by Dave Eggers
The closet is more than a closet. The air is warm, steamy; it smells like soap. On one wall is a two-basin sink; heat lamps are bolted to the undersides of the cabinets. Set in the opposite wall are two little doors.
Tom returns to the same chair in the corner of Fran's room whenever he starts to feel dizzy. Three, four, occasionally ten times a night, he watches a nurse carry an utterly newborn baby through the little door on the left and deposit it on the counter in front of Fran.
She plucks off little knit caps and unwraps blankets. Their bodies are scarlet or imperial purple; they have tiny, bright red fingers, no eyebrows, no kneecaps, no expression except a constant, bewildered wince. Her voice is a whisper: Why here she is, there he goes, OK now, baby, just lift you here. Their wrists are the circumference of Tom's pinkie.
Fran takes a new washcloth from a stack, dips it in warm water, and wipes every inch of the creature—ears, armpits, eyelids—washing away bits of placenta, dried blood, all the milky fluids that accompanied it into this world. Meanwhile the child stares up at her with blank, memorizing eyes, peering into the newness of all things. Knowing what? Only light and dark, only mother, only fluid.
Fran dries the baby and splays her fingers beneath its head and diapers it and tugs its hat back on. She whispers, Here you are, see what a good girl you are, down you go, and with one free hand lays out two new, crisp blankets, and binds the baby—wrap, wrap, turn—and sets her in a rolling bassinet for Tom to wheel into the nursery, where she'll wait with the others beneath the lights like loaves of bread.
***
In a magazine Tom finds a color photograph of a three-hundred-year-old skeleton of a bowhead whale, stranded on a coastal plain in a place called Finland. He tears it out, studies it in the lamplight. See, he murmurs to Mr. Weems, how the flowers closest to it are brightest? See how the closest leaves are the darkest green?
Tom is twenty-one and fainting three times a week when, one Wednesday in January, he sees, among the drugged, dazed mothers in their rows of beds, the unmistakable face of Ruby Hornaday. Flaming orange hair, freckles sprayed across her cheeks, hands folded in her lap, and a thin gold wedding ring on her finger. The material of the ward ripples. Tom leans on the handle of his cart to keep from falling.
Blue, he whispers. Blue, blue, blue.
He retreats to his chair in the corner of Fran's washing room and tries to suppress his heart. Any minute, he thinks, her baby will come through the door.
Two hours later, he pushes his cart into the post-delivery room, and Ruby is gone. Tom's shift ends; he rides the elevator down. Outside, rain settles lightly on the city. The streetlights glow yellow. The early morning avenues are empty except for the occasional automobile, passing with a damp sigh. Tom steadies himself with a hand against the bricks and closes his eyes.
A police officer helps him home. All that day Tom lies on his stomach in his rented bed and recopies the letter until little suns burst behind his eyes. Deer Ruby, I saw you in the hospital and I saw your baby to. His eyes are viry prety. Fran sez later they will probly get blue. Mother is gone and I am lonely as the arctic see.
That night at the hospital Fran finds the address. Tom includes the photo of the whale skeleton from the magazine and sticks on an extra stamp for luck. He thinks: See how the flowers closest to it are brightest. See how the closest leaves are the darkest green.
He sleeps, pays his rent, walks the thirty-one blocks to work. He checks the mail every day. And winter pales and spring strengthens and Tom loses a little bit of hope.
One morning over breakfast, Mr. Weems looks at him and says, You ain't even here, Tom. You got one foot across the river. You got to pull back to our side.
But that very day, it comes. Dear Tom, I liked hearing from you. It hasn't been ten years but it feels like a thousand. I'm married, you probably guessed that. The baby is Arthur. Maybe his eyes will turn blue. They just might.
A bald president is on the stamp. The paper smells like paper, nothing more. Tom runs a finger beneath every word, sounding them out. Making sure he hasn't missed anything.
I know your married and I dont want anything but happyness for you but maybe I can see you one time? We could meet at the acquareyem. If you dont rite back that's okay I no why.
Two more weeks. Dear Tom, I don't want anything but happiness for you, too. How about next Tuesday? I'll bring the baby, okay?
The next Tuesday, the first one in May, Tom leaves the hospital after his shift. His vision flickers at the edges, and he hears Mother's voice: Be careful, Tomcat. it's not worth the risk. He walks slowly to the end of the block and catches the first trolley to Belle Isle, where he steps off into a golden dawn.
There are few cars about, all parked, one a Ford with a huge present wrapped in yellow ribbon on the backseat. An old man with a crumpled face rakes the gravel paths. The sunlight hits the dew and sets the lawns aflame.
The face of the aquarium is Gothic and wrapped in vines. Tom finds a bench outside and waits for his pulse to steady. The reticulated glass roofs of the flower conservatory reflect a passing cloud. Eventually a man in overalls opens the gate, and Tom buys two tickets, then thinks about the baby and buys a third. He returns to the bench with the three tickets in his trembling fingers.
By eleven the sky is filled with a platinum haze and the island is busy. Men on bicycles crackle along the paths. A girl flies a yellow kite.
Tom?
Ruby Hornaday materializes before him—shoulders erect, hair newly short, pushing a chrome-and-canvas baby buggy. He stands quickly, and the park bleeds away and then restores itself.
Sorry I'm late, she says.
She's dignified, slim. Two quick strokes for eyebrows, the same narrow nose. No makeup. No jewelry. Those pale blue eyes and that hair.
She cocks her head slightly. Look at you. All grown up.
I have tickets, he says.
How's Mr. Weems?
Oh, he's made of salt, he'll live forever.
They start down the path between the rows of benches and the shining trees. Occasionally she takes his arm to steady him, though her touch only disorients him more.
I thought maybe you were far away, he says. I thought maybe you went to sea.
Ruby parks the buggy and lifts the baby to her chest—he's wrapped in a blue afghan—and then they're through the turnstile.
The aquarium is dim and damp and lined on both sides with glassfronted tanks. Ferns hang from the ceiling, and little boys lean across the brass railings and press their noses to the glass. I think he likes it, Ruby says. Don't you, baby? The boy's eyes are wide open. Fish swim slow ellipses through the water.
They see translucent squid with corkscrew tails, sparkling pink octopi like floating lanterns, cowfish in blue and violet and gold. Iridescent green tiles gleam on the domed ceiling and throw wavering patterns of light across the floor.
In a circular pool at the very center of the building, dark shapes race back and forth in coordination. Jacks, Ruby murmurs. Aren't they?
Tom blinks.
You're pale, she says.
Tom shakes his head.
She helps him back out into the daylight, beneath the sky and the trees. The baby lies in the buggy sucking his fist, examining the sky with great intensity, and Ruby guides Tom to a bench.
Cars and trucks and even a limousine pass slowly along the white bridge, high over the river. The city glitters in the distance.
Thank you, says Tom.
For what?
For this.
How old are you now, Tom?
Twenty-one. Same as you. A breeze stirs the trees, and the leaves vibrate with light. Everything is radiant.
World goes to Hades but babies still get born, whispers Tom.
Ruby peers into the buggy and adjusts something, and for a moment the back of her neck shows between her hair and collar. The sight of those two knobs of vertebrae, sheathed in her pale skin, fills Tom with a longing that cracks the lawns open. For a moment it seems
Ruby is being slowly dragged away from him, as if he is a swimmer caught in a rip, and with every stroke the back of her neck recedes farther into the distance. Then she sits back, and the park heals over, and he can feel the bench become solid beneath him once more.
I used to think, Tom says, that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place.
Ruby looks at him. Her eyelashes whisk up and down.
But now I know life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.
She holds his gaze. Some deserve more luck than they've gotten.
Tom shakes his head. He closes his eyes. I've been lucky, too. I've been absolutely lucky.
The baby begins to fuss, a whine building to a cry. Ruby says, Hungry.
A trapdoor opens in the gravel between Tom's feet, black as a keyhole, and he glances down.
You'll be OK?
I'll be OK.
Good-bye, Tom. She touches his forearm once, and then goes, pushing the buggy through the crowds. He watches her disappear in pieces: first her legs, then her hips, then her shoulders, and finally the back of her bright head.
And then Tom sits, hands in his lap, alive for one more day.
Orange
Neil Gaiman
FROM Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine
CONFIDENTIAL POLICE FILE
(Third subject's responses to investigator's written questionnaire)
1.
Jemma Glorfindel Petula Ramsey.
2.
17 on June the 9th.
3.
The last 5 years. Before that we lived in Leesburg (Florida). Before that, Kalamazoo (Michigan).
4.
I don't know. I think he's in magazine publishing now. He doesn't talk to us anymore. The divorce was pretty bad and Mom wound up paying him a lot of money. Which seems sort of wrong to me. But maybe it was worth it just to get free of him.
5.
An inventor and entrepreneur. She invented the Stuffed Muffin™, and started the Stuffed Muffin chain. I used to like them when I was a kid, but you can get kind of sick of stuffed muffins for every meal, especially because Mom used us as guinea pigs. The Complete Turkey Dinner Christmas Stuffed Muffin was the worst. But she sold out her interest in the Stuffed Muffin chain about five years ago, to start work on My Mom's Colored Bubbles (not actually ™ yet).
6.
Two. My sister Lilias, who was just 15, and my brother Marshall, 12.
7.
Several times a day.
8.
No.
9.
Through the Internet. Probably on eBay.
10.
She's been buying colors and dyes from all over the world ever since she decided that the world was crying out for brightly colored Day-Glo bubbles. The kind you can blow, with the bubble mixture.
11.
it's not really a laboratory. I mean, she calls it that, but really it's just the garage. Only she took some of the Stuffed Muffins™ money and converted it, so it has sinks and bathtubs and Bunsen burners and things, and tiles on the walls and the floor to make it easier to clean.
12.
I don't know. Lilias used to be pretty normal. When she turned 13 she started reading these magazines and putting pictures of these strange bimbo women up on her wall like Britney Spears and so on. Sorry if anyone reading this is a Britney fan ;) but I just don't get it. The whole orange thing didn't start until last year.
13.
Artificial tanning creams. You couldn't go near her for hours after she put it on. And she'd never give it time to dry after she smeared it on her skin, so it would come off on her sheets and on the fridge door and in the shower leaving smears of orange everywhere. Her friends would wear it too, but they never put it on like she did. I mean, she'd slather on the cream, with no attempt to look even human-colored, and she thought she looked great. She did the tanning salon thing once, but I don't think she liked it, because she never went back.
14.
Tangerine Girl. The Oompaloompa. Carrot-top. Go-Mango. Orangina.
15.
Not very well. But she didn't seem to care, really. I mean, this is a girl who said that she couldn't see the point of science or math because she was going to be a pole dancer as soon as she left school. I said, nobody's going to pay to see you in the altogether, and she said how do you know? She's a sort of squarish shape, for a start.
16.
German measles, mumps, and I think Marshall had chicken pox when he was staying in Orlando with the Grandparents.
17.
In a small pot. It looked a bit like a jam jar, I suppose.
18.
I don't think so. Nothing that looked like a warning label anyway. But there was a return address. It came from abroad, and the return address was in some kind of foreign lettering.
19.
You have to understand that Mom had been buying colors and dyes from all over the world for five years. The thing with the Day-Glo bubbles is not that someone can blow glowing colored bubbles, it's that they don't pop and leave splashes of dye all over everything. Mom says that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. So, no.
20.
There was some kind of shouting match between Lilias and Mom to begin with, because Mom had come back from the shops and not bought anything from Lilias's shopping list except the shampoo. Mom said she couldn't find the tanning cream at the supermarket but I think she just forgot. So Lilias stormed off and slammed the door and went into her bedroom and played something that was probably Britney Spears really loudly. I was out the back, feeding the three cats, the chinchilla, and a guinea pig named Roland who looks like a hairy cushion, and I missed it all.
21.
On the kitchen table.
22.
When I found the empty jam jar in the back garden the next morning. It was underneath Lilias's window. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.
23.
Honestly, I couldn't be bothered. I figured it would just be more yelling, you know? And Mom would work it out soon enough.
24.
Yes, it was stupid. But it wasn't uniquely stupid, if you see what I mean. Which is to say, it was par-for-the-course-for-Lilias stupid.
25.
That she was glowing.
26.
A sort of pulsating orange.
27.
When she started telling us that she was going to be worshipped like a god, as she was in the dawn times.
28.
Marshall said she was floating about an inch above the ground. But I didn't actually see this. I thought he was just playing along with her newfound weirdness.
29.
She didn't answer to "Lilias" anymore. She described herself mostly as either My Immanence or The Vehicle. ("It is time to feed The Vehicle.")
30.
Dark chocolate. Which was weird because in the old days I was the only one in the house who even sort-of like it. But Marshall had to go out and buy her bars and bars of it.
31.
No. Mom and me just though it was more Lilias. Just a bit more imaginatively weirdo Lilias than usual.
32.
That night, when it started to get dark. You could see the orange pulsing under the door. Like a glowworm or something. Or a light show. The weirdest thing was that I could still see it with my eyes closed.
33.
The next morning. All of us.
34.
It was pretty obvious by this point. She didn't really even look like Lilias any longer. She looked sort of smudged. Like an after-image. I thought about it, and it's ... okay. Suppose you were staring at something really bright, that was a blue color. Then you closed your eyes, and you'd see this glowing yellowy-orange after-image in your eyes? That was what
she looked like.
35.
They didn't work either.
36.
She let Marshall leave to get her more chocolate. Mom and I weren't allowed to leave the house anymore.
37.
Mostly I just sat in the back garden and read a book. There wasn't very much else I really could do. I started wearing dark glasses, so did Mom, because the orange light hurt our eyes. Other than that, nothing.
38.
Only when we tried to leave or call anybody. There was food in the house, though. And Stuffed Muffins™ in the freezer.
39.
"If you'd just stopped her wearing that stupid tanning cream a year ago we wouldn't be in this mess!" But it was unfair, and I apologized afterward.