The large cases here hold a series of the island’s Old World costumes. Headdresses, jewelry, flashing weapons studded with gems, and of course, a kimono.
I walk over to it and stare. This one has bold cobalt, shy sky, inky ebony. It is vibrant and alive and almost menacing. I find myself glad to know it is contained in glass.
My boyfriend joins me. “My mother’s is nicer.”
I don’t answer.
“She makes them, you know. They’re as authentic as you can get, considering.”
I think of my mother, wearing hers day after day, unwilling to let go of her past. What would it have meant to her to have a new one? I doubt she would have worn it. It would never have been authentic enough.
“It’s important to keep some of our culture.” He says it as though I am part of that culture.
I shake my head at him. “It’s important to move on.”
I leave him in the museum, standing next to the caged kimono like a living piece of the exhibit.
I return to my apartment, funded in part by my father. He wanted to be sure I lived in a Jewish neighborhood. I have all sorts of Jewish neighbors that I never speak to, and I live right down the street from a synagogue I don’t attend. But at least I can get challah for Friday nights. Not out of any sense of obligation, of course, but because I like challah.
It isn’t until I find myself surrounded by that set of traditions, that Jewish community, that I begin to wonder. What made this culture more valid than my mother’s? The fact that it still had a homeland, a ground zero? Just like jungles subsuming abandoned ruins, cultures that lose their roots eventually fade and are overgrown by the cultures nearby. Adapted. In my mother’s case, Americanized. She had struggled against it, had tried to keep the pure essence of her people’s past, their beliefs and history. But any person living away from their home culture must learn to grow new roots in the fresh soil or else they will wither. As my mother had done.
That night on the news, I learn that extensive paperwork is involved in raising the ruins of my mother’s homeland from its oceanic grave. There are questions about who “owns” that space, that place in the water that once was a country. Are permissions needed? seems to be the question. I snort. Permission from whom? All the dead that lie below? Maybe someone should’ve asked them sooner.
On the television, a group of Americanized culture-mongers are divided. Some want the artifacts left undisturbed. Others are rallying for them to be pulled up, cleaned off, and put on tour. “We must remember!” says one man. “We must show the world so it will not forget!” I think of my boyfriend and wonder about his family. It makes me curious to meet them. So I call up my boyfriend on the pretext of apologizing for leaving him at the museum and inveigle an invite.
We’ve only been dating a few months, and although he’d invited me before to have dinner with his family, I’d always declined. I thought it was too early. But tonight I’m feeling nosy; I want to see what they’re like, where he came from, why he is the way he is.
He picks me up the following evening. After a whole day of waiting, the idea now seems like a bad one, but I can’t think of a polite way to back out, especially since I was the one who had asked, pretending to be all interested. Well, I guess I hadn’t been pretending at the time. I had been interested. But the spark of fascination has worn off after 24 hours, and I’m prepared to be bored, if not downright irritated.
They live in one of those neighborhoods. You know, the cultural kind, where people of all one type gather en masse. I’m all set to be condescending about it until I remember that I live in a Jewish neighborhood myself, and is that so different.
The house we arrive at is old but decidedly Western in design. Steps, a wooden porch, a door. We even enter into a regular living room, complete with sofa and television. But when I glance at the bookcase, I notice a good number of books that are not in English. They’re real books too, the paper kind, not electronic like most of mine at home.
My boyfriend’s parents call him a strange name, but other than that they speak in accented but very good English. They’re dressed in American clothes, too. I suppose it’s because I’m there that they bother. I see his mother shooting little glances at me and remember that I look a lot like my father. Which means I don’t look like what they expected their son to bring home.
In the corner of the kitchen, behind the dining table, is a shrine like my mother’s. Involuntarily, I move towards it.
“You practice Shinto?” my boyfriend’s mother asks. I look over at her, and I imagine my face must be hard because my boyfriend looks startled by it, but his mother only continues to smile kindly.
“I’m Jewish,” I say somewhat harshly. Then hesitate. Because that isn’t exactly true, after all. “I mean, I grew up Jewish. But my mom had one of these.”
My boyfriend’s mother nods encouragingly, but I have nothing more to say.
We head for the table. My boyfriend’s teenage younger brother and pre-teen sister appear from somewhere and quietly take their seats. The brother ignores me while the sister stares. My boyfriend introduces me and them, but the names have so many odd sounds that I promptly muddle them and decide to save myself embarrassment by not addressing the siblings for the rest of the evening.
“Tonight I cooked a traditional dinner,” my boyfriend’s mother announces. She produces bowls of soup, followed by larger bowls of steaming rice and fish and vegetables. I remember my mother cooking similar meals, serving up rice and meats and a myriad of sauces.
And then my boyfriend’s mother sets down napkins and chopsticks and I freeze.
From the time I was a child, my mother tried desperately to teach me the art of eating with chopsticks. But the same big, clumsy hands that wouldn’t allow me to do calligraphy or play a musical instrument also kept me from being able to handle the wooden utensils. Eventually my mother had given up, setting the table with two sets of silverware and one pair of chopsticks.
And now I face the chopsticks yet again.
I suppose my expression cannot be disguised because my boyfriend’s mother says suddenly, “You would like a fork?”
I feel my mouth open to respond, then close again without anything coming out of it. It’s the old fish-out-of-water routine, complete with guppy mouth action. “I never learned,” I finally manage to say, and my own defensiveness rings in my ears.
“Easy enough,” my boyfriend’s father says jovially, and I start because I’d forgotten he was even there. Except for his brief introduction, it’s the first thing he’s said all evening. “Like this,” he announces, holding up the chopsticks. But they’re in his left hand and I’m right-handed.
I glance around the table, and they’re all holding up their chopsticks to show me. Cornered, I pick up my set and begin to fumble. My boyfriend puts his down and adjusts mine in my hand. I immediately manage to misadjust them. The brother stops to help me. I quirk the sticks awkwardly and drop one. The mother and sister come to my aid. After a moment, I realize they’re laughing at me. Until I discover I’m laughing too.
For some reason the idea that I’m enjoying myself makes me uneasy.
At some point I am able to pick up a piece of fish. The vegetables prove more difficult. The rice turns out to be impossible, so I leave most of it uneaten. Thank god there’s a spoon for the soup.
After the chopstick escapade, the dinner becomes eerily silent. Meals with my parents had also been quiet, but it’s been so long since I’ve eaten with a family that I find the situation discomfiting. At least when I eat with my friends, or with just my boyfriend, we talk. Here I feel left out, like maybe they would talk if I weren’t there.
Once everyone is finished and I’ve finally stopped trying to pick up any more rice, my boyfriend’s mother clears the table and the rest of us rise from our seats. I thank my boyfriend’s parents as he escorts me out, all the way out, back to his car.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
“For what?” he asks as he slides
into the driver’s seat. He’s not looking at me, which I take as a bad sign.
“I don’t know. Not being genuine enough, I guess.”
Now he does turn and look at me. “Aren’t you at all interested in your heritage?”
I feel as if a dark pit has opened in my stomach as I think over his question. “Why does it mean so much to you?” I ask him.
“It’s important!”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll die out if we don’t hold onto it!”
“And?” I don’t mean to sound cruel, which I know I do. But I honestly don’t see the point. “You won’t die from lack of it, will you?” I ask. He just stares, so I go on. “Maybe the culture can’t live without you, but you can choose to live without the culture. Because. . . Because if you live for the culture and not for yourself, it’ll kill you.”
He starts the car and drives me home without speaking another word.
Days later I still haven’t heard from him, so I assume it’s over. It’s just as well, I suppose. We never would’ve agreed on what kind of wedding to have or how to raise a family. My friends and co-workers commiserate and I’m over it pretty quickly.
On the news, the underwater ruins are being hauled to the surface. I wonder what my mother would have thought. I consider calling my father; I haven’t spoken to him in over a month. Then I decide he probably wouldn’t be interested in discussing this particular news report.
I think about my mother, all the things she knew and loved, all the things that are now lost. I wonder if natural selection extends to entire countries and cultures, if there is a reason for some traditions to die. Or if it is simply the fault of people like me, determined to exist as they are and not be dictated to by the past. Either way, the outcome is the same. One day historians will wonder what became of us, and the answer will be that it took more than one person to end the society by abandoning it, while it would only have taken one person’s willingness to remember for it to continue.
And me, I remember my mother’s kimono. It was a washed-out, frayed and tattered thing, over-worn to one faded non-color. But once it had been shining, beautiful. Just like my mother.
The World Ends at Five
“Fifteen minutes until the end of the world,” she announced as she sailed by. I glanced at my watch. 4:45 on the nose. I decided I should go rinse out my coffee mug; the drink was cold now anyway from spending a day untouched on my desk.
I glanced at the big black monitors that lined the walls as I walked. Lots of flashing red, some yellow, a very little green. I didn’t even bother to stop and read any of them more closely. What would be the point this late in the game?
In the kitchenette I washed my cup and dried it with a paper towel, then toted it back to where my desk crouched amid others on the open floor. “Ten minutes,” she said as she slipped past, now going the other way.
“Give it a rest,” I muttered. Ten minutes, sure. But they’d be the longest ten minutes.
I got back to my desk and skimmed my e-mail. Most of it wasn’t worth worrying about. I closed the program and shut down my computer. Along the walls, the monitors began to beep a five-minute warning, just as my phone rang. I scowled at the number displayed on the ID. An advertiser. Well, he could wait too.
A low roar began to build around the two-minute mark. I expected people to start screaming with the anticipation, but everyone was eerily calm. Well, I was calm, why shouldn’t they be?
The beeping from the monitors became more insistent, until finally the sound bled into one long, high-pitched shriek. We watched the last four seconds count down with our breath stopped in our lungs.
Everything went black.
“Is it over?” I heard someone ask a moment later, in a voice a little louder than a whisper.
“It’s over,” I said.
Back-up lighting snicked on in a cascade starting at one end of the floor and working towards the other. People blinked and squinted and wondered.
I picked up my bag. “See you tomorrow,” I said to no one in particular.
“Same time, different world,” she said brightly as she brushed by me on my way out.
I think she enjoys her job a little too much.
I’ve been doing this for almost a decade now. I don’t know why. It’s just what I’m designed to do. I am a Constructor, working for The Originator. I build worlds.
And then, after months or even years of work, we tear them apart again.
The early ones were feeble, not at all well thought out. There were very few people in them and only blurs of color that suggested an environment: flat expanses of green grass, the far away smudges of a darker green for trees. Blue skies without the depth of clouds.
The people were painted with the same broad strokes: color, gender, perhaps one major personality trait. But like the paintings of a child, the details were lacking, and the faces were only blurs.
The Originator has left a stack of file folders on my desk. We’ve long since come to the place where every new world builds on one or more that came before it. Nothing new under the sun, as they say. The folders contain different aspects that The Originator wants to use in the construction of the next realm. Ah, this building—it shows up in a lot of our worlds. And this house, too. These are pre-fab sets now, quick and easy to throw together, which makes my job a lot easier. Slap a little new paint on, move a room or two and we’re all set.
The people are harder. It takes a lot of them to fill a world, and every one of them has to be different. Many of them are similar, but we can’t use the same ones over and over or else someone will notice, and then we’re in real trouble.
I sit down and begin making phone calls to farm out the duties. We’ve got several vendors now who know the job backwards and forwards. This world will be a big one, and Ames will be able to supply us with a population in about nine months time. Cree Industries will begin planning and zoning work and will have working models to show us in a couple weeks.
She walks in just as I sit back to take a break. “This’ll be a big one,” she says with a broad smile. The bigger they are, after all, the better they break apart.
I glance up at the monitors. The world we’re deconstructing today is a small one, existing only of one town and a few hundred people. Short story territory. Not that that makes it any easier for me. We put just as much work into the little stuff as the big. More, in fact, because the little worlds require much more attention to detail.
Barton Crossing. That’s today’s world’s name. In Rhode Island. I recall the research, what the “real” Rhode Island consists of. But that’s not my domain, and we’re not doing the real Rhode Island any harm in any case.
I call up on my computer a list of details: a coastal village with a standing population of 2200 that swells in summer, primarily fishermen and summer tourist traps like inns and trinket shops. A lighthouse stands on the north shore of town.
I pull up a persona file at random. Old Mrs. Bennis makes homemade fudge and sells it from the store she’s run for ages, continuing even after her husband of 46 years passed away three years ago. Her three children have tried in vain to get her to retire, but Audrey Bennis won’t hear of it. She’s got a lot of life in her yet. So she thinks.
I sigh and check the clock. 10:23. Barton Crossing, Rhode Island, has less than seven hours left in its short history.
I call up the chosen disaster. She’s selected an old-fashioned hurricane to wipe the town off the map. A damn shame, but there are worse ways to go, and I’ve seen them all.
I bring up Barton Crossing on my screen, a shot of the lighthouse and coastline. The sky looks clear, but it’s windy already, the waves shattering over the rocks. I pick up my phone and call the prep department.
“How are you handling it?” I ask, more for the formality since I already have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing.
“News media,” Fred says. “You’ll see the reporters out in their slickers soon if you keep watching.”
“No thanks.” I hang up and click away from the image of Barton Crossing’s lighthouse, over to a quieter Main Street lined with a family-run hardware store and a Market Basket grocery.
Main Street. I hate the name, but the design team uses it again and again, like some kind of inside joke.
The people on Barton Crossing’s Main Street seem placid enough as they stroll the sidewalks. It’s late summer there now, the kids just back in school, light sweaters beginning to appear amidst the tshirts. I find myself admiring the crew’s work as I notice the worn wood fronts of shops, the faded and peeling paint, here and there a missing roof shingle. Things the people of Barton Crossing take for granted. Well, doesn’t everyone assume the world they live in will always be there? Only people like me know the difference. Only people like me will miss it when it’s gone.
A day full of meetings about the new construction—the designers want to call it Pickery, but we have yet to get approval from The Originator on that—and I return to my desk to find Barton Crossing, Rhode Island, in the throes of a full-force storm.
“Pickery is a stupid name,” she says, stopping next to my desk.
“Take it up with Creative,” I tell her, and she storms off. I know she’s just pissed because Barton Crossing isn’t big enough to provide much entertainment as it’s being reduced to nothing.
The town is now visible through all the front windows of the office. It always happens this way; she always wants a front-row seat. I, for one, hate it, hate being in the middle of it all. I never spent any time in Barton Crossing; why should I start now, at its end?
The clouds are low and heavy, the color of dark steel. We can hear the wind shriek and roar, and I instinctively squint against it, even though it cannot touch me. And even though I cannot feel the wind, I am cold.
The houses are shut tight against what’s coming. All the shops on Main are abandoned. Nothing living moves in the streets of Barton Crossing.
The World Ends at Five & Other Stories Page 3