“The pocket creatures trust you,” Marion said. “They really want you to help them return to their planet.”
“And how do you do that?”
“I have to release them.”
“Release them?”
“They have to be released at just the right time from a certain height and on a certain trajectory.” Marion was looking at him with those high-beam eyes. Heck wondered if this guy had x-ray vision. He wasn’t looking at him as much as through him. He wondered if Marion could see his stomach folded up like an empty wallet.
“Marion, where do you live?”
“Here,” Marion said, and shrugged.
“How do you survive? What do you eat?”
“There’s places. I’ll show you. But I’m usually not hungry.”
“How do you get that big without being hungry?”
“I know I’m fat.”
“I didn’t say … You aren’t fat, but you are big.”
Marion stood looking at him with a strange dignity. “So, will you help me?”
“Sure. I’ll help you.” Heck couldn’t believe he’d just said that. Maybe his reality-effacing self had escaped completely into a parallel world.
Marion smiled, a full-blown, all-dimple smile. When he blinked it was like the headlights were flashing. He picked up Heck’s hand as if it were something he’d dropped. He held it with his two hands, studying it. Heck hoped he wasn’t going to kiss it or something.
“It’s still attached,” Heck said. “To me.”
Marion didn’t let go, so Heck snatched it away.
Marion blinked at the spot where Heck’s hand had been. “I heard you talking on the phone. I’m not sure where my mom is, either. She died when I was little.”
Heck had thought being dead gave you a fairly permanent address. “Sorry,” he said.
Marion stopped talking, and Heck couldn’t think of anything to say, so they walked in silence. They came to 26th, and walked a few blocks along it until they were at McLeod. The shelter was an old yellow house with a verandah. “That’s it,” Marion said.
Being so close to his mom now made Heck feel even sorrier for Marion. “If you were little you probably don’t remember your mother much,” he said.
Marion shook his head at the sidewalk. After a minute he said, “I remember one thing. I came home one day and my pockets were full of stuff, and I wanted to show her. I remember that. She knelt down on the floor and looked at everything I’d found. I think there was an exploded pen and a Scratch n’ Win card or something. They weren’t anything much, but she acted like I’d found treasure.”
Heck wasn’t thinking about how to get away from Marion anymore. “You must miss her a lot,” he said.
Marion shrugged. “That’s all I remember about her. Her hands, and her voice. I don’t remember her face, really.” He turned away. “I don’t feel like playing anymore,” he said. He walked away, his back straight. He didn’t even talk to his pockets.
Heck watched him for a minute.
There were two kinds of being gone. There was hypertime gone and there was dead gone, and Heck felt lucky that his mom was only the former.
—
He entered the shelter. A woman with white hair smiled at him. “This shelter is for women only, honey.”
“I’m looking for my mom, Estelle. Estelle Berlioz.”
Heck waited while she checked some papers on her desk.
“I’m sorry, young man, but I don’t have anyone here by the name of Berlioz.”
“She might be confused,” Heck said. “If I could go in …”
“I’m sorry, no men allowed, not even small ones. We can’t have the public coming in and gawking at our guests.”
“But …”
“What does she look like?” the woman asked.
“Well, she’s small, not much taller than me, and built slight, and she has straight hair, blond, and she has a tattoo on her shoulder—an old-fashioned tricycle.”
“Sorry, hon. I’m sure we don’t have anyone here who fits that description.”
“But …”
“Honest.”
Heck stared at her, mouth open.
“Do you want me to phone someone for you, young man?”
“No. No, thanks,” he said quietly.
He left, feeling like he was wading through quantum foam, like waist-high styrofoam balls. Where?
She must have gone to that guy’s house. What was his name? Sam. Sam Halstead. She went there to get her check, of course. Maybe she stayed, on condition that he didn’t get too serious. What was the address? Near Lindsay Park, Levi had told him. He headed in that direction, calling upon his superpowers of memory to click with an address before he got there.
She would have to be way far into hypertime to stay gone this long or to seek refuge at Sam’s.
Hypertime. The bridge to coexisting realities. There was the reality that included her son Heck, but that reality included heartless landlords and no place to live. She couldn’t live there.
It was possible she was going to construct a reality with this Sam of … Morrow Drive, that was it. Maybe that was why she hadn’t called. Maybe she was going to a reality in which she had no son to interfere in a new relationship.
It made Heck sad to think of that, but it would also be comforting to know she was all right, and that someone was taking care of her. His big fear, the one that made him want to throw up to think of it, was that she was headed into the dimension of not existing at all. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he’d known for a long time that she’d thought about that dimension. A lot.
He had to find her and tell her: Mom, choose any reality you want, as long as it’s not that one. If it makes you happy, choose Sam of 356 … 356! Morrow Drive.
It was a box house, with box windows, all dark, and a box stoop. All it needed was a big satin ribbon to be the best present Heck ever got. He didn’t know what time it was for the first time in his life. It was an unsettling feeling, like he’d just lost track of the spin of the earth. This was how his mom felt all the time, he thought. It must be, for her, like trying to jump onto a spinning merry-go-round.
Heck hesitated before ringing the bell. It was late. Or maybe really early. Other people’s houses were dark, too. Then he remembered that it wouldn’t matter to his mom if it was late. She didn’t care about things like that. She’d be glad to see him. She was probably just at that very moment having bad dreams about missing her son, her hero.
He rang the bell.
His mom had never figured this world out. Just like he had never figured out radicals in math. He’d tried and tried, but he just didn’t get it. His mom just didn’t get it. It wasn’t her fault. He didn’t know how she’d been getting by without him. Who was keeping her running grocery list?
Heck knocked on the door.
Radicals. Ha! Radicals didn’t seem so bad anymore. In fact, the whole idea of school sounded good. He’d be glad to get back. Lovely bell telling you what to do, where to go, user-friendly teachers …
Heck rang the doorbell again, and knocked as hard as he could. Then he thought he saw the curtain move, so slightly it was possible he could have imagined it.
“Mom?” he said toward the window.
He waited. Maybe she was coming to the door. Maybe she was worried that he was a dread interloper.
He put his mouth up against the crack of the door. “Mom?” he whispered. “It’s Heck.”
Could he hear her breathing on the other side of the door?
“Mom, if you can hear me …”
He listened. He couldn’t hear anything now, but he thought he could feel her there.
“Mom … Mom … I just wanted you to know that everything’s okay. I mean, don’t worry about anything … Spence’s house is great … Hey, I hope this new boyfriend is treating you nice. I met this kid named Marion—who’d name their son Marion, eh? You’d never guess what he has in his pockets. Aliens! Germ-sized aliens … Ha ha … I thi
nk he’s just playing, just got playing and couldn’t quit … So, um …”
Heck pressed up against the door as if it were his mom. He leaned into it, put his lips near the doorjamb.
“Speaking of Marion, I figured something out, Mom, when I was walking here. You know it’s not really safe on a bridge between two dimensions. Take me, for example. One of me is real, and one of me is where I dream, you know? I guess I have to get the pieces together, or I’ll be … split. Never Superman and never Clark Kent. I won’t be able to fly, but I won’t be able to walk like everyone else either. I’ll always be standing in this phone booth with nothing to change into and nothing to change out of, just standing there in my underwear …” Heck chuckled. His mom would like that one. “So, well anyway, Mom, do what you have to do, you know? Just be happy, and then I’ll be okay.”
Just then a car pulled up in front of the house. A man got out—the one his mom had dated. Sam. He stood by his car facing Heck.
“Is there a problem, son?” He began walking slowly toward Heck. “You’re Estelle’s boy,” he said.
Heck nodded. He glanced at the window. The curtains were still. He swallowed. “I—I thought maybe she was staying here,” he said. Sam wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but he wasn’t nearly good enough for his mom. “Have you seen her? Levi said he was told to forward her check to this address.”
Sam stopped at the bottom of the stoop and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, she showed up yesterday.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She asked for her check, but it isn’t here yet.”
“That’s it? She didn’t say where she was going or anything?”
The man shook his head. After considering a moment he said, “She did say something else, but I didn’t really understand her. It sounded like—like the same conversation we had a month ago, like she was back at that day, telling me she couldn’t go out with me.”
She was out of real time altogether, now. Keep it light, he told himself.
“Guess she didn’t like you, huh?”
“We had a good time,” the man said, “but she’s busy with her first love.” Heck held his breath. “That would be you, son. She told me to call her in a couple of years when you were older.”
Don’t think, Heck told himself. Don’t think. Not yet. Just nod—mature, sane nod. “Well, if you see her, can you tell her everything’s okay?”
THURSDAY, MAY 5
His stomach shrunk up into a crampy ball and his teeth screamed into his ear. It hurt to swallow.
This was bad. Bad, bad, bad. His mom was so far into hypertime she was having a time warp. She was lost. What if she didn’t really belong to this microverse? What if she was mutant maladaptive and was never meant to exist here at all?
What if she was?
When the world was tipped over and everything that normally held you down like apartments and portfolios was shaking off into space, you had to grab on to something. He wasn’t going to let go of his mom.
He had to find her. He was going to have to go to the police, talk to Mr. Holland, get them to put out an all-points bulletin, tell them about his teeth.
No. Not his teeth. If they found her, she’d be sad all over again if they knew about his teeth. Besides, if you were a superhero, you laughed at pain—especially toothache pain. Ha ha! He submitted to the pain. He let it wash over him, studied it, observed it like it was happening to some distant part of him instead of in the core of his brain. A miracle.
He passed the Art Store. Stopped.
Closed. Dark.
Heck pressed his face up against the glass. It felt cool, the way his mom’s hand felt when she touched his face.
Going to the police would be the end of their secret that Everything Wasn’t Necessarily Okay. If he went to the police, they would find her, but maybe nothing would be the same again. Would they put him in a frosty home? Think. There had to be another way.
There was still the Good Deed.
Spence would snort and swear, but Heck believed.
Maybe he just needed a really Big Good Deed, an Ultimate Good Deed, one that could find mothers in hypertime. He thought about every Good Deed he could do with no money and no house and no résumé. He could let the animals out of the zoo, or stand in front of an oncoming truck and have his organs donated. No. Someone would shoot at the animals, and no one had a use for flattened eyeballs. He pressed his lips against the glass, then his other cheek. His teeth were crying, and then he was.
He stepped back, rubbed his face with his left sleeve, rubbed the window with his right sleeve.
He had to go to the police.
No, their whole life would be busted.
Yes. He had to. He was sick, and his mom was … who knew where she was, what was happening to her?
No. If he told, maybe having no apartment would be the least of her problems.
But yes, because what was the big deal about a frosty home if his mom was dead?
He shuddered just thinking the word. Yes, he had to go to the police.
No. If he told the police, that might be what killed her.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Heck stepped back from the window so he wouldn’t break it if he felt an irresistible urge to start smashing his head repeatedly against something hard.
He needed to draw. He needed to play. Where was Marion?
He needed the Good Deed. He needed it bad right now, even if it was just to make himself feel better. He put his hands around his eyes and peered into the Art Store. Maybe he could get in through the broken window and clean up again, free this time. That would be a Good Deed. Maybe it would be all right if he took some paper to draw some superheroes.
A new painting had been put in the window. It was of a young girl happily cutting out paper dolls from a newspaper, but as she cut, the paper bled. The dolls writhed in agony.
Heck stared. Even his teeth weren’t louder than that.
He’d always known paintings could make things happen. This painting made you want to punch something or go home and sit in the car while it ran for a long time in an enclosed space. You had to be good to do a painting like that. You had to be willing to follow your nightmares around and take tweezers to the waste products of your brain. But what if you could make a painting that made you want to share your oatmeal and bring flowers to your gramma’s grave? Instead of painting what was ugly in the world, what if you painted what was beautiful? Wouldn’t that be a Good Deed? What if you showed the world something beautiful where no one had seen beautiful before? Like Marion—everyone treated him like mutant maladaptive, but they didn’t see that light in his eyes, didn’t see how good he was at playing.
What if a painting could be the ultimate Good Deed? What if it could change the world? Or even the entire microverse of one person?
He would paint Marion.
He felt strange, as if he’d stepped over some invisible line and there was no going back. He was Superkid, capable of making peanut butter cookies and signing permission forms in a single bound. He was Superkid, in charge of popcorn for the poor and self-esteem for the downtrodden. He felt better already.
He’d been walking a long time, but he didn’t hurt. The Theory of Everything Is Going to Be Okay was written in a bubble, in script, flowing and exquisitely thin. It was all poetry.
Heck knew that even if he stood still Marion would find him eventually. Looking for him didn’t take long.
“Where have you been?” Marion asked. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I’ve been looking for you, too, Marion.” Heck’s eyes fastened on him.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? Here the Good Deed had been in front of his eyes all along and he hadn’t known it. He would introduce Marion to Marion through the Good Deed of the painting.
“Thanks, Marion,” Heck said, putting his hand on Marion’s shoulder. “Thanks for helping me be a superhero.”
For a moment Marion was sile
nt. Then he said, “It’s Thursday, Heck. May 5.”
“May 5,” Heck said happily. “I’ve never known you to lie to me.”
“Today is the day,” Marion said.
“Yes, it is. The day for what?”
“You know—the Good Deed,” Marion said.
Once in a while in the world, didn’t everything fall into place? Once in a while, didn’t the whole world make sense? “Just what I was thinking,” Heck said.
They stood looking at each other. Marion was hugging his jacket tightly to himself.
“Well,” Heck said gently. “Well, it’s May 5.”
“The day the spores have to be released,” Marion said. “Did you forget? It has to be today.”
“It’s humanity I want to save, not aliens,” Heck said, smiling. “But … sure.”
Marion nodded and whispered something comforting to the inside pockets of his jacket. Heck thought, why didn’t they let him sleep with a coat on? What was so bad about inventing friends if you didn’t have any of the real kind? There he was, shifting from foot to foot as if he had to go to the bathroom.
Heck said, “But Marion, before that I’m going to paint you.”
“Paint me?”
“That’s right,” Heck said. “I know where we can get some paints.”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“I—I get this dream. I’m scared of being painted.”
Heck took Marion’s elbow. “Come on, old phobe, we’re going to the Art Store. It’s the Good Deed. It’s the one. You’re going to see how beautiful you are.”
“The Art Store? It’s not open.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got it worked out.”
Marion followed silently. After a minute he said in a low voiced, “I’m scared. If we get caught …”
“We won’t get caught,” Heck said cheerfully.
Marion was quiet as they walked to the Art Store. He didn’t clutch at his coat or talk to his pockets all the way there. He just walked close beside Heck.
Heck looked up at the sky. When did he know the cosmos was so beautiful? When he was eight and he found out the galaxy swirled like the little windmill his mom had bought him at the circus? Maybe it happened the day he understood that atoms looked like the solar system. Just knowing that made him happy, made the microverse make sense. He wondered if tiny beings lived on electrons and woke up each day to a nucleus sun. Probably his own solar system was an atom in God’s body. Anything could happen in a cosmos that was part math and part magic.
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