“I’m stealthy. I’m fast. You know that. Now go get your coat, nitwit, and let’s take a walk. L, too. And if you feel like writing anything down? Do it. And if you don’t? Write that down, too.”
Richard
The windows of Richard’s first-floor quarters acted as a two-way mirror, but not in the traditional way. Rather, to those standing outside, the Yard was reflected in the glass, but a hint of a large photograph of an empty apartment could be seen behind it. For this, none of the Alphabet Boys ever saw their D.A.D. as he stood watching from within, often wearing nothing more than a bathrobe. Today, as he watched Q, J, D, and L tramp across the snowy Yard, headed for the Orchard, he wore the tank top that he’d sweated through while giving his speech. He’d sweated more since then, after receiving Gordon’s report on his meeting with Warren Bratt.
He doesn’t believe in the Parenthood like he used to.
Did he ever…used to?
He certainly believed in the money he was making from it.
And now?
Now I’m unsure.
Bad word for the Parenthood.
And how did Gordon know this? What brought him to this conclusion?
He didn’t sit down for the entire meeting.
And?
That’s what you do when you want to appear big, big as you can be. You stand. You stand, too, when you’re close to walking.
Richard watched the boys happily crossing the whitening grass, wearing their newest winter coats.
Almost teenagers now.
Growing up.
Soon to be men.
The Delicate Years.
“You’ve got to clothe your kids,” Richard said, alone in his quarters. “You’ve got to feed them, too. And”—he reached a hand to the glass and cupped the boys, as if their distant smaller forms could fit easily into his palm—“you’ve got to make sure they’re telling the truth.”
As the four boys grew even smaller, walking the long border of pines, Richard’s mind traveled back to the Basic Years. It was a flaw of his, he admitted, that he’d long considered the past with a raven’s eye but often assumed the present was in working order. He knew he had the Inspections to blame. The daily reports that his boys were clean, the daily reminders that things were going according to plan. Had he always leaned too hard on the Inspections? Put too much stock in them? Could they tell him…everything?
They certainly reaffirmed for him the most important thing: the lack of knowledge in the boys…the absolutely vacant and seemingly endless acreage of once-loud distractions, the earth now scorched of…
…woman.
Soft string music played from his antique hi-fi radio, loud enough to mingle with the sound of the winter wind outside and the faint ripple of the Corner below. Richard thought back, not searching, not looking for any mistake now, just back to images of the boys as toddlers and their incredible potential.
In those days, he’d believed he could tell which boys were more apt to shine. Which would develop into the scientists and engineers his experiment promised. But he was never exactly right. And these slight errors in his predictions worried him mercilessly.
One incident from the Basic Years caused him particular concern now: a routine patrol he’d conducted himself one evening, his black boots echoing off the brand-new, shiny floors, the distant clink of dishes in the kitchen. He’d looked to his watch that night and frowned. The rules of the Parenthood had been drilled into the minds of the money-hungry staff, mostly ex-cons happy for the clandestine gig. Yet…someone was up. In a place they weren’t supposed to be. Perhaps sneaking a snack? The kitchen had long since been shut down; dinner was many hours over. He quickened his pace to the beat of an increasingly angry inner monologue—preemptive chastising of the dishwashers and cooks.
The tower’s décor was different then, over a decade ago, and the halls were only partially lit, by English tavern lanterns Richard had foolishly insisted upon. The black-painted doors of the storage and equipment rooms unfortunately resembled open doors (another mistake on Richard’s part), and Richard turned to look at each one, expecting a face to look back, someone who knew more than he did about who was making that racket in the kitchen. Someone who knew the mistakes that Richard had made and the mistakes he would make down the road. Someone who saw, in whole, the failures of the Parenthood long before they came to be.
Now, in his quarters, Richard wondered if he’d lost the paranoia he’d possessed in those early days. And he wondered, too, if he should find it soon.
Paranoia, Burt once said, is probably the only thing that’s going to make this experiment a success.
He remembered…
He’d taken the glass walkway to the Body Hall, through its doors, and arrived at the kitchen’s swivel doors, pausing to compose himself. If he were seen fretting, especially in those early years, who among the staff would still believe in him?
This was paramount then, as it was now: Pay the staff enough money to make them happy, but in the end they had to buy in. Had to think they believed in the Parenthood on their own.
Outside the kitchen that night, he polished the top button of his coat.
He entered.
C, hardly more than a baby, was alone on the kitchen floor, his back to the door, lifting plates from the open drying rack and stacking them on the floor to his right.
Richard stepped back into the shadows created by the wheeled plate racks and watched the small black boy in diapers carry out his task. He didn’t know if he should smile or scream. The boy’s methodology was beyond impressive.
Richard noted the resolve with which the boy studied the greater kitchen, possibly eyeing what else he could arrange. C was expressing key personality traits. Fearlessness: He’d crawled here alone. Productiveness: He’d completed a task. Ambition: He was looking for more to do. Imitation: He’d seen the dishwashers stacking the very same plates.
And free will, to boot. Richard felt proud as a parent.
But there was something terrible about it, too.
If C, as a baby, could so genuinely surprise him…what might happen when he grew up?
Enjoy this, for fuck’s sake, Richard thought. Enjoy the first signs that your experiment is working.
But how could he? C had made it out of his crib and into the kitchen. What would stop him, or any of the Alphabet Boys, from one day…going anywhere they pleased?
Anywhere at all?
Now, his nose to the cold glass of his quarters’ window, Richard stared far, to where the pines gave way to an open snowy path. Beyond that, Q, J, D, and L were walking through the Orchard.
Right?
“Spoiled,” Richard said aloud. But, no, not that. None of his boys were spoiled. And the two that had gone bad had been taken care of.
There was only one solution to spoiled.
Yes, Richard’s last line of defense. His ultimate deterrent for staff and boy alike. Just thinking the name of the room calmed him, reminded him that, if ever a boy learned of the existence of women, the Corner was there to be opened.
Paranoia…
He remembered…
Richard stepped out from the shadows of the plate racks and approached the boy.
C, hearing his D.A.D., looked up at him.
Richard smiled then as Richard smiled now, the sweet sounds of the cellos lubricating his nerves.
Study my face, C, for if ever your curiosity leads you astray, it will be this face that weeps, these lips that send you to the Corner.
He picked C up and brought the boy’s nose close to his own.
You’ve made your father very proud tonight.
But he wondered if the boy could detect his lie. He wondered if all the Alphabet Boys would one day detect his many lies….
But paranoia, Burt had also said, will be the Parenthood’s undoing in
the end.
Now Richard made a fist and pounded the glass. He gave it one solid thwack and stepped from the snowy sight of the Yard.
He crossed his quarters, past his large oak desk, went to the bar, and quickly fixed a gin martini.
Burt had also suggested a dry tower. But Richard downed it in two swallows. Energized, he turned to face the windows again, the weather, the world he’d created.
Oh, the Basic Years were such beautiful days!
In Richard’s memory, the early epoch glowed. The illumination in the halls of the Parenthood was softer. The elevators ran quieter. The faces of the boys were the faces of the future. Richard’s vision had come to life.
Genius Is Distracted by the Opposite Sex
So what do you do?
Cast the opposite sex out.
And…
…watch…
…the…
…genius…
…sprout.
Do you remember what progress smelled like, Richard? It was as sweet as childhood, yeah?
Yeah.
Do you smell it still?
He fixed himself a second drink, let the alcohol do its job, and recalled the Basic Years.
We could live forever like this! he used to think. As he fell asleep. As he woke. Forever perfect.
Forevolution.
He poured a third drink, could hear Burt advising him to make the Turret dry. No booze around the boys, four of who were no doubt stretching their legs, taking a break between studies, bonding, exploring, growing.
Q, D, L, and J.
Richard carried the drink to the window. Drinking this heavily often led to evaluating his boys, his prized possessions, his masterpiece. And in doing so, two names, two letters, an omen he wanted desperately to avoid, invariably came up. As though someone other than himself had stolen two especially shimmering trophies from the case.
A and Z.
Richard closed his eyes. Wobbling a bit before the glass, he focused on the music, found balance there. The deep tubas mimicked the shadows in the basement that pooled by the Corner’s door. The flutes cried out like children behind it.
A had gone to the Corner.
Richard had sent him.
He opened his eyes to see that the snow had increased outside. He thought maybe he saw the form of the four boys, perhaps just one of them, walking the line of pines.
But no. Only the branches, swaying in the growing wind.
A was the first to die. A was the first letter of the alphabet. How terribly fitting. The perfectly lit match to set a paranoid man’s paper mind aflame…
The boys would die, one by one, following A, in suit, in order, B, C, D, E…
Richard laughed. It was harsh, nervous laughter, which grated against the gorgeous music that no longer carried a tune for him.
The Delicate Years…
No. The other boys were still here. The other boys hadn’t died, and no, they wouldn’t. So long as they weren’t spoiled. Spoiled rotten. And wasn’t that all there was to it? The experiment held so long as the Parenthood’s singular, irrefutable law was upheld.
A man spends all his time building something, Burt once wrote, and that object becomes his everything. His reward, yes, but his panic, his horror, too.
Of course, A hadn’t done anything wrong. A hadn’t done anything at all.
F’s mother did.
A recalcitrant whore. A weeping, second-guessing woman. A fool who let her heart best her mind until she broke the deal she’d made with the Parenthood.
She’d shown up.
Here.
At the Turret.
Richard had been out in the Yard that day, the very same expanse of grass he overlooked now, his third martini sloppily dripping gin to the floor. He’d overseen the disassembly of the enormous Glasgow Plexiglas crib. The boys had outgrown it. The carpenters (ex-cons, all) were carrying the pieces back to the tower when Richard’s placid, proud mood was interrupted by a sound he hadn’t heard in a very long time.
A piercing shriek. A falsetto of pain.
A woman.
She looked terrible, stumbling by the tower’s first-floor windows. A cuckoo wretch. Her clothes hung from her body as though she’d escaped from a hospital and had come running…running here…
The carpenters were upon her before Richard could speak. But Richard spoke.
Cover her mouth, he said calmly, crossing the Yard, already seeing the Corner door closing on her like a coffin lid.
The sky felt too big above him. The windows of the Turret too clean. Sudden sweat soaked the edges of his hair and beads dripped down to his black beard, blue in the summer sun.
At first, upon reaching her, he said nothing. He only stared into her heartbroken eyes: a mother who’d realized how much motherhood meant to her after all. Later that night, one carpenter told another he thought Richard was going to bite her. But Richard didn’t bite her. He did worse.
Go to the Corner, he’d said to her. As if she knew what that room was. As if she had any idea about the door in the basement of the building that harbored her son, the boy she’d come to retrieve. YOU GO TO THE CORNER RIGHT NOW!
The carpenters had made to move, to drag her inside, when Gordon, always present, always a witness, gasped so audibly it rivaled the mother’s lunatic shriek.
Already knowing what was wrong, what had caused his assistant to cry out, but not yet wanting to believe it, Richard turned to where Gordon was pointing a shaking manicured finger.
A boy stood with his face and hands pressed to the first-floor hall glass.
He was looking right at them.
Right at her.
Her.
“It’s A,” Gordon said, trembling.
A at the window. F’s mother in the clutches of the carpenters.
Richard felt the strength flow from his legs. But he did not fall.
Parenthood law was the one and only.
You can’t raise a truly blind man who has already seen the sky.
He’ll remember…he’ll remember…he’ll always remember…and he’ll ask about her…her…HER.
Richard walked past the carpenters, past the mother who had unknowingly sentenced somebody else’s son.
He entered the tower.
He went to the boy and knelt.
He held A’s face in his fingers.
The woman you saw, he said, has spoiled you rotten.
The Corner.
The only room in the Parenthood the boys were raised to fear. A place that existed before even their nurseries were complete. Somewhere in the basement maze not far from where Lawrence Luxley wrote the books they loved; a door at the end of a cobblestone basement corridor; the place where the noises of the night were made.
Over the years, Richard had noted small rips at the shoulders of the uniforms worn by his staff. He knew the fabric had been torn on the stones across the hall from the Corner, as the ex-cons attempted to stay as far away as they could.
The Corner.
An appellation that seemed to reach out into the hall. A door with fingers. And reach.
The Corner.
Where A and F’s mother went.
Together.
“That’s enough,” Richard said now, draining his third martini. “Time to—”
But his sentiment was cut short at the sight of the four boys returning from the Orchard. Snow had painted the shoulders of their new coats white. Their smiles underscored the laughter he heard through the glass, through the snow, through the distance.
Richard smiled, too. Four of his boys, his boys, twelve years old now, returning from a break in their studies. But as they continued to laugh, as they carried on in the way he’d once envisioned they would…as Q, D, L, and J presented the perfectly proud picture of all th
at Richard imagined they could be, he felt something sour spinning in his gut. A loose screw in his heart.
“What are you laughing at?” he asked them, clinking his glass quietly against the window, in rhythm with his words. “Be…good…boys…now. Tell your D.A.D….what are you laughing at?”
And the boys, reaching the Yard, only saw the snowfall reflected in the glass of the quarters belonging to their D.A.D., a new winter upon them.
In the Orchard
On their walk, the boys talked about many things. But J’s mind continued to return to the discrepancy between what D.A.D. had told him in the Inspection and what he’d said during his speech.
Why did it matter so much? Plenty of Alphabet Boys had slipped up, forgotten something said, put something a different way, or simply intentionally delivered a small harmless lie. J had done it himself. With the cherry juice on the carpet. Or how about the thousand times he’d pretended to understand a joke just because the others obviously did? Was that a lie? And if one of those boys had asked him to explain what was so funny about the very joke they were laughing at, how would he have responded? Would he have been caught in a lie?
“T got in trouble,” L said. “Wore white at the speech.”
“This morning?” Q asked.
“How do you hear about these things so fast?” D asked. “It’s like you’re one of the bricks in the Turret walls.”
“Why did he wear white?” J asked.
The snow fell soft upon their coat shoulders, their collars, their hair. As they reached Mister Tree, J felt something like a tether coming loose. A leash unlatched. He thought of the dogs in the Inspection. He hardly remembered he’d asked a question.
But he looked, too. Looked to see if anyone was crouched behind the tree.
“Must have been tired,” L said. “I can’t imagine he was protesting a speech!”
L laughed the way he did whenever the absurdity of defying the Parenthood came up. The snow settled so uniformly upon his curly hair that he looked aged, playing the part of an old man on the stage of the tower theater.
“It’s possible he did protest,” Q said. “As D.A.D. told us today, things are changing.”
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