Oh, now wait a minute now. If that little girl upstairs was one of those rich Mayfairs come down here to-
“Now don’t you worry about a thing,” Mary Jane sang out, “you didn’t deliver the package, you just signed for it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And now we have to get back in that boat!”
She hurried on to the head of the lower steps, and he sloshed and padded right behind her. Well, the house didn’t tilt that much, he figured, once you were inside of it. Clickety, clickety, clickety, there it was again. Guess you could get used to a tilted house, but the very idea of living in a place that was half flooded was perfectly-
The lightning let go with a flash like midday, and the hall came to life, wallpaper, ceilings, and transoms above the doors, and the old chandelier dripping dead cords from two sockets.
That’s what it was! A computer. He’d seen her in the split second of white light-in the back room-a very tall woman bent over the machine, fingers flying as she typed, hair red as the mother up in the bed, and twice as long, and a song coming from her as she worked, as if she was mumbling aloud whatever she was composing on the keyboard.
The darkness closed down around her and her glowing screen and a gooseneck lamp making a puddle of yellow light on her fluttering fingers.
Clickety, clickety, clickety!
Then the thunder went off with the loudest boom he’d ever heard, rattling every piece of glass left in the house. Mary Jane’s hands flew to her ears. The tall young thing at the computer screamed and jumped up out of her chair, and the lights in the house went out, complete and entire, pitching them all into deep, dull afternoon gloom that might as well have been evening.
The tall beauty was screaming her head off. She was taller than he was!
“Shhhh, shhhh, Morrigan, stop!” shouted Mary Jane, running towards her. “It’s just the lightning knocked out the power! It will go back on again!”
“But it’s dead, it’s gone dead!” the young girl cried, and then, turning, she looked down and saw Dr. Jack, and for one moment he thought he was losing his faculties. It was the mother’s head he saw way up there on this girl’s neck, same freckles, red hair, white teeth, green eyes. Good grief, like somebody had just pulled it right off the mother and plunked it down on this creature’s neck, and look at the size of this beanpole! They couldn’t be twins, these two. He himself was five foot ten, and this long, tall drink of water was at least a foot taller than that. She wasn’t wearing anything but a big white shirt, just like the mother, and her soft white legs just went on forever and ever. Must have been sisters. Had to be.
“Whoa!” she said, staring down at him and then marching towards him, bare feet on the bare wood, though Mary Jane tried to stop her.
“Now you go back and sit down,” said Mary Jane, “the lights will be on in a jiffy.”
“You’re a man,” said the tall young woman, who was really a girl, no older than the pint-sized mother in the bed, or Mary Jane herself. She stood right in front of the doctor, scowling at him with red eyebrows, her green eyes bigger than those of the little one upstairs, with big curling lashes. “You are a man, aren’t you?”
“I told you, this is the doctor,” said Mary Jane, “come to fill out the birth certificate for the baby. Now, Dr. Jack, this is Morrigan, this is the baby’s aunt, now Morrigan, this is Dr. Jack, sit down now, Morrigan! Let this doctor get about his business. Let’s go, Doctor.”
“Don’t get so theatrical, Mary Jane,” declared the beanpole girl, with a great spreading smile. She rubbed her long, silky-looking white hands together. Her voice sounded exactly like that of the little mother upstairs. Same well-bred voice. “You have to forgive me, Dr. Jack, my manners aren’t what they should be yet, I’m still a little rough all over at the edges, trying to ingest a little more information, perhaps, than God ever intended for anyone of my ilk, but then we have so many different problems which we have to solve, for example, now that we have the birth certificate, we do have that, do we not, Mary Jane, that is what you were trying to make plain to me when I so rudely interrupted you, was it not, what about the baptism of this baby, for if memory serves me right, the legacy makes quite a point of the matter that the baby must be baptized Catholic. Indeed, it seems to me that in some of these documents which I’ve just accessed and only skimmed, that baptism is a more important point actually than legal registration.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Dr. Jack. “And where in God’s name did they vaccinate you, RCA Victor?”
She let out a pretty peal of laughter, clapping both of her hands together, very loudly, her red hair rippling and shaking out from her shoulders as she shook her head.
“Doctor, what are you talking about!” she said. “How old are you? You’re a fairly good-sized man, aren’t you, let me see, I estimate you are sixty-seven years old, am I right? May I see your glasses?”
She snatched them off his nose before he could protest, peering through them into his face. He was flabbergasted; he was also sixty-eight. She became a fragrant blur before his naked eyes.
“Oh, now this is major, really, look at this,” she said. And quickly put the glasses back on the bridge of his nose with perfect aim, flaring into detail again, with plump little cheeks and a cupid’s bow of a mouth just about as perfect as he’d ever seen. “Yes, it makes everything just a fraction bigger, doesn’t it, and to think this is but one of the more common everyday inventions I’m likely to encounter within the first few hours of life, eyeglasses, spectacles, am I correct? Eyeglasses, microwave oven, clip-on earrings, telephone, NEC MultiSync 5D computer monitor. It would seem to me that later on, at a time of reflection on all that’s taken place, one ought to be able to discern a certain poetry in the list of those objects which were encountered first, especially if we are right that nothing in life is purely random, that things only have the appearance from different vantage points of being random and that ultimately as we better calibrate all our tools of observation, we’ll come to understand that even the inventions encountered on two stories of an abandoned and distressed house, do cluster together to form a statement about the occupants that is far more profound than anyone would suppose at first thought. What do you think!”
Now it was his turn to let out the peal of laughter. He slapped his leg. “Honey, I don’t know what I think about that, but I sure do like the style with which you say it!” he declared. “What did you say your name was, you’re the one that baby’s named after, Morrigan, don’t tell me you’re a Mayfair, too.”
“Oh yes, sir, absolutely, Morrigan Mayfair!” she said, throwing up her arms like a cheerleader.
There was a glimmer, then a faint purring sound, and on came the lights, and the computer behind them in the room began to make its grinding, winding, start-up noises.
“Ooops, there we go!” she said, red hair flying about her shoulders. “Back on line with Mayfair and Mayfair, until such time as Mother Nature sees fit to humble all of us, regardless of how well we are equipped, configured, programmed, and installed. In other words, until lightning strikes again!”
She dashed to the chair before the desk, took up her place before the screen, and began typing again, just as if she’d completely forgotten he was standing there.