Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Florida regards the young girl. Bobby had wanted a baby. She’d had to sneak birth control in order to keep from giving him one. She’d known, by the time the subject came up in earnest, that he wanted a child not to love but to mold in his image, to follow his orders. She’d folded as much of herself to him and his vision as she could, but he viewed the small parts she held back—her thoughts, her songs, her daily walks in the woods—as a criminal lack of commitment.

  To survive after the breakdown of society, the failure of the dollar, or some kind of meteorological apocalypse, Bobby believed that he needed disciples. Florida believed that once she birthed a kid or two, he would phase her out. Phase her out of her own family, out of his plans, and hence his life.

  Bobby had been working for an insurance company in downtown Manhattan when the Twin Towers were hit, and it changed everything for him. He’d quit his job, sold his suits, and worked as a waiter in Brooklyn, which is where Florida met him. She was a secretary at an acupuncture clinic and sang in an all-female blues band. She was drawn to Bobby because he talked about the importance of the truth; he was bright and well read, had a sexy little ass, and could explain exactly why capitalism was evil. He pointed out that the ninety-two-year-old woman in their neighborhood was being evicted from the apartment she’d lived in for fifty years, just so a new high-rise could be built and more money be made. It was the reason neither Florida nor any of her friends could afford health insurance—the industry had nothing to do with providing healthcare; it was designed to extract the maximum amount of money from each person. It was Bobby’s verbal precision—she’d known countless handsome potheads who concluded arguments with oh man, you know what I mean, right?—and his fine ass that had sealed the deal.

  They had shown up at Zuccotti Park together during the first week of Occupy and stayed in the park until Bloomberg—that tin-pot fascist—sent in the garbage trucks weeks later. Bobby was on several of the planning committees and was often sequestered in meetings. Florida cooked for the protesters and distributed blankets, toothbrushes, condoms, and tampons. She also joined one of the bands. This was her favorite part of that fall: so many good, hopeful, striving people, lifting their pure voices in song. She had always believed in the power of music, but now the proof was in front of her. People were changing, even shedding, their unhappy, enslaved lives to come to this park and sing about a better world. Their song was shaping their present, which created a full circle the likes of which Florida had rarely seen.

  The plane gives a sharp bump, and Linda’s knuckles whiten where she’s gripping the armrest.

  “I’m not ready for this,” she says.

  “This,” Florida says. She thinks: This is the subject that defines women. Having babies. Will you have them? Can you have them? Do you want to have them?

  “You’ll be fine,” Florida says, calling on her experience as a performer to shine confidence at the young girl, but her skepticism must have leaked through, because there it is, all over Linda’s face.

  September 5, 2013

  The school is only three blocks away, but Besa drives them. “Wingnuts and fools are going to follow you around and say things to you.” She addresses the rearview mirror. “They’ll forget and leave you alone by Christmas, though, so please know that it’s temporary. Reporters have the attention span of a fruit fly. The religiosos will be the worst; just smile politely while they tell you their fairy tales and then walk away.”

  Lacey is in the passenger seat. She looks odd to Edward, perfectly still, as if she’s been turned to stone. When John was in the bathroom that morning, she’d leaned across the kitchen table and whispered, “Should I record General Hospital, and we’ll watch it together after school?” He’d nodded, and she nodded back, her expression grave. He wonders what she’ll do all day, alone in the house without him. He thinks he can see in the set of her shoulders that she’s wondering the same thing.

  He notices Besa glance at Lacey too. Today is a big deal for them, he thinks. Them includes Lacey, Besa, Shay, and John, whom they left behind in the driveway, waving at the car as if they were embarking on a perilous journey from which they might never return.

  Edward thinks this to remind himself about normal people’s behavior and to explain the weird charge in the air. A first day of school, even though he’s never been to a proper school, feels no more broken or uncertain than any other day. His heart beats steadily in his chest; his head clicks; he breathes.

  “You used to go to church, Mamí,” Shay says.

  “Before I came to my senses. I was brainwashed in Mexico.”

  Shay fidgets under her seatbelt. She and her mother spent three days arguing over her back-to-school outfit and finally reached a questionable compromise: Besa’s choice of a pink ruffled skirt and Shay’s choice of a blue baseball T-shirt. Shay had allowed her mother to braid her hair for the occasion, though, and Edward had watched the process on the front steps that morning. Besa’s hands were deep in Shay’s hair; Shay’s head was tipped back, eyes closed, catlike in her pleasure. The mother and daughter were silent, a rarity, and peace had radiated off the scene.

  Shay says, “You’re making Edward nervous, and he shouldn’t be, because the kids at this school are idiots. They’re not worth the energy. I should know—I’ve been with them since I was five.”

  “I’m not nervous,” he says, knowing that none of them will believe him.

  “You were way better off being homeschooled,” she says. “Getting to sit around all day reading books.”

  Edward shrugs. His father had explained to him and Jordan, very early on, his objections to the school system. “It’s not awful,” Bruce had said. “It’s a mixed bag. But there are twenty-five kids in a class, at least, which means the learning is inefficient. If you’re bright, you’re slowed down by the fact that other kids can’t move at your pace. And in part because there are so many kids, they run the schools like factories, or, dare I say, jails. You’re put in lines, moved when the bells ring, allowed to run around in a high-fenced yard once a day. None of this is conducive to deep thinking or creativity. You start to go deep into a subject, and a bell rings to pull you out of it.” Bruce rubbed his head, which was what he did when he was agitated. “Does this make sense to you?” Jordan, eight, and Edward, five, shrugged. But late at night, on a day long with math sheets, and piano practice, and their own thoughts, one of them would say into the dark, “I bet school would be better than this.”

  “I want to be in Shay’s class,” Edward says. He’s wearing the gray pants and white button-down shirt that Lacey laid out for him. He didn’t recognize the clothes, but he never does. Lacey bought an entire wardrobe for him after the crash, and she dresses him differently than his mother did. He used to wear bright colors, and cargo pants, and Jordan’s hand-me-down skater T-shirts; now he wears pressed jeans, white T-shirts, and, apparently, slacks.

  Besa’s eyes are hard as they pull up in front of the school. “Pobrecito,” she says. “Don’t worry, you and Shay will be together. We already took care of that.”

  The building—which houses the town’s middle and high schools—is brick and enormous. They have pulled up by the middle school entrance; the older teenagers enter on the far side of the building and take all their classes on the top two floors. The middle school occupies the lower half of the building. Edward focuses on Shay’s blue-shirted back and on keeping his balance—he no longer needs crutches, but his legs are not yet equally strong—as he makes his way inside. His expectation of what a school looks like comes from movies, and this one looks correct. A couple of offices by the front entrance, tile walls, rectangular lockers, and rows of classroom doors. It’s very different from where Edward has spent his life learning: draped over the living room couch, reading on his bunk bed, working on math at the kitchen table while his dad cooked dinner.

  He walks careful
ly, as kids pinball, laughing and talking, down the long hallway. There are warning calls from grown-ups to slow down, be careful, wait your turn. “Children!” an adult yells. “Calm your bodies!”

  He’s not talking to me, Edward thinks.

  He feels his ears click, click, click. Then he’s in a classroom sitting next to Shay, watching a teacher write the formula for the area of a triangle on a blackboard. He already knows this; his father taught it to him years earlier. A few minutes later, he realizes that he could teach this class; the math is as simple to him as breathing. Then another row of seats, in another classroom, with a female teacher dressed in lavender, who seems to look everywhere in the room but at him. Then a clamorous cafeteria, where Shay helps him with his tray and he nibbles at meatloaf that’s the same color as his pants.

  He has the sensation of being followed by a cloud of buzzing bees. He’s bothered by the noise; it seems to descend from the ceiling and rise from the floor simultaneously.

  Shay forks a Tater Tot and says, “Pretend we’re in the Great Hall—everyone whispered about Harry on his first day there too.”

  “I haven’t done anything to whisper about,” Edward says.

  “You’ve done as much as Harry had at that point.”

  When she sees he’s still looking at her, she says, “You survived.”

  Oh, he thinks. Right.

  He’s on his way out of the cafeteria when there’s a tap on his shoulder. He looks behind him and sees a brown-skinned man with a mustache.

  “Principal Arundhi,” Shay says.

  “Good afternoon, Shay,” he says. “Edward, may I have a word with you in my office?” He looks at Shay and says, “I promise to deliver him safely to his next class. Don’t worry, young lady.”

  Edward follows the man’s back through the crowded hall, then up two sets of stairs, then down another hall. Here, the kids look swollen and distorted, and Edward realizes they’re on a high school floor. The boys’ voices are louder and deeper, and when two kids mock-tackle each other near him, Edward flinches. Students lower their voices, though, and straighten up when they notice the principal. Several say hello, then give Edward a look. Principal Arundhi turns in to a room with a mottled-glass door. When the door closes behind them, the clamor of the hallway is muffled.

  The room and windowsill are lined with plants of various sizes, and more greenery hangs from the ceiling. Some have fat leaves, others are spindly and tall; two have small pink flowers. The air smells like moist dirt. The desk, in the center of this greenhouse, looks like a mistake.

  Principal Arundhi smiles. “I like to bring nature inside. I’m a bit of a gardener.” He puts his hands together in front of him. “Now, Edward, usually when we have a new student join us, I announce it over the loudspeaker on the beginning of the first day and ask everyone to help welcome the child. I didn’t do that with you, because I thought you wouldn’t require, or desire, any additional attention. But I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to make you feel more comfortable here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Edward says, thinking: I’m not comfortable anywhere.

  There is a pause while the principal looks over Edward’s head, presumably at the orange-flowered bush on the filing cabinet. “You took a standardized test in the spring,” he says. “Your father arranged for it, I believe. Your scores were very high—high enough for you to skip a grade.”

  Edward straightens in his chair. “I don’t want to skip a grade. I’d like to stay with Shay, please.”

  “That’s what your aunt and uncle thought you’d say. And so it shall be.”

  The man is looking at him expectantly, so Edward says, “Thanks.”

  “Let me ask you a question, young man.”

  Edward braces himself, knowing it will be about the crash.

  “How do you feel about flora?”

  It takes a second for Edward to understand what the man has asked him. “You mean plants?”

  The principal nods. “The foundation of our ecosystem.”

  In truth, Edward’s never thought about plants before. His mother had a spider plant in the kitchen, but it had always appeared to him to be part of the furniture.

  “Each year I ask a few students to help me with the care of these beauties.” The man gestures around the room. “Perhaps you can be my first volunteer?”

  “Okay,” Edward says, because it seems to be the only possible answer.

  “I’ll let you know when your services are required. You can go now. But if you run into any problems during your schooldays, Edward, please know that I am here.”

  * * *

  —

  Lacey and Besa are waiting together in the car at pickup. They’re first in line, parked right in front of the school doors, which is fortunate because the parking lot is jammed with cars and people. Besa sizes him up.

  “They left you alone today, huh?”

  He nods as he climbs into the back seat.

  She waves her hand at the crowded parking lot. “You see how bored the lunatics in this town have been, that they’re treating this like some kind of UFO sighting?”

  She’s not wrong. The entire town seems to be present, and every eye in the parking lot is on their car. This must be the most highly attended pickup in the school’s history. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles have appeared. Relatives have traveled from out of town to collect their great-grandnephew on the first day of school. There are teenagers who have rounded the building or crushed their way through the middle school doors in order to collect younger siblings they generally have no time for. The crowd pretends not to stare but does so very badly. A couple brazenly gape. There are myriad cellphones pointed in Edward’s direction. One young man is perched on a tree branch with an old-fashioned camera. There are whispers. There he is. That’s the boy. It’s him.

  Edward notes the cellphones and cameras and remembers his total of Google hits. He thinks, One hundred and twenty thousand and one. One hundred and twenty thousand and two. Three, four. Seven. Twenty-two. He can imagine a photo of himself in these stiff clothes, looking skinny and drawn. New versions of this image proliferate. He imagines them being uploaded to Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter.

  “Don’t they have anything better to do?” Lacey says.

  “Fools,” Besa says. Because of the traffic, the car can only inch forward. A woman who looks like a kindly grandmother holds her cellphone out and clicks it right next to Edward’s window. She offers him an apologetic smile.

  Besa leans on the car horn, and the lady startles.

  “That’s my dentist over there,” Lacey says. “I know for a fact that he doesn’t have any kids.”

  Edward wants to say something, to let them know that he’s all right, because he understands they’re upset on his behalf. But this day seems to have completely drained his battery, and his jaw won’t work.

  “Hey,” Shay says, as they finally burst free of the school grounds. “What about me? Isn’t anyone going to ask about my first day of seventh grade?”

  The tension cracks, and the three females in the car laugh. Lacey has to wipe her eyes, she’s so undone. They laugh even harder when they pass a line of nuns, a block from the school. The row of black habits nods in the direction of the car.

  * * *

  —

  At dinner, Lacey says, “A moving truck will be arriving next Wednesday.”

  John and Edward look at her. Dinner is lasagna and salad. Edward has gained back six of the eight lost pounds and has slowly started to eat normal meals. He experiences actual hunger sometimes and is always surprised by the gnawing sensation in his belly. He knows his aunt’s cooking is organized around putting as many calories as possible into each of his bites. One morning at breakfast, John complained that the milk tasted funny, and she confessed that she’d added some ground cashews t
o bulk it up a little. John had looked at her like she’d lost her mind, and Edward giggled, his second-ever laugh in his new body.

  “You’re…we’re moving?” Edward is unable to keep a note of horror from his voice.

  “Oh no, I’m sorry,” Lacey says quickly. “I should have phrased that differently.”

  “We’re not moving.” John puts a hand on Edward’s shoulder.

  “The boxes from the storage unit we rented in Omaha—that’s where the movers stored your family’s things while we figured out what to do with them—are being delivered here. The big items, like the furniture, are being sold, but the personal items are coming here Wednesday.”

  “Where are you planning to put them?” John says. “The basement would work, I guess. I just need to move some stuff around down there.”

  “I was thinking of putting them upstairs, in Edward’s room.” Lacey looks at her nephew. “If that’s okay with you? It’s so dark in the basement, and I think it’s going to take some time to go through and organize.”

  Edward is confused for a moment, before making sense of the request. He’s never slept in the nursery, and never will, but his aunt seems to need to believe that it belongs to him. He says, “Sure. That’s fine.”

  “Maybe you’ll want to go through the boxes with me,” Lacey says. “Your personal things will be among them, of course.”

  “Maybe,” Edward says. He thinks of the boxes, sitting on a truck right now, driving through the Midwest in the late afternoon. Driving in the wrong direction. The boxes were supposed to move in a straight line from New York City to Los Angeles. Instead, they made it halfway, stalled for three months, and are now headed back. Edward pictures the outside of the cardboard cubes, not the contents. He remembers them in neat piles in his New York apartment’s living room, ready to be picked up. His mother had spent weeks meticulously packing and yelled at whichever boy she caught digging through a box in search of a particular shirt or book.