Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  In the spring, at least half a dozen of the children in Bobby’s year had grown up. The hot weather seemed to speed things up. Sitting by the dry fountain outside the Municipal Offices one afternoon, watching the litter and the grownups scurry by, a friend of Bobby’s named Michelle suddenly dropped her can of drink and coiled up in a screaming ball. The children and the passing grownups all fluttered uselessly as she rolled around on the paving until a doctor who happened to be walking by forced her to sit up on the rim of the fountain and take deep slow breaths. Yes, she’s growing up, he snapped, glowering at the onlookers, then down at his watch. I suggest someone rings her parents or gets a car. Michelle was gasping through tears and obviously in agony, but the doctor’s manner suggested that she was making far too much of the whole thing. A car arrived soon enough and Michelle was bundled into the back. Bobby never saw her again.

  He had similar although less dramatic partings with other friends. One day, you’d be meeting them at the bus stop to go to the skating rink. The next, you would hear that they had grown up. You might see them around town, heading out of a shop as you were going in, but they would simply smile and nod, or make a point of saying Hello Bobby just to show that they remembered your name. Everything was changing. That whole summer was autumnal, filled with a sense of loss. In their own grownup way, even the parents of the remaining children were affected. Although there would inevitably be little time left for their children to enjoy such things, they became suddenly generous with presents, finding the cash that had previously been missing for a new bike, a train set or even a pony.

  May and Bobby still spent afternoons together, but more often now they would just sit in the kitchen at May’s house, May by turns gloomy and animated, Bobby laughing with her or—increasingly against his feelings—trying to act reassuring and grownup. They usually had the house to themselves. In recognition of the dwindling classes, the teachers were allowing any number of so-called study periods, and both of May’s parents worked days and overtime in the evenings to keep up with the mortgage on their clumsy mock-tudor house.

  One afternoon when they were drinking orange juice mixed with sweet sherry filched from the drinks cabinet and wondering if they dared to get drunk, May got up and went to the fridge. Bobby thought she was getting more orange, but instead she produced the plastic flask that contained her bitter milk. She laughed at his expression as she unscrewed the childproof cap and put the flask to her lips, gulping it down as though it tasted good. Abstractly, Bobby noticed that her parents used a branded product. His own parents always bought the supermarket’s own.

  “Try it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Go on.”

  Bobby took the flask and sipped. He was vaguely curious to find out whether May’s bitter milk was any less unpleasant than the cheaper stuff he was used to. It wasn’t. Just different, thicker. He forced himself to swallow.

  “You don’t just drink this do you?” he asked, wondering for the first time whether her attitude wasn’t becoming something more than simply odd.

  “Of course I don’t,” she said. “But I could if I liked. You see, it’s not bitter milk.”

  Bobby stared at her.

  “Look.”

  May opened the fridge again, took out a carton of ordinary pasteurised milk. She put it on the worktop, then reached high inside a kitchen cabinet, her blouse briefly raising at the back to show the ridges of her lower spine that Bobby so enjoyed touching. She took down a tin of flour, a plastic lemon dispenser and a bottle of white wine vinegar.

  “The flour stops it from curdling,” she said, “and ordinary vinegar doesn’t work. It took me days to get it right.” She tipped some milk into a tumbler, stirred in the other ingredients. “I used to measure everything out, but now I can do it just anyhow.”

  She handed him the tumbler. “Go on.”

  Bobby tasted. It was quite revolting, almost as bad as the branded bitter milk.

  “You see.”

  Bobby put the glass down, swallowing back a welcome flood of saliva to weaken the aftertaste. Yes, he saw, or at least he was beginning to see.

  “I haven’t been drinking bitter milk for a month now. Mum buys it, I tip it down the sink when she’s not here and do my bit of chemistry. It’s that simple…” She was smiling, then suddenly blinking back tears “…that easy…Of course, it doesn’t taste exactly the same, but when was the last time your parents tried tasting bitter milk?”

  “Look, May…don’t you think this is dangerous?”

  “Why?” She tilted her head, wiped a stray trickle from her cheek. “What exactly is going to happen to me? You tell me that.”

  Bobby was forced to shrug. Bitter milk was for children, like cod liver oil and rusks. Grownups avoided the stuff, but it was good for you, it helped.

  “I’m not going to grow up, Bobby,” she said. “I told you I wasn’t joking.”

  “Do you really think that’s going to make any difference?”

  “Who knows?” she said. She gave him a sudden hug, her lips wet and close to his ear. “Now let’s go upstairs.”

  Weeks later, Bobby got a phone call from May one evening at home. Mum called him down from his bedroom, holding the receiver as though it might bite.

  He took it.

  “It’s me Bobby.”

  “Yeah.” He waited for the lounge door to close. “What is it?”

  “Jesus, I think it’s started. Mum and Dad are out at a steak bar and I’m getting these terrible pains.”

  The fake bitter milk. The receiver went slick in his hand.

  “It can’t be. You can’t be sure.”

  “If I was sure I wouldn’t be…Look, Bobby, can you come around.” She gave a gasp. “There it is again. You really must. I can’t do this alone.”

  “You gotta ring the hospital.”

  “No.”

  “You—”

  “No!”

  Bobby gazed at the telephone directories that Mum stacked on a shelf beneath the phone as though they were proper books. He remembered that night with Tony, the lights on everywhere, burning though everything as though it wasn’t real. He swallowed. The TV was still loud in the lounge.

  “Okay,” he said. “God knows what I’m supposed to tell Mum and Dad. Give me half an hour.”

  His excuse was a poor one, but his parents took it anyway. He didn’t care what they believed; he’d never felt as shaky in his life.

  He cycled through the estate. The air rushed against his face, drowning him in that special feeling that came from warm nights. May must have been watching for him from a window. She was at the door when he scooted down the drive.

  “Jesus, Bobby, I’m bleeding.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  She pushed her hand beneath the waistband of her dress, then held it out. “Look. Do you believe me now?”

  Bobby swallowed, then nodded.

  She was alone in the house. Her parents were out. Bobby helped her up the stairs. He found an old plastic mac to spread across the bed, and helped her to get clean. The blood was clotted and fibrous, then watery thin. It didn’t seem like an ordinary wound.

  When the first panic was over, he pushed her jumbled clothes off the bedside chair and slumped down. May’s cheeks were flushed and rosy. For all her talk about not wanting to grow up, he reckoned that he probably looked worse than she did at that moment. What was all this about? Had she ever had a brother named Tom? One who died? She’d lived in another estate then. Other than asking, there was no way of knowing.

  “I think I’d better go and ring—”

  “—Don’t!” She forced a smile and reached out a hand towards him. “Don’t.”

  Bobby hesitated, then took her hand.

  “Look, it’s stopped now anyway. Perhaps it was a false alarm.”

  “Yeah,” Bobby said, “false alarm,” although he was virtually sure there was no such thing. You either grew up or you didn’t.

  “I feel okay now,
” she said. “Really, I do.”

  “That’s good,” Bobby said.

  May was still smiling. She seemed genuinely relieved. “Kiss me, Bobby,” she said.

  Her eyes were strange. She smelled strange. Like the river, like the rain. He kissed her, softly on the warmth of her cheek; you way you might kiss a grownup. He leaned back from the bed and kept hold of her hand.

  They talked.

  Bobby got back home close to midnight. His parents had gone up to bed, but as he crossed the darkened landing he sensed that they were both awake and listening beyond the bedroom door. Next morning, nothing was said, and May was at school with the rest of what remained of their class. The teachers had mostly given up with formal lessons, getting the children instead to clear out stockrooms or tape the spines of elderly textbooks. He watched May as she drifted through the chalk-clouded air, the sunlight from the tall windows blazing her hair. Neither grownup nor yet quite a kid, she moved between the desks with unconscious grace.

  That lunchtime, she told Bobby that she was fine. But Yes, she was still bleeding a bit. I have to keep going to the little girl’s room. I’ve got through two pairs of knickers, flushed them away. It’s a real nuisance, Bobby, she added above the clatter in the dining hall, as though it was nothing, like hay fever or a cold sore. Her face was clear and bright, glowing through the freckles and the smell of communal cooking. He nodded, finding that it was easier to believe than to question. May smiled. And you will come see me tonight, won’t you, Bobby? We’ll be on our own. Again, Bobby found himself nodding.

  He announced to Mum and Dad after dinner that evening that he was going out again. He told them he was working on a school play that was bound to take up a lot of his time.

  Mum and Dad nodded. Bobby tried not to study them too closely, although he was curious to gage their reaction.

  “Okay,” Mum said. “But make sure you change the batteries on your lamps if you’re going to cycle anywhere after dark.” She glanced at Dad, who nodded and returned to his paper.

  “You know I’m careful like that.” Bobby tried to keep the wariness out of his voice. He suspected that they saw straight through him and knew that he was lying. He’d been in this kind of situation before. That was an odd thing about grownups: you could tell them the truth and they’d fly into a rage. Other times such as this when you had to lie, they said nothing at all.

  May was waiting at the door again that evening. As she had promised, her parents were out. He kissed her briefly in the warm light of the hall. Her lips were soft against his, responding with a pressure that he knew would open at the slightest sign from him. She smelled even more rainy than before. There was something else too, something that was both new and familiar. Just as her arms started to encircle his back, he stepped back, his heart suddenly pounding.

  He looked at her. “Christ, May what are you wearing?”

  “This.” She gave a twirl. The whole effect was odd, yet hard to place for a moment. A tartanish pleated dress. A white blouse. A dull necklace. Her hair pulled back in a tight bun. And her eyes, her mouth, her whole face…looked like it had been sketched on, the outlines emphasised, the details ignored. Then he licked his lips and knew what it was; the same smell and taste that came from Mum on nights when she leaned over his bed and said, you will be good while we’re out won’t you my darling, jewellery glimmering like starlight around her neck and at the lobes of her ears. May was wearing makeup. She was dressed like a grownup.

  For a second, the thought that May had somehow managed to get through the whole messy process of growing up since leaving school that afternoon came to him. Then he saw the laughter in her eyes and he knew it couldn’t be true.

  “What do you think, Bobby?”

  “I don’t know why grownups wear that stuff. It isn’t comfortable, it doesn’t even look good. What does it feel like?”

  “Strange,” May said. “It changes you inside. Come upstairs. I’ll show you.”

  May led him up the stairs and beyond a door he had never been through before. Even though they were out, her parent’s bedroom smelled strongly of grownup, especially the wardrobe where the dark lines of suits swung gently on their hangers. Bobby was reasonably tall for his age, as tall as many grownups, May’s father included.

  The suit trousers itched his legs and the waist was loose, but not so loose as to fall down. He knotted a tie over a white shirt, pulled on the jacket. May got some oily stuff from the dresser, worked it into his hair and combed it smooth. Then she stood beside him as he studied himself in the mirror. Dark and purposeful, two strange grownups gazed back. He glanced down at himself, hardly believing it was true. He pulled a serious face back at the mirror, the sort you might see behind the counter at a bank. Then he started to chuckle. And May began to laugh. It was so inconceivably easy. They were doubled over, their bellies aching. They held each other tight. They just couldn’t stop.

  An hour later, May closed the front door and turned the deadlock. Heels clipping the pavement, they walked to the bus stop. Perhaps in deference to their new status as grownups, the next service into town came exactly when it was due. They travelled on the top deck, which was almost empty apart from a gaggle of cleaning ladies at the back. They were busy talking, and the driver hadn’t even bothered to look up when he gave them two straight adult fares (don’t say please, May had whispered as the tall lights of the 175 had pulled into the stop, grownups don’t do that kind of thing). Dressed his strange grownup clothes, his back spreading huge inside the jacket shoulder pads, Bobby felt confident anyway. Like May said, the grownup clothes changed you inside.

  They got off outside Albee’s Quick Restaurant and Take Away. For some reason, May wanted to try visiting a place where they were actually known. Bobby was too far gone with excitement to argue about taking an unnecessary extra risk. Her manner was smooth; he doubted if anyone else would have noticed the wildness in her eyes beneath the clothes, the makeup. Rather than dodge the cars across the road, they waited for a big gap and walked slowly, sedately. The lights of Albee’s glowed out greet them. They opened the door to grownup laugher, the smell of smoke and grownup sweat. People nodded and smiled, they moved to let them through. Albee grinned at them from the bar, eager to please the way the teachers were at school when the headmaster came unexpectedly into class. He said Good Evening Sir and What’ll It Be? Bobby heard his own voice say something calm and easy in reply. He raked a stool back for May and she sat down, tucking her dress neatly under her thighs. He glanced around as drinks were served, half expecting the other grownups to float up from their chairs, to begin to fly. They’d been here after school a hundred times, but this was a different world.

  It was the same on a dozen other nights, whenever they hit on an excuse that they had the nerve to use on their unquestioning parents. Albee’s, they found, was much further from the true heart of the grownup world than they’d imagined. They found hotel bars where real fountains tinkled and the drinks were served chilled on paper coasters that stuck to the bottom of the glass. There were loud pubs where you could hardly stand for the yellow-lit crush and getting served was an evening’s endeavour. There were restaurants where you were offered bowls brimming with crackers and salted nuts just to sit and read the crisply printed menus and say Well Thanks, But It Doesn’t Look As Though Our Friends Are Coming And The Baby Sitter You Know…Places they had seen day in and day out through their whole lives were changed by the darkness, the hot charge of car fumes, buzzing street lights, glittering smiles, the smell of perfume, changed beyond recognition to whispering palaces of crystal and velvet.

  After changing at May’s house back into his sweatshirt and sneakers, Bobby would come home late, creeping down the hall in the bizarre ritual of pretending not to disturb his parents, whom he was certain would be listening open-eyed in the darkness from the first unavoidable creak of the front door. In the kitchen, he checked for new bottles of bitter milk. By the light of the open fridge door, he tipped the fluid down
the sink, chased it away with a quick turn of the hot tap—which was quieter that the cold—and replaced it with a fresh mixture of spirit vinegar, lemon juice, milk and flour.

  The summer holidays came. Bobby and May spent all their time together, evenings and days. Lying naked in the woods on the soft prickle of dry leaves, looking up at the green latticed sky. Bobby reached again towards May. He ran his hand down the curve of her belly. It was soft and sweet and hard, like an apple. Her breath quickened. He rolled onto his side, lowered his head to lick at her breasts. More than ever before, her nipples swelled amazingly to his tongue. But after a moment her back stiffened.

  “Just kiss me here,” she said, “my mouth,” gently cupping his head in her hands and drawing it up. “Don’t suck at me today Bobby. I feel too tender.”

  Bobby acquiesced to the wonderful sense of her around him, filling the sky and the woods. She’d been sensitive about some of the things he did before, often complaining about tenderness and pain a few days before she started her bleeding. But the bleeding hadn’t happened for weeks, months.

  They still went out some nights, visiting the grownup places, living their unbelievable lie. Sometimes as he left the house, or coming back late with his head spinning from the drink and the things they’d done, Bobby would look up and see Mum’s face pale at the bedroom window. But he said nothing. And nothing was ever said. It was an elaborate dance, back to back, Mum and Dad displaying no knowledge or denial, each moment at the kitchen table and the rare occasions when he shared the lounge passing without question. A deception without deceit.

  The places they went to changed. From the smart rooms lapped with deep carpets and chrome they glided on a downward flight path through urine-reeking doorways. This was where the young grownups went, people they recognised as kids from assembly at school just a few years before. Bars where the fermented light only deepened the darkness, where the fat uncles sat alone as evening began, looking at the men and the women as the crowds thickened, looking away.