Thereafter I retain Wei on a weekly basis by whittling away at Mrs. Schwartz’s memories. I submit Pearl Harbor — Week Prior to Infamy. I submit The Day the Music Died — Buddy Holly Remembered, which unfortunately is merely Mrs. Schwartz hearing the news on a pink radio, then disinterestedly going back to cleaning her oven. Finally Briff calls, hacked off. She says she wants some real meat. She asks how about the entire twenties, a personal favorite of hers. She’s talking flappers. She’s talking possible insights on Prohibition. I stonewall. I tell her give me a few days to exhaustively check my massive archive. I call Mrs. Ken Schwartz. She says during the twenties she was a lowly phone operator in Pekin, Illinois. She sounds disoriented, and wearily asks where her breasts are.
Clearly this has gone far enough.
I call Briff and tell her no more modules. She ups her offer to three thousand a decade. She’s running for school board and says my modules are the primary arrow in her quiver. But what am I supposed to do? Turn Mrs. Schwartz into a well-cared-for blank slate? Start kidnapping and offloading strangers? I say a little prayer: God, I’ve botched this life but good. I’ve failed you in all major ways. You gave me true love and I blew it. I’m nothing. But what have you got against Mrs. Ken Schwartz? Forgive me. Help me figure this out.
And then in a flash I figure it out.
I lock the shop. On the spine of a blank module I write 1951–1992—Baby Boomers Come Into Their Own. At three thousand a decade, that’s twelve grand. I address an envelope to Briff and enclose an invoice. I write out some instructions and rig myself up.
Memories shmemories, I think, I’ll get some new ones. These old ones give me no peace.
Then I let it rip. It all goes whizzing by: Anthony Newburg smacking me. Mom on the dock. An Agnew Halloween mask at a frat house. Bev Malloy struggling with my belt. The many seasons. The many flags, dogs, paths, the many stars in skies of many hues.
My sweet Elizabeth.
Holding hands we gape at an elk in Estes Park. On our knees in a bed of tulips I kiss her cheek. The cold clear water of Nacogdoches. The birthday banner she made of scarves in our little place on Ellington. The awful look on her face as I called her what I called her. Her hair, trailing fine and light behind her as she stormed out to buy fruit.
The grave, the grave, my sad attempt to become a franchise.
Then I’m a paunchy guy in a room, with a note pinned to his sleeve:
“You were alone in the world,” it says, “and did a kindness for someone in need. Good for you. Now post this module, and follow this map to the home of Mrs. Ken Schwartz. Care for her with some big money that will come in the mail. Find someone to love. Your heart has never been broken. You’ve never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you’ve ever loved you’ve treated like gold.”
DOWNTRODDEN MARY’S FAILED CAMPAIGN OF TERROR
My first and favorite task of the day is slaving over the Iliana Evermore Fairy Castle. It’s lovely. I turn the Maintenance lights off and the fake stars come on automatically. There’s a short in the full moon over the Fire Door, but unfortunately my Recommendations for Corrective Action have been consistently ignored. I dust all the furniture and remake the tiny four-poster, then add colorant to the brook and wax the ballroom floor. I pick lint off the fur items, such as the mouse rug with the teeth still intact and the royal robe contributed by the Peruvian ambassador in the Theodore Roosevelt days. I’m arranging the tiny knights so they appear to be fording the stream when the door flies open and the kids from the most slovenly day-care in the world come screaming in.
Every morning four minivans pull up and eighty kids pile out and one supervising adult with a magazine. All day long the kids run wild, indiscriminately pushing the interactive exhibit buttons. Today a group of them surround me and ask why I’m wearing a nightgown. I tell them it’s no nightgown, it’s a frock. One cute little fellow says the hell it is. A little girl calls me Grandma and asks if she can try on my wing harness and I say certainly. The minute she gets it on, however, she makes an obscene gesture and runs off. Those wings are fifteen dollars to replace. I can’t afford that. I’m old and stiff but finally I get her cornered near the Audio Enhancement Module. Just as I get my hands on my wings the supervising adult comes rushing up and says how dare I hamper the child’s self-esteem by being critical of her impulses? She tells the little girl that if she takes the wings out into the hall she’ll be free to explore and grow as she sees fit. Then she stands in my path and glares at me.
An hour later the children have left and my wings have not been returned.
So I go down to Administration to break the news to Mr. Spencer, Cleaning Coordinator, praying in my heart for a time-deferred payroll deduction.
On his office wall Mr. Spencer has nine watercolors of the space shuttle and a photograph of himself crying the day the Challenger crashed. He says because he’s in a good mood he’ll give me two weeks to pay for the wings before firing me. Then he asks do I want to know why he’s so happy. I don’t but I say I do. He says he’s so happy because while he was on vacation the see-through cow didn’t die. Spread across his desk are photos of the cow for his up-coming poster session. The see-through cow is his main career asset. Via the cow he hopes to get out of Cleaning and into Curation. Mr. Jorgsen in Applied Biology did the theoretical calculations proving the cow was possible, but he never intended anyone to actually implement. Mr. Spencer got hold of the plans and through slander had Jorgsen demoted to Exhibit Repair. The great scandal the public doesn’t know about however is that the cows don’t last. We’ve been through six already. It’s very hush-hush. When one dies, a special team comes in and alters the new cow to look like the original, using special fur makeup. Then the surgical group whisks it away and implants a Plexiglas window in its flank.
Mr. Spencer has me listen to his presentation. It concerns ingestion-to-defecation ratios and problems experienced with the flesh/window junction. He throws in a few cow one-liners that are not effective. Of course he doesn’t mention the deaths. When he’s done I tell him it was excellent and he reminds me to subtract the time spent listening to him from my time sheet so I don’t inadvertently get paid for it.
I get up to leave and he asks what’s next on my agenda. I say Break. He says not so fast, then orders me to clean up some vomit from near the Pickled Babies. I ask him please no. Three stillborns was my lot and the Pickled Babies first thing in the morning is too much.
But he cheerfully recites the Employee Loyalty Oath and says he’s not in the mood to negotiate and tells me to please shake a leg for Christ’s sake.
On the way to the Pickled Babies I pass poor Mr. Jorgsen standing forlorn in the railroad diorama. The church comes up to his knees and he’s losing his mind. He feels bad for having designed the see-through cow. Of late he’s been kicking the diorama apart, and the scuttlebutt is he’s one building away from dismissal. I say good morning and he sits down disconsolately on Mount Hood. At the Nutritional Evaluation Module several teenage members of Special Duties are estimating their percentage bodyfat by typing information in on a giant lettuce head. I say hello and they look over at me meanly.
The world has certainly changed since I was a girl.
At ninety-two years old people assume you’re dense. They assume you don’t remember being young and have corny moral values and can’t hear well. But oh how I remember sex with Herb, the one good man I’ve known. He played a beautiful soft guitar. We met at a fruit stand. How we experimented in his trailer before my husband Bud and his repulsive gangster friends slit his throat and dumped him off a barge into the CalSag. After killing Herb the lot of them came over to our place for dinner as usual. Oh I was beside myself. All of them had excellent appetites. Every Sunday they came. After eating they would take their shirts off and talk gangster strategy in the front room. I would do the dishes and sit on the porch in hopes they would forget about me. But invariably Bud would have me try on a dress for the group. The day he killed Herb he made me put on a cigarette-girl get-up and serve dessert out of it bending low.