The True Meaning of Smekday

  “They put it on my neck. With some kind of mole gun,” Mom said, nodding to herself.

  “But…why?” I asked. “Why would a race of…of intelligent beings travel across the galaxy just to give people moles?”

  Mom looked a little hurt. “I don’t know. How should I know? But it wasn’t there yesterday! You have to admit it wasn’t there yesterday.”

  I looked at it, trying to remember. But who remembers a mole?

  “Oh, Turtlebear, you believe me, don’t you?”

  Let me tell you what I didn’t say. I didn’t say it was all a bad dream. I didn’t say she’s been working too hard and eating too much cheese right before bed. I didn’t tell her for the fiftieth time that I wished she didn’t take those pills to help her sleep.

  What I did say was I believed her, because that was how things worked in our house. When she’d return from the grocer’s where she worked with a bundle of spoiled meat she’d saved from the Dumpster, I’d tell her it looked delicious. Then I’d throw it away. When I’d get home from school and find she’d blown our savings on an eight-hundred-dollar vacuum she’d bought from a door-to-door salesman, I’d tell her how great it was. Then I’d get on the phone and get our money back. I said I believed her about the aliens.

  “Thank you, Turtlebear. Sweet girl,” she said, hugging me tight. “I knew you would.”

  Maybe I should explain about the whole “Turtlebear” thing. It’s a family nickname, apparently, going way back. My birth certificate says “Gratuity Tucci,” but Mom’s called me Turtlebear ever since she learned that “gratuity” didn’t mean what she thought it did. My friends call me Tip.

  I guess I’m telling you all this as a way of explaining about my mom. When people ask me about her, I say she’s very pretty. When they ask if she’s smart like me, I say she’s very pretty.

  “Sweet girl,” Mom whispered, rocking back and forth. I hugged her back, my face inches from that mole.

  There are companies that claim to make a greeting card for every occasion. If any of them are reading this, I couldn’t find a “Sorry all your friends deserted you after your alien abduction” card when I needed one.

  And poor Mom, she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She told everyone at the grocery store about the whole thing. Even the laundry folding. Especially the laundry folding, like it was a really important detail. I wonder now if the aliens didn’t do things like that on purpose, to make abductees sound more crazy.

  I was kidnapped by aliens and they made me fold laundry.

  I was abducted and the aliens made me clean their rain gutters.

  You see what I mean?

  So people stopped talking to her. Mom and the other ladies at the store usually went out together on Wednesdays for enormous margaritas served in ceramic sombreros. But one by one they made their excuses, and Mom suddenly had her Wednesdays free. One week she made me her spy, and I crept outside the Wall Street Taco Exchange and peeped through the windows. Sure enough, the grocery store ladies were there, swilling out of Mexican hats and laughing together. And I swear I could tell they were laughing about Mom.

  “Were they there?” she asked when I returned to the car. “You didn’t see them, right?”

  I slumped in my seat. “Right,” I said.

  It was another Wednesday, actually, when I noticed that the mole had changed. I know it was a Wednesday because it was Brownies-and-Movies-Wherein-Guys-Take-Their-Shirts-Off Night, which had replaced Margarita Night when it became clear that the grocery ladies would either have evening dentist appointments or unexplained family emergencies every Wednesday from now until the End of the World.

  The End of the World, of course, was only a few months away at this point. Even so that’s still a lot of dentist appointments.

  Anyway.

  So the brownies were made, and the leading man had just removed his shirt to go swimming, and I was playing with Mom’s hair when I saw it. The mole. It was easily twice as large, and a weird sort of purply color.

  I held my breath. “When…did this happen?” I asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “When did it get…like this?”

  Mom turned her head to look at me. “When did what get like what, Turtlebear?”

  “Your mole. It’s bigger,” I said, and I pressed my fingertip into it.

  Mom shot up from the floor, her face all tight and pinched.

  “You shouldn’t touch it,” she said flatly. “It’s not a toy.”

  I was a little offended. “I know it’s not a toy. Of course it isn’t. It’s gross. Who would want a gross toy? Well, maybe boys would, but that’s none of my business—”

  “Just don’t touch it,” Mom snapped, and tore off into the kitchen. And this is when, as she was walking away, I saw the mole glow. Just for a second. It was bright red, like a Christmas light.

  “Whoa!” I shouted after her. “Wait a minute!” I ran into the kitchen, and Mom turned to meet me.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she said. “I’m not really mad, I just—”

  “Shut up!” I said. “I have to tell you—”

  “Don’t you tell me to shut up. YOU shut up.”

  “Mom—”

  “I don’t like this behavior. You’re acting very weird…ly. Weirdly. Is it weird or weirdly?”

  “Mom, you have got to get that mole removed,” I said.

  “What? Why?” she said, looking confused. “What?”

  “It’s bigger than before, and it’s changed color,” I said. “Moles that change size and color, that’s like, a sure sign of cancer.”

  Mom began vigorously shaking her head. “I’m not going to let some quack hack me to pieces,” she said.

  “But a second ago I saw it glow!”

  There was a heavy silence in the kitchen. Mom looked at me like I had feet growing out of my head.

  “Glowing moles are definitely cancerous,” I added. I was pretty sure this was a lie, but I hate losing arguments.

  Mom hesitated. Then she reached up to her spine and touched the mole gingerly. She didn’t like what she found, I guess, because her hand snapped back and she began to shake her head again, violently, like she had swimmer’s ear. Like she was trying to shake a thought right out of her.

  “I’m the grown-up, and you’re the baby,” she said finally, and left the kitchen. It was how a lot of our fights ended. Not this time.

  “We can’t just ignore this,” I said slowly, sweetly. “We have to be brave and go to the doctor. Do you remember Dr. Phillips? You thought he was going to be scary, but everything turned out all—”

  “Jesus, Gratuity, stop talking to me like that,” said Mom, shooing me away. “This’ll work itself out.”

  I huffed. “Oh, yeah. What, like everything else does around here? Yeah, everything else works out, and you never have to worry or think about it or do a thing. But you know why this is different? Because I can’t fix it this time!”

  “Oh, Gra—Turtlebear, don’t—”

  “I need you to cooperate because I’m not a doctor yet, and I can’t take your mole to have it looked at without you attached to it, so I need you to just do as I say!”

  Mom just stood there in a door frame for a really long time looking angry, then something like sad, then angry again.

  “We’ll talk in the morning!” she said, and slammed the door. Only, our doors were cheap and lightweight and about as good to slam as a Wiffle ball is to hit.

  “Mom…” I sighed. “Mom, you’re—”

  The door opened again, and she brushed past me to the other end of the hall.

  “I knew it was your room,” she mumbled.

  The Shirtless Man Movie had clearly been ruined, so we both went to bed early. But I awoke three hours later on account of the twelve glasses of water I’d had before bed. After a few minutes I was seated at the computer.

  I turned it on. I forgot that ours was one of those computers that makes a sound like a choir saying “Ahh” when you turn it on.


  “Shh,” I hissed, pressing my hands over the speakers. “Stupid computer.”

  I peeked out into the hall. Lights off, no sounds. I settled back into my chair and started the web browser, and went to Doc.Com, one of those medical websites. It loaded a cover story about whooping cough, and a banner ad that suggested I ask my doctor if Chubusil was right for me, and then finally the part where I could enter Mom’s symptoms. I typed:

  mole changes size color

  After a moment, I added:

  glows

  and hit RETURN.

  The search turned up something like 140 articles, with names like “Do I Have Cancer?” and “Oh, No! Cancer?” and “Okay, So It’s Cancer, Now What?”

  Excited, I clicked on the best match and began to read. Maybe moles do glow, I thought. But the first item didn’t mention it. Neither did the second. I read five articles before realizing my search had only turned up results for the words mole, changes, size, and color, except for one that mentioned getting a “healthy glow” in an essay about tanning salons. No mention of glowing moles.

  You know that part in the story where the character thinks, I bet I didn’t really see a ghost after all. I bet it was just a sheet. Wearing chains. Floating through our pantry. Shrieking. I bet it was just my imagination. You know how you always kind of hate characters who think that? You hate them, and you know you’d never be so stupid not to know a ghost when you saw one, especially when the title of your story is The Shrieking Specter, for God’s sake, pardon my language.

  This is that part of the story.

  You see, the problem is, you don’t know you’re in a story. You think you’re just some kid. And you don’t want to believe in the mole, or the ghost, or whatever it is when it’s your turn.

  I decided then and there that the mole had not glowed. It was a trick of the light, or a hallucination, or smoke and mirrors, or any one of those things people say that are supposed to explain what happened but don’t. Anyway, I stopped believing the mole glowed. I had to.

  It didn’t matter, because I still believed the thing had changed size and color, and that was scary enough. I shut down the computer and crept back down the hall. Pig followed, purring and making little figure eights around my legs. She probably thought she was getting an early breakfast, and when I didn’t acknowledge her she meowed.

  For a moment I thought I’d been caught when I heard Mom’s voice from her bedroom. I froze in place, and her voice went on, one word, pause, one word, pause, like she was calling a bingo game. I couldn’t help but be curious, so I padded slowly to her bedroom door. It was ajar, and I put an ear to the crack.

  “Tractor,” said Mom.

  Tractor? I looked in.

  “Gorilla,” she continued, then, “Arancia…Domino…Emendare…Vision…Apparently…Mouse…”

  She was lying on her back, talking in her sleep. In English and Italian. And dreaming about the weirdest roll call ever.

  I listened a while longer, expecting her to stop, or to say something sensible. I don’t know much Italian, but I knew enough to realize the Italian-to-English dictionary wasn’t going to make any sense out of what I was hearing.

  “Lasagna,” said Mom.

  “Good night,” said I, and went back to bed.

  The next day I made Mom an appointment to see a dermatologist. The appointment nurse said they could have a look at her in about a month, and I was sort of politely rude about this, and after a really vigorous conversation she moved it up to next week.

  Next week. I’ll get her there somehow, I thought as I put down the phone; and I couldn’t have been happier, because I didn’t know Mom would be gone in four days.

  Let me just leap ahead those four days now, because there’s really nothing to say about them. They were filled with meals and sleep and arguments with Mom, as though she weren’t about to be taken, as though everything weren’t about to change. We went shopping, we wrapped presents, went to Mass, put up the white plastic Christmas tree. If my life were a movie, you could expect that musical montage of scenes right now, the kind lazy directors use to show time passing. You know: there would be a bunch of funny, short clips of Mom and me at the store trying on different outfits, funny hats, and now we’re trying to make eggnog, but the lid comes off the blender and the stuff splatters the walls and us, and we’re laughing, and now cut to us Christmas caroling outside someone’s house, but, whoops! they’re Jews, and all the while “Jingle Bell Rock” or something is playing. And the next thing you know, it’s four days later. It was Christmas Eve, in fact, but I don’t want to dwell on that. This isn’t a Christmas story. It’s a Smekday story.

  It was nighttime when it happened. I was in bed, but I wasn’t sleeping. I was just lying awake, listening to the noise of cars and people speaking too loudly on the street, and thinking about something. Okay, I suppose I was probably thinking about what I was going to get for Christmas the next day, and it was hard not to. Though I guess Mom was trying to be quiet in the living room, it was plainly obvious that she was still up, stuffing my stocking with candy and CDs and things, or wrapping a present. After a while the noises drifted off, and I think I did, too. I hadn’t been sleeping long, before I was startled awake by a big noise.

  Sckruuuup

  went the noise, from above, from up on the roof. And yes, for a moment I thought, Santa Claus? So sue me.

  I got very ’Twas the Night Before Christmas at this point as I stumbled to the window to see what had happened. That’s when I got my first glimpse: a huge accordion hose, like a vacuum cleaner attachment, swinging down from the roof and sailing off into the darkness. I looked up quickly to see what it was attached to, but I saw only a huge dark shape high in the sky. In its wake, every car alarm in the neighborhood wailed, and every dog barked.

  I heard Mom shout, “Cannoli!” from the living room.

  Then, “Earphones!”

  I ran out into the hall and stopped at the doorway.

  “Eggbeater!”

  Mom had fallen asleep stuffing my stocking. And she must have really fallen asleep, because she was still wearing the stocking up to her elbow. She was sitting on the floor, propped against the futon, bits of candy and ribbon spiraled around her.

  “Chessboard!”

  It probably goes without saying that she was chanting words like before. Only now she was shouting, red-faced, with her eyes shut tight.

  “Granata!”

  I crept, heart pounding, to her side, and got a good look at the mole. It was blinking, definitely blinking, purple and red and green, over and over and over.

  “Somewhat!”

  “Mom…?” I said.

  “Cookies!” she answered.

  “Mom! Mom, wake up!”

  “Annunciare!”

  I shook her arm, the one without the stocking on it, but her eyes stayed closed.

  “Mom!” I shouted.

  “Mom!” Mom shouted. I think this was just a coincidence.

  I don’t really remember everything else she yelled. I didn’t know I’d be asked to write it all down someday. Probably there were some nouns and verbs and things, there was definitely the name of a president but I don’t remember which one, and the brand of shampoo she liked. But I remember the last word. I remember the last word she said.

  “Zebra!”

  Then it was over. The words stopped coming. Her eyes didn’t open, but she sat quietly for a minute. I shook her again.

  “Mom…Mom…”

  She stood up. She stood up so quickly she pulled me with her. The mole was only purple now, no longer flashing. Just bright and steady, and I will hate the color purple for the rest of my life.

  I let go, and she walked through the kitchen to the back door. I thought she’d run right into it, but she calmly slid off the chain and turned the bolt, then stepped through to the fire escape. I followed, wishing I was wearing shoes. It was freezing outside.

  “Wh…where are we going?” I said, descending the stairs behind her. Onc
e on the street, I kept an eye on the ground, stepping gingerly around broken glass and garbage. Mom didn’t answer, but her purple mole stared down at me in an evil, purple way.

  I don’t know when I first noticed the humming. I think I’d been hearing it for a while, since before waking, even, but it was the sort of thing you could drown out, like cicadas in summer. But now as we walked, it grew louder. I knew without thinking that we were walking right toward it.

  “C’mon, Mom, time to go home. It’s C-Christmas Eve.” I gritted my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  “If you come home with me, I’ll make you eggnog. I’ll make you some special eggnog. With rum. Or…or vodka. With whatever’s in the bottle with the pirate on it.”

  We were walking toward the Oak Hill Cemetery. It was a good cemetery, the kind with high stone walls and fat mausoleums. Obelisks and statues of sad angels. Normally, Mom would never have set foot in there.

  And now, finally, I could see it. It was enormous, for one thing. Bigger than you’d expect, and then bigger still. It fell slowly through the air like a bubble. Like a bubble with tentacles. Like a snow globe the size of half a football field, with an underbelly covered in hoses. Suddenly it lit. Not with blinking lights like an airplane: it was like the globe was filled with a glowing gas, pale yellows and greens. And purples. And inside the globe were smaller globes, and layers of platforms and shapes, and on those…possibly…tiny figures moving.

  But no: this isn’t working. By describing the ship, I’m making it seem less than it was, and that’s a sin.

  It was terrible. And it was wrong. Just looking at it felt like losing. It was the great flying monstrous humming end of the world.