People crowded around the edges of the parking lot beyond brightly painted barricades.
“… ontinuing drama playing out at the Great Ape Language Lab at the University of Kansas. The public is urged to remember that while these apes have a peaceful reputation, they are still wild animals, many times stronger than adult male humans, and capable of inflicting grievous injury, even ripping off limbs…”
Isabel’s eyes shot open.
The camera panned past the tops of the trees, where the bonobos sat miserable and wet, huddled against the trunk, seeking protection from the wind.
“Many groups have converged in an effort to save the endangered animals, which have been stranded in the treetops since an explosion last night destroyed the building that housed them and critically injured one of the scientists. Today the home of the university president was vandalized. The animal rights extremist group Earth Liberation League has claimed responsibility for the attacks in a video released on the Internet, but the authorities have yet to… h! My goodness!”
A crack resounded, and the camera swung to a man with a gun on his shoulder and then to the top of a tree. At first, there was nothing. Then one of the bonobos began to sway. Amid screeching and yipping, the others plucked the tranquilizer dart out of his thigh and tossed it to the ground, but it was too late. The stricken bonobo- was it Sam or Mbongo? It was too dark and too distant for Isabel to tell-collapsed and dropped from the ring of hairy black arms that tried to keep him upright. Another crack, another bonobo. This one seemed to split in two midfall, the parts spinning and tumbling through the tree branches. One landed in the center of a piece of round canvas held at its edges by firemen. The other part-Lola, Isabel now realized-hit the frame and bounced back into the air. There was a collective gasp from the crowd and news crew alike as the firemen lunged forward with outstretched arms.
Isabel let out a muffled cry and struggled to get upright. She knocked the juice from the nurse’s hand, spilling it across both of them. The insulated brown thermos slid across a puddle of condensation, as if pushed by an invisible hand, the broth sloshing from side to side.
“Stop. You’ll hurt yourself! Stop!” said Beulah, and when Isabel did not, she pressed the red call button and held Isabel’s wrists and shouted for help, which came pattering down the hall in the form of other uniformed figures and a syringe that was emptied into the valve on Isabel’s intravenous line.
5
John had finally booked his flight for the next morning (inexplicably, all the flights that day were full) and was watching footage of the apes falling from trees when someone started banging on the door. The banging continued with such vehemence that it occurred to him it might be the police. Of course they would wish to speak with him; he had been at the language lab only hours before the explosion. But the vigor and relentlessness of the banging worried him. Surely they didn’t consider him a suspect?
When he swung the door open, it all made sense, even though she was supposed to be safely six states away-
“Fran?”
“Where is she?” demanded his mother-in-law, inserting herself between John and the doorway and entering the front hall. Bulging supermarket bags swung from her hands and wrists. John was sure he saw the outline of a box of Velveeta.
“I think she’s in the…” John’s voice trailed off, because Fran was already marching toward the kitchen.
John turned back to the doorway. His father-in-law was climbing the stairs with two suitcases, old-fashioned hard-sided ones without wheels or retractable handles. They had purple ribbons tied around the handles, presumably to tell them apart from all the other pieces of thirty-year-old luggage coming around the carousel.
“Hello, John,” said Tim, pausing at the doorway.
“Hello, Tim.” John swung his head around toward the raised voices coming from the kitchen. “Did Amanda know you were coming?”
“I don’t think so. When Amanda didn’t even call to say ‘Happy New Year’ Fran got it in her head that something was wrong.”
John sighed and took the suitcases from the old man. He carried them into the guest room, which was really Amanda’s office. It had been in a state of suspended animation since Magnificat’s untimely demise, at which point she had been polishing
His mother-in-law’s voice sailed in from some other part of the house and John pulled himself together. He couldn’t do much-even if the room were neat, it would not be clean enough to please Fran-but he shuffled stacks of paper together and moved them into the closet along with the printer and stepped into the wastepaper basket to squash its contents. As a final touch, he smoothed the bedspread, which still had a fine coating of cat dander.
There was no rescuing Amanda from Fran, and adding his own presence to the mix could only make things worse, so John parked himself in the living room with Tim and the television and a bottle of Bushmills. After a while Fran came through on hands and knees, scrubbing the wall and baseboard, complaining in equal parts about her creaking knees and Amanda’s housekeeping. Amanda followed, swabbing halfheartedly with a wad of moistened paper towel. Her deficiencies were grievous: what kind of a woman didn’t keep her guest room made up? And why didn’t she have shelf paper in the kitchen? Fran promised to furnish some, since it was clear Amanda didn’t care, and Lord only knew where that came from, since she, herself, was a meticulous housekeeper. Once, when John was absolutely sure Fran’s back was turned, he made a yapping motion with his hand. Amanda responded by holding a finger gun to her own forehead and pulling the trigger.
Through a whiskeyed haze, John endured Velveeta-laced scalloped potatoes, a pile of tasteless green beans, and pork chops dressed in Shake ’n Bake. The Caesar salad, drowning in Kraft dressing, had been carefully denuded of all the crisp white pieces of the romaine, which were John’s favorite. Fran herself consumed three quarters of a basket of heat-and-serve dinner rolls, all while continuing to berate Amanda: she needed to take a good, hard look at her life. She wasn’t getting any younger, you know. Forty was closer than thirty now, and she still didn’t have a career or family to speak of, and while it was fine to have one or the other, Amanda had neither, in case she hadn’t noticed. She’d given the book thing a go but now it was time to think of the future. How could she even think of leaving her husband and moving to L.A.? She’d end up being a waitress, that was what, and she was too old to spend that much time on her feet. She did realize that varicose veins ran in the family, didn’t she?
John watched with amazement as Amanda blandly “Yes, Mothered” her way through the onslaught.
When Fran got up to clear the table, Amanda stood and calmly gathered plates. Tim Matthews patted his stomach, rose, and toddled off toward the room with the television. God bless him, thought John, following in such a hurry he nearly knocked his chair over.
