Sleight (9 page)

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D
rew told Lark he’d invited them to stay, but West—Drew didn’t know why anyone would name a child West—said he’d have to turn around once he got there, head back to York. Byrne, though, would be staying a week or two.

“You invited a stranger to stay in our home?” Lark wasn’t incredulous. Drew was an open book, their house an open house.

“Not
exactly
a stranger,” Drew tried to explain. “Clef called earlier—she sounds a little like you I think, sad like you—she said you knew West, and then West called from the train and vouched for the other one.”

“I know
of
West,” Lark said. It wasn’t yet clicking for her. “Why would this other one want to meet me?”

“Apparently,” Drew raised an eyebrow, “he has your book, and they’ll be at the station in a few hours.”

Lark shook her head. “I’ll kill her.”

“No, you won’t.” Drew stood up from the couch, pulled Lark into him. “Clef’s as rootless as you are. In weather, you help, she helps—sisters.”

“Can he stay in my room?”

“No, Nene. He’ll stay in here.”

“Can I sleep in here then?”

“No, Nene. You’ll stay in your own room. Everyone has their own room.”

“You and Daddy don’t.”

“No. That’s true. Daddy and I share a room. But you have your own room, and so will Byrne while he’s here. Take the pillowcase off that pillow for me, would you? Thank you. Why do you like this Byrne so much anyway?”

“He has a rock.”

“I saw that. But maybe you shouldn’t mention it.”

“Why?”

“Some people don’t like to talk about things like that.”

“Like rocks?”

“Yes, sometimes the things are like rocks.”

“I’m not supposed to talk about Newt.”

“Not with your teachers, no.”

“But Newt’s your daddy.”

“Yes he was.”

“And a scientist.”

“He and your grandmother both.”

“Why is he little if he was married?”

“Nene, I don’t know why you see the things you do. Newt was little once, not when I knew him, but once. Please don’t tug at the quilt like that. Why don’t you go down and see what Daddy and Byrne are doing?”

“Byrne thought I should be with you.”

“He said that?”

“No.”

Byrne spent the evening with Drew. When he had arrived, Lark had gone out for groceries with her daughter, then cooked for them—a lamb stew with curry and yellow tomatoes. After a subdued dinner, during which Byrne tried not to stare at her blue fingers, Lark had complained of a headache and gone to bed. Nene followed a few minutes later. For the second time since he’d arrived, Byrne was left alone with Drew, who was—though physically intimidating—a comfortable man. A large bald black to Byrne’s small slouching whiteness—Drew was practiced at putting at least one artist at ease, and Byrne eventually let himself relax. They watched a cop show together while finishing the wine from dinner, and during commercials Drew asked a few questions about sleight, proving less knowledgeable than Byrne. His interest didn’t feel like a test—he accepted the lapses in Byrne’s haphazard education without judgment. At eleven, after the alleged child molester suicided, throwing the white cop deep into a well of ambivalence, Drew led the way to the guest room. A few moments later he knocked on the door, and when Byrne opened it, Drew handed him a mint green bath towel, face towel, and washcloth, with a bar of shrink-wrapped glycerin soap dimpling the crest of the cotton pyramid.

The next day, Byrne took a long shower. He preferred the feel of rock against skin, so left the washcloth folded on the sink, guiltily—he didn’t wish to refuse any kindness in this house. He wandered down to the kitchen around nine. Nene was sitting at the table, sipping what looked like coffee.

“Cinnamon apple tea,” she said before he asked. “No caffeine.”

“Are your mommy and daddy around?”

Instead of answering, Nene took a bite of a sugar cookie that had suddenly emerged in a greasy hand from beneath the table. For a half second, Byrne had taken the cookie for dirty quartz. When she was done chewing, she said, “Daddy’s out in nature because it’s morning, and Mommy went to the kiosk to sell. There’s coffee in the French press. Have some.”

After fixing himself a cup, Byrne sat down across from Nene. She was a remarkably composed child. Her skin was lighter than her father’s, but not by much. Her roux-colored hair was braided into tight rows, each secured with a gold band. Her eyes were open and gray. A gray like smoke, not storm or muddy ice. She studied him too, without reserve.

“What was your daddy like?”

“Well … he wasn’t at all like your daddy.”

“Why wasn’t he?”

“I really don’t know.” Byrne grimaced, thinking. “Why do you want to know about my daddy?”

“Why do you want to know about my mommy?”

“I think I have some things to learn from her.”

“Because she hurts? Do you want to know why she hurts?”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

Nene abruptly stood and left the table. She banged through the screen door and out into the yard in an oversized cardigan and leggings. It wasn’t cold and Byrne could see her father through the window over the sink; nevertheless, he worried for her bare feet.

What Byrne had seen in Lark’s book during the trip down alarmed him. West had brought other diagrams of structures onto the train, both Revoix’s and those of other notable hands, so that Byrne could compare. West had said that all hands were somewhat unbalanced, that the ones Byrne had met in Oxford had been two of the more socially adept. “I used to blame it on their education,
¹⁶
but Lark seems to have similar difficulties, if not worse. Maybe,” West mused, “the education actually helps the hands retain and resemble normal—or feign it.” And maybe, thought Byrne, education homogenizes their work.

Compared to the others’, Lark’s structures leapt. Byrne watched them shoot above the page to the visual rhythm of trees passing the train—running backwards and away—some on fire, some with newly naked limbs outstretched. Napalm. Alternately florid and stark, each of Lark’s structures strived. That’s what it is, Byrne thought. Lark’s work crossed over—was synaptic. Her structures vaulted, though he didn’t know what stood across the gap, nor how much distance needed bridging, nor what she meant to leave behind.

Looking out the window of the train, Byrne had seen, along the tracks, baseball fields. So many baseball fields. And because of late October they were vacant. Trains, Byrne had thought, make an earlier America, make world film: windows framing the glinting day-ends, passengers as captive audience, entering gold. To be inside a train is to be inside a gap. Inside the illusion of forward. They, all of them—and Byrne had for the first time in three hours looked around him at sleeping students, laptop-lit businessmen, and women of a certain age drinking wine from the café car in doll bottles—they were chrysalides. All of them, someone else for hours.

Byrne’s head was light with thought. Maybe failure was sewn into such spaces: trains, bedrooms, the stage. In Lark’s book, failure was the Braille of every page. The other hands’ structures were more perfected, seamless. Theirs were relics, unearthed whole, while hers were prodded or drawn into defiant, living relief: needled.

West had watched Byrne’s squint and ponder. West had smiled out into the landscape, and West had slept some. West excused himself to visit the facilities. West came back. West asked Byrne, “Well?” Byrne had kept reading, kept waiting, expecting to arrive at a group of words that looked like a precursor, that would make him beside the point, but he didn’t. What he’d told West was, “I’m scared of her.” What he felt was—relieved.

¹⁶
Hands begin training at the academies and then complete their studies in research enclaves—small rural communes replete with libraries and (to the uninitiated) seemingly idiosyncratic equipment: telescopes, blenders, astrolabes, harps, magnets, etc. In 1986, George Hirsch attempted to infiltrate one such community as part of his doctoral dissertation in sociology. Made aware of the vast number of packages hands accrue during the course of their matriculation, he posed as a deliveryman. A fascinating record of his conversations with his subjects can be read in the book
Eight Weeks with the Seven Hands of Preble;
his work underscores the elitism and paranoia that accompany the development of hands.

NOTES FROM A LAPSED HAND.
¹⁷

When hands sit down to draw structures, each hand is its own—but common to holding, some notions follow:

It is good to draw on velum so that what is next appears as clouded-present rather than clear-present or blocked-present.

Many hands use tools—ruler string compass wedge whisk needle microscope. Other hands are not tool users, but arrive instead from an empty desk.

It is known that one note struck over and over facilitates (i.e., piano. i.e., alcohol. i.e., hymen.)

In a sleight more structures bind than tether.

Structures may be incidental, specific, remembered, fragmented, synthetic, grounded, or they may contain botulism.

Structures may be devised.

Structures may be taken in or let out for vision.

If a hand is beyond rules, no rules apply to that hand.

horsehead power = vulva power

Drawing, it is right to keep the sleightists always in mind as they are unique instruments.

It is unwise to allow the unique nature of instruments undue influence.

By thinner spreading cover acreage, by centrifuge. Work always toward the original contraction.

Never hound nor hind nor buckle.

Bring about world-inside-world. Bring about ax with pine. Reinvest spare.

Respect what you do not know about what you do: efficiency, sweatshop; fission, Hiroshima; church.

Lark was bruised. It was her state, bruising, blood welling up only to be blocked by membrane. Lark would’ve liked to let herself: dress in leeches, sate them, have them fall from her deceased. Leeches drank overmuch. She knew people like that: children. Children were feedings without end. But despite her daughter’s insatiability, Lark willingly fed Nene. This was one part of her love for her child. Nene used her up, and without use, Lark was too much herself.

Drew had never taken advantage. After and during sex, yes, he made her less there—and she was, happily. Lovemaking was for an act of subtraction. Drew knew when he was taking. In a way, Lark still wicked, was still performance; it didn’t matter how intimate the audience. But Drew had never taken from Lark simply because that was what she was there for. Her daughter Nene had. Animalized her. Lark was grateful for that which she could not withdraw from. She was proud of how, after initial thrash and refusal, she had succumbed to motherhood—almost like a mother would. Thankful for how her daughter had, those first dark months, bruised and gummed the mythic breast. Until it was only and again sore and sour flesh. Hers.

Byrne was at her house now, a strangely passive figure, primal weapon in hand. He had been waiting for nearly a week. He wanted something and he was patient: an unusual combination. Though disquieted, Lark was coming around—thinking it was somehow right to give. Nene adored this Byrne, but Lark wasn’t yet familiar. The idea of being perused frightened her—she was deeply uncomfortable with fingers, how they could open, how they read. But Byrne—what was he? A man. A man and his rock. Might he be as simply fed—as elegant—as a child or a parasite? She didn’t see how.

During his sixth morning in her home, Lark invited Byrne to watch her work. Drew was teaching Faulkner at the community college. Nene was off at pre-K. The windows were open—it was almost hot. Something outside was burning. It had been a warm fall. Lark drummed indigo fingers: he was taking too long.

She wouldn’t begin until Byrne came in. Her jars of hued dust were set out in order, but Lark had no Needs to show just now. All the Needs she’d killed were color. Before she’d brought up the last one, the one she’d offered to Clef, Lark had tried to assimilate it. To let it be in her until it was her. She was already a monster—why did she resist plurality? Perhaps because that Need wouldn’t go quiet. Instead, it had kept at her, saying there was more. More. Lark was so tired of wanting—killing was better.

Still no Byrne. Her jars were nervous as test tubes.

Lark’s father, Newton Scrye, had worked extensively with flies. Drosophila melanogaster. Red eyes. Her mother spent thirty years with diseased albino mice, red-eyed also. They had had their creatures, just like her, and killed them. The ten thousand deaths accomplished by her parents were made acceptable by crimson irises and an assurance of purpose. Because those deaths had been for knowing. Had been in the service of. Newton and Jillian Scrye’s daughter Lark killed less. She killed only Needs, and only eleven, and she couldn’t be certain they were actual. The difference: Lark killed in order not-to-know.

When Byrne finally got around to joining her, she would stain one Soul. That was it. She’d told him at breakfast that he could watch, and that because he’d been such a gracious guest, they could talk while she worked. She’d set a tall stool across the big desk. He would sit there where he could see, where she could.

After he slinked in and found his seat, Byrne watched Lark for a few minutes without speaking or moving. He sensed an edge. She had allowed him to examine the knot before she began: an elbow of locust branch. But she hadn’t called it a locust, she’d called it a funeral tree. There was a locust over his father’s grave—Byrne remembered the spiking vine that wormed beneath its fissured winter bark. And its black pods, long as his forearm, fallen, half hidden beneath a week-old snow. During Gil’s burial, he’d leaned toward the tree to snap off a six-inch thorn from its vine. He’d inspected it, wiped it against his trousers, then sharply jabbed it into the cramped flesh between his thumb and index finger, newly knotted from its first few days gripping stone. Byrne wasn’t glad for the memory.

“What is a Soul exactly?”

“Is this to be an interview then?” Lark mocked, slipping into a coy drawl she’d learned young. Though inexcusably tardy, Byrne was growing on her. It helped he had a deformity; a rock in the hand meant fewer available fingers.

“I guess. Sure.”

“Then I’ll say that a Soul is a vessel comprised of a unique combination of Needs. And that a Soul is a useless thing to buy. In fact, the idea of purchasing a Soul should disturb you. A person should earn a Soul, don’t you think? Or grow one?”

Byrne laughed without noise, the sobbed chuckle convulsing him. “You’re hysterical.”

“Yes. A century ago, I’m certain that would have been the diagnosis.” Lark’s tone had gone from taunting to arch in one sentence. As had her posture.

Byrne straightened up. She was confusing him. “Right. So … why do you think people buy Souls from you?”

“Why is God lazy?” Lark’s voice was a belle’s again.

“Is God lazy?”

“Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

“I submit that as proof of his laziness.”

Lark was massaging color into the small wooden bowl. She didn’t look up at Byrne when she spoke, but he watched a crooked smile walk across her face. She was playing him.

“You say Souls are made of Needs. I saw the Needs you drew. They weren’t color, they were form. And they were plural.”

“A Need …” Lark didn’t want to answer though there was no question. She pushed herself. “A Need is what makes you … you … anything … do anything.” She was losing control of her whimsy. She was embarrassed to find herself sounding sincere.

“It’s desire then?”

“No. A Need is … let me think.” She looked up at Byrne. “How’s your grammar?”

“It’s good.”

“Good. Then a Need is like an infinitive, a passive infinitive: to be impelled, to be induced. Or no, that’s not it.” Lark thought, then spoke her thinking, which was wrong—vulnerable—of her. “Desire is what
I
do. A Need does desire
to
me.”

“A Need is divine then? External?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God.” Lark had found her way back inside the banter. Was she perspiring? She touched her forehead with the back of her hand.

“But
you
do.”

“I most certainly do not.” Her hand came down. She wasn’t perspiring.

Lark held out the newly painted Soul for Byrne’s inspection. Its hurricane of greens. Byrne remembered a punchline from preadolescence,
a frog in a blender
—but this was bloodless. She was. He looked into Lark’s eyes, Irish with wrinkles, laughing and counting him. She made him feel young, like a young man. As if his skin were angry.

“Why is it you renounce them then?”

“Excuse me?” Lark, stunned. He’d hit something. She grew even taller in her chair, her vertebrae repelling one another. She tried to be scathing, fumbled it, seemed wounded. “Renounce—now there’s a religious word. And I’m not. I don’t. If anything, I
announce
the Needs. Announcing them fixes them, and they die for it.”

“‘Fixes them’?”

“I never wanted them to define me. And now, now I seem to be nothing but refusal.”

“There’s no escape for you then?” Byrne felt the need to catch her, pin her to some utterance. She irritated him—so few did. It was, he thought, her way of mocking herself, which mocked him better.

“I never tried to escape. I tried not to imprison them, but Needs die outside of incarceration. Outside of my body.” Lark passed her hand sadly over the Soul, as if it were a small grave or a black hat. She looked up. “Only their color doesn’t.”

She wasn’t hurting him, not really. And she looked like a bird now: sharp averted eyes, taut neck, instinct, arrow. Byrne tried to rescind. To be kind.

“The drawings you made look like sleight, you know. Like structures.”

“I do know.”

“Is that why you quit?”

“You mean, having found a way to rid myself of my Needs, did I then refuse to spend time inside their bodies writ large?”

“I guess that’s what I’m asking.”

“No. I quit because I was good, and when you’re good and a girl at something, you should be suspicious.”

“Of what?”

“Of what part of yourself you didn’t know you were selling.”
¹⁸

Lark read it. A dozen pages spilled over with words. She had asked Byrne to write her a precursor. She hadn’t thought. It was what he did and she wouldn’t. She’d never articulated the Needs like that. She had known that it wasn’t possible, but also—that there was too much power in it.

When Byrne returned from his walk, Lark’s daughter Nene was sitting cross-legged on his bed. A petite shaman. “Do you want to play cards again?” he asked her. And when she didn’t answer: “How about I teach you Egyptian Ratscrew?”

She shook her head. “What I want to know,” she spoke quietly, “is what you did to my mommy.” Nene leaned forward then and placed her head into her hands. She was so old, and her head such a sad gift. When she completed the fold, she was the size of a large turtle he’d seen across the lake an hour before. Byrne didn’t think she was about to cry—maybe because he couldn’t picture it. He sat down next to her but kept his hand and his rock to himself. She wasn’t the type of child one touched easily. She was the type of child who made one reconsider natural inclinations. As Byrne had come to know her over the past ten days, he’d started learning himself differently.

He tried to comfort her with an explanation.

“I just gave her some words.”

“Why would you do that?” Nene’s voice was muffled, spoken into her lap.

“She asked me to.”

The little girl’s head popped up. Hopefully. “She did?”

“Yes.”

“I want to see them then.”

“I don’t think they’ll make any sense to you.” Byrne knew Nene could read, better than any four-year-old he’d ever known. When he’d first arrived, she had been in the middle of the
World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook: 1972.
They had briefly conversed about ecology and the fourth estate. Her grasp of the concepts was rudimentary—no better than if she had been twelve.

“Newt’ll help.”

“Your grandfather?”

“He helps when things are hard for me.”

Byrne knew an adult shouldn’t encourage this type of delusion, but Nene talked about Newt guilelessly. And the stories were enchanted.

“But isn’t Newt a scientist?”

“He will be, when he’s older, before he died.”