by Eugen Bacon
His eyes are slits.
She sits at the edge, strokes his hair. “Tell me about your mother.”
“Mine? What about her?”
“What she look like?”
“Silhouette.”
“Is that a shape or a color?”
“It’s a name. Silhouette.”
. . . Later, much later, Myra stands invisible by his bedside.
“Why do you hold a candle at me?” he asks without speaking.
The candlelight flickers. Its light plays patterns on the walls. She answers him the same way, without speaking. “You left.”
“I am disgusted with myself.”
“Disgust is what I knew,” says Myra.
“Disgust about death?”
“That you were never dead. You watched her bury an empty coffin.”
“Least I could do.”
“Was it me? Did you hate me so much?”
“Hate? Never my love.”
“Yet you left me.”
“My heart stayed.”
“I was a child!”
“Your eyes were ancient, young’un.”
“Sometimes. T-Mo. Maybe sometimes I miss you too.”
• • •
Tempest looks happier, more mature. She carries herself differently. There is a knowing about her. Fingers clasped, no questions asked. She and Myra bounce in a homebound skip. What Myra feels is . . . sweet as amity.
Now she must focus on things that matter.
Vida and Amber glance down the window, they too are holding hands. Their eyes light up. The front door snaps open, nearly off its hinge. Amber whistles out. Her legs—how skinny—peddle at dazzling speed. Tears shimmer in her eyes. She is laughing and whooping, running and crying. Her garble is the distant cousin of “Thank you, oh thank you.” She races across the yard, laughing and garbling, and casts herself upon . . .
Myra.
ODYSSEUS
• 50 •
Silhouette . . .
He climbed sopping wet from the river. His mind was filled with prospect. He stood on a crag, stared further out, away from the shore. Of the fresh seaweed clumped in his hair, some he pulled with his fingers and let slip into white waves that coiled with breeze.
The water’s lashes were soft yet bold. They fluttered at the indifferent coast.
He turned his head west and, unlike T-Mo—the one of the stepping who stood still and beckoned—this one nudged himself inland. And although he could bend time and space to teleport through space, extend across alleys, glide through walls, he walked. Only things he changed before he walked were his clothes. And the webs in his feet.
• 51 •
That’s not him,” said Tempest. She pointed at a man sitting at their porch on a brisk April afternoon. He calmly chew chewed a strand of grass, gazed at the family. “Uh-uh. Not him. He is wearing . . . tennis shoes.”
“Sure?” said Vida.
“They are white tennis shoes, look.” She ran up to the stranger. “You are not T-Mo,” she said.
“Miss . . .” Grass in his mouth still. His voice was the same silk as T-Mo’s. “Tell me your name. Something pretty I’m sure. Pearl? Petal?” He ruffled her curls. “Ruby?”
“Tempest.”
“Aren’t you the picture?”
He stood then, took his time rising to full height, placed a hand on her head.
Myra understood he was someone she knew, someone she didn’t. He’d shown up with sunnies and a saxophone. Yes, about that . . . indeed. He wasn’t T-Mo.
He still chew chewed the grass. If Myra hadn’t known better, she would have mistook him. But there were differences. Like dress. T-Mo wore cheesy things like that t-shirt carrying bold white words on its breast, words that said: Hearts & Beds. Wore it in front of a prospective father-in-law, Salem had said. T-Mo’s eyes gazed at you in a personal way, measured you and determined a fact about you. And he didn’t wear hats even though nobody could remember the color of his hair. All they saw was the gator skin, intricately patterned, so creased it looked worse than an ailment before its weaves and crossings morphed into art under their stares. So the man standing there in a moleskin jacket (turn-up cuffs) and a cowboy hat . . . with sunnies and a saxophone . . . with flat eyes and something smooth, something shifty . . . He wasn’t T-Mo.
He dropped the grass, lifted the hat. Tucked one hand in his pocket and approached. Something else too—he had lapis lazuli hair, blue as blue—much intensity in its color. A speckle of ash and gold along his temples.
He stood tall, head almost touching the eaves.
“My name is Odysseus. T-Mo . . . has not told you about me?”
“He hasn’t,” said Myra. “And I don’t care.”
This man with his shimmering blue hair looked danger, brought danger, was dressed like a punk and smelt like a forest. She’d had enough inside the stepping and was not willing for any more of these people inside her real world.
He stayed quiet, waiting. For what? An invitation? When it was not forthcoming, he wasn’t getting it from Myra, he claimed it. “Dusk soon. This far. Nowhere else.”
“There’s an inn—” started Myra.
Vida cut her short. “I never turned a person from my door, and I’m not starting now.” To Odysseus: “Forgive my wife. Come in, do.”
“Should he?” said Myra.
“Will he?”
In that awful silence between them, the first in their lifetime, Odysseus never cast his eyes off Myra’s face. “I will come in,” he said to Vida, shook his hand. “Someone has manners,” across his shoulder to Myra. “I choose you,” to Amber. His finger poked her chest. “I trust nobody else but you to stay close to this baby.”
Amber took from him the contoured saxophone case.
• • •
Before the visit, they’d been to the fair. Always planned to go, always postponed, something always happened. The one day they managed to go, one day, look what they found waiting at the door.
“Ride, ride all day!” the jolly clown on the carousel had cried. Up and down, up, down. Happy thighs rode the ponies. High spirits from the carousel never left Tempest and Amber. They forked out notes like adults to buy head-sized fairy floss from Serious Sweets. Then they ate O’Ghee spiced-ups, drank Tropicana Fresh chillers, Soda Lake pops . . . The fair spoiled them for choice: eat-in munchies, take-away munchies, invitations-only munchies, stall-to-stall munchies. They were breathless, excitable, their merry feet doing whirligigs all the way to noble park rides, ghost train rides, dinosaur hunt rides, shoot the freak rides . . .
Myra, sprawled on the curl of a de-leafed tree, watched the world below go by.
People loved roller coasters for the light-headedness they produced. For the spinning sensation that followed an upside-down loop loop loop. For the seat-pushing-on-the-back feeling, for the feeling of muscles roping and body organs dropping . . . They did it over and over, some straight after vomiting, simply to experience yet again riding with your whole body.
But Myra was different.
She didn’t need amusement park thrill coasters to fly high, to feel weightless. She was capable on her own of sky-active performance. Without propelling structures, her body could freely accelerate airborne in twists and spins and free-fall plummet. She understood the full-body sensation, every part of her body individually pushed by gravity. She’d experienced this feeling over and over as orbits rocketed past. So she didn’t participate but observed thrill seekers, fire eaters, burger eaters, money eaters.
Vida, who was skipping like a boy around dressed trees, vanished into some haunted ride. Tempest and Amber were tossing coins, twigs and songs into a penny pond filled with snow white swans . . . Everything was perfect, until Tempest pointed.
“Look,” she said. “There’s a man at our door.”
“
Look like you, Momma,” Amber said.
And he did too, pixel by pixel, a manly pixelation.
Myra shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. The man poised wide-legged on their porch, sun melting in his face as he chew chewed that ridiculous grass, wasn’t family. “Can’t be,” she said.
• • •
He chatted with Amber as she carried the sax to his room: “My word. You don’t look like an Amber.”
She flushed. “What do I look like?”
“Don’t know. Maybe a Ballard? Or a Bianca? An Olivia. Something pretty.”
Her flush deepened.
Vida showed him the guest room but it was Myra who ambushed Odysseus, alone in the room, before he could unpack.
“They’re just girls.”
“What are you on about?”
“A Ballard? Or a Bianca? Aren’t you the picture?”
“I see. That.”
“Pearl? Petal?”
“I get it.”
“Something pretty?”
He shrugged. “Will you keep going? I said I get it.”
“Tell me why you are here,” said Myra.
“Bored.”
“Bored?”
“Came to see. We all need excitement. At some stage.”
“To see who?”
“To see what he made.” His gesture enveloped the room. “All . . . this. You.”
“Why see what he made?” She understood he meant T-Mo.
“Curious, I guess.”
“Why curious now?”
“Time is not relevant.”
“It is if you are curious about us now. What happened to before?”
“About you? It was never you. It’s him, really.”
“Explain.”
He took his time. “Always wondered what he really was.”
“What T-Mo was? Surely.”
“He played Gabriel, acted God. Stood there all holy, eyes watching watching.”
“Over what?”
“Cherubim. Serpent.”
“So you’re a snake.”
“I am not the villain if that’s your question. Novic is the one you want.”
“What’s Novic got to do with this?”
“Everything.” His eyes burnt.
“How?” said Myra.
He shrugged.
“I said how?” said Myra.
“You always this annoying or is it just for me?” Silence. Then: “All I wanted was to be the same as T-Mo. Like how children lit up when they saw him. Me they eyed and puckered. Grownups saw Lucifer. Even plants wilted, don’t know what they saw. Imagine growing up with that.”
“Saying you’re a victim?”
“Same as he. You. Salem. Silhouette. Novic makes everyone a victim.”
• • •
Dinner was strained. Vida’s efforts at conversation, at finding history, met walls. Neither Myra nor Odysseus would indulge a different mood between the two of them. Tempest stayed in some daze. Amber was busy, too busy being coy. And Odysseus switched on the charm for her especially. He pulled out her chair at the start of dinner, sat after she sat. Amber reciprocated his interest. She was first to lift his empty plate to the kitchen and, as she did so, Myra noticed a touching of fingers that led to Amber’s giddy laugh.
She cornered the girl in the kitchen, where Amber was lustily humming and filling a kettle. Her singing was louder than Red’s, and she sang in the secret language she shared with Tempest: “Al pet rom ned. Carr esli cap orst!”
“Different buzz, huh?” said Myra.
Amber’s hand at the tap shook but her gaze stayed steady. “Don’t know what this is about.”
“You and me both.”
Next morning, Vida was in the kitchen when Odysseus appeared.
“Sleep well?” said Vida.
Odysseus nodded.
“Kettle going,” said Vida. “How do you like your tea?”
“Wet,” said Odysseus.
By the time the kettle was boiled, Odysseus and the sax were gone.
He was back on the clock for dinner, but Myra stood at the doorway, blocked entry. Behind her, Vida ran a nervous hand at the back of his neck and was relieved when Myra stood aside for Odysseus and his sax.
“Guess one more night won’t kill,” said Myra. “Don’t mean you stay tomorrow.”
Odysseus gave no thanks, no protest, not even rejection of her proposal.
But at the dinner table he lost his walls. Regaled them with tales of otherworldly lands, worlds whose wind smelt of baby fennel, whose sun was the color of blood orange, whose phantoms soared without restraint when gods doused the night. His voice remained full of silk, his presence paramount, even Myra could not ignore it.
He spoke loud and he whispered. Mesmeric words like ballads. He spoke with persistence and with slowness. He told of the Temple of Ide, of the mountains of Saturn, of an Atlas of Huygens embossed on a moon in Gaia. The flow and gravity in his eyes shifted with each new place.
Tempest’s eyes were content, her smile big, her laughter free and tinkling, soft like a gentle scatter of beads, and ending on big notes. Amber was . . . entranced.
That night it rained, buckets and buckets of it, almost a perfect storm. Amber and Tempest fought their most fitful fights yet. In a pause between the mountains of Saturn and a toilet break, Myra didn’t see whose eye went sharp first. All she heard was a growl, then saw a leap. Amber was small as she was fast. She tackled Tempest who found herself knees to the ground before she could throw a fist. Amber’s bony palms pressed the girl’s shoulders. Tempest, who carried a blaster in her hand, one that called up lightning or a storm, who also executed the stepping, entered memories of other people and saw things, did not summon her powers. She just skirted the table, lunged and fought like a spiteful girl. Her kick knocked Amber to the floor. They wrestled, breathed in rapid snatches. One guided a fist away, another back-pedaled, spun at the nth minute to knock the other into a wall. Currently, no one was winning.
No one saw Odysseus until he lunged his fingers through their hair, snatched Amber and Tempest apart by their scalps. He clutched them under his armpits. When he released his hold, the girls were too numb with shock or embarrassment to resume battle. Mumbled their goodnights when Odysseus bade them. Tempest’s face was soft. Amber’s was softer.
“Well . . .!” said Vida, after Odysseus himself retired. “Our way is this!”
“That’s decisive.”
“He’s decisive. He’s staying then?”
“I guess,” said Myra.
By dawn again he had vanished, returned by dusk.
Vida lit the fireplace, more for aesthetics than need.
Myra leaned, arms folded, against a bookshelf. Odysseus declined the chair Vida offered, stood one hand in pocket in the living room, sipped wild berry cider that Vida had also offered. The girls were nowhere.
So Myra spoke freely. “Finished your genocides?”
Odysseus laughed. “The worst,” he said.
“Beg your pardon?
“You’d like to think the worst of me.”
Myra remembered what T-Mo had said: Idi. Göring. Bokassa. Pol Pot . . . Nagasaki, Kosovo, Rwanda and Chechnya . . .
“Where was it today?” she asked. “Yemen?”
“Not going to do it . . . I’m afraid.”
“Do . . . what?”
“Bite your bait,” he said. “Soon you’ll blame me for all of Earth’s pandemics.”
Later, in their bedroom, Myra explained it to Vida. “You have no idea what he is capable of.”
“Nor have you.”
“You are defending him?”
“You are conjuring more than he is.”
His ultra-charm. She couldn’t believe how well it worked. She set it aside and forgot.
Until Amber changed her hair.
• 52 •
It sifted in quietly, fine as baby dust. Myra noticed it quite by chance. At first it was the way the girl held herself when she anticipated his presence: her soft waist and new face too. Then it was the angle of her neck when he stepped into the room. The way her eyes fluttered and then shone when they fell upon him. The way her eyes dropped to her feet when he looked at her closely. The way she trembled when he took her hand. The secret smile that crossed her face when he turned his face to some other thing . . . Then, only then, when his focus was some other place, did she look, devour him with a dreamy sadness, the tender kind of one who yearned. Hers was a bottomless kind of dreaming.
When he walked in the garden, Amber stood at the window. She pressed her nose against the glass, cupped with her palms her love-struck face. She looked as if he was oxygen, and she bottled—gazing at him from an airtight jar. When he threw his head, laughed over a private or shared joke, she too smiled. She was at ease this way, looking at him unnoticed, listening to the silk in his throat. Sometimes her lips moved, silent words to herself. Knowing eyes made their own laughter. At times, thinking she was alone, she would shut her eyes, tilt her neck, open it to an invisible feather along her nape. Her shoulders went loose, then occasionally, once or twice, she touched her nape, caressed the skin inside thick, roped hair.
Suddenly, hair she had always locked in braids opened up. It fell tenderly to one shoulder or both. As it had always been locked up, Myra was astonished to find the true color of it when the hair came loose. It was reddish-brown, the color of brandy. Seeing it now, feeling it, how lustrous its strands, Myra noticed how silvery red sometimes changed to silvery russet with angle of light. She fingered Amber’s hair as they stood at the terrace, watching Odysseus strolling out the front yard. Tempest was by his side. She slipped her arm into his, her face glistened with more than bliss.
