The Uncanny Reader (42 page)

Those who can't resort to finger-snapping and other embarrassing things, but it does no good. They are unheard, invisible. They might as well rot. Francesca Pold got waiters. It wasn't surprising.

The two of them ordered and our chat continued. The girl pretended to be deeply involved in my fairy-tale book, but I often saw it slip down and her eyes—all attention and interest—watch carefully. Beautiful eyes. Large and smart, they had a kind of liquidness to them that made you think she was on the verge of crying. Yet that very quality made them more singular and attractive.

The mother was a gabber and, although what she said was mostly interesting, it was easy to tune in and out on her monologue. More and more I found myself looking at the daughter. When their food came, I saw my chance.

“What's your favourite subject in school, Heidi?”

“Ma-ma-math-e-ma-ma-matics.” Her jaw trembled up and down.

“Is that what you want to do when you get older?”

She shook her head and, pointing at me, smiled. “C-C-C Computers.”

She had a torturous, machine-gun stutter that grew worse as she got more excited. But it was also very plain she wanted to talk to me. Her mother made no attempt to interrupt or explain what Heidi said, even when some word or phrase was largely unintelligible. I liked that. They'd obviously worked it out between them and, handicapped as she was, the girl would grow up in a world where she was used to fighting her own battles.

I'd already had dinner but joined them for dessert when I saw how big and fresh the strawberries were they ordered. The three of us sat there and spooned them up while the sky lost the rest of its day. It was completely dark outside when we got up from the table.

‘Where are you sitting?'

I smiled. “You mean what class am I in? Second, I'm afraid.”

“Good, so are we! Do you mind if we sit with you?”

I liked to look at the woman, but was growing tired of her motor-mouth. More and more looks passed between Heidi and me. I would have happily sat alone with the girl and her stutter for the rest of the trip to Munich (they were going there too), if that had been possible.

Despite being able to call waiters, Francesca appeared to have the mistaken idea that beauty also means licence to go on about anything, ad infinitum. I pitied her daughter having to put up with it every day of her life.

But what could I say: no, I don't want to sit with you? I could have, but it would've been rude and essentially wrong. We would sit together and Francesca would talk and I'd try to make Heidi's ride a little more pleasant.

As usual, most of the compartments were empty. Once settled, Francesca reached into her purse and took out a pack of cigarettes. That was surprising because she hadn't smoked at all till then. The brand was unfiltered Camels and she drew smoke way down into her lungs. While she puffed, Heidi and I talked about computers and the things she was doing with them at school. The girl knew a lot and I wondered what she would do with this skill when she grew older. That's one of the nice things about working with computers—you don't have to
say
a word to them and they'll still do your bidding. Even if Heidi retained her stutter in later life, computers would be a good thing for her to pursue because she could do wonderful, productive things without uttering a word.

To be young and suffer the kind of affliction she carried on her tongue must have been as bad, in its way, as having a case of the worst acne. Only pimples usually go away when we get older. Stuttering stays around and doesn't pay much heed to a person's birth-date or self-esteem.

She tried so damned hard to speak. No matter what subject we were discussing, there was something she wanted to say, but her words came out so slowly and painfully that at times I literally forgot what we'd been discussing after watching Heidi strain her way through the sentences.

Once when we were discussing computer games she got completely hung up on the title of her favourite and her mother had to come in and help.

“The game she likes so much is called Panic Hand. Have you ever played?”

“No, I've never even heard of it.”

The girl tried explaining how it worked, but when none of it came out the right way, gave up and slumped in her seat. I knew she was about to cry. She'd tried but lost another game to her inner enemy: in living contrast to her gorgeous mother who had only to sit there and carry on her own boring, unending monologue.

But even mother was silent a while. The girl looked out through the window, flushed and tight-lipped, while Francesca smiled at me and smoked one cigarette after the other.

Suddenly Heidi looked at me and said, “Don't you th-th-think cigarette s-s-s-smo—king is c-c-c-c-ool? I d-d-d-do.”

I shrugged. “Tried it when I was younger but never got the hang of it. I think it looks good in the movies.”

Hearing this mild rebuff, the girl cringed down into her seat as if I'd hit her. Was she
that
sensitive?

I was looking at her and trying to catch her eye and wink when her mother said, “I'd like to sleep with you. I'd like to sleep with you right now. Right here.”

“What did you say?” I looked at Francesca. She had her hand on her blouse and was unbuttoning it.

“I said I want to sleep with you. Here.”

“And what about your daughter?”

“She'll go out in the corridor. We can pull the curtain.” Her hand continued to climb down the buttons.

“No.”

The blouse was open and a nice lilac frilly bra showed through against the stark white of her secret skin in there.

“Look, Francesca. Just wait, huh? Christ. Think about your daughter!”

The woman looked at the girl, then back at me. “You can sleep with her too. Would you rather that? I can leave!” She laughed high and fully, winked at Heidi, then began to button herself back up. “See, honey, sometimes you don't need me. You just have to find a computer man.”

“Hey, just stop.” I finally had the presence of mind to stand up and start for the door.

“D-d-d-d-don't go, please!” The girl grabbed my arm and held on hard. Her face was fear and shame. She got up out of her seat and put her arms around my neck. “Please don't go, please! I'll m-m-m-m-make her g-g-g-g-go aw-wa-wa-wa-wa-way!”

I hugged her back and, slowly easing her arms from around my neck, pushed her back into her seat at the same time. When I had her there, I turned to Francesca. Who wasn't there. Who wasn't anywhere. I was standing with my back to the door, so there was no way she could have gotten around me to get out.

Torn between a strong urge to get the hell out of there, and big curiosity to know what was going on, I more or less froze where I was and waited for something to decide the next move.

The train began to slow and the loudspeaker announced that we were pulling into Rosenheim, the last stop before Munich. I sat down. Heidi slid over next to me. Then she did something so erotic and wrong that I shiver to think of it, even now. Very gently, she took my hand and slid it under her skirt, between her legs. It was there a milli-second before I tried to pull it away. But couldn't because she held it there and she was much,
much
stronger than I. That power, more than where my hand rested, was what scared me. What was she, eleven? Twelve? No twelve-year-old had that much strength.

When she spoke it was in a very normal, un-stuttering girl's voice. “Didn't you like her? Tell me what you like and I'll make it for you. I promise. Whatever you want!”

“What are you doing, Heidi? What are you doing?”

Her hand tightened on my arm. It was so, so strong. “Didn't you think she was cool? The colour of her hair and the way she smoked those Camels? That's how I'll do it. That's what I want to be like when I'm old. That's how I'm going to make myself.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don't believe me? You don't think she was cool? That's what I'll be like and every man will want me. They'll all want to touch me and listen to me talk. I'll have lots of stories and things. I'll be able to say whatever I want.”

“Why can't you say it now?”

She squeezed my hand till I cried out. “Because I stutter! You heard! You think I was
kidding around
? I can't help it.”

Trying to prise her hand off mine, I gave up. “Why can you talk normally now?”

“Because your hand's there. Men are going to want me all the time then because I'll talk like her. I'll be beautiful and I'll talk beautifully.”

“You made her?”

Her hand loosened a little. She looked at me, wanting a reaction. “Yes. You don't like her? All men like her. They always want her. Whenever she asks, they say yes. And if they want her then they'll want me too. 'Cause that's what I'll be like.”

I had two choices—to play along and pretend or tell the truth and hope …

‘She talks too much.' Heidi stopped squeezing my hand but kept it where it was.

“What do you mean?”

“She talks too much. She's boring.”

“B-B-B-oring?”

“Yes. She talks about herself too much and a lot of it isn't interesting. I stopped listening to her. I was paying more attention to you.”

“Why? You didn't think she was pretty?”

“Pretty but dull.”

“The other men didn't think that! They always wanted her! They always took her!”

“Not all men are the same. I like a woman to be interesting.”

“More than pretty?” It was as if she were asking me things from a questionnaire. I had little choice but to answer her.

In fact, the rest of the way to Munich she questioned me about ‘Francesca.' How did I like her voice? What about her body? What was wrong with her stories? Would I have wanted to sleep with her if she'd been alone?

I never found out who the woman … ‘was.' I did not want to make the girl angrier or more upset than she was, for obvious reasons. I answered her questions as best I could and, believe me, there were a great many. I answered her right into the Munich train station where she stood up as the train was slowing and told me she had to go. Nothing more, nothing else. Sliding the glass door open, she gave me one last small smile and was gone.

*   *   *

What do I think happened? I think too many things. That she had an idea for the perfect woman she wanted to be and created her out of her unhappiness to take her place until she could grow into her adult skin. But she was young and made mistakes. What the young think is cool or sexy we grown-ups often smile at. That's one thought. Or she was a witch playing her own version of ‘Panic Hand,' a game I naturally looked for but never found. Or … I don't know. It sounds completely dumb and helpless, but I
don't
know. I'm sorry if you're unsatisfied.

I saw her one last time. When I got off the train I saw her running down the platform and into the arms of a nice-looking couple who were delighted to see her. The man wouldn't put her down and the woman kept giving her kisses. She never turned around once. I kept my distance.

But I walked far behind them and was glad she didn't see me. Then there was Celine. And look who came with her so late at night! Fiona. The wonderful Fiona—Celine's daughter.

 

MORIYA

Dean Paschal

He's VERY mechanically minded.

Oh?

Yes. It's scary at times. How so?

There is a darkness to mechanical objects that he is a bit too quick to appreciate and understand.

(The elderly lady turned ahead of them down a long hall and the mother and the boy followed. The three of them turned again, passing a shelf covered with whiskey bottles and a mahogany cabinet which the boy noticed was full of wine and single-malt scotch.)

In that case (the elderly lady said) I have something—something mechanical—that he might like to see. The girl next door wanted to see it this morning, so it's already wound.

The boy to whom the two grown women are impolite enough to be indirectly referring is fourteen years old and is following them through a Victorian-looking house on his first day in New Orleans. He is to take six weeks of intensive French lessons in a special summer program for adolescents in a school on Jackson Avenue. The elderly woman is a moderately distant friend of his mother's who is going to put him up and who is leading both of them now into a parlor tinkling with prisms and light.

Indeed, the idea of “something mechanical” immediately had this boy's interest. Just as immediately, he saw it and was disappointed. Enough so, that it was difficult to fully conceal his disappointment. The mechanical thing was a clock. It was a glass clock in the center of a marble table. It was ticking steadily. The clock had an exposed mechanism, a pendulum weighted with dual glass tubes full of mercury, but otherwise was of a rather familiar style and unremarkable. There were some other antiquated objects in the room, some family pictures in ornate, somewhat brassy-looking shadow-box frames, a spinet-style piano, two medallion sofas facing one another beneath a third medallion on the ceiling. Indeed, there was something of a medallion “theme” to the entire center of the parlor. It is unlikely that the boy would have known or noticed this. He was, after all, mechanically, not architecturally, minded. On the left-hand sofa, however, there was something he
did
notice, couldn't help but, a doll, a virtually life-sized doll, not a “‘baby” doll either but a doll representing an adolescent girl, a girl in her mid-adolescence, perhaps. Had she been standing up she might have been over four feet high, perhaps well over. She was wearing a nineteenth-century, European, many-buttoned, fin-de-siècle dress, a maroon velvet jacket, and some high-topped black shoes. She had been positioned so that she was looking somewhat wistfully out of a long French window, one elbow on the arm of the sofa.