The Waning Age Read online

  One of the reasons Joey and I are best friends is that he sees it this way, too. Sometimes his idea of toughness differs from mine, but we always agree on the big picture. Unbeknownst to me, Joey had taken the day off from his job at the pharmacy on the day Cal had his testing done. When we got home close to five, Cal’s favorite music (Dolly Parton) was blaring through the apartment windows. On the kitchen table was a cake that looked like a fortune in chocolate and butter with the crooked words TEST RESULTS: AWESOME! written in purple frosting.

  “Wow!” Cal said, staring at the cake and beaming. “Wow!”

  I gave Joey a hug. “You are actually awesome,” I said to him quietly.

  Joey hooked his arm around me. “No problem,” he said. “Hope it tastes good.” He didn’t ask, didn’t even sniff in the direction of the test. He just took plates out of the cupboard and told Cal that it was his job to cut pieces.

  The other thing about Joey is that he has Tabby’s acting gene. Most stage actors do synaffs to simulate emotion, but Tabby is one of the purists who thinks it’s about remembering emotion and cultivating that memory, then channeling it when you act. Maybe that’s why she often is out of work. Regardless, she is very convincing at feigning emotion when she wants to, and Joey is the same. Neither one of them uses it in the show-off way, to pretend they can afford synaffs. Joey uses it very sparingly, and with Cal he almost never uses it at all. He sees it as a kind of manipulation, because for children the emotions are real, and to show children false emotion that seems real is . . . well, deceitful. At my mom’s funeral he feigned grief, and I could see that he was doing it so that Cal would not feel alone or strange in his misery. It worked—Cal held his hand and mine the whole time, and as Joey cried I could see Cal thinking, This is okay. This is okay, to fall apart.

  Right now Joey wasn’t acting, but he was sending a subtle, celebratory vibe into the room, throwing the napkins, wrestling Cass into an apron—subtle enough that Cal was laughing and loosening without realizing why. I looked around at them—Cal exclaiming over the cake, Joey and Cass horsing around, Tabby kicking off her heels—and I thought Cal was really right about not wanting a mansion.

  * * *

  —

  Dr. Baylor hadn’t given us any test results. She had recorded the entire session with her magical cart and promised to look at it closely, along with her supervisor at RealCorp.

  “Can we have a copy of the test, even if you don’t have results yet?” I pressed.

  “The testing equipment is owned by the Realism Corporation,” she said cheerily, “so technically anything produced by the equipment is also owned by RealCorp.”

  This flummoxed me, and I could tell Cass and Tabby weren’t too pleased by the logic, either. But it made sense, in a messed-up way. The Realism Corporation is one of the four largest pharmaceutical companies that produce synaffs and I wouldn’t expect it to give away anything for free, not even the time of day.

  “How is it any different from a blood test?” I asked. “The test might be yours, but the blood is Cal’s.”

  “Actually, that’s the wrong analogy,” Dr. Baylor persisted pleasantly. “Think of it more as a drawing that Cal made on really, really special RealCorp paper using RealCorp pencils.”

  I frowned, but I didn’t keep arguing with her because Cal was already uncomfortable. I did ask her for a time frame and she said a week. Fine. That meant we had a week to sit and stew and think about what it all meant.

  All afternoon and into the evening, I did just that. What did it all mean? What did it mean for Cal? What could I do to help him that I wasn’t already doing? What was I missing?

  Cal was asleep in his room, and I was sitting in bed with only the reading light on. It cast a circle of light on the quilted bedspread, and I turned the light so it shone away from me. The living room came into view: on one side, the tweedy sofa and oval coffee table; on the other side, my bureau between two bookshelves. Above the sofa was a canvas painted by Cass, all surreal figures and dripping landscapes. The thin curtains covering the casement windows shifted a little in the breeze.

  There were a few things I had never told Cal during any of our conversations about growing up. Hadn’t told anyone. Memories I didn’t mind leaving packed in the attic.

  I couldn’t remember the feeling of fear, but I could remember the fact of the fear. Constant—ebbing and flowing, but always there. There was a long, lingering sense that something was wrong. It was like forgetting something and not being sure what you’d forgotten. Mostly it came into sharp relief when I was with other children, because then the stages were starkly evident. The older ones who had already faded inspired mixed terror and envy—they seemed cool, unapproachable, faintly menacing in their transformed state. We were like a troop of monkeys beside them, and they were an army of ice princesses. But the moments of incremental change could be horrifying.

  There was Coral. Yes. Coral was definitely one of the worst moments, but not the only one. She had been friends with us, me and Joey. For a time, we were inseparable. I remember all of us falling asleep in a tent made of bedsheets, waking up to see Coral’s wispy, pale hair stuck to her face. I remember our easy flights of fantasy and making a spell book to ward off the change we knew was coming. Wing of crow and drop of wax. A coil of paper burned to ashes. Murmured rituals with words that tasted old, like prayers. The spells didn’t work, of course. First me and Joey, almost at the same time, began to fade. But Coral was slow. During that year when most of us were fading, she waited—like Cal, she was hanging on to every ounce of feeling she had.

  I didn’t know how far I’d faded until Coral showed me. We were at school, at the end of the day. I was sitting on the grass, doing nothing, when I heard screaming. Someone was calling my name. The other kids were clumped around a chained-up picnic table, and I drifted over. Nat! Joey! I understood that it was Coral crying, but the sound of her screams didn’t do anything to me. I was intrigued. I pushed the other kids aside to see what was under the table. I laughed. The sight was funny. She was naked, and she had something smeared on her back that smelled really bad. I couldn’t be sure what it was, but it was hilarious. The other kids were laughing. I was laughing. Coral’s face was red and puffy from crying. She looked me straight in the eye. “Nat, please,” she said, her voice shaking. “Please help me.”

  I blinked. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Then a boy in our class who hadn’t faded much yet, Derek, crept in under the table. He didn’t say anything, he just crawled in with Coral and handed her a rain jacket that had probably been moldering in the lost and found for a few years. She snatched it and pulled it on, hiccuping through her tears. Then Derek put his hand out. I remember thinking, What is he doing?

  I had the sense that I was forgetting something really, really important. I had to think of it. I had to think of it before it went away completely. What was it? What was it? Coral took his hand and squeezed it. She was trembling.

  Then I remembered. Cruelty. Shame. Fear. Compassion.

  They hit my stomach like a load of bricks, and I turned away from the pack of demons that were my classmates. I ran and ran and ran, but there was nowhere to go. Only the chain-link fence at the edge of the school playground and my own deadened brain, fading fast.

  * * *

  —

  The first month of high school was aimed at that. At them. At me. All those deadened brains. It was pure carrot and stick. Carrot being lunch in three different sizes—tiny, adequate, and generous. Stick being cages. Also in three different sizes. In the biggest you had space to rant against the steel bars, if you were so inclined. In the smallest you couldn’t even turn your head. Once we’d figured out the basics of rewards and punishment, it was on to the real lessons.

  The objective? Stay human. Don’t become a Fish. As in Cold Fish, as in the creeps who troll around wrecking things for the sake of it. The Fish are the reason Los
Angeles and a dozen other smaller cities are ghost towns now: depopulated, urban jungles, slowly being swallowed by the water and the sand, the vegetation and the mold.

  The Fish have all the senseless destructiveness of ten-year-olds, like the ones who reduced Coral to a stinking, naked mess. They sink into the void and stay there. No synaffs to remind them of how things used to feel. No fear to stop them from anything. You can’t even call them sadists, because there’s no pleasure to be gained.

  The worst part of Coral’s waning wasn’t even that she waned late. The worst part was that once she waned, she turned Fish. Her and a few others in high school. Not Derek, who disappeared beforehand, probably whisked away to private school. She found new friends more like her. The carrot and stick didn’t work on them. They hurt people the way gardeners hurt slugs: rationally, easily, with a practical goal in mind. The slugs are ruining my garden, so I will pour salt on them. The boy is in my seat, so I will stab his ear with a pencil.

  I threw the covers off and walked silently to Cal’s room. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling were bright, the constellations so close that it felt like the heavens were sagging. Cal was a small shape beneath the covers, slender as a branch. He was snoring a little. His clothes for the next day were draped over his chair: a tidy small shirt, a tidy set of folded pants, a tidy sweater, a pair of worn shoes. The books on his desk were neatly stacked. I stood beside his bed like a creepy sandman, watching him sleep. Sometimes I do that. Mostly because I’m trying to figure out how everything I’ve learned about the emotions I don’t have can possibly explain how I feel about Cal.

  Maybe I don’t actually feel anything. Maybe the rules drilled into my bones about defending the innocence of childhood and protecting the weak and committing to kin have messed with my brain so badly that I just think I love Cal.

  Maybe the rules really work. Much as I loathed the assault on my sensibilities known as high school, I have to admit that it’s the only thing keeping all of us from becoming Fish. Six years of brutal training, hammering into you over and over the seemingly senseless rules by which society is governed. The fact that you can no longer count on your emotions to navigate the world. You have to rely on your brain. And the rules. A thousand dictums on matters great and small. A complex code, to be memorized and practiced and practiced again. You follow traffic signals. You respect personal space. You acknowledge effort and discomfort with thanks and apologies. You recognize the limitations of youth and old age, and you provide assistance. You do not touch people if they do not want to be touched. You only use weapons in self-defense. You do not set fire to buildings. You do not stab pencils into people’s ears. You do not pull dresses off girls.

  Know what harm is. And cause no harm. Know what need is. And help those in need. Know what the law is. And follow the law.

  By the end, the rules aren’t senseless. By the end, they seem like the only things that actually make sense.

  I don’t envy them, the cops who taught us, and I envy even less the people who had to come up with this survival raft of a strategy to begin with. What could they do? On one side, you have a sandy shore overpopulated with people hopped up on synaffs, so desperate to feel again they’ll pay anything and feel anything. A crazy beach party gone haywire. On the other side, you have a sea full of sharp-toothed Fish, happy to wreck the little raft you’ve made out of timber and tar and earnest, nostalgic, unrealistic rules.

  What are you going to do? It’s not lonely on the raft, because you don’t feel lonely. You don’t feel anything. But nevertheless, you know you’re lost.

  I padded back into the living room and lifted the handset of the old rotary phone. Then, for no reason adhering to logic, other than one conjured from the memory of Coral, the sight of Cal, and the prospect of my raft, I pulled the rectangle of cream-colored card stock out of my work bag and slowly dialed Troy’s number.

  As I waited, listening to the ringing sound, it occurred to me that it was probably late. I was about to hang up when he answered.

  “Hello?”

  I paused only a fraction of a second. “Hi. This is Nat. Natalia Peña.”

  His pause was longer. No doubt he had forgotten about the cleaner from the Landmark, as was to be expected. “Hi,” he breathed, a smile of surprise in his voice. “I’m so glad you called me. I really didn’t think you would.” I heard the sound of screen decals in the background being silenced.

  “I didn’t think I would, either.” No sense denying it.

  He laughed.

  When I can’t see a face, it’s a little harder to read emotions. I listened to the tenor of his laugh: not rapid or mechanical; relaxed and spontaneous, like a hiccup. The effect was warm and easy, unoffended and untroubled. He asked: “What made my luck change?”

  “I wanted to thank you. For the book and the flowers. People are rarely kind enough to do something like that. Actually, never kind enough. I can’t remember the last time anyone sent me a book and flowers.”

  “You probably just get the flowers.” He played dejected, as if dismayed at all the competition. “What, like, every other day, maybe?”

  “Nope. Surprisingly, I don’t get flowers more than once a week.”

  He laughed again, then sobered. “I’m actually relieved. I didn’t know how you would take it. I was such a mess, there isn’t really any gift to make up for what you did. Seriously—thank you. And then I was positive you wouldn’t call, because as far as first impressions go, you could not get much worse. I’m not really like that, but you’d have no reason to believe me. Still, I had to at least try—” He paused, stopping himself.

  It sounded earnest. It sounded genuine. Even though I knew it wasn’t genuine, couldn’t possibly be genuine; it could only be synaffs. Well, what was I expecting? Wasn’t that why I’d called, for the feeling of something genuine that I knew not to be? Just like every other idiot adult, I was dialing random numbers into the void, looking for the nonexistent real article.

  I still hadn’t said anything, and he was embarrassed. “Long speeches,” he said sheepishly.

  That made me laugh. “You must be totally sick of all things Homer by this point in your life.”

  “No, actually, the opposite. When you said Hector and Achilles, it was like something clicked in my head. That copy is from the Cloak and Dagger; it’s one of my favorite bookstores.”

  I knew the place. It had an espionage theme, carried to a logical and almost counterproductive extreme. No signage outside; secret knocks and passwords to get in; subterranean rooms with hidden doors behind bookshelves. “I’ve been there. Not for ages, though. Do they still have the one-way mirror?”

  “Yeah,” he said fondly. “They still have it. What’s new is the torture chamber. Have you seen it?”

  “That doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Just a small room with two armchairs and two kinds of books. Russian novels and German philosophy.”

  I chuckled.

  “We should go,” he said lightly.

  “Sure,” I replied, matching his tone.

  He paused. “Great!” He seemed surprised. “I’m out of town for a few days, but when I get back?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll call you in a week or so.” The rotary wasn’t traceable, and he was smart enough not to ask for my number.

  “Thanks, Natalia,” he said, sounding suddenly wistful. “Thanks for calling.”

  “Good night, Troy.”

  6

  CALVINO

  oct-11

  2:38 p.m.

  calvinopio:

  Essay: What is waning and where does it come from? By Calvino Peña

  Waning is what happens to children as they get older. Beginning at age nine and ending at age ten children begin to go through a huge change called waning. During waning scientists say children lose the ability to feel emotion and they become adults. Scientists say adult
s do not feel emotions at all. They feel only instincts and they still have reason.

  Scientists don’t know where waning comes from. They know that it has occurred for several decades and that everyone experiences it. As far as is known there is no one who has not waned. The explanation that is taught is that adults many decades ago began to lose their emotional intelligence, because emotion is a form of intelligence. But it isn’t known what they did to lose their emotional intelligence since other kinds of intelligence remained the same.

  What scientists agree on is that the change is all over the world so it must be something that affected everyone. It could be a disease like smallpox, it could be a type of pollution or something in the water, it could be something completely outside of us like a change in the atmosphere. (The atmosphere did not cause waning, but something outside of us like that.)

  (Note: What scientists do not know is that waning doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Scientists think that everyone changes exactly the same, but this is not true.)

  hglt: Thanks for this response, Calvino. I learned a lot from your essay. Scientists seem to get a lot of things wrong! What do you mean when you say that waning doesn’t affect everyone in the same way?

  calvinopio: It has to do with the invisible emotions I was talking about. I was taught that the brain is like a city and that emotions live in one neighborhood then after waning the neighborhood is cut off.

  hglt: Yes, that metaphor is an effective teaching metaphor, though it isn’t _exactly_ what happens in the brain.

  calvinopio: So what I mean is that adults have different emotional neighborhoods even if they are cut off. That is very obvious.

  hglt: Can you give me an example?

  calvinopio: Yes. For example my mom. I can’t prove that her neighborhood wasn’t cut off but I know that she was not like other adults.

  hglt: In what way?

  calvinopio: She was bothered by things. You would probably say that it was her reason but I don’t think so. Often times she really seemed hurt.