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HIS VIEW IS BLOCKED by someone’s face—which fills the crack in the door, trains an eye upon him. He jolts away, staring dumbly, then bolts from the snack bar, shoving through the glass door with both hands, turning and wheeling on the boardwalk, looking for his brother. Surely he could not have gone far; surely he must still be visible, walking toward the Camino, his stupid white pants glowing, his feathered hair trailing, his clam-shell necklace glinting. He looks at the screen and sees poor Mrs. Skinner—who reminds him of his mother now that his mother wears earth-toned pant-suits and an Aqua-net scented beehive; now that she seems so passive and resigned and carries the leather-bound Bible everywhere—in a death duel with one of the rats. The huge rat has crashed through the window of her kitchen and locked its jaws about her neck, is thrashing its head violently as she punches and struggles and kicks. She grabs hold of a meat cleaver and starts hacking the rat’s face—but is knocked to the floor, shrieking, blathering, begging. “Oh, God—oh, God!” Until her windpipe is severed and blood gushes everywhere; her hands letting go, the cleaver clattering against the tiles—her eyes becoming black glass while blood spreads like spilled ink across the floor.
He begins trembling violently, turning this way and that, knowing he cannot find the Camino, knowing that if he did it would not make any difference, it would not stop the ground from rolling or the killer bees from coming or Skylab falling or Mt. Saint Helens from erupting. It would not stop the transmission from bleeding or the windshield from cracking. It would not stop the projector from burning out, from leaving them all in blackness, to shiver and die alone. It would not stop time—nothing could.
He is incoherent as he stumbles around to the side of the building, pauses against the wall. He looks at the screen even though he knows he shouldn’t: sees Lorna the good-looking biologist holding her head—Lorna who has been so cool and determined and unbreakable, who also reminds him of his mother, his old mother, like the Unsinkable Molly Brown on the Titanic; the mother who waded into a cloud of bees and came out with four screaming kids; who gathered several more into the bed of the Camino and floored it to the hospital. Who saved Ricky’s life; who had to—because he tripped over a cord. Because he hadn’t been watching where he was going, never did. Because he could not see what was right in front of him, beneath his nose. That Lorna is holding her head, cowering just as he is, mewing, “Oh, no, no, no...” as the rats eat through the ceiling and wood splinters and glass showers; as Rita goes into labor, sweating, cursing, pushing in spite of everything.
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HIS BROTHER IS INFURIATED that they have to leave early, before the film is even over—mutters something about how another family outing has been ruined by his baby brother, who has to be special. He wastes no time in trying to expose a nerve, suggesting the movie is too mature for him, that he should be careful what he wishes for because he just might get it.
“It’s nothing to do with the movie,” insists the Kid, teeth chattering in spite of the comforter draped over his shoulders. He sits with his legs dangling over the tailgate, still trembling as though he were having an epileptic seizure. He has had to sit for fear of passing out; sitting, it turns out, will not do either—he cannot bear to touch the tailgate, much less the asphalt. Even the comforter does not comfort but weighs heavy upon his shoulders, smothering, suffocating, scratching his arms with coarse little hairs. The material world itself has become unreliable.
“Yeah, right,” says Sheldon. Behind him, up on the screen, Lorna is telling Rita to “Push, push,” as the baby is born. “You sure seemed all right before it started.”
Had he? There hadn’t been any real reason not to be; they were still on summer vacation, technically, and Mom was still allowing him to grow his hair, which he’d need in Junior High. There was the Booker thing, of course, and the math thing, and the thing with the tape recorder. There was the thing with the beehive and the Bible on the dash—but so what? What did these amount to but temporary setbacks and phantasmagoria—things which could be fixed or figured, eventually? Everything had changed— nothing had changed. Mom was still Mom—though in an earth-toned pant-suit and an Aqua-net beehive. Dad was still Dad in his white cardigan sweater and his pleated Khakis and his greased hair—though he’d grown a mustache and thick sideburns—while Sheldon; well, Sheldon was Sheldon—polite, insincere, patronizing—the same old brother only masquerading as Leif Garret. And The Food of the Gods, about which he’d read so much, had come to town at last; and could now be viewed at drive-ins all across the country, which made for a lot of giant wasps swarming a lot of dumb football players.
“I’d say I was euphoric,” says the Kid.
“So what the hell was the problem?” asks Sheldon as they pull out of the theater, everyone honking as their headlights sweep the screen. The Kid remains silent as they exit the gate—the tires of the Camino clanking over the ‘no entry’ spikes—peers behind the screen at the rusted iron girders, like the ribs of some giant carcass, and the scaffolding covered in pigeon shit. A wino has taken refuge using the girders to support his shelter—a red-black blanket with tattered edges. The Kid doesn’t know what the hell the problem was, exactly, but as they motor up the hill overlooking the drive-in he sees the place with fresh eyes, viewing it as a kind of graveyard, its speaker stands like tombstones and its cars like black, shiny coffins, waiting to be returned to the earth, and so also with the concessions stand, its painted wood mutating, fossilizing, and the neon lights, their gas and their filaments breaking down, becoming something else, while the gnats and mosquitoes and stick-bugs have it their way, multiplying and dividing out of control, as weeds push up through the cracks and the people who are but shadows bleed silently back into shadow. He doesn’t know what the problem was, other than he’d had a sudden premonition that something terrible was going to happen—to the drive-in, to Spokane, to all the people (even the wino), to his mother and father and brother and himself. They were all going to die, just go away.
Eventually.
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HE IS RUMMAGING through his shelves, looking for the decal set for his Concorde SST model, when his fingers snag a rack of tempera paints—spilling it to the floor in a shower of colored tubes. He has tried to keep moving since they’ve gotten home, tried to still the shakes by organizing his Famous Monsters of Filmland issues by month, by arranging his Micronauts in little rows, like a military parade; by finding his SST. He is crouched by the shelves, picking up the kinked metal tubes, reading and sorting—bottle-green, oyster-white, chestnut-brown—his fingertips shaking, when he sees his mother, standing in his bedroom doorway. She is wearing his X-Ray glasses, which he recalls leaving in the bed of the Camino. He knows she is trying to be cute, to make him laugh, but he can’t, not after ruining everyone’s night.
He stands, brushing his pant legs. “Sorry about tonight...for picking those movies...and for freaking out like that.”
She doesn’t act as though she has heard him—only cocks her head, grinning. He sees that the ceiling light is reflected in the lenses of the toy glasses, realizes that for her the light has become the word ‘X-RAY.’ “Hold your hand up to the bulb,” he says.
She does so, moving her hand back and forth, wiggling her fingers.
“It makes a halo around them,” he says. “Makes the light bleed into your joints, so that your skin looks like bones, and the halo looks like skin. What do you think?”
She lowers her hand and looks at his wall paintings: superheroes and villains, the Milky Way, a mural based on Rudolph Zallinger’s The Age of Reptiles—and Dogora-Carcinoma, his body hidden by clouds, his tentacles reaching.
“I think,” she says, and stops. “I think...that you’ve been born into this mystery, just like the rest of us. That... it’s a mystery so great...” she pauses, her face in shadow, “that men and women, especially parents, will do anything, anything, to deny it.” She takes off the specs, smiles at him. “Just so that they and their children can get through the day.” She folds the paper frames and holds them at her side. “The years. Look at you. I told you, ‘You’ll—’”
“Be taller than my brother. I know, Mom.”
She enters his room and sits on the bed, pats the bedspread next to her. “Come here, sit.”
He goes to the bed and sits.
“Give me your hand.”
He gives her his hand.
“Close your eyes—keep them closed, no cheating.”
She maneuvers his hand under her shirt, causing him to wince as his fingertips brush her flesh, which is startlingly warm. “Mom—”
“Shhh.”
She guides his hand up her abdomen, sliding it smoothly over her skin until its palm rests partially on a rounded hump, which he determines to be the bottom of her left breast. “There,” she says, almost whispering, and takes her hand from his wrist. “Hold it there.” She folds his fingertips so that they rest upon a tiny lump, which gives softly beneath the pressure, and is no larger than a robin’s egg. He can almost feel the blood racing beneath its surface as she breathes, her breast moving up and down.
She says: “You asked me once what a globular carcinoma was, remember?”
In his mind’s eye he sees something red-black and saw-edged, with bitter teeth.
“And I told you it was probably one of your monsters—which of course you didn’t believe, or partially believed, or chose to believe.”
He imagines tentacles sprouting from the red-black thing, radiating out from its center, seeking purchase.
“But I knew what it was, because I had one inside me, or something like it. I found it the day your father brought home the El Camino. That one turned out to be benign, meaning harmless. This one isn’t. Do you understand?”
He squeezes his eyes closed as the thing’s tentacles split, multiplying, spreading throughout her breast, turning everything red-black.
“This one must be removed, the only question being should they take the whole breast, or just this lump?”
“They should take the whole—”
“Yes, that’s what your father and brother think. But I have my own ideas. And I’ve decided they should take just this lump. Because my breast is part of me, and I’m a part of it; we’ve been through a lot together. So they can take Lumpy here and I will remain a whole woman, not a lopsided one like that hunchback in your Creature Feature—”
“Igor.”
“Igor, exactly. Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant. And then they will bombard the area with X-rays until the cancer is all gone.” She removes his hand gently, tells him to open his eyes. There are dark spots above her cheeks, fine wrinkles around her eyes. Yet her complexion is tan, plum, glowing. “So you see. I’m not going anywhere just yet. In fact, I’m not going anywhere period. I may be in a life and death struggle, but I’m not dying. I’m going to fight this. I’m going to beat it.”
He stares at her, not blankly but without particular intent. It is as if some kind of autopilot has taken over. He isn’t sure what he is feeling or if he is feeling anything. But some of her words have lodged in him, taken root—will stay there, he suspects, forever. X-ray bombardment. Not going anywhere. Life and death struggle.
“What if—”
“There is always what if. But there’s no room for it—not in a life and death struggle. Not when it’s underway. It’s kill or be killed.” She gets up, folds back the blankets. “You’ve got an appointment in the morning, at the principal’s office. Go right to sleep. No TV.” She turns on a lamp, switches off the main light. “And for heaven’s sake, no horror movies.”
He lies in the lamplight and stares at the wall, at Dogora-Carcinoma.
She pauses outside his room. “If you do well tomorrow you’ll be allowed to advance, in spite of the math. Otherwise you’ll be held back. That’s the flat of it. That’s how they explained it.” Hinges creak as she grips the doorknob. “Remember. The dinosaurs couldn’t adapt and that’s why they became extinct.”
Then she shuts the door—firmly, completely.