Don DeLillo - Underworld

Except their Kelvinator wasn't white of course. Not on the outside anyway. It was cameo rose and pearly dawn.

He looked inside. He saw the nine tilted parfait glasses and felt a little dizzy. He got disoriented sometimes by the tilted Jell-O desserts. It was as if a science-fiction force had entered the house and made some things askew while sparing others.

They sat down to dinner and Rick carved the mousse and doled out portions. They drank iced tea with a slice of lemon wedged to the rim of each glass, one of Erica's effortless extra touches.

Rick said to Eric, "Wha'cha been up to all afternoon? Big homework day?"

"Hey dad. Saw you simonizing the car."

"Got an idea. After dinner well take the binoculars and drive out on the Old Farm Road and see if we can spot it."

"Spot what?" Erica said.

"The baby moon. What else? The satellite they put up there. Supposed to be visible on clear nights."

It wasn't until this moment that Erica understood why her day had felt shadowed and ominous from the time she opened her eyes and stared at the mikado yellow walls with patina green fleecing. Yes, that satellite they put into orbit a few days ago. Rick took a scientific interest and wanted Eric to do the same. Sure, Rick was surprised and upset, just as she was, but he was willing to stand in a meadow somewhere and try to spot the object as it floated over. Erica felt a twisted sort of disappointment. It was theirs, not ours. It flew at an amazing rate of speed over the North Pole, beep beep beep , passing just above us, evidently, at certain times. She could not understand how this could happen. Were there other surprises coming, things we haven't been told about them? Did they have crispers and breezeways? It was not a simple matter, adjusting to the news.

Rick said, "What about it, Eric? Want to drive on out?"

"Hey dad. Ga, ga, ga, great."

A pall fell over the table, displacing Erica's Sputnik funk. She thought Eric's occasional stuttering had something to do with the time he spent alone in his room. Hitting the books too hard, Rick thought. He was hitting something too hard but Erica tried not to form detailed images.

Do not puncture or incinerate.

The boy could sit in the family room and watch their super console TV, which was compatible with the knotty pine paneling, and he could anticipate the dialogue on every show. Newscasts, ball games, comedy hours. He did whatever voice the announcer or actor used, matching the words nearly seamlessly, and he never stuttered.

All the other kids ate Oreo cookies. Eric ate Hydrox cookies because the name sounded like rocket fuel.

One of her kitchen gloves was missing-she had many pairs-and she wanted to believe Eric had borrowed it for one of his chemistry assignments. But she was afraid to ask. And she didn't think she looked forward to getting it back.

Yesterday he'd dunked a Hydrox cookie in milk, held it dripping over the glass and said thickly, "Is verry gud we poot Roosian moon in U.S. sky."

Then he took a bite and swallowed.

The men went out to find the orbiting satellite. Erica cleared the table, put on her rubberoid gloves and began to do the dishes. Rick had kidded her about the gloves a number of times. The kitchen was equipped with an automatic dishwasher of course. But she felt compelled as a homemaker to do a preliminary round of handwashing and scouring because if you don't get every smidge of organic murk off the fork tines and out of the pans before you run the dishwasher, it could come back to haunt you in the morning.

Flush eyes with water and call physician at once.

And the gloves protected her from scalding water and the touch of food scraps. Erica loved her gloves. The gloves were indestructible, basically, made of the same kind of materials used in countertops and TV tubes, in the electrical insulation in the basement and the vulcanized tires on the car. The gloves were important to her despite the way they felt, clammy but also dry, a feeling that defied innate contradiction.

All the things around her were important. Things and words. Words to believe in and live by.

Breezeway Car pools

Crisper Bridge parties

Sectional Broadloom

When she finished up in the kitchen she decided to vacuum the living room rug but then realized this would make her bad mood worse. She'd recently bought a new satellite-shaped vacuum cleaner that she loved to push across the room because it hummed softly and seemed futuristic and hopeful but she was forced to regard it ruefully now, after Sputnik, a clunky object filled with self-remorse.

Stacking chairs Room divider

Scatter cushions Fruit juicer

Storage walls Cookie sheet

She thought she'd lift her spirits by doing something for the church social on Saturday to pep up the event a little.

Do not use in enclosed space.

She would prepare half a dozen serving bowls of her Jell-O antipasto salad. Six packages Jell-O lemon gelatin. Six teaspoons salt. Six cups boiling water. Six tablespoons vinegar. Twelve cups ice cubes. Three cups finely cut salami. Two cups finely cut Swiss cheese. One and a half cups chopped celery. One and a half cups chopped onion. Twelve tablespoons sliced ripe olives.

She remembered coming home one day about six months ago and finding Eric with his head in a bowl of her antipasto salad. He said he was trying to eat it from the inside out to test a scientific theory of his. The explanation was SO crazy and unconvincing that it was weirdly believable. But she didn't believe it. She didn't know what to believe.

Was this a form of sexual curiosity? Was he pretending the Jell-O was a sort of lickable female body part? And was he engaged in an act of unnatural oral stimulation? He had jellified gunk all over his mouth and tongue. She looked at him. She had people skills. Erica was a person who related to people. But she had to put on gloves just to talk to him.

She set to work in the kitchen now, listening all the while for the reassuring sound of her men coming home, car doors closing in the breezeway, the solid clunk of well-made parts swinging firmly shut.

The charismatic black stood outside the church talking to the crowd.

Downtown the young whites leaned on brick walls and parked cars, crew-cut young men in chinos or jeans, or squatted on the curbstone, some older men among them, most showing a small hard salty grin, eyes tight, watching the marchers move out of the bus terminal.

Past the brick dorms and athletic fields of the campus, a group of black men lounged against a car parked in front of a rickety frame house in an alley off Lynch Street. A man with a cane. A man with blue suspenders. A man in a necktie and white shirt and straw fedora. A couple of younger men sitting on the fenders and talking to a woman eating a peach on the porch steps.

The charismatic speaker said, "They made us run, so we got good at it."

The marchers came into town carrying knapsacks and signs. Some of them walked toward the campus as the sun began to set. A number of white-shirted police stood along the route, smoking, some of them, and seeming to disregard the marchers, who walked in two loose columns toward the sound of the speaker's voice.

The young speaker said, "They made us run until we got so good at it we didn't need their inspiration anymore."

In the Greyhound terminal a number of marchers separated from the others and began to sit on the floor of the whites-only waiting room.

But the porch didn't really have steps. It had a couple of loose cinder blocks set against the brick underpinning and that's where the woman sat.

Students joined the crowd in front of the church, listening to the speaker, and some of the cornerboys came out of Cooper's, where they'd been shooting pool, and stood around to watch the crowd.