"I've been married for ten years and I still don't know who my husband is," Joan explained to the gypsy. "He's loyal, hard working, doesn't beat me, but he doesn't seem to have any feelings."
Joan had dragged her husband, Ben, to marital counseling with the minister, a psychologist and two social workers; Ben had mumbled a weak protest, then followed obediently. When one counselor asked the couple to jot down what they'd been feeling while in the office, Joan composed a grocery list of emotions - five synonyms for "frustrated" and ten flavors of "hopeless"; Ben wrote "chilly", then described the draft wafting down from the window. Joan complained "If most men are from Mars, my husband's from Pluto, that's how distant he seems"; Ben remarked that he was in counseling "because my wife thinks I should be here". A friend suggested that Joan consult with Madame Selena, "a real seer who's done some real magic". Joan shrugged, then reluctantly called the gypsy for an appointment; when all else fails, consult a psychic.
"I was shy and kinda homely; Ben was the only guy who spoke to me at parties." Joan coiled a strand of her lank brown hair around her finger. "And sheltered; I didn't know much about make-up and fashions and dating. Most of the guys were too busy with the girls in clingy blouses to notice me. When Ben asked me to marry him, I figured that he was as good as I'd get. He was polite, had job security with the government. I wasn't a candidate for any Prince Charming. It was a case of nerd meeting nerd."
Madame Selena narrowed her eyes. "So, you want him to express what he feels?"
"Yes!" Joan paused. "But, but first I want to know what he's really like inside. If there's a serial killer lurking in there, I don't want all those hidden feelings out in the open. Better that they stay repressed, while I make plans to get away."
"I may have just what you need." Madame Selena turned to scan a wall lined from floor to ceiling with shelves and cubbyholes. Corked cobalt blue decanters waited beside dust glazed flasks holding iridescent oil. A vial of lavender fluid leaned against a brown glass bottle with a faded label reading "love lozenges; aphrodisiac, restorative and stimulant". The crimson tassels dangling from Madame Selena's shawl and cuffs danced as she stooped to rub the dust from a bottle and squint at its yellowed label.
"No, that's my elixir of courage," she mumbled. "Someday, I'll get these shelves organized, arrange everything alphabetically. Be patient, it's in here; I need a dewy-decimal system for my medicines."
Madame Selena's copper chains and crystal amulets jangled as she crouched to examine the lower shelves; only her thick, flowing gray hair showed above the dimly lit table. Joan sighed, wondering if genuine tiger's milk or a slurry brewed from frog eyes could help more than psychotherapy.
"I found it!" Madame Selena placed a thick palm on the embroidered tablecloth, leaning sideways as she pulled her buxom figure erect. Sweating, she dropped into her gold taffetta armchair and silently rolled a tiny indigo bottle between her palms.
"My tincture of truth," Madame Selena intoned nostalgically as she stared down. "When this batch goes, it's lost forever. I know how to make some of the concoctions here, but some of the recipes were never handed down. The secret ingredients were lost with the old ways."
Joan fidgeted as she gazed at the twinkling dark glass; she imagined acrid smoke exploding from its mouth when the stopper was pulled. "What does it do?", she asked.
"Do?" Madame Selena exhaled slowly. "This is a very special, very strong, very magical potion. It changes how you see, lets you see essence and substance, lets you see into the hearts of men. If you want to see someone's true nature, just drink a drop of this mixed in water. In a half hour, his true nature will appear to you as clearly as his flesh and blood form. It's magical, this potion that lets you perceive the truth beneath the skin."
"I'm not sure I understand." Joan frowned, "Like, uh, what would I see?"
"See all those people out there, on the street?" Madame Selena gestured towards the window. "They're all human, have human DNA and human blood cells. But deep down, many of them are also something else. Some have the souls of wolves. Some, the souls of minnows. Some the souls of parakeets. This potion lets you see that wolf soul."
"Like a totem spirit?" Joan asked.
"Partly but not quite," Madame Selena mused. "Totem spirits are animals. But I've seen people whose true selves aren't animal at all. They seem placid on the outside, but their souls are dancing fires or raging ocean waves. They look frail and fickle, but the inner self is a granite boulder. I even saw one man whose true self was an automobile."
Joan gaped. "A what?"
"A 1998 red Ford Escort with stereophonic sound and black cowhide seats; I could feel the chrome and smell the leather, until the drug wore off. I don't understand it myself; it seems that people can be anything under all those smiles and neckties and skin."
"You're saying you could actually see and feel the car? This wasn't just a vague hunch, that the guy was like an automobile?"
"Yes." Madame Selena leaned forward and set the indigo bottle on the table; her necklaces and charm bracelets jingled. "When the potion's having its full effect, you'll see the inner self more vividly than the flesh and blood man. If he's a wolf, you'll feel the course wolf hair and the cold rubbery wolf nose. But don't worry, that wolf can't bite you. He's still contained inside a human, controlled by a human. You can't get hurt."
"So, what do I do?"
Madame Selena pushed the bottle and an eye dropper towards Joan. "One drop in a half cup of water, then wait a half hour. Best on an empty stomach, works faster. There's enough here for a few doses; some people want to know who their kids and bosses really are. And no, there's no hangover, no side effects; the potion's clean and pure."
Joan rose, paid the gypsy, and left; the potion rested snugly in her purse, beside an empty eyeglass container, her wallet and last week's crumpled shopping list.
-------
On Saturday, Joan thought about taking the potion. Locked in the bathroom, she lifted the inky vial from her purse, then spotted her own reflection.
"What if I take this stuff, then look in the mirror?" she thought. "Will I be able to see my own true self? I've always felt like a cat. Wouldn't mind being a seagull, sniffing the sea breezes and gliding over the surf. But what if my true self is a spider? People curse spiders, crush them, wack them with newspapers. What if I'm a big hairy tarantula, good only for a horror film?"
Joan pushed the bottle back into her purse. Saturday wasn't a good day to take the drug; Saturday was Home Repair Day. Ben spent the day hammering and chiseling, or buying thingamagigs and gizmos to plaster and drill. He might spend eight hours at his basement lathe, or might use morning and afternoon shopping at hardware stores, comparing the prices and quality of a gleaming brass whatchamacallit. Joan could wait until Sunday, when Ben routinely mowed the lawn in the morning and watched football with a six-pack by his side in the afternoon.
On Sunday, after Ben had sunk into the couch, his bare feet crossed on the coffee table and a cold can of Budweiser staining the endtable veneer with a rim of condensation, Joan locked herself in the bathroom with her purse and a half cup of water.
"I hope this stuff isn't like LSD", she thought as she brushed her hair. She'd heard the stories about people who thought they'd sprouted wings and jumped from highrise windows or who punched holes in the plaster while flailing at demons lurking in the walls. "Or like PCP", she gasped, as she fastidiously moved the toothbrush back and forth over the enamel of each incisor and molar. PCP stayed in the body for years; she'd heard of people banished to institutions because the PCP madness hit them every other week.
"What do I need, that elixir of courage?", she muttered. She poured a drop of the potion in the cup and swallowed the bitter concoction in one gulp.
Joan lifted an empty beer can from the livingroom table. Ben glanced at her, then fixed his stare on the screen where padded men crashed into each other and the announcer yelled in a strained staccato.
"The Eagles are winning," Ben said flatly.
Eagles, bulls, pitbulls, red socks, blue stockings.... Joan didn't know one team from another, which animals and footwear played football or baseball. "Cockamamie Cocks," she mused, as she scoured the kitchen sink, "That would be a good name. Or the Cuckoo Colliders. Or the Batty Bucks, gone nuts over a ball."
She pulled a chicken from the freezer and laid it on the counter to defrost, wondering if Madame Selena's potion was just flavored water and remembering what one of her friends had said. "Honey," the friend had quipped, "You gotta have balls to understand balls. We have estrogen, so we understand flowers. If we had testosterone, we'd understand why men like to kill each other on the field".
Maybe. Joan spread a red checkered cloth over the narrow kitchen table, then moved a vase of dusky orange mums to its center; the petals burned in the thick afternoon light. Was the sunshine brighter? Did the veins in the mum leaves stand out in starker relief, or was she merely paying more attention to how they'd always looked? Did the pale yellow window sill glow with an internal incandescence, pulse with the vitality of a life form eager to come out of hiding?
Joan stole into the livingroom, clasping her trembling hands tightly around her chest.
"How's the game, dear?", she asked, fixing her gaze on his outstretched legs. Something metallic shone through the trousers. She moved her gaze cautiously upwards to geometric forms gleaming under the shirt and stubbly jaw.
"Score's even now," Ben droned.
The trousers, shirt and skin dissolved to nearly translucent suggestions of their prior forms. Ben's legs, thick steel pipes hinged at the hips and knees, ended in rubber suction cup feet; switches, blinking green lights, dark plexiglass panels and a red dial set to "5" flanked the left pipes. He clutched his beer between iron pincers; a thick transparent rod, filled with cables of varying width, retreated and advanced from where his ring finger would be.
"Whatever his inner self is, it can't hurt me," Joan told herself. "The man has it under control. It's kept contained by a human".
"Honey," Joan stammered, "I just drank four beers. I...I figured, maybe that would loosen me up enough to sit through a game with you, maybe even help me enjoy it." She'd need some excuse for poking and prodding him; drunkeness was as good as any. "So maybe I'll just snuggle with you a little, get to understand football by being with you."
"Uh huh," Ben intoned, in the voice which meant "More of this lovey-dovey stuff, part of living with a woman".
Ben's ears, transformed into tiny satellite dishes, swiveled in response to every creak. On the phosphorescent green plates that had replaced his eyes, glowing white, yellow and blue dots darted across grids. Where furrows had creased his forehead horizontally, vinyl plates holding CDs slid out from grooves at the press of a button.
"Eagles'll win". The words, followed by a simulated slurp, issued from a perforated disc lower in the chrome faceplate; Joan wondered if she could reprogram his voice to sound like her spinster aunt Agnes, or like a cello that's learned to talk.
Joaned leaned closer, squinting at the words "Robomanics, Inc." embossed in the steel cylinder that was Ben's torso. Slowly, she reached for a white instruction manual that poked conspicuously out of a metal side pocket, slid it from its plastic wrapping and read:
"Robo-Hubby, model 5.8a, from RoboManics. Solar powered but rechargable battery included. Incredibly lifelike! Advanced artificial intelligence allows quick adaptation to a variety of environments; teach him to mow the lawn, cook supper, babysit, perform efficiently at the office. One hundred twenty seven separate motors and 360 degree robotic motion allow him to walk, jog, waltz, foxtrot, shake hands, pivot in place, juggle, write, manipulate all tools and cutlery, sit down, lie down and copulate. Sensitivity to changes in color and ambient brightness ten times greater than human's. Advanced voice recognition and production in programmed language; artificial intelligence allows Robo-Hubby to assimilate new words and idioms. Detects movement and touch with advanced optical, electric and magnetic sensors. Nearly instantaneous calculation of sums, products, square roots and differentials. Interacts with other Robo-Hubbies, Cyber-pets and non-robots with programmed politeness. Warranty - one year."
Joan slid the instruction manual back into its pocket, noticing that Ben's serial number was 6X920M5LK.
"So, my husband's a robot," Joan thought; people did say that Ben had a calculator for a brain.
"A cyber-pup for my cyber-hubby," she mused, as she watched the form of Ben's trousers slowly darken. "Cyber-pup might even curl in my lap and let me stroke his metal skin. Unless he's a lemon or his battery's run down. If something short-circuits in his brain, he may think the dinner table's an intruder and snap off its legs, or may begin mieowing. No big deal, fix this by a trip to the factory. Even if he does short curcuit, he'll never wet on the rug or shed on a black velvet skirt."
Creased dented Ben's tousers. Buttons materialized from pearly disks, then protruded sharply in a column up his shirt; loose threads dangled from some. Joan glanced up at the familiar slit mouth, the lusterless gray eyes staring at the TV, the brows which only rose when decorum dictated that this was the proper response.
"A touchdown." Ben continued to gaze at the set, head immobile.
Joan nodded. "Uh, while I've been sitting here, I've been thinking." She leaned forward, scrutinizing the face for any reaction. "Those marital therapy sessions? I don't think we need them. We've been wasting our money."
"Just what I've said all along". Ben's face remained blank.
Feelings. Joan rose from the couch, trudged to the corner table, sighed and sat down. She'd think when Ben was asleep or out of the house; now, she needed an
excuse for any tears she couldn't hold back. She opened to the bookmark in the latest romantic thriller in her collection and began reading:
"Bunny vanished into the night, taking with her all the valuable momentos of the Erickson dynasty. Police believe she disguised herself in a stolen wig and furs, and left the country by boat...."
