“I don’t care,” Travers said. “You don’t know this place.”
“Neither do you.” Kyle grabbed a sausage, and broke it into little pieces with his fingers. He set the pieces on the floor, and Bartholomew Fang vacuumed them up so quickly that Travers wondered if the dog got some of the rug as well.
“Just promise me,” Travers said. “Promise me you’ll let me know where you are at all times.”
Kyle sighed. “I didn’t think you’d be so mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Travers said. “I’m just….”
How to explain to his son how unnerved he was? How off balance? He hoped he wasn’t broadcasting, as they called it, because he didn’t want Kyle to sense the anxiety as well. Travers had worked really hard to be solid for Kyle, and now Travers wasn’t even sure who he was, let alone what would happen next.
“Scared?” Kyle whispered. He didn’t look up.
Travers wondered if Kyle could sense anything, and he toyed with lying.
“Am I scared?” Travers repeated while he thought about how to field that question.
Kyle nodded, still watching Fang snuffle at the carpet, searching for more sausage.
“I guess maybe I am,” Travers said, deciding on truth as the best strategy. “I don’t know what’s ahead.”
“Lots of lights,” Kyle said.
“Hmm?” Travers didn’t understand. It sounded like a non sequitur, but sometimes Kyle made predictions that came true.
“You didn’t know what was ahead,” Kyle said. “But I can see it. Lots of lights. Neon lights.”
Travers gave him an indulgent smile. “We are in Las Vegas.”
Kyle shook his head. “No, Dad. The lights are swirling, and they come in very close, and I’m not sure you escape them.”
“Escape them?” Travers asked, feeling as if his son had had too many conversations with the Fates.
“And Miss Sinclair, she’s there too, along with these guys who seem really mad.” Kyle pushed his plate away, something astonishing, considering he still had some strawberries and whipped cream on it. Even Bartholomew Fang gave him a sideways look, although that might have been a request for more sausage.
Travers tried to comprehend what Kyle was telling him. In the past, Travers would have dismissed it as dream fragments, left over from Kyle’s sound sleep, and it was hard to fight those tendencies now.
Kyle must have seen the struggle on Travers’ face. Kyle put his hand on Travers’ arm and leaned toward him, looking both scared and sincere.
“Dad,” Kyle said, “if I promise to be good and do icky basketball without complaining and stuff, can we just go home? I won’t write any more comics or talk about magic any more or anything.”
Travers stared at his son. Kyle had just offered to give up two things he loved for something Travers had to force him into every year. Had the vision frightened Kyle? Or was something else going on?
“This vision thing,” Travers said—he couldn’t call it a prophecy without giving it too much weight, and he didn’t want to call it a dream without detracting from his son’s fear— “it scared you, didn’t it?”
Kyle bit his lower lip. Bartholomew Fang whined and pressed his nose against Kyle’s knee. Kyle petted him absently, but didn’t look at him.
“You like things normal, Dad.” Kyle’s soft words echoed Travers’ earlier thoughts. Travers felt uneasy about that, too. “Because of me, everything’s all screwed up.”
Travers grabbed his coffee cup as if it were a lifeline, even though he knew that the confusion he felt didn’t come from sleepiness, so caffeine wouldn’t help. “Everything?”
“We’re here because of me,” Kyle said. “I begged you to drive the Fates here. And I helped Aunt Vivian convince you to take them to L.A. in the first place.”
Bartholomew Fang whined again and shoved his nose against Kyle’s hand. Kyle ignored him.
Travers snapped his fingers, and Bartholomew Fang ran to him. Travers took a piece of sausage and gave it to the dog, who—to his surprise—ignored it.
So the dog did have some powers of his own. He sensed, in canine fashion, the tension in the room and was trying to ameliorate it.
“What are you most afraid of, Kyle?” Travers asked.
To his surprise, Kyle’s lower lip trembled, even though his teeth were trying to hold it in place. A tear ran down his cheek, and Kyle wiped at it with the back of his hand.
“Ky?” Travers kept his voice soft.
“Did…” Kyle swallowed visibly and had to start again. “Did Mom run away because of the magic?”
Kid psychology, and reinventing the past. Kyle must have thought that Travers was denying his magic for a reason, not because he truly hadn’t figured it out.
“Did she leave me because I’m magic?” Travers often started by repeating the question with slightly different wording just to make sure he understood. “I—”
“No,” Kyle whispered. “Did she leave because of me?”
Travers felt his breath leave his body as forcefully as if he had fallen from a great height. Kyle had never asked a question like that before, he had never once asked if it was his fault that Cheryl left, even though Travers’ sister Megan, the child psychologist, often asked if Kyle worried about that.
Kyle must have worried about it and not said a single thing. How much else had that kid bottled up inside?
“Your mom and I,” Travers said slowly, uncertain if he’d ever talked to Kyle about his mother in quite this way, “we got married when we were seven years older than you.”
Another tear hung on Kyle’s lower eyelashes but didn’t fall. Travers found himself staring at it.
“I know that seems old to you, but it’s not. Not really.” Travers sighed. He didn’t entirely understand what happened, either. He knew what broke up the marriage. He just didn’t know why Cheryl had abandoned her son. It was inconceivable to Travers that anyone would ignore this child, let alone never see him again.
Kyle was staring at him as if trying to memorize every single word.
“When you get married,” Travers said, “you declare that you’re grown up. My parents made it pretty clear that I’d be on my own if I married your mother, and she didn’t have any parents, just a grandmother whom she really didn’t like. So we were on our own. And it was hard. All we had was a high school education. We couldn’t get good jobs and we couldn’t rent a nice place, like they have in the commercials.”
That last was bitter, and Travers heard it. He had worked all of Kyle’s life to keep the bitterness out of his conversations about Cheryl. He wasn’t about to let the bitterness creep in now.
“She was happy when she got pregnant,” Travers said. “It was just like in the fairy tales, you know? Babies are part of happily ever after.”
Kyle blinked and the tear fell. This time, Travers caught it with his forefinger, and then he caressed his son’s cheek.
“I was the one who was worried,” Travers said. “I worried about money and finding a safe neighborhood for you to grow up in and being the best dad in the world, and maybe in all that worrying, I scared your mom. I don’t know.”
Kyle’s lips had thinned. He looked like he was stretched so tight he would shatter.
Still, Travers knew he had to continue. This was important, maybe the most important conversation they’d had.
“All I know,” Travers said, “is that the day you were born, it was like your mom and I switched attitudes. I was thrilled. I’d never seen anyone like you before and I thought you were just the best thing that had ever happened to me.”
“And Mom thought I was the worst?” Kyle’s voice shook.
Travers’ breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t meant that, but he understood how his son could hear it that way. That’s what made this conversation so very difficult.
“No,” Travers said. “Your mom realized that fairy tales weren’t true. Babies, particularly newborn babies, are a lot of work. They can’t do anything for th
emselves. They can’t talk, they can’t tell you what bothers them, all they can do is cry, and eat, and poop. Some newborns can’t even really smile, but you could. You had the best smile I’d ever seen.”
Travers had told him that before and it always made Kyle grin. Except this time. This time, Kyle couldn’t be easily calmed. “So she left because she didn’t like taking care of me.”
Travers was being very careful to control his thoughts—he wasn’t even going to think the adult answer if he could avoid it.
“I don’t know why she left,” he said, “but here’s my guess.”
Kyle sat very attentively. Even Bartholomew Fang watched Travers as if the world hung on his answer.
“I think being a grown-up was too much for her,” Travers said. “Me, the lack of money, the fact it was so different from the way it looks in the movies—I think she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“But she left after I was born,” Kyle whispered. “It had to be my fault.”
Travers shook his head. “It was probably mine. I expected her to be someone she wasn’t. I expected her to be the fairy tale wife and mom, and she was just a young girl pretending to be a woman.”
He could tell from the slight frown on Kyle’s face that the explanation was too adult for his son.
“Some people,” Travers said, trying again, “are really good at taking care of other people, whether they’re married to them or friends with them or related to them.”
“Like you and Aunt Viv,” Kyle said.
“Yes,” Travers said. “But some people need to be taken care of themselves, even though they’re grown-ups.”
“Like the Fates,” Kyle said.
“Kinda,” Travers said. “Only worse. The Fates are trying to take care of themselves. They’re just not doing a good job of it at the moment. They’ve done a good job in the past.”
“But they don’t understand this world,” Kyle said.
“And your mom didn’t understand the grown-up world of marriage and children. She ran away from responsibility, Kyle, not from you.”
“But I was her responsibility,” Kyle said.
Travers nodded. He had hoped his son would miss that part, but Kyle proved too intelligent once again.
“You were,” Travers said. “But she didn’t stay long enough to get to know you. She didn’t even try, Kyle. It was just like if the Fates ran away the first time they realized their magic didn’t work here. They would never have gotten to see this world; they just would have run away from the first thing that scared them.”
Kyle bit his lower lip again. He was still disturbed. It was obvious from his downcast expression and his unwillingness to ask the question that was on his mind.
“Kyle,” Travers said, taking his son’s hand and holding it tightly. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you were a baby or a puppy. She wasn’t running away from you. She was running away from me and the failure of our dreams. That’s why she hasn’t been back.”
“Huh?” Kyle asked. He didn’t seem to understand this part.
“If she saw you as a real person, if she knew what she had actually left behind, then she might feel some regret. She might have to change her behavior.” Travers gave his son a rueful smile. “I don’t think she’s willing to do that, even now.”
“She doesn’t sound very nice,” Kyle said, and there was anger in his voice. “How come you married somebody who wasn’t very nice?”
Travers resisted the urge to contradict Kyle, and reassure him that she was nice.
“I was eighteen when I fell in love with her,” Travers said. “I didn’t see her any more clearly than she saw me. I don’t think we fell in love with people. I think we fell in love with what we made up. And when that turned out to be wrong, she ran away, and I—”
He took a deep breath, and studied his son. This part, Travers had never admitted to Kyle.
“—I let her.”
“You could’ve gone to find her?” Kyle asked, and there was hope in his voice. He probably wanted Travers to do that even now.
“I could have,” Travers said. “I don’t know what good it would have done. Maybe not any. But I didn’t.”
“How come?” Kyle asked.
“Because,” Travers said softly, “if she couldn’t stay when she had something as perfect as you in her life, nothing I had to say would make any difference. She would never see the good things. She would spend her life thinking other people had them, and never realize how wonderful the stuff in her life really was.”
There it was, part of the adult theory. But Kyle seemed to understand it.
“You think there was something wrong with her?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah,” Travers said, wishing he had thought of putting it that simply. “Yeah, I do.”
“Oh,” Kyle said, and leaned back in his chair. He stared at his half-finished breakfast. “So you thinking you didn’t have magic, that had nothing to do with Mom?”
It took Travers a moment to understand the logic of the question. Kyle had brought all of this up because he believed that Travers had been pretending not to have magic with the thought that magic had driven Cheryl away. So in accepting magic, Travers would have been guaranteeing that Cheryl never came back.
“It had nothing to do with your mom,” Travers said. “Just my own blind stupidity.”
“You’re not stupid, Dad,” Kyle said.
“Thanks,” Travers said.
Kyle nodded. He slid his plate back, grabbed his fork, and scooped up a large bite of whipped cream and strawberries.
But before he stuffed it in his mouth, he looked at Travers. “Dad, I’m really glad you stayed.”
Travers ruffled his son’s hair. “Best decision I ever made, Kyle.”
Kyle grinned, then set about finishing his breakfast. Travers watched him, feeling even more disconcerted than he had all night. Kyle was feeling the changes too, just not in the same way. And the stresses on Travers would influence his son as well.
Travers just didn’t know how to prevent it.
Seventeen
Zoe felt like she was a general in charge of too many troops. At ten a.m., she went to the hotel to find the Fates still lounging over breakfast and no sign whatsoever of Travers and Kyle. Zoe wasn’t sure who to be more irritated at: the Fates, who seemed to think that there was no such thing as time and a schedule; or Travers, who knew there was, but apparently ignored it.
She packed the Fates off to their separate rooms for showers, and was about to pick up the phone to summon Travers and Kyle, when a knock came at the door.
Since the Fates were singing the same song in three different showers (which would have been creepy even if the song hadn’t been “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” [which the Fates mispronounced, in three-part harmony worthy of the Andrews Sisters, as “Boegie-Woegie Bugle Boy”]), Zoe decided it was the better part of valor to answer the door herself, rather than interrupt one of the three chanteuses.
Zoe pulled the door open to find Kyle and Travers standing before her. Kyle looked subdued; his glasses had slid to the end of his nose and were smudged, his hair was badly combed, and he sniffled. Zoe wanted to smooth his hair and ask him what was wrong, but she felt that would be inappropriate, at least in front of his father.
Travers looked even better than he had the day before. His light blue polo shirt and dark jeans emphasized his lean, elegant body, and made his blond hair seem even lighter. The clothes also accented the blue of his eyes. He smiled at her as if nothing was wrong.
“You don’t look like a Fate,” he said.
“That’s because I’m not one, thank heavens,” Zoe said, and stood aside.
The first one across the threshold wasn’t Kyle or Travers, but Bartholomew, whom she hadn’t even noticed. The little round dog waddled past her as if he were king and she was his servant.
“He seems to be doing pretty well,” Zoe said.
“Considering how much he’s eaten, it’s amazing he can walk,”
Travers said. “What are familiars supposed to do? Eat all the calories in the room so the mage doesn’t have to?”
“Only some familiars,” Zoe. “And only if they’re named Bartholomew.”
“He’s still hoping for ‘Fang.’” Kyle’s voice was a bit watery, too, as if he had been holding back tears.
Zoe closed the door. The singing continued as if it were in surround sound, and Travers looked from one closed door to the next.
“They’re not in the same shower, are they?” he asked.
Zoe shook her head.
“They decided on the song and the misinterpretation of the lyrics before they went in, right?”
Zoe shook her head again.
Travers sighed. “Some things I’m never going to get used to.”
He stepped farther into the main room, and stopped. He was clearly as appalled as Zoe had been when she first walked in.
The living room was a disaster. Zoe hadn’t even tried to clean it up. It looked like the Fates had hosted a group of visiting thirteen-year-old girls. Pillows rested on the floor, along with a pile of blankets. Empty A&W Root Beer cans leaned against Hires Root Beer cans which leaned against one or two regular beer cans, all apparently empty. A box of chocolates, with all but the center two pieces picked out, lay open on the coffee table, and pizza crusts littered the floor near the couch. The television had been turned so that whoever leaned against the pillows could see it, and a bunch of DVDs were stacked next to the DVD player.
Travers walked over to the DVDs and picked one up. “The first season of CSI?” he said with a frown. “Who are they kidding?”
Kyle joined him.
“Look,” Kyle said, crouching next to the stack and pulling some videotapes from behind it. “A whole set of City Confidential, and American Justice.”
“What are they looking for?” Travers asked.
“I’m not sure we need to know,” Zoe said.
He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. His eyes were electric, and they sent a charge through her every time they met hers. She felt her heart rate increase, and hoped the changes in her breathing weren’t obvious to anyone but herself.
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