Episode Four
Have You Seen My Little Girl?
Tobias Mandelbaum sat in his living room with the air-conditioner on full blast, cooling his chest and ankles. He had aged like the desert, baked in the sun. His face was leathery. He was thicker around the middle than he’d been in his youth. He was slower. His joints hurt him a little. But he was not vain. He didn’t mind the lines on his face or the gray in his hair.
He made himself a cup of espresso and sat in front of the bay windows overlooking the ocean. A sea gull alighted on the deck railing. He tapped on the glass and the bird flew away. It was hot and humid today, and the palm trees made a shaggy backbone along the shoreline.
He had dreamed last night of being back in New England with his wife. He had dreamed of a house full of warmth and music. The memory was so alive on his skin that he could almost feel Estelle’s presence. Almost.
There were plenty of pretty girls on the beach this morning. Blondes everywhere you looked. Strolling across the sand like Marilyn Monroe. He noticed one young beauty with a flock of boys orbiting around her. Her long blond hair moved in the wind like a tentacled jellyfish, like something separate and alive. What a dazzling sight.
Mandelbaum traveled a lot, but he always came back to this modest house on the east coast of Florida. He’d been rich, and he’d been poor, and there was very little difference between the two, except that you could buy more stuff when you were rich. But you couldn’t buy peace of mind. You couldn’t buy happiness. All the tired clichés were true.
Now he clapped his hands on his thighs. Time to get moving. Time to get going. He had work to do. His knees hurt him, but he stood up and smiled. Grin and bear it, buck-o. The heat, the sweat. What are you going to do?
Mandelbaum knew things most people didn’t.
There were mysteries out there more powerful than any human being.
Now he stood gazing at the sea. It was one of those moments when he missed his wife terribly. Her laughter used to make his day. They fought and bickered, like most couples, but the good times were great. He had her back, and she had his.
There was no putting off the task, so he went over to his desk and opened the decades-old box. The relic’s leathery, mummified body had been severed at one of the thoracic vertebrae. It looked like a puppet whose strings had been snipped. He gingerly lifted the two separate halves out of the box and laid them on the desktop, his thin lips pressed together into a hard line. Mandelbaum wasn’t a squeamish man. But nothing disturbed him more than the sight of this almost-child, between 25-30 weeks of gestation, lying naked and mummified on his desk next to his pens and pads of paper. He scrutinized the perfect little eyelids, the insect-like eyelashes, the miraculous fingernails and toenails, the calcified umbilical cord. Most striking of all was the tapered two-inch tail, curved like a pump handle.
Oh Toby. I want to have a baby, of course! That’s my wish.
Just one?
Two babies! A boy and a girl. That’s my fondest desire, since you asked, sweetheart.
He smiled at the memory, recalling how Estelle’s fringed hair swayed with every swing of her head. He breathed in the relic’s fetid perfume and frowned. The bones, although fully matured, were weak and delicate. The tiny ribcage had been cracked and peeled back to reveal the mummified tissue. The organs were puttylike—brown, gray, green. There was very little dried blood. The lungs were not yet fully developed. He studied the articulated joints. The papery skin was tight to the skull. The shriveled ears were eerily human, except for the pointed tips. The genitalia were those of a normal human male. The fetus was about seven months old. He thought about his wife’s death at the premature birth of this child, and it sank like a hot rock in his gut.
A boy and a girl, Toby. A little devil and a little angel! That’s what I want!
He
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