I Sing the Body Electric (16 page)

I went down and out the front door.

“
There
you are,” said Nora, standing down by my car in the drive.

I went to her.

“You didn't hear a thing,” she said. “and yet you heard something, right?”

“Right.”

“Are you ready to leave now, Charles?”

I looked up at the house. “Almost.”

“You know now, don't you, it is all over? You feel it, surely, that it is the dawn come up on a new morning? And, feel my heart, my soul beating pale and mossy within my heart, my blood so black, Charlie, you have felt it often beating under your own body, you know how old I am. You know how full of dungeons and racks and late afternoons and blue hours of French twilight I am. Well…”

Nora looked at the house.

“Last night, as I lay in bed at two in the morning, I heard the front door drift open. I knew that the whole house had simply leant itself ajar to let the latch free and glide the door wide. I went to the top of the stairs. And, looking down, I saw the creek of moonlight laid out fresh in the hall. And the house so much as said, here is the way you go, tread the cream, walk the milky new path out of this and away, go, old one, go with your darkness. You are with child. The sour-gum ghost is in your stomach. It will never be born. And because you cannot drop it, one day it will be your death. What are you waiting for?

“Well, Charles, I was afraid to go down and shut that door. And I knew it was true, I would never sleep again. So, I went down and out.

“I have a dark old sinful place in Geneva. I'll go there to live. But you are younger and fresher, Charlie, so I want this place to be yours.”

“Not so young.”

“Younger than I.”

“Not so fresh. It wants me to go, too. Nora. The door to
my
room just now. It opened, too.”

“Oh, Charlie,” breathed Nora, and touched my cheek. “Oh, Charles,” and then, softly, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. We'll go together.”

Nora opened the car door.

“Let me drive. I must drive now, very fast, all the way to Dublin. Do you mind?”

“No. But what about your luggage?”

“What's in there, the house can have. Where are you going?”

I stopped walking. “I must shut the front door.”

“No,” said Nora. “Leave it open.”

“But … people will come in.”

Nora laughed quietly. “Yes. But only good people. So that's all right, isn't if”

I finally nodded. “Yes. That's all right.”

I came back to stand by my car, reluctant to leave. Clouds were gathering. It was beginning to snow. Great gentle white leaflets fell down out of the moonlit sky as harmlessly soft as the gossip of angels.

We got in and slammed the car doors. Nora gunned the motor.

“Ready?” she said.

“Ready.”

“Charlie?” said Nora. “When we get to Dublin, will you sleep with me, I mean
sleep
, the next few days. I shall need someone the next few days. Will you?”

“Of course.”

“I wish.” she said. And tears filled her eyes. “Oh God, how I wish I could burn myself down and start over. Burn myself down so I could go up to the house now and go in and live forever like a dairy maid full of berries and cream. Oh but hell. What's the use of talk like that?”

“Drive, Nora,” I said, gently.

And she drummed the motor and we ran out of the valley, along the lake, with gravel buckshotting out behind, and up the hills and through the deep snow forest, and by the time we reached the last rise, Nora's tears were shaken away, she did not look back, and we drove at seventy through the dense falling and thicker night toward a darker horizon and a cold stone city, and all the way, never once letting go, in silence I held one of her hands.

G
randma!

I remember her birth.

Wait, you say,
no
man remembers his own grandma's birth.

But, yes,
we
remember the day that she was born.

For we, her grandchildren, slapped her to life. Timothy, Agatha, and I, Tom, raised up our hands and brought them down in a huge crack! We shook together the bits and pieces, parts and samples, textures and tastes, humors and distillations that would move her compass needle north to cool us, south to warm and comfort us, east and west to travel round the endless world, glide her eyes to know us, mouth to sing us asleep by night, hands to touch us awake at dawn.

Grandma, O dear and wondrous electric dream…

When storm lightnings rove the sky making circuitries amidst the clouds, her name flashes on my inner lid. Sometimes still I hear her ticking, humming above our beds in the gentle dark. She passes like a clock-ghost in the long halls of memory, like a hive of intellectual bees swarming after the Spirit of Summers Lost. Sometimes still I feel the smile I learned from her, printed on my cheek at three in the deep morn…

All right, all right! you cry, what was it like the day your damned and wondrous-dreadful-loving Grandma was born?

It was the week the world ended…

Our mother was dead.

One late afternoon a black car left Father and the three of us stranded on our own front drive staring at the grass, thinking:

That's not our grass. There are the croquet mallets, balls, hoops, yes, just as they fell and lay three days ago when Dad stumbled out on the lawn, weeping with the news. There are the roller skates that belonged to a boy, me, who will never be that young again. And yes, there the
tire-swing on the old oak, but Agatha afraid to swing. It would surely break. It would fall.

And the house? Oh, God…

We peered through the from door, afraid of the echoes we might find confused in the halls: the sort of clamor that happens when all the furniture is taken out and there is nothing to soften the river of talk that flows in any house at all hours. And now the soft, the warm, the main piece of lovely furniture was gone forever.

The door drifted wide.

Silence came out. Somewhere a cellar door stood wide and a raw wind blew damp earth from under the house.

But, I thought, we don't
have
a cellar!

“Well,” said Father.

We did not move.

Aunt Clara drove up the path in her big canary-colored limousine.

We jumped through the door. We ran to our rooms.

We heard them shout and then speak and then shout and then speak: Let the children live with me! Aunt Clara said. They'd rather kill themselves! Father said.

A door slammed. Aunt Clara was gone.

We almost danced. Then we remembered what had happened and went downstairs.

Father sat alone talking to himself or to a remnant ghost of Mother left from the days before her illness, but jarred loose now by the slamming of the door. He murmured to his hands, his empty palms:

“The children need someone. I love them but, let's face it, I must work to feed us all. You love them, Ann, but you're gone. And Clara? Impossible. She loves but smothers. And as for maids, nurses—?”

Here Father sighed and we sighed with him, remembering.

The luck we had had with maids or live-in teachers or sitters was beyond intolerable. Hardly a one who wasn't a crosscut saw grabbing against the grain. Handaxes and hurricanes best described them. Or, conversely, they were all fallen trifle, damp soufflé. We children were unseen furniture to be sat upon or dusted or sent for reupholstering come spring and fall, with a yearly cleansing at the beach.

“What we need.” said Father, “is a…”

We all leaned to his whisper.

“…grandmother.”

“But,” said Timothy, with the logic of nine years, “all our grandmothers are dead.”

“Yes in one way, no in another.”

What a fine mysterious thing for Dad to say.

“Here,” he said at last.

He handed us a multifold, multicolored pamphlet. We had seen it in his hands, off and on, for many weeks, and very often during the last few days. Now, with one blink of our eyes, as we passed the paper from hand to hand, we knew why Aunt Clara, insulted, outraged, had stormed from the house.

Timothy was the first to read aloud from what he saw on the first page:

“I Sing the Body Electric!”

He glanced up at Father, squinting. “What the heck does that mean?”

“Read on.”

Agatha and I glanced guiltily about the room, afraid Mother might suddenly come in to find us with this blasphemy, but then nodded to Timothy, who read:

“‘Fanto—'”

“Fantoccini,” Father prompted.

“‘Fantoccini Ltd. We
Shadow Forth
…the answer to all your most grievous problems. One Model Only, upon which a thousand times a thousand variations can be added, subtracted, subdivided, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.'”

“Where does it say
that?
” we all cried.

“It doesn't.” Timothy smiled for the first time in days. “I just had to put that in. Wait.” He read on: “‘for you who have worried over inattentive sitters, nurses who cannot be trusted with marked liquor bottles, and well-meaning Uncles and Aunts—'”

“Well-meaning,
but!
” said Agatha, and I gave an echo.

“‘—we have perfected the first humanoid-genre mini-circuited, rechargeable AC-DC Mark V Electrical Grandmother …'”

“Grandmother!?”

The paper slipped away to the floor. “Dad…?”

“Don't look at me that way,” said Father. “I'm half-mad with grief, and half-mad thinking of tomorrow and the day after that. Someone pick up the paper. Finish it.”

“I will,” I said, and did:

“‘The Toy that is more than a Toy, the Fantoccini Electrical Grandmother is built with loving precision to give the incredible precision of love to your children. The child at ease with the realities of the world and the even greater realities of the imagination, is her aim.

“‘She is computerized to tutor in twelve languages simultaneously, capable of switching tongues in a thousandth of a second without pause, and has a complete knowledge of the religious, artistic, and sociopolitical histories of the world seeded in her master hive—'”

“How great!” said Timothy. “It makes it sound as if we were to keep bees!
Educated
bees!”

“Shut up!” said Agatha.

“‘Above all.'” I read, “‘this human being, for human she seems, this embodiment in electro-intelligent facsimile of the humanities, will listen, know, tell, react and love your children insofar as such great Objects, such fantastic Toys, can be said to Love, or can be imagined to Care. This Miraculous Companion, excited to the challenge of large world and small, inner Sea or Outer Universe, will transmit by touch and tell, said Miracles to your Needy.'”

“Our Needy,” murmured Agatha.

Why, we all thought, sadly, that's us, oh, yes, that's
us
.

I finished:

“‘We do not sell our Creation to able-bodied families where parents are available to raise, effect, shape, change, love their own children. Nothing can replace the parent in the home. However there are families where death or ill health or disablement undermines the welfare of the children. Orphanages seem not the answer. Nurses tend to be selfish, neglectful, or suffering from dire nervous afflictions.

“‘With the utmost humility then, and recognizing the need to rebuild, rethink, and regrow our conceptualizations from month to month, year to year, we offer the nearest thing to the Ideal Teacher-Friend-Companion-Blood Relation. A trial period can be arranged for—'”

“Stop,” said Father. “Don't go on. Even I can't stand it.”

“Why?” said Timothy. “I was just getting interested.”

I folded the pamphlet up. “Do they
really
have these things?”

“Let's not talk any more about it.” said Father, his hand over his eyes. “It was a mad thought—”

“Not so mad,” I said, glancing at Tim. “I mean, heck, even if they tried, whatever they built, couldn't be worse than Aunt Clara, huh?”

And then we all roared. We hadn't laughed in months. And now my simple words made everyone hoot and howl and explode. I opened my mouth and yelled happily, too.

When we stopped laughing, we looked at the pamphlet and I said, “Well?”

“I—” Agatha scowled, not ready.

“We do need something, bad, right now,” said Timothy.

“I have an open mind,” I said, in my best pontifical style.

“There's only one thing,” said Agatha. “We can try it. Sure.

“But—tell me this—when do we cut out all this talk and when does our
real
mother come home to stay?”

There was a single gasp from the family as if, with one shot, she had struck us all in the heart.

I don't think any of us stopped crying the rest of that night.

It was a clear bright day. The helicopter tossed us lightly up and over and down through the skyscrapers and let us out, almost for a trot and caper, on top of the building where the large letters could be read from the sky:

FANTOCCINI
.

“What are
Fantoccini?
” said Agatha.

“It's an Italian word for shadow puppets, I think, or dream people,” said Father.

“But
shadow forth
, what does that mean?”

“
WE TRY TO GUESS YOUR DREAM
,” I Said.

“Bravo,” said Father. “A-Plus.”

I beamed.

The helicopter flapped a lot of loud shadows over us and went away.

We sank down in an elevator as our stomachs sank up. We stepped out onto a moving carpet that streamed away on a blue river of wool toward a desk over which various signs hung:

THE CLOCK SHOP
Fantoccini Our Specialty.
Rabbits on walls, no problem
.

“Rabbits on walls?”

I held up my fingers in profile as if I held them before a candle flame, and wiggled the “ears.”

“Here's a rabbit, here's a wolf, here's a crocodile.”

“Of course,” said Agatha.

And we were at the desk. Quiet music drifted about us. Somewhere behind the walls, there was a waterfall of machinery flowing softly. As we arrived at the desk, the lighting changed to make us look warmer, happier, though we were still cold.

All about us in niches and cases, and hung from ceilings on wires and strings were puppets and marionettes, and Balinese kite-bamboo-translucent dolls which, held to the moonlight, might acrobat your most secret nightmares or dreams. In passing, the breeze set up by our bodies stirred the various hung souls on their gibbets. It was like an immense lynching on a holiday at some English crossroads four hundred years before.

You see? I know my history.

Agatha blinked about with disbelief and then some touch of awe and finally disgust.

“Well, if that's what they are, let's go.”

“Tush,” said Father.

“Well,” she protested, “you gave me one of those dumb things with
strings two years ago and the strings were in a zillion knots by dinnertime. I threw the whole thing out the window.”

“Patience,” said Father.

“We shall see what we can do to eliminate the strings.”

The man behind the desk had spoken.

We all turned to give him our regard.

Rather like a funeral-parlor man, he had the cleverness not to smile. Children are put off by older people who smile too much. They smell a catch, right off.

Unsmiling, but not gloomy or pontifical, the man said, “Guido Fantoccini, at your service. Here's how we do it, Miss Agatha Simmons, aged eleven.”

Now there was a really fine touch.

He knew that Agatha was only ten. Add a year to that, and you're halfway home. Agatha grew an inch. The man went on:

“There.”

And he placed a golden key in Agatha's hand.

“To wind them up instead of strings?”

“To wind them up.” The man nodded.

“Pshaw!” said Agatha.

Which was her polite form of “rabbit pellets.”

“God's truth. Here is the key to your Do-it-Yourself, Select Only the Best, Electrical Grandmother. Every morning you wind her up. Every night you let her run down. You're in charge. You are guardian of the Key.”

He pressed the object in her palm where she looked at it suspiciously.

I watched him. He gave me a side wink which said, well, no … but aren't keys fun?

I winked back before she lifted her head.

“Where does this fit?”

“You'll see when the time comes. In the middle of her stomach, perhaps, or up her left nostril or in her right ear.”

That was good for a smile as the man arose.

“This way, please. Step light. Onto the moving stream. Walk on the water, please. Yes. There.”

He helped to float us. We stepped from rug that was forever frozen onto rug that whispered by.

It was a most agreeable river which floated us along on a green spread of carpeting that rolled forever through halls and into wonderfully secret dim caverns where voices echoed back our own breathing or sang like Oracles to our questions.

“Listen,” said the salesman, “the voices of all kinds of women. Weigh and find just the right one…!”

And listen we did, to all the high, low, soft, loud, in-between, half-scolding. half-affectionate voices saved over from times before we were born.

And behind us, Agatha tread backward, always fighting the river, never catching up, never with us, holding off.

“Speak,” said the salesman. “Yell.”

And speak and yell we did.

“Hello. You there! This is Timothy, hi!”

“What shall I say!” I shouted. “Help!”