Cygnet Page 6

  Lolly, Lolly, Lolly in every frame, on and on. My eyes are sore but I’m working faster now. It is starting to seem important—something like pride is welling up. It looks good, as if it had been that way all along.

  “Oh, would you look at that.”

  I jump as if guilty. I hadn’t heard Mrs. Tyburn come in, too absorbed in the playback, checking the smoothness of the text between frames.

  “Marvelous, dear girl. Very well done. If I hadn’t been there I would have sworn that nothing had been done to this footage whatsoever.”

  I have to work hard to smile back at her. It’s like that last push-up that makes you strain and grimace and grunt.

  “Just one thing, my darling. I have to say, I’m not wild about Lolly. It makes one think about . . . licking.” She makes a face. I hear my molars grind. I could kill you. I could rip out your throat with my teeth. “Could you change it to Priss? You don’t mind, do you?” My smile grows wider and all of my features start to fall sideways off the edges of my face.

  But she can’t just leave. She has to go on: “You really work magic, you know. It’s astounding. Magic.”

  She’s paying me by the hour, so I really shouldn’t care. It’s her money. The waste is hers. My time is worth five dollars an hour. Eight cents a minute. It’s pretty much a long-distance call. Dish out your money, you ignorant old bag. Sit there and toss dimes at me all day since you’re too helpless to do anything else. Get someone to tug a smile onto your face and pin it in place today and I’ll take care of all the days that you neglected. I’ll do all the work that you didn’t do.

  When she finally does walk out, her bleached platinum head smug with her nice new history, I decide to claw back some time to look for my folks. I take out my list of places we’ve lived in and pick up where I left off. As the little fat yellow stick figure, grabbed by the scruff and dropped into Street View, I navigate systematically, inching my way around city blocks, checking out the blurry people, frozen in their errands. Everyone looks familiar, like no one in particular. I trawl the streets unseen for miles, scanning, chasing every promising body but always finding strangers’ frames, alien limbs, the postures of other people’s families under the pixilated faces. There’s an ugly new apartment block on the lot where we picked dandelions that time; people are shuffling out of the food bank at the back of the church near our old house. When I finish one city, I slide the cursor to whatever city’s next on the list and start again. It made me feel better at first; now it’s starting to make me feel sick.

  I can picture the maps of a dozen cities that all hang together now. Over the Brooklyn Bridge to emerge in South Boston. Down the Hollywood Hills to land in Boulder Valley. The straight lines are all illusions, the average of a collective point of view. Are the roads in Rome still straight? Would the strangers be too strange? Will I be too strange for the strangers that I meet out there when I have to go back to the Bad Place?

  Do you know the story of the top and the ball? It was one of the short ones in the tattered book of bedtime stories that my dad had somehow smuggled from his own childhood. After “The Ugly Duckling” and before “The Little Match Girl.” It was strange and never my favorite, about two toys who are in love until the ball gets lost and ends up warped by weather and neglect. How long will it be until me or my folks have weathered into a shape where we can’t even recognize each other anymore? Or until we’ve changed so much we can’t love each other again, like jigsaw puzzle pieces that have gotten wet and distorted and can’t fit together, like they should, and the picture will never be right? I wonder if what I’ve lost is the possibility of fitting anywhere. An extraneous piece, the wrong blue for the sky or the sea, the wrong green for the leaves or the grass or the café awnings or the leather of the little boy’s lederhosen.

  My parents lost all the photos from my childhood in some move or other. I don’t have the straw to spin into gold, the way I do it up here in Mrs. Tyburn’s attic. My magic will work on her but not on me. I’ll have to start from scratch, on my own, the old-fashioned way. Except they’ll come back for me tomorrow. I know they will.

  Chapter Four

  Putting your phone on silent is supposed to be subtle, but that only works if you have it in your pocket or your bag or something. My phone is on the table, where it has a kind of seizure, knocking its back against the surface over and over, making so much noise you wish you’d just left it on. I’m too clumsy and fumble with it, and by the time I press the green button I’ve missed his call again. Jason’s usual First Friday call. He can leave a message.

  In the dorky story I play out in my head, Jason’s my boyfriend. When he’s not around and only exists in my mind, we have this perfect relationship. He surprises me with gifts, brings me flowers. No one has ever given me flowers before, and I hate how much pleasure the idea brings me. We stay up all night talking, and then go out on my lawn and watch the sun come up. I say that I need to go to bed, that I have to work the next day, but he won’t let me go. “Just another minute. Five more minutes. Ten more,” and he holds me tighter. He takes me to a family event on the mainland (on the boat I’m cool, relaxed, but he keeps me close, just in case), something middle-weight like a Memorial Day cookout. Nothing too serious like Christmas or anything. I’m nervous but he says everyone will love me, and they do. I find things to talk about with the grown-ups, and the kids all claim me as their favorite after I teach them how to walk on their hands. (In my imagination, I know how to walk on my hands.) But his mother loves me best of all. She always wanted a girl, and she thinks I’m “just darling.” No, that sucks. It’s more like: I bust out some super-witty one-liner and she says, “That’s my girl,” but quietly, mostly just for me to hear, and then tosses me a wink, a subtle wink—or is winking just too heinous?

  His mom is pretty in the pictures on her Facebook page. But then again, she always untags herself from the ones where she looks kinda iffy. I probably won’t ever meet her in real life, which is fine by me, actually. I’d probably like his imaginary mother better, and when I say the wrong thing in front of the imaginary mother I can just shake the scene like a huge Etch A Sketch and start over. ⌘+z. I have as many tries as I need to make it perfect.

  My phone flashes again, alerting me to a voicemail.

  “You have one new message,” the robot voice tells me, adding gravely, “The next message is three minutes long.” My voicemail only records for three minutes, so when I hear that it means that either someone has called me accidentally and recorded the noise in their bag or their back pocket, or that it’s the first Friday of the month and my imaginary boyfriend’s stoned and rambling.

  “Hey, it’s me. Just calling ’cause I’m on the island and wondered if you want to meet up. But I guess you’re not there. Maybe you’re at work or something. So, I don’t know if you’re busy or whatever . . .”

  I prop the phone between my shoulder and my ear, half listening while I get back to work re-renaming the dickhead boat, waiting for an important detail to emerge from Jason’s monologue. I think he thinks that voicemail is like old-fashioned answering machines, the kind that would click on and play aloud in the room, giving the other person time to race to the landline and pick up. It’s a cell phone. Where does he think I’m not?

  I text back a reply answering the questions I picked out from his white noise of “ums” and “ahs.” “Finish work at 6. Pick me up at Mrs. T’s. Happy to help finish up your rounds. Will be fun.”

  * * *

  Quitting time. I’ve done a lot today; I’m getting faster. I could finish this in my lifetime, maybe even in hers. I have a notebook where I jot down what I’ve done that day and where I’ve stopped. It’s a pain in the ass if I lose my place, and the log also helps Mrs. Tyburn feel like she’s keeping an eye on what I’m doing, like otherwise I might sit up here jerking off all day. I take the external hard drive and make sure everything’s backed up. I shut down, spray the keyboard, wipe the screen, push in my chair, and take my teacup with me. It
’s like no one’s been here.

  I find Mrs. Tyburn in the living room. There’s some kind of jazzy piano music on. It must be old. Sounds like a CD of a really scratchy recording. She’s drinking a martini, which is probably one of the top five sexiest things people can do. I make a mental note to develop a taste for them.

  “Finished for the day, my dear?” She looks at her watch and smiles at me. I wish it was easier to read her face. The clock on the mantelpiece says it’s just after six.

  “Yeah, I got to a good stopping point. I’ve marked the logbook and—”

  Just then the doorbell rings.

  “Gentleman caller?”

  I don’t really know what to say, so I end up spitting out something stupid like, “Kinda . . . Jason.” But she knew that. Who else would it be?

  “First Friday already? Oh, how one’s mind goes all to dots.”

  I laugh with her even though I’m not sure I get the joke. Maybe I’m supposed to disagree, tell her she’s sharp as hell, that she’s got the mind of a teenage Einstein and a fantastic rack to boot, but I’m tired and I don’t want to play games with Geriatric Barbie. I just want to get out of here. But she has to keep talking.

  “Funny that you should be the one with a regular visitor.”

  It’s so awkward I can hardly breathe. “He’s here for Giddy and for the others, not really to see me. You know that. I just kind of help . . .”

  “Nonsense. Nothing wrong with taking on a beau at your age. So these are your going out clothes?”

  “I guess . . . I didn’t really bring much with me when I came over, so sometimes I have to borrow my grandmother’s clothes.”

  “Violet always did strike a bit of style, God bless her soul. I’d give you some of my old things but I’m just so awfully petite.”

  The doorbell rings again.

  “Go on, now. Don’t leave your suitor at the threshold. The way you linger anyone would think you’re simply loath to abandon me.”

  I walk over and kiss the air next to each of her cheeks. “See you on Monday, Mrs. Tyburn.”

  She reaches into the drawer of the end table next to her, takes out an envelope with my week’s wages, and hands it to me. “Until Monday, my darling.”

  I open the door and Jason looks up and blows out a mouthful of cigarette smoke, and we stand there for a minute, looking at each other.

  His eyes are Thanksgiving-turkey brown and he has a smile out of a catalog. His whole look would be too pretty, too all-American white boy, if it wasn’t for the little imperfections, the scar over his right eye, the cigarette always hanging from his lips or pressed between his yellowed fingers, the little rips of skin by his fingernails. His disheveled short brown hair makes him look like a newborn kitten. And even though he’s always got sour nicotine breath, his kisses, even a little peck hello, always get to me.

  “You’re back,” I say when we pull apart from our hello kiss.

  “I’m back.” He smiles again and does a half laugh before he turns and we start off together down the path toward the center of the island.

  “How’s Giddy?” I ask him, even though I saw his grandmother myself in Rose’s shop yesterday. She’ll be different for him than she is for me, anyway. Giddy smiles, says hello, tolerates me. As we make our way over to Suzie and Johnny at the Psychedelicatessen, he tells me about their day together, getting stoned and planting winter veggies in Giddy’s garden plot, digging new beer traps for slugs. She made cucumber soup for lunch, and they talked about the latest book for their two-person book club. Giddy called him out for not finishing it before she confessed to dropping it herself a chapter after he had. He’s animated, like the day’s been an adventure, like he would love her even if he didn’t have to, like he’d come to see his grandmother even if he wasn’t obliged. I manage to contain the jealousy before it gets to be too much.

  He laces his fingers between mine and squeezes. “How’ve you been?”

  “Yeah, good.” I wish I had something to tell him, but nothing’s changed. I take my hand away and put it across my eyebrows to keep the sun out of my eyes. “I’ve been changing the name of Mrs. Tyburn’s husband’s boat.”

  It doesn’t sound as difficult and complicated when I say it like that.

  “In a home movie, frame by frame,” I add. Walking wakes me up a bit after the day cooped up in the edit suite. And the island is beautiful. It seems made for summer. The spaces between the houses are green with wispy grasses and wildflowers, or lumpy with funny stacks of rocks and moss. It’s not uptight like a suburb with buzz-cut lawns and prissy flower beds. The island is like someone who’s really pretty and knows she looks better without makeup. The sea is silver and reflect-y like a crumpled piece of foil.

  Most of the Swans ignore younger visitors, but everyone nods to Jason when they pass us, even though he’s only twenty-two. Jason’s essential here. When First Friday rolls around, and the handful of younger relatives and Wrinkly friends who can’t or won’t leave the mainland come over, Jason visits his grandmother, Giddy. He comes every month, our most regular guest. They talk and eat, take walks. He fixes things around her house or helps in her garden plot, reminds her of her Facebook password so they can look at the latest photos his mother has posted.

  And then he gets to work.

  In front of the swirly rainbow walls of the Psychedeli, Johnny is washing out a massive stockpot with the hose while Suzie sits in the grass in her big red cat’s-eye glasses reading on her Kindle, skirt hitched up to get some sun on her pale, freckled legs.

  When Johnny sees us, he lifts his big, leather-vested torso and waves us over, shouting, “Jason! What’s up, dude?” He drops the hose and splashes Suzie.

  She waves her e-reader at him. “Old man, you wreck this hundred-dollar rock and I’ll have your hide with my eggs tomorrow!” She reaches for Jason’s arm and he hitches her up and gets pulled right into a hug. “Ain’t you here right on time! Come on in, you two.”

  Johnny turns off the water and follows us in with the clean pot, which he carries as if it weighs nothing.

  Inside, blue walls painted with a cloudscape that mimics the sky on a clear summer day gives the Psychedeli a great feeling of spaciousness, which it needs against the hodgepodge of homemade and salvaged furniture and pillows and beanbags that make up the dining room. Hardly anyone uses the beanbags because it’s hard to get up once you’re in one, even for me, and they always talk about getting rid of them but never do. They’ve hung some flags over the counter at the back, all with acronyms like POW-MIA and AFL-CIO, and ones with the Led Zeppelin zeppelin and the Rolling Stones lips. It smells like a health food store in a small town. The almost creamy scent from boiling fresh bagels in the morning blankets the room, sweetened with the lingering haze of the sage they burn and the grass they grow and the oomph of coffee brewing strong in their big urn. Coffee costs a nickel here, just like newspapers.

  Having stowed the pot in the kitchen, Johnny comes back with a coffee each for Jason and me, and we settle into the purple-cushioned booth at the back, discreet, even though there aren’t many customers—just one table where Helen and Nancy are having tea while Marie reads Joanna’s tarot cards—because Suzie hasn’t rung the food bell yet. It’s a ritual that Mrs. Tyburn hates (you can hear it almost everywhere on the island, except the really far-out places like Lolly’s house), but as usual, Mrs. Tyburn’s dainty sensibilities are nothing against the hippie consensus.

  “Man, you get skinnier every time I see you. They don’t have food in the Bad Place no more?” Johnny says gruffly as he turns back toward the kitchen.

  “I see your wife’s still keeping you in the clean-plate club.” Jason gives him a little punch in his biker gut and they kind of hug and do a sloppy wannabe-hip handshake-low-five thing.

  Suzie follows with sugar, milk, and a couple of spoons. “You better watch that mouth when you’re talking to my old man. You’re not too big for me to put you over my knee.”

  “No, but he is,” says
Jason, pointing a thumb at Johnny.

  “Don’t bet on it,” Johnny corrects him, back at the table now with a parcel the size of a large shoebox, like one you’d put a pair of boots in. He slides it across the table to Jason and gives Suzie a squeeze and a big mwah kind of kiss. Jason takes a smaller package and pushes it across to Johnny.

  The shoebox Johnny gives to Jason is the island’s only export, Swan Silver, what they’re cooking upstairs at the Psychedelicatessen, a hybrid of AK-47 and White Widow. Hydroponic, organic, anti-inflammatory, and, apparently, better than Sudoku for the early signs of Alzheimer’s. I did a spit-take when they first told me it fetches twenty dollars a gram. But then they let me try it.

  They keep the growing discreet, a concession to the Swans who feel antsy about the whole thing. Nobody really expects a bunch of sweet old-timers to get raided, but the world they’ve made for themselves is too precious to expose to the whims of cops. So they keep the operation small. Only a few plants, but it’s enough to make sure that even when a market blip drains someone’s pension, or a member of someone’s family needs to get buried back in the Bad Place, everyone has what they need. Jason collects the stock, sells it on the mainland, and brings back the proceeds. This cash fills up Swan Bank every month, and the money there is free. No questions asked. That is, if you’re old enough.

  Johnny draws a half-cup gulp of his coffee and drawls, “Right, you bad little tadpole. What’ve you got for us this fine summer’s day?”

  Jason pulls a good-size Tupperware container out of his backpack. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find something you can handle, Grandpa.”

  “Can I box his ears now?” Suzie asks me.

  Until she says that I thought everyone had forgotten that I was there. And since when do I make decisions about Jason’s ears? Maybe it’s because we’ve been doing this for a while, and the past few times they’ve seen Jason I’ve always been with him. The moment starts to feel like a totally weird double date, but I don’t not like it.