I shared Professor Lutz’s understated admiration of everything about insects. “In man,” he states, “the blood is sent to the lungs for a load of oxygen, which it then carries to the tissues. Insects do things more directly: air is conducted to all parts of the body by means of a system of tubes called trachea.” In other words, insects don’t breathe through their mouths or noses. They can breathe all over their bodies. Brilliant. Lutz also reminded me that “There is no brain, strictly speaking.” Although he did not state it outright, I again perceived a kind of aloof admiration for the design of bugs, the implication being that they “think” with their entire being. If our brain is severely damaged, our nonfunctioning brain might destroy the rest of the body and we would die. An insect could be damaged in any number of ways and still the body control/thinking process could continue.
It’s not that I truly wanted to wake up one morning like Gregor in Franz Kafka’s famous “Metamorphosis” story. I was stuck with being human and would make the most of it.
I had heard my mother heading to her bedroom and then the door opening. After about twenty minutes of further reading, I went to check up on her to make sure she was okay. She was in bed, asleep, snoring loudly. (My parents had argued about this. My dad claimed she snored. She said he was lying. He wondered why anyone would lie about snoring. She said he could not possibly be telling the truth. “Women don’t snore,” she had said, a perfectly illogical thing for a woman of science to say, but then there were many things about both my scientific parents that made no sense to me.)
A drawer in the night table by her bed was open, and inside was a small hinged photo display. Feeling a bit guilty, I opened it to discover it contained two pictures of me. I appeared to be about eight years old in both. In the one I recognized my old favourite T-shirt, the one with the enlarged image of the head of a praying mantis. I had a kind of smirk on my face that told the camera I did not really want my picture taken. But I was undeniably cute nonetheless. The other picture of me was less familiar. It appeared to have been manipulated in some way, photoshopped as they used to say, so that my hair was longer, dangling down in front of my eyes, and I was wearing a South Park cartoon T-shirt — big oval face with wide eyes. I’d seen the old South Park cartoons on the comedy channel but was never a fan of that style of raw humour. In the background of the photo was another odd thing — the castle that I had once visited, the one that sat high above Loch Ness.
I couldn’t imagine why my mother would have had a photo of me altered to look like this, and why it was placed here in the drawer of her night table paired with the other photo. It was as if one was me; one was not me. There was a bottle of pills on the dresser. I pocketed them and would put them on the kitchen table in the morning. I still worried about my mom. Something wasn’t quite right.
She snored loudly as I pulled the covers up around her neck. She started to say something in her sleep. I couldn’t make out the words but it sounded like she was talking to a child. She was dreaming. The words were slurred from both wine and pills but the tone was obvious. At first she was saying something comforting. I recognized that tone from when I was little. She had a way of making me feel that I was safe, that everything was going to be okay, even when I thought everyone in the world was against me. But then her expression changed and she started to sound afraid. In her dream, something had gone wrong. Something terrible was happening. She was no longer talking to the eight-year-old me in the dream. “No,” she said, suddenly very distinctly. “You’re wrong. You’re lying. It can’t be.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Despite my worries about my mother, I went to bed and fell into a deep dream. In my dream, I was swimming in Loch Ness again. The water was inky dark and cold but cold in a good way. It was night and the moon was out. I could see the hills and the silhouette of the castle above the loch. At first I thought it was me swimming and I could sense that below me somewhere was the Loch Ness monster. Not really a monster, though, just a lonely, amazingly sad, ancient creature left over from a time long ago. Then the shift occurred again and I realized, as before, that I was the Loch Ness monster. It was one of those instant dream transformations that make reasonable sense at the time. My body was immense but I felt graceful gliding through the dark water. Even more amazing was the fact that I suddenly realized I was not alone. Alongside of me was another creature, my mate or my twin.
And then all at once the loneliness, the isolation of centuries, dissipated. A feeling of completion and warmth flooded my being. It was as if for the first time in my life, I knew that I was not a tragic isolated quirk of nature, a true freak. I had a companion who was like me.
To the east, I saw the sky beginning to lighten. The sun scattered light over the Scottish hills, while in the west the moon still shone brightly, casting silver daggers and swords of light on the water’s surface. I watched as my companion dipped headlong into the water and dove deep. I followed and felt the powerful compression of water all around me, familiar and vital, as I went deeper and deeper into the loch.
In the morning I was surprised to discover Robyn banging on my door. “I asked around and found out where you live. I decided to give you a lift to school. My mother gave me the skid for the day. So you want a ride or what?”
I guess I was still coming up from the depths of the loch. I must have looked at her kind of oddly as I shielded my eyes against the sunlight.
“It’s not like I’m stalking you or anything.”
“Oh,” I said, groggily. “It would be okay if you were. I’ve never been stalked by a girl before.”
She smiled. When Robyn smiled, her whole face, her entire being, changed. The world changed along with her. The sun became even brighter and the birds started singing. I saw a blue jay and I swear he winked at me. When a dark, beautiful, cynical girl smiles, she has no idea how powerful the effect can be.
“So are you ready to go or what?”
I was still in my pyjamas — the ones with images of flying insects all over them: mosquitoes, flies, lady-bugs, and dragonflies. “I need a few minutes. You want some breakfast?”
“Toast,” she said. “I’d eat a piece of toast as long as it’s not white bread.”
“Whole wheat, stone ground. Is that okay?” “My favourite kind of grinding. And coffee. I need coffee in the morning. You have coffee?”
“We do coffee too.”
My mom walked up behind me. She brushed her hair out of her eyes. I noticed the darkness under the skin. She yawned once, pulled her housecoat a little tighter around her, and then smiled at Robyn.
“This is Robyn,” I said. “That’s my mom.” Robyn nodded. My mother studied her. She was evaluating her, judging her, but she remained polite.
“Robyn’s gonna give me a lift to school. I’m gonna make her some toast and coffee first.”
“I’ll do that,” my mom said. “You go get dressed.”
When I came back down, they were discussing — well, arguing about — genetically modified foods. This public debate had been going on ever since I’d been born or before. My mom was solidly in favour of GM foods. I’d heard all of her arguments and they made sense. I could have guessed that Robyn would be on the other side of the fence.
“So we’ll agree to disagree,” I heard my mom say when I walked into the room. The debate had probably started with the toast. Was the wheat GM or not GM, Robyn would have asked, and it went from there. My mother changed the subject. “So you drive?”
“Got my licence when I turned seventeen.”
I didn’t know she was seventeen. Not that it much mattered.
It was my turn to change the subject. I didn’t want this to become an interrogation. I sipped my coffee. “Mom, I went to tuck you in last night&hellips;”
“Sorry about that, Dylan. Your mother has had a bit of a rough spell here.” She looked embarrassed.
“No, it’s not that. But I found these two pictures of me by your bed. One I recognized but the other one &hellips; som
eone had digitally altered it or something. What was that all about?”
She didn’t seem to know what to say. There was an awkward pause and then she said, “Oh, that. Your father’s idea of a joke. He and I had differing opinions about whether you should keep your hair short or let it grow. So that was what you would have looked like if you had had long hair. He put you in Scotland as a reminder of the old days when he and I were working there — before you came along.”
I was hoping Robyn wasn’t going to ask but she did. “What kind of work were you doing?”
My mother looked at her fingernails. “Research.”
“In what?” Robyn asked, probably just trying to be polite.
“Genetic engineering,” my mom answered. “That was how I met Dylan’s father.”
Robyn studied her toast. “Oh.”
I didn’t really understand what my father did at his company and I knew very little about my mother’s research before she quit working. I knew she was highly regarded. I even remembered her telling me a bit about genetics — at least as it related to bugs. She’d been able to explain to me all about Gregor Mendel’s experiments and what they meant when I was still quite young. I was kind of shocked to learn that other kids’ mothers didn’t fill them in about genetics at that age.
More interesting to me than Mendel, however, was hearing the story of one of my early heroes, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and his research, using fruit flies, into the relationship between chromosomes and heredity. I remember giving an oral report on the subject in school when I was ten, and the teacher wrote on her evaluation, “Dylan showed much enthusiasm for his subject.” My talk began something like this: “Chromosomes are really cool.”
“So where do you live, Robyn?”
“Emerson,” she said.
“And you go to Brevard High?”
“I transferred here.”
“She was picked on,” I said. “It was in her best interest.”
My mother was about to ask for the story and I didn’t want to go there. “We gotta leave now or we’ll be late.”
“Sure,” my mom said, letting us both off the hook.
I couldn’t believe Robyn’s skid. A two-door electric with retractable roof and full-solar hood. She started it up and it made no sound at all, much quieter than my dad’s dual-fuel Honda, which was an older combo — diesel-electric — and a real guzzler.
“She’s hiding something,” Robyn said.
“No, she was just trying to avoid talking to you about GM food and a few other things that she figured you’d be offended by.”
“No, it’s not that. I watched her face. Women can tell when other women are lying.”
“Lying? You’re talking about my mother.”
“You think parents don’t lie?”
I didn’t want to hear Robyn trash my mother. I didn’t know why she was doing this but I figured I’d let it go. “Let’s just change the subject, okay?”
“Sure. Did you see that conceited jerk on the news who claimed there is no Loch Ness monster?” Robyn asked. She knew of my interest in Nessie.
“Yeah. What a party-pooper.”
“Do you think he’s right?”
“I know he’s not right. I swam in Loch Ness. I could feel the presence of something there. I know.”
“You swam in Loch Ness?”
“My parents took me to Scotland a few years back. I loved it.”
“Weren’t you afraid?” “Trust me, the Loch Ness monster is a vegetarian. Maybe he eats fish sometimes but not meat.”
She stopped for a light and stretched her arms up through the open roof. She smiled and transformed the world once again into a wonderful place to be alive. “That’s really cool that he’s a vegetarian. I’d like to meet him sometime. Would you introduce me?”
“Sure,” I said. “On our way to Tibet. We’ll fly to Glasgow and I’ll take you there. Just don’t try to explain to my friend that most people don’t believe he exists.”
“If you believe he’s real, then I believe he’s real,” she said.
“Oh, he’s real all right.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
That day I again watched Robyn weather the harassment from kids at school. “The trick,” she said, “is to just not let them get to you. If you don’t react, if you don’t get angry, they have no power over you.”
The girls were much harder on her than the guys. Miles may have gotten the ball rolling, but Robyn didn’t react, and as she’d predicted he moved on to pick on some other poor soul. Miles didn’t care who his victim was as long as he had a victim that he could make squirm. Robyn wasn’t a squirmer. I was going to let her teach me some good life skills. It was quite an education.
At lunch, we sat outside on the grass and she told me to sit very still and look into her eyes. I followed her instructions. Her eyes were dark, like deep, deep pools of liquid. Caroline and her friend Clare stood not far away staring at us. I could hear Caroline ask, “What are they doing?” Clare answered, “I think it’s some kind of weird mind control. Maybe it’s voodoo.”
Maybe it was voodoo. As I continued to look into Robyn’s eyes, I felt myself drifting out of my body. I started to say something but she shushed me. “Just be quiet. Do you trust me?”
I nodded yes.
Then she leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. I was already flying through some alternate plane of existence. The kiss reconnected me to my body and my body was hurled up into this exotic other place. Next I felt her kiss my lips. Her tongue slid into my mouth and it was warm and wonderful.
Caroline said, loud enough so that anyone could hear her, “Oh God, that’s disgusting.”
It was anything but. Robyn knew how to kiss. When she stopped I was out of breath and still floating.
“Do it again,” I said.
She put up her hand and smiled, looked almost embarrassed, almost shy. “I just wanted to see if you were willing to trust me or if you’d be freaked.”
“I trust you. Totally. Do it again.”
“Not now.”
“Where did we just go?”
“We didn’t go anywhere. We were right here.”
“No, I felt like we were somewhere else.”
“I surrounded you with my energy field.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or take her seriously. “Surround me again.”
“I can’t. Not here. Not now. I need to recharge my batteries.”
“Like your skid, right? You have your own personal solar panels, I bet.”
“We’re all solar cells. You soak up the energy and then it’s up to you whether you put it to good use or just piss it away. Most people just piss it away.”
I kind of wish she’d stopped right there but she hadn’t. “I hate to bring this up but there’s something about your mom that isn’t right.”
“She’s just a little paranoid. She probably thinks you’re going to corrupt me, being older and all that.”
“I know she doesn’t trust me. I’m used to people judging me by the way I look or what they think I am but this is something different. She’s carrying around a lot of pain and with it some kind of secret, I think.”
“We all have secrets. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is the secret has something to do with you. I saw it in her face when you were asking her a question.”
Now, this lovely, strange girl was making me mad. What right did she have to go analyzing my mother and making accusations? “Look, my mom is going through this rough thing. I think it has to do with menopause or maybe depression but it doesn’t have to do with me. She probably just worries about me, that’s all.”
“She’s trying to protect you from something.”
“Sure, why not? I’m old enough to take care of myself but she still thinks I’m a little kid. Both my parents were overly protective of me. It’s hard for her to let it go.”
Robyn knew when to stop. “Sorry. I was just telling you what I felt. I was being unfair.”
“Time for class,” I said.
I don’t know exactly what triggered the sudden daydream but it was so entirely weird. It might have been something to do with the news story and the vid images of the loch, of Scotland. It had something to do with my dream, something to do with that photo my mom had. And Robyn. Robyn had said my mother was lying about something. She said it as if it were unquestionable, as if it were a fact.
I was sitting in math class. Mr. Kempton was on a roll. He sat at his projection console and worked through this enormous equation that was displayed on the big screen at the front of the room. Mr. PowerPoint. He had a flair for making the dullest math subject come alive with colour, motion, and video clips that popped in and out and actually helped to illuminate the subject. He had always gone the extra distance to try to make teaching fun. So it was weird that this was the time I was drifting. When I drifted, I always stared at the upper-right-hand corner of the room. I guess I didn’t even realize it was happening at first.
I was eight years old. We were driving through some mountains in Scotland. Outside it looked &hellips; well, prehistoric. Stark, treeless hills above the valley floor. I was in the backseat of a very small car, an old car. Real old, like something I’d seen in those old Mr. Bean TV shows. In the front seat sat a man and woman — quite young. At first, I don’t think I understood that they were my parents, but a young version of my parents. I was studying a fly crawling on the backseat window. There was music playing — a radio, I guess, because the music was interrupted by a fast-talking Englishman. He talked so rapidly and with such a strong accent that I could hardly make out what he said. But I did catch the phrase “Spice Girls” and wondered what that meant. I wondered who they were, these girls made out of spices. Then more music. A fast beat. I must have liked it. The two adults in the front seat must have liked it. The man, the young version of my father, was tapping his hand to it on the steering wheel.
Deconstructing Dylan Page 5