I reminded myself that I’d come here to get Ma. And I wasn’t leaving without her.
I swallowed, smoothed my dress, and walked toward the circle of light. Silence stretched in the darkness as I approached the chair, trying not to show fear. I sat and folded my trembling hands between my legs.
A speaker on the ceiling crackled and thumped. “What do you know about us?”
The voice was hoarse with whiskey and cigarettes.
“I don’t know anything,” I said. “I swear.” My heart was beating a hundred miles a minute.
The darkness said nothing.
“Hello?” I said.
“How did you find this place?”
“Um, a dog. A . . . Pomeranian. I followed it here.”
The speaker made a ruffled sound like the microphone was being covered with a hand, and there came more whispering. “I’ll shoot that dog myself, I swear.”
Another pause and then more static. “What is your name?”
“Um, Phoebe. Phoebe Lane.”
This was met with a flurry of whispers.
“Did she just say Lane?” a British voice said.
“Someone get the chloroform,” the rough voice said.
“Stop it. She’s just a child.”
“There was no mention of a daughter on the report.”
“Somebody’s getting canned.”
There was more scuffling, and then a new voice came over the microphone.
“Phoebe?”
This voice was neither rough nor British. It was a woman’s voice—firm and confident, the kind where you can tell she’s pretty just by listening.
“Can you see the man in the sky?”
The question stole the breath right out of me.
“Do not say another word, Miss Link,” the rough voice said without a microphone. “You are compromising our entire op—”
“Let her speak,” the woman said.
The rough voice sighed, and then a cigarette lit in the darkness. The microphone clicked off.
“Phoebe,” the woman said again, “can you see the man in the sky?”
“Um . . . ,” I said.
The last time I’d told someone about Daddy I’d been six years old. I sat on the curb of the motel, squinting up at the blank sky, trying to follow Ma’s instructions. “If you focus on the bright bellies of the clouds until the sky sorta fades away, then you’ll see him. That’s your father. Pale like frost on glass.”
I was trying to figure out if the faint sliver of the moon was his fingernail clipping.
The motel manager came out of the office and adjusted her cat’s-eye sunglasses at me. “Honey, you keep looking up with your mouth hanging open like that, a seagull’s gonna lay an egg in it.”
“I’m trying to see my daddy,” I told her, and then crossed my eyes like I was at a 3-D movie, hoping he would pop out of the sky.
“Aw, baby, has your daddy gone up to heaven?”
“Nah. Momma got knocked up by the man in the sky. She says I’m a . . . ’maculate conception.”
The manager pulled her jacket tight around her throat, swept into the office, and slammed the door. Ten minutes later she phoned our room, asking us to leave the motel and never come back.
“What were you thinking, telling her that?” Ma asked, stuffing her nylon leggings into her suitcase. “That woman thinks I’m so hopped up on drugs I believe I’m the Virgin Mary!”
“I didn’t know!” I said, crying on my hard-shell suitcase.
Ma made a flutter with her lips. “No, I guess you didn’t. Serves me right for telling you jokes that are beyond your years. Look, from now on, your father’s a secret, you hear? People just can’t understand. Now count out ten cents for the bus. Lord knows where we’re staying tonight.”
“You can see him,” the woman’s voice in the darkness said, “can’t you?”
Was this a test? I imagined the figures in the dark room holding clipboards with two big boxes, one with CRAZY written beside it, the other with NOT CRAZY. In my mind, three pencils hovered over the CRAZY box, awaiting my response.
“Answer, kid,” the rough voice said. “Otherwise you’ll never leave here again.”
My jaw trembled, trying to make words. The woman saved me from speaking.
“This is silly,” she said. “You aren’t scaring her into anything. You’re just making a fool of yourself. Turn on the lights, Mason. I want her to see us.”
“Do not turn on those lights,” the rough voice said. “We must take every precaution not to compromise the lab. We must extract any pertinent infor—”
“With all due respect, Mr. Peak,” the woman said, “the only thing you’re going to extract is pity from me. Now turn on the lights before I rattle off everyone’s full names and you’re faced with the moral dilemma of having to murder this poor girl.”
There was a husky sigh in the darkness. “Go ahead, Mason.”
The lights popped on, and the space filled with light, making me squint again. I was in what looked like a small warehouse. A checkerboard floor stretched to the four distant walls, like a chess game that didn’t know how to end. In the middle of the room was a table with three people sitting in chairs.
The British man with the goatee and the lab coat sat to the left. In the middle was the rough-voiced man with the microphone. At first, he held up a piece of paper to cover his face, but then he let it drop, hopeless. He had clownish hair and sagging cheeks like Droopy Dog, which he tried to make up for with a trim haircut and a nice suit.
The woman sat to the right. She was as beautiful as her voice had promised. She wore a cheongsam dress, and her hair was as black and elegant as calligraphy, pulled back under an airwave hat. She had dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise looked as light and thin as Lladro from Macy’s.
But then my eyes continued down and caught her stomach, which bulged into her lap beneath the table. This woman had a bun in the oven, and it was nearly cooked.
“Hello, Phoebe,” she said. “I’m Elizabeth Link. But you may call me Liz.”
“You were at the motel,” I said. “The day Ma vanished.”
The woman’s eye gave a little twitch, like she remembered me but didn’t know who I was at the time.
“Where’s Ma?” I said, rage building in my trembling voice.
Droopy Dog, Mr. Peak, I guessed, glared at the woman.
She responded to me without looking at him. “Your mother is on a special mission.”
I crossed my arms. I loved Ma to pieces, but the only mission she was any good at was wearing torn dresses and letting fellas hoot at her.
“You kidnapped her,” I said. “There was nail polish spilled all over the bedspread.”
“Actually, she was cleaning that up when we arrived,” the woman said.
“Why didn’t she leave a note?” I said.
“Probably because she didn’t want us to know you existed. To protect you.”
It was true Ma had been overprotective since being released from the hospital. That was part of the reason she’d never registered me for school. She couldn’t make herself trust I’d come back to her.
I wanted to challenge this woman further, but she seemed to have an answer to everything.
Liz interlaced her fingers on the table in a businesslike fashion. “Phoebe, I think you might be able to help us.”
The British man with the goatee smiled at me. Mr. Peak scowled.
“Help how?” I said.
“Well,” the woman said, leaning in, “you have a gift that few people in the world have. You can see the man in the sky.”
My leg started working like a jackhammer. I leaned on my knee to make it still. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman smiled. “That’s fine. You can take your ti—” She winced and doubled over. She laid one hand on her pregnant stomach and the other flat on the table and breathed in and out a few times.
“Are you all right, Miss Link?” the man with the goatee
said.
“I apologize,” she said in a strained voice.
Mr. Peak rolled his eyes and then called up toward a microphone in the ceiling. “I said it, didn’t I? It’s one thing to have a woman on the payroll. Another to have one that’s knocked up six ways from Sunday.”
The woman flashed her eyes at him. “Would you prefer I take maternity leave during our little emergency?”
“Don’t get smart,” he said. “I’m not the one who knocked you up.”
The woman straightened herself, and even though her face was pale and strained, she remained upright. “Perhaps it would be best for me speak to Phoebe alone.”
Mr. Peak licked his teeth beneath his lips. He didn’t seem to want to budge, but he must’ve known something I didn’t about this woman because he tapped his papers into a neat pile, and then walked toward the exit. The man with the goatee followed.
“That’s just great,” Mr. Peak said in the doorway so the woman could hear. “The world’ll get clicked off all because you can’t handle a couple of kicks from a baby’s feet. Hey, kid.” He looked at me and pointed to the microphone in the ceiling. “Let us know if her water breaks.”
When the door shut, the woman managed half a smile. “Why don’t you come closer, Phoebe?”
I sat in the chair next to her while she slowly turned her belly toward me, like it was the rotation of a planet or something.
“May I?” she said.
Before I could answer, she tilted my chin upward, turning my face side to side.
“The spitting image,” she said.
I knew she meant Daddy and took my chin back.
“I haven’t got much sleep lately,” I said.
Liz gave me a pitying smile. “I suppose I ought to start by telling you that you and I are sisters. Well, half sisters.”
I studied her face, looking for any resemblance to Ma or Daddy to figure just which half she was talking about. I couldn’t find a trace of either. Every inch of her was delicate and smooth. Here was proof that some people did win the lottery when it came to genes.
Liz gathered my hands between hers and set them in her lap, which was uncomfortable because while her hands were icy cold, her thighs were burning up. Must be a pregnant thing, I thought.
“I can see him too, you know,” Liz said. “Our father. In fact, as far as I know, you and I are the only two. Well, and our mothers. But my mother is dead, and yours . . . well, as I said, she’s on a special mission.”
I looked at her skeptically but kept my mouth shut.
“You’re smart keeping quiet,” she said, squeezing my hands with her icy ones. “Your mother must have taught you well. Come with me.”
She pushed herself up off the chair and then led me to a dark little room in the corner. The walls were a tangle of pipes, and hanging in the center was a periscope that looked plucked straight out of a submarine.
“Go ahead,” Liz said.
I pressed my eyes to the rubbery eyepiece. There was Daddy, in two blurry circles, closer than I’d ever seen him.
“How does he look?” Liz asked.
I pulled my eyes back. “You tell me.”
“Bored,” she said, without looking.
“How many hairs does he have on the mole on his right cheek?” I said.
Liz gave a smirk. She blinked her pretty lashes and then gazed through the scope. “It isn’t on his cheek. It’s on his chin.”
I had a lot of feelings then. Heartache. Affection. Like I wasn’t so alone. Things I’d kept myself from feeling since I was eleven.
“So,” I said, “Daddy keeps you safe too?”
The woman wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion.
“That’s why he looks at us,” I said. “To warn us when a Shiver is coming.”
“Shiver?” the woman said.
“That’s what Ma and I call monster attacks. They always leave you with a chill.”
The woman’s expression turned from confusion to pity. “Oh, you sweet, innocent thing.”
I scowled at being talked to like I was in kindergarten, but a dreadful feeling started to well in my chest.
“Is that what you believe?” Liz said. “Is that what your mother told you?”
My teeth clenched. This felt like the time Katie told me there was no such thing as Santa, and I had to pretend like I knew all along while my heart was breaking.
“How do I explain this?” Liz tapped her teeth with her fingernail, thinking. “Best to be blunt, I suppose.” She gave me a sincere look. “Phoebe, our father doesn’t protect anybody. He only has three interests: violence, monsters, and women of a certain type.”
“What do you mean?” I said, not sure I wanted to know.
“Our father’s eyes drift toward these . . . Shivers, as you call them, because he likes to watch them kill. We are his entertainment. He doesn’t care any more about you and me than you would about squishing an ant at a picnic.”
I opened my lips to argue, but I couldn’t. Realization dripped over me, cold and numb. I thought of Daddy’s expression: bored or tired or pleased as punch. He had never been watching out for me and Ma. He’d been watching for his own pleasure.
Katie. The boy with his arm in a sling. He was enjoying it.
“Violence is Father’s favorite thing in the world,” Liz said, “right after scantily clad women. In fact, that’s where you came from. Father liked the look of your mother in that torn dress so much that he—”
My face crumpled.
“I apologize,” Liz said. “I’ve known that Father is a debauchee for so long that I’ve grown used to it.”
I rubbed my face, remembering all the times Ma had told me to avert my eyes because Daddy had his hand down his boxer shorts. Then I dropped my hands and stared at Liz’s pregnant belly in horror. “Is that . . . his?”
“What? Of course not. Our father may be a pervert, but that doesn’t mean he’s incestuous.”
I studied the pipes in the small room. “Did Ma know about this place?”
“She was as surprised as you are,” Liz said.
Why had Ma lied to me all these years? Did she think I wasn’t grown up enough, even now at fifteen, to handle it? I felt so stupid for not putting it together before now. My mind tried to fill in all the parts of the story Ma had never told me. Maybe when she went to the police station, she was actually trying to get them to protect her from the creepy man in the sky.
As if reading my mind, Liz said, “Your mother didn’t necessarily lie to you, Phoebe. It’s more likely she’s been lying to herself. She first caught Father’s eye when she was kidnapped by Emperor Ook. Father’s been searching for her ever since. Well, her and a few choice other women. Every time his eyes tracked your mother down, she knew just when to escape. So in a sense, he was protecting you. Just not purposefully.”
I’d been blaming Ma for robbing me of a good life. But it wasn’t her fault at all. It was Daddy’s. If she was the lightning rod, his gaze was the lightning.
Liz shook her head. “Here I am discussing family matters when we have mountains of work and mere days to do it. You know about Father’s remote control, right?”
My mind was spinning so fast I couldn’t quite figure out what she was asking at first. But then I remembered the black box sitting in Daddy’s lap. Ma and I could never quite figure out what it was, but we took turns guessing. A box for a diamond necklace? A wand? Neither of us had ever guessed a remote control. It didn’t even have a cord.
I adjusted the periscope. The remote was as clear as a mountaintop in sunlight. Usually it was rested on his knee, but right then, on that thawing spring afternoon, he was lifting it. And it was pointed straight toward Earth.
“And you understand what that remote implies?” Liz asked.
When I was seven years old, the motel manager insisted on showing me and Ma up to the room so he could demonstrate the “wave of the future.”
“Is it magic fingers?” Ma asked. “ ’Cause I’m all out of nickels and
those beds rattle the fillings right out of my teeth.”
“Better!” the manager said, and with a chuckle, he carried my suitcase and led us past the icemaker down the hallway. He opened the door for us and set my suitcase inside, then flipped on the lights and rubbed his hands together. He went to the nightstand and picked up a small rectangular box with four white buttons and a wire leading to the TV. It said ZENITH in electric letters across the top.
He held it out to us with both hands like he was wielding Excalibur.
“Ladies, may I present to you . . . the Lazy Bones.”
Ma gave the box a funny look. “What is it?”
In answer, the manager walked over to the television and flipped it on. A news anchor was speaking rapidly about a giant Gila monster attack in Little Winnipeg.
He walked back to me and crouched down low. “You like the news, little girl?”
I wrinkled my nose. The news was what happened to towns me and Ma abandoned. It was never good.
“What do you like?” the manager asked. “Howdy Doody?”
I bit my bottom lip and nodded.
“Well then, let’s see if it’s on, shall we?”
I reached up to turn the TV dial to channel three, but the manager said, “Ah ah ah.” He held out the Lazy Bones. He tapped one of the four white buttons, second from the right. “Push that one.”
I did. The button didn’t go very easy, but I pressed and pressed until my thumb hurt, and then the button sank with a satisfying Click!
To my great astonishment, the TV changed. It leapt from boring old news to Ed Sullivan smiling in front of a curtain.
“Well, it isn’t Howdy Doody,” the manager said, winking, “but close enough.”
My fright quickly melted away as I realized the magic that I had cast with my very own thumb. I smiled up at Ma, who didn’t look so impressed.
“Is this thing why the room costs an extra dollar a night?” she’d asked.
The remote control had been the most enthralling thing I’d ever seen in my young life. But peering through the periscope, I took on Ma’s skepticism.
There in the sky, Daddy’s thumb was moving toward the only button on the remote that I could see. A big button right at the top. The power button.
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower Page 5