Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

“Parents,” I said.

“Well, I’m glad my parents are more generous than that. It sounds like your father must be Ebenezer Scrooge and your mother must be Shylock.”

“Shylock was a man.”

“Stingy, anyway. How much do they charge you for lunch and dinner?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m surprised. Do they have a coin box and water meter on the shower? Do they make you pay for clean sheets?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“A car is a necessity of life,” she said. “Parents have a responsibility to provide them for their children.”

Now, you have to understand. I’m not an argumentative person. I’m quite easy to get along with. But she was talking about my parents, judging them just by the fact that they ran a rip-off car leasing business with a captive clientele. I couldn’t let her go unanswered. So I answered.

“Listen, Miriam, a car is different from showers and food and bedding. It’s a lot more expensive. And I eat three meals a day and sleep once a night and take a shower every morning. It’s regular and predictable and it doesn’t go up and down. But the car I use as often as I like, and we kids used to use the cars all the time. It cost the folks hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month. And so it was perfectly fair for them to decide we should help pay.”

“You can’t live in the modern world without a car. They might as well charge you for air.” She sounded upset.

“You can live without a car,” I said. “You can walk, for example. I’ve walked to school a lot the last few months.”

“I can imagine,” she said darkly.

“I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve discovered there are things you can’t see from a car.”

“Like bubble gum on a sidewalk,” she said, sounding rather snide.

“I think it’s a good idea for us to help our parents pay for the cars.”

“And I think anybody who thinks that is crazy.”

“You do?” I asked, and I think by now I also sounded upset.

“I do. If word of this gets around, other people’s parents will try it, too, and pretty soon an entire generation of young people will be trapped at home with their families night after night.”

It shows you how angry I was. I said, “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. And furthermore, I think that it’s perfectly possible for people to have a good time together without having a car at all. I think it would be a wonderful date just to walk over to a girl’s house and take her out walking and talking and maybe looking in store windows or maybe just seeing a little bit of the neighborhood and just getting to know each other without spending any money at all.”

“That sounds hideous.”

“Then,” I said, “I won’t ask you out on such a date.”

I took her home and neither of us said another word except for a perfunctory good-night-and-thanks-for-a-wonderful-evening at the door.

When I got home, after filling the gas tank, I wrote down the mileage on the odometer, figured out my total car costs for the evening, and went inside, got the money from my room, and went into Mom and Dad’s bedroom, where they were reading the Old Testament out loud to each other the way they do every night.

“Did you have a nice time?” asked Mother.

“Wonderful,” I said. “I want to settle up for tonight.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that until the first of the month,” Dad said.

“I want to do it now.” I showed them how much I owed them, counted out the money, and handed it to them. Then I carefully placed a five dollar bill on top of the rest.

“What’s that for?” asked Mother.

“It’s a tip,” I said. “For service above and beyond the call of duty.

“I think you’re wonderful. I’m glad you laid it on the line with us. I’m glad you shared the responsibility of paying for the entire U.S. automobile industry with us kids. It’s the most adult thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”

Mother got tears in her eyes. Father said, “I think Jerry’s grown up, don’t you, Mother?”

“Yes,” Mother agreed.

“Well, you’re both wrong,” I said. “I’m just completely out of my mind.”

I kissed them both good-night and went straight to bed feeling pretty doggone good. Also pretty doggone poor, since I had about six bucks to last me through the rest of the month. But as my sister Anne pointed out, money isn’t everything. In fact, it’s hardly anything.

Susan Parker decided to make a list. She sat down at her writing desk, the one her father had given her two years ago on her eleventh birthday and which she was already outgrowing. On the left side of a piece of paper she wrote, “People who hate me.”

On the right side of the piece of paper she wrote, “People who like me.”

The first name she put on the left side was Todd Slover. He was definitely a hater. She had accidentally jabbed him in the arm with a pencil and now he would probably die of lead poisoning.

Mrs. Gray was on the “People who hate me” side, too. She had brought a fishbowl to school for the lesson on lizards. The class was supposed to catch a lizard and put it in the fishbowl. Susan broke the fishbowl.

It hadn’t been a good day at school.

The list of haters kept growing. In big letters she wrote, “MOTHER.”

Mother had sent her to the store for eggs. Susan had been absolutely positive Mother had sent her for eggs. She got home with the eggs. Mother thanked her for the eggs and then asked about the butter, which is what she sent her to the store for.

“Eggs are nice, I can always use them,” Mother said. “But what I need to finish the cookies for the party tonight is butter.”

“Oh, yeah, butter,” Susan had answered. Mother had gotten that tight little look she always got when she was trying not to get mad. Susan had decided that was a good time to head for the bedroom.

Susan held up the list and looked at it. So far, it said:

People who hate me | People who like me

Todd Slover Mrs.

Gray

MOTHER

It was a depressing list. She had already made three people very angry today. And the night was still young.

And so Susan decided that it was about time for Gert Fram to write another novel. Gert Fram was a world-famous thirteen-year-old novelist who preferred to avoid publicity and therefore never published more than one copy of her work. So far, she had written five novels. They were arranged in a neat stack on the desk: Samy Davis Worm , by Gert Fram. Little Purple Pears, by Gert Fram. A Decent Book about Nothing, by Gert Fram. Water Warts, by Gert Fram. And her favorite: Chapy Nukls. Also by Gert Fram.

Susan picked up her pen and reached for an empty book. She had made a batch of about five books the last time. They consisted of pieces of paper about two inches by four inches, stapled together along one edge. Making the empty book first was a good idea. That way she always knew when to end her novel, because she would run out of paper.

She thought for a moment, and then wrote, “RASIN MOON, by Gert Fram.” Then she smiled, and began to write:

“There was a little man & everyday he would eat and he would eat rasins always, now there was a rasin moon in the sky. And every day it would get fatter because the rasins would keep growing + nobody would eat them exept gravity + it doesn’t have a mouth, well, this little man was getting hungry for rasins one supper night but the world would run out because the rasins would evaporate, + if it wasn’t for evaporation the rasin moon would be a nothing moon, the man decided to go to the rasin moon but he didn’t know that there was such thing as one but he decided to check anyway. He didn’t really know how to get up there but all of a sudden”