The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  “Shut up, Spider-Man.”

  “Not Spider-Man.”

  “Yeah, cause Spider-Man isn’t ticklish!”

  Linnea dove for his ribs. Max shrieked and squealed. Their mother looked in on them. “Don’t get him all worked up, please.”

  “I’m a radioactive spider and I’m biting him!”

  “Linnea,” said their mother in a warning tone.

  Linnea stopped tickling and Max took a few swings at her. “You’re a big fat spider,” he announced.

  “I need you to set the table,” their mother said, heading toward the kitchen. It was kind of funny that Max looked more like their mother than Linnea did, even though he was a boy. Their mother looked like a palomino horse. Max had the same goldy hair and light eyes. Linnea guessed she looked like her father. It wasn’t the kind of thing anybody was going to tell her.

  Jay came home and sat in the den watching the news. The news was all he ever watched. Linnea wasn’t allowed to watch MTV or some of the movies. Her mom and Jay were so clueless. They didn’t know all the things you could get on the computer or on a phone.

  Jay worked at FedEx, scooting packages around on a forklift. He always came home tired, like it was so hard to drive around all day. Linnea set the table for dinner and tried to sneak back into her room. She was soft-footing it past the den when Jay called to her. “Hey sis. Come in here a minute.”

  Linnea edged around the doorway, half in and half out. “How was school?” Jay asked.

  “It was all right.” She figured Jay meant, did she get into a fight with Megan. But Megan was a sophomore and the two of them didn’t have classes together. They only saw each other in the halls, and they could usually steer around each other.

  “Your mom did your hair, huh?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Don’t let her catch you making that face.”

  “Can I do my hair a different color? Or even just highlights?”

  “That’s up to your mom.”

  “But you’d be OK with it, right?”

  “You have to ask her.”

  Jay still had his FedEx polo shirt on. It made him look like he played golf for a living. His eyebrows practically met in the middle. He wouldn’t let Linnea’s mom wax them. Linnea said, “Why do I have to learn algebra? I bet I never have to use algebra in my whole life.”

  “Yeah, but what if you grow up and decide you want to be an algebra teacher?”

  “You’re killing me. I got a B on my French quiz.”

  “Why not an A?”

  “Come on. Nobody gets A’s.”

  “Linnea.”

  “How about you pretend I told you I got an A.”

  “Funny, kiddo.” Jay called her things like kiddo and sis, because she wasn’t his real daughter. And Linnea called him Jay, because he wasn’t her real father, just some guy that she’d gotten used to having around.

  On the television, a bunch of foreign people were marching along a street and hollering. Then the picture switched to somewhere else, a flood, and then the president giving a speech, then a man came on who looked like Mr. Field her algebra teacher but wasn’t, and he said that the government was taking over everything now, taking over businesses and schools and banks and taxing everybody to death and coming to take their guns away.

  “Do you have a gun?” Linnea asked, just to be saying something.

  “That’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  Linnea thought that might mean that he did, most likely in his closet somewhere, and that was kind of exciting, at least more exciting than most things about Jay. She was going to look around for it the next chance she had.

  Her mom called everybody in for dinner. They were having cube steak and fried potatoes and green beans. Max got macaroni and cheese because that was all he ever ate. Linnea finished eating and took her plate to the sink and then went to the cupboard and fixed herself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Her mom said if she was still hungry she should have had some more meat and vegetables and Linnea said no, what she really wanted was Frosted Flakes.

  Sometimes she felt that these people she lived with, each one of which was related to her in some different way or not at all, were like a cartoon, like The Simpsons, and everything they did was probably really funny if you were just outside watching it.

  The next day at school all the freshmen had an assembly about citizenship, and how they were all members of their community and they should all sign up for some activity, like helping old people rake their leaves or volunteering at the food pantry or reading to little kids at the library. They should get involved.

  Linnea didn’t think she was the community type. There weren’t any windows in the auditorium and that sucked because outside it was a perfect October day, breezy and cool with the air full of colored leaves like fluttering birds. And today was only Tuesday.

  She yawned and her friend Patti poked her. “Wake up. Get involved.”

  Linnea poked her right back, then one of the teachers gave them the stink-eye so they both put on their best paying-attention faces until he turned his back, and then they had to try not to laugh.

  Finally it was over and they got to go back to third period, which was English. They were reading Maya Angelou so they would know something about black people.

  Linnea had to go to the bathroom and she told Patti to tell Mrs. Beet that she’d be there in a minute.

  The bathroom was at the end of the third-floor hallway, one of the small ones with only three stalls. When she’d finished peeing, she washed her hands and fussed with her hair. She thought her mom had cut it too short. It looked like it had gotten caught in a blender or something and they had to chop it off.

  The bathroom door opened and Megan and one of her trashy friends came in.

  They were both surprised to see each other and maybe if it was just the two of them alone they could have let it go. But Megan’s friend was watching and so Megan said, “Oh lookee here. It’s the little skank.”

  “Hi there, cupcake,” Linnea came back with. It was a new one she hadn’t used yet.

  Megan’s face turned blotchy red. She couldn’t ever help it. She was growing big boobs, like Angela, and she always looked like a lot of her was squeezed upward, like her tops were too tight and about to strangle her. “Hilarious,” Megan said. Then, to her friend: “Say hi to skank-head.”

  The friend smirked. She was one of those eyeliner girls. “Hi, skank-head.”

  Linnea clutched at her chest and pretended to crumple. “Dying here.”

  Megan and Eyeliner parked themselves in front of the mirrors. They made faces at themselves, sucking in their cheeks, and then they started in piling on more makeup.

  “What happened to your hair?” Megan asked. “It looks extra queer today.”

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  Megan and Eyeliner looked at each other. “Oooh,” they said.

  Her hair was so stupid. Even if it grew out and even if she had somebody else do it from now on, it was always going to be ugly and stupid and wrong. You wanted to believe that getting older, growing up, would change everything, transform you into the amazing person you were meant to be. But what if it didn’t? What if you had to stay you forever?

  “So, you give any good blow jobs lately? Huh, Meggie?” Megan had once made the mistake of telling Linnea the things she had done with her last boyfriend.

  “Fuck you!”

  Now it was Linnea’s turn to go “Oooh.” She tried to get out the door then but the other two were in the way and Megan shoved her in the chest. Megan was big, but a total spaz, so it felt more like getting bumped by somebody on a bus.

  Linnea ran into one of the stalls and shut the latch. She put her eye up to the crack in between the door and the metal frame. Megan was right outside, leaning in. “Oh wow,” Linnea said. “The attack of the giant boobs.�
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  “I am gonna beat your ass!”

  “Not from out there you aren’t.”

  Megan smacked on the stall door. “Get out here!”

  “Make me.”

  Megan put her face up to the crack. Linnea wished she had her backpack so she could stick a pen right in her eye. Linnea saw their two pairs of feet. They smacked on the door some more and then pushed on it. Linnea pushed back.

  They stopped trying to get in and the feet moved back to the sinks. “Maybe she should just stay in there,” Eyeliner said.

  “Yeah, because that’s where she belongs. In a toilet.”

  Linnea said, “Hey, Meggie. Your mom is gross. I’m just saying.”

  “And your mom’s a whore!”

  “Yeah? Then I guess Jay likes whores better than big fat cows like your mom.”

  Megan rushed the door again and made it rattle. “He does not.”

  “Yeah, right.” Linnea was running out of rotten things to say. She was going to get in trouble for cutting English when it wasn’t even her fault.

  Megan and Eyeliner were talking so she couldn’t hear, all whispers. Then they left. The door swung open and they were gone. Linnea stayed put. She knew they were probably just outside so when she came out they could jump her. How long was she going to have to wait for somebody else to come in so she could leave? She unlatched the stall door and peered out to make sure they were gone. There was a window open just enough to let a little air in but she didn’t know if it went anywhere and then she remembered the beautiful day outside and it wasn’t fair.

  Why did she have to even know Megan, but she did, she was somebody Linnea would have to drag around for her whole stupid life because Jay was stupid enough to marry Angela. And it was a purely horrible thing to realize that Max was what was called Linnea’s half brother but he was Megan’s too. Horrible horrible horrible.

  Megan was going to grow up to be just like Angela, a big whiny top-heavy cow with a lot of boys always hanging around her. Did that mean Linnea would turn into her own mother and wake up every day in a bad mood and telling everybody else they were doing things wrong? Now that was depressing.

  Some kind of noise started up, somebody shouting, but small and far away and Linnea couldn’t tell if it was inside or outside, beyond the window. Then a ripping, popping sound. A door slammed. Then the echoing noise of feet running in the empty hallway. More shouting, she couldn’t make out the words.

  Was something happening? Was it some kind of crazy stuff?

  She left the stall and went to stand next to the hallway door. She couldn’t tell if anybody was on the other side or not. She put her mouth to the opening. “Megan?”

  No answer. Her heart was jumping around and the commotion of it was making her head feel blurred. She had to decide something but whatever it was wouldn’t stay still. It was about the door, which had always been an ordinary door but now it was like a door in a movie, something the camera stayed on for a long time so you knew it was important. She put her hand flat against it, as if letting the hand do its own deciding, and then came the sound of slow feet coming down the hallway and stopping just outside.

  THREE

  Foster’s wife belonged to the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and probably some others he’d forgotten about. Foster told her she seemed to join any organization that thought human beings had been a bad invention. His wife said he could make fun all he wanted, but they were all about worthwhile goals, like responsible stewardship and living in harmony with nature.

  Harmony, Foster said, now that was a good one. Nature was a constant fight for food or territory, and every creature out there was either prey or predator or sometimes both, and that included forlorn polar bears on melting ice and lovable orangutans and anything else whose affecting, full-color photograph was used to manipulate people like her into writing more checks. Anyway, the next time the deer came down from Mt. Tam and munched on her roses, he wanted to hear her talk about harmony and stewardship. His wife told Foster that he just enjoyed arguing and being disagreeable.

  He couldn’t argue back without proving her point, so he silenced himself and waited for her to leave. She was preparing to go out, and this required phone consultations and marching back and forth between different rooms, and wondering out loud where were her shoes, her keys, and so on, and here was the lunch she had prepared for him, and this was how he was to go about reheating it, and he had to remember his medicine, which was all set out on the kitchen counter, did he want her to call and remind him?

  “Feral cats,” Foster said.

  “What?” His wife’s eyebrows rose and hovered like some old-time Applause-O-Meter, except here the dial went from exasperation to alarm.

  “People want them to be endangered.”

  “Entirely disagreeable,” his wife pronounced, taking herself off.

  Foster waited while the car made its way down the long hill of the driveway, pulled into the street and receded, leaving a faint, stinging silence behind it. “Am not,” he said aloud.

  In fact, Foster was mildly in favor of preserving marine mammals and hummingbird habitat and scenic rivers, and mildly annoyed by most of his own species. What he didn’t care for was anything he regarded as sentimental or falsely optimistic. Big fish ate little fish. Species evolved or failed to do so. Everything reproduced and died, everything wound up on the scrap heap of mortality. He’d had two bouts with prostate cancer and either that or something else was likely to finish him off sooner rather than later, and he didn’t want to have to pretend it wasn’t happening.

  He had the house to himself for some blessed space of hours. She had gone into the city and there she would shop and lunch. She had an errand involving drapery fabric, or maybe it was upholstery fabric or maybe it wasn’t fabric at all, but bathroom lighting fixtures or some other household trophy. It was often true, as she accused him, that he did not pay attention to the things she told him. They had been married more than forty years, and by now he figured he’d already heard everything she had to say.

  So much of what came out of her mouth was just a kind of anxious noise, meant to reassure herself that she still existed, still retained her full complement of opinions, observations, preferences, imperatives. From time to time Foster dipped his oar into the stream, answered back, made listening noises, supplied information where required. But he simply couldn’t keep up. What he called talking, she called “communication.” On those occasions when she punished him by remaining silent, he usually had to have the punishment pointed out to him. It hurt her feelings, and her hurt feelings became one more of her infallible grievances, something used against him.

  A good marriage? A bad one? A little of each, he thought, and anyway it hardly mattered by this late date, their children grown and gone, and only these last, exhausted years remaining. They’d knit themselves together and now, after the surgeries, the professionally sympathetic doctors, the explanation of what was meant by “recurrence,” it was time to begin the process of unknitting.

  There was a sense in which he had already removed himself from her. Dying was something you did alone; he needed to practice for it. He hated his wife’s solicitude, her extravagant worrying, her inquiries after the state of his damaged, leaky body. He pushed her away, he said he was fine, leave him be. Of course her fears were in large part for herself. She was terrified of sleeping alone, waking alone, moving through her remaining days alone. Foster knew this. The future cast its shadow. But he could not allow himself to feel pity for her, lest he feel pity for himself, and so become entirely undone. He wanted to be left in peace, or the closest he could come to it.

  Today he had his little space of solitude, and his excellent cup of coffee, and the thin winter sun angling through the windows of the breakfast room. He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. He didn’t want to t
hink about anything. He didn’t want to be in pain, or dread being in pain. If only the light could go out and take him along with it.

  A noise drew him back to himself. Something outside that scraped or scratched. Even before he opened his eyes he identified it as a rake moving over rough ground.

  At the edge of the large and well-kept backyard, with its koi pond and footbridge and plantings of bamboo and Japanese maples, its bird-friendly shrubs and variety of feeders, a man—a young man? teenager? all he could see was a slight figure in a hooded sweatshirt—was raking the dead leaves out of the English ivy. They employed all manner of people to tend to the lawn and garden, and so this was not in itself startling, although Foster had not seen this person before, and his wife usually told him when to expect a crew—that is, the latest person who’d shown up at their door asking for work. Of course it was likely that she’d said something but he’d missed it. For once this bothered him, as if he should be making an effort not to let anything slip past him.

  The boy had already filled a number of tall brown paper leaf bags—he must have started working along the driveway, out of Foster’s view—and now he began hauling these around the corner of the house. When he came back to the rake, a black dog bounded alongside him, sniffing the borders and raising his leg on a teak garden bench.

  Foster tapped on the window glass but they were too far away. A dog would not do, would not do at all. Who told him he could bring a dog anyway? His wife wouldn’t have allowed it; dogs, in her view, were only slightly less destructive in a garden than deer.

  Foster went to the back door and opened it, called out, but now the boy had a leaf blower going, running it along the edge of the beds. The racket was obnoxious. The boy had his back to Foster, the dog was pawing at the edge of the koi pond, onto some scent, maybe. “Hey!” Foster called. “You, scram!”

  The dog raised his head, gave Foster a level glance, then went back to his absorbing task. The boy still hadn’t seen him. Foster stepped outside—it wasn’t really that cold—onto the bluestone path. His ankle wobbled—