The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “Maybe what?” Usually, I don’t have this much trouble arranging sliced radishes in a pretty pattern. Right now, they’re just a bunch of ugly yellow discs.

  “You understand what I’m saying. I shouldn’t have to spell it out. You don’t trust your own sister?”

  When I was eight, she convinced me that she was psychic, then foretold exactly how horrible my life would be if I didn’t do exactly as she said. It’s embarrassing how many years she got away with it. If the water had been falling back then, she’d have flooded the house.

  “Only your family loves you enough to tell you this.” Listening to her is like being pelted by rocks. “What can he possibly see in you? Dump him and marry a nice Chinese woman instead. Stay with him and he’ll cheat on you or dump you.”

  Three words into her last sentence, I know what she’ll say. I leap to pull her pan away as I shut off the burner. The water that falls from nowhere drenches her and the burner where the pan was. Had the water hit the pan, the steam and splattered oil would have burned her.

  “Go get warm.” I plate the spinach onto a dish on the counter. “I’ll mop up the water.”

  “People change, but maybe he’ll still love you, even as you shut him out like you have me, Mom, and Dad.” Her arms wrap around her body and her words come out between chatters. “We still do, but I wonder why we bother. You’ll break Mom and Dad’s hearts if you never pass their name and blood on. Are you really willing to abandon your family for that man?”

  She stomps off before I can answer. Hiding so much of myself from my family, in retrospect, that totally counts as shutting them out. There was only so much of my life I could share with them. Once the water began falling I couldn’t even lie to them. But I hid because I wanted to keep them, not abandon them.

  Dinner is going well, too well. My sister is a gracious hostess, too gracious to complain when Gus and I sit next to each other. Instead, her eyes question my every action. Why is my right hand below the table? Why am I spooning tofu onto Gus’s plate? What am I saying when I whisper into his ear?

  Gus eats as if he has pig’s ear and cow’s tripe every Christmas. When we get home, the next time it’s my turn to cook, he’s getting pig’s blood soup for dinner. I’ve wasted years afraid he’d hate my favorite foods.

  My nieces love him. They stop dueling each other with chopsticks when he asks them to. To half the adults at the table, he may as well be speaking classical Greek, but they laugh at his jokes and listen with rapt attention as he talks about the time it thunderstormed as he and his brother were climbing the steep eastern face of Mount Whitney. My mom resuscitates stories of her childhood in . Even my sister is sick of those stories. Gus, however, asks about raising chickens and about the grandmother I barely remember. Okay, I’m translating like mad, but the point is they enjoy Gus’s company and Gus enjoys theirs. In the rapid fire exchange of words, my parents surprise me by asking about my research in biotech. I almost forget the impending doom hanging over me like an uttered paradox.

  “,” my sister’s father-in-law says as I’m clearing the table after dinner. “?”

  No family meal is complete without the marriage question. Actually, it’s always some variant of “You’re over thirty. Where’s the grandson?” Marriage is just the necessary precondition.

  I think I’m smiling blandly, but Gus’s eyes reach mine and I realize he sees the marriage question on my face. It’s hard to believe the man doesn’t read minds. My sister’s glare is this pressure that squeezes my chest.

  Telling everyone I haven’t met the right woman might humidify air, but it won’t cause the water to fall. It’s true so I won’t even feel any angst. Gus will understand and, for once, my sister will be happy with me. She and I can’t be in the same room for ten minutes but we’ve always wanted the best for each other. But she doesn’t need to tell me what that is anymore.

  “. Gus.” I’ve come this far; I might as well go all the way. “.”

  Providing a grandson can’t be that important in the grand scheme of things. Kevin’s parents still love him. Maybe mine will still love me. And they seem to like Gus as my friend. Now that they know he’s proposed, maybe they’ll also love him as their son-in-law.

  My sister’s fury explodes and overwhelms every other reaction in the room. Her words are clearly in English, but the only ones that make any sense are “Get out, and don’t ever come back.” Kevin’s trying to calm her down. Gus weaves around the family toward me. However, I’m upstairs in the bedroom before I realize I’ve moved.

  Gus is extremely tidy. It’s easy to repack his luggage. I never unpacked so I don’t have to repack. He’s such a generous soul. For all I know, he may still think we’re not leaving. I shouldn’t have left him downstairs. Maybe the nieces can translate for him.

  “Matt, you’re leaving out of spite.” The doorjamb neatly frames Gus. “Okay, your sister had a bad reaction, but poe poe and gohng gohng don’t seem to be taking it badly.”

  I blink and shake my head. It takes me a few seconds to realize that he’s talking about my parents.

  “Did you just call my parents and ?”

  “Yeah, poe poe and gohng gohng.” He looks confused. “I tried to call them Mr. and Mrs. Ho this afternoon, but they both corrected me before I got past hello. Am I pronouncing it wrong?”

  “We can work on that, but that’s not my point.” I shut his suitcase. “‘??’ means husband’s mother and ‘’ means husband’s father.”

  That he can call them that without water falling on him . . .

  “They’d already figured us out.” Gus steps into the room to make space for Mom, trying to burrow past him. “Hi, poe poe.”

  “Lonely boy.” My mom looks at Gus, but points at me. “He always lonely boy.”

  I really wish she’d just let me translate for her. In Chinese, she’s effortlessly witty and erudite. That’s the person I want Gus to know, not the inchoate stranger I knew until I’d spent a decade trying to get my Chinese up to snuff.

  Gus takes her hands and doesn’t speak too loud or down to her. Metaphorically, that is. Literally, he’s about a foot taller than Mom.

  “Not if I can help it, poo-oh poo-oh.” He’s trying too hard to imitate the way I said it and now he’s overpronouncing. “I’ll make sure he’s never lonely again.”

  Mom turns to me. At first, I think she wants a translation, but she must have understood because she doesn’t give me a chance to speak.

  “” Ok, this isn’t an example of her being witty or erudite. My mom is also very practical and direct.

  I hear my heart pound. Gus is looking at me for a translation. We don’t have a relationship if I filter what he hears.

  “She said: You’re a biotech researcher. Can you give me a grandson? One with genes from both of you?” Gus must have really impressed her. “What were you two talking about this afternoon?”

  “Not that.” He looks as surprised as I feel. We’ve never discussed kids. He turns back to her. “We need to talk about it.”

  And I need to win a Nobel Prize if she’s dead set on a grandson with both our genes. Parents.

  The clincher is that she leaves, trusting Gus to talk me back from the edge. Normally, she tells me that once Michele calms down, she’ll want me to stay. Michele’s only angry at me because she loves me. But now, it’s Gus’s job to keep me civil. Mom’s probably so happy about this, she doesn’t care that Gus is a guy. Gus isn’t any better at keeping me from the edge than Mom though.

  The motel is a five minute drive from my sister’s house, but it feels like another planet. For one thing, we’ve gone from Victorian Christmas Land to Operating Surgery Land. It still smells like pine, but the flat, medicinal one. For another, when I drop my suitcase and curl into a ball on the bed, it’s as if I’ve held one of Gus’s bizarre isometric exercises for weeks and I’ve finally let go. Just like the end of any other trip home except this time I’m still tethered to the world. Gus stands at the door. Snowflakes gli
sten off his hair and hooded sweatshirt.

  “They’re your only blood relatives in the country.” Gus flicks on the light and clicks the door shut. When I turn away, his weight dents the bed. My body falls toward his. “Matt, don’t freeze me out too.”

  Gus’s words pummel me no matter how softly he tosses them. My own words scrape my throat. I taste salt and metal when I swallow. Lying then letting the water wash my throat and fill my lungs tempts me as much as pretending Gus isn’t sitting on the bed. Every trip, I decide that I’ll sort things out later. Then I go home and pretend the trip never happened. That won’t work this time. Gus is, if nothing else, a witness and a reminder.

  “Fine.” I sit up and stare at the carpet. “Once, I gave Mom flowers for Mother’s Day and Michele humiliated me because flowers wilt and how dare I send Mom something that would die. Michele accused me of ruining her birthday because one year I sent her a card with blue birds on it. Like I knew her parakeet had drowned itself in her toilet. One Christmas Eve, Michele asked me to shave for Christmas day. I didn’t really have any stubble so I forgot. She couldn’t understand why I would refuse to do something to make her happy, especially something so simple, so she ambushed me with a razor. I wish she had better aim. Shaving cream stings your eyes. For weeks people wondered why I had scars around my neck and on my face. Is that enough, or do you want more? Why should I have to keep putting up with her?”

  I am so tired. My body won’t stop shaking. Air won’t stay in my lungs. Melted snow pools around my boots. I wish Gus weren’t looming over me. I wish he were in his apartment, or visiting his own family.

  Gus sits, mouth agape, for a moment, but if he expected water to fall on me, he’s done a terrific job of not showing it. His arm straps across my shoulders and pulls me to him. He presses a finger under my chin and guides my head until I face him.

  Part of me wants to bolt, get into the rental car and find somewhere else to stay for the night. The rest of me knows that’ll hurt Gus and he’ll be too much the hero to admit it. Like screwing up all of my relationships at the same time is a good idea.

  “You shouldn’t have to put up with her.” Gus unzips my jacket, then peels it off me. “But are you going to write your parents off too? Say we have a kid, and I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t, don’t you want the kid to know their grandparents?”

  “So I’m right and she wins anyway?”

  I rub my face. Telling me I’m right is a change. Once, Mom told me everything Michele does to me, she does because she loves me and wants the best for me. Why couldn’t she just hate me instead, I asked. That talk didn’t go well.

  “What you mean by winning?” Gus shrugs. He hangs my jacket on the coatrack next to the door. “You broke today. It happens. Maybe some time away from her is a good thing. Tomorrow, we’ll go back and we’ll try it again, okay? If you want, I’ll stick to you the whole day.”

  I take a deep breath. It feels like the first time my lungs have expanded in hours. The pine and wet leather assault my nose. “Sure.”

  I take off my boots. Melted snow has soaked through to my socks. My feet are cold and clammy. Gus is still standing at the door.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours.” Gus holds a hand up to interrupt me when I ask him to stay. “You don’t want me around and frankly, right now, you’re too wigged out to be good company. I know you’re not angry at me, but it’ll be better in the long run if I leave now while we’re still on speaking terms.”

  I’d protest but that would just make his point. Gus turns out the lights before he leaves. The comforter is wet from melted snow. It sticks to my skin when I fall into bed. I curl up into a ball and roll the comforter over me. Buried, I finally start to relax.

  This time, I have left the world but it still doesn’t feel right. The mattress ought to be sunk deeper. My arms should be around the hulk of a man who can’t ever admit hurt or pain. I should be immersed in the warmth of his body as he is in mine.

  “I love you, Gus.” Now, I just have to figure out how to say it while he’s in the room.

  Snow evaporates off the comforter. I’m warm and dry. I wriggle my head out. Flowers and ozone replace the smell of pine. A spring breeze grazes me. I stare at the door in the dark, wishing it would open.

  The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere. Copyright (C) 2012 by John Chu.

  Art copyright (C) 2012 by Christopher Silas Neal

  All rights reserved.

  For information, address [Tor.Com], 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  e-ISBN: 9781466838116

  First eBook Edition: February 2013

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  His hand was cool and damp, with the limp, rubbery texture of a corpse. I don’t know what it is about people who work with the dead, but every one I’d met in my fifteen years came to resemble their clients after a few years on the job. I didn’t shudder as I shook hands, didn’t pull back in revulsion. I kept smiling, and I think it surprised him. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Morgan. I’m Lia Thantos, the new summer intern.”

  Bright green eyes behind thick glasses sparkled with something approaching amazement. He pulled back his hand and crossed his arms over his white lab coat. “Please, call me Mike since we’ll be working together. I have to admit, we don’t get a lot of applications for internships here at the morgue. You’re sure this is what you want to spend your summer doing?”

  I shrugged. “I’m the fourth generation of a family of morticians. Dad decided it would be good for me to learn this side of the business. Thought it would look good on my college application. Frankly, it’s no big. When I go home tonight, there’ll be dead bodies there too.”

  His eyebrows raised and then lowered in confusion. Everyone’s did when they found out. It was a little weird. And a lot creepy. Or so say the few friends I can claim. I inhaled deeply as he considered what to say. The antiseptic smell permeating the room couldn’t completely cover the sweet, cloying odor of decaying flesh. It wasn’t a bad smell, precisely. But it takes getting used to. He looked me over, from purple-streaked hair to black-and-gray camo pants and leather Frankenstein boots in size five. When he finally spoke, he tried for humor. But the underlying question was disturbing by implication. “So, are the therapy bills racking up in your family? Coffins and kids are…Well, they don’t usually mix.”

  I gave a thin, tight smile. Even among the death workers, as I called them, I’d learned not to reveal how often I’d played in the coffins when I was little. No, they hadn’t influenced who I became. They’re part of who I am. The padding’s so soft and smooth, and when the lid shuts, there’s utter silence. Peace. I’d sit in the visitation rooms too, before anyone arrived. Same reason. Just me and the dearly departed and peace. Dad’s the same way. Frankly, I think my mom is squicked out by both of us. “Well, other than the fact I haven’t been able to get the smell of embalming fluid completely out of my nose since I was six, it isn’t bad. After all, death is just another part of life.”

  Ding, ding, ding. His whole body relaxed when I spoke the proper phrase. All death workers say it. It’s the secret handshake, the whispered password at the darkened doorway. It’s the mantra that justifies their existence, and probably what keeps them sane. And it had the advantage of being true. He nodded. “Okay then, Lia. Let me show you around.”

  He handed me a clipboard and white jacket from a hook on the wall, and we walked through the swinging doors. It wasn’t a big place. Rol
ling up the sleeves of the oversized coat took longer than the tour. I already knew what exam tables looked like and recognized most of the equipment used for autopsies. My dad and granddad collected tools from different eras as a hobby. I pointed toward the refrigerated drawers lining both sides of the cold room. There were twenty. Ten on each side of the room. “You have a lot of drawers for a county this size. Is there a high mortality rate?”

  He leaned against one of said drawers, comfortable in gum-soled shoes and elastic-waisted hospital pants. “There was a long time ago, when the building was built. The Spanish flu hit this area hard a century ago. There used to be a crematorium right next door, where the parking lot is now. One-stop shopping for the doctors. We’ve updated the drawers, but most of the room is just the same as it was then. And, oddly enough, we’re full up at the moment.” His hand reached out to pat one of the doors. “Let’s talk about the drawers for a second. The county coroner has very particular guidelines about how bodies are accepted into the facility.” So, my boss’s boss. I knew the coroner was an elected position in Brazer County but didn’t know much about what he did. Dad said the coroner was really good at his job and I was supposed to pay close attention to anything he told me.

  Mike pointed toward the clipboard. “You’ll need to write this down.” I already had my pen raised. He gestured with an arm toward the doorway we’d entered. “Bodies are delivered there by the hospital, EMTs, or police. For now, you won’t have to worry about handling bodies on your own, though I’ll want your help with one later. You’ll mostly be answering phones and doing the paperwork to file with the state.”

  “No big,” I commented as I jotted notes. It really wasn’t. “I’ve hefted corpses before with Dad. I can’t lift one alone, but I’m stronger than I look.” I flexed a bicep to prove my point. I might only be 115 sopping wet, but most of it’s muscle. “Just let me have the head. Dead people’s feet reek. Never have figured out why.”