Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Oh, Martin, I do love you!” She jumped up from her chair and came around the table to take him in her arms. Her breasts pushed against his face. The talking part of the visit was over.

  She was greedy in bed, rocking hard against him, calling out noisily. He had always liked that. It was part of her fierceness, her unabashed competence. She smelled strongly, too, a spicy smell he had never smelled on any other woman and that always seemed to him the very essence of lust. Afterward, the fierceness turned tender and the spicy smell died slowly away. Curled next to his wife spoon-fashion, his body fitting around hers with unthinking ease, Martin felt grace descend on him, unexpected and sharp as pain. They still had Wednesdays. As long as they had Wednesdays, this weird life they had designed was worth it. He held Elizabeth, and was grateful when she held him back, silent.

  It was snowing hard. John Jenkins raised his head from the Bigelow “President’s Choice” he and Stan were aligning in a Mrs. Crandall’s ostentatious living room and saw the snow outside the windows. Something about the windows, set off by a pointless and overly elaborate architrave, made him pause. On the street, car brakes screeched.

  Stan said, “So then the guy leaves the hooker and goes back to the bar, picks up the redhead, and the three of them go at it for at least twenty minutes. It was a great movie. Jenkins, you listening?”

  Martin looked, dazed, at the hammer in his hand. The handle had a deep nick on the left side. He had never seen it before.

  “Hey! Don’t slow down now, soupbrain! We’re almost done!”

  Stan. Yes. Stan. How did he know that? How did he know this pseudo-Gothic abomination was Mrs. Crandall’s living room?

  “Hey, John, you all right?”

  “What day is it?” Martin said.

  “Day? It’s Tuesday, dickhead! Why’re you—”

  “You finish up. I’m leaving.”

  “You can’t just—Paul isn’t going to like this!”

  There were two vehicles in the drive, Martin’s old Mercedes and a van stenciled FLYING CARPETS/THE BEST VALUE AT THE BEST PRICE! The unseasonal snow, huge wet flakes, touched down on fully bloomed beds of daffodils and tulips and melted instantly.

  Martin drove the Mercedes toward the city. He wanted to see Elizabeth, but he was afraid she wouldn’t let him in. She hadn’t let him in before, neither time when it wasn’t a Wednesday. One of the times, he thought, he might have become angry. He couldn’t remember what had happened after that, or how long ago it had been. It was May now. And tomorrow was Wednesday. He would wait to see Elizabeth until Wednesday.

  The minute Martin let himself into the apartment, he knew he’d lied to himself. He hadn’t headed into the city because it wasn’t Wednesday. Connie stood in white lace panties, garter belt, stockings, and see-through bra in the middle of the living room. Her dark hair hung loose against her shoulders. She held two wineglasses bubbling pink.

  “Happy anniversary, darling,” she purred in that contralto only she had, sexy as hell but with an innocence under it, as if nothing could go wrong in such a great world. As if nothing ever had. She tossed her hair back over her shoulders and smiled. “You’re right on time, John.”

  Martin walked toward her.

  “All right, we gotta have this out, John,” Stan said. “You’re not keeping up your end of the work. Paul’s starting to notice. You’re gonna be in deep shit, buddy.”

  “I know,” John said. His head hurt. It was hard to concentrate on what Stan was saying. And he and Connie had had a godawful fight last night, he didn’t know what got into her sometimes. She said he’d been distracted ever since their anniversary, different somehow . . . Treating her as if she weren’t there.

  “So what’re you gonna do about it?” Stan said. They were in the warehouse, surrounded by rolls of carpet like giant fuzzy diplomas. Stan stood on a half-unrolled remnant of Dupont Xtra Life in Egyptian Blue.

  “What?” Martin said. He looked around in bewilderment. Rugs, and an angry, muscled guy glaring at him . . .

  “I said, what’re you gonna do about it! Christ, John, get with it!”

  “I’m sorry,” John said. The headache must be worse than he thought, for a minute he’d almost passed out. He had to concentrate on what Stan was saying, Stan was one of those people who got angry in the presence of weakness or sickness because it embarrassed him. A common reaction . . . how did he know that? “I’ll do better. I’ve just been getting these bad headaches.”

  “Then see a doctor!” Stan snapped. “Or Paul’s gonna fire you. That clear through your headache?”

  “You rotten bastard, you ever talk to me that way again and I’ll cut your heart out,” Cody said.

  Stan took a step backward. His mouth actually fell open, like in cartoons. Cody thought that was pretty funny, except that he wanted to smash a fist into it. The fucker, giving him orders. . . . He seized the front of Stan’s T-shirt and almost lifted him off the ground. The T-shirt tore.

  “John! What . . . Whatta . . .”

  Cody slammed his fist into Stan’s solar plexus, then his knee into Stan’s soft gut. He could hear the wimp vomiting as Cody left the warehouse.

  Jenkins’ Mercedes was parked near the fence. Cody tore onto the expressway and gunned the motor. He wanted to score. Fuck, he’d been in so long—months this time, while those two wimps Jenkins and Oliver lived their puking little lives. Although he’d say this much for them, they both had class-A women. Maybe instead of scoring he should look up sweet-assed Connie . . . but, no, she was in school being the cute little teacher. Elizabeth, then—the kid would still be in school . . .

  A ten-wheeler tried to pass him on the right. KLEEN BRITE it said on the side. Cody hit the accelerator and roared forward, angling back in front of the wheeler within inches of its grill. The trucker leaned on the horn. Cody flipped him the finger—arrogant bastard! Cut him off deliberately! Cody slowed down. The trucker tried to pass again, this time on the left.

  Cody could feel the rage surge up in him, clean and strong and welcome as red blood. Fucker thought he could butt-fuck Cody! He slammed his foot on the accelerator and started to cut ahead again. The truck speeded up. Cody wrenched the wheel hard to the left and screamed. The screaming went on a long time, and something small flew through the air. It hit his gasoline-soaked jeans and his legs were on fire, his chest and belly—“Stop it! Make it stop, Mommy! Please!” But Mommy had thrown the match and the next moment the Mercedes was flipping through the air, Martin’s body straining so hard against the seat belt he thought his back would break. By the time he opened his mouth to scream, the Mercedes had hit ground.

  “You were lucky,” Connie said. “That’s what the doctor says. My God, John, you could have been killed!”

  Martin looked at her. She had rushed to Emergency from her classroom; chalkdust smeared the shoulder of her dark blue sweater. The chalkdust was no whiter than her face. The doctor, who was not Hasselbach but a Pakistani resident with a name Martin couldn’t pronounce, watched them quietly. Connie put her arms around him. She smelled of chalk and perfume and her young body trembled. Martin had thought of calling Elizabeth from Emergency, but it wasn’t Wednesday.

  “You can go to home now,” the doctor intoned musically, “but you must to come back if you have any blurred vision, dizziness, or neck pain.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” Connie said. Reluctantly she released Martin. “Honey, can you walk?”

  “Of course I can walk,” Martin said. But in the parking lot he suddenly had to lean on her chalky shoulder.

  “What is it? Dizziness? Blurred vision? Neck pain? Honey?”

  Guilt, he wanted to say. Fear. He remembered exactly what had happened on the expressway. He remembered the Kleen-Bright truck, and Stan’s bawling him out, and the carpet warehouse. He remembered Cody and John, who were not him, and whom he was not supposed to remember.

  “Just tired out,” he told Connie, and she supported him all the way to her car.

  “You can get d
ressed now,” Hasselbach said. “I’ll be right back.” He closed the door. The guard had already left.

  Martin picked his clothes off a light green leather ottoman that matched the light green silk curtain drawn across the consulting room for modesty. Everything in the room, no matter what it was made of, was light green. A soothing color, he supposed. It took an effort to pull on his jeans and sweater. What defined “modesty” when every corner of him had just been poked and pulled and listened to in the presence of a guard?

  Hasselbach had insisted on the guard; he’d been afraid Cody would emerge. Martin could have told him it wouldn’t matter. Even Cody was getting too weak to threaten anybody. Although during the entire examination Martin had been aware of Cody, yelling to get out, his rage a pure gush of hatred: You burned me you bitch you burned me please stop Mommy please make it stop. It had been an effort not to just let Cody out. Cody at least had some energy. Even if it came from memories of horrors that had never happened.

  Martin slumped in the light green chair and put his hand over his face.

  Hasselbach came back into the room, holding Elizabeth’s elbow. It was Wednesday.

  “I think you already know what I’m going to say, Martin,” Hasselbach said quietly.

  Martin nodded. Elizabeth set her jaw and reached for his hand.

  “The tumor is growing. It hasn’t yet metastasized, as far as we can tell, but it could do so at any time. The personalities you were given have blurred into each other enough that they no longer have separate bodily attributes.”

  You must to come back if you have any blurred vision, the Pakistani resident had said in his musical voice. And he had leaned on Connie’s chalky shoulder.

  “Your fatigue and nausea are of course due to the carcinoma. There will be other symptoms, the same ones as last time. But you do have a choice, Martin. You do have that.”

  “I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said. Her fingers tightened on Martin’s. “What choice?”

  Hasselbach took off his glasses and started to clean them. Martin could see how much he hated this. Failure of his medical experiment. And Martin had been just a goddamn guinea pig. No, that was Cody thinking, Cody raging . . . But Cody was him, wasn’t he? The sperm memories might have been implanted by Hasselbach, but Cody’s anger had been fleshed out by Martin’s own mind, just as John Jenkins’ stolid contentment had been. There was no disowning either of them.

  Hasselbach spoke directly to Elizabeth. Easier for Hasselbach than looking at him, Martin saw. “We must remove the induced memories we gave Cody. Cody is the key. His severely dysfunctional experiences are what made Martin form the functional personality of John Jenkins. He is also what keeps the personalities in a state of flux. Cody’s rage. Cody’s instability. Without that, it’s possible the John Jenkins personality will become the permanent one. Martin has carefully constructed him, and the mind doesn’t like to give up its constructs. If Jenkins became permanent, that definitely might shrink the tumor again. Jenkins doesn’t have cancer.”

  “Permanent?” Elizabeth said. “You mean, Martin wouldn’t come out at all? Not even on Wednesday?”

  “Or,” Hasselbach pressed on, “the Martin personality might take over, completely taking back his own mind. But then, of course, he would still have the carcinoma.”

  Martin said harshly, “Be dying, you mean. If I’m Martin permanently, I die.”

  “Or, there is a third possibility. We can try starting all over, with another induced dysfunctional personality motivated enough to form a different prime multiple, without cancer. Strength in response to torture.”

  “ ‘Dysfunctional’ ?” Elizabeth cried. “ ‘Motivated’ ? What you mean is another tortured little boy who thinks he was burned or beaten or crushed by his mother or father, who grows up to be the kind of person who burns and beats and crushes in return! Do you know what Cody did when he broke into our house eighteen months ago? Do you? He raped me! Camilla was home, and she thought it was her father so I didn’t dare so much as cry out, and it was her father! Only it wasn’t . . .” She was crying now, doubled over in her chair.

  Martin reached for her blindly. “Elizabeth . . .”

  Instantly she steadied, her hand on his shoulder. Even her eyes looked dry. She was his Elizabeth again, fierce and capable and just. Multiple personality, Martin thought, dizzy. Strength in response to torture.

  “I’m sorry, Martin,” Elizabeth said evenly. “That was inexcusable. It wasn’t you, and I don’t want to make this any harder for you than it already is. I only want what’s best for you. I love you, and I want you to live. That’s the most important thing I want. You believe that, don’t you? Don’t you, darling?”

  “Yes,” Martin said. He did. Inside, John Jenkins groped in the dark and called Connie’s name.

  Hasselbach said softly, still not looking at Martin, “Don’t wait too long to make your decision. There isn’t very much time.”

  “It isn’t much of a choice,” Elizabeth said.

  “No. It isn’t.”

  The crying and pleading were over. Elizabeth sat, smoking, in the dark back booth of a bar near the Medical Center. On the TV suspended over the bar, an ecstatic woman held up a bottle of dish detergent. Elizabeth’s free hand moved restlessly over the table. Light from the TV glinted off her wedding ring.

  She said, “I think we should—”

  “Wait,” Martin said. He put his hand over hers, to hold it or to hold it still or to cover the ring. She was going too fast. “I think we should wait just a minute.”

  Her face softened. “Martin, love . . .”

  “Just a minute, Connie. Please.”

  She didn’t change expression. On the TV, a police car screeched to a halt beside an office building, a squat ugly structure like a crate. After a moment, Martin realized.

  “You know. You know all about Connie, about Connie and me . . . Connie and John Jenkins—”

  “Martin—”

  “You know. You had me followed. On a Wednesday.”

  Elizabeth’s fierceness returned. “I followed you myself!” And then a moment later, almost apologetically, “It’s all right, Martin. Of course it is. You needed someone, wanted someone—”

  She was lying. It was not all right. Nothing was all right.

  Martin stood. He blundered toward the door. Elizabeth called after him, but he was already outside, blinking in the sudden sunlight and summer heat, and by the time she paid the check and rushed after him the car had pulled away from the curb. The steering wheel was so cold and heavy in his hands that it was hard to turn. It seemed he could still hear something blowing up on the TV—the police car? The office building?

  His life.

  He drove without stopping, not even for red lights, until he was out of the city. He kept on driving while the afternoon light faded and the building exploded. Cody tore past a Ford pick-up. John saw the driver’s shocked, scared face in the rear view mirror. John pulled over to the side of the road, a shaky stop in a patch of dilapidated daisies, and turned the car around. Martin wrenched the wheel away from him and turned back, a sharp pain like nails behind his eyeballs. Elizabeth knew. All this time she knew he lived with Connie, loved Connie. Six-sevenths of every week. He had done that to her. She knew and he, Martin, did not. About. His. Own. Life.

  Martin bellowed and shook his head from side to side. John put his hands over his face and nearly hit a ’92 Saturn with a bumper sticker that said SAVE THE PLANET. Cody laughed and rammed the Saturn from behind. It skittered off the road like a water bug and came to rest in a cornfield. John wrenched his head back over his shoulder; the driver was climbing out of the car, unhurt, yelling. Martin drove on.

  They were finally stopped by the lake, a scruffy stretch of rocky, weed-choked beach not yet cleaned up for the summer. Someone had dumped a doorless refrigerator at the water’s edge and small waves sloshed rhythmically over its rusted shelves. Martin put his head on the steering wheel. Pain burned along his legs, inside h
is belly.

  Get moving, you asshole, you’ll die right here you stupid fucker!

  Can’t move my arm . . . Connie—

  She knew. She knew, and I didn’t.

  Get moving get moving get moving get moving . . .

  Martin screamed. Water sloshed through the refrigerator. Elizabeth and Connie pounded on barred windows. The police car and the office building blew up and burned.

  He got out of the car and waded into the wet, toward the dark mists moving over the evening water.

  “The tests are negative,” Dr. Hasselbach said. He looked pale. Betsy sat straight-backed at the very edge of her chair, like a schoolgirl. Tim smiled at her. See? his smile said. I told you this was silly; I’ve never been sick a day in my life.

  “All of them?” Betsy said. She lit a cigarette, and the doctor didn’t stop her. That seemed a little strange to Tim, but, then, a lot of things seemed just slightly strange. Of course, you had to expect that when you’d nearly drowned fly fishing. Even when the drowning was old news, three months stale. There were bound to be small dislocations of memory for a while. That’s what this nice little doctor had said right along.

  Even now he didn’t like to think what might have happened if that teenage kid hadn’t pulled him out. Tim wished the kid had stayed around, though. He wanted to thank him. But Tim couldn’t even remember what the kid looked like. Another effect of almost buying it. All he had was a first name.

  “Should we repeat the tests? Just in case?” Betsy said. Tim looked at her fondly. That was his Betsy. Thorough as they came. Too serious, though. Now that Tim had this clean bill of health she’d insisted on, he was going to see that Betsy lightened up. Had some fun. Camilla, too. Maybe they could all go to Disneyland next summer.

  “I don’t think . . . it might be best not to disturb . . .” Hasselbach seemed to be having trouble finding words. Tim jumped in.