Assuming Mr. M. had been right about practice building up our mental muscles, Ingrid and Colton were going to need some place bigger than the office to build up their flying muscles. So would the rest of us, as soon as they spilled the beans about the mathematics involved – which had better be ASAP. I was not going to be rude or pushy about that. They could finish off the tray of doughnuts first. Then, though, I badly wanted some quality time with Ingrid and a whiteboard. So, to judge from his expression, did Ben.
Colton used up most of our supply of paper towels getting the sugar off his fingers and the chocolate off his face. Ingrid demonstrated a skill considerably more impressive than mere flying: she hogged all three raspberry jelly doughnuts and didn’t get a single spot of jelly on her white blouse. “Ah, that was wonderful,” she sighed. Slowing down enough to breathe, she started working on a glazed cinnamon spiral.
“Better than teleporting?” Not that I was envious or anything.
“Safer, anyway. Flying, you can see where you’re going.”
“And when.”
Ingrid turned slightly pink. “And when. I think we’re all aware of the importance of that part now.”
In October, an effort of Ingrid’s to push the limits of teleporting had become a demonstration of how to overdo it with star power. Aiming for her home town in West Texas, she and Colton had found themselves in Britfield, all right – the Britfield of 1957. And when they tried to teleport back to now, nothing happened. They had rather a trying time until Jimmy used his talent for research to locate them and his high-powered brain to figure out why the return didn’t work. Thanks to that, we now knew a little bit about how time travel worked, but that little was somewhat unnerving. Even Ben hadn’t pushed further research into that area.
But I was beginning to suspect that the experience had spooked Ingrid to the point she was afraid to teleport at all. There wasn’t any law that you had to teleport whenever possible; on the contrary, Dr. Verrick made it clear to us that we had better not disappear within sight of people who didn’t understand the Center’s work, or appear out of thin air in front of more such people. So our everyday life didn’t involve nearly as much teleporting as you might imagine. We walked down the stairs and to the Student Union, or wherever, to get lunch, and then we walked back. Just like normal people. About all we used teleportation for on a daily basis was to avoid the parking hassle on campus by teleporting between the private side of the office and our apartments, and lots of times we didn’t even do that – if, for instance, we expected to need a car during the day.
But Ingrid… I wasn’t sure she’d done even that short telecommute since October. And it just didn’t make sense that someone who had a way to avoid the nuisance of finding a parking space near campus would go through it every day.
We would have to talk about that, but in private, not in front of the entire staff. And any touchy-feely talking was only going to happen after she and Colton walked Ben and me through the topology of flight.
“I’m waiting. Can you do it or not?”
Impertinent moron! “Can I make a satisfactory bomb out of cigarette lighters and an empty soda can? I too am waiting. By tomorrow night I shall have acquired the materials I need.” In fact, he was buying enough for two bombs. First the Center, and then this dolt.
13. A strong desire to duck and cover
The entire Kostis clan was assembled for dinner tonight; Mom must have been on the phone all day. Representing the older generation: Mom, Dad, Uncle Stefanos, and my widowed Aunt Alesia who lives with us off and on. Representing the younger generation: my brothers Yanni and Stevie, Yanni’s wife Andrea, Cousin Elias. Representing a strong desire to duck and cover: me.
Hostilities started over the soup (avgolemono, in case you’re wondering) with Uncle Stefanos opening fire.
“So, Thalia…”
“I pronounce it Thah-lya now.”
“What, you know better than your own mother?”
“It’s the Greek pronunciation, you know.” At least I thought it might be. The relevant part to me was that it didn’t rhyme with ‘failure.’ Why my parents saddled me with a Greek name and an American pronunciation escaped me, except that it was a part of the general insanity of the family.
“Hah! What do you know? Do we ever see you in church?”
“Where,” my mother put in, “you might meet a nice Greek Orthodox boy. Now that you’ve let that Mr. Southingland get away, maybe you’ll start coming to St. Elias on Sundays, hmm?”
I jumped up to help her clear away the soup and bring in the main course. At least while I was in the kitchen nobody was yelling at me. But dishing up the food reminded Mom that I’d never learned how to cook and no wonder I couldn’t catch a man.
“Oh, leave la petite alone,” Aunt Alesia laughed her off. “Modern girls do not live in the kitchen, n’est-ce pas, chérie?” She patted my hand.
Fifteen years of widowhood have not abraded Aunt Alesia’s love for her French husband and have only increased her delusion that French is her first language. Another case of insanity in the family, but a relatively benign one. I was grateful for support, however eccentrically phrased.
Mom ignored the interruption and continued mourning for my lost chances with Ben until Dad interrupted her plaints over the pastitsio and beet salad. “Never mind about Thalia.” He pronounced it ‘Thay-lya,’ of course. “All I want to hear from her is where she’s hiding that worthless boy.”
“If you mean Andros –”
“Do you see anybody else missing? I know you put him up to this! I saw you two whispering in the corner last week! What did you do, tell him he could live with you? Well, he can’t! He may be a weakling and a fool, but he’s my son and he can damn well come back where he belongs!”
“I don’t know any more than you do.”
Dad glowered at me. “I don’t believe you.”
I couldn’t very well fish my phone out of my pocket and show him the last text I’d sent, given that it started with a promise to Andros not to tell our parents where he was. “He texted me today to say he is safe and all right. I told Mom that. And that is all I know.”
“Are you telling the truth, girl?” Thank you, Uncle Stefanos, for that vote of confidence.
“Who knows?” That was Dad again. “All she learned at that university was to disrespect her parents.”
I couldn’t see much benefit in continuing to fight. I kept my head down and worked on the pastitsio while Dad and Uncle Stefanos enlarged on my many failings, beginning with lack of respect for elders and going on to mention inability to cook, being too plain to attract a man, being too intellectual ditto, and ending with the certainty that whether or not I’d encouraged Andros to run away, the present crisis was my fault anyway for presenting him with such a terrible example.
While I was carrying their plates back to the kitchen and dishing up ice cream, they switched over to Andros. His lack of girlfriends (I’m afraid the boy is going to turn out to be a pervert), avoidance of fights and football (what a wimp) and lack of discipline (Marines? Hah!) were all dragged out and discussed. In detail. Dad only stopped briefly to complain about being fobbed off with ice cream from the grocery store instead of a real Greek dessert.
“I’ve been too worried about my little boy to cook!” Mom declared tearfully. I suppose the soup and pastitsio and beet salad had been assembled by elves.
Dad glared at me while Mom dissolved into tears. “Now see what you’ve done, upsetting your mother? Get out!”
I would have been delighted to walk out into the nearest patch of shrubbery and teleport back to Lensky’s, but of course it couldn’t be that easy. They thought somebody had to drive me home. Stevie and Cousin Elias both volunteered, and I wound up sandwiched between them in Stevie’s pickup truck while they tried to pry Andros’s location out of me. As if I knew!
For them, of course, “home” meant the apartment I still nominally shared with Ingrid. And when we got there, worse luck, there was a p
arking space right outside. Stevie turned off the ignition and announced, “I’m walking you to the door.”
“Do that!” I said. “And while you’re at it, I suppose you’d like to search the apartment, just to satisfy yourself that Andros isn’t hiding in the closet!”
“Good idea,” said Stevie, clumping up the stairs with me.
I threw the door open. “Ingrid, are you dressed? My idiot brother wants to search our place for Andros!”
There were a couple of thumps and bumps behind her closed bedroom door and then she came out, flushed and with her hair down, tying the sash on her dark blue robe.
Stevie hadn’t seen my roommate with her hair down before, or in a robe that, while technically modest, seriously emphasized her excellent figure. He turned red, stammered, and did no more than glance in her room. I was relieved not to see Jimmy in there; Ingrid might never have forgiven me that embarrassment.
He took longer than necessary to search the rest of the place, though. Considering how small it was, it shouldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to assure himself that we were not concealing a rather large teenage boy.
“Your room is a disgrace, Thalia.”
“Thah-lya,” I corrected him.
“Don’t you ever put anything up?” He skirted a pile of clean laundry and opened the closet. Then he looked under the bed.
“There is hardly room for Andros under there,” I pointed out.
“Fair enough.” Stevie scrubbed his face with the palm of his hand and ran his fingers through his hair. “You really don’t know where he is, Thalia?”
“What do you want me to do, swear on the sacred knucklebone of Saint Elias? No. I do not know where Andros is.” And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Not after hearing Dad going off on him tonight.
Finally Stevie accepted my word and clumped off to drive Cousin Elias home. Once we heard the pickup start, Ingrid sighed in relief and took off her robe. I was surprised to see that she was fully dressed beneath it. “Ah, Lia? There’s one little thing I need to explain.”
“What, you’ve got Jimmy DiGrazio hiding behind your bed? He couldn’t come out and say hello to my brother like a normal person?”
“Ah… Not Jimmy, no.” She raised her voice. “Andros? You can come out now!”
***
I didn’t really talk to Andros until the next day; it had been quite late when Ingrid revealed what she’d been concealing from me, and we were all tired and testy. Also, Lensky was expecting me. I figured the rest of the explanations could wait until Saturday. Early Saturday.
On Saturday morning, after breakfast at the apartment, Ingrid took off with the explanation that she and Colton had planned to continue working on the flight algorithm over the weekend. It might even have been true. At any rate, she went off in her little Honda – not teleporting; that hangup of hers must have been a nuisance – and I made fresh coffee for Andros and me.
“Andy,” he corrected me the first time I used his name.
“Andy,” I conceded. I was hardly going to argue if the kid wanted a more normal name. Especially since nearly the first thing I told him was to pronounce my name Thah-lya instead of Thay-lya. Not that that was any closer to normal, but at least it didn’t sound like “failure.”
“So. I know Dad’s been giving you a hard time. Was there anything specific that made you decide you couldn’t take it any longer, or was it just the cumulative effect?”
Andros – Andy – flushed. “He started in again Thursday night. The usual. I’m a wimp because I never fight anybody, I must be afraid to play football for my school, I’m probably a fag, I’m a disgrace to the family. You know. You’ve heard it all before.”
I had, and it was one reason why I ducked out of Friday night dinner whenever possible.
“But Thalia… this time…” He looked down and almost whispered. “Thalia, I wanted to hit him. I almost did. That’s why I had to get out.”
“Oh.” That had not been among my reactions to Dad’s constant bullying, but then, I was significantly shorter and slighter than he was; it wouldn’t have been an option. Andros – Andy, dammit – was big for his age, maybe a head taller than our father. And despite Dad’s insinuations that he was a wimp and a weakling, I happened to know that he worked out with weights in the school gym on a regular basis. If he’d slugged Dad, our father would probably have gone flying across the room.
“Well, if you ever do hit him,” I said after thinking it over, “could you do it on a Friday night, so I can watch?”
“Thalia, it’s not funny!”
“No, it isn’t. Sorry. I’m kind of a jerk sometimes. So did you leave because you were afraid the temptation to hit him would be too much?”
“Sort of. I figured either way, it would come to the same thing. I mean, what if I did hit him? He’d throw me out, wouldn’t he? This way I’m out of the house and I don’t have to feel guilty about it.”
“No, you can just feel guilty about the fact that Mom’s in hysterics and you’re planning to throw away your chance of graduating high school.”
“That would happen anyway. If he threw me out.”
I couldn’t argue with that, though I tried. “Andy, your life will be much, much easier if you can stay at home until you graduate. In two years there’ll be nothing to stop your enlisting. A year and a half,” I corrected myself; his birthday was in June. “Are you sure you can’t take it for just another eighteen months?”
Andy gulped. “You heard him last week. Thalia, he’s getting worse. And most of the time I’m the only one there. Since you moved out. Stevie and Yanni don’t like coming over much more than you do.”
And while I was living at home and working my way through college, I’d been Dad’s preferred target, giving Andy some cover. “I do see your point. Still – it’s going to be hard, Andy. Where will you live? What kind of a job can you get? If you wait until you can enlist, I think the military will pick up the tab for at least a couple of years of college.”
“Thalia, I can’t. You don’t know what it’s been like since you moved out. Look, you got away. That’s all I want – to get away from him. And I thought… maybe you’d let me stay here?”
It probably wouldn’t help to point out that I’d taken Dad’s criticisms for four long years until I graduated and got a job. If Andros – Andy – said he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t. And I couldn’t see sending him home and waiting for the inevitable explosion, even if he would have gone.
“Andy,” I said as gently as I could, “it wouldn’t work. They’d find out you were here soon enough; you can’t keep diving behind Ingrid’s bed every time you hear somebody coming up the stairs. And once they find out, you’ll be right back where you were. They can probably force you to come home.”
“If they do,” he said, “I’ll just run away again.”
“Is there any way I can make it easier for you to last out until you’re eighteen?”
He blinked. Rapidly. I looked away so he could swipe a hand over his eyes. “Thalia, if you could talk to them? Make him lay off me?”
I’d never been able to do that for myself. I’d just kept my head down and concentrated on getting through from one day to the next.
But maybe – just maybe – I’d be able to do for Andy what I hadn’t done for myself.
I had to. He was my kid brother. I’d been what, thirteen when he started school? I’d been the babysitter, the big sister he went to when he had problems at school, the one who listened to him and encouraged him.
The one who’d abandoned him without a second thought, the minute I had a chance to escape.
“I’ll try. Tomorrow? Right after church. Maybe he’ll be in a better mood then. And can I tell Mom I’ve seen you and you’re okay for now? She really is worried sick, you know.”
“She never worried enough to stand up for me,” he said with some bitterness.
“She can’t, Andy. She really can’t.” I’d worked my way through that, one painful b
it of understanding at a time. If Dad had ever hit us, she might have summoned up the strength to protect us. But bullying? She accepted that as a normal part of life. Her father hadn’t been any sweetheart either. She couldn’t even let herself see that what Dad was doing was wrong, much less stop him.
“But you can,” he said with touching, if misplaced, faith.
I guessed I was going to have to.
“Okay. Tomorrow I’ll try. But only if you let me tell Mom you’re all right.” And that was going to be a conversation and a half, with me trying to keep them from guessing that he was hiding out at my place after all. In emergency, I might be able to stash him at Lensky’s condo. But I’d succeeded in keeping my family from finding out about Lensky for over six months now; I didn’t want to give up now. Besides, it wouldn’t be any kind of a long-term solution. Although…
“Andy, I’ve had sort of an idea. But let me try with Dad first, okay? If that doesn’t work out, maybe we can find some other solution. Today I’ve got to go in to work. Will you be all right here by yourself?” I needed to try my crazy idea without his hearing about it.
Of course he’d be all right. He’d brought his Gameboy.
14. Elvis meets the Ramones
I spent a chunk of Saturday making sure my alternative for Andros would work, at least short-term. I spent much of the rest of it breaking into a cold sweat at the prospect of negotiating with Dad. I’d always preferred to deal with my family by evasion, dissimulation and denial. Did I really owe it to Andros to put myself through the wringer?
Well yes, I did.
An Annoyance of Grackles (Applied Topology Book 3) Page 10