The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

FAMILY PORTRAIT Morgan Kent

She put down her sewing. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said all evening,” she said.

“The last thing you said,” he replied from behind his newspaper, “Was, ‘so . . . that Morrison woman said to me . . .’”

“She’s putting on weight, too.”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”

He read a few more paragraphs, but his attention was diverted. .

“Well? Come on, what did Mattie Morrison say? I’m all agog,” he said patiently.

“You look all agog.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Look at me. Agog, agog, agog.”

She picked up her sewing, and peered at it.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make a hem-line as well as she can. I’ll say that for her, anyway.” She made a face and began picking out the stitches. “In any case, that woman had the nerve to tell me don’t write on the wall!”

He jumped.

“That’s a heck of a thing to say, . . .” he began.

“Not me,” she said, her voice rising. She pointed, and said, “him!”

He turned, and looked over his shoulder, and then roared, “Mr. Christian, come here!”

Mr. Christian, age two years and six months, scrambled to his feet, and stood carefully in front of the scribbles on the wall. He smiled engagingly.

“Well, Sir? Explain yourself.”

The boy recognized the tone that meant, “I’ll fix it later, Brat, but right now you better show your mother that you’re sorry!” and he launched himself into a complicated explanation in which only about one word in three was decipherable. The general drift appeared to be that it wasn’t really his fault, it was two other little boys that did it, and anyway, he was sorry, and was he gonna get a s’ankin’?

“Don’t tempt me,” his father growled. “Isn’t it time for him to go to bed?”

“Past time.”

“I thought so. All right, Microwatt. Go to bed. Go directly to bed. Do not pass Go. Do not collect Two Hundred Dollars.”

“No!” said Mr. Christian.

His father put down his paper.

“I no s’eepy!” said Mr. Christian, and he retreated a step.

His father stood up.

“I hungee!” wailed Mr. Christian, his voice rising, and he trotted to the hallway.

His father glowered at him, and took a step in his direction.

The boy howled miserably, and tried the ultimate delaying tactic.

“I gotta go potty!”

“No you don’t,” his mother said positively. “You go right to bed.”

Mr. Christian’s bright little face vanished from the hall doorway like a blown-out candle. They heard him giggle as he shuffled his sleeper slippers down the hall.

“Really, darling. You’ve got to be firm with that little stinker. He plays you like his wind-up teddy bear.”

“I am firm. You saw the way he took off for bed?”

“After I yelled at him.”

“He was going anyway,” the father said, as he settled down and picked up his paper. “Now, please tell me what The Morrison said.”

Then little Chris, elaborately casual, trotted back into the living room. His father’s eyebrows rose as he watched the boy sit down by his toys, obviously prepared for a long, happy stay.

He cleared his throat, and with exaggerated patience, asked, “And, uh, what, pray tell, are you doing back in here?”

“I no s’eep.”

“That’s true,” his father mused.

“An’ no light my room.”

“Ah.”

“An’ a mon’ser my bed, Daddy.”

“A monster in your bed? Oh, dear me.”

Christian nodded absently. He was busy with his toys.

“All right, Private. On your feet. Let’s go. Hup! Two, three, four! Move! I’ll go fight off your monster, and turn on the nightlight. Come on, O pestiferous One.”

The boy got up dutifully, kissed his mother good-night and followed his father down the hall into his room.

“See, Daddy? Dark!”

“So it is, o’l buddy. I’ll just turn on the lamp, like this, and then you’ll see that there ain’t no Mon . . . yke!”

“See, Daddy? Mon’ser!”

And a monster there was. A reeking, wobbling, flaccid horror that grinned, toothily, and gibbering like a madwoman, eased itself from under the bolster, and scrabbled awkwardly across the bed toward him. Christian’s mother looked up from her sewing as her husband stepped stiffly back into the living room.

“The brat in bed?” she asked.

He nodded, jerkily.

“There was a monster in his bed.”

“What?”

“A great, ugly, black thing.”

“Now really, darling. You’re as bad as that boy.”

“No, dammit! It was there!”

She tapped her teeth with a fingernail, and looked reflective.

“I guess he could be starting now. I was three when I started. A great big, soft-nosed pony, Mother said. I guess he could be starting early for his age. Remember, he walked early, too.”

“Horrible damn thing. What has that kid been watching on TV anyway?”

“Just his regular kiddie programs in the morning,” she said.

“I wish I would have taken my camera in there,” he said thoughtfully. “Old Houseman, and his five-year-old. He claims she can fly now. Wait ‘till he hears about this.”

“And he always was a fast child. He was on table food a lot earlier than the other little ones on the block.” She carried on, with her thought uninterrupted. “And your mother, on her last visitation, said something about you starting early, too. Hung a huge fireball in the living room when your father’s boss came to call.”

“Scorched his mustache, too,” he replied. He stepped to the wall, and inspected the scribbles his son had made. “Does dots, a long squiggle, and four curved lines have any particular significance to you?”

“That child will never be a Michelangelo,” she sighed heavily. “Is he asleep now?”

“Yeah. I put his ‘mon’ser’ away, and he was almost asleep when I left the room,” he answered, and frowned at the marks on the wall. They slowly faded.

“You left a little bit, down there, in the corner,” his wife said.