Marie-Helene Bertino - Safe as Houses

Charles prefers people to call him Charles, not Chuck, Charlie, or Chaz. Vanilla is Charles’s place to shine and he owns it figuratively, especially the Vanilla Mall, which he owns literally. You’ve probably visited us or, at the very least, received our latest circular. Charles made sure it was distributed widely. It features a picture of us posing at the carousel: Wild horses won’t be able to drag you away from our bargains!

Today he traverses the Vanilla Mall’s two levels, trying on gloves at Leather, Etc., sampling a Jell-O smoothie at Joyful Juice, “stealing” free samples from the Butterscotch Brigade. Watching him, I am put in mind of a king in town. A short king. A discounted town that smells like soft pretzels.

Take your time, he winks, as I weigh the merits of cotton cargos at Old Apparel. I know the owner.

Near the fountain, the girls at the Earring Pagoda sigh as Charles walks by and click their piercing guns. He approaches their hut, performs a silly cha-cha-cha, then leans in to commence charming the snot out of them via puns. Their voices coo and flirt.

What doesn’t Charles have? A pretty wife. The glittery eyelashes of the Earring girls flick from him to me. How did we meet again? One asks.

Oh girls, never underestimate a man’s desire to rescue. I chuck penny after penny into the fountain, always the same wish — no traffic on the way home — as the girls “try” silver hoops and chandeliers on him. Charles would never cheat on me. Not because he is loyal but because he is boring as milk.

Then one of the Earring girls says, Hey, look, it’s some kind of bird, isn’t it? She and Charles shade their eyes toward the second level (Eternally Young, the Umbrella Store, Horatio’s Pretzels) where a natural, flying thing enacts erratic circles above the heads of the pretzel eaters, who take large bites and nudge one another to look.

The other Earring girl covers her head. A bat!

It ducks into the Umbrella Store. We hear yelps from within. Charles is on his walkie-talkie, summoning security men from deep inside the mall’s infrastructure. The flying thing emerges from the Umbrella Store and resumes its circling routine, so small that on some trajectories it appears to have vanished. Then it plunges through the open air between levels. It is heading toward us; this fact hits Charles, the girls, and me simultaneously. We gasp. The girls are immediately devastated. They vanish under the counter. The thing (bat? bird?) question-marks, then speeds through the air. It reaches Accessory Village and halts above the Earring Pagoda. It pumps, double-hovers, beats in midair, and reveals itself to be a hummingbird.

In a place inside me I thought was dead, a bell rings.

From under the counter, one of the Earring Girls screams. What’s it doing?

From unseen hatches on the first and second floors, other hummingbirds emerge, pulse, hover, and double-hover. The shoppers on the upper level are in mayhem. One of them launches an extra-large shopping bag over the banister. It makes a slow arc through what could now be considered the melee of birds. It hits the ground near the fountain; whatever it contains makes an upsetting metal sound.

The original hummingbird registers the crash with a twitch of its oil-slick wings. The other hummingbirds join it. They bob and flash near our heads, their eyes on me. There can be no mistake: I am its program.

My husband pats himself down for a gun he does not carry. The lead hummingbird beats its wings, it double-beats, it beats beats beats. It stares into my widened eyes, its own a shade of blue the color of my old Toyota.

My husband’s voice in the walkie-talkie: Will all units join him for a situation occurring on the first floor?

I hold out my hand and the bird rests; its soft wings batter against my palm.

Minutes later, I am being pulled from the fountain, the contents of my purse floating like a universe of butterscotch stars. Above me, Charles’s face and the faces of the Earring Girls come into focus.

Charles’s voice is controlled mortification. You fainted, he says.

One of the girls holds my hand. You totally did, she agrees.

Where are the birds? I say.

They disappeared when you fainted, the other Earring girl says.

Her face is replaced by a mall paramedic demanding to know what year it is, who is president, what my husband’s name is, what my name is.

My husband’s name is Ian, I say.

It is the wrong answer; their faces make this clear.

…

Charles drives home from the Vanilla Mall hunched forward, his fingers strangling the wheel.

It’s just one of those things, I say about the hummingbird. Charles ignores me, glares into a red light. Birds have disgraced him where he works. This is how a man like Charles sees it.

We park the BMW in the garage. He pins my hand to the console when I try to get out.

I want to know, he says, if you have been in contact with them. He does not look at me but through the windshield so it is as if he is asking the lawn mower.

I pretend to not know what he means. With who?

He turns to me. His face is AP Calculus.

I squirm on the heated seat. No, I say.

Don’t lie to me. He holds my hand so hard I gasp.

We’ll die from asphyxiation, I say.

That’s if the car is on, Vanessa. He sighs because I am dumb and beyond hope.

…

Corrina had the power to make small objects disappear. Marigold could move things through space, and Ian could control birds with his mind.

It was the first snowfall of freshman year. Corrina and Marigold were trekking through the quad when they encountered lacrosse boys Chris and Dan. According to our school’s newspaper, the Vanilla Wafer , Chris and Dan were “twin bastions of force” on the field. Seeing Corrina and Marigold, Chris cleared his throat, cupped his hand around his mouth, and delivered one perfect note: Faggot. Corrina and Marigold paused in their argument about the unsung hero in R.E.M., as if they sensed their names being called. Chris sang again, this time accompanied by Dan: Faggot.

Except for the four of them, the quad was empty.

Are they talking to me? Marigold said.

The snow kept snowing.

Corrina and Marigold continued their trek to the southeastern-most point of campus to join Ian and me in the room he shared with a bifocaled boy who was always rolling his eyes and leaving.

Corrina said, We have to hit back, quickly and hard.

Corrina said, Van, take notes.

We stayed up all night in Ian’s room, planning. I made a list in my flamingo journal. I wanted to draw a picture of the indoor lacrosse field but none of us had seen it. We weren’t people who attended sports events. We drank red sodas. We lay four on the bed: Corrina with her head on Ian’s stomach, Marigold with his head on Corrina’s. Ian said as a little boy he helped his mother dye her hair out of three-dollar boxes. He and Marigold did shots of tequila. Michael Stipe, lead singer of our favorite band, was singing we should suspicion ourselves and not get caught.

This was after they had realized their powers got greater when they were together: Corrina could make bigger things disappear; Marigold could transport bigger things. This was after Corrina had changed Sam’s name to Marigold and my name to Van but before we had heard of Katie Freeman or the rotten kidneys that would ruin our lives. Sam, she said, was a dumb name and Vanessa, she said, was a fat girl’s name.

I am a fat girl, I had said.

Bats! yelled Corrina. No, seagulls!

Bats are dicks, said Marigold. They’d come with their own agenda. And seagulls aren’t scary enough.

I crossed out bats. I crossed out seagulls.

Corrina held one elbow behind her head and stretched. Marigold put on a record, then decided against it. Corrina said, Crows! Like Hitchcock!