Dan

by Joanna Ruocco

  “Thank you, Melba,” said Officer Greg, patting the bag, staring wistfully at a point on the wall above her head. Leslie Duck had allowed Melba to decorate that wall. Melba had taped up recipe cards, each showing a brightly colored image of a hot assembled food. Melba had unearthed the recipe cards while digging for pleasure in Hissy Mary’s famously unkempt lawn. The recipe cards were well-preserved, stacked inside a chafing dish enveloped in black plastic. Melba pulled off the plastic and lifted the lid. Expecting eggs, which she knew were occasionally interred, not by hens but by connoisseurs, sometimes for hundreds of years, she had been delighted to find the recipe cards instead. She had even knocked on Hissy Mary’s door to share news of her discovery. Luckily, Hissy Mary did not come quickly to the door. Standing there on the doorstep, Melba had time to reconsider. She reconsidered, turning and running from the door. She ran cradling the chafing dish, which bruised the insides of her arms, and she forgot the shovel and sweater in her haste. She had liked the sweater. It had nubs all over and looked casual on regular days and fancy on holidays. The shovel, though, she thought, was just as well abandoned. Twice in the night, sleepwalking from the house, she had woken behind the juniper bush to find Zeno Zuzzo using the shovel to beat things no longer moving. He swore on his honor that the things had, until the moment of Melba’s appearance, in fact been moving. They had been moving aggressively, and Zeno Zuzzo had been acting in self-defense. Or had he told her he had performed the deeds for hire? Melba could not remember. Either way, Zeno Zuzzo did not enjoy resorting to the shovel. She remembered he had said as much—“Melba, do you think I enjoy resorting to the shovel in this way? I do not. I do not enjoy this resorting”—and she supposed he would be grateful the shovel was gone.

  Melba wished she wasn’t remembering the shovel, not with Officer Greg so close. She didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, but of course she wouldn’t know. She wasn’t an officer. She resisted the urge to look behind her. Officer Greg seemed to be studying the recipe cards, perhaps anticipating the criminal applications of either the cards themselves or the various ingredients they listed. At last, Officer Greg shook his head slightly, rocking the bag.

  “Carry on,” he said to Melba. “Nothing’s been proven. How do you spell ‘dormouse’?”

  “D-O-R-M-O-U-S-E,” said Melba.

  “Interesting,” said Officer Greg. “Very interesting. Most civilians would get dormouse wrong.”

  Melba considered explaining. I think a lot about vermin, she could say. Officer Greg’s jowl was quivering.

  “Bev Hat was quite the speller, wasn’t she?” he said. “Don’t answer! You don’t have to say anything else. Not yet. I’ve already had Bev Hat’s report cards delivered to the station. We’ll see about her spelling.” He jammed his arm roughly into the bag and removed the Danish. Melba looked away, but glanced back in time to see Officer Greg opening his mouth wide, inserting the Danish to a considerable depth, and tearing it fiercely with his teeth. For a long moment, he chewed.

  “You claimed this was a Danish?” he asked, sniffing at the glistening, gibbous object now balanced on his palm. Melba wrung her hands, mind racing. Soon her thoughts were all behind her, distant and small, impossible to distinguish from one another. Had she claimed that the baked good in Officer Greg’s hand was a Danish? Hadn’t he been the one to call it a Danish? With his free hand, Officer Greg manipulated his roll of tape, unspooling a long strip. He wrapped the Danish with grim, exacting motions. No trace of friendliness softened any plane or angle of the features presented to Melba’s anxious gaze.

  “Don’t leave town,” said Officer Greg. He was looking at the taped-up Danish in his hand, but Melba knew he meant her, whoever she might prove to be. After he banged out through the door, she sank down upon her stool.

  The phone rang and she leapt up, lifted the receiver, and let it drop heavily, severing the connection.

  “There!” said Melba viciously. Would Bev Hat do anything so discourteous? Mothers hardly hung up on morning callers! Mothers seemed to expect people to call in the mornings. They coveted these calls: calls from friends who wanted to report on some developmental benchmark of interest to mothers, or calls from older, informed people who kept abreast of the prevailing wisdom on hazards and could advise mothers accordingly. Often mothers called each other in the morning to discuss achievements or to hint that an alternative to a popular consumer good could be made by hand. Why, try keeping a mother away from a ringing phone, from the prospect of an engrossing conversation!

  How do I know so much about mothers? thought Melba, and shivered. Surely she hadn’t known so much yesterday?

  But is something different about me? thought Melba. Or is it just a different morning? Melba tried to think about the morning. What kind of morning was it? Damp, but that was the weather, not the morning. Unpleasant, but that feeling—that feeling of being not entirely pleased—that was her feeling, not the feeling of the morning. The morning did not feel anything. The morning was precisely that: unfeeling.

  A monster, thought Melba Zuzzo.

  The bakery was hot, stifling, but Melba shivered again. Before morning, it was night, thought Melba, but what kind of night? She tried to remember the night. She had heard a long, lonely hoot outside her window, and finally, unable to sleep, she had gone downstairs to cook a tiny pancake. Meanwhile, Bev Hat had died and Ned Hat had become an old man. Grady Help had crept into her house and crouched beneath her kitchen sink, and maybe Dr. Buck too, and Hal Conard had made his rounds through the streets of Dan.

  Nothing can really be known about the morning or the night, thought Melba. I suppose that’s why we have dates. The numbers make tiny equations and we can learn the numbers and feel like we’ve settled something. Melba, not for the first time, marveled at the strangeness of morning and night sharing a date when they were so palpably distinct.

  If Melba were mayor of Dan, she would see that this was changed. It would be her first initiative. Day and night would be divided, no longer lumped together by the chuckleheaded mandate of the calendar. The change was bound to be popular; it was reasonable, and it would serve to speed things up—dates flying past, two or maybe even four dates in a twenty-four hour period—so one no longer had to drag along from midnight to midnight, forced to consider an experience so protracted and yet so disjunctive as a single unit.

  But when before did I ever hanker for a political voice? Melba touched her throat gently, then pinched and wiggled her windpipe, rather roughly.

  I’m so tired of thinking, she thought. The only distraction is small bodily manipulations and I’m tired of those too. She looked with hope at the bakery door. The bakery door banged open. In walked Don Pond.

  Thank—, thought Melba.

  Don Pond was the bakery’s first customer every day, but he never boasted.

  “It’s luck, Melba,” Don Pond had told her, long ago, back when they were still assessing one another’s prospects as people. Melba had just handed him his bags of garlic sticks and psyllium husk brownies and listened politely.

  “I don’t move faster than other men,” Don Pond had said, “and I don’t wake up any earlier. I can’t say I’m more deserving than they are, either. In fact, many would say I’m less deserving.”

  Soon a precedent was established. Don Pond would always linger after purchasing his baked goods, making modest claims and waving a garlic stick so that salt and chips of toasted garlic fell onto the counter. He and Melba would lick their fingertips and press them down on the counter, returning their fingers to their mouths and sucking off the savory crumbs. Melba came to enjoy these interludes with Don Pond, except on occasion, when Don Pond was in a mood and his modesty became taxing.

  “I’ve caused a lot of suffering, Melba,” Don Pond would confess.

  “Oh Don, you’re in a mood,” Melba would interrupt but he would not be put off. When Don Pond was in one of his moods, he interrogated himself ruthlessly, finding fault after fault, and nothing Melba said to encourage l
eniency made any impression. Just the other week he had stomped into the bakery and Melba could tell from his patchily shaven head and bare, goose-pimpled arms that he was in the throes of a mood the likes of which he had never before inflicted upon her.

  “I’ve caused a lot of suffering, Melba,” he began. “I mean physical suffering! To others. In podiatry class, I discovered a splinter in the sole of a classmate’s foot, and I dug for the splinter with a needle, dug deeply, until I had exhausted myself. Can I tell you a secret, Melba, something I’ve never told anyone?”

  “Is it because you see me as a person of little consequence?” asked Melba. She retreated through the swinging door into the back of the bakery as she said it, overcome by emotion. She opened and slammed the walk-in refrigerator door so Don Pond would think she was checking on the pitchers of eggs. The cold blast of air felt good against her face and neck. Melba liked Don Pond. She felt close to him when they laughed together, licking their fingers and tasting the pungency of lightly charred garlic: such a flooding, intimate taste to share with someone before most people were even awake. Then he had to spoil it by bringing up secrets, secrets he would only tell to a nobody. But maybe he didn’t see her as a nobody, maybe he saw her as Melba Zuzzo, and, as such, peculiar and unassociated, unlikely to share his secrets with others.

  She pushed back through the door and marched to the counter to face Don Pond, who had pulled several paint squares from his shirt pocket and was holding them up in different combinations.

  “Do you see me as a person alone, isolated from intercourse?” demanded Melba, blushing.

  “Intercourse, Melba?” said Don Pond delicately, stacking the paint squares and sliding them back into his pocket.

  “Dealings,” said Melba. “You know how secrets spread through Dan,” said Melba. “It’s like wildfire! Or butter! What do you call that if not intercourse? But sometimes intercourse skips a person, an isolated person, a person so unlike other people that that person is on the brink of extinction. Is that how you see me? As a person skipped by intercourse? On the brink of extinction?”

  “I think there would be signs if you were on the brink of extinction,” said Don Pond, shocked out of his modesty by her outburst. “Think about it, Melba. There would be special protections. You wouldn’t be allowed to just come and go, all day and all night, riding around Dan on a bicycle, springing animals from traps. You’d be kept in a special facility until you reproduced, and not with just anyone, with a family member, Melba. I don’t mean biological family,” said Don Pond quickly as Melba recoiled. “I mean a person who shares your most jeopardized quality. Do you even know what quality that would be?”

  “I am psychic,” said Melba Zuzzo.

  Don Pond whistled. He had a very nice, full whistle, so nice that his whistling might be considered a quality in its own right. But Don Pond did not stop to comment on his whistle. He was focused on Melba. Melba stood with her arms straight at her sides while he admired her.

  “Well, that’s it, then, Melba,” said Don Pond. “Psychic. Wow.” He shook his head. “I don’t suppose anyone knows about that, or I’d have heard. It’s only fair that I tell you my secret, not because of intercourse, just because you told me one of yours.” He shut his eyes. For a long time he didn’t speak.

  “There was no splinter in my classmate’s foot,” he said at last. “Oh, I showed her a splinter alright, but it was a pencil shaving from my own pocket. I dug in her foot purely for my own gratification. I’ve slapped people, too, Melba, hundreds of times, during mosquito season. ‘Hold still,’ I’d say. ‘There’s a mosquito.’ Then bam! But do you think the mosquitoes were really there?”

  “Not always,” said Melba, generously.

  “That’s right,” said Don Pond, slowly. “Not always. So you see,” he continued, “I don’t deserve anything, not compared to people who’ve never slapped for no reason. I don’t know why I’m so favored in this life. It’s not in reward for my sterling character! I suppose, Melba, we were all of us given paths to walk in life, and some paths are lucky paths that lead you where you want to go in advance of the hordes. Shortcuts, if you will.”

  “Your house is very close to the bakery,” Melba agreed.

  “I don’t know if it is,” said Don Pond. “But my path is shorter. Luck has nothing to do with where a man builds his house. That’s a zoning issue. I’m talking about getting from A to B. What if there’s an ocean between A and B? It would take you a little while to cross that ocean, wouldn’t it Melba?”

  “It would,” said Melba.

  “Well there is no ocean between me and the bakery,” said Don Pond, and let the matter rest there.

  Now Melba almost cried out with relief as Don Pond strode across the bakery. To face Don Pond across the counter—surely this was normal! He did not look at all tentative in his dark knit cap and earring.

  “Thank you, Don!” gasped Melba extending her hands. Don Pond grasped them. His hands were ice cold and Melba noticed that his wrists, which extended past the cuffs of his dark jacket, were a vivid pink.

  “You’re cold!” she observed.

  “The temperature’s dropping out there,” said Don Pond. “I almost turned back several times.” He paused, perseveringly. Then he tightened his grip on her hands. Melba braced herself for the outburst.

  “Officer Greg was here!” cried Don Pond, a catch in his voice.

  “He didn’t buy anything,” Melba said loyally. “He didn’t come in the capacity of a customer. There haven’t been any other customers, I swear it, Don.”

  “He left holding a bag …” Don Pond’s large, glaucous eyes began to shine. “He had what could have been a Danish in his hand …”

  “Evidence,” said Melba. She realized Don Pond was trembling. His teeth chattered within his trim beard.

  “Hold on.” Melba pulled her hands free and hurried through the swinging door into the depths of the bakery, turning all of the ovens as high as they would go. Then she opened the back door, and, returning to the front of the bakery, opened the front door as well, propping it with a gallon can of chestnuts.

  “We’ll see what that does,” she said with satisfaction. “I don’t expect it will warm the whole of Dan, but, then again, it may. For now, come around the counter. We’ll go into the back and stand in front of the ovens.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Don Pond. “Even as the first customer, I don’t deserve that kind of privilege. It isn’t authorized.”

  “Oh,” Melba blinked. She found his attitude provoking and didn’t like this newly revealed aspect of his character. It seemed to her that Don Pond couldn’t be resisting out of modesty alone. What if Don Pond wasn’t simply modest? What if he was, in fact, some kind of stickler?

  Melba tried not to hold it against him, but it was difficult. Zeno Zuzzo loathed sticklers and Zeno Zuzzo was an influential man, a man with whom it behooved Melba to share beliefs. Zeno Zuzzo did not like to name names but he did enjoy speaking knowledgeably about types, or worse, maintaining an ominous silence about the type in question.

  Melba remembered a particular episode.

  “Look!” Zeno Zuzzo had exploded, pointing out a large and a small woman loitering outside the town hall, perhaps eager to be viewed by a passing committee. Melba followed his finger, straining to make out details but only reconfirming the relative largeness and smallness of the figures, which struck her suddenly as very funny.

  “They’re different sizes!” She giggled and Zeno Zuzzo glanced at her approvingly, then gave a brief hard guffaw.

  “Do you see the ears?” he asked. “Those women are conspiring, always conspiring. Why else would they need ears set so close to their mouths? They’re whispering things to themselves, Melba. They’re stirring themselves up. They won’t be satisfied until they assassinate, someone, anyone. If you can drop a person like that with a well-aimed rock, you should do it, before they have a chance to attack. If you don’t notice the ears until they’re upon you, prepare for close combat.
Soap in a sock is handy.”

  Melba nodded, fingering her own ears. The earlobes were not attached, but then again, they were not nearly as long and loosely formed as her father’s. Zeno Zuzzo had extraordinarily long earlobes and his ears were set far back on his head. He was very proud of his ears and emphasized their shape and position with his signature haircut, the Belmondo. No other man in Dan was as well-suited to his Belmondo as was Zeno Zuzzo.

  “Someday somebody should write a book about me,” Zeno Zuzzo often remarked. When Melba was a student at Dan Elementary, Zeno Zuzzo would say it while reviewing Melba’s report card, which always indicated satisfactory performance in the literary arts: penmanship and spelling. Zeno Zuzzo would nod meaningfully at the report card and wink. Zeno Zuzzo was very good at winking.

  “A wink is a friendly gesture with a little something extra,” Zeno Zuzzo explained to Melba. “A little oomph. Like when a man calls another man ‘sweetheart’ then riddles him with bullets between the groin and knee.” Before leaving Dan Elementary, Mrs. Burr had told Melba’s class that a wink was a wizard’s kiss, but Melba knew better than to repeat anything Mrs. Burr said to her father. Besides, in this case, it was irrelevant. Melba Zuzzo could not wink.

  But on the subject of sticklers, Zeno Zuzzo maintained a chilling silence.

  “Don’t get me started about sticklers,” was all he would say, then he would sink onto his haunches, stroking his lower lip with his thumb, his dark brow beetling, and Melba would back away, sensing the restrained malevolence and understanding implicitly the lowliness of the stickler, his lack of all human worth, and, worse, his inability to contribute to the natural world, the vegetable and mineral kingdoms to which all beings who are not sticklers tithe.