by Simeon Mills
Following one particularly intense Indiana game, back when Kanga and I were six, Dad glared at us and said, “Come on, you wussies. Let’s go to work.”
“They’re just kids—” Mom protested, but Dad was already pushing us through the door with his rubber hands.
One of Dad’s part-time jobs was delivering coupon leaflets to free magazine stands in the surrounding towns. He did this alone, in his van: picking up the boxes of leaflets from the printer then spending all night delivering them. But after that Indiana game, Dad seemed motivated to connect with us like Coach Knight did with his players (including Isiah Thomas), so Kanga and I suddenly found ourselves bouncing around among the leaflet boxes in the back of Dad’s van, listening to his instructions:
“Who the hell taught you to deliver leaflets? You think you can play for me? You’re wussies! Show me the leaflets for Bill’s Train and Hobby Shop. I DIDN’T SAY LOOK AT THE LABELS! This is Indiana. You’re pathetic. Show me the leaflets now. I haven’t got all day . . .”
The van was outfitted to transport exactly four people, with a half bench directly behind the front seats, leaving a cavernous void in the rear to stack Dad’s leaflet boxes. He’d been too cheap to pay for carpeting, but that was a good thing, as it was easier to scoot boxes across the cold corrugated metal to the front, where Dad needed them. I had to intuit Dad’s system for organizing the boxes—a system he’d never explained to us. But I managed. I chose the correct box every time and pushed it up to Dad.
Kanga? He had no idea what was going on. He would blindly guess which bundle Dad wanted. Or worse, he would build himself a fort with the boxes and hide, causing Dad to say: “Think you’re cute? Think I got time for your foul-ups? Show me Bill’s Train and Hobby Shop in five seconds, or I throw your brother out of this moving vehicle and make you scrape him off the road with a shovel. One. Two. Three. THIS IS INDIANA! Four—”
Despite Kanga’s “foul-ups” and “wussy bellyaching,” he was the kindergartner in the Indiana T-shirt. Not me. So when our work shift ended at a distant gas station in Perrysville, past 3:00 a.m., and the cashier inside was dead asleep on his stool, Dad took Kanga with him to help pump gas. Just Kanga. I climbed onto the bench, crunching a few stray leaflets, and watched them through the van window.
The parking spaces around the gas pumps were empty, except for a long black puddle trickling into a drain. After Dad filled the van, he didn’t return the nozzle to its hook. Instead, he looked over his shoulder to be sure nobody was sneaking up on him. “Those other colleges are for wussies,” Dad said and brought the nozzle to Kanga’s face. He tapped the bottom of Kanga’s chin until my brother was staring straight up into the buzzing gas station lights. “This’ll get you on Bobby’s team.” Dad’s finger tapped the trigger. I heard the whoosh and gurgle of the pump. The nozzle was aimed straight between Kanga’s trembling lips. My brother’s eyes went calm.
Dad went into the station and woke up the cashier to pay for his fill-up.
Kanga climbed back into the van, stinking of gasoline. Drool clung to the side of his mouth, and his hair had obviously been tousled by Dad.
I had to look away.
“Clean up those leaflets, boys,” Dad ordered in his own voice as he drove us back to Shimmering Terraces. “Wussies,” he corrected himself, but I could see his grin in the rearview mirror. To Dad, Kanga was already a Hoosier.
• • •
Now, though, Dad was nothing but a distant voice in my processor—albeit one that still haunted our apartment. I heard Dad whenever I saw his old dartboard (the darts themselves had been lost years ago) or the permanent ring in the living room carpet from his kegs of beer. Looking at our couch, you could tell which side was Dad’s because it was greasier from him watching TV in just his underwear. And there was that divot in the wall from when Indiana got beat by Virginia in the 1984 NCAA tournament.
But in the kitchenette, all I heard was Mom.
Hanging above the coffee maker was her portrait of Elvis Presley. The King. He was rendered in cool blues on black velvet, a close-up of his face crying into a microphone. Strangely enough, the crying Elvis made Mom smile whenever she looked at it. I asked her about it once, and she seemed genuinely surprised at the question. “Why, Elvis was a robot, honey.” She was making tacos. “Everybody knows that.” Then Mom got back to singing the only Elvis song she knew, which wasn’t even a full song, just two lines from “Hound Dog” over and over:
“Well, they said you was high classed, Well, that was just a lie, Well, they said you was high classed, Well, that was just a lie, Well, they said you was high classed . . .”
Dad was in the living room, pummeling his dartboard, pretending not to hear her, pretending he didn’t know the truth about their model numbers. She was a Detroit 415. He was a 405.
Now I was singing those two lines, beneath Mom’s old portrait of the King, making my own tacos. The Directions recommended every robot perfect one solid-food meal in the event of a worst-case scenario: an impromptu dinner party of which you are the host. This was my 483rd attempt at tacos.
Before mealtime, Kanga and I were required to stuff plastic bags down our throats to catch the mouthfuls of taco meat. (Kanga did this in the privacy of his bedroom.) After dinner we pulled them out and flushed their contents down the toilet. (Kanga again insisted on privacy.) But the bags were only half the challenge. The Directions also ordered us to practice intelligent conversation during dinner—and not the predictable Q-and-A sessions Mom had slow-pitched us, but meaningful philosophical debate. Here was tonight’s discussion:
ME:
Did you hear, Kanga? [Pausing to ingest tacos] A robot was just accepted at Barnard College. Not a robot hiding her identity, but a girl who wrote her entrance essay about being a robot. They let her in! Early admission, even. She’s starting classes in January. Isn’t that incredible?
KANGA:
[Staring at taco in hand] Can’t you ever just get us Cobra Burger?
ME:
Barnard is in New York City, in case you didn’t know. Remember what I told you about New York? [Pausing to ingest tacos] There’s a whole part of that city that’s filled only with robots. Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a place like that? Where you knew everybody was a robot?
KANGA:
[Setting taco on plate; pushing plate away]
ME:
Don’t get me wrong. There are worse places than Hectorville. People here hate robots, sure, but [Pausing to ingest tacos] it’s not like living in Ohio, where they have X-ray machines in every building, and they run background checks just for buying grease at the—
Dinner was interrupted by three hard knocks on the apartment door.
I wiped the corners of my mouth. Dealing with solicitors was a skill I’d developed over the years. There was no time to remove my food receptacle. I opened the front door, slipped into the hallway, and, before even looking at our guest, closed the door behind me, exaggerating my effort to stay quiet.
Only then did I identify the visitor: Mr. Jacobowhite, Kanga’s English teacher.
“Oh—” His expression indicated he had no idea who I was, an advantage because I knew exactly who he was, which meant I had his next move narrowed down to two possibilities. Mr. Jacobowhite would either ask, “Is your mother home?” or, feeling bolder, he might say, “May I come in?”
“Sorry, Mr. Jacobowhite, but my dad’s taking a nap on the couch. His shift starts in a few hours.”
Mr. Jacobowhite gave me a confused look.
“Pardon me, Mr. Jacobowhite. I’m Darryl Livery, Kanga’s brother.” I offered my hand for him to shake. “I have Mrs. Deal for English, but Kanga’s told me about you.” (Kanga hadn’t.)
“A pleasure to meet you, Darryl. Normally I wouldn’t just show up at a student’s home without advance notice, but there was no phone number listed for your family, and . . . is Mrs. Livery available for a moment?”
“You mean our mom?” I had noticed humans often co
mbined several emotions in a single expression, and I practiced these combinations in the mirror. The one I wore now for Mr. Jacobowhite conveyed both hurt at the mention of our mother and pity for Mr. Jacobowhite for not knowing something he should have known. “Our parents are divorced.”
“Oh.” Mr. Jacobowhite frowned. “Okay then.”
I had Mr. Jacobowhite right where I wanted him. Male teachers loved it when troubled students opened up to them. Any revealing details from a kid’s personal life turned them into a giant box of Kleenex. The academic subjects they taught were secondary to having an unkempt, nonthreatening beard. The trick with these guys was to spark their compassion by divulging details of a strained home life, dysfunctional enough to excuse any antisocial behavior on our part (because why was Mr. Jacobowhite here anyway?), yet not so toxic that he would feel compelled to call Children’s Protective Services. It was a delicate balance, but I knew Mr. Jacobowhite would help me find it by asking his next question:
“Is there a good time when I can call your dad?”
I winced. “I won’t stop you, Mr. Jacobowhite, but it’s probably not such a good idea to call Dad.”
“Why not? Are you and Kanga safe? Is everything okay?”
“We’re fine, it’s just . . .” I shook my head. “It’s stupid.”
Mr. Jacobowhite knelt down on one knee, so our faces were on the same level. “You can tell me anything, Darryl.”
“Our dad doesn’t like teachers. Actually, he hates them.”
Mr. Jacobowhite’s beard puffed with a huge grin. “But I’m here with good news about Kanga. He’s one of the best creative writers I have. The story he wrote last week—” Mr. Jacobowhite fumbled several handwritten pages out of his coat pocket. “Did you read this? The one about the boy whose parents get kidnapped by robots?”
Read it? I wrote it (as I did for all Kanga’s homework). Normally, this was a chore. A slog. But I’d poured my grease into this particular story. I’d lost myself in it. And even though The Directions warned us to always avoid the topic of robots during human interaction, I figured this could be an exception. The assignment was to write a science fiction story. “Kanga showed me that one. I loved it. Especially that part at the end—”
“When the boy tricks the robots into drinking acid and then rescues his mother!”
“It’s a fantastic story.” I forced my smile into a grimace. “But Kanga will never show it to our dad. English was Dad’s worst subject. It was the reason he flunked out of tenth grade. Now he doesn’t trust any of you.”
“That breaks my heart. Would it help if he knew how gifted his son was?”
I gave Mr. Jacobowhite another combo face: amusement with a touch of exasperation. “Like I said, I won’t stop you. I’ll tell Dad to give you a call when he wakes up.”
“No.” He handed me the story, titled “Buford’s Dilemma,” which was marked from top to bottom with Mr. Jacobowhite’s feedback: underlined superlatives and scores of exclamation marks. “I don’t want to subject Kanga to any further negativity regarding his potential.” He touched my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. “But promise me, Darryl, that you’ll make sure Kanga continues to write. I won’t always be there to encourage him, but you will. That imagination of his could win him a scholarship. He could be the next Ray Bradbury.”
“I promise, Mr. Jacobowhite. Thank you.”
He stood up. “I noticed Kanga wasn’t wearing a hat the other morning when he arrived at school, so here.” He took a blue winter hat from his pocket. “I only brought the one. I mean, there was no brother in the story he wrote . . .” Mr. Jacobowhite pulled off his own hat. “Take mine, Darryl.”
Watching Mr. Jacobowhite walk down the hallway, I considered what to tell Kanga about my encounter with his English teacher. Hat salesman, I’d say, and he would believe me. Keeping secrets had always been my specialty. Or should I say Ray Bradbury’s? My writing had received praise before, but never like this. The six stapled sheets of paper in my hand felt like a bestselling novel. I wanted to show it to somebody. Anybody. Kanga. Mr. Renault downstairs. My own English teacher, Mrs. Deal. I wanted to wave my story in Mrs. Deal’s face and say, “This is what I’m capable of!”
No.
I wanted Dad to read it. I wanted to say, “Check this out, Dad. Some of the parts are kind of funny,” and watch his eyes zigzag down the page, watch his lips ghost-read the words, watch his whole body shake with laughter when the story’s dad yells, “Bull’s-eye!”
I hid those thoughts away in my processor. After all, it was Kanga’s story, not mine, and nobody was going to read it ever again. Especially Dad, who never even read The Directions.
• • •
The remainder of the evening unfolded in typical fashion.
First I visited the bathroom to remove my food receptacle, pulling the long plastic bag, brimming with taco meat and masticated tortilla shells, from the recesses of my throat. I paused to admire the full receptacle, allowing myself to feel a sense of satisfaction, perhaps even fullness, the same feeling I imagined humans enjoyed after a delicious meal. Then I squeezed the chewed taco meat into the toilet and flushed. As I tossed my used receptacle into the trash beneath the sink, I noticed Kanga’s: still clear, without a trace of tacos. This triggered the mom in me to ask aloud, “Why do I even bother?”
I cleaned the kitchenette, then handled the bills that Dad had always complained about (the Gravy stipend was indeed modest) while Kanga watched Unsolved Mysteries, Night Court, the final twenty-two minutes of a movie called Twins, and Quantum Leap, as well as the countless commercials promoting a worriless, scientifically advanced lifestyle of plug-in air fresheners, weight-loss shakes, home gym apparatuses, free refills on pop, handheld video games, pregnancy tests on a stick, and the greatest hits of all time, now available on compact disc. At eleven o’clock, Kanga suffered through the news and was rewarded with Arsenio Hall, followed by Personals and Night Games, a pair of dating game shows that were Kanga’s guilty pleasures. At 1:03 a.m., he whispered, “G’night, Darryl,” and stumbled into his room.
“Love you, Kanga.”
I was charging up in my customary spot, behind the orange chair in the living room. I stayed there another couple of hours, until 3:51 a.m., then grabbed the phone book and cordless phone, tiptoed out our apartment door, down the hallway, and into the stairwell. I was alone, but Dad’s voice was waiting in my throat.
In the phone book, I found the number for “Jacobowhite, Aaron.”
He answered after the fifth ring. “Do you know what time it is?” he said, still half-asleep.
“You the teacher that came by my place today? Talking to my kid, putting all those ideas in his head about writing? About scholarships? See, I got a real job, buddy. I use my hands, and I make money. I feed my boys. I put clothes on them. What do you do? Overpaid babysitter! Next time you want to—”
“Sir, I never meant to—”
“—come near my place, you save us both some trouble and drive off a cliff, you elitist scumbag. Got it?”
“Okay, sir. Let me just—”
I hung up.
Back in our apartment I was surging with energy. It was time to use the camcorder and VCR to edit our science presentation.
I had planned to delete Kanga’s Magic Johnson footage immediately, but I made the mistake of watching it one last time. Then again, and then several more times, until that bullet of jealousy passed clean through me. After viewing the twenty seconds of footage for the eighty-second time, I realized the simple fact that I was proud of Kanga. How had he ever created something so beautiful with a garbage mom like me? And why, in the sickly green glow of the television screen, did I feel a rancorous urge to press Record and tape over my brother’s moment of perfection? It was the sensible thing to do, of course, destroying proof of Kanga’s exceptionality. And so easy. All I had to do was press Record and remake the introduction myself.
I pressed Eject.
I put the finished videotap
e in my backpack. Earlier tonight Mr. Jacobowhite had allowed me to feel exceptional, and I was still beaming from it. Tomorrow in science class, I would give the same gift to Kanga.
I won’t hold you down, brother. Not again.
Back in the summer after fourth grade, after our parents had been gone for months, Kanga still believed they were out there. He devised a plan to knock on every door in the building, asking people if they’d seen Mom and Dad, if they’d found any clues, any leads at all. Kanga’s error had been going to me for help. I told him it was useless, that I’d already been to the police, that they’d combed the entire building and found nothing. “Don’t bother the neighbors,” I said. “People don’t want to be reminded of depressing things.” Then I turned on cartoons for him until his plan dissolved into explosions and sound effects, because I already knew Mom and Dad were history.
Because I turned them in.
I called Detroit.
I picked up the phone, dialed the number at the back of The Directions, and told the operator Mom and Dad were obsolete.
That same day Mom and Dad were gone.
5
IF I EVER NEEDED TO identify the biggest villains in America, all I had to do was listen to my classmates whisper about who they were sure was a robot. This morning in Mr. Belt’s class the list was broad. There was the woman from Texas who hired a hit man to kill the mother of her daughter’s cheerleading rival. Definitely a robot. There were the Lebanese hostage takers. Robots. There was Mike Tyson. Rapist and robot. There was the suicide doctor, Jack Kevorkian. Clearly a robot, because who else would have such disregard for human life? Well, Jeffrey Dahmer. That guy was such a huge robot that the only “Jeffrey” in our grade, Jeff Lindor, probably would have killed and eaten a person just to have a different first name.
But if they’d asked me, I would have told my classmates that the biggest robot of all time was Kanga Livery. He was on the other side of our classroom, ogling Staci Miles. Not looking. Not glancing. Ogling. He looked exactly like a robot with a broken processor.