Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (18 page)

Call me Omniscient

I am what technical people call 'omniscient.' But before you get any ideas about me knowing everything, let me dissuade you. I only know about the stories I tell. About Moby Dick, for instance, I know nothing. As to the work I am involved with, I do my best to tell what everyone is thinking and doing, but don't blame me if I don't tell you everything. A little mystery is an essential part of every tale, as well as every life.

And let me tell you! Those first-person fellows ("Call me Ishmael" etcetera) hold back a lot more than I would, and dress up the truth of what they tell about themselves, queasy at the thought of just anyone turning the pages of their lives.

So yes, I've seen a lot in my day, been behind a lot of stories. Every author uses me if he doesn't choose to tell the tale himself. Many abuse me horridly, but as I am only a 'tool,' a device for telling, never an acknowledged partner in an author's life, I must look on and sigh. I tell the author what happens. But don't blame me for the way he tells you, what obscurity he chooses. Or she, if you insist on getting sidetracked. The point is, I never interfere.

Except once.

~

We were working on a novel about death, murder, sex, and intrigue—KayDeeOh and I. That's his initials, by the way, but it will suffice. We'd been working for four months and he was getting slower and slower, and fatter as he slowed. I'd tell him what he wanted to know that day, but he kept getting wound up in the telling. He was one of these 'I don't want to know the whole story' types, the most frustrating kind. He started out every morning with a blank page and poised fingers, which hung over the keys in a most annoying manner. He expected, but wanted to know only in the smallest of instalments. He irked me. But after the first chapter, I seemed to irk him, too, as his telling got more and more convoluted.

Chapter one went alright. Chapter two, slower. We'd gotten through the first death, then an out-and-out murder, and he was intrigued as to the first death, because he didn't know—accident or murder.

Then it was time for the sex and intrigue. When at day 15 nine am, top of page 167, he stopped. "I've got writer's block," he wrote in an email, to his mother, of all people.

Then he sat. Just sat. No. He opened up his button-down shirt, and, swivelling his chair away from his computer screen, picked his bellybutton for about ten minutes. A big sigh escaped when he plucked an ingrown hair from his paunch. And then there was a bang bang bang and a
Kornell dear
at the apartment door. He buttoned up his shirt and slouched toward Mom, who had already opened the door, balancing a tray of homemade lasagne and two mystery presents wrapped in foil and ribbon.

KayDeeOh buffed her cheek with his, and opened the first present, which turned out to be a pair of long underwear. "You don't heat this place enough," she smiled. "Wait," she said, as he began to untie the bow of the second. She bustled into his bedroom and tutted as she made his bed and straightened up his night table. "Now," she announced toward him in the doorway. The wrapping came off to reveal a framed photo of herself.

"It's beautiful, Mom," he said as he walked out of the room and put it in his office, on top of the file cabinet. "I spend more time here ... thinking, you know," he yelled as she made little noises in the kitchen. He fiddled with his email until there was a smell. Coffee. But when he entered the kitchen, her backside was facing him as she hunted in the almost empty fridge. "Let's go to Schrafts," she said,

"I only have time," he said to her back, which tensed as he watched, "for the best Mommy Princess in the world."

"Oh, Kornell," she sniffed, as she turned around, all five feet of her, into his arms. He kissed the top of her hennaed head. They left. To my fury.

The next day was worse. The bellybutton exploration began in bed. Then there was a hair exploration, from the back of his skull to the furze at his forehead. I waited but he didn't enter our room. The phone rang, and it was Mom. Another day shot.

She was a nice Mom. I've got nothing against her. His apartment was cold. But if he got me to tell him the whole story, then I could have been shot of him. One story done, which meant that my growing load of stories could be dealt with more efficiently. These days there are so many people I have to work with, though the stories ... I prefer those of five hundred years ago. At least amongst your stories. Five hundred million years ago. Now that was the golden age. But where was I?

So there was this so-called "writer's block" interruption of telling. I mean, I never let anyone down. I am always ready, but human-tellers are so—volatile.

Day after day, KayDeeOh stood me up. I'd be ready, but he'd be in bed. I'd be waiting, and he'd be getting dressed to go out with Mom for—one time, a lunch of chili and wedges and key lime pie. Another, a look at some paisley chintz for her leather loveseat. Then there was the bargain buy of agapanthus at a place where I recognized someone I used to work with. I thought of saying hello, but knew that if I did, I'd be tied up for a year. He is only interested in stories that are so complicated that even I need a printed list of who did what, and their names are unpronounceable.

I was just ready to give KayDeeOh up as a forever-drawered, when on the twelfth day of nonsense, I arrived to see him wake up and cry. He crouched over his stomach on the bed, the stomach that, with his striped shirt, looked like a festive beachball. And his fingers poked at his gloopy face as tears rivuleted down through the tangle of beard and lips curved as Cupid's bow. Lips made not as gates for food to be shoved past, but for love.

The phone rang. He picked it up. "Mom?" he said. "Mommy Princess?" He hung up and then dialled. "Mom? Sorry. Something must have happened ... What ... You didn't ring ... Well, have a nice ... Sorry, I didn't remember you were going ... Yes. I must pay better attention. Shmoochies to you, too ... I'll let you go."

He tucked his legs under him and was just picking up his shirt to pick at his stomach when I made him swivel around and look at the framed picture of his mother.

When I must admit, I smiled. For, in place of that framed picture, he saw his reflection. The curved lip part. And that, the best part of him, did what it usually does.

It was simple. I asked him, "Would you like to write a love story?"

He looked at his lips, their impossible curves. He got up and polished the dust off the frame and opened the blinds just a little bit more. The slightly ghostly image of his mouth now smiled in sharp full colour, a mirror from the glare streamed into the room.

"Go buy yourself a mirror for your desk," I said, "and meet me back here in half an hour, or less."

He did. We worked together, inspired, as I told and he examined his lips in the little round mirror glued to the corner of his screen.

I told him a story of a beautiful but incognito princess. A prince with lips, of course, like his, and a fate worse than frustrating, until page three hundred twenty-four, when their mutual passions meld and love bursts, searing everything that gave the book what looked to be bestseller status—as that story usually does down through the ages, no matter who translates what I tell, to words.

He worked without indulgences. He didn't cry hunched over once. He never read his spam. He only wrote one email during the time. To his mother to say that he was writing a ripper of a love story. "Anoint me with your Mommy Princess good wishes," he wrote. Somehow, since he never imagined writing a love story, he felt superstitious. She didn't write at all. If he had had time, he would have felt worried, but I didn't give him time. We worked. And on page four sixty three, only three crises before the end, he got a postcard from Venice.

~

Having a wonderful time. I met someone. Did you mean the book for me, Kornell? As a message to find love? I bought Love Bursts at the airport by that awful man who can't write, you know, but it was the only thing I could find in English, in Paris, France when I felt so alone. But that was then, and this is now. And You Must Have, or it wouldn't have Happened. You can meet KW. KingWing I call him because he was on tour, too, just as alone as me though there was the crowd of us. I think he'll want you to call him Randolph when we get back in, I think, March. You might as well eat all the stuff in my freezer, before it gets freezer burn. Love always, your Mommy Princess, now Queen of First Class even!

~

The handwriting was minute and it careered around the postage stamp and fell down around the margins of the address till the card looked like a maze with the walkways clogged with brambles.

I had thought we would be working today. He had behaved himself so well that I had been looking forward to it. And things were going so swimmingly that, unbeknownst to him, I had the sequel up my sleeve, since those lips were so successful that I was having fun with him and this collaboration.

But now here he was again, crying on his bed. His stomach was now lean and his looks were surprising to me, when I looked at him in disgust. The past weeks of work had absorbed him so much that he ate only to write. He had taken his 'off' time each day to walk and think how he wanted to write what I had just told him. Then he calmly homed in on home, sat in his chair, and wrote a well-told version of the story, not the best version, but definitely in the top 50%.

Were we going to revert to those old ways? I was wondering what the use with interfering was when he glanced at the mirror by his bed, the little one he had installed to inspire him.

I was desperate, I admit, but the thought of going backwards and waiting for him all the time, was too much. We already had one wasted part-story, drawered. So I interfered again, in quite unacceptable ways.

The apartment bell buzzed. He spoke into the speaker.

"Telegram for you, Mr. Pali-uh-Palitzriz-uh Palitz—"

"Yeah. That's good enough. Come up," he snapped.

He tucked his shirt in his slacks and opened the door. A woman walked toward him. I know I shouldn't have but I made her the most beautiful woman in the world, from story )9IUYH, circa ()*, used only 67 times since 167, with variations, of course. I picked the most modern version, which is why I made the mistake of telegram, but KayDeeOh didn't know that telegrams stopped being delivered five years ago, and I forgot that a sequined tube dress, rolled silk stockings that ended below the knees, and a bathing cap made of ribbed pink viscose was not the current mode. She did have the most perfect cupid lips, which is why I chose that version. In the story, she approaches unexpectedly, and he forgets everything that ever made him unhappy, and he changes his whole life's direction, and he becomes her loveslave, and they walk off into the sunset with him having left his entire old life behind, and story ends, and I'm, as he would say,
outa here
as a partner for him, KayDeeOh, Writer Extraordinairily Frustrating.

But, even though what I did was totally illegal, and something that I thought I could well get in trouble for by the only other authority who makes me feel nervous at times, Mr. Kornell Palizrizia (né Kitchen) did nothing except stare at her as she approached, laugh at her when she arrived, and say, "Good joke, though I don't get it. Where's the telegram?"

But she didn't have a telegram, and didn't know how to bluff, because that wasn't part of the story. She stood in front of KayDeeOh looking silent and beautiful and dumb until he slammed the door in her face.

"Great lips," he mumbled as he threw himself on his bed. He lay flopped out flat for a couple of minutes, then reached out to the night table. Flipping himself on his back, he hovered the mirror over his lips.

"Better," he said.

I left him then, and never went back.

I don't do autobiographies, let alone what he does now—autoerotic romance.

Bluebird Pie

Forty-seven bluebirds
baked in a pie.
We ate it with asparagus
and it made my mother cry.

Their singing is no more
she wailed
as she crunched a little head.
But heavenly they taste
with thyme
my raptous father said.

We ate our meal in guilt and joy
and now in spring when jonquils bloom
we roam the fields with netting
hunting gorging bluebirds,
to bake in celebration
of the end of winter's gloom.

Picking Blueberries

Father carved the joint. "Thin for you, Dick?" he giggled.

"Please, Father." Dick answered. He still hated the taste, and the batter he was mixing was double chocolate to disguise as much as possible even the texture, once mixed in.

Mother was in the bedroom. As usual. Dick wondered who was with her this time.

Today was Dick's birthday. This morning, Jonathon, the ex-psychiatry student, one of Mother's currents, had visited for a couple of hours. Dick opened to door to his knock, and Jonathon held out a gaily wrapped package. "I stole this for you," he smiled, trying to curry favor probably, though Dick was surprised that Jonathon had noticed him.

"How did you know?" Dick asked. But Jonathon's face was blank, looking over his head toward the guts of the house.

"Coincidence," Dick muttered, but he unpeeled the giftwrap to find The Complete Poems of TS Eliot, with a "To Dick 1972, from Jonathon," scrawled on the title page in thick blue ink. He opened it further to The Hollow Men. "Thanks Jonathon," but when he looked up, Jonathon had already disappeared.

Dick took the book up to his room and carefully sliced out the title page. Then he smiled at the book. It was entirely coincidence. Dick remembered other arrival gifts, as Jonathon always had something when he came over. Jonathon's gifts to Mother had been a pound of sirloin, a slinky toy, a package of foam curlers that they both chortled over, then made a mobile of, hanging now from the lamp over the dining room table. To Dick, once before, a gift, some plastic toy that Dick hadn't disguised his disgust over. Jonathon did well on this one, but as usual, it was a within-grab-range impulse. It could as easily have been The Gun Digest 1968 or a Barbie doll.

Dick knew Eliot from the library, and had enjoyed the camaraderie of hopelessness that he felt with Eliot, though he preferred Sassoon. But those were private thoughts not discussed with anyone, least of all Father, Mother, and their friends.

A series of loud gasps and grunts whooshed down the hall and rolled into the kitchen where Dick and his Father were now, Dick with his mixing bowl, Father cutting up the hash cube—in family jargon, "the joint."

Father's brow wrinkled momentarily, and then he went into the living room. In a moment, "Ah! Brown sugar, just like a young girl should ..." blasted over any sound other than a bomb, and Father came prancing back in, neck extended, head bobbing to the music.

Father worked a few more seconds at his task while Dick watched, wondering what took so long to smash up a glob. But that wasn't the way Father looked at it, so Dick kept his thoughts to himself. Then Father scraped the broken up paste into the mixing bowl, and took over the mixing himself, carefully mixing well, then tipping it into the prepared pan, and finally using his fingers and tongue on the mixing bowl to lick the leavings clean.

Dick put the pan in the oven, then went to his room. The party would start soon. Father danced off into the living room.

~

Theirs was only one house of about a dozen in The Community. The Community had a constitution, lots of money from somewhere, and a purpose "to uplift and foster." Dick heard the whole purpose thing read out once, and it sounded noble. He wished he had written it. The houses of The Community were scattered in the middle of a quiet neighborhood, though The Community houses were the only ones not inhabited by black families. The reason there were so many Community houses is that the collection was considered a college, and associated with some famous college in another state, a college with classes and real campus buildings.

Most of the people of Father's and Mother's age had been professors of one kind or another from another fancy college at the other side of town (though in the informal atmosphere of The Community, Professor and Doctor had been dropped, just leaving the plain Mr. Mrs. Miss.) They were all officially the faculty of The Community, though Dick never heard of any classes that he could recognize, like at school. Nor did anyone say "faculty" except at meetings, when they said it a lot.

The recruiting team seemed to be pretty important, though. It was Mr. and Mrs. Fox, who went to universities and sang. Dick heard them once. They sang Puff the Magic Dragon and Hava Nagila. Mrs. Fox didn't look like Mary and Mr. Fox didn't look like Peter or Paul. Mr. Fox's hairy belly showed through his shirt, Mrs. Fox's long Indian-print dress dragged down in the front, and her long tightly corrugated hair had bangs that jutted out in a big curl. But every time Mr. and Mrs. Fox went recruiting, a few weeks later, some new recruits came in, mostly pretty girls. They had to be approved and allocated living quarters, but Dick didn't know of a time anyone was refused. Often though, after a few months, one day a girl was here and the next gone, with no explanation—to Dick, at least. Not that many of them ever said hello to him, but some were nice for a while.

At the Foxes' house, which the Foxes commanded like all the other grownups did their own houses, Mrs. Fox was usually the only one of the Mr. and Mrs. home, always carrying on her wide hips one or two of her children. The house smelled of sour milk, and Mrs. Fox usually had stains on her clothes. When they went on recruiting drives, Ellen who lived in the house took care of the children, but only because it was a few days, and because she didn't do much except put the bottles on the sofa, and diaper once a day.

Ellen was a "life model" in the college. "Rubens" was what Mr. Fox called her. Dick wondered whether that meant that she talked about her model life, and if so, did she tell the college students that her house smelt.

She looked like a startled rabbit most of the time, and had a big belly all the time. She got along well with Mrs. Fox though, although Dick never knew why. No one else would take care of the babies.

Dick knew that Mr. Fox was hardly ever home from what he heard. Mr. Fox had been a professor of English literature, and as Mrs. Fox said to Ellen, and Dick overheard from Sara, who lived in the next door house to Foxes, Mr. Fox had Miss Prescott to stay overnight with, and Miss Prescott lived alone in her Community house, and what could Mrs. Fox complain about. After all, Mrs. Fox had the children, "who were no incentive to come home to." This is what Dick heard from Sara, who wanted to be a life model, too, but possibly next semester, she was told. Dick thought it unfair that she had to wait, because the stories she told were better than Ellen's.

Miss Prescott had been a professor like Mr. Fox—anthropology. She was thin, hard, and smelt like nothing, or at the most, typing paper. She wore wraparound skirts and blouses that looked ironed. Her arms were corded and tan, and her sandy blonde hair was cut off sharply to the top of her neck.

Mr. Fox and Miss Prescott had set up The Community Project, the downtown poor area café. The Community had bought it with some of the grant funds, and deciding on that was a "process of meetings" that permeated Dick's room—not really meetings as such, but more of a lot of talk, and then everyone storming out, and then another meeting, and then, worry about an ultimatum of the money being cut off if they didn't have a Project, and then the café was brought up, as someone found out it was for sale cheap.

The day after The Community bought the café, Dick was one of the work detail driven out in the new van—Mr. Fox driving, Miss Prescott directing when they piled out—to clean up the café from its previous owner, who seemed to be an alcoholic chain smoker.

The place opened up the next day and a work detail went in to cook. Dick didn't know who. Father and Mother were asked to contribute hours, but they were busy. Father couldn't because he was a psychologist for the state, and Mother couldn't because she was busy reading Anais Nin and Henry Miller, and thinking of writing a book about them.

Mostly nobody knew what to cook in the restaurant, and even less, how to clean. This was fine until one day a retired cook got food poisoning, and then there was another meeting at Dick's parents' house. Why Dick's parents' house again, he didn't know, but the house was in the middle, so maybe that was it.

After that, Dick heard Jonathon complain to Mother that he had been rostered, and couldn't get out of working one shift a week. The good thing was that Miss Prescott started making pies, and the place got a good review in the newspaper. She must have liked making pies. And then at the next meeting at Dick's parents' house, when someone said, "The review went well. We're up for renewal," there was clapping, yelling, and suddenly, "Brown sugar" blared out again, and the room stampeded itself into the floorboards till way after Dick went to bed.

Soon after, Father began to stay away longer at work, and Mother was often not home because in the next door, a baby sitter had moved in. Her name was Betsy, and she wore a dress as long as Mrs. Fox, but she didn't smell like milk. And she was curvy, and she didn't curl her hair but wore it in braids curved over her head. She came after the last recruiting trip. The babysitting was for Dick and his little sister, Jane, who was only nine months old.

Mother had been looking for a babysitter. Betsy worked free-of-charge, as all babysitting was, in The Community. Mother called her "the wet nurse" and laughed. Mother was conscientious about not leaving the house with just Dick and Jane in it. She wouldn't do something like that. "The pigs won't help if we get ripped," she explained to Betsy, "so don't leave the house." Mother loved her Sierra dishes, yellow and blue and green. They took years to collect. And no one had the record collection of Mother and Father.

Dick remembered Mother when he was a little boy and she wore lipstick and teased her hair. He wondered why she hadn't thrown out the makeup. She had a picture on the bedroom wall of someone who looked like her, except Mother's hair was free-flowing. Virginia Woolf, she said, a writer. Dick walked to the library and checked out a Virginia Woolf book, but he returned it half-read, as he couldn't understand why the lady was so upset all the time.

Dick liked Betsy. She liked him, and told him stories about creatures she invented. She invited him to play with her and the neighborhood kids, the day after she first babysat, and he had fun. Betsy made something weird, white and hard and soft at the same time. A big tray of it. If you hit it hard, it was like concrete, but if you put your finger into it, your finger would sink down as through batter. It was just cornstarch and water, she said. Dick had a lot of fun and met some neat kids. They all had even more fun when Betsy added food coloring to the white stuff, and she began to throw it around, inviting them to, too. She did something fun every afternoon, and Dick had fun outside after school, something he hadn't before.

When Betsy was with Jane, she got a look on her face. Dick thought it looked like love. He liked to watch her with Jane. She sang lullabies that she made up on the spot, really soft.

One day, just before Father and Mother were to go out again, Dick walked into the kitchen, but Betsy was sitting on a kitchen chair, and Father was kneeling at her feet with his hands on her skirt, cupping her knees.

"She's right with it," Dick heard Father say. Then Father noticed him, and got off the floor, and Betsy smiled at him, and her eyes were wet.

She moved into the house the next day. She brought a big cooking pot with a heavy bottom and a rocking chair. The pot went into the kitchen and the rocking chair, into the living room.

She babysat a lot after that, and she sang so much that Dick was really happy that he could have her so much to herself.

Then she worked in the restaurant during the day, so that the play sessions she had had, were over.

Then she started looking really sad.

Then Dick noticed that she was getting fat. He liked what it did to her breasts, which he almost couldn't stop looking at as the tops of them swelled over that dress she always wore. He thought of it as her Princess Dress.

But then Dick could see her face puffing out, and her waist looked tight.

He didn't know why. He asked her, but she said it was nothing. He kept asking, and one day she said, when they were in the living room, trying to talk over the sound of Mother in her room, "Why doesn't he do something?"

But she was saying it to herself, and not to Dick, as he opened his mouth to ask who what, and she had gotten up already to go to the kitchen to cut herself some bread.

When Betsy picked up Jane now, she made noises just like Mother made to Jane. "Ee ee ee, oo oo ooh" she said.

The sleeves of her Princess dress were dirty.

One day she told Dick a story about rats. He had nightmares that night. He wanted to go to someone, and went up to her room in the attic. He had never been there. It was dirty. She was sleeping on a couch, wearing some sort of dirty kimono that was half open. In a panic, he left.

The next day was Saturday. At breakfast, Father answered the phone. "Sure he can," he said. "He's not doing anything."

In a few minutes, the van beeped, and Father said to Dick, "That's your ride!"

Dick got into the van to find a bunch of girls from The Community already in it. Mr. Fox was driving, with Miss Prescott beside him. She turned around. "We're going to pick blueberries for my pies."

He sat between two girls on one of the side benches. In the middle, the floor was piled with fruit boxes and baskets with handles.

They went out a long way into the country. Dick couldn't remember being out in the country before. He looked out the back window, as the sides were metal. Cows got left behind, red barns, crows, a field of corn. A U-Pick Peaches sign. He wanted to smell, but couldn't smell anything except someone's perfume that reminded him of dust.

Still, this was fun.

They turned off a bumpy road onto a dirt one, drove a few seconds more, and then stopped. Mr. Fox slid open the door. Miss Prescott appeared behind Mr. Fox, and putting her head on his shoulder, spoke into the van. "Take out the picking shit."

Dick and the others pulled out the boxes and baskets, and each took a basket. Miss Prescott directed them all to the blueberries. They grew as an orchard, on a short forest of trees.