“Where do we start?” said Jackie.
Josie told her. Jackie swore at her, and then apologized for swearing.
“The library, though.” Jackie considered. “No. That’s. That’s.” She indicated with her hands what it was.
“The search for truth takes us to dangerous places,” said Old Woman Josie. “Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.”
Jackie opened the front door. The pain in her gut subsided for a moment, or perhaps only faded under the anxiety of thinking about the library.
The yard outside seemed so bright and so distant from the dim interior. The Erikas carried on with their yard work. There was a hole dug into the backyard that one of them was starting to fill. They stood motionless, muttering at the hole, and a bright black light enveloped the displaced dirt, nudging it back into its place.
There were hands wrapping around her. Josie was hugging her, but the angle was wrong, and there was a significant height difference. They both stood in the unnatural hug for a moment, neither wanting to acknowledge the misalignment of the physical affection.
When Jackie thought about where she had to go, she did not feel fear. But she felt an awareness of how tenuous it was, the collection of thoughts and habits that was Jackie Fierro. How easily those could all be taken away and rearranged into some other form of matter.
“Stay away from the man. Don’t try to follow him to his city. It’s a trap.”
“Josie. I can’t live with this,” Jackie said, looking at the paper in her hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Old Woman Josie. “It will be.”
She squeezed harder, and Jackie turned in to the hug, allowing herself to be comforted. Her stomach did not hurt anymore, or it hurt differently.
“That was a lie,” said Josie. “That was one of those times I was lying.”
“I know,” said Jackie. “It’s fine.”
She was lying too.
Chapter 8
Diane was filling her gas tank when she saw Troy. She didn’t approach him, and he didn’t notice her. She had not seen Troy in fifteen years, and had not wanted to see him ever again.
When she tried to put the nozzle back onto the pump, it kept falling off because her hands were shaking. She didn’t feel anything at all, but she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking. By the time she looked up, Troy was already gone. He had gotten into his car (white sedan, broken taillight) and pulled away without looking at her once. She forced herself to stand very still and breathe slowly until her hands stopped shaking. Once they were steady, she put the nozzle back onto the pump, deliberately opened her car door, and drove away at a reasonable speed. The entire time she felt fine.
Weeks later, she stopped by her bank to get change for a PTA fund-raiser. Sitting behind one of the desks was Troy, wearing a dark suit and a plastic name badge. She tried to confirm the name on the tag without him noticing her staring but was unable to.
This time her hands did not shake at all. She actually felt fine, but she tasted blood. Without even noticing, she had been biting her lower lip so hard that the tooth had broken through. She wiped the blood away and walked past him with her withdrawal slip, not looking at him. Because she wasn’t looking at him, she couldn’t see if he was looking at her.
Just a few days after that, she and Josh went to the movies. This was a monthly tradition that went back to when he was seven. He had been acting glum, taking on oozing, gloppy forms that made a mess of the furniture and carpet, and asking her a lot of questions about his dad and where he had gone. She had been alternately terrified and exasperated by the moody creature that had appeared in place of her little boy, and she announced that, as a special treat, they would go to the movies.
That night at the movies was the first good night they had had in weeks. She hadn’t been sure what to see and just asked at the ticket counter for whatever popular children’s movie was playing. The joyful glow of being somewhere together and feeling like they were both on the same team had outshone the silly antics of the funny characters in the kids’ movie (No Country for Old Men) up on the screen. They had left the theater, him walking upright, with non-oozing legs, and holding her hand with a human palm and fingers. He did not ask about his father again for months.
And so started their monthly attempt to recapture the lightness of that first night. Mostly it was good. Sometimes, especially lately, she had to remind him to keep his form short, and free of any broad wings or smoke emitters that might obstruct other moviegoers’ views. He would always do what she said, but not without a lot of sighing and eye-rolling (he almost always took a form with eyes when going to the movies, although he had gone through a period where he preferred the experience of sightless listening).
This particular night, the theater was showing the sequel to that popular animated franchise about the trees that look like trees but have human organs and try to stop developers from razing their forest. The trees are unsuccessful at first, but in the end the construction crews learn their lesson after seeing the large quantities of blood, and hearing the mangled screams. Later they are eviscerated themselves by vengeful arboreal spirits. Diane thought the movie wasn’t as good as the original, but she adored the comical voice work of immortal cinema legend Lee Marvin. Josh said he thought it was boring, but he said that about most movies, and he seemed to laugh at most of the jokes and funny death scenes.
While sitting through the previews, Diane saw Troy enter. He was wearing a polo shirt and carrying a carpet sweeper. He crossed from one exit to the other. He seemed to be checking the floor lights along the aisle. One strip was unlit.
Diane tried not to look at Josh and immediately failed, turning to watch his silver, scaly skin, his flat nose and protruding eyes intent on the screen. Josh hadn’t recognized Troy. Why would he? Josh hadn’t seen Troy since he was a baby. She saw herself in Josh, and sometimes assumed he did the same.
Josh did not see himself in Diane. She knew this.
She put her arm around Josh, ostensibly out of affection, but subconsciously out of protection. He glanced at her hand hanging near his non-shoulder. He glanced back at Diane, confused but not upset.
Diane looked forward, toward the screen, thinking about how to not think about Josh’s father. Her foot was tapping. She carefully stopped her foot from tapping.
Here is what it was about Troy.
Diane does not always have a husband. There was a time when she always had a husband, but now she never has one.
She always has an ex-husband. They were never married, but husband and ex-husband are the shortest-hand way to describe her relationship to Troy.
Diane is interested in the semantics of marriage and not marriage. This is why:
Diane always has two parents. Someday she will never have two parents, but right now she always has them. They are mother and father to Diane, and grandmother and grandfather to Josh.
Her parents have never been married. They never want(ed) to be married. They want(ed) to be together and in love. They are almost always together and almost always in love. They never want(ed) to get a certificate or fill out paperwork or have their love and togetherness approved by a smiling god.
They, of course, value and respect others’ love of a smiling god. (Is that a smile?)
They also fill out paperwork and get certificates when required to do so for, say, a job or a driver’s license or Diane’s birth or the times they’re required to play the mandatory citywide lottery whose winners are fed to the hungry wolves at the Night Vale Petting Zoo.