“Of course. The grandfather tree, poor boy.”
We’re across the round table at a slight angle, close enough that she can reach out and almost touch my cheek, though it is emotion – and recollection – that stills her hand rather than any shortcomings of distance.
“We were living with Jane, I don’t even know if you would remember her. Titanium Girl?”
“Titanium Girl?”
I don’t think this is the moment to confess I used to jerk off thinking about this woman, though like most centerfolds, I imagined these big-breasted, wide-hipped women as giants, unable to imagine any arrangement of scale where I was not the size of a toddler in comparison to those impossibly perfect and manifestly female proportions.
“You’re telling me Aunt Janie was Titanium Girl?”
“We were both single mothers. It made sense to throw in together, though the original Crimson Cowl killed her little Jimmy and after that, well Jane went off a bad way with the drugs and then those photo shoots and then they confined her out at Rykers, back before they had the technology they have now, but she went quite willingly. It was too much for me too and I stopped going out, just concentrated on you. A year or two went by and I was thinking about art school, just an ordinary immigrant girl without a husband and trying to think of a new life and then I met your mother.”
Georgia laughs, wiping away a tear of sadness as the true source of her delight finds focus still in her eye cast across the dining room table, an autopsy of the curried roast underway beneath my fork.
“And then one day out of nowhere John Lennon turns up at our house,” Maxine says slowly, hands clasped over her wife’s and eyes fixed now on mine. “Imagine that?”
“What happened?”
“He was a blithering madman,” Georgia says. “He told me about the Plan and said what he intended to do.”
She shakes her head minutely.
“I didn’t even know if he was serious . . . or that it was possible. He wanted to take you, and said he would be back to collect you and all the other children. When he left, I saw the Ono woman in the shadows outside.”
“We left that night and never went back,” Maxine says. “Two days later, the Doomsday Man tried his hand at global genocide and thank Christ he failed.”
“How did he do that?” Tessa asks, daring to pipe up from her position at the far side of the table.
I rake my fingers across my scalp as I try and encapsulate the details of this sad history lesson, but Georgia’s already ahead of me. It’s weird to hear such industry-specific words tumbling from my Irish mother’s mouth.
“He had a map of the world in his head,” she explains. “He’d traced nearly every minor telepath and latent psychic on the globe and found a way to use them as a superconductor for his own powers. He became the Doomsday Man. He made the mistake of co-opting Thoughtstorm, though, a notorious villain of the time, who broke free thanks to his own powers and alerted the Star-Spangled Squadron and the Protectors about what was happening. And they took him down. Down from the edge. No trial or anything, or not till much later anyway. Away he went into White Four, as they called it then. Or White Three.”
“White Four,” Maxine confirms with muted helpfulness.
“And ten years later they just let him go?” I scratch my head and give a whistle. “Astounding.”
“A total balls up,” Georgia agrees.
“And have you heard from him since then, granny?” Tessa asks.
“Oh God, darlin’, please don’t call me that, I’ve said before,” George sighs, almost weeping. “No, thanks be. We’ve kept our heads down, tried to keep your father in the dark, poor boy, just so he wouldn’t find us.”
“He must’ve told you something about this Plan of his, for you to be so afraid,” I say and open my palm as if all my reasoning might be found there.
“I need a cigarette,” George says weakly. “Yes, Joe. He said he’d found a place. A sanctuary. He was moving the other mothers and their children there. He wanted me to come, said he’d give me a day to come willingly before he simply ordered me to do it.”
“Mind control?”
“I think so.”
“But then he went and triggered his Doomsday instead?” I ask, marveling at how flawed it all seemed.
“Your mother always blamed the Ono woman,” Maxine says soberly. “And here’s one of the few times and places where we’ll disagree. There was something in him, then, the same as was always there. Something dark. Yearning. It could’ve been a power for good, for hope. Instead, I don’t know how it works when you can see and do the sorts of things you people can . . . but it turned him black, poisoned him. If it was Ono, if she had a role, then it was just that – a role. I wouldn’t blame her any more than I’d blame the bad LSD everyone was taking back then.
“John Lennon had only himself to blame.”
*
I HAVE THE sincere impression there are still a few big holes in the story. Yet I am damned if I know how to move forward. I don’t think beating the answers out of either of them would feel very good, and like I mentioned before, maybe my mum would kick my ass.
“I can’t believe you just . . . hooked up with him like that,” I say eventually.
“Well, it was John Lennon,” Tessa says.
“Tea?”
Georgia stands shakily and moves with haste across to the kitchen and begins fussing with the cups. It takes her a moment to notice the big dent in the side of their retro kettle and I genuflect and shrug.
“Do you have any photos from that time, gran?” Tessa asks.
“Oh no, child,” George says with her back to us. “Young people nowadays, you’d photograph your own shadow and put it on Deviant Art I know, but you’ve got to remember these were different times. We used to have some clippings, but I don’t know, they faded. Newsprint, you know. . . .”
“I can’t remember ever seeing a baby photo,” I say.
The comment falls into the silence and lays there, a semaphore of neglect, letting me draw my own conclusions along with everyone else.
“So the old sperm donor story’s dead and buried,” I eventually say.
“We’re sorry, Joe.”
“And I guess you came along a few years later than you made out,” I say to Maxine with a Maori nod.
“As you said, you remember the house with Auntie Jane.”
“Yeah,” I shrug. “I guess it’s all a mish-mash for me. Tell me no one ever scrambled my thoughts, did they?”
The pair of them stare at me horrified, like I’ve just asked them to come straight with me on any child abuse since we’re ousting the skeletons from the family closet. I want to explain to them how little I remember of my early years and how much it creeps me out. I only have snatched glimpses of the lady with the honey-blonde hair who, it turns out, was yet another world-famous crime-fighter. Titanium Girl, the old face of Colgate and later Hustler. My aunt, in name if not actuality. It’s enough to make me want to hang my head and cry except these walls do not seem as comforting as they once did. Perhaps they never did. Perhaps this coldness I think has dominated half my life stems back from these secrets more so than any imagined inability of my two mothers to come to grips with having a boy instead of a girl they could fashion in their own image. And maybe, really – and this isn’t a thought comfortable to entertain – maybe it was never about my sex.
“We’d never let anyone touch you, Joseph,” Maxine says reverently, appalled.
“Why do you think we did all this, this craziness?” Georgia asks.
Tears dribble over the crease of her chin.
“Our whole fucking life has been about keeping safe. Keeping you safe.”
Georgia wipes at her face with the sleeve of her pullover.
“Now promise us you won’t do anything about going to find him,” she says.
I pause for breath and stare back, dumbfounded by the request, and find I’m probably not able to say anything sensible. It was enough to
make the belated connection about my older half-brother Julian, living in France like a regular lord of the manor, or so says the Internet, a Norman castle in his possession and a string of pop chart failures. Musicians, I don’t know, it’s as crazy as actors, everyone having to cover the mirrors in case they start making out with themselves.
The questions I could field that poor bastard . . . and now they say there were more children, kids my age, and sired by the same super-powerful and ultimately mad-as-fuck schmuck now . . . now what? Disappeared somewhere.
I have to be certain.
“I honestly couldn’t tell you what this means,” I say to them after an awkward delay. “I’m not sure I even would want to meet him.”
Before they can relax I add, “I don’t know I could do anything less. You’ve been hiding from him all this time, ma. Is it because you know where he is?”
But Georgia shakes her head, a touch of well-played regret in there somewhere, convincing me to imagine an old lady reflecting on a life misspent, an affair that could’ve been something so much more, perhaps. And I nod knowingly, appreciating her pain for one genuine moment – which is a shame, because she’s lying her ass off and I’m just too much of a soft touch to know until it’s too late.
Zephyr 4.10 “A Direct Contributor”
ITS THREE DAYS later and we’re civilians again as Tessa and me brace against the cold while visiting the new Bloomingdales downtown of Jackson. There are police everywhere because of the big religious confab the City States guys are having in Washington. Why exactly we need a dark green tank parked like a slab of living newsreel on the corner of New Lexington and Wray I cannot tell you, but the guys with the cool headwear Googling us through slitted eyes as they prove they can smoke and chew gum at the same time don’t look like they’re about to explain. The militaristic tenor to the holiday season doesn’t seem to do much to the crowds, which hubbub around us with the patience of rabid Dobermans and the orchestration of a swarm of bees. It feels very much like Tessa and I are in our own private Idaho as we walk against the flow of savings-fixated humanity, the visit to the new store just a curiosity, a pretext, as we talk in muttered code, chins in our scarves, the air thick with the city smells of bratwurst, cigarette ash, paranoia and meconium.
“I dunno, dad,” my darling girl says and not for the first time. “If this is all doing for my head, I can’t imagine what it’s doing for yours.”
“Not much damage to a block of wood,” I joke.
“Seriously,” she says in a voice reserved for reciting text messages. “You’ve got to level with me. If the whole, you know, freaking John Lennon thing wasn’t enough, what about what gran said about all the other little Lennonites mixing it up out there?”
“But are they mixing it up out there?”
“Just say what you mean already.”
“Well, look at you and me, honey,” I say and immediately drop my voice as we pass too close to a black guy pulling his best Ray Charles, inch-thick glasses vaguely turned our way. “Apparently we’re of the House of John, if what George says is true, and we’ve got the powers to match.”
“So you’re saying the skies should be thick with ‘em, if what’s said is true?”
“You’re just as sharp as you look.”
“Thanks,” Tessa says and chuckles against the breeze.
We wait on the corner for traffic and the lights go and two cops on horses trail ahead of us, steaming apples the order of the day as tourists snap photographs against their best intuition. A homeless guy who looks like he’s been made-up as part of some frat-boy prank stands on the corner, rouged and bearded cheeks marked by tears as he holds up a cardboard sign that reads YOUR ADVERT HERE $20. A group of school girls rush by smacking parked traffic with their hockey sticks and the industrial-military-police complex must have more important things to do because they pay the ratty chicks little heed as they rush against the banking traffic, horns honking, gulls batting against the hectic breeze as it lifts heads above the main boulevard. A neon sign with an image of me holding a cheeseburger like it is the secret power source of the universe or something gives way to an ad for something else, I’m not sure what else, Black Honey and Shade, two hot black chicks working out in a gym and then rolling around together on a beach, on a sofa with white towel duvet, on a Virginia front lawn, in the middle of a deserted cemetery. I shake my head and think it’s no wonder people get sick of us.
I indicate the looming shopfront as we cross through the chaos. A megaphone somewhere suggests there’s a public rally on one of the cross streets. We’re not far from New Central Park, just a couple of blocks.
“You’re still up for this?” I asked with cocked thumb.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me you’re going to do something about it,” Tessa says in the imperceptibly adult way she’s developed of late.
“About?”
“The Doomsday Man.”
“John Lennon?”
“Based on what gran said, I’m not sure we should say his name so much,” Tessa quite sensibly replies. “He might, you know, pick it up.”
“Fine,” I respond. “Code name Burger King activated.”
Tessa laughs.
“You want I should find him?”
“You’ve got two pretty good reasons,” she replies. “Either he’s a threat to our very existence or he’s, you know, your freaking dad.”
“Is that word back in again? Freaking?”
“It’s geek chic. Just roll with it.”
“Honey, you can flip a school bus. You don’t need geek chic.”
“Really?” Tessa replies, sounding so genuinely astonished I know for a fact she’s having me on. “My publicist was suggesting I get these little glasses. . . .”
“Publicist, huh?” I shake my head, a grim chuckle on my stubbled mug. “Having a stab at the old man? OK, fair enough. When Windsong starts becoming good for something other than movie premieres, you let me know. Maybe you’ll need a publicist then.”
“I think whoever said we have to use our powers for good was probably interrupted halfway through,” Tessa responds with a wry laugh. “I’m sure she meant a good time.”
I can smirk because for now I’m certain Windsong has a better path ahead of her than all that. When I started in the game, heroes were too aloof to be celebrities. We were more worried about maintaining secret identities. I’m not sure what happened to all that, despite a nagging suspicion that whatever happened, I was a direct contributor.
“You want me to investigate,” I say eventually.
We cross the sidewalk, waiting for a small knot of Koreans marveling at a busker playing bagpipes, the sound mercifully muted by the sharp wind, a little dog curled beside the man’s hat on the ground, shivering, the personification of misery.
“Funny,” I continue as we start moving again. “These last weeks I’ve been thinking I need to spend less time worrying about the big picture and try and resolve some kind of life for myself away from the mask and leathers.”
“Dad, come on. You have no life.”
“Well that’s what I’m saying,” I tell her.
“Hard for me to sympathize,” Tessa replies. “I know you’re being all parental and restrained and shit, watching me play the diva now I’m out and about. And I know you think I should be cautious about embracing that life, but really, you were my age once, or close to it. Have you forgotten just how awesome this is?”
“I’m reminded every time I see you,” I say, the daggy dad.
“I don’t think you even have a secret identity to protect any more, really, do you dad?” Tessa asks, injecting just the right cocktail of seriousness and sympathy.
“What, since your mother left me, you mean?”
Yeah, I sound bitter.
“Well, if that’s what’s happened. It’s not like anyone talks to me.”
“I’m talking.”
“Yeah. About yourself.”
“Well let’s change. . . .”
“No, no, thanks very much,” Tessa quickly intervenes. “Excuse my complaints. Please, let’s remain focused.”
She takes my elbow, negotiating us around a safety barrier encircling an open manhole cover.
“If you have one actual real friend outside your other life, you know, I bet you couldn’t name them,” she says.
My eyes widen a little, trying desperately to conjure someone. The Uzbekistani punk across from the flat who peddles my caffeine probably doesn’t count.
“Maybe that should be your mission,” she laughs. “Try to reconcile these two halves. Find a friend. Find your father.”
I’m about to make some smart-assed remark when all sound in the world suddenly vanishes, sucked up into a great bottleneck that then spits it rushing, smashing back around us. The view ahead wobbles and the front of the new Bloomingdales, just twenty yards ahead of us, disappears in a flash of bricks and white light and I cover my face with my arm as I try to grasp Tessa by the arm and fail.
*
THE FORCE OF the explosion knocks us sideways. I barely feel the various contusions as I slam into the side of a parked cab and it tips over and I drop over the other side as the taxi rolls on top of me with its windows and wheels shredded, the Iranian smoker inside now just a puree, a victim of death by flechette. When I drag myself from beneath the vehicle, the street enveloped in a moment of inexpressible calm, I see Tessa across the other side of the street with her back to a lamp post. She clutches her arm and looks around dazedly. Her coat and stockings are riddled with cuts far less serious than the debris around her should suggest. Or the bodies, for that matter. At least twenty former human beings lie in the street, looking for all the world like the god of the ants has had his revenge, people stamped, burst, torn open, their blood atomized across the ceiling like the decorative color spray of choice for this year’s most fashionable scenery.
I jog across and help Tess to her feet. One of her boots is missing. I prise back her fingers to inspect her arm and see a type of metal rod usually used to set cement in the foundation of buildings now sticking from her shredded jacket sleeve, an ooze of blood running down to her wrist and spattering the chalky ground.
Zephyr II Page 7