Gifts for the One Who Comes After

by Gifts for the One Who Comes After (v5. 0) (epub)

  Afterward she would let Nicholas drive because that seemed easiest. His confusion, his anger, was more pronounced if she said no.

  But sometimes it was as if her Nicholas had caught up with her. As if he had bridged the lagging gap between them. But if she insisted on driving, insisted on going over the taxes or turning off the stove element, then a stranger would be there, and she would feel time dilate and stretch as Nicholas became an old man, infirm. Her father. Her grandfather.

  “Do you still love me?” he would ask. “Do you still know me?”

  Sometimes, she would think. “Yes,” she would answer.

  And on the road she would sometimes feel that same look of confusion overtake him, as if it was the world that had changed hideously and unexpectedly around him. Then, she would touch his hand, and she would pray he didn’t startle and tap the breaks too hard.

  “Do you remember where you are going?” she would never ask.

  “No,” he would never answer.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll get there. Together. At exactly the same time.”

  iii. Singularity

  Carole at Seventy-Four

  When they came from the stars, Carole greeted the spacemen with an appraising stare. She shook hands delicately. She had woken with the feeling the day would hold something miraculous.

  “Take us to your leader,” the spacemen said.

  There were four of them: green from head to foot, eyes large as black ostrich eggs. The eldest of them had the look of her father: elephant wrinkles. Dark as moss.

  Carole leaned in the doorway. There were things that should be done, she knew. People who should be told. Somewhere government agencies were in a panic. Somewhere interns were being fired, red phones were ringing off the hook. But the house was quiet as the house was always quiet. The air breathed in and out of it. Sunlight dappled the carpeted stairs. Time slowed here.

  “No,” she said at last. She brought them inside. Offered them ginger tea with biscuits on the cracked porcelain tea service her mother had left her when she died.

  The spacemen munched at the biscuits. They were polite.

  “Where do you come from?” Carole asked them.

  “Are you familiar,” said the greenest of them, an eager thing, “with the Horsehead Nebula? Sigma Orionis?”

  “No,” said Carole apologetically.

  “Well,” he said. Munch munch. “Interstellar landmarks are a bit difficult at a certain point. But your biscuits are delicious.” Carole decided she liked that one. He had a certain look about him: his skin was smooth and bright as a mango.

  “What did you see out there?”

  “If you look far enough in one direction,” he said, “you can see the beginning of everything.”

  “Oh?”

  “It has something to do with the way light travels.”

  “And if you look in the other direction?” she asked.

  “No one looks in the other direction,” said the oldest.

  Carole poured the tea in a hot, steaming parabola. She took hers with sugar.

  The spacemen drank enthusiastically under her gaze, rattled saucers, exchanged glances, fondled the crumbs and licked them from their fingers. Looked around

  “We’ve been such a long time travelling,” the greenest of them whispered at last. And then: “Your house is very beautiful.” Carole could see he was wet behind the ears and, remembering her own awkward upbringing, pitied him. She touched his hand. Winked. She was a jazzy beauty in her ancient silk nightgown, her hair gleaming like bone china.

  “Thank you,” Carole replied. “I take pride in it.”

  Carole and the spacemen sat in a glorious ten-minute silence, her index finger touching the edge of the saucer, their hands curled in their laps—lost in that moment after tenderness and just before love.

  Then:

  “You’re as gorgeous as cucumbers,” Carole said. “I love your eyes.”

  The oldest of them coughed. His skin wrinkled and smoothed. Twitched. “We ought to be going now.” He was apologetic.

  So was Carole. She rose unsteadily.

  But the greenest of them lingered. He was sick with sorrow. She could tell. When she showed them to the door, he kissed her fingers, ever so gently, as if he were licking up crumbs. “Will you wait for me?” he asked.

  The space between them was expanding. They were hurtling farther and farther apart from one another.

  Carole smiled. “Call me Penelope. I can wait.”

  Afterward, the house seemed empty. Carole cleaned up the saucers, put away the biscuits. When the phone rang she ignored it. It would only be Anita, demanding to know who her guests were, what they had to say for themselves, would they pay for the damage to the lawn?

  What was there to say?

  The spacemen had come. They had gone. They had found a place in her home, briefly, like a spoon beside a soup bowl on a cold day. And, thinking that, Carole settled down to wait for the slow, graceful arc of things lost returning once more.

  “Here was something that was ours. The one bright and shiny thing the universe had dropped into our laps.”

  SUPPLY LIMITED, ACT NOW

  Because Larry said it would never work, we knew we had to try.

  Because Larry said he didn’t want any part of it, we knew we had to try it out on him first.

  That was the way it was with Larry. That’s how it had always been between us. The four of us knew it. No one questioned it. We could all see the slightly sick look come over Larry’s face as he realized. We could see him turning pale. Pushing at his taped-up glasses and starting to scramble.

  He tried to say something.

  Marvin grabbed the shrink ray.

  Marvin pressed the button.

  And the world popped and crackled around us.

  That’s how it started.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been like that if Larry had never said anything. But when Larry had followed the instructions last time it had been a disaster.

  “FRIENDS,” the ad had said. “HERE’S HOW TO GET at almost NO COST YOUR NEW, Real, Live MINIATURE DOG!”

  “Supply Limited,” the ad said. “ACT NOW!!”

  “Please let me come home with you,” the miniature dog begged in a giant speech bubble.

  The dog was black, with long, floppy ears, cartoonishly wide eyes and a white-speckled snout. Larry, on the other hand, was skinny as a beanpole with a face full of acne. His elbows and knees were huge and knobbly. They stuck out like the knots in the ropes we had to climb for gym class. And if there was any boy who ever was in need of a dog it was him.

  And so Larry sent in his coupons and waited at the door for the mailman every day.

  He waited the way he had every day for the past year; while those other times it had been with terror, this time it was with stupid, fearless joy.

  You see, the thing you need to know about Larry is that his brother Joe had joined the Air Force last September.

  “GEE!! I WISH I WERE A MAN!” said the ad.

  “Come to the UNITED STATES AIR FORCE Recruiting Station,” it said.

  We all wished we could be men—of course we did!—but only Larry’s brother Joe was old enough. So he’d signed up just like it said to. They’d sent him to Honolulu for a while and then after that he had been moved to Seoul where he wrote back letters every once in a while about how hot it was and how many of the shovelheads he had killed and how much he missed his kid brother.

  Those weren’t the letters that worried Larry. Of course, it wasn’t those letters. It was the official letter. The one signed by President Harry S. Truman himself. Larry knew exactly when the mailman came every day. His whole family did.

  But after Larry sent away for his miniature dog? For a couple of weeks anyway things were different. This was about the only time in the whole last year that Larry waited for the doorbell to ring
with something besides near dread.

  And when the mailman arrived, Larry was over the moon!

  We all cast an eyeball on the package when Larry brought it over to the clubhouse, half skipping, half stumbling, his glasses gone crooked and his hair plastered with sweat to his forehead in big, wet, wormy lines.

  The package was small, but that was okay. The dog was a miniature dog. It wouldn’t need a large package.

  The package was beat-up. The tape was scruffy and the glue had crusted and peeled off in parts. One corner of the package had split open.

  We were all there. Marv, Todd, Mel and me—this was back when Mel still came around. But Larry opened the package with glee. We all saw him do it.

  And inside the package? Nothing but a little ball of fur and a tiny collar with the word “Rufus” inscribed into a metal disc that jingled when it fell into his hand.

  We all clapped Larry on the back. We all made apologetic noises.

  “Ain’t that a bite?” Todd said mournfully before he offered him one of the Cokes he had brought over to the clubhouse. The Coke was beautifully cold. You could see the Coke almost melting in his hand. It was June by then and the fresh summer heat had made us all a bit stupid and giddy at the same time. Stupid enough to believe an ad for a miniature dog for only twenty coupons.

  That wasn’t enough for Larry though. Larry was relentless. Larry wrote back to the address the package was stamped with.

  “Please sir or madam,” he wrote. “I have sent the twenty coupons as requested, but my miniature dog did not arrive.”

  And three weeks later there was an envelope.

  And inside the envelope there was a note.

  Dear Valued Customer,

  It appears as if you were the intended recipient of “Rufus,” one of our finest miniature fidos. We’re sorry to hear the news, and can only presume that he has escaped in transit, the little scamp!

  Unfortunately, we cannot offer refunds for missing pets, but we guarantee that Rufus is a loyal dog. We recommend you leave out some Boyer Smoothie Peanut Butter Cups (those are his absolutely favourite!) and, perhaps, Rufus will find his way home to you, his expectant new owner.

  Because of his size, it may take some time. We advise patience.

  Sincerely,

  Arthur Graham,

  President of Norwood Enterprises, Incorporated.

  Des Moines, Iowa

  We told Larry not to bother. We told Larry that Rufus was gone. We told Larry that’s how life was sometimes. No, it wasn’t fair, and no, it wasn’t right, but that’s how it was.

  But Larry didn’t listen. Larry didn’t want to live in a world of “it’s not fair” and “it’s not right.” Who could blame him? We all knew someone who had never made it home. We all had uncles and cousins and big brothers, fathers and grandfathers who never came back from North Africa or Okinawa. We all had prayers we said for the lost ones. And we were all waiting for something.

  Larry was like that.

  If it was possible to love a thing before you had ever seen it and Pastor Davis said that it was, that was how we were all supposed to love God, then that was the way Larry loved that dog. Larry loved Rufus more than God but even that wasn’t saying enough. After all, we could all remember the day when Pastor Davis said, “Let us give thanks,” and Larry spazzed out, shouting, “I don’t wanna give thanks! Thanks for what? Why the hell would God make a world like this one, huh? Thanks for nothing, God!” Larry looked embarrassed after, but he didn’t go back to church and he didn’t say sorry to Pastor Davis neither.

  No. Larry waited for Rufus the Miniature Dog to find his way home. Larry left out the Boyer Smoothie Peanut Butter Cups (just in case). Larry kept the collar in his pocket (just in case). And sometimes, when Larry didn’t think any of us would notice, he would trail behind a little ways as we dragged our skinny asses back from the baseball diamond in Glenn Park. And then we would hear him whistle and call very softly, “Rufus, Rufus, c’mere, boy, c’mere, Rufus. Willya come on home?”

  Finally, it was Melanie who had to say to him, “Let him go, Larry. He’s not coming home. There was never any stinking miniature dog.”

  And because it was Melanie who said it he listened.

  We were all a bit in love with Melanie.

  And so Larry said it would never work. Especially when he saw the shrink ray, nine inches of moulded plastic with these big brass bands looping around the barrel. It coulda been a toy. It looked about as good as anything you got out of a Cracker Jack box.

  Larry said he didn’t want any part of it.

  And maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the way it made us stupid and giddy, just not to be doing anything of real consequence. To lay in the shade of the clubhouse where the air smelled of stale cedar and it didn’t move except when one of us got up to fetch sandwiches and moon pies from the pack. We traded comic books back and forth. We marvelled at the possibilities of cardboard submarines and x-ray glasses. Shoes that would make you two inches taller. And the shrink ray. Of course, the shrink ray.

  Maybe it was because Melanie didn’t come by so much anymore. Not since she had become Melanie, that is. Not since she’d stopped being Mel or Melly. Mel had been one of us. Mel could throw knuckle balls and cheat at rummy. Melanie didn’t do any of those things.

  And Marvin was just being a cauliflower-eared twit anyway. He hadn’t expected it to work.

  And when the shrink ray had worked, well, we all just stared in stupefied wonder. Like we were all waiting for God to take it back.

  “What happened?” Larry said. It sounded like he’d been sucking on the tail of a balloon. It made me giggle. It made us all giggle.

  “Ya got shrunk,” Marvin told him.

  “I did?” Larry asked.

  “Sure as shit,” he said.

  And he had.

  There was Larry, holding half a PB ’n’ J sandwich in his hand, but now it was quarter-sized because Larry was just half a Larry. He was hardly three feet if he was anything.

  “Huh,” said Marvin.

  And none of the rest of us had anything better to add to the conversation so we just let it lie until Todd grabbed the shrink ray out of Marvin’s hand and aimed it at a can of Coke.

  “Be careful,” Marvin said. “The box said to use caution at all times!”

  “Baby!” shrieked Todd with a jazzed grin on his face.

  “What?” said Larry who was still looking around in confusion.

  And then Todd yelled, “Gotcha!” and he cranked up the dial and pressed the button.

  There was a feeling like thunder when there’s no thunder. It made me think of tornado weather. The air got hot and sticky. And it crackled. But there was no noise. And then the Coke bottle was gone. It was tiny. It was no more than a thimble.

  “Boss,” said Todd. His blond hair was sticking up like a fluffed duck’s.

  “Shit,” I said. “I was gonna drink that.”

  “Nothing to do for it,” said Todd. “Larry’ll have to drink it now.”

  “No way. It’s too small for Larry,” I pointed out. Todd just shrugged and then he pointed the shrink ray at Larry.

  “Wait!” yelled Larry. But Todd didn’t wait. The gun went zap. The world went fuzzy and there was Larry, five inches high.

  “Eff you!” Larry shrieked in a near falsetto.

  “Stop spazzing out,” said Todd.

  And maybe that’s where it all should have stopped. Marvin was reading the instructions on the box. He was trying to read them anyway. But then Todd zapped the box and when it was done shrinking they were too small for Marvin to read anymore.

  “Be careful!” Marvin said. “Ya almost got me! Now how are we gonna figure out how it works?”

  “I know how it works!” Todd said.

  “C’mon, man,” said Marvin. “I paid for the thing.”

  “Just ice it, willya? Possession,”
said Todd with infinite patience and condescension, “is nine-tenths of the law.”

  “Candyass!” said Marvin.

  “Spazz!” said Todd.

  “Jerk off!” shrieked Marvin.

  “Just listen, willya?” said Todd. “Listen.”

  And we stopped. And we listened.

  But Todd didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything at all. And neither did the rest of us.

  Because Todd was starting to grin. It was a big grin. It was like some sort of primo super grin. And his eyes, his eyes had this crazed and gleeful look. They were wide as saucers like the kid was on cloud nine. Like this was the living end.

  “This is it,” said Todd.

  And no one said anything.

  “Ya see it, right?” said Todd.

  “Right,” said Marvin.

  He was the first to speak. And he had that grin too. It was crazy. It was infectious. It looked like it was going to split the top off his head. But then I was grinning too. I was grinning right along with them. It was like there were bottle rockets going off in all our brains.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I dig,” said Larry and his voice was tinny and high but didn’t matter because he was grinning too and it was like that grin made him nine feet tall anyway. It was the first time anyone had seen him smile properly since Rufus had chewed his way out of the post.

  Marvin scooped up Larry and tucked him away safely into the front pocket of his checked, flannel shirt.

  “Let’s go,” said Todd.

  We started with trashcans and mailboxes because that was the sort of thing we always started with. They were easy. The McCallisters’. Mr. Kane from around the block who had painted “Remember Our Boys” in big red and blue letters on the outside. WHOOOOSH!

  “See ya later, alligator!” Larry shouted in that high, squeaky voice of his.

  But then it was Todd who got bolder. He was a January baby and so he already had inches on the rest of us. Todd was always the first of us to get bold. Todd was always pushing us a little further down Damnation Alley, saying, “C’mon, can ya dig it? Can ya dig it?” And we could dig it. Hoo-boy, could we ever dig it! We were whooping and hollering, tearing through the neighbourhood.