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À l'oeuvre on reconnaît l'artisan — You can tell an artist by his handiwork.
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She is sewing a story, stitching a tale line by line. This one is about her great grandmother who sewed herself a mermaid's swim costume and swam to America. The journey was long, arduous and by the time she arrived at the state of Maine, her costume had fused to her flesh. She had a dressmaker split the center seam, separating her so she could walk, and went through life with her legs covered in thick green scales, a brocade, fossilized by the sea into leathery chaps like a cowboy would wear. Men found her scales incredibly attractive; it was considered good luck to rub her thighs. They all wanted only one thing, to get into the space between the scales, the alligator purse that had been perfectly protected. The sweat of their palms stung her skin; she found them repulsive.
She moved to Massachusetts and took a part time job doing women's work sewing tassles on loafers in a shoe factory. Suck cock, suck cock, the sound of the sewing machine.
At a country circus, she met Rae, a boy with powdery hands, like buttery talc, who worked the spinning cups in a traveling show. His mother was a bearded lady, his father the world's tallest man. His beloved uncle Fegee, a merman, who died long ago, was laid out, taxidermied in a glass vitrine that traveled wherever the family went — a quarter a peak.
Rae asked her about her homeland and she told him about the veiled life, she told him there were places she couldn't go, she told him she was invisible there — people only saw what they wanted to see, they didn't look too far. She told him that when she left she knew she would never go back. Her family wept as she sewed herself into her disguise, their tears filled the river that floated her down to the sea — her home was lost to history. As she told Rae the story of her past, her eyes filled and dripped plink, plunk onto uncle Fegee's vitrine. Rae wiped the vitrine and never asked her about it again.
When their daughter was born with her index finger extended — extraordinarily long and sharp with a boney open passage at the top, an eye for thread to pass through, they thought it a plus. They named her Penelope. She could thread herself through fabric, through wood, though metal. She was incredibly good at math, won a scholarship to a prestigious engineering school and took jobs building ships, airplanes, skyscrapers — the master builder of the 20th century. Their son, Morris, had wings under his arms, a transparent flesh webbing from his arms to his ribs. His shirts had to be custom made, a more successful Icarus, he made the first successful ship-less solo flight into space — and returned with an incredible tan. He married an ornithologist and they nested on the top floor of a high rise.
"Yours is a family of unusual traces," a soothsaying neighbor once said.
"We are bred to survive," the father answered, accidentally clipping the woman with his weed wacker, lacerating her ankles. "It is evolution — we keep what we need, we lose the rest."
Morris had an irrational fear of all breeds of infants and so he and his wife lived with their two
Identical twins had born with gills and organs of both sexes.
Labradors, their cockatiel, their frogs and ferrets all adopted at an advanced age. Don't put your pet out to pasture, give it a new life at Elder Animal Haus — was the slogan on their matchbooks.
Penelope, so smart and successful, was lonely. Strolling the seaport, she met a sailor from far away; they married that night and immediately returned to the water. Packing to go, her mother gave her a scrap from long ago, the piece she'd saved from her center seam and the girl affixed it to herself — a scaly merkin mounted with crazy glue.
Given the family's history it came as no surprise when the grandparents received word via carrier pigeon that identical twins had born on an island off Key west with gills and organs of both sexes — identical hermaphrodites Tasiña and Tasi.
"Grandchildren!" the mother announced to the ladies of her sewing circle, leaving out the spawny details. They sewing circle clucked approvingly. Long ago when she joined the sewing circle, she told anyone crass and curious enough to ask about her scales that she was a burn victim, it was easier for people to understand and she wasn't looking for trouble. A stitch in time saves nine, a fish in time, saves mine.
Thimbles and Threads, the ladies called themselves — a
ministry that stitched for salvation; "Charity Never Faileth — Sew What's
New?" They knitted hats for cancer patients, socks for orphans, afghans for Afghans,
lap blankets for cold old women and men, the grandmother donning a thimble to
darn watch caps for the Christmas at Sea, "Leave No Keppe Cold," a Jewish military
relief organization.
Her sailor mate met a bad end, having gone ashore, he failed to look both ways when crossing the tracks and even though the conductor slammed on the brakes nothing was spared, and his bodily mash was returned to the sea in a potato sack covered with salt tears.
Youthful widow, single mother, a woman with needs of her own.
Penelope began an affair with a dolphin — and described him in a dispatch
to her mother as a great conversationalist, incredibly loving, and gifted in
special ways. "He can curl his member like a finger beckoning…I won't
say more lest you think me crude. Swimming with him reminds me of when I used
to dance standing on daddy's feet, waltzing in time. For the moment, I am content
to live as a fish."
Her sailor man's children Tasiña and Tasi matured quickly and were ready to replicate — each able to complete the process entirely on their own. To her dismay, Tasi, her he/she daughter, declined — said she felt the need to hang on to herself to be in essence, copyrighted, but Tasiña her she/male son turned out little ones by the dozen. Some stayed on land, some on the sea, some sold sea shells, another had fleas, four go to Harvard, two go to Yale, a dozen go to Trinity and one goes to jail. Another spends his days surfing big waves in Hawaii and the oldest is a federal judge swearing in people who promise not to tell tall tales. Tasi, having spent so many years raising children found it difficult to get a job and worked as a temporary secretary — He's pretty but can he type?
Penelope, twice widowed, having had enough of it all, returns to the city. Now a septagenarian who looks forty, well preserved from a life in salt water, she comes back to New York. Having learned a thing or two from her kids, she tells everyone that she wants to be called Tom. She packs plastic bought on the Lower East
He feels his packy getting moist and squishy.
Side
at Babes in Toyland and tends bar down by the water at a place called Henrietta
Hudson's, spinning her yarns to any available ear. One of the girls at
the bar tells her the story of a straight business woman who packs — just
because she feels it gives her a competitive edge. "No one knows what you've
got tucked in your pants until you get hit by a train," and Penelope nods
knowingly.
One night a spindly Sarah Spider, a sex therapist, sits down
next to her near closing time and starts spinning a handsome web. Penelope Tom
admires the handiwork and the mating dance begins. "It's been so long I wouldn't
know where to begin," she confesses, as Sarah's expert hand travels up her thigh.
Tom remembers the sensation his mermaid mother spoke about and having inherited
her hypersensitivity and not forgetting that he's still got the old scaly merkin
crazy glued over the spot, he feels his packy getting moist and squishy. Sarah
spins a wicked web, leading Tom back to her apartment after closing up shop.
Sarah ties her up and down and is just about to cuff her to the bed when Tom
realizes that there's more to it than that. Lost between her legs, a latex hot
head, Sarah is a cannibal and a carnivore and she's the midnight snack. As Sarah
is using her pincers pry the merkin loose, Tom comes to her senses and with her
elongated index finger — the needly nail grown tough over time is now like
an ivory tooth — pierces Sarah's shell. The stabbed spider spurts bug juice
everywhere.
Tom, takes a taxi to Tasiña's house in Harlem, leaving her cock and balls behind, hoping she can hide out for a while. Tasiña has a boyfriend who, nostalgic for the ontogenetic past of life in the womb, internalizes the water — he drinks his morning urine. It harkens back to the water of his early life, the amniotic, the oceanic. His habit has prompted many women to leave him. Tasiña, just nods, she brings him a glass, "Bottoms up," she says, liking the way his penis fills the glass, like a soda syphon "Aqua vitae."
Recovering, Penelope reads that while on it's journey, the rover Opportunity discovered evidence of water on the surface of Mars, and is intrigued at the idea that at some unknown time in the distant past there was life on the red planet. She gets it in her head to do one thing before she dies — with her engineering skills she will build the Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket.
Because of her age, because she is a woman, because of all of history and everything that has come before, she is once again invisible, no one notices the little old lady in Harlem building a space ship at the edge of the Hudson river. Using everything she has, she sews herself a space ship, Neptune, taking off under the cover of night, a bright blast, echoing around the world.
n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
A. M. Homes' most
recent books are Things You Should Know, a short story collection, and Los Angeles: People Places And The Castle On The Hill, a travel memoir. The film based on her book The Safety of Objects was released last year and is now out on DVD. She's currently at work on a new novel.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
