“Bernadette, the intern? And you believed her? Where did she hear it?”
“At the Muffin Shop.”
“I said, ‘I don’t give a shit.’” I left it at that and he didn’t add or correct.
“You should set the record straight,” Art said mildly.
“I guess so.”
We hung up. Those two calls, Jane and Art, managed to undo the repair work on my state of mind. I tried to conjure up the Nicholas bedroom, the woman’s legs enticingly spread, her arm draped across the bed in a flamboyant gesture of surrender. The vision no longer worked its playful magic.
“Sam,” I shouted.
Still no answer.
I usually avoided his bedroom. Sam had left his clothes packed. He simply pulled something to wear out of a cardboard box every morning, and threw it back in that general direction every night. I should go up. Be introduced to his classmate. I was curious.
On the way, I stopped at the bookshelf. “Boron: a soft, brown, amorphous nonmetallic element.” That told me absolutely nothing. I shut the dictionary and tackled the stairs, swinging my injured limb from step to step like a peg leg.
“Sam?” I knocked.
He peeked out. His face was flushed. “What is it?”
“I wanted to say hi.”
He cracked the door a few more inches. His shirt was open and he began buttoning it. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“I was bitten by a dog.”
“You look different.”
“I do? Different how?”
That stumped him. Recognizing a change in his mom had been a leap; defining it took more observation that he usually committed to. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“I always wear makeup.”
“You’re brighter.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m exactly the same. Is someone here with you?”
He stepped aside and I saw a boy sitting on the bed.
“This is my mom,” muttered Sam, as if he’d been dragged by his hair spout into revealing me.
“Nuqneh,” said the boy. His arms and legs rearranged themselves like a set of pick-up sticks, as he stood up. He was very, very skinny, and almost as tall as Sam.
“Excuse me?”
“Nuqneh,” the boy repeated in a low, gravelly voice.
“Deidre speaks Klingon,” said Sam.
I didn’t know where to begin with all this information. If this boy was Deidre, then either Deidre was a boy’s name and I didn’t know it, or this boy was a girl. As for the language—I’d heard of it, but couldn’t place it.
I dealt with the easier problem. “What is Klingon?”
“Klingon is the official language of the Klingon Empire. Like English is the language of here.”
“Oh, right, Star Trek. I didn’t realize the Klingons have their own language.”
“Yeah. She’s teaching it to me.”
She. That settled it. I examined her more closely.
Deidre’s face was a collection of planes and sharp edges: a square chin, cheekbones like cliffs, blue eyes set so deep they seemed to peer from inside the crevice of a rock. Her skin looked baked, but at a very low heat for a very long time, so it had a flat tone, copper minus the metallic flickers of light, caramel without the mellow richness. Her hair, the eerie white blond of an albino, hung limp—one hank over the forehead, the rest tucked behind the ears with a straight lifeless fringe visible below the lobes. I could not discern the body inside the large man’s workshirt with the tails out. I stared at the pockets under which breasts should be. None were visible.
“Wejpuh,” said Deidre.
Sam laughed, and so did the girl/boy, revealing a thin straight-lipped smile.
“What does that mean?”
“Charming,” said Sam.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling I had learned for the first time what being polite was. Sam’s worst class was French. After two years he barely knew Comment allez-vous, and now he was planning to master Klingon?
“He hangs out with Deidre,” McKee had said. I had envisioned some long-haired adorable teenager, who said, “Cool,” or “It’s a slam.” Not—I could hardly bring myself to admit it—a freak. Deidre was a freak. That meant Sam probably was, too. I had to invent a new category to accommodate this twosome: not even vaguely in the normal range (NEVNR) or not in the normal range by a mile (NNRBM). No wonder McKee knew who they were. Freaks were always famous in small towns. Did Deidre speak Klingon everywhere, or just when she wasn’t in school? Did she speak pidgin Klingon or fluent Klingon? Maybe she’s a genius. That thought actually surfaced, although I quashed it instantly, scorning my own pathetic spunky optimism, the hope-springs-eternal that there could be a saving grace. And … I didn’t want to consider this … but had Sam been necking with this person? His cheeks did have a pinkish hue. If so, psychologically speaking, was he making out with a girl or a boy? Perhaps he was necking with an alien, a creature from his own tribe?
“Do you mind?” Sam asked.
“What?”
“Leaving. We’re busy.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said as he shut the door.
The Sakonnet Times, October 8
Big City Eyes
BY LILY DAVIS
LAST WEEK I stopped at Jake’s Farm Stand. While browsing, I overheard that Charlotte, the niece of the woman buying eggplants, was taking ampicillin for an earache. Perhaps the niece’s name wasn’t Charlotte. It could have been Charlene and maybe she had strep throat. I purchased a Boston lettuce and plum tomatoes. Then, awed by the beauty and variety of harvest vegetables, I bought three acorn squash, two turban, a butternut, and even a large bluish shapeless hubbard. I like to eat squash occasionally, maybe twice a year.
I opened my refrigerator and noticed these squash, all eighteen meals’ worth, last Monday morning just after a mouse had run across my feet and just before several possibly tick-ridden deer breakfasted on my tulip bulbs. These facts don’t justify or mitigate my later behavior, but I did leave home in an agitated state to cover Claire Ramsay’s 911 call. Her daschund, Baby, had his head stuck in a pitcher.
How this event came to pass is still a mystery. After the incident, Mrs. Ramsay refused to speak to this reporter except to say that the pitcher is 1920s English pewter and sells for $95 at her store, Claire’s Collectibles, on Barton Road. According to sources at the Comfort Café, where Mrs. Ramsay buys black coffee to go before work every day, she may sue the police for confiscating Baby and keeping him overnight at the SPCA in Riverhead. According to sources at the Muffin Shop, where Mrs. Ramsay has never been, her baby, whose name they did not know, almost suffocated but is fine now.
Why would a dog poke his head in a pitcher? Was there a treat inside, a trace of spirit or crumb, or was it a whim—one of those moments when an animal does something stupid?
Sergeant Tom McKee of the Sakonnet Bay Police Department ordered me to keep my distance. His exact words were “Stay back, out of our way.” I would like to point out that I did exactly that. The sergeant then carried Baby from Claire’s Collectibles around the corner to LePater’s Grocery. He was accompanied by two other officers, Carl Scott and Denise Woodworth.
Shortly