Brenda ran her right hand up under the white wig that was part of Santa’s hat and grabbed a greasy handful of hair and pulled up his head. His scalp was still warm.
“Silver Bells,” sang the Voice of the Mall. “Silver Bells.”
Bob led a wide-eyed little girl away from the line where her mother stood wrestling with her packages and scowling. Bob took the girl under the arms, sat her on Santa’s lap, and hurried back to his camera. The girl looked up at Santa, then she looked at Brenda peering over Santa’s left shoulder.
“Santa wants to know your name,” Brenda said.
“Crystal.”
“That’s a nice name,” Brenda said. “Like the singer.”
“What is this?” Crystal’s mom called from the line. “I want to hear some ho ho hos!”
Bob jerked up his chin at Brenda and lasergunned her with his eyes.
Brenda turned her face down so they couldn’t see her mouth and in a voice as deep as she could make it said, “Ho ho ho.” She jerked Santa’s head up and down and wagged it from side to side, hoping for a bowlful of jelly effect.
Crystal wrinkled his nose. “I think Santa pooped his pants.”
“I know. I know.” Brenda whispered. “Isn’t he silly?” She turned Santa’s face so he would appear to be whispering in her ear. “Santa wants to know what you want for Christmas, Crystal. Don’t you, Santa?” She nodded his head.
Crystal straightened her shoulders and rattled off a long list of merchandise.
“Okay,” Bob said. “Okay. I got it.” He rushed up and plucked the girl from Santa’s lap and set her on her feet.
“I didn’t get to finish my list!” Crystal yelled as her mother dragged her into the river of mall people.
“You don’t have to do this, Brenda,” Dolly whispered in her ear.
Brenda’s fingers were stiff, and a dull ache spread through her hand and up her arm. The weight of Santa’s head was like holding up a bowling ball. She just wanted to let go. She just wanted to go home.
“But what about the rent, Dolly?”
“Something will turn up,” Dolly said. “It always does.”
“It always does,” Brenda said. “I don’t have to do this.”
Santa’s head twisted suddenly in her hand. His skull turned to ice, freezing her fingers in place. He opened his mouth, and his breath was spoiled milk in her face. “Deliver unto me that which is mine, Brenda,” he said.
Brenda yelped and tore her hand from his head and jumped up. Santa slumped forward until his head hung between his knees.
“Hey!” Bob rushed up and knelt down in front of Santa and pushed him back up. “What the hell are you doing?” His voice was a mean hiss.
“We don’t have to do this,” Brenda said. She could see the remaining parents huddled in hushed conference, the children hugging their legs and hanging onto their hands and staring with wide eyes at Santa slouched in his big chair.
“You’d better hope you didn’t screw this up, Brenda.” Bob hurried over to the parents and joined the huddle.
A moment later, a man prodded a small boy forward. “Take him next,” the man said.
Bob pulled the boy to Santa. “Get back in your place, Brenda.”
“But surely they know now!”
Bob glanced back at the parents. “Turns out they don’t care,” he said. “They just want to get this done.”
The boy’s father smiled at Brenda and made the okay sign with his finger and thumb.
The rent. Her turkey leg. And Dolly’s show tonight. Bob wouldn’t pay her if she left now. Brenda looked out into the faces of the Mall People. They stood behind the red rope at the edge of the peppermint candy cane alcove and worshiped her, their faces glowing. A man lifted his shopping bag and rattled it at her. A woman did the same. Then they were all doing it. Their voices rose, pleading, insisting.
“Bring back the sun, Brenda.”
“Make the corn grow, Brenda.”
“Seed the New Year sales, Brenda!”
Her head swam with their voices. Brenda wanted to hide, wanted them to take their eyes off her, but the Mall People would have their way. She stepped behind Santa and crouched down again. Bob put the boy on Santa’s knee.
When she raised Santa’s head, the boy took one look at Santa’s eyes and screamed. Bob snapped the photo and plucked the child from Santa’s lap. Brenda turned Santa’s head this way and that, as if he were peering around for the nastiness that could make a child scream so.
Bob and the boy’s father stood looking at the Polaroid as it developed. Bob nudged the man in the ribs with his elbow. “Hang onto this picture,” he said. “It’ll be fantastic ammunition when the kid’s a teenager. Next! Next!”
Brenda turned Santa’s head around so she could look into his rolled white eyes. His mouth had twisted into a nasty grin under his cotton moustache.
“No,” Brenda said. “Just no.” She dropped his head and stood up.
“Hey wait!” Bob snatched at her as she pushed past him. “We aren’t finished!”
“What are you?” a woman hugging a weeping toddler to her chest said. “Some kind of Scrooge?”
“I’ll be home for Christmas,” Brenda said.
She ran from the peppermint alcove, scattering the Mall People from her path. The Voice of The Mall moaned in despair, and shops darkened as she passed them.
Poop
Sometimes they felt like kids again, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist, standing over the sleeping baby, this late-in-life lazy sperm, test tube wonder they’d named Lewis, because Lewis was a popular name these days (and you can call him Lewie), and just because Lewie’s parents were in their forties didn’t mean he had to walk around with an out-of-fashion name. Hey, years ago, they might have named him after one of Marilyn’s favorite causes. So, what’s your name, little boy? And he’d look down at his shoes and mutter, Save-The-Whales, sir.
You couldn’t expect the sailing to always be smooth. “It’s not like getting another cat,” he said or she said and they agreed that no, it was not like getting another cat. Even the cats they already had knew it was not like getting another cat. Not so much the smell of talcum and sour diapers, nor the fact that the guest room now had a permanent resident. It was more a wound-tight constant watchfulness. Karl and Marilyn knew babies weren’t made out of glass, but knowing that didn’t mean they weren’t on constant alert for danger. The cats all had the same new name, and that new name was “get away from there!”
One evening when Karl went into his Honey-I’m-home routine, she rushed out of the shadows sobbing with a bundle and pushed it into his arms and ran out of the room.
Well, it was his turn. He put little Lewis down on the couch and pulled at the Velcro tabs and peeled back the diaper and took a look at the load Lewis had left. It seemed to consist entirely of perfectly formed discrete bits, brown and soft looking, and shaped like an assortment of threaded nuts and bolts. Aside from the usual bad smells Karl had come to expect, there was also a hint of machine oil. Jeeze, what had the kid been eating?
“Hey, Marilyn!” he said. “Come on back out here. You gotta see this.”
“No,” she called. “That’s just the point. When it’s your turn, I definitely don’t have to see it.”
He grabbed Lewie’s feet, pulled the dirty diaper away and made a neat package of it. He hoisted the baby up higher and washed his bottom.
From somewhere far away, Karl could hear music, like the local philharmonic had decided to take a few turns around the block. He looked back over his shoulder at the window. The sound didn’t seem to be coming from the street. In fact, it seemed to be coming from Lewis. Feed your baby little radios and he will forever have a song in his heart? Karl moved to put his ear down on the baby’s stomach, but fi
rst strategically positioned his hand—having already been hosed in the traditional first defiant act of the son lashing out at the father—and listened. Yes, there it was—tummy music.
“Hey, Marilyn, the kid’s playing Bach!” Karl called.
“Concerto? Or symphony?” she asked.
“You could come listen for yourself.”
“Not a chance,” she said.
The music stopped suddenly. Maybe it had been coming from the apartment below. Karl fixed Lewis up with a fresh diaper.
Lewis got a look on his face like he’d eaten a bowling ball and maybe now was the time to throw a strike.
“Oh no,” Karl said. “Not again. Not so soon.”
The diaper bulged around the baby’s thighs. It bunched and unbunched like a fist in a glove.
When all movement finally stopped, Karl peeled the diaper down.
Small brown birds burst into the air and flew away in all directions.
Karl jerked away with a startled cry.
“You can knock off the sound effects,” Marilyn called. “I’m not going to look.”
The birds settled on the curtain rod above the big picture window. They spent a few moments squabbling and preening and elbowing for position before settling in to stony silence and sidelong glances.
“This is serious, Marilyn,” he said, and she must have heard something serious in his voice because a moment later she appeared at the kitchen door.
“What in the world?” she said when she spotted the birds.
“Lewis,” Karl said.
He looked back down at Lewis, and Lewis pumped his legs and waved his arms. His diaper was not too messy. In fact, Karl couldn’t tell if what was there had been left by Lewis or by the birds. Marilyn sat down on the couch and Lewis stretched his arms back over his head and rolled up his eyes to look at her. She absently tickled his nose and he giggled and snatched at her hand. Running mostly on automatic now, Karl washed the baby again and changed his diaper.
He looked at Marilyn over the baby and she looked at him.
“Where did the birds come from, Karl?” she asked.
“From Lewis,” he said. “They were in his diaper.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Really. There must be a window open somewhere.”
“Sure,” he said, “that must be it.”
But he didn’t believe it, and she could see he didn’t believe it, and he could see that she didn’t believe it either. Lewis gurgled and giggled and his parents, long practiced in marital telepathy, zapped thoughts back and forth above his head. We can handle this. We’re adults. We can do it. No we can’t. We’re children ourselves. What do we know about babies? No one told us anything about this. What are we going to do? I wish my mother was here. I wish your mother was here, too, or my mother. Your mother wouldn’t know what to do. What’s wrong with my mother? Would you shut up about your mother?
Lewis rumbled and filled his pants again.
“I’m afraid to look,” Karl said.
Marilyn reached over the baby and pulled the Velcro tabs.
A multitude of mice exploded from Lewie’s diaper. Karl and Marilyn leaped up off the couch, yelling. The mice scrambled over the baby’s stomach and legs and across the couch and off onto the floor, definitely hitting the ground running, and the birds screamed and leaped into flight, crossing and recrossing in the air, never quite colliding, swooping down on the fleeing mice, not catching any as the mice hot-footed it under the furniture. The cats, no longer cowering, dashed around after the mice and jumped and swatted at the birds.
Marilyn covered the baby with her body. Karl stood over them both, waving away the birds and kicking at the mice the cats had flushed from under the furniture.
“We might as well be on the moon,” Karl said. There was absolutely no one to ask. So many friends, but none of their friends would have a clue about this.
“What?”
Check the baby books. They had an entire shelf of baby books. They had had lots of time for research. They hadn’t gone into this with their eyes closed. Or maybe call the pediatrician. Doctor, is it normal for my baby to be pooping birds and mice?
“We need someone to tell us what to do.” Karl said.
“Shouldn’t we know what to do?” Marilyn asked.
“Yes,” Karl said. “We should know what to do.” But even as he said it he could see that they both realized they would never know what to do. There would never be a single time they would be able to say for sure, yes, this is the right thing to do—this definitely is right for you, Lewis. This is what should happen or this is how it should be. We’re absolutely right to say you can’t go there. We know what we’re talking about when we say you should do this instead of that. Father knows best. Listen to your mother.
There came wet sputtering flatulence from Lewis, gastrointestinal distress, but also words, surely words, muttering, whispering, a gravelly voice from a place no words had ever come before. It was as if the speaker were trying all of the languages on Earth, looking for the one that would work in this situation. Then there was a tremendous clearing of the throat, so to speak.
The birds retreated to the curtain rod again, taking their seats like theater patrons after an intermission. Karl and Marilyn sat down again on either side of Lewis and waited to see what he would produce next.
What Lewis produced next was unearthly and smelly, obviously from elsewhere, and it seemed to surprise the baby as much as his parents. Someone said, “Hello, Father. Hello, Mother.”
Karl looked at Marilyn. “Er . . . hello,” he said.
“But who is speaking?” she whispered.
Karl didn’t know. He shook his head. “Maybe a ghost?”
“You’re suggesting my baby’s butt is haunted?”
“Do you suppose we could think of these as his first words?” Karl asked.
“Will you two shut up and listen for a moment?”
“You shouldn’t tell your elders to shut up,” Karl said.
“I have come back to speak of a time some fifteen years in the future, when you will be faced with what might seem like a trivial decision to you.”
Karl reached over the baby and put his hands on Marilyn’s shoulders. They leaned together, head to head, looking down at Lewis.
After a silence in which Karl suddenly worried that maybe they’d simply gone crazy, and didn’t know whether that was a comfort or not, the voice spoke again. “There will come the time when Lewis wants to attend a camp out in the desert in which the other guests will be both girls and boys.”
“Yes?” Marilyn said.
“You’ll worry about beer and drugs that haven’t even been invented yet.”
“Oh, no,” Marilyn said.
“You’ll worry about sex and diseases that haven’t even been invented yet.”
“And?” Karl asked. He suddenly knew that he should pay particular attention to that look on Lewie’s face. It would be a look he would need to watch out for in the future.
“You must let him go,” the voice said.
White Guys in Space
1.
After an obligatory period of lies and damn lies, the 104th congress repealed the 1960s, and Worldmaster Jones, secret CEO for AmerEarth Corp, and his right-hand hatchet man, Coordinator Grey, popped into existence.
“Boy, it’s about time,” Jones said.
“You got that right, Worldmaster,” said Grey.
Jones rang for his secretary.
“Yes, Worldmaster?”
“Have the boys get my helicar ready, Nancy,” Jones said, “and bring in a couple of cups of coffee.”
2.
Not to mention the bug-eyed lobster men from Alpha Centauri.
3.
“Wo
w! Would you look at all the knobs!” Joe said when he peeked into the control cabin of the spaceship. Joe, who was doing simultaneous degrees in atomic physics, medieval studies, entomology, philosophy, hotel/motel management, linguistics, and electrical engineering at Yale, knew a thing or two about spaceships.
His buddy Frank, home for the holidays from Harvard where he was majoring in chemistry, mathematics, Victorian detective fiction, farm management, and computer science, rubbed a hand across his blond crewcut and joined Joe at the window of the unfinished craft. “Gosh,” he said, “do you think it’ll really work?”
“You’ve got to have faith in our friend the atom, boys.” Doc pulled his head out of the access hatch and waved a socket wrench at Frank. “Of course it’ll work!”
Doc, who had always been just a little too far out for the universities, had streaks of gray running through his unruly hair, and a perpetually preoccupied look on his craggy face. Joe guessed he was in his forties. He wore a white lab coat and black loafers.
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” someone called from the garage doorway.
“Uh oh,” Doc said. “Trouble.”
Frank elbowed Joe in the ribs. “You can close your mouth now,” he said. “It’s just Nancy.”
“Hi, Doctor Tim!” The young woman stepped into the garage and smiled, and Joe’s heart missed a beat.
4.
Meanwhile the slimy lobster men from Alpha Centauri, who had been going somewhere else entirely before the sixties had been repealed, turned their scaly attention to Earth, and what they saw they liked. By the time Joe and Frank helped Doc get the spaceship upright and onto its tail fins and aimed at the moon, the lobster men only had bug-eyes for Earth women.
Meet Me in the Moon Room Page 18