Drea was a poet in residence at NYU when she met Ramesh at a faculty dinner. As his pick-up line, he told her that the written word was dead. Even then, he compulsively pissed people off. Trina’s the same way. She never intends to offend anybody; stuff just bursts out of her mouth. Half the time, she doesn’t even realize she’s thinking it.
Turned out, Trina’s parents belonged together, because instead of getting mad, Drea agreed. “Yeah, books are dead,” Drea said. “So what does that make me for writing poems? Better yet, what does that make you?”
But Drea hasn’t written a poem in a decade. Now that everybody self-broadcasts audio poems, she says it’s like genius and madness; there are so many voice that you can’t tell anymore, which is which.
“Why was the door open? Was someone here?” Trina asks.
Out the window, she sees a fire on 78th Street. The Jackson Diner is burning. She smells scorched Indian food, which is a better smell than usual. On the television split screen, ten people are competing to be the best art critics. They look at photos of paintings scavenged from the Louvre and say whether they’re any good. Then the judges tell them if they’re right, or if the paintings are crap. The second channel is that show with Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara, where instead of breaking up, they get back together. The last channel is their still kitchen. Drea is watching their apartment on channel 9.53256. Suddenly all three programs are interrupted, and Trina moans. It better not be another evacuation. She only just got rid of the lice in her hair from the last time she had to stay at the 48th Street Shelter.
The President comes on screen. He’s smiling. He’s had a lot of cosmetic surgery, so he looks just like Brick’s brother, Brett Jensen. Or maybe he is Brett Jenson. She can’t remember.
Remember me, she hears in her mind, like the President is saying it. Her head hurts bad. She misses the morphine. I worry about Lulu, she thinks, and she knows the thought is not new. The doctor’s cure never works for long.
“Good evening,” the President says, like he’s fancy. Everybody else says, “Hey, America!” Then he reminds everyone about Patriot Day. “I’ve got a special surprise,” he says, and Drea claps her hands together like it’s Ex-Mass morning. “At dusk on Patriot Day, every city in this great country will launch a FIRE WORKS SPECTACULAR!” he announces. Then he itemizes the cities: Seattle, Santa Fe, Portland, Boston, New York. He doesn’t mention Los Angeles or New Orleans, which makes her think they’re still at war for earthquake and flood remuneration. She can never remember who the war is with, because it changes so often.
“Ummm,” her mother says like she’s hungry. “I love all those pretty explosions.”
“We have explosions every feckin’ day, Drea!” Trina reminds her, but it doesn’t do much good. Brett Jenson (the President?) has a dimpled smile, which for some reason makes her remember the word soul. A little girl with no hands is haunting her. She looks at her own hands now and notices that she’s been biting them. Teeth indentations are embedded like welts along her fingers.
“Why’s the door open? Where’s Dad?” she asks.
Drea sits up from the couch and looks at Trina like she doesn’t recognize her.
“Think,” Trina says. “Where was the last place you saw him?”
Drea furrows her brow. Her fingers are swollen from all the video typing. She’s supposed to use voice prompt, but she prefers typing because it reminds her of writing. Old people! “I saw him on the television?” Drea asks.
Trina starts to get quivery lower lip. She wants to hit her mom all of a sudden, which makes her even more like her dad, maybe. “Did he go to work this morning? The door is open.”
“Oh,” Drea says, and slides back into the couch. “Somebody took him, then.”
“So where is he?”
She doesn’t answer. The President signs off, and new shows start. Their theme songs all sound the same. They plan it that way, so when you’re watching a bunch of shows at once it’s never discordant.
“I’m lonely, baby. Why don’t you come sit with me?” Drea asks, and Trina would like that. They’ll share a blanket and kiss toes like they used to. Trina will tell her mother what she did, and her mother will forgive her. Together, they’ll figure out what to do. But Trina doesn’t sit, because things have changed, and nothing’s the way it used to be.
On one of the programs, a dark-skinned girl with brown hair and deep circles under her eyes is standing in a dark, dingy room. Flickering lights cast shadows against her face. On the couch beneath the girl, a sickly thin woman lays stretched out and half-sleeping. It’s weird, because television stars are supposed to be skinny and tan, not a bunch of ugg-os. Then she figures is out. It’s her. It’s right now. This is her life. The Committee for Ethical Media has added another camera.
In her room, she switches to channels 9.53256 and 9.53257, then presses rewind. She sighs with relief. The reverse record is working. She plays the tapes backward, and sees herself wiping tears from her eyes while talking to her mother on the couch. Was she crying? She doesn’t remember that, though she notices now that her eyes are still wet.
She sees stillness. Her mother in the dark with the shades drawn, moving only to swallow vitamins and breathe. Then her dad with each arm held by an officer of the CEM, walking backward into the kitchen. They wrestle a little. Her dad is on the floor. One of the men hits him on the back of the head. But then they all get up again. They let him go, and walk backward out the apartment. The door closes, and it is Dad chewing toast into existence. She wishes it had happened like that.
She uses a long metal prong to pull out the old filter. It’s black with soot. Then she replaces it with a clean one and tries not to gag. It’s small until it fills with air. Then it expands. Her dad says it’s the ultra-fine particles you have to worry about. They get into the deep lungs, where there isn’t any hair or phlegm to carry them back out. Nobody at school uses filters. They’re expensive. Ramesh steals them from the lab. There’s like, fifty hidden behind the false wall panel in her bedroom.
As she walks, she remembers. She’s not supposed to, but she can’t help it. First came the cold table, and then the blinking eye. And then the slap against her cheek and the echo of her voice, as it was recorded. She puts her hand in her mouth and bites down until she draws blood, but it doesn’t make her feel any better: her father. She told, and now he’s gone.
The main branch of Committee for Ethical Media is at the old library near Bryant Park in Manhattan. A guard at the subway station orders her to spread her legs, because it looks like she’s hiding a bomb up there. He loses interest when she tells him she’s got antibiotic-resistant syphilis. After an hour, the F train never shows, because the 59th Street Bridge is closed due to bomb threat. She hikes it north over the Triborough, then grabs the 6 Train downtown. By the time she gets to the CEM, it’s night, but the city is lit up so bright it feels like day.
She takes a number and waits. The woman sitting next to her is wearing a trash bag. This time, it’s white and lemon scented, so slightly less offensive. She falls asleep for a while. When she wakes it’s morning, and her number is three spots away. They call her name. She’s up in a flash.
“Ramesh Narayan?” she asks.
A woman punches something into a computer. “Rammy Naran? Nope. Next!”
“No, wait. You spelled it wrong. Here.” The woman enters the name again. Then she frowns. “Cremated or buried?”
Trina tries not to hear this. She tries very hard. There is something bad on her tongue. Bile, maybe. “No. He was taken in for voluntary questioning.”
“So it says.” Then she leans over the counter. She is wheezing badly, and her backpack is hissing like a bum who got stabbed. “Heart attack during interrogation,” she answers. “Cremation or burial?”
Trina’s tries to think, but the words don’t make sense. She’s not sure they’re English. Her hand is in her mouth and she’s biting hard. It tastes like salt. “I love my dad,” she mumbles. “And he loves
me.”
“Which? Your insurance covers both,” the woman says. Her backpack is gasping.
Trina thinks about the cold bottle against her cheek. The bruise is still tender, and she touches it now, and pushes hard until it hurts. She’d like it to reverse heal. She’d like to wear the scar for the rest of her life. “It’s a mistake,” she says. “He was going to get us out. I made a mistake.”
The woman shakes her head. “You’re right. There was a mistake.”
Trina’s crying all of a sudden, from relief. “Yes! I knew! They only took him for questioning.” She’s holding onto the counter, because otherwise she’ll fall. “Daddy!” she shouts, “Daddy, where are you?” because maybe he’ll hear her voice in one of the interrogation rooms, and know that she came all the way from Queens to rescue him. He’ll know she’s sorry.
The woman grabs hold of Trina’s wrist like a lobster catching prey. Her grip clamps tighter when Trina tries to shake her off. “We couldn’t find next of kin. So the CEM already incinerated him. That’s the mistake. He’s still dead, kid. Now shut your mouth before the guards arrest you for making a racket.” Then she lets go, and places a bar-coded ticket on the counter. “You can pick him up at that address.”
“No,” Trina says. “That’s wrong. Ramesh Narayan. Before the war he gave lectures all over the country. He was an important man.”
“The ticket,” the woman says, only Trina sees that she’s not mad, just tired. Her lips are almost blue from lack of oxygen. “Sure, maybe it’s a mistake, but that’s where you’ll find out.”
Trina looks down at her shoes. In her mind a bomb explodes at her feet. It makes a hole opens up, and swallow her. The girl left standing in the CEM lobby is just a shell. Made of tubes and plastic surgery. A confection of the doctor. Sweet and stupid as cotton candy.
She’s panting and wet with sweat by the time she jogs the forty blocks downtown to the East Village. If she could she’d run forever, but the building’s name comes into view: City Morgue. She stands in front of it for a long while, catching her breath.
Unlike in Jackson Heights, a lot of people in Manhattan don’t have mechanical lungs. Instead they’re zipped inside big plastic bubbles equipped with molecular air generators. They’re skinny and they dress in high heels, even the men. They look like a different species. As they pass the front of the building, she thinks about poking holes in their generators. The air will leak slowly, and then they’ll start coughing, just like everybody else.
Once inside the building, she exchanges her ticket for a number, and waits. After a while a guy with no teeth hands her a Styrofoam urn. She’s not sure it’s her dad, but there’s a picture burned into the side. In it, Ramesh is wearing his tan work suit. His dead eyes are closed.
She’d like to eat the urn. That way she’ll never forget. There were the animals that died in his lab. Little spotted mice with pink tongues. They couldn’t survive the debris. There are buildings that fall. The third world war in the last twenty years. There is her mother, who used to laugh. There is her best friend Lulu. They blend together. They coalesce, like mercury. Like morphine. They bathe her. She is bathed in death.
Perhaps she’ll run from here, and never stop. There is Canada, like her dad planned. But would they really have gotten there? Or would Patriot Day have come with blood and fireworks, and then gone gently, into another day? She knows the answer, and for once it makes her think no less of him. He would have anesthetized his new port with vodka, and after a visit or two to the doctor, he’d have become just like everyone else. There was no plan for escape. There was only rage and talk. But these were better than nothing.
I won’t forget, she whispers, and she knows she should say it to the ashes, but she can’t bring herself to open the urn.
She walks the whole way, and doesn’t get home until the next morning. Her feet are bleeding. Squish-squish.
When she walks inside, Drea is on the couch. She’s been sneaking extra visits to the doctor, and Trina can tell from her dilated blue eyes that she saw him recently.
She puts the ashes on the table. The television is tuned to four channels. This time there is a view of the neighbor’s apartment. The weird guy is having sex with his daughter. Drea is sad about that, so she’s hiding her face. Trina can’t figure out if it’s really happening, or a programmed show
She turns off the television. “This is Dad,” she says.
Drea is quiet. She knows she’s supposed to explain, but she doesn’t know how. She can’t help it; she laughs. This is Dad, light as a feather. This is my hand, covered in open sores.
Drea examines the photo, and then opens the Styrofoam top. “If this is your father, what does that make me?” she asks.
When she wakes the next morning, she can’t help it. She forgets she was supposed to remember. She spies Drea running her fingers through the ashes, and goes on automatic pilot. She calls the doctor. He can’t squeeze her in until tonight. She uses Lulu’s name. She figures Lulu won’t care. It’s all for a good cause. Just the thought of the needle makes her skin tingle. She can’t wait for the needle.
Remember me.
Drea is playing the television so loud that it gives her a headache, so even though she’d rather stay home, she walks to school. It’s Patriot Day, so everyone is wearing maroon and orange. In her black jeans and t-shirt, Trina sticks out like a bloody thumb. There aren’t any classes, just lines of people waiting to sit on gurneys in the auditorium, and get their free ports. Along the aisles, they’re handing out Tang juice and Fluff sandwiches.
In her mind she tears the ports from kids’ skulls and watches them bleed. She tears out her own port, too. Up on the podium, the seniors are giving speeches to the underclassmen: “Before my port I wasn’t sure, but now I know I’m happy!” “The Doctor makes everything better.” “This will be the best day of your life.”
But then Hitler interrupts the testimonials for a special announcement. Something about a pep rally and bonfire tonight after the fireworks. He wants people to bring things to burn. She stops listening until she hears Lulu’s name. She’s been hiding from Lulu all day, because if she sees her, it’ll make what happened to her father real, instead of a dream. She’ll have to talk about it. She’ll have to say his name.
Hitler Lite continues. “Complications of the complication on the complication,” he says. Blah blah blah. “Let’s bow our heads for a moment, in memory of Lulu Walker.”
Her face goes red. It’s so hot she’s sweating. She doesn’t stay to hear any more. She’s out the door.
She knows she shouldn’t be here. She promised she wouldn’t come. She hates him. Then again, she’s got no place else to go. “Emergency,” she tells the nurse in pleather and vinyl. “I have to see the doctor. Lulu Walker.”
She takes a ticket. The woman sitting next to her is wearing a sheet. She’s shaking like she needs a fix real bad. Trina doesn’t look too closely, because the woman is Drea.
She closes her eyes and thinks about the trickle through her veins. She thinks about emptiness. She thinks about the filter in her lungs full of ashes. The dead are all around her. She is breathing them. And still the buildings topple while the televisions sing.
—Remember me.
—Why? It hurts too much.
“Lulu Walker?” the nurse calls, and she’s up in a flash.
Needles inserted. Blood squirted. She lays down. White eye to red to green, she begins. “I worry about the speed of things. I worry you murdered my dad. I murdered my dad. I worry he was right all along, only I hated him so much I didn’t see it. I worry this war will never end. It’s just a lie to keep us stupid.”
Her voice echoes. It’s being recorded. They’ll think its Lulu, probably.
“Continue,” it tells her, and she finally recognizes the voice. It’s the same lady on “Will Brick Jensen Get Laid?!?” who says that sports are for lesbians and stupid people.
The morphine tingles in her arm. She starts forgetting even though t
he doctor hasn’t entered her port yet. The treatment is finally working, she realizes. It’s not brain damage they’re after. Everybody remembers eventually, no matter how often they’re adjusted. The doctor isn’t the cure. It’s self-regulation. It’s forgetting with the snap of a finger, the promise of a tingle in the arm. Forgetting in the anticipation of pleasure. Forgetting because it’s easier, and you’re tired of fighting, when everyday things get worse, instead of better. It’s learning to be your own doctor. That’s what Patriot Day is all about.
“Continue,” the woman repeats. She’s been paid for her voice, of course. An actress. They do it all the time. Trina thinks she’s going to laugh, but instead she is crying as the morphine drips. It doesn’t feel good this time; it just feels sick.
Lulu is dead. Her father is dead. Even the living are dead. The laser begins to shoot, and her father is disappearing. The machine is killing her father. Beanpole with dark circles. They used to swing their feet on the bench in Westchester, side-by-side. The memory disappears. Burned away. She searches for it, but it’s gone. Next goes the bathtub, where he taught her to swim. Gone. She is killing her father. She is a murderer. The doctor is a murderer.
She pulls the needle like a plug. Precious morphine drips. She unlocks the port. Click. Then she’s kicking the machine. She’s beating it senseless with her bitten and scarred hands, because two days ago Ramesh was here. Two days ago, even though he knew she would betray him, he was waiting for her. He loved her. She punches and kicks, until the Cyclops eye shatters. Then she pops the needle inside its gaping wound. The morphine wets the wires, and the doctor’s lights go out.
Mister October - Volume Two Page 25
