The son’s arms felt deboned — fuzzy, how they’d felt in those sick months — months during which each night the man had appeared above his bed. The son had not mentioned the man to anyone, not his mother, even during all those weeks she’d never left him, never let go of his hand — not even when the man appeared right there beside her. The man had been there on the first day the son started feeling sick. He’d walked right up to the son in the cafeteria. A hairy man, with covered head. He’d come to the table and stood above the son and reached and touched the son across his face — his lips — his jaw. The man had slid his thumb into the son’s mouth, just like that. He’d spoken through the finger, in a voice. The man with the yellow shirt neck pulled so loose. The man who’d stood and stood and stood, looking at the son until the son closed his eyes and he felt the fat crooked thumb expanding and when he’d looked again he wasn’t there — just the whole long school room full of children eating lunches, silent — the adults against the school walls watching with their heads cocked — no one said anything about it, even after the man was gone. The next day the son could not sit up.
The son was certain this person on the phone now was not the same man as that man then, but he knew they knew each other. He didn’t know why he knew that. He sensed something at the window but he refused to look. The man inside the cell phone had been talking all this time.
WHAT THE MOWER FOUND
The mother mowed the yard again. She mowed the yard, the yard, a prayer. The mother was slick with sweat and slather. Her skin was red in certain places from sun and where she’d scratched herself to keep the ants and bees off. The insects swarmed her head no matter how fast she moved. They had wings and teeth and eyes. They swarmed the yard, the street, the long horizon. The mother had mowed the yard twenty-seven times in the last week. Sometimes she’d go on for hours. Her biceps and pectorals were getting meaty. The grass was going dead around the edges from where the mother had pushed the mower so much. The mother kept her eyes wide and turned her head back and forth from side to side. Where was the man who’d fixed the mower? What else could he put a hand to? All those surrounding lawns on all those houses.
The father was still gone. That morning he’d left sometime just after 4 a.m. and he would probably not be home till after midnight. His face seemed to be sinking into his features. The mother tried to think of the father’s name. She could think of lots of other names it might have sounded like, but not quite the right one, she knew. She mouthed out things she’d said before — she reversed her rehearsed vows, teasing her tongue toward the father. She mowed the yard in wicked zigzags, reckless with her aim. The mower devoured her newer flowers — begonias, ivy, mums. They were dying anyway. She ripped up one long sod piece, spurting mud on the walk. Underneath the sod, the insects hung, spaghetti. The mother kept pushing, head up, chest out, scrunching her face best into something someone watching could sometime want.
The mother did not see the son watching through the window on the second floor where there may not have been a window once before.
The mower soon grew heavy. The handle hurt her hands. The mother went on garbled grunting, as if trying to push something from her insides. Around a corner by the chain fence, she felt the mower suck something up. Metal clanged against the blades. There was a whirring, choke and smoke. It spat something out its side. The mower whirred a little longer and then got tired, then was gone. The mother squatted on her haunches in the trampled mud-mushed grass, her eyes stung with gasoline and sweat, the sky behind her slightly hulking. In the grass there, slushed with clippings, scarred, the mother saw the egg.
THE COPY EGG
The egg was made of a smooth dark polymer with several seams and edges, though the mother could not make them open, try as she might with nail or hammer. Several hours of such tinker caused a burning at her eyes.
The mother found with effort how the egg did other things.
The first night she slept with the egg under her pillow, hugging. She woke with the huge toy in her mouth. Her chest felt funny and she could not remember sleeping. She later found the garage filled with an inch of liquid. The liquid stunk and had to be scraped out. The mother watched the father on his knees for hours scowling with the trowel.
The second night the mother hid the egg inside a lamp. She wasn’t sure whom the hiding was meant to be from. She’d bought the lamp from a garage sale run by the neighbors. The stuff was left out on the front lawn with a sign. No one was watching. The mother left a dollar. She went back and left a dime. Later, she couldn’t get the lamp to work. She liked the lamp — the look and stink of it, the pattern. She called it Bill. She sat it at her bedside. The egg seemed to fit the nodule where the bulb went just exactly. In the morning the lamp was on. The mother carried the lamp and egg into the bathroom and used the light to read while in a bath. The light made her feel younger, but not enough.
The third night the mother felt very tired and did not have time to touch the egg at all—
instead she dreamt she ate it. She dreamt it had a job that paid for all. She dreamt it became a full-grown boy who sat beside the son and kept him clean.
The fourth night the mother stayed up late alone and held the egg against her chest. She found by lengths and rubbing how the egg could steer the house. When she touched the egg in one location, the downstairs bathroom toilet flushed. When she knocked with her left thumb knuckle on its one small gray abrasion, the egg nudged the kitchen off an inch. Other sorts of routine made the egg do other kinds of things, most of which would go unnoticed unless one knew exactly where to look. The mother found it difficult to remember which trick did what. She tried to write down notations, but her hand shook scribble. One thing the mother knew for certain was when she kissed the egg a tone would sound inside the shell. The tone triggered something in her brain that made her shake with vast orgasm. It erased all previous tones. Her body shuddered reeling, clobbered taut. The mother felt guilty and enormous. Her certain veins clenched into bouquets. It had been more than several years. The mother could hardly keep herself from squealing through the small house in the night — she had to bite a wooden spoon. She bit through it. She kissed the egg until her eyes went bloodshot and her brain swam fat with glee. The next day she could not stand up. Nor the next day nor the next. Her lower muscles scored and knotted. The mother hid the egg inside her nightgown. She moaned with ache late into evening. The father went to sleep downstairs.
The mother cursed the egg. She called it Bastard. Inside the egg the egg changed colors. The next time the mother found the chance to kiss the egg it just sat and gleamed for hours. The mother spit. The mother put the egg inside a closet, covered, and closed and locked the door.
The fifth night the egg woke the mother up. Its voice rattled the bed frame and the mirror. A man’s voice, deep and meaty. The father slept right on. The egg said things about the son — what he’d done and what would happen. The egg would not shut up. The mother found herself arguing with the egg aloud. The mother took the egg downstairs. She immersed the egg in high ice water. The voice bubbled upward, even louder. She got house paint and coated the egg’s face in a new white — the same color as her bedroom. The egg started hissing. It melted through its outer layer with new blackened creamy flesh. It went on and on not only about the son now, but about the mother — who she’d been, what she’d wanted, how she felt about the father, what she would do given the chance with certain other men or even just for money. The mother’s nostrils made little outlets, waiting for a plug.