Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Touched me where?”

  “Your arm,” he said, exasperated.

  “I didn’t feel anything—”

  “C’mon, Pella. You were asleep. Or out cold.”

  She turned, and moved closer to him, trying to find an angle in the dim light that allowed her to read his expression.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  She hesitated, then said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  She nudged his arm, and he duckwalked back through the entrance. She followed, shucking off the blanket.

  “You’re leaving that in there?”

  “Yeah. Shut up.”

  They climbed out of the gully together, silent. The sun was high, and their shadows were knotted at their feet.

  “So if you weren’t sleeping, what were you doing?” he asked finally.

  “I was sleeping,” she decided.

  “This have anything to do with your not taking the pills?”

  “I guess.” She’d let him supply the explanations, believe what he wanted.

  “What happens?”

  “Nothing. I just need to sleep a lot.”

  “That’s it?”

  His plain disappointment made her almost want to tell him. “That’s it,” she said.

  “Morris Grant said your mom had seizures,” he said suddenly.

  “What does Morris Grant know about it?”

  “He said David told him.”

  “Just two,” she said. “One at home, one in the hospital.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with that, does it?”

  “No.” She refused the notion so firmly that only afterward did she realize she needed the clarification herself.

  They were silent again for a while, climbing the ridge. The sky was peach-hued, awesome and empty, no variation to give it more than two dimensions, or fewer than a billion. The crunch of their alternating footsteps mimicked an echo. Smoke huffed up past the rise on their left, gray-pink against the hill, but nearly impossible to make out as it rose into the sky. It came from Efram’s backyard kiln. Pella intentionally bumped against Bruce, steering them in the other direction.

  “Maybe you’re just sort of warming up for something,” said Bruce as they walked along.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, your body’s changing, because of the Archbuilder viruses. So that’s why you need to sleep a lot.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What about Ray and Dave? Is anything like this happening to them?”

  “Nope. And they don’t know about it, either. You’re going to keep quiet about this, right?”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes.”

  If he were one of her brothers she would have had to back it up with a threat of some sort. But Bruce Kincaid smiled, and she realized he wouldn’t tell, simply because it made his life more interesting to have a secret with her.

  She thought of what Morris had told her that day on the ridge over Efram’s farm. That Bruce loved her. If it was true she didn’t want to know about it, especially here, walking alone with him, indebted to him for protecting her secret, her hiding place. Let him keep both secrets, Pella thought. Mine and his own.

  “And anything else,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Anything else I can do,” said Bruce. “To help you.” He sounded annoyed, like she wasn’t getting into the spirit of it.

  “I can’t think of anything.” She wished she could tell him that not talking about it included not talking to her.

  “Maybe I’ll stop taking the pills too,” he said.

  “Don’t.”

  “Then whatever happens, happens to both of us—”

  “Forget it, okay? You’ll be glad. I wish I could forget it myself.”

  “So do you want me to get pills for you? I could.”

  Would she want to let go of her deer-self, so soon after discovering it? Stop sleeping, stop spying? Then she thought of Hugh Merrow, of what she hadn’t wanted to see. The curtain that had parted. Maybe she did want to take the pills, after all.

  “Wouldn’t they notice them missing?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Your parents.”

  At that moment a household deer ran skittering between them and sprang up onto a rock to the right of their path. Pella stared at the deer. It cocked its head at her questioningly.

  Could someone be looking through its eyes?

  “I’ll steal them from Wa’s,” said Bruce. “He’s got a shelf full of them.”

  If nothing else it would keep Bruce busy, divert his attention. “Okay,” she said. “Do it.”

  They came to the ridge that overlooked the lesbians’ house. Llana Richmond and Julie Concorse, and their baby, Melissa Richmond-Concorse. It was no longer remarkable. Six days before, Pella and Bruce and the other children had stood here and watched the men prepare to fit this house together. Now it was already lived in, a part of the town.

  “I could find you a better hiding place, too,” said Bruce. “I know lots.”

  “Who’s going to find me where I was, except you? I bet you had to follow me, anyway.”

  “Well, yesterday I watched what direction you went.”

  “I knew it. I just hope Morris Grant wasn’t following you. He’s probably out there kicking in the sides of my thing, just to see if he can.”

  “He didn’t follow me.”

  Julie Concorse came out onto the porch of the house below and dumped a plastic container of dirty water over the edge, without looking up and seeing them. The water made a dark spider-shaped stain on the rock in front of the house, topped with a lump of soap bubbles.

  As she watched Julie Concorse disappear through the front door, Pella imagined herself in her other form, a household deer slipping inside the house.

  “There was a couple like that living next door to us, in Bryn Mawr,” said Bruce. “We shared an under-garden with them and some other families. Only they had a boy.”

  “A baby?”

  “About Martha’s age. It’s kind of weird, lesbians and a boy.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Pella, squelching his enthusiasm.

  The only way she knew to manage right now was to smooth down all irregularities, to placate Bruce and anyone else. Everything would be normal, everything would be okay. Nothing would be weird. She would keep weirdness contained within herself, to protect the others. Foremost among them, Clement.

  They walked on until they stood in front of Pella’s house. “Well,” said Pella, wanting to be rid of him now.

  “See you later, I guess,” said Bruce.

  “Okay.”

  “Let me know what’s going on, okay?”

  “Shut up, don’t talk about it here.”

  “Sorry. Bye.” He looked at her wanly, raised his hand, then headed off, half-running.

  Raymond was in the biggest chair, with the album of family photographs spread open in his lap. Pella hadn’t seen it since they’d packed it up, back on Pineapple Street, those last few days. Raymond looked up surprised, and snapped the album shut.

  “What are you doing?” said Pella.

  “Nothing.”

  “Where’s Clement?”

  “You know, with Joe Kincaid. Talking about the school thing.”

  “What about David?”

  “I dunno. He and Morris and Martha were going around.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “Didn’t feel like it. Why didn’t you?”

  Pella didn’t answer. Instead she went through to the bathroom and locked the door from inside. She pushed her pants to her ankles, plunked down on the toilet and peed. Finished, she hunched forward on her knees, eyes shut. She already wanted to silence her thoughts and wander again, from herself, from the trap of the family house. She couldn’t bear to go back out and see Raymond huddled with the photographs, grown reflective at last, at the wrong time.

  Craving distance, she let herself d
rift, sitting there with her chin on her crossed wrists. In a moment she woke into a lithe body running from under a monumental shadow, into a patch of sun. A household deer again. She scampered over a fallen pillar and back into shadow, and Hugh Merrow’s house came into view.

  Her curiosity had called her back here.

  Around the corner, up the wall, and through the window, then down, on silent feet, into the room. Pella was nothing but eyes and feet now, the rest of her only a tremble in-between. It was easy to ignore a tremble, let eyes follow feet. She dashed up on a table and looked around.

  The Archbuilder was gone. Hugh Merrow was at the sink, washing his brushes, scumbling in a jar of turpentine, then kneading the bristles back and forth against the porcelain. If something had gone on between Merrow and the alien, it was over. Pella had managed to miss it, exactly.

  Whatever they’d done hadn’t advanced Merrow’s portrait of the Archbuilder. There wasn’t any color rinsing out of the artist’s brushes, and the canvas sat looking precisely as it had before, a sketch in gray wash. Unfinished, forgotten.

  Ten

  “Put the chairs in a circle.”

  “That’s not like school.”

  “Are you complaining?”

  “I thought you didn’t want—”

  “If we’re gonna do it we should do it right.”

  “There’s no right way. This is something different, as you’ll see—”

  “Chairs in a circle is different like kindergarten.”

  “We could use the porch.”

  “No, then they’d just be distracted.”

  “We’ll be distracted inside, watching household deer.”

  “I’ll chase them out.”

  “No, Morris, set up the chairs.”

  “He wants to be deer monitor.”

  “That sounds like the name of an Archbuilder. Deer Monitor.”

  • • •

  Clement had cleared out their living room for the classroom, the one-room schoolhouse. Joe Kincaid, who’d been a professor in Pennsylvania, was teacher, which made Clement what? The principal? The dean? The class consisted of Pella, Raymond and David, Bruce and Martha. Plus Morris Grant. And two Archbuilders. One was Ben Barth’s friend, Hiding Kneel, the other the one Pella had seen at Hugh Merrow’s, whose name was announced as Truth Renowned. But not Doug Grant, who at fifteen apparently judged himself too old, and not Melissa Richmond-Concorse, the lesbians’ baby, who at two wasn’t old enough.

  On a high shelf in the corner perched two household deer, waiting.

  Only the Archbuilders were enthusiastic. The fathers strung along the children on the promise of something unusual, or there would have been outright rebellion. As it was, Joe Kincaid and Clement Marsh were meeting with passive resistance. If the families were laying ground for a new society, all the more crucial school be kept out of it. Why clean a slate only to make the same drab marks on it again? So the children dragged their feet, honorably, in the name of later generations, children who would view them as architects of a paradise.

  Anyway, six children and two Archbuilders weren’t a class, and two fathers weren’t a school. The objections were endless. Yet here they were, seated in an abysmal circle, forced to stare at one another as they listened. Outside, the irregular sun-splashed terrain of the valley beckoned. Being drawn indoors made the children feel they were creatures of the valley now, as much as the Archbuilders, maybe more.

  Pella sat with her feet up on her chair, arms around her knees. She picked idly at the scab on her ankle, eyes focused through the window, on the distant horizon.

  “—we’re not going to pretend that you’re all reading at the same level,” Joe Kincaid was saying. “Or should be reading the same things—”

  “We are all reading on the same planet,” said Hiding Kneel, leaning forward into the circle. The two Archbuilders sat together, Hiding Kneel agitated, fronds in motion, Truth Renowned silent and shy, arms and legs tucked away. Though no one admitted to fear of the Archbuilders, the children had given them plenty of room.

  Seated near the windows, their fur glowed in the sun, looked almost wet in shadow.

  “Uh, yes,” said Joe Kincaid. “I guess that’s the point. One thing that’s certain is we’re on the same planet. Sharing what we learn about it is as important as any other sort of schoolwork. I know Bruce and Martha are studying at home, and I guess your mom gives you lessons at home too, Morris. Anyway, this will be the opposite of kindergarten, for whoever said that. We’ll call ourselves a study group, which is a kind of school I didn’t have until college. But I didn’t live on another planet when I was growing up either.”

  “That suggests that you are not growing up now,” said Hiding Kneel.

  “Ah, good point. I should know better, since part of what I’m getting at is that you’re never done learning. For instance, lots of Archbuilders speak English; Clement has decided to be the first human to speak Archbuilder—”

  “There’s no such thing as speaking Archbuilder,” said Raymond. “There’s hundreds of languages. Caitlin said. Remember?”

  “Well, I’ll study one of the languages,” said Clement. “Our Archbuilder members here can help me decide which would be a good choice. Just listen to Joe for now, Ray.”

  Pella felt the scab on her ankle scratch off under her fingernail, then a little chill of pain where blood met open air. She cursed her body. She wanted to hide it away.

  “We’ll meet twice a week,” Joe Kincaid went on. “I’m sure some of you will be quite relieved to hear that. This doesn’t mean you can quit your independent-study work. What we’ll do here is get together to talk about what we’re learning. The older kids can help the younger ones with hard material, and native speakers can help students of new languages. Teaching is one of the best ways to learn.”

  “Sounds like college is dumber than kindergarten,” said Morris Grant.

  “Kindergarten didn’t have Archbuilders,” said Bruce.

  “And Archbuilders didn’t have kindergarten,” snorted Morris.

  “Rather, we have a system of tutorship—” began Hiding Kneel seriously.

  “Maybe we’ll bring in guests to speak to the group,” said Clement, trying to reassert control. “Diana Eastling, if she could be convinced—”

  “Let Hiding Kneel talk, Dad,” said Raymond. “I mean, all Diana Eastling does is study the Archbuilders. Kneel is one.”

  Pella’s attention quickened at the mention of Diana Eastling. As far as she knew the biologist was still away, exploring. Had Clement seen her?

  The one place Pella wasn’t spying was home. Who knew what Clement was up to?

  Clement said, “Fair enough—”

  “The germs of the word kindergarten elaborate certain paradoxes in our situation,” said Hiding Kneel, fronds waving. “We are not young, nor do we generally produce offspring. Otherhandedly, we are all children of the generation that preceded us, those who reshaped our world and then abandoned us to it. Further, garden indicates a preserve, a cultivated portion, but there is none such. We meander in ruins and waste. Yet again, our providential potatoes grow ubiquitously, and the climate is like a—I cannot recall the word …”

  “I don’t know,” said Clement, when no one else spoke. “I can’t think of what word you’re after.”

  “Don’t start him up again,” said Morris Grant. “He’ll talk forever.”

  “A hothouse, thank you,” continued Hiding Kneel, as though Morris or Clement had supplied the word. “And so kinder in a garden is seemingly on-target. Begging the pardon of Morris Grant, I regard it flawed to say we don’t have kindergarten. Indeed, we more lack anything other.”

  “What?” said Morris Grant.

  “And your, uh, system of tutorship?” said Joe Kincaid.

  The two household deer on the shelf in the corner were in motion, bouncing, shaking. Pella squinted to see better. One had mounted the other, was pumping frantically. Unmistakable. Like a nature show about mating bears or liz
ards. The one thing that was done the same everywhere.

  Except by Archbuilders, thought Pella. They weren’t split like all the rest of the world into fuckers and fuckees.

  “Our system of sleeping and dreaming, you mean,” said Hiding Kneel to Joe Kincaid.

  “If that’s what you mean—”

  “Certainly,” said Hiding Kneel. “I learned English that way.”

  “Hear that?” chortled Morris Grant. “It learned English asleep. No wonder.”

  “Shut up,” said Bruce.

  “Please, explain it to us,” said Joe.

  “Let Pella Marsh do that,” said Hiding Kneel, uncurling its tendrils in her direction. “She may be better able.”

  “What?” said Pella, startled. She’d been staring at the humping deer, imagining herself displaced into one or the other of them.

  “I suggest you might elaborate the method of education by reverie,” said the Archbuilder.

  Pella’s face heated. “What makes you think I know anything about it?” she said fiercely.

  Archbuilders sleeping, household deer creeping, and Archbuilders learning English asleep. Spying on people, that’s what Hiding Kneel meant. Education by reverie. No wonder Efram didn’t like household deer.

  She’d take the pills, she decided.

  “What’s this, Pella?” said Clement.

  “Nothing,” said Pella, glaring at Hiding Kneel, ignoring Clement.

  “This school is off to a great start,” said Morris Grant, with heavy sardonic emphasis.

  “I like it,” said David sincerely.

  “You said we were going to have snacks,” said Martha Kincaid to her father.

  “In a minute,” said Joe Kincaid. “First let’s pair off into study partners—”

  Pella was matched with David. She turned her back to Clement, hoped he’d forget what Hiding Kneel had said. Morris Grant was paired with Clement, clearly by design. Hiding Kneel was Raymond’s partner, and the other Archbuilder, Truth Renowned, was matched with Martha Kincaid.

  “Might we now play backgammon?” said Hiding Kneel excitedly.

  There were heavy footsteps on the porch.

  • • •

  They all turned as the door was thrown open. Standing like a statue in the sunlit doorway was Efram Nugent. He didn’t step inside, but held there, silhouetted in the light, and surveyed the room, then raised his hand and pointed at Truth Renowned.