The Solace of Monsters Read online

  “Kindness is rare. Believe me, Mara, I know.”

  I didn’t always understand my father, yet he was overflowing with his own knowledge. I searched his eyes, hidden by his glasses, and he was far away, as though he was sorting through his own memories, arranging the most horrible ones in front. They were proof enough for him.

  “Thank you for the drunken dress.” I wanted to make him happier.

  He finally laughed. “Rambunctious.”

  It sounded nice to me, his tinkling giggle and my grating roar. “Am I animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

  He stopped laughing. “Some of the earlier prototypes had some unusual parts but you’re very human, Mara. Why do you ask? What do you think you are?”

  I wanted to hold the Photograph in front of me. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re my daughter.”

  I didn’t want to ask about the other one, or the four before me. They were inside of me. And all of us wanted to escape. I didn’t know how to do it. My two unsupervised hours on the computer had already been used up and I wasn’t allowed on the computer often. I had sent a group message that said, “Help! I’m being held captive in a laboratory where I’m being experimented on.” Online I was thevillagersarerestless. And I was a forty-year-old overweight housewife who collected porcelain dolls whose eyes flipped open and called me “Mama.” I had no idea where we lived.

  The only reply I received was from monkeyman who answered, “Ha, ha. Aren’t we all?”

  I asked, “Are you made of monkey parts?”

  “What do you think?”

  I concluded that I was better off searching for more factual material, like what types of trees, bushes, and flowers grew in different states, and medical information. No one knew what to believe in cyberspace. Or I could view blue shoes to match my new dress.

  Father had a pensive look on his face, his white hair sprayed out from his head, his glasses slipped down his nose. “Let’s have a guest over for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll cook. You can wear that dress.”

  “A guest! Here!” I screamed. I imagined that mouse scurrying back to its hole, that dead chicken spreading its wings to fly, Gloves missing us and hurrying back home. Somebody else’s heart was churning. “We’ve never had a guest before. A human guest?”

  “Yes, Mara,” Father chuckled. “A human male.”

  “Who?” I screamed at him, not meaning to be so loud.

  “I’m not sure yet. It’ll be a surprise.”

  “Why?” I blurted out, thinking of the experiments with mice.

  “It’s time to be around another person. You’re ready. You can see a bit of the world that way.” Father chuckled.

  This was probably another one of Father’s tests.

  Father turned away from me and whispered into his cell phone, which he hardly used at home, and was constantly attached to his body. He swerved toward me. “We have a day to get prepared. I’ll teach you etiquette.”

  “Etiquette.” I laughed at the word.

  “You know. Things like not to lick your plate or gnash your teeth at someone.”

  But when he demonstrated how to contain myself and my movements, I remembered being around other people. I understood the utensils and unnecessary, polite conversations. An image returned to me, one of children fleeing from my outspread female hands. The fingers had long, red fingernails, unlike my current hands. The image felt as though it was stolen more from my future than my past. The children’s faces were lit with fear.

  I was sitting near the kitchen window as darkness began creeping through the window bars and across the yellow table, turning it blue. “Who invented cats?”

  “No one, Mara, they simply evolved over time.”

  I wondered if I could evolve into a cat over time. “Can I die?”

  “Yes, you certainly can.” Father’s face crimped in anguish and all his wrinkles were visible. His eyes, behind his glasses, began to tear.

  I thought of Gloves. Was she dead or alive? There was so much I wanted to learn. I juggled my silverware with fast motions so the knife, fork, and spoon were misplaced in a little pile. I gazed at Father’s surprised expression. Then I hurried them back to their rightful places. I had bent the fork by mistake.

  “When did you get so dexterous? Let me see your hands. You have to be very careful with your increasing strength.” He unfurled his own hands.

  “Yes.” I glanced pitifully at the bump in the fork.

  That night my body was tangled in my sheets and sweat poured in rivulets along my old scar lines. The bars on our windows reminded me of fences. I pushed back the curtains to see the moon and some stars scattered above the trees. I wasn’t supposed to look outside.

  “These curtains are for YOUR protection,” Father reiterated, “although we’re isolated here and there’s no one nearby for at least five miles.” Every so often I was aware of the noise of a car or bus or truck passing by, its headlights scraping the sides of our house with light. But it was on a distant road.

  I rose, wandered around my bed, listening for a narration from a pine tree or an animal rustling outside. Maybe the lost mouse would whisper some valuable information into my prone ear. No creature was voiceless. I just needed to learn their language. In the pure dark I didn’t know where my body ended and night began. That was a relief. But I could see well enough in the moonlight. Was a neighbor coming for dinner or one of Father’s friends from his research job? He didn’t like talking about work unless he wanted to complain.

  “They treat me like I’m nothing, Mara. All because of some assumptions I made on a project after the accident.” Father refused to talk about the accident. “It was my fault. It was all my fault.” His head tried to bury itself in his hands.

  Father told me to follow his lead with the guest and not talk much or ask any questions.

  Before I finally fell asleep, I inventoried my newest parts: my most recent hand, new kidney, ear, left foot, the useless mole, several vertebrae, a kneecap. My face had remained stable for a long time. Everything felt good, in working order.

  An enormous black beetle was floating facedown in the center of the East River in New York City. Tall buildings surrounded the water and people gathered along the sides to watch the insect wash by. Hardly any trees adorned the banks and once a gull tried to alight on the hard back of the beetle. After a second it flew off. Some of the beetle’s black stick-legs churned in the river. I couldn’t tell if it was trying to swim or to keep from drowning. I’d seen a photograph of the East River once in a book. Children, families, bicyclers, pets all lined up along the beetle’s route. Finally the giant beetle reached the end of the river and was stopped by a large chunk of cement. People crowded near the insect’s desperately pedaling legs. They began throwing anything they had at the flailing beetle: keys, books, hats, eyeglasses, briefcases, shopping bags. One young boy tried to hurl his bicycle. It missed hitting the insect but formed a wave that turned the beetle onto its back, where its legs pumped in the air. When I looked closely, the beetle’s face was my own.

  I woke up startled, with my head hurting.

  Was I hard-shelled and difficult? What have you done, Father? I found something solid and round rolling around under my covers, at the bottom of my bed, like a pea. When I threw back the sheets I discovered that I had lost the top joint of the big toe of my new left foot. Some blood had dried and flaked off my skin. I hadn’t noticed any pain and hadn’t woken up with any in the night. I brushed the brittle dark scabs onto the floor. I picked up the withered top toe joint and threw it into my toilet, flushed it down. The rest of my toe was fine without it. My body was growing mutinous.

  I wouldn’t tell my father. It seemed a bad omen.

  The guest’s name was Gregory, Greg for short. I vomited before he arrived, which I hadn’t done since Father once had a problem with the anesthesia and one time after a stomach
operation when I was a Childcloud. Our rooms slanted when I stood upright in my bathroom. I saw fireworks when I glanced in the mirror and wiped my mouth. I thought I noticed the loose mouse scuttling over my bathroom tile and hurrying into the hallway in my peripheral vision. When I peered closely, nothing was there.

  “Don’t get too excited about Gregory, Mara. He’s dumb as a post.” Father’s eyebrows ran around his forehead as he wiped my mouth. “I shouldn’t have told you about his coming ahead of time.”

  “It’s an occasion to wear this dress.” I twirled and the blue silk tried to go someplace else. I wore my new black shoes, and Father hadn’t noticed my missing toe yet.

  I believed I heard Gloves howling outside our house just before Gregory tried ringing our defunct doorbell repeatedly. When Father opened the door for Gregory a soft, brown moth flew inside. I wanted to hunt that moth down and breathe it inside of me. Then I could have part of the world outside beneath my skin and it would remain a part of me forever. I could briefly smell grass and dandelions and warm sunlight, which I took to be summertime since we didn’t need any heat in the house.

  I had learned from Gloves that I could sniff people and see where they’d been. I restrained myself from doing that to Gregory, who waited at the door behind Father.

  Once, when I was a Childcloud I told Father, “I smell smoke and something bitter and liquid. And you urinated recently.”

  “Cigarettes and one whiskey. And yes, I did. It’s the anniversary of the accident. But I won’t do that again. Besides Mara, it’s impolite to smell people.”

  So I tried not to. But I did fabricate stories about where Father had been and what he’d been doing from any odors I could detect from far enough away. I’d tell the stories only to myself.

  At some distance Gregory smelled of soil and cut grass and some old greasy food, shampoo, deodorant, something antiseptic, apples, and he, too, had urinated recently. He had dark wavy hair that had a brisk, sweet odor and flapped over his forehead. He had brown eyes and pleasant features. He was shorter than both my father and I. His hands seemed uprooted and everywhere, carving descriptions in the air when he talked. He was much younger than Father. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to his robust pulmonary system and his strong, steady breathing. He was healthier than Father, but not as vigorous as me. Even with all the operations to repair me, I knew I might crush Gregory unintentionally. That was why Father and I rarely touched one another fondly. And why I had to touch anyone or anything so delicately.

  Gregory was just inside our door, and he was saying, “There’s quite a forest around this house . . . and I didn’t even know you had a daughter.” He smiled at me and his face lit up in a good way, as though he was happy that I had come into existence. His hair slapped at the sides of his head. Father quickly locked the front door behind him.

  “Welcome,” Father said in a false manner I’d never seen before.

  Father sat us in the dining room at the large table usually reserved for books or papers or the scant mail that arrived for Father. I’d spied on the mailman a few times, but he walked briskly to and from our house, and I knew Father wouldn’t like me brushing the upstairs curtains aside since someone might see me. Father opened the revolving door to the kitchen and a host of odors emerged: chicken, rice, and broccoli.

  He left Gregory and me alone at the table, and I grew nervous when he spoke. My lungs and mouth became dry and stale as something else inside ripened.

  “Someone at work mentioned a car accident. I thought all his family had died. But I see that isn’t true. What’s your name?”

  “Mara.” It was my first time almost lying because I hadn’t corrected him and explained. I noticed our flowered wallpaper tearing itself away from our walls above his head and the mouse’s head darted out from a hole and then it popped back inside. It was distracting.

  He stood and shook my new hand across the table. “Gregory. I see you have a few scars but not many. When was it? Seven or eight years ago?”

  Father quickly returned. He said, “What have you two been talking about? Job rumors? Or what’s for dinner?”

  We both shook our heads.

  Father placed our steaming dinner plates in the middle of the table so we could take what we wanted. “Be careful what you say in front of Mara, Greg. She’s very intelligent and has a quick and unusual mind.” Gregory piled food onto his plate and began eating.

  I smiled at the chicken, proud of any thoughts that were uniquely mine.

  Gregory said, “At work they sure are finding us the worst and most boring jobs to do, sterilization, cleaning. At least we get to use the microscopes every once in a while. Right, Doctor? Hey, what did you do to get demoted? I played a practical joke on somebody and ended up in that lousy facility.”

  “Mara,” Father said to me, “Gregory is my boss.” Father gnawed at a piece of chicken and spit the bones out. He turned to Gregory and said, “You must have heard something about me.”

  Gregory’s face and ears reddened. He mumbled, “I heard you doctored some research results at the school and it was a doozy.”

  “Ah, the important part is WHICH research results, the recombinant or the chimeric DNA?” Father was still eating.

  “Inconsequential,” I gave them. Father and I laughed. Gregory looked perplexed.

  “I heard it was some kind of vaccine for a chimpanzee cloning program and that because of it, all the experimental clones died. I heard they had to shut the whole thing down.”

  Father banged his fist on the table. “Clones! All people want is cheaper meat to eat. Cloning couldn’t replicate people. The clones were genetically identical to the originals but different. Like fraternal twins. They didn’t even look the same.”

  “Are you saying you tried it out on people?” Gregory’s jaw dropped open.

  Father commenced eating as though Gregory hadn’t said anything. “The body—no actually for me it is my mind—always insists on something. Something it needs.” He looked back and forth between Gregory and me. That was enough explanation for Father. “How about some wine?” Father asked us both.

  “What’s wine?” I asked.

  “Fermented grape juice.” Father looked at me askance. “I’m surprised you haven’t read about it in one of your books.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “It sounds disgusting. What’s grape juice like?”

  “She was home schooled and she doesn’t get out much, Greg.” Father went downstairs, leaving Greg and me alone again.

  I didn’t know there was anything downstairs, in the laboratory and office, that wasn’t mechanical, surgical, or a body part.

  “So, Mara, what do you do all day?” Greg was reaching for more food.

  “I read a lot. I play sometimes.” He must not have noticed the bars on the windows since all the curtains were closed.

  “I’m more interested in the play part.” He grinned. I wasn’t sure why.

  “I can make my fingers into puppets.”

  “I’d like to see that sometime.” He sounded disappointed.

  “Tell me about your work with my father.”

  “I’m sure it’s really boring for your father after everything’s he’s done. It’s mostly grunt work. I bet the Doctor could do better work than the scientists we clean up after.”

  “What kind of research are they doing there?”

  “They don’t even bother to tell us and we don’t have clearance anyway.” His head hung to his chest. “But your father thinks it’s some kind of stem cell research. He’s figured this out from their garbage, from their fucking garbage.” He seemed excited about that.

  I was finding the guest’s human nature different than what I had been taught, gestures belying what was said, a vulnerability, an admiration for my father, which I shared. Things were more complex than I had imagined.

  Father returned with an old su
itcase that had travel tags still attached to the handles. I had never seen it before. He lifted out two bottles of wine in his fists.

  “Now you’re talking, Doctor.”

  He poured wine into a glass, lifted it up, swirled the wine around. “You have to let it breathe first, Mara.”

  I made my grinding laugh and Greg stared at me. “It doesn’t have any lungs. The grapes can’t come back to life.”

  Father ignored me. He sniffed at the wine and drank some. “It’s just an expression. You inhale to gather the aroma and enhance the taste.”

  “I thought that would be impolite.”

  “Then you can drink it,” Father continued, ignoring me and drinking more wine. “Here,” and he poured a glass for Greg and one for me. He looked at me.

  I’d read about wine-making but I knew almost nothing about wine itself. I imitated my father although I didn’t see the wine breathing at all. It smelled of fruit and springtime and rotten leaves, vinegar, and something bitter and sweet all at once. I tasted it and I could feel it plodding down my throat and making a warm rush for my gurgling stomach. The strange, sharp moisture of the wine filled the rest of me. Father and Greg could drink the wine faster than I could.

  “Here’s to working at that shit hole.” Greg lifted his glass to the overhead light so it shone various shades of a deep red. Then he emptied it in one gulp down his throat. His hair flew in his face as though it was having a discussion with him.

  Father sighed and collapsed a bit into himself. “To family, what’s left of it.” He sipped at his glass, the red slightly staining his lips.

  I vexed my eyebrows and mussed up my hair. “Now Mara, don’t do this and don’t do that.” I wagged my finger.

  “Ha, ha,” Greg said, “that’s a good imitation of the Doctor.”