Her choice of words made her blush more and in the midst of an embarrassed giggle, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth in a lovely, wide smile, revealing that her right front tooth was missing and the bicuspid next to it was broken off at an angle. I’d only ever seen the tiniest smile from her—a curl of her lips—and sometimes she even put her hand over her mouth when she smiled. She was embarrassed about her teeth and I took her revealing smile to be an exchange: her secret for my secret, embarrassment for embarrassment. Saying, “I’ll close the door,” she backed out of the room and retreated down the hallway, still giggling.
In the aftermath of her laughter, I was utterly unable to finish what she had interrupted, so I showered, dressed, and entrusted myself to my eternally helpful assistant. Celeste was making phone calls, faxing paperwork, arranging meetings, all while maintaining a running commentary on a wide variety of friendly and bright topics.
“It must be so exciting for you to be home again,” she said.
“It’s nice,” I said. It wasn’t nice or exciting.
“I’m guessing you’re a dog person. You are, right?”
“Hm.” I’d never owned so much as a goldfish. I was a book person.
“I can always tell. I’m a cat person myself. I have a Maine Coon, a calico, and a Siamese mix,” she said then quickly revised. “But I like dogs, too.”
“That’s nice.”
“Mr. Tveite says this is the beginning of a new era for Raleigh Industries.”
“I’m sure it is.” Could she quote entire marketing brochures for RI?
“I think a small town would be a nice place to raise a family, but I really prefer living in the city, you know. Just more to do. I love going to concerts, don’t you? I love live music.”
“Mm-hm.”
Our conversations didn’t go exactly like that. Those were just highlights of a single day’s conversation, but it was non-stop. She didn’t have to stop talking to work, or vice versa. She could do both at once, seemingly with greater efficiency than she could do them separately. I didn’t want to be a boor. I wanted to slap her. I ground my teeth until my jaw ached at the end of the day. It was like being trapped in a bad marriage and like many men before me, I took refuge in the garage. With a book hidden in my pocket, I stepped out of the room, as though I were merely stretching my legs, or going to the bathroom. I walked down the hall, past the kitchen, and once I was sure the coast was clear, I made a break for it. As are most people, I was taught to think of a car as a mode of transportation: a vehicle to convey me from one place to another, not a place itself. Sitting in the car, however, I began to think of things I could do to make it more comfortable. I needed a better light and something to drink. It might have seemed weird to an observer, except I was rich, so it was merely eccentric.
After a grueling day at my accountant’s office, looking at indecipherably occult spreadsheets, I drove by Meda’s house hopefully. I never would have done it, considering the embarrassment of her walking in on my act of self-pollution, except for that smile. Just as easily she could have been shocked or too appalled to speak, and I never would have stopped at her house. Instead she gave me that smile. Her old Datsun sat in the yard, but I got no response when I rang the doorbell. I knocked loudly and a woman I’d never seen before came to the door. Her hair was still dark, but her face was lined and rough, like she had lived hard. Her sunken cheeks hinted at missing teeth. She looked at me strangely when I introduced myself, but she let me in.
Miss Amos was sitting in her usual spot and Annadore was in her playpen, arranging plastic farm animals and chewing contemplatively on a cow. For several uncomfortable moments, we were all quiet, and then the woman put out her hand.
“So, you’re Bernie Raleigh? I’m Muriel Amos. I’m Cathy’s—Meda’s mother.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Meda’s in the shower right now. She’ll be out in a little bit.” Muriel said it as though they’d been expecting me, so I sat down and waited.
“That’s Bernie Raleigh,” Meda’s grandmother said to Muriel. “He was abducted.”
“I know, Mom. I know that’s Mr. Raleigh. You interested in alien abduction?” Muriel took my uncertain shrug as an invitation to continue, leaning toward me over the coffee table. “You know a lot of people are starting to use hypnotism to find out they’ve been abducted. A lot of times the aliens will cause people to forget they were taken. They suppress the memories. I remember my own experiences, and my mother has been able to since she had her stroke.”
“It’s like that whole part of my brain got opened up, where I had the memories hidden, since I had my stroke.” Miss Amos nodded to herself.
“I was just reading an article a friend of mine got off the Internet.” Muriel indicated some papers on the coffee table. “About this woman who got hypnotized as part of a program to stop smoking. While the doctor was hypnotizing her, she had a flashback of being abducted. The doctor never believed in it before, but he says after that, he thought it had to be real, because he did a bunch more sessions with her and she remembered all kinds of things. It turned out she’d been abducted like fourteen times.”
Down the hall, the sound of running water stopped.
“He’s here,” Muriel shouted.
At that same moment I added up the intricate web of alien abductions and multiple Miss Amoses. Parthenogenesis.
“I’ll be out in a little bit,” Meda called. “I’m almost ready.”
While we waited, Muriel continued her story. “It was almost twenty years ago. We were living over off County Road 9, and I’d walked down to the grocery store. I was hurrying to get back, because I’d left Cathy—Meda—who was about five and her little brother alone. It was a spooky road to be on at night all alone back then, and I was thinking all kinds of things, when all of a sudden there was a big light shining down on me.
“It was too bright for car lights and it was coming from above me, too. I dropped the bag of groceries I was carrying and tried to run away, but it was like I was frozen, couldn’t move, just like in a dream. And then I felt this really strong pull on me that made all the hair on me stand up on end. My arms and legs were dangling, and I could feel this pulling right in the center of my chest, that’s where the light had latched onto me, right in my chest. That’s how they took me up into their ship.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to maintain a look of polite interest.
“That was the first time they took me, but they’ve taken me a lot of other times since then.”
We all straightened up when we heard a door close down the hallway, and then Meda came around the corner, dressed to go out. She had on a slithery black skirt that swirled around her calves and a dark green turtleneck that left my speculations about breasts in the dust. I came up out of my chair in a purely reflexive gesture of good manners; I don’t know what I would have fallen back on without them.
“That’s not—you know what Jeff looks like. This is Mr. Raleigh.” Meda looked at her family with undisguised suspicion. Belatedly, she turned to me and said, “Hi.”
“Hi. I was on my way back from the city and thought I would stop and see if you—all of you—would like to go to dinner with me.”
“I can’t. I—” The other three Amoses in the room looked at me expectantly, but without giving me any hints about what they expected. Then someone knocked on the door, and Meda never finished the statement. “There’s Jeff.”
She gave a sigh that spoke so eloquently of the discomforts of her situation that I regretted increasing them.
“I’m sorry. I should have called,” I said.
Her date knocked again, and for a ludicrous moment I wondered if I should answer the door; I was closest. Finally, Meda stepped past me, her sweater-clad breast making contact with my arm, and reached for the door.
A Million Bucks
Meda
I opened the door just a crack and said, “Hey, Jeff, let me get my coat.” Jeff can’t take a hint to
save his life, so he came right in. His head dropped back so he could look up at Mr. Raleigh. It was about the only way to look at Mr. Raleigh, but Jeff got all prickly about his height. He was even shorter than me, only 5’8”.
“Hi, I’m Jeff Hall.” He stuck out his hand, and I knew he was going to give Mr. Raleigh a tough guy handshake. I don’t think it worked, because Mr. Raleigh went on being polite.
“Bernham Raleigh. I was just leaving, Mr. Hall. It was so lovely to meet you, Miss Amos,” he said to Mom. “And a pleasure to see you again, Miss Amos,” he said to Gramma. Then he turned to me and said, “I hope you have a nice evening, Miss Amos, Mr. Hall.” It was all I could do not to laugh. Was he kidding?
“Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Raleigh. I hope we see you again some time,” Mom said.
“Is that your boss?” Jeff asked after he was gone. “I didn’t know you worked for Lurch. Christ.”
“I’m ready to go.” I managed to get Jeff out of the house before Mom could start in.
“You look like a million bucks,” Jeff said in the car. That was the kind of compliment he always gave me. I hated it, because who wants to be told how much money they look like? Really, no girl wants to be told that, or anyway, I don’t.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You better watch out. I’m guessing your big geek boss is going to put the moves on you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, please, he’s a guy, he’s thinking the same thing every guy is thinking. And he’s rich, so he thinks he can buy whatever he wants.”
“He’s not that rich.”
“Aw, that’s sweet, baby,” Jeff said. He didn’t understand what I meant.
Debunked
I believed Meda’s mother. I don’t mean that I accept the notion that aliens came to our planet and took Muriel into their space ship. Although I don’t dismiss that idea as impossible, it seems like the least likely of several possibilities. I believe something happened to her, something that made her feel taken away from herself, something that returned her not quite as she had been.
I was nine, nearly ten. They were waiting for me as I walked home from school. I was taking a shortcut through the city park, and someone called my name. Amy waved at me. She was a blonde girl who had worked for my parents as a maid for a while. I had a little crush on her. I remember that she asked me about Robby. When I told her he was sick at home, she looked upset. I followed her gaze to a battered van parked up the hill, where the path widened into a little lane that eventually emptied onto a side street. There was a man leaning against the van watching us. Amy’s boyfriend, Joel.
“Hey, come over,” Amy called to Joel. “This is Bernie.”
“Where’s his brother?”
“He’s home sick today.” There was an uneasy silence between Amy and Joel.
“Well, hey, Bernie, what say we give you a ride home?” he said.
“You sure?” Amy asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Come on, Bernie.” Now I understand the silent conversation that was taking place, but at the time I noticed nothing. I can’t remember if I’d been admonished against taking rides from strangers, but even if I had, Amy hardly qualified as a stranger.
In the back seat of the van there was a second man. When I sat down next to him, he said, “This isn’t him.”
“I know,” Amy said.
“Damn it.” He punched me in the face, harder than Robby ever had, hard enough that the world started to fall away from me. I never even saw the man, because I must have blinked as I turned toward him, and all I felt was the impact of his fist. Then the man I never saw pressed a rag that smelled like a hospital over my mouth and nose. I suppose it was ether.
Mrs. Duncan, the housekeeper before Mrs. Bryant, answered the first ransom call. Thinking it was a prank, she disconnected. Until then, my family thought I was missing, and all kinds of people, neighbors and employees, turned out to look for me. When the kidnappers—I hate that word, so stupidly melodramatic—when they called the second time, they were allowed to speak with my grandfather. His response was vitriolic rage, as evidenced by the newspaper quotes at the time. Within two hours of the second phone call there was a full-blown FBI task force operating out of the formal parlor. The newspapers ran pictures of cops and agents, crowded around recording devices and maps in my grandmother’s parlor. It was weird to see that, and a little embarrassing, like a copycat Lindbergh scenario.
My grandfather was defiant. He refused to pay the money demanded, or any amount negotiated by the task force. Initially he even refused to allow them to play out the decoy payment scenario the FBI developed. It wasn’t the money; it was a matter of principle for him. I was twenty-one before I knew that, before I knew he had refused to pay.
The next day Celeste went to the corporate office for what she said was “training,” and what I suspected was a debriefing. Mr. Tveite wanted to know what I was up to. In her absence, I walked down the hall to the kitchen, hoping for some different lunch conversation. As I opened the door, I heard Meda say, “It’s the only day they could fit Mom in. The Saturday appointments fill up fast.”
“It’s just that Thursday is so inconvenient, Cathy,” Mrs. Trentam said. “I already have to take Samantha to school that day, and then I’d have to stop for you and then for Muriel. And then the drive into the city at that time of day.”
“I know it’s not convenient, but that’s what they had, and she needs to go. She’s been putting it off and she needs to go. Couldn’t I borrow your car and then you wouldn’t have to take the time?” Mrs. Trentam was silent. Meda sighed and, with honest submission and no anger, said, “If you can’t, you can’t. I’ll figure out something else.”
“It’ll be less of a headache if I just take you. You’d have to be back by two, because that’s when I have to leave to pick Samantha up from school and I can’t be late picking her up. And Mr. Raleigh isn’t going to be happy about us taking the whole day off.” I hated hearing myself referred to as some distant authoritarian, and although it was an admission I’d been eavesdropping, I interrupted them.
“I have to go in for a meeting on Thursday. I could drop you off before and pick you up again afterwards.”
Mrs. Trentam cringed when I said it, and answered for her niece: “Oh no, we couldn’t possibly. That would be so inconvenient for you.”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Meda said. “You know how doctor’s offices are. You might be stuck waiting to come back.”
When I insisted, she didn’t waste her breath on any more protests.
When we picked her up on Thursday morning, Muriel had the aura of those Mexican women who speak with the Holy Virgin. She came to the door of her trailer in ragged sweat pants, slippers and a man’s work shirt. She looked like she hadn’t been awake long, but she lit up when she saw me and said, “Well, good morning, Mr. Raleigh.” At her mother’s enthusiastic greeting, Meda gave me a defeated, almost reproachful look and led me up the steps.
“Bernie, it’s just Bernie,” I said.
Meda’s shoulder blades tightened together. It occurred to me there was a limit to the degree of acceptance I could obtain through kindness.
The trailer had the cave-like quality that is native to mobile homes: paneled walls, brown carpeting, and windows covered in dark curtains. It was decidedly lived in.
“It’s so nice of you to help us out like this,” Muriel said to me. Then she opened a can of beer. Meda had been digging through a pile of clothes on the sofa, but at the familiar pop and hiss, she turned with a beat-up sheepskin jacket in her hand and snapped at her mother.
“Why’d you go and open that? You can’t take a beer. You want him to get a ticket for driving with an open container?”
There was a storm of sadness and aggravation in her face, and as wrong as it was, it gave me an erection watching her wrangle with her mother. Meda snatched the beer away and forced Muriel’s arms into the jacket, the same way she had put on Annadore
’s coat ten minutes earlier. Not with brutality, just an abruptness born of frustration.
We rode in silence until Muriel said, “Hey, Bernie, maybe if we have time we could go down past Tinker. There’s this field east of there, and if you’re there in the early morning you can see the ships.”
“We’re not stopping, and they’re fighter jets from the airbase,” Meda said.
“That’s what they want you to think.”
“We’re not stopping.” Meda stared straight ahead, picking at the seam of her jeans.
“Such a nice car.” Muriel sank back into her seat with a sigh of pleasure. “Leather seats. That’s quality.”
For the rest of the drive, she limited herself to such mundane conversation topics, for which I was grateful, and eventually Meda thawed out a little. To Meda’s embarrassment, Muriel took out her wallet to show me family pictures. She passed forward a picture of a thin girl who looked like a shadow of Meda, a brunette with brown eyes, whereas Meda’s were true black. “That’s my other girl, Loren, Meda’s little sister.” She passed me a small photo of Meda from many years before, and I saw then that the scars had imparted calmness to her face. In the picture she was in the third grade and her face was a riot of feeling: some disagreement with a classmate, or a fight with her mother over the shabby, too-small dress she was wearing. The expression on her face was feral. She hated. Something. Someone. It was the only picture of Meda that her mother carried in the plastic folds of her wallet.
Mr. Tveite, the Chairman of the Board of Raleigh Industries, spent almost two hours walking me through his ideas for my little presentation at the annual shareholder meeting. He thought I was an imbecile; I reciprocated by thinking he was an ass. Once we’d finished our meeting proper, the Chairman started to talk about going to lunch. The look of breathless opportunism on Celeste’s face confirmed to me that the meal should be avoided at all costs. Then the Chairman began talking about his New Year’s party, which he really hoped I’d come to. As I was trying to figure out how to escape, his secretary rang on the intercom and said, “Lionel Petrie has arrived, sir.”