How to Say Goodbye in Robot

by Natalie Standiford

  “You’re lying,” I said. “Who was that?”

  She collapsed onto the bed. “Bea, I told you. I don’t want to answer any more questions tonight. I’m sick.”

  Enough, I thought.

  “That’s your excuse for everything,” I said. “I think you make yourself sick on purpose.”

  “Bea, that’s ridiculous. Why would I make myself sick? I’m miserable!”

  “I’m miserable!” I said. “It’s the middle of the night! I have to get up early tomorrow. We’re supposed to be here for me! For my decision. An important decision about my future. Tell me—Who was on the phone?”

  The line about “my future” was pouring it on a little thick, but I couldn’t resist. Those words gave me the moral high ground and I knew it.

  Mom curled up on the bed. “Bea, please. I’m sorry about this. About everything. We can talk about it tomorrow, but right now my stomach hurts and I can’t think. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “You can’t make it up to me,” I said. “Just leave me alone. That’s all I want. If you’d only let me come by myself, none of this would have happened. Having you around makes everything worse.”

  She buried her head under a pillow. “Stop it! You’re so cold! You’re heartless, you little robot!” The pillow muffled her words, but they stung.

  “I feel things,” I said. “I’m not a robot!” I stamped my foot and screamed. Then I burst into tears. I touched the little wet drops and held them toward her. “See, I’m not a robot. This is proof.”

  She refused to take the pillow off her head. I wiped the tears on her pillowcase. I might have been made of metal once, but not anymore. Like Pinocchio, I’d turned into a real girl. So far it sucked. But there was nothing I could do about it.

  I got into bed, leaving the bathroom light on. Mom might need it.

  I woke up at eight feeling drained. Mom was asleep, tangled in her sheets, pillow on the floor. The bathroom light was still on.

  I got dressed and found my way to the dean’s office. I met with some students, toured the campus, ate lunch in the student center. I tried to concentrate on the school and the city, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Mom. And Dad. Why didn’t he answer the phone last night? Where was he? And who had called Mom?

  I went back to the hotel after lunch. Mom’s bed was made. Her things were packed. She lay on the bed on her back, dressed in jeans, with her shoes on.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Dizzy,” she said. “I’m sorry, Bea. I can’t stay here. I have to go home.”

  We’d planned to go to the Met that afternoon. That night I was supposed to go to a party for prospective students. Was she saying I should stay by myself and do these things without her? Was she leaving me there? Or did she expect me to go home with her?

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Did Dad call?”

  “Finally. This morning.”

  “Where was he last night?”

  “He said he’d turned the phone off.”

  That didn’t sound like something Dad would do while Mom and I were away and possibly needing him. Or maybe it did. I didn’t know anymore.

  “So…do you want me to go home with you?”

  “I’m not leaving you alone in New York City,” Mom said.

  “Oh. Okay.” I packed my few things and we were ready to leave. It took five minutes.

  “Will you drive?” Mom said. “I’m too dizzy.”

  That was the end of my college weekend. We were quiet on the drive home. There was no point asking any questions. Because there was no way she was going to give me any answers.

  Dad met us at the front door.

  “Make any decisions?” he said. “Vassar, right?”

  I walked past him without answering. Dad helped Mom upstairs. He tried to lead her into their room, but she went into the guest room and shut the door. He forced his way in. They stayed in there for hours, hissing at each other.

  CHAPTER 18

  For the art show, I entered a photo called “A Hairdresser in Iceland.” I posed in a snowy Santaland with a candy-striped barber pole. A large Barbie makeup head played the role of beauty shop customer, propped on a box with a smock around her neck. Wearing a platinum wig, a short blue tunic, and a wide smile, I teased the Barbie’s hair into a tall, yellow beehive. A sign over the mirror spelled out ICELAND in rainbow letters. Fake snow sparkled all around me. I tried to look as happy as I possibly could.

  “Iceland,” Walt said as he studied my entry. “You told me about that a long time ago, at Tiza’s party. All about the happy Icelandic hairdressers.”

  “You remembered,” I said.

  “You should have won first place,” Walt said.

  “The judges thought my picture was a joke,” I said.

  “Want to walk around and look at the other stuff?” Walt said.

  “Okay.” I was dying to see Jonah’s painting. Every time I stopped by his wall, he covered the painting with a sheet and told me to go away. He didn’t want me to see his masterpiece without its rightful blue ribbon.

  Now Jonah sat on the floor in front of his work, a blue ribbon finally stuck to the pasteboard. The large painting, “Family Portrait,” took up the entire wall. It showed Matthew, crowned with his padded helmet, ruling from a golden wheelchair before a Tate family crest. Or was it Jonah in the throne, playing Matthew? The eyes were sly, more icy than milky. Catso and the Evil Miss Frankenheimer perched on either side of him like hounds flanking an English lord.

  The colors and composition and technique were impressive. But the most striking thing about the painting was the look on Matthew’s face. What was he thinking? Was he smiling or smirking or just making some kind of braindamage face?

  It was like the Mona Lisa. Inscrutable.

  “Congratulations.” I slid to the floor to sit with Jonah. “I almost can’t believe you won first place, because this painting deserves it so much, and people who deserve to win hardly ever do.”

  “It’s awesome,” Walt said. “But why did you paint yourself in a wheelchair?”

  “It isn’t him—” I began, but Jonah interrupted me.

  “Because that’s how I feel,” he said.

  “And what are those little cats supposed to represent?” Walt asked.

  “They don’t represent anything,” Jonah said, a note of disgust creeping into his voice.

  Walt backed off. “I’m glad you won,” he said. “Hey, Beatrice, can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Over here, I mean?” Walt pointed to a quiet pasteboard nook nearby—the freshman watercolor section.

  I got to my feet—with difficulty, since Jonah clamped his hand down on mine. I wrested it out from under him.

  “Don’t go,” Jonah murmured.

  “I’ll be right back,” I promised.

  I walked away with Walt. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I know it’s a little early,” Walt began, “but I was afraid if I waited, it would be too late—”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Um, would you like to go to the prom with me?”

  “The what?” I said.

  “The prom?”

  “Oh, the prom.” I guess I’d known there was a prom coming up, somewhere in the back of my mind.

  “Do you have a date already?” Walt said. He twisted his fingers together nervously. His eyes gleamed with goodwill and hope and anxiety.

  “No,” I said. “No date.”

  “You’re not going…with Jonah, or somebody like that?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jonah and I hadn’t discussed it. I doubted he was very interested in a night at the prom.

  “So, what do you say?”

  He meant: Why wasn’t I saying yes? Good question. Why wasn’t I?

  I could still feel the pressure of Jonah’s hand on mine.

  I remembered a time in Austin, a few years earlier, when a girl from school asked me if I wanted to g
o skiing for a weekend with her family. I wanted to, but Dad was going to a conference that weekend, and Mom and I had planned a three-day Alfred Hitchcock marathon. We could have watched those old movies any weekend, but somehow I couldn’t tell Mom the marathon was off. So I didn’t go. And Mom and I had fun. I’ll never know for sure if I made the right decision, but it felt right. That girl was my friend, but Mom came first.

  Now, Jonah came first. I liked Walt, but that was the way things were.

  “I’m sorry, Walt,” I said. “It’s not you personally. I just don’t think I’ll be going to the prom.”

  The hope in his eyes dried to panic. “Not with anyone?” I shook my head. “Why not?”

  I made up a plausible-sounding reason on the spot. “I feel weird about it. Everyone else has been at Canton for so long, and I just got here, and the prom’s not my thing.”

  “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here,” Walt said. “I’ll make sure you have a good time.”

  I shook my head.

  “Will you think about it? Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  I started to say no, but he said, “Just think about it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay.” His body relaxed slightly, the ordeal over. “See you later.”

  “See you.”

  He walked away. I went back to Jonah.

  “What did Ichabod want?” Jonah said.

  “Don’t be mean to him. He’s nice.”

  “I wasn’t being mean. That was affectionate. An affectionate nickname for a tall, awkward, geeky guy who’s easily spooked. It fits.”

  “You weren’t being affectionate.”

  People walked by and congratulated Jonah. They looked at his painting thoughtfully, as if considering its deepest implications. But they didn’t linger or talk to Jonah for long. He sent out a people-repellent vibe, a kind of Off! for humans.

  “Did you go to the prom last year?” I asked him. The Canton prom was for juniors and seniors. He might have gone.

  “What? Fuck, no,” he said. “Are you thinking of going?”

  “No.”

  “Did Walt ask you? Is that what he wanted?”

  I even felt guilty telling him. “Kind of.”

  “Did you say yes?”

  “I said no, but he told me to think about it.”

  “Don’t go,” Jonah said. “You won’t like it. They rent out a ballroom downtown at the Belvedere, and everybody puts on fancy clothes and tries to pretend they don’t know every pimple on each other’s butts. Limos, the whole bit. Afterward, somebody has a big debauched party where they all get drunk and puke in the yard. Everybody stays out all night. Big fucking deal.”

  He was right. What would I do at a prom without Jonah? If you analyzed the concept, took it apart, and looked at its pieces, the prom was nothing more than a dress, a limo, and a perfunctory date.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jonah said. “We’ll do something big on prom night. Just the two of us. After all, we’re graduating too. We deserve a celebration. Our kind of celebration.”

  This was exactly what I wanted.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Let’s run away, just for the night. Or maybe the weekend. To Ocean City.”

  “Yeah,” I said, warming up to the idea. “Prom night in Ocean City. I’ll even buy a gown to wear.”

  “I’ll promenade you down the boardwalk,” Jonah said. “We’ll be king and queen of the freaks. Be sure to wear your tiara.”

  “I don’t have a tiara,” I said. “All I have is a Happy New Year crown with painful memories attached to it.”

  “We’ll get you one, then,” Jonah said. “You can’t go to Ocean City without a tiara. It’s a new rule I just made up.”

  “What about all your plotting and planning and thinking?” I asked.

  “I’ve done a lot of it,” he said. “We’ll finish our plotting together, at the beach. Deal?”

  How could I resist?

  Of course it was a deal.

  MAY

  CHAPTER 19

  Herb:

  Hello, you’re on the air.

  Robot Girl:

  Herb, I’m just calling to wish Ghost Boy and his twin brother, Matthew, a very happy birthday. They’ll be eighteen years old tomorrow. And I’d like to invite all loyal Night Light listeners—and you too, Herb, if you can make it—to a birthday party for Ghost Boy tomorrow night at Carmichael’s Book Shop on Charles Street, off Mount Vernon Place. Around eight.

  Herb:

  Thank you, Robot Girl. I’m sure many listeners will join you for the celebration. Happy Birthday, Ghost Boy! Next caller, you’re on the air.

  Judy from Pikesville:

  This is Judy from Pikesville? I heard that young lady, and I just want to remind her that the drinking age in this state is twenty-one, not eighteen as she seems to think. I have a good mind to go to that birthday party just to make sure she and her little friends drink nothing stronger than RC Cola. I would, too, if it weren’t for my phlebitis…

  Jonah’s birthday was May 5, and by eight-fifteen, he and I were lingering in the dusty upstairs bookstore, browsing before going down to the beer stube for the party.

  “I want to make an entrance,” Jonah said.

  “I think you’re nervous,” I said. I was enjoying this, teasing him and bantering with him again.

  I didn’t know why, but since the art show Jonah had warmed up again. He seemed excited about something. I assumed it was graduation, the end of school. No more Canton, after fifteen years. I was glad to have him back.

  I pulled a heavy coffee-table book off the shelf called Dreaming of Iceland—full-color photos of steaming springs, Reykjavik pubs, and stark volcanic landscapes. I showed Jonah one of the pub pictures. An elfin-eyed girl fed beer to a stuffed reindeer.

  “Look,” I said. “Drunk people.”

  Jonah paged through the book. “It’s missing something, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No pictures of hairdressers. No salons or barber shops. How could they leave out Iceland’s greatest natural resource?”

  “Mysterious,” Jonah said. “Maybe they don’t know the value of what they’ve got.”

  “Maybe.”

  Jonah reached through the gap in the shelf left by the fat picture book. There was a six-inch space between the back of the wall and the books. “This would be a good place to leave a secret package, if we were spies,” he said. “Or drug dealers. The book titles would be our code. I’d send you the title of a book, and you’d know exactly where to look for the treasure.”

  “If only we had a secret mission to fulfill.” I put the book back on the shelf. “Or treasure to hide.”

  “Or a big stash of drugs,” Jonah said.

  “Have you had a nice birthday so far?”

  “No,” Jonah said. “My father made a special dinner tonight to celebrate. Or, you know, had one delivered from Petit Louis.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “It’s weird. I can’t remember the last time my father made a fuss about my birthday. He always gives me a present, but that’s all. Last year he didn’t even eat dinner with me.”

  “Eighteen is a big birthday,” I said.

  “That’s not it. He was in a bad mood—a worse mood than usual. But he tried to pretend he was happy, which isn’t like him at all. To make an effort, I mean. He kept looking at me in this meaningful way, but what was the meaning? As if he had something he wanted to tell me. As if the dinner had been called so he could make an announcement. But there was no announcement. When dinner was over, he excused himself, stood up, kissed me on the top of my head, took his coffee into his study, and shut the door.”

  “He kissed you on the top of your head?”

  “Yeah. That’s what freaked me out the most. He never does stuff like that. Even when we were little, he never kissed me or Matthew. Especially not Matthew.”

  “Never?”

  “You know in The
Godfather when a Mafia boss gives someone the kiss of death, and that means they’re doomed? That’s what Dad’s kiss felt like. The kiss of death.”

  “Come on. What’s he going to do—gun you down? Cut off Miss Frankenheimer’s head and leave it in your bed?”

  “I’m just saying the whole birthday charade was creepy.”

  “Happy birthday to you—” I sang.

  “Shut up.”

  “Come on, birthday boy. It’s time for your real party.”

  We went downstairs. Four other Night Lights sat at a table near the piano: Myrna from Highlandtown, Larry from Catonsville, Burt from Glen Burnout, and Kreplax from the Future. An older couple huddled in the corner, watching us. I suspected they might be Night Light listeners, only too shy to join in.

  “Here he is!”

  “Ghost Boy!”

  “Happy birthday, hon.”

  Jonah let Myrna buss him on the cheek. He lit up. Unlike his father’s kiss, hers was simple auntish affection, not a harbinger of doom.

  A few more people arrived, including some listeners we didn’t know. We pushed tables together and squeezed in. Some people brought presents. Larry gave Jonah a couple of old records, the Partridge Family and the Monkees. Myrna gave him an Elvis note-book, and Kreplax gave him a calendar for the year 2110. “It’s from my home time thread,” Kreplax said. “I hope you’ll be able to visit me someday.”

  “Thanks, I hope so too,” Jonah said. Then he turned to me and asked, “Where’s your present?”

  “I was going to give it to you later—”

  “No,” Myrna said. “Now!”

  “Now! Now!” Our crowd of radio friends banged their fists on the table.

  “All right.” I pulled the present—a flat rectangle wrapped in pale green tissue paper—from my bag. Jonah eyed it warily.

  “Is it embarrassing?”

  I shrugged. “Depends on how easily embarrassed you are.”

  “This I gotta see,” Myrna said.

  Jonah ripped off the paper. Underneath was a framed print of a photo I’d made just for him.