Welcome to Night Vale (6 page)

Diane was filling her gas tank when she saw Troy. She didn't approach him, and he didn't notice her. She had not seen Troy in fifteen years, and had not wanted to see him ever again.

When she tried to put the nozzle back onto the pump, it kept falling off because her hands were shaking. She didn't feel anything at all, but she couldn't get her hands to stop shaking. By the time she looked up, Troy was already gone. He had gotten into his car (white sedan, broken taillight) and pulled away without looking at her once. She forced herself to stand very still and breathe slowly until her hands stopped shaking. Once they were steady, she put the nozzle back onto the pump, deliberately opened her car door, and drove away at a reasonable speed. The entire time she felt fine.

Weeks later, she stopped by her bank to get change for a PTA fund-raiser. Sitting behind one of the desks was Troy, wearing a dark suit and a plastic name badge. She tried to confirm the name on the tag without him noticing her staring but was unable to.

This time her hands did not shake at all. She actually felt fine, but she tasted blood. Without even noticing, she had been biting her lower lip so hard that the tooth had broken through. She wiped the blood away and walked past him with her withdrawal slip, not looking at him. Because she wasn't looking at him, she couldn't see if he was looking at her.

Just a few days after that, she and Josh went to the mov
ies. This was a monthly tradition that went back to when he was seven. He had been acting glum, taking on oozing, gloppy forms that made a mess of the furniture and carpet, and asking her a lot of questions about his dad and where he had gone. She had been alternately terrified and exasperated by the moody creature that had appeared in place of her little boy, and she announced that, as a special treat, they would go to the movies.

That night at the movies was the first good night they had had in weeks. She hadn't been sure what to see and just asked at the ticket counter for whatever popular children's movie was playing. The joyful glow of being somewhere together and feeling like they were both on the same team had outshone the silly antics of the funny characters in the kids' movie (
No Country for Old Men
) up on the screen. They had left the theater, him walking upright, with non-oozing legs, and holding her hand with a human palm and fingers. He did not ask about his father again for months.

And so started their monthly attempt to recapture the lightness of that first night. Mostly it was good. Sometimes, especially lately, she had to remind him to keep his form short, and free of any broad wings or smoke emitters that might obstruct other moviegoers' views. He would always do what she said, but not without a lot of sighing and eye-rolling (he almost always took a form with eyes when going to the movies, although he had gone through a period where he preferred the experience of sightless listening).

This particular night, the theater was showing the sequel to that popular animated franchise about the trees that look like trees but have human organs and try to stop developers from razing their forest. The trees are unsuccessful at first, but in the end the construction crews learn their lesson after seeing the large quantities of blood, and hearing the mangled screams.
Later they are eviscerated themselves by vengeful arboreal spirits. Diane thought the movie wasn't as good as the original, but she adored the comical voice work of immortal cinema legend Lee Marvin. Josh said he thought it was boring, but he said that about most movies, and he seemed to laugh at most of the jokes and funny death scenes.

While sitting through the previews, Diane saw Troy enter. He was wearing a polo shirt and carrying a carpet sweeper. He crossed from one exit to the other. He seemed to be checking the floor lights along the aisle. One strip was unlit.

Diane tried not to look at Josh and immediately failed, turning to watch his silver, scaly skin, his flat nose and protruding eyes intent on the screen. Josh hadn't recognized Troy. Why would he? Josh hadn't seen Troy since he was a baby. She saw herself in Josh, and sometimes assumed he did the same.

Josh did not see himself in Diane. She knew this.

She put her arm around Josh, ostensibly out of affection, but subconsciously out of protection. He glanced at her hand hanging near his non-shoulder. He glanced back at Diane, confused but not upset.

Diane looked forward, toward the screen, thinking about how to not think about Josh's father. Her foot was tapping. She carefully stopped her foot from tapping.

Here is what it was about Troy.

Diane does not always have a husband. There was a time when she always had a husband, but now she never has one.

She always has an ex-husband. They were never married, but husband and ex-husband are the shortest-hand way to describe her relationship to Troy.

Diane is interested in the semantics of marriage and not marriage. This is why:

Diane always has two parents. Someday she will never have
two parents, but right now she always has them. They are mother and father to Diane, and grandmother and grandfather to Josh.

Her parents have never been married. They never want(ed) to be married. They want(ed) to be together and in love. They are almost always together and almost always in love. They never want(ed) to get a certificate or fill out paperwork or have their love and togetherness approved by a smiling god.

They, of course, value and respect others' love of a smiling god. (Is that a smile?)

They also fill out paperwork and get certificates when required to do so for, say, a job or a driver's license or Diane's birth or the times they're required to play the mandatory citywide lottery whose winners are fed to the hungry wolves at the Night Vale Petting Zoo.

But they do not want to be married. Our life together is just that: our life together, they might say if you asked them to succinctly grandstand about their choice. They might, but they probably wouldn't. They aren't sanctimonious or vociferous. They simply love each other, and that is enough for them to believe in.

Diane too wanted to be with someone and be in love with someone. She wanted to do these things without being married. She still does. She saw herself in her parents. She saw how she could be, how life could be, how love could be.

There is a correlation between seeing what could be and experiencing what is. But, as the well-spoken scientist who is often interviewed on the news says: “Correlation is not causation” and “Past performance is not a predictor of future results.”

Diane's parents are also two different races. It matters which races, but it matters only to Diane and her parents and their
family and friends, not to those who do not know them. Not everyone gets to know everything about everybody.

Growing up in the Southwest, Diane saw a few mixed-race parents, mixed-race children, but she did not always have the opportunity or inclination to befriend these families. When she was a kid, friends were still determined by City Council decree, based on the numerology of each child's name, which had been considered the most solid foundation for a lasting friendship.

Sometimes she was teased, called terrible names by other children. Sometimes, those children were not the same race as one of her parents. Conversely, those same children were often the same race as her other parent.

As Diane became a teenager, she continued to hear not only about her race but also about her body.

She was a girl, not yet a woman. She was fifteen years old.

Imagine a fifteen-year-old girl of mixed-race parents.

That's pretty good. That's very close, she might say to anyone who described what she looked like. Diane didn't know what she looked like. She never cared to know. Many people would tell her anyway.

When her body won the race to womanhood against her person, Diane began to hear that she was tall, short, fat, skinny, ugly, sexy, smiled too much, smiled too little, had bad hair, had beautiful hair, had something in her teeth, dressed nice, dressed cheap, had duck feet, had elegant feet. She was too dark. She was too pale.

She heard a lot of different descriptions of her, and she took them all as truth.

You must never need to get any sun, Diane, a person might say as they playfully (and jealously) batted their sleeved arm at her. You don't look like who you are, Diane, a different person
might say as they playfully (and scoldingly) batted their unsleeved arm at her.

Teasing about race came less and less. Or rather, it disguised itself as simple assessment. You sound like a regular person on the phone, someone might say to her on the phone.

She also heard about the non-marriage of her parents. You're technically a bastard, right? people sometimes asked when they heard her parents were unmarried.

Were you an accident? other people (sometimes the same people) might ask. Do they not love each other? other people might inquire, earnestly. Well, they've got an easy escape if things ever go wrong, still others might joke, unearnestly. Are they swingers? some might joke and others might ask sincerely.

But most common was the assumption that she would never fall in love. You'll probably never meet someone, some assumed, because your parents didn't teach you the importance of marriage.

She did find true love. His name was Troy. He was seventeen. She was an older seventeen.

Imagine a teenager named Troy.

That's not bad. He's a bit less athletic, but it doesn't matter. Troy looked like what he thought he looked like. Troy always looked exactly how he thought he looked. He never loved Diane until they met. Then he always loved her. Until later, when he never loved her.

“I will always love you,” he sometimes said.

Later he didn't say this at all. He wasn't even there to say it.

They were always together and always in love for the eight months they first knew each other, working summer jobs at the White Sands Ice Cream Shoppe. Then Josh, not yet named Josh, began to form. He began first as scattered cells. Those
cells joined and began to multiply into billions and billions of cells until they were shaped like a single, giant cell.

Those cells added more cells from Diane's cells, and those cells began to make eyes and feet and kidneys and tongues and wings and gills, growing and expanding into a Josh-like shape. People pointed out to Diane how different she looked on the outside. She did not feel she looked any different.

Then one day Josh came out of Diane.

She was a girl, finally a woman. She was eighteen years old.

Imagine an eighteen-year-old mother.

Imagine a seventeen-year-old father.

Troy couldn't. Troy couldn't see himself anymore. He looked at Josh, whom he named after his uncle, a retired Army Ranger he vaguely thought of as “cool,” and Troy saw a mirror out of sync. A face stared back, making different gestures, different motions than Troy made. It was his face, but it did not look like him, act like him.

Troy had never experienced discord. Or he had never known he had experienced discord until that moment.

Troy moved out of Night Vale when Josh was one year old.

A month later, Troy sent Diane a letter. It said something about a military family. It said something about being children. It said something about mistakes. It said something about remembering each other. It said something about never forgetting her face.

She doesn't remember if he said he would never forget her face or if she should never forget her own face. Either way, neither happened.

Some people told her they knew she would never keep a man. Some told her that good parents would have insisted Troy marry her. Some told her she dressed inappropriately. Some
told her she was too tall. Most told her she would never get married now.

This was fine with Diane. This is still fine with Diane.

We meant to say you'll never meet anyone now, let alone get married, most would clarify.

Josh was always curious about who his father was. He understood, based on what his friends had told him, that many children had two parents, and there were periods where it was clear he felt one short. Often he would ask questions. Sometimes those questions were out loud.

Diane sometimes hears that Troy is an actuary. Sometimes she hears Troy is a florist. Sometimes she hears Troy is a cop. A toll collector. A professor. A musician. A stand-up comedian. Once she heard a terrible rumor he became a librarian, but she could not imagine Troy becoming the darkest of evil beasts, no matter what he had done to her. Is it even possible for a human to become a librarian? Diane wondered.

And now she and Josh in the movie theater, and Troy, unnoticed by Josh.

The dark strip of floor lighting turned back on. Troy, still not looking her way, gave a big thumbs-up to somebody out of sight, just around a dark corner. Troy's teeth shone in shadow. He did not look at Diane. Troy exited the theater slowly, still grinning, thumb still extended.

She looked back at Josh, her arm reflexively tightening around him. He squirmed and glanced at her.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and removed her arm.

“No, it's fine,” he said, looking down at his half-eaten Twizzler.

“Really?” She put her arm back around him.

They waited quietly for the movie to start.

Later, Diane would return to the theater on her own.

Jackie started her car in the direction of the library, but soon it strayed. Or she strayed it. Whatever the verb is to cause to stray. Corrupted. She corrupted her car toward her mother's house.

Her mother had called, and being a good daughter was as convenient an excuse as any. Anything to avoid the library.

She turned onto Desert Elm Drive, a name which was evocative of nothing real. She drove past the Antiques Mall. The antiques in the window were especially cute, wrestling with each other and playfully snapping at each other's tails. But she could never seem to justify the money for an antique, and besides she was rarely home, so how would she care for one?

Her mother lived in the neighborhood of Sand Pit, which was between the developments of Palm Frond Majesty and the Weeping Miner. It was a neighborhood of single-family homes, with small front yards, mostly kept gravel by water-conscious residents, and backyards that rose steeply into hills unsuitable for planting without extensive and time-consuming terracing.

Her mother's house was like any house that was pink with green highlights, or any house with a manually opening wooden garage door fallen half away to splinters, and any house with a rosemary bush slowly encroaching its way into every other plant in the yard, and a front gate that sagged into rusted hinges, and a thick green lawn that frustrated her water-conscious neighbors. Her house could easily be mistaken for any other house that happened to be identical to it.

Jackie felt unease she could not express with any sort of coherent gesture or incoherent word when she eyed the house. Something about the house was unfamiliar to her. Her heart was beating in her chest, which is where it usually beat. She got out of the car and thought about all else that she could be doing now. Like driving through the desert in that Mercedes that was in her pawnshop, destination unknown (or no, glancing down at her hand, she knew exactly the destination, didn't she?), with the top down, searing air and dust running through her hair, pretending that the discomfort of driving with the top down was enjoyable because it, as an action, signified enjoyment. Or finally treating herself to a nice prix fixe dinner (with wine pairings and complimentary antivenoms) at Night Vale's hottest foodie spot, Tourniquet. Or standing very still out in the dunes at night until the lights came down around her and she felt herself lifted by cold alien hands, taken away somewhere secret and far away for research, never to return. All the fun she could be having, except she had never done any of those things, and if she were honest, and she sometimes was, she had never wanted to. What she liked was routine. Her routine was her life.

If she thought about it, her life hadn't added up to much at all, but she never thought about it. Except now, every time she saw that paper in her hand, she thought about it. It was ghastly, all this thinking.

Her mother was waiting at the open door.

“Oh, Jackie, I'm glad you came.”

Jackie followed her inside. The house was immaculate, as though no one lived there. Some people prefer to make their homes so neat that there is no evidence of life anywhere at all.

“You had something to say, I think,” Jackie said. “I came by to hear it.”

“You were always quick to the point. Even as a child.”

Her mother led Jackie into the kitchen, which was as pristine as the living room. The colors were teal and raspberry, the same as every other room in the house, with accents of mint. It resembled a model home, and Jackie wondered if the perfect oranges perfectly arranged in the glass bowl on the counter were just wax.

Jackie looked again at the oranges, the kitchen, the clean walls and furniture. She was not sure she had ever been inside this house. Of course, she must have grown up here. Unless her mother moved after she had grown old enough to move away, but she would have heard about it, probably been involved in the moving process, possibly even the process of picking a new place. Also, at nineteen, she couldn't have moved away from home very long ago. But nothing about the house was familiar to her. She looked around the kitchen trying to guess which drawer held the silverware, the surest sign of kitchen familiarity, and she hadn't a clue.

“Do you remember years ago, when we had your best friends Anna and Gracia over for a birthday party and you were annoyed because your birthday wasn't until the next day?” asked her mother.

“Ah,” Jackie said. “Mmm,” she said. She slipped open a drawer, trying to appear like a person who casually knows where the silverware is. The drawer was full of dish towels.

“I tried to explain that the next day was a school day, and the elementary administration sends armed posses of schoolchildren after truants, but you just wouldn't listen. Always stubborn, you.” Her mother's eyes were wide and her lower lip was folded under her teeth. Her fingers were pressed pale into the Formica counter.

Jackie tried another drawer. It was full of an opaque, fatty liquid, simmering from some invisible heat source.

“No,” Jackie told herself. She hadn't been looking for the hot milk drawer. The silverware drawer. If she knew where that was, then she knew the house. If she didn't, then.

“I've never been inside this house,” she said. Her mother didn't look surprised.

“When you were ten you hit your head on this counter here. I thought you'd be hurt but instead you were laughing. You said it reminded you of a character in a movie doing a funny fall, and that picturing it that way, from a distance, made it hurt less. You couldn't stop laughing.”

“How did I even know how to come here?” Now Jackie was afraid again, and it made her angry. In her anger she slammed open another drawer, but again not silverware. “This is where silverware should go, if you think about the kitchen in terms of workflow. And who even has
two
hot milk drawers?”

“You had a knack for hurting yourself but a natural tendency to not really feel it,” said her mother. “I remember when you got stung when your birthday piñata was filled with bees. That taught you a valuable lesson about birthdays in general. Remember that?”

“I remember the pawnshop. I remember days at the pawnshop. Going back and back. What I don't remember is where your silverware drawer is. Where is it? Where is the drawer?”

There had never been information more important to her. She crumpled the slip of paper in her left hand, and then fanned herself with it, not a single crease in it.

“I don't have one, dear. You know that. We're both getting worked up. You'd better sit down. We'll figure this and everything else out if we just have more water. It's important. It will help with your migraines.”

“I don't get migraines!”

Her mother glanced out the window, and Jackie followed the glance, physically, to the window. Her anger was a creature now, and it walked behind her, pushing her along.

There was her mother's yard, neat grass bordered by gravel. The grass kept alive with an artificial life-support system of pumps and machines stretching hundreds of miles to the nearest reservoir, its roots barely clinging to the sandy topsoil, mixed heavily with chemical fertilizer. Beyond the lawn, terraced on the steep hill, were plants more suited to the climate. Cacti, and sagebrush, and metallic trees that changed size each day.

“I'm not sure I've ever been out there,” she said as she sat down at the kitchen table with her mother.

“Of course you've been out there,” her mother said. “Let's talk together about memories you have of being out there.”

Her mother rolled an avocado back and forth on the spotless tabletop. The floor and the tabletop and the walls were all the same clean color, and everything was equally clean and unused. The avocado was, of course, fake, as all avocados are.

Then her mother looked up with pleading eyes. She gestured with the avocado, as if that were what she was trying to say, or at least an approximation of that.

“When you were five years old, we held a birthday party for you in Mission Grove Park, in the birthday party area. The one that's fenced in and kept secure in case there's another one of those occasional birthday . . . accidents.

“It was a simpler time. Because I personally had less memories and so less to superimpose upon the world, and so it was much clearer, and also I was younger. Thus, the world was simpler. I'm getting lost.

“We had a birthday party for you. There were presents and guests and a banner that said:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
.

“Your father picked you up and swung you around. Parents sometimes show love through velocity. I don't have that picture anymore, but at one point I did. Your father picked you up. It was your birthday. Do you understand?”

“I don't remember having a father.”

“Well, dear. He left quite some time ago.”

“I don't just not remember having a father. I don't remember you ever telling me I didn't have a father.”

Her mother gripped the avocado and searched Jackie's face, presumably for some sense that communication had occurred.

“What ever happened to Anna and Gracia?” Jackie asked.

“Who?”

“The other girls from one of my birthday parties?”

“Oh, I don't know. We all lose touch with friends as we get older.”

There was a sound of movement in the backyard. Her mother lowered her eyes as Jackie sprang up and went to look out again.

Still the backyard, and the lawn, and the plants, and the gravel. But now also a shape in the gravel, against the fence. At first, vaguely man-shaped. Then, specifically man-shaped. Her eyes filled in the details as they were discovered. Blond hair. A warm smile. Was that a smile? It was the man from the kitchen at the Moonlite All-Nite.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Jackie said, eyes and fists tightening.

The Sheriff's Secret Police were always easy to summon, as quick as shouting “Hey, police!” out your door or whispering it into your phone. The phone didn't even have to be on. But calling for help was not something Jackie Fierro was likely to do.

What she was likely to do, she thought as she did it, was charge out the back door directly at the man, shouting, “Coming for you, creep!”

There weren't even footprints in the gravel. That's how gone he was. She stumbled to a stop. No one. She jumped at a loud hiss behind her.

“I'm not afraid,” she declared, and she wasn't. She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

The sprinkler popped up, and the water hit her full-on. And then the rest of the sprinklers, one by one, tossing their burden into the hot desert air to nourish the grass, or to float away and evaporate.

“I have definitely never been out here,” she said, water streaming down her hair and face into her clothes and shoes. “How did I even know how to get to this house?”

Her mother, visible faintly through the kitchen window, took a deep, slow bite out of the wax avocado and, not looking back at her daughter, began with difficulty to chew.