15
And the next thing I know, Edna has appeared beside me and she is making our guests feel right at home and telling them all about the Chicken Wiggle and her green salad with homemade Thousand Island dressing — no secret really, she confides, ketchup and mayo and sweet pickle relish — and they all seem entranced with these details and my wife Edna Bradshaw herds the twelve into a tight little gaggle — she is very skillful at this — and she moves them off down the corridor toward the Reception Hall. She looks over her shoulder at me and says, “You come on along whenever you feel ready.”
She is a thoughtful wife. She is a prescient wife. Perhaps she knows more about what is inside me than I give her credit for. Perhaps they all do. Perhaps I know nothing about these creatures. I trail along. I am sad that I am outside the gaggle. But it is my fate.
We go in to the Reception Hall and the bus still sits in the middle but now, near the door, there is a great round table covered in a white cloth and set with thirteen places.
“Please,” Edna says and motions to the table. “There are place cards.”
And the twelve degaggle, pouring around both sides of the table looking at the cards. I step to the side of my wife Edna Bradshaw.
“There are only thirteen places,” I say.
“Well I will certainly have my hands full serving all of you,” she says. “I’ll just catch a bite in the kitchen.”
“I am sorry,” I say.
“This is all you’ll need to know about Earth. No need to go bothering everybody down there.” Edna is making the statement that asks a question, for she is looking at me, waiting. She has asked, Are you still planning to go show yourself at midnight? I am afraid the answer I have for her is not the one she wants to hear. So I say nothing.
And there is a ruckus near the table.
“You can’t be doing that,” a voice says. I look up. It is Viola Stackhouse. Her arm is extended, her forefinger pointing across the table at Citrus, who stands by a chair with a place card in her hand. Arthur Stackhouse is already seated. Viola’s other hand rests on his shoulder. She adds, “I know whose place that is. It’s mine.”
“Wouldn’t you rather sit by your husband?” Citrus says.
“I’m happy to be next to our host,” Viola says. “I want to be there.”
“I know who he is,” Citrus says.
“We all do,” Viola says.
“Do you? Not like I know.”
“He held my hands,” Viola says. Then she bends to Arthur and clarifies, “Like a father.”
“He’s the father of everyone,” Citrus says. “And he held my hands too. He held them and then he put me in my bed and he patted my hands. Patted them like a real father. Like the father most high.”
“I could feel his heartbeat,” Viola says.
I sense the snap of a head nearby. I look and Edna is thin-mouthed and brow-wrinkled, a look clearly intended for me.
“I could feel his heart too,” Citrus says.
Edna’s eyebrows plunge deeper and clinch toward one another.
“So could I, when he touched my hands.” This is another voice.
Edna turns to look.
It is Claudia speaking. She goes on, “This is the spaceman’s way with people.”
“I am a friendly guy,” I add.
And the faces turn toward me as if they are surprised to find me present in the room. They all seem more comfortable speaking about me than looking at me.
I take Edna’s hand and I say to everyone, “This is my wife Edna Bradshaw. We are a happy couple. My species can give a heartbeat to anyone, but I have given my heart to Edna.”
She looks up at me and her brow has loosened, she is smiling and her eyes, once more, are filling with tears. She lifts up — I presume on her tippy-toes — and she gives me a kiss on the cheek.
There are some sympathetic exhalations of air, wordless sounds that I value from this species, from the direction of the table: “Ah!” they say.
“Can I sit at your right hand, Father?” Citrus says.
“I’ve worked for NASA …” Claudia says.
“It was my place card …” Viola says.
“I can settle this easily,” Hudson says. “He needs counsel at his right hand.”
“You people are nuts, if you ask me,” says Misty. “He’s a spaceman.”
“He is Jesus come again,” Citrus cries.
Misty quickly amends her statement: “No offense intended, Mr. Desi. I just mean we should accept where you put us.”
“You mean no harm. Am I right?” Digger says to me, drawing near Misty and slipping his arm around her.
“No harm at all,” I cry. “Of course not. Please. Sit down. I want you to break bread with a friendly spaceman and I will pick your brains.”
No fewer than half a dozen of my guests go wide-eyed and recoil at this. Fortunately I understand right away. “Please. I am using a phrase I have learned from you. My species does not literally ‘pick at brains.’ Heavens no. I merely seek your advice.”
Viola leaves her husband and moves around toward Citrus. “Then who shall it be?”
“I think we need another place at the table,” I say. “The one who serves us this meal shall sit at my right hand. My wife Edna Bradshaw.”
Edna squeezes my hand. “Oh you spaceman. I guess I can manage. I’ll get another chair.”
“I’ll help you,” Viola says.
“Thank you, Sweetie,” Edna says, and the two women move off.
I approach the table.
Citrus starts to move to the left of my chair, but Lucky is there and he flashes his place card at her.
Citrus’s black lips tighten and she lowers her face.
“It is all right,” I say to her. “You are near me wherever you sit.”
She looks up at me. “Of course,” she says. “Forgive the weakness of my faith.”
I hesitate, trying to translate this observation. There is some body of knowledge standing between her and me now and I am sad for that, sad that I cannot speak to her and hear her directly. Before I can reply, she moves off to her place around the table.
Some of the guests are standing, some are sitting. “Please,” I say, motioning to the chairs.
“This is all real strange, you know,” says Trey.
Before I can answer, Citrus leaps in. “Don’t you realize we’re chosen people?”
“Chosen for what?” Digger asks, though he does not sound frightened.
“He loves us,” Citrus says.
And I am struck motionless, where I stand, just behind my place at the table, my hand on the back of my chair. Then I have a reinforcement of this notion from a source close to me. Edna’s voice from across the room, coming this way: “He’s the most loving creature you’ll ever find.”
I look at her and she is carrying a tall, brushed-metal chair like all the others. She puts it beside mine and turns at once and heads off again. I set aside the question of love for the moment.
“You are all certainly chosen,” I say. “Since these are the final hours of the observation phase, you are even more special.”
“Is this the end of the world?” These words rise in a small and quavering voice from the far side of the table, from Mary Wynn, whose Vietnamese name means generous.
I cannot refrain from expressing my own fears at the moment. “Not of your world. No. Perhaps of mine.”