With my acute hearing, I could only hear indistinct murmurs for the most part, mostly because Charles and Audrey wouldn’t shut up. They were still excited to learn that I was a real, live megahero, and Charles was beside himself that Audrey looked so great in my costume, with its plunging V-neck formed the yellow “M” on the torso, and her cleavage almost popping out and all. But I did glean that Grandma Seedy was talking to someone important on the other end of the line.
“It certainly seems to be that way,” she was saying. “The mounting evidence seems incontrovertible. You know what that means—we have to convene a meeting at once.” There was a pause as someone murmured something inaudible on the other end. “I’ll be there by midnight,” Seedy concluded.
Once she hung up, we all tumbled back into my studio bedroom space. “Sorry, kids, but there’s been a change in plans,” she announced. “I have to get back to the East Coast immediately.”
“But what about Alice, our mama?” asked Avie. “The daughter who thinks you’ve been dead since World War II? She’ll want to know you’re alive, Grandma.”
“We’ll have to take a raincheck on the tearful reunions,” said Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James sternly. “And you mustn’t tell her you’ve seen me. There’s no use raising her hopes.”
“Hopes?” I said. “But, Grandma Seedy, you’re standing right here in front of us, in the flesh. I looked at Avie, who was still clutching the framed photograph of a younger Seedy James with the first two Meltdown megaheroes and a young, pre-Liquid Man Rex Rigid in her hands. “And Avie already showed Mama that picture of you. We’ve told her you’re still alive.”
“And she probably didn’t believe you,” said Seedy. “Who could believe such a thing? And for the time being, my daughter may as well remain in doubt—until I can be sure whether this Multidimensional crossover is a permanent condition or merely a fluke.”
I wondered what could be a fluke about the Megaton Universe and Meltdown Universe combining. It had obviously taken place. If thirteen scientists—or at least the thirteenth scientist—had split the universe in two, as improbable as that seemed, they had since recombined. Both Megaton Man and the Human Meltdown—each described as “America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero”—may have come from different worlds, but they were now in the same world, together. Megaton Man had even hooked up with the Human Meltdown’s half-sister, the See-Thru Girl, and produced an offspring: Simon Phloog. If what Grandma Seedy was now saying was possible—that two crisscrossed dimensions might come apart again—what would that mean to the adorable little boy who already called me Aunt Clarissa?
Avie, Charles, and I walked Grandma Seedy down to the street where her rented car was parked while Audrey changed out of my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, Charles tagging along mostly because Audrey insisted some privacy. He stood there with his hands in his pockets as Seedy hugged Avie and me—her granddaughters goodbye. Speaking of tearful reunions, it was obvious that for an eminent scientist, she was doing a bad job holding back her emotions.
“I’m so glad to meet you girls,” she finally gushed. “I’m so proud that you’ve grown into such fine young women. Give Alice my love—love your mother for me, on my behalf.”
“She knows you always loved her, Grandma.”
“Grandma,” said Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James. “That’s a title that’s going to take some getting used to.” She climbed into her car and whisked off down West Forest Avenue and disappeared.
By now, Audrey had changed into her street clothes and had joined us on the street in front of my apartment.
“What did I just witness?” asked Charles. “Wait until I tell my brother…”
Avie and I turned sharply on Audrey and Charles.
“You can’t tell anybody what you saw here this afternoon,” I said. “Especially you, Charles, and especially not to your brother John Bradford who writes that columns on unexplained phenomena in The Detroit Day.”
Charles read the expression in Avie’s eyes, which said, “If you do, Buster, you’ve had your last blowjob from me.”
“That’ll be easy,” said Charles. “Since I didn’t understand anything except for the fact that Clarissa here is Ms. Megaton—”
“Especially that,” I said. “That’s my secret identity, Charlie. I don’t know why megaheroes keep their identities secret, but they do. So you better not tell a soul.”
“Don’t worry, Clarissa,” said Audrey. “I’m used to keeping classified information completely confidential.” She seemed to be implying more than just her ongoing love affair with Wilton, which started when they were both youngsters and persisted in college, even though Wilton was now a Teaching Assistant and Audrey his student. But I didn’t press her on it.
Not long after, I realized I needed to talk to Trent about what I had learned—about this whole Multimensional crossover thing, and its implications for all concerned—and I knew I needed to do it in person. Although Stella had given me an open invitation to crash at the old Ann Street house any time I wanted, I thought I’d better phone ahead. Trent answered the phone. I made up the excuse that I need to meet with my senior thesis advisor in the coming days, which wasn’t strictly true. But I didn’t know how to explain to him that my Grandma who was supposed to be dead seemed to think there was a slight chance the universe might come unraveled, let alone how it might affect his son. Trent said it would be all right with him if I stayed over, but that I’d better check with Stella just to be sure, so he called her to the phone from the next room. She said sure, there was a cot and sleeping bag they could set up in my old room, or even the couch, if I preferred—since I’d taken my bed with me to Detroit. She said Trent would be going in to work at the bookstore, but would be home in the evening while she attended a lecture.
Because of all the trees and shrubs surrounding the back yard that were turning colors and dropping their leaves, I was able to land behind the Ann Street house without being seen by the prying eyes of neighbors. Stella was folding up laundry from the clothes line. I had brought my duffle bag over my shoulder and went straight into the house. Throwing my blue jeans, jersey, and denim jacket over my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, I quickly returned to help her fold things into a basket on the picnic table. We didn’t even hug or anything; she just kept right on folding while I pulled things down from the clothes line.
“Trent’s already at work,” she said. “But he’ll be home before I leave for my lecture. You won’t have to watch Simon by yourself, at least.” Simon was running around the back yard with a water pistol, shooting at squirrels who scurried among the falling leaves and kicking a puffy football around.
“What’s the lecture about?” I asked.
“Multimensional theory,” Stella replied. “It’s probably the area of theoretical physics I’ll want to make my research topic in grad school. The professor who’s likely to be supervising my graduate studies is giving it. He’s a brilliant man.”
I wondered if Stella was falling for another older genius, like she had in the case of Professor Rex Rigid. “You must already know plenty about the subject,” I said, “having been a member of the Megatropolis Quartet and riding on the Time Turntable as the See-Thru Girl and all.”
“Not really,” said Stella. “I mean, I never really investigated how it all works. There were a lot of strange gizmos Rex was working on that I didn’t really understand. But the idea of alternate realities has always interested me.” She looked off into the distance for a moment. “I’ve always wondered how life could be different…”
“Funny you should mention that,” I said. “Did you ever wonder what would happen if two realities suddenly fused together? Or, not so suddenly?”
“That’s not possible,” said Stella. “Not as far as I understand Multimensional theory. They can split apart—break up and branch off on different paths. But recombining would cause all sorts of chaos.”
“Like what?” I asked. I was thinking specifically of my mother, Alice James, who in one dimension never saw her mother again, and had me and Avie, but in another dimension never had children at all, but became a costumed crime fighter called the Mod Puma.
“All sorts of things can happen when universes diverge,” said Stella. “People make different choices; they live their lives completely differently. If they were to suddenly be forced back together—well, the consequences would unthinkable.”
“Like a grandmother who was thought dead but suddenly comes back to life,” I said.
Maybe my Grandma Seedy was wise, keeping the truth of her existence from my mother. What would happen to Alice if she learned she could have been a sleek, nocturnal megahero in another dimension, and not be bothered with the hassle of raising us kids?
Simon finally noticed me at the picnic table, helping his mom fold clothes. He ran toward me and hugged my legs. “Aunt Chrissy,” he said.
“You remembered,” I said. I picked him up and gave him a big hug and kiss. “Oof, you’re getting so big. But it’s Aunt Clarissa. Can you say that? Cluh-Rissa.”
“Aunt Calissa,” he said.
“That’s better.” I set Simon down and he went running after a squirrel he spotted on the telephone pole that sat just inside the back fence by the garage.
As I watched Simon frolic in the leaves, I realized I had just held in my arms the product of two dimensions—the Megaton and Meltdown Universes—that had somehow crisscrossed, enabling Trent and Stella to conceive this child. What was the universe to be called now? The Everything-but-the-Kitchen Sink Universe?
“So how are you Trent getting along these days?” I asked.
“Fine,” said Stella. “Same as always. Why do you ask?”
“I mean, you’re like the classic nuclear family now, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re a mommy and a daddy, with two-point-one kids and two-car garage, now that you don’t have housemates.”
“You make us sound like suburbanites,” said Stella. “I don’t think of it in those terms. We’re just partners, raising our child.”
“But now you’re like, you know…”
Stella kept folded pillowcases and towels as she studied me. “Like what?”
“You have privacy now,” I said. “The daddy comes home from a long day’s work at the office, kisses the mommy…”
Stella made a face. “No, not really.”
“You’re not more…romantic…these days?”
Stella made a sour face. “Romance? No. What makes you think that?”
“You know how opposites attract,” I said. “Especially opposites from different dimensions. Men are from Mars, women from Venus and all that.” I was trying to fold a tea towel for the third time, but having no luck. “You know how I always wanted to see you two crazy kids get together. I never knew my real father, and it’s just…” I spotted Simon with a miniature toy rake; he had gathered some leaves into a pile and was kicking it apart. “I think it’s great that Simon has two loving parents that love each other, not only emotionally, but physically.”
“I think you’re romanticizing the practical business of parenting, Clarissa,” said Stella. “I don’t know what the parents’ relation to one another, emotionally or physically, has to do with raising a child. My adoptive father was much older than my mother; they were never particularly physically demonstrative. But they were loving—to one another and to me.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “You and I are alike, Stella, in that neither of us knew our biological fathers. I just think it’s great that Simon has Trent. We never had that, you and I.”
“Biological fathers are overrated,” said Stella, with some disgust. “Mine got both my mother and my half-brother Chuck’s mother pregnant almost simultaneously. He was a lousy, no-good, two timing womanizer. I finally met him at a family reunion of sorts in big house along the Hudson River; I was entering puberty and my mother thought it would be good for me to meet my real father, because I had all the same questions about mine as you do about yours. My adoptive father, God bless him, agreed it might be beneficial to bring the estranged branches of our family together, to help bring some closure. And do you know what that reprobate, my biological father, did?”
Stella had never told me the See-Thru Girl had actually met the Mortal Meltdown. “No, what?” I asked.
“We were only alone for a moment, in the kitchen, just the two of us,” said Stella, beginning to tremble with anger. “He’d arrived later than the other grownups. He didn’t know who I was, but I knew who he was, from photographs I’d seen of him.” She paused, tears welling up in her eyes. “He hit one me—he practically attempted to molest me. Right there in the kitchen, with a house full of grownups. And I was barely more than a child.”
“That’s awful,” I said. “Didn’t he realize…?”
“When I said, ‘But sir, I’m your daughter,’ he still didn’t back off. When I started screaming, and the other adults came rushing in, and he backed off. They all thought I was just some excitable child who’d gotten frightened by a stranger walking in the back door of a strange house. He laughed it off. But he still had that look in his eye that said it really didn’t matter what I was—a child, a relative, his own daughter, or otherwise.”
“Good Lord,” I said. I thought of Stella’s half-brother, who’d attempted to rape my sister in the flying Q-Mobile in the skies of New Jersey. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in your family, does it?” Stella didn’t understand what I was saying, since neither Avie nor I had told her what Chuck tried to do to Avie in New York. Luckily, she was too busy wiping tears from her eyes to have heard me.
“Meeting my real father only traumatized me further,” said Stella. “He turned out to be a worthless creep; I hope when you meet your real father, he doesn’t.”
“But that’s just it,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “Trent’s a great guy. He’s devoted to Simon, and he’s loyal to you…” Except, as I said this, I realized that from a certain point of view he was kind of two-timing Stella with me, not to mention Imelda at the bookstore and whatever other relationships he might have on the side, for all I know. Maybe Stella was right; maybe all men were worthless.
“Do you think a man deserves some special reward just for doing his duty?” Stella demanded. “That he deserves to have some woman take his name and wear his ring because she bore his child? He deserves some special gratitude for being responsible enough to raise his child he brought into the world?” She was almost shaking with anger now. “That’s old fashioned, Clarissa, to say the least. Avie, your own half-sister, would call it regressive. This is the twentieth century.”
I was worried she was going to blow up, but she didn’t. I waited for her to catch her breath; finally, she relaxed.
“So, I guess you’re not any more kissy-kissy, lovey-dovey with Trent than you were before,” I said.
“Why, did he say something to you?”
“No. It’s just that I know you’d kept him in the doghouse a long time,” I said, as I took down the last articles of clothing from the line. “After all this time, I had hoped things would progress, you know? Now that you have the whole house to yourselves…”
“I kept him in the doghouse?” said Stella, offended. She happened to be folding some of Trent’s clothes, and was doing so angrily. “He hurt me terribly, after I had loved him, risked everything for him. I hated Megaton Man…but that was a long time ago. Only now…it’s not so bad, having a man around.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said, folding some of Simon’s T-shirts. “To change the lightbulbs and stuff.” I am the master of euphemism. “You’re not seeing somebody else, are you?”
“Heavens, no; I’m not interested in a relationship,” said Stella. “With school; with Simon…”
“But you’re not any closer, the two of you? You and Trent? That’s a shame.”
“It’s the same as it’s always been,” Stella insisted. “We’re not in love; we’re not lovers. I have needs, sure. And if I wanted… well, you know men; they’re always ready.”
“I see,” I said, saddened. Only now I was sad at the thought that Trent could be cheating on me. Which was completely silly.
“But it’s not like a love affair or anything,” Stella insisted. “Megaton Man had his chance, a long time ago, and I’m not going there again.” She set a folded stack emphatically on top of the full basket of laundry. “So, yeah, we do it…occasionally. But it’s just…”
“Perfunctory, convenient,” I said, tossing my last folded article on top. “But you’re not planning on getting married or anything, or more kids…”
“Why, what did Trent tell you?” she demanded more emphatically.
“Nothing,” I said. “He doesn’t tell me stuff. But it’s only logical. You’re closer now…you’re sharing your lives…”
“Up to a point,” said Stella. “But I haven’t made any plans for the future that include Trent; I wouldn’t want to risk counting on any man.” Stella picked up the basket and carried it toward the back door. Turning, she called to Simon: “Simon, come inside now.”
Simon dropped his rake and picked up his water pistol and ran toward the house. I held open the screen door.
“We’re going to have a snack with Aunt Clarissa,” said Stella. “And then it’s time for his nap,” she whispered to me.
“Oh, boy,” cried Simon. “Milk and cookies!” He ran into the hallway bathroom to wash his hands.
“This one certainly wasn’t planned,” Stella said to me.
The thought struck me that there could be another Stella, right now, in another dimension, who had never met Megaton Man and had never given birth to Simon Phloog. Would that Stella even realize what she was missing? If that Stella had it to do over, would she give birth to her unplanned child again? How would this Stella feel, if the Kitchen Sinkverse were to suddenly come apart, and Trent and Simon were to suddenly disappear, and Stella never saw either one ever again, like they never existed? According to my grandmother, Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James, such an occurrence seemed a distinct possibility.
Trent came home from the bookstore and we had an early dinner, after which Stella ran off to her lecture—about how reality is shaped by language and how alternate realities can arise just through our choice of words, and how physics are culturally determined, and such far-out ideas—given by her future advisor. Simon was full of energy, having napped in the afternoon, and there was an unspoken awkwardness between me and Trent; neither of us exactly felt like sitting around the house alone making small talk with each other.
There was an hour of daylight left, so we decided to go for a walk. I still had on my Ms. Megaton Man uniform under my civilian clothes, and my visor and cape in a shoulder bag—it made me feel closer to my Grandma Seedy—and I threw on my denim jacket I’d brought along. We bundled Simon in his jacket and Trent did the same, and the three of us took a stroll up to Broadway Park, along the Huron River.
As we walked north on State Street, Simon tried to learn to pronounce my name properly. “Cluh-Rissa,” he kept saying. “Cluh-Rissa.” He turned his squirt gun on anything he saw moving in the leaves in the yards we passed, hoping it would be a squirrel.
“I don’t think they like that,” I said. “In fact, I almost said in the back yard, I’m pretty sure they don’t.”
“Cluh-Rissa,” said Simon, squirting the knees of my jeans.
“Don’t do that, Simon,” said Trent angrily. It was the first time I’d ever heard him use a harsh tone with Simon.
We came to Depot Street, the roadway that ran along Broadway Park and separated it from the town. The park sloped down to the river, which glistened in the twilight. There wasn’t much traffic; we each took one of Simon’s hands and carried him across the roadway in a run. Once we made it to the vast, grassy lawn, we set him back down, and Simon went running off through the leaves, aimlessly squirting his gun, after the squirrels who were gathering acorns and wild chestnuts and hickory nuts that had fallen from the trees, most of which clumped around the edges of the lawn.
“They don’t like it,” I said.
“I’m not shootin’ at ‘em,” said Simon. “I’m just scaring ‘em.”
“It’s not nice to antagonize nature,” I said.
After a while, Simon came running back to us, “Aunt Clarissa, my gun’s dried out.”
Nearby was a water fountain that actually worked. I picked up Simon so he could reach it to fill his gun. I set him back down again and off he went, after the squirrels. “Thanks, Aunt Cralissa,” he shouted.
“He’ll get it right one of these days,” I said.
Trent was standing there with his hands in his pockets, just watching me and Simon. He hadn’t said much through dinner and had hardly spoken since we’d left the house on Ann Street. Now he was doing his best to remain invisible while I played the babysitter with Simon in the park, practicing my name over and over.
“Stella sure seems optimistic about this grad advisor,” I said.
“I don’t know much about that stuff,” said Trent. “Sounds like a lot of gobbledygook to me.”
“Except you’re Megaton Man, and you’ve ridden the Time Turntable to other dimensions,” I reminded him. “You’ve had a first-hand look at alternate realities.” In fact, it may have been all of that illegitimate crossing over that fused together the Megaton and Meltdown Universe, I thought.
“Yeah, but this guy’s not a scientist,” said Trent, somewhat scornfully and perhaps with a tinge of jealousy, I thought. “She met him at that physics department mixer, a special reception to welcome the great man, a while back. He’s some world-renowned scholar with a humanities background—critical literary theory and philosophy of history and metaphysical whaddyacall—but no actual hard science. Hiring him has been a big controversy within the department, Stella tells me. It’s all a bunch of intellectual mumbo-jumbo in any case, if you ask me, but apparently it’s the hot thing right now; there’s shelves and shelves of that stuff coming out these days.” As an autodidact working at a college town bookstore, Trent was usually more open-minded and respectful about learning; it was unusual for him to be so dismissive of the latest academic fashion. “Personally, I don’t think this guy could build a toaster. At least Rex built the Time Turntable—he talked a lot of gobbledygook, too, but he knew his way around a screwdriver.”
“That may be the nicest thing you’ve said about Stella’s ex-husband,” I reminded him. “You certainly did a lot of riding around on that thing. Ever wonder what the consequences might be?”
“What do you mean?” Trent asked.
“You know, hopping across dimensions and traveling through time, willy-nilly,” I said. “It was bound to cause problems.”
“Like what?”
I told Trent all about meeting my Grandma Seedy and about how she said the universe had been split apart, and about how six scientists created the Original Golden Age Megaton Man in one universe and another six created Major Meltdown, the first in the Meltdown line, in another. And now, obviously, they coexisted in the same universe, which meant that somehow two dimensions had fused back together.
“I don’t know about any of that,” said Trent. “I don’t remember ever hearing about a Major Meltdown or Magma when I was growing up. But then, I grew up in a small town in rural Michigan, not far from here. We seldom heard much about what went on in big towns like Megatropolis.”
“But you must have realized something had gone wrong when you went to New York and ran into the Quantum Quest Quartet,” I said. “That’s what they were called before they became the Megatropolis Quartet. You must have realized Megaton Man and the Human Meltdown had to be from different dimensions. New York and Megatropolis are different names for the same city in two different dimensions…when you crossed over, you must have brought Megatropolis with you, don’t you see? You guys are not from the same universe at all.”
“But I don’t remember ever crossing over, at least not on that occasion,” Trent protested. “I just took the train as far as New Jersey, and flew the rest of the way. One thing’s for sure—I never seemed to get along with Chuck very well. The Human Meltdown and I came to blows over the title ‘America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero.’ He insisted it belonged exclusively to him, and I considered him an usurper. It all seems kind of childish now.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “The Megatons and the Meltdowns are from two different dimensions—they’re incompatible; they don’t belong together.”
“Tell me about it,” said Trent. “I live with one—Stella is Chuck’s half-sister.”
“I know that,” I reminded him. “And you and Stella had Simon—that makes him both a Megaton and a Meltdown.”
“And that’s about all Stella and I have in common,” said Trent.
I watched Simon playing ahead of us as we walked. I wondered what would become of the little boy who was both a Megaton and a Meltdown, should the universe split apart again.
Next: The Arms of Krupp
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Archival Images:
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| Unpublished drawing of Ms. Megaton Man in action, 2018. ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved. |
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| Original pencil drawing. ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved. |
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| Linework inked with a Uniball pen on tracing paper before coloring. ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved. |
All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2019, all rights reserved.
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