A group of middle school boys in Hot Topic shirts lace their fingers through the chicken wire, trying to get Lela to admit she’s not really a mermaid. “What do you eat?” one of them asks, and Lela drawls, “Clams.” Her voice has a grating edge, as if she spent years as the ring-toss barker and has only just stepped into the mermaid tail this morning.
I feel Howie slump with disappointment that, despite having prepared for, I share.
“Hey,” I say, squeezing his arm. “It’s okay. We didn’t expect anything, remember?”
Light pierces the room, and the tent swells with noise as people spill in from the outside. “It’s the Puzzle Pieces!” someone says. Lela looks up, peering into the darkness beyond her cage.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say. We squeeze past the tweens toward the exit sign. I lift the tent flap and drop it again, feet frozen.
“What’s wrong?” Howie asks. “Let’s go.”
“Everyone and their kissing cousin is out there with a camera,” I whisper.
“So?” he asks. “Ignore them. We’ve done it before.”
But this disappointment feels too private. I can’t think of giving the world my face in this moment.
The voices get louder behind us. I brace myself. Beside me, Howie stiffens. Then a voice at our elbows says, “Hey. Come this way.”
I look around, confused, then down. A heavily pierced dwarf gestures to us from a slit in the canvas I hadn’t noticed before.
“Or you can just stand there with your thumbs up your asses,” he says. “Whatever.”
Howie lifts his eyebrows. So I lead.
The dwarf’s name is Lester. He leads us out into the dazzling sunlight, a small clearing sheltered by the backs of the freak show tents. A man and a woman perch on folding chairs nearby, smoking cigarettes. She’s in camouflage from the waist up, with patches of black hair glued to her arms and cheekbones, and has her legs propped up in the man’s lap. I recognize the man from a poster: The Living Drug Addict! He’s done heroin . . . through his eyes!
“You can go out that way,” the dwarf says, gesturing. “Lela’s got homeboys running toward the tractor pull.” He sniffs. “They’ll forget about you by the time they get to the giant pumpkins.”
I have never talked with a dwarf before. I am not sure where to put my eyes. This must be how people feel talking to me.
“Thanks,” I say.
Howie lingers a moment, clearly not ready to go.
“What do you do here?” he asks.
Lester adjusts his belt. “Blockhead stuff,” he says. “Also some penny magic tricks—dollar bills in balloons, pulling quarters from ears.”
“Sounds pricier than pennies,” I say.
Lester smiles. It’s a real sucker punch of a smile: devastating, impossible to see coming. “Smart girl,” he says.
Howie glances back at the tent. Lester says, “Don’t bother asking for your money back. Woody runs a tight ship. Zero refund policy.”
“It’s not the money,” Howie says. “We were just hoping . . .”
We look at each other, unsure what more to say, but Lester waves a stubby hand. “It’s all right,” he says. “I know who you are. Lela’s the one that recognized you, actually. She reads all that People magazine shit. Puzzle Pieces, right? She’s been talking about you all week. Says you’re just the cutest things.”
I look away. The air is a surreal blue over the white tent tops.
“We were hoping to find someone, um, like us, you know, to talk to,” Howie says.
“And you came here?” Lester’s eyebrows droop like lazy reddish wings exhausted from a long season’s migration. He shakes his head. “Forget this stuff. This is family fare. You kids’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Do you know anything about Helen Rhees Boyle?” Lester looks blank, and Howie clarifies, “The Angel of Appalachia?”
“Oh, her,” Lester says. “Jesus. There’s some ancient history. That old broad’s still alive?”
“We think so.”
“My granddad saw her once when he was a kid,” Lester says. “He told the story every Christmas. She was something else.”
“So she’s real?” I ask.
“Real as they come,” Lester says. “Maybe real dead, though. Who knows.”
“We’re going to visit her this weekend,” Howie says.
Lester’s eyebrow lifts. “Really?”
“Do you want to come?”
I try to catch Howie’s eye, but Lester’s already waving him away, coughing into a fist.
“You’re a sweet kid,” he says when his throat is clear. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a roll of tickets, pushing them into Howie’s hand. “Go enjoy the fair. Quit wasting your money. Just don’t come back here, all right? Bad for business.”
We emerge behind the Expo Building into a rare patch of stillness. Before us, and all around, the fair beckons: tired families, brightly colored tents, distant screams of people dropping in the Slingshot. I think about the frozen circus parade in the Loblolly gallery: the immobile acrobats and clowns laughing at some great joke I couldn’t hear.
Beside me, Howie asks, “What do you want to do?”
I close my eyes and stretch out into the warmth of the sun. My skin drinks in the jangle of music and barkers and show recordings mingling with the announcements over the loudspeakers. The clash and noise of life.
I laugh aloud. I can feel movement building in my toes.
“Everything,” I say.
We run down the fairway, shrieking like children. People shout and scatter; we slip between them, quick and nimble. There are the people leading ordinary lives, and then there is us: unfurling.
Later, in the papers, there will be pictures of Howie and me eating jumbo turkey legs and leaning over the railing at the blacksmith’s shop in the Village of Yesteryear. We fling our tickets at rides, our money at games. We spend every penny on deep-fried pecan pie and the swinging pirate ship and the fun house, where the mirrors distort our bodies even more than normal.
Outside the agriculture tents, there’s a pig that paints pictures by holding a paintbrush in its teeth. You can buy the paintings for a dollar. Howie suggests that I hang one at the end of my exhibit, and I laugh but feel depressed. I hug my scarf tighter against the chill in the air. The sun is draining away, and with it, the dread reality of our appointment is dawning.
Howie and I wander side by side through the twinkling midway. We don’t look at each other. We are not ready for everything to be over.
“Screw it,” Howie says suddenly. “One more ride.”
“We’re out of tickets,” I say.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I can get more.”
“Does this involve prostitution?” I ask. “I can’t let you debase yourself for my State Fair experience.”
He heaves an exaggerated sigh.
“You’re sure you won’t let me sell my body?”
“No more than usual,” I say.
Darkness has settled in by the time we reach the front of the long, quadruple-wrapped line for the Ferris wheel, the midway lights rippling to rainbow-twinkling life. The ticket taker is supremely unimpressed with our empty hands. He points us away.
“Lela sent us,” Howie says.
The man says, “Who the fuck is Lela?”
“The mermaid,” Howie says.
The man waves a hand. “Get out of here.”
Howie stares the man in the face. Then he lifts his shirt.
I half expect the man to yelp or swear, but he only rubs a hand across his tanned brow, looking exhausted. “Just go,” he says, gesturing toward the car.
“I thought I said no selling your body,” I say to Howie as we step onto the car.
“It was barter,” he says. “Screw capitalism. I would be remiss in my Stat
e Fair ambassador duties if I let you go home without riding the Ferris wheel.”
We settle into the cold metal basket, feeling the platform sway beneath us as a family of four squeezes in the seats on the other side of the car. The night is getting cold, and I shiver a little. Howie throws his arm across the back of the seat. I can feel the warmth of his body, how close his face is to mine. I can’t turn to look.
We rise toward the sky in jerks and starts, our basket swinging as they load on more people below. I try to imagine all the space between my feet and the ground, how it grows and grows.
“This ride is slow,” the little boy across from us complains.
“That’s good,” his mother says. “That means we get more time to ride.”
Howie and I say nothing. I can feel the heat of him on my skin, can sense the dark space in his chest in which his heart expands and contracts, sending the blood skittering through his veins. I sit very, very still, and I know he’s feeling the same thing about me. I know that if I turn to look, I’ll see something in his face that I’m not ready to see. Beneath us, the glowing world rocks and sways.
“I want to go on the Tornadoclone,” the kid is saying. The father rolls his eyes at me, as if to say, Kids.
“I don’t mind being up here a while,” Howie says, but softly, and only to me.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to defuse the tension and still the tingling in my stomach. “May as well get your money’s worth.”
He says nothing. Our car moves up another space, and we’re just one from the top. Then we inch up again, and we’re there, hanging at the top, swinging. The world below us unfurls like a gem-strewn blanket: the swings tiny, the roller coaster far away. Despite all of the tallest skyscrapers, the mountain tops and airplanes, I am sure that we are the highest people in the world.
The kid says, “Whoa.”
I look up at Howie, and find him smiling, and think, Damn.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
He’s still looking at me. My breath catches. I don’t know how to do what comes next.
I say, “I was just thinking of this riddle I once heard.”
He says, quietly, “I love riddles.”
I look back over the edge of the car, knowing we’ll have to come back down, that in the morning I’ll have to deal with this piece of myself that I am on the edge of giving away. But for the moment, everything looks safe and small and far away.
34
Howie picks me up early the next day for our appointment with a smile I feel too shy to return. We take our time driving, not speaking about what’s to come. We’re headed to a private clinic where we’ll stay overnight for observation after the first round of gene therapy. We drive with the radio off and the windows cracked. The day is unusually cold, the sky a great flat muscle.
The press crew is smaller today, huddled in the parking lot and blowing into gloved fingers. Men with cameras climb out of idling cars to snap pictures of Howie and me as we run the gauntlet together. There are fewer mics, fewer bids for attention. Howie smiles and waves, but I don’t bother. They don’t need my consent to craft the story they want to tell.
We are met on the ground floor by our medical team. Dr. Morse’s hair glows crimson under the fluorescent lights. She is spoiling for a fight.
“We’ll begin with a physical merging of the patients’ bodies,” she announces. “It’s imperative that we have a sense of physiological compatibility pretreatment.”
She stares us down. Howie and I stare at each other, at our bodies. A dizzy tingling flutters around the Hole like a storm of moths. Neither of us says anything. Dr. Morse, who had clearly been bracing herself for an argument, continues, surprised and slightly disappointed.
“After that,” she says, more quietly, “we’ll prep you for treatment. This round consists of three injections each—for Morgan, cells modified with Howie’s A436G, and for Howie, A436C isolated from Morgan’s tissue. We’ll keep you overnight for monitoring. You’ll have access to medical staff at all hours. Have you had anything to eat or drink in the last six hours?”
We shake our heads.
“Let’s head to the back,” Dr. Takahashi says, startling me with his presence. He waits for most of the crowd to pass, then falls into step beside me, squeezes my shoulder. His gloved palm rides my scapula until I drift away to the changing room to don the gown that is, by now, like a second skin.
Everyone reconvenes in a large examination room, devoid of kitten posters. I want to go and stand by Howie, but I don’t want anyone to know I want it, so I stand in a corner, hoping he’ll come to me.
He does.
“It’ll be okay,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “It’s just bodies.”
“It’s just bodies,” he echoes.
But the air between us is troubled by tiny wings.
The Merge feels stiff and awkward. We stand toe to toe, inching our bodies together until Howie’s Lump, lubricated, slips into my Hole like a key sliding into a well-oiled lock—so easily that we stumble the last half-step, and Howie’s chin clips my temple. I gag involuntarily at the sudden warmth, the unfamiliar sense of being filled. I hear the pounding of Howie’s heart, inches from my ear. He grips my elbow, ostensibly for balance, and I find my feet where I left them, beneath my knees, steadying myself.
I inhale, experimentally, and feel my organs swell around a hard foreign mass. We’re both sweaty and too close to each other. My mouth is directly next to Howie’s nipple. I try to pull back, and it pulls him forward. He stumbles a little, catching himself on my shoulders. He lets out a little huff of laughter, and it jumps inside my intestinal tract, and the sensation is so strange that I start to laugh, too. We laugh into each other’s faces, tears streaming, guts locked together.
“That’s enough,” Dr. Morse calls, but we can’t stop. We are hysterical. We are so relieved that this is all there is. No magic sparkle, no transformation. Just two bodies in an awkward human position: the answer to all of our questions a completely ordinary blank.
I don’t watch as Taka administers my injections. “This might pinch a little,” he murmurs. There’s a prick, the sterile ocean taste of saline in the back of my throat, and then a sudden burning flow. I cringe, trying not to squirm. I focus on the color of the wall. I think, Wall, wall, wall. On the next table, I hear Howie take a sharp breath.
They settle us into hospital beds, plastered with electrodes and hooked up to an array of humming monitors. I’ve had nothing to eat since the day before. Dr. Morse settles into the chair beside my bed, clipboard in hand, muffin on a plate by her side.
“What are you watching for?” I ask.
“Symptoms,” she says tersely. As though my body is not my business.
“Like boredom?” I say. “I am currently suffering an overdose of boredom. Also hunger.”
“Do you want me to put the TV on?”
“Are you going to watch me watch TV?”
“It is called observation,” she says.
It’s going to be a long night.
We watch Animal Planet while nurses brush in and out, checking and adjusting. Periodically, Dr. Morse asks how we’re doing. Do we feel nauseated? Warm? Are we experiencing pain? She eyes the Lump and the Hole, as though hoping against her professional judgment to see them shrink away on the spot.
“Irritated,” I tell her the sixth time she asks how I’m feeling. She closes her eyes and visibly counts to ten. Then she steps into the hall.
“You should give her a break,” Howie says softly, after she leaves the room. “She’s not all bad.”
“Really?”
“I know she can come off as kind of intense,” he says. “She’s just really passionate. There’s been a lot of criticism of her work. I think it makes her more hostile than she needs to be.”
I fold
my arms beneath my breasts and stare at a rhinoceros beetle having sex with another rhinoceros beetle on television. “Is this another I-was-a-quiet-kid-on-the-outside-of-things observation?”
“No,” he says. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face. “We’ve talked about it.”
“Your doctor told you that?” I think of Taka, always locked away behind gloves and glasses.
“She’s actually a very kind person,” Howie says. “I didn’t know anyone when I first got to New York, and Parker took me under her wing. We have dinner together about once a week.”
“You and Parker? Are these dates?”
“What? No,” he says, irritated. “We just order Chinese takeout and talk about her work or my classes or whatever.”
“Does she wear nice perfume and excuse herself to slip into something more comfortable?”
“Quit being jealous,” he says.
“I’m not jealous,” I scoff. “It’s just weird.”
He shrugs. “Think what you like. I can’t stop you,” he says. “She’s been a really positive influence in my life, and a great advocate for me. Besides, I think it’s good for her to get out of the lab every once in a while. I think she gets pretty lonely . . .”
His voice trails off as Dr. Morse comes back into the room. She walks briskly, eyes down, and crosses back to the chair between our beds. Her shoe catches the floor and she stumbles a little, her neck going pink as she crosses her legs and resettles her clipboard in her lap. Suddenly I can see, as plain as day, the word insecure tucked into every pore. I think of these weekly dinners, and how excited Dr. Morse must be for them: poring through menus days before, cleaning house before he arrives. She spends a little more than she is comfortable with on ill-fitting sale blouses, dabs on a little lip gloss, allows herself to wonder intellectually if he’ll notice. She never lets herself get beyond that word intellectual—he’s too young, it would be unprofessional, but still. That pocket of excitement grows in her stomach, day by day, until Friday mornings are a haze of snappish excitement.
Hole in the Middle Page 21
