Spare and Found Parts
Page 7
There was crashing. Was that glass breaking? She placed one hand on her chest as if to try to drown out the sound of the loud machine inside her. Should she just burst in, ride out the end of her fury at Oliver and Ruby, and rescue her father from Daniel’s stream of insults?
“Sick”
“Madman”
“Abomination”
Nell knew in her gut this would be a stupid thing to do; she’d never gone into the lab, not in her whole entire life. What if her father became angry at her for intruding? He’d know she’d been listening. The last thing she wanted was to betray his trust. She strained against the barrier, trying to make out more.
Eavesdropping was dangerous; if she were meant to hear angry conversations, the door would not be closed. The conversations would not be happening in the dead of night when she was assumed to be asleep or at a dance hall three and a half miles away either. Nell was not meant to be part of this, but here she was.
She held the hard, lifeless hand tightly in hers.
“Madman, abomination, sick, sick.”
“How could I have trusted you?”
“How could I have trusted you?”
Nell choked back a sob. Suddenly she couldn’t hear any more of this. She didn’t want to know what they were fighting over. Let them, let them. She slowly, silently moved back up to her bedroom, fingers knotted around the hand, the sterile digits of her future. Kodak was scratching against the bedroom door, mewling to get out. When she went in, he immediately scampered up her legs and arm to her shoulder, his tiny nose seeking the crook of her neck.
Nell sat on her bed and stared at the hand. The figures and plants drawn on the paper all over her walls were still and stark around her. Sometimes she felt as though her bed were lying in the middle of an open notebook. This was her only comfort, surrounded by the plans for things she intended to create.
Could she build a boy? Could she make metal think? Could she create something that wasn’t still, something that could breathe and feel? She shook the hand a little, not knowing what she was hoping for. Would she cast more limbs in plastic, or porcelain, or terra-cotta? She’d have to ask her father for the molds. Nell didn’t consider herself much of a carver—and where would she get the plastic? Or clay. Or metal. She’d have to sterilize a lot of material, and she’d never be able to weld something the size of a human being in this room; she’d smoke the place out.
Never mind making it think. Never mind computers. That was just another impossibility.
“Am I fooling myself, Kodak?” she asked him quietly. He looked up at her, his eyelids drooping, sleepy.
Of course the one impressive idea she finally had would be totally out of reach. Naturally. She wished she’d never found the hand or had had the common sense to throw it back into the sea.
There was no way she was going to sleep, not now. Nell stood and walked over to her wardrobe. It was four blurring into five now, but she was wild with awakeness. Dawn began to spiral fresh pink into the dark outside. She placed the hand on a small shelf while she changed from her Bayou frock into her culottes and a loose, wide-necked gray wool sweater, over which she placed her mother’s work apron, a blue denim thing, stitched by the great-grandmother she’d never met. It was worn and soft, stained and scorched by a variety of impermeable substances. It was hers. She hadn’t worn it in a while, since she’d resolved she was a useless inventor. As she placed it over her head, she could almost swear she smelled her mother from it, even though she knew it had stopped smelling like Cora long ago. She wasn’t very good at pretending, but it was nice sometimes. It might be what she needed to keep her going today.
She tied the apron on and slipped the hand into the deep front pocket. She unwound her hair and wound it up again more neatly. She dabbed the makeup off her face with cotton and tea astringent, all the black and purple streaks erased from her cheeks and replaced with pale powder and a tincture of rose to give her cheeks the flush they otherwise severely lacked. She was making herself up for nobody, but it helped. As she dressed and assembled herself, her ticking hushed to a normal, just about audible rhythm. When dawn flooded in, she would be a person who invented and discovered, who helped her father and who made a difference. Today would not be another wasted opportunity.
The birds outside were an orchestra of awake. She could not hear her father and Daniel anymore, only the symphony of morning calls. Kodak was sleeping now on her pillow. His tiny rib cage rose and fell with each breath. Nell didn’t rouse him.
When she got down the stairs to make herself a cup of tea, her father’s lab door was open. She nearly stopped to stare inside or creep over the threshold, but now was not the time. Not at all. With all the resolve she could muster, she walked right by, giving the door a push shut as she passed. It clicked, it closed; that mystery passed for the moment.
The kitchen floor was covered in frogs again. The garden door was wide open, the fresh leafy smell of morning lifting in on the tips of the early breeze, edged with tobacco. Julian sat on the kitchen table, a mess. His shirt was half undone; his tie hung loose around his neck. The knuckles on his flesh hand were bleeding, and a finger was missing from the mechanical side. It was making an irregular chiming and bleeping sound, horrible and worrying, but he was ignoring it. He had a lit cigarette between two of his remaining steel fingers. Ash fluttered softly to the tabletop without his noticing.
Nell hadn’t seen her father smoke in years.
“Da?” she asked softly from the doorway.
“Would you please, please get rid of these poxy frogs, Nell? I just opened the door to let in some air, and in they bloody marched. I really have to start setting up traps.” Her father’s voice was ragged. He didn’t even look up.
Nell set her jaw, plucked the broom from the corner, and set about herding the tiny green creatures back out. The first time the frogs had gotten into the kitchen, her mother told her that she must never touch them with her fingers. Her mother, full of strange advice. Her mother, whose voice and heathery laugh she was only half sure she remembered. Who she couldn’t picture whole. Big hair, bright and crooked grin. Maybe the rest was imagination and grief.
“Human blood is hot; frog blood is cold. Our fingers are like fire to the poor little babies. Scoop them up in a jar, or sweep them outside; just don’t touch them!” Cora had shown her how to tip the little amphibians into old mason jars with a piece of paper, never touching them at all. Julian had been watching and picked up a stray from near where he was sitting at the table, using his mechanical hand. It had been an early version, still gray and squeaky. Cora had put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “Jules, don’t. Didn’t you hear me?”
“It’s cold, Cora, look, the little lad isn’t even hopping away.”
Julian had then gotten to his knees and shown Nell the frog up close, sitting calmly in the steel palm of his new hand. Its eyes were peaceful and black, the thrumming of the tiny engine in her father’s arm so loud to her, in that moment, so much to bear. Alive, but cold and safe for the small frog. Cold and safe.
Thirteen years later Nell swept around the same old table where he’d held the small creature, which he was now sitting on top of, a picture of devastation. Still, she would not pity him, not right now. She was resolved to see the brightness in this morning. So she swept the frogs out into the garden, gently and carefully, and closed the door.
“Did you hear us fighting?” her father asked, breaking the terrible, awkward silence hanging in the kitchen air like something about to turn sour. His voice was shaky, exhausted.
“Only from a distance,” Nell replied, composed. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t. Thank you.”
“Would you like something to eat? I actually have a few questions for you if you want to, you know, take your mind off, em, everything.” She was holding the hand in the pocket of the apron, its stillness a relief. “I heard something last night that you might be interested in—”
Julian sat up, his face somehow more drawn than usual, eyes reddened. He smoked the end of the cigarette, stubbed it out in the teacup by his side, and got up. He walked to his daughter and placed his human hand on her shoulder. “I’ll answer your questions tomorrow. If you don’t hear from me, don’t fret. Maybe we’ll talk the next day.”
And he ambled out of the room. Even after the laboratory door had opened and shut, the pulse of kindness from his small embrace charged her, made her all the more willing to be brave, be the inventor she was born to be. To contribute.
Nell felt a pang of hunger. The refrigerator, as Julian had noted, was empty, bar a tall jar containing some cloudy water and some floating things that could have just as easily been eyeballs as they could have been pickled eggs. Nell grimaced. The cold thrum of the machine was refreshing; the morning heat was already descending on the house. Nell closed it again and moved to the cabinets: empty, empty, empty. Where had everything gone? She was positive that there’d been enough for a fresh breakfast, at least an egg and an avocado, maybe some cured bacon. One onion sat in the back of a barren shelf, happily sprouting green shoots among the cobwebs. A single tin of butter beans was housed in the shelf above it.
Nell looked over to the sink. It was full of smashed dishes. Cracked shards of white and blue ceramic stained with whatever they’d eaten before they started fighting. They must have come right back after their meeting with the mayor. What could have gone so wrong that a meal could turn this ugly?
Nell was suddenly furious at Ruby’s father for being cruel to hers when he had gone to all that effort, but as soon as the ticking inside her grew loud, she shut her eyes and focused: no, no, no more energy wasted on being angry and sad. Her hand went instinctively to the totem in her apron pocket. How calming it was.
She imagined him again, the person she would build. Drew him soft, graphite in her mind. She tried hard to hear his voice as she leaned against the counter, the depth or softness, but there was nothing but the distant clanks of her father in his lab again. No voice. Not yet. No voice, no name. Just a hand.
She decided, as she cleaned the broken crockery from the sink piece by piece, that she would go for a cycle, maybe down to the markets. It wouldn’t be nice—it would be busy and loud—but she could prepare something good for Julian to eat that evening, something to cheer him up. Plus cycling always helped her think. She had a lot to figure out, mostly whether or not it was worth her while investigating what exactly Oliver had in the back rooms of the Gonne Hospital. She was annoyed at herself for even considering it, for placing a fishhook of deceit onto Oliver’s tongue. But if she couldn’t cast or carve or weld all the limbs herself, she had to get them from somewhere. Otherwise she was just left with paper and a mannequin hand. Oliver owed her this access, surely, for all the space he’d taken up in her home over the years.
Once Nell had cleared the debris of her father’s and Daniel’s falling-out from the kitchen and blocked the crack under the back door to prevent any further frog invasions, she packed a satchel, wrapping the hand in a scarf and shoving it below her notebook and a flask full of iced, fresh tea. Her little purse of tokens was still full. She decided to let Kodak sleep; the poor creature had such a long night.
At the bottom of the stairs up to the house she checked the postbox. Nothing today. She must write back to Nan.
As Nell pulled away on her bike, she noticed Ruby in the distance, making her way down the path to her house. Ruby waved, a stripe of color against the forest, but Nell ignored her and cycled on. She didn’t want to talk to Ruby yet because of both the nonsense with Oliver and whatever Daniel was shouting at her father for.
How could it be so easy for Ruby? They never talked about anything anymore. Not their worries, not their mothers. The glass eye wasn’t just a simple little omission from their conversations; it felt steep to Nell. Deliberate. Perhaps Ruby didn’t need to talk to her anymore.
Maybe, she thought, as she spun down toward the big road, maybe Ruby was just normal now. So many of the other apprentices had had a parent swept away from them by the epidemic, but they were all still capable of relaxing, being happy, dancing, partnering up. Ruby was like them. Over it. She was all right.
Nell had always been too worried to enjoy the same things that her peers enjoyed. Worried about being unable to invent anything, unable to contribute, about her mother, about her mother’s being gone. She sounded like a machine and had a chest cavity full of steel, but she didn’t have the privilege of turning herself off when she got too exhausted or too anxious. She kept ticking along.
Her brow knitted as she cycled down by the river and into the city’s last center. The quays were dense with cleaners this morning, teams of folks tipping vats of purifying chemicals down into the water, as they did every day. There was a stench in the air around this hour that should have been clean but instead was overbearing, noxious. Dilapidated breweries and stone buildings (which Julian had once whispered were museums full of art long ago) lined the grim wetness of the Livia, and Nell ducked into the skinny winding streets where some families still lived.
She picked up her pace; the vague color of tragedy still clung to these streets. At least in the greenery of the parklands there was dense, lush fauna to mask it. Out by the river the old water’s chemical stench made for a good disguise. But here, among the houses where the epidemic had taken most of its victims, the air was thick and alive with their specters. Some days Nell couldn’t feel the grief at all, but today the ghosts were all over her.
Clunking over old tram lines, Nell seared through the city at top speed. She set her jaw, intent to make it down to the market quickly; the air was strange today. Still, to get to the bustling hub, no matter what route she took, she would have to pass the hospital.
She eventually broached the center of the city, marked by the tall steel Needle that stood proudly in Main Street, a pathetic folly in the shadow of Kate’s majesty, her long, cool shadow a relief against the heat of the morning. Julian had told her many times that the Needle was the last monument built before the country took the Turn. It shone in the tepid morning heat, silver and towering and almost endless. It had been the first thing protected by plastic during the Turn, wrapped in miles and miles of industrial clean cellophane. It survived, untouched by the signature bloody red rust that ate metal all around it. The townspeople had unwrapped it to celebrate the end of quarantine. A tiny red light blinked at the peak when night fell, but nobody knew why. Nell didn’t like to hear the stories and theories, especially not the ones that said it was somebody watching.
It had been left to stand, it was said, because it told no stories. It had no face, no body, no myth. It was just a needle, towering to the hot sky, too slim and smooth to climb, made of such stuff that nobody could even write histories upon its surface. The stone woman’s incomplete face gazed past it, as if it wasn’t even there.
Wrapping her fingers around her handlebars a little tighter, Nell looked up at the statue. She wished she had someone to talk to, someone to pour her concern out to. This, she imagined, was what mothers and sisters were for. Kate’s incomplete blank stare didn’t even touch Nell; she was a speck in the streets far below.
She didn’t let this sudden gape of loss sink her for more than a moment. This was why she had to build a companion, build a boy with an electric voice, so she’d have someone to confide in when the people around her were too much for her to handle. Too flawed. Too human.
CHAPTER 11
Nell pressed on into the day, and it was upon her then: the shadow of Gonne Hospital. White stone columns, grand carvings, a proud aul dame. It was still romantic somehow: the disused department store, a large bronze clock jutting from its facade out onto the street, rows and rows of silent, caged windows t
hat had once proudly displayed beautiful expensive things from places far away. Nell stopped to take it in despite herself.
She was just about to begin pedaling again when someone moving caught her eye: Oliver bloody Kelly, walking briskly down the street. Nell’s gut twisted between disgust and curiosity. He had to be on his way to his dark storeroom full of stolen parts hidden somewhere in its labyrinthine belly. She’d been able to ignore Ruby, so for sure she could ignore him; she could just be on her way—
“Well, isn’t this a surprise! Couldn’t wait a few days. Don’t blame you!” he called out to her, his voice jarring against the deserted streets. His smugness almost echoed across the road. His dress shoes slapped against the pavement as he bounded toward her, and then there he was, his eager hand on her arm. Nell was defeated, too tired now for the escape.
“Ruby must have told you I was working today. Finally come clean about the eye, has she?” Oliver smelled strong, soapy. “You look wonderful, given how distressed you were last night. Have you reconsidered? Will you let me show you the inventory? Give you the full tour?” Nell’s skin crawled at his enthusiasm, but curiosity slipped its ugly tentacles around her again. She did truly want to know what was inside the room he kept, a history of the city in spare parts.
“I have not reconsidered anything, Oliver. I’m on my way to the market but”—she mustered a thin-lipped smile from somewhere—“I can come in for a bit.”
Nell dismounted her bicycle, the sleepless night landing on her. The hand in her satchel weighed a ton in unanswered questions, in unsolvable problems.
Oliver beamed, offering his arm to her. She stared, and he withdrew quickly.
“Was just being a gentleman.”
“If I ever want your arm, I’ll take it, Oliver.”
They crossed the street quietly. Oliver was barely able to contain the smile on his face, but for Nell each step forward was a fight against the pulling current of her distaste.