The Matriarch Matrix

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

—Saint John Paul the Great

Parkside, San Francisco, California

7:10 a.m. GMT–8, May 4, 2022

The fog blankets the house where Peter oversleeps his 6 a.m. alarm. Cold, damp, opaque, and yet ethereal in how the real and the imagined mingle in its mists. But for Peter, his fog, real or imagined, is not one of love, but that of the cursed.

In the emptiness within his soul, he cries, “Please help me. What do I do?”

And the man who can pull together others’ words so they sing cannot even find the words to cry out his angst as he rolls through the twists and turns of sheets and blankets.

Thud. His body, rigid and cold as Death’s scythe, hits the floor.

“Oh my God. My little sister. She’s in trouble,” Peter screams as he bolts to his rickety thirdhand desk to find his MoxWrap, tapping in panic on the call icon of a young woman wearing long golden metallic swirls in her blond hair, accented by similar earrings. “Pick up. Pick up. Please.”

And then he sees the time in Shanghai: 12:04 a.m. tomorrow morning. Sheepishly, he shuts down the call, hoping he didn’t wake up Michaela.

The fog from the night clearing, both outside and inside, and with microwaved instant coffee finally in hand, he scans his MoxMail. Nothing from MoxMedia yet. Ouch. But then there is his landlord’s gentle reminder that his rent is due, and one from his boss, Jerrod Olson. He opens the last one, hoping Jerrod has mercy in mind and is going to give him a surprise bonus for his exceptional work for nearly two years as a contract copyeditor for the Journal of International Geo-Archeology.

Oh, the trauma. Oh, the inhumanity. I’m fired again. I was right in what I edited. Why doesn’t Jerrod see that? Why is the author always right? Even when they’re wrong?

The irony of it all. I finally had a job that would have made my father proud of me. The son he always wanted me to be. Another few months, and I would have gotten my year-end bonus and maybe a perm position, in which I would have had full access to the resources and people I need to complete his and Pappy’s search. A full-time employee.

And so, he puts his head to the desk with arms around his aching brain. He finds relief from his dream-impaired thoughts as he goes for his run along the Pacific, up to the Golden Gate Bridge. Better than Pappy’s smoking, but certainly not as good as passionate bonding. But he reflects on Dr. Bev’s male wish fulfillment comment and makes do warming his heart with the image of little Peter sitting in the lap of his pa while he reads the newest findings in archeology. They shared the love of discovering the new in the old of the past. And his brain energizes with the memory of Pa’s words explaining the nuances of the Star Trek franchise.

His chest fills with pride at the memory of winning a summer internship in the newly created Near East department of the Asian Art Museum after his junior year in high school. But with that thought, the darkness always returns. He ran into the house to tell his pa the great news. But the darkness began. The g*n. In his mouth. The blood. His eyes open in despair. And Peter sank to the ground and cried. His mother’s God left him that day, and so he left God.

Blond. It was blond that shone through the darkness. He could see his mother’s hair glistening as her fingers wiped his tears away at his father’s funeral. Only her touch could breathe warmth into his beleaguered soul as his clammy hands clasped hers and they watched his father’s casket lowered into the ground.

How am I going to pay the rent if I don’t ask Ma again? What am I going to tell her? Should I pretend nothing happened?

Back at his little studio, he peers out his window with that precious view of the Pacific and sees sunlight peeking its way through the fog. Maybe there’s hope after all.

Blond. It was blond that caught his eye as Sarah asked him to coffee that night at the Aliens R Us Society meeting. He picks up Sarah’s photo, puts it in the trash bin, but then pauses, taking it out and placing it facedown on his table. His mother still holds out hope they will get back together, but Peter knows better, for he edited Sarah’s first book.

A long shower. Cold one at that, given what he thinks he dreamt only minutes ago. A close shave this morning because he will be meeting his mother for brunch, hand held out, begging for more rent money. Those “eyes of innocence” stare back at him in the mirror. What was Dr. Fontaine talking about? All those eyes got him in Manhattan was mugged at gunpoint late one night coming out of the subway. Naivety, not innocence, beaconed his eyes to all would-be thieves.

He looks in his closet. A collection of banana slug shirts. He takes out a navy one with Sammy the Slug in his blazing yellow glory holding his anthropomorphic hands out with boxing gloves on.

The smell of negative ions is so distinct to the Pacific. He knows, as he spent time in New York. The Atlantic just didn’t smell the same. As he exits the pastel-pink-and-white-trimmed stucco house hosting his little studio apartment to go on his morning run, Peter is relieved he snuck by his nice landlady’s door without being asked about the rent. In his wallet, he has a ten and six ones. Just enough to get to brunch with his mother and back. Hopefully with a rent check. Being fired could not have come at a worse time.

Down the street, a fifteen-year-old brown minivan is in the process of moving in or out. An early-forties woman in a tight beige spandex top and carmine knee-length skirt waves him down. Mrs. Harrison. Her colors and mascara are perfectly coordinated with MoxFashion’s guidance for this week. “Peter. Perfect timing.”

“Why, Mrs. Harrison? Are you moving?”

“Yes. Come inside, please,” she says.

Once he’s inside, she elaborates. “The terms of my divorce weren’t so good. My husband—my ex, that is—really took me for everything. Do you believe it? I have to pay him alimony,” she says, brushing her dark blond hair back, exposing her ear.

She thumbs through a stack of papers and shows Peter three. “But enough about my problems, I wanted to show you Melinda’s third-round acceptances into Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard. All came within the last two days. And to think, a year ago, all three schools rejected her. If it hadn’t been for your editorial help, your coaching, your confidence building, she would have wasted her gap year. You are a godsend, Peter. You are.” And Mrs. Harrison takes Peter by surprise with a big hug.

She pulls back, looking at his UC Santa Cruz t-shirt, and purses her lips. “You’re so brilliant. Why didn’t you go to any of those schools?”

Dimples aglow, feet shuffling, hands in pocket, Peter replies, “That was more than a dozen years ago. How could I have chosen differently? I loved UC Santa Cruz. How could I proudly wear Sammy the Slug if I didn’t accept their offer?”

“I wish I could pay you for your help, Peter, but this divorce has stretched all my finances. Melinda and I have to move to a smaller place not far from here. But I can offer some home-cooked meals. You look like you might be tired of the microwavable cuisine bachelors subsist on,” says Mrs. Harrison as she puts her right foot towards Peter, wriggling it to get his attention.

But Peter only sees her large tabby cat, coming by her legs to curl around his. He bends down to pet this descendant of the saber-toothed tiger as Mrs. Harrison says, “Maybe you’d like a little cougar in your life, Peter? It’s very common these days.”

He looks up at her innocently. “No, no, Mrs. Harrison, I couldn’t take care of your cat. Well, maybe babysit him until you can get settled in your new place.”

To his surprise, she kneels down with him, making sure he has the best view of her, and pinches his right cheek while gazing into his eyes. “You are so adorable. Those eyes. A woman could lose herself in them.”

“That was good, Mrs. Harrison,” Peter retorts. “I read the first chapter of your manuscript. You have a latent talent for being a romance writer, not that I’m an expert on that kind of fiction.”

Placing her hands around the dimples on both sides of his face, she replies, “Call me Amelie, Peter. Maybe if we partner on all things romance, I could pay you with the royalties for my first book?”

Removing her warm hands, Peter nods, pursing his lips. “I tried editing romance novels. My ex-girlfriend started writing them just after I won a set of MoxWraps. She took a test on hers that said she was a natural for writing that genre. I couldn’t relate to the alpha male heroes. Chiseled faces, glistening pecs, and the bulging shorts. But she could. We made the fateful move to the Upper West Side in Manhattan to further her writing career. And things changed. I guess that’s why I found her in bed with a man just like that. Ex-Army Ranger sniper, ex-NYPD, and now assistant head of MoxWorld USA security. Everything I’m not.”

Again to his surprise, she kisses him on the forehead. “And maybe some women have grown out of that alpha male type. My ex was one. And look where that got me.”

Out the open door, an old white pickup truck can be seen pulling up, and out exits a large man, chiseled face, day-old stubble, perfect chest-to-torso ratio, tattooed arm, dressed in a tight-fitting grey compression tank partially covered by overalls. He yells, “Of course you would be trying to seduce someone too young for you just a week after our divorce papers were final.”

Amelie bolts up, straightening her top. “You should show this young man some respect. He helped your daughter get into Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard. Something that you couldn’t do.”

Barging in the open door, reeking of alcohol, the worst, cheapest kind, he pulls Peter up by his hair and leans his rough face into his. “An intellectual, huh? Take my advice, she isn’t worth it. Don’t fall for her act. I did.”

“Randall,” Mrs. Harrison yells. “Get out of here. Haven’t you hurt us enough?”

And Randall lets go of Peter and grabs his ex-wife by her top. He growls, “I’m here for my daughter. She shouldn’t be living with you. You’ve missed paying my first month’s alimony already. What kind of role model are you, parading around like this?”

And the big man strikes her, drawing blood. And what is he thinking? Peter, that is. For he grabs this man, who must be fifty percent bigger than he in all dimensions.

“Mr. Harrison, you need to sober up and come back later. It would be best for all.”

“Oh, Mr. Egghead here thinks he can talk me into leaving. And let him try to be a role model for my daughter? Not happening,” he yells, shaking Peter’s hand off him.

And that gene activates, the exact one that wrote in the margins of that pristine, pompous professor’s paper about how wrong he was regarding the Black Sea hypothesis. Out of Peter’s mouth comes, “You know that one to two percent of our genes come from the Neanderthals. But in your case, you must be at least fifty percent. You should leave nice homo sapiens ladies alone so our species can keep evolving. Crawl back to your cave, why don’t you?”

Whap. Something very hard rips Peter’s skull. Barely standing, wavering to and fro, Peter feels warm fluid drip down his hair onto his neck.

Looking up from the redness streaking through the beloved slug on his t-shirt, Peter tries to focus as his glasses have gone flying. And then Peter sees it. Randall Harrison had a g*n in those overalls. A g*n now pointed at his face. A g*n with his blood on it.

And he stands there frozen in time. There he was at 157th and Broadway, staring down the barrel of a g*n. There he was in his father’s den, staring at the g*n in his b****y mouth. There he was in the forests, staring down an arrow at…at his sister’s chest. Frozen forever in time.