Fantastic Metropolis

Muriel left me, left us, I should say, on Monday. The tap in the kitchen sink sprang a leak, spewing a mist of cold water onto sheets I spread on the floor, and a hummingbird, furious that she’d forgotten to refill its feeder just outside, beat at the window again and again. By the time friends, family and mourners began arriving, Thursday around noon, preparations were almost complete.

First thing I did was draw up a schedule. Muriel would have been proud of me, I thought as I sat at the kitchen table with pen and a pad of her notepaper, water from the spewing tap slowly soaking into the corduroy slippers she’d given me last Christmas. Here I’d always been the improviser, treading water, swimming reflexly for whatever shore showed itself, while Muriel weighed out options like an assayer, made lists and kept files, saw that laundry got done before the last sock fell, shoehorned order into our lives. And now it was all up to me.

Somewhere between 16 and 20 on my list, the hummingbird gave up its strafing runs and simply hovered an inch from the glass, glaring in at me. They could be remarkably aggressive. Seventeen species of them where we lived. Anna’s hummers, Costa’s and black-chinned around all year,

Rufous, calliope and the rest migrating in from Mexico or various mountain ranges. In that way birds have, males are the colorful ones, mating rituals often spectacular. Some will dive 90 feet straight up, making sure sunlight strikes them in such a way that their metallic colors flare dramatically for females watching from below. These females are dull so as to be inconspicuous on nests the size of walnuts.

Muriel loved this place of cactus and endless sky, mountains looming like the world’s own jagged edge, loved the cholla, prickly pear, palo verde, geckos with feet spurred into the back of our windowscreens at night.

Most of all, though, she loved hummingbirds. Even drew a tiny, stylized hummer for stationery, envelopes and cards and had it silkscreened onto the sweatshirts she often wore as she sat in front of the computer, daily attending to details of the business (cottage industries, they used to call them) that kept us comfortable here.

That same hummer hovered silently in the upper left corner of the notepad as I inscribed 24.

I gave it a pointed beard and round glasses.

Favorite bird. Hummingbird. Favorite music. Wozzeck, Arvo Pärt’s Litany. Favorite color. Emerald green. Favorite poem. One by Dylan Thomas.

The tombstone told when she died.
Her two surnames stopped me still.
A virgin married at rest.

Memories of my father were also in mind, of course. The one who taught me. I was ten years old when it began, sitting on the floor in a safe corner with knees drawn up reading H.G. Wells, a favorite still. Suddenly I felt watched, and when I glanced up, Father’s eyes were on me. Good book? he asked. At that point I couldn’t imagine a bad one. Just that some were better than others. I lit the next one off the smoldering butt of the last. They all are, I told him. No, he said. A lot of them just make up things.

Mrs. Abneg spoke then. Charles: he’s too young, she said. Father looked at her. No. He’s ready. Earlier than most, I agree, but this is our son. He’s not like the rest. Mrs. Abneg ducked her head. The female must be dull so as to be inconspicuous on the nest.

And so I was allowed for the first time into my father’s basement workshop. I could barely see over the tops of the sinks, benches, the tilted stainless-steel table with its runnels and drains. Shelves filled with magical jars and pegboards hung with marvelous tools loomed above like promises I would someday keep.

That first session went on for perhaps an hour. I understood little of what my father said then, though whenever he asked was something or another clear I always nodded dutifully yes. Knowledge is a kind of osmosis. And soon enough, of course, our time together in the basement workroom fulfilled itself. Others found themselves shut out. For a time I wondered what Mrs. Abneg or my younger brother might be doing there up above, but not for long. Procedures and practicums, the rigors of my apprenticeship, soon occupied my full attention and all free time. I had far too much to do to squander myself on idle thoughts.

Just as now, I thought.

I set to work.

As I worked, I sang Wozzeck.

Drudgery goes best when attention’s directed elsewhere—not that pain and loss don’t nibble away at us then. Stopping only to feed or rest myself when I could go on no longer, shedding gloves like old skin, I performed as my father taught me. Handsaws, augers and tongs, tools for which there were no names, came into use. I tipped fluids from bright-colored decanters, changed gloves, went on.

She cried her white-dressed limbs were bare
And her red lips were kissed black

Wozzeck was the piece Muriel and I had decided on; with tutorials twice a week and daily practice, I’d got it down as well as might be expected. Not a professional job, certainly, but competent. I sang the parts in rotation, altering pitch and range as required, hearing my own transformed voice roll back from the cellar’s recesses.

I’d never really understood painting, poetry, old music, things like that—opera least of all. Whatever I couldn’t weigh, quantify, plot on a chart, I had to wonder if it existed at all. I knew how important all this was to Muriel, of course. I’d sit beside her through that aria she loved from Turandot, “Nessun dorma,” or the second movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet watching tears course down her face. I’d see her put down a book and for a moment there’d be this blank look, this stillness, as though she were lost between worlds: deciding.

Often Muriel and I would discuss how we’d come together, the chance and circumspectness of it, other times the many ways in which, jigsawlike, our curves and turnings had become a whole. Then, teasing relentlessly, she would argue that, as an anthropologist, I was not truly a scientist. But I was. And who more alert to the place of ritual in lives?

I died before bedtime came
But my womb was bellowing
And I felt with my bare fall
A blazing red harsh head tear up
And the dear floods of his hair.

My father trained me well. I had not expected ever to bring my skills into practice so soon, of course. How could we have known? Officers appeared at the door just past noon. One was young, perhaps twenty, undergrowth of beard, single discrete earring, the other middle-aged, hair folded over to cover balding scalp. I was twelve. Answered the door wearing shorts and a T-shirt that read Stress? What Stress?! Mr. Abneg? the officers addressed me—so I knew. The older one confirmed it: Father was gone, he’d stepped unaware into one of the city’s many sinkholes. And so Mrs. Abneg became my responsibility. I took care of her, just as Father taught me. Fine workmanship. He would have been proud.

The skull must be boiled (Father said) until it becomes smooth as stone, then reattached.

This I accomplished with a battery-driven drill and eighteen silver pins from the cloisonnéd box my father passed on to me, his father’s before him. Singing Berg the whole while. I’d learned all my lessons well.

Legs must fall just so on the chair.

One arm at rest. The other upraised. Each finger arranged according to intricate plan.

Exacting, demanding work.

Fine music, though.

By Thursday Muriel looked more beautiful than ever before—I know this is hard to believe. That afternoon I lifted the wig from its case and placed it on her. Draped the blue veil across the preserved flesh of her chest. (I, too, can be practical, my dear, see? I can make plans, follow through, take charge. Do what needs be done. And finally have become an artist of sorts in my own right, I suppose.)

The doorbell rang.

Thank you all for coming.

Glasses clink. Steaming cups are raised. There is enough food here to feed the city’s teeming poor. I circulate among our guests, Uncle Van, Mrs. Abneg’s sister, cousins and nephews, close friends. Some, I can no longer speak to, of course. To others I present small boxes wrapped in bright paper: a toenail or fingernail perhaps, sliver of bone, divot of pickled flesh.

Yes. She looks beautiful, doesn’t she?

Outside, whispering, night arrives. No whispers in here, as family, friends and mourners move from lit space to lit space. They manipulate Muriel’s limbs into various symbolic patterns. Group about her. Pictures are taken.

It’s time, Muriel’s brother says, stepping beside me.

And I say, Please—as instantly the room falls quiet.

I want to tell you all how much I love her.

I want to tell you we’ll be happy now. Everything is in place.

I want to tell you how much we will miss you all.

Listen…

One day you’ll walk out, a day like any other, to fetch laundry, pick up coffee at the store, drop off mail. You’ll take the same route you always do, turn corners as familiar to you as the back of your hand, thinking of nothing in particular. And that’s when it will happen. The beauty of this world will fall upon you, push the very words and breath from your lungs. Suddenly, irrevocably, the beauty of this world will break your heart; and lifting hand to face, you will find tears there.

Those tears will be the same as mine, now.

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“Dear Floods of Her Hair” first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction and was reprinted in Time’s Hammers: The Collected Stories.