by PAMELA DEAN
“I hate duplicity,” said Gentian.
“It’s the lubrication of social discourse.”
“Ugh.”
“Yes, well.”
“Didn’t Mary Lou Retton have a warm-up suit?”
“Yes, and if it hadn’t had Olympic patches on it it would have made her look like any other little girl out on her paper route on a cold evening. The conclusion is left as an exercise for the student.”
“And Hamlet had a cloak.”
“Hamlet’s cloak didn’t show off his chest.”
“What chest?” said Gentian, nastily, and stamped upstairs to clean her room up. She would be at Becky’s tonight and probably well into tomorrow, so the work had to be done now. She picked up her dirty clothes from the floor and fed them down the laundry chute in the hall. She made her bed. She put a small collection of crumby plates and ringed mugs and glasses on a tray and set it at the head of the stairs. Then she looked around, blinking a little. Not being an astronomer seemed to be making her much tidier. Her reference books were all still on their shelf; Sky and Telescope was stacked neatly on its shelf, unread; no scribbled notes and diagrams dotted the floor. She put the biography of Maria Mitchell back in its place of honor in the headboard of the bed and shoved her homework, textbooks, and school notebooks into their drawer; and that was all, she was ready to dust and sweep.
So she did, fuming. Having Rosemary at the party wouldn't be disastrous, but having Juniper would. The Giant Ants knew about siblings; there wasn’t an only child among them. But none of them had anybody quite so irritable and condescending as Junie. She would be bored, but she wouldn’t go away decently and do something she liked; she would just make snide remarks.
“I wish I were an only child,” said Gentian to Maria Mitchell. Maria Mitchell was engaged in murdering a bit of carpet that she had detached from her scratching post, and paid no attention.
Gentian packed her suitcase to go to Becky’s. Cotton nightgown—Becky’s room was overheated, in Gentian’s opinion, and her usual sweats were much too warm there—clean underwear, socks, T-shirt. Toothbrush, hairbrush. The biography of Maria Mitchell. Her current notebook. Pride and Prejudice, Julius Caesar, Owl in Love, The Princess and Curdie, the last four issues of Sky and Telescope, Carl Sagan’s Comet, and The Space Child’s Mother Goose. Several pens, a protractor, a stylus. The binoculars in their case. Her ephemeris. Her father’s CD of Laurie Anderson’s “Strange Angels.” Her own CD of Holst’s “The Planets.” Some stray chocolate-chip cookies from Junie’s last batch. The suitcase was full. Gentian considered it, and crammed a set of astronomical postcards down into one side pocket. This late in the year, there was a danger of being snowed in. There had been Halloween blizzards before.
Maria Mitchell leapt into the suitcase just as she was about to close it.
“I’d take you if I could,” Gentian told her. “You know you’d just yowl. And Jeremy’s allergic to you.”
Maria Mitchell kneaded the CD boxes with both front paws and purred.
“And no, you can’t have any cookies. Chocolate is bad for cats.”
Maria Mitchell sprang out of the suitcase and hurried into the bathroom, whence she could be heard making annoyed sounds. Gentian followed her, to find the food bowl empty. She filled it halfway, then full, then put another half cup on top of it all. Halloween blizzards cut two ways, after all.
She highlighted the feed cat! sign with fluorescent pink marker, petted the crunching Murr for several minutes, and took her suitcase downstairs. Her mother and Rosemary had emptied the contents of the rag bag and the sewing chest all over the living-room sofa. Her mother had put on music and turned it up quite high. “Next, I’ll grow into your arms a toad but an eel; had me fast, let me not gang, if you do love me leel.”
“Oh, Mom,” said Gentian under her breath. “What is this, psychological warfare?”
“Did you feed your cat?” shouted her mother.
“Yes!”
“Say hello to Becky!”
“All right!”
“Bring Jeremy to your party!” shrieked Rosemary.
Gentian lugged her suitcase to the front door without answering. She wondered what Rosemary wanted Jeremy for. He was only eight. Possibly to demonstrate a decent sibling relationship to Juniper.
She opened the front door and recoiled. It really was cold out there, enough to make her eyes water. She put a poncho on over her sweatshirt and grabbed the nearest pair of gloves. She grasped the suitcase firmly and went outside.
Mrs. Zimmerman was planting bulbs in front of her house, on the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street.
“Are you running away?” she said as Gentian came into her field of view.
“Yes, I can’t stand my sisters any longer and I’m going to Antarctica to seek my fortune.”
“Good timing,” said Mrs. Zimmerman. She jerked a plug of soil out of the ground with her bulb planter and popped a scaling lily bulb into the hole. “I think it’s spring in those latitudes.”
“I always think ahead,” said Gentian solemnly. They both laughed. “Actually, I’m going to spend the night with Becky.”
“Give her my regards,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, dumping half a cup of organic fertilizer on top of the bulb. Its sour, complex smell tickled Gentian’s nose. Her father had used it too, on all those hundreds of bulbs he had made her help plant in exchange for taking the telescope to people who didn’t know what they were doing.
Mrs. Zimmerman said, “Are you insects having your usual Halloween celebration?”
“Yes, it’s at my house.”
“Perhaps Ira and I will go to Antarctica instead.”
“You’d better. Mom wants me to let Junie and Rosie come too. She thinks their costumes aren’t warm enough.”
“What is everybody dressing up as?”
“I haven’t decided. The Giant Ants always keep it a secret, anyway. But I think everybody’s sort of at loose ends this year. We’ve all been everybody we like. Well, Steph always has some new obsession, but last year everybody said they didn’t know what they’d do next, and I still don’t.”
“Marie Curie?”
“I did her in first grade.”
“Ah. What are your sisters dressing as?”
“Rosie wants to be Mary Lou Retton and Junie wants to be Hamlet.”
Mrs. Zimmerman laughed and tamped the plug of soil back into the ground. “Have you been a telescope?” she said.
“Mmmm, no. If I went trick-or-treating it’d be okay, but if I have to be at a party where I want to sit down, it would present problems.”
“Do you think your young neighbor goes trick-or-treating?”
“Wow,” said Gentian, putting her suitcase down. “I don’t know. He could be all sorts of things.”
“I take it he’s not invited to your party.”
“Well, gosh, no, it’s usually just us. I’d invite you first if we decided to expand.”
“I saw you and Alma playing ball with him, and wondered if you had expanded your circle.”
“It takes more than playing soccer to do that.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think Alma likes him very much, anyway.”
“I’m not sure anybody does,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, pulling out another plug of soil and dropping in another lily bulb. “That evening was the only time I’ve ever seen him with anybody.”
“Do you see him much? I hardly ever see him at all.”
“He walks around late at night.”
“Really? How late?”
“Two, three, four in the morning.”
“What does he do?”
“Just walks up and down, and to and fro.”
“Huh.”
Mrs. Zimmerman obliterated the hole she was working on and made another. Gentian picked up the suitcase. “I’d better go or I’ll be late.” Becky’s mother was fussy about dinner’s starting on time. “Have a nice Halloween.”
“You, too,” said Mrs. Z
immerman. “Have you ever come as giant ants?”
Gentian laughed and went on her way. The elms had lost most of their leaves during the rain, and assumed their winter tracery against the blue icy sky. The maples were still turning; some of them had green leaves here and there. The feathery locusts, Becky’s favorite tree, were vivid yellow. The wind was violent. She walked faster.
Becky was sitting on the front steps of her house, bundled in a yellow down jacket, a teal-green hat, and black mittens. Her nose was red and her eyes wet. Gentian leapt up the steps. “What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s just the cold,” said Becky. “I’m trying to get winter into my blood so I can write a new poem.”
“Wouldn’t it go in faster if you sat out here in a swimming suit?”
“No, part of winter is wearing too many clothes.”
“Well, I’m freezing. Can we go in?”
“I guess so. It’s dinnertime, anyway.”
Gentian found Becky’s mother both alarming and exasperating, but she seemed to be in a good mood tonight. She fed them chicken with almonds and eggplant in garlic sauce and asked civilly after their Halloween costumes. Jeremy, it transpired, wanted to be Marco Polo and carry a box of vermicelli to indicate that he had brought noodles back from China. Becky’s father asked if he should follow Jeremy in a chef’s costume to indicate historical influence. Gentian liked him better than she liked Becky’s mother, but he seldom said very much.
They escaped upstairs in good time. Becky, like Gentian, had the attic room. It was much larger and lower, being the entire upper floor of a much smaller house. Becky had her desk and bed in the middle of the room and other shorter things against the half-sized walls. She had painted it in dazzling white enamel to make it look lighter and bigger. There was red vinyl tile on the floor. Steph said it looked like a kitchen, but Gentian liked it. One of Becky’s mother’s amiable traits was that she did patchwork, and Becky had a quilt on her bed and another on a slanting portion of ceiling, and patchwork pillows in all sizes, and window-sized quilts that could be rolled up, instead of blinds.
They sat on the bed and ate salted cashews. “What did you write this week?” asked Gentian.
“I’m terribly afraid it’s going to be a short story,” said Becky. “I thought it was a poem, but first it had a plot and then it started being free verse and then it grew dialogue and finally there just didn’t seem to be any reason for it to be poetry.”
“What’s it about?”
“A girl with no friends who finds a magic tree.”
“Oh.”
“Well, I can’t help it.”
“I’ll like it fine when it’s done.”
“You can hate it if you want to,” said Becky, irritably. “You aren’t obliged to like everything I write.”
“I always do like it, though,” said Gentian, startled.
“Yes, I know, but you don’t have to. Sorry.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like it when my poems turn around like that. And I don’t know what to do about Halloween. I just don’t look like Sappho.”
“Mrs. Zimmerman asked if we had ever all dressed as giant ants.”
Becky chortled. “Well, maybe next year. Erin and Steph are awfully smug about whatever they’re going to be, and I don’t think there’s time to make all those costumes anyway. What are you going to be?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Zimmerman suggested a telescope.”
Becky collapsed across the bed, laughing.
“Ha, ha,” said Gentian. “And you can be a poem. It’s about as practical.”
Becky sat up. “But I could. I could go as a poem.”
“You could?”
“Yes. Just let me ponder it. Maybe you can help me later. Now, what have you been doing?”
“What can I do? No telescope. I’m getting it back Monday no matter what they say. Boneheads.”
“Yes, then you’ll have time to try it in other locations before November eighth. But come on, what have you been doing with all your spare time? Research?”
“No, I haven’t got the heart for it.” Gentian considered. “Alma and I made that jumper.”
“It’s too bad Erin couldn’t help.”
“That’s okay, Alma’s good at sewing too. And Erin and I are going to the Planetarium the day after Thanksgiving and she’s going to spend the night afterwards. I guess you’d better ask if you can come on Saturday that weekend. I need to be at home for astronomical purposes.”
Becky beamed upon her. “There, that’s better.”
“It won’t be, if we can’t get the telescope to work.”
“Maybe you need a new one.”
“Too expensive.”
“An early Christmas present?”
“Well, I could ask.”
“You’d better. You’re just mooning around wasting time.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Are you doing your homework?”
“For heaven’s sake. Yes.”
“Well, you can’t let something like a malfunctioning telescope set your whole career back.”
“All right, I get the point. What about your career? Have you got anything to read me?”
“No. The short story isn’t done yet. Well, all right. I have a really, really bad poem, but I’ll read it to you if you want me to.”
“I do.”
Becky dragged a dog-eared sheet, much marked and erased, out of the drawer of her bedside table, and read.
“Fill your head with rubbish,
Fill your soul with dreams,
Better than from hashish
Or from flying machines:
From it all come creeping
Out the mangled shapes that seem
More the province of a sleeping
Than an open-eyed regime.
Fill your head full up with learning,
And your soul, reality:
Ignorance will stream out, pouring
Shapes of mindless fantasy.
What the eyes regard the mind
Will take and tangle to a skein
The very fates could not unravel
Nor the god of plots disdain.
Plainness turns to Turkish carpet,
Parthenon to Taj Mahal,
And the gold of every target
Covers red, and blue, and all.”
“I like the way it sounds, but it makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Well, that’s the point.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“No, it’s not okay,” said Becky, “but never mind.” She grinned. “I showed Micky ‘The Butterfly Hat. ’”
“Good grief.” Gentian felt peculiarly jolted. “What did he say?”
Becky grinned again, the most evil grin possible on such a face as hers. “He said it was really creepy, and then he asked me if I were a vegetarian.”
“What did you say?”
“I said there was a difference between fair use and copyright infringement.”
Gentian laughed. “Did he get it?”
“Oh, yes, and then we had a long argument.”
“Is he a vegetarian?”
“No. He just thinks that anybody who believes in kindness to animals ought to be.”
“Why on earth?”
“He thinks Asimov wasn’t a real scientist because he quit medical school rather than get a dog from the Humane Society and kill it. He thinks he’s going to be a real scientist.” She said this with particular emphasis. Gentian looked at her carefully and decided to pursue the emotional rather than the philosophical path.
“Are you going to a movie with him?”
“Yes, the Friday after Thanksgiving.”
“Good, you can tell me about it on Saturday.”
“I will, too. Have you got anything to read to me?”
“I have music.” Gentian opened her suitcase and got out the Laurie Anderson disk. “It’s my dad’s. He likes it because of the song about the day the devil comes to get you
.”
“He does?”
“It’s funny. It says the devil’s a rusty truck with only twenty miles, he’s got bad brakes, he’s got loose teeth, he’s a long way from home.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“He likes the strange angels song, too, and so do I.”
“Is this a religious record?”
“No, no, no. It’s got a song about icy comets whizzing by, too, and kerjillions of stars. He played me that one first, to soften me up for the other ones.”
“Kerjillions?”
“Kerjillions.”
“Okay.”
“And the one I brought for you is called ‘Beautiful Red Dress, ’ and I think it’s got to be about menstruation. That’s not exactly common.”
“No, it’s not, and there’s a reason for that.”
“Becky. What the hell is the matter?”
“Go ahead, play the song.”
Gentian got off the bed, turned Becky’s CD player on, put the disk in, and started to select the song. Then she thought about it. “Let’s play the whole album,” she said. “I think the song is better that way.”
“Whatever,” said Becky.
All through the first song she maintained a deadpan expression that made Gentian perfectly sure that something was, in fact, the matter. It was not like Becky to refuse to enter into one’s enthusiasms. The second song, about stopping by the body shop and asking to have a stereo put in her teeth and high-heeled feet installed, made her smile briefly, and when the requests were followed by a reference to “The Monkey’s Paw,” which was one of her favorite stories, Becky looked at Gentian and nodded. The third song, not one of Gentian’s favorites in any case, got the deadpan treatment again. Gentian waited it out. The fourth song was called “Ramon,” but Gentian always thought of it as the Angels Like Lawn Mowers song, and she was fairly certain that Becky would find it irresistible. It had a number of goofy moments and others reminiscent of Ophelia’s remark, after she went mad, “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be,” which had been known to reduce Becky to tears, even when read badly.
The song began,
“Last night I saw a host of angels,
And they were all singing different songs,
