Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Look, Doc, I’m fine. In fact, I never felt better. Thanks and all, but Betsy and I have to go. I didn’t leave my old job to just sit around, you know. A new business needs lots of attention.”

  Hasselbach and Betsy were staring at him with identical expressions. Tim smiled, took Betsy’s cigarette from her hand, and crushed it out. Thirteen years married and he hadn’t been able to persuade her to stop smoking. Well, give it time. But right now, he needed to get back to the store. Tim’s Decorator Carpets, bought with all their savings, was too big a risk to leave to his inexperienced staff.

  But in the parking lot something still nagged at him. “Honey, could we hold dinner for a couple hours tonight? I think I might go ask again at the houses near the lake. I’d really like to find that kid Martin, thank him. Just a couple hours?”

  Betsy lit another cigarette. She opened the car door. “I think maybe you better not. Not tonight.”

  “Well . . . all right. Another night,” Tim said. There was time. There was lots of time.

  The store looked great. Tim’s new assistant had done a good job with the front display window: bunches of real autumn leaves scattered over carpet rolls in russet, gold, burnt orange. She had ironed the leaves to keep them from withering. Between the carpet rolls sat pumpkins that exactly picked up the undercolor in the Horizon Alhambra shag.

  Tim climbed into his new Corvette and headed toward Allenham. He was late again. There was always so much to do. But Betsy would understand. She always did.

  Just before the expressway, he stopped and pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts lot. It was getting darker earlier these days, you expected that in the fall, but not this dark, not this . . . this . . .

  The moment passed. John shook his head to clear it. He pulled out of the lot and whistling, eager, headed the car into the city, toward his and Connie’s apartment. He couldn’t remember what she’d said they were having for dinner, but he remembered that it was something good, and he was hungry. He’d put in a full day, measuring and cutting and tacking carpet, fitting it carefully into a new house designed by a big downtown architect. Making things fit.

  It was Wednesday.

  THE DEATH OF JOHN PATRICK YODER

  “LOOK AT THIS, JOHN,” SARAH SAID. SHE PASSED THE NEWSPAPER ACROSS the breakfast table to Yoder. “Your obituary is in here!”

  Yoder took the paper. Sarah’s face roiled with barely suppressed glee. She hadn’t yet brushed her graying blonde hair and it stood up in wavering peaks like underbeaten whipped cream.

  It really was his obituary: “YODER, JOHN PATRICK, 43. July 10. Survived by his wife Sarah (Pelletier) Yoder; son Dale Richard Yoder; brother Samuel Donald Yoder of Valdez; mother-in-law Dorothy Pelletier; aunts and cousins. No prior calling; private services.”

  “It’s a mistake,” Yoder said, with a stiffness that made him feel uncomfortable. These days Sarah frequently made him feel uncomfortable.

  “Of course it’s a mistake!” Sarah said. She broke into whoops of laughter. “Otherwise, I would have thought they were in bed with us last night!”

  Yoder folded the paper and rose. Sarah’s irreverent raucousness, which had seemed so free-spirited and honest twenty years ago, seemed that less and less. He picked up his briefcase. “I’ll call the newspaper from the office.”

  “You do that,” Sarah said. “Good morning, Dale. Your father’s obituary is in the newspaper!”

  “Ummm,” Dale grunted. He scowled at his mother, the array of breakfast cereals on the table, the world. He was sixteen. Sarah’s glee vanished; she hated Dale to be surly at table. They fought constantly. Before she could begin her maternal attack, Yoder made his escape.

  On the drive to Zircon Corporation, his anger grew. How dare the paper print irresponsible obituaries from unconfirmed sources! Journalism had no standards anymore. What if business associates saw the obituary and assumed he was out of the running for accounts? What if Sarah’s mother saw it? She’d have another heart attack.

  By the time he reached the parking garage, he was in a rage. He parked the Mercedes, punched the elevator buttons, swung into his office under firepower. The phone lines were all busy. He cut off somebody else’s call and dialed.

  “Tribune and Chronicle. May I help you?”

  “Give me the editor-in-chief!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Strickland is unavailable at the moment. Can someone else help you?”

  “Whoever writes the goddamn obituaries!”

  He was transferred to a Ms. Stein. “This is John Patrick Yoder. My obituary appeared in your newspaper this morning, Ms. Stein, and I am not dead! Got that? I am not dead. Now I want to know two things—how the hell this happened, and what the hell you’re going to do about it!”

  “Just a moment, please,” Ms. Stein said crisply.

  “No, wait, don’t you dare put me on—”

  He was put on hold. Pachelbel’s Canon started to play. He’d hang up. No, he wouldn’t—that’s what they wanted. He wouldn’t hang up. They had no right to treat him this way! The Canon finished and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons began.

  “Mr. Yoder? I think I can answer your first question. The source of the obituary was the Gibson Funeral Home. The usual procedure is for the funeral homes to send in the obituaries and for us to print them unless there’s some question about the source. We’ve worked with the Gibson people for years, and there’s never been a—”

  “Thank you,” Yoder snapped. He didn’t want the edge rubbed off his anger by irrelevant apologies. The Gibson Funeral Home was obviously the real screw-up. He looked up the number.

  His secretary stuck her head in the door. “Mr. Yoder—”

  “Not now, Tiffany!”

  The head disappeared.

  “Gibson Funeral Home, Norm Gibson speaking. May I help you?”

  “You sure the hell can,” Yoder said. “My name is John Patrick Yoder. My obituary appeared in the newspaper this morning and they say you gave it to them. But I am not dead! Got that? Now I want to know two things—how the hell this happened, and what the hell you’re going to do about it!”

  “We’re sorry you’re not the dead party in the obituary, Mr. Yoder. Please hold a moment while I check our records.”

  “Don’t put—” The 1812 Overture began playing.

  Five minutes later the voice of Norm Gibson interrupted six cannons. “Mr. Yoder? I’m afraid there’s been no mistake. The death certificate for John Patrick Yoder, forty-three, of Fourteen Fairview Lane, Mapledale, was sent to us by the Bureau of Contemporary Statistics downtown. The body is listed as ‘unavailable,’ which is what they do when it’s a drowning kind of thing or when the body is donated for medical research or something like that. We write the obituaries for them and handle the newspaper end of things, on a retainer basis. We’ve never had any trouble with the system before.” His tone implied that the trouble was with Yoder, not the system.

  Yoder said angrily, “Well, obviously the system’s not working so goddamn hot right now! What are you going to do about it?”

  “We’ll look into the circumstances, of course, and I’ll get back to you personally. Will you be in town a week from Thursday?”

  “A week from—Why the hell can’t you call them up today? Right now?”

  Gibson said gently, “You’re not the only client the Gibson Funeral Home has, Mr. Yoder. Today alone—”

  “I’m not the Gibson Home’s client!” Yoder yelled. “I’m not dead! I’ll call them myself!” He slammed down the phone.

  Tiffany appeared in the doorway, looking scared. Her hair, which rose six inches above her forehead in a stiff topknot that reminded Yoder of Woody Woodpecker’s, bobbed nervously. “Mr. Yoder . . . Ms. Robinson at Doyle, Dane is on the phone. She wants to know where they should send flowers for the funeral—the paper didn’t say. She also wants to know who’ll be taking your place as her contact at Zircon.”

  “I’m not dead,” Yoder said, despairingly this time. Tiffany nodded loyally. Her topknot bobbed.<
br />
  Th-th-that’s all folks . . .

  Yoder couldn’t laugh.

  He had never heard of the Bureau of Contemporary Statistics. “Downtown,” Gibson had said. The government pages in the phone directory confused him; they were a mass of QuikReference listings, “please see” notations, and lengthy breakdowns by department of organizations Yoder also had never heard of. Finally he found it: “Bureau of Contemporary Statistics, McMillan Building.” An answering machine put him on hold ‘until the first available operator becomes available.’ The machine played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” Yoder got his coat and walked to the McMillan Building.

  The Bureau of Contemporary Statistics was on the eighth floor. Behind a frosted glass door was a bleak room with a bare long counter, three wooden chairs, and travel posters of India stuck on the walls with Scotch tape. No one was there. Yoder called, “Hey! Can I get some service?”

  An enormous black woman in a flowered muumuu waddled from a side door. Her hair was in cornrows. She wore four gold necklaces that made concentric circles on her chocolate skin.

  Yoder knew he wasn’t comfortable dealing with people of color. Not the blacks in Marketing or Legal, of course, the men in well-cut suits and the women in bright silk blouses and softly waved hair. They were just like anybody else. But people like this woman, whom Yoder now saw wore thongs instead of shoes even though this was a business office . . . he wasn’t comfortable with these people. The reasons were complicated, and old.

  “Yes?” the woman said softly. Her voice had a pleasant fuzziness to it, like the hand-torn edges of good stationery. The soft fuzziness did nothing to mitigate Yoder’s anger, but of course he couldn’t have dumped it on her in any case. Something to do with fairness. Or maybe it was noblesse oblige. She was so fat.

  “This obituary,” Yoder said. He’d brought along the newspaper. “See? That’s me. But I’m not dead.”

  “Lemme see,” the woman said in her fuzzy voice, even though he was thrusting the paper right at her. He gave her the whole thing and backed away slightly. She studied the page for a long time, squinting at it and bending over the counter. Her four necklaces jangled. Finally she said, “I check it out for you,” and disappeared through the side door.

  “I can’t wait too long,” Yoder called after her, but it was too late. He was on hold.

  Ten minutes later the woman re-emerged. She held a sheaf of papers. Yoder jumped up from the closest of the uncomfortable wooden chairs. “Well?”

  “No mistake, mon. You dead.”

  “What? What the hell—” Yoder restrained himself with difficulty. The gold jewelry was so fake. The thongs were so thongy. “How can I be dead? I’m standing right here in front of you!”

  The fat black woman regarded him impassively. “You dead,” she said softly. “The way we keep our records.”

  “The way you—what the hell are you talking about?”

  She regarded him a minute longer, then seemed to come to some sort of decision. “Look, mon. This ain’t the Bureau of Vital Statistics. This the Bureau of Contemporary Statistics. The measurements be different. By our measurements, you dead.”

  Yoder stared, dumbfounded. The woman sighed and laid her papers on the counter. “Here—look. It take three measurable signs to establish death. See what I got here? These your three death signs. ’Course, these be copies. The originals, they in the vault.”

  She set out six pieces of paper in three groups of two. Despite himself, Yoder stepped closer to look. He yelped and grabbed the first paper, crumpling it in his hand.

  “That’s a Zircon Private Data memo! How did you get that!”

  The black woman didn’t answer.

  Yoder’s position at Zircon, a Fortune 500 telecommunications company, was head of the Vehicular Assets Division, which controlled the company cars used by sales reps and service technicians. There were 2,106 company cars in the United States alone. The Private Data memo concerned Yoder’s negotiation with a Big Three car manufacturer to trade in a third of Zircon’s fleet before tough new federal laws regulating exhaust emissions raised the price of each car. Paired with this memo on the fat woman’s counter was a newspaper picture of Yoder twenty-five years ago, in college, demonstrating against Dow Chemical’s manufacture of pesticides.

  His wedding picture was there, Sarah smiling with her unique combination of rowdiness and radiance. It was paired with a computer printout from Bud’s Motel and Hot Hut, listing a double room for J. Yoder and Carol Sanderson at 1:42 in the afternoon.

  His last confidential credit counseling report, noting that he owed $38,000 in credit card debt and had discussed Chapter 13 bankruptcy with the counselor, was paired with a crushed paper flower. Yoder regarded the flower with disbelief. It was the kind he used to sell in airports when he’d been a Hare Krishna.

  “How . . . You can’t . . . These are . . .”

  The fat black woman merely shrugged. Her furry voice was very sad. “You soul-dead, mon. Rest in peace.”

  By lunchtime Yoder had a grip on himself. It was simple, really. These people were crazy. They arranged this elaborate hoax from some sort of compulsive delusion about the world, some infantile pathology that refused to recognize that people grew up, changed, accepted reality. No one could remain an idealistic, faithful, socially motivated flower child forever. If you did, the world stomped on you. Hard. Yoder’s decisions since his adolescence had all been correct. Who in his right mind would want to be a Hare Krishna now? That was only another kind of scam. Only these poor benighted fools in the Bureau of Contemporary Statistics or whatever the hell it was couldn’t see this. They were stuck in some sort of time warp, acting out pathetic fantasies that had taken on the grandiose arrangements of a Walden Two. The only appropriate response was to pity them.

  Having worked all this out, and much calmer now, Yoder went to lunch.

  At his favorite restaurant, a woman came up to his table. She looked vaguely familiar, although when Yoder ran through the categories of people he knew she didn’t seem to belong to any of them. Not a business associate, not in that long print skirt and sweatshirt. Not a friend of Sarah’s, not with that humorless intensity. Not the wife of a golfing buddy, not with that straggly brown hair. She carried a bouquet of flowers.

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said solemnly, and he was staggered. How could he not have recognized her!

  “Diane! After all these years, how many has it been now, let’s see . . .”

  She was uninterested in his social filler. She handed him the flowers and said softly, “I was sorry to hear of your loss.”

  “My. . .”

  “I’ll always remember that summer in Vermont, Johnny. I’m really sorry you’re dead.”

  She turned and walked away. Yoder, open-mouthed, thought irrelevantly that if he hadn’t recognized her voice, he would have recognized the walking-away view of her body. Diane! All that summer on the commune in Vermont they had made love outdoors: wildly, tenderly, as if the grass and trees and very air were recycling the sweet constant ache of desire in some sun-driven sexual photosynthesis. They’d got it on in the fields, on the roof, beside the tiny deep blue lake. Diane . . .

  She had handed him flowers because he was dead.

  By the time he reached the street, she was out of sight. He was left holding the bouquet, daisies and tiger lilies and buttercups like shallow yellow suns.

  “Diane Harding?” Sarah said, a wary note in her voice. “The one you told me about? After all these years?”

  “Yes,” Yoder said. He sat on his deck chair, cradling a large Scotch and water. He hadn’t wanted any dinner. Sarah leaned against the deck railing opposite him.

  “I didn’t know you ever saw her,” Sarah said.

  “I don’t ‘see her,’ Sarah. I just happened to see her.”

  “How did she look?”

  Yoder spoke before he thought. He was still incredulous. “Just the same. Not a day older. It was amazing.”

  “Lucky Diane,
” Sarah said acidly, and Yoder saw his mistake. But one of Sarah’s virtues was generosity: she forgave him. “Still, the whole thing sounds odd.”

  “That’s putting it mildly!”

  Sarah scratched a mosquito bite on her thigh. There was a strange note in her voice. “So what are you thinking of doing?”

  “I don’t know. Forgetting all about it, I guess.”

  His wife regarded him meditatively. Then she grinned. “And I was going to go out tomorrow and buy a black veil.”

  “Sarah, it’s not funny!”

  “With flowing weeds to match. What exactly are weeds, anyway? It always sounds like widows are walking around covered in crabgrass. Or possibly buttercups.”

  “I’m glad you find this so amusing,” Yoder said. He stood stiffly. Really, sometimes Sarah went too far. “I’m going to bed.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Sarah said, and gave him one of her roguish winks.

  But it turned out that standing was the only thing he could do stiffly. Long after Sarah slept, Yoder lay awake, staring at the ceiling, remembering Diane.

  At 9:00 A.M. the next morning Tiffany stuck her head through the doorway. “Mr. Castle on line three, Mr. Yoder. I know you said not to be disturbed, but . . .”

  “That’s all right, Tiffany. You can always put Mr. Castle through.” Castle was with the Big Three car manufacturer.

  “John! Great news on this end!”

  “I’m always in line for great news,” Yoder said heartily. “Shoot.”

  “We can push through the vehicle delivery on the twenty-seventh, and the word from the Hill is that the President won’t sign the Clean Air Act until Monday the twenty-ninth.”

  Yoder calculated rapidly. A two-day leeway was not his idea of great news. “Wonderful! That’s terrific! The only thing is, I wonder if we might not be cutting it a little close? You know how it always is: If something can go wr—”

  “Not at all!” Castle said. “It’ll tick along like clockwork. Right under the wire. Legal is ecstatic.”