. . . spell tracking-arm.
He grabbed the coat hanger, pointed his finger at its dowel, and burned holes in it, one for every wire connection on the Speak and Spell.
“Hey, you’ve got a finger like a torch, E.T.”
Still clad in his new coat, he hurried back into the closet, to his Speak and Spell. His torch-finger quietly melted the solder on the keyboard contacts, to which he fastened what wires he had. “More . . . more . . .”
The boys looked in the door. He waved the coat hanger.
“More . . . more . . .”
They brought him wire, a pie tin, a mirror, and a hubcap.
He kept the wire, rejected the other objects. They would not do for his rocks-and-rolling record. It must be hard, flat, round. Couldn’t they understand?
He turned to his geranium.
They are Earth children, said the plant. Good, but slow.
“Okay, E.T., we’ll find some other stuff.”
“Yeah, there’s lots of junk around . . .”
He watched them depart. He must not be impatient with them. He must be a M-E-C-H-A-N-I-C, soldering all the wires in place on the Speak and Spell and stretching them up to the dowel of the coat hanger, to the holes. Into these holes, contact fingers must go, small and metallic, with lots of spring in them.
He’d seen such metallic fingers around, somewhere in this house. Where was it?
The radiant waves of the willow-creature, mother of the crew, came to him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on her mental image, hovering before him.
Yes, she had the metallic fingers in her hair. What did she call them? He dipped into her memory chip, searched, found.
“Gertie . . .”
His other accomplice came running in. He pointed his finger at her. “Spell ‘bobby pins.’ ”
“B-O-P-P-Y—”
“That is incorrect.” He pointed at his slippery, hairless head.
“You want some?”
He nodded.
Gertie took him by the hand.
Together they snuck down the hall and into Mary’s bedroom. He glanced out the window. The willow-creature was in her garden again, dealing with the largest vegetables in the state. A deeply puzzled atmosphere was about her head, as she hefted a gigantic squash, so big it appeared to have been milk-fed with a straw.
The potted flowers on the windowsill, radiant with out-of-season blossoms, bent to him.
Hello, Ancient Master. What are you looking for? What high, wonderful scientific mission are you on?
“Bobby pins.”
“Here,” said Gertie, opening up a white porcelain chicken.
The extraterrestrial took out the bobby pins, and caught his own reflection in Mary’s dressing mirror. If he wore not only a jacket, but pants as well—would the willow-creature be able to overcome her shock?
He would have to shorten the pants and get paper bags for his feet. But then—
“Come on, E.T.,” said Gertie, pulling at his hand. She pulled him out of the bedroom, into the hall. He followed her back to Elliott’s room, and reentered his closet.
“What’re you gonna do with Mommy’s bobby pins?”
He sat down on his pillows and fastened the bobby pins to the dowel of the coat hanger. Now a row of metallic contacts hung down, to rake across the surface of his rocks-and-rolling record. He connected the pins to the wires leading from the Speak and Spell.
“That sure is a funny-lookin’ thing,” said Gertie. “Do you always make such funny things?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“E.T. phone home.”
“Where’s your home?”
He pointed to the sky. Gertie stared out the little window.
“Is it where you take me when we go dreaming? The faraway place?”
“Far.”
“Will they hear you at your home?”
Earth children asked an amazing number of questions.
“Will they pick up their phone and say, ‘Hello, E.T.?’ ”
“Spell ‘nuisance.’ ”
“N-U-S—”
“That is incorrect.”
“Well, the reason I can’t spell so good is you took my Speak and Spell, and now it only says gleeple deeple.”
“Gleeple doople.”
“Anyway, it doesn’t spell nuisance.”
Gertie turned away from the monster and began playing with her stove, which she’d brought into the closet with her. She was baking a new kind of muffin made out of Mommy’s face cream mixed with mud. The elderly computer mechanic toiled on by himself, humming a confused smattering of Top-Forty lyrics he’d heard on Elliott’s radio. So engrossed was he in his work, and Gertie in hers, that they didn’t hear Mary climbing the stairs. They didn’t hear her coming down the hall. They only heard her as she opened the door to Elliott’s room.
The old monster jumped, lining himself up with the stuffed animals, goggling Muppets, and toy space robots in the closet doorway. His limbs froze in standby position, and his great interplanetary eyes, more evolved than Earth’s greatest optical devices, went as dumb and unseeing as Kermit the Frog. Glazed, they stared out, and his lumpish form seemed lifeless as the toy robot to his right.
Mary entered. Her eyes flitted over the cluttered assortment of toys, met the extraterrestrial’s gaze, and passed on to the geranium, flowering in the closet. “Did you bring this in here, Gertie?”
“The man in the moon likes flowers. He makes them grow.”
Mary stroked the luxuriant foliage and shook her head in wonder. “Everything’s growing like crazy. I can’t understand it.”
“Have a muffin, Mommy.”
“My, this looks good,” said Mary, looking into the muffin tin. Too good, she realized, for something made out of mud. The aroma was faintly familiar . . .
“My God, Gertie, is this my facial in here?”
“It’s banana cream.”
Mary stared at the remains of the secret formula for the New Me. “Gertie, I’m not going to lose my temper, honey. I know you didn’t know any better. But Mommy pays twenty-five dollars a jar for this cream and now I’ll have to put it on my face mixed with mud, sand, and pebbles.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy.”
“I know you are, dear. And someday I’ll laugh about it. But not today.”
Her eyes passed back over the frozen extraterrestrial lined up with the Muppets, and she didn’t so much as blink, so distraught was she over her defiled facial. She turned away and he breathed a sigh of relief, which was tinged with melancholy, however. For how could she love him when he was no more to her than Kermit the Frog?
He watched her leave the room, and his heart was heavy as he disengaged himself from the strings of a hanging puppet. He was just a toy to Mary, in the closet with the rest of the stuffed freaks.
Unhappy space-being, spell loneliness.
Spell rejection.
He squatted back down with his transmitter and soldered a few more wires with his torch-finger.
How ironic it was that the willow-creature, the lovely Mary, pined for her vanished husband while in a closet, close at hand, dwelt one of the finest minds in the cosmos. He gazed down at his large pumpkin stomach, hanging on the floor, and for the first time in his very long life he saw it as grotesque. But even if he stopped eating Oreo cookies, it would never go away. It was him.
“Why are you so sad, E.T.?” asked Gertie. She looked into his eyes and saw that the dancing waterfall had turned into a desert filled with big bare cracks that went on forever, the loneliest place she’d ever seen.
He blinked and the desert vanished. Then he picked up the Speak and Spell and touched the keys once more.
. . . gleeple doople zwak-zwak snafn olg mmnnnnip . . .
The soothing tones of higher intelligence comforted him. That was a language. You could speak your heart with it. He would speak to the night, over and over, as soon as the boys came back from shoplifting at the hardware store.
&nbs
p; When he left the Earth, at least he’d have that satisfaction behind him, that he’d trained and guided these young Earthlings into the higher paths.
If he left the Earth.
Looking at his homemade transmitter, made of bobby pins and a coat hanger, he had his doubts. But his own inner brain wave assured him he was on the right track. He could only follow its directives and hope.
But if they hadn’t stolen him a circular saw blade . . .
There was a clatter of footsteps on the stairs and then Elliott and Michael entered. They opened their jackets and took out the requested circular blade, as well as handfuls of eye bolts and other connectors.
“Here y’go, E.T. Is that what you wanted?”
“Spell rocks-and-rolling . . .” E.T.’s fingers moved excitedly over the surface of the blade. He placed it on the turntable and spun it with his finger. The tooth-edged blade went round and round, glistening in the shaft of sunlight entering at the little window.
“But how can you make a record out of a saw blade?”
“Spell paint.” He indicated that the surface must be coated.
“Any particular kind?”
He pointed at the sky.
“Blue?”
He nodded.
“Mommy came in,” said Gertie. “And she didn’t even notice E.T.”
“Yeah? The camouflage worked?” Elliott pointed at the row of silly stuffed creatures.
“Out, out,” said E.T. and chased them away. There was only so much humiliation a distinguished cosmologist could put up with in a day.
Mary gazed into the mirror over her dressing table and reached into the porcelain chicken for a bobby pin.
Her fingers moved around the empty interior of the bird.
“Where—?”
But she knew where. Gertie, of course. She was already using makeup. Bobby pins were necessary, as well.
“Gertie!”
The child came running in. “Yes, Mommy?”
“Give me back the bobby pins.”
“I can’t, the monster’s using them.”
“Oh? What is he using them for?”
“In his machine.”
In his machine. Mary contemplated this. Was it worth the struggle of tracking through the child’s endless string of fantasies to get the bobby pins back? No, clearly it wasn’t. Better to let my own hair hang in my face, for that fashionable brink-of-a-nervous-breakdown look.
“Thank you, Gertie, that will be all for now.”
“I’ll tell the monster you said hello.”
“Yes, give him my best.”
The monster sat in his closet, working hard. The saw blade had been painted and allowed to dry, and now the senior mechanic began burning a pattern of holes in the painted surface.
“Hey,” said Elliott, “I get it. It’s gonna be like a music box.”
Michael peered in over Elliott’s shoulder as the pattern was inscribed. “It’s a player piano,” he said, as E.T.’s torch-finger continued burning a punch-card pattern in the blade. E.T. then laid the programmed blade on the turntable, gave it a spin with his finger, and lowered the coat-hanger arm; its row of bobby pins tracked along over the rotating blade, clicking in and out of the punched program.
“Wow, E.T., you’re wild . . .”
As the blade turned and the bobby pins tracked, their wires activated the keyboard of the Speak and Spell, and the star language came out, over and over.
. . . gleeple doople zwak-zwak snafn olg mmnnnnip . . .
“You made it, E.T. You made your own record.”
Gertie came in, carrying her newly acquired walkie-talkie. She was talking to her distant dollies, in her own room. “Come in, dolly, this is Gertie . . .”
E.T.’s long arm reached out, took the walkie-talkie, and in two seconds he had dismantled its microphone and attached it to the Speak and Spell speaker.
“E.T., you wreck all my toys!” she shrieked, in tones that penetrated the entire house.
Her brothers patiently explained, while twisting the arms of her doll into hideous postures, that she must learn to be generous.
“Well,” she sniffled, “he’d better not wreck anything else.”
The aged scientist assured her that no more of her toys would be wrecked. All that was needed now was the coaxial cable from her mother’s TV set. And the UHF tuner, for which the time had also arrived.
Together they snuck back down the hall.
Later that night, Mary entered her bedroom, clicked on the TV set, kicked off her shoes and got into bed. There, she wearily opened a newspaper and began to read. Eventually she noticed that the TV had not come on.
“Michael!”
The house was silent.
“Elliott . . .”
She pondered, her mother’s intuition clearly telling her that her two boys were responsible. But this intuition, in a more refined burst, came up with the image of Gertie.
“Gertie?” she asked the night softly. Had Gertie done something?
She closed her eyes and a puzzled frown came across her brow, for she was getting a mental image of Gertie tiptoeing into the bedroom with a large Muppet.
I’ve been working too hard, sighed Mary, and stretched out with the newspaper over her face.
After a brief, anxious nap, she woke, hungry. Was it time to eat a loaf of bread smeared with strawberry jam? Had the Hour of Depravity come once more?
She slipped quietly from bed and tiptoed into the hall. The children mustn’t see her; it was wrong to set them a bad example, of a mother who could not control her appetite, who at this very moment was beset by visions of jelly.
She paused in the hall, heard Elliott and Michael in the playroom. Good, they wouldn’t see her making a disgusting pig of herself, but what was more important, they wouldn’t stop her.
My thoughtful sons, who don’t want me to have to squeeze sideways through the doorway of life.
But I can’t help myself.
I’m starving.
For jelly rolls. Bowls of custard. Rice pudding. How about a banana split?
She tiptoed down the stairs and paused in the lower hall, to see if the coast was clear.
The living room was empty. The dining nook was dark.
Mary tiptoed along toward the kitchen. Turning the corner, she saw a light burning, and the next moment discovered Gertie, sitting at the table with cookies and milk. What she did not see was E.T., on a stool beside the refrigerator. The poor little space-goblin was huddling there, unable to hide, and expecting the worst.
But Mary was talking to Gertie, and pointing at the two plates on the table. “Who is that plate for?” she asked, staring down hungrily at the cookies displayed on it. “For your doll?”
“For the spaceman,” said Gertie. “He likes cookies.”
“Would he mind if I had one?”
“Oh, no,” said Gertie. “He loves you.”
“What a nice spaceman,” said Mary, and snatched up the cookies.
Oh, god, sugar.
The monstrous delight broke onto her taste buds, and she knew she was lost. “I must have jelly.”
She whirled toward the refrigerator, threw it open. The door, swinging wide, knocked E.T. off his stool, into the trash basket. He sank to the bottom of it, feet sticking out, but Mary still did not see him.
“. . . apple butter . . . marmalade . . . how about these frozen blueberry turnovers, I could eat four of them . . .”
“Mommy,” said Gertie, “are you having a fit again?”
“Yes, dear . . . fudge . . . an eclair . . .”
Suddenly, strong arms took her from behind.
“Control yourself, Mom.”
“Elliott . . . Michael . . . leave me alone.”
“Mom, please.” Michael turned her from the spectacle before her. “You told us we were never to let you do this.”
“Forget what I told you.” She strained for the cookies on Gertie’s plate.
“Come on, Mom,” said Elliott, backing i
n front of E.T., whose feet were still sticking out of the trash basket. “We’ll play Monopoly with you.”
Mary looked into Elliott’s eyes, could see he was anxious and nervous, hopping back and forth in front of her, to distract her from the refrigerator. “You’re a loving child, Elliott.”
“You told us to remind you,” said Elliott, “that if you ate any more sweets, you’d look like a stuffed sausage in your bathing suit.”
The two boys moved her away from the monster, out of the kitchen, and into the hall, Mary shuffling along between her sons.
“You’re good boys . . . strict, but good . . .”
They got her moving upward again, on the stairs. “Don’t look back, Mom. You know what will happen if you do.”
“The Hefty Ladies’ Department,” said Mary meekly, and continued on up the stairs.
On the following day it rained. Mary went to the umbrella stand for her umbrella. It wasn’t there, and she didn’t find it anywhere else, because it was in the closet upstairs being used as a parabolic reflector.
“Wow,” said Elliott, “that’s neat . . .”
The umbrella was lined with reflective foil. To its handle a coffee can was attached, with the UHF tuner, from which the coaxial cable ran back to Gertie’s walkie-talkie mike; the mike was connected to the Speak and Spell, and gleeple doople zwak-zwak was now being multiplied into the microwave frequency. The ancient radio operator explained that he now needed something he’d spied under the dash of Mary’s car.
“The Fuzz Buster? You want Mom’s Fuzz Buster?” Michael shook his head, and Elliott agreed.
“That’s the only thing of Dad’s that Mom has left. She’s very attached to it.”
The elderly voyager made diagrams and showed the boys how the Fuzz Buster must be mounted in the coffee can so the microwave frequency could be transmitted outward.
And that evening, as Mary was speeding home, her warning system failed to show police radar in use, and she was given a twenty-five-dollar fine.
But the communicator was nearly complete.
“Yeah,” said Michael, “but what’s gonna run it? What’s gonna turn this?” He spun the saw blade on the turntable. “If we take it up in the hills there”—he pointed out the window—“there won’t be any electricity.”