Overnight it was all over. It was that simple. The wondering was done with just for the asking. Then the questions began coming even more furiously than before: they kept asking me until I was worn out with words. Had it been a mix-up at the hospital? An aborted kidnapping? A black-market sale? Had they lost me on the tyke ride at the state fair? “Corrente”— could be Roman, Egyptian, Akhaian…you name it. It sounded European, but it might have just as easily been Middle Eastern or African—you could never be sure, the area around the Mediterranean turning so murky, ethnically, with rivers running north, occupations every which way, and King Ptolemy back in the day letting all the brides get switched, swapped, and swiped. Was there a place known as Correnth somewhere? Could it have something to do with humans evolving out of an ape named Cornelius? “Eddie Corrente”— kind of rhymed, a little alliterative. Perhaps I had descended from an old-world werewolf: part man, part jackal. That would explain my drawn-out dew claws. Maybe my freakish feet were the product of a sorcerer’s art, an unnatural graft: the embellishment of man’s frame with falcon talon or baboon paw. I guessed I had the sort of name privileged kids made fun of in school. I supposed I would find out.
It was a long ride, but I managed to distract myself from urologic urgency by concentrating on the surrealistic scenes flashing by on road signs. When the highways had been privatized, junction, exit, and speed limit markers had been turned into unjuried art spaces. Graffiti were the preferred media by which packs and posses competed for unofficial posts as poet laureates. Gradually mesmerized, ultimately exhausted, I bounced around half asleep in the back seat, monotonously hallucinating sparkling urinals and snapping to just before allowing myself to take a leak.
When the driver took the first Jersey exit I started to feel ill at ease. The fresh air caused me to cough and the smells of nature got me queasy. All that nauseating verdure made me sweat. The car turned left onto a smooth, clean street that looked like a flat from a movie set, with grand houses set far back on broad lawns shaded by monstrous trees. Back in the early 2000s, before TV had become interactive, there had been a weird phenomenon called the situation comedy. People would sit down for thirty minutes and watch an awful stew of generic jokes, romantic drivel, and canned laugh tracks. These domestic grotesques, set mostly in horribly bright living rooms with windows onto overgrown foliage, had been shot on this same green street—I was sure of it.
When the limo pulled up to the curb I could barely see out the windows: There was a geared-up photographer jockeying for position on one side and two frightening, flattened faces pressed against the glass on the other. My door opened and I stepped from the back seat with no sense of modesty, never once having had the occasion to emerge from a car of any kind. Bleary, bladder filled to bursting, heart pounding, pores pouring, I was showing it all to the world, as they say, except in my case that meant a pair of rare, bare feet.
“Well, will you look at that, Daddy!” she started things off. “He’s got loaves like you got dough.”
“Now, now, Mother,” his first chirp, “mustn’t tease junior.”
She was busty. He had a belly. They were well-to-do political types, the mayor of Ho-Ho-Kus and his gung-ho wife. Cheerful, liberal, Universalists, chummy names: Pauly and Merry. “That’s M-E-R-R-Y. People ask me, ‘As in the Mother of God?’ And I say, ‘Nah, like Christmas!’” They thanked God and said they hoped I did too—however I might imagine him or her. I supposed that I resembled them as well as I could anybody, although their shoe sizes were clearly single-digit.
The first thing I said addressed what everyone, including the gawking photographer, his jaw dangling low like the camera bags slung from his shoulders, was looking at: my feet, between which I compulsively shuffled. “Honest,” I tried, head down, already contrite, “they’re my only excess.”
Merry said, “Can’t wait to see.”
“Say again?” Pauly said.
“I said you need to pee, honey? It’s a long haul from Baltimore.”
“Not Maryland, Mother. They found our boy in Mass.”
“Sure,” she said to nobody in particular, with a wink at me.
We all three froze in place to let the photographer take a pict. I wasn’t sure if I instinctively, genetically, knew what to do or if the parents’ already-iron hold was manifesting itself telekinetically, but even without explicit prompting I mugged like the best of them. Pauly yoked a hairy arm across my shoulder. “Jeez,” he said, “your clothes are soaked. Was the sunroof open? Cloudbursts over Connecticut?”
Inside the house, the head was a nightmare right out of Dr. Seuss. Everything I touched—pristine porcelain, gleaming steel, glowing terry cloth—was instantly sullied. Although aghast at the marks I had made, what I saw when I emerged into the kitchen more than compensated for my shame. The alien grown-ups nonchalantly proffered a wagon wheel of a pizza: thirty-six inches in diameter, extra cheese and sauce, the works. Convinced that at any moment I might awaken and find that pie, if not parents, had turned out to be just part of a dream picnic, I dispensed with all modesty and wolfed five slices. Mama picked off the anchovies and could not finish even half a piece. Pops put away a couple but left his crusts. I had not inherited their meager appetites. When the folks pushed their plates away, I obliged by taking care of the scraps.
After the meal, Pauly and Merry drove me up broad, carpeted stairs. At the top, they showed me my room. “Your” and “room” sounded absurd in the context, especially together. That’s when I realized: These affable freaks really mean it. The huge bed was covered with fluffy wadding that sank a good foot when I sat on it. There was a chest neatly brimming with folded clothing, packages of clean briefs, and new tube socks, extra-long. The magnanimous padrón said he would send out for any brand of sports shoe I wanted, and when instinctively I said, “Converse!” I thought I detected a disapproving grimace. I held to the consolation of my first-pair brand with a desperate clutch, as the shipwreck victim bobbing in spin drift hangs onto the sole, floating coconut.
In the living room, I sat up straight and very still in my grimy, tattered shirt and pants, certain that by the slightest movement I would soil the snowy cushions of the poofy armchair. Pauly and Merry cradled cocktails on either end of the couch and spoke remotely of their “journey” to find me, a battle of hope and courage. The tale was not very specific, but full of heroic rhetoric. It sounded like they had already told it to a TV crew or two. When the time rolled around and Pauly turned on the late edition of the local news, it turned out they had. It was the lead story. They absorbed the report without comment. After it was over, Pauly said to himself with some satisfaction, “I sound downright senatorial when I say ‘ordeal.’” Merry commented on the look of the lawn.
Over his second drink, Pauly delivered a little speech. “I’m the guy who privatized the sewage industry. The operating system for all the formerly-public works in the Northeast— that was designed by yours truly. When I was a youngster like you, the Internet was bringing anything and everything to your door faster and easier than a phone call. I said to myself, you can get the Net to deliver media, groceries, and consumer goods to the average American home, but what about what they want to have taken away? And then it hit me,” Pauly said, wagging a finger over his head to represent that old light bulb glowing, “—shit! They’ll never be able to break down piss and shit into bytes and bits.” Pauly carried a big bankroll in his pocket. By the bulge, I would say a tidy hundred grand in a fat, gold clip.
Shyly, I said, “Um, any idea how I got these feet?”
“Grandmaternal influence,” Pauly grumbled. “Recessive trait, you know. You should have seen the dogs on that lady! Yup—you’re a dead ringer for the face, too!”
“Do you have any pictures?”
“We used to have albums full, but they were all lost.”
“How?”
“Fire,” Merry sputtered, while simultaneously Pauly spewed, “Flood!”
“Uh, it was a fire flood,” Merry correc
ted herself, “the kind that fires up on you all of a sudden. Isn’t that right, Daddy?”
“No, Mother. You’re always mixing that up. Flash flood.”
“Sure, how silly of me. The Passaic just kept rising over the riverbanks. Remember, Daddy?”
“Hackensack, Mother,” Pauly said, his eyes narrowing. “It was the Hackensack River.”
“Hackensack. Sure.”
“Seems like you’re getting kind of tired, Mother. Why don’t you let the boy and me have a little man-to-man?”
“Sure, Daddy,” Merry said, rising. Laying a warm, fragrant hand briefly on my cheek, she added, “Sweet dreams, handsome!”
After fixing himself another cocktail, Pauly went into a little more detail about the split of our stories. “Merry and I were teenage sweethearts. We got started early, and boy was it fun to…to find out we were going to have a child. Trouble is, she did it kind of young. This was before my lucky break, and her father thought I was a good-for-nothing, so he took you to an orphanage. Somehow, from there, you ended up a derel— er, street kid. The old man kept the trail a secret, but he sure didn’t count on me striking it rich after he kicked the bucket and managing to track you down.” Pauly finished his drink with a snort.
“Um, Dad,” I said. After a momentary lapse he squinted at me, seeming as irritated by his new appellation as I was by mine. “I forgot to ask back at the agency—what was my given name?”
“Your given name?”
“As a baby. What did you call me?”
Pauly fidgeted with his swizzle stick, eyes darting nervously between glass and floor. I figured it was just the standard shiftiness that comes with being a politician, compounded by the weirdness of meeting his kid after all these years. His expression a little pickled, Pauly blurted, “Eddie, of course.”
“That’s funny.”
“What?”
“Well, considering that’s what my pack master—guardian, I mean—named me too, completely independently.”
“He didn’t know anyone at the orphanage?”
“Nope. At least not according to his story.”
“What a coincidence. Well, I sure am beat. I better get to bed. Good night, son.” There it was—that terrible word again!
Upstairs in the silent house, I peeled off the ratty shirt and pants that had kept me self-conscious the entire evening and, after removing my one possession from the pocket, deposited the grubby clothes in the trash. Attached to my bedroom was a private bathroom. Instead of the hole in the boards in the basement of the Nec, there was a bright, white throne. When I flushed, I thought of Pauly’s cash register ringing. I reclined for more than an hour in the polished trough, in awe of the efficacy of suburban plumbing, filling and refilling with hot water a casket-like conveyance I knew, from picts on the Net, to be a tub. Soap bubbles disintegrated on contact with my skin. I made a gray halo just below the rim. The way the street had built up layers on me, I would have left a ring around Lake Michigan.
Although I was not accustomed to changing clothes, least of all before turning in, I buttoned up in flannel pajamas Merry had laid out on my pillow. Climbing into the sack felt strange, like wearing shirt and pants for a swim, and bare feet in bed felt even weirder. The long soak had not rinsed away the smell of the city and I was all too full of bravura for the fresh, clean sheets. I feared the odor of the streets would so soak the stuffing that my redolence would never dissipate, even if by morning my pristine parents had to throw out the mattress. I removed my glasses and placed them atop the bedside table, glancing briefly, blurrily, leerily at the profile of Lincoln. While the coin’s discovery had gotten me out of binds twice before, the steps at which it had intervened had succeeded, in the long run, only in depositing me here in Ho-Ho-Kus, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. Scrubbed, exhausted, dropping off to sleep, I considered this token from the life I had left behind. What did Abe, with his unpredictable devices, have in store for us?
Everything was so bright and white I thought I was dead. In the canyon-deep streets of the abandoned factory district off Kendall Square, which most of the day lolled in the wan reflection of urban brick, our nearest star rarely peeked over the roofs until noon, even in summer’s bloom. But the windows of my new bedroom faced east, right into the rising sun. The mattress had proved cripplingly supple. I was bent and arthritic from just one night in all the fluff, and I had soaked the sheets with sweat. This would not have seemed unusual, except that it had happened as the result of a dream. I never dreamed. Other rats who lived ulterior lives at night, sustaining themselves on secret, somnolent identities as sports stars and pack masters, had tried to convince me that I dreamed like all the rest, only did not remember. Yet I was adamant. I never dreamt. I slept deeply, somewhat peacefully. But, if anything, I had used up all the REM watching my all-absorbing question roll by. I supposed that it was only natural to now redeem the repository of dreams, as the day before I had obtained a dramatic, specific, and somewhat dreary answer. Where do I come from? had all of a sudden become Here. In lieu of the exhausted question, Morpheus had at last bestowed upon me my first nocturnal adventure.
It had actually been a series of dreams, all with the same unspectacular, pedestrian theme: running, running, running … from drug dealers … from a thousand pocket-picked plaintiffs … from an overzealous orphan broker … from Shep and the rest of the Nec … These had all been pretty standard shrift, the kind of chases I generally enjoyed. What turned dream into nightmare was the dash that, at last, I stood to lose, away from pursuers who were gradually, grievously gaining on me: mush-mouthed mom; doting, dipsomaniac dad—both hopelessly, horribly middle-class. Certainly, I was chagrined by my first flight of midnight fancy. If that was all there was, an exhausting extension of the dull grind of day, then I decided I could do without the dreaming of dreams. I got up, unbent myself, peeled off damp pajamas, toweled dry, and prepared for the descent into my first big day as somebody’s son.
Dressing, I wistfully regarded the forlorn heap of clothing I had left in the trash. Feeling oppressed by all the stiff elasticity although sporting only shorts and socks, I wished I could climb back into my comfortable old rags. Still, I would oblige the proud parents with clean, creased clothes. Was that not the minimum a kid could do? I selected a green sweatshirt (Go Jets!) and a too-crisp pair of jeans from the chest. Back in the Beast, I never would have been caught dead in fresh denim. The fit made me think of stuffing my legs into mailing tubes, wrapping a stovepipe around my rear. The only thing that saved the pants was a feature sewn into the top of the right pocket: a trim, additional pouch, perfect for concealing a small amulet. I picked up One Cent from the bedside table. Considering my options—slipping it between layers of bed, flipping it into the back of a drawer, dropping it in the toilet and disposing of it with a vigorous flush—I frowned and asked for some sign. Are you lucky? Naturally, that question was for myself as much as for my miniature mascot, but no matter how I glared he would not look me in the eye. Sure, I could have compelled him to talk: heads, yes; tails, no. But that would have forced an ultimatum for which neither one of us, perhaps, was prepared. As it appeared I would have to wait for a definitive indication, I ended up reluctantly depositing the old profiled president snugly into my new, blue demi-pocket. I took one last look in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door: big, blanched feet, regal jeans, Lincoln green. At least by wearing the outfit I would not have to look at it.
Pauly had already left for work and Merry was not yet awake. Padding around in stockinged feet, I took the opportunity to privately survey the ground floor, beginning with wood-paneled study: desk, shelves, ottoman, an obtrusive exercise machine, and the most unusual furnishing, situated conspicuously in front of the desktop term, an antique commode. I surmised that it functioned, as the bowl was bolted to the floor and there was water inside. This must be where Pauly got his work done. Lining the walls was a broad collection of those big, clumsy artifacts: books made from paper, novels and the like. I wondered w
hich parent had read them. By the light of the living room shag, I took inventory of all the uncomfortable furniture that was supposed to make a home. On the glass-brick bar, a golden trophy held a couple of teeny toothpicks while the littlest egg cup burst with a garish bouquet of the old man’s souvenir swizzle sticks, no two the same: among them a busty rumba dancer, a mini–model jet, and a blue sheep that read “A gift from…” and bore the long name of the Greek ambassador to the UN. Lining the edges of the dining room’s terra cotta, cabinets were stocked with privets, cozies, caddies, and coasters of all kinds, along with an eclectic flotilla of containers: six-ounce tea cups to ten-gallon lobster pots and a great array of in-between goblets and crocks. At the back threshold was that kind of chamber peculiar to the rural home: The immediacy of outdoors composed not only of steel and stone yielded the mandate of a mud room, with bare wood furnishings and polish-stripped fixtures for sloughing off soil.
I felt a little uneasy sliding across kitchen linoleum. The room was way too bright, all glass, steel, and white Formica brimming with bottles, canisters, and cardboard packages bathed in buttery sunlight, but a dozen assorted donuts on the table quelled my malaise. I sat down with them before the news term, which carried a page-one pict of my parents and me with the caption: “Native Son Returns to Ho-Ho-Kus!” Mercifully, my feet had been cropped.
I had set to work on the dough, hitting my stride at nut number ten, when Merry came down, still in her nightgown. She stood blinking in the doorway with beautiful bare knees and a bold V-neck cleave, squinting at me like something alien and unfamiliar, frowning to remind herself what had happened the previous evening.
“Gawd! I didn’t know you’d be up already, honey! Don’t I look a mess?”
She staggered blindly in front of the bright window and through the sheer fabric of her nightie I got a glimpse of bulging owl eyes. I averted my gaze to her fuzzy slippers. She had sweet little feet. It was a wonder what had come out of her. Merry shuffled her way to the coffee machine, groped for the pot, and poured. She sat across from me and plunged into her mug, resurfacing a moment to mutter, “It’s the first day of your new life. Shouldn’t you be sleeping ’til noon or something?”
Fast Eddie, King of the Bees: 1 Page 6
