The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  Tamara

  The Veckers own the big white house on the hill. They pay people to do their gardening, mow the lawn, trim the bushes. Several Voorhisville residents think it’s unjust that the Veckers win the Gardeners’ Association’s blue ribbon each year, as well as the grand prize for their Christmas decorations; that big house outlined with thousands of little white lights, all those windows and doors bordered too, so that it looks like some strip mall.

  Nobody is exactly sure how the Veckers got to be so rich. Even Cathy Vecker, twenty-five years old and recently returned from Los Angeles, looking a good deal older than her age, has no idea where the family money came from. The topic never held much interest for her. Cathy knew everyone was not as fortunate as she was; but what could she do about it? Whenever she thought about all the poor people—Roddy Tyler with his duct-taped shoes, for instance—it just made her weary.

  Because what could they do? The Veckers were rich, but they weren’t that rich; they were no Bill Gates, that’s for sure. Even Cathy, who had never been good at math, knew the numbers didn’t work out. The world had more people than dollars in the various Vecker accounts. If the Veckers gave away every cent they owned, nobody would be rich, and the Veckers would join the masses of those without enough. For a while, Cathy had worried that she was becoming a socialist, but once she worked through the logic, she was relieved to discover that she was just a regular rich American.

  Being a rich American meant Cathy could follow her dreams. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue modeling and acting. Cathy Vecker was pretty. She was not as beautiful as Sylvia Lansmorth, but everyone knew that Sylvia was exceptional—though overly attached to her roses. Sylvia’s husband was gorgeous too, or had been, before he died. He was a carpenter. Cathy’s mother and grandmother hired him from time to time for special projects.

  Cathy had never been happier for the Vecker money than she was upon returning from Los Angeles. She was thrilled she didn’t have to come up with an immediate solution to the challenging question of what she would do with her life. It wasn’t that she meant to shrug the question off—she had every intention of addressing it eventually—but it was a relief not to have to rush to a conclusion, get a job waitressing or something.

  Los Angeles had been an experiment, and she’d failed miserably. All the women in Los Angeles were gorgeous. It was kind of weird, actually. Also, Cathy discovered, she couldn’t really act. It wasn’t until she saw a recording of her audition that she recognized that. Why hadn’t anyone told her? Why hadn’t someone just said it?

  By the end of August, Cathy had narrowed her choices to going to college—though she hadn’t applied, she felt certain her family connections could get her into St. Mary’s or the university—or opening a small business. She was bogged down in the details. What would she major in? What kind of business would she start?

  Then she became distracted. She thought she was falling in love, or at least that explained the powerful attraction, the chemistry, the reason she did it in the back of a hearse, like somebody who couldn’t afford a room somewhere. Later, Cathy had to admit there was something about it that felt dangerous and exciting. She thought she’d gotten that sort of thing out of her system in Los Angeles, but apparently not.

  He didn’t ask for her phone number, but she didn’t worry. She was a Vecker. Everyone knew how to get in touch with the Veckers. By September, she realized he wasn’t going to call. By the end of that month, despite the Pill—which Cathy had been taking since she was fifteen, when she had her first affair with Stephen Lang, who (she didn’t know it was a cliché at the time) cleaned their pool—Cathy guessed she was pregnant. A quick trip to the drugstore and a home pregnancy test confirmed it. Cathy knew she should be upset, but honestly, she wasn’t. She placed her hand on her flat stomach and said, “I’ll do this.”

  She decided she’d start a community theatre, right there in Voorhisville. A Christmas play in December, maybe a musical; possibly Our Town in the spring; something modern in-between. It wouldn’t have to make money. The Veckers could do this. They couldn’t support the world, or America, but they could do this. Cathy could run it, even while she raised her child, and she could live off one of the Vecker accounts, and she could do something good for Voorhisville.

  The senior Mrs. Vecker received the news—first of the pregnancy, then of the community theatre—with the traditional Vecker attitude. Cathy was worried her grandmother would be upset, but it turned out there had not been an exact alignment between Grandma Vecker’s own wedding and Cathy Vecker’s mother’s birth; a matter covered up, at the time, by an extended European honeymoon. “Didn’t you know that?” Mrs. Vecker asked.

  Whereas Grandma Vecker said, “It’s quite clever of you to start without the man hanging around. Everything you need from him, you’ve already got.”

  After her husband died, Sylvia Lansmorth found herself in the unusual position of being rich. Well, not rich, exactly, not like the Veckers, but she no longer had to work at the canning factory, a job she’d held since she was fifteen. Who would have guessed that Rick Lansmorth—who was, after all, just a carpenter—had the foresight to take out sizable life insurance policies for both of them? But he had.

  All these months later, Sylvia was still finding the wooden figurines Rick had been working on during his chemo; tiny creatures that fit in the palm of her hand: a swan tucked in his toolbox (she’d been looking for the hammer); what appeared to be the beginnings of a wolf (the shape formed, a few lines cut for fur but no eyes or mouth) on the kitchen windowsill; a tiny mouse with a broken tail in the garden. Rick used to sit outside wrapped in blankets, even when the sun was hot, and Sylvia guessed he’d thrown it in frustration. Not the sort of thing he would normally do, but dying had been hard.

  Sylvia was not living the life she’d imagined when she was a high school girl who thought her job at the canning factory was temporary. She used to look at the women working there and wonder why they stayed. Now, Sylvia knew. It just happened.

  She and Rick had planned to leave Voorhisville. First, he tried building up a clientele in Centerville, but he was just another guy with a toolbox there. People in Voorhisville knew and trusted him, and while there wasn’t much work, what work there was, he got. Then he moved to Alaska. The plan was that he would get established before Sylvia joined him. They missed each other, of course, but it was a sacrifice they were willing to make. They thought they had time. Instead, he came back to Voorhisville with cancer and stories of moose.

  After Sylvia quit her job, she spent a great deal of time in the garden; so much so that, as fall approached, she realized that her main occupation had been dying, and she didn’t have anything to replace it with. She would have denied that she had wished for it, or expected it; she would have resisted calling it a miracle; but just when the garden started to look barren, she discovered she was pregnant, the result of one single sexual encounter with a stranger she had no desire to see again. Sylvia had gotten quite good at crying over the past year. Why couldn’t it be Rick’s child? Why couldn’t he still be alive? What could possibly come of conception in a hearse? How Freudian was that?

  Sylvia considered an abortion. Then she got in her car, drove to Centerville, and went to the Barnes & Noble, where she spent a good deal of money on pregnancy and parenting books.

  “Wow, we’ve really had a run on these lately,” the clerk said.

  Sylvia liked having a secret. It wasn’t that she was ashamed. She just liked having this private relationship with her baby. Once her neighbor, Lara Bravemeen (whose upstairs windows brooded over Sylvia’s garden) asked why she’d stopped going to yoga, and she just shrugged. Sylvia had recently discovered that most people accepted a shrug for an answer.

  In January, Sylvia learned that Lara Bravemeen was pregnant too. Their children could play together. That is, if the Bravemeens stayed married and continued to live next door. Lately, there’d been a lot of shouting over there.

  Never having been
pregnant before, Sylvia had nothing to compare it to except TV shows, but she thought it was perfect. She felt wonderful the whole time. Holly, the midwife, said, “Sometimes it’s almost harder if you have an easy pregnancy. It makes the birth just that much more of a shock.”

  Sylvia, who had been feeling very much like a Madonna—not the rock star, but the perfectly peaceful mother type—just smiled.

  The pain was monumental. Right from the start. Ed called the doctor and she said, “How far apart?” and Ed asked Lara, “How far apart?” and Lara screamed, “What?” So Ed repeated the question. “There’s no time between, you moron,” Lara hollered. Ed relayed this to the doctor (editing out the “moron,” of course), who said, “When did the contractions start?” and Ed said, “Five minutes ago.” That’s when the doctor said, “Bring her in now.” Ed said, “Right now?” and the doctor said, “Wait. You’re in Voorhisville, right?” and he said, “Yes,” and she said, “Call the ambulance,” and Ed said, “Is there a problem?” and Lara screamed and the doctor said, “Call them.” So Ed called the ambulance and they came right away. It was Brian Holandeigler and Francis Kennedy (no relation to any of the famous ones), who tried to make jokes to calm Ed and Lara down, but between screams of agony, Lara was vicious. “She’s not usually like this,” Ed said. “Fuck you!” Lara shouted. “You’re going to be all right,” Francis said. “Fuck you!” Lara screamed. “Try to breathe,” Ed said. “Remember the breathing?” “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lara screamed.

  Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. She knew it. And here she was, surrounded by these idiot men (“Idiots!” she shouted) who thought she was hysterical.

  “I’m dying!” she screamed.

  “You’re not dying,” Ed said.

  It felt like she was being scraped raw inside by talons. It felt like her guts were being carved out. Or like teeth! It felt like small sharp teeth were chewing her up inside.

  “Do something!” she shouted.

  “Well, we really can’t do much,” Brian said.

  “What?” Ed and Lara said.

  “I could take a look,” Brian said.

  “But we’re not supposed to transport women in labor,” Francis said. “We’re supposed to stay here. Unless there’s a problem.”

  “There’s a fucking problem!” Lara shouted.

  “Do you mind if I look?” Brian said as he slipped his hands around the waistband of Lara’s pants. Ed found the image disturbing, and turned away. Lara saw him turn away. She managed, through her pain, to form the words again: “Fuck you.” Brian sat up. “Hold your legs together,” he said. “What?” Lara said. “Is it coming?” Ed said. “Of course it’s—” Lara interrupted herself to scream. “Close your legs!” Brian shouted. “Are we taking her?” Francis said. “Yes. Yes. Oh God, yes,” Brian said. “Close your legs!” he yelled at Lara. “Oh, God, oh Jesus,” Brian said. Lara screamed. Ed leaned down and held her hand. “Please,” he said, “close your legs.” “I want it out!” Lara shouted. “Please,” Ed said, “do what they say.” “Excuse me,” Francis said, and shoved Ed away.

  Brian and Francis set the stretcher on the floor beside the couch. “I’m dying!” Lara screamed. Brian and Ed lifted her to the stretcher. “Close your legs,” Brian said. Lara closed her legs. “Don’t drop her,” Ed said as he opened the door. “Can I come with you?” “Two steps,” Francis said to Brian, who was backing out. Ed shut the door. He looked at Sylvia’s dark house. Death could come to anyone, anywhere, he thought. “Are you coming?” Francis said. Ed jumped into the ambulance. The siren screamed, but it was nothing compared to Lara’s screams. “Let me see where you’re at,” Francis said. He spread a sheet over Lara’s lap and bent under to have a look. When his head came out of the sheet, his eyes were wide, his skin white. “Oh, Jesus,” Francis said. “Hold your legs together.”

  Lara tried to hold her legs together, but it felt like she was being sliced by knives. “Ed,” she shouted. “Ed?”

  “I’m here, baby, I’m right here.” He squeezed her hand.

  She screamed. She screamed the whole ride from Voorhisville to the hospital in Becksworth. When they got there, the doctor was waiting for them.

  “How about an epidural?” she said. “You better take a look,” Brian said. She lifted the sheet and looked. “Take her to the OR,” the doctor said. “What’s happening?” Ed said. “You stay here,” a nurse said. “What’s happening?” Ed said to Brian and Francis. They both stared at him, then Francis said, “There might be some complications.” Ed sat down. Brian and Francis left. The hospital was so quiet Ed thought he could still hear Lara’s screams. But it couldn’t have been her, because Lara had gone to the right, and the screams were coming from the left.

  Jan Morris lay screaming in her hospital bed, but no one was paying much attention. Someone had checked her when she came in, and pointed out that she wasn’t even dilated yet. Jan insisted they contact her doctor. “She wants to know,” she said. But Jan’s doctor was busy with some other emergency, so Dr. Fascular took the call instead. The nurse checked Jan again, decided that she was making a big fuss over nothing, and administered an epidural. The mother was in her forties, and they were often the biggest pains. They wanted everything a certain way. But Jan kept screaming until it finally occurred to someone that there might be a problem.

  The nurse who looked at Jan later said, over coffee and eggs with her twelve-year-old son, that it was the most shocking thing she’d ever seen. The woman hadn’t even been dilated ten minutes ago—or, okay, it might have been closer to twenty minutes, but then suddenly there was . . . she thought there might be an arm, a leg, something like that. Anyway, after she saw the strange thing protruding from Jan Morris’s vagina, she ran to call Dr. Fascular again.

  “What thing?” the nurse’s son asked.

  “I don’t know how to describe it. It was just sticking out, and it was like a, like the tip of a triangle, and it was sharp.”

  “You touched it?”

  “Look,” she said, and showed him the small cut on her finger.

  “What happened next?” the boy asked.

  She remembered touching that bloody tip with her finger; she remembered the sear of pain and running to call the doctor. The next thing she knew, several hours had passed and she was punching her time card to go home. Even though she was tired and her feet were sore and she certainly wanted to be there when her son woke up, she went to the nursery where she found the baby, a sweet-as-they-all-are prune-shaped thing, wrapped tightly in a blanket, sleeping. She read the chart and saw that there was nothing unusual noted.

  Maddy

  Yeah, well, that nurse didn’t see nothing wrote down about it because they could hold them inside like the way you put your fingers in a fist, or maybe more like the way you close a eye. That’s what the babies did. They pulled them in real tight and it just looked like, I don’t know, kind of extra wrinkled and stuff. Who pays attention to a baby’s back, anyways? Not most people. Most people wanna look at a baby’s face or fingers and toes. There is a weird fascination with grownups looking at a baby’s fingers or toes. Also, baby’s shit. My mom could go on and on about JoJo’s shit. Was it greenish? Was it runny? She’d get mad at me when I rolled my eyes. “You can tell things about your baby’s health, Maddy,” she’d say.

  My mom liked to behave all superior about babies with me ’cause she had two, and she figured that made her a expert. Also, I really think she liked the fact I was a teenage mother ’cause it proved her theory that I was a fuckup all along. Weird as it is, though, I sometimes wish I had my mom here with me like Elli has hers. But how fucked is that? Both of them doing it with the same guy? It makes me shiver every time I think about it.

  JoJo was born at home, even though we didn’t plan it that way. Just ’cause we had a midwife renting Billy’s old room in the basement don’t mean we was going to use her. Holly was really busy. Once she came upstairs and asked me to turn the music down, but she asked like she knew
it was a big pain for me to do, and so I turned it down. And one night we sat on the front steps and talked. I thought she was nice.

  But it’s not like I got to choose much about JoJo. My mom liked to act like everything was up to me. “He’s your baby,” she’d say. “He’s your responsibility”—she said this about diaper changing and when he was crying. But other times she’d say, “Just ’cause you had a baby don’t mean you’re all grown up now.”

  My mom said I had to go to a hospital. “It’s just ridiculous that in this day in age, with all the best modern medicine has to offer, a woman would choose to give birth at home like they was living in Afghanistan or something.” My mom loved to mention Afghanistan whenever she could. My brother Billy got killed there, and after that she blamed Afghanistan for anything wrong in the world.

  After I talked to Holly that night on the porch, I wanted her to help when the baby came. It’s not like she tried to convince me, or nothing like that. We barely talked about it. Mostly we talked about other stuff. But I liked her, and I didn’t like Dr. Fascular. He has cold hands and is always grumpy and shit.

  My mom was all like, “No way,” and said it had to be at the hospital. But there wasn’t much she could do when it happened the way it did, all of a sudden, with me alone in the house. I didn’t expect it to hurt like it did. It hurt a lot. I didn’t scream, even though I really wanted to. I just went down to Billy’s old room and laid down on Billy’s old bed, which was now Holly’s, and waited for her to get home. It hurt so bad I took the bedspread and rolled it up at the end and stuck it in my mouth. Every time I felt like screaming, which was pretty much all the time, I bit down.