The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t even have time to get dressed!” She appealed to him with the unfairness of it. Her mouth gaped and she labored to breathe. He couldn’t tell if she was woozy from a gas leak or if it was just distressed vanity.

  Conner said, “Maybe you should sit down.” There was nowhere to sit. “Did you want me to go in and check, see if I can find anything?”

  “Be careful! Don’t turn on any lights, it can spark an explosion!”

  He went in through the kitchen. He smelled cat piss, not gas. The smell rose up and ballooned inside his head. She must be so used to it, she could detect some other, different stink on top of it. Conner looked around him, not finding anything in the way of a gas leak or anything of value he could lay hands on. He took a few quick steps into the den, feeling thickheaded from the smell. There was a way in which the room did not match up with the room in his memory, and a way in which it did. He turned, blundered into a wall, and walked back through the kitchen and outside.

  An orange PG&E truck was just pulling up in the driveway, and a worker in a vest and helmet got out. Mrs. Foster—he had forgotten the name, but it would come back to him soon enough—was telling the worker the details and urgencies of the situation. Conner waited. He had an unreasoning fear that she would drop dead, and it would be his fault.

  The PG&E guy walked around the house to investigate. “It’ll be all right,” Conner told her, although he didn’t know that.

  Mrs. Foster stuck her hands in the pockets of her bathrobe, pulled out a pair of eyeglasses, and settled them over her nose. “What if the house blows up?” she asked plaintively.

  “It won’t.”

  “Well you sound very sure of yourself.” She contemplated him. “Do I know you?”

  “No ma’am. But I’m glad I was in the neighborhood and could help.”

  She looked him over again, either trying to remember him or trying to fit him into a recognizable category, but she didn’t say anything more. They waited for the PG&E guy to finish. Conner wondered about the cats. He hadn’t remembered cats.

  The PG&E guy came back out and said there was a pilot light out on the water heater, that was the only thing he could find, there was a lot of pet hair blocking the oxygen feed and he’d cleaned it away. He said this without seeming to criticize or draw conclusions. It was probably the sort of job where you saw all kinds of things.

  They watched him back his truck down the drive. “Well if that isn’t mortifying,” Mrs. Foster said. “All that fuss over a water heater.”

  “You didn’t know what it was.”

  “My husband always took care of the house things.”

  Conner said nothing. She turned to look at him again, her eyes magnified and swimming behind the lenses of her glasses. “And what exactly were you doing in my yard?”

  “Actually,” Conner said, and it was another too-late moment, a step through another sort of doorway, “actually, I was looking for work.”

  The next day he went to a health club that was advertising free trial memberships, filled out a guest pass with a name not his own, and stole two wallets and an iPhone from some unlocked lockers.

  And so he had gone to work for Mrs. Foster, and the vet allowed him to set up a payment plan for the rest of what he owed, and things were all right now but not really. He told Mrs. Foster enough about his father and his father’s situation and his own situation to enlist her sympathy, while also managing to suggest that he was holding back because of the exquisitely painful nature of it all. Mrs. Foster’s capacity for sympathy was a bubbling spring, a geyser barely capped, and it was not difficult to siphon enough of it off to work to his benefit.

  He admired her generosity; he also felt a contempt for how easily she could be manipulated. He was ashamed of his talent for ingratiating himself, even as he had every intention of continuing to do so. He felt protective of Mrs. Foster, of her bouts of frailty and distress, she was useful to him, she annoyed him. His dealings with her were in large part motivated by self-interest and in some smaller part by dread, guilt, obligation, and wanting to do the right thing, and all the people she brought around who kept trying to figure out the definition of humanity? That was it right there.

  Mrs. Foster delighted in coming up with large and small chores for him. He planted shrubs and replaced the worn stair tread. He cleaned up cat mess and built gates and pens to contain them in the basement. He liked cats, in general, but he did not like these cats. He could be entrusted with lists of supplies to purchase, and more involved transactions that required negotiations with tradespeople. He helped her do battle with the new computer her daughters had insisted on buying for her. “It’s too complicated, it won’t let me do anything.”

  “It just looks different from what you’re used to.” What she had been used to was a ten-year-old PC.

  “I told everybody at the Foundation, if there’s something I’m supposed to know, type it up and put it in an envelope.”

  “Now that’s just being a quitter,” Conner said, in a pretend-scolding tone. He knew by now what he could and couldn’t get away with around her.

  “Young man,” Mrs. Foster said, pretending to be severe, enjoying every minute, “when I make up my mind to quit, I don’t expect to be talked out of it.”

  She liked having some company in the house, she said, someone to help her with all those things she tended to fuss about. She said she didn’t know what to pay him, he was going to have to help her with that too, and Conner said he didn’t know, he guessed whatever she had in mind would be all right. Instinct told him it would be best to be vague here. She made special trips to her bank in order to have clean twenties and fifties to hand over to him, always with a hesitation as she did so, always adding one more bill and asking him, is that all right, is that enough?

  There were times he felt he was taking advantage of her, and times it felt the other way around.

  He didn’t steal from her, unless being overpaid was stealing. He told her that he was saving money for college, which was not a lie unless he never went. He still did the occasional odd job for other people. It seemed like a good idea for him to have somewhere else to be once in a while. Between paying off the vet and giving money to his dad, there wasn’t any huge amount left to him. He held on to what he could. He didn’t steal, but honesty was a luxury he wasn’t yet sure he could afford.

  He used to believe that he would grow up in pretty much the same way everyone else did, the same way all his friends went about it. At the end of high school you were propelled into the next phase, like an exit on the highway that shot you in a certain direction, and then it was a matter of choosing lanes (work, school, what work, what school), and your choice carried you forward without much further effort. Now he saw that you couldn’t count on moving forward. He could end up like his dad, just going along and going along and never much thinking about things until all of a sudden life did something unforgiving to you, and made you realize you were old.

  “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” Mrs. Foster asked him straight out, when she was in one of her playful moods. “A good-looking young man like you.”

  “I don’t have time for one.”

  “Nonsense. There’s always time for that.”

  “It’s OK, really.” He liked her better when she didn’t try so hard to be pals.

  “Are you shy? Girls always warm up to the shy ones.”

  No, he wasn’t shy. He watched the girls who drove around town wearing their sunglasses and trailing bright bits of music, he watched the joggers in ponytails and shorts and bra tops, he beat off in the shower as he fucked them again and again, their legs pushed apart and dangling, their pink faces wincing. He wasn’t shy but he didn’t know how to get from watching to fucking. He would have scared them if he’d tried. There was meant to be conversation and flirting and some effort made, and he didn’t care
to make the effort, or he’d forgotten how. He couldn’t bring himself to talk about all the small and meaningless things girls required to prove you were paying them attention.

  He hadn’t even noticed the girl behind him in line at the Mexican place where he sometimes bought lunch. He was waiting for them to call his number when she walked over and said, “So I guess you liked the burritos.”

  “What?”

  “He doesn’t remember,” she remarked, as if to a watching audience, although there was no one with her and no one paying attention.

  “Oh, hi.” She had red hair now. “Yeah, good burritos.”

  She took a step toward him and regarded him as if he was something hung on a wall, a picture, or maybe a bus schedule. “What did you do to your hair?”

  They called his number then and he picked up his food. When he turned around the girl managed to be in his way without looking like she was trying to. “Wait for me, OK?”

  He didn’t have to but he did. When she had picked up her own food, Conner said, “Looks like you did a number on your hair too.”

  She raised a hand to flick the hair away from her eyes. The red color was a little faded, some of the dye rinsed out. “This is my natural color. Didn’t you have some weird name?”

  “Conner. Yours was weirder.” He remembered hers all right, Eowyn. But he didn’t want to admit to it if she had forgotten his.

  She shook her head. “I’m kind of between names right now. You want to sit down?”

  He’d been intending to eat in the truck, but instead found an empty table. They sat across from each other and started in on their food. He was able to look her over, make up his mind about her. The hair was sort of freaky, but she was wearing ordinary clothes, jeans and a T-shirt. The skin of her face was pale for the end of summer, and she’d drawn smudged black crayon around her eyes. She saw him looking. “What?”

  “Why do you put that black stuff on your eyes?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No. It makes you look like a raccoon.”

  “Well thanks so much. Raccoon is exactly what I was aiming for.”

  Conner couldn’t tell if she was pissed off or not. He’d finished his food but she was still working on hers, cutting it with a plastic knife and fork. He said, “How old are you anyway?”

  “Older than I look.”

  “Come on, just tell me.”

  “I’ll be sixteen in February. See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  She shook her head and went back to poking at her food. Conner guessed she looked about fifteen, sure. He didn’t think she was hitting on him. She was just weird. “So, why aren’t you in school?” he asked, just to be saying something.

  Her face closed down, went flat and sullen. “What are you, the truant officer?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be there?”

  “This week is just some meetings and stuff.”

  “Oh, so you’re a little badass. Skipping out.”

  Her black-smudged eyes contemplated him. “I don’t know anybody there yet. Which is both a good and a bad thing. I think I need to go to a beach or something.”

  “What, and work on your tan?”

  “No, just, be someplace where there aren’t any people.” She finished eating and gave the straw in her drink a final noisy pull.

  More customers were crowding in at the door for the lunch rush. They cleared away their trays and walked out into the hazy hot day. The restaurant was on a frontage road parallel to 101. The traffic was like water from a running tap, pouring over the highway. “You see what I mean?” the girl said. “Is there anything here that wasn’t made by, what do they call it, the hand of man? Except I guess the sky?”

  He hadn’t really thought about it. “Well, nice to see you,” Conner said. He had to raise his voice over the traffic noise.

  “Yeah, you too.” She was occupied with looking through her bag.

  Before he drove off, he tried to call his dad. He got the message saying that the number was temporarily unavailable. This meant the bill hadn’t been paid, which was aggravating because he’d given his dad the money for it. One more way-to-go-Dad moment.

  When he started down the frontage road, he saw the girl trudging along the edge of the parking lot, past the vaguely Spanish-style building complex that housed other restaurants, stores selling baby goods, luggage, stained glass. She’d put on an oversized pair of white sunglasses that took up half her face. Conner lowered the window. “Do you need a ride?”

  She opened the passenger door and got in. “Thanks. It just sucks not to be able to drive around here.”

  “Where did you need to go?”

  She turned the sunglasses in his direction. “I don’t actually need to go anywhere.”

  “School,” he reminded her.

  “I haven’t entirely decided about school. I’d have to repeat some courses, that’s another sucky thing.” She looked around her. “What kind of a truck is this? It’s very lame-o.”

  “Yeah, well, so are those sunglasses.”

  She turned her face toward him and peered over the tops of the glasses. “I like them. They’re like, a spy who’s trying to look Hollywood.”

  “The last time I saw you,” Conner said, “you were trying to sell me pot.”

  “That didn’t work out very well. Not just with you, I mean in general.” She shifted around on the seat until she had one leg tucked underneath her. “You were so majorly offended. Don’t tell me you never in your life smoked.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” He’d done his share. But he’d pretty much quit when his dad started having his problems. He didn’t want both of them staggering around the house stoned. “If you want to go someplace, you need to tell me where.”

  “The beach? Come on. Pretty please? I can’t get there by myself. Where were you going instead?”

  “Back home.” Although saying this, he didn’t know if he’d meant Mrs. Foster’s or his dad’s. If he went to Mrs. Foster’s, she’d want him to do some made-up chore so she’d have an excuse to pay him again. Sometimes he felt like an African orphan, like a poster child for her charity empire. If he went to his dad’s, he’d have to listen to a lot of snot about being a pool boy. Not yet ready to decide anything, he said, “I need to get gas, OK?”

  He filled up at a Stop N Go and tried to call his dad again. Again he got the same recorded message. Was there ever going to be a time when he didn’t worry about his dad? The answer came to him right away: when his dad was dead.

  Conner got back into the truck. “Which beach did you want to go to?”

  She said, Oh, excellent, she said she didn’t know, she hadn’t been to any of them, she was still kind of new here. Conner asked her where she was from and she said a galaxy far, far away. “Fine,” Conner said. “Have it your way. The mystery girl from Planet Weird.”

  She was quiet then. “Hey,” Conner said. “I’m just messing with you.”

  “An asteroid crashed into my home planet and we had to activate our escape pods.”

  Conner drove back through Mill Valley, then onto the Shoreline Highway. It was a weekday and there wasn’t any beach traffic to speak of. “It could be cloudy at the beach,” he said. “Colder.”

  “I don’t care. This is just excellent. I wish we could go all the way to the Arctic Circle.”

  He thought they could head to Muir Beach, that was the closest. The road wound along the cliff edge with the ocean far below. The girl hugged the door, shrinking away from the drop-off, even as she craned her neck to see it better. “You haven’t been up here before, have you?”

  “Don’t talk, just drive, OK?”

  The road led them down again, past a cluster of mailboxes, a pasture of grazing horses, then a short tree-lined lane to the beach itself. He steered into
the parking lot, found a spot, and killed the engine. “Here you go. Beach.”

  They got out and made their way along paths through an expanse of clumpy ice plant, then sand, then down to the smooth wetness at the water’s edge. A dozen or more other people sat or strolled, all of them giving the impression of trying to ignore everyone else. Muir was small, a pocket beach, with cliffs on either side and houses on one slope of the peak above it. To the north you could walk around a cliff shoulder to a narrower rim of sand. Farther still there was supposed to be a nude beach, or so his pals always said, but Conner guessed that was wishful thinking.

  It must have been close to low tide. The waves were small and orderly, rinsing in and out, leaving a deposit of kelp and sticks. Seagulls marched back and forth, only bothering to fly off when people came right up on them. The sky was thin gray with a mild, eddying breeze off the water.

  The girl bent down and untied the laces of her sneakers. She took one shoe off and hopped around, trying to kick the other shoe loose. “Here,” Conner said, holding an arm out.

  She leaned on him to steady herself and managed to get the shoe off. “Thanks.”

  He hadn’t meant anything by it. But it took on some kind of meaning, touching her, if only because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched anyone. The girl was looking out at the ocean, scowling. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  He watched her roll up her pants legs. “That water’s cold,” he said.

  “Sissy.”

  “Fine. Knock yourself out.”

  She took a few steps until she was ankle-deep in the surf, then set off walking the length of the beach. Conner kept pace with her from above the tide line. He pulled out his phone. You couldn’t get service out here, but maybe his dad had left a message. He checked but there weren’t any calls. They hadn’t talked for a couple of days. His dad was still doing his pissy act, where everything was Conner’s fault. He was welcome to keep it up and see where that got him. But the phone being turned off was something new.

  At the end of the beach the girl came out of the surf and sat down in the sand to put her shoes back on. After a minute Conner sat down too, on a ridge of sand just above her. “Was that fun?”