The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The first alien turned to ask, “Are we mistaken in thinking this is America area? We are now in Hispanic area?”

  She fought down an urge to giggle and almost choked instead. “This is the southwest part of North America, yes, but there are many Hispanic people in this area as well as Caucasian people and Indian people. This country also has Afro-American people, ah, Hawaiian people, Chinese people…” She caught herself babbling, and her voice trailed off as the two went back into their huddle. Could two huddle? She sucked in her cheeks and bit down hard, trying to convince herself she was awake. Half hidden in a grove of firs beyond the two aliens a gleaming shape hovered about two feet above the ground. The alien ship: a triangular gunmetal blue thing, flat on the bottom, rounded like a teardrop above. It looked barely big enough to hold the two beings, who were about her height, five foot six, though much lighter in build, each with four yellow arms and four green legs, and what seemed to be a scarlet exoskeleton covering the thorax and extending in a kind of kangaroo tail in back, like a prop. Or maybe wing covers, like a beetle. So, maybe they were bugs. Giant bugs. And maybe they weren’t. The exoskeleton could be armor of some kind, and they had huge, really huge multifaceted eyes, plus several smaller ones that looked almost human. The mouths didn’t look like insect mouths, though there were small squidgy bits around the sides. She couldn’t see any teeth. Just horny ridges. They couldn’t make words with inflexible mouths like that, so evidently they talked through the little boxes they had hanging around their…middles.

  “Are you receptor person?” the taller one asked. “That is, provider of sequential life with or without DNA introduced by another individual or individuals?”

  She thought about this, sorting it out, flushing a little as she thought, Oh, Lord, are they going to ask me about sex? She swallowed. “I’m a woman, female, yes, and I have two children.” With DNA introduced by another individual. Which explained a lot, if one was looking for explanations.

  “Are you recently injured?” the other, slightly shorter alien asked, reaching out with a pincer foot to stroke the swollen purple skin around her left eye.

  It felt rather like being touched with a pencil eraser: not hard, but not soft, either. Possibly very sensitive, she supposed, and the gesture was delicately nonintrusive. “A small accident,” she murmured, putting her hand protectively over the bruise. “It’ll heal up very soon.”

  “Ah. You have our sympathy for being marred,” this one said.

  “Are you person of good reputation?” asked the taller one, with an admonitory glance toward its companion. “You have done no foolish or evil thing that would make others consider your words false or unbelievable?”

  “All of us do foolish things,” she said. “None of us are perfect. I’ve never done any purposeful evil…”

  You didn’t mean to, Benita, but you hung your life out on the line like an old towel, to get faded and ragged. I wish you could go back, daughter, but we can’t do that.

  “…I don’t think I’ve done anything too ridiculous.” She sighed, and looked at her shoes.

  “Will you help us make contact with your people, so we may do so peacefully, without injury to anyone?”

  This was real! The idea went off like a roman candle, pfoosh, whap! Honest to goodness real! Good Lord, of course she would help avoid injury, though what could she do? “I will if I can,” she equivocated, trying to wet her mouth and lips. They were dry, achingly dry.

  “We ask only what you can,” the tall one said. “We will first give you names you can pronounce. We will simplify our own names from our youth, our undifferentiated time. You may call me Chiddy, and my companion is Vess.” Chiddy held out a bright red cube about six inches square. “This is our declaration. Our investigation shows that this America section is the section most interested in search for extraplanetary intelligence, so you will go to your authorities of this America section, and you will give them this. When it is in the hands of authority, it will automatically do all necessary convincing, advising, and preparing.” It nodded, well satisfied with this exposition.

  The other one, the smaller, softer-voiced one, held out a folder. “Here is money for your trouble, legal money, licitly obtained, not a replication, which we understand to be improper, plus we will do you a welcome reversal.” The aliens stepped back, bowing, with their four hands or tweezers or whatever together, upper right to lower left, upper left to lower right, so their yellow sleeves (shells?) made a neat little X across their scarlet bellies.

  Then the two of them, Chiddy and Vess, turned and went back to their ship, quad-a-lump, quad-a-lump, like a team of trotters. The ship liquified to let them in, then solidified again, which was fine because everyone knew about morphing ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger did one of those movies about time travel, only it was the other guy who morphed…

  Benita stayed where she was, holding the cube and the folder, while she tried to find words to tell them they had the wrong messenger, that she didn’t do things like this, that she didn’t know how, couldn’t possibly…

  By the time her mouth was ready to say “Wait,” the ship was well off the ground. It rose until it cleared the tops of the trees then soundlessly disappeared. The treetops moved as though hit by a strong gust of wind from the east. She stood stupidly staring from the empty spot in the sky to the enigmatic thing in her hands. It was warm. It hummed a little on her palms and she could feel the vibration. It also changed color, from bright red to deep wine, and finally to dark blue. She set it on the ground, where it turned red again and started to make an agitated noise, rather like a fussy baby. She looked in the folder they had given her, counted for a rather long time, took a deep breath and counted again. There were two hundred five-hundred-dollar bills. She put the money back in the folder and dropped it on the ground, staring at it, as though it was a snake.

  We’re often tempted to be foolish, Bennie. Often tempted to do wrong.

  Mami had never said anything about being tempted to do right! So, if she was tempted by this money, did that mean it had to be wrong? Heavens, even children and puppy dogs received rewards for doing right!

  The cube was now squealing for attention, but it quieted and began to change color when she picked it up and patted it, as she had done with her babies. After a moment’s more confusion, she picked up the folder as well. Though her brain seemed to be having a fit, her feet started moving, carrying her body down the hill while her brain skipped here and there like a dud kernel of popcorn, badly overexcited but unable to explode. The best her legs could manage was a wavering stroll, but at least they kept going until she reached the car. The familiarity of it, the dents, the rust spots, the smell of the inside of it—fast food and dog, mostly—settled her a little.

  She leaned on the open door, still trying to think. Lord. She couldn’t just get in the car and drive off with no plan, nothing decided. And she couldn’t just go home, either. Though it was remotely possible that Bert had crawled out of his boar’s wallow of a bed and found someone to give him a ride to work, it was far likelier he’d stayed in bed, watching baseball and making his way through the rest of the case of beer he’d talked Larry Cinch into bringing him last night. Larry was an open-hearted man whose kindness used up all the room in his head, leaving no space for either evil intentions or good sense. One would think that since Bert had been convicted of DUI five times, his friends would begin to catch on that he’d be better off without beer!

  And one would think when he did it five times, the last time killing somebody, they’d put him in jail! Other places, maybe. Not in New Mexico, where at least a third of the male population considered getting drunk a recreation and driving drunk an exercise of manly skill, something like bull fighting. The judge had put Bert on house arrest, sentenced him to an electronic anklet that set off an alarm at the station house if he wasn’t within fifty feet of the monitor at home or at his so-called job in the Alvarez salvage yard. He was supposed to call the station before he went from on
e to the other and they gave him thirty minutes to arrive. Most of the time, Bert figured it wasn’t worth a phone call to get to work, especially on weekends when Benita was home and he could get some fun out of bedeviling her.

  The rest of the week was bearable. Ten to nine, Monday through Friday, she was at The Written Word, doing more than a bit of everything. Marsh and Goose, the owners, were casual about their own work hours and pretty much left it to her. She’d been there part time for two years, starting when Carlos was three and Angelica was one, then full time for fourteen. The first two years were mostly learning the job, stocking shelves, unpacking, doing scut work. Gradually she progressed, and after they put her on full time she read reviews and ordered books and paid the bills and sent back the unsold paperback covers and did the accounts. She took adult education literature courses so she could talk to customers about books, and computer courses so she could use bookkeeping systems and inventory systems. When she ran out of anything else to do, she read books. Considering the correspondence courses, the books and the Internet, PBS, Bravo and the History channel, she’d soaked up a good bit of education, maybe even a hint of culture, occasionally comforting herself with the thought she was probably as well read as some people who came into the store, people who had obviously not hung their lives out on the line like an old, ragged dish towel.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember how she’d felt more than twenty years before, a kid, a high school senior madly in love with an older man. Among her friends, there’d been a little cachet in that, his being older. She’d been too naive to wonder why an older man, a self-described artist, would be interested in someone just turned seventeen. She was pretty, everyone said so, and artists were romantic, everyone knew that, and the label wasn’t an actual lie. Bert had never claimed to make a living as an artist, and he had won a few third prize ribbons or honorable mentions at regional shows.

  A man of minor talents and major resentments. The marriage counselor had said that, quietly, to Benita. It had been a revelation, not the fact that Bert had major resentments, she couldn’t have missed knowing that after all these years. But the bit about the minor talent, yes, that was a revelation. Somehow, Benita had come to think of him as being too lazy to live up to his potential. After that, she’d fretted over it, wondering if he thought he had no potential, and if he drank rather than admit it. She felt sad for him and wanted to comfort him, and that coincided with a few days when Bert wasn’t drinking so they had a weeklong second honeymoon, not that she’d ever had a first one. It made her feel better until the next time he got drunk and knocked her down.

  It was really hard to be understanding or sympathetic with Bert. When he was sober, he would sit at the table listening as she begged him to talk to her. He would grunt or utter a monosyllable, or he’d grin, that infuriating grin that told her he was teasing her, goading her. She never got close! Oh, he had good points. He was always good to his mother. He wouldn’t work to help her out with money, but he was always ready to help her out with advice or carrying stuff or taking her somewhere. He never once laid a hand on the children. If he was sober, he was delightful with them: he’d tell the tall stories about places he’d been, things he’d done. He’d take them to the zoo or the playground or the movies. Of course, if he was drunk, he could tongue-lash them raw, so she kept them out of his way when he was that way. But even sober, he never talked with her, and she tried to figure out why that was, what she could do differently. She bought books and tried everything they suggested. After that one try at counseling at the county mental health clinic, there didn’t seem to be any point in trying again.

  Even with his drinking cronies, he didn’t talk much, and what little she overheard going on among them was totally predictable. Same stories. Same angers. Same jokes directed at the same targets: women, fags, foreigners, any racial or religious group except their own. Not that they were religious, but they had a common acceptance of what they’d honor and what they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t spit on a cross or the flag or a Bible, but they’d kick a small dog or hit a sassy woman without blinking.

  At seventeen, she’d taken him at his own estimation, at his own word. He was an artist. He would have a great career. Besides he had brooding good looks, simmering glances, a line of compliments, used often enough with enough other women to sound sincere, though she didn’t know that then. Benita had had no defenses, and she’d very quickly become pregnant with Carlos and defiantly happy about it. Papa said she would be married before the baby was born, or else. He and Mami had a furious argument about it, one of the few Benita could remember. Mami said no, let the baby come, they’d take care of it in the family, Bert wouldn’t be a good husband. Papa said no, Benita had to learn that actions have consequences, good husband or not, she would not have a bastard.

  Surprisingly enough Bert wanted to marry her, and she thought marrying him was all she wanted. He even had a place for them to live, with his widowed mother. In fact, as it turned out, Mrs. Shipton had suggested to Bert that he get married so she’d have some company and help in the house, which was something else Benita didn’t know at the time. Benita’s giddy delirium carried her through Carlos’s birth and Angelica’s birth two years later, and partway through the year after that, by which time she had begun to perceive, though still dimly, just what it was she had done.

  “You must go to work, Benita.” Mami had said it calmly, as she said most things. “This is the fourth time you have come to me to borrow money for groceries.”

  “Mother Shipton…she’s been paying for groceries, Mami, but her social security only goes so far…”

  “If you have no money to feed your children, you must work. You have no choice.”

  “Mami, Bert’s looking for work…”

  “He quit his last job, Benita.”

  “He said they fired him for no reason…”

  “He quit, Benita. The people gave him that job as a favor to your father, so he asked them why Bert left. He left because they expected him to work, actually do things. Bert prefers not to work. If he will not work, you must.”

  “But, the babies, and Mother Shipton…”

  “I will care for the babies daytimes. Soon they can go to nursery school, and you must also pay for that. Bert’s mother is Bert’s concern, and her own. She is not an invalid, Bennie.”

  “I’m not qualified for anything…”

  “You are a woman. Hombres son duro, pero mujeres son durable. I have found you a job.”

  After that, Benita had been so busy she had never had time to think, except about one thing.

  “The mistake you made must stop with you,” said Mami. “Your children must go to school! To college.”

  That was the start of the secret bank account. That was the start of Mami’s little lectures to Carlos and Angelica. By the time Angelica was five, she was saying, “When I go to college, Mama.”

  Bert had a different idea. He played with Angelica and called her his cutie-pie, but since the time Carlos first grabbed a crayon and made marks on the bedroom wall, Bert decided that when Carlos graduated from high school, the two of them would start a gallery. Bert talked about it all the time, as though it were real. Carlos would bring his scribbles home from school for Bert to critique. Bert would put on his pontifical voice and explain art techniques. The two of them would huddle over the table while Angelica, Benita, and Mother Shipton fixed meals or washed dishes. Bert was an artist. Carlos would be an artist.

  Before long he was saying, “Granny says I will be a great artist, Mama.” Benita didn’t contradict him or his granny. So long as he expected to succeed, she would help him. It was something to think about, to plan for, to work for.

  Bert kept the idea alive, hugging his son. “ ’At’s my boy, we’re gonna show ’em, huh, Carlos, when we open the gallery.”

  Carlos agreeing, “Right, Dad. When we open it.”

  The years were all the same, with only the sizes of their needs changing: extra large instead of mediu
m for Carlos, size twelve instead of eight for Angelica, an old wreck of a car instead of a bike for Carlos, a computer instead of a TV for Angelica. Mother Shipton died when Carlos was eight; Bert inherited the house. The years accumulated in Benita’s routine of buying books, supervising homework, making Carlos do better than he cared to, helping Angelica do as well as she wanted to. The years accumulated with the drinking bouts happening oftener, then very often, then every day or two. Benita couldn’t figure out where he got the money! He never had any money for groceries or the gas payment. When the children were little, Benita had occasionally fled with them to the shelter when things got violent. When Carlos was as big as his father and at no risk of his father’s temper, Benita and Angelica found a refuge in Benita’s office, after the store was closed, sleeping on the floor on a spread sleeping bag, with no one knowing where they were.

  Then, suddenly Carlos was out of school (low C average) and neither Bert’s plans nor Benita’s turned out to have been sure things. Carlos approached his father about the gallery idea.

  “Well, we’ll need a few thou, Carlos. Got to get together a few thou first. For rent, you know. Rent and making contacts with artists, all that.”

  “Where are we going to get that?” Carlos demanded. Carlos might not have done well in school, but he could add two and two.

  “Mortgage the house,” said Bert suddenly, out of nowhere. “We’ll mortgage the house.”

  But he didn’t mortgage the house. Not for a while.

  Benita said, “Carlito, while you and your dad are figuring out the gallery business, why don’t you enroll at UNM? I know your test scores and grades weren’t great, but you can get student aid, and it’s right here in town, and you can study art…” Benita, trying to move him but not telling him about the secret bank account, not until he, himself, was committed to going on. That had been Mami at her most succinct.