lingua and she said, "Presents for Ayudesh and Wanji." Everybody stood tip to see inside, so I couldn't see, but I heard her say things. The words didn't mean anything. Tea, that I knew. Wanji talked about tea. "These are sweets," I heard her say. You know, candy." I know the word "sweet," but I didn't know what else she meant. It was so much harder to speak English to her than it was to do it in class with Ayudesh.

  Nobody was paying any attention to what she said, but me. They didn't care as long as they could see. I wished I could see.

  Nobody was even thinking about me, or that it I hadn't been there she never would have opened the box. But that was the way it always was. If I only lived somewhere else, my life would be different. But Sckarline was neither earth nor sky, and I was living my life in-between. People looked and fingered, but she wouldn't let them take things out, not even Harup, who was as tall as she was and a lot stronger. The younger people got bored and sat down and finally I could see Harup poking something with his tinker, and the outland girl watching. She looked at me.

  „What's your name?" she asked.

  "Me?" I said. "Unun, janna.

  She said my name. "What's your last name, Janna?"

  "Sckarline," I said.

  "Oh," she said, "like the settlement."

  I just nodded.

  "What is his name?" She pointed.

  "Harup," I said. He looked up and grinned.

  "What's your name?" she asked him and I told him what she had said.

  "Harup," he said. Then she went around the room, saying everybody's names. It made everyone pleased to be noticed. She was smart that way. And it was easy. Then she tried to remember all their names, which had everyone laughing and correcting her so I didn't have to talk at all.