The Obsoletes

by Simeon Mills

  “Verdi. The Great Pavarotti. You’ve heard of Luciano Pavarotti?”

  “Pavarotti, again,” said Brooke. “Stupid.”

  Kanga continued shoveling food into his face.

  “Perhaps you know him from the Three Tenors?” Pastor Noon asked us.

  “The Three Tenors.” Mrs. Noon took a drink. She listed with her fingers various works performed by Pavarotti: “I Lombardi, The Three Tenors, Turandot.”

  “Aida.”

  “Of course Aida.” And Mrs. Noon went on to describe the building and the enormous backstage chambers filled with fake weaponry and fake trees, and the tightly packed dressing rooms where the women (“And the men,” added Pastor Noon) huddled around sinks and mirrors preparing themselves to act, and the Great Pavarotti, and the assistant to the Great Pavarotti, whose only job was to bring the famous opera singer Dixie cups of water between his scenes, and—

  A muffled wail halted the former actress’s reminiscence. Mrs. Noon allowed the sound to continue for several moments before glaring at her husband.

  “Elecsandra’s hungry,” said Pastor Noon, standing from the table. “I’ll be right back. But dear? Describe to the boys your costume.” He wiped his hands on a napkin and tossed it beside his plate. “I love it when she describes her costume.” He hustled out of the room.

  Mrs. Noon finished her wine, keeping the glass tipped an extra moment at her mouth. “Just another taste,” she said to her daughter.

  Brooke uncorked the bottle. Unlike the half effort poured by Pastor Noon, she filled her mother’s glass nearly to the brim.

  Mrs. Noon refreshed herself with a long sip of the wine, until her glass once again appeared half-full, as though Pastor Noon had refilled it. She pushed her chair back from the table. “Darryl.” She stood up. “Look at me. This was my costume for Aida. Afro wig.” Her tiny fingers hovered at her ears. “A piece of white cloth.” She dragged a finger across her chest. “Another piece of white cloth.” She pointed between her legs. “No shoes. No bracelets. No jewelry of any kind.”

  “Don’t forget the body paint!” said Pastor Noon, quickly retaking his seat at the table. I noticed he had changed into a different shirt while upstairs. “Ellie just needed a couple swallows of formula, that’s all. Tell them about the body paint, dear.”

  “Black body paint.” Mrs. Noon closed her eyes at the memory. “Head to toe. I was an African. I was black. I was pitch-black.”

  “Ethiopian,” clarified Brooke.

  “Ethiopia is in Africa. I was African.”

  “African doesn’t mean Ethiopian, Mom. Ethiopia is in Africa.”

  “Brooke’s right,” I blurted. “Ethiopia is in Africa.”

  Brooke and her mother glared at me, unsure how to interpret my interjection.

  “Ethiopia is on the Horn of Africa,” I added. “It borders Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia. Ethiopia is one of a few dozen African nations.”

  Mrs. Noon took a drink of wine. “I was Ethiopian. Not to be confused with the Egyptians, who were also in Aida, except their body paint was brown, not black.”

  “Thank you,” Brooke said to her mother. Her nostrils flared mischievously in my direction, and my processor nearly caught fire.

  Mrs. Noon went on to describe her role in the production: A dead Ethiopian citizen, murdered by Egyptians. Her body was draped on a wooden cart and wheeled across the stage. “Understand, the entire stage is pitch-black. No lighting. Nothing except a single spotlight shining on me. My body, hanging off this wagon, a spoil of victory for the Egyptian army.” Mrs. Noon refilled her wineglass herself. “I was—”

  “Tell them who was sitting in the audience!”

  She took a drink. “You go ahead. You’re ready to tell it.”

  “I’m sorry I interrupted. It’s your story. I just wanted—”

  “No. You. Tell them who was in the audience.”

  “It’s your story.”

  “Tell them. Tell them. Tell them. Tell—”

  “A man now running for president of the United States.”

  “That guy.”

  “He’d just become governor of Arkansas.”

  “The one who went on TV with his wife to say he didn’t screw that actress.” Mrs. Noon cackled. “Gonna be a president.”

  “Dear—”

  “I got my picture taken with him backstage. Everybody did. And his wife was there. I’m so sick of this story.”

  “It’s a great story.”

  “It isn’t.” Mrs. Noon’s face wrinkled, as if from a horrible memory, and then she slowly aimed her hatred toward her daughter. “You know what I would love to see tonight? These kids getting in that hot tub. Love it.”

  “We’ve gone over this,” said Pastor Noon. “We’ve already said no. A hundred times no, and the answer is still no.”

  “What are you afraid of? That Brooke and him will start doing it out there?”

  “The dinner table!”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I will not answer that question at the dinner table.”

  “Because if that’s what you’re afraid of—” She covered her mouth. She squinted her eyes and shook her head. “You were telling me about this one.” She pointed at Kanga. “A basketball game or something?”

  “Kanga. Darryl. Let me apologize.”

  “I bet they won’t even kiss each other.”

  Brooke was clawing her toenails against the floor.

  “She might kiss him, but will he kiss her back?” Mrs. Noon winked at me. “That’s the question.”

  “That’s fine, dear.” Pastor Noon’s voice was back to normal. He smiled. He was using all of his energy to appear calm, yet his chin wouldn’t stop trembling. “You’ve forgotten one issue. The little issue we talked about earlier. That issue being that Kanga and Darryl do not have swimsuits with them tonight, so the case is closed.”

  “I give up, then. No hot tub. Never hot tub. But answer me this, love. If they did have their suits—”

  “But they don’t.”

  “But if they did have swimsuits, could Brooke and the boys use the hot tub?”

  “The boys don’t have swimsuits.”

  “Here’s another question. Then I’ll shut up.”

  “I’ve never asked you to shut up in your life, and you know that.”

  “I’ll shut up after you answer this single, stupid question. Are you getting in that hot tub with me tonight?”

  “You?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I—”

  “Answer the question!”

  “No.”

  “Then give your stupid spare swimsuits to the kids. I’ll chaperone.”

  Dinner ended. Brooke abruptly left the table—her plate of cold food was untouched—followed by Mrs. Noon, who first poured a fresh taste of wine.

  Kanga sat innocently at the table, his relaxed smile suggesting only the most pure intentions concerning the rest of the night. I knew better. This new version of my brother did not merely go with the flow. He dictated the future. Whatever his processor imagined, the world around him conspired to make it true. The evening had already unfolded perfectly for him. Whatever scenarios he was dreaming up now, nothing would stop them.

  Upstairs a door opened and slammed. The pastor smiled at the messy dinner table. “Let’s get you boys into swimsuits.”

  21

  UP IN THE MASTER BEDROOM, I saw a framed black-and-white photograph of Pastor Noon as a boy. He stood with a group of other boys—his brothers—posing euphorically near a house being eaten alive by ivy. I scanned the room for evidence of Mrs. Noon as a girl. There was none. It seemed reasonable that her first earthly incarnation was as a full-grown woman, rising from a cart of dead, painted bodies.

  The pastor got our swimsuits from a dresser but hesitated in giving them to us. He was frowning. He stuffed the swimsuits into his pockets. I knew better than to stare at those bulges, so I looked at the footprints we’d just made in the softest
carpeting I’d ever felt.

  “My story? The Lord and myself did not become acquainted until my college years. And then I didn’t truly know him until”—Pastor Noon forced a smile—“until he brought my wonderful daughters into this world. I have a question for you, Kanga. A personal one. Just say the word if I’m being too personal, and we’ll forget I ever asked. Are you in any way licensed to drive a motor vehicle?”

  “No, sir.”

  Pastor Noon glanced upward. “Well.” He grinned. “You look old enough to drive, that’s the thing, not that I have anything against driving, per se. It’s that Brooke, my sweet daughter, has, in the past, struggled to recognize the legal limits placed on fourteen-year-olds in terms of operating a motor vehicle. We’ve spent a good deal of energy on this subject. You may recall Brooke’s brief absence from school.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kanga. “We were so worried about her.”

  “Rest assured, boys, after much prayer Brooke now understands that her actions have consequences. She is on the right path.” Pastor Noon gave us a sober smile. “However, should you notice Brooke falling victim to her vehicular urges—”

  “I will intervene, sir,” said Kanga. “And I will let you know, personally, if your daughter strays. Both Darryl and I understand the complicated benefit of having involved parents. It’s hard for us to listen to our folks too. But in the end you guys love us, right? Parents just have our best interests at heart.”

  “Kanga, I feel so blessed to have met you tonight.”

  We graciously accepted our suits from Pastor Noon, who then ushered us into the master bathroom so we could change in privacy. Walking those few steps, I noticed a jerkiness to Kanga’s stride, and the sound of sand, as if crunching in the wheels of a toy truck.

  Pastor Noon pointed to a rack of towels, inviting us each to choose one for the hot tub, and enclosed us in his bathroom.

  After his dominating performance at dinner, I expected Kanga to mock my pathetic attempt at eating. After all, I still had the glob of lettuce in my cheek. But once we were alone, my brother immediately let his guard down. As he stared at the bathroom floor, his face revealed intense inner pain. “I ate too much,” he whispered.

  “You ate a lot of food.”

  “I just started eating, and then—” His jaw crunched as he spoke. “I’ve got to get it out of me.”

  “I’ll help you. Tell me what to do.”

  Kanga said the first step was to get him out of his clothes. His shirt and socks went quickly, but, due to the stiffness in his legs, his pants were much more difficult. He kicked; I tugged. Then Kanga was naked, resting heavily against the Noons’ large vanity. There were two sinks. Mrs. Noon’s side was busy with spray bottles, rock-shaped objects, and a small treasure chest that presumably held items she dared not put on display. Kanga leaned toward the pastor’s sink. He angled his head under the faucet until his lips were wrapped around the aerator. He was staring at me from this position, eyes wide with discomfort.

  “You’ll be okay,” I whispered.

  He turned on the hot water and let it pour into his mouth and down his throat . . .

  Kanga had done this before. That much was obvious. His process was well practiced. His movements were confident and familiar. The water ran into him for over two minutes. At last, his hand reached to turn off the faucet. His lips released the faucet with a pop. He stood up, moving a bit easier now. All the hot water was draining through his inner workings, into the bottom half of his body. Twice their normal girth, his legs now resembled long water balloons. Kanga’s slightest movement caused his legs to slosh against each other. If I had taken Mrs. Noon’s hairbrush and smacked him in the knee, he probably would have exploded all over the bathroom. He performed a dance, allowing the hot water to splash throughout his moving parts. I should have looked away, but I couldn’t. Even his penis was bloated beyond reason, bouncing from one thigh to the other.

  “Kanga—”

  “I’m okay.”

  He opened the toilet lid. I’d seen sick people before at school, fellow students who raised their hands and warned the teacher they were about to barf. Kanga’s eyelids were malfunctioning like theirs: half-closed, twitching, discolored. A long string of drool hung from his lip. There was a clothes hamper across the bathroom. I noticed one of Mrs. Noon’s sheer garments hanging out of it. Kanga pushed the hamper beside the toilet. He licked his lips. He slapped himself in the neck.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You can flush the toilet when . . .” He stared at the toilet.

  “When should I flush it?”

  Kanga flopped forward, draping himself over the hamper, his butt at the apex of his body. With his hands he gripped the edges of the toilet bowl. Then I understood: this was a science lesson about water and gravity.

  As Kanga kicked his legs into the air, wiggling them about, everything loose inside him came gushing through his mouth. First, just a steady stream of water, but then pieces of food mixed in. Swiss steak, bread, brown baked potato peels. The toilet was filling up, so I flushed it. Excess water leaked from Kanga’s nose, his ears, even his eye sockets.

  When he was done (after two more flushes), he stood up, looked in the mirror, and dabbed away tiny food particles from his eyelashes. His legs appeared normal and strong. He tapped his toes on the bathroom floor. He sucked in his stomach and pounded his chest. There was no trace left of the boy who moments ago had needed my help and reassurance. He jumped and touched the ceiling. It must have been eleven feet above the floor. “Hot tub?” he asked with a grin.

  I hated him.

  I hated him so much I wanted to kill him.

  But whom was I kidding? Physically, there was no stopping my brother. He had broken our first rule of safety and suffered no consequence. He was about to sit next to Brooke in bubbling water. Tomorrow he would still be the best basketball player in school. And now I had to change my clothes in front of him. No, Kanga Livery could not be destroyed with violence. I would have to do it with brains.

  “I called Detroit on Mom and Dad.”

  Kanga stared into Mrs. Noon’s mirror, picking meat from his teeth. “What’s that, brother?” He spit a piece of gray steak into the toilet.

  “I called Gravy Robotics and said Mom and Dad were obsolete. It was easy. I just dialed the number and told the woman who answered, and Mom and Dad disappeared the same day.”

  I didn’t tell him about my naive hope, when I’d made the phone call, that our parents would be fixed instead of destroyed. Or that my belly had been churning with unprocessed shame since learning of their true fate. I wanted a reaction from him. I wanted rage. Despondence. Confusion. Anything that would tell me something inside him had just died. But my brother wouldn’t give it. He kept working on his teeth.

  “I’m the reason they were taken away, Kanga. And it was so easy. It was like crossing something off a to-do list. Get rid of Mom and Dad. On to the next thing.” The words tasted wrong, like a mouthful of lettuce, but I couldn’t stop now. Kanga didn’t know the worst yet. It had been hiding in my pocket since I’d returned to Hectorville. “This is what I got in Detroit.” I revealed my rubber hand. “You want to see Dad again? What’s left of him? Let’s shake on it, Kanga!” I waved the ghastly remnant of our father closer to him, and my brother leaned back, horrified. “You can probably guess what happened to the rest of Mom and Dad. And what could happen to you.”

  “You’d do it to me, huh?” Rage rippled under Kanga’s skin, his muscles tensing. But he instantly calmed himself. He slapped my hand away, as if it were a pesky bug. He refused to look at it again. “Obsolete,” he said. “Doesn’t that mean ‘useless’? See, I was listening when Mom read those Directions when we were little. This one chapter, it was all about how to kill a robot if he was much bigger and stronger than you.” Kanga grabbed a pair of tweezers from Mrs. Noon’s sink. “These would do the trick, wouldn’t they? You just have to sneak up behind the guy and slip them into his guts.” He held the twee
zers near the right side of his abdomen. “Right here, about seven centimeters in. Then pinch his exhaust tube. You know the one I’m talking about, Darryl? The tube running up from his processor? Then wait about fifteen seconds, and his belly will catch fire. End of robot.” He tossed the tweezers back into the sink. “That was chapter eighty-four.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you do. Just be careful about calls to Detroit.” Kanga squeezed into Pastor Noon’s tiny swimsuit. “You were already obsolete.” He paused at the bathroom door. “Now that thing’s on your wrist.”

  He left.

  It was true. But I felt relief hearing my brother say it plainly: I was obsolete. Nobody needed me anymore. Which meant I had only one person left to look out for. Myself.

  I scooped the green goo from my throat and flushed it down the toilet, then changed into Pastor Noon’s other swimsuit. I pulled the drawstring extra tight. I hung a bath towel over my new hand. I was ready to get in that hot tub.

  On the way downstairs, I saw Brooke’s closed bedroom door. There was nothing special about the door itself, but I knew it was hers because there was screaming inside.

  “It looks great!” shouted Mrs. Noon.

  “It’s horrible!” answered Brooke.

  It, I thought. What was it? A homework assignment? A new poster they had hung above Brooke’s bed? A watch?

  “He won’t be looking at you with a microscope.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “You look exactly like you’re supposed to look.”

  “It hurts.”

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “You’re killing me!”

  “It won’t kill you to get in that hot tub.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You little . . .”

  Heavy stomps in the bedroom. Light flickered underneath the door.

  I dashed downstairs, to the entrance of the house, where someone had placed my dress shoes and Kanga’s high-tops neatly against the wall. Outside, the freezing air stung my exposed skin. I even felt pinpricks where my old hand used to be. When I glanced at the oversize bulge beneath my towel, my whole body felt hollow, from my ankles to my ears, and a dull magnetic impulse beckoned me toward the trees, where I might fall to the ground with my mouth open and let a family of tiny rodents live inside me until summer.