by Nancy Kress
That night he took her behind the library sofa. She let him carry her now. It felt funny, carrying such a heavy cat made all of light. He could see her dimly underneath his hands. The library was cold—Jane turned the heat down at night—and smelled like nobody ever went there. Timmy liked that smell.
“They say I have to go away,” he whispered to Marigold. “Back to Mommy and Daddy.”
“I’ll go with you,” Marigold said.
“I know. But Mommy will slap me and then we’ll run away and go between towns and then someplace to live and then Daddy will find me and hit me for not taking care of Mommy.”
“But I’ll be with you,” Marigold said.
“I know,” Timmy said miserably. It wasn’t enough. Marigold wasn’t enough. How could that be?
“The bad thoughts come hard, Marigold,” Timmy said. “I want to . . .” He started to cry.
Marigold said, “Remember how good it felt when you smashed my box?”
“Take me to the deep safe place, Marigold! Take me away from the bad thoughts!”
“I can’t,” Marigold said.
“Take me to the deep safe place in your eyes!”
“I can’t.” Marigold twitched her tail. “But you can, Timmy.”
“I’m afraid,” Timmy sobbed.
“Remember how good you felt afterward?”
Marigold looked at him. In the darkness behind the sofa her eyes were very green. Timmy could see the deep safe place in them.
“The bad thoughts are here, Marigold!”
“You need an outlet,” Marigold said, in Jane’s voice. She started to purr, which she’d never done before. The purring sounded just like humming. It had words in it, Marigold’s words so they must be true: . . . never saw such a sight in your life . . .
Timmy crept to the kitchen. The knives were there, with the sharp edges for cutting off the blind mice’s tails. He took two, one for each hand, because he didn’t need to carry Marigold anymore, she scampered happily next to him. Timmy and Marigold went down the cellar. Timmy hadn’t been there since his first weeks at Jane’s. The bad thoughts pushed him hard, hurting him inside the way Daddy hurt him—
The box beside the furnace was empty.
Marigold said, “Jane gave the kittens to good homes when they got too big.” Timmy looked at her. Her face didn’t show him anything. He couldn’t stand that.
“Marigold, the bad thoughts are coming. I can’t stop them, they hurt—”
This time Marigold didn’t answer, which was worse. Oh, much worse. Timmy went upstairs, then upstairs again, to the bedrooms.
Jane slept on her back, with her mouth open. She snored. Without her glasses, her face looked empty. The bad thoughts hurt Timmy so much, he thought he would scream.
Timmy raised the knife. He looked at Jane snoring with her mouth open. Only she wasn’t snoring, she was smiling, walking across the lawn with Boots in her arms. Would you like to pet Boots? She’s very gentle. Would you like a kitten for your own? To keep forever? Would you like another peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, honey?
“I can’t,” Timmy whispered.
“Go on, Timmy,” Marigold said, only now she had Mommy’s voice, mad and hurrying. Come on, Timmy, for cripe’s sake, can’t you do anything right, you little shit— The bad thoughts burned him. Stabbing and kicking and burning and blood and their brains spilling out and their arms gone and their guts on the floor . . . cut off their heads with a carving knife . . .
“Remember how good it felt last time?” Marigold said. “Afterward?”
This is for you, Jane said. Your mother said you couldn’t have a kitten when you move to your new house, so I brought you this. You press the button here—
. . . never saw such a sight in your life . . .
And then Timmy saw it.
It was right there, right in Marigold’s eyes. Killing her box had felt good last time, had been the outlet, the escape, the way in. The way to Marigold, who was always there, who would never leave him or kick him or hurt him the way the bad thoughts hurt him. The outlet was the way to the safe place deep in Marigold’s eyes, and the bad thoughts tried to confuse him because they were bad thoughts. He had smashed Marigold’s box, but that had only set Marigold free. Free to show Timmy the safe place, where the bad thoughts could never go—the such a sight he never saw in his life—
“Thank you,” Timmy said. He said it out loud and then raised the sharp knife to his own throat. Marigold smiled. Timmy pushed hard and then someone was screaming, two people were screaming, but it didn’t matter because he wouldn’t ever have to hear them again and the bad thoughts were gone and he had reached the deep place inside Marigold’s eyes, the place the three blind mice had run, the place where Boots and the kittens would be there always and of course so would his cat, his cat, the place Timmy made because no one else could make it for him. The safe place. Marigold Outlet.
1997
ALWAYS TRUE TO THEE, IN MY FASHION
On the cutting edge of haute couture, Suzanne thought she knew what it meant to be . . .
Relationships for the autumn season were casual and unconstructed, following a summer where fashion had been unusually colorful and intense. Suzanne liked wearing the new feelings. They were light and cool, allowing her a lot of freedom of movement. The off-hand affection made her feel unencumbered, graceful. Cade wasn’t so sure.
“It sounds bloody boring,” he said to Suzanne, holding the pills in his hand. “Love isn’t supposed to be so boring. At least the summer fashions offered a few surprises.”
Boxes from the couture houses spilled around their bedroom. Suzanne, of course, had done the ordering. Karl Lagerfeld, Galliano, Enkia for Christian LaCroix, and of course Suzanne’s own special designer and friend, Sendil. Cade stood in the middle of an explosion of slouchy tweeds and off-white linen, wearing his underwear and his stubborn look.
“But the summer feelings were so heavy,” Suzanne said. She dropped a casual kiss on the top of Cade’s head. “Come on, Cadie, at least give it a try. You have the body for casual emotions, you know. They look so good on you.” This was true. Cade was lean and loose-jointed, with a small head on a long neck: a body made for easy carelessness. Backlit by their wide bedroom windows, he already looked coolly nonchalant: an Edwardian aristocrat, perhaps, or one of those marvelously blasé American riverboat gamblers who couldn’t be bothered to sweat.
The environment helped, of course. Suzanne always did their V-R, and for autumn she’d programmed unlined curtains, cool terra cotta tiles, oyster-white walls. All very informal and composed, nothing trying very hard. But she’d left the windows natural. That, too, was perfect: too nonchalant about the view of London to bother reprogramming its ugliness. Only Suzanne would have thought of this touch. Their friends would be so jealous.
“Come on, Cade, try the feelings on.” But he only went on looking troubled, holding the pills in his long-fingered hand.
Suzanne began to feel impatient. Cade was wonderful, of course, but he could be so conservative. He really hadn’t liked the summer fashions—and they had been so much fun! Suzanne knew she looked good in those kinds of dramatic, highly colored feelings. They went well with her voluptuous body and small, sharp teeth. People had noticed. She’d had two passionate adulteries, one knife-fight with Kittery, one duel fought over her, two midnight reconciliations, and one weepy parting from Cade at sunset on the edge of a sea, which had been V-R’d into wine-dark roils for the occasion. Very satisfying.
But the summer was over. Really, Cade should be more willing to vary his emotional wardrobe. Sometimes she even wondered if she might be better off with another lover . . . Mikhail, maybe, or even Jastinder . . . but no, of course not. She loved Cade. They belonged to each other forever. Cade was the bedrock of her life. If only he weren’t so stubborn!
“Have you ever thought,” he said, not looking at her, “that we might skip a fashion season? Just let it go by and wear something old, off alone together? Or even
go naked?”
“What an idea,” she said lightly.
“We could try it, Suzanne.”
“We could also move out of the towers and live down there along the Thames among the starving and dirty-mattressed thugs. Equally appealing.” Wrong, wrong. Cade turned away from her. In another minute he would put the pills back in their little bottle. Suzanne decided to try playfulness. She twined her arms around his neck, and flashed her eyes at him. “You are vast, Cade. You contain multitudes. Do you really think it’s fair, mmmm, that you deny me all your multitudes, when I’m so ready to love them all?”
Reluctantly, he smiled. “ ‘Multitudes,’ is it?”
“And I want them all. All the Cades. I’m greedy, you know.” She rubbed against him.
“Well . . .”
“Come on, Cade. For me.” Another rub, and after it she danced away, laughing. He could never resist her. He swallowed the pills, then reached out his arms. Suzanne eluded them. “Not yet. After they take effect.”
“Suzanne . . .”
“Tomorrow.” Casually, she blew him an affectionate kiss and sauntered toward the door, leaving him gazing after her. Cade wanting her, and she off-hand and insouciant. It was going to be a wonderful autumn.
The next day was unbelievably exciting, more arousing even than when she’d walked in on Cade and Kittery in the summer bedroom and they’d had the shouting and pleading and knife fight. This was arousing in a different way. Suzanne had strolled into the apartment in mid-morning, half an hour late. “There you are, then,” she’d said casually to Cade.
He looked up from his reader, his long-limbed body sprawled across the chair. “Oh, hallo.”
“How are you?”
He shrugged, then made a negligent gesture with one graceful slim-fingered hand.
Suzanne draped herself across his lap, gazing abstractedly out the window. Today London looked even uglier than usual: cold, gray, dirty. “Do you mind awfully?” Cade said. “I’m in the middle of this article.”
“And so absorbed that you don’t notice me, mmmmm?” Suzanne moved against him.
Cade smiled, pecked her cheek, and gave her a careless nudge. “Off you go, then.” He returned to his reader. Suzanne stood and stretched.
The rush of blood to her nipples and thighs startled her. He really was indifferent to her! She would have to actually work at getting him interested, winning him from his casual reading . . . God, it was exciting!
She would succeed, of course. She always did. But why hadn’t she ever realized before how much more interesting the victory was when she’d have to struggle for it? She hadn’t been this aroused in years. “Cade . . .” She leaned over him and nibbled on his ear. “Sweet Cade . . .”
He tilted his head to look up at her, eyebrows raised. The drugs had done something to his eyes, or to her perception of them; they looked lighter, more opaque. Suzanne laughed softly. “Come on, it will be so good . . .”
“Oh, all right. If you insist.”
He rose from his chair, turned to pick up the dropped reader. He nudged an antique vase a quarter inch to the right on one of Sendil’s occasional tables. He rubbed his left elbow, gazing out the window. Suzanne took his hand, and they ambled toward the bedroom.
And it was wonderful. The most interesting show in years. Really, the fashion designers were geniuses.
“Cade, Flavia and Mikhail have invited us to a water fete on Saturday. Do you want to go?”
He looked up from his screen, where he was checking his portfolio on the New York Stock Exchange. He didn’t even look annoyed that she’d interrupted. “Do you want to go?”
“I asked you.”
“I don’t care.” Suzanne bit her lip.
“Well, what shall I tell Flavia?”
“Whatever you like, love.”
“Well, then . . . I thought I might fly to Paris this weekend.” She paused. “To see Guillaume.”
He didn’t even twitch. “Whatever you like, love.”
“Cade—do you care if I visit Guillaume? For an entire weekend?”
In the summer, a threat to visit Guillaume, a former lover who still adored Suzanne, had produced drama that went on for sixteen straight hours.
“Oh, Suzanne, don’t be tiresome. Of course you can visit Guillaume if you want.” Cade blew her a casual kiss. She charged across the room, seized his hand, and dragged him away from the terminal. His eyebrows rose slightly.
But afterward, as Cade lay deeply asleep, Suzanne wondered. Maybe he’d actually been right, after all, about the current fashions. Not that it hadn’t been exciting to work at arousing him, but . . . she wasn’t supposed to be working. She was supposed to feel just as detached and casual as Cade. That was the bloody trouble with fashion—no matter what the designers said, one size never did fit all. The individual drug responses were too different. Well, no matter. Tomorrow she’d just increase her dosage. Until she, and not Cade, was the more casual. The sought after, rather than the seeker. The way it was supposed to be.
“Cade . . . Cade?”
“Oh, Suzanne. Do come in.” He sat up in bed, unselfconscious, unruffled. Beside him, Flavia emerged languidly from the off-white sheets.
She said, “Suzanne, darling. I am sorry. We didn’t expect you so soon. Shall I leave?”
Suzanne crossed the room to the dresser. This was more like it. A little movement, for a change—a little action. Really, casual was all very well, but how many evenings could one spend in off-hand conversation? Almost she was grateful to Flavia. Not that she would show it, of course. But Flavia was giving her the perfect excuse to put on an entirely different demeanor. She had rather missed changing for dinner.
From the dresser top she picked up a string of pearls and toyed with them, a careful appearance of anger suppressed under a facade of sophisticated control. “Cade . . . how could you?” Flavia said, “Perhaps I had better leave, hadn’t I? See you later, darlings.”
She activated a V-R dress from her necklace—easy unconstricting lines in a subtle taupe, Suzanne noted—and left.
Cade said, “Suzanne—”
“I trusted you, Cade!”
“Oh, rot,” he said. “You’re making a fuss over nothing.”
“Nothing! You call—”
“Really, Suzanne. Flavia hardly matters.”
“ ‘Hardly’ ? And just what does that mean?”
“Oh, Suzanne, you know what it means. Really, don’t make yourself ridiculous over trifles.”
And Cade yawned, stretched, and went to sleep. To sleep .
Suzanne thought of waking him. She thought of pounding on him with her small fists, of dumping him on the floor, of packing her bags and leaving a note. But, really, all those things would look rather ridiculous. People would hear about it, snicker . . . and even if they didn’t, even if Cade kept her bad taste to himself, there was still the fact that the two of them would know it had happened. Suzanne had lost her cool poise. She had been as embarrassing as Kittery, the season Kittery showed up at a geisha party dressed in the crude emotions of a political revolutionary. Even if Cade were to keep this incident private, Suzanne winced at the idea of his thinking her as gauche as Kittery, as capable of such a major fashion faux pas. No, no. Better to let it pass. Cade snored softly, Suzanne lay beside him, fists clenched, waiting for winter.
Finally, the new fashions were out! Suzanne went to Paris for the preseason shows, sitting in the first row at each important couture house, exultant. She saw, and was seen, and was happy.
The designers had outdone themselves, especially Suwela for Karl Lagerfield. The feeling was tremulous, ingénue, all the tentative sharp sweetness of virgin love. Pink, pale blue, white—lots of white—with indrawn gasps and wide-eyed sexual exploration. Ruffles and flowers and heart flutterings at a lingering look. Gianfranco Ferre showed a marvelous silk, flowing biocloth abloom with living forget-me-nots, accessorized with innocence barely daring to touch the male model’s hand. At Galliano, the jackets
were matched with flounced bonnets and a blushing fear that a too-passionate kiss would lead . . . where? The models’ knees trembled with nervous anticipation. And the ever-faithful Sendil showed an empire-waist ballgown in muslin—muslin!—that, he whispered to Suzanne, had been inspired solely by her.
Suzanne wanted everything. She spent more money than ever before at a preview. She could hardly wait for the official opening of the season. Cade and she, once more thirteen years old, with love new and sparkling and fraught with sweet tension . . .While she waited for opening day she had her hair grown long, her hips slimmed, and her eyes widened and colored, to huge blue orbs.
Maybe they could give a party. Everyone tremulous with anticipation and virgin hopes . . . wasn’t there something called “spin the bottle” ? She could ask the computer. It was going to be a wonderful winter.
“No,” Cade said.
“No?”
“Oh, don’t look so crushed, love. Well, maybe, then. I mean, what does it matter, really?”
“What does it matter?” Suzanne cried. “Cade, it’s the start of the season!”
He eyed her with amusement. But under the amusement was something else, the now-familiar feeling that he found her faintly ridiculous, casually distasteful. God, she couldn’t wait to get him out of this wretched understated nonchalance.
Suzanne made an effort to speak lightly. “Well, if it doesn’t matter, then there’s no reason not to go for a bit of a change, is there?”
He flicked at a speck of dust on his sleeve. “I suppose not. But, then, love, no reason to go for change either, is there? This suits us well enough, don’t you think?”
Suzanne tried not to bite her lip clear through. It was too close to opening day for tissue repair. “Well, perhaps, but one wants some variety, all the same . . .”
He shrugged. “I don’t, actually.”
She cried, “But, Cade—!”
“Oh, Suzanne, don’t get so worked up, it’s quite tiresome. Can’t we discuss it later?”