by Robert Reed
Dad was telling her the rest of it, and Mom would ask little questions now and again. I couldn’t quite measure her tone. Dad was talking about Dr. Florida and Dr. Samuelson, building toward the climax. In the little limousine, on the way home, he had promised me, “I’ll handle your mother. Don’t mention Florida’s offer, and I’ll see what I can do. All right?”
“You think she’ll say yes?” I had asked.
“Not the first twenty times, no. But I’ll wear her down. Don’t you worry.”
He was handling her. He said, “Quite the mind, Gwinn. The man is eighty years young, and you should have heard him. Ryder was asleep, and he launched into a string of lectures. He explained the machinery to me. He talked about his first tailoring clinic and lab. Then he told me about the new tailored animals he’s producing. Remember that aquarium Ryder mentioned? The little whales and such? Well, they’re part of his latest brainstorm. He’s starting a new line of household pets from endangered creatures. Tiny whales and flightless eagles, for instance. And miniature tigers, clawless and housecat-sized.”
Mom said, “Really,” with a flat voice.
“He’s going to make them abundant again. A tiny tiger isn’t a real tiger, sure, but he explained it to me. What he’s doing—isn’t this neat, Gwinn?—he’s knitting all the normal tiger genes into the pets. They’ll be safe, they just won’t be expressed.” Dad paused, then he said, “When we rebuild the wildernesses and clean up the oceans again…well, these critters will be abundant and ready, and isn’t that neat?”
Mom said, “What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Kip,” she said, “I know there’s something. I’ve smelled it all night, and I’d appreciate some honesty. Now.”
“You clever wench,” he joked. “Okay. Here it is.”
He repeated Dr. Florida’s offer, saying, “Before you scream and stomp, please do me the favor of listening. Will you?” He spoke for a little while, then added, “We have complete control over what they use. He’s given his word, Gwinn. If we take offense at anything, at any time, we have every right to back out of the deal.”
“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Why Ryder? And his friends?”
“It’s the exposure they got on TV. In part.” He said, “Three billion people saw them. A third of the world’s population. Florida’s own public relations people love the idea, using a group of natural kids. Real kids. They say there’s an obvious connection between the five of them. It comes across in a moment, and it’s something you don’t get from professional kids. You see?”
“What’s the purpose?” she wondered. “Where would they use—?”
“In a one-minute commercial. If all the parents say okay. It’ll be shown in selected markets, at selected times, and it won’t be gaudy. He promised. You’ve seen those commercials before. Those feel-swell things?”
“With Ryder?” she said.
“Portrayed as ordinary. That’s assured.”
“What about the attention he’d receive? People will be curious—”
“No names are released, Gwinn. The commercials are shown on local stations, not on the big networks. And not near us.”
“It takes a day to film?” She sounded stubborn and a little confused. “That’s all?”
“Florida plays host for a day, yes.” Dad paused, then he remarked, “He’s very forthright about his motives, dear. You should have heard him—”
“I would have pressed him—”
“You should have come,” he said.
She was silent.
“But no,” he said. “You phonied your illness like a schoolgirl, and now you’re sorry. Aren’t you?” He asked, “What did you expect? If you didn’t trust the man, or the circumstances, you should have come and looked after your son’s interests. Right?”
“Maybe so.”
“Do you want to hear the rest?” I listened hard. I held my breath and there was nothing, then he told Mom, “There’s something else and why don’t we keep this from Ryder. All right? He doesn’t know.”
“What?” She sounded meek now. “What is it?”
“Florida’s going to pay us and all of the families if, and when, these commercials are aired. Not a fortune, no, but enough—”
“We don’t need it,” she snapped.
“Am I finished? Did I say I was done?” He paused, then he said, “Gwinn. If we just go along with this game, for now, he’s promised to steer some real estate business our way. And soon.”
She cleared her throat.
“We could ensure ourselves some rich years, Gwinn. The sort of years we used to dream about having.”
She said nothing.
“What are you thinking?”
“He’s an angel,” she told him. “Everyone says so. Yet doesn’t this sound like a bribe? Doesn’t it?”
“Dr. Florida,” said Dad, “is an enormously successful businessman. Do you think he got that position with luck and sweet intentions? No, dear. No, I’m not fooling myself. He’s a tough negotiator and he knows the bottom line. I’m the one who asked for something up front, for something tangible, and he relented when I persisted. This was business. Just business.” Dad paused, then he said, “You’re mad.”
“Am I?”
“Jesus, Gwinn—”
“Just what does he want? I don’t understand.”
“I told you.”
“All this trouble for a commercial? Is that sensible, Kip?” She muttered something, then she said, “We should have refused to allow any of this. From the first. I had a feeling—”
“And what if we help Ryder? You want to risk not doing that?” His voice was a whisper cloaking a full-throated scream. “What is your problem, lady? I don’t understand.”
“I want things to make sense.”
“Then let me tell you one other thing. Okay?” Dad said nothing for a long moment, then he admitted, “The great Dr. Florida is alone, dear. And lonely. He’s rich beyond measure, but he never married and his family has died. He’s surrounded by ambitious people, and he’s old enough to see the end. So what I think…are you listening?…what I think is that he wants to spend a little pocket change and have kids underfoot for a day. That’s what he wants.”
Mom was silent.
“He takes this Father-to-the-World business seriously.” Dad waited for a moment, then he said, “You know me. I’m a pretty good judge of people. I’m no genius, but I can read a face as well as anyone.”
“You can,” she relented.
“So where’s the harm?”
And she told him, “Let me sleep on it. Let me think it through.”
I couldn’t sleep. I tossed in bed and kicked at the clammy sheets, and I got up and opened the window and listened to the night sounds. I was wide awake and remembering the teacher who had come to see my folks years ago. She had offered money for the chance to research me. But she wasn’t a good person. Not like Dr. Florida, I thought. My folks couldn’t have trusted her like they could trust him, and I imagined Dr. Florida standing over my bed. He touched my head and said, “You’re cured of your memory,” and I grew scared. How would such a thing feel? How could I stand losing chunks of my past? Or having my surviving memories grow fuzzy and dull? And never, never being able to pick which moments I would save? I couldn’t stand the thought. I curled tight beneath the clammy sheets, feeling an ache in my belly and shivering.
I got sick just after one o’clock. I didn’t reach the bathroom in time, and Mom found me puking a second time, my head dangling over the perfumed white bowl. She said nothing. She got a sponge and ammonia and loaded our upstairs maid, and while the maid ran she took a towel to my face—a dry white towel frayed at the edge—and she mopped away the sweat.
I puked a third time and felt better.
The sickness was past, and I was simply dry and weak. It must have been the sweet goo I’d drunk at the mansion, and the ice cream, and Mom helped me to bed and felt my head, her hands stinking of the am
monia. She asked if I’d slept. I hadn’t, no. “Then stay home tomorrow,” she told me. “Sleep late and rest.”
“But I’m okay.” I wanted to see my friends; I needed to tell them everything that had happened. “If I go straight to sleep—?”
She wasn’t listening. She was thinking to herself, her eyes focused on a point a thousand miles past me.
I said, “I’m not sick.”
“What?”
“I’m fine,” I promised.
“You’re lying warm under covers at home.” She said it carefully. “You’re weak and tired and you don’t even know it,” she told me, sounding wise and a little bit angry. Then she bent and kissed my forehead and left. The lights turned off as she walked from the room, and I heard her leading the maid back into its closet. Then everything was dark and calm in the house. For a long while I hovered on the brink of deep sleep, and all at once I heard a scream. Or I thought I did. I blinked and sat up and heard nothing through the open window. Was it the dragon? Or a dream? I lay down again and found myself in a tree, climbing slippery branches, and my toes let go, and my hands, and I was tumbling…
…and I jerked awake, feeling empty and tired and powerfully happy. To sleep again, I conjured up one of Beth’s songs and played it in my head, once and then again, and the song lingered, threading its way through all of my dreams that night, bringing me safely to morning.
I was ten years old and friendless, and on a cold Saturday morning I went down to the bottoms to wander. It was early winter, after the first hard freeze, and I still hated Marshall for all of his cocky shit. The air was so still that my breath hung around me, and every tiny sound seemed important. The tall weeds were shriveling and browning. The dark spring water in the little stone basins was steaming, heat bleeding from the earth, and I watched the birds drinking wing to wing, jockeying for position.
The almost-pond was prepped for winter. City crews and city robots had done the work yesterday. The intakes were closed and the water was inoculated with certain tailored bugs—special microbes that consumed and transformed the sugars and amino acids into a plastic, the dark almost-pond turning clear and now capped with a false ice. The freeze had helped the process, I knew. That plastic was slick and tougher than real ice. It would shoulder aside the warm days and sunshine once it was cured, and kids would skate and play hockey and race one another. Then come spring the crews and robots would return, carting off the plastic and opening the intakes, the water turning dark and sweet again for the birds and bambis and such.
The false ice wasn’t quite cured that morning.
I sat on my butt on the stony shoreline, staring through the clear new inch of flexible plastic. Bits of dead and sodden leaves drifted in sluggish currents. I tried the pressure of one gloved hand, the false ice bowing a little bit. I knew it wasn’t cured; I remembered past winters. So I just sat and watched the morning light spreading through the orange and red trees. Leaves had fallen and the woods themselves looked less substantial, less mysterious, autumn turning them transparent. I saw the high stone walls bordering the west woods and the neat homes perched above the walls. I didn’t know Beth. I hated Marshall but missed his predictable nonsense. I thought about him for a while, then blinked and noticed two shadows on the false ice. My shadow and a second shadow. I blinked and turned, finding Cody.
She was wearing hockey pads and an orange Russian hockey helmet, her skates velcroed together and thrown over a shoulder. She had a puck and stick in one hand. She was smiling through her helmet’s cage. “Why aren’t you out there?” she asked. She sounded tough and friendly in the same breath. “What’s the holdup here?”
I said it was too soon.
“You think?”
“It’s dangerous,” I warned her, and I backed away from the shoreline. I meant to impress her with the danger.
Cody laughed, removing her pads and helmet. She was wearing white jeans and a heavy shirt and running shoes worn smooth from use. “It’s Ryder, right?” She said, “Watch this, Ryder,” and she ran past me. She slid out onto the weak false ice, never pausing, never doubting herself.
I cried out, startled and frightened.
The almost-pond had its deep spots, like wells, and I remembered stories of kids pulled dead from such holes. I felt a horror, knowing Cody would break through and become trapped, dying while I watched, and how could I help her get free? I couldn’t. I was half her size and a tenth her strength, and I hated Cody for being out there while I was watching. For giving me no choice.
Cody pretended to skate. She took long smooth strokes and the uncured plastic bowed and cracked behind her. It was like a cartoon—a visible white line jerking and jolting its way across the surface, the sound deep and menacing. I jumped and clasped my hands on my head, shouting for her to hurry. “Faster!” I cried. “Faster, Cody! Go!”
She was laughing. She laughed all the way across, dry and happy, and then she was standing on the far shore and I saw the almost-pond moving beneath the false ice. There was a rubbery rise and fall to the cold water, waves rolling from shore to shore. It was strange to see, and unexpected, and I stared until I heard my name. “Ryder!” shouted Cody. “Come across. Come on. Quick and smooth and it’s easy!”
I didn’t want to seem frightened.
Cody was fearless, and it seemed important not to act scared now. I moved. I didn’t give myself time to think. I just took an enormous breath and moved.
The plastic gave beneath me. It wasn’t so slick as real ice, and the telltale cracking sound chased me. I let go of my breath and rushed forward. I told myself that I wasn’t so heavy as Cody, not nearly, and the ice surely would appreciate my scrawniness. And then I was terrified. I pumped my arms and managed mammoth strides, crossing the middle of the almost-pond, and I was past the middle and came sliding up onto the earth, safe and grateful and belatedly full of courage. I nearly tripped, and Cody caught me and patted my back, pointing to the slender white fissure that had chased me from shore to shore. “You’re one of the club,” she informed me.
“Am I?” I wondered. “What club?”
“It’s an expression,” she explained, laughing hard.
I looked at Cody’s square face. I saw her early chin fuzz and the heavy square teeth and the boy-short hair sprinkled with perspiration, bright in the sunshine, and she didn’t seem ugly anymore. She was transformed, and now she was just Cody. I thought: “This is Cody.” I thought: “This is how Cody looks.”
“Want to go again?” she wondered.
I said, “Sure,” and we took turns again. It was a delightful thrill to slip over the danger, real or not, and I could have done it all day. We crisscrossed the false ice until it was laced with cracks, and I was sweating hard and laughing too hard to stand when we were finished. I was down on my knees on the cold dirt; and Cody took a long look at me, then she said, “I’ve got two big rules. If you want to be with me, there are two things you can never, never do.”
“What things?” I asked.
“First of all, you can’t be rude about my mothers. Not for any reason.” Her voice was calm and certain, saying, “I don’t want you to ever say anything against them. I won’t take it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“And second,” she said, “if someone else says something about them, or even about me—anything stupid or ugly—you don’t come tell me. Understand? You’re not my spy. You’re not my eyes. So you keep it to yourself, okay?”
“All right.”
“You’ve got it?”
I said, “I understand.”
Cody smiled. I stared at her face until she turned away, and she bent and picked up her gear and then turned back to me, saying, “Look,” and pointing at the almost-pond with her hockey stick. “You know what that looks like?” I saw the water still moving beneath the false ice, its waves crossing the almost-pond once and then again. I felt a little bit sad for having scarred the false ice—it would stay that way throughout the winter—then Cody said, “It
looks like we’re still out there. You know? Can’t you almost see us skating out there still?”
Dad worked on Mom while I slept through the morning, and then into the afternoon. It was nearly three o’clock when he came from the basement to tell me, “She’s relented. Ask your buddies if they want to visit the mansion, and I’ll call Florida and get the big ball rolling.” He breathed and said, “She’s got rules and restrictions—you know Mom!—but at least she’s come around.” He shook his head and grinned, glad for the way things had turned out.
“Can I leave now?” I wondered. “I feel better.”
“Isn’t it early?”
School would let out soon, and I had plans—
“Go on,” he relented. “Just take it easy. Okay?”
I walked straight to Cody’s house and left a message. “Come down to the oak as soon soon soon as possible! And make sure you bring everyone else! Everyone!” Then I slid past the Wellses’ house and across the green pasture, no one else in sight. It was the rarest of days—a whiff of solitude over the parkland—but I felt ever so excited with my news, and I was hungry to tell it. I wished my friends were with me now. I would have traded the solitude for their noise and nonsense in an instant.
I crossed the bridge and muscled my way up the oak’s trunk, finding crescent-shaped depressions around the thumbprint lock. Someone had been beating the hatch with a hammer. Probably yesterday, I thought. The lock had held tight. Cody built for keeps, I told myself; and it opened to my thumb and I crawled inside, up into the big room. I opened a cabinet and dug out our best binoculars—huge and black with electronic workings and palm-sized eyes—and I sat on the long bench and looked out the east windows, waiting, the binoculars on my lap.
I’d invite everyone at once. All four of them, I planned, and I wouldn’t play favorites. I promised myself not to play favorites.
I smelled the warm wind and sat motionless, imagining them smiling when I told them. The oak gave a lazy groan. I lifted the binoculars to my eyes, the dusty white rocks of the road now close enough to touch. I adjusted the dials and kept my hands steady, and the electronic workings adjusted for my little trembles. I saw bits of broken glass and a small black beetle crossing the whiteness. Then I felt an urge, a temptation, and swinging right and lifting, I found myself looking inside the kitchen window at the back of the Wellses’ house. I saw an ancient sink—stainless steel dented and the faucet dripping and sprouting rust at every seam—and there were dirty dishes and dirty glasses on the countertop, and big metallic green flies clung to the filth. A puffy woman—Jack’s mother—passed into view, a sweating beer bottle in one puffy hand, her face colorless and somehow dead. Suddenly I felt wicked for spying—a little bit. I pulled back and breathed and then lifted the binoculars, thinking that I shouldn’t wimp out now. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I would never spy on other people, no, but it didn’t count so much with the Wellses. I sat still and told myself that the taboos didn’t apply to them, so it was okay.