by Joe Meno
At a dinner party, a young woman mentions to Mr. Larchmont that her pet cat is lost. It must be hiding somewhere in the apartment, or so the young woman suggests. Mr. Larchmont frowns, staring at the young woman’s face. He touches the wrist of the lovely hostess, scurries off, and soon returns with his miniature elephant. The entire party is amused as they travel down the hall to the young woman’s apartment. Mr. Larchmont places the miniature elephant on the soft gray carpet and pets its forehead gently. The animal stumbles about at first, happily taking interest in the young woman’s white orchids, and then slowly, sadly, it turns, small step after step, drawing closer to the woman’s gray sofa. The elephant lifts its trunk for a moment, sniffing about, and then becomes still, an old drawing of itself.
Mr. Larchmont frowns.
The young woman lets out a nervous laugh.
—Of course I looked under the sofa, she says.
Mr. Larchmont says nothing.
—Of course I looked under there.
The young woman takes to her knees and searches beneath the sofa.
—See, there’s nothing there.
Mr. Larchmont kneels beside the woman and feels around. It is empty. He turns and stares at the miniature elephant, who sits unmoved, its head sadly bowing.
The young woman, upset now, searches beneath the sofa one more time.
—Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no.
The young woman feels about and finds a small hole, a tear in the bottom of the sofa.
—Oh no. She used to climb up inside there when she was a kitten. She … Mr. Larchmont frowns, gently lifting the miniature elephant, carefully placing it within his pocket. The young woman begins to sob. The cocktail party is quickly over.
* * *
The miniature elephant may remain sad for many days: After discovering the missing cat, it will not eat for a week. Mr. Larchmont offers it a miniature head of lettuce, but the elephant only frowns, blinking its great blue eyes, turning on its other side in Mr. Larchmont’s bureau drawer. After a week of listlessness and a general ennui, Mr. Larchmont takes the animal to the vet.
—He looks very sad, the vet says.
—That’s what I thought too, says Mr. Larchmont.
—Did he come across any other dead animals lately? That will put them in terrible humors.
—He did, as a matter of fact.
—Oh no, that’s no good at all. It can kill them.
—It can kill them? Mr. Larchmont asks.
—Sure, sure. They’re very sensitive, the vets says. You have to be careful not to let them get depressed or, well—here he whispers—it can kill them.
—Then what can I do for him?
—You have to cheer him up. You have to cheer him up or he’ll stop eating altogether.
—Okay, Mr. Larchmont says. Well then, how do I cheer him up?
—Here, the vet says. He reaches into his white smock and removes a small red rubber ball. This should do the trick.
The rubber ball does wonders for the miniature elephant: It soon forgets the sadness of death lurking in the quiet corners of every room, every building, every city. Mr. Larchmont is careful when they stroll about town: He avoids cemeteries, hospitals, fancy restaurants where rare steaks are served. The miniature elephant seems to return to good humors and Mr. Larchmont, strolling behind, smiles as it splashes beside a leaky fire hydrant, blowing a trunk full of water into the summertime air.
—Carry on, Mr. Larchmont says. Enjoy yourself, dear friend.
A girl from the city goes missing suddenly: Mr. Larchmont reads the news and stares sadly at the youngster’s picture in the paper. The girl has short brown hair and a white bow above her left ear.
—Oh no. What a terrible world, Mr. Larchmont says, reading the story for the third time.
Strolling about the city that afternoon, the miniature elephant instinctively leads Mr. Larchmont near the apartment building where the missing girl was last seen. The structure is gray brick, the shades of its windows all drawn closed, its façade a weepy face.
—Oh no, my dear friend. We ought to turn now and alter course.
But the miniature elephant pays no heed to Mr. Larchmont’s words, stumbling on, slowing with each step, until Mr. Larchmont and his pet stand near a cordoned-off area peopled by policemen, onlookers, and busybodies. The miniature elephant ignores the nervous crowd, trampling right past their feet.
—Oh dear, Mr. Larchmont mutters.
The elephant pauses, its small gray trunk curled in a knot. It begins to fuss and sniff about, its blue eyes blinking excitedly as a well-shined loafer belonging to a police officer hurries by. The elephant pauses again, then takes off at a clip, Mr. Larchmont breathing quickly to keep up.
—Dear friend, he calls. Dear friend, do wait.
But the miniature elephant cannot: With its small, column-shaped legs it canters along, its tiny ears flapping with each miniature gallop. Up the boulevard, down the avenue, around a corner, Mr. Larchmont holds his black bowler atop his head, nearly tripping over his umbrella. He follows his tiny pet about the city until he sees, just up ahead, that the miniature elephant has stopped at the entrance to an abandoned doll factory: The tendrils of strange-looking, angular shadows lurk gravely within. The miniature elephant is standing completely still, its ears drooping sadly.
—Oh no. Oh dear, Mr. Larchmont says.
Through the broken glass and boarded-up doors, Mr. Larchmont quietly climbs: The miniature elephant is trembling in his pocket as he disappears into the fog of the gloomy dark. The widower’s best shoes sink in the heavy dust, his hands grasping at the rusted limbs of old machines: Somewhere beneath a thatch of crossed iron beams, somewhere in the desolate formations of red and green and gray, Mr. Larchmont stumbles upon a pair of tiny black Mary Janes. His breath immediately goes dull. There is a doll beside it missing its head, lying next to a formidable stack of great white boxes. The boxes explode with life as Mr. Larchmont approaches, a flurry of scurrying rats scatter about.
—Oh dear.
Mr. Larchmont’s knees are shaking wildly as he trundles on, spotting an enormous vat, and beside it a deep exhaust shaft, which glows and echoes with eerie green light. Mr. Larchmont stops, his heart beating as quickly as the miniature elephant’s, one large thump followed by a thump one thousand times smaller in size. Together, however, the thumps muddle on. Mr. Larchmont finds his way to the grimy edge of the shaft, and gripping a metal support beam, he peers down. There is nothing: only black. Too slowly, his old eyes adjust to the light, and several small shapes begin to drift into place. The shaft is filled with hundreds and hundreds of tiny dolls, their blue eyes flashing up in sorrow. Mr. Larchmont places his hand beside his mouth and shouts into the darkness.
—Hello? Hello?
What he hears in response is only the factory watching him quietly.
Perhaps it would be best if we paused here. Perhaps if we consider the sound of the city as it whispers in unfamiliar shadows behind us, we could stand here and become silent, counting the moments of our lifetimes with the heartbeats on our wrists. We could wait, lost in the city, in this quiet, in this silence. We may come to know the sound of one particular second. We may take this moment to stop and wonder what will become of us after our deaths.
The factory begins to grow darker still.
Mr. Larchmont calls out. There is no reply but an echo.
—Hello? he calls once more.
Only silence again.
Mr. Larchmont peers, blinking hard, down into the dark, then holding his breath, he is sure he can hear something whimpering.
—Hello! he shouts. Hello! Is anyone down there?
A pebble moves. A sound rises like a tiny insect trying not to weep.
—Hello?
—Yes? comes an eek, from what may be the smallest voice in the world.
—Is someone down there?
—Yes, comes the answer. I am. And I am scared.
Old Mr. Larchmont, joyous, darting from the we
ll like a madman, is crashing through the factory, his legs and neck aching with panic as he very nearly collapses. Somewhere, oh he must hurry now, somewhere there is help. He staggers out toward the boulevard, the boarded-up doors parting before him, A policeman, if only I can spot a policeman, if only a policeman, and as he stumbles about, the city rising before him, he notices that the sound of his pulse in his head, middle, and wrist, is now, sadly, hurrying on alone. He places his hand beside his suit coat pocket and is startled by its stillness. He chokes back a startled sob, unable to breathe. The miniature elephant in his pocket, as strange a weight as the heart in his chest, is dead.
People in the city, reading the newspaper headlines that evening, elect to fund a miniature statue in tribute to the tiny elephant. In the paper later that week, there is a photograph of the monument beside a photo of the girl smiling, her face bandaged, lying in a hospital bed. The monument for the elephant is only four inches high and is placed before the city’s oldest bakery, accompanied by a miniature plaster cake. Pigeons nest near the monument and children, often curious, put the miniature elephant in all of their chalk drawings.
THE BOY WHO WAS A CHIRPING ORIOLE
illustration by
Archer Prewitt
The Boy Who Was a Chirping Oriole Firework was my son first. We do appreciate the cards and gifts and letters. We do not care much for what the scientists have to say. I hate them generally. I hate the scientists who use the word impossible like a knot. On our own, we have struck a bargain with Life and are usually pretty happy, as is our boy, so I am here to say once and for all that FIREWORKS ARE OK: THEY ARE GENERALLY SAFE. We feel that fireworks are a necessary and important part of American life. We do not blame Starling® Fireworks, who have been my employer for fourteen years, or the fireworks industry in general. Bobby, our son, the boy who is now a firework, still loves fireworks more than anything. It is the only time, lighting them off, that he becomes remotely visible to us.
Here are some of Bobby’s favorite Starling® fireworks:
Pearl of the Orient Fountain
Item#: H-106
This fountain, small but loaded, is one of our nicest! It features fiery jewels of color accompanied by loud whistles and lots of crackle. This particular fountain was one of my son Bobby’s favorites. He would count each exploding pearl as it turned to purple smoke in the fading sky above our heads. One summer, when he was five, he counted up to fifty. Then he ran to me and thanked me and said he was having the best summer ever. A Starling® exclusive!
Giant Cuckoo Fountain
Item#: H-110
A crackling fountain with golden spray and screaming-whistle effect. Six pieces per pack. By the time Bobby was ten, we began to notice a kind of phosphorescence to his pale white skin. Sometimes, when we would stand close together, him staring up at me, watching me light one of these lovely fountains, I could almost see right through him, like he was made of nothing but the night.
Golden Gate Spectacular
Item#: H-105
Voted the best fountain for gorgeous color three years in row. This favorite features red, gold, and silver sparks. Bobby was watching one of these beautiful fountains the first time he began to glow. I put a blanket around him and his mother phoned an ambulance, but by the time they arrived, he looked fine. Still, we should have known better. We should have asked better questions or made them take him to the hospital. It wasn’t more than a day or two later that he began to vanish, but slowly, phantom limb by limb.
Golden Pine Fountain
Item#: H-103
Begins with an explosion of golden and silver sparks, which look a lot like pine needles. This is followed by golden pops and long-lasting, tree-shaped sparks. Bobby could not go to school because of his skin, the glowing. So he would come with me to the warehouse and I would let him light off whatever fireworks he liked, which were usually these Golden Pine Fountains. He would often cover his ears and shout along with the loud, screeching sounds of this award-winning firework, stamping his feet with glee. Soon, parts of him—his hands and feet and knees—would momentarily disappear while he was shouting.
Silver Salute Firecrackers
Item#: F-107
LARGEST available by law! 20,000-count strip of our loudest firecrackers. One night, Bobby disappeared completely. His mother was panicked, but what I did was light one of these 20,000 strips of Silver Salutes, and as the tiny explosions echoed in the dark, we could see a faint outline of our boy clapping his hand, smiling back at us, stamping his feet.
Whistling Gemini Missile
Item#: L-101
New, astounding twenty-inch missile with a variety of effects at the highest point of the rocket’s path. Ten pieces per bag. We soon figured out that Bobby had become a firework. We also figured out which fireworks he loved and which could bring him back. He is always with us, just not so visible. We are proud to say Bobby’s favorite fireworks of all time are these Whistling Geminis. They are the only rockets bright enough to light up the freckles on his fading face.
Chirping Oriole Roman Candle
Item#: C-015A
Eight incredibly noisy screaming meteors with red and silver tails. This one is always a favorite! Bobby, where are you now? Where do you go when you are not here with us? When these chirping comets cry out, we have to imagine they are your voice. We imagine you are telling us that you love us and that you know we love you no matter what.
About then we are going to the movies once a week just to be outraged. We pick the worst-looking film of the bunch, a romantic comedy with some scandal-afflicted star or a z-grade horror pic, whatever Sophie wants, and then, after a few moments of watching, we begin shouting our displeasure before we finally storm out. We ask for our money back. We demand to see the manager. We threaten to write angry letters. We dream up imaginary offenses. We begin carrying on like this everywhere we go—inventing outrages for everything. At a record store, Sophie declares that the vinyl is too overpriced. On the bus, she refuses to pay the fare because we have been forced to wait in the rain. We have fun acting like this, acting like we are incredibly offended. Really, we are just bored to tears with everything.
Which is about when Sophie finds out she’s pregnant. It isn’t exactly a secret, as Sophie is very bad at secrets and anyone can tell as soon as you look at her. She smiles way too often when she’s got something she wants to say, her loopy Russian eyebrows arching up her wide forehead. Once the terror starts to fade, once we’re definitely sure we’re going through with it, we begin telling everyone, people we don’t even like, people who only moments before were total strangers. We are both in our late twenties and done daydreaming and ready to behave like adults. I quit the underground art magazine where I have been working and get a boring 9-to-5 as a designer at a glossy journal—one whose quiet layouts are dedicated to the anonymous world of wood—while Sophie, who is some fancy artist’s assistant, is finally given decent medical insurance. Of course, her parents offer to help us move into a nicer apartment, but we say we are all right, and thank them anyway. It feels like we will be okay. It feels like we are holding hands everywhere we are going.
The only problem is that Sophie doesn’t act like she’s pregnant. When I ask her when she plans on slowing down, when it is she’s going to begin to act like she’s having a baby, she just looks at me funny and shrugs, rolling her eyes, and then tells me to kiss off. Her hair is long and dark and she has a beauty mark just above her lip, and when she shrugs it makes you feel small and stupid for ever troubling her about anything. When I come home at night, she is usually not there. She is out, at some noisy gallery opening with her boss, Marisol—the Russian artist who does enormous paintings of angry female genitalia—or she is dancing with her younger cousin, who’s just moved here from Minsk to become a model. Everything Sophie wears, from her tight T-shirts, which reveal her lovely midriff, to her knock-off designer jeans, so tight you don’t need any kind of imagination to see what’s going on there, all of it stays
exactly the same.
Sophie says she’ll quit smoking but not drinking. She says her boss Marisol never quit drinking when she was pregnant. Not more than thirty seconds later the phone rings, and even before Sophie hands it to me I know who it is. “I drank all the time when I was pregnant,” Marisol hisses, her voice as deep as some Russian general’s. “Who do you think knows more about having babies, you or me?”
I go into the Gold Star, this bar around the corner from us, and tell them that if they serve Sophie there will be serious consequences. I ask my friend who was a police officer last year for Halloween to escort me, in hopes that they will be fooled by his plastic-looking badge. I go to the bodega at the end of the block and tell the guys there not to sell Sophie any more alcohol. They look at me and laugh and then give me some free lottery tickets because they feel bad for me.
A week later, Sophie talks to a woman she has just met on the subway and decides she does not want to chance it. She decides it is time to finally quit drinking. We put a number of half-empty liquor bottles in a box and leave them on the corner and in the morning it is like magic when we find that they have been emptied.
When I look at her now, it doesn’t even seem like she’s pregnant. She just looks very sure of herself, like she knows something you don’t know, like she might keep you guessing about that something forever. The only thing that does seem to change is our music. Sophie sells all of our old records and says she only wants to hear bands from the British Invasion. She has bought the collected recordings of Nick Drake. “No more French dance music, no more hardcore,” she says. No more post-core, no more new-new wave. That night, we lie in bed together and listen to “The Thoughts of Mary Jane.” I stare at Sophie’s body, tiny freckles appearing in places I have never noticed before. I try to count them all but there are just too many and she has become too beautiful and staring at her is now like staring at a star moments before it supernovas, destroying just about everything.
