The dermatologist had, at some point, flirted with everyone’s daughter. He had countless sensitive, spindly children—he was what you might call a hoarder. Each child had an unusually flexible body and an operatic emotional range. The dermatologist would walk the Town’s main street in wraparound eclipse glasses and a black wool suit that overspilled at the collar and cuffs with the froth of his white shirt. Mothers would duck into the credit union or the Triangle Pub when they heard him coming. The dermatologist lived with his children and his wife in a split-level bungalow that he nonetheless called Spruce Acres.
The thing about him was, his wife kept having babies. Once a year, someone would spot her at the evening farmer’s market, buying crocheted Celtic cross tea cozies, and you’d have to look carefully but there was nearly always a baby somewhere on her person. She would duck and weave when you spoke to her but eventually she would lift the corner of her coat and you would see the new child. Or was it the old one? Your eyes would move from her feet, which were always slippered, to her hair, which had gone from grey to white. The vendors would cast their eyes down and search for nothing in their tills until she passed. Sometimes she’d finger a beach glass necklace, or a jar of blackberry jelly. The dermatologist, picking up the rear, would pause at the SPCA cage, take off his gloves, and stick his fat, clean fingers through the bars for the kittens to lick. Their children, meanwhile, would have scattered like roaches to enter the limbo contest.
I remember this Town’s early years, before I met the dermatologist.
Everyone was so tall, so ornately robed, their braids full of jewels and laid carefully down their backs. Meanwhile, I never had a single opinion worth defending.
Above this scene, the moon scuttles into place like a silverfish. The evening farmer’s market features a bagpiper, who is at this moment warming up in the corner, at tooth-loosening decibels. No one can hear what anyone is saying, least of all what the dermatologist is saying to his wife, as he leans over and tugs back her shawl (beneath which there had been some slight movements, earlier in the day, movements that have since ceased).
What is the point of this report? Is it the predatory nature of the dermatologist, the subservience of his wife, the complacency of the Town, the eyes of the hoarded children? Which child will be the first to challenge the dermatologist’s dominion? Or will they remain loyal to the universe of his making? Either way, they are lucky to be so young and flexible. Look at how deep their backs bend as they travel under the metre stick.