Museum of the Weird (10 page)

“What about buoys?”

“Given time and water retention,” said a woman who worked in a laboratory, “a buoy will sink like the rest.”

This was disconcerting news. Everyone stood around a while, thinking.

“What about an indestructable balloon?”

“Such a contraption does not exist, and is therefore not a thing.” “A floating bird, such as a swan?”

“It will die and then sink,” the first man said, annoyed.

One man made to rest against the iron cube and stepped back, grimacing in pain at the surface heat.

“A glass bubble, then.”

The laboratory woman shook her head. “The glass would eventually erode, as would polymer, plastic, wood, and ceramic. We are talking thousands of years, but of course it would happen.”

The group was becoming visibly nervous. One young man recalled a flood in his hometown that brought all the watertight caskets bobbing out of the earth, rising triumphantly out of the water like breeching whales. The water eventually found its way though the leak-proof seals and the caskets sank again.

Another man recalled a mother from the city who drove her car into a pond, her children still strapped to their seats.

A man and a woman walked to camp and returned shortly with a cooler of beer. The gathered crowd commenced to drinking, forming a half-circle around the cube. They agreed that many things would eventually sink:

A credit card

A potato (peeled)

A baby stroller

A canoe

A pickle jar full of helium

A rattan deck chair

A mattress made of NASA foam

They even agreed on alternate theories: everything that sunk could rise again, for example. One of the men splashed a few ounces of beer on the iron surface as a gesture of respect. The place where the beer touched cooled down and the man leaned on the cube. It didn’t budge.

The men and women grew drunk and their claims more grandiose (a skyscraper, an orchard, a city of mermaids). Eventually, the mothers came to lead them back to camp but they didn’t want to go, eliciting words from the mothers, who had been stuck with the children and each other all afternoon and were ready for the silence of their respective cars. Back at camp, they were throwing leftover food into the pond. Ducks paddled up to eat the bread crumbs and slices of meat and the children clapped. The Rogers kid stayed on his mother’s lap, picking jelly beans from her hand. A pair of siblings threw an entire loaf of bread into the water and watched it disappear.

The mothers didn’t talk much, preoccupied with children or ducks. As they sat, some thought about the children, and some thought about everything eventually sinking, but most thought of the long drive ahead, the end of the weekend, and the days after that.

LOVE, MORTAR

My love for you is like a brick. It sits silent in me when you bring out my food at the Dine and Dart, red tray aloft, your skin gleaming like grilled onions. My love is rough around the edges but solid through the center, fresh from the kiln. My love for you is heavy and dark, Jenny, it builds and breaks down, Jenny, it cracks the windows between you and me—you, mixing milkshakes for little league winners, and me, miserly with sandwich wrappers in my car. You, smiling down at the register like a woman with secrets, and me, in agony over the golden arch of your eyebrow.

A brick, inert and dangerous. This love can be worn down but there is always substance to it, always heft, as when you struggle to lift the box of flash-frozen patties, that iced meat against your bare arms, the cold thickness of your flesh a barrier against the protected warmth of your lungs, your heart, your bones. When your manager helps you with that box, the brick grinds in my chest. Your manager, Bill of the blue eyes, Bill of the “no parking” policy, Bill of the fast food tie. He tucks it in his shirt as he walks to the bathroom. You might be kind and claim that Bill is a good man but what you’ll soon learn is that there are no good men, Jenny, none left at all. Not even me, though I’m good deep down, almost to the center.

Almost to the center. But the center of me is that brick. It’s there when you bring my cheeseburger no lettuce on a steaming red tray. It’s there when you reach into your flat front pouch for my straw. It’s there when you pull your hair up behind your visor when you go in for your shift and when you lean over the grease trap with your scraper and bucket. It’s there when you stand at the register, Jenny, your unpainted fingernails hovering over the keys as you think of those old dollar bills, the tens and rolls of quarters, wondering if you shouldn’t just no-sale the register and open it, one of those times when blue-eyed striped tie Bill is smoking a cigarette in the bathroom and looking at the Sears catalog he has hidden behind the toilet. You could just open that register and reach in with two hands and pull out fistfuls of cash and put it into your front pocket, stuffing it all down there, paper-wrapped straws scattering across the greasy floor. You’d walk out and throw your visor into the garbage and you would never come back.

But where would you go, with your great treasure? I see you on the beach at Galveston, peeling off that thick dirty uniform and walking slow into the water, trading the salt of french fries and tater tots for the healing salt of the ocean. I see you saving souls in that warm water, Jenny, I see you taking men in that water and making bricks of them all. You sink them there and build a wall with them, and create purpose to their roughness and use to their weight. You build a sea wall and stand on the other side with your feet planted wide on the hot sand, your golden hair streaming behind you like a flag of independence.

You have a power, and there is no reason this power should frighten you. Surely you see how Bill looks at you, and the men paving the road and even me over my cheeseburger no lettuce sucking chocolate milk through a straw. We are all drawn to you, but I am the only one who understands that draw, knowing how I started the kiln’s fire myself, long ago. Now, my guts are full of clay and you can dig it out yourself. Open me up and hold the dangerous brick in your hands, feel that awful weight.

THIS QUIET COMPLEX

Maria Telesco

Leasing Office

Windy Pointe Apartments

1220 Thorpe Ln.

San Marcos, TX 78666

January 8

Dear Miss Telesco,

As you well know, I typically prefer to address my complaints to you personally. I look forward to the hours we spend together each week, discussing the maintenance terms of my lease. We are women of respect and empathy, and informal communication is often sufficient. However, I felt that I should address my complaint with you today in the form of a signed letter.

I always look forward to the Windy Pointe Apartments’ Annual Christmas Decoration Contest. You could say it is one of the few reasons I might remain in an apartment complex with a mold infestation. Thank you, by the way, for sending Charles and Marcus to repaint my ceiling. (They told me it was dust but we both know that’s not true, don’t we?)

Creating the beauty of the season is a matter of placing clean, bright lights precisely in place, lining the window with washable fire-resistant faux-nettles, and hanging germ-free antimicrobial cloth garland over the balcony in a way that perfectly accents the blue in the rails. Charles was a dear for sanding them, by the way. I know he did not find any termites but it’s possible the termites escaped, isn’t it? Perhaps the entire rail should be replaced?

Besides the cheer these decorations bring to the hearts of the children of this apartment complex, I have always appreciated the eighty-dollar rent deduction the first place prize always brought. Last year, I used the extra money to purchase a tarpaulin for my living room floor—a once-over with bleach kills the bacteria that falls from the ceiling while I am sleeping at night. This year has been tough, and I was hoping to be able to afford another set of acid-free storage bags for my summer clothes.

Obviously, you cannot imagine my shock and disappointment when Sandra McCloskey in Apartment 3-B won first prize.

Sandra McCloskey placed a tree on her balcony, a real tree that affects my real pine allergies. She “decorated” the tree with strings of popcorn, which attract birds that sit on her unwashed balcony ledge—birds that proceed to defecate, I can only assume, on her balcony rail. Additionally, Sandra McCloskey (I think we can speculate that she is not a Christian woman) invested in one hundred blue icicle lights, which she did not consider cleaning before nailing them at unevenly spaced intervals to her overhang. I saw her take those lights directly from the box and hang them. I watched her do this.

Miss Telesco, this loss is not a matter of pride for me—at this point, it is a matter of my health and safety. Though my contest entry perfectly blended the purity of artistic expression with the sanctity of an antimicrobial environment, I can understand your position as impartial judge, perhaps wishing to reach out to the younger, pine-loving crowd that has so recently flooded into our quiet home. However, I think it would not be beyond your power to ask Sandra McCloskey to remove her “decorations” at the earliest possible convenience. She’s had her fun, she’s won her prize. Let her spend the money on tainted meat and ineffective coconut-scented soaps. All I ask is that, in future competitions, you not allow her menace to continue before the eyes of the world, and of God.

Happy New Year!

Helen Sands

VULTURES

The vultures were everywhere. On the local news, the meteorologist speculated calmly after his seven-day forecast that the vultures were eating moss by the river. They weighed down trees and circled over the town.

I found Brenda looking at the sky when I came back from hauling boxes to the trash bins behind the daycare.

“They’re over the baseball diamond behind the high school,” she said, “three blocks away.” She shielded her eyes against the sun, watching.

“Everybody’s looking up these days,” I said.

“The radio says it’s good for the muscles in your neck,” Brenda said. Inside, the children had already begun to destroy the carton of Easter eggs we had hidden in the snack room.

* * *

At home, I told my boyfriend Toby that he had to come with me to Evelyn Merkel’s to mop her floors and fight the vultures.

“I don’t want to go anywhere near any vultures,” he said.

“It’s my money, then.”

“It would be your money, anyway. I’ve got some ideas,” he said. “I need time to put something together and I can’t waste it on vultures.”

“Fine,” I said.

* * *

Evelyn Merkel was wearing a housecoat with a nightgown underneath, and her hair was curled in rings that fell over her shoulders. She set her thin hand on Toby’s back and gave him a little push over the threshold.

“Out back,” she said.

Mrs. Merkel had a metal pole in the yard to hold up the clothesline and two vultures were chasing each other around it. They screeched and darted, beaks terrifying and open, showing sharp tongues. I couldn’t figure if they were playing or fighting. When Toby moved the curtains to the side, they turned at once and screamed at us. Mrs. Merkel tugged the curtain back over the window.

“I don’t want them knowing we’re in here,” she said. “Do you two want breakfast?”

“We already ate,” I said.

“What do you have?” said Toby.

She had English muffins and unsalted butter. Mrs. Merkel said she wanted to make orange juice but couldn’t due to the vultures monopolizing her citrus tree. Out back, the birds made frantic scraping noises against the metal pole.

Toby found a rake in the garage while I finished the dishes. Mrs. Merkel switched on a soap story. Toby stood at the door, gripping the rake with both hands. It was the old kind of rake, with a heavy metal bar at the end and tines that could aerate a lawn if you dragged it. On the television, strangers danced at a party.

“Don’t slam the door,” Mrs. Merkel said. “Don’t kill them.”

He laid his palm on the door. “These vultures are symbols,” he said.

“Wave that rake around and make some screech noises,” she said. “I don’t want you killing anything.”

One vulture was rooting around in the compost pile, and the other snapped at the clothesline and fell back.

“They’re big,” Toby said. He slid the door open.

Outside he danced around the vultures with his back to the wall. They shrieked and he swung the rake low to the ground, catching a long divot of grass and flinging it back to the door. Mrs. Merkel turned up the volume on the television and Toby took another swing, passing closer. The birds fell back in unison and took off running, rising. He leaned the rake against the wall and opened the glass door so violently that it smacked into the other side.

“For goodness sake,” Mrs. Merkel said.

* * *

Brenda invited me out to lunches on weekends because she wanted to be my friend. We drank ice water and watched the sky.