Onion Songs (17 page)

Authors: Steve Rasnic Tem

“
He doesn’t want to tell me what’s bothering him. Half the time I’m not sure he even knows I’m there.”

Angie
’s two-year-old—Trish couldn’t remember the little boy’s name—planted himself in front of her with his thumb in his mouth. Angie put the cigarette down and moved him like an errant piece of furniture. “Maybe he can’t help it,” she said. “There may be other forces involved.”

Trish looked up warily.
“You mean another woman.” She almost said “A strange woman.”

“
I mean the devil takes on a number of different roles in our lives. And when you’re wrestling with the devil, pretty much everyone else disappears, including your family. I know you may not believe that, but it’s what I believe.”

Harry was sitting at his own table, a small square of wood not much bigger than a dinner plate, in a corner against the wall by the sink.
He’d turned his chair around to face them, but Angie’s wide shoulders hid most of his body. He’d been smiling since Trish arrived, his eyes floating as if he were listening to his own private, ecstatic tune.

“
I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know that I
know
anything. I don’t know how people find each other in the first place, or how they stay together. What do you really see in another person? A few surface traits, the way they present themselves when they know you’re looking, and then those times they’re losing it, dropping the mask. And when things start going bad, those mask-dropping moments are what you focus on—you find yourself running around trying to catch them in the act, you’re just sneaking around looking for evidence that they’ve failed you—I swear, you’re collecting their worst moments, and you’re thinking that that’s what’s really true, that that’s all there is. To life, I mean. You can’t see what it adds up to other than a list of things, a list of words, objects purchased, things consumed. A long list of disappointments.”

She finished up wondering if she
’d been spitting. Did she just lose her mind in front of Angie and that peculiar little Harry?

“
Oh, honey, you’re just upset. You get all upset and then you get all complicated. None of us know. It’s in God’s hands, finally. There’s somebody for everybody, you just have to let God make the arrangements.”

“
Angie, you’re on your third marriage.”

“
And God had a hand in every one of them.”

Trish gazed at Harry, whose face split into an even wider smile.
She felt warm, and wanted to leave, but didn’t know how to get out of there without being rude. The corners of Harry’s mouth began traveling in opposite directions then, until the line of mouth completely bisected his head. Harry leaned back and eased open his mouth. Trish got up and left before the top of his head had the opportunity to fall in.

When she got home she could hear Martin moving around upstairs. Low murmurs rising and falling. Snaky sounds. Reality TV. Which, she thought, must be the most despairing phrase in the current vocabulary of the world.

She couldn
’t bring herself to go upstairs so she looked around downstairs for something to fill the time. She’d never had that problem as a child. Her mother used to say, “Trish makes up the world as she goes along.”

She sat on the couch in front of the fireplace.
It wasn’t a real fireplace, actually, although there had probably been one, or several, in the house when it was first built. But the old chimney was at the other end of the house. This fireplace had a pretty, but plastic-looking, mantle and a painted optical illusion of a firebox with lavender gas flames.

She and Martin had redecorated this room multiple times over the years, each time to something prettier (according to the fashion of that year), and a step further away from reality, so that stepping in and out of this room was like traveling to a different
... hallucination. Some day, she was sure, people would buy huge environmentally controlled boxes to live in, and video and 3D technologies would provide the decoration. Home and Virtual Living. The world outside the walls of your newly purchased skull could just go straight to hell. Why should you care?

Whisper whisper whisper.
She also didn’t care if their house hated her new attitude or not. By this time it probably realized something was up, that it was quickly losing its grip on her. Some of these things—that side table, the small Victorian lamp—had been her grandmother’s, and some—that art deco desk chair, for example—her mother’s. The rest were things she and Martin had purchased at fancy department stores, garage sales, out of a catalog (from pictures which never exactly matched what was delivered). Today there seemed no solid reason for any of it to be here.
Window dressing
was the phrase her mother used to use.

People never stopped playing house.
What was this place but her biggest dollhouse ever? People created their worlds within worlds driven by whim—so what substance could there be to any of it?

The walls of the room suddenly faded into a child
’s wavering crayon lines, a lopsided oval of red crayon sun showing through the broken drawing. It smiled down at her crookedly.

Upstairs Martin continued to whisper.
It might have been her name he was saying or it might not, but she decided to imagine it was. She staggered to her feet and made for the rough box that delineated where the staircase should be.

Stair steps shuffled beneath her feet like a random stack of narrow rectangular cards.
The world didn’t clarify itself again until she opened their poorly drawn bedroom door.

Martin lay on his back in the bed, his chest rising and falling aggressively.
A large something stood or crouched on the floor by his feet, wings spread into a crucifix, head the size of a buffalo’s with a huge black beak the sheen of metal, cow-like eyes bright with realization, and behind those eyes, blending into the long blonde hair that flowed down its feathered and scaled backside, a pair of flaming, multi-colored gills.

Judging from the size of the breasts Trish supposed her to be female, although visual cues seemed hardly reliable.

Martin whistled and bucked, in the throws of an oddly controlled seizure.
Although Trish could see no trace of it, she felt something pass between Martin and the thing, this other she. She took something. He took something.

The whole process lasted less than a minute.
Finished, the creature turned slowly toward Trish, and froze, only light moving across the eye. Trish felt as if she would completely dissolve in its greater presence.

Sweeping its wings, the creature moved again toward the window.
Trish thought that such a large thing could not possibly pass through that size opening, when it faded into the air. A brief smell passed through her mouth and nose, scouring, then evaporated with a slightly salty aftertaste.

She sat down on the floor and remained there for some time, peering now and then at Martin who appeared to be breathing easily, resting peacefully.
Eventually she crawled onto the bed beside him, staring at the ceiling, barely touching his side with her little finger, but touching him deliberately just the same.

She kept listening for the flap of wings, waiting for a change of smell or shadow.
To her great disappointment, nothing came.

Trish walked through the downtown shopping district with a forced, determined step. She hadn’t brought her purse; she had no plans to buy. She did have a few dollars stuffed into her bra, because she did want to eat. She enjoyed eating these days—she was always hungry.
Food becomes me
, she thought, and smiled, the way she remembered Harry smiling.

Around her the narrow lines of the buildings swayed.
Threads of various colors floated together briefly, becoming patches of sky and patches of store, power lines and sidewalks, streets, the momentary smear of cars moving with one or more occupants inside. Then the fabric warped and folded, hours passed, the sun tumbled through the sky like a half-eaten fruit tossed languidly into the trash, and there she was again, continuing on her merry way.

She bent down and picked up a thread
—once part of a sidewalk, perhaps connected to a person’s leg or the side of a tree—gave it a yank, then she smiled as the world tightened and leaned over slightly, before returning more or less to form, rumpled like a worn out sweater.

When she was a little girl her grandmother had knitted her the most beautiful sweater.
It had at least six colors knitted into a series of intricate, irregular patterns, as if from some sweater manufacturing machine gone wild, but Trish knew it came from her slightly addled grandmother and her imperfect way of knitting things. Trish had worn that sweater proudly every day until one day one of the threads had come loose, a strand of yarn some two or three inches long. The sweater now looked shabby. Not knowing what else to do, Trish had pulled on the thread, and pulled, until it became a long line of bright color, and, reluctant to ask her grandmother to fix it, Trish had kept pulling, and kept pulling, until after an hour or so the actual shape of the sweater was gone, as if it had never existed, and instead she had this pile of shapeless colored yarn.

“
Mommy, who’s that strange woman?” she heard a child ask nearby.

Trish
’s lips tasted sweet, then salty, and vaguely of sex. She smiled as the thread of the child’s voice stretched out into a long, dreary wail adrift with the rest of the dangling sky.

OFF THE MAP

“
OK, Kids, we’re going to take this vacation
off the map!”
The Dad, relaxed and expansive behind the steering wheel, threw back his head and horse-laughed. Big Sis hated the laugh and hated the fact that the Dad pretended like this was something special, when he said the exact same thing on every vacation. Hated it almost as much as she hated being called Big Sis, almost as much as she hated her parents’ insistence that their children refer to them as “the Dad” and “the Mom.”

Beside her the twins Boyo and Gal Pal voiced their enthusiasm.
“Bravo!” they cried in unison, Boyo waving his French beret and Gal Pal her tiny sombrero. This year Boyo was to be a resident of France and Gal Pal a citizen of Mexico. They’d overstuffed their dilapidated cardboard suitcases with the appropriate native clothing, reading materials, and snacks. After weeks of harassment Big Sis had finally decided on somewhere non-specific in the British Isles. At least they spoke English there, more or less.

The family station wagon cruised the back roads like an out-of-control boat.
The Mom chattered to the Dad constantly about this or that seen, or passed recently, or coming up on the right. Big Sis clutched the padded arm rest until her elbow locked, and forced her eyes closed at the worst of it, when the Dad veered too close to tractor trailers, or swung too wide on curves, and the outside wheels spat gravel. “Shit shit shit...” she stuttered.

“
Quelle horreur!”
Boyo exclaimed, “Oolala, le potty mouth!”

“
Oh, shut
up!”
She punched him in the shoulder. “That last part isn’t even French—it’s English with an accent!”

“
Sere Bueno!”

“
German and Spanish, you halfwit!”

“
Pelé.”

“
Brazilian soccer player.”

“
Oh, Big Sis!” the Mom interrupted from the front seat. “Isn’t it all so much easier when you speak the language?”

Big Sis curled into the corner of the back seat to sulk.
Boyo grinned wickedly, chanting
bien, bien, bien
.

It was always like this on vacation.
Their family had no money in the best of times, certainly no money for trips abroad, although the Dad and the Mom had promised a trip to Europe for as long as Big Sis could remember. The very idea made her shudder. The whole world hated Americans. Maybe the Dad didn’t mind being beheaded—he was mostly head anyway, but why should the rest of the family suffer?

What they did instead was just like
homework!
Boyo and Gal Pal had been studying languages and customs for weeks, not that it had helped much in Boyo’s case.

She
’d been lucky the Mom and the Dad had permitted her to choose Britain, which she knew all about, having studied about Queen Elizabeth I in school, and knowing pretty much everything about kings and queens, princes and princesses. There were dukes and earls as well, but she really didn’t understand that much about them, except there was a song, “Duke of Earl,” that the Dad had liked to sing to them when they were little.

They had been in the car for a very long time.
On previous vacations her parents traded house-sitting chores for a place to stay, some out-of-the-way location where they could run their crazy vacation experiments without interference. They thought these deals were some big secret from the Kids, but Big Sis knew—the Mom and the Dad weren’t exactly secret agents. “Look at this empty house we’ve found!” the Dad would exclaim. “How could anyone forget they lived in such a wonderful home?” the Mom would ask, a stupid expression on her face.

But this summer they didn
’t seem to know at all where they were going. Every few miles the Dad would pull off onto a side road, travel down it awhile, then stop near a house. The Kids had to stay in the car with the Mom while he got out, walked around the structure, looked in the windows, knocked on the door. Each time he would come back shaking his head at the Mom and they would drive around some more.

By dusk Big Sis was getting worried.
She’d had nothing but biscuits (which tasted suspiciously like cookies) all day, with nothing to wash them down but unrefrigerated orange juice. Her throat was raw and scratchy, and when once again the Dad stopped the car, just after sunset, the sky an almost painful red, she wanted to yell at them both. Just what did they think they were doing? Both the twins had passed out from the heat in the car, and if they didn’t find the house soon she herself was going to be homicidal.

But this time the Dad came back smiling, shook the twins awake, and told them all it was time to unload.

“
France is upstairs in the back, Mexico down here by the front door. England,” irritatingly, he bowed, “you have the large bedroom upstairs.” He paused, waving his bright flashlight around like a light saber. “Surprised?”

“
Shocked.”

“
You’re more than old enough now, I’d say.” And for the first time in months she smiled.

But something was missing.
She looked around. Of course—there was no furniture. She stared at the Dad’s flashlight. She walked over to a light switch, flipped it on. Nothing. “There’s no power!”

“
We’re fifty years into the future. Worldwide power outage. The direct result of a foolish use of our natural resources. I have an extra flashlight for you, by the way. It gets pretty dark in Britain after nightfall.”

She could have punched him, but she took the flashlight instead.

The next morning was full of the clamor of the French and Mexican wars. The Dad came thundering out of his bedroom wrapped in a bright red silk robe covered with sun-yellow flowers. He saw her staring at him. “Japanese Occupation,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.

The Mom had packed her British kit for her, obviously not trusting her to do it properly.
Beside the fairytale books, a costume jewelry tiara, and the Beatles CD Big Sis had thought to bring herself (but forgetting the CD player completely), the Mom had placed a woolen tartan scarf (great for summer!), a Fodor travel guide to the United Kingdom, and a shiny green teapot.

She had already checked the sinks—no running water.
Gal Pal, usually quiet even during her hyper times, had said, “Maybe they don’t take baths in Yourup!” Big Sis called her stupid, which sent her running to the Mom.

The Mom and the Dad weren
’t going to be much help, obviously. “You’re a British citizen now,” the Dad said. “What would any good subject of the Crown do in your situation? A good vacation stretches the mind—it teaches you how the rest of the world lives. You travel far enough out of your comfort zone, you journey far enough from home, and you just might find yourself.”

The Mom, grinning like an idiot, apparently agreed.

So Big Sis slapped on her tiara, picked up her teapot, and went looking for water.

The countryside around the house was mostly flat, covered in shiny, bronze-colored grass. She imagined the grass made a jangly sound against her tennis shoes, but knew it had to be a sound from somewhere else, maybe wind chimes, their sound carried by the wind.

She saw no signs of water, but the wavy ground reminded her of the ocean, so she kept looking for pools somewhere in the low ridges, hiding away clean and pure.
Now and then she even thought she heard a fog horn, and once saw a distant bridge stretching between two square towers, but she thought it way too far to travel without help.

Some day, she would.
She would travel as far as her heart’s desire.

Boyo strolled up beside her, resplendent in his gendarme
’s uniform. “
Et tu
,
Senorita?”

“
No, Boyo. That’s Latin and Spanish.”

“
But isn’t Latin, Spanish?”

“
Sort of. Are you here to protect me, Gendarme?”

“
Wie bitte?”

“
Never mind, you’re speaking German again.
Können Sie mir helfen?”

“
Was möchten Sie?”

“
Could you tell me why you hate us?”

“
But you’re British. We only hate the British when they act like Americans.”

“
And how do the Americans act?”

“
Why, they act like they’re the Dad.”

“
But I’m not the Dad. We
all
can’t be the Dad.”

The creek had risen out of the grass and was flowing toward the ocean now.
Big Sis filled her teapot with its clear, liquid gold. Suddenly her tiara fell forward and somersaulted into the fast-moving water. She started crying—now she could never be a princess.

By the time Big Sis and Boyo returned to the house it was nearing nightfall, and Big Sis was afraid of another night alone in the dark.
She knew she would have her family around her, but she also knew that once she closed her eyes she would be alone in the dark again.

She was surprised and delighted that the Dad and the Mom had built a great bonfire out in the front of the house.
Gal Pal was strumming her guitar, singing sad Spanish songs of death and unrequited love. “
De la sierra morena
.”

The family sat around and toasted marshmallows.
They watched as something bright shot across the sky. The Mom said, “You know, it might just be a meteor. A shooting star.”

The Dad said,
“No, it was just a plane from some airport nearby.”

Boyo said,
“Isn’t it great that all the peoples of the world share the same sky?”

The Dad said,
“No, that isn’t exactly true.”

Gal Pal, who had offered nothing to this gathering but song, asked the Dad,
“Why do you like spoiling things all the time?”

The Dad replied,
“Well, we all die alone, even those of us in families.”

A dark child wandered out of the night and sat down by the fire.
She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and looked around.

The Dad said,
“Careful! She’s a bomb!”

Boyo said,
“She’s got a short fuse.”

Big Sis said,
“Wait a minute.”

The Mom said,
“Oh Jesus Christ a bomb!”

Big Sis said,
“Please, wait a minute.”

The Dad said,
“We gotta take care of that bomb!”