Adult Children of Alien Beings (3 page)

*   *   *

It's not hard to figure out where I might spot a shopping alien early in the holiday season. The peppermint ice cream at the Kroger fills an end box across from the soft cheeses where I figure I can dither indefinitely over whether to get dill or pimiento or chipotle or just forego this artery-clogging glop altogether—one of the privileges of old age, indecision—while I wait for an old alien. It's senior discount day. The aisles teem with us. Still, for even so weighty a question as to brie or not to brie, there must be a limit, and fairly soon I'm joined by the youthful dimwit I recognize to be the manager, who pretends to tidy up some tiny cheeses with smiling cows on the label. There are cameras everywhere.
Alert: Senior beached at the cheeses without a purchase for going on a quarter hour.

“Are you finding everything all right, sir?”

Who can honestly answer yes to that one?
Sir
with the right inflection means doddering old fool in managerspeak. Screw you very much, Sonny Boy, I'm waiting for ancient aliens. “Just fine,” I say. He glances down into my basket. There's a bag of frozen kale thawing, a pound of black beans, and a couple of yams to show I'm serious about the shopping thing. Aliens didn't eat cheese and ice cream and thick, juicy steaks because it was good for them. They knew they were only in their human form for the short term and didn't have to live with the consequences. I've been vegan since my heart attack four years ago this spring. I'll have to move along. There's nothing within arm's reach I can eat. Maybe I can lurk by the frozen berries and dither there if the sight line's right. So far there's only been a handful of single quart peppermint ice cream buyers. Nobody's made a purchase of alien proportions. Dad and I used to empty the case as soon as it showed up. If the store runs out early in the season, Dad explained, they restock, and you can hit the same store twice in one year. If you wait around till there's no Christmastime left, they might not bother. Some years we had to hit multiple stores. This is probably the peppermint cusp.

“Were you looking for a mild cheese?” the manager ventures. “Or something sharper?”

Than you? I point to the label on the cheeses he's fussing over. “Those cows there—are they organic? Where are they from exactly? They look so happy.”

“Hey Stan!” a familiar voice behind us says, and we both turn. It's Katyana.

She's a small, slender woman who lives alone, and yet her full-size shopping cart is filled to overflowing with peppermint ice cream, the case behind her, empty. My back was only turned for a moment. She's quick. She could've easily slipped away unnoticed. “Katyana,” I say. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The manager seems surprised I even know someone like Katyana. Her arms are covered with tattoos, and her nose is pierced. She's wearing what looks like one large tie-dyed scoop neck sock, boots, and a flannel shirt tied around her waist. Her earrings remind me of trout flies. The manager seems slightly terrified of her himself. She and I watch him retreat. I've never felt more alien. I like it.

“I've been thinking about what you said about finding an old alien,” I say. “I'm on a peppermint ice cream stakeout, and it looks like you just bought it all.”

She gives me this penetrating look, really drills in. The Christmas carols fade into silence, the fluorescents seem to dim. I can feel the cold radiating from her shopping cart. I'm slightly terrified of her myself. “I guess your wait is over then, isn't it?”

“You getting some chocolate sauce to go with that?” I ask with a chuckle, though it comes out more like a squeak and a snort.

“I have plenty at home. Want to come on over for a bowl? I could use some help unloading this. Bring Myrna. She and Avatar can play.”

I'm a bad person. My dog's out in the car. I know you're not supposed to leave them unattended, even in December, but she loves it. Like most border collies, she loves to watch. I always park somewhere she'll have maximum visibility to keep tabs on the flock. Katyana must've seen her when she drove up in her decrepit mini pickup. She had to know I was here.

*   *   *

I know what I just said about the health risks involved in the consumption of high-fat, high-sugar dairy products, but this is a unique situation. I'm intrigued. There is a far fringe opinion in the ACAB community that the aliens didn't die, didn't go anywhere, that they traded in their old worn-out bodies for new ones, that they traded in their old lives by necessity when they did so, in order to live new lives in younger, healthier bodies. Like Katyana's. Old souls in young flesh. I've never liked this theory much because it would mean my parents didn't die or return home from an important mission; they abandoned me and Ollie so they could live a new life without us.

Katyana's saying it's true. “Think of
them
,” she says. “You and your brother were moving on. Maybe they had health problems. A new life is a pretty wonderful thing.”

She says this like she knows what she's talking about. We're standing in the kitchen of her garage apartment. It's dusk. The days are short. She's backlit by the light through the kitchen door. A light over the stove shines on her face. I try to imagine it, a new life.

She puts on a kettle for tea. On the wall beside the stove is a huge spice rack like the one I have at home. I know now why Deetermeyer snuffled my parents' clothes. He was looking for this scent. If I were to bury my nose in the flannel shirt Katyana is wearing it would smell like this spicy, steamy kitchen. She says she will miss this place, a cozy garage apartment behind an empty house with a Sold sign in front. The new owners want her out by the end of the month, so their son can move in. Happy New Year.

She dishes up huge bowls of peppermint ice cream and explains that aliens have mastered the human genome, and periodically they trade in old bodies for new ones—all of them. Katyana's terribly sorry, but she's lied to me, she says, out of necessity. She isn't the daughter of original aliens. She's one of them in a new body she's only had for slightly more than a decade. “Y2K was a busy time. All the hubbub made it easy to launch a new life.” She apologizes for the deception, but she had to decide if I could be trusted with this knowledge. If I was truly ready. She has a tiny urn filled with chocolate sauce imported from Switzerland with a little spigot. She loads it on. My mouth is watering.

I follow her into the tiny living room, and we sit down. I'm not surprised to see, hanging on the wall, a Paint by Number identical to my mom's. I still can't make out that third eye.

“Ready?” I ask.

“For a new life, a new body.”

At this point Myrna is cowering under the coffee table, taking a break from Avatar who, although he's neutered like all alien dogs, kept humping her when we first got here, head, rear, anywhere, while Katyana and I were loading the freezer in the garage with ice cream. Avatar seems to have trouble finding a happy medium. Katyana told him to quit, and he did, but Myrna doesn't trust the situation and would like to leave
now
. I'm all ears, however, and I ignore her beseeching looks.

“Will your car make it to New Mexico?” Katyana asks, her mouth full of ice cream. She doesn't have to tell me her truck won't. The inspection sticker expired in March. You can hear and smell that the exhaust system won't pass, and there's a huge crack in the windshield. I wouldn't drive it anywhere I couldn't walk away from.

“I think so,” I say, though I'm not thinking. My mouth is frozen in creamy fat sweetness, burning with peppermint and dark, earthy chocolate. It's like crack but more deadly. I swallow it anyway. She doesn't have to say where in New Mexico. Mom and Dad's last destination.

We're headed for the abyss.

We talk for hours working out the details. I have a thousand questions. She has a thousand answers. I cook, we eat. I can't remember the last time I was so happy. It's not the prospect of a new body, though that would certainly be welcome, if still difficult to believe in. It's just a night like this, full of questions and answers, plans for an insane odyssey, a midnight meal. It's been a long time. It's nights like this you live for, isn't it? Nights you never forget.

*   *   *

You must admit I have to tell my brother about this, and he has to listen. He's older than me, for Christ's sake. He could go any time. He has a terrible diet. I call him from the gas station where they're making my Saturn roadworthy. It only has to make it one way, I explain to the mechanic, though I don't explain why. Katyana and I plan to leave first thing in the morning. It's a terrible time of year to travel, but what can you do?

Ollie doesn't pick up right away, probably still pissed from the last time we spoke.

When I tell him where I'm going, he shuts up in a hurry. “It's not an abyss,” I explain. “It's a transdimensional portal to the nearest alien medical facility where the procedure will be performed. Because of the transdimensional drift, when I return, I'll actually emerge back here in town.”

I can hear him breathing in and out. Finally he says, “What does she look like, Stan? This woman half your age you're driving across the country with in an old clunker?”

“Like an alien goddess.”

“Stan, you can't do this.”

This time I hang up on him. The elder alien brother telling the younger he can't do something is a near guarantee it will be done. That's how I ended up married the first and fourth times. I couldn't let him tell me what to do. Not that this is about another marriage. I was just trying to offer him the opportunity for a new life as well, not another chance to get all up in my business, like he knows a thing about wise romantic choices.

*   *   *

Katyana has a friend we can stay with in New Mexico while we're scouting out the abyss, so we'll be cool once we get there, she says. We just have to make it from here to there. Money's tight for us both, her more than me. Social Security keeps me afloat; I do a little freelance, some teaching. I used to write all kind of things before the cookbooks clicked. The web killed cookbooks. Recipes are free, as they should be. I never believed in recipes anyway.

Her unemployment just ran out. She was an archeologist working for the Department of Transportation. You can imagine how that went. She, of course, has no parents she can turn to. They're light years away. Gas will cost plenty, meals. At first, she's talking like we should just drive straight through, just go for it, four hour shifts, but over dinner in Knoxville, she asks, “How many more hours?” She looks totally beat, and she's supposed to take the wheel after dessert.

There's a table topper for Seasonal Treats, and Katyana ordered two peppermint ice creams with chocolate sauce for dessert even before she decided on dinner, which drew a bemused look from the waitress, a lanky, curious blonde. Katyana told her that we're going home for the holidays; that no, she doesn't know what kind of feathers those are on her earrings; that yes, people have told her she looks like some actress I've never heard of who “kicked butt” in a movie I have heard of but assumed I wouldn't like. I suspect the waitress is smitten. Perfectly understandable.

I break the news. “We have to cross Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, a bit of Texas, and half of New Mexico, and we're there. Twenty-one or -two hours if we don't stop too often, though we need to give the dogs a proper walk sometime, or they'll drive us crazy.”

We got a late start. It took a little doing getting Avatar and Myrna installed in the backseat where they seem to have worked it out. Our stuff is crammed in the trunk. The abundant caffeine Katyana's downed in a myriad of forms is starting to fade, and she's about to crash. She revives a bit when the ice cream arrives. She digs in for a while. I pick at mine. One binge is enough for me. The sweetness is cloying, the fat, toxic. I let it melt.

“How come you never hit on me?” she asks, seemingly changing the subject. She's finished her bowl and accepts mine, stirs it into a dark purple swirl I remember from childhood. She sucks on the spoon with each bite.

“I'm twice your age,” I say.

She shrugs a shoulder, takes another bite. “That doesn't stop Dave. That doesn't stop Bill.”

“Bill? I didn't know he had it in him.”

“Oh yeah. He started talking tantric with me one morning early when it was just the two of us, if you can imagine. But back to you. I've seen how you look at me. Are you a perfect gentleman? I've heard of those.”

She's teasing, flirting a little, but I know what she's asking. “Have you read
The Sun Also Rises
?” I ask.

“That's Hemingway, isn't it? I read the other one.
A Farewell to Arms.
Why?”

“I was looking for a delicate shorthand. You've heard of prostate cancer? I had surgery five years ago. They warn you that there are risks, but the percentages look terrific, and if there are any problems, they tell you, we have these great drugs now. I know you've heard of Viagra. Didn't work, horrible side effects. I've been a perfect gentleman ever since. Just recently they released a study saying surgery like mine wasn't maybe such a great idea after all.”

I've never made this speech to another person on Planet Earth before.

She holds my gaze. She takes my hands. “I'm sorry that happened to you.”

I shrug. “The cancer's gone.”

“Whenever you're ready,” the waitress says, laying down the check, giving Katyana a dazzling smile. Surely, she must be thinking, this old man is her father. Little does she know we're only passing through on our way to another dimension where Katyana's nearly twice my age.

Out in the parking lot, Katyana gives me a daughterly hug, and we get in the car, me behind the wheel. Before I put the key in the ignition, she asks, “Can we afford a night there?” pointing to a Quality Inn a few parking lots over. “They usually take dogs.” We means me. She's totally broke, her last credit card in tiny pieces. She made her fingers little scissors when she told the tale last night.