Just Plain Weird (5 page)

         
“One of my friends… told me that… I’m socially maladroit,” I said. “What do you think?… I don’t even know… what maladroit means….”

         
I was sure I had her attention now, as the crumpling sound of the trash bag stopped as if she was postponing her chore to consider the question.

         
“You ought to look it up in the dictionary,” she said at last, “if you don’t know what it means.”

         
“Oh… I just trust… my friends… in their use of… long words,” I said. “You know… that they’re not… using them… to make fun of me.”

         
“Do yourself a favor,” she said, in earnest, “trust no one.”

         
“Is that any way… to go through life?”

         
“It’s as good as--” she started, and then stopped abruptly. “Are you going to keep doing that?”

         
“Doing what?”

         
“Jumping.”

         
“Why?”

         
“I feel like I’m talking to a kangaroo.”

         
“Sorry.”

         
“Why don’t you just walk around to the yard?”

         
“With you?”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“That would be okay?”

         
“Yeah, that would be okay,” she said, as if maddened that she was being forced to talk so much.

         
“It’s safe?”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“Promise?”

         
There was a lengthy pause before she asked, “Are you mentally afflicted in some way?”

         
“No… I don’t think so.”

         
“Then, be normal, and walk around.”

         
I was giddy at the invitation; either that or it was all that hopping catching up with me. I walked out and round the front of her house, and then to the back yard gate. When I entered the yard, she was struggling to dump the lawn clippings into the trash bag. She was somewhat on the small side, and she wrestled with the two bags. A lot of the clippings were spilling out onto the patio. She paused when she saw me standing there.

         
“A little help,” she suggested.

         
“Hunh?”

         
She looked from me, to the bags, and then back to me.

         
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

         
I grabbed the clipping bag from her, and emptied it into the trash bag, which she held wide open; the chore was easily completed with two people. She then took the clipping bag, leaned over and reattached it to the mower. She stood up, brushing away the hair that had fallen across face, walked over to a lawn chair, and flopped down onto it. She appeared overly tired, as if she’d never mowed a lawn before in her life. She was wearing white shorts, a blue sleeveless top, and old-fashioned looking deck shoes with no socks. Her legs were so pale they almost blazed under the bright sun. You could see the map of blue veins beneath her skin. She seemed to catch her breath, and then she squinted up at me.

         
“You were in my house yesterday?” she asked in a tone that was not quite an accusation.

         
“Yeah, with my friend,” I said.

         
“Why?”

         
“Just curious,” I told her truthfully.

         
She frowned as though she didn’t quite understand it-- what was there to be curious about?

         
“And who is it that I have to thank for my father’s sudden insistence that I get out of the house more often?” she asked.

         
“Uh,” I hedged. “That might be me.”

         
“Thanks,” she said wryly. She frowned. “You actually said that I needed a suntan? You actually said that about me-- a total stranger who has never done you any harm?”

         
“Did I mention that I was socially maladroit?” I asked.

         
She sighed. “Yeah, I think you made that clear.”

         
“Sorry.”

         
“Never apologize for what you are,” she murmured, and then said, “You know, it’s just that some people don’t tan, and I’m one of them. I just burn and peel. One time I got such bad sunburn, I looked like a lobster. My skin was so hot I had to lie down in the bathtub in cool water. Well, I fell asleep in the tub, and while I slept, the water soaked through my skin. When I woke up, I had all these huge blisters all over and-- why am I telling you this?” she said, suddenly irked.

         
I shrugged my shoulders.

         
“Anyway, my father is one of those people who think being outside under the sun is healthy. You know, a real outdoorsy type, though he hardly looks like it.
 
I don’t think he ever heard of skin cancer.”

         
“What about your mother?” I asked.

         
She tilted her head slightly, squinting up at me.

         
“I don’t have a mother,” she said; she said it with something that sounded like pride but was probably more defiance. When I didn’t say anything, she didn’t go on to explain. She didn’t say whether her parents were divorced or that her mother had died or anything. Whatever the truth of the matter, I sensed it might be a sore spot. “I just have him,” she said, “and he’s a little, well, odd. Since you’re going to be next door, you’ll probably talk to him from time to time. Don’t take everything he says seriously. He goes on sometimes. I’m just letting you know up front. He’s not, like, crazy or anything-- no, nothing like that. He just manages always to say the wrong things, and he ends up giving people the wrong impression.”

         
“Like what?”

         
“Oh, I don’t know-- sometimes, he just says weird things, and then people start thinking weird things.”

         
“What, like you guys are aliens or something?” I asked.

         
“Oh, no, not that,” she said seriously. “Of course, we’re aliens. Isn’t it obvious?”

         
“You are?” I said, and I began to hear a buzzing sound in my head.

         
“Sure,” she said, as though it was no big deal. “We’re here to take over the world-- that’s why we’re starting here in Hamilton, Indiana-- the nerve center of the entire planet.”

         
I stared at her, waiting for a little arm to shoot from her mouth. I must have looked dumbfounded.

         
“That was a joke,” she said at last, glumly. “You were supposed to laugh.”

         
“Oh.” I chuckled uneasily.

         
She frowned and wagged her head.

         
“Look,” she said, standing up from the lawn chair. “Here’s the deal-- and I think it’s only fair. Since your big mouth got me into this trouble, you’re going to help me with the lawn or with any other outdoor chores my father comes up with for me. I’m just not cut out for it. I think it’s the air. The air on my planet isn’t nearly this thin.”

         
“That’s a joke, right?”

         
She looked me up and down, and said, “Well, there might be a ray of light.” She didn’t sound very hopeful.

         
I helped her finish mowing the yard and the front lawn, and with bagging all the clippings and setting the bags out by the curb for the garbage men to pick up. Afterward, we sat on the front porch of her house, and talked awhile. She was no longer as distant or as surly as she had seemed, and listening to her talk was really quite enjoyable. It was as though once certain things were established-- for example, that I was sort of a moron, and that she wasn’t-- she could let her guard down and relax and be herself, which was very pleasant. Smiles came to her easily, now, and her eyes would flash now and then when she heard or said something she thought was funny. She had the most incredible eyes, actually; they were emerald green, and whenever she had a mischievous thought, they shimmered and made her look even prettier than she looked when she was moody.

         
I learned a fair amount about her. She told me that she’d been home-schooled her entire life, and had never set foot in an actual school. She’d lived in quite a few different places already, her and her father moving every two or three years. This last fact I found rather puzzling. There was no obvious reason why they would be relocating so often, and she rendered no explanation. All she did was name off the places they had lived: Fort Myers, Florida; South Bend, Indiana; San Diego, California; Batavia, Illinois…. I found it intriguing, but I wasn’t about to ask her why, for fear she might become distant and moody again. She certainly had a secret side-- which I doubted had anything to do with being an alien-- and, after all, I was just some clown she’d just met. I couldn’t expect her to reveal to me her innermost thoughts, yet still I couldn’t help wondering about the odder details of her life.

         
“What is there to do around here for fun?” she was now asking. It was a strictly small-talk question; she didn’t really seem interested, and I suspected she already knew the answer.

         
“Well, not a lot, really,” I said.

         
“What do you do?”

         
“Uh…” I was hard pressed to think of something. “I lift weights.”

         
She raised an eyebrow. “For fun?” she asked, and then laughed-- she had a delightful laugh; it sounded like water trickling into a rain barrel, bubbling and burbling from the back of her throat. “We’re going to have to work on your idea of fun. Lifting weights,” she scoffed.

         
“I enjoy it,” I said, “on some levels.”

         
“You mean lifting weights has more than one level?” she asked.

         
“Absolutely,” I said, although she appeared doubtful.

         
“Well, what about going places, doing things?”

         
“I don’t have friends,” I admitted. “Who wants to go somewhere alone?”

         
“Well, what about that guy you were with yesterday?”

         
“Raffles? Raffles isn’t really a friend. His more like a stray dog that started following me a few years ago.”

         
“That’s rather harsh,” she said.

         
“Whenever he comes around, he makes me nuts.”

         
“For instance…?”

         
“He’s just irritating,” I said.

         
“How?”

         
“He makes me explain everything I say.”

         
“Like I’m doing now?”