I had more pressing matters to attend to closer to midtown. That afternoon was my long-standing appointment with Pamela Jointly, former controversial columnist for the Manhattan Project and current journalism instructor at the Dearborn campus of Arbor State University, and author of a recent collection of essays on megaheroes and the threat they posed to society. She had also been my housemate for a couple of years in Ann Arbor before I’d become Ms. Megaton Man. Her book, Megamusings, had been a scathing critique shot through with her own first-hand observations during her stint in Megatropolis, counted as a hybrid memoir, although it stopped short of discussing the post-megaheroic careers of our housemates, Stella Starlight and Trent Phloog.
We planned to meet at the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts just after lunch. I got in free with my Arbor State ID card, and was still burping from the chili-mac I’d wolfed down when I sat down in the medieval courtyard café inside. The lunch crowd had come and gone and was now almost empty; the space was quiet and serene—almost like Elizabethan England from whence the bricks and stained glass had long since removed by some Detroit industrialist. I had brought along my book bag, and pulled out my marked-up copy of Pammy’s book, along with a Manila envelope of photocopies, and waited.
A couple of older white ladies sat at another table sipping coffee and munching on cobb salads. I supposed they were from Grosse Pointe, and wondered what a black girl was doing by herself in Elizabethan England. Usually Avie and I, or Nancy and I—or all three of us—went through the museum together; this was one of the few times I was alone, and I felt a little self-conscious. But Pammy soon arrived, smartly in dressed in a skirt suit, looking every bit the academic despite the warm summer day and fall semester being nowhere in sight.
Even though we had never really been that close as housemates on Ann Street, we hugged like we were long-lost friends.
“You’re book is wonderful,” I said, holding up my copy after we’d sat down. “Gosh, I had no idea how smart and thoughtful you were.”
“Thanks,” said Pammy. “I’m working on a new book…it’s a follow-up of sorts to the megahero essays. The publisher wants something more subjective, more human, you know?”
“That’s amazing,” I said. “That’s just what I thought your book lacked, I mean, needs. It’s great and everything—how you draw a parallel between the exaggerated gender roles of megaheroes and the ‘mutually-assured destruction’ ethos of America’s nuclear arsenal, but you know as well as I do that megaheroes are fallible, too. We’re just people.”
“That’s just what my literary agent says,” said Pammy. “She thinks my next book should delve into that more human side. I was hoping to pick your brain on a few ideas.”
Pammy took out her reporter’s pad and furiously made notes. I must have been talking a mile a minute, because the next couple of hours flew by like nothing as we reminisced about Ann Street. I tried to remember every interesting detail about living with Stella, Trent, baby Simon, Yarn Man, and Kozmik Kat. At some point, Pammy took out her tape recorder, “Just as a memory aid,” she said, and I barely noticed the one-page release form she put in front of me and had me sign. “I promise not to quote you directly,” she said. “This will all remain on deep background.” Occasionally, Pammy even threw in an anecdote she recalled about her time in Megatropolis, but I did most of the talking.
When we were done, she said, “This has all been really helpful, Clarissa. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me, and I’m gratified you liked my book, too.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. I handed her my copy of her book. “I made all kinds of notes in the margins. See?”
Pammy flipped through the pages, her eyes wide. “Wow,” she said. “Can I borrow this and make copies? I’ll give it right back.”
“Even better,” I said, beaming as I passed her the Manila envelope. “I made you a set of copies for you at Ye Olde Photocopies on Cass. Sorry to infringe on your copyright!”
“Not a problem,” said Pammy as she leafed through the copies. “I’m really bowled over. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Just spell my name correctly in the acknowledgements,” I said. “Anything I can do to help a famous, celebrity author!”
I left the museum walking on air. For one thing, I realized I had been more homesick for my old life back in Ann Arbor on Ann Street more than I had realized, and I enjoyed reliving the good old days with Pammy. For another, spending the afternoon in the rarified air of the museum had completely taken my mind off my parents’ marital troubles.
As I walked home, I realized I hadn’t mentioned my own megahero career at all—about becoming Ms. Megaton Man, or visiting New York with my sister, or meeting the Y+Thems, the Devengers, and Roman Man—let alone my search to find my biological father. The whole reason I’d wanted to meet with Pammy in the first place was my she could tell me anything about who he might be. Oh, well. There would be other occasions to bring that up.
That night was a slow one for waitressing at the Union Stripe restaurant down on Woodward Avenue. I didn’t have any patrons seated in my section, so I fiddled with my apron pockets by the drinks station as Avie sat at the bar nursing a Short’s Signature draft, doodling in her sketchbook.
“You got pumped,” she said. “Snookered. Taken for a ride. The ol’ bait-and-switch.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“Pamela Jointly is a savvy media operator,” said my half-sister. “She lured you in, promising info on your real father and our grandmother—but what she really was after was gossip for her next juicy tell-all bestseller.”
“You have a histrionic imagination,” I said. “It was just two old friends getting together for coffee, talking over old times. Besides, she didn’t promise me anything. I was just hoping.”
“Sissy, you’re so naïve,” said Avie. “Why do you suppose she wants to be so chummy with you all of a sudden? Did she tell you anything at all about the Mod Puma, or the Silver Age Megaton Man, or Grandma Seedy? Of course not. She was just trolling for stories she can put in her next book.”
“None of that came up,” I said. “Besides, I forgot to ask.
“She isn’t going to write about your torrid sex life, is she?” asked Avie. “That’ll sell millions.”
“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter,” I said. “Pammy wasn’t interested at all in my non-existent career as Ms. Megaton Man—outside of me hooking up with Yarn Man. Although she did seem particularly interested in nailing down a precise timeline of event surrounding the weekend Simon was born.”
“That figures,” said Avie. “She’s only interested in her white friends who used to be big-shot megaheroes in Megatropolis, and their love child. Did you tell her about our visit to New York and all the megaheroes we met?”
“We only talked about Ann Arbor, Avie,” I said, “about megaheroes she’s actually met. She wouldn’t know the Y+Thems from the Man on the Moon; I don’t think she even knows they’re refugees now in Detroit.”
“You should have told her about how the Human Meltdown tried to rape me,” said Avie. “The world needs to know what a creep that Chuck Roast is, and how those poor Youthful Permutations were ruthlessly exploited for so long by Liquid Man and Bad Guy.”
“You can put all of that in your own memoir someday,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“You think I brought it on—Chuck attacking me—don’t you?” Avie demanded. “That I was flirting with the Human Meltdown, just asking for it. That’s blaming the victim, Sissy.”
“Avie, that’s not what I think at all,” I said. “But you know how some men are around that curvaceous body of yours—they can barely control themselves. You’ve got to be more careful.”
“Oh, my God,” said Avie, almost shouting. “You are blaming the victim! I can hardly believe it—some supportive sister you turned out to be.”
Maybe Avie was right. Ever since it had happened, I had been reluctant to place the entire blame for the incident on Stella’s half-brother, despite what I had seen with my own eyes. Maybe his behavior didn’t fit my conception of a good guy. Maybe I still idealized megaheroes. Maybe I was blaming Avie for being too sexy for her own good. Was she right? Was I cowing to society’s gender expectations and subconsciously blaming her for his actions, rather than facing the truth?
“Some customers were just seated in my section, Avie,” I said. “I have to go and take their drink order.”
When I came back and called out my drink order to the bartender, Avie was still at the bar; she had finished her beer and was working on a second. At least she seemed to have cooled off a bit. “Did you remember to tell Pammy your conversation with her was off the record?”
“Avie, Pammy’s not a reporter anymore,” I replied. “She doesn’t work for any news organization at the moment; she teaches journalism to undergrads at Arbor State–Dearborn, for cryin’ out loud. It’s not as if a transcript of our private discussion is going to appear on the front page of The Manhattan Project tomorrow morning.” Although I was beginning to feel some remorse in the pit of my stomach about the release form I had signed, and the photocopies I had passed along to her.
“Pulitzer Prize-winning controversial columnist Pamela Jointly doesn’t have to have a news outlet, Sissy,” said Avie. “She’s a noted author now. You said yourself she’s working on another book on megaheroes. Anything you said can and will be used against you.”
“Avie, Pammy helped Stella Starlight escape New York and a loveless marriage with Rex Rigid,” I pointed out. “She let the former See-Through Girl tag along when she came to Ann Arbor. When Trent Phloog showed up after he lost his Megaton Man powers, she let him crash with them. Do you think Pammy was slumming with a house full of has-been megaheroes for two years just so she could gather material for a hypothetical book?”
“Maybe not, but after the fact, what’s to keep her from using it?” said Avie. “She probably views it as fair game. Her allegiance is with the media elite, not with people like Stella or Trent, or people like us. Her brother-in-law—that cartoonist in New York—mentions Ann Street all the time, in that Doomesbury comic strip of his.”
“That’s a lot of ifs, Avie.” I said. “Pamela Jointly writes non-fiction that’s published by an academic press—think pieces about global issues and how megaheroes symbolize patriarchy and unrealistic gender roles in our culture—stuff that only ten other academics bother to read. I just wanted to remind her that if she was going to continue writing about megaheroes, she should highlight their human side, too. Besides, she’s too busy teaching at the moment to crank out another book. Just collecting her old columns into her first book took her forever.”
But I was being disingenuous. Even as I said this, I knew only too well that Pammy had taken a lot of notes during our two-hour conversation, and filled two whole cassette tapes recording our voices. And Pammy had mentioned her literary agent. She may not have had a contract yet, but she sure as hell was working up a pitch. I didn’t mention to Avie I had given Pammy a whole sheaf of photocopies of the marginalia I had written in Megamusings.
“Mark my words,” said Avie. “Pammy may be a lowly adjunct now, but she’s had a taste of the big time. She’s planning her big media comeback, just you wait. She’s compiling dirt on Trent and Stella, don’t you see? A tell-all book about the personal life of the former Megaton Man and See-Thru Girl. I just hope they never find out it was you who sold them out.”
I was going to reply, but I didn’t know how. Besides, my drink order was up.
“At least she didn’t see the notes you wrote in her book,” said Avie. “Hoo boy, that’s some hot stuff.”
A week later, Stella called and asked me if I could come out to Ann Arbor and babysit Simon; it was on a weeknight when she had some academic function to attend and Trent had to work at the bookstore. I was happy to say yes. Not only did I miss Ann Street—and baby Simon, who was now two and a half—but it would also give me a chance to air out my Ms. Megaton Man uniform on a warm summer night and fly from Detroit to Ann Street.
After I landed in the back yard, I walked into the house through the screen door. Stella was in the kitchen standing over Simon in his high chair. She was serving him his favorite meal: “worms”—canned spaghetti with meatballs—and he was making his usual mess of it.
“Look, Aunt Clarissa’s here,” Stella said to Simon.
“Anchor Issa,” said Simon.
I dashed into the hallway bathroom and changed from my uniform into my civvies, which I had in my duffel bag. I came out in shorts and a tank top and took the spoon from Stella. “Here, I can take over.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I have to change. My department’s holding an open house for a new visiting lecturer. He might be one of my advisors in grad school.”
“Go,” I said. “Make a good impression. I’ll hold down the fort.”
Stella still hadn’t found a housemate they liked. For the time being, my old room upstairs served as Simon’s auxiliary play room, and Pammy’s old room was Simon’s crib room. Even though only a couple months had passed since I had vacated, and I had just recently visited, I found myself feeling wistful being in my old house again, playing with the son of Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl.
Had I betrayed Trent and Stella? Was I resentful of the happy home they seemed to share with their toddler, despite the fact they remained unmarried parenting partners? Had I spilled my guts to Pammy in the hopes of somehow exacting revenge on them, because they had never wholly welcomed me into their extended family, and that I felt edged out? Had I balled Trent at long last, just before taking my leave, because I subconsciously wanted to take Simon’s biological father away from him, as some woman no doubt had denied me of my own biological father, and as some other woman was taken my half-sister’s daddy away from her?
These thoughts ran through my mind as Simon and I ran through the house for the next couple of hours, up and down the stairs, out into the back yard and around to the front porch. I was beginning to wonder if he was regaining the megapowers Dr. Quimby’s—Rex Rigid’s—treatment, administered shortly after Simon’s birth, had neutralized. Because by the time the evening had grown dark, I was tuckered out. I fell asleep on the living room sofa, Simon in my arms, in front of my family’s old television—the one Avie had trucked out from Detroit, and I had left behind when I moved out.
David Letterman was signing off after midnight when Trent returned from his job at Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore. He was surprised to see me lying on the couch. “Clarissa,” he whispered. “I was expecting Preston to be babysitting.”
I sat up and passed a sleeping Simon to Trent’s waiting arms.
“I guess he was busy with his space station or something,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
We took Simon upstairs and laid him in his crib. “He wasn’t any problem, was he?” he asked as we stepped out into the hall and closed the door.
“Never,” I said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts flying again, soon, at the rate he’s going.” I rubbed my thighs. “He really gave me a work out.”
Before I realized it, Trent’s arms were around me and he was kissing me hotly on the lips. I kissed him back.
“I missed you, Clarissa,” he said.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
“You didn’t have to move out, you know.”
“Maybe not; I don’t know. It would have been weird. It’s weird now.”
We kissed some more. I looked around.
“We can’t do it my bedroom,” Trent said. “My floorboards squeak; it’ll wake Simon up.”
“Stella will be coming home soon, won’t she?”
“Oh, when she’s with her academic friends, she can be out all hours. She deserves a night out.”
“What about the rec room?” I said.
We crept down the stairs to the first floor, then ran down the basement stairs. We didn’t even bother to turn on the light; I didn’t want to be reminded by the décor of my time there with Yarn Man. We fumbled around in the dark and tumbled onto the sofa. He wanted to go down on me, but I couldn’t let him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I have my period.”
“What did you have in mind?”
I thought maybe there was some petroleum jelly in the bathroom adjacent to the rec room my daddy had built, but no go.
“We don’t have to,” said Trent.
I ended up blowing him in the dark while fingering myself. It wasn’t the most satisfying experience, but we were both pent up, and it provided some release.
We lay in each other’s arms for a while, quietly, in the dark.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I feel like a whore,” I said.
“Don’t feel that way,” he said. “I don’t think of you that way. It was nice.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?” I asked.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he said. He slowly caressed my small breasts in the dark.
“Why didn’t you ever say so?” I asked.
“I thought you knew,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
After a while, I said, “I better get going.”
“Yeah,” he said.
We both creaked sorely up the stairs to the kitchen, and a grabbed my duffel bag. I changed into my Ms. Megaton Man uniform right in front of Trent as he leaned against the sink, watching me.
“You are beautiful,” he said. “And you sure look a lot better in that uniform than I ever did.”
I beamed as I zipped up my duffel and threw it over my shoulder.
“Pammy’s writing a new book about us,” I said. “About us fallible megaheroes. It’s probably going to be scandalous.”
“Oh, fuck Pammy,” said Trent. We both laughed.
“I may have helped her,” I said. “She picked my brain for stories about when I lived here.”
“I don’t care,” said Trent. “I’m got tired of fighting the truth a long time ago.”
He took me in his arms and kissed me. “That’s weird,” he said, feeling the texture of my uniform. “I never kissed a megahero as a civilian before.”
He watched me walk out into the back yard, into the middle of the lawn.
“I’m glad you came out here,” he said. “Maybe I can get away and visit you in Detroit soon.”
“That would be nice,” I said.
The guilt-trip my sister Avie had inflicted on me stung a lot less after seeing Stella, Simon, and Trent again. But it was out of my control now. In a couple of years, at the rate the publishing industry worked, I would find out what my tattling to Pammy had wrought. As I flew through the night sky, dodging around the planes of Detroit Metro Airport and over Dearborn, my thoughts returned to my estranged parents’ marriage, which had been torn asunder by my daddy’s infidelity with some unknown romantic partner. Keeping closer to the ground than usual, I found myself compulsively scanning the motels along Michigan Avenue, the main artery leading back to Detroit, just to see if I could spot my daddy’s pickup.
Just my luck, I spotted it. There it was, parked in front of a no-tell motel. My heart stopped. Daddy was nowhere to be seen. He must have been inside the room already, doing it with his little home wrecker.
I couldn’t help myself; I swooped down and landed on an adjacent rooftop and perched, waiting to see who he would come out of the room with. I peered at the drawn curtains of the room for only a few minutes, although it felt like hours. It was during moments like these that I regretted my laser goggles didn’t provide me with X-ray vision. I felt bad, spying on Daddy like this, but I had to know.
Suddenly, a car pulled into the lot, one I recognized: a late-model Honda. It pulled into the empty space alongside my daddy’s pickup.
Out of the car stepped Pamela Jointly.
Next: North Cass Ditty in the City
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Archival Images:
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| A scene that hasn't happened yet: Clarissa confronts her biological father, the Silver Age Megaton Man—and it's not a happy reunion! Colorized concept drawing. |
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| Spoiler Alert: The fact of Clarissa's parentage was already revealed in Bizarre Heroes #13 (Fiasco Comics Inc., September 1995). Click here for more on the origin of Clarissa and the Silver Age Megaton Man! Original sketchbook page, inked with Micron pigment liners. |
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All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2019, all rights reserved.
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