Gary Moshimer

 

 

Dr. Zolman has made our house call, with his miracle tracking chip to implant in Father’s neck. Father was found walking twenty miles up the highway in bare feet at two a.m. And he started calling my twin brother Aaron and me this: Laverne and Shirley. He wanted to know when we’d grown boobs. This hit Aaron hard — he’d tried to exercise and diet. We had a bad gene from our mother’s side and now she was dead, leaving no one to defend us.

Father had taken our photos from the wall of his house. He hung new frames and left the generic people in them. “They look nicer,” he said.

He eyed Zolman. “Are you here for the girls? Make them big losers?”

Zolman dissolved knockout pills in Father’s coffee. The implant tool looked like an electric staple gun. BAM, it was in. Father woke up rubbing his neck, squinting at us. “I see you two as water polo cheerleaders.”

 

 

Something went wrong with the chip. It did its job, tracking Father, but it also made him stronger. He grew younger each day. He lifted weights. He went to the college gym, where he was alumni, and started barking orders. People listened. He looked like Charlton Heston. He went without a shirt. One night he was up in the trees on the ridge in a loin cloth of his own making. It was purple, part of our mother’s dress. My brother and I hardly slept, watching the monitor where he blipped along, always on the move.

 

 

One morning he showed up at our apartment. He wore a suit and tie. The purple loin cloth formed a neat triangle in his breast pocket. “Come girls, we’re whipping you into shape. You’ll meet the team.”

We could not resist. He had pinwheels for pupils.

He paid trainers to torture us: fifty reps, a hundred. We were fat fish, mouths pumping as dying gills. We flopped poolside. The polo team wore Speedos hiding small dolphins. They gave us love kicks.

“They’ll be ready,” Father said.

 

 

“Zolman, we need it out.”

He said that would be complicated.

I said, “Don’t you see his power? He’s inside everyone.” I saw the pinwheels in Zolman’s pupils as well.

We came to on the couch, rubbing our necks. Zolman was gone.

 

 

Our chips made us shop. We wished to pamper our man breasts and full figures at Victoria’s secret, but the lady had a security button. The shoe place was more cooperative. They had monster shoe horns, jamming us into pumps. We bobbled around the floor, seams bursting. The salespeople liked it. “That’s ten pair you own now.” We felt like geishas with our bound feet.

We bought purses, and at the bath and body shop filled them with fragrant marbles and bubble bath for our first match.

 

 

“WE…ARE…THUNDERCATS!!”

We were the base of the slippery pyramid. The other girls perched in our fat palms, little butts snug. A finger might slip in, unseen, a special perk, because we still liked girls and our Speedos would sprout gherkins, little salutes like flag poles.

We quivered under the weight. We were not getting the best workouts because Father had disappeared. His chip no longer worked. We couldn’t find Zolman, either. We feared the worst but were on a new endorphin high.

“T-H-U…N-D-E…R-C-A-T-S!! GO!!!”

Aaron created the distraction by strutting the THUNDERCATS banner on his gherkin, while I poured the bubble bath. It made for an exciting fourth quarter — echoing referee whistles, the dolphin men rising many times with giant bubbles mistaken for the ball.

 

 

Zolman returned, drunk, wearing several coats. We saw him staggering on the shoulder, leading Father by the hand. They were casualties, Father with the bloody wrap on his neck, Zolman crying. We pulled them into the car.

Father was his old self, dirty face, suit hanging from shrunken frame. He did not recognize us in dresses and sensible make-up.

Zolman slapped his own face. “I’ve done terrible things!”

“No,” I said. “We’re happy for the first time.”

 

 

We cleaned them up, bought Father a smaller suit. We took them to the championship match.

There were footholds in our blubber, launching points allowing crazier spins and twirls. We bounced our girls higher, always catching. People cheered along. Father, half up the bleachers, tossed his cane with malice, but I was able to intercept it and fire it back like a javelin, perhaps too hard. The rubber tip clonked his forehead, rendering his limbs stiff and straight, a pure neurological response. His body shot like a plank through the slats to the concrete below, his ribcage squeezing out some last number combinations, an address or latitude to find an answer, or a question. The buzzer sounded, and we carried him out with pride. The game was won.

 

 

The number was Father’s lawyer. Turns out he wanted cremation, his ashes tossed to the sea from a remote bluff in Nova Scotia where he’d spent time with our mother. There was a note: She floundered in the surf, her body whale-like. I tried to save her. Her soul left her. I wanted to live with her soul.

That was too much for us, too far. We put his urn in the back of our mammoth shoe closet.

Meanwhile we inherited the house, redecorated, threw parties. We had the cheerleaders and the dolphin men. All were unthreatened by our small penises. The girls mounted us like favorite stuffed bears of girlhood. The men rolled us around the carpet and threw balls at us.

One drunken night we broke into the pool. We had Father’s ashes. We dumped them in. The cloud became a water tornado and Father formed before our eyes. Out he climbed, an ash man with reddish eyes.

“Now,” he said, his voice an ashy whisper, “we’re going to whip you into shape.”

 

 

 

 

GARY MOSHIMER has stuff in Wigleaf, Frigg, Atticus Review, and many other places.