“Thank you,” I replied, stepping through the glass door and onto one of the umber tiles. Ahead of me, the adobe walkway extended thirty feet, ending at a massive waterfall. Water trickled down slabs of amber and slate stone, creating ripples as it met with the surface of the pond. From there the walkway split, leading to the lab—right—or the cultivation grounds—left.
The door locked and closed behind me with a low hissing sound, indicating the cooling system had been activated. The microclimates nearest the windows and doors were the most temperamental, always in flux as the temperatures recalibrated. The air was dewy and plentiful with the earthy scent of moist soil.
“Did you have a nice day at school?” Viva inquired.
“I did, thank you. And you . . . here?”
“Satisfactory,” Viva replied. “Thank you.”
I walked a few steps before my mother called. “Hi, baby!”
“Hi, it’s me!” I called back.
I heard my mother’s laughter, lifted up high like one of Jeronimo’s caws. The exotic parrot was stunning to look at, but a bit mean-spirited; he liked to play clever tricks on us, mimicking the sound our voices. One time I ran screaming from the greenhouse because “my father” shouted at me to “Get out! There’s a bomb about to go off!” And after the incident with the lilies, I really couldn’t be too careful.
“Oh, good,” my mother replied, feigning relief. “I don’t think your father would be at all pleased had someone discovered how to breach his impenetrable security system.”
A clipped snort that I could safely assume belonged to my father, joined the sound of the overhead misters. “Not possible.”
“This is true,” Viva corroborated. “An unauthorized entry in not possible. I am encrypted with a source code that would take a minimum of three years to troubleshoot. Should this happen, I am instructed to self-destruct.”
My father’s ingenuity knew no bounds.
“Ah . . . good to know, thank you, Viva. Have a nice day.”
“It is currently seventy-seven degrees outside,” she told me.
Well everything has glitches, I thought in my father’s defense. Then I waved in the general vicinity of where I believed Viva’s camera to be located.
“Fost? Did I leave a jar filled with a bright blue substance by the oleanders?” my mother asked.
I glimpsed at seven or eight Sun Conures queued along the branch of a palm. They tweeted amiably, pecking one another for no apparent reason.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see—” But then I did. “Yes, I see it. Did you want me to bring it to you?” I walked forward, where silky green and blue iridescent leaves burst from both sides of the walkway; they looked like peacock feathers.
“Please do, yes,” she replied, then warning me, “There should be a lid tightly secured to the jar. If not, do not touch it, all right? I’ll come over.”
I hesitated. “. . . okay?”
I was just reaching for it, finding the jar as my mother had promised—with a lid tightly secured—when she added, “It will burn the flesh right off your bones.”
I flung my hand away with such force that I fell backward.
“Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m fine,” I answered, eyeing the blue glop fearfully. “But you’re sure it’s safe to move it?”
“Is the lid on?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes,” she replied pleasantly.
I stayed where I was, staring warily for another moment; then getting to my feet I grabbed the jar with my thumb and index finger, holding it away from my body as I walked. Once I felt confident it would not explode in my hand, or melt me into a pile of bones, I began to look around, wondering if anything had grown overnight. Things did that here.
High above me the clear panels sparkled, allowing shimmery rays of sun to splatter the living things with yellow nourishment. Despite ownership, it was the sun who governed this place, setting things in motion, or not. All around me plants yawned to life, pretended to be shy, or burst from the ground like a chorus line dancing onto the stage.
Nearing the center of the gothic dome, I passed by the largest pond, home to tri-colored koi and matte-green lily-pads, huddled together in secretive groups. Long beds of green grass bordered all waterfronts like fuzzy caterpillars, offering an idle peace away from the busier areas inside the greenhouse. Some days I would come here and read for awhile, lulled by the watermill’s steady crank-and-pour. My favorite of all, however, was the bridge—the wooden rainbow I had renamed it. It wasn’t just pretty—oh, it was really pretty, though—but functionable; a shortcut from one side to the other. The banister was wide enough to sit on, and this I did often, dangling my feet over the side, watching the fish suck at the surface of the water, their tiny, circular mouths opening and closing, opening and closing.
The constant evolution never failed to show me something new. Things moved and shifted, sometimes within hours. Flowers trembled in birth and branches bowed to their deaths, from one day to the next. I could not walk in here without being alerted to a living motility. And still, the elegance of the greenhouse—which felt more like a conservatory—upheld all the standards one would expect from a nature reserve. It was botanical Eden. It was Horticulture’s playground. It was the best of two imaginative worlds.
“You’re being careful, right?”
“I am,” I called back loud enough for her to hear. “Very,” I said, to the hissing goop.
“Also—there should be another jar just as you’re coming to the waterfall. If you’re looking straight, it will be on your—”
“I see it,” I told her. “Should I bring it, too?”
“Please. And that one isn’t at all toxic,” she reassured me. “However”—I was close enough to hear her stifle a laugh—“as you’ll soon see for yourself, that isn’t always a guarantee.”
Guarantee from what? I wondered and turned the last corner. And there I almost dropped both jars—not from clumsiness, but from shock.
“Dad,” I whispered, shaking my head back and forth. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”
My father gave me one stiff nod of the head, then looked down at his feet. “Yes, well, the chromaticity wasn’t supposed to bind with the pheromones . . .”
He continued to speak to me in Scienese, and by then I was understanding only every three or four words. My mother held a fist to her smiling lips. “Your father—he . . . there was small incident earlier this morning,” she offered, “while mixing the new pigments.”
Had my father’s ears not suddenly turned the distinct color of embarrassment, I would not have been able to tell he was blushing; for the majority of his face was no longer the same alabaster as mine, but a dusty cobalt. I eyed the jar in my hand speculatively, with renewed awe and horror, and hurried to set both of them down on the workbench.
“Does it come off?” I asked.
“Eventually,” my mother replied, smiling at my father in amusement. “Or so we hope.”
The effect was mildly terrifying and fascinating all at once. The milky thin substance wasn’t concentrated like a mask would be, nor was it neatly distributed, but smeared like a messy watercolor painting.
Apparently it wasn’t only his face.
Unable to hide my agog eyes, I watched as he lifted a tie-dyed hand to the corner of his brow, pressing the tips of his fingers the length of his cheek in a wiping motion.
“Still pretty bad, is it?” he asked, eyes flicking toward me first and then my mother. “I, ah, didn’t anticipate the compound would imbue.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He picked up the jar, careful not to slosh its contents, and raised it to eye level. Somewhat incredulously, he mumbled, “Just a rudimentary solvent, sodium chloride, mixed with a copper-ammonium complex to give it the blue color.” He sighed, then set the jar back down. “For days now I’ve been struggling to get the consistency just right. My first attempts failed terribly. Much too den
se . . . I broke a few rods trying to stir it. So I experimented a bit, but ultimately ended up compensating and throwing the serial dilution out of balance. But the fifth time was perfect,” he said quietly, with such intense longing, I knew he was more upset about the failed experiment than at being the color of a blueberry.
“I, ah, didn’t realize until your mother found me working on the azaleas”—sending a sheepish glance in her direction—“that my skin . . . that I had turned . . . well, blue.”
My mother had her pinky pressed to her lower lip, running it back and forth slowly, the way she did when she was focusing intently. From the look of her murky brown eyes—wide, unblinking and glassy with unshed tears—I guessed she was focusing to hold back the lump of laughter lodged in her throat.
When neither of us spoke, my father grew antsy. He jabbed his rimless glasses higher onto his nose, scratched the back of his head, and swatted at the sides of his trousers. Even with only my mother and me here, he didn’t like the attention; this I understood better than anyone.
I felt terrible for my dad, and was trying to think of something to mollify him, when my mother announced, “Well, I think you’re blueautiful!”
Before I could shut my mouth, laughter blasted through my lips. I slapped a hand over my mouth. “Oh, Dad, I’m sorry.”
“No-no,” he said, waving my guilt away. “It’s quite all right. Your mother’s been poking fun at me all day. I’m sure she’s glad you’re here now; someone to laugh at her clever antics.” He looked at her then, smiling despite being mocked.
For him, my mother was the only thing on this planet more potent than the innate inclination to secret his feelings.
She came up beside me in a fit of giggles, letting her forehead drop gently against the side of my shoulder. “This is true,” she said. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you. But only because I’ve missed you.” She slipped her arm around my waist and I hugged her.
“How long do you expect the effects to last?” I asked him.
“Yes, well, I’m working on an anti-pigment right now.” In a gesture identical to one of my own, he raised a hand and began fiddling with his hair; like mine, but shorter, like fusilli noodles. “My goal is to be flesh colored by the end of the day,” he concluded.
There was no question about it: I was, without one iota of doubt, Jameson Kelly’s daughter. Sometimes, when I wasn’t paying close attention, or in a hurry, I would mistake him for a mirror. I smiled at my clone. At least there were two of us.
By the look of him, my dad had been seized by his mind’s fist. I could almost see the numbers and symbols hovering around his head. It would take some effort to reel him in from the foreign planet he orbited.
“I’m going in,” my mother—the brave solider—whispered to me. “Wish me luck.” She squeezed my waist, then released me before my father could slip any further away.
It was a delicate job, bringing a Kelly back to the present. Our daydreams were not loosely guided musings or pruned pathways, but like being trapped inside a rubber band ball. They were deep and endless. And if not executed properly, the rending process gave us a terrible fright.
Watching this reverie play out before me—brows severe, lips parted, eyes blank with intensity—I couldn’t help wonder what life might have been like had more of my mother’s bloodline made its way into my DNA. Even soiled by a day’s worth of work on her clothes, in brown work boots, beige shorts, and a long white tee covered in small colorful stars, she was beautiful, petite and womanly.
She was soft; not so much in the face, as she was quite angular, but in her voice and the way she could touch you—make you feel as though you were the most important thing in the room. My mother won hearts with smiles. I had seen this happen . . . many times.
In some ways, I supposed she would be considered classically beautiful. When not tied back in a thick braid, her hair fell in soft waves just past her shoulders. The color, a dark chocolate, offset the swampy green in her eyes and complimented the olive in her skin tone. In other ways, her beauty was anything but traditional . . . a flaw, some might call it. Only by looking directly at her would you be able to distinguish the infinitesimal difference in one eye; how the right one was slightly off-kilter, pulled fractionally toward the outer corner. Similarly, when she smiled broadly, one side of her mouth curved up, while the other sloped downward. These things in my opinion were enhancing traits, made her charming when she might have been . . . too immaculate.
She rose up on her tiptoes, the delicate muscles of her calves flexing. Cupping my father’s face tenderly between her hands, she called to him. “James? James, come back to me.”
“Oh.” My father blinked, smiled lopsidedly, and then his ears turned red. “Was I gone very long?”
“You tell me,” she replied teasingly, turning her cheek left then right. “Have I grown old, wrinkly, and gray?”
“No. You don’t look at all like a baby aardvark,” he told her.
My mother made a motion like wiping the sweat from her brow. “That is a relief. What is it that I am, then?”
“You’re a dove.”
“Mm, and you, my fearless eagle?”
“I think it might be better if I were a dipper or a shrike. More compatible with the docile dove.”
“Good point. Or we could both be doves, how about that?”
“That would be best.” He smiled and leaned in for a quick but tender kiss. Pulling back, I watched his brows meet as he tasted his tongue. “Marie, did you forget to brush your teeth this morning? Your breath smells of onion.”
I was just thinking how artfully my father was handling this conversation when he spoke those last couple sentences.
“Perceptive as always, darling,” she said. “It was an onion bagel. Actually we both had one, if I remember. Is it possible what you’re tasting is your breakfast?”
I stood a ways away, giving my parents some privacy, staring at the funnels, pipettes, and graduated cylinders strewn about. I bent over a lit microscope, adjusting the knob until the slide came into focus. Expecting something fungal, I was surprised to find something pretty, though I hadn’t a clue what it was. I could only describe it as: a misshapen square pointed at both ends, lavender in color, with a burgundy three and E facing one another. A flower, perhaps?
As if hearing my question, “Monocot and dicot flower bud. Lovely, don’t you think?”
“Very,” I agreed. “Is it something you’re growing or something you’re studying?” I asked, rising up and turning to face her.
My mother was pulling a piece of licorice apart. I looked at her hands, then her eyes, and smiled. She offered me one of a dozen Red Vines spilling from the zippered pouch buckled around her waist.
“No, thank you.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “I still cannot understand how don’t enjoy these. Not even a little, hm? You know this”—she wagged the flaccid red rope at me—“is your fault,” she accused. “I had no taste for licorice until I became pregnant with you. Then we had to start buying them in bulk because you wouldn’t allow me to sleep at night if I didn’t consume at least one package before bed. And they’re horrible,” she declared, her eyes closed in delicious savor. “Oh, well. There are worse vices, yes?”
“Definitely.”
My mother sighed and came toward me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Oh, Fost . . . I’ve had the loveliest dreams about licorice,” she said languorously. “There is one where I’ve discovered how to make it grow on trees. And when someone says, ‘Marie, you have to slow down. Licorice doesn’t grow on trees, you know?’ Then I say back ‘Yes it does! See?’” She tipped her head back and laughed. “The best one, really though, is where I’m buried to my neck, covered head to toe in shiny, sticky, red, delicious licorice; and to live I must eat my way free.” From under my chin she peered up at me, a conspiratorial look on her face. “Let’s keep this between you and me. Your father has been telling me for years that I have an addiction, and I rea
lly don’t enjoy arguing with him when he’s right about something.”
I laughed. “Mum’s the word.”
Suddenly her eyes pricked with tears, a common occurrence when she was happy. “Ah, I just love having a daughter. Someone to be in cahoots with. Oh!” Suddenly she let go of me and walked over to a giant pot. “Speaking of Mums, I have something for you. But first I want you to take a look at my King palm. Isn’t he gorgeous?” she said, running her hand along the thin, smooth trunk. “Came all the way from Madagascar. He was a little worse for wear when the deliveryman dropped him off, but I think he’s doing better now. Yes,” she added, speaking to the tree, “you will be big and strong in no time.”
“How much bigger will he get?”
“Well, the palm man I spoke to guaranteed over forty feet, but after taking a closer look at his roots, I suspect he’ll surpass sixty, easily.”
“In the pot?” I asked, dubiously.
My mother turned to me then, confused. “The pot? Oh!” She laughed. “No, of course not. I’ll replant him long before he reaches maturity. But first I have a few tests I want to run.” She returned her attention to the tree, fingering the leaves. “You see, originally I wanted a Talipot palm, but they’re native to India and do best in tropical environments, so that would have required some heavy babysitting, and the thing is . . .”
On my mother’s face was a look I knew extremely well, meaning one of two things; in this case I was certain it meant determination.
A smirk lit her mouth and alighted her eyes. “I am eighty-eight percent certain I can get him to bear passion fruit.”
I deduced this wasn’t something King palms normally did.
“It’s going to be tough—definitely a challenge,” she continued, placing her hands on her hips. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Yes, but I suppose that’s a good thing. It’s usually when I learn the most. And the fruit . . . Oh, Fost, I can’t wait to give you your very first native passion fruit. It might even be better than licorice.” Her eyes went wide with the possibility of such an idea, then she pursed her lips. “Well, that might be stretching things a bit, but I assure you there is nothing like it.”
Awakening Foster Kelly Page 7