DSosnowski - Vamped

by Vamped (v1. 0) [lit]

  My already chilled blood starts creeping toward absolute zero.

  I set the unhinged door aside and look for broken glass, for any sign of a struggle. I look for the shadow or reflection of an intruder trying to hide just inside the doorway, or behind the shower curtain. I look for the telltale polka dots of carnage on the walls and ceiling.

  Nothing.

  No glass, no shadows, no blood spatters. Just Isuzu sitting on the toilet with her jeans and underwear around her ankles, a towel draped across her lap, hugging her stomach and rocking back and forth.

  “What is it?” I ask, noticing the tears and terror in her eyes.

  “I’m dying,” she sobs. I notice myMerck Manual open on the bathroom counter. “I’ve got Ebola!” she wails.

  “Oh my God!” I say, my hand going to my mouth. That my meaning and purpose in life should be struck down at the age of thirteen by a mysterious virus bent on liquefying her insides seems entirely plausible to me at the moment. I’m a parent, and paranoid, and part of my brain has been living in this moment for years. “Oh my God,” I say again, catching a glimpse at what an Ebola victim looks like in theMerck.

  “Look,” Isuzu says, rising from the toilet, wrapping the towel around her waist like a skirt. And I can smell it without even looking—the smell as familiar to me as my own name. There’s blood in the toilet—from her.

  My “oh my God” hand is still pressed to my mouth and it’s a good thing; it’s hiding the smile of what I’ve realized, but Isuzu hasn’t.

  To satisfy my little girl who’s apparently becoming a young woman, I take a quick peek at the primary evidence supporting her diagnosis of Ebola. I work to straighten the grin under my fingers into something a bit more serious, and appropriate. Looking at her stricken face helps.

  Taking my hand away and clearing my throat, I say, “Um…,” but then stop. God, do I feel like amale, all of a sudden. Not like a vampire talking to a mortal. Not an adult talking to a child. No. I’m a man stepping into no-man’s-land without a compass or a guide or even an adequate supply of feminine-hygiene euphemisms.

  And all of a sudden, I start thinking about dating again. I haven’t seen anyone of the adult female persuasion since the night I brought Isuzu home. I’ve been busy raising her up to this point. We’ve been busy playing slapjack, misunderstanding each other, getting into rows, and making up. So far, it’s been a one-man job, with a little involuntary input from Father Jack, and that’s been it. That’s been enough.

  But not now. All of a sudden, it’s obvious to me that raising Isuzu beyond this point is a two-person job. And so I start thinking about dating again. Dating hard. Speed dating. Whatever it takes to find a mom I can hand Isuzu off to in moments like these.

  “Um…,” I say again.

  Stalling for time, I pick up theMerck, consult it, study it, tap my chin as if pondering my little girl’s diagnosis. “Maybe,” I say, slowly, “maybe there’s another explanation.”

  Isuzu has apparently anticipated this. She snatches the book from my hands, and flips to the section on hemorrhagic fever. She hands it back.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s a good one, too, but…” I close the book and return it to the sink counter. On second thought, I place the book on the floor, and rest a foot on top. “I’m thinking it could be something that’s not so…”

  “…rare?”

  “No.”

  “Contagious?”

  “No.” I lock my eyes on her eyes, so she can take whatever reassurances she needs from them. “Fatal,” I say. “I don’t think this is fatal.” Which isn’t strictly true, of course. Puberty is a sign of growing up, and growing up is a terminal condition, if left unchecked. Still, the point is, I’m not expecting her to drop dead within the next forty-eight hours or so.

  I decide to take a different approach. “Do you know where babies come from?” I ask.

  The look this question gets is not the one I expected. I expected either a smirk, or embarrassment, or blank, blinking innocence. I didn’t expect a look of horror mixed with a clear sense of betrayal. Still wearing that look, Isuzu nods her head, grimly, indicating that yes, shedoes know where babies come from.

  “The farm,” she says.

  Oh my God! I can see the gears working in her head, the shocking “ah ha’s” she’s coming to, about why I took her in in the first place, and why I haven’t killed her—at least not yet. I feel sick. I feel sick, and I want to cry, but crying blood at the moment isn’t exactly going to help matters.

  All I can do is say, “No.” All I can do is shake my head as vigorously as possible. “No. No. No. No.” All I can do is throw up my hands, twin stop signs. “That’s not it at all.”

  The look on her face says,Bullshit. The look on her face says,Convince me, motherfucker.

  “Have you ever heard of a period?”

  “You mean like a question mark,” she says, “but without the squiggly thing?” She draws anS or snake in the air.

  “No. Awoman’s period. Her time of the month. Getting a visit from Aunt Flo?”

  None of these words are making sense, in the combinations I’m using, in the way I’m stringing them together. And why should they? Vampire women don’t have periods. Isuzu herself was too young for the information when she was still living with the only woman in her experience prone to such monthly visits. The only chance of something like this being mentioned on TV would be in a…well, a period piece. But period dramatizations on vampire TV veer away from that subject matter just as rapidly as regular TV did, before the change. Sure, menstruation means blood, but more than that, it means reproduction. And that means it’s just another reminder of the things we’ve given up, to live forever.

  “It’s all natural,” I tell Isuzu. “Nothing’s wrong.” I pause. “This isn’t about dying,” I lie, because, in the long run, everything about mortals is about dying. But I can’t think that way. Not now. Not for Isuzu’s sake. “It’s about life,” I say. “There comes a time in a young woman’s life when…”

  I go on, explaining what needs to be explained, assuring her that I’m not when she insists I must be kidding. The explanation I give is clinical, biologically correct, and anatomically accurate, but I’ll spare you the gory details. After all, I’m as adverse to these little reminders as any other vampire. I just try not to show it while rescuing young damsels from Ebola.

  19

  Who Knew Buddhists could be so Mean?

  I’m thinking about my mom.

  I couldn’t save my dad. I was vamped too late; he died too early. But I didn’t have that same excuse when it came to my mom. She was still alive when I got back from the war with not a scratch on me, but pale as a ghost and suddenly allergic to sunlight.

  “Mr. Hollywood!”

  That’s how she greets me, after throwing open the door that first night back.

  I’m still standing on the porch, still wearing my uniform, a duffel bag slung over my shoulder, the mesh of the screen door still standing there between her and me. The porch light has been burning all evening, awaiting my arrival, driving the moths and mosquitoes mad, the black flecks of their bashed insect brains dotting the bare bulb in a pointedly pointless way. I shake my head. “Huh?”

  My mother taps the side of her head, next to her eyes.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, reaching to remove my sunglasses, but then stop. I’ve been thinking about how to do this, all the long way back from Europe. I never did come up with anything that was worth anything.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you open the screen door?”

  My mother’s two-toned eyes widen with an “Oh jeez” or an “Oh yeah,” or maybe both. “Oh honey, I’m sorry,” she says, pushing the door open. “I was just so busy drinking you in.”

  I flinch; she doesn’t notice.

  “Have you gotten taller?” she goes on. “You’ve gotten taller, haven’t you?” She tries taking my free hand; I pull away, making a big show of struggling
with my duffel bag. Maybe after I’ve gotten a cup of coffee, something warm to hold on to, to borrow from, to render less shockingly cold.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  I don’t mean to say it; I just do. I just step in through the front door, and there it is, staring at me like a shotgun aimed at my head. The dining room table. The dining room table, set, and waiting for me, bowls and platters steaming with the delicious steam of my favorite everything.

  My mother doesn’t even scold me for using the Lord’s name in vain. Instead, she starts reciting the menu like she’s running through the guest list for the Last Supper.

  “Delmonico steak so it’s still pink inside, baked potatoes with butter, corn on the cob, dinner rolls from the Italian bakery, iced tea with lemon and sugar, coffee black, fruit salad, baked beans, chicken soup with just broth and noodles—no carrots, no onions, no celery—and for dessert…”

  And even though my heart is breaking from the sight of all this love I can’t do anything with anymore, by the time my mother hits “and for dessert,” I just start laughing. And it’s a big laugh, one of those throw-your-head-back-and-roar-at-the-moon laughs, the kind that comes on all of a sudden, after too much fear and anxiety and tension, tension, tension, followed by the sudden release and relief of knowing nothing’s really changed. Everything’s just where you left it, even the people.

  My mom hasn’t said what’s for dessert yet, and I imagine her staring at me—glaringat me—pissed at me for laughing at God only knows what. She’ll be doing that thing with her fists and her hips; she’ll start tapping her foot impatiently; if I wait long enough, she’ll say, “What’s so funny, mister?”

  That’s what I expect to find when I finally stop laughing and look at her again. Instead, what I get is a glimpse at what my mother might look like if she wound up on display at the wax museum. Her expression is frozen, as is the rest of her. And just like that, I know she’s seen them. She’s seen my fangs when I laughed.

  “Mom?” I say.

  No answer.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  Silence.

  And so I do it. The damage has already been done, so I might as well damn it the rest of the way. I touch her hand with my cold hand. She flinches. Stops. I remove the shades from my obsidian eyes.

  “Mom,” I begin. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Peach cobbler,” she says, pulling her hand away from mine.

  “What?”

  “Peach cobbler,” she repeats, by the table now, taking the place she’s set for herself. “Peach cobbler for dessert.”

  “Mom…”

  “It’s getting cold,” she says. “Sit,” she adds.

  I close the space between her and me, think about touching her shoulder, don’t. Instead, I pull out the chair by the place she’s set for me.

  “Looks great,” I say, drinking it all in with my eyes. “You shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble,” I add, staring at the part in her hair, hanging there in front of me, over her plate, over her Delmonico steak, still steaming faintly, her fork and knife stuck in the meat, stuck in her hands not moving, not even trying.

  Like Dracula?” she says, when she finally unsticks and risks looking at me again.

  “That’s the general idea,” I say, “but they get a lot of stuff wrong.”

  Her eyes keep glancing down when she thinks I’m not looking. There’s a knife where she’s looking, and I wonder if she’s planning to stab me—if she thinks she needs to defend herself against her own son. And then I get it. I place my hand over the knife’s shiny blade. “Like that,” I say. I pick up the knife and hold it so she can see me and my reflection in the blade. “How do you think Bela keeps his hair so neat if he can’t see himself in a mirror?”

  My mother smiles and I smile, too, but lips only. No fangs. As Kenny Rogers would say, years later, you got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Maybe I am a gambler, after all.

  “How?” she asks, and I tell her.

  She asks me what the world looks like through eyes that are all dilated pupil, what it feels like to have skin that’s so cold.

  “Holy,” I say. “The world looks and feelsholy. Everything’s haloed. Everything glows. And everything feels connected to everything else, and you’re connected to it, too. Just like everything, and everything else.”

  “Sounds Buddhist,” my mother says, with no little bit of ire. Somehow, I get the feeling that given the choice of what to have for a son—a vampire or a Buddhist—my mother would pick fangs over yin-yangs any day. “Mrs. Thompson’s son Billy came back a Buddhist,” she says.

  “No,” I assure her. “No, I just drink blood.”

  “That’s good,” she says. “Because, you know, theyact all peace and love, but really they’re kind of pushy. Mrs. Thompson’s son Billy won’t even eatmeat anymore.”

  “I can’t eat meat anymore,” I say. “Or corn on the cob, either, for that matter.”

  “That’s different,” she says. “Youcan’t. Billy Thompsonwon’t.” She pauses. “You know what he calls chicken soup?”

  I shrug.

  “ ‘Corpse tea,’ ” my mother says. “He made his own mother cry with that one. Honestly, I never knew Buddhists could be so mean.”

  It occurs to me that it’s probably more a Billy Thompson thing than a Buddhist thing, and I almost say so, but then don’t. Because, really, it’s not a Billyor a Buddhist thing; it’s a not-talking-about-me-being-a-vampire thing. That’s what’s going on. It’s all about not talking about where the blood I drink comes from, or what I do with the empties.

  “Mom?” I say.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Do you miss Dad?”

  The look on her face is the look of someone who didn’t know vampires could be so mean. Not that I mean to be.

  “What kind of a question isthat ?”

  “I…”

  “Ofcourse I miss your father.”

  “I…”

  “It wasn’tme who didn’t cry at his funeral, Marty.”

  Now it’s my turn to be surprised by the meanness of others.

  “I…”

  “He was yourfather. Even Billy Thompson cried athis father’s funeral.”

  Billy Thompson again. I’m really getting to hate that name. And something tells me—a little bird, a little bat, maybe—I’ll be craving Eastern cuisine in the not-too-distant future.

  Meanness was not the reason I mentioned my father, by the way. Death was. Death, and dying, andnot -dying. Because when I came back from Europe and all that death—and all that relived grief—I came back with a plan. And the plan was good. The plan was symmetrical. The plan was so good, and so symmetrical, failure was not an option. My mother had given me my mortal life, and now it was my turn to repay her with immortality. She wouldn’t have to die like my dad did, and I wouldn’t have to watch her die. She couldbe and I couldbe, and we could talk on the phone when either one of us got lonely—about nothing, or the weather—and we could live forever knowing that the other would always be there.

  That was the plan.

  I just mentioned my dad as a way to work up to it. After all, you don’t just plunk immortality down in front of somebody. You ease up to it.

  “What do you mean, no?” I say, staring at this woman to whom I’ve just offered life everlasting.

  “It’s sweet of you to think of me, dear,” she says. But then she scrunches up her face like she’s bitten into something awful. She shakes her head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  Let me translate. Let me paint you a picture. Here I am, sitting in our old dining room, sitting in front of a cold Delmonico steak, my ears practically still ringing from World War II, my brain still spinning from being a vampire myself, and here my own mother is, saying Thanks, but no thanks. To immortality. No. Death is fine. Death will do. Given the choice between dying or hanging around with me, her son, forever, she’s pickingdeath.

  It was the choice between the lady and the tiger
. I was the lady, and my mom was going with the tiger. And I don’t mind telling you, I felt a little insulted. It was like my own mom was telling me she’d rather commit suicide than be around me.