Double Vision

by Tricia Sullivan

  Klaski chortles into her Spaghetti-O's.

  ‘What's so friggin'funny, Klaski?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, ma'am.’

  ‘No, I wanna know. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Well, ma'am. You just make it sound so easy. Some of the greatest minds of our time have devoted thousands upon thousands of pages of analysis to the question of how to deal with the Grid without getting ‘freaked’ as you put it, ma'am. Pharmaceutical companies have devoted millions to the problem of olfactory cortical attack. The defense industry—’

  ‘Aw, can it, Klaski. I never said it was easy. Your problem is’–and she stabs her spoon in Klaski's direction – ‘you expect to lose. You're all brain-fried before you even get here just based on some junk you read. If you ask me, that's too much friggin’ imagination for your own good. You smart kids – Lewis, this don't include you, you're an exception – you smart kids can't even survive in a world without Charmin, how you gonna cope with real shit? Haha, get it? Charmin? Real shit?’’

  Dutiful laughter. Lewis appears gratified by the backhanded compliment.

  Machine Front is calling you.

  GOSSAMER REPORT TO N-RIDGE AIRSPACE FOR SURVEILLANCE DUTY IMMEDIATELY.

  Gossamer is tired. You send back a weak protest, but MF is insistent.

  GET UP HERE NOW.

  Meanwhile, Serge's Swatch is chirping at her to tell her you're being recalled. She checks it with a flick of her eyes, then looks at you.

  The rest are still chortling and passing each other the Ritz crackers. Serge walks over to where Gossamer is plugged into the Grid and disengages her.

  ‘Machine Front have decided to attack the mines,’ she says in a low voice. 'You better go.’

  the cosmic information

  Gloria was at the door of my assignment room. I could smell her perfume, but I kept my eyes on the blue screen, trying to orient myself to the real world. I realized she had been knocking.

  'I'm sorry to interrupt you, Cookie,’ she whispered. ‘But there's an urgent personal call for you. A woman called Brenda? She says she's your mother's friend and it's an emergency’

  ‘Where's the phone?’ I got to my feet, swaying.

  ‘At my desk,’ called Gloria after me. ‘Line one.’

  I ran down the hall and picked up line one. Brenda works with my mother at Macy's. I looked at my watch. It was the middle of the afternoon. She'd still be at work.

  I blurted, ‘Brenda, what happened?’

  ‘Oh God, Cookie, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this.’

  I only half-listened. Brenda's voice was quaking and strange, and her story was garbled. It seemed to go on forever. About halfway through I realized where it had to be leading.

  ‘Is my mother dead?’

  ‘Well, because the granddaughter had chicken pox, see, and she couldn't drive us, so . . .’

  My mother was dead. That much was obvious. It took a while for me to make sense of the rest. Brenda and my mother had gone out to lunch with a former colleague who had retired last year. Brenda's car was in the shop and my mother had given up driving years ago because of her nerves, so the colleague had picked them up at work and driven them to the restaurant, but then had to leave early to pick up her granddaughter from school because the granddaughter had chicken pox. Mom and Brenda had to be back on time to take inventory in the stockroom, so they had taken the bus back to Willowbrook from Clifton. Sitting in traffic on Route 46 my mother had collapsed. Brenda had witnessed the whole thing.

  ‘We did CPR the whole time waiting for the ambulance,’ she assured me. Her voice was hoarse and thick at the same time. ‘The paramedics were very good. They worked on her all the way to St. Joe's. It wasn't no good, baby. She was gone to the Lord.’

  Bile rose in my throat at the platitude, but I tried to quell my anger. Brenda was in shock.

  ‘And she wasn't feeling good but we thought it was the Pizza Palace all-you-can-eat buffet, you never know with the mayonnaise in this weather. There was just no sign, nothing.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

  There was a pause. ‘It's you I'm worried about, Cookie. I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry. Just tell me what to do, how I can help.’

  I didn't know what to say. A thick, half-caring feeling had come over me.

  'I guess we'd better go to the hospital,’ I said finally. ‘Is she still there?’

  Brenda burst into tears.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ she wailed. ‘I'm sorry to break down like this but you sound so calm, I feel even worse. Cookie, you want me to come up there and get you?’

  ‘No. I'll meet you at St. Joseph's. Give me like an hour.’

  When I came out of Gloria's work area, everybody was standing around the Coke machine. It must have been three p.m.

  ‘Hey,’ Gunther said to his audience, ‘Did you hear the one about the anorexic nun and the polar bear?’

  He saw me out of the corner of his eye and his face fell.

  ‘Cookie, are you OK?’

  ‘I have to go, Gunther. I'll call you later.’

  I didn't want to talk to him, but he followed me to my car.

  ‘Are you sure you're OK to drive, Cookie? Is there somewhere I can take you?’

  I shook my head. A stiff, hot breeze was blowing the smell of diesel and hot asphalt from the Parkway. Loud insects crouched in the furze beside the parking lot. My car felt as hot as a glede, whatever that is. I read it in Tolkien.

  Gunther was still following me.

  ‘I'm OK.’ I thought of Troy and the brick. Don't let them see you flinch. It was just like something my father would say. Now I'd have to call him, and tell him.

  ‘Cookie, I'm not trying to be a buttinsky, honestly. Will you let me know if there's anything I can do?’

  ‘There's nothing,’ I said, starting the Rabbit. ‘Nothing you can do.’

  Isn't it strange, the things people don't wonder about? Like, I have no idea how a Xerox machine works. Or a carburetor, actually. I don't understand the stock exchange either. And if evolution is this trial-and-error process, then why aren't there a lot more fossils of really weird-ass-looking things that nature tried out but they didn't work? But I don't ask because it's pointless. Like once I asked Gunther how the soldiers got to the Grid and he said they were launched via a gravity-torsion generator in New Hampshire. My friend Miles from high school says Einstein's theory of relativity means you can't have faster-than-light travel. But they have Warp Nine in Star Trek, don't they? And nobody minds. So maybe Einstein was wrong. Or maybe Star Trek was right. A gravity-torsion generator. That sounds pretty funky.

  There are just too many things I've never wondered about, and I'm feeling like the joker of the century as I accelerate onto the Parkway.

  I never wondered about this. Not since I was a little kid and really needed her.

  An image of my mother in the doctor's office. She is standing in front of a Winnie the Pooh height chart. I am five. I am getting a booster shot. She tells me I have to be brave. I can think of nothing in the world worse than somebody sticking a needle in my arm. My mother kneels and puts her hands on my shoulders and says,

  ‘Now, Kiki, you got to face it like a big, brave girl. You gonna let a little needle make you scared? I don't think so. You give that needle hell. My Kiki, I'm your mama and I know how much you want to cry and run away but you are a big girl and I know you can do this.’

  Then she turned to Dr. Collins.

  ‘Make her cry and I'll belt you one,’ she said.

  I didn't cry. I can still taste the cherry lollipop.

  Brenda met me at the hospital. She was stuffed into a tight pair of jeans and her mustard polyester blouse was puffy and crooked at the waist where she'd hastily tucked it in. She had on Nike court shoes and a huge pocketbook was slung over her right shoulder. I couldn't help thinking that she'd probably kill her training partner in a pocketbook-and-broom demonstration.

  Then I saw her face.

  ‘It's for real,’ I said.<
br />
  Brenda nodded slowly, lips quivering, and held out her arms to me as her eyes wobbled with tears. I let her enfold me but I tried not to inhale her perfume or relax into her softness. I didn't want to indulge in that kind of comfort.

  Brenda was sobbing.

  ‘She didn't suffer,’ she said. ‘I want you to know that.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK, I hear you.’

  We drew apart. I looked at Brenda's shoes. She's on her feet all day at the gift department cash register, but no one ever sees her feet so I guess she gets to wear whatever she wants below the level of the counter. Still, the idea of Brenda on a basketball court made me want to laugh again. Inappropriate remarks flooded my mind.

  ‘You knew, didn't you, Cookie? I mean, you called her just the other night – she was telling me. You must have sensed it. You two were so close.’

  I nodded. It was easier to go along with her than to fall on my knees and cry and say that, no, I hadn't known; Cookie, the psychic daughter of a psychic, I never suspected a thing. To admit that I still didn't believe it and was hoping it was all a mistake. To add that I had only called because Mom had called me first and I'd felt guilty.

  ‘We were going to go to the Bahamas in the fall. She booked a cruise. We got an off-peak deal. We were going to have pina coladas, you know, just like in that song.’

  ‘I'm sorry,’ I heard myself say, and Brenda emitted another flood of tears.

  ‘What is the matter with me? Cookie, I'm talking stupid, I'm sorry, just tell me what you want to do, honey. Brenda's here for you, baby. You want to talk to the nurses who worked on her? The doctor went off shift but you should probably talk to somebody.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  They took me to see her. I was struck by the sheer mass of her. And at the same time, how much more visible her bones seemed to be: she looked like an animal, especially around her jaw.

  She had freshly painted nails. Lynette at Lynette's D-signs would have given her a manicure over the weekend, while they discussed the price of tomatoes and the fact that I didn't have a boyfriend yet.

  It's almost impossible to say anything else about her quiet body without losing it. I felt like a big, trembling tear, I was brimming over with so many memories. At first they were just images. Flashes. Smells. Her hands on pastry dough. How she'd slap the TV to get Channel 11 to stop flipping on vertical hold.

  Then the little story-memories.

  ‘Party in the dark’ when I was seven. She invited my little friends over and we switched off all the lights and played ‘find this’ games. Then we lit candles. It cured my terror of the dark better than any reassurances she might have given.

  Or shopping, how she laughed at the skinny girls with their cigarettes and cans of Tab and their posing.

  ‘Life's too short,’ she'd say, shaking her head. ‘A man can get a little piece of that any day of the week, flash some money, no problem. If he likes you for that reason, he's gonna dump you as soon as you get yourself a little older. You might as well enjoy yourself.’

  Then she'd buy me ice cream.

  ‘In our family, women are big. We're big women. In every sense of the word. Big woman, big heart.’ Big woman, big heart attack. Dead woman. Not fair.

  There would be no more unconditional love, no more platitudes, no more predictable mom-responses. Poor me.

  We called a funeral home that Brenda knew. ‘They're nice, they got a good makeup girl and they won't rip you off.’

  Then we looked for my mother's class lists for her tarot group to cancel tomorrow's lesson. Brenda offered to call everybody. She'd already called my mother's pastor and he wanted to come over and see me and pray with me but I begged off. Brenda looked disappointed.

  ‘How ‘bout some chicken soup? I can hear your tummy growling.’

  I managed to convince Brenda that I was better off on my own. Brenda meant well, but her sympathy rolled off me. I just wanted to be miserable. My mother was gone and all I could think about was myself. I went home and cried to Nebbie. I railed at my loss.

  ‘Who will I keep secrets from?’

  Then I remembered Rocky, my mom's Maine Coon cat. I went and got him right away. It was good to have something to do. Emergency, emergency, stop everything.

  But I didn't run into anyone at her building. No Rosalinda, no Joe and Vanessa. Everything was quiet and normal. I might have just been dropping by for some pork chops and cherry pie. I looked around her place. The clock was still ticking, which you don't expect, somehow. There were dishes in the sink. Her Snoopy slippers, that I'd given her.

  I wandered around with Rocky at my heels, looking for some clue. A trigger? An explanation? A bottle of heart medication, a letter to me, a traumatizing message on her machine...

  Nothing. Coupons for 9 Lives cat food. A dry-cleaning ticket. Unopened water bill.

  I called Darren but he was still at school. He teaches math to underprivileged kids in San Diego. His work number was in my mother's address book and I started to dial it. Talking to my brother would be a needed form of collapse. But I hung up on the first ring. There was nothing he could do, and dragging him out of class in the middle of the day was only going to make things worse for him. ‘Just slow down, Cookie,’ I said.

  I flopped into her couch and picked up the earrings she'd left on the coffee table the night before. Some psychics can pick up information from personal effects like this. Not me. Rocky jumped into my lap.

  My mother called him Rocky not because of the boxer but because she said in his past life he'd been a ship's captain who, drunk, ran his crew aground, off the coast of Portugal. Of course she believed in reincarnation. She remembered several of her own past lives, she said.

  ‘We keep meeting the same people again and again. It's like a theater company with the same actors, always doing different plays.’ She held seances, crystal-ball readings, and tarot workshops. She threw the I Ching every day.

  She used to drag me to the Baptist church on 118th Street, too. And when as a teenager I challenged the contradictions between the Bible and the other stuff she was into, she got all upset.

  ‘All religions are the same. People just interpret the cosmic information in different ways. Like different styles of art. I like going to church, and I like wearing a nice hat and seeing my friends, and I like to give praise in singing. Whatever else I might do with my time, that's between me and God.’ She fixed me with round white eyes. I guess I must have been looking unconvinced.

  'Do I tell you what to believe? You can become a Jew or a Hindu for all I care. I don't even mind if you want to become one of them Trekkies, which for you I gotta say is probably closer to what's really gonna happen. Just be happy, Cookie. God likes happy people.'

  I didn't see the logic of this but since Mom didn't believe in logic there was no point in saying so.

  'We're all just. . . out there,' she was fond of saying, waving her hands like she was shaking water droplets off them. 'Doing our thing, and it's all happening, praise the Lord.'

  As soon as I got my first job, I moved out.

  When the hauntings first started, I didn't tell her. I knew she would jump on them as proof of her belief system. And she'd talk about me to her friends, want to parade me in front of her tarot class to tell about my ‘chilling psychic experiences,’ just like the boa-constrictor stories.

  Ironically (and annoyingly, considering what she had said to me about becoming a Trekkie) the first visions happened during Star Trek. I was working as a file clerk for the Rockland County utility company and I had a tiny apartment in Suffern. I used to watch Star Trek reruns every Saturday night at six o'clock on Channel 11. I'd bring home a pizza and a bucket of Breyer's Neopolitan, and I'd sit Indian-style on the floor in front of the TV as the opening credits rolled. I'd sing along 'ooh OOOH, ooh, ooh-ohh,oooh . . .'

  Nebbie was just a kitten then, and I was keeping her secretly because my lease said no pets. She'd drag her own pizza into a corner like she'd brought down a buffal
o, and gnaw it.

  It was the episode where Spock smells these red flowers on this planet and starts having emotions. He laughs, he cries, he starts to kiss a woman—

  —and I see the assault. From below, like I'm an ant on the floor as opposed to a fly on the ceiling. It starts in a pool hall, four men on one. The underdog is a lean Hispanic guy in his twenties in jeans, a T-shirt, and out-of-style Adidas. The other four are also Hispanic, same age group and same overall look. You'd think they'd all befriends. I don't know what starts it. But I vividly see the way their weight moves across their legs and feet as they punch, pummel, knee, elbow, and head-butt. The one being attacked doubles over almost immediately and staggers across the room. I see a forest of legs follow him. He hits a table and then slides under it, only to be dragged out for more beating.

  I covered my eyes, then peeked again.

  They are talking Spanish, mostly curses from what I can gather. They deliver blows, making ugly grunts, and their victim wheezes and gasps and chokes. His head lolls.

  Eventually they leave him on the floor. His T-shirt is pulled up almost over his head. I can see his flanks heaving as he gasps for breath. He rolls on his side and curls up. The attackers run. The floor buckles beneath their weight; I can feel that somehow. I have lost all sense of my apartment and Nebbie and the pizza. I watch for several minutes as the man just lies there, his back to me. Then one of the men comes back into the room. He goes into the men's room and comes out half a minute later. He takes a gun out of the back of his jeans. He points it at the guy on the floor.

  I see his face. It is wide, with strong cheekbones and a flat nose that speaks of some Indian in his heritage. He isn't very tall, but his body is strong, especially his legs. The muscles of his legs are clearly visible beneath his black stonewashed jeans. I see the gold crucifix around his neck, too; it's one of those that have an actual figure of Christ hanging on the cross.