The Dream of Doctor Bantam

by Jeanne Thornton

  That’s fine, she said.

  And it’s not forever, said Michael. We were actually planning

  to rent out one of the bedrooms, you know. So it’s a little

  inconvenient.

  She doesn’t need her own bedroom, said Julie.

  The cigarette had burned down enough that it rolled freely onto the plate; she picked it up and let it burn in her hand, let her coffee smolder in the other, her eyes on Michael’s eyes. Then Michael closed his eyes and nodded.

  Okay, he said.

  She smiled and took a long drag. He opened his eyes and smiled back at her. He was so young, she suddenly realized—thirty, Ira’s age. Seven years older than Patrice. Why had she never wondered about this before? Where had her mother even met this person? What did he even see in her?

  Anything else you want to ask me? she smiled, twirling her cigarette smoke.

  He put his hands on the back of his head.

  What do you want to be when you grow up? he asked.

  Alive, she said.

  I’m glad to hear it, he said. What else?

  She set her cigarette hand on the table, dropping ashes in the wood grain, and she watched the smoke come off in question marks and whirls until the teapot started to scream and Michael got up to turn off the burner—then to scrape the undrinkable chocolate sludge free from the concave metal sides.

  They moved into Tabitha’s room. Julie spent a day with Michael clearing out her old furniture, saving the things she wanted to save—not many things, books, shirts, a trunk, one yearbook—and incorporating them into Tabitha’s total stock of possessions. They made signs for a yard sale.

  We can probably hang on to some of these things, Michael said. We don’t have to literally sell off your entire childhood.

  No no, said Julie. Sell everything. Everything must go. Gotta get those utilities paid.

  Patrice spent the day in bed, the new sheets pulled up to her chin. Julie made some Campbell’s soup for her at one o’clock and brought it to her in an old Snoopy bowl. She was smoking in Tabitha’s bed; five cigarette butts were resting on the bedside table, next to the purple vibrator. Julie cleaned them up and put the purple vibrator away.

  How are you feeling? she asked.

  I’ve failed and everything has turned into a ruin, said Patrice. Everything has always been a ruin.

  Except my soup! chirped Julie.

  She waited for Patrice to respond, then left the bowl and went out the door.

  Michael was coming down the hallway. He was bringing Campbell’s soup in a red and black Chinese bowl down the hall to Linda’s bedroom. Snakes of Dunhill smoke were rising from beneath the door. Michael gave her a sheepish smile. Julie avoided his eyes.

  The garage sale brought in eighty-five dollars, which she and Michael split. Julie spent her forty-two on a carton of cigarettes from the gas station. She sat on the swing Michael had built in the yard, smoking them and kicking herself back and forth, until the ropes finally rotted out and she landed on her ass in the fire ant pile. The ropes were swinging close to the ground, dirty like leftovers from a botched midget hanging, like frontier justice had gone crazy here on some poor child.

  She sat in the bathtub, a hunk of ice from the freezer floating with her, using up an old bottle of calamine lotion from Tabitha’s abandoned medicine chest. Patrice sat on the toilet beside her, smoking, wrapped in a blanket. She hadn’t said anything for an hour.

  It was wrong of me to react the way I did, she said. It was what a timebound person would do.

  I’m going to kill you with this chunk of ice if you talk about Institute bullshit again, said Julie. You’re well out of there.

  Patrice stopped talking. She was thinking about the Institute instead. Julie could see it in her ugly, cowardly eyes. She crossed her legs in the bathtub and applied more calamine lotion.

  She got a job at the Retrograde. It was easy. She typed up a resume at the big library downtown, implying but not actually stating that she had a GED, and handed it to the gawky barista.

  You’re hired, said the barista, after looking it over.

  Julie looked at her.

  It’s that easy? she asked.

  I have to go in like, two hours, said the gawky barista. And you’re here all the time anyway. And you seem like … you always seem so cool.

  The gawky barista had huge eyes behind her glasses: cinnamon pudding eyes. She fluttered them without meaning to as she looked away. Julie suddenly realized that she was young, beneath the patently illegal ear piercings—that she was pretty hot. That she seemed pretty hot and sane.

  Julie excused herself, went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and stared at herself in the mirror. The tampon dispenser was still empty. There was a clock on the other side of this wall; she could hear it ticking.

  I seduced a barista today, she said to Patrice after she got home from what ended up being a first half-day of work. Patrice was still in the bedroom, still wearing the same pair of Tabitha’s old panties, Tabitha’s old lace-and-rhinestone blouses. She was sitting on the floor with Tabitha’s tarot cards spread out in front of her, listening to Tabitha’s music. She had a Dunhill between her lips.

  You were gone all day, she said.

  I had to get a job, said Julie. You know. Workin’ for a living. Takin’ care of business.

  She sat down on the edge of Tabitha’s bed and put in one of Tabitha’s old Smashing Pumpkins CDs. Reverb-soaked piano music started to play.

  Will you turn that off please? asked Patrice, quickly. It’s

  distracting me.

  Julie looked at her, then turned the CD player off.

  So have you figured out what you’re going to do, now? asked Julie. Maybe go back to school? Maybe get a job yourself?

  I don’t know, said Patrice, dreamily. I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking these cards.

  She switched the positions of two of the cards and hummed to herself, lighting a new cigarette off of the old one.

  Your mother has good cigarettes, she said.

  I guess that’s true, said Julie. So what do the cards say that you’re going to do? Do they say you’re going to get a job? Maybe a place of your own?

  I think this place is okay, said Patrice. She squinted down at the cards. The Empress, and the Queen of Cups. And the Moon.

  Awesome, said Julie. Queen of Cups. Like a waitress, or a barista.

  It’s about pregnancy, Patrice said. It’s about building a new life.

  She looked up at Julie.

  When will we adopt a baby? she asked.

  Julie turned on the CD player again and lay back on the bed. She pressed her hands into her eyes and tried to lose herself in the guitar effects.

  We can’t have a baby together, she said. It’s totally impossible. I guess the Institute really doesn’t believe in science! Ha haha. We can’t have a baby together.

  You said we would adopt one, said Patrice. She got up on the bed. That’s what I want to do. If I can’t be in the Institute, I want us to have a baby. You could work to support it, and I could take care of the baby at home.

  We can’t take care of a baby in my parents’ house, said Julie, getting off the bed and sitting on the floor.

  We can make enough money to move somewhere else then, Patrice said. She was so happy, fielding all of these trivial objections. She crouched over the edge of the bed, her cheek next to Julie’s like a cat rubbing scent. Do you still have any of the money I paid you?

  I don’t want to have a baby, said Julie.

  Patrice processed this, somehow, nodded to herself, let her head swing back to the cards. The cigarette was turning to ash, unsmoked, in her mouth. Julie put her hands on her stomach, then took them away, made herself press them flat onto the floor. She lit a cigarette and dragged on it furiously, trying to force nicotine into all of her cells, all of her blood.

  Do we have anything to drink? She asked. Like, beer, or harder alcohol? Harder stuff would be better.

/>   Patrice rolled on her back and looked at the ceiling.

  I want to raise a child, she said. I want to raise a child without any alarm clocking or corruption of identity or any of the things that make children bad and timebound. I want to raise a pure child who can be happy in the world. That’s the only thing I have left to do. I w-want to care for someone.

  Julie dragged on her cigarette again. Out of the corner of her eye she could see what Patrice looked like, staring at the ceiling. She tried to remember what she used to feel like when she saw this expression on Patrice, this total belief, this crazy conviction. She tried to remember what it must have been like, once, to believe in someone. It must have been a pretty good feeling, she guessed.

  I’m going to go get something to drink, she said. Do you want anything?

  Patrice shook her head.

  I’m okay, she said.

  Julie closed the door behind her and searched every drawer of the kitchen, looking for liquor. She found a box of ancient, warmed-over wine coolers in the garage; she made it through two and a half of them before she had to go into the kitchen and get a glass of water, three glasses of water, to get the horrible sugar taste out of her mouth.

  She went into her old bedroom. The furniture was gone; everything was gone. The carpet was pressed in where her bed had once been. She lay down on the carpet within the depression and she closed her eyes, and it seemed like it was only a moment before

  she opened them again and it was daylight outside, it was time to go to work again.

  Michael was assembling a plate of French toast for Linda. Patrice was sitting at the breakfast table, an empty plate in front of her. She looked up at Julie expectantly.

  Will you pick up cigarettes on the way home? she asked.

  Julie held up her finger, wait one minute, and ducked into the bathroom. She slipped into the bedroom to get changed. Her old copy of The Dream and Reality of Time Travel was sitting open on the table next to the bed. The note from Tabitha was inside, the last thing of Tabitha’s left—that and the ashes, still waiting in the garage.

  She picked up the paperback, slipped out the front door, and got on her bike, holding the book tight against the handlebar. She threw it into the first trashcan she passed.

  She and the gawky barista were working together today. She learned how to foam milk, how to make decaf espresso drinks, how much of the special syrups to use. She figured out how to use the store iPod and she put “Constant Craving” on infinite repeat because she wanted to be alone.

  That’s a lesbian song, said the gawky barista. So are you … you know …

  She went outside to smoke on the street. If she turned her head to the right she could see the Institute building. She turned her head to the left and watched the homeless people work the street, watched the students flutter back and forth, watched the whole mess burn in the same southern sun.

  Does Patrice have any other CDs? asked Michael. Besides that one? Because I’ve heard it several times now. And I was wondering if she wanted to maybe, I don’t know, switch it up.

  Julie cackled.

  Imagine how I feel, she said. No, she doesn’t. She just has that French one.

  French one? asked Michael. So she does have more than one?

  No, said Julie, confused. She sang: Je ne veux pas travailler.

  That isn’t French, said Michael. It’s a fake, a novelty song. It’s by this band Pink Martini.

  It isn’t a real French song? asked Julie.

  No, laughed Michael. It’s some kind of grammar textbook

  parody.

  That night she lay in bed with Patrice, watched the sheets rise and fall above her ass, the tree outside in the yard, Linda’s TV burning down the hallway.

  You don’t even know who Pink Martini is, she hissed into the darkness.

  Patrice shifted under the covers and turned toward her, her arms like shrimp claws, defenseless against the night. Julie made herself turn away.

  10

  The day in October when she took the GED it rained. The grass was going khaki despite the rain and the water coming down the window—the one she’d looked through since they’d first moved to Austin, the one she remembered looking through when she was eight and pancakes were cooking in the kitchen and Tabitha was calling her name—the water was gray, dragging the summer dirt in charcoal streaks over the glass.

  She kissed Patrice’s shoulder goodbye and got dressed. It would never get cold here, not in Texas: it just got wetter, damp to the point that you’d wear a sweatshirt just to have an outer layer of damp around you. She put one on and made a poncho out of a garbage bag to go around herself. There was no coffee in the kitchen, no Michael this morning, never a Linda on a Saturday. The red digits on the coffee maker blinked 8:30 and she had to be at the school district office by 9.

  She called the Retrograde from the phone in the kitchen.

  Yo, she said. I can’t come in today. I have to go take the GED and stuff.

  Good idea, said the owner. Without a high school degree it’ll be hard to find another job when I fire you for calling me at the last minute like this all the time.

  She shrugged it off; being accused by one’s peers was part of the whole job thing. She was getting used to it.

  She wheeled her bike out of the garage and pedaled down the street toward school; the rain stopped coming down for a while, and there were only the secondary echoes of water falling from rooftops, gutters, the edges of rose trellises. Thunder cracked; three small rabbits were flushed out of a bush at the corner of Burnet Road and ran crazily for the street. There were only a few cars out at this hour and Julie waited at the corner until the rabbits made it across, then she pedaled on.

  She rode uptown, past the neighborhoods lined with auto parts stores, tiny houses with rusting jungle gyms, basketball hoops in yards with cracked and empty flowerpots. She rode past strip malls, Starbucks outlets with old men reading newspapers, SUV moms returning bags of videos to the iron drop box in the parking lot, and all the unseen street kids between the fences, traveling downtown to take their places even in the rain. Churches with hand-lettered slogans—THE BIBLE IS THE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS / SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT IT MAKES ONE WEAK; she hadn’t eaten any breakfast this morning—and Vietnamese restaurants and insurance companies, freeway overpasses, the beginnings of the vast and useless dead yellow plains that stretched north and out of town before joining some other town.

  This is the world, she told herself as she pedaled, this is the world you’ve decided to survive in.

  At the district office the orange partitioned room was already crowded. They directed her to take a seat in the back. She wasn’t used to folding herself up to fit into one of those desks with the crossbars anymore—their gum, their sky blue plastic chairs. She didn’t recognize any of the people around her. They didn’t chatter with her, ask her what she did over her summer, talk about what they were going to do some day. They were taking off work to be here. They had cups of coffee on their desks to keep them awake and living. She wished she’d thought of that.

  She stopped halfway through the test and went to the bathroom to throw up. Again, she’d eaten nothing beforehand. She stared into the toilet bowl and she knew what she was looking at, and she told herself to get up and get back to finish high school, already, there were only forty questions to go.

  The test was easy. With fifteen questions to go she deliberately broke her #2 pencil and got up to sharpen it. She took the long way around the room, watching the heads bent furiously over Scantrons, trying to push through the questions to some better future. This was the last moment in which she could honestly claim to be a child, and suddenly she didn’t want to let it go, and she sharpened her pencil until it was only a head and an eraser that fit perfectly into her palm. Then she went back to her seat, finished the test, handed it to the bored proctor, and tossed the pencil into the wastebasket on her way back into the rain. The whole test had taken an hour, equivalent to the last full year of her
high school degree.

  She rode home over the roughest, bumpiest roads she could find. She thought about a lot of things on her ride and later she couldn’t remember any of them.

  She shrugged off the poncho in the garage and lit a cigarette. She smoked leaning against Michael’s crappy sawhorse workbench, watching the cat, wondering things about who built cars and why. Then she flipped the butt into the yard, closed the automatic door, and went into the kitchen. Linda was there, smoking over a pan of scorched and scrambled eggs.

  Hey, said Julie.

  Oh, said Linda. Hi. Just cooking some eggs for myself. Do you want some?

  She didn’t really want another cigarette, but she lit one anyway and got an ashtray for herself from the cabinet below the silverware. She got one for Linda, too, since Linda had just been ashing in the sink bubbles.

  Those aren’t eggs anymore, Mom, she said, looking into the pan. Do you want me to make some eggs?

  When did you start smoking? asked Linda, frowning at her.

  I didn’t really want this cigarette, said Julie. I thought we could, you know, bond.

  She waited for Linda to tell her to put it out. Linda took another drag on her own filter.

  So when did you learn to cook eggs? asked Linda.

  Patrice taught me, said Julie.

  Patrice is the girl who’s staying over, said Linda. In the old room.

  Patrice is my girlfriend, yeah, said Julie.

  She had put her hands on her hips; she took them off quickly. And she watched Linda’s face, this once-in-a-lifetime expression she was about to see.

  Linda looked at her, squinted at her, like there was some visible mark on her. Her eyes darted up—short hair—darted down—long pants, boots.

  She’s your girlfriend, said Linda. Okay. So do you love her?

  Of course, said Julie. She folded her hands tightly across her ribs, so that they hurt.

  That’s bad, said Linda. It’s better if you don’t really love someone. It’s less complicated, in the end.

  She sat down at the table. Julie watched her for a while, smoking with her face in her hands. She had a pointy chin, that same hay-bale texture to her hair in the morning. She had the same hazel eyes as Julie.