LEST LEVITATION COME UPON US.
Suzette Haden Elgin.
Suzette Haden Elgin is a linguist, writer, and folk singer known both for her science fiction and fantasy novels and her tall tales and musical performances at fantasy conventions. Some of her best fiction suggests her concern with feminism in a style free of rhetorical jargon, as with this witty and, perhaps, subversive tale in which the wife of a prominent lawyer discovers to her dismay that she seems to have become a saint, miracles and all. As her miracles become gaudier and seem likely to hurt her husband"s prominence, she decides something must be done about them.
If it had been only her circ.u.mstances, her own convenience, only her own self to be considered, Valeria thought she might in fact have been able to manage. There would have been adjustments and accommodations, but she was a woman; and, accustomed as all women are to adjustments and accommodations, she would have coped somehow. If nothing else, she could have let a tale be leaked, one bit of trivia at a time ... little note cards in a spidery hand with weak excuses on them, and the word going round of a chronic disease. Nothing fatal, and nothing ugly; but something that would have made coming by to see her a ch.o.r.e to avoid, while at the same time explaining why she was never seen in public anymore. And pretty soon she would have been forgotten, one of those enigmatic and eccentric Southern ladies with a decomposing corpse to protect in the cupboard ... the teenager who delivered her paper, and the elderly man who could still be hired to deliver groceries if the order was kept to just a bag or two, they would have set things down on her front porch and made hasty tracks. For fear of what they might see behind Valeria Elizabeth Carterhasty"s spotless white curtains.
But it was not like that, as she was no longer a Carterhasty, nor could she consider her own self. She was much-married, mother of three, wife to Julian B. Cantrell, up-and-coming attorney-at-law, and consideration of self was far down the list of her priorities, somewhere below keeping the flea collars up to date on the requisite dog and pair of Siamese cats. Clearly, she was going to have to think of some way to deal with this inexplicable affliction an unknown deity had seen fit to visit upon her.
That Julian had been furious the first time it happened seemed to her entirely reasonable; after all, a lawyer does not maintain a practice at $100,000 a year and support a family without maintaining a certain image. The elegant home, with the redwood deck. The pleasant wife with the knack for noncontroversial conversation. The matched set of well-groomed and well-behaved children, each with a hobby that might in time become a profession. Daryl, with his microscope and his white mice. Philip, with the ranks of labeled s...o...b..xes each containing an electronic something-or-other, and the l.u.s.t for a personal computer-even without a printer-that Julian sternly refused to satisfy. "When you have earned and saved half the money for it, I"ll match that with the other half, young man." That was Julian"s way. And Charlotte. With Charlotte it was ballet. Charlotte had not really wanted to take up ballet ... had wanted to go into baton-twirling, actually ... but when it was explained to her that there would be a problem making that fit into Daddy"s image, she had sighed, and exchanged glances with her mother, and gone dutifully into the ballet cla.s.ses as requested. Whether she ever took out the wooden baton with the gold dust and the red ta.s.sel and the cheap silver cord, won at a carnival and put away in her closet, Valeria did not know and was careful not to ask.
They had been at the Far Corner, she and Julian and a Mr. and Mrs. Tabbitt from Memphis, right between the c.o.c.ktails and the trip to the salad bar, and Valeria had known Julian was satisfied by the way things were going. He"d leaned back a little in his chair, and the tension in his hands that came from trying to quit smoking had relaxed a bit. The light was dim enough to make everyone look attractive, but not so dark you couldn"t see what you were eating, and the Muzak was doing "Rhapsody in Blue," when it happened. Mr. Tabbitt ... Wayne? ... she thought he had been a Wayne ... had leaned forward and peered at her, his eyebrows a little vee of intense interest, and remarked that however she achieved the effect it was surely very becoming. And when she"d asked what effect, he had said that he was talking about the way she glowed.
"Glow? Do I?" Valeria had turned to Julian and pointed out how nice it was of Mr. Tabbitt to pay her the compliment, and found him staring at her too, and all the relaxation replaced by the kind of tight-strung attention he paid to juries he wasn"t sure of yet.
"It must be the light in here," he"d said slowly.
"Must be," agreed the Tabbitts, especially Mrs. Tabbitt, whose name Valeria could no longer remember.
"It would have to be," Julian added. "I wonder how they do it? They should make a fortune at it."
Valeria sat there, fiddling with her gla.s.s, wondering; and the murmurs from behind their table began to work their way through to her conscious attention. And about that time the rose petals started falling, and that was really the last straw. Julian was a patient man ordinarily, for the stress that he was under, but he took her out of there as fast as if she"d thrown up on the table, and the Tabbitts not only didn"t give him their malpractice suit to handle, they were practically at a full run by the time they reached the parking lot.
Julian"s main concern, after the loss of the Tabbitts, had been for the publicity.
"How the h.e.l.l are we going to keep it out of the papers?" he had demanded, handing her brusquely into their Mercedes in a way that made her elbow ache and coming very close to slamming the door on her white silk skirt. She only just managed to s.n.a.t.c.h it free in the nick of time.
"Keep what out of the papers, Julian?"
"Oh, come on, Valeria!"
"Sweetheart, if you don"t look at the road once in a while I don"t see how you can drive-it can"t be a good idea."
"Well, d.a.m.n it, Valeria, just look at yourself! Go on-look at you!"
She had held her arms out in front of her, obediently, and sure enough, she did glow. Not just the rosy glow of health, or the metaphorical glow that came from the right sort of cosmetics and a good hairdresser. You could have read a newspaper by her.
"My goodness," she said. "How embarra.s.sing for you ... I"m sorry, Julian."
"Yeah." Julian swerved viciously around a dog that wasn"t bothering anybody. "Your goodness. What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is going on with you, anyway?"
Well, she didn"t know, so far as that went. What it reminded her of more than anything else was one of those white plastic statues of Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild, that came for $6.98 from a radio station that broadcasts all night long from the very depths of Texas. The statue, according to the preacher hawking it, not only glowed in the dark with the light of Truth and the light of Salvation and the everlasting light-provided you put the batteries in, presumably-it also could be made to revolve slowly on its stand. Valeria was grateful that she was not revolving, either slowly or in any other manner. But the glow was really in very bad taste. It was not soft, it was bright, and it was the same shade of gold as the stuff glued to the top of her daughter"s carnival baton. And it spread out from her skin to a distance of a good two inches or so.
Tacky, thought Valeria, and brushed off a rose petal that Julian had missed while he was hustling her out of the restaurant.
"My dear," she said, genuinely concerned because she could see that he was, "you don"t need to worry about the papers. Really."
"I don"t, eh? I suppose you think people are used to going out for a quiet dinner in an expensive restaurant and seeing the woman at the next table light up like a d.a.m.ned Christmas tree, not to mention having rose petals rain down on her from the ceiling. For G.o.d"s sake, Valeria ... I mean, the people who go to the Far Corner are reasonably sophisticated, but they won"t have seen that number before."
"Julian."
"What, Valeria? What?"
"It won"t be in the papers," she said.
"The h.e.l.l it won"t."
"It won"t," she insisted.
"One reason why not, Valeria-just one!"
"Because, when people see something like that, they won"t admit it. Not to each other, not to themselves ... not to the papers. By the time they"ve all finished eating they"ll be convinced they didn"t see anything at all, or they"ll think it was a stunt for my birthday with the waiters throwing roses at me or something. I a.s.sure you."
"You think so?"
"Julian, if any of those people were to suddenly look up and see an angel, twenty feet tall and with a wingspread like a 747, you know what they"d say? "Biggest d.a.m.ned bird I ever saw," that"s what they"d say. And then they"d order another strawberry daiquiri."
"You really think-"
"I really do, dear heart. There"s absolutely nothing for you to worry about. Even the Whatsits-"
"Tabbitts. They were a d.a.m.ned good case, Valeria."
"Even the Tabbitts ... they won"t be three blocks away before they"ve convinced themselves they didn"t see anything either."
She saw the tightness go out of his shoulders. She patted his hand, and waited.
When they pulled into the driveway he finally asked her, tentatively, if she could-maybe-explain it.
"No, Julian," she said calmly, "I"m afraid I can"t. But I"m sure it won"t happen again."
"Like those stories you read about it raining frogs."
"Something like that."
Valeria was quite wrong. It happened over and over again. The children didn"t appreciate rose petals in their breakfast pancakes when it happened while she was cooking. Julian set out for her logically the reasons why, since he differed from almost every other American husband by not snoring, it was unfair and unreasonable for her to keep him awake by glowing at him in the dark. Her protests that she had no control over it at all, and no warning either, didn"t help matters, and Julian suggested to her that she stay home as much as possible until they could work something out.
She was at home when the cookies thing occurred. It was Charlotte"s turn to have Camp Fire Girls, and Maryann Whipple"s mother was supposed to have sent the refreshments; but, Mrs. Whipple being the sort of woman she was (not Maryann"s fault, and a nicer child you couldn"t have asked for), there weren"t nearly enough cookies to go around. There Valeria was with a plate of cookies-store-bought, too, and not a bakery, either-with only one dozen cookies on it. And seventeen Camp Fire Girls holding gla.s.ses of Kool-Aid and looking at her expectantly.
She had just opened her mouth to excuse herself, meaning to go to the kitchen and see what she had in her cooky jar, when she heard Charlotte make a funny little strangled noise and cover it with a cough.
"Oh, how nice of your Mama!" the child said-she was one quick thinker, was Charlotte-and before Valeria could say anything to confuse the issue, Charlotte had whisked the plate out of her hands and was pa.s.sing it around just as bland as you please. If any of the girls had seen the one dozen nondescript lemon supermarket cookies on that plate suddenly become a pyramid of dainty little cakes, each one with its own icing and its own trim of chopped nuts or candied cherries or silver sprinkles, that girl hadn"t mentioned it. So far as Valeria knew, it was just herself and Charlotte who had seen it happen, and Mrs. Whipple would never remember that she"d sent a plain white plate and gotten back good china with a narrow rim of gold, and that made two things to be thankful for.
"Really, Mother!" Charlotte had said, when the door closed behind the last of the Camp Fire Girls. "Really!"
"You handled it very well, dear, I must say," said Valeria. "I was impressed."
"Thank you, Mother," said Charlotte, tight-lipped and fuming, her arms folded over her chest just exactly like Julian.
"Charlotte," Valeria chided, "that"s not attractive."
"I don"t care if it"s attractive or not!" wailed Charlotte. "Really, Mother-what are you going to do next???"
"Ah," said Valeria solemnly, "if I knew that, I would be much more comfortable about this whole thing. I could plan ahead, you see, if I knew that."
"And you think that is attractive?"
Valeria raised her eyebrows, thinking that Charlotte had more than a touch of the Cantrell temper from her father"s side, and that p.u.b.erty was going to be a storm-tossed sea for the child, but she said nothing. She only looked, until the girl"s eyes dropped and a high flush spread over her cheeks.
"I"m sorry, Mother," said Charlotte. "That was sa.s.sing, and it was uncalled for. I know you don"t do it on purpose."
"I surely don"t," Valeria answered.
"Can you stop, do you think? I mean, that"s not sa.s.s, Mama, it"s just that I want to know. Do you think you can?"
Valeria sighed.
"I think it will stop of itself," she said slowly. "The way everybody around a town sees UFO"s or hears mysterious thumps or something for a week or two ... and then it just stops. Provided you don"t pay a lot of attention to it."
"And if it doesn"t stop?"
"Well! If it doesn"t stop, then I will have to get some son of help, naturally. We must wait and see."
She stayed home more and more that summer, and Julian went so far as to let the word get out that the doctor thought she might be just a touch anemic and ought to stay in bed a good deal. But there were times when she really did have to go out, and no way to avoid it. When your next-door neighbor is in labor, and there"s not a single soul around to take her to the hospital, and her husband"s away in Atlanta on business and her parents clear off in California ... might as well be on the moon as be in California ... ! Well. Valeria had yet to see the day when she would send a woman off to the maternity ward in a taxi, always supposing they could have gotten a taxi, which was not anything you could have counted on. Before it was over she was to wish fervently that she had called an ambulance, or delivered the baby herself (which would have been no great shucks, though the mere suggestion had nearly sent the mother into hysterics); but at the time, her duty had been as clear to her as the freckles over the bridge of her nose. And she had bundled up Carol Sue and the suitcase and headed straight for Skyway Memorial without giving it one more minute"s thought-as would any other woman, under similar circ.u.mstances.
That time it did get in the papers. Never mind what people might have thought they did or didn"t see. The traffic helicopter that was doing the feature for the six o"clock news about the tangled mess at the intersection by the defense plant got pictures that had nothing to do with subjective impressions. There was the Mercedes, on the six o"clock news, and her, Valeria Carterhasty Cantrell, at the wheel, rising into the air every time there was a little bit of a knot in the traffic and just wafting right over it to the next empty s.p.a.ce before settling sedately back into the row of cars and their flabbergasted drivers.
It got them to the hospital in record time, and the inconvenient glow got them past the Admitting Office without one word about insurance or money, which had to be a first, but if it didn"t mark the baby it would be a miracle. And n.o.body was speaking to Valeria. Not her husband, not her children, not Carol Sue, not Carol Sue"s hus band (back from Atlanta) ... Carol Sue"s parents, flying in in great haste from California, had been threatening to sue until they learned that Julian was an attorney.
Julian once more had a good deal to say about last straws. Not divorce, of course; Cantrells did not divorce. Divorce, furthermore, would do nothing for his carefully made plans to move one day into the Governor"s Mansion. It could be added that he was truly fond of Valeria, and aware that she could not be easily replaced.
Valeria, who appreciated both his concern for her and his concern about her, came to the rueful conclusion that it was not just going to go away of itself as she had hoped, like a spree of UFO sightings. She would, she told Julian, do something about the problem.
"The problem."
She did not like the way he was looking at her; it had overtones of naming the problem, perhaps defining the problem. Valeria did not think that would be in Julian"s best interests.
"This afternoon," she said quickly. "I"ll see to it."
"How? What?"
"But right now, Julian, you are late for the Jaycees Luncheon. That Munic.i.p.al Center thing."
"G.o.d, I forgot all about it!"
"Well, you"d better go, dear, hadn"t you?"
"I"m not sure I have the guts."
"I beg your pardon, Julian?"
"I am going to hear one h.e.l.l of a lot about what they saw on the six o"clock news, Valeria. And the ten o"clock news. This time, it"s a horse of a different color. Television cameras do not imagine they see ... what they saw."
"Mmmmm."
"Valeria?"
"Julian," she said, tapping her lower lip with her finger, "I suggest that if they bring it up-which would be extraordinarily rude of them, I must say-you tell them that we are bringing suit against Mercedes for one million dollars. And another couple of million on behalf of Carol Sue and her baby."
Julian stared at her, and she could have sworn there was a flash of admiration in his eyes.
"I never would have thought of that, darling," he said, grabbing his briefcase.
He wouldn"t have, either. Valeria had explained to Charlotte, on the single occasion when the child insisted on knowing what was the matter with men, anyway, that they lacked motherwit; and that this was an inherent deficiency that could not be held against them.
"I don"t see why not," Charlotte fretted. "They could learn ... they learn law stuff and medical stuff and how to blow up the whole world, don"t they?"
"Not the same thing at all."
"What"s motherwit?"
"Motherwit is what makes you notice the messes men get themselves into, Charlotte Rose. And what gives you sense enough not to let on you notice."
"And to clean up the messes after them."
"Precisely. And we will never mention this again."
"Can I tell Judette McElroad? We"ve been best friends going on three years this March."
"No."
"Not even Judette? Mama!"
"Not even Judette. It"s up to Judette"s mother to tell her."
"Like the Curse."
"We do not say "the Curse," Charlotte. It"s tacky."