Coming Home
By Geoffrey Ashbrook
7/17/2001- 7/26/2002
The six of them stepped off of the space ship and took off their helmets and looked down around them at the crowds of people who had come to see the landing. Tomiko marveled at how she never got used to leaving her “sea legs” behind. It felt a little like something was missing the way everything stuck to the ground.
They all walked along the ramp towards the frantic looking mission control personnel who were jotting down notes on clipboards, sizing up the ship, and checking readings on monitors and meters by the sides of the doors to the elevator that would bring the crew down to earth. Todd looked at Tomiko and she returned the glance. The crowd was almost completely silent accept for a few small scattered groups of people who were carrying on as if at a raucous concert. A family of pigeons flew by, darting between the astronauts and then off higher and higher.
One of the Mission Control men walked out onto the gangway. They could see it was Jim.
"Helllllo there, Jim," said Rick, with a cover smile and his hand out.
"Yeah," said Jim, who looked at Rick’s hand and then wrote something down on his clipboard. "Just uh…" Jim was chewing a rather large piece of chewing gum which he spat over the side. "Follow me, eh?" And he turned around scribbling notes and walked towards the elevator.
Rick's smile leveled out and his hand dropped. Tomiko watched the gum fall and stepped over to the edge to see it down. She turned around and tapped Ray on the helmet (Ray frequently forgot to take her helmet off during simulations, and even missions. Once they got a picture of her bouncing food squares off her face shield at the start of dinner).
"Oh, hello, Tomiko," Ray said, taking the helmet off with sharp click and a hiss. "I thought it was awfully quiet…it still is awfully…say, what's going on?"
"I don't know, but…" Tomiko hushed and waved her hand as they were nearly to the elevator and right up around Jim. As Ray was walking into the lift she saw a young technician. "Phil," she thought. He was just staring at them, his hand still shaped around the pen that was swinging from the piece of knotted blue string that tied it to the wall. She waved a little wave to him and a wink. And after a blink he squinted a little and very slightly smiled.
The doors shut behind them. Jim cleared his throat and coughed into his hand. "I gather you're all here," he said half looking around. "Mr. McArthor will be meeting you when we get down. He'll be waiting for you on…the Bus," he half looked around again. "Maybe it will feel good…for you to…" The elevator sank, the tower stretched up in their view through the only window which was on the ceiling, "…walk around on the ground…and…feel…" There was that rhythmic whooshing noise that Ray always thought sounded like an ice cream mixer. Then the floor bucked a little and the doors opened. "…Anyway, here you go."
Rick smiled extravagantly again and clapped Jim so hard on the back that it half turned him around and his clipboard spilled out the elevator doors in a blossom of pages. "Thanks a lot, Jim," he said, and they all walked out quickly leaving him behind. When out of range Rick turned to Todd and said, "We may have to start putting presents in Jim's coffee again."
At the end of the long green carpet that was stretched out in front of them there was a large bus-looking-thing that they usually took back to the International Mission Centre. It was nicknamed 'The Bus,' and none of them ever heard it called anything else. It was loaded with various equipment, a lot of it medical as they each usually got something of a checkup on the way back, just in case.
The walk to the open door seemed a little longer than usual in the quiet. The sun was hot and their suits began to feel heavy and sweaty. Even on the ground it seemed so still. They could hear the hum of the insects and the distant sounds of the birds that lived in the wetlands that surrounded them and their relatively small buffer of 60,000 or so people. And they had never heard that before. Hot currents of air blew around, shifting the hair and garments of the mannequin-like crowd.
One by one they stepped onto the Bus. Rick was waving to the crowd with both arms as he walked on backwards. Ray was the last to get on, and right before she did she noticed that one of the cheering groups didn't sound like they were cheering. It didn't have that natural clutter to it. It was more like chanting. She tried to get a look as she stepped up but the door started to close and so she went in and started to take off her suit.
It was a little ritual. They all picked out an outfit to put on after they got back and had had a quick gravity-shower on the Bus. Most astronauts picked out something like silk pajamas, or a fuzzy flannel robe. Rick always had something like a Tux. Tomiko usually just wore the towel from the shower, her lucky towel which she brought from home. Todd often had a pair of dirty old jeans. Ray, a knit dress her mother had made her. Kiran, traditional Indian robes.
When they all got out of their showers and dried off and went to grab their pile of clothes, Todd picked up his pair of filthy jeans and turned them over a few times. "These aren't the jeans I…picked out…I don't think," he said, his eyebrows pinching towards each other.
Ray looked at the jeans and smiled. "How can you…" and she held up a cotton dress by the straps, "…maybe you’re right." Ray turned to Rick and said, "Rick, is that the same Tux that…"
But Rick waved his hand slowly and smiled with teeth whiter than his starched shirt, "You know, I never like to wear the same suit twice."
"Yeah, but, I mean is it the same one you picked out?"
Rick just looked at her, his head cocked, his fingers nimbly slipping cufflinks into place.
"Oh, never mind," she said, and slipped the dress over her head.
Tomiko walked out of the shower, frisking her hair with a white towel. "Those retards lost my towel again, oh, hello, Mr. McArthor," she said, still rubbing away vigorously at her thick straight hair.
Old Travis McArthor walked towards them from the front of the Bus, limping slightly, wearing his usual tan corduroys and a green Bert & Ernie shirt. "Hello there, Kids," he said. That was what he would always say after a mission. Most of them didn't really feel like they were back until they heard it. Todd always felt bad for the astronauts of the future who wouldn't get to hear him say it. But then, he would conjecture on a good day, they may have something of their own that's just as fitting.
"You know," he said as he sat down with creaky knees and elbows into one of the chairs that ran in a row down one side of the Bus. "This mission is…ground breaking. There hasn't been a mission like this before." He looked them over with his watery green eyes, blinking, his short silvery hair wuffling in the air conditioning.
"I know," said Rick, tying his bow tie as easily as if it were a shoelace, "they were speechless." And he smiled a knowing smile to McArthor, and winked.
McArthor smiled bunching up the wrinkles around his eyes. Ray rolled her eyes. "I think, Rick,” said Mr. McArthor, “that people will remember the return of the Golden Finch, on August second, two thousand and thirty one, differently than you might think."
"Why is that?" asked Tomiko, rubbing the towel behind her left ear.
"Because," said Travis McArthor, sitting back in his seat and grinning, "it returned fifty two days ago."
"What?"
"Fifty two days ago the whole world watched as you came back from your historic mission. And they cheered when you came, and they cheered when they heard what you found. The information you brought back with you was startling enough, but it didn't prepare us for this. No…" He chuckled. ”No one knew what the effects of your study might be on the crew, and apparently we still don't know. Three weeks ago we received a signal from you that you were ready to chart a course for home. At first, you can imagine, we thought it was an echo, bounced off of something. But when we didn't reply you kept talking, and we decided to play it straight."
"So you’re telling me," said Ray, "that my dress is at home, possibly being worn by me, possibly as I watched the landing?"
"Oh, I'm sure you watched the landing, but not from home. You’re all at The Centre."
"So the crowd," said Kiran.
"That's why they were so quiet."
"Nearly twice as many people," McArthor said, as he ran the tips of his fingers through the short hair above his ear, "showed up this time." He chuckled to himself again and drummed his little finger against the armrest.
After a minute they were all sitting down. Tomiko watched the tops of the cedars fly by the window across from her. Rick stopped smiling.
McArthor sat forward and clapped his hands to his knees. "Don't you think this is all terribly exciting? I'm sure you'll be very pleased to see yourselves."
After a fashion, Kiran spoke. "Whenever I would return from a mission, my wife would always cook me this spinach dish. It is the only time that she makes it, and then we take a walk. And she will tell me all of the things that I missed while I was away. And then she talks about her thinking…but what will I do, this time?…What does it mean to share your wife with yourself? Can I just go home? Maybe we should all stay at The Centre for a while." He looked around, almost imploringly.
"I think my kids'll get used to it," said Todd. "Beatrice is only three, I think she'll get a kick out of it. It'll make hide-and-go-seek a treat. I only wonder…I'll have to do twice as much laundry…"
"I guess I should start looking for a new apartment," said Tomiko, watching the floor.
Kiran looked at her. "You don't think you would get along with yourself?" he asked.
"I'm not great with roommates," she said.
"I’m gunna love having myself around more, personally," said Ray, gazing at the top of the Bus. "I’ll always have an excuse for talking to myself now. I can take turns driving on road trips, and then tell myself all about what I slept through. And I can embellish." She folded her arms behind her head.
The Bus dropped them off at one of The Centre’s side doors and they all got out and walked with a funny flutter in their stomachs, like onto a first date. They followed an attendant until they stopped at a room where they could all get ready. They ordered different clothes, all except Kiran and Ray, and Todd just wanted some different shoes.
The waiting seemed like forever and no one said much despite how much was going through their hearts. And every time someone came into the room, with bottles of water or parts for someone's outfit, everyone looked up and then had to catch their breath after realizing it wasn't them.
When everyone was ready they all followed the attendant out again and walked through the halls and up to the double-doors of that big room, and paused. It had been years since any of them had been nervous about anything that would be happening inside that room. It had become just another place where expensive hors devours awaited on silver trays carried by waiters who seemed to have no personal concerns. But it didn’t feel like that room anymore. The attendant pushed the doors open.
Unlike the landing pad, the room
burst into applause as soon as they stepped inside. And the din didn't die down
for a good ten minutes. Even they seemed excited to see themselves. Rick
instantly approached himself and complimented his Tux and gave himself a big
hug --and a knowing wink. Todd's kids ran up to him as if they hadn't seen him
in years and started asking him all different questions at once. Iggy kept
asking about the aliens who cloned him. His wife was teary eyed gave him a huge
hug and a kiss. Then he gave himself a good firm handshake and quickly got lost
in a conversation about a fly-fishing trip he'd been on and missed in
After a short recap of the odd events by Jim, who kept looking uneasily at the audience and chewing another large wad of gum loudly into the microphone, Travis McArthor slowed up to the front and beamed quietly out at everyone.
"Hello there, all of you. I am glad everyone is getting along…" Blink, blink. "I think you will be pleased to be the first to hear about yet another surprising finding. Richard and Deborah Glintle have been comparing the two ships and their data and have discovered that the two ships aren't actually identical. Most parts do look remarkably similar. But one thing that doesn't look the same is the data that was recorded during the experiment itself." The room was quiet. The sun was going down outside and a few egrets poked around in the reeds with their long craning necks, right outside the window. "Mr. and Mrs. Glintle?"
There was a short silence as the squat Glintles ascended to the podium for their talk. And Jim ran back up to lower the microphone, dropping his muffin on the way there and then stepping on it on the way back to his seat.
"Good evening, all of you," said Deborah. "It appears that there was something more to this experiment than we had thought. To be honest we did not know at first if the method was going to work at all. But it has worked."
"The experiment," said Richard, "was intended to measure the curvature of space in high detail. That was all. And the only risks we anticipated had to do with the incredibly high speeds the ship had to maintain so close to heavy stellar objects, namely planets. Now it seems we are in a complex situation. And there are many things we still do not know. But we have been able to figure a few things out."
As the Glintles went on, occasionally pointing to vague shapes on unlabeled diagrams, most of the people in the room trailed off to things that had been on their mind from the day before, or the day before that.
A friend said something they hadn’t understood. A look from his wife that could only mean one completely uncertain thing. How much longer can I drive on those breaks? What does “200 miles” translate into when its all highway driving? What had he meant by “if that really matters,” it’s not like it was his family to talk about that way anyway.
Every time some chair made a noise or the pictures on the screen made a sudden change the room would refocus on what the speakers were saying. And they would catch a few words.
“See? Now take a look at a similar image taken at a different place around the planet,” he would say, and point to yet another pixilated image that looked like wallpaper from a doughnut store. A few people dared to wonder if what the Glintles were talking about really had anything to do with why the ship had landed twice.
After many cycles of this the projected image went out completely, and the Glintles were quiet. A fear swept through the audience of just missing the final explanation.
The Glintles looked at eachother. “What we suspect,” she said, “is that when the ship moved out of time it made an echo which will ‘pulse’ a few times and then fade away.”
“This ship that has just come back is an echoed reflection of some kind, like a ripple or a splash that repeats rhythmically."
"We may be getting more returns of the ship, until the echo dies out."
"It is hard to tell presently, but as the ripples get weaker then the ships that come back may not be real, but just shadows.”
“How many real ships will we get? We do not know. Maybe just two, maybe ten."
Someone raised a hand. Richard and Deborah looked at eachother, and Richard pointed.
A girl holding the hand of Kiran lowered her hand and said, "So where is the ship now?"
"We have no way of knowing that," said Deborah.
"Will it ever come back?" asked a more disembodied voice somewhere in the audience.
“It may return,” said Richard, “But if it doesn’t, or if the crew can’t tell us, then we can barely guess at what has happened to it.”
Someone in the second row raised a hand and Deborah pointed, and Mr. McArthor’s voice rose up. “For all we know, wherever that ship has gone is as much a part of this world as the Americas were before the Europeans mapped them…It’s like a dream to find out that a crew of cartographers fell off the world because they fell off the map they were drawing.”
The room was still. Richard and Deborah looked out over the crowd, trying to ascertain what they could from the faces. How much had they understood? Were there common worries or common fears unvoiced? Deborah watched the astronauts in particular. As a child she had always dreamt of being a part of history. Would she be less worried if she were younger, more full of questions and curiosities perhaps? What was that crew of doubles feeling? She could not identify that lumpish feeling in her chest, or know if it was anything like what they were feeling.
As it was, Rick and Todd were thinking more about galas and mountain streams as the rest of the crew sat wondering about how a part of them was still off somewhere else. What did it feel like? Did they feel any different? Could they feel something missing? If they really tried could they connect with that part of them that resided wherever else they were? What was it like outside? ‘Is there air or vacuum?’ ‘Are there dogs running around outside of time?’ ‘Are my parents outside of time?’ ‘Are there locals who go fishing outside of time, and who know the good spots?’ ‘Do I look good outside of time?’
It was quiet for a spell, and then some people in the audience began standing up and gathering their belongings and talking quietly to each other about keys and cameras and coats.
Some of the guests left and went out to their cars. But it was late and most people retired for the evening to what amounted to be hotel rooms in The Centre.
At 5:37 am the next morning, after a large breakfast buffet and a few miniature last minute medical examinations, the Astronauts departed along with their families --for those who had families-- and with the Centre-Personnel who had devised parts of the mission --including Mr. and Mrs. Glintle.
Like a crowd leaving a party at dawn, an old station wagon with bicycles hanging from the rear, a new coup, two taxies, a 1968 Volvo, a Jeep and a few other modes of transport all filed slowly out of the lot and headed toward the interstate. There the group began to part ways, and half an hour later the cars were spread out all over the dendritic roadways and headed for different parts.
* * *
The station wagon pulled up out front of a three-story cottage and the kids all leap out of the car and ran up and onto the porch. Satva began explaining to Nazhi and Gersom that one of the Daddies was now her Daddy and that she would let them share the other one. Renuka began taking some of their bags in, and Ghee followed wagging her tail.
Renuka noticed as she walked by the dancing Lilly, the one by the side of the path where it took a bend, that some little green shoots had started to come up through the mulch in front of it.
Kiran stepped out of the front and back, stretched, and pulled out most of the rest of the bags and took them inside and started straightening the kitchen table while he went up to take a shower.
Down stairs Kiran took the potatoes and cauliflower from the fridge and placed the container next to a skillet on the range, and began cutting up eggplant and onions and garlic. Then he started on the salad while the onions were simmering.
He turned the water off and stepped out of the shower onto the small long tasseled rug. And he listened to the stopper give way and the extra water pour from the faucet in the bath. After a minute of looking around and thinking, he dried himself with half a dozen clean hand towels and walked out and sat down on the side of the bed, pulled on a clean shirt, and saw a small purple leotard draped over the dog gate that kept Ghee from climbing into their bed at night. Then he slipped some pants on and went down the steps, feeling the little bits of sand and dust that seemed to grow on the wood. When he got down stairs, and as he walked into the kitchen, he noticed it was quieter.
Renuka was on the phone, and he was walking with a salad bowl and a large bowl of curry into the dinning room. He watched them walk off and sit down at the table and start to fill their plates.
“Oh that’s no problem,” she said, spooning more curry sauce onto a large chunk of potato with her free hand. “No, just tell them to rinse off their bathing suits, hopefully they will remember, but…What? No, at 7:45…Yes, that’s it…Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow… bye bye.” Beep.
“How was your shower?” he called out.
“Very nice.” He walked into the room and up to the table and took a seat, feeling like a kid who is sitting down to dine alone with the parents of a new friend. “Is that new soap upstairs? Where did you get it?”
They looked at eachother. “It is the same soap,” he said.
“The kids are over at Don and Lisa’s now,” she put in. “I thought that might give you some time to relax.” She smiled, leaned over and kissed the uncomfortable Kiran on the cheek, and took her plate with her as she went out the side door.
He watched her go, squinting a bit, and then looked over at himself.
“If I were you right now, I think I would be feeling like I was trouble to be here,” he forked some cauliflower and bit it at one corner. “And I would also feel cheated.”
“Too strong words,” he said, almost shaking his head, and now looking at his plate.
“We want you to stay. You belong here, even if it is strange.”
He looked up and saw a look in his eyes, and it reminded him of the way he saw his father smiling at a customer when he first went with him to work. It was something he had never seen before in a place he thought he knew.
“Ok?”
Kiran nodded, and ate some eggplant, which was good. “This is very good bangen,” he said, watching his onions. “Ok.”
“Some things will not be the same any longer. But this is your home as much as it is mine.”
“Thank you.”
He got up out of his seat and gave himself a long hug. “This must be one of the world’s marvelous gifts, that sometimes we are offended by.”
After they cleaned their plates they played a game of chess and then he showed him a new wide-angle camera lens he had just purchased.
Then Kiran went upstairs to freshen up for bed while he went over to Lisa’s to pick up the kids. As he was going across the street he wondered if Don and Lisa knew. He hoped none of the parents of his children’s friends would be upset and push away.
When he got to the door they greeted him and welcomed him home warmly. Then they rounded up the kids, who were nearly willing to go because of how late it was getting to be. They all said goodbye and started off.
Crossing the street again they were all talking to him at the same time, about how Ginny’s lizard has the pox and how they found a city up in the tree and how Don made them coil up all the string again back into a ball and how uncomfortably long that took.
Once home he sent them up to bed and made sure their teeth were brushed and their jammies were clean and kissed them all goodnight.
When he got halfway down the hall he could hear the water running, and then it shut off. He smelled the moisture in the air and when he was close enough he saw the loo door was shut. He thought for a minute, and figured he’d read until she was ready and he turned and walked into the study. And there was a loud thunk.
She opened the door and walked out frisking her hair dry. "What was that noise, Dear?" she asked. And she saw him standing a foot away from the wall, staring at it and rubbing his nose.
"When did you move the door?"
"There was never a door
there." She slapped him on the shoulder and tutted him and went back into
the bathroom. There was the sound of a comb hitting the floor and a minute
later she walked out again, gave him a quick kiss on the lips, tiptoed into the
bedroom, and crawled into bed next to Kiran.
He looked at them for a second, rubbed his face, and then turned and stepped into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. Then he went downstairs to read, as he didn’t feel tired somehow.
He grabbed a volume of folk-tales that he’d started before he went away, and he opened it to find which rabbit-eared page was his and sat down in an armchair. Soon he was on his way in the back of a covered caravan car filled with monkeys in cages. His robes were of silk and he could hear the singers practicing in the carriage behind him. He inspected the monkeys finding most of them asleep, and then, flipping one of the door flaps up onto the roof, he stepped outside and stood, squinting and using his flattened hand as a visor, looking off the back of a large wagon. There were farmers walking down the side of the road with giant bundles of cloth tied to their feet, and poles across their shoulders holding buckets filled with peat. And the air was filled with the smells of roasting apples and fresh baked bread. The road they were on snaked out behind them, ending in a grove of wild fruit trees. And then behind that a host of parapets poked at the sky. Where they were headed now he could not see or guess, or remember if he ever knew.
He looked ahead at the long flat carriage being pulled along, behind him in the train, by five horses. The wooden frame was bare and the tent-roof was piled up in a heap in the back. The bed of the cart was covered in stacks of sacks piled five feet high. And there were people he recognized sitting on them and eating bread and talking and singing. One had a flute. His brother and his brother’s fiancé were there, along with his Uncle and the paper trader who they were bringing as far as the next city.
Off the side he saw a few children playing with a large sphere that looked like a hollow metal frame. They were rolling it around, jumping through it because the gaps were so big, and rapping it with their knuckles which made a tone that warbled as the mass rolled along with them in hot pursuit. Then he noticed the whole field behind them was filled with children playing with similar framed or mesh balls, all made of different metals. Some sparkled copper or silver, others seemed dark. Some seemed painted. And they were all sizes. Every once in a while he thought he could see patterns in how they rolled and ran. Maybe they were playing some kind of game? Whole parts of the field would empty, the children and spheres lining up. Long straight or snaking rows all moving, starting and stopping that the same moment, or nearly so, like a flock of birds all turning at once in the air. Then he would move on and from another angle it just seemed like lawless play. Then he heard a noise from inside the tent of the carriage he was on, and he walked back inside.
“Hey,” the voice said.
He walked back slowly but didn’t see anyone there. “Is someone here?” he asked.
“Hey, where are we going now?” came the voice again, this time right beside him.
He turned quickly and saw it was one of the monkeys, sitting at the front of its cage and playing with the long silvery hairs on the top of its head. “I’m not sure,” he said.
The monkey gave him a skeptical look.
“Really,” said Kiran.
The space was dimly lit, but when his eyes adjusted he saw that the money had a nose ring on one side and was wearing spectacles. And the floor of the cage, nicely carpeted, was littered with books. One was spread open, pages down, in front of the sitting figure.
He heard a noise and sat bolt upright and looked around his living room, and by the side of the chair his volume of folklore was lying closed on the ground. He stood up and stretched a very little, his eyes barely open. And then quietly he walked upstairs to bed, accidentally forgetting the book.
They had left enough room for him, so he climbed into bed. He reflexively reached his arm around his wife, under her pillow, and then feeling his own arm already there from the other side he just as reflexively pulled it back. He got out of bed and looked at the quiet couple again.
Then he walked back downstairs to the sofa and lay out on it and looked at the ceiling. Was it the same color it always was? But long before he could decide what color it had been he had fallen fast asleep with Ghee curled up against his stomach.
* * *
The shiny blue Volkswagen Passat pulled up the gravel drive, and the lights went out and the engine stopped. The two passengers looked at eachother, both trying to keep their eyes open.
"...hmmm, I hope we don't scare Mrs. Billard too badly when she sees, she's been through so much."
"What with her hedges dying and all."
"Her hedges died?"
"Just last week."
"No..."
"Honest."
"She worked forever on those."
"Sort of."
They giggled.
A dog barked.
One of them opened their door and the car chimed until she took the keys out. Then they both pulled their bags from the back seat and got out and shut the doors and then the driveway was dark again. And they just stood there in the quiet.
"So who gets to sleep in the guest bed?"
"You do." Yawn.
"Why me?"
"Because you just got here, that’s why."
"Yeah, well, this is my house, I mean..." Yawn.
"The guest bed isn't that bad."
"Why can't we sleep together?"
"…Isn't there something wrong with that?"
"Oohhh." She slapped her fingers down onto the roof of the car. "Don't you remember when you first came back how much you wanted to sleep in that bed? I can't believe I'm arguing with myself about this."
"Lets get inside, it's chilly out here."
"Yeah, it is."
They took their bags inside, where Tomiko put down the bag with her research notes in it behind the door --right beside an identical bag. She smiled and scratched her head. "This is going to be a little weird, I think," she said.
"Nice to be back?" And then without leaving any time for a reply, "Oh. You're lucky you came back after I did. Remember why? Forgot to clean out the fridge," she said, arms folded, ever more enunciating her words. "Smells ok now, but only just. I never saw five-month-old yogurt before. The raspberry ones, I was, we...whatever, you were archiving in there? Well, most of them exploded. Yeah."
"Well, thanks for cleaning it up," she said, and she walked into her room.
She followed herself in and stood behind herself, looking into a closet empty but for a yellow button down shirt and a full hamper.
She turned around and looked at herself with disgust.
"I forgot…sorry. The prospect of going to pick myself up at the airport must have blocked everything out. They’re not that old," she said, lifting a filthy sock from the hamper and letting it fall back. "You should be able to find something in here."
She reached down and picked up a pair of jeans with a large spaghetti sauce stain and that otherwise looked like a stiff mound of dried seaweed. She held it over the bin and looked over at Tomiko.
"What?" And she turned around and walked into the bathroom and started to run the water, and then shut the door.
Tomiko squinted and dropped the jeans onto the floor where they hit with a slight knock. "'What'?" And she dragged the hamper to the back room where she saw a wheel-less bicycle that she'd never seen before where the washer and dryer had been. She looked around the room and then dragged the hamper back to her closet, gritting her teeth…and she could hear herself singing in the shower. Slowed by humility she perused the hamper and decided she'd better stick with the jeans, at least she knew what had caused the tomato sauce stain.
She picked the pants up again and carried them like a trash can lid over to the kitchen sink where she grabbed a scrubby-sponge and began removing layers of ingredients. When she got that, and two smaller and more ambiguous stains, out she spritzed water all over the legs and beat the pants against the floor until the cloth had softened and they looked more like pants again. Then she lay them out over the back of a chair and walked to the bathroom. The shower was off now.
She reached for the handle as she rubbed her eyes and walked right into the door. It was locked. "You locked the door?" she asked loudly.
The door opened and she walked out wearing the only two towels. "Did I what? Oh, sorry about that." She sat down on the foot of her bed and finished cleaning her ears with Q-Tips.
"Where are the washer and drier?"
She started to laugh, "I'll tell you tomorrow, you'll love it."
"I doubt that."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said. And she walked into the bathroom and brushed her teeth and washed her hair quickly in the sink. Then she walked over and took up one of the moist towels from the floor in front of the bed where she was already fast asleep under her down comforter, and wiped the water off her hair.
A slight draft moved through the room as she stood there, and she shivered and turned away from the bed and folded her arms. Maybe she was tired from driving. Quietly she left and walked through to the other side of the house.
The sheets on the guest bed were thin but clean, and she stood there ruminating over whether or not it was ok to sleep there naked. After some waffling she dropped and stepped out of her pants and stepped-off her socks and pulled off her shirt, and then stood there for a moment longer looking at the futon. People had always said it was comfortable.
Another draft curled around her and the old lumpy-glassed windows rattled in their frames, and where her hair had wet her shoulders it bit like a winter wind. She ran back to the back room, padding on the balls of her feet, and grabbed her old musty camping blanket and, returning with it, threw it out on the futon where it settled along with some dust and mica chips. And then she flicked the light off and slid in between the smooth cold cotton sheets. After a few minutes of fidgeting and shifting her legs back and forth and rubbing her feet together she started to settle in as the fabric and pockets of air around her warmed.
She stared at the ceiling, the tip of her nose cold, watching the shadow of a branch swing and shimmy and jiggle in the light from the window that was splayed out above her. Her eyes tried to follow it as it moved expertly throughout the eight regions of the stretched-out rectangles, like a traveling dancer gracing the courts of nobles in different parts of the country. Cedar? She turned onto her side. She could still see part of it because one corner was stretched down onto the wall. She rubbed her feet together a few more times and closed her eyes and listened to the sound of herself against the cloth.
She was starting to fall off, thinking of climbing pine trees when she was an ickle childer, but she wasn't asleep, at least not anymore. Her nose felt wet-cold and she tried to bury it in the pillow. Her toes were feeling the little playful fingers of draft going up under the sheets. "Ooohhh..." she said into the pillow, and she sat up quickly, threw off the covers, and swung her legs out over the side and onto the floor. For some reason the cold doesn't feel cold when you’re nearly bare and new to it.
She stood up and walked out of the room and into the kitchen, and watched the neighbors’ trees and a traffic light in the wind while drinking from a bottle of water at the sink. And she listened to the sound of the sea beneath the wind. Then she ran through the house and into her own bedroom and jumped under the covers, hijacked half the pillow, and cuddled up against herself. And she was warm. And she started thinking of something to say if she woke up and protested, some excuse or trick, but she fell off to sleep before she had one.
In the morning she woke up and rolled over, and was alone. She started to run over the course of events from the evening before, and then she heard footsteps outside the door. She looked around the room, which appeared to be a bit more straightened up than she remembered it. And then she smelled it. She got out of bed and went to brush her teeth and she washed her face and put her up hair in sloppy morning pigtails and went out to the kitchen. There she saw herself in front of the sink, looking out the window, with two lumpy scofflaw pigtails.
"Is that…" she began, but Tomiko put a finger to her lips and ushered her quickly with her hand. Tomiko stepped quietly over to the window as fast as she could, and looked out, and wondered what she was supposed to be looking at…her neighbor’s house? "What?" she whispered.
Then all of a sudden a little man in an apron blew out of the side of the house as from a musket and dashed stiff-legged to his car. His porch screen slammed quietly behind him, nearly inaudibly, as the air came alive with feathers and wings and squawks and insults.
"You, you fleshy pole-vaulters, get! And take your lugubrious feces with you, take'r the' horns, conscienceless beasts. Flatter than all prevaricators of unworded linens, you rail me!" Swinging his pink fists in the air he reached out to them. After a few minutes he cooled and resigned to sweep off his car with his palms. "Tankancerous biscuit layers...proto-deluvian gate breakers!" It was difficult for either of her to hear exactly what he was saying because he raised and lowered his voice and mumbled and garbled.
"So proud," she thought.
"A bit raw for a man of the cloth, don't you think?" she asked, standing there beside herself.
"Remember when he used to just call them 'damn bird gits,' or 'bleeding heretics'? Now he really goes off."
"I wonder why they pick his car?"
"Or a car at all…never saw that one before him." And they watched as the last of the great Canadian Geese disappeared into a bank of clouds in an overcast sky.
"Maybe he has that 'fighting spirit' that dad always talked about. The one that keeps old people alive."
"Hmm…" She walked over to the stove, leaving herself at the window. There was a large pot there, which she uncovered, and she turned back and looked over at herself. They smiled at eachother. "Mac and Cheese for breakfast?" she asked.
"Why not?" she said, reaching up and grabbing two big bowls from the cupboard. "Should be ready now. Oh, and sorry about last night, I mean with the laundry and all. The washer and drier went, you know, died, within two days of eachother. It happened last week and the new ones I ordered should be here tomorrow. Good ones too."
"Right. That’s ok, I sort of spot-cleaned those jeans so…I'll be fine." She reached over to the pants hanging over the chair to feel if they were dry, and they were.
"So it got too cold for you in the guest room?" She said, filling one of the bowls with steaming and handed it to her.
"Oh, yeah, I’m really sorry about that. But I never thought it got that cold. I mean," she stuffed a spoon-load of noodles into her mouth, "no one ever said anything, but it gets freezing in there." A few noodles escaped and fell onto the floor next to her foot. One or two landed on her foot. They felt nice and warm, and gave off little trails of steam.
Then she filled her own bowl and pulled a chair and sat down at the table.
She took one more look through the window, at Dennis Kiebles working over his hood with a pail of boiler rags, and then she followed suit. Folding one of her legs under her she sat and bowed to blow her noodles, and saw the large empty dog cage in the corner of the room.
Tomiko tore a section from a paper bag and picked up a pencil and jotted a few things down and then stopped. “Can you think of anything we need other than milk and peanut butter and…oh, raisins?” Scribble.
“Umm…Xanadu?“ she said, and she ate the noodles from the spoon one by one.
Click here to see a transcript of the Glintle’s debriefing talk.