The sun was shining brightly outside, a stunning February day, but her study was chilly. To give her distraught hands something to do, Stevie dug a small box of matches out of her cardigan’s only pocket and lit the space heater. Then she stood there warming her hands behind her and watching Seaton Benecke work. New deviltry or a mechanical exorcism? Stevie convinced herself that she did not care. She just wanted him to complete the job and remove himself and his obnoxious companion from the house. The t he was trying to fix stood for tactic. Maybe it had succeeded, this tactic, but as soon as he was gone she would win the larger war by putting him out of her mind and never allowing him to darken her threshold again.
“I think that’s got it, Mrs. Crye.” He pressed the metal cover back into place, rolled in a sheet of paper, and pounded out a string of words including tactic, temperature, ticket, toothpaste, turtle, and teeter-totter. “Yes, ma’am, it’s okay now. It’s even better than it was before. It ought to suit you to a T.” This last was Seaton’s idea of a joke—another feeble Benecke joke. He gave her a tentative smile, turned back to her (reputedly tractable) machine, and tapped out a final tympanic tattoo, the word typewriter.
“Very good, Seaton. You’ve proved your point. Now it’s time for you to leave. I’ve got to check the kids.”
“It’s going to work even better than before, Mrs. Crye.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, ma’am. No matter how well they’re working when I get ’em, I always try to improve on that. It’s what I do. Just like you try to improve on the last article or story you did.”
Stevie refused to encourage Seaton with further comment. She opened the study door and watched tight-lipped and imperceptibly trembling as he pocketed his tiny screwdriver, wiped his hands on his jacket, and searched for any leftover tools or typewriter parts. Although the cold air from the corridor swept past Stevie’s ankles, she kept the study door open to indicate that their interview—their entire association—was over. The sooner he was down the stairs and out on the highway home the sooner the ice in her bone marrow would melt, restoring her to a healthy human warmth.
Disconcertingly ’Crets leapt from Seaton’s hip to the Oriental rug, dashed past Stevie on all fours, and cornered like a miniature stockcar heading into . . . the master bedroom. Stevie was too startled to shout at the monkey. She and Seaton exchanged an ambiguous glance, then bumped shoulders pushing through the doorway in pursuit of the capuchin. At the threshold to her own room she saw ’Crets clambering across the quilted bedspread she had made when Ted, Jr., was a toddler and Marella not yet even the germ of a connubial ambition. The beast had claws. He would ruin this would-be heirloom. Now, in fact, he was leaping from the center of the quilt to the Ethan Allen headboard. His antics—his unthinking tiny-primate presumption—infuriated Stevie.
“I thought he didn’t like the cold,” she accused. “This is the coldest room upstairs because I always keep my shades drawn and the curtains closed. What’s he doing in here, Seaton?”
“You ever read those Curious George books to your kids when they were little? ’Crets is curious like that monkey in those children’s books. He can stand the cold for a while, Mrs. Crye. The cold won’t hurt him.”
“I’m worried about my household goods, not ’Crets.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Get him out of here, Seaton. Get him out of here without turning the whole room upside-down.”
Curious ’Crets was peering at them from the headboard across the darkened bedchamber, a simian version of Poe’s raven. The large white 10 on his jersey seemed to proclaim him the perfect capuchin, than which no other monkey of that genus was more agile, intelligent, or emblematic of unknown menace. Seaton made no effort to catch him or to call him off the bed. Instead, he gave the dim room a lingering appraisal.
“Is this where you sleep?”
“Get him off my headboard!”
“That’s a pretty king-sized bed, Mrs. Crye. You must have shared it with your husband once. It must be lonely sleeping in such a big bed in such a big room without your husband beside you.”
Stevie gaped at the blond young man. Coming from any other male intruder those words would have sounded like the prelude to rape or a proposition as unwanted as it was obvious. Seaton, however, made these tactless comments resonate with a wistful sympathy. That, in its own way, was almost as frightening as a liquorish tongue reaming her ear and an uncouth hand on her breast. In the latter brutal scenario, at least, she could have screamed for help without the least twinge of indecisiveness.
And then Seaton asked, “Did you love your husband?”
“Of course I loved my husband.” Stevie was too shocked by the out-of-left-field nature of the query to make any other reply.
“And he loved you?”
Her shock disintegrated like a tumor under repeated bombardments of electrons from the Clinac 18. “Get your goddamn monkey out of my room!”
Unabashed, Seaton looked at his goddamn monkey. “Here, ’Crets. Here, ’Crets.” He whistled between his front teeth. “Got some Sucrets for you, ’Cretsie boy.” He neared the bed extending a foil-wrapped lozenge, alternately whistling encouragement and hyping the old familiar bribe. “Got a sweet un, ’Cretsie. Got you a really sweet un.”
Like a kid going feet-first off the high dive at the rock pool in Roosevelt State Park, ’Crets sprang from the headboard into the middle of the Technicolor quilt. He bounced once, grabbed the Sucret from Seaton, and landed on the carpet two feet from Stevie. His no-eyes were miniature black maelstroms threatening to spin her into an otherworldly abyss. When Stevie fell back from the capuchin’s stare, ’Crets scampered through the doorway and down the hall into Marella’s room.
Her heart galumphing in her breast, Stevie gritted her teeth and pursued the creature. “Come on!” she shouted at Seaton. “You promised me this wouldn’t happen. You’ve got to catch him.”
Inside Marella’s vast bedchamber, she paused and looked around. ’Crets could be anywhere. Her daughter collected stuffed animals: bears, poodles, crocodiles, armadillos, koala bears, goats, seals, ducks, and Sesame Street critters. Some were lifelike, some mythological, some were polka-dotted or parti-colored parodies of genuine terrestrial fauna—but they occupied every niche, cranny, and bureau top in the room, making a quick sighting of Seaton’s companion unlikely even had ’Crets consented to jump up and down in the middle of this inanimate menagerie.
Stevie peered at the three-story tray assembly across the room in which Marella had stacked many of her plush animals, but the live monkey did not seem to be there. He had gone under one of the beds or concealed himself in the step-down closet about twelve feet to Stevie’s left. This closet had a small inner door opening into a section of attic over the kitchen—a hatch, really—and the last time Stevie had checked, this door had been fastened by a wooden block on a large skewering nail. But now the door to the step-down closet stood conspicuously ajar, and if either Teddy or Marella had peeked into the attic without afterward twisting that block back into place, ’Crets might have fled into the attic’s peculiarly populated darkness, and they’d never get him out. Heat from the kitchen warmed that musty labyrinth even in the winter, making it livable, and its dimensions sometimes seemed greater than those of the kitchen-cum-dining-area it allegedly crowned, especially to intruders not acquainted with the place. The last thing Stevie wanted was a death’s-head capuchin haunting her attic, prowling its cobwebbed promenades with an exit into Marella’s room as handy as a nearby 7-Eleven store. She envisioned the little monster slipping out at night to sit on her daughter’s pillow and refresh himself at her jugular. And if ever Marella propped a plush animal on her pillow before retiring, and if ever Stevie looked in on her in midnight’s detail-obliterating gloom, Stevie would mistake the toy animal for the real-life capuchin and straightway suffer cardiac arrest. . . .
“Seaton, get in here!”
“I’m right beside you, Mrs. Crye.”
“Look un
der the beds. Look in the closet. Pray he hasn’t escaped into the attic. I’m at the end of my rope with both of you.”
Seaton did as she bade him do. ’Crets was under neither of the twin beds, for he had hidden in the step-down closet. Seaton found him on an upholstered trunk behind a curtain of summer hangups. He dragged the monkey back into Marella’s room with an amelodic accompaniment of screeches (’Cretsie’s) and ouches (his own). Flakes of foil stuck to the capuchin’s beard; glitters of shattered Sucret twinkled above the long slash of his lip. His eye sockets held the deceptive emptiness they usually held.
“Get him out of here, Seaton. Take him back to Columbus on your time bomb of a motorcycle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Finally, after almost two hours of her hints, suggestions, and commands, the Cryes’ uninvited guests took their leave. Teddy and Marella were sad to see them go. They waved at the figures on the motorcycle and called out invitations for a future visit. Stevie, inside, stood at the kitchen sink washing her hands in scalding-hot water.
XXI
An hour or so later she stood in her study reappraising the Exceleriter. What had Seaton Benecke done to it now? The room was warmer, almost comfortable. She let her fingers hover over the keyboard, confident that if the machine was “even better than it was before,” she would finally get some answers from it. They might not be answers she wanted, or answers remotely reassuring, but her knowledge about herself and those she loved would increase, and the most important thing now was to learn through the typewriter’s preternatural instructorship without losing her grip on reality. She had no desire to hang above her front door a shingle bearing the inscription Stevenson Crye, Madwoman of Wickrath County. How, though, did you get answers from a willful, uncooperative machine?
You confront it, Stevie told herself. You ask it questions and so establish a dialogue.
On the same sheet of paper on which Seaton Benecke had typed a series of t words, she typed a question, letting her fingers fall as lightly as an acid rain. The result would be either growth or corrosion.
Who are you?
Three words and a question mark. They had formed in her mind, coursed through her nervous and locomotor systems, and sprouted as if by magic in a tiny patch of virgin whiteness. Through the agency of her Exceleriter she had translated thought to paper. Nothing strange about that. Millions of people performed similar feats of thought transference every day, often with concepts more revolutionary or queries more complex than “Who are you?” Of course only she of all the people in the world knew the terrible complexity of this particular three-word question. As Stevie reread what she had typed, the Exceleriter depressed its own shift-lock key and pounded out a flurry of uppercase characters:
I AM A FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION, STEVENSON CRYE, MADWOMAN OF WICKRATH COUNTY. I AM YOU.
A patent lie, for her hands were clasped in front of her and they had not moved to the keyboard to frame this response. Nor had any such thought taken shape in her mind. Standing immobile over a machine that operated itself, you could not transfer to paper a thought you had never had. Perhaps Seaton Benecke, ’Crets, and this infernal typewriter were conspiring to drive her crazy. By plucking the phrase Madwoman of Wickrath County from a previous moment’s fleeting reverie, the Exceleriter’s motive intelligence—whatever elements might compose it—seemed bent on that very end. Stevie typed,
I’m sorry. That just isn’t so.
To which the Exceleriter replied,
THEN PERHAPS YOU ARE A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION, STEVIE, FOR ONE OF US MUST BELONG TO THE OTHER. I WAS GIVING YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT EITHER YOU OR YOUR HUSBAND PAID FOR THIS MACHINE.
After which a genuine exchange ensued:
If you were a figment of my imagination, we wouldn’t be engaged in this quarrel. Ted bought you, but nobody bargained on having you periodically wrest control from me.
WHO ARE YOU ADDRESSING, STEVIE? THE PDE EXCELERITER 79 OR THE INTELLIGENCE YOU PERCEIVE BEHIND IT?
I don’t know. Yes, I do. The latter.
AM I MANIPULATING YOU? ARE YOU MANIPULATING ME? OR ARE WE PERHAPS PARTNERS IN A BIOMECHANICAL SYMBIOSIS?
There’s nothing mechanical about the intelligence that asks such questions. Who are you?
I AM THE FIGMENT OF AN IMAGINATION THAT IMAGINES YOU TO BE A FIGMENT OF MINE. OR VICE VERSA.
Stevie refused to accept this last gambit. It was an argument from one of those adolescent head games you played in college. Was the world real? Were our dreams intrusions from another reality? Did we create God or He us? . . . None of the answers to these questions, no matter how convolute or clever, released you from your awareness that you had earned a disappointing B- on your last comparative lit. paper and that finals were fast approaching. That Lyndon Baines Johnson reminded you of a Hollywood character actor and that American soldiers were dying in Vietnam. That your complexion warranted a major Estee Lauder overhaul and that three days after you thought your period had ended you were still spotting. To hell with What’s-the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping? and Is-the-scholar-Soshu-a-man-dreaming-himself-a-butterfly-or-a-butterfly-dreaming-itself-a-man? Even if illusory, the world published its scattershot proclamations and made you kowtow to them. You could not get away.
Only about two inches of paper remained beneath the Exceleriter’s last assertion. If she wanted answers instead of inane riddles, she would have to get down to business. Stevie typed,
Tell me about Ted. Finish my nightmare for me. If you’re my husband, talk to me as Ted talked.
Of course Ted had never talked through the intercession of a typewriter, and the machine responded to Stevie’s plea by turning itself off. By way of experiment she jabbed the key that restored its hum. It shut down again. She jabbed it back to life a second time, and although it did not counter with a third emphatic shutdown, it hummed without typing a line.
Teddy knocked on the door and stuck his head into the room. “Mom, you busy? Dr. Elsa’s here. Can you come down and talk to her?”
Stevie’s heart performed a clumsy somersault. Guilt-stricken, she turned the machine off. Then, affecting nonchalance, she hid her colloquy with the Exceleriter by positioning herself in front of the typewriter. Teddy could not see the incriminating evidence, but as Stevie looked into his eyes she realized that he had no wish to. Her heart began to soft-pedal its breakneck surgings.
“He fixed it for you, didn’t he?” Teddy asked. “That guy from Columbus, Seeley Bennett or whatever his name was.”
“Yep,” said Stevie. “It’s fixed.”
“He’s a nice guy, Mom. He’s probably not too young for you. Sort of halfway between Dad and me, agewise.”
“Age wisdom, Teddy, is an area where you may surpass Seeley Bennett.”
“Are you going to let him visit again?”
“Go back downstairs, Teddy, and fix Dr. Elsa and me a pot of coffee. I’ll be with her as soon as I’ve straightened up a little.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
XXII
Dr. Elsa was there because earlier that afternoon she had run into Tiffany McGuire’s mother at the grocery store and learned from her that Marella had come down sick again. Dr. Elsa insisted on giving the girl a quick but methodical examination right there in the kitchen. Marella submitted to this probing because her brother had gone off to Pete Wightman’s house again, removing him as an onlooker, and because she was fond of Dr. Elsa. Not many kids in Barclay could command an unsolicited house call. It was an honor to have your tongue depressed in your own home, the smell of fresh-perked coffee perfuming the air. That’s what Stevie told Marella, anyway, and Marella had the good grace to acquiesce in these sentiments.
“You feel okay today, then?” Dr. Elsa asked, peering into the corners of her eyes.
“I felt all right pretty soon after Mrs. McGuire brought me home.”
“Just that nervous stomach again, young lady?”
“I guess so.”
“It was more than
that,” Stevie said. “She woke up in the middle of the night complaining of a fever.”
“No, I didn’t,” Marella protested, shocked.
“Yes, you did. You said, ‘Hot, Mama. Oh, Mama, I’m so hot.’ You couldn’t move. You wanted me to call Dr. Elsa.”
“Mama, I did not! I slept all night.”
Stevie looked at Dr. Elsa. “You know how kids are, Elsa. They wake up during the night and talk to you, but don’t remember a word of it in the morning.”
“They usually remember when they’re sick, honey.”
“I wasn’t sick last night, Dr. Elsa. Mama made us go to bed right after the Duke boys, and I slept fine. I was afraid I wouldn’t, but I did. Mama didn’t even put the bucket beside my bed.”
“Well, she seemed all right when she first went up. But she woke me up moaning about how hot she was. She said she was melting. I told her to turn back her blanket, but she said she couldn’t move. Finally she asked me to call you.”
Standing beside Dr. Elsa’s chair, her waist partly encircled by the doctor’s arm, Marella rolled her eyes heavenward and shook her head. She was biting her lower lip to keep from speaking.
“Why didn’t you?” Dr. Elsa asked.
“I’ve been a nuisance all week. Used your typewriter Tuesday, bent your ear that evening, drove to Wickrath yesterday to see you. I couldn’t impose again, Elsa, not in the middle of the night.”
“Even if your daughter was paralyzed? What would it take to get you to call me, kiddo? Rabies? Bubonic plague?”
Who Made Stevie Crye? Page 10