“It’s your birthday,” Leslie says. She is smiling at me. Her eyes seem excited/electronic.
“Oh,” I say. I have seen fifteen cycles now.
“We scanned compatible, you know. It’s in your charts,” she says quickly, answering the question I was thinking.
“Oh.”
“If you want, my parents would love to have you over to celebrate.” She looks down at the floor, not like a shoelooker, but like she’s ashamed. “They like celebrating things.”
“I don’t celebrate like that or associate with you. Also, everyone thinks your parents are strange,” I say.
“I know, but it would make us all really happy,” she says. This, I realize, is exactly what Mr. Harper was speaking of. Leslie McStowe wants me to make her happy for no reason. I look at her and am lost in something that doesn’t feel like pride or intellect or what truth should feel like. “Please,” she says, and she hands me a paper that is an invitation for later in the day. I take the invitation, and then I walk to the table where I normally sit with the people I usually associate with.
At home, my familial unit says things to me.
“Hello,” my father says.
“You seem agitated,” my mother says.
“You are now on the Good restriction list,” Marlene says.
I don’t say anything to anyone. Without any Good in me, everything looks like a different kind of bad. And all I can imagine are the worst things about everyone and everything. And I can’t tell if my stomach is aching or whether I’m imagining how bad a really bad stomachache might be if I had one right then. Either way it hurts. Ideas that scare me run around in my head. I go to the bathroom. I pull the mirror back. There is an injector, but there is still no Good. None. Only a shaver and fluoride paste and a small medical kit. I look in the medical kit just in case. No Good. I take the empty injector and bring it to my neck. I hit the trigger and stab and hope maybe I’ll get something. I hit the trigger again. Again. I close the mirror, and a small crack appears in a corner of the glass. I go outside. I’m afraid of how bad I feel. No one asks where I am going.
The McStowes live in a complex on the outer part of the section. In our section the poor people all live on the outer parts so those of us on the inner parts don’t have to come in contact with them all the time. They live cramped together in small spaces that are cheaper and, as a result, not as nice in looks or housing capabilities: keeping warm/dry, being absent of animals, etc.
I haven’t had any Good since breakfast. I can feel the no-Good pressing on me. Pulling me down. It is getting dark outside. Out at the edge of the section, there are so many shoelookers slowly moving through the walk-streets. They’ve been abandoned by the people who used to be their families. That’s what happens to most shoelookers. There are a bunch of soon-deads, and there are a few kid-youths and also every other age there is. Once in a while, one of the shoelookers will snap her head up and her eyes will be wild like she just remembered something important. Then, after a few seconds of wild looking and head turning, she’ll drop her head back down.
It’s worse than frustrating. Being around all those downed heads makes me want to close my eyes forever. I follow the gridwalks toward where the McStowes live. I focus on the ground because it doesn’t make me want to disappear as much. The ground on the way there is gray and gray and gray. My shoes are black and gray. Good in its vial is clean/clear.
Long fingernails bite my shoulders. I look up and see a shoelooker my mother’s age. Her hands are near my neck. She screams, “Where are we going?” and shakes me like she’s trying to get me to wake up. Her voice is screechy like she’s been yelling for a long time. I shove her, then I run because I’m very disturbed.
I make sure I’m looking up as I run. I’m sweaty when I reach Leslie’s housing complex. Inside it is not nice. A bunch of cats and a raccoon race and fight in the lobby area. The walls are dirty and the paint is peeling. I walk up a stairwell that smells like a toilet. When I find the McStowe door, I knock on it. I can hear people rustling inside. I imagine myself falling into a jar of needles over and over again. I haven’t had any Good. The door opens. It’s bright inside.
“Happy birthday” comes out of several mouths. The voices together make my heart beat harder.
“Hello,” I say.
“Come in, come in,” says Leslie. There’s a tall man with a skinny neck and gray hair. He wears an ugly shirt with bright flowers on it.
“Great to see you; really great to see you,” Father McStowe says. I’m wondering if in the McStowes’ home people say everything twice.
The food sector is a small space to the left. It smells like something good. In the main sector are Leslie McStowe, her mother, her father, and three fidgeting shoelookers about my age. They have the usual sad/dirty look. They might be from the school. I don’t know. I don’t look at shoelookers.
“Come in,” Mother McStowe says even though I’m already inside. She is a thin woman with a short haircut. There are folds of loose skin under her neck. I come in farther. Everyone is looking at me.
“How was your walk over?” Leslie says. Her face is smiling.
“Bad,” I say. “This part of the section is worse than where my unit lives.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Father McStowe says. “Let’s have some cake now that the man of the hour is here in one piece!” Man of the hour. He is talking about me.
There are two beds in the main section. There are sheets and plates on one bed so it can be a table. There are pillows arranged on the other to make it a place to sit.
“I’ve never had cake,” I say. I haven’t. It isn’t something proud people eat. It makes people fat, my mother says, just like the candy the Antis hand out in the streets.
“Well, isn’t that a shame,” Mother McStowe says even though she is smiling. She has dimples like her daughter. “In this house we eat cake every chance we get, seems like.” She laughs. And so does Father McStowe. Leslie laughs. Even one of the three shoelookers laughs a little. I can tell by how the shoelooker’s shoulders jump while she stares at the floor.
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for me,” I say. “My housing unit is much nicer than this.” It gets quiet, then the house starts laughing some more. Even though I don’t know exactly why they are laughing, I’m not too frustrated.
“This one!” says Father McStowe. “A true comedian.”
“What’s a true comedian?” I ask.
“Joke-tellers, humor-makers,” says Father McStowe. “Back in the old world, it was a life profession to make laughter. One of many interesting old-world lives.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say, ’cause I don’t.
“That’s OK,” says Mother McStowe, still giggling. “Let’s eat some cake.”
“Sounds sweet to me,” says Father McStowe. He laughs, and so does his family.
We move over to the table/bed. The main sector of the housing unit has walls covered in sheets of paper with too many colors on them.
“Cake,” Mother McStowe says as she walks to the food sector, “was a delicacy in the old world used to celebrate events like union-making, the lunar cycle, battle-victory, and, of course, birthdays.” Mother McStowe looks for some utensil in the food sector. I look at Father McStowe and ask, “Is that the food sector your son killed himself in?” There’s a clang/clack sound from Mother McStowe dropping something on the floor.
Father McStowe looks at me. He touches my shoulder. His hand is large/heavy. “You know something”—he speaks low so only I can hear him—“one of the things we like to do in this home is be careful of what we say. What you said didn’t have to be said. And now you’ve hurt my wife. She’ll be fine but—”
“Lying for others is what caused the Big Quick and the Long Big,” I say.
“Maybe. Or maybe it was something else. I’m talking about thinking about the other person, ya know?” Father McStowe whispers to me. “I’m sure you have a lot of ideas about this, but it’s somethi
ng we try around here.” He smiles and touches my shoulder again. “Let’s eat some cake,” he says in a big voice, a voice for everybody.
I haven’t had any Good since breakfast. And here I am. In Leslie McStowe’s house. Because she invited me and because she makes me think of things that aren’t Marlene or optimization or being forever dumb/slow.
Mother McStowe comes back. She smiles at me as she hands me a knife big enough to cut a bunch of things. “It was tradition for birthday boys to cut the cake after the singing of the traditional birthday hymn,” Mother McStowe says. She looks around quickly with wide eyes, then begins to sing. The rest of her family joins in. The shoelookers look down and up, and down and up, trying to decide what to be, and even they mumble along with the McStowes.
Happy birthday to ya, happy birthday to ya
Happy birthday, happy birthday to ya
Happy birthday, it’s your day, yeah
Happy birthday to ya, happy birthday, yeah!
When they finish, Mother McStowe tells me, with her eyes, to cut the cake. The knife cuts through easily. “I forgot that, traditionally, you are supposed to make a wish before you cut into the cake,” says Mother McStowe. “But after is fine, I suppose. You can wish for anything.”
Of course, I wish for Good. I put one more cut into the cake, then Mother McStowe takes the knife from me, and I see she cuts into the middle of it instead of off the side like I did. She cuts pieces for everybody. Father McStowe and Leslie and I sit on the bed made for sitting. The rest stand and chew. The cake is the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten.
“Do you like it?” asks Mother McStowe.
“It’s good ’cause it’s so sweet,” I say. It makes my tongue and teeth feel more alive.
“And it’s an authentic old-time recipe you can’t get anywhere else,” Mother McStowe says.
When half my cake is gone, I turn to Father McStowe. “Do you have any extra Good?” I ask somewhat discreetly, since taking too much Good is not a proud thing. Father McStowe looks at me with cheeks full of cake.
“We like to think of our home as a throwback to an era before industrial Good,” he says. He swallows, then puts a hand on my shoulder, then removes it.
“I need Good.”
“You’re thinking now; this is then.” Father McStowe does something with his hands. “Think of our home as a place where no one needs industrial Good.”
“Is it because you’re poor that you don’t have any Good?” I ask. Father McStowe laughs so hard he spits wet cake onto the floor. Quickly, Mother McStowe cleans it up. He looks to his daughter, and says, “This one is funny. A real comedian.”
“I’m not telling jokes,” I say.
“That’s why you’re so good,” Father McStowe says. “When I want to be funny, I usually tell an old-time joke, like this one.” He clears his throat. “Have you heard the one about the deaf man?”
“What?”
“That’s what he said!” Father McStowe says. “If you would have said no, I would have said neither has he. Get it?” He touches me on the shoulder and chuckles. Leslie and the shoelookers giggle with him. “Truly, we like to think we, as you’ve seen, have created a space that is really a throwback to a time before the Big Quick or even before the Long Big. My family and I re-create that decent era for people who might want or need it.”
“I’m frustrated because you don’t have any Good. I’m leaving,” I say.
“What we—hey, Linda, could you grab some of our literature?—offer here is a way to feel and be happy without Good. We can feel good just by being together, and you can join us a few times a week depending on the package that works for you.” Leslie is smiling, and the shoelookers are eating cake, switching between weak smiles and lost frowns.
“I’m going home,” I say.
“Take some literature,” he says. With her face smiling, Mother McStowe hands me a pamphlet. On it are smiling faces and words and different prices. Different amounts of time are trailed by different credit values on each row of information.
“There are lots of choices,” Leslie says.
“Think it over. If any package feels right for you, let Leslie know. We recommend starting off with at least three days a week here with us in the Era. You’ll feel brand-new. Just look at these guests.” Mother McStowe points to the shoelookers, who are still munching cake. They look at me and they all try to smile.
I get up. “I’m frustrated because I thought this was something different,” I yell. I haven’t had any Good. I feel the pamphlet crushing in my fist. On the front, it says LIFE IN THE ERA in curly letters. “Also, your daughter doesn’t frustrate me, so that’s why I came.”
“Look over the literature,” Father McStowe says when I’m at the door.
“I haven’t had any Good since the morning, that’s why I’m emotional,” I scream before I slam the door and run back to my own housing unit. I get tired, so I have to walk. Plus, there is no Good at my housing unit anyway. The night is black. The gridwalk is gray and gray and gray. There’s some sweet left on my teeth, and even after the sweet is gone, thinking about it helps keep me walking.
At breakfast the next day, the Good makes me feel better for a few minutes but not even through to the last sip of my milk. My neck aches. My brain throbs. The floor of the school is mostly tan, and the patterns against the tan are at least easy to drown in. In Mr. Harper’s class, we are talking about the Long Big and how it led to the Big Quick, like always. I think of cake during class.
At lunch I go to sit with my usuals. At the table Scotty says, “Back off, we don’t want to associate with a shoelooker like you.” Somebody else says, “Go sit with the downs over there.” I just stand there looking at the ground because I’m not a shoelooker even though, with my head down, and the feeling in my head, and the tears almost in my eyes, I probably look like one.
I try to be proud and look up. I feel a boom and a hurt under my eye. I fall. The table laughs. I see that John has punched me to say I am officially not welcome. My face hurts. I want to lie there, but I get up because I’m pulled up. It is Leslie McStowe who pulls me. She is frowning. When I’m standing, I pick my head up, and she walks with me to the nurse’s office. “It’s OK,” Leslie says, lying like they used to, like she does. And I am happy to hear her do it.
In the nurse’s office Ms. Higgins stares at the two of us. Samantha is sitting in a chair. Samantha is not healthy, ever, but she looks at me, like, Welcome, and does her happier moaning sound. Ms. Higgins pulls a cold pack out of a cold box. I put the cold over my eye. It makes the hurt less. I sit in a chair next to Samantha. Leslie sits in one next to me.
“He got hit,” Leslie says.
“Yah ohkay?” Samantha groans.
“You got hit,” Ms. Higgins says.
“Yes,” I say. Ms. Higgins says nothing. Then she stands up and opens the drawer that holds her injector. Hearing the drawer slide open makes my skin tingle. She turns her back to us so she can feed some fresh new Good into the injector.
Then, at the office door, I see my sibling. “I heard,” says Marlene, “you’ve become a real shoelooker.” Leslie touches my not-cold hand. Her fingers are warm on mine. “Ben is on a Good restriction, Higgins,” Marlene says. With one eye, I look at Leslie McStowe, then at Samantha, then at Marlene, and then at Ms. Higgins. Ms. Higgins screws a vial of Good into the injector. “I’ll report you,” Marlene says.
Ms. Higgins continues screwing the vial into the injector and does not look at Marlene. Marlene stands at the office door. She’s holding a cup of water. All I want is Good. Ms. Higgins looks at me with her loaded injector. Leslie squeezes my hand. I look at Ms. Higgins. I shake my head. Ms. Higgins drops her injector on her desk then sits down in her chair. She turns her head and looks at the wall. We are quiet. It’s quiet for a long time. Leslie looks at me. She wants to smile, but she can’t, so with my head down, one hand warm, one hand cold, one eye bruising and the other looking at her, I say, “Have you heard the one about the
deaf man?”
KATHLEEN ALCOTT
Natural Light
from Zoetrope: All-Story
I won’t tell you what my mother was doing in the photograph—or rather, what was being done to her—just that when I saw it for the first time, in the museum crowded with tourists, she’d been dead five years. It broke an explicit promise, the only we keep with the deceased, which is that there will be no more contact, no new information. In fact, my mother, who was generally kind and reliable in the time she was living, had already broken this promise. Her two email accounts were frequently in touch. The comfort I took in seeing her name appear, anew in bold, almost outweighed the embarrassment of the messages that followed. She wanted me to know that a small penis size was not an indictment against my future happiness. She hoped I would reconsider a restaurant I might have believed to be out of my budget, given a deal it made her pleased to share. She needed some money for an emergency that had unfolded, totally beyond her control, somewhere at an airport in Nigeria. Though these transmissions alarmed me, it was nice to be able to say what I did, when an acquaintance or administrator at the college where I teach saw my eyes on my phone and asked, Something important? It was nice to be able to say, Oh, it’s just an email from my mother. Given how frequently we had written while she lived—the minute logistics of a renovation, my cheerful taxonomies of backyard weeds—she avoided the spam filter after her death, and I could not bring myself to flag her.
She had not died as she lived. Does anyone? Though my mother had not been vain in a daily sense, she often made me, in the weeks of her dying, rub foundation onto the jaundice of her skin. This was something she could have done alone—she never lost power in her hands, as far as I knew—but one of the dying’s imperatives is to make the living see them. This is nobody’s fault, but it is everybody’s burden. That sounds like something my father would say, half-eating, in the general direction of the television: Nobody’s fault, everybody’s burden. Perhaps he did, and this thinking made its way into mine. I don’t always know well where I’ve left a window open.
The Best American Short Stories 2019 Page 4