The Dream of Doctor Bantam (4 page)

1

It was June; in August she would go back for her senior year of high school. She had to read
Crime and Punishment
, and she had to narrow down her five top choices for college, and she had to say goodbye to everything. It was June, and she was digging around in the bedroom mess of a teenage boy she didn’t like so well, hunting her socks so she could sneak out the front door. It was June, and in August everything would start moving again.

Her mother’s boyfriend Michael was waiting by the drooping maple tree in the yard when Julie came home wearing Robbie’s backpack. Something about the way he was shorter than her bothered her; something about the way his hair never seemed to get longer, how well he must know about the fishing careers of the men who cut his hair; something about the rust-red polo shirts he wore with blue jeans; something about the long candlewax-drip of his nose. He’d built her a swing. It hung unevenly from a branch, swaying on two cannibalized jump ropes.

I thought you might like this, he said.

Thanks, said Julie. She parked her bike against the garage and limped across the lawn to the patch of longer grass growing in the shade of the tree. How long were you working on this?

All day, said Michael. Did you sleep at this house last night?

Did
you
sleep at this house last night? asked Julie.

Michael smiled. He was young by Linda’s standards: someone that Tabitha could have become given five more years and a totally different attitude toward computer/network courses at the local community college.

Try it out, he said.

How’s Mom doing? Julie asked.

Try it out, and I’ll tell you, said Michael.

She lowered herself slowly onto the swing. The maple branch cracked quietly above her.

I’m too fat for your swing, she said.

You’re too substantial, you mean, he said. Would you do me a favor? Would you stick around in the evenings more? She could use it, your mom.

She kicked her feet against the overgrown grass and rocked back and forth, catching herself before she could take off.

Did she say if maybe she was going back to work soon? she asked.

It’s too early, said Michael. She needs time.

She’s not even doing anything, said Julie. She just sits back there. She just smokes cigarettes and watches TV. She always did, but she used to mix it up some, at least. She’d go rent movies, or go smoke on the porch, or just all kinds of things.

She’s getting better, Michael said.

He was looking at the window of the house when he said it, the long-dark and long-empty living room in the front where Julie and Tabitha had once tracked mud or sat on the couches reading the Childcraft encyclopedia and practicing the piano, badly. Julie knew he was looking at that window even with him standing behind her, the sourish smell of his breath a halo in the air.

It’s just one kid dying, seriously, she said. She’s got a spare.

Not if you’re not around, said Michael.

So I’ll be around, said Julie.

Michael put his hands on her shoulders to give her a push. His fingers touched her skin where Robbie’s mouth had been. She twisted away, hunched forward over her knees and her eyes lost in the grass.

Stop it, she said.

Stop what? Michael said. You’re a good kid; you both are.

He went to his car and sat in the drivers’ seat. He was turning the FM dial; she knew it. She sat on the swing with the branch breaking above her until the sunlight on the yard faded to orange and the silhouettes of children rollerbladed across the asphalt.

You both
were
, she hissed at him.

She found a pack of bacon, foil-wrapped, at the back of the freezer, wilted broccoli, pasta shaped like Julie’s favorite cartoon cat from twelve years ago. She cooked it all up and grated cheddar cheese over it and mixed it up with olive oil and ketchup. She filled a brown glass bowl, set it on a tray stolen from a Luby’s, carried it before her down the hallway. Beneath her mother’s door the carpet pooled with blue cathode-ray light and the opening bars of
The Eyes of Lucy Jordan
.

Mom, she called. Dinner.

The bedsprings creaked. Linda’s lighter flicked three times from behind the door: quick-quick-slow.

Dinner, Mom, she called.

Could you leave it for me? croaked Linda.

I’m going to leave it on the floor, said Julie. Is that all right?

A flash of cheap burning paper; Skydancers again, as cheap a cigarette as you could get.

Sure, honey, said Linda.

Mom, said Julie. Is Mother’s Day coming up?

No answer but another flick of the lighter.

I don’t think so, ventured Linda.

Because I want to get you something really nice, said Julie, ignoring her. Like a carton of Dunhills, or Djarums. I want to give your lungs a real treat, okay?

Could you not be a bitch to me, honey? croaked Linda. Please?

Okay, said Julie. Happy Mother’s Day, okay? If it’s coming up.

No answer, again.

She sat at the kitchen table and read the comics from the past three days and clipped
Funky Winkerbean
to paste in her composition book. She held up the newspaper with the rectangular hole in it up to her face, like a mask. The newsprint rubbed off on her cheeks. Then she got up and called Robbie’s house. There was no answer.

I’m going out, she called to Linda, too quietly for Linda to hear.

I went out
, she wrote in black Sharpie on the cut-up newspaper. She left it on the kitchen table for herself to find tomorrow, in the morning.

The campus drag: used CD bins, stained tables before fruit smoothie dens, plastic busts draped in burnt orange. Two bookstores, one failed, the other failing. On one end of the block, the Renaissance Market with its folding tables, its street musicians, its homemade pewter necklaces, its shriveled city trees in pinewood planters. On the other end of the block, the Institute of Temporal Illusions.

The Institute was housed in a long, two-level storefront made of cheap white plaster. Green plants with broad leaves grew in faux terra cotta pots in front of its wide windows. From the shallow basement came the smell of fried pork vermicelli and ancient copier toner, and gold flaked from the iron letters of the sign:

THE INSTITUTE OF TEMPORAL ILLUSIONS

A COMMUNAL PLACE OF IDENTITY AND FOCUS
OUTSIDE OF TIME

As a rule the students who worked the doors of the Institute were male, dangling between eighteen and thirty, their puff-pastry flesh wrapped in white dress shirts and navy corduroy pants, sweat at their armpits. They liked to offer Julie deals (or offer deals to whoever was in earshot, dogs, babies), deals on relaxation courses or free promotional film screenings or God knows what. When they smiled at you their teeth were bad and they weren’t afraid of showing them. Julie walked faster and kept her eyes on the pavement.

She went into the Retrograde, the coffee place just next door. The place looked like a cross between a bomb shelter and a set from
Brazil
; silver snakes of ductwork and exhaust vents wound through the exposed rafters, and all of the chairs were ergonomically designed to be as stylishly uncomfortable as possible. Most of the people at the Retrograde were students. Two of them were
students
, from the Institute. She got in line behind them and folded her arms.

I mean I’ve tried to talk to her, one of the
students
said. I mean I’ve honestly tried; I’ve run processes and everything. But she’s a highly anti-causative individual.

She’s bound to her memories, the other agreed. Not to her identity.

She’ll never make zero.

Two fifty, said the woman behind the counter, the owner. The usual barista, the gawky one, was gone. There was only ever one barista, a tiny skeleton of a girl, her hair cut in one wet lock that hung black over her face like a dog ear, red, open lips sometimes peeping from behind. She looked enervated, like the only thing that kept her moving was the music that pumped through the iPod plugged into the PA like a defibrillator paddle. Julie liked the barista and distinctly didn’t like the owner, who looked like she’d been deep-fried in butter and drizzled with cinnamon, like you’d touch your hand and have to lick yourself clean.

The students gave the owner two and some pennies and took their coffee to the door. The owner sorted the pennies into four piles of five, two strays. She made a fist and rapped her knuckles against the edge of the brushed metal counter.

Do you need a quarter? asked Julie.

The owner looked at her.

Are you offering me exact change? she asked. Will you marry me?

Julie bit her lip.

Depends on if you’ll put out before the honeymoon or not, she said.

I was kidding, smiled the owner. You’re Tabs’s baby sister, aren’t you? I remember you.

Yeah, said Julie, looking at her bag, cheek hot. Can I get a croissant and one of those spicy chai things?

Ham croissant or chocolate croissant? asked the owner.

Ham and chocolate croissant, said Julie.

The owner took her time about finding the tongs, opening the cap on the chai mix, working the steam wand. Maybe when your ass was as fat as hers was, really, when you looked at it, it took a longer time to get around and do things. It must be terrible to have such a fat ass and to be so fucking stupid as well.

How is Tabs? she asked, ringing Julie up.

She’s great, said Julie. She died, you know.

Tell her to call me, smiled the owner.

She looked back at her newspaper and Julie stole a dollar from her tip jar.

She was hoping she’d find Ira here, Tabitha’s Ira, and she wasn’t disappointed; Ira was basically always at the Retrograde. He looked mostly the same, like someone who in another life would be wearing an apron in the back room of a meat market hacking up roosters; he had probably actually been on someone’s payroll doing that. His beard was maybe a little bit longer and more ingrown than the last time Julie had seen him, a month ago, and his glasses had slid down a socioeconomic bracket or two: thick and black, lenses scratched, the bridge sporting a loop of duct tape maybe for reasons of style, not structure. He was sitting in a golden recliner couch, its fabric detached and dog-torn, a long-handled stapler, a pile of cheaply-printed sheets, and a plate with a salmon bagel in front of him. A woman with bottled-black hair and a kanji tattoo across her shoulder blades was sleeping on his lap; his BIKE MURDER 2005 T-shirt-clad gut stroked her cheek as he leaned over and stapled booklet after booklet together. Julie crawled onto the recliner couch next to him and slung her arms around his beef jerky neck, resting on his shoulder like an expiring maiden in a Wagnerian forest.

Ira, she said. Run away with me. I’ve decided. I want only you and I can’t bear it anymore.

Okay, he said, his stomach rumbling. But what will I tell my liege lord? I’ve sworn to protect and honor him.

Oh, Ira, said Julie, clinging tighter, how I hate thee, how I hate thee.

Ira, said the woman with the kanji tattoos. Would you introduce me?

Julie bounced up and sat on the floor at the foot of the couch. Ira put his hands behind his head and scratched his balding spot.

Maya, he said, this is Julie, Julie Thatch. She’s Tabitha’s sister. You remember Tabitha.

Her younger sister, smiled Maya, exposing a yellow tooth. How are you holding up, with Tabitha, being?

Oh fine; she’s still dead, said Julie. She spit on her palm, then presented it to Maya. I’m Julie; how are you; I’m jailbait.

Maya did not take her hand. Ira sank his head and hands back into the top cushion of the recliner.

So I guess I’ll help you put together your little magazines later, she said.

I guess you will, said Ira.

Then fine, said Maya. She stood up and gathered her notebooks into her long and tattooed bronze arms.

Bye, called Julie, getting up from the floor. Keep holding up okay.

She sat down in the warm spot where Maya had been sitting.

That was very funny, said Ira, watching the empty stairs.

Is this the new issue of
Bluecollar Review
? asked Julie. Is she your girlfriend?

Yes, this is the new issue, said Ira. Want to help me staple it and sell it? What’re you doing today?

Running away from home, Julie said. Want to come along?

Ira straightened up his spine, cleared his throat.

Are you serious? he asked. Is it that bad? Do you need a place to stay?

I was kidding, said Julie. It’s not that bad at home.

That’s a relief, said Ira.

It’s
worse
, said Julie, and she let out a maniacal laugh. It didn’t work; Ira just nodded and looked at the salmon bagel, looked past it at some kind of existential abyss growing in the pink-veined hole. Julie leaned over the table and started collating pages and passing them through the long-handle stapler.

So what’s in the new issue? she asked. Did you write about my sister or anything?

This time it worked; Ira looked deeper into the salmon.

I wrote about the Wal-Mart thing, where they’re taking over the mall, he said. I wrote about the big recruitment center protest. I wrote about getting fired from that landscaping job and about worker’s rights. There’s a lot of good stuff in this issue.

But nothing about Tabs, huh? Julie asked. It’s not healthy to keep things bottled up like that, Ira.

No, it’s not, he said, and looked at her; she flinched. I’ve written about Tabitha before.

But you haven’t written about her dying or anything, said Julie, leaning forward again. You know Tabitha died, right?

Ira sat up and took his hands from behind his head, his eyes behind the glasses on her.

You’re not a drinker, are you? he asked.

I’m seventeen, Julie said.

So yes, said Ira. You feel like drinking?

Maybe later, said Julie. I don’t know. Yes.

Neither of them moved from the couch.

Don’t pull this typical Thatch family shit on me, said Ira. Tell me how you’re doing.

Can’t complain, said Julie. I mean it sucks that she’s dead.