“Is that those hormones Walter was talking about? Is that what makes him look so peculiar?”
“I don’t know that he looks peculiar. It is simply the next stage after old age. People look different at different stages. You should have seen yourself when you were one day old.”
“Oh, all right. I don’t know why you have to remember these things about time and bring them up all the time. Let’s put it this way. Walter has changed since I was home for the Christmas holidays.”
“Yes, and I just explained it. The Youth Restorative contains hormones which, as I understand it, cause changes in the basic structure of the cells of the human body. DNA or RNA or something like that. Women are not expected to understand these things, Annabelle.”
“That’s your excuse for things you don’t want to understand. But I’ve seen Walter so I know this Youth Restorative does something. Where on earth did he get this stuff? Surely it isn’t plain old water from the swamps.”
“No, It’s from—dear, didn’t you all hear any rumors over at Precollege?”
“We hear all kinds of rumors.”
“Well, this thing is big. It involves the whole Confederacy and there’s more to it than just Walter’s mail order business, Is that the men coming in?”
It was either them or a herd of elephants. Every time Brother walks in the house the chandeliers sway. And there would be Uncle Gary and . . .
“Set the table, Annabelle!”
I got out the good silver, because of Jerry, but not the crystal, which makes me nervous.
Everyone was a little stiff during dinner. I think this was partly due to the fact that while the rest of us had chicken and mashed potatoes, Walter had a string of raw fish. And the more everyone tried not to notice it, the more he chuckled.
I could have just died.
After dinner we cleared the dishes and I found out we had a dishwasher-stacker-disposal unit that even ground up the bones and sloshed the leavings in a bucket for the hogs.
Mama and I left the men to smoke in the dining room while we went out to smoke on the gallery. There’s nothing sillier than this segregated after dinner smoking, particularly as this is the time when all the interesting things get said. I know, because once when I was ten I hid in the china cabinet, and boy, what I didn’t hear!
The stars were flung all over the sky and just blazing away and I had to sit there through two cigarettes fending off Mama’s questions about Jerry. Finally she said, “I do wish your father were alive,” which meant she gave up.
“Now where did Walter get this Youth Restorative?” I asked.
“Ah, that,” she said with a sigh. “You know, Annabelle, you couldn’t have picked a worse time to bring a guest home. Particularly one we know almost nothing about. I’ve written Ada Sue in Jackson to find out what the Prices are like, but I haven’t heard from her yet and Jerry’s in there listening to all that talk and I’m not sure that Walter will remember to be discreet.”
“If there’s anything Walter’s good at, it’s being indiscreet. You still haven’t answered my question.”
Mama sighed again and got that dignified look on her face that she uses when she says things she doesn’t want people to laugh at. “The Swamp Water,” she said, “comes from the planet Venus.”
At that moment Jerry walked out, flipped a cigarette into the petunias, took my elbow and guided me out for a walk in the starlight.
“I’ll bring her back alive.”
I knew without looking that Mama smiled and then went frowning into the house.
A little down the road, near the Leaning Pine Tree, I stumbled over a rock and came out of my daze.
“Jerry,” I said, “my mother is stark, raving mad. There’s a plain bad streak in the family.” I shuddered. Who’d be next?
Jerry laughed. “Don’t you know What’s happened?”
“No. And if somebody doesn’t explain it to me pretty soon I’ll lose what little remains of my mind.”
“The Venusians have landed,” Jerry said, “in a swamp around Bayou Teche. They landed, in fact, in a bayou that runs behind your great Aunt Felicie’s house. You have a great Aunt Felicie?”
“Great aunt by marriage. Aunt Felicie is nine hundred years old and she insists on living by herself out there with the alligators. Every Christmas she comes in with a great big pot of gumbo. Otherwise, we never see her.”
“Well, your great Aunt Felicie took to the Venusians and the Venusians took to your great Aunt Felicie.”
“I suppose Walter told you all this and I suppose you swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But will you please explain why nobody’s heard about the Venusian landing.”
Jerry shrugged. “Apparently Felicie tried. She wired the president of the Confederacy. She wired her state representative. She even wired the Union government and several top Union scientists. When no one came she apologized to the Venusian representatives and wrote a letter to Grandfather Walter.”
“Did the Venusians learn English from her?”
“No. They learned Cajun from her?”
I giggled. It all sounded so exactly like Aunt Felicie.
“Do I see a nice piney bank up there?” Jerry asked, pointing to the bluff beyond the old Carey place.
“You do. Here, hold my hand and I’ll take you around the back way. You can’t get there from the road.”
I led Jerry around the dark, crumbling house, which looked like a place where no one had lived but many had died. We crossed a queasy little bridge with stars laughing in the creek beneath.
“What did Aunt Felicie say in her letter to Walter?” I asked when I had gotten Jerry across the creek safely and on to an overgrown path that no one could have found but me.
“She said the Venusians wanted to know what sort of present the people of the Confederacy would most appreciate. And of course Walter, being badly in need of rejuvenation himself, suggested a Rejuvenator.”
“The Venusians didn’t know he and Aunt Felicie are both half crazy?”
“They’re not so crazy. Let me finish. The Venusians thought this was a perfectly good idea, and they whipped one up.”
“Really, Jerry.”
“You said you wanted to hear. You’re the one that wants to waste all this starlight talking.”
“I mean it’s hard to believe the Venusians just happened to have a recipe for human Rejuvenation with them. Particularly since I assume they’re not human.”
“Not human the same way we are. But they do have one useful area of scientific knowledge under control. And that’s virology. The study of viruses.”
“Given time,” I said, “I could have figured out what virology is.”
“You’re not being a good listener,” Jerry said. We sat down and watched the fireflys across the road, and there was something lovely and comforting about the darkness and the stars and the little surprise glowings of the lightening bugs.
“What does virology have to do with Swamp Water Youth Restorer?” I asked, dropping pebbles off the edge of the bluff.
“Just this. The Venusians had increased their own life span enormously through the use of viruses.”
“I thought Walter said it was hormones.”
“He does think so. But from what he says, I think it’s all done with viruses. This is a guess. I gather they have a virus that goes in and replaces the template of the living cell. The template is the pattern from which new cells are formed. And if you change the template, a different cell is formed. Now maybe for themselves, they can rejuvenate without changing their appearance a great deal.
“But you can figure out what happened. Working with viruses with which they were familiar, they found one which alter cellular patterns but not to the extent of causing shock or death. But it was, after all, a Venusian virus, and the effect is—well, rather amphibious. You see how Walter looks.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but what I’d rather look like Aunt Felicie and die at a reasonable age than end up like Walter.”
>
“If you think Walter minds, you’re wrong.”
“Oh, I know. Walter’s enjoying the living soul out of all this.
“At the rate the mail order business is going, everyone may soon be just exactly like Walter.”
“Jerry, I get the oddest picture of the old guard UDC sprouting tails and swarming down en masse to Bayou Lafourche. In all humanity, somebody ought to go and warn the alligators.”
Well, Jerry left in a huff the next day and at the time I thought it must have been because of something I’d done—or more likely what I’d not done—the night before.
But the next week we got a frantic telegram from Aunt Felicie. Apparently Jerry had gone North and convinced somebody about the Venusians, because Aunt Felicie’s house was running over with Union scientists. Well, this would get Jerry into a good Eastern medical school.
Of course, nobody told him not to do this, but he should have asked us about it beforehand. It sounded like he was selling out to the Yankees.
Even so. The Venusians are on our side, because that’s where the nice, warm swamps are. Not to speak of Aunt Felicie, who has a way with people when she tries.
No doubt the Union scientists learn many useful things from the Venusians. But Walter has an exclusive franchise on the Swamp Water Youth Restorative.
And the swamps are a paradise for rich old post-senescents, which is nice for the poor old natives. Not to speak of the poor young natives.
The latest thing is, of course, top secret. But since cousin Jefferson is in the senate I know all about it and I think it’s a grand idea. Watch for the Annexation of Venus.
FLOWER ARRANGEMENT
If I was willing to get to the root of this problem, why were they so up in the air over it?
LATER on, I couldn’t remember quite why I did it. I was sitting there in my usual condition of vague awareness, wishing Barbara’s voice would stop grating away because there was a man who was going to talk to us about St. Augustine grass, and I was hoping he’d say what to do for the brown spots in my lawn.
“Oh, come on, girls,” Barbara was saying. “We ought to enter the Federated Gardens show. Last year we won third prize.”
What Barbara wanted, of course, was for us to urge her to do the Arrangement. She was the only one of us with any talent, and to be fair, Barbara is a real maestro.
Every year we each make a Dried Arrangement and Barbara comes along and says, “Um!” and presses her lips together and waves her hand over your weedy-looking mess and pokes sticks in and out of the starfoam and, presto, you have a beautiful Arrangement to keep in your living room until the next Dried Arrangements meeting.
Every year I take it home and everyone says, “Oh, isn’t that beautiful! Did you make it?” And of course I had been rather pretending I had made it, only if somebody asked me about it directly, I had to say, “No, Barbara James made it.” I frequently wished I had the courage to rush out of the Dried Arrangements meeting before she got to me and set my weedy, whispy Arrangement on the buffet and leave it there.
Needless to say, I do not have this kind of courage.
Only as Barbara got to the part where she says, “O.K. Any volunteers?” something popped inside of me and I shot my hand up and said, “I’d be glad to have a try at it.”
Barbara’s mouth quirked a little, because she knew perfectly well what kind of Arrangements I make, “and because she had probably already decided exactly what sort of Arrangement the Eastbank Garden Group was going to enter in the Federated Gardens show.
But she said, “That’s fine, Sally Jo. You’re to use camellias in it somewhere. I think you’d do best with a simple fan Arrangement. I’ll mail you their rules book, and if you’d like any—er—advice, why, I’d be glad to help.”
That was it, of course. She wasn’t going to let it be my Arrangement at all.
I didn’t even hear what the man said about St. Augustine grass. All the time I was thinking, thinking, thinking. Was there any kind of Arrangement I could make that Barbara couldn’t do better? Something really different, so that when I looked at it, I wouldn’t have to picture Barbara pressing her lips together?
IT was about eleven o’clock at night when I got home, and of course Ronald was asleep, but I just couldn’t bear this by myself.
“Ronald!” I cried in a loud whisper so as not to wake Tommy. “Do you know what I’ve done!”
Ronald snuffled irritably, then sat up with a jerk and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“You ran over somebody!”
“No. I volunteered to make the flower Arrangement for the Federated Gardens show!”
Ronald mumbled blasphemies and sank back into his pillow.
“Darling, please stay awake. You see, the thing is, I’m actually going to do this. Only there’s the matter of Barbara. Now, if I can only find something—come to think of it, there’s the Hogarth Curve. Barbara can do fans or Japanese things or crescents, but the one thing Barbara has never won a prize on is the Hogarth Curve. It tends to droop, you see. Darling . . .” But he was asleep.
For a wild moment I even considered waking up Tommy, just to have someone to talk to.
The wild moment passed and I eyed the telephone. But there isn’t anyone you can call up at eleven o’clock at night and say, “About the Hogarth Curve—”
I crossed my arms over my chest and slipped my feet out of my shoes so I could stride up and down the house quietly. Naturally I couldn’t think of anything. I never can when I try.
But it hit me the next day. I was putting some applique on a pot holder for the bazaar in January—I loathe applique—and there it was!
The Hogarth Curve wouldn’t do, because while Barbara wasn’t really successful with that kind of Arrangement, she could look at it and immediately see what was wrong. But the Hogarth Curve isn’t the only line in the world. Lines reminded me of math, and math reminded me of that Mathematics for Morons book Ronald brought home in one of his numerous unsuccessful attempts to improve my thinking ability.
I stuck my finger with a needle, hissed at the stab, held the pot holder carefully away so as not to get blood on it. Applique, ha!
There was something in that book I wanted to remember. Some really interesting line. I grabbed the book and started down the index. B. I was sure it began with a B. No. Moebius Strip. That was it.
Feverishly, I flipped the pages back to find out what it was that was so interesting about the Moebius Strip, and whether it could be done with an aspidistra leaf soaked in glycerin.
“Brring!” went the alarm clock, which I always reset in the morning to tell me to go get Tommy.
“Damn, damn, damn,” I said, glancing hastily around at the part on Moebius Strips. There were other interesting-looking lines, but I just had a feeling the Moebius one was right.
WALKING into the kindergarten, I peered around for Tommy.
“Everything all right?” Miss Potter asked.
“Um? Oh.” I guess I had a glazed look in my eyes. “Come to think of it, I’ve been pondering it all morning and I haven’t told anybody yet. I’m going to make the Arrangement for the Federated Gardens show.”
“How nice! You could make a real family project out of it!” Miss Potter said with her usual misplaced enthusiasm. “Tommy loves to make things!”
“I know.”
Tommy talked all the way home, but I didn’t hear a word he said.
“Make yourself a peanut butter sandwich,” I said when I pushed open the back door.
“Boys my age need a good hot lunch.”
“My mother used to have to force me to eat a good hot lunch. I’d have liked nothing better than to come home and make myself a peanut butter sandwich.”
Tommy gave me his accusatory look.
“Oh, all right,” I said.
AFTER lunch, we went out in the garage where I have my lab—ferns being pressed between newspapers, cattails hanging up to dry, my bucket of things in glycerin.
“What I need,” I muse
d, “is the biggest aspidistra in the world.”
I found a really nice one. Brownish, of course, but with a reddish streak and hints of deep green in it. And best of all, a light stripe right down the middle.
“This,” I said, “is going to be the very soul of our flower arrangement.”
“What’s a soul?”
“A soul . . .” The telephone rang. I am not always this fortunate.
“I wanted to let you know,” Barbara said, “that I’ve got the perfect container for your Arrangement. A pale blue cloisonné bowl. Oval. Just the thing for a fan Arrangement.”
“I’m not making a fan Arrangement.”
“No? Well, I think it would do very nicely for one of the Japanese Arrangements.”
“I’m not using Japanese lines,” I said.
There was a silence. Then, “You’re not going to try a Hogarth Curve!”
“No. It’s not the sort of thing you can describe, Barbara. You’ll just have to see it. When I’m ready.”
“I can come by any evening.” Fortunately, Barbara works. “Suppose I come by this evening and bring you the bowl?”
“I already have a base,” I lied. “I’ll call you when I have the Arrangement in shape.”
“I didn’t mean to interfere.”
“It isn’t that. It’s that the thing is—gestating. I need to feel it for a while.”
“Of course,” Barbara said, as though I had just told her I was calling in a medium.
A BASE. Really, I didn’t want any base at all. I needed something that was nothing.
The pastry board was too big. But I have a lovely chopping board, oblong, just the right size. I scrubbed the onion and garlic smell out of it as best I could and stuck on a piece of starfoam with floral clay.
Now the Moebius Strip. “Tommy!”
His eyes were wide and puzzled. He didn’t know what he’d done.
“Why did you tear Mama’s aspidistra leaf into strips?” A whole bunch of them, meeting at the stem. “It’s prettier that way.”
I could see what he meant. There was something festive-looking about it. Like streamers tied to a stick.
“Let’s try it like it is,” Tommy said.
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 11