CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

While never named in the story, it can be inferred from the title that the 92-year-old female protagonist of this narrative is Mary. Mary works at a sort of all-encompassing interactive museum that is never named in the story itself. This museum includes myriad displays: a miniature castle; cows that have had a Plexiglass window surgically implanted into their side so that viewers can see in; an exhibit of deformed babies that have been pickled in formaldehyde; and a “functioning scaled-down coal mine” (85), among other attractions. Metaphorically, one can view the “museum” as America.

Mary spends her morning preparing “the Iliana Evermore Fairy Castle” attraction. A group of rowdy kids come in and “run wild, indiscriminately pushing the interactive exhibit buttons” (79). One of these kids steals Mary’s fairy wings. Just as Mary is about to get her wings back, ”the supervising adult comes rushing up and says how dare [Mary] hamper the child’s self-esteem by being critical of her impulses” (79). A pair of replacement wings will come out of her paycheck and Mary goes to Administration to tell “Mr. Spencer, Cleaning Coordinator” (79), about the loss of the wings. Spencer says he’ll give Mary “two weeks to pay for the wings” (79) before she’s fired. Spencer is in a good mood because “while he was on vacation, the see-through cow didn’t die” (79). Already, six see-through cows have died, prior to this one:“When one [cow] dies, a special team comes in and alters the new cow to look like the original, using special fur makeup. Then the surgical group whisks it away and implants a Plexiglass window in its flank” (80). Mr. Spencer orders Mary, prior to her break, “to clean up some vomit from near the Pickled Babies” (80).

As Mary goes to the Pickled Babies exhibit, the reader gets her backstory, learning first that she is 92 years old and that she had an affair with Herb, “the one good man [she’d] known” (81). Mary’s husband, Bud, and Bud’s “repulsive gangster friends,” killed Herb and “dumped him off a barge” (81). During her marriage, Mary was forced to serve dinner to Bud and his gangster friends while wearing dresses of Bud’s choice. Mary’s brother “was a Wobbly and went out West, where they cut off his penis and hung him from a bridge” (81), his body then shipped back home to the family. Following this, Mary moved to the city, met Bud, who enjoyed biting her and “scampering to the kitchen for a zucchini squash” (82) during moments of intimacy.

Mary gets tired and sits down on a bench on the way to clean up the Pickled Babies exhibit and Mr. Spencer’s “young tart” (82), Mitzi, takes a picture of Mary asleep. Mitzi assures Mary that her pay rate will be reduced due to this infraction; Mary continues on to the Pickled Babies exhibit. The babies “range in age from two weeks to full term” (83), and how they were obtained is unknown. Mary herself had three stillborn births over the course of her life, and she states that she’s looked to make sure that none of the stillborn babies in the exhibit resemble her and Bud.

Mary provides further backstory, saying that Bud made good money as a gangster “doing odd jobs for the frightening Quinn brothers, such as killing a Chinese on [Mary and Bud’s] back lawn” (83). She says that “not a cent of Bud’s money is left” (83) because it was scammed out of her by a Mormon man who “seemed so nice” (84). Mary approaches the babies and see that one of them, “Six Months, Eleven Days [,] has been knocked from his shelf. His jar is broken and a stream of formaldehyde is running towards the escalator” (84). At this moment, Mr. Spencer “comes around the corner with a Trustee” and asks Mary why she doesn’t have on the protective gloves that she should, as “oil from [her] hands will discolor the baby and require its replacement,” adding that he “should insist on an age cut-off, [as] this is like working with human vegetables” (84). After this, Mary heads to her locker, “for the rat poison,” in order to “send another see-through cow to God” (84).

At the see-through cow exhibit, Mary “kneel[s] down and pretend[s] to Windex [the cow’s] panel” (85). The see-through was created in order “to provide schoolchildren insight into the digestive process of a larger mammal” (85). Mary states that “compassion is not why I’ve killed six [of the cows] to date. I’ve killed them because I like to make to Mr. Spencer sad” (85). The cow eats the rat poison “then turns her head toward the geodesic dome and begins foaming at the mouth” (85).

Mary returns to the Fairy Castle and, a bit later, is confronted by Mr. Spencer and the Trustees. Spencer has done a locker search and found the rat poison that Mary has used on the cows. He fires her, disallowing Mary from even getting her coat before leading her out the front door: “In the plain blue day is my city, the city where I lived, the city that, in my own fashion, I loved. I remember when it was made entirely of wood, and men sold goods from carts, and this museum was a floodplain where we all picnicked” (86). Mary “dodder[s] shivering out along the cold, cold pier, surrounded by staring Navy boys” (87). Realizing she now has no source of income, she falls from the pier and into the freezing water. The sailors save her, congratulating one another: “One has a radio and they begin to dance” (87).