In the Scheme of Things | J J Steinfeld
The modern appetite for the supernatural and outer space aliens and the paranormal, believe me, is nothing new. I'm seventy, and my earliest thoughts are of space travellers. Amorous space travellers. Now I even think of the words paranormal and paramour together. I don't want you to think I'm some doddering nutcase caught in the middle of an interplanetary porno flick. (Actually, that's more a description my mother would use, bless her octogenarian—soon to be nonagenarian—heart.) My mental processes are on the firmest terra firma. But that does not mean life is without its unexplainable aspects. Let me explain.
On my seventieth birthday, the cake candles glowing, encapsulating my life with miniature fires and melting wax, my mother, eighty-nine and who is working on her twenty-fifth Fortuna Tumultuous adventure novel—the latest as with the earliest, having Fortuna conducting her adventures in other galaxies—told me that my father, her paramour, her last paramour, she emphasized, had been a renowned scientist who investigated the paranormal, among other interests. Until that moment, I had never known who my father had been. It had been a matter of principle and strength and pride for Mom that she never needed a man, or to identify the sperm donor, as she had referred to him long before that term acquired modern scientific and popular currency. Irrational as it sounded, I had thought my father was a space alien, something I had never voiced to anyone, let alone my mother, who I have lived with in the same old house my entire life.
I don't know if it had anything to do with reading my mother's first Fortuna Tumultuous novel—"Fortuna, in full battle array, gazed into the errant space wanderer's eyes, saw the sensitivity, the longing, and felt love suffuse her being"—but the notion of having a space alien father grew in my mind. I developed that notion when I was quite young, and it has persisted in one form or another to this very day.
Why tell me now, Mom? I asked, still breathing unevenly from the numerous expulsions of air it took me to extinguish seventy-one candles—not to forget the one for luck and to grow on; we should never cease to grow spiritually, my mother argued, Fortuna hasn't. See, my lovely son, Mom said, you are seventy, and even though I'm not superstitious or sentimental, you know me, at my age I'm giving in a teeny bit to sentimentality and superstition...you were conceived on his seventieth birthday. And, directly on the heels of that momentous revelation, she told me about the small town she had grown up in, and left when, at the age of nineteen, she found out she was pregnant. It was a small town like the one Fortuna had fled, except Fortuna’s escape was in a sleek space craft.
Then, pouring each of us a glass of scotch, Mom began to tell me the story of Gustavus. Gustavus, my mother said, could make people vanish into thin air. It was an ability—no, a power, a supernatural, frightening power—he acquired on his tenth birthday, a bungled exchange between his father and a mysterious old woman who had the flowing hair of a teenager. The father was trampled by a horse-drawn milk wagon, horses that one old-timer said had eyes the colour of the Devil's skin—if evil incarnate indeed has an epidermis. Gustavus, during his younger years, rarely exercised the power, until his early twenties, when he found the sweetness of copulatory bliss, and in the town there was no shortage of eager accomplices. Married women, for Gustavus, only married women. I, unmarried and therefore unpursued by Gustavus, believed it was his eyes, the colour of a nighttime summer sky. Others said it was his singing voice. He was by no means a beautiful or handsome person. Not quite ugly. I asked my mother to define "not quite ugly," and she made a contorted face, then smiled with indomitable composure and said, The town he lived in, and where you were conceived, is reputed to be the most active alien-abduction area in the country, although most people claim it is a tourist-attracting gimmick. Why would a sane person, I asked, want to visit a place where they might be abducted by aliens at any moment? Good point, my mother said, and poured herself another glass of scotch.
My mother swam her tongue in her drink, moaned pleasurably, and then continued with her story: Bored and sad and ever so slightly guilty, Gustavus made himself vanish—and his neighbours said the aliens had abducted another, was that thirty or thirty-five in the last ten years. That was before they got it into their heads that tourists could be financially beneficial to the small, out-of-the-way town.
Even before the narcotic effect of tourist dollars on scientific objectivity took hold, people fought the rumours: his eyes were ordinary, not unique; his voice was wonderful, not supernal. But the rumours persisted and one day the world's foremost expert on alien abduction, a tiny, long-bearded man—I'm five-two, at least I was in those days, and he was shorter than me—spent a full week in town, talking to residents, wandering about with his notebook, and meeting a young author-to-be who, craving worldly experience, bedded the tiny, long-bearded, world-renowned scientist, and wrote a story about the occurrence—a story that became her first published piece. The story, son, was better than the reality. Freshen your drink? she said, and I reminded her that my tolerance for alcohol was not equal to hers.
This is the first you've ever mentioned the name Gustavus in my presence, I said, trying not to sound accusatory, reminding her of our lifetime of mother-and-son conversations and confidences. I have my reasons, Mom said, and announced that she had to get back to her writing, there was a book waiting to be finished. Then my mother remarked with an exuberance befitting a woman a third her age that her literary output and my theatrical achievements will coincide upon the publication of book number twenty-five. My last theatrical role, I pointed out, was eight years ago. But she reminded me of my dinner-theatre work and the charming TV commercials I had done. From serious stage actor to song-and-dance man, Mom. My looks are faded, my hoofin' talents diminished, but my love of performing, I had to admit, was stronger than ever. The commercials were all for health-related products, and I touched various parts of my body to indicate where the thespian and the medicinal had dovetailed for me.
I felt caught in my most challenging role: I was playing myself. But at seventy, I was asking as though I were an adolescent, Who am I? See the mayor, my mother told me. He's been mayor of that little dot on the map for nearly four decades. Tell him you were brought by the spirit of Gustavus.
As a mature man, having believed that I had been fathered by some amorous space traveller, but instead finding out it was an amorous renowned scientist, I went to the town of my mother's birth and youth, and visited the mayor in his town-hall office. A plaque on the building set forth the town's world view: GO OUT INTO THE NIGHT AIR, CAST YOUR EYES SKYWARD. MORE THAN THE MOON AND STARS ARE PLAYING THEIR ROLES IN THE SCHEME OF THINGS. I introduced myself, uttered the name Gustavus as matter-of-factly as I could, and the mayor, seated at his desk, ordered me to get out of his sight. Gustavus, I said again. I've been brought by the spirit of Gustavus.
Gustavus, he fumed, the mayor a King Lear gone ballistic. That's why I'm here and breathing. Why you're here and breathing.
Innocently I said, I'm here because my mother told me she was born in this town, left as a teenager.
You're here, he shouted, the mayoral Lear going even more ballistic, because of Gustavus and that scientist who visited here to investigate the strange goings-on.
The mayor put his head down on his desk, and, his demeanour considerably drained, said, You're my brother. Half brother. I suggested that he was mistaken. A stirring, heartfelt, forceful five-minute monologue by the mayor made me accept that he was my half brother.
We have twin half siblings, a half brother and a half sister, but they were lured aboard an alien space ship many years ago, he revealed, tears in his eyes. I accused my half brother of being lamebrained and foolheaded, of thinking he was in an episode of The X-Files. We argued furiously for an hour, half brother against half brother, and I felt upon the stage, transformed, magnificently transformed. Despite my inspiring performance and our newly discovered consanguinity, my half brother pushed me out of his office, his last words to me were that our half siblings were abducted by aliens, and my last words to him were, Get yourself some professional help real quick.
But, late at night, the constraints of one's mortality squeezing dreadfully, certainty is not the most appealing of conditions. I now often return to the town of my conception, and cast my eyes skyward, seeing lights from unidentifiable sources, hearing inexplicable sounds.
On my seventieth birthday, the cake candles glowing, encapsulating my life with miniature fires and melting wax, my mother, eighty-nine and who is working on her twenty-fifth Fortuna Tumultuous adventure novel—the latest as with the earliest, having Fortuna conducting her adventures in other galaxies—told me that my father, her paramour, her last paramour, she emphasized, had been a renowned scientist who investigated the paranormal, among other interests. Until that moment, I had never known who my father had been. It had been a matter of principle and strength and pride for Mom that she never needed a man, or to identify the sperm donor, as she had referred to him long before that term acquired modern scientific and popular currency. Irrational as it sounded, I had thought my father was a space alien, something I had never voiced to anyone, let alone my mother, who I have lived with in the same old house my entire life.
I don't know if it had anything to do with reading my mother's first Fortuna Tumultuous novel—"Fortuna, in full battle array, gazed into the errant space wanderer's eyes, saw the sensitivity, the longing, and felt love suffuse her being"—but the notion of having a space alien father grew in my mind. I developed that notion when I was quite young, and it has persisted in one form or another to this very day.
Why tell me now, Mom? I asked, still breathing unevenly from the numerous expulsions of air it took me to extinguish seventy-one candles—not to forget the one for luck and to grow on; we should never cease to grow spiritually, my mother argued, Fortuna hasn't. See, my lovely son, Mom said, you are seventy, and even though I'm not superstitious or sentimental, you know me, at my age I'm giving in a teeny bit to sentimentality and superstition...you were conceived on his seventieth birthday. And, directly on the heels of that momentous revelation, she told me about the small town she had grown up in, and left when, at the age of nineteen, she found out she was pregnant. It was a small town like the one Fortuna had fled, except Fortuna’s escape was in a sleek space craft.
Then, pouring each of us a glass of scotch, Mom began to tell me the story of Gustavus. Gustavus, my mother said, could make people vanish into thin air. It was an ability—no, a power, a supernatural, frightening power—he acquired on his tenth birthday, a bungled exchange between his father and a mysterious old woman who had the flowing hair of a teenager. The father was trampled by a horse-drawn milk wagon, horses that one old-timer said had eyes the colour of the Devil's skin—if evil incarnate indeed has an epidermis. Gustavus, during his younger years, rarely exercised the power, until his early twenties, when he found the sweetness of copulatory bliss, and in the town there was no shortage of eager accomplices. Married women, for Gustavus, only married women. I, unmarried and therefore unpursued by Gustavus, believed it was his eyes, the colour of a nighttime summer sky. Others said it was his singing voice. He was by no means a beautiful or handsome person. Not quite ugly. I asked my mother to define "not quite ugly," and she made a contorted face, then smiled with indomitable composure and said, The town he lived in, and where you were conceived, is reputed to be the most active alien-abduction area in the country, although most people claim it is a tourist-attracting gimmick. Why would a sane person, I asked, want to visit a place where they might be abducted by aliens at any moment? Good point, my mother said, and poured herself another glass of scotch.
My mother swam her tongue in her drink, moaned pleasurably, and then continued with her story: Bored and sad and ever so slightly guilty, Gustavus made himself vanish—and his neighbours said the aliens had abducted another, was that thirty or thirty-five in the last ten years. That was before they got it into their heads that tourists could be financially beneficial to the small, out-of-the-way town.
Even before the narcotic effect of tourist dollars on scientific objectivity took hold, people fought the rumours: his eyes were ordinary, not unique; his voice was wonderful, not supernal. But the rumours persisted and one day the world's foremost expert on alien abduction, a tiny, long-bearded man—I'm five-two, at least I was in those days, and he was shorter than me—spent a full week in town, talking to residents, wandering about with his notebook, and meeting a young author-to-be who, craving worldly experience, bedded the tiny, long-bearded, world-renowned scientist, and wrote a story about the occurrence—a story that became her first published piece. The story, son, was better than the reality. Freshen your drink? she said, and I reminded her that my tolerance for alcohol was not equal to hers.
This is the first you've ever mentioned the name Gustavus in my presence, I said, trying not to sound accusatory, reminding her of our lifetime of mother-and-son conversations and confidences. I have my reasons, Mom said, and announced that she had to get back to her writing, there was a book waiting to be finished. Then my mother remarked with an exuberance befitting a woman a third her age that her literary output and my theatrical achievements will coincide upon the publication of book number twenty-five. My last theatrical role, I pointed out, was eight years ago. But she reminded me of my dinner-theatre work and the charming TV commercials I had done. From serious stage actor to song-and-dance man, Mom. My looks are faded, my hoofin' talents diminished, but my love of performing, I had to admit, was stronger than ever. The commercials were all for health-related products, and I touched various parts of my body to indicate where the thespian and the medicinal had dovetailed for me.
I felt caught in my most challenging role: I was playing myself. But at seventy, I was asking as though I were an adolescent, Who am I? See the mayor, my mother told me. He's been mayor of that little dot on the map for nearly four decades. Tell him you were brought by the spirit of Gustavus.
As a mature man, having believed that I had been fathered by some amorous space traveller, but instead finding out it was an amorous renowned scientist, I went to the town of my mother's birth and youth, and visited the mayor in his town-hall office. A plaque on the building set forth the town's world view: GO OUT INTO THE NIGHT AIR, CAST YOUR EYES SKYWARD. MORE THAN THE MOON AND STARS ARE PLAYING THEIR ROLES IN THE SCHEME OF THINGS. I introduced myself, uttered the name Gustavus as matter-of-factly as I could, and the mayor, seated at his desk, ordered me to get out of his sight. Gustavus, I said again. I've been brought by the spirit of Gustavus.
Gustavus, he fumed, the mayor a King Lear gone ballistic. That's why I'm here and breathing. Why you're here and breathing.
Innocently I said, I'm here because my mother told me she was born in this town, left as a teenager.
You're here, he shouted, the mayoral Lear going even more ballistic, because of Gustavus and that scientist who visited here to investigate the strange goings-on.
The mayor put his head down on his desk, and, his demeanour considerably drained, said, You're my brother. Half brother. I suggested that he was mistaken. A stirring, heartfelt, forceful five-minute monologue by the mayor made me accept that he was my half brother.
We have twin half siblings, a half brother and a half sister, but they were lured aboard an alien space ship many years ago, he revealed, tears in his eyes. I accused my half brother of being lamebrained and foolheaded, of thinking he was in an episode of The X-Files. We argued furiously for an hour, half brother against half brother, and I felt upon the stage, transformed, magnificently transformed. Despite my inspiring performance and our newly discovered consanguinity, my half brother pushed me out of his office, his last words to me were that our half siblings were abducted by aliens, and my last words to him were, Get yourself some professional help real quick.
But, late at night, the constraints of one's mortality squeezing dreadfully, certainty is not the most appealing of conditions. I now often return to the town of my conception, and cast my eyes skyward, seeing lights from unidentifiable sources, hearing inexplicable sounds.