It’s worse than frustrating. Being around all those downed heads makes me want to close my eyes forever. I follow the gridwalks toward where the McStowes live. I focus on the ground because it doesn’t make me want to disappear as much. The ground on the way there is gray and gray and gray. My shoes are black and gray. Good in its vial is clean/clear.
Long fingernails bite my shoulders. I look up and see a shoelooker my mother’s age. Her hands are near my neck. She screams, “Where are we going?” and shakes me like she’s trying to get me to wake up. Her voice is screechy like she’s been yelling for a long time. I shove her, then I run because I’m very disturbed.
I make sure I’m looking up as I run. I’m sweaty when I reach Leslie’s housing complex. Inside it is not nice. A bunch of cats and a raccoon race and fight in the lobby area. The walls are dirty and the paint is peeling. I walk up a stairwell that smells like a toilet. When I find the McStowe door, I knock on it. I can hear people rustling inside. I imagine myself falling into a jar of needles over and over again. I haven’t had any Good. The door opens. It’s bright inside.
“Happy birthday” comes out of several mouths. The voices together make my heart beat harder.
“Hello,” I say.
“Come in, come in,” says Leslie. There’s a tall man with a skinny neck and gray hair. He wears an ugly shirt with bright flowers on it.
“Great to see you; really great to see you,” Father McStowe says. I’m wondering if in the McStowes’ home people say everything twice.
The food sector is a small space to the left. It smells like something good. In the main sector are Leslie McStowe, her mother, her father, and three fidgeting shoelookers about my age. They have the usual sad/dirty look. They might be from the school. I don’t know. I don’t look at shoelookers.
“Come in,” Mother McStowe says even though I’m already inside. She is a thin woman with a short haircut. There are folds of loose skin under her neck. I come in farther. Everyone is looking at me.
“How was your walk over?” Leslie says. Her face is smiling.
“Bad,” I say. “This part of the section is worse than where my unit lives.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Father McStowe says. “Let’s have some cake now that the man of the hour is here in one piece!” Man of the hour. He is talking about me.
There are two beds in the main section. There are sheets and plates on one bed so it can be a table. There are pillows arranged on the other to make it a place to sit.
“I’ve never had cake,” I say. I haven’t. It isn’t something proud people eat. It makes people fat, my mother says, just like the candy the Antis hand out in the streets.
“Well, isn’t that a shame,” Mother McStowe says even though she is smiling. She has dimples like her daughter. “In this house we eat cake every chance we get, seems like.” She laughs. And so does Father McStowe. Leslie laughs. Even one of the three shoelookers laughs a little. I can tell by how the shoelooker’s shoulders jump while she stares at the floor.
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for me,” I say. “My housing unit is much nicer than this.” It gets quiet, then the house starts laughing some more. Even though I don’t know exactly why they are laughing, I’m not too frustrated.
“This one!” says Father McStowe. “A true comedian.”
“What’s a true comedian?” I ask.
“Joke-tellers, humor-makers,” says Father McStowe. “Back in the old world, it was a life profession to make laughter. One of many interesting old-world lives.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say, ’cause I don’t.
“That’s okay,” says Mother McStowe, still giggling. “Let’s eat some cake.”
“Sounds sweet to me,” says Father McStowe. He laughs, and so does his family.
We move over to the table/bed. The main sector of the housing unit has walls covered in sheets of paper with too many colors on them.
“Cake,” Mother McStowe says as she walks to the food sector, “was a delicacy in the old world used to celebrate events like union-making, the lunar cycle, battle-victory, and, of course, birthdays.” Mother McStowe looks for some utensil in the food sector. I look at Father McStowe and ask, “Is that the food sector your son killed himself in?” There’s a clang/clack sound from Mother McStowe dropping something on the floor.
Father McStowe looks at me. He touches my shoulder. His hand is large/heavy. “You know something”—he speaks low so only I can hear him—“one of the things we like to do in this home is be careful of what we say. What you said didn’t have to be said. And now you’ve hurt my wife. She’ll be fine but—”
“Lying for others is what caused the Big Quick and the Long Big,” I say.
“Maybe. Or maybe it was something else. I’m talking about thinking about the other person, ya know?” Father McStowe whispers to me. “I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about this, but it’s something we try around here.” He smiles and touches my shoulder again. “Let’s eat some cake,” he says in a big voice, a voice for everybody.
I haven’t had any Good since breakfast. And here I am. In Leslie McStowe’s house. Because she invited me and because she makes me think of things that aren’t Marlene or optimization or being forever dumb/slow.
Mother McStowe comes back. She smiles at me as she hands me a knife big enough to cut a bunch of things. “It was tradition for birthday boys to cut the cake after the singing of the traditional birthday hymn,” Mother McStowe says. She looks around quickly with wide eyes, then begins to sing. The rest of her family joins in. The shoelookers look down and up, and down and up, trying to decide what to be, and even they mumble along with the McStowes.
Happy birthday to ya, happy birthday to ya
Happy birthday, happy birthday to ya
Happy birthday, it’s your day, yeah
Happy birthday to ya, happy birthday, yeah!
When they finish, Mother McStowe tells me, with her eyes, to cut the cake. The knife cuts through easily. “I forgot that, traditionally, you are supposed to make a wish before you cut into the cake,” says Mother McStowe. “But after is fine, I suppose. You can wish for anything.”
Of course, I wish for Good. I put one more cut into the cake, then Mother McStowe takes the knife from me, and I see she cuts into the middle of it instead of off the side like I did. She cuts pieces for everybody. Father McStowe and Leslie and I sit on the bed made for sitting. The rest stand and chew. The cake is the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten.
“Do you like it?” asks Mother McStowe.
“It’s good ’cause it’s so sweet,” I say. It makes my tongue and teeth feel more alive.
“And it’s an authentic old-time recipe you can’t get anywhere else,” Mother McStowe says.
When half my cake is gone, I turn to Father McStowe. “Do you have any extra Good?” I ask somewhat discreetly, since taking too much Good is not a proud thing. Father McStowe looks at me with cheeks full of cake.
“We like to think of our home as a throwback to an era before industrial Good,” he says. He swallows, then puts a hand on my shoulder, then removes it.
“I need Good.”
“You’re thinking now; this is then.” Father McStowe does something with his hands. “Think of our home as a place where no one needs industrial Good.”
“Is it because you’re poor that you don’t have any Good?” I ask. Father McStowe laughs so hard he spits wet cake onto the floor. Quickly, Mother McStowe cleans it up. He looks to his daughter, and says, “This one is funny. A real comedian.”
“I’m not telling jokes,” I say.
“That’s why you’re so good,” Father McStowe says. “When I want to be funny, I usually tell an old-time joke, like this one.” He clears his throat. “Have you heard the one about the deaf man?”
“What?”
“That’s what he said!” Father McStowe says. “If you would have said no, I would have said neither has he. Get it?” He touches me on the shoulder and
chuckles. Leslie and the shoelookers giggle with him. “Truly, we like to think we, as you’ve seen, have created a space that is really a throwback to a time before the Big Quick or even before the Long Big. My family and I re-create that decent era for people who might want or need it.”
“I’m frustrated because you don’t have any Good. I’m leaving,” I say.
“What we—hey, Linda, could you grab some of our literature?—offer here is a way to feel and be happy without Good. We can feel good just by being together, and you can join us a few times a week depending on the package that works for you.” Leslie is smiling, and the shoelookers are eating cake, switching between weak smiles and lost frowns.
“I’m going home,” I say.
“Take some literature,” he says. With her face smiling, Mother McStowe hands me a pamphlet. On it are smiling faces and words and different prices. Different amounts of time are trailed by different credit values on each row of information.
“There are lots of choices,” Leslie says.
“Think it over. If any package feels right for you, let Leslie know. We recommend starting off with at least three days a week here with us in the Era. You’ll feel brand-new. Just look at these guests.” Mother McStowe points to the shoelookers, who are still munching cake. They look at me and they all try to smile.
I get up. “I’m frustrated because I thought this was something different,” I yell. I haven’t had any Good. I feel the pamphlet crushing in my fist. On the front, it says LIFE IN THE ERA in curly letters. “Also, your daughter doesn’t frustrate me, so that’s why I came.”
“Look over the literature,” Father McStowe says when I’m at the door.
“I haven’t had any Good since the morning, that’s why I’m emotional,” I scream before I slam the door and run back to my own housing unit. I get tired, so I have to walk. Plus, there is no Good at my housing unit anyway. The night is black. The gridwalk is gray and gray and gray. There’s some sweet left on my teeth, and even after the sweet is gone, thinking about it helps keep me walking.
At breakfast the next day, the Good makes me feel better for a few minutes but not even through to the last sip of my milk. My neck aches. My brain throbs. The floor of the school is mostly tan, and the patterns against the tan are at least easy to drown in. In Mr. Harper’s class, we are talking about the Long Big and how it led to the Big Quick, like always. I think of cake during class.
At lunch I go to sit with my usuals. At the table Scotty says, “Back off, we don’t want to associate with a shoelooker like you.” Somebody else says, “Go sit with the downs over there.” I just stand there looking at the ground because I’m not a shoelooker even though, with my head down, and the feeling in my head, and the tears almost in my eyes, I probably look like one.
I try to be proud and look up. I feel a boom and a hurt under my eye. I fall. The table laughs. I see that John has punched me to say I am officially not welcome. My face hurts. I want to lie there, but I get up because I’m pulled up. It is Leslie McStowe who pulls me. She is frowning. When I’m standing, I pick my head up, and she walks with me to the nurse’s office. “It’s okay,” Leslie says, lying like they used to, like she does. And I am happy to hear her do it.
In the nurse’s office Ms. Higgins stares at the two of us. Samantha is sitting in a chair. Samantha is not healthy, ever, but she looks at me, like, Welcome, and does her happier moaning sound. Ms. Higgins pulls a cold pack out of a cold box. I put the cold over my eye. It makes the hurt less. I sit in a chair next to Samantha. Leslie sits in one next to me.
“He got hit,” Leslie says.
“Yah ohkay?” Samantha groans.
“You got hit,” Ms. Higgins says.
“Yes,” I say. Ms. Higgins says nothing. Then she stands up and opens the drawer that holds her injector. Hearing the drawer slide open makes my skin tingle. She turns her back to us so she can feed some fresh new Good into the injector.
Then, at the office door, I see my sibling. “I heard,” says Marlene, “you’ve become a real shoelooker.” Leslie touches my not-cold hand. Her fingers are warm on mine. “Ben is on a Good restriction, Higgins,” Marlene says. With one eye, I look at Leslie McStowe, then at Samantha, then at Marlene, and then at Ms. Higgins. Ms. Higgins screws a vial of Good into the injector. “I’ll report you,” Marlene says.
Ms. Higgins continues screwing the vial into the injector and does not look at Marlene. Marlene stands at the office door. She’s holding a cup of water. All I want is Good. Ms. Higgins looks at me with her loaded injector. Leslie squeezes my hand. I look at Ms. Higgins. I shake my head. Ms. Higgins drops her injector on her desk then sits down in her chair. She turns her head and looks at the wall. We are quiet. It’s quiet for a long time. Leslie looks at me. She wants to smile, but she can’t, so with my head down, one hand warm, one hand cold, one eye bruising and the other looking at her, I say, “Have you heard the one about the deaf man?”
Lark Street
An impossible hand punched my earlobe. An unborn fetus, aborted the day before, was standing at my bedside. His name was Jackie Gunner.
“So, I guess you didn’t have the balls?” Jackie Gunner said. His voice was a stern squeak. My eyelids rolled open. He was a tiny silhouette on the end of my pillow. Smaller than a field mouse.
“Well, say something, Dad.” He said Dad the way some people say cunt. “Do you even feel bad?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I feel real bad.”
“I feel real bad,” Jackie Gunner repeated. “Is real bad a hole big enough to fit our lives in?”
“Our?” I said.
“It’s a metaphor, Daddy,” said a new voice, this one shy, charming even. A second tiny fetus climbed up my comforter onto my bed. Her name, I knew, was Jamie Lou.
“Phew,” Jamie Lou said at the summit, which was up near my pillow. She plopped down so she was sitting beside Jackie Gunner. A tiny shadow beside a tiny shadow. Twins, I thought.
“I’m sor—” I began.
“Don’t,” Jackie Gunner said. “Just don’t.
“So you didn’t have the balls, huh?” he repeated while thrusting and grabbing the space between his tiny, tiny legs. Legs that would never grow big enough to kick things like bottle caps, or soccer balls, or other people. “I think I have more balls than you and I’m still, like, a trimester from genitalia.” Here he paused as if in reflection. “What are balls like?”
Jamie giggled.
I didn’t know how to answer him. “Uh, they . . . well . . .” My voice still dragged from sleep.
“Whatever,” Jackie Gunner said. “You wouldn’t know. You didn’t have the cojones to look.”
“Be nice to Daddy,” Jamie Lou said. Jackie Gunner grunted. Then he turned his tiny head and sort of looked at me sideways. “Look at me, Dad.”
The night before, my girlfriend, Jaclyn, had taken a series of pills that had pushed Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou out of her. When we found out it was an option, the take-home method had seemed like the way to go. We’d imagined it’d be more humane. The pamphlets instructed us—her—to tuck four pills in the space between her lip and gums. That way they would dissolve, and then the chemicals would find her bloodstream without the detour of her stomach. There would be vomiting. The pamphlet made that clear.
Jaclyn cried on the toilet. I held her hand in the beginning. Then she told me to leave. So I did. I listened from the living room.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” said Jamie Lou. At this, Jackie Gunner turned and kicked Jamie Lou on the side of the head. “Ouch,” she said.
“Hey,” I said, feeling like it wasn’t the time for violence.
“Shut it. And it’s not okay,” Jackie Gunner said. “He won’t even look at us.”
“He’s scared,” said Jamie Lou, rising. She brought her head close to Jackie Gunner’s head and kissed his temple.
“I don’t care,” said Jackie Gunner, ignoring the kiss.
After about an hour of the most honest pain I can remember he
aring, Jaclyn said something I understood. “Oh, my God, it’s in my—oh, my God,” and I knew they’d been released. I thought I might try to hold her hand again then. But I could not. I could not look into that bathroom.
That was only about eight hours before Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou appeared in my room.
“Look at me, Dad!” Jackie Gunner yelled.
I got up carefully, trying not to squish them or bounce the bed and send them flying. I flipped on the light switch.
Their heads were too big for their tiny bodies, which were each as thin as a pencil and a fleshy pink. Their skin was shriveled and translucent. I could see through their skulls to pea-size gray brains. Jackie Gunner’s eyes were closed, but behind one of his eyelids there was just an empty socket. Jamie Lou had both her eyes, and she seemed to have working eyelids, too. Their hands and feet were partially webbed, and their scrawny legs shouldn’t have been able to support their bodies. They wore a glaze of bright blood.
“Don’t smile at me, Dad,” Jackie Gunner said.
“Okay,” I said.
“Tell me what my mom is like,” Jackie Gunner demanded. “Tell us everything.”
“Mommy,” echoed Jamie Lou.
“She’s pretty cool,” I said.
“Okay?” Jackie Gunner said.
“You want to know right now?” I asked.
“Well, we don’t exactly got a whole lot of time, Pops.”
“We’re not gonna be people,” Jamie Lou explained, suddenly somber. I looked at her.
I thought of one place to start: my mother’s Volvo. It did this thing where if you ever stopped all the way, the car just shut off about half the time. You’d have to rush to shift into park, then twist the key to off, and then turn it back on to get the car started again. It’d get going just fine, but the next time you stopped—lights out. Eventually, you got the hang of it, figured out all the little tricks. Like, if I shifted to neutral just as I stopped, the engine would maintain a healthy hum. Or you could just never stop: slow down early for every red light, roll every stop sign.
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