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Further Misadventures of the Misleading Title
She was giving birth. Hair clung to her brow like wet feathers. She screamed, she strained. She wondered if god was punishing her for Eve’s sin. She was about to yell to god, tell him it’s not her fault his finest creations were human, when the deity himself walked in. It was Him all right, but he was also a medical doctor. And dressed up as a clown. He sported the whole deal: rainbow wig, oversized shoes and obnoxious yellow gloves. He took his position. It’s an odd sensation, having a religious icon so close to your crotch.
"Once more, and it’ll all be over, ma’am."
She screeched again, and felt something slide out of her. It was silent. Silence, in place of gurgling infant protests. She was beginning to get alarmed. She managed to shake her words out, half frantic and half exhausted. "What’s the matter?"
Then she heard it.
Ticking.
tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.tick.
(quietly, with mathematical precision.)
God lifted the child. "Here’s your baby." Some invisible music box began to play Brahm’s lullaby. Her arms wrapped around the bundle of powder blue cloth. Pink infant hands, yes. Soft feet with round toes, yes. But she could not bring herself to look at the baby’s face. She knew what she would see. A white circle trimmed with numbers, and her terrified expression superimposed upon the glass. No mouth, no nose, no sapphire eyes that he had definitely inherited from his mother. Nothing except the passing of time.
***
Her husband gently caressed her out of sleep. "Virginia..." His hand was on her cheek. She opened her eyes as though she had never been asleep. Ever.
"You were crying in your sleep again, Virginia. Your pillow’s wet." She didn’t respond. She stared at the walls with vacant eyes. James swallowed. He was really worried about his wife, these days. Every morning it was the same. She wouldn’t begin to live until late afternoon, when hunger would lead her into the kitchen for a few pieces of bread. James baked bread everyday; it was the only food his wife would eat anymore. Then she would continue with her ritual to Lysander’s room. She would hold her child and moan, "Andy, my Andy. Please wake up." The child would lay limply and let his head roll and bob with the rhythm of his mother’s swaying, eyes impenetrable and unfocused.
Lysander was unlike other children. His would-be friends and classmates were down the street, engaging in their respective fantasy lives with invisible dragons and faery wings. Lysander would stay inside, paled to the shade of unbaked bread, moving down halls and through doors, keeping time aloud. Perfect central standard time, unfaltering to the very second.
Virginia blamed herself. She suffered from a condition that should have prevented her from having any children. Then, like an ironic angel, Lysander appeared on an ultrasound as flawlessly developing fetus. The pregnancy went as well as any pregnancy can, with the usual cycles of morning sickness and the lust for foods that didn’t help. She even carried the baby to full term, something which even the happy couple didn’t expect. He was a masterpiece baby, fully developed and warm. Just a little quiet. Even the when the nurse came into the waiting room, with a hug, an ‘I’m so sorry’, and a pamphlet in her hand that read ‘Coping with Autism in Your Family’. Lysander was still their wonderful, perfect baby. Their slice of utopia.
However, the older Lysander grew, the more his mother died. All she would have needed was one longing look with a ‘mommy, i love you.’ Lysander never ran to his mother’s arms when she came home from work, and so slowly, Virginia left. Virginia went away and put her wedding ring on her dead body. James whispered love to the corpse and held it and took it out to dinner. Virginia’s mother pulled the carcass out of bed and had coffee and morning gossip with it. They all ignored the stench, the way the flesh shriveled off.
James was really worried about his wife, these days.
****
Lysander marched down the corridor mechanically, obeying the pace in his head. Like a metronome, he counted out the time. "one thirteen fifty-four, one thirteen fifty-five, one thirteen fifty-six, one thirteen fifty-seven, one thirteen fifty-eight, one thirteen fifty-nine, one fourteen, one fourteen one, one fourteen two." He walked through a door. It was the bathroom. "one fourteen six." His mother was in the tub. Her face was white and satisfied. Her eyes were closed. Her right arm hung still against the porcelain, her knuckles touching the floor. "one fourteen eight, one fourteen nine." Thick blood carpeted the tiles and clung to the cracks in between. A broken wine bottle rolled towards him when he breathed. "one fourteen twelve" Lysander turned and walked out of the room and into the hall. "one fourteen fourteen, one fourteen fifteen, one fourteen sixteen." No one stood at the end of the hallway as Lysander’s silhouette shrunk against a sunlit window, and his voice turned around the corner.
*****
fuckfuckfuckfuck. i could have done something. why didnt i do anything? i didn’t see anything. godamnit the signs where all there. jesus am i blind? iwannacigarette. think its time i forget i dont smoke. what the hell am i gonna tell andy? kid probably wont even fucking notice. shit. i am so sorry. i didn’t mean it! i.... ...oh god virginiavirginiavirginiavirg inia virgin iavirgi nia vi r g i n a v i r g i n a
********
Lysander was in his room, asleep. Nap time, his father had said. His father was going to find a bed for his mommy. An enclosed mahogany bed with satin lining.
He was dreaming about apples. He knew all about apples. No one would think so, but he did. His eyes opened. He was frightened. He panted and then, aloud: "ONE FOURTEEN TWELVE!!!" His eyes twitched, then he was still as a photograph of a stranger. Somewhere, deep inside, something was hurting.
**************
James hugged his mother-in-law stiffly and let her be hysterical for him.. He was a strong chinned man, and made himself like a jigsaw puzzle with only the edge pieces in place. Her words were all saline and instability. "She was such a bright, happy girl. What happened?"
James thought about how scripted her mourning sounded. In spite of grief, he found bitter humor in the fact that he played along. "I don’t even know....how life can be so..." He paused, waiting for a word that would spit mud and tears and anger. He decided language was too structured, too civilized. He changed the subject. "D-Do you think Lysander should come to the funeral?"
Mary was running her hand against a coffin engraved with crosses and flowers. She looked up, her eyes like melting ice. "No." She spoke slowly, "Lysander should not attend Virginia’s funeral. Believe me, James." Then she sighed and her shoulders quivered. "Everyone will be so upset...we don’t want the child to become a target. Even with a....’normal’ child I would reconsider."
Her words sounded so assured, and he was so vulnerable. And she was Virginia’s mother. He glanced into a coffin. "Do you think Virginia would have wanted blue or white lining?"
************************
It was a little after lunch when the baby-sitter heard the scream. She was watching a tabloid news show and wondering why she was there. This was the kid’s mother! He needed to say goodbye, too. The scream was fervent and indistinguishable. She was yanked from her sweet galaxy of paparazzi accusations, and panicked surfaced. She didn’t want to go into the kid’s room and find him punching holes through the paint and into the plaster until his fists were bloody. She didn’t know if she could deal with it.
She opened the door, and her intestines felt out of place. Andy was sitting on the bed, whispering some numbers. "one fourteen twelve, one fourteen twelve, one fourteen twelve, one fourteen twelve..."
"Andy? Andy, what’s the matter? What does that mean? Do you need medicine?" This was completely out of her range. His father had said he’d probably sleep the entire time. She tried to touch his arm, thinking the warmth of her touch might do some magic. The boy cringed and pressed against the wall. "Andy, are you going to be all right?" He laid down, and shut his eyes as if he was crushing a world between his lids. The baby-sitter backed breathless out of the room, afraid to disturb the scene that agreed with her television viewing so well.
**********************************************
James watched the scotch whisk the ice cubes around, waiting for images of his dead wife to appear. He would rather have a good, solid beer with a crackling foam, but this called for a more somber drink. He saw her skin, her lips, her eyes. Eyes that he had written a few bad poems about: ‘as blue as if the creator had dribbled a few drops of sky when he made her.’ He laughed at the phrase, and then was guilty and stupid. He was meant to be sorting through the past. The drink was getting to him.
***********************************************************************
Lysander had been walking the perimeter of his room for the last hour, and he had counted 62 minutes and 3,726 seconds. "one fourteen seven, one fourteen eight, one fourteen nine, one fourteen ten, one fourteen eleven, one fourteen t-" Then it happened. "one fourteen TWELVE!!!"
Neurons charged with energy. The hand brushed over the ten and the eleven and paused at the twelve. Clockwork purred and somewhere a spring snapped. A door opened fast. "cuckoo!" A wooden bird with wild eyes shot out on a plank. "cuckoO!" Its voice was smooth and taunting. "cuckOO! cucKOO! cuCKOO! cUCKOO! CUCKOO!!!!"
The sapphire eyes that he had definitely inherited from his mother flushed to black for a violent moment. He leapt up like an angry dog and attacked the artificial bird. It burst into a thousand splinters and sunk into his tense and bloodless hand.
And... (tick)
And.... (tick)
(tick) And....
And then Lysander whispered "no."
And then Lysander murdered time.
***
He didn’t own a wristwatch. He didn’t know that three decades had passed. He did know that he liked a bar on the corner of fifth and main. They didn’t care about time there. There wasn’t a clock in the place. He would seat himself behind the front counter and would remain there, motionless. He would leave just before they closed; he didn’t want to be reminded of his reason for coming there.
*******
Mike sucked in the smoke fast. It had been a bad day. He was tired of his boss. He was tired of being a lowly bartender with a master’s degree in art, and tired of being a victim of the under apprecation of it. He was tired.
"Hey, Mike!"
Mike tensed at the sound of his boss’s voice. He glanced at his watch.. "I’m not off break for another five."
The dictator entered the room. "Not according to my watch," He said, indicated his empty wrist. "I want you to get out there, tell that bum to leave. I’m sick of him taking up space here."
Mike smashed the cigarette into the ash tray, watching the filter fold and wrinkle like skin. There was no use arguing. If Mike had anywhere else to go, he would already be there.
***************
Mike was hired as a bartender, not a bouncer. Nevertheless, he walked over to the bum. As always, the bum was there, partially buried under a wide assortment of winter attire. "Can I get you anything?"
The bum moved just enough to respond. "No."
"Look, you come in here every day, you’ve never ordered anything, you don’t even talk."
"My name’s Lysander. Please to meet you, " The bum hissed. "Enough?"
"Get a job or something. You can’t just keep spending all your time here."
Lysander narrowed his eyes over his shoulder and his brow tensed into a million crossroads. "Time?"
"Uh...what?"
Lysander straightened and would have been quite forceful had he been standing. "We. have absolutely. No right to talk about time. We are an idiot species. We build our lives around something we don’t have the means to understand. Around ignorance. We cannot prove that time exists. We change, but that is not time. If anything, time would stand still and observe. Time would be ancient and wise. By putting a name on this unsure ‘non-spatial continuum’, as the most loathsome dictionary will define it, we destroy any possibility of it being wondrous. We are not out of the dark ages. The sun no longer evolves around us, but time still does. I don’t know any more than anyone else, but I am not afraid to realize that. And, look, now you’ve made me a hypocrite.
DO. NOT. TALK.
OF. WHAT.
YOU. DO. NOT.
UNDERSTAND."
Mike was damn glad his shift was over.
**************************
That night, at home, Mike smoked a few cigarettes and thought about the bum called Lysander. There was a reason the man sat for hours in isolation in a bar. What else is there to do for an anti-social loser who has no job because he doesn’t believe in time? He laughed and pointed his finger at the crazy in his mind. Herded up a bunch of taunting ten year olds and let them do their worst.
Time had always been one of Mike’s best friends. Time had given him a doctrine in art. Time had built the house around him. Time was in his heritage. He still kept the same pocket watch his great-great grandfather did and he was proud as he popped open the gold disc.
Then he casually noticed how still the hands were.
Time had depleted his muscles, greyed his hair. Time had trapped him in a hellish domestic drama, with him playing the bartender. Time was responsible for killing him.
It fought fiercely against his logic, but something inside him had begun to knock. He opened the door and the bum's rationality introduced itself. Mike invited it for tea.
**************************************
Mike leaned at the bar and contemplated the horrible death that must have met Lysander. He had come to work only to tell him. He wanted to say that his speech had inspired at least one person, and to that one person he was not a deranged bum who sat in bars all day. He wanted to say his life had just been changed forever. Mike wanted to say that, but instead the words and experience swirled inside of him, frustrated. He started to study the wood grain and thought about ordering a drink, when he heard a voice from behind him.
"Hello."
A silken feminine voice.
"Why so glum, sweetie?"
"I’m not glum."
"Well then, would you mind givin’ a lady the time of day?"
It shot him in the heart. He looked over at the voice, and it became a woman. The most woman in the goddamn world and worlds beyond, by anyone’s standards. She encompassed everything he had ever coveted since his first wet dream. She was a chameleon lust, customized to every fantasy. She was Mae West in glittering shades of grey, a naked virgin aside her unicorn, a lioness with sharpened claws. She was here. He looked at that woman with the changeling body and the dewed rose lips and he said what he wanted to say.
He said
want he wanted (to say)
He smiled. "Fuck you."
The End