Omnivores Read online

  A blue-clad member of the cleaning staff picked up a rooster carcass and carried it to the boneyard next to the generator, where, pinching her nose, she tossed it onto the pile. Estée watched her pick up a nearby shovel and throw a couple of clods of soil onto the corpse. The soil was rich in red worms and their casings, which sped the process of decomposition. Estée knew her worms.

  All the grilled meat was still laid out on the long tables. It would putrefy, uneaten by the Krafts or their support personnel. Already the chairs were being folded and stacked, the tent was collapsing in undulations of green and white. The maids laid it out flat on the grass, folded the corners into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, stepping nearer and nearer to each other as they folded. Finally it was a bundle that fit into the arms.

  “Why’d they all take off?” demanded Bill of the air. “Food not good enough for these ingrates? Fire ’em! Fire ’em all! Those management boys won’t stop me this time, nosir, litigation my ass. Monday morning they’ll be scrounging up scraps from the gutter. Manners Esty. No one has manners anymore.”

  She faced the banner Velut arbor ita ramus and the gigantic empty screen. There was Betty, at her closed bay window high above. She was crouching on all fours. A flimsy nightgown fluttered on her arms.

  Estée envisioned a suicide leap, a shattering plunge through the glass. “What are you doing?” she called urgently from beneath.

  Her mother shook her head, mouthing, “I can’t hear you.”

  “Then open the window! How did you get out of bed? And what are you doing?”

  Her mother mouthed, “I can’t hear you.”

  “Then just open the window!”

  Her mother mouthed, “I can’t hear you.”

  “Would you please open the window?”

  I can’t hear you.

  TWO

  BILL WAS OVERCOME BY TRANSPORTS OF HATRED. HE underwent a swift reversal—the click-change of scenes through a Viewmaster. There was no slow evolution. He woke Estée up in the small hours smashing displays. Roused by the noise she padded out in T-shirt and bare feet, but her soles encountered splinters and she had to retreat, to watch him from the doorway. “Ugly bugs! Ugly bugs!” he shouted, tearing moths off the walls, stomping, waving his arms. When he was finished there was not a display case left intact. “Scorched earth,” he yelled at his daughter, and performed a clumsy dance amidst the ruins.

  He left the gallery in chaos, glass and wood and pin-stuck moths all over the floor. To get through the hall Estée had to navigate over the wreckage, careful where she stepped. At 8:00 a.m. maids were already stooping and sweeping.

  He posted a note on her bedroom door.

  The Specimens are grose, vile repugnent Creatures. The Management will no longer be maintaning a Museum for Them. However we will continue our Study. You will resieve you’re Instrucsions here. You will Create a chart for the Specimens and record there Progress on this Chart. Specimens shall be numbered from One on. You will be supplied with Live Specimens for you’re Experiments. You’re first Assinement is to put Specimen One, a mamber of Acrolophidae, in a jar and Keep Him there by Starvation until he is Dead. Write down how long it Takes and what you’re observations. Love, Dad.

  Estée was initially confused by this directive. Bill explained to her, while she hefted free weights, that the work of preservation had changed its course due to his recent revelation—viz., that moths were hateful, disgusting, and possibly alien. Their provenance might, for all he knew, be another planet. He suggested Mars off the top of his head but indicated that he had little interest in further speculation. The workroom would be converted into a laboratory. He would keep a steady stream of live moths coming in. Her job, as his assistant, was to corral them in a variety of habitats and subject them to experiments.

  Every evening a new specimen, every evening a note with instructions. On a clipboard she would keep a journal. “In the records,” said Bill with great effort, “you tell what they act like when you do stuff to them, for me plus also for science in general. For the future history.”

  “I don’t want to experiment on them,” she ventured boldly, fully expecting a physical assault. Bill stood over her as she completed a cycle of knee bends, his midriff her sky above.

  “Honey,” he gravely intoned, “it is for the good of the many. The experiments we do are for Posterior.”

  “We’re not biologists,” she said. “We don’t know the first thing about experiments. No one experiments on moths anyway. We know about them already.”

  “How did Mary Curry invent tuberculosis? How did Alex Bell invent the phone? By accident! Discoveries happen when you least expect it.”

  He would not be swayed from his mission. She tried to ignore him, but he threatened to withhold food, to prevent her access to Betty, and finally to lock her in her room. She decided to comply.

  Bill’s notes told her to sequester moths in jars, without food or air; to drown them, burn them, dissect them. He had shelves constructed, with dividers between the numbered sections. Each moth remained in its section even after it had died. She had to spray them with insecticides, feed them poisoned food, remove portions of their bodies while leaving others intact. She had to closet them with predators: spiders, beetles, frogs, lizards, birds, even rodents purchased by her father from mail-order suppliers. On one occasion she had to insert the head of a cat, presented to her in a shoebox, into the mesh cage of a tiger moth and catalog their joint deterioration. The lepidopterans were provided routinely with dung, chitterlings, and pickled pigs’ feet. Bill wanted to reform their eating habits: he had never trusted vegetarians. They preferred a lingering death.

  “You’re not going to change them,” she argued. “It’s evolution. Their digestive systems weren’t made for meat.”

  “Esty,” chided Bill, “your lepidopterans can adapt. Survival of the fittest, Esty.”

  She made careful entries on the chart. Her father bade her read them aloud and would nod sagely and say, “Ah, oh yes,” as she read.

  Number 32 has sacrificed sections of both maxillary palpi in his efforts to escape the jar. He has abandoned all fungal matter and appears to be ingesting nothing. All his energies are directed toward freedom. Number 41 is bereft of both wings on the left side. Her right eye is severely damaged from constant pressure against the side of the can, yet she stubbornly persists.

  Bill ordered books for her with which she was able to bone up on the biology of butterflies—life cycles, food, and natural habitats. In some cases, she could delay their deaths by making small adjustments, unbeknownst to the boss. But usually there was no balm for their suffering, and she watched them shed their parts until they were nothing.

  Mr. Kraft bought her a high-priced microscope, a digitized scale, an antique Bunsen burner, and a handsomely laminated poster of the periodic table. She had no use for them, but Bill was pleased by the expansion of his high-tech lab. He was prepared to make additional expenditures to keep it, as he said, State of the Art. Estée could invoice him for whatever tools she wanted. “Science is advancing,” he said as he tweezed the wings off a monarch.

  Mrs. Kraft, behind her double door, wished to hear nothing of the proceedings. She had her shrine, and telephone calls from old friends. Frequently, when Estée came into her room, she was telling a story to a childhood pal in Baltimore or a relative in Orlando. “There we were, in the kitchen with apple pie à la mode,” she would say. “The golden retriever was lying at the hearth, and Bill leaned over to me and said, ‘God bless America, sweetie pie, I sure love you.’” Her decay had accelerated; she had no appetite, forgot to wear her teeth, and repeated herself four or five times whenever she spoke. She ordered Estée to keep sending off for Betty artifacts, always said, “Yes, yes,” with a nod and a sweeping hand gesture, “Buy it, buy it, buy buy buy,” but when the items came in she paid no attention, letting them accumulate on the wall, on top of tables, littering her room.

  Estée adopted a policy of noninterference.
She was an adjunct to the whims of Bill and Betty, whose schemes were as random as laughter, as senseless as an accident. She disavowed all connection to the tasks she performed. “Dear Diary: the Age of Majority. I saw it on TV. I will leave here and be in the world. I will see the normal people in malls and on the street. Normal people will be everywhere, teeming.”

  For the lab experiments, she found that Betty’s training came in handy. She went though the motions faithfully, all the while remaining, in secret, cold and motionless, inanimate. She identified with walls, chairs, tables, any collection of atoms turned callously to function.

  Bill made a concession to her new maturity by allowing her three hours of television viewing per week, which she used to watch the news on CNN since she was not allowed access to print media. He decried all so-called facts set in type. Almost everything presented to you on paper, he said, was a falsification, the product of numerous conspiracies between corporate and government interests vying for positive coverage. There had never been, for example, men on the moon. “Plain as the nose on your face. Trick photography,” he asserted, wolfing down spareribs with sauce dribbling over his porous chin. “News is just like any other show. All done for ratings, girl. For bucks.” As a businessman himself he was in on the game. He was wise to their schemes. “Sure,” he said modestly, “if I was in that line, I’d be a straight guy. I’d probably get crucified. You know what a stickler your dad is for the truth. But I’m not, I’m in cremation. And there too I’m just as honest as the day is long.”

  The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was another popular myth. “There’s no such thing as a nuclear bomb,” stated Bill over a megabowl of ripple chips. “That’s a line they cooked up so they didn’t have to have as many wars. It’s a doozy. You got a lotta folks fooled on that one, but me and a few other guys know the deal.”

  Bill was no longer a purposeful strider, the man who in younger years had warded off naysayers and skeptics with the square set of his shoulders. Now and then Estée caught him in confusion: hiding under a pile of coats in the foyer, speaking in a referee’s booming tones, he would arbitrate a tussle between himself and himself. The coats would roll and quake. He gave himself split lips and bruises and chipped one of his bottom teeth with a fist. When she caught him at it he would shrug his shoulders and continue his struggle, strangling himself until his eyes bulged while she looked on. He groped and blundered in broad daylight; surprised during acts of lunacy by a maid or deliveryperson, he kept up his activities until they wandered away again and then subsided into a stupor. She found him grappling with Betty’s bedroom door one night, delivering a soliloquy. “She took it from me. Give it back!” He noticed Estée staring from the shadows and whistled nonchalantly. “It’s my heart kid. Weaker than it used to be, can’t get the damn thing open.”

  “I’ll open it for you,” she offered, but Bill took his hands off the door and stepped back shaking. “No. No way. A man does these things by himself.” Later he denied all charges.

  Still, he had the presence of mind to leave live moths for her nightly. With hundreds of specimens dying or dead in their cages in the lab, he liked to visit while she worked and stick a finger through the mesh. Some of the early captives still refused to shuffle off, remaining in their small demesnes without eating or flying, huddled against the wall with wings folded, resolutely though barely alive. Bill was fascinated by these fighters. “How’s that rascal 76?” he asked at breakfast almost every day, for Number 76 had held on for months in a state of fossilized morbidity. He was covered in dust, he had lost all his legs and half his thorax, but still when Estée blew gently on him his antennae quivered, out of keeping with the wind.

  Thursdays Estée had the evening off and Bill would catalog the night’s new specimen for her, setting it up in its habitat and initiating the round of punishments. On Good Friday in the spring before her eighteenth birthday, she came into the laboratory and found that Specimen Number 228, trussed up with ropes, legs bound, in a cage against the wall, was a dog.

  Number 228 will be disected live as per Usual procedure starting with Feet. It is a Miniture Snauzer. It will Not be Sedated if thats what your thinking. Tools for this Esperiment will be found in supplys Cuboard. Please begin Immediately. As I will Brook no Delay. Thanks alot, love Dad.

  The muzzled schnauzer craned its neck and looked at her through plaintive eyes. She unbound it, removed the muzzle, and let it out of the cage. It trotted happily at her heels as she left the lab.

  She found him in her mother’s room, where he sat beside the bed reading slowly to Betty from a picture book as Betty’s right hand, always busy under the sheets, fomented dissent in an unseen quadrant, causing her to breathe rapidly and lick her lips. “Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in,” read Bill, ignoring the commotion. “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.”

  “Won’t do it,” said Estée right off. “No way.”

  “Now honey,” he said. “Let’s not bother your mother. We’ll take this shoptalk outside,” and he closed the book.

  Betty only had eyes for the schnauzer. “Pooky poo!” she said, and patted the quilt beside her. The dog leapt up, wagging its tail.

  “He wants me to cut off its feet,” said Estée. “Can I have some support from you for once?”

  “Oh dear,” said her mother, and stroked the dog’s head with her free hand.

  “Taking it outside,” said Bill in his warning voice, rising. “Come on.”

  “We can discuss it right here,” said Estée.

  “Let’s not make trouble,” said Bill.

  “After all,” said Betty, “there’s a lot of little doggies like this one.”

  “Forget it,” said Estée.

  “The penalty for mutiny is walking the plank,” said Bill. “In the King’s Navy, it’s hanging by the neck.”

  “We’re not pirates,” said Estée. “There’s no king either. We’re American citizens in the twentieth century. We don’t torture dogs. I can call the ASPCA in fifteen seconds flat. That’s where they take care of animals. I found it in the phone book.”

  “Dear oh dear,” said Betty. “Father knows best.” She picked a frilly baby bonnet out of her bedside drawer and affixed it on the dog’s head, tying the pink ribbon under his chin.

  “It’s for the sake of progress,” said Bill. “How about those guys with monkeys and electrodes? Defense Department, those guys do ’speriments on half a million critters every year. No one calls the ASPCA on them.”

  “You don’t have a license,” said Estée.

  “License, schmicense,” said Bill gruffly. “What’s the difference? Up the evolutionary scale a bit. There’s plenty of stupid critters around. Dumb beasts Esty. Cool down.”

  “I’m not going to let you,” said Estée. “I draw the line at higher mammals.”

  Bill grabbed up the dog, which whined in his arms, its bonnet falling lopsided over one ear.

  “For this you’re picking a fight with your father? This little overgrown rat? Its brain is the size of a walnut. Come to your senses!”

  “Absolutely not,” said Estée. “If you want to talk senses, I’m ready.”

  “I’ll break its leg right here and now,” said Bill, and started to twist its paw. The schnauzer screamed and bit him. He let it drop. Estée retreated beside it as it limped into a corner.

  “You try that again and I’ll knee you in the balls,” she told him, gritting her teeth.

  “Oh my,” whispered Betty.

  Nursing his wounded arm, Bill shook his head. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” he said.

  She was able to pick up the whimpering dog while Betty, playing Florence Nightingale, kissed Bill’s bite wound and emitted coos of sympathy. She left the room, ran to the front door, and let it out. “Go away,” she yelled when it lingered on the steps. “Just go away!”

  Bill was subdued for a few days, and then left a raccoon in the lab. This was followed by an opossum. Both of them she carried outside, in their
cages, and loosed on the lawn. She and Bill began a speechless battle. Nothing was said about the new specimens, nor about the notes that accompanied them.

  This Specimen #231 is a Very Mean Giunea Pig, note the Large Incisors. In Various countries this pig is Eaten after Stewing, plus it is Kept as Pets. Please flay 25 Strokes per night until Death occurs.

  Number 232 is a Lop Eared Rabbit. This Specimen will be Garroted with a Coat Hanger but not killed, then make it run in a Whole bunch of Circles.

  Afraid that grisly fates would befall Specimens 231 and 232 if she released them in the backyard, Estée transported their cages into her bedroom, where she fed them scraps of lettuce from the kitchen. Bill didn’t ask where she’d put them. He’d abandoned his practice of coming into her room while she slept; she’d bribed a carpenter to install a lock and wore the key on a shoelace around her neck. Anyway, his concerns had shifted; he was preoccupied. Obviously it no longer occurred to him that she was anywhere when she was out of his sight. When she retreated she dissipated like vapor; a fading feature of the landscape, she diminished unnoticed as the scene changed. Bill’s paternal neglect resulted less in melancholy than relief.

  Though they hardly spoke as the weeks passed, Bill checked the moth charts. She kept up her observations of the lepidoptera as their few remaining representatives, one by one, gave up the ghost. No new moths appeared, and the stubborn importation of mammals decreased until it happened only once a week. She had a collection of rodents in her room, six in all, and had freed a weasel, a stoat, three cats, and a poodle when her father disappeared.

  “Where is he?” she queried Betty, who’d had herself transported on a stretcher to her sunken bathtub and, imagining herself Ophelia, languished there with flowers scattered on the water and the tresses of a long wig floating on the bubbly surface around her head.