Triptych

by J. M. Frey

  “Sort of,” Basil agreed around the screwdriver in his mouth. He kept tapping the screen of his hand-held television, pulling pieces out of the phone and comparing them to the images on the machine. “Blimey, my BlackBerry for a Flux Capacitor.”

  “And a swanky DeLorean.” Gwen grinned as if Basil hadn’t just babbled something totally incomprehensible about fruit. She made a motion with her hand, a horizontal cutting through the air like describing the path of an airplane.

  “Can you tell us what that thing was?” Mark asked, shaking his head at the strange terms the two kept tossing at each other, trying to pull them back into conversation that made sense — as much as a conversation about aliens and time travel could. “The flying saucer in the garden?”

  “Classified,” Gwen said again, with the practiced ease of someone who’d used the word a lot (too much). “Though the term ‘flying saucer’ is considered derogatory.”

  “Though technically the organization that classified it hasn’t actually been started yet,” Basil pointed out, mimicking her flippant tone.

  “Shut up, dear,” Gwen said amiably.

  “It was coming after…you?” Evvie asked, some of the clues slotting into place. She looked at the scar on Gwen’s forehead, then down to the blood-spotted bandage on Gwennie’s. “Her? To…I mean, to stop whatever you do in the…then.”

  Basil frowned at the screen, face suddenly stormy. “It don’t seem right, does it? That they’d come and get cozy just to…to do something like this.”

  “I agree that it’s completely unexpected, given their earlier behaviour,” Gwen said with a nod, and Evvie blinked at the professionalism of it. “They were warm and very…very open.”

  “Gwen,” Basil warned.

  Gwen deflated a little, shutting down on what she’d intended to say, tucking away an old can of worms that had been about to be reopened. “But that’s based on us actually knowing them.” So bitter.

  “Unfair,” Basil whispered.

  They glared at each other over the table — the kind of silent battle that only an intimate couple can have; the kind of battles Evvie had with Mark. Basil was the first to look away, turn his back, and return to dissecting the telephone.

  Gwen stared at his back for a moment, eyes narrowed, as if trying to force her opinion in through the back of his skull with just the power of her glare. When that failed, she rolled her eyes and her shoulders, sighed, then leaned over the table to stare into the baby’s face. For a long moment two pairs of wide blue eyes regarded each other. Gwen reached across the table and Gwennie lay perfectly still in Evvie’s arms, completely unconcerned.

  “Don’t touch her,” Basil said without looking up. “You’ll make space-time go kablooey.”

  “Bullshit,” Gwen said. “What do you think this is, an episode of ‘Doctor Who’?”

  Gently she ran the very tips of her fingers up the baby’s soft, still arm. Tapped the pudgy nose. Then she shivered all over once and sat back, staring at the tip of her finger like she was expecting the skin to melt off, despite her own self-assurances.

  “You’re taking this very well,” Gwen said abruptly, dropping her hand to her lap.

  “No, I ain’t.” Mark ran a hand through his hair, making the already over-stimulated tufts stand up in all directions. “I’m in shock.” His eyes widened a bit. “An’…an’ don’t swear, young lady.”

  Gwen chuckled. “Yes, Dad.”

  Mark’s stern expression melted into something akin to wonder. “Dad,” he repeated breathily. Neither of the Piersons had expected to hear that word quite so soon. The exhalation was his way of bumping back down to Earth, the truth of what was happening starting to settle. Evvie wasn’t far behind.

  “You’re taking it well, at least,” Gwen said, her words aimed at Evvie.

  “How could I not?” she asked, because it had landed in her the same time as it had in her husband. She knew, she knew that this woman was her child, felt that mine sensation, down in the same place where she felt Gwennie. “You have Mark’s eyes. My hair. Gareth’s smile.”

  Gwen lifted a hand and covered her mouth, and there was something of shame in the gesture. “Gareth died in — ” Her eyes were drawn back to the bandage on the baby’s head. “You told me I fell down the basement stairs.”

  “You what?” Evvie blurted, thrown by the non sequitur and the horrible thought that her brother Gareth was going to…no, Gwen hadn’t finished that sentence. It could have been anything. Could be years from now (tomorrow).

  “The scar. You told me I fell down the stairs.”

  Basil craned his head around the wall, to the small flight of steps that led to the basement family room. The basement was just a sub-level sunk a little lower than the kitchen, entirely visible through the white metal railings that separated it. Evvie could stand beside the sofa and see the table they were seated at now. Basil frowned, crooked mouth arching down, eyebrows following.

  “What? A scar like that?” he asked, pointing at his forehead to the place where Gwen(nie)’s mark was with the tip of his screwdriver. “It’s four steps. Oh, my God, Gwen, look at that telly! It’s so fat. Is that a Betamax?”

  Gwen dropped her hand and rolled her eyes. “Trust Basil to geekgasm all over the eighties.”

  ***

  Evvie didn’t have much in the way of things to make up a meal in her house. The nearest store was more than a fifteen-minute drive up the country road, and even that was just a glorified family-run market stand. Neither she nor Mark wanted to leave the other alone with Gwennie and these two. Just in case.

  Aliens and spacecraft and time travel aside, they were just hard to understand. Trying to hold a conversation with two people who knew you better than you did, who spoke in strange half-idioms and references to things you were unfamiliar with, while cheerfully ripping apart every piece of technology you owned was…tedious, to say the least. Terrifying, at the most.

  So Evvie pulled Hi-liner fish sticks and McCain French Fries out of the freezer, and Basil muttered mutinously about how they were not real fish and chips, but Gwen clipped his ear and he ate everything she put on his plate, and more besides.

  Evvie was starting to see how he may have gained his soft middle.

  Was this really the man that Evvie’s daughter, her baby Gwennie, was (going to be) with? Brilliant, acerbic, nerdy, pudgy, rude, with a back-pedaling hairline? Evvie had envisioned a farmer with dirty blue jeans and a lazy smile that he flashed at her whenever he asked for more apple pie, or a cop with bright white teeth and a penchant for bringing home flowers, or the manager of a supermarket with dependable hours and a good benefits package. Instead, Gwen had found a squirrelly, potty-mouthed British mech-head.

  They were easy around each other, touched casually and insulted affectionately, but Evvie couldn’t be certain they were together. If they were, then what was wrong? They weren’t even engaged yet, if her bare fingers were anything to go by, and Gwen was nearly thirty!

  And Gwen herself…? Soldier? Specialist? (Nerd?) Evvie knew it was a horrible motherly cliché, but she wanted Gwennie to be a ballerina. A nurse. The prettiest girl in school, with all the boys after her but smart enough to know that a man wouldn’t marry used goods. Instead, Gwen was single, childless, her social life lost in the secret bunkers of a covert military operation. That was not the life Evvie had in mind for her daughter. She was supposed to be the Fall Fair Queen, not a…a killer.

  Killer, Evvie said again to herself, to be sure that it was the word she meant. Yes. Gwen had looked at the knife so precariously close to Gwennie’s tiny throat, and shot that thing point blank in the face. In the face. No warning shot, no demands for surrender. Cold.

  Just a pulled trigger and the spray of stuff (brains) all over the grass.

  For a split second, empty.

  This was Evvie’s daughter.

  Trained killer.

  Her baby.

  The fish sticks make a bid for freedom and she swallowed onc
e, heavily.

  The milk glass clutched in her hand groaned, and the eyes of everyone at the table — save for Gwennie, who was solemnly massaging her ketchup into her hair — turned to Evvie. Mark cleared his throat, which he only ever did when he was nervous, and asked, “Evvie? Honey? You okay?”

  “Yes,” Evvie lied. She set down the glass carefully. “I’m not…hungry.” She stood, cleared away her dishes, scraped the half eaten fries into the garbage and dropped the plate into the sink.

  My daughter is a killer, Evvie tried not to think.

  Gwen’s mouth went tight around the edges, her eyes blue marble.

  Unable to resist the motherly impulse, Evvie grabbed Gwennie up out of her highchair, pulled her close, sucked in the scent of starchy sugar and processed tomatoes and baby. “I’ll give her a bath,” she said to no one, and fled upstairs before anyone could protest or see the way her hands shook.

  ***

  The sound of the water running to fill the bathroom sink drowned out the conversation downstairs. Evvie hated abandoning Mark to a room filled with strange words, but she couldn’t, couldn’t stay in that kitchen with that uncanny woman. Unnatural.

  That stranger who was her child.

  Gwennie blew contented snot bubbles until the water was ready, fingers grasping alternately at her mother’s shirt or more of the ketchup, turning Evvie’s clothing into a palette of red and green smears. An artist maybe? Evvie thought, smiling down at her.

  With a jolt of startled horror, Evvie realized that no, no, of course Gwennie wasn’t going to grow up to be an artist. She was going to be a soldier. A Specialist. She was going to wear black and bullet-proof vests and telephones in her ear. She was going to carry a boxy gun on her hip. She was going to use it.

  Evvie began shaking hard all over, and if weren’t for fear of hurting or startling Gwennie, she probably would have collapsed to the floor and had a good self-indulgent screaming fit. As it was, she sank down and sat on the toilet lid and cried quietly, miserably into Gwennie’s little neck. It felt awfully wonderful in that wrenching cathartic way and it made the back of Evvie’s eyes and throat burn.

  Gwennie patted Evvie’s cheek with sticky, saucy fingers; a small, soft comfort. It’s okay, Mom. It’ll be okay. And then she smiled at Evvie with her uncle’s (dead) smile.

  What will happen to Gareth? Evvie didn’t dare try to answer herself.

  “I love you,” she whispered into Gwennie’s reddened wisps of ketchup-matted hair. “I love you and even though I want you to do what makes you happiest, don’t be like her.” The words stopped up her throat, felt disingenuous and unfair and tasted horrible but only because they were true, true, true. She sobbed harder, hiccoughing against Gwennie’s shoulder. “Please, please, please, don’t be like her. Be better. Be good.”

  And that was a stupid thing to say because nobody ever was, not as easy as that, but it was unfair, so unfair that Evvie had to see it, so totally, so perfectly, so soon.

  Beside her, the water in the sink began to overflow, pattering a syncopated staccato against the floor as it fled over the corner of the counter, and Evvie stood up quickly, yanking on the taps before the bathroom rug got soaked. Gwennie looked torn between confusion and amusement. The back of her eyes still hot with the rest of the tears that she didn’t let fall, Evvie drained a bit of water from the sink, then set Gwennie down on the damp countertop and stripped her quickly of her onesie with shivering hands. She dropped it into the trash. She never wanted to look at it again. She didn’t want to remember. Even if Evvie did ever get the blood stains out of it, every time she saw the little elephants on the cotton candy clouds, all she would think of would be aliens and knives and how Gwennie had almost…almost…

  Evvie removed Gwennie’s diaper as well — soiled but not too dirty — and then the gauze bandage on her forehead. Gwennie squealed when the tape came away with some of her hair and Evvie gathered her close, whispering soothing nothings against her head. Gwennie sniffled miserably, not entirely sure if the pain was worth full-blown tears. Evvie talked her out of them and sat back to take stock of the cut.

  The flash of white bandage caught her attention instead. She stared at the gauze in her hand. A piece of the future.

  She was about to throw it into the trash before it was ever created.

  A strange urge to keep it, treasure it, to secret it away flooded up in her and she sighed.

  Evvie shook her head at her own silliness and forced herself to discard the bandage. It wasn’t special in any way, and it was soiled. It wasn’t worth keeping. She refused to feel something as absurd as regret about it.

  She turned her attention back to Gwennie and her wound. It was longer than Evvie thought it would be, judging by the scar on Gwen’s forehead. On the adult Gwen, it arched back into her hair — that same hair covered it on the grown-up, but Gwennie’s was still baby fine, and it was visible. The cut was a little deeper than Evvie thought at first glance, too. The tip of the knife had done more than nick her.

  So close.

  It wasn’t bleeding any more, and clotting just fine, but Evvie wondered if perhaps they should go into the hospital for some stitches after all. The thought of having to try to explain to the doctor that an alien from twenty-nine years in the future had been trying to cut her baby daughter’s throat to prevent her from growing up and blowing its face off was too much, and Evvie scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  No, Evvie knew how to take care of cuts. Her brothers had gotten hurt enough around the farm when they were children, and with her father out in the fields all the time and her mother sometimes in town running errands, it was up to her to patch them up. Some gauze, some tape, and a careful eye to avoid infections, and Gwennie would be none the worse for wear.

  Save for the puffing white scar that would mar her perfect little forehead for the rest of her life.

  Gwen wore her hair long on the right side of her face. She kept patting it down in a sort of reflexive, compulsive manoeuvre. Evvie hoped fervently that wasn’t the result of some sort of bullying or a complex about her appearance that she had developed during her childhood. She wasn’t sure how to even think about Gwennie at school, much less Gwennie at school getting bullied. Evvie didn’t want to dwell on it, but with all the technobabble she and Basil spouted at each other, there was a distinct possibility that her (prom queen) daughter would turn out a geek.

  Picked on. Loser. Outcast.

  Was that why she was in some nameless military branch, involved with such a…horrible, rude man? Was she hiding? Did she feel she didn’t deserve better?

  Did she run away?

  Don’t think about it.

  Testing the temperature of the water in the wide bathroom sink and deeming it cool enough, Evvie set Gwennie down to sit in it. Immediately Gwennie began slapping the surface of the water joyously with the palms of her hands, splashing the mirror, the wall, and Evvie. Tenderly, Evvie worked the mild shampoo into Gwennie’s hair, avoiding the cut carefully, and rinsed it off with a scooped hand.

  The water turned ketchup-red.

  Evvie stared at it for an unmoving second, then she pulled Gwennie out. She had just enough time to pull her daughter, dripping wet, against her side and flip open the toilet lid before she puked.

  It tasted like fish sticks and ketchup and disappointment and Evvie hated, hated that this was happening to her. Gwennie was completely still against her body, clinging with curled fingers like a sloth. Evvie flushed, unplugged the sink drain, and set Gwennie down on a thick towel on the floor of the tub before she cast about for the dusty bottle of mouthwash that was jammed against the back of the cupboard under the sink.

  Just as she spat the lumpy, sticky green liquid out of her mouth, for once happy for the overpowering medicine, the sweet alcoholic burn at the back of her teeth, Evvie heard a voice float up through the half-open window. With a glance at Gwennie, who was happily mouthing her big toe, eyes getting droopy, Evvie went to
the window, folded her hands over her fluttering stomach, and looked down.

  Down in the yard, the lower half of Basil was poking up out of the ruined cockpit of the spaceship, and he was tossing electrical components up into the air, over his shoulders, to fall with a distant thud against the turf like in a cartoon. He was complaining — loudly — about how he was a scientist and not a grunt and the hiding of evidence was not supposed to be his job.

  It was hardly eavesdropping if he was speaking at such a volume.

  “Well, whose job is it supposed to be?” Gwen asked, rubbing her hands on the thighs of her pants as she emerged from between the rows of corn. A quick glance at where the alien’s body used to be told Evvie what she had been doing out there. They had stripped off their tactical vests. In just their black pants and jackets they looked small and strangely fragile.

  Human again.

  “Wood’s job,” Basil said. “She’s our clean-up man.” Then, “Bugger.”

  “What?”

  “I’m stuck. My — bollocks — my bloody sleeve! Grab my trousers.”

  Gwen snorted. “What now? Here?”

  “Perv,” Basil said happily. “Pull me out.”

  Gwen complied, grabbing a good handful of his belt. With a mighty tug, Gwen had Basil out of the spaceship and sprawled half on the lawn and half on her. His left sleeve was in complete tatters, revealing more pale skin beneath and a sharp, angry red scratch. He rolled over, took advantage of their position, and kissed Gwen thoroughly. Evvie felt like a voyeur, even more because this was her daughter and her — what, lover? Boyfriend? Fiancé? Evvie didn’t even know, anymore. But she didn’t stop watching. Gwen’s hands ran up the back of Basil’s neck, carded through his thinning hair.

  Still tactile Gwennie.

  “I’m happy to see you smiling again,” Basil said softly. Gwen replied by ducking her head down, tucking her chin against her own chest, curling up.

  Evvie shivered, a feeling of soft foreboding settling over cool skin.