Carmen Dog

by Carol Emshwiller

  They all gather round to hug her and stroke her and rub her under the chin, even the tall, thin, sad clown. Chloe heats up her milk, and Mary Ann—flop, flop, flopping about on her wide feet and sometimes tripping over herself—brings out one of the pallets. The green creature with the big teeth sheds a few tears of her own, grinning at the same time, but that's just her way and no harm meant. They put Pooch to bed in a corner, where she falls asleep instantly. While she sleeps, the various Rosemarys return one by one until they are all back except for the one real Rosemary, who is no doubt off on some mission more important than any of the others. Perhaps she has gone to check up on the recently formed Academy of Motherhood.

  * * * *

  The doctor does not know how many Rosemarys there are. He waits and counts nine altogether, including the first two (Chloe and Pooch). Then there is a long, long period when none of them come at all. It's growing late. Almost ten o'clock and the doctor has had no supper, or lunch for that matter. He decides that now is the time to barricade the door. He'll do this first, hungry and tired as he is. Of course they will hear him hammering them in, but that won't make any difference. The roof is four stories high and there are no places to perch by the steeply pitched eaves and no places to climb down, even for one as adept as Phillip.

  After nailing them in, using spikes and heavy boards, he goes down to make himself some supper, but he's no cook, and anyway he's too tired to do more than eat a few cupcakes from the cage dispenser. Finds they are delicious. He is thinking, thank goodness Rosemary had seen to it that they are full of nourishment. If not for her, where would the experimental animals be? Starved, maybe. He must admit that Rosemary is, has always been, a great help. But what about that phone call from the police? What has she been up to? As far as he can tell, she's always been on his side. But he'll not even call the police about those boarded up in the attic. He decides to get a good night's sleep and then he'll decide what to do about all this. He forgets that there's been no one around, now what with his locking in all the Rosemarys, to feed his experimental creatures in the basement, or to lock them back into their cages for the night. He even forgets that the window in his laboratory is still unbarred and wide open, arranged as it was for the escape of number 107 with a stool and a bookcase forming a ladder.

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  Chapter 14: A Festive Dinner Party

  Worms awaken into birds, and music bursts from their astonished throats.

  —Tom Disch

  The new academy of Motherhood and related concerns occupies a building on Fifty-seventh Street. It looks rather like a fortress; indeed, it is a fortress, for no one wants motherhood defenseless in the modern world, or at the mercy of primitive forces. Major stumbling blocks are the mothers themselves. (Perhaps in the future a small monetary reward for mothering might not be out of line.) It is hoped that, under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences, motherhood will be modernized and mechanized and become a true science. Certainly it can be at least as scientific as psychology or linguistics could ever be. It is also to be hoped that the Academy of Motherhood will become the place to birth future administrators.

  On the ground floor of the motherhood building there is a shop with updated motherhood items. In one section: straps, harnesses, leashes, pens, gates for doorways, tranquilizers, etc. In another section: intercoms, closed-circuit tv, word processors, etc. In another: flow charts, comparison charts of how other children do at the equivalent ages, record-keeping books ... all the software of motherhood.

  So far, the experimental mothers have been kept on the top floors. They are examined every week to see how their unborn babies are coming along and to try to ascertain just what sorts of babies can be expected from any given mother in the throes of any given changes. Former mothers cook and clean for them. The Academy realizes that, no matter how civilized a country may become, there will always need to be people one can leave the dirty work to (as well as the sitting around listening to the nonsense of young people); and who better to leave this work to than mothers and former mothers?

  At this very moment a search is under way to find the Maximum Mother (the mm, as she is referred to), so that she may be honored by the Academy. She should have the quiet dignity befitting a mother and yet so rare in mothers. It is hoped that she will exemplify all the best qualities of motherhood and that she will show other mothers that they too can set new records in the field. (It has been so little studied that surely new records will not be hard to set once the mothers are pushed in the direction of efficiency and dignity.)

  The Academy of Motherhood, with its thick walls and small windows that don't open, will surely be one of the last, if not the last, buildings to fall into the hands of the opposing forces should it ever come down to that. That is as it should be: motherhood as the last bastion of the reliable, the reasonable, the sane, and the scientific.

  The Academy is surely the best place for the doctor to call in the morning after his good night's sleep. It would, he is thinking, serve all those Rosemarys right if they were forced to become experimental mothers. Yet he hopes his own Rosemary is safe. He wonders if perhaps he still loves her. But why not? She's never given him cause not to. He hopes she's not been kidnapped and brainwashed.

  But now the doctor is dreaming of a huge, engulfing Rosemary rolling over him ... a kind of wave, and he is tumbled about in her surf helpless. It's scary, but it's also exciting, sexy. Nonetheless, he wakes up screaming. It's three in the morning. And now the door to his bedroom is opening slowly and a Rosemary is coming in. (It's been a long time since they slept in the same room, and it's been a long time since she dared to open the door and walk in like this without even knocking; though, of course, it's also been a long time since he shouted out in his sleep.) He is instantly wide awake and poised. Ready. She comes closer, leans over him so that he can smell the rubber mask and hear her asthmatic wheeze. In the dim light from the hall he can see her familiar lumpy silhouette, though since he's lying down he can't get any sense of her size. What sort of Rosemary is this? he wonders. Thinks it most likely can't be “his” Rosemary since she's wearing a mask. He waits for her to lean even closer, then grabs the mask and rips it off and, in the next gesture, turns on the bedside light, pieces of torn rubber dangling in his hand.

  She looms, swells up, glitters. Yes, it is she. “His” Rosemary. Got to be. The one he used to love. Might love even yet and in spite of everything. My God! Staring at him. The Great Mother. What he wants to do is bow down. What he wants to talk about is love. Wants to bask in her shadow. Lie at her feet. Say, “I've always loved you,” and all of a sudden, he thinks he has.

  "I want you to call the Motherhood Academy first thing in the morning,” she says. “I want you to turn us all in to them. Myself included."

  It's clear to the doctor that, for all her changes, and in spite of all the Rosemarys in the attic, “his” Rosemary has been on the side of reason all along. (Should he suggest that she put herself up for the Maximum Mother award?) “I will, I will,” he says, so eager to please that he jumps out of bed. But now he can see how big she really is (compared to his six feet three), and the light is just right for her to be at maximum shimmer. Awed, he says aloud what he thought a moment ago: “I've always loved you.” He is remembering a quote from Marcus Aurelius: “Does the emerald lose its beauty for lack of admiration? Does gold, or ivory, or the color purple?” But right after that he remembers that Marcus Aurelius also said: “Never allow yourself to be swept off your feet: when an impulse stirs, see first that it will meet the claims of justice.” He will be cautious. This may be a trap to get on his good side. Or a way to infiltrate the Academy of Motherhood and take over powers of motherhood for themselves. Is it too late to take back the assertion of love?

  Rosemary doesn't bother answering his words of love. She probably knows him better than he knows himself, or perhaps she's lost interest in whatever he may think of her. “As to the creatures in the basement,” she says, “you w
ill find they have already fled through the laboratory window. The poor things are, however, without suitable clothes and will not get far, especially if they stick together, which I presume they will. They'll have ‘inmates’ written all over them. I expect they'll be returned soon. Come. Let's make a meal for them. They have not even had any supper, poor babies."

  As a matter of fact, the phone does ring just then and the doctor is informed that his experimental animals have been rounded up and will, in a few minutes, be delivered to his door. At first they had been mistaken for a group of prostitutes in the wrong part of town, which is why they had been arrested, and then it was decided to take them to the pound. But when they heard this the creatures, with Phillip as their spokesman, had confessed that they were part of the doctor's important experiments and wished to be returned to him.

  Together the doctor and Rosemary go down to the kitchen, where he intends to keep an eye on his wife. Actually, he can't keep his eyes off her. How fast and efficiently she moves about, mixing, pouring, turning things on and off almost in the same motion! She is puffing and wheezing, but that does not detract in the slightest from her glamour. In fact it somehow makes her even larger than the larger-than-life she already is to him. There hardly seems room for them both in the spacious kitchen, and every time her fur touches him as she passes it gives him prickles up and down his spine. He has a hard time keeping Marcus Aurelius in mind. He wonders if he should read Ovid instead.

  "One of these days—I hope soon—I will join my fellow hyperborians,” Rosemary says. “My body is not designed for these latitudes.” She is at this moment chewing on an ice cube. The doctor wonders if she is warning him of the impossibility of their ever having a life together in the future.

  Rosemary ties an apron around the doctor's waist and sets to cooking the kibble and sunflower-seed pancakes while she gets out carrots, celery, tea, and cream, along with mealworms and chocolate-covered ants. Clearly the meal is to be a special treat.

  In spite of trying hard not to enjoy himself; the doctor has not had so much fun in a long time. He remembers when, at around the age of eleven, he could flip pancakes by throwing them up with the pan. In a moment of youthful exuberance he tries this, though not successfully. Rosemary neither scolds nor laughs, but wipes up the mess, as deadpan as ever. You'd almost think her big white-with-black-markings face was another mask and that all her silvery glitter was another costume under which was yet one more Rosemary, and then below that another, each one miraculously larger than the one before and each face even less expressive.

  She has set the table in the main dining room with the Rosenthal china and the Gorham flatware, and when the police deliver the basement inmates they are invited into the front dining room instead of being ushered down to their cages. It is the doctor, still in his pajamas and slippers and wearing the large, flowered apron, who serves them and sees to it that their plates and cups are never empty.

  In this setting the natural elegance of all the creatures becomes clear. Phillip's especially. One cannot deny that her colors are a bit on the garish side to be considered truly refined, but one cannot help appreciating her sinewy grace, her proud head and smile (though perhaps that constant little upward curl to the lips should not be called a smile at all). It is she who, automatically, sits at the head of the table and keeps an eye out to see that everyone is eating. It is clear that she is the one who masterminded the escape effort and that she will take advantage of any other opportunity that may come her way, though now that Rosemary—and a completely new Rosemary, at that—seems to be in charge even of the doctor, Phillip is obviously confused.

  The doctor wonders if he should warn Rosemary about Phillip. Yet he hesitates to do so. He can see the same alert, wary look on the faces of both of them, and he wonders if they are in this together, even though it is apparent that Phillip, like the others, has never seen this particular Rosemary before, or rather, this particular aspect of her. It is also clear that they are all, Phillip included, both shocked and pleased to have found such a powerful ally. But that was exactly how the doctor himself had felt on first seeing her. He knows he should be doubly wary, since it seems that all creatures who come under Rosemary's spell feel that they are home at last. (A good characteristic for the Maximum Mother. The doctor is wondering again if he should urge her to try out for it, though he knows this is motherhood at its most dangerous.)

  As they eat they do not speak. Perhaps they are inhibited by the presence of the doctor and by this strange, imposing Rosemary, and of course by the elegant setting—the almost see-through tea cups, the water in cut-glass wine glasses—but all their natural animal refinement comes to the fore and the doctor is not at all bothered by a nervous flutter or flap or any inadvertent squeaks. He is as pleased with them as though he had trained them himself for just this occasion and now finds them using the right fork at the right time, which they do. Even tired as they are, only one cup of tea is spilled and only a few mealworms slither away.

  Almost without forethought, at the end of the meal the doctor brings out brandy snifters and his vsop and proposes a toast. It's Rosemary he toasts, as seems only fitting—also expedient under the circumstances—but it is to Phillip that he raises his glass and his eyes. Rosemary has gone beyond him and, though splendid, is in fact on the way down and one must not forget it, while Phillip.... But of all of them in the basement, Phillip has never been impressed by him. On the contrary (and that may be one of her appeals). She has never been girlishly giddy, nor has she ever lost sight, as far as he could tell, of just exactly what the situation in the basement was. Also he must admit he has not treated her very well, though of course that was for the sake of scientific enquiry. He hopes she understands that. And that time when she said what a privilege it was and what a joy to be becoming human. He had not listened. He had not believed. And here she is, fierce joy apparent in every motion, and looking more human and more gorgeous than ever even though her blue smock does not bring out her natural coloring at all. In fact clashes with it. Here she is, modeling proper fork use to the others, though she does it almost as a putdown of proper manners—almost as a challenge. She's a combination the doctor cannot resist. It promises so much in the way of both knowledge and surprises.

  Perhaps even joy, and it's been a long time since the doctor thought about anything even remotely connected with joy.

  Shortly after the toast they all go off to their cages to sleep for the few hours that remain of the night. All but the doctor, that is. Try as he will, he cannot go back to sleep. He is wondering, where does the truth lie, with motherhood and the Academy? Or with these forces of the animal? He wonders if there is any hope for him to have a future with Phillip without changing his allegiances ... have a future with any female? Yet doesn't he owe his very existence to motherhood? Shouldn't he therefore remain loyal to the Academy? But where does Rosemary stand in all this? Hard to tell. And which side will win in the long run? Not that that should influence his choice. Should he try to stop them now though they are doing exactly what he would have told them to do if they had asked his advice? How logical Rosemary is! Most of them are all id. Phillip especially. No, that's not true. She's both. Is that best? Has he been misled by logic? Is it logical to be so logical? Perhaps he should go with his feelings. For Phillip. Now she's one who knows how to use the butter knife for the butter and a fork for the mealworms.

  In the morning the doctor will try to convince Rosemary that Phillip should be left behind with him and not turned in to the Academy of Motherhood with the others. He can't bear the thought of her being inseminated with some lesser scientist's child. But Rosemary will insist with an adamant shake of her head, showing, in the first smile that he will have seen from her for a long time, her big teeth. They're enough to frighten even taller men. ("But surely I'm entitled to.... “"Not yet,” she will say.)

  Before Rosemary goes to bed she pushes a message over the top of the barricaded attic door in which she explains the situation.
She advises everyone to be dressed and ready for an early start the next morning and to have a big breakfast just in case, for one never knows, these days, if things will go as planned. She says that a bus is to be rented and that all of them, from the attic and basement alike, are to go off obediently to the Academy. It should be, she writes, pleasant for them to meet each other and for Basenji and Mary Ann to see their companions from the cages below again. And they should not worry; the time for action will come later. And would they please bring down with them all the Rosemary masks and dresses that are left in the attic as well as the several police uniforms they have rented.

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  Chapter 15: An Aristocrat

  The universe is truly in love with its task of fashioning whatever is next to be....

  —Marcus Aurelius

  It is all very well to donate a group of females to the Academy of Motherhood, and one can only be commended for it, but if one of these creatures is wanted by the police as violent and dangerous, and another is under suspicion for intent to overthrow the civilized world, that is another story entirely. So what comes about is not quite what was expected.

  The first part goes smoothly. John, now dressed as a clown, is, as they had hoped, considered by those at the Academy to be rapidly on his way to becoming a vulture, and therefore female. He is accepted without question, though of course John has always looked like a vulture; even as a child he had a long thin nose and glinting black eyes. He does not try to disillusion the Academy of Motherhood people, but deliberately walks with a jerky, avian motion. Also he has painted a vapid smile on his clown-face, knowing that if they feel superior to him they will be inclined to make snap judgments and not give him a second thought.