by Chris Adrian
“That’s disgusting,” Vivian said, but it actually looked rather appetizing to Jemma. She’d had no nausea since she’d seen the crab earlier, and was quite hungry now. She wasn’t actually nervous, either. She’d only said that to express solidarity with her friend. In fact, all day, ever since she’d seen the crab, she’d been in a fine mood. It was the fish, she was sure, that were making her happy, and she thought her good mood would persist even if Vivian lost the election. The crab had brought tidings so glad that there was nothing that could make Jemma sad that night.
The message was secret, and just for her. She read it without knowing it, and only became aware she had received the news hours after the ugly creature had dropped off the glass and drifted back into the deep black water underneath the hospital. It was as if the crab had announced in her a confirmation of everything she’d been so tepidly suspecting in the past weeks, that they were indeed floating in anticipation of a new world, and that she herself may anticipate it also. Her old fears finally seemed unreasonable to her, and she wondered, all day long, why she would not marry Rob Dickens.
“Oh, give me a cupcake, dammit,” said Vivian. “And somebody tell me a story. “
“Have you heard about the coprophile of Seven East?” Rob asked. Didn’t Jemma love him enough to marry him? Certainly she did. She loved him too much to marry him, too much to have another light hit him in the head, or have an asteroid come out of the sky to crush him, or to hit him in the face with a meat tenderizer, or establish with him such a miserable institution as a marriage. What use was there for it anyway, now?
“You mean Maggie?” Vivian asked.
“No, a real one. A pair, actually.” Vivian hadn’t heard. But surely there was no danger in it now. That was what the crab had said to her. I am here, you are floating not in a sea of death, but a sea of plenty. Everything is new. “I heard it from Jordan Sasscock,” Rob said.
“A reliable source,” Vivian said, leaning across the table now.
“He was walking by the call room on Seven East when he heard some groaning inside, or crying, so he stood by the door and listened. There was another groan, and he was about to knock when he heard the groan again, and understood that it wasn’t a groan of distress. It was the other sort of groan.”
“A groan of undress,” said Vivian. If he drowned, if he got strangled by an octopus, if he got bitten by a poisonous child—if anything happened, it had been given to her to fix it. So was it so unreasonable to think that she could fix, or that they could fix together, or avoid altogether, the more subtle injuries of marriage? Her brother would say no, but she was thinking maybe, maybe, and maybe. Rob had become used to her saying no to him, but had not given up asking. “Marry me,” he’d say, just as they were falling asleep, and first thing in the morning she’d tell him, “No.”
“Exactly. He would have kept walking, except he heard something else. There were two voices, male and female, and now the male voice said, Oh Darling, shit on me!”
“No way.”
“No shit,” Rob said. “But yes, shit! It went on and on while he listened. I’m going to shit! and I’m shitting! and Now—you shit on me!” Jemma’s imagination, recognizing an opportunity to be perverse, drew the couple for her while Rob and Vivian laughed hysterically, each of them embellishing the story that Jemma was forced to watch. The faceless heads on the couple in the call room popped off easily enough, and were replaced, at first, with Dr. Sasscock’s head, and then with her head and Rob’s head, and she watched the whole thing, not too shocked and not too intrigued, and asked herself the inevitable question—could she, could she—and decided, while Rob and Vivian had rolled themselves to the floor, and Vivian had finally forgotten her anxiety, that if you loved someone enough to eat their poop, then you surely loved them enough to marry them.
“And the last thing he heard,” Rob said, laughing and gasping, “before he ran away, was the man’s voice saying, I hope that’s not a peanut—I have an allergy!” They had both raised themselves back to their seats when he said this. Now they fell back down, Vivian dragging a cupcake after her that stuck against the side of her head. She and Rob were further transported into raptures of hilarity, but Jemma sat calmly, remembering the oath she took with her brother fifteen years before. “Swear!” he’d said, as serious and spooky as Hamlet’s ghost. Swear! I will never get married like them, they’d said together. If you knew him, she thought, you’d release me. On the subject of the baby she was quiet, because she knew that would only infuriate him more, and though he’d never made her swear not to reproduce, nor conducted any rituals to compromise her fertility, she had always understood that it was an even greater sin than marriage, to have a baby and fill it up with all your regrets and failures.
“Oh, that’s funny,” said Vivian, when they’d recovered again and lifted themselves back to the table. She took a bite from the cupcake that fell on her, and wiped the icing from her hair with a napkin. “Isn’t it funny, Jemma? Why aren’t you laughing?”
“I’ve heard it before,” she said, though she hadn’t, and she knew Rob had made it up just for the occasion of Vivian’s anxiety. Vivian seemed released by all the laughing. She ate another cupcake, and some pretzels, and two pieces of cheesecake, while they all repeated fish stories, Vivian the only one among them to have seen a whale.
When Rob’s watch alarmed they left the conference room and went down to the lobby, where Father Jane announced the election results. She named the members of the Council first. There were not many surprises. It would look much like the Committee, except for the absence of those who’d run for Universal Friend. Jemma moved closer to Rob and took his hand as Father Jane went on, starting with the runner-up positions. Monserrat would be Third Friend. There was cheering and applause. Far away Jemma could see the tamale lady jumping up and down as graciously as that could be done.
“Hey,” she said, close to Rob’s ear. “Let’s do it.”
“Huh?” he said, over the noise.
“Let’s do it,” she said. Father Jane announced that Vivian would be Second Friend. She handled the news as well as any beauty-contest runner-up. She waved her hands and clapped back at the people applauding her, but the muscles of her jaw were bunched up in knots.
“Let’s get married,” she said to Rob, but he was leaning over toward Vivian, hugging her with one arm while Jemma pulled on his other one.
“The office of First Friend will be held by… Ishmael!” Jemma pulled harder on Rob’s arm.
“Hey,” she said. “Listen to me.” She was almost all intent on getting him to hear her, though a part of her mind was suddenly anxious at the prospect of living under Dr. Sundae’s penitent reign of terror, or becoming a citizen of Dr. Snood’s Republic of Smarm. “I want to get married,” she said again. “I changed my mind.” This time he heard her, and his face became entirely blank before he smiled and abandoned poor, disappointed Vivian. He grabbed her ears with both hands and pulled her face to his face for a kiss, and neither was listening when Father Jane made the last announcement, so the news that Jemma had been elected to the office of Universal Friend had to be repeated for both of them.
Snow is falling all over Severna Forest, from the brown brick gates to the steps of the clubhouse, from Beach Road to the top of Waste-Not Hill, settling on the rotted ruin of Calvin’s old tree fort down by the river, and outside Jemma’s window, collecting silently, layer on layer upon her sill while she sleeps. She’s been dreaming all night of snow—it began to fall just as she settled into bed, while she raised her bottom in the air and pushed her face into her pillow, burrowing into the blankets until they were twisted just right and the pillow heaped up in pleasing mounds on either side of her head. Turned toward the window she could see it striking against the glass, and as she fell asleep she saw the usual red darkness behind her eyes broken up with bright white motes. She was a cold princess riding a swan made of ice, a liberated snowman who went campaigning all over the country to free other snowme
n from static servitude, and she was the snow itself, cast high over Severna Forest and settling forever over every house and person.
It is almost something that we can do together, to become the snow. Or rather, we can do it at the same time—I am as invisible to the dream Jemma as I am to the waking one and you cannot see me behind her and above her and beside you. We are settling along the sloping green roof of Mr. Duffy’s store, and along the railings of the clubhouse porch; all over the golf course, up on the hills and down in the dells and over the traps full of cold sand, we are draped as a blanket. Over the Nottingham’s house, over their oblivious dog in the yard, over Rachel’s house and her new bicycle—with her birthday so close to Christmas she usually never gets good presents but this year was an exception—with its fancy pink banana seat with the lambskin cover that Rachel forgot to remove for the night and the long, luxurious handlebar tassels that stream like glory when she flies down a hill. It’s so much better than your bike, but she has forgotten it outside, and you are free now to cover it up and muffle its brilliance. She will be lucky to find it before the next thaw.
Down beyond the fifth hole, where the railroad tracks run right by the river, we settle gently on the tracks, and over the teenagers playing a new game—they lie between the tracks and let the train pass over them. We muffle their shouting, and after the train passes they keep staring up into the sky, and they get a different feeling, looking into the heart of the storm. Instead of the usual strange exalted sadness that comes after the train passes they feel an unusual peace and in a fit of vulnerable, sentimental foolishness they think it is the spirit of Christmas gently attacking them just when they thought they had become forever immune to its treacly power, but really it is just the wonder that comes of staring into the heart of an angel and a girl.
We perish on the river, snowflake by snowflake, but miss nothing of what dies, and the river freezes a little more with every touch, until we are settling on it, too. It’s a lovely sensation, you decide, to feel stretched and pulled down over the whole town, to fall from so high and settle so low, to feel you are a giant who has thrown herself affectionately and protectively over every house, crouching everywhere to gather every home in your arms. You feel the hearts and minds and lives of every creature inside as a bright warmth in your belly, where I only feel like I have eaten a bug, and your dream increases in beauty even as you start to wake, while I fall back to the world, anxious and disappointed and yearning to be free. When you wake you forget what a dreadful day you’ve entered into, and you spend a whole minute kneeling on your pillow to stare out the window at the wonderful snow thrown over the trees and the houses and the river, feeling a kinship with it that you can no longer understand, until you remember what day it is, and moan, and knock your head against the glass.
Jemma hated Christmas Eve. Every year she woke up already wanting the day to be over. She’d sit on her bed, not believing that a whole twenty four more hours would have to pass before Christmas would come, staring at the clock on her wall: faceless Holly Hobby with her arms twisted hideously behind her back, her pointing finger would take forever just to move from one minute to the next. The pervasive quality of waiting ruined the day. In the morning her father engaged in the annual construction of waffle houses, building them plank by plank with maple syrup caulk and cinnamon stick tenons while Jemma watched, her nose sitting just above the kitchen counter, her belly aching not just with hunger but with anticipation. The ache persisted even after she’d eaten the house, from the whipped-cream smoke rising from the chimney down to the square kiwi doormat, and no matter how many grilled cheese sandwiches she ate for lunch or how deeply she dived into the moo goo gai pan during the traditional Christmas Eve Chinese dinner—no matter how much she ate she remained hungry for the next day. Time seemed to pass slower and slower the closer she got to the following dawn, so a sled ride down the hill took half as long at nine in the morning than at four in the afternoon. She would sit on her sled watching the trees go by as slowly as a parade, so she could pick out the ones with testaments of love carved into the bark, and notice the winter squirrels perched in the naked branches, their mouths moving in slow motion as they chattered at her. Distances stretched twice as long as on other days, so the trip into town seemed as long as the trip into DC on a regular day. Water for hot chocolate took twice as long to boil, a videotape took forever to rewind, even a glass of water took forever to fill from the refrigerator spout. The whole day was full of extra time. Jemma used it all to fret, and to consider how Christmas, when it came, would pass in an instant, and she would come to herself suddenly on the twenty sixth of this month feeling like she’d missed it all somehow, even though she’d spent a whole lifetime, the day before, in suffering, suffering anticipation.
She suffered through breakfast, through the morning’s recreation, though lunch, through an afternoon of static sledding and eternally boring movies that never ended—A Bugaloo Christmas, A Little Pony Village Christmas, Smurfette Saves Christmas… Again! She suffered through tasteless afternoon snacks, and suffered even when it became necessary to run the inevitable early-evening errand. Jemma followed her mother through the supermarket, on a quick trip, having just dashed into the store, leaving Calvin in the car, to buy eggs for the morning and a set of replacement lights for the string on their tree that had gone dark, but the time between one step and the next was interminable. Her eyes were level with her mother’s belt—wide and black and shiny, the sort of thing Santa might wear, except it cinched a puffy yellow snowsuit instead of a red velvet coat.
“Is this line moving?” she asked her mother, who by this time of the evening traditionally began to ignore most of what she said, so Jemma had to repeat herself a few times before getting a perfunctory, “Shush.” The line was not moving. The conveyor barely inched along. The stuttering clerk engaged in extended conversation with every person in line, and talked for what seemed like at least five minutes with her mother about ways to make your eggs fluffy, all while more slow, silent people shuffled into line behind them, everyone looking at their shoes or at the snow falling thickly outside, but no one looking at their watches or noticing how time had almost stopped. Outside Jemma looked for her footprints in the snow, but they had already been covered. It always took her mother a long time to find the car, and tonight in the darkness and the snow it seemed to Jemma that they would wander forever among the white lumps that were anonymous and identical except where one was lit up inside, so the whole thing shined red and gold as if heated from within. They walked toward two of these, thinking it must be Calvin, keeping a light on for them, but they both drove away before they could reach them. Then, just as Jemma sensed that her mother was about to begin cursing at the snow, Calvin’s head and chest popped out from a lump ten cars down and waved to them.
“Over here,” he called out, and honked the horn with his foot. Their mother, when they were in the car, scolded him for opening the sunroof and getting snow in the car, then thanked him for saving their lives.
“They would have found our frozen corpses on Christmas morning,” she said. “I want you to tell your father that.” He was in surgery that night.
“I would have come looking for you before then.”
“And found our frozen corpses. I was ready to die already. Weren’t you, Jemma?”
“What time is it?”
“Never mind that. Are you ready to see Santa?” There would be a distribution of gifts that night under the Severna Forest Christmas tree, an annual tradition.
“Not the real Santa,” Calvin said.
“What time is it?”
“No, of course not. A licensed representative, like all the others.”
“I wouldn’t stand for it if I were him. I’d make them pay.”
“Oh, they pay. And there’s a long form, and a special school. Sheriff Travis was gone for months. Don’t you remember?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost time, Jemma. Look at the snow. It’s
quiet and content and never complains or asks what time it is. You should be like that. Calvin, you are my eyes. Seatbelts off? Here we go!”
She hated to drive in the dark, and hated worse to drive in the snow, because she saw poorly at night, and the snow blinded and distracted her. She ran stop signs and stopped at green lights and made several wrong turns on the long ride home, but neither Calvin’s shouted warnings nor the strange, backward hissing noise their mother made by sucking air through her teeth every time they nearly wrecked made the trip go any faster, or distracted Jemma from the waiting.
At first, watching the snow was not particularly instructive. It drifted, slowly, or rushed slowly at the windshield and struck the glass and melted, or stuck on top of the snow already piled on the hood. Only after they were home, the tree lights fixed and the eggs put away, and after they had bundled themselves up again for the walk down to the tree—everyone had to walk or ride a sled, unless the weather was truly dangerous, in which case the event would be canceled—did the snow actually soothe her. Walking hand in hand with her mother, she leaned back her head and looked up, catching snowflakes in her open mouth, and something in the pattern of snowflakes lessened the tension in her belly. She stumbled a few times, and hardly noticed when the teenagers, hooting and holding flares aloft, passed them on sleds as they walked down the hill, or noticed the exhausted parents dragging their kids on toboggans up from Beach Road. She noticed the tree first as a multicolored stain on the falling snow. She looked ahead and saw the white star shining over top of the clubhouse roof, and then saw the whole thing as they rounded the building and walked over the yard. The tree, a thirty-foot Douglas fir, was there all year round, but the day after Thanksgiving men came with a cherry picker to string the lights and set the star.