by Nagle, Pati
Rick slammed out of the garage, leaving me staring at R.J.’s little-boy bike.
∞
I was in bed alone for hours, not sleeping, when Rick finally came in.
“I waited until Alisha conked off,” he said, and drew in a shaky breath. “Damn! That kid racks up more under-the-covers reading time than I did when I was a kid, and I thought I was the world’s champ.”
“You put the wand back?” I asked, sitting up.
“Right under the bed.”
I hugged my knees to my chest, feeling the emotional vertigo I’d felt when Lauren was first born, and I stared down at this child who had been inside me for so long. Now a separate being, whose memories would not be my memories. Whose life would not be my life.
And Rick mused, “How much of my motivation was jealousy, and not just concern for their safety? I get a different answer at midnight than I do at noon.”
“You mean, why didn’t it ever happen to me?”
His smile was wry.
∞
They were gone the next night, of course.
It was raining hard outside, and I walked from room to silent room, touching their empty beds, their neatly lined up books and toys and personal treasures, the pictures on their walls. Lauren had made sketches of a girl’s face—Princess Elte? In R.J.’s room, the sketches were all of great birds, raptors with beaks and feathers of color combinations never seen in this world. He’d stored in jewelry boxes the feathers and rocks he’d brought back across that unimaginable divide.
Alisha’s tidy powder-blue room gave nothing away.
The next morning I was downstairs early, fixing pancakes, my heart light because I’d passed by the three rooms and heard kid-breathing in each.
I almost dropped the spatula on the floor when I looked up and there was Alisha in her nightgown.
She ran to me, gave me a hug round the waist. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.
“Thanks?” My heart started thumping again. “For pancakes?”
“For putting it back,” she said. “I smelled your shampoo in my room that day, when the wand disappeared. But I didn’t tell the others. I didn’t want them to be mad.”
I suddenly found the floor under my bottom. “Your dad put it back,” I said. “We were in it together. We didn’t mean to make you unhappy.”
“I know.” Alisha sat down neatly on the floor next to me, cross-legged, and leaned against my arm, just as she had when she was a toddler. “We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d say no. Not to be mean. But out of grownup worry.”
“We just want to keep you safe,” I said.
She turned her face to look up at me, her eyes the color of Rick’s eyes, their shape so like my mother’s. “And we wanted to keep you safe.”
“Ignorance is not real safety,” I pointed out. “It’s the mere illusion of safety.”
Alisha gave me an unrepentant grin. “How many times have you said about us, they’re safer not knowing?” she retorted, and then she added,” That’s why we always go at midnight, and we’re only gone a couple of hours. We can do that because the time there doesn’t work like here.”
“But another world. How can we set safety rules? We don’t know what happens.” I held her tightly against me.
“You send us to school,” Alisha said, pulling away just a little, so she could look at me again. “You don’t know what happens there. Not really.”
I thought back to my own school days, and then thought of recent media orgies, and felt my heart squeeze. “True. But we’re used to it. And habit and custom are probably the strongest rules we know. Can we go with you to the other world? Just to see it?” I asked.
Alisha shook her head. “There’s a big spell. Prevents grownups, because of this big war in the past. Only kids can cross over—not even teenagers. One day we’ll be too old. I know you’ll be real sorry!”
I tried to laugh. It wasn’t very successful, but we both smiled anyway. “It’s not every set of parents who have kids who cross worlds—you’ll have to give us time to get used to it.”
She hugged me again, and flitted away to get dressed.
∞
“R.J. has taken to telling me stories,” Rick said a few days later. “Not—quite—admitting anything, just offering me these stories instead of me reading to him.”
Only Lauren went about as it nothing were different, everything were normal. Keeping the other world secret was important to her, so we had to respect that, and give her the space to keep it.
∞
“Alisha told me more about magic,” I said that next week.
The kids were gone again. A spectacular thunderstorm raged like battling dragons outside. We didn’t even try to sleep. We sat in the kitchen across from each other, hands cradling mugs of hot chocolate. Rick had put marshmallows in it, and whipped cream, and just enough cinnamon to give off a delicious scent.
“Magic.” He shook his head.
“The amazing thing is, it sounds a lot like the basic principles of engineering.”
“I think R.J. has learned how to turn himself into a bird,” Rick said, stirring the marshmallows round and round with his finger. “They fly in a flock, and watch for the Grundles, who I guess have a bad case of What’s-yours-is-mine as far as other kingdoms are concerned.” His smile faded, and he shook his head. “Nothing will be the same again, Mary—we can’t even pretend to be a normal family.”
“Is anybody?” I asked. “I mean, really?”
What is normal?
We live in our houses and follow schedules and pick jobs that are sensible and steady and keep the bills paid, but in my dreams I fly, as I did when I was small.
“The universe is still out there just beyond the palm trees and malls and freeways,” I said. “And the truth is we still don’t really know the rules.”
What we do know is that we love our children, will always love them, until the stars have burned away to ash, and though parents are not issued experience along with our babies’ birth certificates, we learn a little wisdom and a lot of compromise as the children grow.
Rick said slowly, “Well, I hope Lauren and her sword-swinging princess pal are kicking some serious Grundle butt.”
We remember how to laugh.
Perfect Stranger
Amy Sterling Casil
This story is my favorite story because it was inspired by my baby Anthony, who was born with Down Syndrome. It has been adopted in several college literature and bioethics texts because it is a serious speculation about what could happen if people could use gene therapy to build a child more to their satisfaction than the one born to them. My son Anthony died in 2005. I began thinking about what this story became when the genetic counselor discussed chromosomal abnormalities with me, saying that a cure for them was a long way off, but other genetic illnesses would soon be cured. Every therapy mentioned in the story is currently being developed. The story is fiction; the feelings are real.
∞ ∞ ∞
The rain falls in sheets across the yard, another pane of glass beyond our windows.
Would you like it warmer, Mr. Gill?
The house pings once. Twice.
“No,” I say. “It’s fine the way it is.”
Thank you very much, the house says.
Just like anybody else, the house likes to talk to somebody. I imagined this as a great feature. I’m an ergonomic architect; I designed it.
Denny is asleep in his room. You’d think at fifteen, he’d be too old to take a nap. But he’s wiped out after soccer.
Carolyn threw Denny’s football out today. The foam rubber football I gave him when he was four years old.
It was old, she said. Falling apart. He didn’t want it any more.
I thought, if he really doesn’t want the football, maybe he could say. I tried asking.
But right then, Denny was off to soccer practice, then a study session, then the game. Now, he’s sleeping. This is what happens when they’re in high school.
>
Carolyn says I should be proud. Proud he’s such an athlete. And a scholar.
And I guess I’m a gentleman.
The rain comes down like liquid leaded glass.
The gardeners have taken the trash all the way to the curb once again. It’s a very long way to the end of the driveway.
I return with half of Denny’s football.
She must have taken shears to it. A lightning strike of rage flashes. If she were home right now. . .
Your body temperature is lower than normal, Mr. Gill, the house chimes in its chimey voice.
“I’ve been out in the rain,” I mutter.
Would you like some soft, fluffy towels? the house asks.
I want the other half of the football. I’ll glue it back together. But I smile and grunt an assent, to which the house responds.
Outside, the rain sleets down, a thousand tiny sticks pattering on a thousand tin drums. Nah, not drums. It’s just our solar panels.
Denny was born with HLHS. That’s an acronym for hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is universally fatal, if left untreated. Even now, there are babies that do not survive, even with full-length clone DNA therapy administered in-utero.
When at five months of pregnancy, Carolyn went for a high-level ultrasound that determined Denny had HLHS, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to try gene therapy. The doctors explained how the heart healed itself as the baby grew.
It was raining that day.
Pouring outside while we listened to the neonatal geneticist explain how the procedure worked. We were so lucky, she said. Before gene therapy, babies like Denny could only survive with full heart transplants. She told us about a doctor that had tried baboon hearts to replace broken baby ones.
Apparently, some parents aborted babies diagnosed with HLHS.
“I’d never accept that,” I said.
“What?” Carolyn snapped, her hand over her swollen belly. “You’d rather let my baby suffer?”
I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.
The geneticist explained in the past, babies born with this heart defect were simply left to die. Their hearts barely pumped blood. And they would just fade away.
Maybe that could be less humane than an abortion.
At least that was what we discussed on the way home.
It was a miracle that we had the gene therapy, and that Denny was born whole. And totally healthy.
It was the best moment of my life.
The rain rattles the solar panels as I sort pictures on the computer. Denny in his baby swing. Denny playing with blocks.
I should be working. But I can’t focus on the Recreation Center today.
There was one of him holding the fuzzy book he got from his grandmother. She was so frightened—my mother—when I told her about Denny’s heart problem. She didn’t understand gene therapy.
Carolyn got on the phone and explained it to her. When Denny was born perfectly healthy, I don’t think any of us gave it much more thought.
My mother and Denny sat for hours, reading that little book. Pat the Bunny. Her favorite—she insisted on buying it. I have it in my study, in the right drawer of my desk.
At one past garage sale, it had been another item bound for the dumpster. I put the half-football with Pat the Bunny.
Denny was about three when he learned to read.
I sorted those pictures, too.
They say a man’s not supposed to be interested in pictures. Mementos. The man lives his life, and the woman saves it. Well, what they say is true and what happens are sometimes two different things.
There was another book Denny liked. Stan the Hotdog Man. We read it over and over.
And one day, Denny started talking about Stan. It dawned on me that he was reading.
“Carolyn, come here!” I called.
She came running in from the kitchen, alarmed.
“Honey, I think he’s reading.”
Her face changed. “Horse manure,” she said.
“No, really,” I said.
Denny then read a whole page of Stan the Hotdog Man in his small voice. He beamed proudly up at me.
“See?” I said.
“You’ve read it to him so many times, he’s memorized it,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
It was some time later when I learned that by memorizing the book, Denny was, indeed, reading. By that time, he was in kindergarten.
I sorted some more of the pictures from later years, and looked pensively out at the rain. Denny was still sleeping.
I think I always hoped that my son would play football.
Back before I met Carolyn, I played ball. Played all the way through sophomore year in college. Sidelined by a knee injury. I guess I was a pretty good running back, if a little bit underweight. The guys were all into steroids back in those days. There was no such thing as gene augmentation. All we had were good, old-fashioned workouts and protein shakes. And maybe a shot in the butt for guys that were really dedicated.
Or crazy.
You could blow your heart out on steroids. They made you break out all over. Gave you erectile dysfunction. Made you crazy.
Happened to a lot of my friends. It’s a good thing I figured out that trap before I fell into it.
I guess I did try it a few times.
Drops of rain dappled the window.
Your heart rate has increased, Mr. Gill, the house chimed. Your core body temperature has dropped.
“So turn up the heat,” I told the house.
I had to say something. Otherwise, it wouldn’t leave me alone.
∞
I folded the blue ribbon neatly into my desk drawer. For math excellence. Why they’d give a math prize to a kid in second grade was beyond me.
When Denny hit second grade, his teacher pointed up that he was reading like a pro, but having trouble with his figures.
“I was never too good with math,” I told her. Wasn’t that great in reading, either, but I didn’t feel compelled to share.
“You might want to look into some tutoring,” she said.
“He’s in second grade!” I said.
Carolyn hushed me. “How far is he behind?” she asked.
“Behind?” the teacher asked. “Oh, no—he’s not behind.”
“Well, there’s no reason to worry,” I said. “He’ll pick it up.”
“His times tables,” Carolyn said. “Next year he’s got to learn the times tables.”
“We don’t do it that way any more, Mrs. Gill. Each child is tested individually against his or her own standards.”
I didn’t precisely follow how there could be enough time to set individual standards seeing as the kid had just started second grade.
“How far is he behind?” Carolyn asked again.
“He’s not behind,” the teacher said, a stubborn tone creeping into her voice. “Denny is so bright. I’m sure you’d agree with me that he could do better if he applied himself. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“Maybe he just wants to play outside,” I said.
“Hush!” Carolyn said. “Gary and I both agree that Denny is bright. And he’s got plenty of motivation.”
“Well,” the teacher said smiling. “Why don’t you try that tutoring service, or a math buddy.”
A math buddy was like an English buddy, or a foreign language buddy. It was a small, silver, pain-in-the-ass robot that could also vacuum the floor. They were notorious for tripping guys foolish enough to buy them for their kids. A guy in Cleveland broke his neck that way.
I was going to be damned if I’d get one. I would have rather gotten Denny another football.
On the way out to the car, Carolyn looked up at me, concern wrinkling her forehead. “He’s falling behind in math,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to whisper,” I told her. “Nobody can hear. Besides, the teacher said he’s not behind. We can encourage him.”
“Encourage him!�
�� Carolyn snapped. “He can do better, and he will.”
“Well, do you think we should try a tutor?” I asked. The thought of locking Denny inside with some greasy-haired high school math geek made me cringe. But even that was a more appealing choice than bringing a gibbering, tortoise-like “math buddy” into the house, so it could trip me on the stairs and turn me into a paraplegic.
“No,” Carolyn said. “Not a tutor.”
I felt relieved.
“Have you heard about the new gene therapy?” she asked. “It’s just like what they did for Denny’s heart defect. Only it can strengthen a child’s brain power. I was reading all about it yesterday.”
“Oh,” I said. I had pretty favorable memories of how they’d fixed Denny’s heart. “How does that work?”
“Maybe it’s like what they did before. Only they inject the new genetic material into someone’s brain. Then it makes a few changes and the person gets smarter.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t like the thought of anybody injecting anything into Denny’s brain. But I’d learned it was best not to interrupt Carolyn when she was thinking like this. Frankly, it was almost always better just to wait things out. Half the time she forgot about this stuff and never mentioned it again.
“If you’re concerned about your son’s logical and mathematical abilities, I don’t think you’ve got much to worry about with Denny,” Dr. Mandel said. “He’s a bright, normal boy.”
“But his teacher says he’s falling behind in math,” Carolyn said. “Can’t we do something?”
“I’d recommend a math buddy,” the doctor said. “My own daughter has one. She’s about Denny’s age. She used to hate math, and now she loves it.”
“Doesn’t that thing get in your way?” I asked—about the math buddy.
“Thing?” the doctor said, looking puzzled. “Oh!” he said, chuckling. “Yeah, it did trip me up once. I fell right off the deck into the pool.”
“There’s something I don’t like about those little robots,” I said. “The teacher also suggested a tutor.”