Superpowers (4 page)

Judge Judy was lecturing the plaintiff when Jack realized his father was asleep. He looked less drawn, less in pain while sleeping, and Jack hoped it was so.

He found his mother in the kitchen, slumped behind a cup of coffee.

"Still raining," he said.

"Well, we need it." She sipped her coffee. "It's good you came. You headed back now?"

"Yeah. Still looking for another job for the summer."

"Don't take on too much, Morty."

"I'll be fine, Mom." She looked like a little girl, hunched over the white tablecloth, a long strand of hair hanging loose from her ponytail to frame the left side of her face. He wanted to comfort her, to take her hand and let her cry if she needed to. If she dared to. It was Dad who was dying, but there were no doctors for what she was feeling.

"I'll come by on Friday," he said.

"Drive carefully," she said.

As soon as he was out of sight he ran so fast that the fields blurred past him, that his calves burned and his lungs ached. He ran to Madison and then he ran on, west and north until things looked unfamiliar and he knew he would have to stop to find out where he was. But not yet.

_______

Detective Ray Bishop flipped through a mail-order catalog with one hand and none of his attention. He was on hold again. He spent half of his time at the station on the phone. He thought about taking up smoking again, not very seriously. He'd given it up six years before, after his divorce, and Ray didn't believe in backsliding.

Self-improvement was Ray's quiet obsession. Since his divorce, he'd given up a bad habit every time a woman left him—smoking, drinking, caffeine, biting his nails, cracking his knuckles, snapping his gum. He'd even tried giving up masturbating, but he had feared for his mental health after two weeks and relented.

It wasn't that his habits broke up relationships. There had been plenty of problems between Olivia and himself that his smoking had nothing to do with, and Barbara hadn't slept around because Ray snapped his gum. But Ray had a picture of his ideal self in his head, a guy who always knew the right thing to say and do, a guy who always looked good and smelled good, never had gas and never had food caught in his teeth. He would never be that guy, of course, but there was no reason not to aim high—what was the point of the concept of perfection, if not as a goal?

Not that it seemed to help much. The last woman he had gone out with had nixed a second date, telling him over the phone that he was "too perfect" for her. Try as he might, he hadn't been able to turn it into a compliment.

He set the catalog aside and leaned his elbow on the desk. He wished the coroner's office would get some hold music; at least then he'd know for sure that he hadn't been hung up on.

A nasal voice came on the line. "Bishop?"

"Cutler. How many bodies have you got over there, anyway? I've been waiting fifteen minutes."

"Answering the phone isn't my job, Bishop. If you guys didn't call here every hour on the hour, I'd have more time to get your answers."

"I've called twice." It was three times, but then he hadn't been on hold for fifteen minutes, either. "Do you have anything on the Tanner girl yet?"

"I was just about to call you."

"What were you going to tell me?"

"Nothing you didn't already know. Strangulation. She fought. Plenty of skin under the nails, I sent it over to the lab. No recent intercourse. Toxicology report will be a couple of days, but from the look of the tissue I'd say she was clean."

"She wasn't raped?"

"No. The report—your report, in fact—indicates she was fully clothed when found."

"She was found by her roommate. I thought she might have covered up the body."

Someone rapped on Ray's desk, and he looked up to see his daughter Harriet in front of him. She smiled and set a bulging duffel bag on the floor. Then she wandered off to read the notices on the office bulletin board.

"I'll have this faxed over," Cutler said. "Any suspects?"

"Not yet. No witnesses, and the roommate who found her was the only close friend that hadn't left town for the summer. She was shook up, I'm going to try to get a statement from her in the morning."

"Taking the night off? Another date?"

"Dinner and laundry with my daughter. You got anything else for me, Bill?"

"No. I'll call you when those lab reports come through."

"Sure you will."

Ray hung up and gathered his case papers into a manila folder before sliding the whole mess into a drawer.

Harriet read the bulletin board with a look of concentration. She looked very like her mother—thin and long legged, with a high, broad forehead. They even had the same smile, an unexpected brightening of a normally stern face.

"I hope you lock your doors when you're at home," he said, stepping up beside her.

She sighed. "Dad, don't give me the speech. I work at a newspaper, remember? I heard all about it."

"Everyone hears about it, all the time. They just think it can't happen to them. I want to make sure you're being careful."

"You taught me that, Dad. Have a little faith in your parenting skills."

"Did you know her?"

"Now I do. Marsha Tanner, twenty-one years old, brown hair and eyes, lived at 414 West Johnson—"

"Two blocks from your house."

"I know. But it happened in the middle of the day, and from the report we got, there was no forced entry."

"So?"

"So it was someone she knew, and someone who doesn't care about getting caught." She kissed him on the cheek. "Let's forget about it for a while. I thought I'd make lasagna, but we'll need to pick up some stuff on the way home."

"Lasagna's not going to make me stop worrying about you," Ray said.

"No, but you won't be able to nag me while you're eating it."

An hour and a half later—after Harriet had made him spend almost two hundred dollars on groceries he needed but never would have bought on his own, and after spending a half hour at the video place looking for a drama before settling on the Jackie Chan movie they both wanted to see anyway—Ray watched helplessly while his daughter took over his kitchen. The ideal man in his mind's eye was an accomplished cook, but apart from channel-surfing through a cooking show on cable now and then, Ray had never learned to do much more than grill steak. Harriet was putting away groceries, pulling out a pan and utensils, and assembling ingredients simultaneously.

Ray had bought his house on the East Side of Madison about four years before. He rented out the upper floor to a trio of grad students and kept a laundry room in the basement. The apartment was meticulously clean, because he was hardly ever home.

After a few minutes Harriet noticed him standing there. "Go ahead and sit down, Daddy."

"I could put some of these clothes in the wash," he said, reaching for the bulging duffel she'd left inside the door.

"No." She watched him warily until he set the bag down. "Just relax. I don't mind cooking, and I can do my own laundry."

Harriet did this about once a month. It was nice of her, but it left him with nothing to do. Ray preferred their twice-weekly lunch dates, where he felt like the two of them were on an equal footing. When she cooked for him he felt like a helpless bachelor being babied by his twenty-year-old daughter, which was exactly what he was.

He sat in the kitchen for a while and tried to make conversation, but she was too busy to give more than one-word responses to his questions. Finally he gave up and moved into the living room. The Tanner girl was all over the news, so he put on
SportsCenter
and immediately fell asleep.

"Daddy." He forced his eyes open but didn't see anyone. "Daddy, wake up." He blinked, but he still didn't see her.

"Harry?"

"Dinner's ready." Her voice came from the kitchen now. "Are you awake?"

"I'm awake." He sat up on the couch, rubbing his face.

"Can you dish up your own lasagna? I need to use the bathroom."

"All right." The lasagna was still steaming, and there was garlic bread and spinach salad besides. He shoveled it all onto a plate and grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge. "Do you want me to make you a plate?"

"That's OK," came her voice from the bathroom. "I'll be a minute."

"Are you sick?"

"No, Dad. I'm fine ... I just, it's my period, if you need to know."

"Oh." Nothing made him feel so inadequate as a parent as when Harriet was having her period. "Do you need anything?"

"No, I've got stuff here. Go ahead and eat."

Ten minutes later she was still in the bathroom, and he'd flipped through seventy-some channels without finding anything to watch. The lasagna was criminally good, but he forced himself to sit with the illusion that he wasn't going to have another piece.

The bathroom door opened. "I'm going to check on my laundry," Harriet yelled. The back door slammed, and footsteps tromped down the back stairs. Ray shook his head and went to get more lasagna.

He was pouring himself a glass of water when the back door opened again. "You'd better get some of this before it gets cold," he said. But there was no one at the door. He crossed to it and looked out. He thought he heard breathing, but there was no one there. "Harriet?"

Silence. He hurried down the stairs, his heart wanting him to move quicker yet. The washer was washing, the dryer drying, but no one was there. No one in the utility area, either, and the rest of the basement rooms were locked. "Who's here?"

No answer.

Then he heard someone walking around upstairs, and he ran, not caring if Harriet teased him, hoping it was her and he was just getting old—going deaf and hearing things at the same time.

She was at the counter, dishing up lasagna. He didn't say anything, just breathed his relief and locked the back door behind him.

"Where were you?" she asked.

"I thought you were downstairs."

"I was. I came back up. Are you OK?"

"I called, and you didn't answer. I got worried."

"I didn't hear you." Sweat stood in beaded rows on her forehead, and her breath came quick and shallow.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Better." She swept past him into the living room.

They watched most of the movie in silence. Eventually Harriet relaxed a bit and started to giggle at some of the stunts, but she was still bothered by something. Ray knew his daughter well enough not to press her. If she thought he could help her, she would ask. Part of him was indignant that she wouldn't ask his help with all her problems, but realistically he didn't want that. He just wanted her to trust him and to feel that she could come to him whenever she wished. That, and he didn't want to drop out of her life. He wanted her around, and not just a voice on the phone. She was fun, and she was smart, and she constantly amazed him.

She woke him when the movie was over. "Must be a record," she said. "You only slept through the last twenty minutes."

"I don't always sleep through movies, you know."

"No," she said. "Some of them you walk out on."

He let her tease him for a while. She must be feeling better.

"Can I stay here tonight?" she asked when they both realized how late it was.

"Sure. Take the bed. I usually sleep on the couch anyway."

"Old habits die hard, huh?"

He forced a laugh.

"I'm sorry, Daddy." She kissed him and moved into the bedroom. "You have to be the only single guy alive who makes his bed every morning, Dad."

"And you know this how?"

"Dad!"

It was another hour before she fell asleep. Ray turned on
SportsCenter
and curled up in the TV's cool glow.
Make her keep her door locked, Lord,
he prayed as he drifted off.
Keep an eye on her for me. Please.

 WEDNESDAY

There were no entries for "Super Strength" in the electronic card catalog. None for "Superpowers," either, which surprised Mary Beth, because she had expected to at least find a bunch of entries on the United States and the old Soviet Union. "Superheroes" pointed her to "Heroes," which took her nowhere. There was a subheading for "Heroes—Comic Books," but there were only two texts there, one of which was in German and the other was a comic book about Lewis and Clark kept in the Historical Society archives.

Mary Beth leaned back in her chair at the Memorial Library and looked up at the ceiling. She'd already tried the Internet. She'd Googled "Superheroes" and ended up with a quarter of a million results, but after clicking blindly through several fan Web sites, an exercise site, and a couple pages of "Superheroines in Bondage," she'd given up and decided to try the library. Now she was trying not to let her frustration get the better of her.

Over the last few days she and Harriet had scrambled to replace all the broken things in the apartment without Caroline noticing. At first she had wanted to tell Caroline everything. Since she and Harriet had spontaneously developed strange new abilities it seemed likely that their roommate might have as well. But Caroline had given no indication of any change. She still worked long hours and went out nearly every night she didn't work. Caroline went out on more dates in a month than Mary Beth had in her two years of college. Mary Beth resented this, partly out of jealousy, but mainly because she knew that if she had been working thirty hours and going out three nights a week she couldn't have kept up Caroline's 3.5 GPA.

Mary Beth was managing a 3.8, but she worked for it. When school was in session she spent nearly every night at the library, and not the social halls of College Library but the solitary stacks of Memorial, where few undergraduates ventured and silence prevailed. Her classes were hard, and she was a slow reader; sometimes she felt like she was working three times as hard as the people around her, just to keep up.

Thankfully she didn't have to work—her parents gave her more than enough money to cover tuition, food, rent, and what little entertainment she took the time for. They didn't need to do so much, but they'd been wallowing in guilt ever since her little brother had been born unexpectedly six years after they adopted her. They had tried for years to get pregnant before making her the center of their lives, and despite all she did to convince them otherwise, they were certain she bore deep psychic scars stemming from the sudden invasion of another child.

Whatever psychic scars she bore, Mary Beth was certain they hadn't originated with her brother's birth. She loved her brother, and she loved her parents; but their generosity had created a feedback loop of guilt. Mary Beth was determined to get through school as quickly as possible so they wouldn't have to keep supporting her. She took the maximum number of credits each semester, plus summer school, and her plan was to finish in three years and then apply to medical school. Her parents, in turn, gave her still more money, and when she didn't spend it they tried to send her on vacations to Italy and Australia and Costa Rica—this past spring break they had sent her, Harriet, and Caroline to Jamaica, which had made her roommates into big fans of her parents. But while Mary Beth appreciated everything they did for her, she wished sometimes that they were a little less rich and a lot less solicitous.

Mary Beth had wanted to be a doctor since junior high, or maybe earlier. No single incident had decided her; she was simply fascinated with how bodies moved and grew and fit together. She took disease and injury personally, although she herself had rarely suffered either, and never seriously. It had something to do with her mother—her real mother, the one who had died giving birth to her, leaving her without a family for the four days until the Laytons learned of her and decided to make her their daughter.

That lonely, friendless girl, whom Mary Beth had already outlived by four years, was still a presence in her life. She had two forms: one was the resentful denizen of her dreams, who called upon a rogues' gallery of nightmare assassins to take back the life Mary Beth had stolen from her; the other was her mother as a small child, an almost-sister Mary Beth had conjured out of a child's flawed understanding of the story of her own birth. She used to spend hours talking to Wanda Benson, imagining her in pigtails and a flowered dress, a gentle girl who told good jokes and held her hand when she was frightened. Even now Mary Beth sometimes pictured her like this, though she was less proper and smiled less easily. The mother in her nightmares had become more vivid over the years than the friend in her imagination.

Mary Beth didn't blame the doctors for letting Wanda Benson die. She had no illusions that if, once having become a doctor, she were somehow able to step back in time to that delivery room, she would be able to save her mother's life. From what she had learned, it was a miracle that both of them hadn't died months before her birth. Maybe the real reason she wanted to become a doctor was as repayment for her own survival.

As much as she was enjoying being the strongest woman on the face of the earth, it was a distraction from her plans. The one-week summer session started in five days, and she was signed up for an intense lab class. She couldn't afford to be breaking things. She had to figure out how to control this power before Tuesday. With a bit of finesse she could become a trauma surgeon, freeing people trapped in crushed cars by tearing the vehicles out from around them like paper, then performing delicate operations on-site with her superior control. She could rescue miners from cave-ins and then treat their wounds. She could respond to police calls and deflect bullets that would otherwise kill or incapacitate.

She was pretty sure she could deflect a bullet. Nothing, not razors nor broken glass nor knives, could cut into her skin, despite her constant and—as Harriet finally called them—morbid attempts to draw blood. She didn't even bruise. Nor was she ever sore, even after lifting a Ford Escort over her head late Monday night when she and Harriet had walked up to Capital Centre Foods for some late-night grocery shopping. She had been walking down the middle of the silent street, giddy from junk food and the late hour, when she'd set down her bags and swept the little car up into the air, being careful to lift with her knees. For the first time she had felt a bit of strain, a tightness across her shoulders when she went to set it down, and she wondered if she was near her limit. She would have tried to lift a Toyota 4Runner next if Harriet hadn't hissed at her to get inside before she drew attention to herself.

Yet she was able to type on the library computer without shattering the keys; and although the effort was more than that of, say, lifting the table upon which said computer and five others sat, she had hope. She had never had to think about being gentle before, hut she was determined to learn her own strength, to blend in. She pictured calling up her parents and telling them she was dropping out of school to become a superhero. It would be worse than joining a band.

She had to know what was happening, and ever since she was five years old Mary Beth had relied on libraries for answers. With a few exceptions, which were not failures precisely but rather cases of questions leading to more questions (such as Who is God? and What is death? and Why are boys so stupid?), she had never been let down.

Possibly she wasn't looking in the right places, but she didn't feel as if she could explain her situation to a research librarian without being referred for psychiatric counseling. So after an hour of fruitless searching she found herself standing outside, looking out over Library Mall, completely at a loss.

"You look like you're at a loss." Marcus Hatch was beside her, smiling.

Mary Beth grimaced. "Where did you come from?"

He looked sheepish, if it was possible to look sheepish in a calculated way. "I followed you," he said.

"How charming," Mary Beth said.

"It wasn't a creepy follow. It was a hey-there's-that-intriguing-young-lady-I-met-the-other-day-but-didn't-get-a-chance-to-talk-to follow."

"They look almost identical."

"Hey, I'm sorry." Marcus put up his hands. "If being interested in you is such a turnoff, I'll go away."

Mary Beth started across the Mall toward State Street. "You're interested in me? Why would that be?"

Marcus matched her pace. "What can I say? You made quite an impression."

Mary Beth managed not to break stride. He might just be using a figure of speech. She had done her best to bend the bar back into shape, but it was still visible, at least to her. She didn't know if someone would investigate, or if they could trace her if they did. There must be hundreds of fingerprints on the equipment in there.

If she told Marcus to get lost he might get more suspicious than he already was. Of course, if she suddenly became sweetness and light he'd be suspicious, too. Assuming that he was suspicious in the first place, which she couldn't be sure was the case. She mentally chased her tail like this for a few seconds, finally coming out with, "Huh."

"Huh? What do you mean by that?" Marcus asked.

"I was just wondering if this approach usually works for you. Following and flattering. Seems a bit nineteenth century to me."

"I've been slapped once or twice. In your case, I hope it doesn't come to that."

Was he implying that he knew she could slap him through a brick wall? Or was he just being smarmy? "You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

"Should I be?"

Mary Beth wished he'd ask his questions and stop hinting around, if that was what he was doing. His insinuations made her feel as though she had a dirty secret, and she didn't like that. It was a secret, but there was nothing dirty about it.

"Are you going to follow me home?" Mary Beth asked, picking up the pace.

"Did you finish your research?" Marcus asked in return. "I didn't think there were any classes going on yet."

"I'm done talking to you," she said.

"For now you are. You'll change your mind eventually."

"Good-bye," she said, and left him behind.

She didn't go home. She was on her way when she passed a video store with a large poster advertising the
X-Men
movie out on DVD. She remembered the X-Men from her search of the World Wide Web as well, and she started to wonder if she wasn't overlooking an important resource.

After consulting a phone book, she took a downtown bus out to Monroe Street. She saw it immediately. She'd probably been by here twenty or thirty times and never noticed it before, but it was hard to imagine how; the sign was a large, bold, red and white.
ARTEMIS'S COMICS
.

She entered, blinking at the shadowed contrast to the sunlight outside. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with comics. Garish titles blared from glossy paper;
Flash, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four.
Beside the new comics were rows of graphic novels shelved tightly together, and in the center of the room, a cluttered display table with action figures and other collectibles.

"Can I help you?" A small Asian woman stood behind the counter.

"I hope so," Mary Beth said. "I need to do some research on superheroes. For a paper." She flushed at the lie, certain she wouldn't be believed.

"OK. What aspect of superheroes? Vigilantism, supergroups, superhuman powers, secret identities, costume fetishes—"

"Secret identities," Mary Beth interrupted. "How they fit into normal society, that sort of thing. Controlling their powers so as to handle everyday activities."

"OK. You know, the secret identity isn't usually that much of a focus. Most superheroes deal with it to some extent, but it's largely background. And some superheroes don't have secret identities. The Fantastic Four, for example. Everybody knows that Reed Richards is Mr. Fantastic and his wife, Sue, is the Invisible Woman."

Mary Beth made a mental note to tell Harriet that the name "Invisible Woman" was already taken.

"Or someone like the Hulk, who is widely known to be the alter ego of Bruce Banner. He can't keep his identity a secret because the Hulk is something he can't control."

"I'm more interested in examples of maintaining a secret identity."

"Right. Lots of characters maintain secret identities, but some are more realistic than others. Batman is Bruce Wayne, but Wayne isn't someone you or I can necessarily relate to. He's an obsessive and a scientific genius in perfect physical condition with an ungodly amount of money. Someone like Spider-Man is a bit more down-to-earth. Peter Parker goes to school, struggles to make money, worries about his Aunt May. The fact is his life becomes more difficult as a result of his powers. But then that's nearly universal."

"It is?"

"Sure. That has to happen, because otherwise you don't have much of a story. But besides that, there are two opposing axioms that govern much of what happens in the realm of superheroes. One is Spider-Man's motto, 'With great power comes great responsibility' The other was said by Lord Acton, the British historian: 'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely' Superheroes and supervillains exist in the gray area between those two statements. When you make yourself responsible for maintaining order, are you allowing your power to corrupt you?"