ORACLE
The night we all found out what the deal was with Ralph, Dawnâs little brother, was the same night Dawn had invited me over for dinner for the first time. It was in June. The reason I say June is because I remember their dining room windows were all open at the time, and the outsides of the screen windows were just clustered with june-bugs. Like if a car went down the block you could barely tell what color it was, thatâs how clustered the windows were. Dawnâs housecat Mr Ninny would sit in the windowsill clawing at the june-bugs from the inside. Heâd carefully hold his paw up against the screen, keeping it very still, until a june-bug had crawled into just the right spot, then heâd shoot his claws out of his paw through the screen, impaling it. Then snick! heâd retract them and the little dead june-bug would plummet to the backyard two stories below. Dawn and Noah thought it was the coolest thing, and would sit for hours watching Mr Ninny kill, but I have to admit I was a little grossed out.
We had just eaten dinner, Spanish rice, and the sun was setting, so that flat orange light was coming through the windows all diagonal. Dawnâs younger brother Noah had assumed what I imagined was his usual post-dinner position in summertime: face-down in the floor in front of the oscillating fan, with his shirt off. He looked like heâd just collapsed there. Ralph, her youngest brother, was at the dinner table putting together a jigsaw puzzle of some ancient Roman ruins or centurions or something. Every fan in the upstairs was set at full blast. Mr. Turbot was downstairs in the cool basement watching TV. I knew because I could hear random shards of M*A*S*H or Magnum PI being cut off between the rapid-fire percussion of channels being changed very fast. The sound of searching dissatisfaction. Dawnâs Mom was scrubbing pots in the narrow, L-shaped kitchen when the phone rang.
As soon as Dawnâs Mom picked up the phone and said, âHello, Turbot residence,â in her sweet agreeable voice, Dawn sharply gasped, as if recalling something earth shattering. It was loud and excessive, an imitation of an adolescentâs gasp.
âThe Phone Game!â she cried out. âYou have to play the Phone Game!â I think for a second there my bony little thirteen-year-old bottom was about three inches above the couch cushion, from sheer fright. Dawn clutched me by the armâa little violently, truth be toldâand tried to explain the Phone Game to me. In a rush of excitement Dawn told me that she considered me not only her new best friend but also an addition to the Turbot family and so she wanted to bring me into the fold by introducing me to the special secret pastimes of the Turbots, those little activities that every family concocts to entertain themselves. She actually did use the word âconcocts.â Sweat stood out on her forehead and upper lip, and her hair was totally frizzing out from the humidity. She was talking so fast that I couldnât quite follow her though, and just as I had done with every strange card game she had tried to teach me throughout seventh grade that previous school year, I quietly told her to go ahead and just play it, and I would try and pick it up from example.
Dawnâs Mom was a tall woman in glasses, apparently constantly beaming at children, who went into a kind of trance whenever she got on the phone, becoming very attentive to whoever was on the other end of the line. She was a very good listener. I remember that much. When I look back on it, I think she was probably a rather lonely person, since she seemed to welcome phone calls from just about anybody. Like they were little temporary trapdoors to the outside world.
So Dawn started asking her mother questions. âHey Mom? Why is Ralphie such a stinker?â
âYes,â Mrs Turbot replied. âWe went there for lunch last weekend.â
Dawn looked at me, wincing a little bit, as if to apologize for the poor showing. âEh. Not that impressive,â she said. She had a kind of manic worldliness about her, a worldliness that was remarkable in an thirteen year old. âThe Game works better if you ask yes or no questions.â I just stared at her. âLike this one time. I asked Mom, âDid Ralphie have some troubles during diaper training? Where he crapped his pants behind the couch and Dad swore at him?â To which good old reliable Mom said, âWhy yes, we had to dig up the septic tank, it cost a fortune.â Noah and I rolled around on the floor. It was classic Phone Game Mom. A perfect match. Didnât we roll around, Noah?â
Noah Turbot lifted his blind head slightly and nodded, before plopping it back down on the rug. He was still comatose face-down in front of the fan, in the exact center of its back-and-forth oscillations. His naked back was mottled and crawling with the shadows of evening june-bugs not long for this world.
Dawn turned back to the kitchen where her Mom stood with the phone lodged in the crook of her neck. âHow about this, Mom: why is Ralphie such a renob? That is to say, a backwards boner?â She and Noah broke down into giggles, Noah laughing into the rug as I looked over in horror at the dinner table where Ralph sat. The little guy was shriveling down on top of his jigsaw puzzle, in fierce concentration. Ralphâs face was red and he seemed to be constructing an invisible membrane-like bubble around himself, pretending no one else was there in the dining room with him. We all had been lectured about his condition, and warned that we were not to rough-house anywhere near him because if he got a bruise somehow, he wouldnât heal like all us normal children would. He would just bleed and bleed inside his body until he died because his blood didnât know how to clot. Thatâs what Dawn told me anyhow. He was about nine at the time.
Mrs Turbot, oblivious to all this backwards boner business, stared straight ahead and said, in reply to Dawnâs question, âYou know, sometimes it just happens that way. Our TV antenna is a good example, God what a nightmareâŠâ More giggles from the rug.
Before I go any further let me just say that I was always brought up to wait my turn to speak, that people talking on the phone should just be left alone until the conversationâs over. My Momma always told me, âCassie, honey, I donât have enough ears to keep it all straight when two people are speaking to me at once.â Which is very reasonable. But, like many seventh graders invited over for dinner, who are trying to make friends, desperate to make friends in fact, I wasnât about to point out anything of this sort to Dawn. Since March of that year, I had fallen under Dawn Turbotâs spell. Do not search my past for any evidence of a backbone.
From that point on, Dawn asked her Mom a litany of questions about herself. By that I mean, Dawn started asking questions about Dawn. She asked if she was the greatest daughter in the whole world. With a straight face, Mrs Turbot became one of those eight-balls you shake up and flip over for your fortune.
Dawn: âWill I be voted Best Dressed this year by Yearbook Committee?â
Mrs Turbot: âYuh-huh. I think itâs the smartest thing to do, and the doctor agrees with meâŠâ
Dawn: âHereâs a good one: Is Andrew in love with me, or with Angela Drupt with her shelf-butt that I could balance my lunch tray on?â
Mrs Turbot: âYou know, I was just thinking about that!â
Dawn: âI know, so was I! Who isnât? Great minds se at work on this very question.â She turned to look at me with a safe expression, narrowing her eyes. I mirrored it right back at her and nodded. She did not ask if she was the most humble seventh grader in the whole world. Or the most deserving. Those things were never in question. It would take me years to figure it out, but at the time I was in a big hurry to become just like her.
June-bug silhouettes slipped from Noahâs back as he surfaced from his coma and got to his feet. He was the only fifth-grader with dyed blond hair and who wore sunglasses in school. He also had a skateboard no one ever witnessed him riding that he strapped to his backpack. He chewed gum obnoxiously as he watched over Ralphâs shoulder at the centurions. âHey Ralph whatâs the name of that computer game youâre always playing. The one where you have to manage a prison.â
Mole-like, as if coming or of a trance himself, Ralph blinked up at his brother. His glasses made his eyes huge. âUm, itâs called Penal Crises. For PC. They also make it for Nintendo, but we donât have Nintendo. Yet.â Ralphâs face was very small and full of trust and innocence. I remember Dawn had told me about how Ralph had been on the local TV news one summer, being interviewed by some reporter about comic books. Ralph said he only really read comic books that had a positive moral message.
Noah looked back at the two of us women on the couch, his eyes shining. His loving-brother routine disintegrated fast. âPenal Crises?â He pronounced it so nasally and British, I had to giggle out loud, I couldnât help it. He said it cry-sees. Recently I heard that Noah had some kind of mysterious health problems and had to drop out of Dexby College, that he had gone from 220 lbs at age 19 down to a spectral 146 lbs at age 24. People wondered if he hadnât been cursed with a late-blooming dose of some of his younger brotherâs poor sickly chromosomes. But Iâm fairly sure it was drugs. He got caught up with some strange people in Eureka City, for years. Also rumors of cult involvement. It was all really vague.
Dawn nodded at my giggling and rolled her eyes. âRalph stays up in his room and plays these weird biting educational games on his computer. Total dork city. He sits in front of screens all day, sucking up gamma waves. Real attractive to the opposite sex, that is, Ralph.â The sage face again. She was full of adult wisdom, her face said so. âRight, Mom?â
âYou got that right,â Mrs Turbot replied, world-weary. And although I knew her reply had nothing to do with Dawnâs comment, the timing of it produced an uncanny illusion: a really snide mother-daughter conversation was actually taking place about the sex appeal of a nine year old. The effect this trick had upon me, on my poor awkward pubescent understanding of the world, was profound. It was music to my ears. A strange inner vista opened up. An extremely rapid burst of channel-switching downstairs.
âCâmon, now you try it.â Dawn nudged me. Poked me actually.
Up to that point, I was the type of girl to give my Mom handfuls of flowers after church service, or to run up two flights of stairs and summon the school nurse instead of staring and chuckling when overweight Betty Marbel doubled over sick in the playground. I, Cassandra, was a lovable and capable child. But now I began to sense the awful potential of this fiendish parlor game Dawn exposed me to: verbally humiliating others through indirection, teasing with overwhelming consensus, the consensus of a parent.
âOh wait,â Mrs Turbot said, âanother callâs coming in. It might be him. His office isnât open this late, but thereâs still a chance itâs him. Just let me switch over real quick, do you mind? It could be important news about the blood test. Ok? Ok.â Dawn poked me harder. I scoured my thoughts for a question to ask Dawnâs Mom.
The daytime talk shows I occasionally watch describe âthe abusive personalityâ as something transmitted within the family, from parent down to child. Like an heirloom or a piece of furniture. The âlegacy of abuse,â they call it. I think those people may be deluding themselves slightly. I beg to differ. I think abusive personalities can be passed laterally, between households within a neighborhood. Via the children. Like some jungle insect leaping sideways from one family tree to another, laying new eggs, infesting. Something that moves at angles perpendicular to heredity. If I had some of my sonâs graph paper handy I could map it out for you. I looked across the room at Ralph, scanning the small hemophiliac body for weak points. Didnât take long.
Standing in the middle of the dining room, looming over us all, Mrs Turbot switched over to the other line. âYes? Hello? Yes, Doctor, this is she. How are you?â
âDoctor,â I said, mimicking Dawnâs Mom a little, âDoctor, I must know: does Ralph Turbot, my son, my pure moral-comic-reading son, need to be tested for acute halitosis, aka âbutt-breathâ as it is called in professional circles?â
âNo. Oh no.â
âAs a follow-up, is there any way we could drop him off at your hospital and leave him there indefinitely?â I looked at Dawn for approval. She gave it to me. She was dying. I raised my eyebrows at her, like Is this good enough? Dawn waved her arms at me, silently cackling. Not that I noticed it at the time, but the explosive sound of channel-changing downstairs had stopped.
âOh my God. No. No.â
âShe seems to be in ânoâ mode. Have to think up something to go with no. âKay, I got one. Is Ralphie not having a penile crisis?â
Mrs Turbot just repeated the word in the negative.
Noah lifted his head again to look up at his mother towering over him. She was standing immediately at his feet, and his outline looked like the shadow her body would have cast at about 4:45 pm on a cloudless day. I hadnât noticed until now that Mr Turbot had quietly come upstairs and was in the kitchen fishing through the refrigerator for a Molson Export Ale. The fridge door was wide open and fog cascaded around his knees as he crouched there, listening to his wifeâs sobs. He was completely motionless, except for his eyes which moved triangularly between Ralph, Mrs Turbot, and me. He had definitely heard everything Iâd said about Ralph.
Dawn spoke to me from some peripheral location. âThe best gameplay happens when someone conducting a survey by telephone calls her. You know, âyes, yes, no, yes, very much, not at all, strongly disagree, strongly strongly disagree, undecided.â She just goes on and on for an entire afternoon. Itâs a goldmine. Thatâs how it started, way back when.â
âGod, not that. Thatâs impossible, isnât it, Doctor?â
Ralph was nine years old when he caught a case of pneumonia, pneumonia you or I could probably catch a hundred times and repel in a normal year. At a football game that autumn after he died, I overheard some of the older middle school boysâwho all us girls looked up to and would have died if theyâd asked us to the danceâstanding in a circle all facing inward with their hot cocoa calling Ralph Turbot a fag. This was before they realized they needed to test transfusions for AIDS. Somebody had hit Ralph with a rotten egg. Someone broke the yolk.
I never went back to the Turbots, even for the public wake, where I guess a lot of kids went and cried their eyes outâeven oneâs that didnât know Ralph or care about him when he was alive. I was too scared to look Dawnâs parents in the eye. Especially her Dad.
Now Iâm grown up. I have a son, Dale, who Iâm home-schooling. Iâm trying to teach him plane geometry. I police his friendship with other children. Some have called me grim-lipped and heavy handed. Do I worry about retarding his social development? Not like I worry about other things. Like bad influence. Kids who play with guns, for instance. I forbid Dale to play with guns, or to play with boys who play with guns. No matter how garish or neon the toy guns are. Iâve been called âthe Nuclear Over-reactorâ by other Moms. So be it. If Dale even makes a gun with his thumb and finger and points it at Zips our cat (declawed), I ask him politely to stop, then I ask Dale to stop, again. After the fourth or fifth time I grab Daleâs hand and bend his curled fingers back out flat so his palm is flat again, all semblance of a weapon gone. Until everything threatening is gone. Then he usually cries and tells me Iâm hurting him. Itâs a usual thing. And itâs at this point that I go to my room and close the door and sit in the edge of my bed. And I think Itâs too late, itâs too late, theyâve got me, the Turbots have got me.
Even your misspellings are wonderful.