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The next night was spent by everyone, including Kirti and me, once again in the studio, once again lounging rather than working. I was tired and perhaps a bit cross, but La Blanca seemed to be the one who needed to chill.
The girls had been teaching Kirti some complicated dance that involved countless steps and an obscure algorithm for interacting with other dancers. From my usual hidden nook, to my untrained, PLED-shielded eyes, Kirti seemed to be catching on pretty quickly. La Blanca, however, did not agree. She was sitting on the couch she'd shared with Thorne on that first night, but Thorne was across the room. He was listening with uncharacteristic interest as Fiasco told the gory details of how he slaughtered Prettyboy's character in some actie last night.
La Blanca interrupted, storming into the dancers in the middle of the room, calling Kirti a clumsy little monster. Every inch of La Blanca's exposed skin—which made up for a great deal of the surface area between the gem-set toenails on her bare feet all the way up to her center-parted, straightened black hair—had been painted a glaring shade of bronze. Her eyebrows had been painted with diamond chips. Reflective cosmetics had been applied to the tops of her cheekbones, making her aqua eyes look like gaudily-set jewels.
The other girls stepped back to make way for the golden, leggy diva, who was barely dressed in blood red hot pants and a black mesh halter top. Kirti, however, held her ground.
“Why are you still here?” La Blanca demanded. “I said you're doing it wrong!”
Pause for translation. Then, Kirti replied with admirable composure. “I am trying to learn, Miss.”
La Blanca's gilded smile twisted into a mocking grimace. “I'll teach you, bastardita!”
She shoved Kirti into a blandly surprised guest. Kirti gained her feet once again, hair flying in a thousand directions, her jaw set in fury. I watched her tiny fists clench as she took a fighting stance.
“Hey, uh, Blanca, babe,” Thorne interrupted, leaving his barstool. His voice was cheerily mocking, as if he were speaking to a child. “It's nearly half nine. You haven't even finished your third martini. How can you leave it all by its lonesome self at this early hour?”
Just then, for the first time while among this audience, Thorne and I let our eyes meet. He looked as grave as I felt. He was deliberately redirecting La Blanca's anger towards himself, giving me a chance to get Kirti out of the room. Furious, I vowed to speak with Thorne about his girlfriend's behavior at the next opportunity.
Kirti was now looking to me, her face etched with silent outrage. I made a small beckoning gesture. As she put her shaking hand in mine, I led her back towards our own respective bedrooms. Again I praised Kirti for holding her temper.
“I wanted to hit her back,” Kirti said, pouting, clearly struggling. “I really wanted to, but violence is never the best option, right, teacher-ji?”
“That's right, nickhee.”
As reward for her good behavior, I promised to go back to my terminal and meet her for a game of Wizard's Chess in five minutes. I perksed into my room and then into my terminal.
“Jane E, you have one text message!”
Expecting it to be spam, I was taken even further aback when I read the subject line, “For Grown-up Jane!” The sender's name was Tyson-Fevrier, Ranice.
Ranice? My old social worker? Was this some sort of joke? I shook as I double-winked on the subject line.
Dear Jane E,
I hope you remember me. In fact, I hope this is actually the Jane E I've been looking for. This is your old social worker from when you used to live with the VanDeer family. Well, over the years I got married then divorced, left social work for a while, and now I'm back in the field.
My current assignment has me working with families where at least one member is recovering from substance abuse. Funny enough, this led me back to Clinton VanDeer. To make a very long story short, unfortunately Clint passed on not to long ago, and due to a number of other family troubles, Mrs. VanDeer has set a date for her own self-termination, one week from now.
I was asked to find you, because she wants you as one of her witnesses. Please write back as soon as you get this, and I'll help you get out here if you can. I hope you're well. I can't wait to see you again—all grown up!
—Ranice
I glanced over the message headers. It had been bounced around from my old Naomi text box, back to Ranice, forwarded to the new Naomi Academy principal, and forwarded from there to my new address. One week from now, Ranice had written. I looked over the dates and realized that, unless plans had changed, Mrs. VanDeer was scheduled to be vorked in two days. I could barely breathe.
“Jane,” Kirti's represenation called from behind me, “let's play!”
I turned to face my student's image, expecting to see her usual virtual semblance, enhanced to look sixteen instead of nine, but there were no masks. She was letting the terminal present her true appearance: pigtails, unadorned periwinkle flannel pajamas, spotted brown puppy dog slippers—an old gift from Thorne, still too big for her feet. She'd grown so much in the time since I'd known her, and now that I knew I'd have to leave her soon, I didn't want to.
We tied the first game, and then I let her beat me at the second before I advised her to get to bed. I did not have the heart to tell her I would be going away for a bit, but I had no choice but to tell Mr. Thorne, the sooner the better. After logging out, I sought him in the studio. The voices reaching me in the hall told me that the party was still assembled. Before I dared enter, I waited until I heard my boss's voice. Head held high, I ignored the cold look La Blanca gave me while she held court and proceeded directly behind Mr. Thorne.
Standing by his shoulder and leaning towards his ear, “Sir, may I have a word with you, please?”
He turned slowly to face me. It took an act of sheer will not to blush under his piercing gaze.
“What is it?” he asked.
I could feel La Blanca's eyes shooting icy daggers my way. I straightened up and replied, “It's a private matter, sir.”
Mr. Thorne looked at me anew, his eyes narrowing with curiosity. “In the hall?”
I nodded and followed him out there. When we were out of earshot of the translators, I filled him in on my need to take a week or so away from work for a family emergency. He listened, growing more agitated as I told him the details.
Leaning against the wall, he folded his arms in front of him, glowering at the floor. “Jane, explain something to me. Isn't this the woman who basically sold you into slavery when you were just a little girl?”
I could not deny it. “However, she did provide for my first years when there was no one else to do so.”
Thorne laughed sardonically. “Yeah, about as well as a lab monkey's wire mother.”
“I owe her at least one visit, if this is indeed what she intends to do. Perhaps...” The idea formed with the words. “Perhaps I might talk her out of it.”
“Talk her out of it?” Thorne gaped at me. “If I were you, I'd offer to push the button.”
“I think they just use a pill now.”
“Then I'd pour her a chaser.”
“Well, as you yourself have said, sir, in many ways you and I are as different as night and day.”
He gaped for a full second longer. “What makes you think you can talk her down?”
“I don't know. She did ask for me. Perhaps there is something that she wants me to say that will help her to live? I—I don't know. Regardless, I must leave immediately.”
“How did you plan on getting there?”
“I could hire a sky taxi, then take a maglev into San Diego and find my way from there. I'll ask my former social worker to pick me up at the station.”
“That's shite.”
“Pardon me, sir?”
“I'll take you there on the Mesrour. You can hold on tight, can't you?”
Hold on tight to what? I nearly fainted with the thought. “I don't think that would be appropriate, sir.”
“Why not?”
“You have guests requiring attention, for one.” True enough.
“Right. Guests. How could I forget.” He lifted his eyes back to mine once more. “Is there anything I can say to talk you out of going?”
“No, sir, there isn't.” Thank God my voice emerged so steady and sure.
“Is that all, then?”
“Well, sir,” I began. This next part would singe my pride. I prepared for the burn. “I'll need to pay for transportation, plus I may need to pay for a hotel—”
He was fishing in his pocket. “How much do you need?”
“The room and board are generous, sir, luxurious, even, but with my annual stipend not due for several months yet—”
“Stipend,” he muttered. “I keep forgetting.” Shaking his head, he took his WristAssured from his pocket. He tapped at it with one finger for a few moments. “What if I gave you one quarter the stipend that's due you? Is that generous, too?”
“No, sir.”
“No!” He was incredulous. “Why not?”
“As I'm sure your records show,” I said, indicating the device he held, “I've been here for more than one quarter of a year. Therefore, if you're trying to pro-rate—”
“I'm not pro-rating jack. I'm making you come back to me, at least to get the rest of your money.”
“That's not very trusting of you, sir. Why shouldn't I come back?”
He shifted on his feet and went about tapping something into the WristAssured. “Forgive me. I'm not the trusting type. As I myself have said, in some ways you and I are very much alike. You have a PetroPerks account?”
“Yes, sir.”
I frowned as he kept tapping until at last he slid the unbound device back into his pocket. “There. 7500 perks units transferred into your account. That should be enough to get you there and back again.”
“Thank you sir.” I remained before him, still working up more courage.
He ducked to examine my face once more. “There's more?”
“There is, sir.” My pride had been hard enough to risk just now. Now I was risking my very heart. I thought about how Bhenji Fleuvbleu had always taught us the indestructibility of water. I closed my eyes and pictured the stagnant, lonely well in the Naomi courtyard. Dark and cold, even poisoned, but never hurt, I thought. Opening my eyes again, I said, “Sir, I understand that La Blanca will be living here soon.”
He seemed to wait for me to continue, while I waited for confirmation from him. “Go on,” he finally said.
“If you insist that La Blanca live here, I insist that Kirti should not.”
His face colored. “Go on.”
“La Blanca doesn't seem—comfortable with Kirti around, sir. I assume you would want your—significant other to feel as comfortable as possible.”
“But if Kirti's not here, you're out of a job.”
I struggled to maintain my composure, cursing myself for not preparing a response to this. “I'll go back to the agency.”
“No. No, I'll—I'll take care of contacting the agency.”
“Sir, there's no need to—”
“That's part of the employer's contract,” he quickly interjected, rubbing his knuckle at the base of his nose. “If an employer terminates the contract, then they're supposed to inform the agency that the employee'll be available.”
“I don't recall hearing that, sir.”
“You don't? I do.”
I nodded, my throat too tight for speech, blinking at the floor and thinking of water—unhurt but always running.
“So, you going on this trip is just a practice run for the future parting?” Thorne said, his voice as flat as the floor tiles we both seemed intent on studying.
“In a way, sir, I suppose it is.”
“Do I at least get a 'namaste' before you go? It's proper and appropriate and respectful, right?”
“I think so, sir.”
“What does 'namaste' mean, anyway? I forget.”
“In short, it means 'what is divine in me honors what is divine in you.'“
“And what if there's nothing divine in me worth honoring?”
“I don't believe that one bit, sir.”
“You wouldn't, would you?” His aspect softened, and his voice pitched to a rough whisper. “I heard somewhere that it's a symbol of the meeting of heaven and earth. The unity of what seems dual and separate. The joining of one self to another.”
Why was I suddenly having so much trouble breathing? “It can mean many things, sir.”
“And between us?”
I pressed my lips and knotted my hands together to keep them from trembling. I forced myself to meet his eyes, and it was agony. He was looking at me so directly that it seemed that he would any minute realize what was going on behind my thin mask of professional distance. He would be too good-hearted to shame me deliberately, but that wouldn't stop him from cracking a pitying smile. And then what would I do?
“It means,” I said with effort, “whatever we want it to mean, sir.”
He looked away, nodding his head slowly at the floor. “At least it's not 'goodbye.'“
When my lifted palms met, they were dry and cold and still shaking. Reluctant and relieved to let my eyes leave his, even briefly, I bowed to him and invoked, “Namaste.”
I looked up. Thorne pressed his palms together over his heart like I had. I stood transfixed as I watched him bow his head until his shadowed mouth nearly touched his fingertips. “Namaste, Janee.”
He then opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more. I lowered my hands, folded at my waist, and waited, watching the corners of his eyes tense, his firm brow furrow, his strong lips halted. At last, however, he shut his mouth again and turned from me without another word. I don't know how long I stood looking after him, perhaps a full minute after his broad shoulders had disappeared into the cheery din of the studio.
I returned to my room to finish making my arrangements.
***
Twelve hours later, the maglev pulled under the Spanish tile canopy of the newest San Diego rail station. With my blue bag slung across my shoulder, I stepped from the train onto the concrete, lifting my duppetta from my face so I could scan the light crowd clearly. It was not long before I heard a voice calling to me from the depths of memory.
“Jane? Jane! Over here!”
Was that really Ranice? Her mocha skin had more lines in it than I remembered. She wore a shapeless ankle-length dress covered in a boisterous Hawaiian print, beneath which she was about twice as plump as when I'd seen her twelve years before. A use-worn, eggshell-cream cotton duck satchel strap crossed her sagging bosom. A wide, scallop-brimmed ivory hat held a sheer lavender veil over her face. She lifted the veil away from her face with one hand, the other hand cupped against her blush-streaked cheek.
She barreled towards me, beaming, arms outstretched. “Oh, I knew it was you!” she cried as morning commuters got out of her way. “You've barely changed at all!”
I laughed uncomfortably at this assessment as she hugged me hard. I had to duck out of the way of her hat. “That bad?”
“Oh, no, you're grown up—” She held me at arm's length for inspection. “—but only just a bit. Then again, I always used to say you were ten going on forty. Gawd, lookatcha!”
When she hugged me again, I hugged back, smiling. “It's good to see you, Ranice. Thank you for coming to meet me.”
She stepped away, taking my bag from me as she did so. She made a gesture of good-natured dismissal. “The least I could do, child. Did you eat yet?”
“Not since last night.”
“Hnh,” she said, eyeing me with mock disdain. “No wonder you're so skinny. Let's get you fed, first, then.”
Nodding, I smiled and matched her lagging step. I found myself back in the role of meek child, eager to please, quick to follow instructions, grateful for what little kindness I received. We both dropped our veils back over our faces, and I followed her out to the parking deck exchange platform. Through my duppetta I looked up. The sun had all the unbridled harshness of a heavenly judgment, not pure heat like in the desert, but pearly bright. The sky was an intense blue, festooned here and there with high clouds making their way between the mountains and the ocean.
We walked down the terra-cotta brick steps, each brick impressed with the name or registered trademark of a patron. Most were marked with the PetroGlyph logo. The crowd was relatively thin at this time of day: no one hurrying to an office or lab, most morning deliveries already made. As we walked, Ranice apologized in advance for still driving “a social worker's car,” and mentioned that she'd dropped her kids off with their father last night.
“Robby is in first grade, and little Shivaughn started preschool this year. We can only afford public schools for them, but you were in public schools, and you turned out fine.”
She did not seem to recall my Naomi experience. I did not remind her.
“And the VanDeer kids...” She shook her head, and through her veil I saw her mouth purse and her eyes shift with distaste. “Now there's an advertisement against homeschooling.”
We had reached the foot of the stairs. I followed her to the right, over another logo-bricked walkway towards a three-story building, a faux-iron scrollwork gate blocking its entrance. A tiled awning offered some shade, and I followed Ranice beneath it. On the two poles holding up the front corners of the awning were a number of perks receptors at varying ADA-compliant heights. Ranice tapped a scratched gold perks ring to one of these. Then she leaned against the wall and pressed her veil to her sweaty forehead.
As we waited, I asked, “How are they doing?”
“The VanDeers?” She shook her head ruefully, lifting her veil with one hand and fanning herself with the other. “Not too good. The Missus, she does nothing but sit in bed all day long. I tried three times to get her to agree to some counseling, or at least an over-the-counter anti-depressant, but she won't budge. She meets all the assisting physician's mental competency tests, so I can't even file a petition for state intervention. I tell you, Jane, it's a sin.”
“And what about the girls?”
“You mean Jacki and Nancy?” She puffed out her lips with disgust. She was interrupted, however, by the opening of the gate beside us. A pepper red compact car emerged, propelled by the parking deck's conveyor belt.
“That didn't take as long as usual. Must've got a good spot,” Ranice remarked, pressing her perks ring to a receptor on the car door handle. I just barely heard the locks slide open over the light din of mid-morning traffic. Inside the vehicle, Ranice leaned over and pushed open the passenger door for me. As I got in, Ranice said, “Sorry, no trunk. You can put your bag in the back seat.”
I tossed the travel-scarred bag back through the gap between driver and shotgun seats. The back did not look like it could hold much more than said bag. I wondered how Ranice could fit two children there.
Ranice hit her perks ring on the top of the gearshift, and the car started. Then we were on our way.
“Can't afford a voice-command car,” Ranice said apologetically, “so I have to do this by hand.”
“No need to apologize. I'm just glad I don't have to walk or find a youth hostel.”
Ranice laughed her broad, musical laugh. I hadn't realized I'd made a joke.
She took us out of the city center grid and fought our way out to the highways. Soon we were rolling past the spreading, sparkling skyline. With the glittering ocean and shining sky as a backdrop, the scene looked like a 3-D freeze frame of a giant broken mirror tossed heavenward, the pieces falling and sticking in the baked, forced-green earth. In the far-left lane, cargo containers shot by on their own magnetic tracks. All the other vehicles seemed bigger and faster than Ranice's. She shouted modified obscenities at all of them for this apparent crime.
Just like old times, I thought, shrinking into my stiff seat. To redirect her attention, I asked again after the VanDeer daughters.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, her voice weighted with displeasure. “Well, those two sure are something. Nancy turned out to be quite the pretty little face. Too bad there's no real brain behind it, if you ask me. And Jacki? On one hand, she's brilliant and talented, and on the other...”
I was confused but somehow not surprised at Ranice's darkened tone. I prompted her. “On the other?”
Ranice looked over at me, eyebrows raised, then looked back at the road. “I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but you hear about Washington Hunt out in Nevada? That exclusive housing development sabotaged by those genetically engineered termites?”
“You think Jacki VanDeer was involved?”
She shrugged and raised her eyebrows again. “They could never prove it, but...”
Reflecting on my own childhood experiences with the young Jacki, this was not too much of a stretch. She'd always been the one to hack into my homework and change all my answers so I failed, proving to my teachers and me how intellectually inferior I was. How natural for her to turn into a self-righteous eco-terrorist.
Before too long, we exited the tollway and rolled deeper into suburbia. Five minutes from the VanDeer's house, we stopped at a drive-thru, and as we ate, I was surprised to find myself utterly calm. Facing the VanDeers after twelve years was nothing compared to facing my boss every day.
Ranice finished my fries for me, and we were on our way again. The streets were barren at this hour, driveways mostly empty in the familiar neighborhood. Little had changed. The houses were the same for the most part, though some had changed color, gained additions, or lost value. Soon we were cresting the hill, then rounding the corner, the VanDeer place coming into view. It was a cottage in comparison to Emhain Macha. The driveway had gained twelve years' worth of unpatched cracks. The concrete pathway to the front door had fallen into disrepair as well, with tufts of weeds growing in the fissures. The lawn looked like it hadn't been watered in months, it was so brown and scraggly. As we approached the front door, I navigated around a roof tile that had fallen onto the walk and broken.
When Ranice pressed her perks to the doorbell button, I heard rushed footfalls reach the other side. The old-style peephole darkened. There was a moment of birdsong behind us, then the footsteps departed again. Ranice and I exchanged confused looks. Just as she was about to reach for the doorbell again, we heard two female voices arguing.
A tall, thin woman with a pinched face opened the door. Her body, neck to toe, was pinched as well, squeezed into a glossy black pleather catsuit. Her hair was plastered into a severe bun at the top of her head. When her eyes rested on me, her nose wrinkled. Jacki.
“Namaste, Miss VanDeer,” I said to her, bowing properly.
Jacki's nose remained pruned. Behind her, a shorter, bleach-blond cherub stood on tiptoes so she could get a better look at me over her sister's black-clad shoulder. This was quite a chubby cherub. From one of her bejeweled hands dangled a large foil sack of fat-free, carb-free no-tato chips. Pale crumbs dusted her cheeks and chin. Nancy. In a squeaky voice she pointed rudely and asked Ranice, “Is that really Jane E?”
“Yes, Nancy, it is,” Ranice said in the bristly voice she reserved only for people who truly annoyed her.
“Namaste, Miss VanDeer,” I repeated to the younger sister.
When I looked up, Nancy was eyeing me up and down, her false eyelashes reaching all the way up to her thick, sculpted eyebrows. Judging my brown salawar kameeze and the plain duppetta resting on my shoulders no competition for her frothy, full-skirted white sundress, she came down on her heels. “W'sup?” she mumbled.
“Can we come in now, ladies?” Ranice asked, her voice strained into civility. “Jane's probably too polite to say how tired she is from all the traveling.”
Opening the door but still holding the knob defensively, Jacki made way for us. Nancy sashayed ahead of us into the formal living room, looking over her shoulder at me every three steps. I tried to recall whether or not Mrs. VanDeer had ever told her that it was rude to stare.
Ranice and I followed Nancy into the formal living room. The curtains over the bay window were the same as before, only now yellowed with age and neglect. I searched the bric-a-brac shelves for Mrs. VanDeer's priceless figurine collection but saw only a thick coating of dust. And where was Abot?
Jacki had prowled after us like a security guard. Now that she no longer hid behind the door, I could see a black and white INGO insignia patch molded onto her left shoulder. The logo was one I did not recognize.
“Why are you here, Ranice?” Jacki asked, folding her spider leg-thin arms in front of her.
“Remember last week, Jacki?” Ranice said. “Your mother signed the application papers, and I needed to get the mental competency report reviewed by the judge. I had to bring the approval back here so the doctor can have it on file when—”
She stopped short and looked down. Sighing, she finished, “Well, for tomorrow night. Anyway, I need to bring it up to her room. Excuse me.”
Ranice turned and went upstairs, the main stairwell creaking with each of her heavy steps. While she did so, Nancy threw herself into a plump easy chair, and Jacki perched primly on the edge of the windowsill. No one offered me a seat.
I searched for one on my own initiative. The coffee table I'd crashed into on that long ago day was gone, but the ice blue damask couch behind it was still there, nearly brown in spots with wear and dirt. I seated myself in the middle of this couch, resting my bag and duppetta on the dulled hardwood floor.
I looked from Nancy to Jacki alternately. If they hadn't been in this house, would I have recognized them? Their faces and figures had become parodies of the children I remembered: Jacki's thrice as thin and cruel, Nancy's fat and vapid to the fourth power. I felt their superior stares boring into me, but I found myself unaffected. My nerves did not jump. My heart did not race. My spine did not shrink under their collective glare like when I was ten. How funny that, as a child I would fantasize about confronting them and torturing them as they once had tortured me. And now? Perhaps we were not reconciled, but I no longer bore them any hatred. I was at peace, a peace more satisfying than any retribution could have been.
Jacki might have sensed this, for she seemed to be trying to unbalance my calm. She fixed her eyes on me like red lasers marking a target. She demanded, “And why are you here?”
My voice firm and sure, I replied, “Because I need to see your mother as soon as possible.”
“What for?” Nancy asked.
“She is the one who asked for me,” I answered firmly but quietly.
“Says who?” asked Jacki.
“Ranice contacted me about this in her role as your family's social worker,” I said.
Jacki's eyes narrowed at me even more, but Nancy looked deeply into her bag of chips and reached for another handful.
“By the way,” I said, looking to both of them, “I am very sorry about the loss of your brother.”
Nancy shoved her handful of chips down the hatch. Jacki kept staring at me. Neither said a word. Who needed air conditioning when the two of them could keep a room this cold?
I stood. “Your mother, is her room still—”
“No!” Nancy blurted in a cloud of crumbs.
I looked to her. “Her room has moved?”
Jacki rose slowly and maneuvered herself between the stairway and me. “She prefers to be by herself,” Jacki answered in a plateau-flat voice. “We don't like to disturb her.”
Maybe if you disturbed her more she wouldn't be planning to kill herself tomorrow, I thought. “I understand that. However, it is also my understanding that she asked me to come see her.”
“I don't know why she would want to see you,” Nancy drawled before swallowing her latest mouthful.
“Neither do I, but I intend to find out.”
Jacki still blocked my path, but upstairs a door creaked open then shut. I heard Ranice's laborious waddling coming back towards us. When she appeared midway down the stairwell, leaning on the railing for support, she said, “Jane? Ready?”
I breezed past Jacki and to the stairs. I could feel the eyes of both the VanDeer girls sticking into my back as I disappeared from their view.
“She's kind of out of it right now,” I heard Ranice telling me as together we gained the second floor.
We passed the closet where I used to sleep, its door closed, its doorknob dusty. I wrapped my arms around myself to ward off the ever-increasing chill.
“She's on a lot of mood enhancers,” Ranice went on. “Pretty looped.”
“Have they helped her change her mind?” I asked.
“The drugs?”
I nodded.
“I don't think so.”
We walked through the part of the hall just in front of the bathroom, where Clint and I had fought that day right before I'd gone to India. We passed his bedroom door, also closed, silent as a blank tombstone. The next room on our left was the master bedroom. Mrs. VanDeer's sanctum.
I stood before that door, open a crack so I could see in just enough to know it was well shadowed. I put my hand to the knob to push it open.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” Ranice asked over my shoulder.
I paused for thought, looking back at Ranice. Her face was gently encouraging, just as it had been when I was little. I nodded. “I think that would be a good idea, Ranice, thank you.”
I opened the door all the way. The hinges complained loudly. Heavy curtains hoarded the room's darkness. A thin scraping of light came in from the hall through the door Ranice had left open behind us. This light fell on the heap of blankets and pillows that was Mrs. VanDeer.
I stepped closer to the bed. Stringy, unwashed strands of her hair lay about the pillow like Medusa locks dipped in grease, suspended against the rumpled linens. Tiny glazes of light touched her wide, unblinking eyes. Her face in the shadows was deeply wrinkled, more deeply than it should have been for someone of her age, wealthy background, and good connections. The air was still and close as an unventilated at-home capsule. I wondered why Mrs. VanDeer was in a bed and not a capsule just before I remembered: she did not need the metering and immune protection an at-home capsule would provide. She wasn't sick beyond her own control.
She blinked once, so quickly I almost missed it. Her breathing sharpened once, twice. She shifted beneath the heaped comforter then was still again.
“Mrs. VanDeer?” I rasped, taking another step across the deep pile carpet until my knuckles met the mattress.
“Nngh.” She turned her head further from me then snapped it back in my direction. “Mnh—who's there?”
“Mrs. VanDeer,” I said, sitting tentatively on the edge of the bed. “It's Jane E.”
She lifted her eyes to my face. It was like being stared at by a zombie. I shuddered.
“Who?” Her voice was high and weak but, but there was no death rattle here.
“Jane E, Mrs. VanDeer,” I said a little more loudly, removing the hush one usually uses at a deathbed.
“Jane E?” She shook her head to the point of violence.
I leaned closer to her, but she kept shaking her head. “Don't you remember asking Ranice to bring me here?”
She slowed her head until it was just waggling back and forth a little. “Jane E,” she repeated, wailing the syllables.
“I used to live here,” I offered. “Remember?”
Ranice, standing apart, muttered, “Those drugs. You might as well be talking to a movie.”
I looked back at Mrs. VanDeer. An eerie, disdainful smile lit her face. “I remember a little hellion named Jane E.”
I smiled back, trying to speak lightly as if from fond memory—memory that did not exist. “I am she, Mrs. VanDeer, though hopefully less of a hellion now.”
Mrs. VanDeer stopped shaking her head all together and peered at me through the darkness. Her eyes went wide and wild. “Can't be,” she whispered urgently. “Can't be. I said Jane died. Jane's dead. Dead. Deserves to be, ‘f you ask me.”
Reaching for her hand, I said, “The Jane you knew was just a little girl, Mrs. VanDeer. That was a long time ago,”
“No!” she answered, snatching her hand away, pulling it beneath the blankets. “Can't be her. Jane E was a disordered little brat. You're calm.”
I did not know what to say.
“Uh-uh, no,” Mrs. VanDeer said, half-moaning, half-whispering. “Can't be dead Jane...”
I saw her hands move beneath the covers.
“Can't be—can't. You're one of his friends, aren't you?”
I looked to Ranice for some hint and got none. “One of—?”
“Clint sent you, didn't he? I knew it!” Mrs. VanDeer began to cry softly.
“No, Mrs. VanDeer,” I soothed.
“Tell him there's no money left to give him. He can go ahead and kill me like he said! There's just no money left...”
My empty hand went to my heart. I turned horrified eyes to Ranice. Ranice was shaking her head, gesturing towards the bed.
“See her hands moving?” Ranice explained, “She's getting another dose off her patch.”
“Another dose of what?” I whispered back.
Ranice rummaged in the bag at her side and pulled out the same HandRight I could have sworn she'd used back when I was on her caseload. “Tranquilizers, some tryptophan,” she read from the screen in her palm. “She won't be awake much longer.”
“I'll wait here until she wakes up,” I said.
“That probably won't be for a while,” Ranice said ruefully, “and I gotta get going. I have other clients I gotta see. I'm not scheduled to be back here until the doctor—” She stopped, clearly searching for more comfortable wording. “—when the doctor gets here. I can drop you off at my apartment. You're more than welcome to crash there. It's a little messy, but—”
“Thanks, but I'll just wait here,” I interrupted, still watching Mrs. VanDeer seeking her voluntary coma.
“But I won't be back until tomorrow night, honey,” she said in that sweet tone she used to use when she knew she was about to leave me alone and undefended in this lions' pit.
I smiled back to reassure her, to help her see the truth—that I was not afraid of them anymore. “That's okay. Even if all I have is a chair, I've slept in worse.”
Ranice frowned with uncertainty. “Are you sure, honey?”
“Positive. I don't want to disturb your work schedule. Besides, maybe I can help here.”
“How?” Ranice asked, half-amazed, half-horrified.
“Maybe—” I let my voice trail off, afraid to say more, shrugging my shoulders against the weight of sadness,
Ranice smiled at me and came over to pat my head. She whispered back. “I'll see you tomorrow night then.”
“See you,” I replied.
Ranice left. I kept vigil by the bedside for about two more hours. The whole time, Mrs. VanDeer remained incoherent, tossing, turning, whimpering. Not once did either of her real daughters come in to see how their mother was doing.
At some point, however, my own lack of sleep overtook me. I woke up, lifting my head from the bedside, neck cramped, stomach rumbling. Rubbing my bleary eyes did not relieve the deepened dimness of the room. I looked to the clock. I'd slept for almost three hours.
Mrs. VanDeer was still asleep, too. Even when my stomach growled loudly against the silence, she did not stir. I decided I would go in search of a snack, to see if my former housemates would share their food as they once had—grudgingly, but enough for me to survive.
Stiff from travel and discomfort, I lumbered downstairs to the spacious kitchen, almost forgetting to turn off the upstairs hall light along my way. The décor had changed little, still dark blue and gilt, reflecting Mrs. VanDeer's smug membership in the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The thick wooden colonial table was still there, still collecting the family's junk: abandoned HandRights, three broken styluses, discarded fashion glasses, a dirty and crumpled man's fedora, a handful of lapel pins with obscure INGO crests, some dried-up funeral chrysanthemums. It was clear that no one had eaten at this table in quite some time.
Where did the eating take place, you may be asking? The family room was adjacent to the kitchen, and just as if nothing had changed but their sizes, Nancy and Jacki sat on the overstuffed couch, plates in hand, watching the netcast screen hanging on the wall opposite them. I don't remember what they were watching. I think it might have been the weather.
Unkinking my neck as I walked, I entered the family room. Both girls curled their lips at me.
“I'm going to fix myself something to eat,” I announced. “May I get anyone else anything while I'm in the kitchen?”
Nancy waggled her head in the negative, clutching her heaping platter of steaming, skinless, boneless chicken.
Jacki glared at me over her plate, which held only three raw string beans and no sign that anything else had been eaten from it. She seemed to be calculating a response. Finally, pointing to her near-empty plate with one hand, she said, “I don't eat much more than this. It is my sacred duty not to take more from Mother Earth than is absolutely necessary.” She turned her glare from me to her sister. “Unlike some people.”
“Maybe if you did take more, you wouldn't look like such an antenna!” Nancy snapped back just before downing another forkful of chicken.
While they continued giving each other dirty looks from their respective ends of the couch, I turned back into the kitchen to rummage for myself. I helped myself to a small piece of cheese, a piece of bread, and an apple—simple, cheap, easy to replace. To clear a space for myself at the table, I threw the dead flowers in the disposal still under the sink.
Finished, I took my dishes to the sink, overflowing with untold days of unwashed dining accoutrements. Their new dishwasher did not have the same cups for detergent or the same buttons that I used to prep and push when I was a girl. At a loss, I simply loaded the dishes into the racks and went back out to the family room.
Jacki and Nancy sat in the same positions in which I'd left them. Nancy's plate, set on the floor by her feet, looked as if it had been licked clean.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Could someone please tell me how to start the dishwasher?”
Nancy blinked at me with her vacant eyes. “How could you not know how to work a dishwasher?”
“Where I live now,” I answered, “the house system washes the dishes.”
Nancy's eyes nearly bugged out of her skull, so surprised that an urchin like me could live in such luxury.
Less impressed, Jacki made a dry spitting noise of disdain. “It's your turn to clean up,” she said to Nancy.
“It was my turn last night!”
“You didn't do them last night,” Jacki sneered, “so now show her how to turn the thing on. Waste of water, anyway. When it's my turn to do the dishes, I wash them by hand.”
With a heavy sigh of protest, Nancy hefted herself and her wide skirts up from her chair and flounced into the kitchen. As I followed, she muttered, “When it's your turn, you make damned sure that we don't dirty any dishes to begin with—oh!”
She stopped, pressing her hands to her full jowls, and turned to me. “You already did the dishes! I guess I don't need to do them after all!”
As she was about to flounce away again, I blocked her path. “Could you show me how to start the dishwasher, though, please?” Like I already asked, I added inwardly.
Pursing her lips, she simply shut the dishwasher door all the way, and it started by itself.
“Thank you,” I said.
Wistful, she wrapped her arms around her middle and leaned dramatically against the lip of the now clean counter. “I'm so not used to doing any work, like you are. But ever since stupid Clint sucked away all the money, and we lost our servants... I can't wait until I'm free and can go where I want. Once everything here is done—”
Her blasé attitude prickled my arm hairs.
“—I have this friend in Boston. She says I can go live with her. She has the best house—with a gazillion rooms, and real human servants. She throws the best parties—I've been to three of them online! Oh, God, I can't wait to get outta here!”
I gave her brittle smile. We had something in common after all.
“Thank you for your help, Nancy,” I repeated as gently as I could, striving to make some kind of peace with her, however shallow it might be.
She yawned in response. “Gawd. Carb coma. Gotta sleep.”
Stretching her arms, she lumbered off to her room upstairs.
Meanwhile, the netcast in the other room had been shut off. I turned off all the kitchen lights and went back to the family room. There I found Jacki kneeling on the floor, hands folded in her lap, eyes closed. I took a similar pose every morning with Kirti when we began our exercises. Perhaps there was some common thread here I could share with Jacki.
Softly, to avoid shocking her out of her meditation, I inquired, “Zazen?”
Her whole body stiffened even more, like a thread being pulled too tightly into the warp. She slowly opened her eyes and regarded me suspiciously.
“I am sitting and meditating, yes,” she answered sharply, “and I'd like to continue this way. If you know the language of such discipline, then you should understand that without needing me to tell you.”
She closed her eyes and rearranged her pose more firmly. I took the cue and left her.
I returned to the formal living room, fetched my bag and took it up to the main bathroom. I washed up, cautious to use only my own towels and toiletries, leaving behind no sign of my presence. Only a few steps away was my old closet-bedroom. I opened the door. It was practically empty. My little cot was gone. Tentatively, I walked towards the two guest rooms and claimed the smaller one for myself by placing my bag on the foot of the bed.
I checked in on Mrs. VanDeer. She was sleeping, as still as a felled log. Looking for a way to make myself useful yet, I took the two empty water glasses from her bedside downstairs, washed them in the sink, and refilled them from the spout in the refrigerator's face. I brought them back to Mrs. VanDeer's room, one in each hand, and placed them on the bedside table.
There was a small cushioned stool at Mrs. VanDeer's vanity table. I pulled it up to her bed and waited there for her to wake up. Hours passed, and there was no change, no movement, no waking, only breathing. After I heard Jacki come back upstairs and shut herself in her room, I waited another hour, and then dragged myself back to the guest room for some real sleep. As I drifted off uneasily, I realized I should have asked Ranice what time to expect the assisting physician the next day.
I woke to daylight warming the cool gray and white of the guest room, with the sounds of the shower blasting in the bathroom down the hall. The nightstand clock read just past eight-thirty. I gathered my toiletries and used the bathroom that joined this guest room to the other. Washed and dressed for the day, I went to check in on Mrs. VanDeer. She was asleep still, or at least she seemed so, but the water glasses I'd refilled were empty. I took them downstairs to the kitchen where I refilled them and put together a plate of toast and jam—some for myself, some I hoped to convince Mrs. VanDeer to eat.
I saw Nancy in the family room, slack-jawed before the netcast screen. I greeted her. She barely made eye contact.
“Is Jacki here, too?” I inquired.
Nancy shook her head, pruning her nose in distaste. “Her highness went to some meeting.”
“In real life or a terminal?”
Nancy shrugged. “Don't know. Don't care.”
I did not bother asking any more questions. Once I'd found a tray to use in carrying the glasses and plate upstairs, I returned to Mrs. VanDeer's room. Still her eyes were closed, her body immobile. Hoping to get some reaction out of her, I put the tray down at her bedside and opened the tightly shut curtains. Sunlight streamed in like ribbons of joy into a tomb.
At last, that sparked movement. Her eyelids scrunched together. Her arm rose to shield her face from the light's onslaught.
“Who's there?” she demanded, her voice pinched but lucid.
“Good morning, Mrs. VanDeer. It is only I, Jane E.”
Leaning on one elbow, she pressed up from the bed, eyes still shut. “Who said you could open the drapes?”
“It's a lovely morning,” I replied gently. “I thought the sunlight might cheer you. How do you feel?”
She answered by feeling around for an extra pillow and pulling it over her face and turning on her side so she faced away from me, mumbling something unintelligible.
I went to her. “Did you say something, Mrs. VanDeer? Can I get you something? Do something for you?”
She thrust the pillow away from her face and cried, “You can go away and let me DIE!”
This sudden verbal violence startled me, and I leapt back a step, knocking into the bedside table.
She choked out a dry sob. Her hands were fumbling against her arms again. After a minute, she cried out. “These must be dried up. Must be. I need more. Oh, God, I need another.”
At last, she opened her eyes, squinting. I was standing just at the front corner of the bedside table, so she thrust out her right arm and pushed me out of her way. She reached into the table's small drawer and pulled out a fresh patch the size of her ragged, uncut thumbnail. Throwing off the covers, she ripped an identical patch from her left forearm and threw its carcass to the floor. She removed the protective backing from the new and moved to attach it.
On impulse I caught her wrist. Her feral eyes met mine. Snarling in disbelief, she pulled on her arm, but I was stronger and held on.
“Mrs. VanDeer,” I said, my voice remarkably calm and measured, “please, you're speaking clearly for the first time since I arrived. Can't you wait, just for a bit? Give your decision about tonight some more thought. It's not too late to change your mind.”
She pulled more fiercely on her arm, but still I held fast. “It is too late!” she screeched. “And why the hell do you care? I know you wish me dead, Jane E! You said so, didn't you?”
I was so taken aback by this that, unfortunately, I lost my grip on her arm. She pulled free, pressing the fresh patch onto her left forearm with the kind of force one would apply to a nicked artery.
“That was a long time ago, Mrs. VanDeer,” I said. “I certainly do not wish you dead now. In fact, just the opposite. I don't think you should even consider suicide.”
Her eyes were easing shut in twisted bliss. I could not tell if she heard me at all.
“You have many good years ahead of you,” I persisted. “Don't let Clint's life end yours, too. You can start over—”
“Start over with what?” she asked, her voice a fraying whisper. “There is no money left.”
“Money is not life, Mrs. VanDeer.”
“Not to you, maybe. You never had any to begin with. But I'm nothing without it.”
I shook my head. “You have life, a future, family. Money could never buy these things.”
“How would you know? Ah, you wouldn't...” she said, her voice dwindling so that I had to strain to hear her say, “I'm the one who kept you from finding out for yourself.”
The patch was having its effect. I knelt by her side. “What are you talking about?”
“You could've had money,” she said. Then she giggled with the drugs' influence. “But I said you were dead, like I hoped.”
Was she speaking the nonsense of the high? Again, I asked, “What do you mean?”
She grimaced and shook her head slowly from side to side. “You were always so weird. So quiet, kept to yourself, and then one day—boom! You showed us how hateful I'd always known you were. So of course I just hated you more.”
“Mrs. VanDeer, it's been over twelve years. I've long since forgiven you. Can't you forgive me?”
“Just hated you more,” she repeated as if I hadn't spoken. “So when I heard about all the kids who died at your school in India, I was glad.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “Why would such a thing make you glad, Mrs. VanDeer?”
“I looked for your name on the list of the dead. I didn't find it, but I always hoped... even when I got that text from the lawyers working on that class action suit, I told them you'd died at that school.” She chuckled a dry, poison-bitter laugh.
I was lost. In that brief admission, she'd given me so many questions to ask, but I did not know where to start.
Still chuckling so that her words shook like aftershocks, she said, “To let you get rich just by existing? I couldn't let that happen and live with myself.”
“I don't understand,” I said at last.
“Idiot. Don't you get it? A bunch of surviving unclaimed embryos from Second Chance filed a class action lawsuit. The judge ordered them to find all their grown embryos and give them their piece of the settlement.”
When I'd said that I didn't understand, I was speaking of Mrs. VanDeer's rancor, not about my getting rich. I thought that part was just the muddled ramblings of a dorfed-up depressive. Could she be speaking with some degree of clarity about facts, not emotions?
“I knew they wouldn't investigate further about whether or not you were dead,” she said, sighing happily as she spun deeper and deeper into herself. “Then they could keep your part of the money. But still, I just knew you were alive somewhere. You were the source of all my misery, and my misery only got worse. It won't end until one of us does.”
She snuggled more tightly into her pillows, tugging the comforter up to her chin.
I knelt by her side so that she could see me if only she would open her eyes. “I stopped hating you a long time ago. I've always felt better for it. Maybe you wouldn't be so miserable if you would just let go of your hate.”
She did open her eyes. Her pupils shrank from the light, her irids cold, dark and steady. “Let go? It's the only thing I have left.”
My heart shrank at this. I tried to think of something that might change her mind. Naturally, as I did whenever thinking of higher matters, I thought of Aidann. I tried to imagine what she would have said. I held my hand out to Mrs. VanDeer, palm open in a gesture of acceptance. “Maybe, if you did let go, you could reach out for something more. Something to bring you joy instead of pain, love instead of hatred.”
She looked down at my hand. Her jaw set in a look of disgust. Giving me one last glare, she turned her back on me.
“Close the drapes and leave me alone,” she said.
I was amazed that someone could hold on to so much darkness, to the point where she let it kill her. I could hardly fathom it. I stood, folding my hands, my voice cold and determined. “I will close the drapes if you like, but one thing about me hasn't changed in twelve years. I'm still a stubborn little bitch. So I'm staying here with you until there's no you left to convince that life is worth living.”
I pulled the curtains together. All went cool and dark again. I returned to the other side of the bed. Seeing that I was facing her again, Mrs. VanDeer turned away once more.
***
Neither of us moved until Ranice returned with the doctor, a woman who looked young enough to have barely finished a residency. Her sweet face etched with regret, Ranice presided over of the signing of forms, the confirming of mental competence, the legal releases by the remaining next-of-kin. The first time I saw Jacki or Nancy set foot in the room was when they were summoned for that last. Amid this hushed, eerie melee, I stepped back by the windows, watching helplessly. I was not family. My objections carried no legal weight.
When the time came, Mrs. VanDeer was asked to sit up. She did so without assistance. The doctor held out a pill. Mrs. VanDeer held out her hands, cupped with expectation.
I tried to catch her eye, to get her to hesitate long enough to reconsider. “Wait, Mrs. VanDeer, please—”
But I was too late. As I spoke, she opened her mouth and threw back the pill. She swallowed it without water. I was dimly aware of Ranice's stepping out of the room, then Nancy. The room was silent as the doctor took Mrs. VanDeer's wrist for a pulse.
“It is a noble thing she does,” Jacki intoned, arms folded across her chest. “One less burden to strain Mother Earth.”
Sickness stung the back of my throat.
Minutes like years passed before the doctor, holding the patient's wrist, looked up at Jacki and me.
“It was painless,” she said with a reassuring smile. “Your mother is at peace now.”
I wondered if that were true.
