Composite Creatures Page 23

  “It’s more general testing,” Art croaked. “They ask what we want from life.”

  Adam leant forwards. “Fuck. That’s big. What did you say?”

  Margo looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure how much of anything matters in the end.”

  “Shhh, Margo. What did you say?” Adam growled, insisting we bare our innards. The silence upstairs was setting my skin on fire.

  “I want to be remembered for making something that moves people. I’m never going to be in the history books, but maybe something I write will. A parable.”

  “And what about your cash cows?”

  “They’ll keep going. People will keep buying them, forgetting them, buying them again.”

  “And what about you, Norah? You’re different. What’s your USP?”

  There was no air left in the room. Already on my knees, the room was black and grey, grainy, filling in with white noise. Adam’s lips were moving, first upturned, then downturned. I felt hot breath behind my ear, and Art’s voice was underwater. “Norah has the world at her feet. She is goodness. She is kindness. She’s exactly what the world needs.”

  A pair of ropes in green tweed around my neck. And then ticking, faster than a clock, right in my ear: tick tick tick tick tick.

  A high voice, a woman: “But that’s not what she wants. What did you tell them, Norah?”

  Were my eyes closed or open? Art’s breath, “It doesn’t matter. That’s for us.”

  Tick tick tick tick tick. Like a pen clicking. But no one there had a pen.

  Take myself away from it. Oh, hot, sweet breeze through trees. I could smell almonds and peanuts and plum wine. If I rest my head back on Art, would that help me come back?

  The sound of the sea, and then the squeal of a pig. It cut through me like glass.

  “Georgie?” Margo stood up unsteadily, her colours coming back into focus. I was weightless, off-balance. I bit my tongue to resist laughing out loud.

  “Go see what’s going on, Adam. They’ve been too long.”

  Adam lifted his huge frame from the chair and headed doggedly towards the staircase. Margo stayed standing where she was, on the brink of staying and going. Adam had reached the doorway when Georgie flung herself at his thighs, reaching her tiny hands up his midriff. He picked her up and I caught a glimpse of a shining red face streaked with silver over his shoulder before it buried itself in his shirt.

  “Jasper.” Adam’s voice was low, a lion. “What have you done? Why’s she upset?”

  Thump, thump, thump, went footsteps down the stairs. But Jasper didn’t come into the living room.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “This isn’t on, Jasper. You’re showing us up. Apologise to your sister.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll do it now.”

  “Dad–”

  Adam drove forwards and grabbed Jasper’s wrist. He rotated his grip, twisting the skin beneath.

  “Dad, there’s a thing up there. A monster. It scared Georgie, not me. It bit her.”

  He continued to twist and Jasper ducked, contorting his whole body to follow his skin.

  Thump, thump, thump on the stairs again. And from between the bannisters watched Nut, her fleshy face pushed against the bars, one round, blue eye in each gap. Her mouth hung open as if she’d bitten something with sore gums, her hands bony waterfalls, pouring between the posts.

  Something changed.

  I saw her through Adam’s eyes, through Georgie’s eyes, through Jasper’s eyes, and I understood. I understood Adam’s stepping back into the living room, his face a mask of horror. Georgie’s drawn-out moan. Nut was a whale out of water, her heavy breathing the heartbeat of the house.

  “What the fuck?”

  Margo broke the music and pulled Adam and Georgie back. Never taking her eyes off Nut, her open mouth dripped with disgust. Adam ran one hand through his hair like he didn’t know what was happening.

  Art was on his feet; I hadn’t even felt the ropes slipping. “I’ll put her away.”

  “Georgie. Georgie. Where did it get you?” Margo fumbled in Georgie’s clothes for an injury. Georgie’s face was still pushed into Adam’s neck, so Margo lifted her arm. A blue sleeve, dampened with saliva in a semicircle as wide as a bowl. She wiggled Georgie’s wrist and kissed her fingers, rolling up the sleeve to check her elbow. No blood.

  Why? Why must we hide her away?

  Margo turned on me, baring her teeth like a cat. “What the fuck is it doing out?”

  She grabbed her progeny and crushed her into her breast. “Jasper. Jasper. Get here now.”

  I reached up a hand to stroke the low part of Georgie’s back.

  “It’s OK, Georgie,” I sang. “This is Nut. Like a walnut. She lives here, with us.”

  Georgie wailed and pushed her face hard into Margo’s dress, her fists clenched over her ears. Margo started clicking her tongue in Georgie’s ear, just like we used to do with Nut when she was newly-made and she didn’t know language.

  Margo stepped away from me, leaving my hand trailing in the air.

  “You’re disgusting. What are you both doing? What are you thinking of?”

  “Did it escape or something?” Adam’s voice was soft and slow, as if he addressed someone who might not understand him, someone who needed guiding to the light.

  Or maybe Adam was afraid. Yes.

  “I need to–” Art slipped by Adam through the doorway.

  “Wait, Art.” I folded my arms, cool as you like. “This is our home, Nut’s home. There’s nothing wrong with this.”

  “Yes, there fucking is!” Adam bellowed. “It’s unnatural.”

  But now that Nut was out, so was I. I’d not felt this serene in months. All the layers were peeled back and I waved my stamen, flashed my golden pollen.

  “She’s the most natural thing in the world. How is this any different to you living as a family? How is Nut any less of a life, just because she wasn’t born?”

  Margo cackled, her face wild and flicking between Adam and I. She gasped, starting words but never getting them out. “You’re mad. Mad.”

  Adam joined in, his voice high, harsh. “How can you compare it? It should be in a fucking institution. I didn’t even think they let you keep them at home anymore.”

  Adam looked at Nut full in the face. “Jesus, Arthur. It even looks like you. How can you look at that every day?”

  It even looks like you.

  Of course she did. She had Art’s eyes, his lips, his nervous grasp of the ear. She loved books and magic tricks. She’d inherited his assets and picked up his habits. She was as good as his daughter. We would never have children, that was in the contract. But he would have her. Our blood.

  Art cleared his throat. “It’s temporary. She got sick in the loft. She’ll be put in an incubator when we can afford it.”

  Anger. I felt anger now. What did it have to do with them? With Adam, or Margo, or any of them? They didn’t have an ovum organi, they didn’t know. And how dare they say all this when Nut was sitting there, listening? They were invaders, unwelcome, unwanted, disgusting. Dirty. Smudging their dark ideas over white. Spoiling, staining, growing foul.

  I lifted on pillars of hot air, sweeping them all up with arms glowing like iron red from the furnace. I could have gathered hundreds of people in those arms, and rushed them off the face of the earth.

  “Get out. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.”

  Margo was already at the foot of the stairs, cramming on her stilettos and shoving Georgie’s slippers in a tote bag. Jasper stood by the front door, staring at the top of the stairs where Art was attempting to drag Nut back onto the landing. I pushed them all aside and threw open the door onto the cold night. Bullets of rain swept in on a twisting wind. Margo flounced out without another look. Adam pushed Jasper out the door with a firm hand on his shoulder.

  “Think about this, Arthur,” Adam called up the stairs. The double bleep of a car unlocking. An engine. A sob.

  Rosa stoo
d behind me, held firm between Mike’s hands. Her face was wet, shining like a mirror, her lips peeled back over her gums. Her cheeks were marked with little half-moon indentations. She was fixated on Nut between her fingers, blinking frantically, trying to clear away a nightmare.

  “Oh Norah. It’s so horrible. I never knew.” Rosa let out a high whine. “She’s you.”

  A slight shake and Mike was directing her towards the door. She pressed the pad of her palm over her mouth, biting the flesh.

  “How could you? How could you? How could you?”

  And we were alone. And later the chimes were striking midnight. And the fireworks were filling the night’s universe with fire and smoke.

  18

  How could you? How could you? How could you?

  How couldn’t I?

  Art stood halfway up the stairs, bobbing his head towards the door, chewing the air. Behind him on the landing, Nut’s face peeked around the bannister, her lips parted, her tongue tasting the icy draft.

  I looped the chain through the eye and tested the handle, once, twice, thrice. I wanted to be with Nut, close her ears to the world. My first instinct was to make sure she wasn’t upset, that she knew she was loved. She did understand language, I know she did. She replied to me, she muttered back.

  I folded my legs beneath me a step or two before reaching Art and seized Nut’s face between my palms. I closed my eyes and it became Art’s face. I knew them both just as well as each other. Moving my fingers over the skin; it was smooth, a high arched nose, a prominent chin, seeded with bristling hairs. His cheekbones. My thumbs smoothed over lips, so soft they could have not existed at all, and above – Nut’s eyes were open wide as if she heard more with the whites. I let out one long breath, and so did she, low and rattling.

  Bones in a jar. Moths’ wings against paper.

  Her face was his face, yes, but it was broken. She was already missing a tooth. And I couldn’t look at her without feeling utterly, utterly ashamed that I’d let this happen. No – that I hadn’t even known that it’d happened.

  Art was still standing beside us on the stairs, watching the door. I reached up, held his hand, squeezed. “Art, sit with me. It’s just us again.”

  He looked at me, a complete blank. “I didn’t want them to go. I didn’t want them to go.”

  I tugged at his hand, pulling him down to Nut and I. “Sit with us.”

  He sank to a crouch and let his hand be guided across her wide, white back.

  “Why did they go? Are we really that terrible?” He mumbled the words under his breath, inside out. I could practically see his capillaries, everything slowing down. I stroked his cheek.

  “Arthur. How could you take her tooth?”

  “I didn’t get to explain it to them. I didn’t tell them I was sick.”

  “Do you feel her? In you?”

  “I didn’t tell them.”

  He was on a different plane; I couldn’t reach him. I cupped his cheek in my hand.

  “They knew, Art. I’m sure they knew.”

  But no, no. Not sick. Not truly sick. Not that type of sick. Not yet. It was too soon. He would have told me.

  “Art, what’s happening?” My voice trembled.

  “You remember that we were bio-matched to share her?” he said, his hands clasping his elbows. “She’s not just yours, she’s mine too. And now I need her. I need you both.”

  Art had given up a lot – moving his entire life from Wisconsin to meet his closest biological match. He’d always said that his life in the US was a time he wanted to cut off, like a limb that wouldn’t heal. And now he needed to slice more life away in order to save himself. All the time, Art had been raw, and I’d never noticed. He’d always looked eerily familiar. From the first time I saw him sitting across from me in the waiting room, and then when I saw him flitting along the corridors, bright as a bird, I knew it was him. He smiled a lot, and that made it all OK. Already he reassured me, and now he needed me to return the favour.

  “I love you, Norah.”

  He wanted me to say it back. He looked like a child, but he wasn’t. I was so aware that he was a grown man who was inching closer to a choice that we couldn’t turn back from. I didn’t say those three little words back to him. They weren’t in me anymore.

  Art let out a juddering sigh and squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s booked for a few days’ time. It’s now,” he whispered. “I won’t be gone long. I’ll be back before you know it, don’t worry.”

  Cold lips pressed on my forehead, and my third eye peered down Art’s throat for the fault, the failure. Was it the greying? Perhaps from his youth in the US? Had he played in his parents’ overalls, never washing his hands after pressing them into the chemicals? I pulled Nut towards me, probably a little roughly because she let out a whimper and buried her head in the crook of my arm. Within seconds she was chewing the sleeve of my dress, placating the tension in her spine, her neck, with each rotation of her jaw.

  I spoke with a fictional voice. “Have you spoken to Easton Grove?” I didn’t sound like me. I was a canary, singing in a cage. An actor, reading a script. Art stroked his fingers down the joints of Nut’s spine. Each lump was an onion bulb, pushing through a pigskin.

  “She’s a dinosaur, isn’t she?” he muttered. “A fossil, already a fossil.”

  My heart high in my throat, I gave a dull thump of a word in reply. Art turned to Nut fully, exploring those ridges with his fingertips before rolling his hands around her expanse to her hips, straining under her weight. The lump of a knee, a foot, so like my own. Toenails.

  In a second I could see it – Nut broken in two on a steel table, Art above with a sacrificial knife. He cuts deep, deep between the teats and yank, yank, yanks the blade towards him as if gutting a wriggling fish, then parts the wet lips of her belly. In he dives, his hands pressed together in prayer. Down to the waist in Nut, Art wriggles left and right before emerging, shining black, and holding a fist of beating red matter, just matter. And all the while Nut’s legs are waving in the air and she’s looking at him with his own face, his own eyes, that one gaping hole at the back of her jaw potent and wanting for a thumb to fill it.

  But there on the stairs, Art was close enough to kiss her. “She’s us, trapped in amber.” He squeezed her middle, pressing probe-like thumbs into the thick layer of fat, “Already a fossil.” Nut flicked her head back on her neck and croaked.

  It sounded like “No.”

  19

  Mum used to play a game. Whenever I was too sick to go to school, she’d make me eat fruit on the hour, every hour, from when she first arose to paint to the last hours of light.

  At first I wouldn’t care and savour the sugar, not minding when I wasted the peach-juice by letting it run down my chin because I knew another treat was coming soon. But by mid-afternoon I didn’t want to eat any more. Every bite bit me back, and made my stomach burn with all the acids. Bitter replaced sweet.

  “Come on, another piece and you’ll be full of power-ups,” she said, blowing out a stream of smoke like a wizard. “We’re not stopping until you’re bouncing off the walls.”

  It felt like a game, even when it hurt. Us against the virus. Mum was scared of the virus, she’d do anything she could to beat it quickly, while it was still weak. Even when I was faking it, she made me eat fruit. Even when she must’ve known that I just didn’t want to go to school that day. But whether I was really sick or pretending, the quicker I got better, the more she made me swallow.

  “We’re winning! Another. Another!” Her red hair bobbed on her shoulders. “Another piece, Norah, and you’ll live forever. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Art stumbled to bed soon after our conversation, leaving me alone on the stairs. I called up to him that I’d follow him shortly.

  After he’d switched off the upstairs light and there’d been a few minutes of silence, I headed to the airing cupboard and pulled out the spare duvet we’d bought for guests but had never used. I carried it to the living r
oom, switching off all the lamps as I went.

  Nut followed me, of course, and stretched out on the floor as I made myself a makeshift bed. I hadn’t been able to find a pillow, so I rolled the patchwork blanket and squashed it by the arm of the sofa. Rain lashed against the window, sounding like someone whispering “hush, hush”.

  I tucked myself in as tightly as I could, burying myself beneath the cloud of cotton, but it didn’t feel right, so I snaked one arm free and let it rest on Nut’s head. She was still there, her breathing heavy and slow. I coaxed her onto the duvet with the dance of my fingers and she lay along my body, grounding me into the cushions. The patchwork smelled like Nut’s smoky scent and matted fur, but I could also pick up Aubrey, the perfume of lilies.

  I don’t know how I slept, but I did. I wanted to be with Nut, and with my fingers on her neck I was connected to the whole world. Even years later, some nights I’d lie in bed and feel like anywhere anyone blinked, I’d be blinking too. Colours, wants, curses and swearing – everything everyone thought flashed across my retinas from left to right, and if I reached out to grab at them, hold them still, the ribbons would slip through my fingers. But I always slept eventually, lost in the chorus, all the noise bleaching itself out into nothingness, like switching off a lamp. There’s the bright light of the day and then darkness, nothing. I wouldn’t, and still won’t, let myself digest what we did.

  New Year’s Day dragged me into the world without my agreement.

  Even before opening my eyes, the morning poured its fire into my belly and burned, twisting my guts this way and that. To move, to open my eyes, meant accepting it so I lay there still, wasting time.

  I reached down blindly for Nut and brushed my fingers against the carpet. Confusion, dread, and I bolted upright – scanning the room for signs of her. Art couldn’t have gone, he couldn’t have taken her already. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t.

  I stalked the downstairs rooms without breathing, quickly testing the front and back doors to make sure they were still locked. My head was swimming and took a few seconds to catch up with me as I bulleted up the stairs and tore into the bedroom.