Geek Love (7 page)

I remember Lil with a bundle of costumes in one arm and a bag of popping corn in the other as she stood rigid in the sawdust of the midway and lectured me sternly: “We use the plural form, Olympia, whenever we refer to Electra and Iphigenia. We do not say 'Where is Elly and Iphy?' We say 'Where are Elly and Iphy?'”

If you stood facing the twins, Elly was on your left and Iphy on your right. Elly was right-handed and Iphy was left-handed. But Iphy was the right leg and Elly was the left leg. If you pulled Elly's hair, Iphy yelped too. If you kissed Iphy's cheek, Elly smiled. If Elly burnt her hand on the popcorn machine, Iphy cried also and couldn't sleep that night from the pain. They ran and climbed and danced gracefully. They had separate hearts but a meshing bloodstream; separate stomachs but a common intestine. They had one liver and one set of kidneys. They had two brains and a nervous system that was peculiarly connected and unexpectedly separate. Between them they ate a small fraction more than one norm kid their size.

Jonathan Tomaini, the greasy-haired music-school graduate who became their piano teacher when they had gone past Lily, claimed that Iphy was all melody and Elly was rhythm exclusively. They were both sopranos.

Arty speculated that their two brains functioned as right and left lobes of a single brain.

Elly punished Iphy by eating food that disagreed with them. Iphy would sink into depressed silence, eating nothing. Elly's favorite trick was cheese. Iphy hated constipation like cancer.

Elly varied the treatment by gorging on chocolate, even though she didn't really like chocolate and it made her chin break out in zits. Pimples were very obvious on her milky skin. Iphy loved chocolate and never ate it for fear of pimples. Elly's eating the stuff never gave Iphy pimples. The punishment was that Iphy had to sleep next to Elly's pimples, had to live within inches of the molten eruptions.

Iphy felt sorry for everybody who wasn't a twin. Elly despised me.

When Chick came along, both twins adored him. He was such a meek little feather that he worshiped them. Lil and Al were just loved. But Arty was different. He was separate. He fascinated Iphy and he terrified Elly. Elly's harshness flared against anyone who might distract Iphy's attention from her. The rest of us were just fantasy opposition. Arty was dangerous. He flirted with Iphy. He toyed with her.

Elly hated him. She acted, sometimes, as though Arty could tear Iphy away from her.

The Binewski family shrine was a fifty-foot trailer with a door at each end and a one-dollar admission price. The sign over the entrance said “Mutant Mystery” and, in smaller letters, “A Museum of Natures Innovative Art.” We called it “the Chute.” Like everything else in the Fabulon, the Chute grew and changed over the years. But the Chute had started with six clear-glass twenty-gallon jars, and those jars-each lit by hidden yellow beams and equipped with its own explanatory, push-button voice tape-were always the core.

The Chute was Crystal Lil's idea, and she supervised it. She visited the Chute every day before the gates opened and polished the jars lovingly with glass cleaner. Later, when Al wanted to put the stuffed animals in, he had to clear it with Crystal Lil. She insisted on the maze at the entrance so that the six jars remained the climax of the walk through.

The stuffed animals in their lit glass windows were the usual humdrum collection of two-headed calves, six-legged chickens, and the mounted skeleton of a three-tailed cat. The only live exhibit was a trio of featherless hens that Al picked up from the chicken rancher who had bred them to save plucking costs on his fryers. He couldn't sell them because customers were used to the pimply “chicken skin” of birds that had their feathers yanked. They didn't trust the smooth-skinned look. These three were cheerful, baggy-fleshed creatures with floppy combs and wattles. They lived for two years before Lil found them, heaped dead in a corner of their cage, done in overnight by some microscopic enemy of innovation. Al had them stuffed and they stayed on in the same cage. One bent over, with head extended as though about to peck at the straw that would never again need changing. One stood alert, with its round yellow eye cocked at the passersby and its right foot curled as though in the act of stepping forward. The last sat cozily in a corner with one wing spread and its head tucked underneath, apparently looking for lice.

Lily would take her pills after breakfast and then go over to the Chute with her cleaning gear. She left the dark green floors and walls to the power-vacuum crew but the glass she did herself. Sometimes I would help, sometimes the twins. Mostly Lily did it herself. She would do a quick, decent job on all the glass windows in the maze, but her true purpose was her visit to the “kids” as she called them. The jars were Al's failures.

“And mine,” Lil would always add. She would spray the big jars and polish them. She would talk softly, all the while, to the things floating in the jars or to whoever was with her. She remembered the drug recipe Al had prescribed for her pregnancy with each one, and reminisced about the births.

There were four who had been born dead: Clifford, Maple, Janus, and the Fist. “We always say Arty is our firstborn but actually Janus was the first,” Lil would say as she peered into the fluid that filled up the jar, examining the small huddled figure that floated upright inside.

Janus was always my favorite. He had a down of dark hair curling on his tiny scalp and a sweet sleeping face. His other head emerged on a short neck at the base of his spine, equally round and perfect, with matching hair. This rear brother squinted in perpetual surprise at the tiny buttocks under its nose. The four sets of minuscule eyelashes fascinated me and I wondered how the two would have gotten along if Janus had lived. Would they have bickered like Elly and Iphy? They could never have seen each other except sideways in a mirror. Probably the top head would have controlled everything and made his poor little butt-brother miserable.

Lil always fussed over Maple, who looked like a big rumpled sponge. Maple had two eyes but they didn't relate to each other. Lil said Maple had no bones. She and Al had decided Maple was female because they couldn't find a penis. Lil also clucked and sighed over Clifford, who looked like a lasagna pan full of exposed organs with a monkey head attached. The twins and I called Clifford “the Tray” when Mama wasn't around.

The Fist wasn't full term but it was obvious where the name had come from. “I only carried the Fist for five months,” Lil said, and that was her excuse for spending a shade less time on his jar.

Apple and Leona were the two who had lived long enough to die outside Lily's belly. Apple was big but dull. She looked like a Tibetan cherub. Her coarse black hair grew close to her rumpled eyes. I myself could dimly remember her sleeping in the top drawer of Lil's big bureau. She never moved anything but her lips, her eyelids, and her bowels. Her eyeballs were still pointing in vaguely different directions. Lil had fed her from a bottle and changed her, washing her limp body three or four times a day. Lil would talk to Apple and rub her and move things in front of her eyes, but there was never any response. Apple grew fat and there was a smell of old urine around her and the drawer. She was two years old when she died. A pillow fell on her face.

Arty always claimed that Al did it. Elly and Iphy would squeal when he said that, and I would shake my head and change the subject, but we never asked Lil and we never brought it up in front of Al.

Leona was the last jar before the exit and had four spotlights focused to pierce the formaldehyde in which she drifted. Lil would linger over the jar and once or twice I saw her cry as she pressed her forehead against the glass and crooned. “We had such hopes for her,” she would sigh. Leona's jar was labeled “The Lizard Girl” and she looked the part. Her head was long from front to back and the forehead was compressed and flattened over small features that collapsed into her long throat with no chin to disturb the line. She had a big fleshy tail, as thick as a leg where it sprouted from her spine, but then tapering to a point. There was a faint greenish sheen to her skin but I suspected that Arty was right in claiming that Al had painted it on after Leona died.

“She was only seven months old,” Lil would murmur. “We never understood why she died.”

The sign in the jar room was bolted to the wall and had its own spotlight. It was carefully calligraphed in brown letters on a cream background. “HUMAN,” it said. “BORN OF NORMAL PARENTS.”

“You must always remember that these are your brothers and sisters,” Lil would lecture. “You must always take proper care of them and keep the roughnecks from jouncing the jars around on the road.”

The twins and I were expected to share responsibility for the jars if anything happened to Lil. This burden wasn't even mentioned to Chick or Arty.

Yet it was Arty who discovered that the kids in the jars floated close to the top when it rained and sank down to the bottom when the sky was clean Al never went into the Chute himself, but he would ask Lil for the weather report every morning when she came back from her visit

Assassin-

Limp-Wristed and Shy

Lillian Hinchcliff Binewski, eight months and two weeks pregnant with the most extravagant experiment in a flamboyant series. Crystal Lil bored with the bigness of her belly and the smallness of Coos Bay, Oregon, and fed up with the kaput generator that kept the show closed until a new coil could be installed that night, sat (Our Lil) in the foldaway dinette of the thirty-eight-foot Binewski Road King living van and decided to take a small van and drive over to a shopping center to pick up some prestitched silver-sequined stretch material to make matching costumes for the kids. And one for herself after her belly deflated, with a bit of white tulle for a tail.

“Arty honey,” she called, and stubbed her cigarette into the last grime of her breakfast wheat germ where it coated the blue bowl. Arturo, the Aqua Boy, was in the shower and toilet room and it took a minute for him to poke the door open. “Arty honey. We're going in to that big shopping center. Oly, you help him, baby. We'll all go.”

The pink-eyed Olympia, six years old and bouncy, put down a copy of National Geographic and climbed up on the side bunk to take Arty's Dunlop belly-tread off its hook. Arturo was murmuring slyly as Lil tore a long pink fingernail while buckling her sandal. “I can't hear you, Arty. Be sure to pee before we leave.”

“I said,” Arty slithered up to Lil's foot and lay looking at her long, elegant toes, “do you think it's a good idea for us all to go?”

Lil stepped over him and swung open the outside door. “Elly-Iphy,” she shrieked. From the big truck stage next door came the ripple of “Moonlight Sonata” for four hands and an answering shout from Iphigenia. “Come here, doves!” and the sonata cut off as Lil grabbed the ignition keys from the Buddha ashtray on the bookshelf.

Arty said, “I don't want the tread. I'll use the chair. It's easier in public.”

On that sunstruck, restless day, Vern Bogner filled the pickups fuel tank at the first station down from the camp. He had stopped there on his way up to buy kerosene for the lantern. The old man at the pump watched the meter flip over and hollered at Vern, “You're leaving early! Get your limit already?” Vern stared grimly through the windshield. The bed of the pickup was obviously empty. Snotty old cocksucker. Sometimes you just wanted to go up in the woods and sit by a fire and slip around a few beers in peace.

Vern Bogner had been produce manager at the Seal Bay Supermarket for five years, and assistant for three years before that. As Vern explained in detail years later, it was a time when his whole life had begun to slide. Despite his experience, oranges had always been hard to stack. He had built mounds and pyramids of Floridas and tangerines and big and little inny and outy navels by the million but he had never been plagued by so many rolls and drops and avalanches as in the past few months.

His wife, Emily, didn't like him much lately. And when he came home from work and said “Hi” to his own kids, they just snorted and went on staring at the TV. Vern was not at all sure what was happening to him, but a decade later he could still describe the moment-to-moment sensations of that morning.

The day was muggy hot and the smell of gas mixed with the beer in his belly and lifted in a bitter scrape to the back of his throat. Emily sneered at him too. “Oh, Vern's got lots of trophies-stuffed green peppers, lettuce heads.” And laughter. Even this scummy old station jock was noticing, rubbing it in. Vern turned his head just enough to catch a glint on the barrel of the 30.06 where it hung on the window rack. He'd been out with his fifty-dollar license four times this year and hadn't fired a shot.

When he saw the tall sign for the new shopping center, Vern flicked the turn signal. A brand-new supermarket took up one side of the lot. The dime store and hairdresser and the rest were on the other side of the five acres. He liked visiting other supermarkets. He'd take a quick tour of the produce section on his way to the beer. A couple of travelers would get him home.

He had parked and was reaching for the keys when he happened to see a van door open all the way across the lot. A long and distinctly female leg stretched out. It ended in a shiny red sandal with a high heel. Vern paused and waited for the other leg. The legs belonged to an enormous belly, thin arms, and a pile of whipped-cream-colored hair.

Then the things crawled out of the van and began milling around the tall pregnant woman. Vern stared as the wheelchair was unfolded and the small lumpy bald thing helped the limbless worm thing up into it. Then he reached back for the 30.06 and smoothly, still staring, pumped a round into the chamber.

Arty's chair had an extended control arm that he could reach, but I liked pushing him and he liked having me do it. He said it made him feel royal. Elly and Iphy each slung an arm over the others shoulder and hopped along, grinning at the old woman who had stopped to stare at us with her shopping cart half off the curb. The twins were ahead of Arty and me, and I could just see Lil's head bobbing in front of them.

I had just put my head down to push when I felt the sting on my hump and saw the little rip come into the back of the chair with a muffled cracking sound. Arty jerked in the chair and let out a roar. The twins toppled forward and the arm around Iphy's neck was spilling red. “Gun!” That was Arty shouting and I was down on my knees getting a breath to cry as he flopped out of the chair and rolled crazily under the tail end of the nearest car. I scrabbled after him, scraping on the hot pavement, my hump burning. Lil's voice flipped up in a quick shriek. I bumped my back on the metal and was trying to cry but I could see Elly and Iphy, with their arms wrapped tight around each other, rolling fast and disappearing behind another car. They left a trail of red blotches where the arm touched as they rolled.

A car horn blared suddenly and didn't stop. The flat bleat floated in a solid layer on the air and human voices popped and chittered far away. I could feel Arty's heat against my leg. I dropped flat and cranked my neck around to look at him. He was on his belly. Blood was running out of his short shoulder and smearing across his flipper before it dripped onto the shade-cool tarmac. His lips were sputtering and big flat tears were sheeting out of his lower lids while his eyes whipped back and forth, searching and mean.

My own eyes and nose were running and the burn on my hump was like a big bee sting flaming poison up through my neck and all the way down to my butt. It was interesting to see the tears coming out of Arty's eyes. I had never seen that before. I never thought of him crying. My own shaky breath and the taste of tear snot on my lip were familiar. Easy. Even the burn on my hump was exactly my size. But Arty's way of crying was new to me. His body was crying but his brain wasn't. The eyes above his tears were as sharp as ever. The blood from his shoulder was sliding faster than the clear fluid from his eyes, but to me the tears were more alarming.

The horn stopped and sirens grew up in its place. Voices jumped and barked and Arty and I lay pressed to the shade beneath the brown crust of the car belly until Lil came creeping and sniffling on her knees, peering under all the cars and calling to us. She couldn't talk when she found us. She dragged me out first and I sat quivering on the hot pavement while she reached far under the car for Arty. The hand that she balanced on had smears of bright red, drying fast. She tugged Arty into the light. She hiked him up onto her belly and stood up. I clung with both hands to the end of her blue blouse and we scuttered across the wide lane to the next row of cars. Behind a small red car Elly and Iphy lay flat on their backs with a big grey-uniformed woman kneeling between their heads. The twins were puckered and red from crying. They stared at the arm that the woman was pressing with a white bandage. The woman's flat eyes and tight mouth never changed as she moved, wrapping the thin arm. Behind them, on the curb, sat the old woman who had stopped her shopping cart to watch us. A man in grey was holding her wrist and talking softly to her. He lifted the prongs of a stethoscope to his ears and slid the listening bell into the collar of her dress, but the old woman's eyes were on me, and then on Arty as Lil laid him down.

Lil was saying, “These too, please. These too, please,” meaning Arty and me, until more grey uniforms came and put big, hot hands on us and tore my shirt from the back. The bee sting on my hump got a breath of clear air and sizzled fresh. I watched another man put fingers on Arty's neck and Arty's wide lips opened with strings of spit webbing the dark inside his mouth and a high whine came out while white squares of gauze were pressed against the blood. Lil sobbed and caught herself and sobbed again, stroking Arty's head as he lay on the pavement with the big hands moving on him.

“I'm older than I thought,” said a thin voice, and the old woman on the curb lay down. The man in uniform crouched over her and her head turned to stare at us as he lifted her arm to a needle.

The ambulance was crowded but Lil wouldn't let them separate us. Elly and Iphy were at the head of the cot with Arty at the other end. I lay on my side on a padded bench and Lil sat next to me with her long cool hand on my head. The grey-uniformed woman moved slowly and carefully. She asked one of the men to stay with her. She didn't want to be alone in the back with us. The doors were open and we were still waiting. I could see through the doors to the other side of the parking lot where the pickup was parked with the driver's door wide open in front of the supermarket. There were four flashing police cars and the soft distant static of radios talking to each other. A grey figure came away from them and jogged quickly toward us. Blond, with a mustache, his uniform starched and neat. He was grinning and shaking his head as he grabbed a wing of the rear doors in each hand.

Lil bent over me, toward him. “Who is he? Why did he do that?” Her voice was rough.

The young man nodded to the woman in uniform who sat next to Arty but didn't touch him. “Some loony. Just crazy. He's moaning that he missed.” The young man closed one side of the door. “Just rocking in the back of the cruiser saying, 'How could I miss?'” The last door closed and the scared eyes of the woman in uniform skittered around at each of us. The ambulance began to move.

When they dropped and flopped and the wheelchair flipped over, Vern felt a sudden warm pleasure that slid off into shock as they fell out of sight. The disappointment was a hot, wet bladder bursting in his chest. They were lined up. In line. His old man would have got all of them with that one steel-jacketed shell. The awful, soggy weep of failure shook him.

He was pressing his face to the smooth rifle stock, oiling it with tears, when a state trooper grabbed the barrel and yanked the rifle through the open window and out of his grasp. His cheek was sliced and bruised by the escaping stock. When the door squawked open he whimpered at the big gun looking at him. The trooper's boots had the same blood-mahogany depth that his father had rubbed into the wood of the 30.06.

He was leaning his forehead against the steel-wired glass that screened him from the front seat. His hands dangled between his knees, the cold cuffs clipped into the ring bolt on the floor of the patrol car. He had fallen into the momentary peace of blankness. His mind was stretched out flat, featureless. A trickle of color and motion at the outer edges of his eyes informed him that the troopers were moving slowly around the car. There were calm, heavy voices and others lighter, thin, and fast. Witnesses, he told himself. The police had arrived so quickly. He was impressed at their efficiency.

Then it occurred to him that a patrol car might have actually been in the parking lot at the very moment when it happened. He thought of a trooper in the aisle of the supermarket, buying cookies to eat in the cruiser. A faint bubble of old resentment rose in him. They were always after sweets. Few people came to his beautiful fruit bins when they were after a treat ...

A dull knocking at the window to his right became insistent. He swiveled his eyes reluctantly, pressing his forehead harder against the partition. A shopper. Her long face with incredible peach skin flushed ripe to the dark hairline pursed and spread its peach-crack lips. The teeth, like sweet corn kernels, whitened at him. The window glass vibrated, telling him “ ... solutely right, right, you were absolutely ... and she was pregnant again ... right ... you did the ... decent ... right” before a pair of blue jodhpurs appeared behind the face and the face jerked away and he saw the dimpled arm swing down over the window beside the distended blouse of the beautiful pregnant girl. She grasped what must have been the handles of a baby stroller and disappeared, and he listened to the rattle of the stroller wheels as the baby and the fetus and their peach mother huffed away.

The sadness of his bruised and aching cheek began to penetrate the calm flow of his breathing. Vern cried again and it wasn't long before the snot hung all the way to his wrists and eased the rub of the metal cuffs.

The nurses were not as disgusted as the doctors but even they were giggling at each other and moving jerkily. The policeman with the thick glasses was sitting in an orange plasti-form chair and trying to keep his holster and his belt radio from jabbing him as he wrote down what Lil said. Lil would talk quickly for a few seconds and then fall silent. Her eyes swiveled frantically from one sheet-wrapped table to the next as she tried to watch us all. The young policeman wrote intently on his yellow pad and then distracted Lil from her surveillance with another question.

Elly and Iphy took the longest. Arty and I were both lying on our bellies, each on our own starch-itchy table, watching as the doctor with the long black braid bent over the twins' wounded arm. The doctor muttered at the white-faced nurse, who kept handing over the wrong shiny metal thing. A doctor with bad skin came back and stood between me and Arty. She began feeling me all over, tapping, listening through chilly instruments. She hated to touch me. I could feel it and my stomach got cold inside. She edged around the table, pushing her fingers into the sides of my hump but avoiding the thick bandage at the crest.