The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories

  “And those cardboard tampon applicators,” Mother said.

  “I’m never going to join the Cyclists,” Twidge said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Can I have dessert?”

  I called the waitress over, and Twidge ordered sugared violets.

  “Anyone else want dessert?” the waitress asked. “Or more primrose wine?”

  “I think it’s wonderful the way you’re trying to help your sister,” Bysshe said, leaning close to Viola.

  “And those Modess ads,” Mother said. “You remember, with those glamorous women in satin brocade evening dresses and long white gloves, and below the picture was written, ‘Modess, because . . .’ I thought Modess was a perfume.”

  Karen giggled. “I thought it was a brand of champagne!”

  “I don’t think we’d better have any more wine,” I said.

  The phone started singing the minute I got to my chambers the next morning, the universal ring.

  “Karen went back to Iraq, didn’t she?” I asked Bysshe.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Viola said there was some snag over whether to put Disneyland on the West Bank or not.”

  “When did Viola call?”

  Bysshe looked sheepish. “I had breakfast with her and Twidge this morning.”

  “Oh.” I picked up the phone. “It’s probably Mother with a plan to kidnap Perdita. Hello?”

  “This is Evangeline, Perdita’s docent,” the voice on the phone said. “I hope you’re happy. You’ve bullied Perdita into surrendering to the enslaving male patriarchy.”

  “I have?” I said.

  “You’ve obviously employed mind control, and I want you to know we intend to file charges.” She hung up.

  The phone rang again immediately, another universal. “What is the good of signatures when no one ever uses them?” I said, and picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Mom,” Perdita said. “I thought you’d want to know I’ve changed my mind about joining the Cyclists.”

  “Really?” I said, trying not to sound jubilant.

  “I found out they wear this red scarf thing on their arm. It covers up Sitting Bull’s horse.”

  “That is a problem,” I said.

  “Well, that’s not all. My docent told me about your lunch. Did Grandma Karen really tell you you were right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gosh! I didn’t believe that part. Well, anyway, my docent said you wouldn’t listen to her about how great menstruating is, that you all kept talking about the negative aspects of it, like bloating and cramps and crabbiness, and I said, ‘What are cramps?’ and she said, ‘Menstrual bleeding frequently causes headaches and depression,’ and I said, ‘Bleeding? Nobody ever said anything about bleeding!’ Why didn’t you tell me there was blood involved, Mother?”

  I had, but I felt it wiser to keep silent.

  “And you didn’t say a word about its being painful. And all the hormone fluctuations! Anybody’d have to be crazy to want to go through that when they didn’t have to! How did you stand it before the Liberation?”

  “They were days of dark oppression,” I said.

  “I guess! Well, anyway, I quit and now my docent is really mad. But I told her it was a case of personal sovereignty, and she has to respect my decision. I’m still going to become a floratarian, though, and I don’t want you to try to talk me out of it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  “You know, this whole thing is really your fault, Mom! If you’d told me about the pain part in the first place, none of this would have happened. Viola’s right! You never tell us anything!”

  Afterword for “Even the Queen”

  Over the years, a lot of people (mostly guys) have asked me, “Where did you get the idea for “Even the Queen”? And I usually say something like “You’re kidding me, right?” Or “Wish fulfillment, pure wish fulfillment.”

  But it was actually more complicated than that. The initial idea came from several places. The first was those “Modess, because . . .” ads I talk about in the story. As a kid, I loved those ads because they had full-page photos of women wearing long white gloves and gorgeous evening gowns by Schiaparelli and Yves St. Laurent.

  I used to cut those pictures out and put them in a scrapbook. They seemed to me to epitomize glamour. Just like the women in the story, I had no idea what “Modess” was. I assumed it was a brand name for a perfume, or for a brand of jewelry, like Tiffany. I still remember the shock and betrayal I felt when I finally figured it out. (For you guys out there, think Ralphie and the Little Orphan Annie / Ovaltine decoder ring episode.)

  The second place “Even the Queen” came from was something my grandmother had said to me. As a teenager, I had a thing for Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and the “olden days” when girls got to wear long skirts and petticoats, and one day I was waxing rhapsodic about how much fun it must have been to have lived back then, and my grandmother said, “I have two words for you: Kleenex and tampons.”

  The third was a conversation I had in an elevator at Clarion West with some of my students. Everyone in the elevator was female, and somebody asked if anybody had any ibuprofen she could borrow for her cramps, and a lively discussion ensued in which we all agreed that if guys had periods, the person who’d invented ibuprofen would have been a cinch to win the Nobel Prize.

  But the episode that really convinced me I needed to write about this came when I was on a panel at a certain feminist science-fiction convention that shall remain nameless. (You know who you are.) I don’t remember what the panel was about, but I do remember that one of the panel members said that women only thought of their menstrual cycle as a “curse” because the male-dominated patriarchy had taught them to, and that left on their own, women would welcome and embrace their menses.

  I thought then (and think now) that this was one of the most idiotic things I had ever heard. In the first place, no one had had to say anything to me to make me despise menstruation, and in the second, nobody in my generation ever called it “the curse.” Yet when I finally encountered the term (probably in one of those olden days / long skirts books I was always reading), I thought the name was perfect.

  After the panel, I did some research and found out this theory was not just the ravings of one lunatic but actually pretty common in feminist circles, and then I talked to every young woman I could find (just in case attitudes had changed), and they were all as outraged and/or gobsmacked as I had been. And horrified to learn that tampons hadn’t been around forever.

  Plus, some of my fellow women science-fiction writers had been on my case because I wrote stories about time-travelers and old movies and the end of the world instead of writing stories about “women’s issues.”

  So I decided to write one.

  THE WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH

  Cath refused to take the Tube.

  “You loved it the last time we were here,” I said, rummaging through my suitcase for a tie.

  “Correction. You loved it,” she said, brushing her short hair. “I thought it was dirty and smelly and dangerous.”

  “You’re thinking of the New York subway. This is the London Underground.” The tie wasn’t there. I unzipped the side pocket and jammed my hand down it. “You rode the Tube the last time we were here.”

  “I also carried my suitcase up five flights of stairs at that awful bed and breakfast we stayed at. I have no intention of doing that, either.”

  She wouldn’t have to. The Connaught had a lift and a bellman.

  “I hated the Tube,” she said. “I only took it because we couldn’t afford taxis. And now we can.”

  We certainly could. We could also afford a hotel with carpet on the floor and a bathroom in our room instead of down the hall. A far cry from the—what was it called? It had had brown linoleum floors you hadn’t wanted to walk on in your bare feet, and you’d had to put coins in a meter above the bathtub to get hot water.

  “What was the name of that place we staye
d at?” I asked Cath.

  “I’ve repressed it,” she said. “All I remember is that the tube station had the name of a cemetery.”

  “Marble Arch,” I said, “and it wasn’t named after a cemetery. It was named after the copy of the Roman arch of Constantine in Hyde Park.”

  “Well, it sounded like a cemetery.”

  “The Royal Hernia!” I said, suddenly remembering.

  Cath grinned. “The Royal Heritage.”

  “The Royal Hernia of Marble Arch,” I said. “We should go visit it, just for old times’ sake.”

  “I doubt if it’s still there,” she said, putting on her earrings. “It’s been twenty years.”

  “Of course it’s still there,” I said. “Scummy showers and all. Do you remember those narrow beds? They were just like coffins, only at least coffins have sides so you don’t roll off.”

  The tie wasn’t there. I started taking shirts out of the suitcase and piling them on the bed. “These beds aren’t much better. It makes you wonder how the British have managed to reproduce all these years.”

  “We seemed to manage all right,” Cath said, putting on her shoes. “What time does the conference start?”

  “Ten,” I said, dumping socks and underwear onto the bed. “What time are you meeting Sara?”

  “Nine-thirty,” she said, looking at her watch. “Will you have time to pick up the tickets for the play?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The Old Man won’t show up before eleven.”

  “Good,” she said. “Sara and Elliott can only go Saturday. They’ve got something tomorrow night, and we’ve got dinner with Milford Hughes’s widow and her sons Friday night. Is Arthur going with us to the play? Did you get in touch with him?”

  “No, but I know the Old Man’ll want to go. What are we seeing?” I asked, giving up on the tie.

  “Ragtime, if we can get tickets. It’s at the Adelphi. If not, try to get The Tempest or Sunset Boulevard, and if they’re sold out, Endgames. Hayley Mills is in it.”

  “Kismet isn’t playing?”

  She grinned again. “Kismet isn’t playing.”

  “Which tube stop does it say for the Adelphi?”

  “Charing Cross,” she said, consulting the map. “Sunset Boulevard’s at the Old Vic, and The Tempest’s at the Duke of York. On Shaftesbury Avenue. You could get the tickets through a ticket agent. It would be a lot faster than going to the theaters.”

  “Not on the Tube, it won’t,” I said. “It’s a snap to go anywhere. And ticket agents are for tourists.”

  She looked skeptical. “Get third row if you can, but not on the sides. And no farther back than the dress circle.”

  “Not the balcony?” I asked. The farthest, highest seats had been all we could afford the first time we were here, so high up all you could see was the tops of the actors’ heads. When we’d gone to Kismet, the Old Man had spent the entire time leaning forward to look down the front of the well-endowed Lalume’s Arabian costume through a pair of rental binoculars.

  “Not the balcony,” Cath said, sticking the guidebook in her bag. “Put it on the American Express, if they’ll take it. If not, the Visa.”

  “Are you sure the third row’s a good idea?” I said. “Remember, the Old Man nearly got us thrown out of the upper balcony the last time, and there wasn’t even anybody else up there.”

  Cath stopped putting things in her bag. “Tom,” she said, looking worried. “It’s been twenty years, and you haven’t seen Arthur in over five.”

  “And you think the Old Man will have grown up in the meantime?” I said. “Not a chance. This is the guy who got us thrown out of Graceland five years ago. He’ll still be the same.”

  Cath looked like she was going to say something else, and then began putting stuff in her bag again. “What time is the cocktail party tonight?”

  “Sherry party,” I said. “They have sherry parties here. Six. I’ll meet you back here, okay? Or is that enough time for you and Sara to buy out the town and catch up on—what is it?—three years’ gossip?”

  I’d seen Elliott and Sara last year in Atlanta and the year before that in Barcelona, but Cath hadn’t come with me to either conference. “Where are you doing all this shopping?”

  “Harrods,” she said. “Remember the tea set I bought the first time we were here? I’m going to buy the matching china. And a scarf at Liberty’s and a cashmere cardigan, all the things we couldn’t afford last time.” She looked at her watch again. “And I’d better get going. The traffic’s going to be bad in this rain.”

  “The Tube would be faster,” I said. “And drier. You take the Piccadilly Line to Knightsbridge, and you’re right there. You don’t even have to go outside. There’s an entrance to Harrods right in the tube station.”

  “I am not maneuvering shopping bags up and down those awful escalators,” she said. “They’re broken half the time. Besides, there are rats.”

  “You saw one mouse in Piccadilly Circus one time, and it was down on the tracks,” I said.

  “It’s been twenty years,” she said, coming over to the bed and deftly pulling my tie out of the mess. “There are probably thousands of rats down there now.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck presenting your paper.” She grabbed up an umbrella. “You take the Tube,” she said, going out the door. “You’re the one who’s crazy about it.”

  “I intend to,” I called after her, but the lift had already closed.

  In spite of Cath’s dire predictions, the Tube was exactly the same as it had been twenty years ago. Well, maybe not exactly. There were ticket machines now, and automated stiles that sucked up my five-day pass and spat it out to me again. And most of the escalators were metal now instead of wooden. But they were as steep as ever, and the posters for musicals and plays that lined them had hardly changed at all. Kismet and Cats had been playing then. Now it was Showboat and Cats.

  Cath was right—I did love the Tube. It’s the best underground system in the world. Boston’s “T” is old and decrepit, Tokyo’s subway system is a sardine can, and Washington’s Metro looks like it was designed as a bomb shelter. The Métro’s not bad, but it has the handicap of being in Paris. BART’s in San Francisco, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

  The Tube goes everywhere, all the way to Heathrow and Hampton Court and beyond, to obscure suburban stops like Cockfosters and Mudchute. There’s a stop at every tourist attraction, and it’s impossible to get lost.

  But it isn’t just an efficient way of getting from the Tower to West-minster Abbey to Buckingham Palace. It’s a place in itself, a wonderful underground warren of tunnels and stairs and corridors, as colorful as the billboard-sized theater posters on the walls of the platforms, as the maps posted on every pillar and wall and forking of the tunnels.

  I stopped in front of one, studying the crisscrossing green and blue and red lines. Charing Cross. I needed the gray line. What was that? Jubilee.

  I followed the signs down a curving platform and out onto the east-bound platform. A train was pulling out. An LED sign above the tracks said next train 6 min. The train started into the narrow tunnel, and I waited for the blast of wind that would follow it, pushing the air in front of it as the train disappeared.

  It came, smelling faintly of diesel and dust, ruffling the hair of the woman standing next to me, rippling her skirt. Next train 3 min., the sign said.

  I filled the time by watching a pair of newlyweds holding hands and reading the posters on the tunnel walls for Sunset Boulevard and Sliding Doors and Harrods. “A Blast from the Past,” the one on the end said. “Experience the London Blitz at the Imperial War Museum. Elephant and Castle Tube Station.”

  “Train approaching,” a voice said from nowhere, and I stepped forward to the yellow line.

  The familiar mind the gap sign was still painted on the edge of the platform. Cath had always refused to stand anywhere near the edge. She had stood nervously against the tiled wall as if she expected the train to suddenly leap off the tracks and
plow into us.

  The train pulled in. Right on time, shining chrome and plastic, no gum on the floor, no unknown substances on the orange plush seats.

  “I beg your pardon,” the woman next to me said, shifting her shopping bag so I could sit down.

  Even the people who rode the Tube were more polite than people on any other subway. And better read. The man opposite me was reading Dickens’s Bleak House.

  The train slowed. “Regent’s Park,” the flat voice announced.

  Regent’s Park. The last time we were here, the Old Man had shouted “To the head!” and vaulted off the train at this station.

  He had been taking us on a riotous tour of Sir Thomas More’s body. We had gone to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels, and Cath, reading her Frommer’s England on $40 a Day while we stood in line, had said, “Sir Thomas More is buried in the church here. You know, A Man for All Seasons,” and we had all trooped over to see his grave.

  “Want to see the rest of him?” the Old Man had said.

  “The rest of him?” Sara had asked.

  “Only his body’s buried there,” the Old Man had said. “You need to see his head!” and had led us off to London Bridge, where More’s head had been stuck on a pike, and the Chelsea garden, where his daughter Margaret had buried it after she took it down, and then off to Canterbury, with the Old Man turned around and talking to us as he drove, to the small church where the head was buried now.

  “Thomas More’s Remains: The World Tour,” he had said, driving us back at breakneck speed.

  “Except for Lake Havasu,” Elliott had said. “Isn’t that where the original London Bridge is?” And when the annual conference was in San Diego, the Old Man had roared up in a rental car and hijacked us all on an overnight jaunt to Arizona to see it.

  I couldn’t wait to see him. There was no telling what wild sightseeing he had in mind this time. This was, after all, the man who had gotten us thrown out of Alcatraz.

  He hadn’t been at the last four conferences—he’d been off in Nepal for the first one and finishing a book the last three—and I was eager to hear what he’d been up to.