In the patio light, the soft wind blew Emmett’s red hair like licks of flame. “Oh, my God!” I mouthed the words when I saw the flames dip and obscure Phyllis’s head entirely. Evelyn’s eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. But more was to come! It wasn’t five minutes after that I saw Emmett’s arm reach down toward the middle section of the iron lung, and I knew what was coming. I cupped my hands over Evelyn’s ear and whispered, “He’s going to put his hand through the portal!”
Evelyn’s lower lip jutted out as if to say, “Huh?” She looked bewildered. I cupped her ear again with my hand. “It’s how nurses wash her, or sometimes I think they have to give her a shot or something. But she and Emmett are probably holding hands. It’s the only way she can touch something.” Evelyn’s mouth pulled down into an inverted curve, an upside-down smile. “Yeah, kind of sad. But it still counts as data, right?” Evelyn nodded. I felt a little triumphant ping deep inside. We watched on in silence. I could see a smile on Phyllis’s face. Her neck, protruding just a bit from the tight-fitting collar, seemed as fragile as a stalk. Her eyes closed. A slight wind ruffled her hair. Her head lost all definition. It could have been a flower on a slender white stem. That was all she was: a beautiful flower. I wanted to forget about the rest of her encased in the steel tube. This was romantic, data or not.
Everything was very still. There was Emmett at the midsection, his one hand swallowed by the Creature. His other hand stretched toward Phyllis’s head with his fingers entwined in her breeze-ruffled hair. Phyllis’s eyes were closed, but she had a radiant look on her face. It was a strange configuration of machinery and arms and heads, a confused anatomy of metal and human appendages limned in the moonlight of a hot summer night.
I knew that they were about to kiss when suddenly the lights in the house came on. Shoot! I thought. We heard a door slide open onto the patio and the sound of footsteps. We pressed ourselves closer to the brick wall of the house, for we were caught in a wash of bright light that poured through the windows, peeling back the shadows that had been our refuge. The light was scalding. We felt naked, exposed. There was some shrubbery near us, and I hoped that perhaps we could press up close to it and appear like another bush or two. We could clearly hear voices.
“Emmett, time for Phyllis to turn in,” a deep voice said.
There was a harsh laugh. “I’m always in!”
There were the sounds of cables being moved and wheels turning. Evelyn and I were clamped against the side of the house, practically not breathing. The clouds cleared off, and the moon was sliding down the black dome of the night and beginning to spray light across the lawn in our direction, shaving the darkness from our shadowed refuge, nibbling away at its borders. It was a race between the Kellers and Emmett getting the iron lung into the house and the encroaching moonlight. Within a minute the dark would be stripped away entirely and we would be exposed, spies in the bleached night.
Just at that moment, we heard the thump of the iron lung, all twelve hundred pounds of it, go over the threshold from the patio to the sunporch. We were revealed, but by that time the nurse, Emmett, and Dr. Keller were all occupied with rearranging the cables. No one noticed two small clumps huddled against the house. When the sliding doors shut, Evelyn and I were off like two shots. We didn’t bother with the belly scramble across the lawn. We just raced for the grove, the lawn striped with our elongated shadows, which sprinted ahead of us. We grabbed the bag of snacks in the grove. When we were back in our yard, I went up on the patio and dragged down two lawn chairs. Five minutes later, I saw Emmett coming out of the grove.
“Hi,” he said. “Whatcha doing?”
“Star watching. This is Evelyn, Emmett. Evelyn, this is my brother.”
“How come you didn’t bring down a telescope?” He paused “And how come you’re soaking wet?”
Oh, jeez, I thought. Think fast, dodo. “We were hot and decided to turn on the sprinkler to cool off.”
“And go in your clothes, not even a bathing suit? You’re a strange one, Georgie — watching stars without a telescope and going in the sprinkler with all your clothes on.”
“How was Phyllis?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Fine,” he said. “Hey, you know, Phyllis would really like to see one of your small worlds.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. How’s the Orion one coming?”
“I need your help — I told you. I don’t know how to wire it, and I need smaller bulbs then those little flashlight ones.”
“Oh, you’ve started the Orion one?” Evelyn asked.
“Yeah, remember, you were the one who said I should do my favorite constellation, something I really loved.”
“I could get you some really teeny-tiny lights. Doctors use them all the time. My dad and my mom are both surgeons. They need them to light up people’s guts and stuff.”
“That would be great.”
“Just bring over one of your other small worlds,” Emmett said. “She doesn’t need to see a work in progress. Show her a finished one. She said you could come over tomorrow.”
“Could Evelyn come?” I said quickly.
“I guess so. I can’t stay all that long because I have basketball practice. But I’m sure she’d appreciate the company. It’s a little weird at first, Evelyn. Have you ever seen a person in an iron lung? I mean, other than in pictures.”
“Uh, no, can’t say as I have,” Evelyn said.
After Emmett went up to the house, Evelyn leaned over and whispered, “Do you think he suspected anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You were quick with that thing about running around in the sprinkler.”
“Yes, but I hope he didn’t notice that the grass wasn’t wet.”
“Oh, yeah, but thanks for inviting me to go with you to see Phyllis. Do you think we should just casually mention that there are recorded cases of healthy babies being born to mothers in iron lungs?”
“No! No way!” Gads, I thought. Evelyn, for all her smarts, was a bit clueless. “Want me to get some scopes so we can see what’s up there tonight?”
“Sure.”
I brought down two very light ones. “Will you be able to see Orion yet?” Evelyn asked.
I was dumbfounded. Everyone knew, or at least I thought everyone did, that Orion was a winter constellation.
“Heck no! Orion only begins to rise in the fall. It’s a winter constellation. Evelyn, didn’t you know that?”
“Nope,” she said simply. “I know a lot about microscopic stuff, microbiology. Cells, nerve endings. My dad uses an electron microscope all the time for his research. It’s amazing what you can see. My dad has actually looked at the molecular structure of nerve endings through one. And he lets me look through it, too.”
“Have you ever looked through a telescope?”
“No. I mean not through a good one. Not one where you can really see out into space.”
“Well, you can take a look tonight.”
It seemed sort of like an odd crossing of fates that Evelyn had never looked through a good telescope and I had only looked through crummy little kids’ microscopes, the kind that come in science kits. It was as if we were both focused on different ends of a spectrum of life in our universe. She looked in, down to the teensiest particles of life on Earth, and I looked out toward the farthest reaches of time, to the very edge of the universe.
I brought back the best of Emmett’s telescopes and set it up, pointing it east, where the stars begin to rise.
“So where is Orion right now if you can’t see it?” Evelyn asked.
“Being chased by Scorpio,” I said softly.
“What?”
“Scorpio killed Orion. Stung him in the foot.”
“I didn’t know that part of the story. I thought he went blind.”
“He did, and then Scorpio chased him. So in summer, when Scorpio rises, Orion flees below the horizon.”
“Scorpions are a kind of spider, you
know.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” I replied.
“Yes, they are arthropods. That’s the class, but they belong to the same genus as spiders — arachnids, just different species.”
“Oh,” I said, and thought that Evelyn should be on a quiz show. Except for a lack in a very few areas, she had more information stuffed under that frizzled head of hair than anyone I had ever met.
“So where’s Scorpio?” she asked.
I pointed to the Southeast. “It hasn’t risen that high yet. But it’s right over there. You can see his tail flicking up into the night, like he’s dusting the other stars away.” We were quiet for a minute. “Do you see his heart?”
“Heart?” Evelyn asked.
“Yeah, it’s a red star, Antares. They say the name means ‘rival of Mars’ — because it’s so red.”
“Oh, wow, it really is red! No wonder Orion is running. When will he come back? Like, when is it safe?”
The question struck me as odd. I shrugged. “I’m not sure if it’s ever safe. But starting in December and through March, that is the best time. When it’s really dark. Orion is a thousand times lovelier than Scorpio.”
That night when Evelyn and I went to bed, I set to thinking about which small world I should take over to Phyllis. There was one that my mom called my namesake small world: Saint George and the Dragon. Then there were my Nancy Drew houses. They were really just scenes from some of the books, like Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, or Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Clock. But when I began reading science fiction, I started making these really weird landscapes and modeling creatures out of clay that had three eyes and pointy heads. My favorite small world came out of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. He described this place that had canals that were the color of violets and ships with sails made of blue mist. And the Martians themselves had eyes like “golden coins” and transparent bodies through which the stars shone. There were ancient cities made of crystal and some of pink stone. It sounded more beautiful and fantastic than anything I could ever have dreamed of.
My first instinct was to bring all my small worlds. But that would have taken at least four or five trips to carry them over, even with Evelyn’s help. Then I realized that if I showed them to her all at once, there would maybe be no reason for her to invite me back.
So we went over the next day and I took the Saint George box. Emmett introduced Evelyn, and Phyllis seemed genuinely glad for the company. The first thing I realized was that Emmett had become an old hand at wheeling the iron lung around and checking its dials and pressure gauges and stuff. I had started to explain to Phyllis about the box and how I had made it all when Dr. Keller came out on the patio. He seemed like a jolly sort of person — very jolly.
“Hi, Dad,” Phyllis said. “This is Emmett’s sister, Georgia, and her friend Evelyn. Georgie brought over this neat little diorama she’s made. Take a look. It’s very clever.”
“Ah yes,” said Dr. Keller. But, in truth, he hardly looked, and I knew immediately that he didn’t think it was all that clever. He was anxious to show what he had brought, which I guess you would say was definitely clever. “Look at this! Finally finished it!”
“Finished what?” Phyllis asked. Suddenly Saint George and the Dragon slid out from the mirrors, and then there were more mirrors, and instead Dr. Keller’s hands were reflected.
“The new, improved double-reading mirror,” he said.
“Of course,” Phyllis said quietly.
“Well, honey, you should be excited. No more tiresome tongue-turning of pages.” That was how Phyllis read. Emmett had told me. They put a book on a rack. Since she could turn her head a little and had full use of her mouth and tongue, she had a device that was like a long spoon which she could bite down on and turn the pages. But apparently it was tiring. So this was the answer, and Dr. Keller, who was an engineer, had invented it. “Got a patent pending. We’re calling it the Phyllis. How about that?” He looked anxiously at Phyllis.
“Fine,” she answered. Except I didn’t think she sounded all that thrilled about it. I looked at Evelyn. She blinked and sort of rolled her eyes as if she didn’t think Phyllis sounded all that fine about it either.
“Hey, Emmett, help me set it up, won’t you?”
“Sure, Dr. Keller.”
“You know where I keep the power screwdriver down in my basement workshop, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
I couldn’t help but think that Emmett knew his way around the Kellers’ house almost as well as he knew his way around ours. In no time they had the Phyllis attached to the gleaming cylinder. But the weirdest thing of all was that here I had come expecting to see a real romance blossoming between Emmett and Phyllis, and Emmett seemed almost indifferent to Phyllis. He was much more interested in talking to Dr. Keller about the iron lung. I tried to remind myself of the scene Evelyn and I had witnessed — Emmett sliding his hand through the portal — but right now it was as if none of that had ever happened and my brother had fallen in love with a machine. This horrid breathing creature was another problem for Emmett to solve. He had even brought over an old high-school textbook of his on basic mechanical engineering. Emmett was as about as romantic as a toolbox!
As they were working, Dr. Keller pointed out all the other little gadgets he had invented or devised and put on the iron lung so that it was absolutely “state-of-the-art.”
“State-of-the-art” was a favorite expression of Dr. Keller. “Phyllis can do more, see more, perform more tasks than any other person in an iron lung. She has the most active, independent life of any respiratory poliomyelitis paralysis victim.”
But she’s still a prisoner in this cylinder, I thought, with only eighty-seven cubic centimeters. So what did it matter if she could have a baby? All those moms out in Los Angeles who had had babies — they could never cuddle them, hold them. I had read that in Japan’s imperial family, the emperor and empress’s babies were taken from them when they turned three years old and raised separately — away from their parents. This was what being a mom in an iron lung must be like. Like an empress mommy no longer permitted to hold or touch your child.
Emmett had explained to me that eighty-seven cubic centimeters of air was the volume the machine could contain. This air was somehow mechanically pumped into the iron lung through bellows. As it was sucked into the machine, the pressure increased, squeezing down on her body at the rate of fifteen pounds per square inch, pushing the air out of her lungs. She could not do this herself because her chest muscles didn’t work. Then in the next whoosh, the pressure would decrease and her chest would expand automatically because of the low pressure, and allow her to take in a thin stream of air. And to this thin stream of air, while zillions of gallons of it gallivanted around in the sky, Phyllis was tied by a cable no thicker than a thumb. And if that cable broke or came unplugged, there were alarms that would sound and generators that would kick in so that the strange mindless mechanical whooshings would never cease; a breath would never be missed. So what did all the reading mirrors and the other gadgets mean or really matter? The iron lung was like a hateful insect with its gleaming carapace. I heard a taunt in its measured rhythmic breaths, a hiss beneath its whooshes, and all the mirrors gleaming and casting spangles of light glared with lies and deceptions of life.
The machine had totally swallowed Phyllis. Her parents believed in the iron lung and not in Phyllis. And now I was thinking that Emmett too believed in the iron lung more than in Phyllis. The unthinkable had happened. Phyllis had been sidelined! This was not the way it was supposed to be. I wondered what Evelyn thought.
“Come over here closer, Georgie,” Phyllis said suddenly, interrupting her father. “And bring Saint George up here.”
“But I got the reading mirrors all set up. Don’t you want to try them?” her father asked in a pleading voice.
“I want to see Saint George and the Dragon, Dad.”
I brought it close to the mirrors.
; “How did you make the dragon?”
“I used a dinosaur mold and plaster of Paris, and then I stuck sequins on for scales.”
“Oh, the knight is great, too! Look at it, Dad.”
Dr. Keller’s brow furrowed, and the jolliness of his face seemed to dissolve into a kind of confusion. “Of course, dear, of course.” I could tell that Dr. Keller was not often confused. For his daughter, he would bear with anything. He would bring the whole world right to her. No, that is not accurate. With his clever mirrors mounted on gyros, he would bring the reflections of the whole world right to her. But right now she wanted to see the small world I had created.
Phyllis made a sort of ugly little joke when I brought the Saint George diorama up close for her to see on the rolling table. “I guess you could say I am my own small world.” I was the only one to hear the joke. She whispered it to me. Evelyn was a few feet behind me. In a way, the small worlds became my passport into Phyllis’s world. She was clearly fascinated and wanted to see more. I went over a few more times. Just me, no one else, as basketball practice had started to crank up for Emmett, and Evelyn had to go to a family wedding out of town. I learned a lot about Phyllis’s life in that small world of hers.
Here was what Phyllis could move aside from her head and neck: one muscle in her left foot and one in her thigh. She called that thigh muscle Ralph. I was formally introduced to Ralph on my next visit when I brought the little box world from The Martian Chronicles. I mean, she didn’t show him to me, because she was wearing a long gown. She just said, “This is Ralph. You can’t see his terrific tricks because my nightgown covers him but that is — how should I say it — where he resides with his mighty powers.” The mirrors moved to catch a port that was near her thigh. I caught my breath because this was the port that I had seen Emmett put his hand through. He had touched Ralph! I almost wished at this point that Evelyn and I had never spied on them. In other words, there was getting to be too much evidence, too much data. I was feeling, quite frankly, overwhelmed.