Dan (3 page)

Hal went rigid.

“She’s dead, Melba,” said Hal. “She died yesterday.”

Melba squeezed the grips of her handlebars. She inclined her chin to look again at the man in the window and she felt the weight of her helmet tug her head backwards.

Melba’s thoughts of Pam Dempsey returned to her. Melba wondered if it was still possible to walk off, to lie quietly. Her head lolled.

“It was helium poisoning,” continued Hal. “She was filling campaign balloons for Mayor Bunt …” his voice broke.

“Ned thinks I’m Bev Hat!” burst out Melba, straightening her neck with a sudden rush of isometrics.

“Ned doesn’t know what to think,” said Hal. “It’s very early in the morning and he hasn’t gotten much sleep. He’d have to be crazy to imagine that Bev has come back as you, Melba. Where would you have gone, then, answer me that? If you’re Bev, where’s Melba? It would be better if he’d never seen you, but now that he has, there’s nothing you can do. He’ll forget this whole thing soon enough. The best thing you can do is get to work. I’ll handle Ned Hat.”

“Bev!” Ned yelled.

“Go Melba!” said Hal, and he slapped the back wheel of Melba’s bicycle as he aimed a flare gun at Ned Hat’s window with his free hand. Melba pushed off and pedaled faster than she ever had, flying down the hill, until she saw the lighted windows of the bakery shining onto the dough dumpster that Bert Bus, the garbage man, had forgotten to drag back into the alley where it belonged by day, upright amid the liverworts.

The lights in the bakery were always on because the owner, Leslie Duck, thought the lights gave the impression of industry.

“Folks see the lights,” Leslie Duck had said, “and they say to themselves: ‘even now, even in the dead of night, the bakers are working in the bakery, baking fresh and golden pretzels,’ rather like elves, Melba.”

Melba was a docile employee, but something—the reference to elves—forced her to question Leslie Duck.

“I’ve often wondered,” she said, “can’t elves see in the dark? Like opossums? Couldn’t they work the mixers in the dark?”

Leslie Duck stared at Melba for a moment.

“Well, that sounds a little sinister, Melba,” he said finally. “That sounds strange and sinister. You don’t go around town saying things like that, do you Melba?”

“Of course not,” said Melba quickly. “I don’t talk about work. It’s impolite, what with so many people unemployed. Imagine if I started saying that opossums worked in the bakery when half the young men in Dan are so idle and bored they’ve petitioned scientists to put them in chemical comas! There would be a riot. The bakery would be burned to the ground.”

Leslie Duck did not look convinced, but Melba began to apply rock salt to the pretzels with such avidity that eventually he nodded with satisfaction and left her to her task.

Now Melba ran about the bakery, uncovering trays of pretzels and crumpets and sliding them under the display case. She realized that her skirts were damp with dirty water from the storm drain and that her hair had been flattened and burred by the helmet. She tied an apron over her muddied shirtfront and dropped onto a stool behind the counter. She tried to forget about Bev Hat. Bev Hat was just one woman and her absence around town could not be as significant as, for example, the absence of a whole group of women. Melba recognized that even the absence of a group of women was not, strictly speaking,
significant
, that is, from a statistical perspective. The population of Dan was not large, yet somehow it was difficult to account for all of the residents.

Melba’s mother had once offered Melba an explanation.

“That Ann Dump!” Melba’s mother had cried. Ann Dump was the town clerk, and not a good one. Under Ann Dump’s clerkship, many vital records in the town hall vault had been consumed by snails.

“That Ann Dump!” said Melba’s mother. “She encourages snails. Have you ever noticed the cucumber slices in the town hall? Every surface is covered with cucumber slices! That Ann Dump is feeding the snails! She’s lured every snail for miles around into the town hall with her cucumber slices.”

Melba had looked around her mother’s kitchen. For years, snails had been wearing runnels in the floorboards, and in these runnels, Melba could see several dozen snails in transit. She identified at least three varieties of snail, including the Eastern Melampus, the snail for whom her younger sister, Melampus, had been named. Melba felt the urge to pick a snail from the wall. Surely, with one of these evidentiary beings in her hands, Melba could at last contradict her mother. How could Gigi Zuzzo claim that Ann Dump’s cucumber slices attracted every snail for miles around when the Zuzzo household was filled with snails, every day more snails than the day before? The town hall was very close to the Zuzzo’s, just across the gully, on Flop Street. Even for snails, the trip couldn’t take long. But maybe it hadn’t occurred to them yet? Gigi Zuzzo was a forward thinker. Her ideas were certainly more advanced than the ideas of snails. The pace of a snail exodus was bound to be slow, so slow that the signs could very easily be missed.

Melba had hesitated, fingers hovering above the snail on the wall. What if she failed to contradict her mother, and instead only managed to provoke her? Gigi Zuzzo often said that Melba was a provoking daughter, quarrelsome, with habits befitting an earlier kind of person, a person from pre-history. In pointing out her mother’s incorrect assessment of Ann Dump’s cucumbers, Melba did not want to prove her mother correct in her assessment of Melba. Melba jerked her fingers away from the snail, but all at once the extensor muscles in her arm contracted. Her arm straightened and she slammed her palm against the wall. The wet pop made Melba grimace.

Why couldn’t Melba master fine motor skills? Maybe she was like a pre-historical person. Melba imagined a pre-historical person. The pre-historical person was squatting in carnivorous ferns, using a rock to smash a mosquito against her own face. A modern person would deal with the mosquito differently. A modern person would react with dexterity and cunning, fabricating a short switch from the carnivorous ferns and flicking it against her face, concussing the mosquito while leaving the bridge of her nose and the facial skin intact. How had the pre-historical person developed into a modern person, a person with this capacity for mental sequencing and gestural precision? Through what course of study?

In high school, Melba had taken both history and phrenology, but neither class had included a unit on pre-historical people. Mr. Sack, the history and phrenology teacher, did not believe in textbooks. Instead, he distributed modeling clay, which the students used to shape the noses of 19th century naval heroes. Melba enjoyed shaping noses, but she hoped for exposure to something more. She grew listless, each nose she produced more snoutish than one before, until finally she decided to visit Mr. Sack in his office after school.

“Knock, knock,” said Melba, and the door swung open. For a moment, it looked and sounded to Melba like something large had just bounded behind Mr. Sack’s ficus tree, and Melba couldn’t help but conclude that Mr. Sack was secretly blind and keeping a guide animal hidden in his office. She began to back away from the door, but suddenly Mr. Sack was at her side, ushering her roughly to a low footstool.

“Welcome to my solitary idyll, Melba Zuzzo,” said Mr. Sack with a broad smile. Melba looked away shyly, pretending to inspect his tall bookshelf. On every shelf, blocks of modeling clay had been carefully grouped according to color, whites with the whites, grays with the gray, taupes with the taupe.

“If you’d like to borrow a block, I have a sign-out sheet,” said Mr. Sack, still smiling. His thighs were close to Melba, and from her seat on the footstool, she could inspect them at eye-level. The wales on his corduroy trousers had been worn down, exposing the thin, sheer fabric beneath, the greasy silver color of a well-thumbed spoon. Mr. Sack selected a taupe block from the shelf, but Melba declined the proffered block and clipboard with a shake of her head.

“Oh, no thank you,” said Melba. She gazed about wonderingly. She had missed school offices, with their lovely potted trees and heavy, dented furniture and wall-calendars and clocks! Since Principal Benjamin had disappeared, she had never imagined she’d enter one ever again, but there she was, in an office in the late afternoon, when the other young people were mingling with each other in the muddy clear-cut beneath the funicular device. Melba was never the type to mingle with young people, and though she wasn’t yet exactly mingling with Mr. Sack, she began to enjoy his proximity. Mr. Sack’s office had a sour and talcy odor, which increased her enjoyment. The odor reminded Melba of the family bathroom after one of her father’s diluvial showers, the white puddles he left after he’d rinsed his hair with vinegar and patted his body dry with an assortment of unperfumed powders. Melba sighed as Mr. Sack settled himself in his chair and looked down at her, legs crossed. After a moment, he spoke.

“You may rest your head on my knee,” he said, and Melba started.

“Oh, that’s very kind,” she said, and then, realizing that her attempt at polite refusal had surrendered at polite, she remained perfectly still as Mr. Sack took a small velvet pillow from his desk drawer and positioned it on his lap.

“I so often rest my head on things, though,” said Melba. “Warm, unfrosted cakes. Freshly piled laundry. I’d better not.” She giggled nervously but Mr. Sack only shrugged.

“The vertical carriage of the human head is marvelous,” he said, “as are the orthognathic jaws and mobile tongue, but it often results in hypertonicity of the neck muscles.”

“Why don’t we ever talk about the neck muscles?” asked Melba. “Or about the tongue? There’s so much I want to know.”

Mr. Sack took a nose from the desk drawer and regarded it sadly, his index fingers thrust deep in the snoutish nostrils.

“Melba,” said Mr. Sack, finally. “You’ve grown tired of noses. Hush! Don’t argue! I’m a teacher and I understand things. You think I should widen the scope of my classes. Well, you’re wrong, Melba. Dangerously wrong. The students in this school have excitable passions. Sometimes they kiss each other feverishly in the halls, or stand up in class, screaming, ‘I am thy vessel! Fill me, dark prince, with the power of evil!’ Certainly, you’ve noticed.”

Mr. Sack shook his index fingers so that the nose dropped to his desk with a dull clunk.

“The students in this school can’t handle the stimulus of absolute knowledge. They need routine and fentanyl lozenges.”

Melba felt a deep thrill at this unexpected confidence and she leaned forward eagerly.

“I’m not like the other students, Mr. Sack,” said Melba. “My airflow is too restricted for kissing and I hate to make a scene.” She lowered her voice. “Mr. Sack,” she confessed, “Principal Benjamin told me about epochs. He said I would learn about them someday. I thought he meant in high school, but maybe he meant at some other point in life, when I’m in the workforce, or taking a course at a retirement community. Mr. Sack, I have a problem,” whispered Melba, almost breathless, “I just can’t figure out what time is made of.” Mr. Sack worked a mauve lollipop out of his pants pocket and he offered it to Melba without speaking. She ignored it.

“Mr. Sack,” whispered Melba. “Sometimes I think time must be like a kind of jelly. A jelly that makes us move slower than we would otherwise, because isn’t time just a way of delaying the inevitable? If there wasn’t time, everything would be over. But then I’m afraid I’m wrong. I’m afraid that, if there wasn’t time, everything wouldn’t have started yet, and we’d be at the beginning. Then I feel so daunted I can barely move. That’s why I fall down sometimes in class and lie in the aisle. Tell me, Mr. Sack,” said Melba, eyes glowing. “Is time a jelly? A clear jelly, like nothing we’ve ever eaten? Principal Benjamin was going to explain it to me, but then …” Her voice broke and she slapped a hand over her mouth, horrified at her uncharacteristic display of excitement. Mr. Sack had pressed the back of his hand against his forehead, as if to ward off her words, and his body trembled. He tore the wrapping from an elongated lollipop and jammed it into his mouth, cracking the hard glossy cone with his teeth.

“You won’t get an answer out of me, Melba,” said Mr. Sack. “You say you’re not like the other students, but how can I trust you? Any one of them would say the same thing. Principal Benjamin trusted you and you know what happened to him.”

Melba felt as though her body had spun a few degrees around her vertebral column. She leapt to her feet, steadying herself against Mr. Sack’s desk.

“What happened?” she demanded. “What happened to Principal Benjamin?”

Mr. Sack’s eyelids were drooping. His chin bobbed against his shirtfront.

“Mr. Sack,” said Melba. “You can trust me, Mr. Sack.”

Mr. Sack’s voice was so thin Melba could barely make out the words.

“Miasma,” rasped Mr. Sack.

“Miasma?” repeated Melba.

“Not jelly,” rasped Mr. Sack. “Miasma. Time.”

“Oh!” cried Melba, but before she could form another thought, Mr. Sack slid down his chair onto the floor. He dragged his torso beneath the desk and drew in his legs. Melba stood in the empty-looking office. She’d felt like she was the only person on the earth and retreated quickly into the hall.

There in her mother’s kitchen, Melba had tried and failed to summon that same feeling of solitude. She was excruciatingly aware of her mother’s presence, of her mother coming toward her, her mother lunging across the kitchen in fifteen-pound ankle-weights. Melba shifted her palm gingerly. Part of the snail adhered to her palm and part of the snail adhered to the wall. Melba rubbed her palm against the wall. Her mother was almost upon her, and she rubbed harder, reducing the snail to a dark and textured patch, indistinguishable from the other dark and textured patches on the wallpaper, just as her mother’s final lunge brought the toes on her left foot in contact with the dado.

“What are you doing, Melba?” asked Melba’s mother, mildly. Melba thought quickly.

“I’m generating static electricity,” she said. “Otherwise I fall asleep in the middle of the day. It’s perfectly safe.”