Duplex (12 page)

The service seemed as though it would never end. Finally a nun got up to snuff the candles, releasing a thread of smoke straight from each wick. The smell was sweet, the candles—as Blue-Eyes knew from reading the brochure—a product of the school’s own honeycombs. One by one the sisters filed through a side door, the ones who were able bending a knee to bow deeply before the altar. The girls went out the same door they’d come in through in a disorderly crowd. No one was talking to anyone else. That was the rule: you had to keep silent all night long until after breakfast.

The later it got the harder the wind began to blow, rattling the windows. The school buildings were set high on a hill and were very old. At one time they’d been painted white but now they looked almost silver. Every night the wind came pawing at them, taking their paint away bit by bit, filling the night with particles. Everything vulnerable was on the move, dropping shadows. The light got blocked the way it always did at night, letting people sleep.

Back home Mary tried contacting her daughter but the receptor wasn’t working. Blue-Eyes did this all the time—it was nothing new. She would put things in the port the way children put jelly beans up their nose, the difference being that it didn’t result in a trip to the doctor and it cost a fortune to fix.

Walter was at a meeting; he wouldn’t be home until much later. When he stayed out late like this, Mary had no idea when he got in. The next morning he would be sitting at the kitchen table in his plaid bathrobe with nothing on underneath, reading the newspaper and drinking coffee like a normal husband. There would be a pile of defrosted waffles on his plate but Mary was pretty sure they were only there for show, as if to provide the illusion that he was having a regular breakfast. The eyes of the cat in the clock that used to belong to her parents would jerk from side to side and he would give the paper a little shake. This was a signal for Mary to untie the sash and let the two halves of his robe fall away, revealing his erect phallus. She could straddle it or take it in her mouth—the choice was hers. When she was finished he would keep her coming with his fingers. Sex with him was never disappointing the way it used to be with Eddie, but she figured that was because she couldn’t ever forget it was Eddie she was having sex with, making it harder for her to completely lose herself in the act.

Mary tried Blue-Eyes one more time; the receptor still wasn’t operational. The house felt especially empty and the dark sky out the picture window seemed oddly loose like fabric there was too much of. Please don’t let this be happening, she thought. When Walter said what he did about Space Drift that night in his apartment she’d thought it was one of those things like the Rain of Beads that had happened a long time ago and would never happen again.

Never again, Mary thought. She sat down at her sewing machine and began attaching the waistband to the skirt she hadn’t finished making in time for Blue-Eyes to take it with her to school. As she sat there the moon appeared in the picture window. It was close to full but not quite—nothing out of the ordinary in the way of a moon but beautiful nonetheless.

Whatever she had felt for Eddie—and, really, she wasn’t sure what that had been, only that it had been everything for her—she chalked up to the fires of youth, which she told herself were behind her. She was encouraged to feel this way, to belittle everything that had happened between her and Eddie. Time healed all wounds, everyone knew that, just as they knew the moon was a rock and nothing more. It came out of the place where the Pacific Ocean was now; a monkey had landed there and then people had walked on it. She would get over feeling sad about Blue-Eyes, too, but not immediately. For the moment she preferred to feel sad.

Mary bit off the thread and held up the skirt. The school had provided the pattern and the finished garment was surprisingly unattractive; she couldn’t imagine her daughter consenting to wear such a thing. She dropped it on the floor. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll put it in the mail. Then she walked to the piano and pulled out the bench and sat on it. The moon is a rock, Mary thought, but you could see how it loved the place it came from in the way it wouldn’t let go of the tides. The moon loved water. Whereas water had a more complicated relationship with rock—without rock, the water could be everywhere. Mary opened her port all the way and began to play the
Moonlight Sonata.
She had never been any good, she knew that, but she also knew this piece by heart. The further into it she got, the louder she played.

At some point she saw a light go on in the nearest neighbor’s house. The nearest neighbor was too far away and too shielded by massive plantings of ornamental shrubbery and shade trees to be able to hear Mary play. Then again, she was using the pedal and had the lid propped open.

PENNY AND BLUE-EYES WERE KNEELING BY THE FIRE IN Penny’s room; they were toasting crumpets the way young men did in the leather-bound books about school life in England. In the books, as at St. Foy, one young person’s future was always going to turn out better than the other’s.

“What’s that?” Penny asked, cocking her head.

Penny was an “old girl”—she’d lived at St. Foy for as long as she could remember. Her room was about four times the size of Blue-Eyes’s and had a fireplace, a sitting area with a camelback love seat upholstered in gold velvet, a four-poster canopy bed, and a Queen Anne highboy. Penny also had an aquarium containing a small pink castle and a large brown fish that stuck itself to the side of the tank with its mouth. Pets were against the rules at St. Foy, but Penny, as she’d told Blue-Eyes, was a rule breaker.

“What’s what?” Blue-Eyes asked, oblivious to the music leaking from her port. The problem with jamming the apparatus the way she did was that you could do it once too often and then you couldn’t make it stay shut ever again.

“Let’s get something straight,” Penny said. “If you keep pretending not to know what I’m talking about like that, out the door you go. No!” Penny added, and she sounded angry. “That is
exactly
what I mean. That sad expression. Like you’re a poor little orphan girl.”

“It’s my mother,” Blue-Eyes admitted. She had been puzzled, not sad, and was surprised by Penny’s outburst. It wasn’t in Blue-Eyes’s nature to pretend anything.

“Your
mother
is a poor little orphan girl?”

“No, my mother is the one who is playing the piano.”

“Turn it up,” Penny said. “Is that really her playing? Your mother can play the piano?”

“She’s trying to make me feel bad.”

“Why would she do that?” Penny asked. “She’s your
mother.
Doesn’t she love you?”

“She does,” Blue-Eyes said. “That’s the whole problem.”

Her mother owned a highboy like the one in Penny’s room—it had come to her along with the cat clock and the many other articles of furniture she inherited when her parents got divorced. This was what her mother’s life was like, Blue-Eyes thought, a large piece of furniture where almost all the drawers held no surprises except for the least reachable top middle drawer—the one with a cockle shell carved in the wood—which was filled to the brim with things Blue-Eyes never saw her mother wear and knew she never would, white cotton underpants, shoes with stiletto heels, a fancy pink prom dress, a broken pair of eyeglasses.

Penny yanked Blue-Eyes’s hair back from the port and rested her ear against the hole, letting the music pour out of it and into her head. “Lucky you,” she said. “If I had a mother like yours I’d be the happiest girl alive.”

E
VEN AFTER THEIR SON BECAME FAMOUS AND BEGAN sending them money, Eddie’s parents remained on the street. Most of the people who’d been living there when he was a boy had moved away, some of them into fancier houses, some of them into retirement communities or nursing homes, some of them into the ground. Of the original families only the Darlings and Mr. O’Toole and Carol XA remained. Mary’s parents had gone their separate ways years earlier, Mrs. O’Toole died the year the street became infested with insects so small they could fly through anything, the Duffys moved to be closer to Roy and Cindy and the grandchildren. Aside from the photographer, no one knew where Miss Vicks had been going when she left, though everyone registered her absence. She didn’t really have any friends, yet the street felt empty without her and her little red dog. They were more reliable than a clock for telling time.

One night not long after Miss Vicks disappeared, Carol XA overheard a whining noise coming from inside number 49 as she was flying past the porch. When she went inside she found the dog sitting in the middle of the living room carpet, obviously hungry but otherwise none the worse for wear. Carol took him home with her to number 37.

Pet care didn’t come naturally to the robots—they found it difficult to fathom the relationship between humans and animals. Sometimes we befriended them, sometimes we made things out of them like shoes or belts, often we ate them. Occasionally humans took the form of animals and when this happened they were always kinder than regular human beings.

Carol copied Miss Vicks’s practice of “taking the dog for a walk.” She enjoyed the slow, stately rhythm dog walking induced in her mechanism, the ritual pause, the insertion of her hand into the plastic bag, the stooping down and the scooping up, the tying of the knot and the ultimate disposal of the neat little bundle. Because she had no sense of smell there was nothing unpleasant about the transaction. All the inhabitants of number 37 liked to make the dog do tricks but it was Carol who truly seemed to love the creature. She could be seen petting its sleek russet head, nipping her front teeth together in involuntary expressions of tenderness exactly like Miss Vicks used to do.

Miss Vicks’s leaving was a blessing in disguise—that was the general opinion of everyone on the street. Having a pet made the robots more human, which in turn brought out the best in the humans. Mrs. Darling knit the dog a long green sweater. Mr. O’Toole never left home without a pocket full of treats. Eddie’s father made sure there was a bowl of fresh water on the sidewalk by the foot of the front steps at all times. As for the robots, they knew Miss Vicks was never coming back.

Eddie’s parents had stayed on the street because his mother wanted to be in the same place if her boy returned, either as a person or a spirit, she didn’t care which as long as she got to see him again. His father had already reserved a space for himself and his wife in the new retirement community that was said to be going up where the Woodard Estate used to stand. In the meantime he busied himself maintaining the lawn. It took almost every ounce of his energy to push the mower up the hill and then make sure it didn’t get away from him going back down. Everyone else on the street had abandoned the idea of having a lawn, paving over the grass or adding an extension that displaced the yard completely. Many of the new people were young families with children, not unlike the way it had been when Eddie was a boy, though the children were different, less apt to play outdoors.

Maintaining the front lawn had become a point of pride with Eddie’s father, who wanted to set an example for the young families, to show them that just because the world often seemed to reward ugliness was no excuse to give up on beauty. Granted, the ivy plant in the Italian cachepot on the bow-window sill was no longer a living thing but made of plastic. The lawn was mostly stringweed, mowed to look like grass. When it got cut it didn’t smell sweet like grass, either. It smelled fishy, similar to algae.

The day was becoming hot, the sky like an open mouth, and the heat had a broad sucking quality no one could get used to. Eddie’s father had almost finished mowing and was standing on the sidewalk, using his large white handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his bright-red face. The sycamore in front of their house was one of the ones that had sickened and died and been chopped down. In its place the community association had planted something that looked more like a twig. The street used to be so shady, even during the hottest months. No wonder the children stayed inside now.

Eddie’s mother stayed inside too. She claimed the sun made her feel faint, though everyone agreed she’d been a different person ever since Eddie had gone on the DL and hadn’t come back. Saturday night Eddie’s father still frequented the Venetian Club and once he’d had enough to drink could be persuaded to take the baton and lead the band for a number or two. Eddie’s mother used to be one of the best dancers on the floor; everyone said Eddie got his fleetness of foot, his animal grace, from her. He looked like her too, with his thick dark hair and full lips, but he got his hazel eyes and tender spirit from his father.

“I’m waiting,” Eddie’s mother yelled through the open front door. Like most of the older people on the street they still felt safe using screens, having built up immunity during the year of the infestation. “The ice cubes are melting.”

“I’ll be right there,” Eddie’s father yelled back. “I’m almost done.”

He was watching the approach from the far end of the street of Carol XA, who had stopped at the corner to let her dog sniff the holly bush. Ever since she’d adopted Miss Vicks’s dog, Carol had adopted her habits and mannerisms as well, wearing sweater sets and tweed suits and playing the part of the perfect spinster. Unlike her predecessor, though, she always had a ready store of neighborhood gossip. Eddie’s father enjoyed passing the time of day with her.

“Lunch is ready
now!
” Eddie’s mother yelled.

If her husband didn’t come in soon she would have to eat both sandwiches herself, something she did more and more frequently, contributing to a growing weight problem. She used to be lithe, like Eddie; in a form-fitting gown she could steal a man’s breath away and fill a woman’s soul with envy. At least now that she was fat she had some friends. Plus the sandwiches were her favorite, sea legs mixed with mayonnaise and celery—to slow herself down she cut them into quarters. A small gray-brown bird she’d never seen before settled on the bird feeder outside the kitchen window, fluffed its feathers, and then made itself smooth again, looking her in the eye.

It was as if she was supposed to do something, though she didn’t know what. For want of anything better she activated the console, a miniature one built into the wall above the kitchen counter for times like this, when her craving for human company was overpowering. The reception was poor, but what she thought was static turned out to be the noise of an over excited crowd. “... a stunning development, Bob,” the sportscaster was saying, “absolutely stunning. I don’t think anyone saw this coming ...”

The picture shifted to the ball field, where a player wearing Rockets jersey number 24 was sliding into home plate. He looked young and strong, exactly the way he’d looked the day he collided with his teammate in front of the Alka-Seltzer sign. It was hard to see anything clearly, though; the picture was fuzzy and because the sun was in his face he was wearing twin patches of black paint under his eyes. Eddie’s mother sat on the kitchen floor, her appetite knocked out of her. “Back to you, Heidi,” the sportscaster said.

The crowd kept cheering, a sea of paper bag–colored faces with little holes for mouths. When they started singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Eddie’s signature tune, the picture switched to the owner’s box, where the owner was making a victory sign with his fingers while his wife sat beside him stiff as a board in a white linen dress and a black straw hat with an unusually wide brim. It was impossible to see her expression—when the crowd got to “I don’t care if I never get back” the camera pulled in for a close-up, whereupon she gripped both knees with her white-gloved hands and put her head in her lap.

Eddie’s mother thought the owner’s wife looked like she was going to be sick and she felt no sympathy. Of course she’d never heard the real story; as far as she was concerned, if it hadn’t been for Mary, Eddie would still be here. It was hard to remember that there had been a time when the future seemed so certain it was as if it had already happened and it was possible to summon even the smallest details of it as if they were distant memories: the four of them eating lunch at the card table in the living room, the sunlight sliding through the bow window in a great yellow block the way it always did at midday. Make that five and put them in the dining room along with a high chair, an entire family shuttling around and through the sun, dragging their shadows behind them like trains. Her granddaughter was a sly little monkey, dark-haired like her daddy. The child didn’t always want to try something new like sea-leg sandwiches, but Grammy had her ways. Then they all played cards.

“I’m feeling good,” Eddie was telling Heidi. The Rockets had won the playoffs with Eddie’s grand slam home run in the game’s final at bat. He didn’t look any different than he had the last time his mother saw him—he had a pleasant face but rarely did he smile. The last time she saw him—when could that have been? As crystal clear as the future once seemed, the past now seemed cloaked in mystery. So much time had gone by. New people had moved onto the street, most of them nice enough but total strangers. Mr. Costello sold his haberdashery to a chain. The trolley barn had become a walk-in clinic.

Meanwhile Eddie’s father had finished mowing the grass verge in front of number 24 and was turning to greet Carol XA.

“Looks like someone’s thirsty,” he said, moving the water bowl closer to her little dog who was straining at the leash.

“You do such a beautiful job,” Carol said. She stood looking back the way she’d come, blinking her eyes rapidly the way a robot does when agitated. “I only wish everyone took as much care with their property.”

“It isn’t easy,” Eddie’s father said. He knew she was talking about Mr. O’Toole, who had let things go since his wife died. Even though the ornamental shrubbery in front of their house was plastic it had shed most of its leaves, and the paint had peeled from all their window and door frames. “Sometimes life throws us curves,” he added.

For several moments they both stood without saying a word, watching while the dog lapped up water. At last Carol pulled a balled tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and began to dab at her eyes. “They seemed like such a devoted couple,” she said with a sigh.

All at once, as it had many times before, the long silver-gray car approached from the far end of the street, moving fast. Because of the missing trees the sun reflected directly off the car’s hood, turning it to a blaze of light almost as hard to look at as the face of the sun itself.

“Keep back!” Carol said, handing Eddie’s father the leash. Already she was moving too fast to register the moment when the leash slipped from his fingers—before anyone could stop her she had stepped off the curb directly into the path of the speeding car.

It was like watching a bright thing intersect with a thing even brighter, neither system’s mechanics even remotely compatible with the usual thermodynamic laws. Once again there was the sound of squealing brakes, a soft thump. Then the car’s rear door opened, letting Eddie out. He stumbled to regain balance and began walking unsteadily, listing from side to side.

“They shouldn’t have let you leave the hospital before you were ready,” Carol said. She was standing back on the sidewalk, Miss Vicks’s dog lying in the gutter at her feet.

“What hospital? I was never in any hospital,” Eddie replied. “Besides, no one told me not to leave.”

“That should have gone without saying.”

As the car continued speeding toward the Avenue, Eddie’s mother caught a glimpse of Mary through the passenger window. She looked older—not
old,
but not young, either—sitting there blowing her nose while her husband’s long fingers deftly wormed their way around behind her bent neck to come out the other side and pat her on the shoulder. Maybe it was that she seemed less vibrant, less hopeful, though that may have had less to do with aging than with the way she was living her life now that Blue-Eyes had been sent away to school. Eddie’s father had told her he was pretty sure he’d seen Mary walking near the former trolley barn in the direction of the Mermaid Tavern. She was always nicely dressed but seemed to have trouble staying upright—following in her mother’s footsteps, you might say. Women often got the tips of their high heels caught in the trolley tracks.

“Didn’t anyone hear me?” Eddie’s mother asked. She had come onto the porch when she heard the brakes and now she couldn’t believe her eyes. Her husband was standing on the grass verge, hugging a person who looked exactly like her son. “Lunch is ready,” she said.

Meanwhile Carol XA stood there cradling the limp russet body of Miss Vicks’s dog in her arms. Of course the robots were aware of the fact that all living beings experienced a thing called “death,” but none of them had ever given much thought to what being dead actually meant. No one heard the sound the robot was making as the car arrived at the Avenue and turned right; it wasn’t coming from Carol but from somewhere far away that also seemed like it was inside her mouth. I don’t think she’d known what would happen when she stopped the car, only that it was her job to get Eddie out of it.

“You’re looking good,” said Eddie’s father.

“Thanks, Dad,” Eddie said.

Inside number 24 the card table had been set for two. With Eddie’s help his mother added a third setting, summoning as she did the future she so ardently desired. Together she and Eddie arranged the sea-leg sandwiches on the blue willow plates, poured iced tea into the jelly glasses, and folded the napkins.

“It’s good to have you home, son,” Eddie’s father said, shaking the napkin back into a square and inserting it in his shirt collar like a bib.