They Is Us

by Tama Janowitz

  When she first moved in – Tahnee was little more than a year, Julie just about to be born – Slawa had been living alone for some time. The place was a mess. In his enthusiasm at her arrival, Slawa attempted to do some re-decorating. He bought floor-to-ceiling hologramovisions at a nearby discount supply house so each room could have hologramovisions on each wall.

  But the sets were of such inferior quality that half the time the color was lousy, and then some of them stopped working; when the men came to bring in new ones, Slawa didn’t want to pay the exorbitant fees for removal of the old, so he simply had the new ones installed on top. And then when those broke, he did the same thing. Now each room, in terms of square footage, is diminished by half.

  With much delight he installed new light fixtures, ceiling fans, a garbage dehydrator, MereTwelve-operated self-generating devices, top of the line Siebmosh communicators – but half the time touching the light switch gave you a shock, or caused a fuse to blow. Clapping on or off worked sometimes, but often things would go on or off in the middle of the night. And no amount of scrubbing could clean the vintage vinyl flooring, which, a realtor had once told them, could make the house more valuable to the right buyer, if they were to someday sell.

  When Terry had left, right after Tahnee was born, saying he was sick of being around someone who was so cheerful all the time, she hadn’t thought of herself as cheerful, though it was true she was taking Chamionalus, but it did stop her hirsutism; that made her cheerful. Terry had grown up in the same neighborhood as she, though she hadn’t known him; he was a fireman and just about the only guy she had ever met who wasn’t working in a factory of one kind or another.

  After they were married they moved in with her father. She worked at La Galleria Senior Mall and Residence Home for the Young at Heart, in Administration. It was a job with a future, especially compared to what others their age had found for jobs, working in the meat products factories; it was amazing, that two kids from their area hadn’t ended up like everyone else.

  Until she got pregnant when they realized both their salaries combined weren’t going to be enough to enable them to buy their own place, or even rent; Terry was obsessed with making the Diamond-C dust in the bathroom, and she began to realize… that pervasive smell of an addict: violet soap, Brussels sprouts and bleach. He already had a dust problem, a problem big enough that they made him take an unpaid leave-of-absence at work. Then he decided he wanted to go to the West Coast and write screenplays, although as far as she could see he had shown no ability to stick to anything at all.

  What skills did Terry have? He couldn’t even write, he could only use a dictation program on the computer so what came out was pages of, “Um, so Joe goes, like fuck, um what um kind of um shit is um this.” She had to admit that making Diamond-C dust was not easy, the few times he had made it before she put a stop to him the quality had been amazing, and what he didn’t do himself he was able to sell for thousands of dollars a gram; of course the ingredients were expensive, the special lights needed, the hydroponics equipment, growing the crystals, inseminating the blossoms, harvesting and so on.

  She had been too stupid to know, at first, that was how innocently she had been brought up! She thought he was just growing some kind of mineralized food-product for them, gorgeously fragrant; as if Terry would ever have been the kind of guy who had a nice little hobby.

  Thinking of living at home reminds her she has to call her father to let him know they are coming the next day. She dials and the phone rings and rings but there is no answer… He is such a strange old man, he refuses to move into the house with them, he insists he wants to go to a nursing home. Now that she is Managing Administrative Director, he says, she could get him a discount, and she would be able to see him every day, if she wanted! It doesn’t seem to matter that she has told him, over and over, the Senior Mall is the last place she would put him in.

  If she doesn’t remind him about their visit he will booby-trap the place; once Julie knocked on the door only to have a carton of F’eggs fall on her head, or when they went up the front path and all the sprinklers came on, spewing them with that water-substitute. Each time he denies doing anything deliberately.

  Why can’t he admit he’s no longer up to functioning on his own? He is so antiquated he insists on using a rotary phone. The last person on the planet who really can say he has “dialed” a number. He won’t have an answering machine – let alone voice mail, or a mobile unit to take with him, so she can’t even leave a message.

  No wonder she is such a freak. Her upbringing had been like someone from a hundred and fifty years ago! Her father with his obsessive collecting of paper goods and his letter writing – letter writing when there wasn’t even a postal system any more, it all had to go Docu-Express or something!

  She dials again. Where could he have gone? Maybe just out for a walk around the block, she’ll try back later.

  Her father never liked Slawa; Dad griped all the time how Slawa was a foreigner, and kept muttering Slawa was an old man, older than himself. At the time she just thought he was crazy, Slawa was older than Terry, and he was foreign, but he was so different from that cocky braggart, her first husband; he was so good with Tahnee, he never treated her differently after his own, Julie, was born. She thought her father was angry, perhaps, that Slawa had a nice house for them to live in, she wasn’t dependent on Dad any more.

  Now she is beginning to wonder if her father hadn’t been right. Just how old is Slawa, actually? And how could she have ever found him attractive? True he wasn’t handsome the way Terry was; Terry was gorgeous, blond, a tight firm bottom and sassy grin. But Slawa had seemed appealing in a comforting kind of way, solid. Authentic. Now Slawa smells, she guesses because he drinks. Or maybe it is just some strange biochemistry. How stupid could he have been putting all his money into buying that shoe repair business – which is a major failure.

  And his stories change all the time, she has long since given up believing anything he said. Slawa claimed to have a degree in science, a Ph.D. from Russia. But he couldn’t get a science job; no one around would hire him, he said, doing the kind of work that he did, which was something – very limited, an obscure area – only in practice over there. Did that make any sense?

  He couldn’t even tell the truth about his age! Sometimes he had a memory of things that had taken place when he was a kid, things that she later realized, when she checked out the details, would have had to occur a hundred and twenty years ago. Stuff that had happened in Soviet, Communist times; if she pressed him, he would say something had happened and he was sent to some kind of Moscow long-term-care facility.

  And when he was finally allowed to leave, all the old people had disappeared. He came home, his grandmother was gone… Nobody noticed, nobody cared, they said, yes, the old people were taken on a vacation, they all went quite happily… No more babushkas! There were shops and restaurants and bars, which hadn’t been there before.

  Why has it taken her so long to wonder if he really has a graduate degree? Now she is realizing, maybe nothing at all is the truth.

  3

  In the background the endless blare, no way to turn it off without shutting down the whole Homeland Home System, “It’s Maya turn – for fun!” and then Mady Hus In Autoset Meier is on the program; they have had the number one hit in the country for more than six months now, after which the President’s and First Man’s Wedding Registry and Wish List items are going to be shown.

  Then Mady Hus In Autoset Meier come back for an encore and are joined by none other than the Fairy Princess, it is really the Fairy Princess herself and nobody can believe it! She has to be pushing sixty, but she still has the touch, not much in the way of singing ability, not much in the way of looks, but still, fantastic! And anybody watching has the chance to Win a Backstage Pass simply by dialing the magic number on the remote! The studio audience – or maybe it’s just a soundtrack – goes wild and even the President grabs his guitar to play along, “Go
t Dree? Take Harmony. Dree: it’s twice as good with Harmony.” And then Scott, the President’s fiancé, says, “President Wesley, I have to add something at this point if you don’t mind. For all you sufferers out there – and I am one of them – when your Drena won’t quit, take Dora. It comes with its own inserter!”

  “That’s right, Scott,” says the President, “You know, we’ve been together a long time and I had no idea what it meant to be a Drena sufferer. Since you’ve been on Dora, tension in our relationship has been greatly eased. And I must say, I’ve enjoyed helping you by using the inserter!”

  “Oh, I know, Mister President,” Scott says coyly. “But I should add, do not take Dora if you have or ever plan to have children. Be prepared to perform an emergency tracheotomy. If you are unable to keep both feet in a bowl of ice water for an hour or stand on one leg, Dora may not be right for you. Side effects may include enlarged heart, liver failure, constipation, dandruff, ortlan and pillbox. For those of you with remaining eyelashes or a significant other, Dora may not be recommended. See your doctor if…”

  Could she stand on one leg, Murielle wonders, for one hour? No, definitely not. She would have to go to the bathroom, or the dog would want to go out. She’s about to make a cup of coffee when she sees she has already done so. It’s evening, how can that be? The days roil out from under her, a nest of snakes gliding quickly from beneath a rock and disappearing into… where? If only it were possible to put her foot down fast, trap one underfoot, she might be able to remember Real Time.

  Lifting the mug with the tepid coffee to her lips she is startled, momentarily, to find, there on the bottom, a large eye, unblinking. Then realizing it is her own, pale green, the color of an unripe olive, staring back at her reflected off the ceramic. She dials her father again. Still no answer. “Slawa!” she shouts, hearing him get out of the shower. “I am not kidding! I want you out tonight!”

  “I am a little bit tired of being constantly picked on!” says Slawa. “All the time I am working and you sit there watching that stupid President, my God how can you stand it, the man is lousy idiot!”

  Murielle goes past him and slams the bedroom door. Three days, four, who knows how long she will be in there sulking, it is impossible to say; brief forays to use the toilet or take some crust of food back to their room, attracting even more bugs and the bed always with crumbs.

  In the meantime he is supposed to sleep on the sofa, baffled, bewildered and then, slowly, irritated, at having to beg her forgiveness for… for what? Even she would not be able to remember. This time, Slawa thinks, it is going to be different. He actually will leave, he can live in the shoe repair shop. The only person left who is important to him here is Julie, and he can arrange to visit her. His cats are scattered all over the house and even though they are responsive, they can do tricks, he works with them daily, it still takes an age to round them up and coax them into their cages. Breakfast, the dog, stands watching by the door. “You go?” he says in a plaintive voice. Slawa nods. “When back?”

  Breakfast

  “I don’t know,” Slawa says. He is full of sorrow. “You want to come with me?”

  The dog shakes his head. “No,” he says. Slawa knows the dog is scared of anything new. Breakfast likes his routine. “When you come back, Poppy?”

  “I don’t know.” There are six cages of cats; he carries them out two at a time. They are heavier than he remembers. How much could a cat weigh, twenty pounds? They resemble small mountain lions, or bobcats. He doesn’t remember ever having cats like these before. Each trip he makes, Breakfast follows him to the car and back in again.

  “Why you leave, Poppy?” Breakfast asks. “Where you going?”

  “I don’t know, Breakfast. I don’t know.” But still the dog asks, “Why?” again and again.

  Murielle hears Slawa’s car. Is he really gone? For the moment the house is peaceful, apart from the scream of the dysfunctional air-conditioning unit and the thump of the Patel boys next door playing Flosh Express in their driveway. She has begged them not to because the ball keeps hitting her wall; they continue.

  At a distance the ceaseless surf pounds, not waves but cars on the thirty-lane highway that has recently opened alongside the abandoned twenty-lane highway.

  She will go crazy if she doesn’t get out of here, she thinks. But where can she go? Anyway, the girls will be back soon, she will have to give them something for dinner and it is too hot to move. Maybe a cold shower will make her less irritable. There is always a chance the faucets will gush real water instead of Sanitizing Gelatin.

  Sure enough Slawa has left three towels, wet, on the floor – who needed to use up three towels, just for one wash? – and hasn’t opened the window afterward so the whole place is still steamy, which he has been told not to do one million times. Half the tiles are coming off the walls and the plaster moldering, the floor is crooked, too. Slawa was right about the place; soon the whole foundation is going to collapse.

  Last night had been the last straw, to hear him crashing around and wake up to find he had pissed again in the hall, so drunk he thought he was in the toilet. What if one of the girls saw him? And in the morning the urine stank so bad, even a dog knew better than to piss in the house!

  Once she had been fond of him, he had seemed to come out of nowhere like a gentle… not a giant, he wasn’t that tall… but a gentle something, maybe one of the seven dwarves, which had always seemed a bit kinky to her, what was that virgin princess Snow White doing with the seven filthy little men – not that dwarves in general were filthy, but at least in the movie Snow White had to go in there and clean the whole place – the dwarves weren’t infants, they had beards, though that one – Sleepy? Dopey? – seemed microcephalic, with a tiny pointed head and huge ears –

  Slawa had rescued her from that horrible apartment, one room with the two of them, she and Tahnee who was only one at the time – it was part of her salary as night-manager, but to live in the old-age home was relentlessly depressing, the smell of the old people and overheated, steamy smell of bland food; it had never seemed like a place to bring up a kid, and besides, how would she ever meet anybody there, everyone was sick and dying and/or a hundred and ten years old.

  Somehow, she wasn’t certain, she kept buying stuff, probably out of depression, from catalogs, or would go to the mall which you could practically walk to, when she had free time – and the debts mounting up month after month so the leased furniture was taken away; night after night of boxed macaroni and cheese dinner and canned peas and soda that wasn’t even Coca-Cola but the store brand; she would never get out from the mess, and every damn box or bottle had its own singing or talking microchip and some were light-sensitive and others were activated on vibration so that each time opening the cabinet a whole Disneyworld chorus, though atonal, would burst out in conflagration: “Yankee-Doodle went to town, riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap and called it Kraft-Ebbing Macaroni!” at the same time as “All around the kitchenette, come and get your Peases, we are good – and good for you! – Pop! Goes a Zippety pea!” And then the deeper bass voice, “A product of Zippety Doo-Dah Corporation, a registered trademark. Zippety – Mom’s best friend for over a generation!”

  Terry’s mother lived nearby then and helped out, babysitting, though she couldn’t stand it; Lorraine smoked, even though it was illegal, and had once burned Tahnee when she was holding her, as an infant, and couldn’t even put down the cigarette for long enough to hold the baby.

  So when she met Slawa – and he was so kind, seemingly, he wasn’t drinking so much then, or hardly at all, and he visited his wife, Alga, almost every day and then would come by to say hi to her, and play with Tahnee, and take her out to dinner – she was grateful, more than grateful and his house was nearby, less than a half-hour away, with a yard for Tahnee, etc. etc.

  Car doors slam. Surely he isn’t coming back? But no, it’s just the kids, returning from the pool. “Didn’t LaBenyce’s mom want to come in? How was the
swimming?”

  “No water.”

  “I thought they were going to start using that gloppy stuff, the water-substitute?”

  “They did, but we were only allowed to get in for, like, twenty minutes, then all of a sudden some girl started screaming and she was having an allergic reaction and so they decided to drain the pool in case it was poisonous or something.”

  They are damp and cheery, reeking of chemicals, white mulberry skin puckered from their day in the… whatever it was. Tahnee really is a beauty, with that ash-blonde hair and tippy nose, thin, wispy; Julie is chubby and will never be so pretty; her smile is pretty, though, but she has the pleading look of a beaten dog while Tahnee – there is that imperious, snotty expression, and she is always batting her eyelashes at men. You can see she is going to be a real heartbreaker. She never smiles but there is already something frightening about her. Though she is not even fifteen, totally pre-pubescent and flat-chested, there is something about her… an insect queen.

  “We’re starving, Mom,” says Tahnee.

  “Yeah, Mom, what’s for dinner?”

  “I’m not going to tell you to go and hang up your towels.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I expect you to do so without being told.” It’s six o’clock, dinner time for normal people. There is nothing in the cabinets or in the freezer that the girls will eat. Why not? Everything is the same, pads or stacks or cubes of texturized cultured processed food-product, grown hydroponically in sterilized growth medium in factories; flavored with emollients, sauces, herbs, spices as well as artificial flavorings and preservatives. The food contains no by-products, all of it is pure and organic. Next week she’ll go see a lawyer.