DSosnowski - Vamped

by Vamped (v1. 0) [lit]

  Yes, I nod. Yes, of course we do. A hundred dollars a mouthful? No problem.

  She smiles then, but doesn’t say it. She doesn’t have to.

  Slapjack!

  It’s understood.

  The funny thing about dodging bullets is the more you dodge ’em, the more convinced you become that the next one’s got your name on it. So you start taking precautions. You duct-tape over the open outlets. You slip-proof the shower. You padlock the poisons. You fill a big tub with dirt, grow potatoes, build a still, cook up some moonshine, and disinfect every nook, cranny, and cubic foot of this pestilential sponge you call an apartment…

  Welcome to Hypochondria by Proxy 101.

  I figure it like this: whatever Isuzu had, she picked it up from somewhere and it wasn’t from me. By which I mean, vampires don’tcarry anything—not typhoid, not influenza, not the common cold. Our blood’s the bug zapper to beat all bug zappers. Period. Which is why the bug heads have to buy their supply of contagion, and why they have to keep coming back for more.

  Which meant that something bacterial, microbial, or viral got tracked into the apartment from out there to make Isuzu sick. And it was probably still clinging to the drapes, the sink, her pillow, the clothes in the laundry hamper. Which meant the apartment and everything in it had to be disinfected. Which is where the potatoes came in. I couldn’t cook penicillin on my own, but moonshine is just high school chemistry.

  And so I dip and redip everything in my apartment, scrub everything down to the bone with homemade alcohol. Isuzu starts laughing a little too loud, just from the fumes. But even after I’m done, even after every bone glistens, there’s still one other place to worry about:

  Outdoors.

  The place where the sun, and germs, are.

  So the short version is: Isuzu and the outdoors are history.

  She needs sunshine, I understand that. And she can stand by the window all day long as far as I’m concerned just so long as it’s on theinside side of it. After all, the inside can be sterilized, but the outside? Are you kidding? The cubic footage alone is justnot doable.

  An ounce of prevention, that’s what this is. Tough love. One of those things we do for the other’s own good. Like a dunk in cold water. Like a slap in the face. Anything to keep them in the tub and out of the iron lung.

  And it’s not like it’s a prison. I have a view. Isuzu can look at it during the day. Watch the weather. The birds. Whatever. We just don’t have a front door that opens anymore. Not without the key I’ve hidden where the sun don’t shine.

  13

  An Ounce of Prevention

  Growing up, I remember this cross over my bed. The beams were as thick as the dining room table’s legs, and nearly as elaborate, looking more like fancy molding than some primitive instrument of execution. But the cross was the cross was the cross. It hung over my head every night for years, and when I wasn’t kneeling before bedtime to pray to it, I really didn’t give it much thought. At least not in terms of the object itself.

  And then one day—the first day of spring that year—my mother opened all the windows and issued the eleventh commandment: Thou shalt dust! And dust we did, every nook, every cranny, every piece of fake fruit in the fake fruit bowl. Inside, we coughed and sneezed, while outside, the birds chirped and trilled, laughing their birdy laugh at all our silliness.

  It was as I was dusting the cross from over my bed that I noticed it. I’d taken it down to make sure I did a good job, and was dismayed to see its ghost still there on the wall, outlined in grime I wouldn’t have noticed if I just left the cross alone.

  But the ghost cross isn’t the point of this memory.

  It’s the real one, the one I took down to dust. It’s as I’m dusting thereal cross that it happens. The Jesus moves. I’m using cheesecloth and it’s gotten snagged on the nail poking through Christ’s crossed feet. I pull the cloth up, and Jesus rises; I lower it, and he descends. His body, it seems, is affixed to a smaller cross that fits into the larger cross in a kind of tongue-and-groove arrangement. There are secret compartments underneath the smaller cross—compartments containing candles, a vial of holy water, a vial of blessed oil, and a piece of paper printed with the words for the Last Rites. On either end of the crossbeam there is a socket inlaid with brass—holders for the secret Last Rites candles.

  That cross had been hanging over my bed ever since the ice bath when I was six. There was a similar cross over my parents’ bed, and over the beds of all my Catholic friends. A spiritual first-aid kit—or last aid, maybe, waiting. Every ready. And just in case.

  Sweet dreams.

  Germs, of course, are just the messengers. And Isuzu’s sneeze was just a warning shot over my bow. I know what this little scare wasreally about.

  Godlessness. Mine.

  I can sterilize my corner of the world if I want. I can lock Isuzu away like a fairy-tale damsel for her own good. I can keep telling myself that I’ve always got vamping in my back pocket, as a last resort. But who knows what might come home on my shoes one night, or tag along with the Styrofoam peanuts in some box of eBay provisions?

  “Look Isuzu, the soft kind…” And a side of plague.

  What if she catches something fast and fatal while I’m asleep? Or while she’s asleep and I’m not watching or listening in? What if I’m at work, where there’s no such thing as sick days, or family leave, where annual vacations have to be negotiated months in advance, planned around, not easily changed without raising more questions than I care to answer? What if I wake up or come home and she’s already dead, or so close there’s nothing I can do?

  What then?

  For me, ever since I didn’t die, I’ve been a member of the Two H Club: hell or here. I get to choose. So far, I’ve stuck with here. It seems like the smart choice.

  Before not-dying, I would have thrown in a thirdH : heaven. But I’m too Catholic to believe I’ve got a chance at redemption after everything I’ve done. I was raised before Vatican II and remember scapulars being pinned to my underwear. I grew up over a hundred years ago, in a house where every wall seemed to have its picture of Mary or Jesus, their hearts exposed and on fire, and circled with blood-dripping thorns or pierced by fierce short daggers. I was never molested by any of Father Jack’s less conscientious brethren, but I got knocked around by nuns who could have put Joe Louis to shame. I was taught the cruelty of kindness, and vice versa. I really did believe I could go to hell for eating meat on Friday.

  But since not-dying, I’ve eaten a lot worse things on Friday and every other day of the week. Or night,Nacht. I’ve killed. I’ve killed plenty, and with some enthusiasm, for quite some time. I saved a lot, too. And I did a lot of gray area stuff in between. And before Isuzu—before the possibility of losing her—I felt pretty much untouchable in both the retributionand redemption departments. I was a lost cause, sure, but I didn’t care because there wasn’t anything he could do to me anymore. At least not until the asteroids hit, or the nukes start going off, or the next ice age comes grinding glacially along.

  But all that has changed. And even though I don’t feel particularly salvageable myself, I have to think about Isuzu.She still has a soul to lose; all theH ’s are still open to her. It’s up to me to see that she gets into the rightH.

  And no, I’m not talking about Harvard.

  Isuzu,” I call. “Come here.”

  “What I do now?” she asks, and I wonder if this presumption of guilt is a good thing or a bad thing, given the task at hand.

  “Do you remember Christmas?” This seems as good a place to start as any.

  “Yeah?” she says, already suspicious, like I’m setting her up to take something back. Which I kind of am—in this case, Santa Claus. She’s eight. She’s eight with extenuating circumstances, sure, but it’s way past time she knew the truth about Santa versus Christ.

  “Do you know why we celebrate Christmas? Thereal reason, I mean?”

  “Because that’s when Jesus was born,” Isuzu says.


  I blink.

  We’ve never discussed this, and I just assumed she didn’t know. Sure, shedid have a life before me, but I’ve listened in after putting her to bed, and I’ve never heard her praying. No, all there ever was, was her saying good night to the things in her room, followed by that sweet snore of hers. Maybe she prayed silently. Living in a hole in a world full of vampires, she’d learned to do a lot of things quietly, so maybe praying was another one.

  “Yes,” I say. “We celebrate Christmas because that’s when Jesus was born.” Pause. “And whois Jesus? Why do we care about him?”

  It’s Isuzu’s turn to blink. She scrunches up her face. “I think he’s one of Santa’s elves,” she says. “The one who wanted to be a dentist.”

  I imagine Pope Peter the Last, covering his eyes, talking to his dying sister long distance, the tips of his fingers rubbing his temples in little circles.

  “No,” I say. “That’s Hermey, and he’s just a puppet on TV. There aren’t any elves. Not for real.”

  Isuzu looks at me with renewed suspicion. Clearly, I’m changing my story from even a few months ago. Clearly, I’m not a man to be trusted.

  “So who makes my toys?” she demands, already ignoring the middleman.My toys. NotSanta’s toys, not the ones he brings to all the good little girls and boys. There’s no such thing anymore. There’s just Isuzu and KidTV andThe Little Bobby Little Show. That’s probably where she learned about Hermey, the dentally inclined elf. She probably watched Little Bobby Little watching it on TV—on TV.

  I wonder what she must have thought, unwrapping the homemade crap I labeled “From Santa” and then seeing what Bobby Little got on TV. Did she think that Santa just didn’t love her as much? Or maybe the problem was Jesus-aka-Hermey. He was too busy thinking about teeth, and so the stuff he made didn’t turn out as good as the stuff Little Bobby got. All Jesus’ stuff went to the Island of Misfit Toys or maybe to little girls named after trucks, who used to live in holes, who used to have moms, who used to not know what the other kids got, and who used to be happy.

  “Imake your toys,” I snap, a little angry. Not at her, but at her situation. “The elves on TV are fake. The kids on TV are fake. Santa Claus is a fake.” Pause. “But you and I are real, and I really want you to—”

  “Does this mean I won’t get any more toys?” Isuzu asks, cutting to the chase.

  “No,” I say. “I made them and I’ll still make them.”

  “Okay,” Isuzu says, and begins to walk away.

  “Wait,” I call out. “We didn’t finish talking about Jesus.”

  “I thought he was a fake,” she says, turning back around.

  “No.”

  “But he doesn’t make toys?”

  “That’s right. He doesn’t.”

  “And he doesn’t pull teeth?”

  “It’d probably be easier than this, but no.”

  “So why do we care about Jesus?”

  “Funny you should ask,” I say, patting the sofa cushion next to me. “Once upon a time, a way, way long time ago…”

  So, was Jesus like the first vampire?” Isuzu asks. “Isthat why we celebrate Christmas?” And I can already see her being troubled by this possibility, seeing as her mom used to celebrate it with her, too, and her mom wasn’t exactly crazy about vampires.

  “No,” I explain for the third or fourth time. “Jesus was the Son of God, and he died for our sins.”

  “But you said he drank blood and didn’t stay dead. And he made other people not stay dead, too. And he didn’t getold old, and he cried blood, and…”

  And I want to tell her to just trust me on this one. Sure, Jesus had a lot in common with vampires, but he wasn’t one. If anything, maybe he was the first vampirevictim, in the metaphorical, sacrificial lamb sense. Problem is, I can’t think of a way to explain the idea of a metaphor without making it sound like a lie.

  “Jesus was just Jesus,” I say, trying to hide my exasperation. “He wasn’t like anyone else. He was special. He was a gift from God—you know, like a present, for Christmas, but this one was for everyone, even the bad boys and girls, because Jesus was going to help them be good. Jesus was mortal, like you, but he was immortal, too, like me. But unlike youor me, he was holy. His holiness is what makes him special and—”

  “Were the holes in his neck?” Isuzu asks.

  “What?”

  “You said his holes made him special,” Isuzu says. “Did a vampire give him the holes? Did God do it? IsGod a vampire?”

  “No, no, no,” I say, my exasperation right out there in the open. “ ‘Holy’ doesn’t mean ‘with holes,’ it means—”

  “Oh, wait,” Isuzu cuts in. “You mean the holes in hishands.” As if to call attention to the limb in question, she nails her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Duh.”

  “ ‘Holy’ doesn’t mean ‘with holes,’ ” I repeat, trying to plug whatever holes I may have created. “If anything, it means ‘without holes.’ ” Pause. “Do you know what a ‘sin’ is?”

  “Something bad,” Isuzu says. “Being naughty.”

  “Yes,” I say. “But sin can be like a hole, too. The bigger the sin, the deeper the hole. Some sins are hardly deep at all, and it’s really easy to get out of them, but other sins are so deep, there’s almost no way to get out without somebody’s help. Some sins are so deep, when you look up, you can’t even see the sky.”

  I’m feeling pretty proud of how well my analogy’s extending itself. But then I look over at Isuzu.

  I stop talking.

  She’s pale.

  She’s pale, and her lip is trembling. Her eyes are beginning to well up.

  “Me and Mommylived in a hole,” she sobs. “A long, long time.” And she doesn’t say it, but I can tell she’s thinking it, that the people who helped them out of that hole for the last time were vampires like me, like maybe this Jesus guy with holes in his hands, but none in his soul, and for sure, none in his history of former residences. Mangers. That’s as bad as it ever got for Jesus H. Christ, D.D.S., mangers, and maybe a cave here and there, during that fasting-in-the-wilderness gig and later, during that three-day aboveground dirt nap he took between Good Friday and Easter. And that’s it.

  And somehow, all of this is the real meaning of Christmas!

  No wonder the toys she got sucked. She’d been living in a hole, which is a kind of sin, which is naughty, for most of her life, and then her mother had to go away, because naughtiness has to be punished. Little Bobby Little—he’s on the good list. And Isuzu…

  Well, Isuzu is crying that spooky, almost silent cry of hers. There was math to be done and she’s added it up. And the bottom line is this: she’s on the wrong list. The bad one. And she doesn’t know why, just that she is.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, followed by more slow-leak sobs.

  And me?

  I’m thinking that parenthood is like a hole you dig a little deeper each day, until eventually it’s so deep you can’t throw the dirt out anymore, and it just keeps falling back on you. At the moment, I’m about ankle deep, I’d say. But there’s more coming, and that’s the scary part.

  Istill have my Last Rites cross. It was packed away in a box of my mother’s old things. It still has the candles, and the oil, and one empty vial of what used to be holy water, long since evaporated.

  I figure I can postpone most of the sacraments until after Isuzu’s an adult and vamped. After that, it’ll be safe to bring her fang-to-fang with Father Jack—safe on at least two counts. For confession, sure, she’ll be looking at a lot of Hail Marys by the time she hits twenty-one, but I’ve already started keeping a list of her sins and she’s promised to do the same. When the time comes, we can compare lists, debate, negotiate, compromise, and then book a couple of nights on Father Jack’s schedule. Communion? Let’s just say Communion has changed a lot since the change. It’s become a lot more…literal.Strictly nonmortal fare.

  Confirmation?

  Confirmation’s just
a booster shot for Baptism, only with the additional complication of adding a vampire bishop to the mix. Matrimony? Yeah,right. Like I’m ever going to have a dead body for that to happen over. And the same goes double for Holy Orders.

  But I can’t risk Isuzu’s soul should anything not unforeseeable happen between now and her vamping. Which means Baptism is still on the table. Fortunately, you don’t always need a priest to get baptized. In an emergency, if someone’s dying…

  And I still have that cross. It still has the candles, and the holy oil, and one empty vial in need of some water, freshly blessed. Lucky for me, I know a guy. I’ve got a connection.

  So, when do you go on?” I ask Father Jack, during our next dead-time walk.