The Best of Nancy Kress

  The five of them had just returned to the living room when Emily came in with her boyfriend, the Walker boy, both of them in jeans and sweaters, laughing. Emily’s dark hair had escaped its barrette and fallen around her face, thick and shining. She showed no reaction to finding an alien in her parents’ living room beyond a friendly smile. Sarah felt her heart swell. Her daughter was beautiful, and smart, and mannerly. She was very lucky in Emily. Some of her friends’ daughters had turned just impossible, but Emily was wonderful. George made the introductions.

  “Enjoying Princeton, Taylor?”

  “It’s wicked, sir. Especially calculus.” Taylor Walker smiled, an attractive easy flash of teeth. “No head for figures, I’m afraid. Professor Boyden is just out of control.”

  “Hughes Boyden?” C’Lanth asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Taylor said. “Do you know him?”

  “Slightly. I did a lot of reading at Princeton when I first came here. Some of the professors were very helpful. In fact, I was up to Princeton this year for Bicker and Sign-ins.”

  Taylor and Emily grinned at each other: some private joke. Emily said, “Totally paralytic. I didn’t get to bed until 7 a.m.”

  Mabel Calucci looked at her. Her voice went slightly shrill. “I was always glad that my daughter Tammy had the chance to attend Bob Jones University. The moral standards there are very high.”

  Fury rose in Sarah. The sheer smug stupidity…Emily, who was Dean’s List and honor committee…this horrible stupid woman…

  But all she said was, “Can I get anyone a drink? Taylor? Emily?”

  “No, thanks, we’re off,” Taylor said. “We’ll be at the club, Mrs. Atkinson. Nice to have met you, Mr. C’Lanth.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” Mabel Calucci said coldly. Taylor and Emily left.

  “I liked the young people Hughes Boyden introduced me to at Princeton,” C’Lanth said, almost musingly. “There was about them a sort of…playful ease.”

  Calucci said brusquely, “Not supposed to be easy, is it? Toney school like that. Probably has real high admission standards. Now, George, I really think we got to get down to business. I’m sure the ladies will excuse us.”

  Sarah looked at Mabel Calucci. She saw that the woman was staring at Brandy, now curled in the wing chair on top of the Forbes and Smithsonians, half of which had tumbled to the floor. Sarah knew what Mabel thought of that. She knew that Mabel was surreptitiously tugging at her red satin neckline, which had slipped even lower. She even knew that in a moment Mabel would say something conciliatory, bright and sweet and cheerful, from lips still pursed like lemons.

  “I’ll come and listen,” Sarah said.

  George looked relieved. Calucci looked annoyed. C’Lanth smiled. “Glad to have you,” the alien said.

  When George came back from the short drive to the station, Sarah was already in bed. She sat up against the pillows and watched George undress. George said nothing until he had flung his coat on a chair, loosened his tie, kicked off his shoes. Finally it burst out.

  “That C’Lanth is a cut-throat.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I thought he was rather amusing.”

  “Amusing?”

  “I thought of seeing if he’d come down the weekend of the third, when we have the Talcotts and the Hendersons.”

  George turned slowly towards her.

  “You know how John Talcott is always complaining that no one he meets can ever give him a really good tennis game. And Louise so enjoys talking to people who actually know something about art. Really, George. don’t look at me like that—it’s not such a bizarre idea.”

  “Sarah—he’s an alien. And you heard how the business talk went, the part of it you stayed for anyway—where the devil did you go? Mabel Calucci complained in the car that you never came back to the living room. C’Lanth is going to ruin me if we don’t get this deal moving.”

  “Well, wouldn’t a chance to get to know him better help that?” Sarah said reasonably. George went on staring at her; after a moment she looked away. He was a dear, but he got so worked up. Unnecessarily, really. After all, they had her money, which was much more than the firm brought in. And when George wrinkled his face like that, he did look like the hardware store man.

  “It would be more useful to get to know Buddy Calucci better,” George said heavily. “He’s the one holding the real clout here. Although C’Lanth might—”

  “Oh, really, darling, do come to bed. It’s late, and I don’t want to argue. You haven’t signed any papers yet, after all. Anything could happen.”

  George didn’t answer. He finished undressing, climbed into bed, turned out the light. Sarah waited. When a few minutes had passed, she said softly, “You might be a little nicer to me, George. I did just spend an evening for you with those two dreadful people.”

  “I know,” George said. She felt him reach for her in the darkness, and she put her head on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t go back to the living room, darling. Truly I am. But her smugness. And that inane chatter. And those little frizzy dyed curls. And him—that eager, hard-eyed grin.”

  “I know,” George said again.

  “I did try.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “And you’ll think about having C’Lanth down on the third?”

  “Might be a good idea,” George said sleepily.

  Sarah snuggled in closer against his shoulder. She was glad George thought she had tried, glad he wasn’t angry. Because of course the truth was that she had been rude to those terrible Caluccis, rude with a sort of reverse-English rudeness of not having been polite enough, not having picked up the cues, not having tried at all to enter into their territory. But, really, with some people you just couldn’t, and it was no good pretending. Everybody knew that, really. With some people, do what you might, the gap was just too wide.

  Afterword to “People Like Us”

  This is an early story, written in 1988, that I still like (not true of all my earlier stories. Or of later ones.) Social class is a touchy subject in America, which is supposed to be a democracy. In addition, class is hard to define, since it’s a mixture of wealth, education, taste, and family connections, all of which no two people see in the same way. I have met people who immediately decided I was not in the same social class as they were, and they were probably right. This doesn’t bother me, but it does interest me. Can gaps in background be made irrelevant in the name of friendship?

  Sometimes, if both people have in common some interest important to both (science fiction, chess, sports, books, history). Often, however, one person will decide that “the gap is too wide,” and it is not always the person of a “higher” social class.

  The alien in this story, unlike aliens in some of my other work, is neither plausible nor well-developed. I’ve made no attempt to provide him with a home planet or credible biology. As in “Out of All Them Bright Stars,” C’lanth is alien used purely as metaphor, which seems to me an acceptable subgenre of SF. Not everyone would agree. Science fiction, too, has its social classes.

  EVOLUTION

  “Somebody shot and killed Dr. Bennett behind the Food Mart on April Street!” Ceci Moore says breathlessly as I take the washing off the line.

  I stand with a pair of Jack’s boxer shorts in my hand and stare at her. I don’t like Ceci. Her smirking pushiness, her need to shove her scrawny body into the middle of every situation, even ones she’d be better off leaving alone. She’s been that way since high school. But we’re neighbors; we’re stuck with each other. Dr. Bennett delivered both Sean and Jackie. Slowly I fold the boxer shorts and lay them in my clothesbasket.

  “Well, Betty, aren’t you even going to say anything?”

  “Have the police arrested anybody?”

  “Janie Brunelli says there’s no suspects.” Tom Brunelli is one of Emerton’s police officers, all five of them. He has trouble keeping his mouth shut. “Honestly, Betty, you look like there’s a murder in this town every day!” br />
  “Was it in the parking lot?” I’m in that parking lot behind the Food Mart every week. It’s unpaved, just hard-packed rocky dirt sloping down to a low concrete wall by the river. I take Jackie’s sheets off the line. Belle, Ariel, and Princess Jasmine all smile through fields of flowers.

  “Yes, in the parking lot,” Ceci says. “Near the dumpsters. There must have been a silencer on the rifle, nobody heard anything. Tom found two .22 250 semi-automatic cartridges.” Ceci knows about guns. Her house is full of them. “Betty, why don’t you put all this wash in your dryer and save yourself the trouble of hanging it all out?”

  “I like the way it smells line-dried. And I can hear Jackie through the window.”

  Instantly Ceci’s face changes. “Jackie’s home from school? Why?”

  “She has a cold.”

  “Are you sure it’s just a cold?”

  “I’m sure.” I take the clothespins off Sean’s t-shirt. The front says SEE DICK DRINK. SEE DICK DRIVE. SEE DICK DIE. “Ceci, Jackie is not on any antibiotics.”

  “Good thing,” Ceci says, and for a moment she studies her fingernails, very casual. “They say Dr. Bennett prescribed endozine again last week. For the youngest Nordstrum boy. Without sending him to the hospital.”

  I don’t answer. The back of Sean’s t-shirt says DON'T BE A DICK. Irritated by my silence, Ceci says, “I don’t see how you can let your son wear that obscene clothing!”

  “It’s his choice. Besides, Ceci, it’s a health message. About not drinking and driving. Aren’t you the one that thinks strong health messages are a good thing?”

  Our eyes lock. The silence lengthens. Finally Ceci says, “Well, haven’t we gotten serious all of a sudden.”

  I say, “Murder is serious.”

  “Yes. I’m sure the cops will catch whoever did it. Probably one of those scum that hang around the Rainbow Bar.”

  “Dr. Bennett wasn’t the type to hang around with scum.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean he knew them. Some low-life probably killed him for his wallet.” She looks straight into my eyes. “I can’t think of any other motive. Can you?”

  I look east, toward the river. On the other side, just visible over the tops of houses on its little hill, rise the three stories of Emerton Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital. The bridge over the river was blown up three weeks ago. No injuries, no suspects. Now anybody who wants to go to the hospital has to drive ten miles up West River Road and cross at the interstate. Jack told me that the Department of Transportation says two years to get a new bridge built.

  I say, “Dr. Bennett was a good doctor. And a good man.”

  “Well, did anybody say he wasn’t? Really, Betty, you should use your dryer and save yourself all that bending and stooping. Bad for the back. We’re not getting any younger. Ta-ta.” She waves her right hand, just a waggle of fingers, and walks off. Her nails, I notice, are painted the delicate fragile pinky white of freshly unscabbed skin.

  “You have no proof,” Jack says. “Just some wild suspicions.”

  He has his stubborn face on. He sits with his Michelob at the kitchen table, dog-tired from his factory shift plus three hours overtime, and he doesn’t want to hear this. I don’t blame him. I don’t want to be saying it. In the living room Jackie plays Nintendo frantically, trying to cram in as many electronic explosions as she can before her father claims the TV for Monday night football. Sean has already gone out with his friends, before his stepfather got home.

  I sit down across from Jack, a fresh mug of coffee cradled between my palms. For warmth. “I know I don’t have any proof, Jack. I’m not some detective.”

  “So let the cops handle it. It’s their business, not ours. You stay out of it.”

  “I am out of it. You know that.” Jack nods. We don’t mix with cops, don’t serve on any town committees, don’t even listen to the news much. We don’t get involved with what doesn’t concern us. Jack never did. I add, “I’m just telling you what I think. I can do that, can’t I?” and hear my voice stuck someplace between pleading and anger.

  Jack hears it, too. He scowls, stands with his beer, puts his hand gently on my shoulder. “Sure, Bets. You can say whatever you want to me. But nobody else, you hear? I don’t want no trouble, especially to you and the kids. This ain’t our problem. Just be grateful we’re all healthy, knock on wood.”

  He smiles and goes into the living room. Jackie switches off the Nintendo without being yelled at; she’s good that way. I look out the kitchen window, but it’s too dark to see anything but my own reflection, and anyway the window faces north, not east.

  I haven’t crossed the river since Jackie was born at Emerton Memorial, seven years ago. And then I was in the hospital less than twenty-four hours before I made Jack take me home. Not because of the infections, of course—that hadn’t all started yet. But it has now, and what if next time instead of the youngest Nordstrum boy, it’s Jackie who needs endozine? Or Sean?

  Once you’ve been to Emerton Memorial, nobody but your family will go near you. And sometimes not even them. When Mrs. Weimer came home from surgery, her daughter-in-law put her in that back upstairs room and left her food on disposable trays in the doorway and put in a chemical toilet. Didn’t even help the old lady crawl out of bed to use it. For a whole month it went on like that—surgical masks, gloves, paper gowns—until Rosie Weimer was positive Mrs. Weimer hadn’t picked up any mutated drug-resistant bacteria in Emerton Memorial. And Hal Weimer didn’t say a word against his wife.

  “People are scared, but they’ll do the right thing,” Jack said, the only other time I tried to talk to him about it. Jack isn’t much for talking. And so I don’t. I owe him that.

  But in the city—in all the cities—they’re not just scared. They’re terrified. Even without listening to the news I hear about the riots and the special government police and half the population sick with the new germs that only endozine cures—sometimes. I don’t see how they’re going to have much energy for one murdered small-town doctor. And I don’t share Jack’s conviction that people in Emerton will automatically do the right thing. I remember all too well that sometimes they don’t. How come Jack doesn’t remember, too?

  But he’s right about one thing: I don’t owe this town anything.

  I stack the supper dishes in the sink and get Jackie started on her homework.

  The next day, I drive down to the Food Mart parking lot.

  There isn’t much to see. It rained last night. Next to the dumpster lie a wadded-up surgical glove and a piece of yellow tape like the police use around a crime scene. Also some of those little black cardboard boxes from the stuff that gets used up by the new holographic TV cameras. That’s it.

  “You heard what happened to Dr. Bennett,” I say to Sean at dinner. Jack’s working again. Jackie sits playing with the Barbie doll she doesn’t know I know she has on her lap. Sean looks at me sideways, under the heavy fringe of his dark bangs, and I can’t read his expression. “He was killed for giving out too many antibiotics.”

  Jackie looks up. “Who killed the doctor?”

  “The bastards that think they run this town,” Sean says. He flicks the hair out of his eyes. His face is ashy gray. “Fucking vigilantes’ll get us all.”

  “That’s enough, Sean,” I say.

  Jackie’s lip trembles. “Who’ll get us all? Mommy…”

  “Nobody’s getting anybody,” I say. “Sean, stop it. You’re scaring her.”

  “Well, she should be scared,” Sean says, but he shuts up and stares bleakly at his plate. Sixteen now, I’ve had him for sixteen years. Watching him, his thick dark hair and sulky mouth, I think that it’s a sin to have a favorite child. And that I can’t help it, and that I would, God forgive me, sacrifice both Jackie and Jack for this boy.

  “I want you to clean the garage tonight, Sean. You promised Jack three days ago now.”

  “Tomorrow. Tonight I have to go out.”

  Jackie says, “Why should I be scared?”
r />   “Tonight,” I say.

  Sean looks at me with teenage desperation. His eyes are very blue. “Not tonight. I have to go out.”

  Jackie says, “Why should I—”

  I say, “You’re staying home and cleaning the garage.”

  “No.” He glares at me, and then breaks. He has his father’s looks, but he’s not really like his father. There are even tears in the corners of his eyes. “I’ll do it tomorrow, Mom, I promise. Right after school. But tonight I have to go out.”

  “Where?”

  “Just out.”

  Jackie says, “Why should I be scared? Scared of what? Mommy!”

  Sean turns to her. “You shouldn’t be scared, Jack-o-lantern. Everything’s going to be all right. One way or another.”

  I listen to the tone of his voice and suddenly fear shoots through me, piercing as childbirth. I say, “Jackie, you can play Nintendo now. I’ll clear the table.”

  Her face brightens. She skips into the living room and I look at my son. “What does that mean? ‘One way or another’? Sean, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” he says, and then despite his ashy color he looks me straight in the eyes, and smiles tenderly, and for the first time—the very first time—I see his resemblance to his father. He can lie to me with tenderness.