by Janis Ian
"Now, you listen to me, child," she said to Annimae. "There’s only one reason that woman would concoct such a cock-and-bull story. I’ll tell you why you can’t look on the face of that son of hers! He is a mulatto."
"That’s not true!" said Annimae. "I saw his baby picture."
"You saw a picture of the baby that died, I expect," said Aunt Pugh, blowing her nose. "Oh, Annimae!"
"There used to be plenty of old families got themselves a little foundling to replace a dead boy, when the estate was entailed," said Great-Aunt Merrion. "So long as there was a male heir, decent folk held their tongues about it. Money kept the nursemaids from telling the truth.
"Well, hasn’t she plenty of money? And didn’t she move clear out here to the West so there’d be nobody around who knew the truth? And who’ll see the color of her sin, if he’s kept out of sight?"
"What’s his hair like, child? Oh, Annimae, how you have been fooled!" said Aunt Pugh.
"Likely enough he’s her son," sneered Great-Aunt Merrion. "But he’s not the one who ought to have inherited."
Annimae was so horrified and angry she nearly stood up to her aunts, and as it was she told them they had better leave. The old women rose up to go; but Great-Aunt Merrion got in a parting shot.
"Ghosts and goblins, my foot," she said. "If you’re not a fool, child, you’ll sneak a penny candle and a match into that bedroom, next time you go in there. Just you get yourself a good look at that Daniel Nightengale, once he’s asleep. You’d better be sure than be a lasting disgrace to your father."
Annimae fled to the darkness to weep, that none might see her. Two hours she fought with her heart. All the fond embraces, all the words of love, all the undoubted wisdom of the Spiritualists and her own wedding vows were on her heart’s side. But the little quailing child who lived within her breast too thought of the aunts’ grim faces as they had spoken, backed up by the dead certainties of all grandmothers and aunts from the beginning of time.
In the end she decided that their dark suspicions were utterly base and unfounded. But she would slip a candle and a match in her apron pocket, all the same, so as to prove them wrong.
And when she came in to Daniel at last, when his glad voice greeted her and his warm hands reached out, she knew her heart was right, and silenced all doubt. Sam came in and served them supper, and she listened and compared the two voices, straining for any similarity of accent. Surely there was none!
And when the supper dishes had been taken away and Daniel took her in his arms and kissed her, she ran her hands through his thick hair. Surely it was golden!
And when they lay together in bed, there was none of the drum-driven madness of the night before, no animal hunger; only Daniel gentle and chivalrous, sane and reasonable, teasing her about what they’d do when he could go to Paris or Rome at last. Surely he was a gentleman!
But she had slipped the candle and the match under her pillow, and they lay there like wise serpents, who wheedled: Wouldn’t you like just a glimpse of his face?
At last, when he had fallen asleep and lay dreaming beside her, she reached under the pillow and brought out the match. No need to light the candle, she had decided; all she wanted was one look at his dear face. One look only, in a flash no evil ghost would have time to notice. And who would dare harm her darling, if she lay beside him to keep him safe? One look only, to bear in her mind down all the long years they’d have together, one tiny secret for her to keep like a pressed flower…
Annimae touched his face, ran her fingers over his stubbly cheek, and set her hand on his brow to shade his eyes from the light. He sighed and murmured something in his sleep. With her other hand, she reached up and struck the match against the bedpost.
The light bloomed yellow.
Daniel was not there. Nobody was there. Annimae was alone in the bed.
Unbelieving, she felt with her hand that had been touching his cheek, his brow, that very second. There was nothing there.
That was when Annimae dropped the match, and the room was gone in darkness, and she could feel her throat contracting for a scream. But there was a high shriek beginning already, an inhuman whine as though the whole room were lamenting, and that was Daniel’s voice rising now in a wail of grief, somewhere far above, as though he were being pulled away from her, receding and receding through the darkness.
"ANNIMAE!"
The bed began to shudder. The room itself, the very house began to shake. She heard a ringing impact from the bathroom, as the silver pitchers were thrown to the tiled floor. The table by the bed fell with a crash. A rending crack, a boom, the sound of plaster falling; a rectangle full of hectic blue-white light, and she realized that the secret panel had been forced open.
Annimae’s mind, numb-shocked as it was, registered Earthquake with a certain calm. She grabbed her robe and fled over the tilting floor, squeezed through the doorway and ran down the long corridor. Tiny globes of ball lightning crackled, spat, skittered before her, lighting her way at least. But she could see the walls cracking too, she could see the plaster dropping away and the bare laths. The carpet flexed under her feet like an animal’s back. The shaking would not stop.
She rounded a corner and saw Mrs. Nightengale flying toward her, hair streaming back and disheveled, hands out as though to claw the slow air. Her face was like a Greek mask of horror and rage, her mouth wide in a cry that Annimae could not hear over the roar of the falling house. She sped past Annimae without so much as a glance, vanishing in the direction of Daniel’s rooms.
Annimae ran on, half-falling down a flight of stairs that was beginning to fold up even as she reached the bottom, and then there was a noise louder than any she’d heard yet, loud as an explosion, louder than the cannons must have been at Gettysburg. To her left there was an avalanche of bricks, mortar, splinters and wire, as a tower came down through three floors and carried all before it. It knocked out a wall and Annimae saw flowers glimmering pale through the plaster-dust, and dim stars above them.
She staggered forth into the night and fled, sobbing now, for her heart was beginning to go like the house. On bleeding feet she ran; when she could run no further she fell, and lay still, and wept and knew there was no possible consolation.
Some while later Annimae raised her head, and saw that the sky was just beginning to get light in the east. She looked around. She was lying in a drift of yellow leaves. All around her were the black trunks and arching branches of the orchard, in a silence so profound she might have gone deaf. Turning her head uncertainly, looking for the house, she saw them coming for her.
A throng of shadows, empty-eyed but not expressionless, and at their head walked the dancers from the fire: the black man with his stick, the red-headed hoyden. Beyond them, dust still rising against the dawn, was the nightmare mountain of rubble that had been the home of true love.
Annimae lay whimpering at their approach. With each step they took the figures altered, changed, aged. They became Sam and Bridget Lacroix. The sullen shades in their train began to mutter threateningly, seemed about to surge forward at Annimae; but Sam stopped, and raised his cane in a gesture that halted them. His sad stern face seemed chiseled from black stone.
"Shame on you, girl," he said. "Love and Suspicion can’t live together in the same house, no matter how many rooms it has."
Annimae scrambled to her feet and ran again. They did not follow her.
She forgot who she was, or why she was traveling, and she had no destination in mind. By day she huddled in barns or empty sheds, for the sunlight hurt her eyes unbearably. By night she walked on, ducking out of sight when a horseman or a carriage would come along her road. For some days she wandered up a bay shore, following the tideline. The mud felt cool on her cut feet.
At length she came to a great city, that whirred and clattered and towered to the sky. She regarded it in wonder, hiding among the reeds until nightfall, hoping to pass through in the dark. Alas! It was lit bright even after midnight. Annimae edged as close as she dared, c
reeping through the shadows, and then turned to stare; for she found herself outside a lovely garden, planted all in roses, shaded by high dark cypresses, and the wrought-iron gate was unlocked. It seemed as though it would be a comforting place to rest.
She slipped in, and stretched out on one of the cool white marble beds. Angels mourned, all around her.
When the pastor at Mission Dolores found her, she was unable to speak. He had his housekeeper feed her, bathe her, and tend to her feet; he sent out inquiries. No one came forward to claim Annimae, however, and the sisters at the Sacred Heart convent agreed to take her in.
In the peace, in the silence punctuated only by matins and evensong, gently bullied by well-meaning maternal women, still she remained mute; but her memory, if not her voice, began to come back to her. There was still too much horror and confusion to absorb, though one fact rose clear and bleak above the rest: she had lost her true love.
He had been dead. He had been imaginary. He had been real, but she had betrayed him. She would never hear his voice again.
She would be alone the rest of her life.
And it seemed a grimly appropriate fate that she should come full circle to end up here, a child in a house full of aunts, confined to the nursery where she clearly belonged, having failed so badly at being a grown woman. Perhaps she would take the veil, though she had always been told to distrust Catholics as minions of the Pope. Perhaps she would take Jesus as her new husband.
But one morning Annimae woke to a welling nausea, and barely made it to the little bathroom at the end of the dormitory hall before vomiting. Afterward she bolted the door, and ran water for a bath.
Stepping into the water, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
She stared, and stared unbelieving at her swollen body.
Nightmare Mountain
Janis Ian
Wish you would have told me
what was wrong with you
Made mountains out of valleys
and took away the view
Wish you would have told me
Told me there and then
I never would have done it if I knew
it meant losing you
So many dreams forgotten
in the twinkling of an eye
Dreams of unborn children
used to glitter in our sky
Now there's only Nightmare Mountain
grown too high to climb
Never would have done it if I'd known
that it meant losing home
There's lots of other chances
now that I've got lots of time
to search out these romances
that once occupied my mind
I wish you would have told me
before this mountain grew
I never would have built it if I knew
that it meant losing you
It meant losing you
(Back to TOC)
On The Edge
Gregory Benford
In the summer of our youth
In the summer of our youth
We were gonna make the whole world honest
~ from Guess You Had to Be There by Janis Ian
Lenin is working night shift, but not for extra pay. He's a salaried supervisor and can't get overtime. Mostly he needs something to do.
The restlessness won't go away. He ducks a personnel issue and slips into his eighth floor office. His thirtieth birthday is coming up soon and it's riding at the back of his mind. At least, he thinks that's what's bothering him. He turns out the lights so he can watch the silvery sprawl of Greater L.A. stretching into the distance like some kind of electrical cancer.
He has been thinking about the Revolution a lot lately and somehow this neon consumer gumbo going on forever is at the heart of his terror, but he does not quite know why. So he presses his balding forehead against the cold windowpane and looks at the endless twinkling glitter in the cool spring night. Abstractly he wonders if this bland mall splendor will stand eternally. And on what foundation? Time and a half for overtime? Even he doesn't believe it, even if the workers under him are benefiting from the boom in business that seems like it will go on forever.
Babes in Blandland, he thinks, but it's easier to come up with a quick put-down than to frame an idea, and he knows it.
The cleaning lady comes in. A little early, she explains, because her son is sick and she has to get home. Stooped, weary, her Latino face manages a creased smile. Lenin feels a red rage at the very sight of her sad, suffering eyes. He gives her a twenty.
The infinite city still looms outside. He picks up the phone and calls his ex, but she has blocked his number. It has been two years since the divorce but he still harbors some dusty hope that it could all work out right after all. Months ago she had told him to move on. But to what?
~~~~~
Washington is on his way home when his damn cell phone rings. He reaches to answer, stops.
Probably it's a headhunter trying to interest him in coming aboard some hot new company. Word has already spread that he turned around his present firm, HighUpTech, big time. It's going on the AMEX next week with a net value over one-fifty mil when the starting gun goes off. Not bad for just two years of ruthless trimming, innovative product design, and some poker-faced cunning.
Does he want to do that number again? He lets the phone ring.
He leaves the 405 for the run uphill into Palos Verdes and stops for a light. A woman standing on the center divider is selling flowers. Her gaudy spring blossoms are well arranged. He hands her a twenty and waves off the change. She is in the usual dingy uniform of jeans and a rough man's shirt and smiles at him, her hair an oily tangle. He wonders how many wrong turns she had to make to get this far down.
When he gets home his wife loves the flowers. Her obvious surprise reminds him that he's been distracted a lot lately, not paying attention to the personal basics. She hands him a chilled Esplanade glass filled with his favorite Sauvignon Blanc. He prefers that now to a Chardonnay. Starting to feel the acid in the stomach, maybe a sign of age? But he's only 31. He throws some honey-roasted almonds into his mouth and goes out onto the deck to take in the diamond-sprinkled avenues pointing away toward the Hollywood Hills.
Somehow he no longer finds this view impressive. Great wealth, but where's it going?
His wife comes out to him, slips an arm around his waist, and he says something suddenly about how big the city is and what the hell it's all about. He has surprised himself and before he can figure out what he meant she kisses him meaningfully and he thinks about bed. Bucks in the day, bed at night, maybe catch some basketball in between the two on the digital cable. He tries to think if there's anything else, maybe something that starts with a B.
~~~~~
Goldman arrives early to meet the Trotsky guy. She likes the place. It's a homey clapboard coffee place on the beach but the coffee's strictly chain knockoff product. At least it's cheaper than the spotless places the chain usually throws up, and here you can read the newspapers as long as you like without ordering another drink. She has a bagel anyway with her mocha supreme grande and has to count out the pennies left at the bottom of her jeans pockets to get the change together. That's it, she's flat busted again.
And Trotsky doesn't show up on time. She finishes the Newspap on the table's screen and sips the mocha with extra cinnamon on top, a real perversion, while outside the sunny dusk turns to a crystal night in Venice. A rollerblader comes in, a wiry woman in cutoffs despite the chill. Long hair, kinda dirty-blonde in the way she likes.
The woman gives her a glance and there's a little something going on right away. Goldman has been trying to go straight for a while to see what it's like. Not Father Knows Best or anything, but to get the flavor back in her mouth, was the way she thought of it.
The woman sits at the next table and they do some eye stuff. That gets Goldman's pulse up, like always, but then Trotsky comes lumbering through the door and looks around with his jerky h
ead movements and darting eyes, like an eagle on the hunt. That gets to her even more, something electrically predatory. Women don't have that pointed energy.
He comes over to her table and plunks his bony body down. Right off he starts talking about some news stuff, not even saying hello. The owner stands glowering by the cash register, a black guy who makes a point about every customer having to order something. Trotsky catches the look and makes a show of ignoring it, keeps right on talking. The black guy puts on his apron, some kind of territorial signal maybe. Some quick eye and shoulder stuff passes between the two men. Trotsky gets up and orders an herbal tea.
While he's over at the counter Goldman catches a sidelong from the woman still in her roller blades. Her soft green eyes mingle sympathy and an eyebrow-arching whassup? Goldman feels herself getting wet.
Trotsky comes back with his tea. He's angry that they don't have brown sugar and says that if the owner wasn't black Trotsky would write a letter to the chain management about it. Goldman has always liked how he sticks to the straight and narrow, even on little things. And he was good in bed those three times, she reminds herself. Wolfish, intense, talked all the way through it, even the oral part. None of the talk was dirty, either. Kinda weird.
Then he has to go to the john and the woman gives her the look again. Decision time. Lots of options here.
The rollerblader would be pretty squishy. Soft, warm, predictable. Playing to her short-term self.
Trotsky was a ferret-faced irk sometimes, sure, but he thought ahead, saw horizons. Which should she go for this time? Maybe a threesome? No, he wasn't the type. Big ideas but tight-wound inside. She stirs her coffee and reaches for more cinnamon.
~~~~~
Jefferson walks into the board meeting the next morning with a solid, confident stride. The satellite company he consults for has sent him to push the new networking scenarios to these biz types. No sweat, he's done it all before. Which is the problem.
People crowd in around him the moment he's in the room. He sees his friend Washington at the middle of a similar jam. The two of them have joked about this effect. A bio-business analyst from UCLA told them it had something to do with chimpanzee tribalism. People need direction and they flock to people who give off the right signals, the musk of power.