“A troubling and disorienting position at the facility, mine,” he said. He looked up at Lenore. “Why don’t you help yourself to some of Brenda’s Twizzler? Brenda’s not drinking it, I see.”
Brenda stared.
“Well, I don’t really drink alcoholic stuff much,” Lenore said. “It makes me cough.”
“Here.”
“Thanks.”
“Troubling.”
“I can imagine.”
“The old… the old are not like you and I, Ms. Beadsman. As you no doubt know, having spent so much time around… at the facility.”
“They’re different, I agree.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.” Lenore tried a bit of Twizzler, got a strong taste of gin and Hawaiian Punch, closed her eyes, discreetly spat the bit of Twizzler back out of the straw into the plastic pineapple jug.
“They are also Midwesterners,” continued Mr. Bloemker. “As a rule, almost all of them are Midwesterners.” He stared off. “This area of the country, what are we to say of this area of the country, Ms. Beadsman?”
“Search me.”
“Both in the middle and on the fringe. The physical heart, and the cultural extremity. Com, a steadily waning complex of heavy industry, and sports. What are we to say? We feed and stoke and supply a nation much of which doesn’t know we exist. A nation we tend to be decades behind, culturally and intellectually. What are we to say about it?”
“Well, you’re saying pretty good things, really; I sense some interest on Brenda’s part, too, I think.”
“This area makes for truly bizarre people. Troubled people. As past historians have noted and future historians will note.”
“Yup.”
“And when the people in question then become old, when they must not only come to terms with and recognize the implications of their consciousness of themselves as parts of this strange, occluded place… when they must incorporate and manage memory, as well, past perceptions and feelings. Perceptions of the past. Memories: things that both are and aren’t. The Midwest: a place that both is and isn’t. A volatile mixture. I have sensed volatileness at the facility for some time.”
“Does this explain anything, do you think? Disappearance-wise?”
“I think it explains very little.”
“I’m going to give Brenda back her Twizzler. Brenda, here’s your Twizzler back, thanks a lot, I’m just not in the mood. Are you sure she’s OK? Have I offended her somehow?”
“Brenda, don’t be a stick in the mud.”
Brenda was silent.
Mr. Bloemker massaged his chin. “The average age of the residents at the facility — I did some research today at the request of the owners — the average age of the residents at the facility is eighty-seven. Eighty-seven years of age. How old are you, Ms. Beadsman?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“So you were born in 1966. I was born in 1957. The average resident was born in 1903. Think of that.”
“Boy.”
“These people, think of the worlds they’ve been part of. The worlds. They’ve literally gone from horse and buggy to moonshot. The technological changes alone that they have stood witness to are staggering. How might one even begin to orient oneself with respect to such a series of changes in the fundamental features of the world? How to begin to come to some understanding of one’s place in a system, when one is a part of an area that exists in such a troubling relation to the rest of the world, a world that is itself stripped of any static, understandable character by the fact that it changes, radically, all the time?”
“System?”
Mr. Bloemker looked at his thumb. “Have you ever been to the Desert, Ms. Beadsman? The G.O.D.?”
“Not for quite a while, like ten years. Lenore and I actually used to go. She had a Volvo that we’d take down, do a little fishing at the edge, do the wander-thing.”
“Yes. I would like to go down and wander.”
“Well it’s easy. You can just buy a Wander Pass at any gate. They’re only about five dollars. The really desolate areas can get pretty crowded, of course, sometimes, so it’s good to get there early, get as much wandering as you can in before noon. ”
“Brenda and I may go down soon. I feel a need for… for sinistemess. I sense Brenda does, too. Am I right, plum petal?” Bloemker carelessly chucked Brenda’s chin with his hand. Brenda tilted way back on the bench, beside Mary-Ann’s hand, until her legs hit the bottom of the table, then sat rapidly up again, vibrating a little. Lenore narrowed her eyes.
“Hmmm.”
“Another thing I must in all frankness admit to finding… amusing,” Mr. Bloemker said, sucking for a moment on the straw in his jug, drinking at something that smelled to Lenore like another Twizzler, “although I hesitate to use that term, because it sounds as if I mean to be derogatory, which I do not. Our residents, the people who are very old now, have really made our culture what it is. And now by culture I mean this country’s culture, not Ohio’s culture, which I do not profess even to begin to understand. Particularly the women, it seems to me. We like to think the sexual revolution is a creation of our generation. That’s a crock, pardon my language. The women who are now old invented it all. Everything we profess to enjoy. The women who reside in facilities now were the first American women to cut their hair short. The first to drink. To smoke. To dance in public. Shall we discuss voting? Making money? Being economic entities? They were pioneers, these people in wheelchairs with blanketed laps.”
“Listen, are you absolutely sure Brenda’s OK?” Lenore asked. “Because the thing is I haven’t really seen Brenda move once on her own, which it occurs to me now includes seeing her chest move to breathe, or seeing her blink. What’s with Brenda?”
“The cutting of hair. That particularly fascinates me. It freed these women from a prison. An aesthetic prison. It freed them from the one-hundred-brushstrokes-a-night tyranny of the culture that… obtained.”
“The not blinking really bothers me, I’ve got to tell you. And what’s this on her neck, here? On Brenda’s neck?”
“Birthmark. Pimple.”
“Is this an air-valve? This is an air-valve! See, here’s the cap. Are you sitting with an inflatable doll?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re sitting with an inflatable doll! This isn’t even a person.”
“Brenda, this isn’t funny, show Ms. Beadsman you’re a person.”
“My God. See, she weighs about one pound. I can lift her up.” Lenore lifted Brenda way up by the thigh. Brenda suddenly fell out of Lenore’s hand and her head got wedged between the bench and Mary-Ann’s hand, and she was upside down. Her dress fell up.
“Good heavens,” said Mr. Bloemker.
“One of those dolls. That’s just sick. How can you sit in public with an anatomically correct doll?”
“I must confess, the wool seems to have been completely pulled over my eyes. I thought she was simply extremely shy. A troubled Midwestemer, in an ambivalent relation…”
“Nice doll,” remarked another patron, at Mrs. Howell’s elbow.
“I think Brenda and I should be going,” Mr. Bloemker said. He struggled with Brenda’s plastic legs. Brenda was wedged. Lenore helped Mr. Bloemker pull. Brenda came out, but her dress got caught on Mary-Ann’s thumbnail and ripped and fell off.
“Holy shit,” said Lenore.
“Holy cow,” said the patron at Mrs. Howell’s elbow. “Where’d you get that? Are those expensive?” Other people at different tables turned to look. Things got quiet.
“How excruciatingly…,” Bloemker muttered.
“Probably wise to go now,” Lenore said.
“Certainly nice to have seen you, anxiously await your father’s…” Mr. Bloemker covered Brenda as best he could with his sportcoat and made for the door. There were whistles and claps. Bloemker broke into a run and ran suddenly into the bartender, who was coming around the side of the bar with a tray of creamy White Russians. There was an enormous crash and tinkle, and the bartender flipped over backwards and drove his thumb into his eye, and White Russian went everywhere, and a shard of broken White-Russian glass hit Brenda and punctured her and she flew out of Mr. Bloemker’s arms and went whizzing around the room, twirling, losing air, finally to land limply but beautifully in a palm-tree pot, with one leg wrapped around her neck. Mr. Bloemker flew out the door. Lenore sniffed at his Twizzler. The patrons laughed and clapped,