Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 (11 page)

"That's
yucky
, Dumas,” said his mother. “Spit. Yuck."

"I'll put it under your pillow."

"Dammit, Dumas. I told you that isn't mine."

Dumas wanted to check the back of his mother's mouth for a gap, but she guarded her mouth too closely. If he had a stranger's tooth under his bed, he would open his mouth and howl. His whole face would become a hole.

When the neighbor girls told Dumas that the Tooth Fairy didn't pay for his teeth, his mother did, he saw where he had failed. He hunted up all his change and left it under his mother's pillow. Then he took the tooth and buried it in the orange peels in the under-the-garbage sink.

Sometimes he thought on the tooth, and in his memory it shriveled and began to resemble an orange seed.

Q:
Will
I
ever meet someone who will knock out my tooth?

A: Not you, but
someone
will. Dumas's mother met one person who would knock out her tooth. Some people meet two. Some people meet three.

Q:
Do
I
know a grown-up who's lost a tooth?

A: Have you found it?

Q:
No. Who took it away if it wasn't me?

A: How should I know?

Maggie asked Dumas, “What am I supposed to do with that?"

He said, “How should I know?"

She asked, “Really happened?” “Father?” she asked.

"Boyfriend,” said Dumas. “Or date. Not someone around long enough to remember.” Dumas said, “The funny thing is I lost one of my teeth twice too."

Q:
Doesn't Dumas mean two of his teeth once?

A: He means not a single occurrence, which is how Dumas's mother thought of the tooth knocked out of her, an aberration, a passing date, something that could have happened to anyone, and so not to her particularly.

Something twice lost is gone for good. That's why it's always part of you.

If you had stayed hidden under the table, you would have heard every word except a stupid question that Maggie didn't ask, which was whether Dumas's mother loved her boyfriend. Otherwise, what a waste.

But this was Dumas's apartment, and Dumas didn't have a table to hide you. Or cupboards or drawers. All the guts of a kitchen—which are spoons, whisks, and pumpkin carving knives—lay spread out on the picnic tablecloth. Maggie's feet were under the tablecloth, and Dumas's feet were under Maggie.

Maggie doesn't like the things her boyfriend says to make her remember him, but she likes her boyfriend. She likes the way his kisses feel like knocking. She'll always remember him whether she wants to or not. She knows him by the fingerprints of his teeth.

Q:
Can I be a pumpkin and have holes for teeth?

A: I know, pumpkin, you hope your teeth fail to grow in and whiteout those little gaps, so cute.

A: You shouldn't hope. No one wants teeth, this is true, like I told. But no teeth is no guarantee someone will want you.

Right Panel

Q:
What am I good for?

A: Don't ask that. You're not a machine. You should ask what your body is good for.

Q:
What is my body good for?

A: Your body is a machine for dying.

Q:
Am I going to die?

A: Everyone is going to die. Your grandparents are going to die, and your mother is going to die. Your father is going to die. All the white pages from Aaron Abramson to Zelda Zychafuss are going to die. Your fish are going to die even if you feed them not too little, not too much. The man who sold you your fish tank? Is going to die. Your aunt is going to die. Your dog won't live forever. Your uncle's ex-wives are going to die. Some people, they've died already.

Still, we think you might beat this. Listen carefully.

A: You didn't cut the tag off the machine, did you? You didn't sign any forms. You didn't trace the X there for those of you who can't yet write. Tell me. You didn't.

A: None of us did.

Sometimes your Aunt Maggie lies in bed for a minute after she wakes up and ponders her feet. Sometimes she lies in her boyfriend's bed. It all depends on where she wakes up.

Dumas doesn't stare at his feet, and he doesn't stare at Maggie's. He makes coffee for the two of them. He would like to make coffee in bed pondering his feet, but this is an impossibility.

"Maggie,” says Dumas, “I have passed the age where my soul is easy currency.” He's speculating on exchanging his soul for an apartment with a dishwasher.

Maggie, at the moment, is entirely flat—hair squashed flat around her head, arms, back, and legs flat, eyes flat down looking at her feet, which poke up, bare and full of bones. She wiggles her toes so that they resemble Martian flowers.

"Dumas,” she says, “your bed is a mattress on the floor and you can't hide underneath it."

"No,” says Dumas.

"What do you plan to do when the rapists come? Give them coffee and cake?"

Dumas shrugs. “You have a plan?” he asks.

Maggie slides, all a-sigh, out of the too-low bed. “Not a good one."

"I wish I had a dishwasher,” says Dumas.

Q:
Will anyone miss me when I am dead?

A: How often do you wash the dishes?

A: How long does it take people to miss you when you play hide-and-seek by yourself?

A: People miss you more when you do the dishes. The cups that stand stain ringed and empty remind them of you.

A: People miss you more quickly when you don't do the dishes. They come calling and tell you to stop hiding and pull your weight a bit.

A: I don't know who will miss you. I don't know how we'll miss you. These are important questions, but I don't know the answers. We will be dead before you. We have planned this carefully.

Q:
Who will do the dishes when all of you are dead?

A: The Man in the House.

Q:
Is the Man in the House a bad man?

A: Watch how your dog treats him. Does she bark at him? Yes, she does. She barks at cockroaches, and they are bad. She barks at ghosts, and they are good. She barks at pumpkins, and they are orange. The Man in the House is good, or bad, or orange.

Q:
Why will you die and leave me alone?

A: We don't want to.

Q:
Should I hide under the bed when death comes?

A: Yes.

When we were all this-much younger, Dumas hid from Maggie for a week and a day to test if she would miss him. He hid at the office and when the office kicked him out, he hid in an alley because an alley is a lonely space between two walls.

From time to time, the alley walls opened rectangles of light and sound and soap-smelling heat. Busboys carried plastic bags out of the rectangles. In the alley, cold and wet, the bags smelled like mouths that had just eaten.

Dumas was hiding behind a dumpster. He couldn't see the busboys. He heard the sound of their feet. One leaned against the wall opposite him and lit a cigarette. He sucked on the cigarette, then lifted it to his eye as if sighting down a gun. He smoked; his breath smoked in the air. In an alley behind a dumpster, the sky is narrow enough to squeeze out a star or two.

Footsteps at the mouth of the alley, and a woman called, “Is there someone back there?"

Dumas waited for the busboy to answer. The busboy could say, “Just me, having a smoke.” Dumas would have to say, “Yes, me. The man hiding in the alley."

Everyone held their breath, and the woman was gone.

Dumas always ended up at home, sleeping until it was light enough that he had to go to the office and hide. For nine days Dumas hid, and Maggie didn't even call.

In the end, Dumas called Maggie and reproached her bitterly. But she trumped him. “I was hiding, too,” she said. “I was hiding
in your house
."

"I never noticed,” he said.

"No."

Q:
Who do you think did dishes while Dumas and Maggie were hiding?

A: This is what Maggie and Dumas ask each other.

When Maggie and her brothers were little and their parents told them to clean their room, they played “The Barbarians Are Coming.” First they picked out on the clock the time the barbarians were due. “When that hand touches that one,” they'd tell the ones too little to tell time. Then they started cleaning. When the barbarians came marching with their longboats over their shoulders, any toy still on the floor was murdered. Horribly. Toys in their proper places were invisible and safe.

Q:
If a woman's place is in the home, is a woman in a home invisible?

A: A woman's place is with her children.

When Dumas was hiding in the alley, he wondered if Maggie missed him. When Maggie was hiding in Dumas's house, she missed Dumas. She missed his missing toes and the gap between his front teeth. She missed him hesitating before he said her name, like he wasn't sure it was the right thing to call her.

When Dumas was hiding in the alley, he missed Maggie, but not as much as Maggie, hiding in Dumas's house, missed herself.

A human body is a thing that can be bought like a jar of pickles, and it's also something that can be manufactured like a pickle jar lid. You are a good advertisement for this.

"If I'd known you when we were children,” Dumas once told Maggie, “I would have found you a very interesting person.” He was watching you draw clocks. The clocks had hands that pointed out of the picture and bubbles that asked “What time is it?” This was a joke that you'd made up yourself.

Maggie said, “Maybe you wouldn't have been so interested in me.” She told him that you and she weren't really so alike. But she agreed that you were a Good Advertisement. After all, children aren't so like their parents. Probably children are more like you.

The last thing Maggie has learned to deal with is how Dumas will look at a piece of her speculatively, like he's trying to talk it into the corner with him alone.

"When you're little,” says Maggie, “they always tell you:
Don't go off with strangers
. But what choice do we have?"

Dumas says that he's sorry she finds him such a strange man.

"No,” says Maggie, “I meant this stranger here with these ears and these breasts and these knees."

Q:
Will you miss me when you are dead?

A: We miss you already. I miss your feet when they were squares, and your mother misses your teeth and hair rubbing the skin where they would grow in. When you grow up and become an actuary, your father misses the astronaut he claims you once wanted to be.

We miss you when you fall asleep, and when you refuse to take your nap, we miss you sleeping because your eyes are beautiful when shut. (Like egg-shell.) We missed you weeks before you were born and years after.

Q:
I don't want you to miss those things. I want you to miss me.

A: It's not so easy to know you. It takes a long time, and we're grown up and old.

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Eileen Gunn

Mean as a sitcom

Ralph grins like a pumpkin

I'm warning you Alice

Forget it thinks Alice

I'm leaving the next time

He shakes that fat fist

Alice looks up at

A full autumn moon

The deep amber of honey

How can I get there?

Russia sent up that puppy

It can't be so hard

Shouts come from the airshaft

Our neighbors the Nortons

Are fighting again

Ed Norton lord love him is

No rocket jockey

But knows how things work

Trixie is smarter

And sexy to boot

Now what does she see in him?

Hey Ed can you help me?

I want a surprise

For Ralph on his birthday

Can't let him find out

That I'm planning to split

He'd tip off old Ralphie-boy

We'll launch Brooklyn's first moon shot

I know we can swing it

We got what it takes

We're looking for thrust

In a ship that can boost us

To Mach twenty-six

There's three ways to do it

Drop bombs or burn fuel

The third I forget

An A-bomb would probably

Damage our rooftop

Can we get rocket fuel?

Ed says there's some fuel in

Cans in the sewers

He'll swipe some tonight

He starts with the guts

Of a washing machine

Alice found in the street

Sweat-soaked Ed Norton

Grabs ahold of a wrench

And a butylene torch

He solders a chamber

For Feynmann-type bombs

That are dropped out the back

Sly Ed builds a gantry

With tools from the sewers

While Ralph drives a bus

Alice the seamstress

Sews up a snug space suit

And a spare just in case

Up on the rooftop

The lift-off is sparked

By oxyacetylene

At the wheel of his bus

Ralph watches the take-off

No dinner tonight

Forget about food

Crafty Ed tells Ralph later

Let's bowl and drink beer

Weightless in orbit

Black stars at the windows

Alice howls like a dog

There's no stack of ironing but

Space is sure lonely

She thinks in despair

A noise from the closet

The spare suit is moving

My god it's alive

Stowaway Trixie

Comes out with a grin

Alice, we're free of them

Zoom!

[Back to Table of Contents]

Mark Rigney

This is the incomplete story of Paints, grandson of Paints No More. It begins in shadow. Like this:

As far as reincarnation goes, I became a believer on the day that I found a dead mole in my Gran's stuffy one-car garage. The old Volvo had obviously run the mole over, or at least its back half; the head and forearms still looked ready to rise and crawl away.

I resolved to pitch the carcass into the garden where it could do some good. Even at the age of eight, I knew not to handle dead things with my bare hands, so I strapped on a pair of Grandpa's over-large gardening gloves—stiff with years of dirt and flowerbed filth—and I reached out to grasp the mole's tail. It took a few tries, my fingers newly clumsy and gigantic in the gloves, but at last I got a decent grip.