The House of Tomorrow

by Peter Bognanni

  We arrived at the hospital soon after and the men unloaded Nana with unbelievable deftness. They dragged the gurney toward the white double doors headfirst. Before she disappeared through, she opened her eyes for a moment and looked at me again. It seemed like she wanted to say something, but I had no clue what it was. Her lips moved. They formed no discernible words. I stared back, unsure what to do. But by the time I raised my hand to wave, it was too late. The soles of her dress shoes (still on the wrong feet) were receding into the well-lit passageway, and the doors were swinging shut.

  IN THE LOBBY, THE WHITCOMBS WERE THERE AS promised. They were the only people in the room aside from a hunched security guard watching a TV bolted to the wall, and a tiny woman in a turtleneck murmuring into a telephone. The room was another world entirely from the white tiles of the hospital proper. Here, there was soft light, coral-colored carpeting, and a machine full of nonperishables.

  Also, there was cola. Janice handed me one when I sat down between her and Jared, and I triggered the top. I had only drunk soda twice before. Once with my parents when I was young, and once on a hot summer errand by bicycle to pick up an allergy prescription for Nana in town. In the hospital lobby that Sunday, I had my third. A glacially cold can of Royal Crown. The first sip was so sweet I nearly gagged. My tongue burned from the carbonation, and my eyes leaked a few tears. Janice saw them and patted me on the back. After each pat, she rubbed.

  Next to me on the other side, Jared sat staring at the bolted television. Sitting down, he looked even smaller and more emaciated. Like a malnourished nestling. There was barely the outline of a body under his voluminous jacket. And his skin was so white it was almost translucent. I could see the washed blue of the veins in his neck and just above his ears. Yet there was something older in his eyes, in his stare. It was difficult to discern his age.

  For the first few moments, no one said anything. But eventually, Janice took my hand in hers. Her palms were warm and dry. “How are you holding up, Sebastian?” she asked. “Would it bother you if I said a short prayer for your grandmother?”

  “Can it,” said Jared.

  Janice whipped her head around. “What was that?”

  Jared continued watching television.

  “Well?” said Janice. “You always have something to say about the ways I find comfort. So go ahead. What is it?”

  “It’s time for my pills,” he said.

  Janice sighed and let go of my hand. She opened her purse and withdrew a small airtight pill case. She reached across my lap and handed Jared a large pill. He held it up to the fluorescent light of the lobby.

  “Cyclosporine,” he said, “compliments of the chef.”

  He swallowed it dry. He was handed another. He swallowed that, then two more. Finally, he was handed the last one. A light orange tablet, smaller than the others.

  “This one,” he said, his eyes still on the TV, “this is the one that will give me diarrhea.”

  “Jared, please,” said his mother, wincing.

  “It’s just a bodily function,” he said. “God created it. God created loose stool. Take it up with him.”

  He looked over at me for the first time.

  “Well, I can see what kind of mood you’re in today,” she said. Her voice was calm. She looked at me. “I’m going to ask about your grandmother. They must know something by now.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for your consideration.”

  She got up and marched up to the receptionist’s desk. Jared gagged a little when she was gone, and coughed up a sour pill smell. He didn’t look my way for the first few minutes. He just kept his eyes on the screen, watching a program about high school students with symmetrical haircuts. But when the program was replaced by an advertisement, he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose until it began to redden. He shot me a sideways glance.

  “You’re not some kind of annoying asshole-genius, are you?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  He wiped the lenses of his glasses with his tuxedo shirt and put them back on.

  “Autistic?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you talk like that then?”

  “How do I talk?”

  “Not the right way, I’ll tell you that,” he said.

  He looked right at me.

  “You talk like a jack-off.”

  “Well, I’m not . . . I don’t really leave our home very often,” I said. “Maybe that’s what you’re picking up on. I haven’t been out much.”

  Jared seemed to take this in a moment. I took another harsh mouthful of RC and tried not to tear up. Jared examined me closely. He looked at my clothes, my worn gray tennis shoes, my blue flannel. I felt like a specimen under the magnifying lenses of those glasses. Somewhere in another part of the hospital, doctors were probably looking at Nana in the same way.

  “Have you ever heard the Misfits’ first album?” he asked.

  I shook my head, and Jared immediately began searching one of the deep pockets of his jacket. “Janice keeps a close watch on me, too,” he said, “but she has my sister to worry about. She doesn’t open my mail.”

  He pulled out his music player, a thin rectangular box with a glowing screen and a circle of buttons. I had seen one advertised in a store window, but I could not remember its name. He began rapidly steering his thumb over the controls.

  “I order my albums off the Internet,” he said.

  “The World Wide Web?”

  He shushed me with a single finger and pressed a final button.

  “I want you to hear something, Sebastian. But first you have to prepare yourself.”

  “For what?”

  “To have your shit rocked,” he said.

  He looked at me, altogether serious.

  “All right,” I said. “How should I prepare?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just do it.”

  So I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. I thought of North Branch from a bird’s-eye view. I pictured myself floating over the bare trees, the top branches scraping against the tips of my shoes. Then I opened my eyes again, and Jared seemed satisfied. He placed the headphones in my ears and turned the volume up.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  Jared pressed a button. There was a brief moment of white noise; then it sounded as if someone were running a chain saw inside my head. Only this chain saw made melodies. And a drumbeat pounded along with it. The singing began seconds later, and I tried hard to make it out over the crunch of what I assumed to be a guitar. But the words were too fast to understand. And the singing switched alternately into yelling and whining. Then a series of whoas. Before I knew it, the song was ending and Jared was looking at me for my reaction.

  “What was that about maggots?” I asked. It was the only word I’d been able to parse.

  “The maggots in the iron lung won’t copulate,” said Jared. “Then later he changes it to . . . the maggots in the eye of love won’t copulate.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s the Misfits. I’m learning how to play that song right now, but I don’t really have the calluses yet,” he said. “I started too late.”

  “Guitar?” I asked.

  “Damn right,” he said.

  “It was . . . a very accomplished song,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  He watched his mother for a moment. She was listening to the receptionist, nodding her head solemnly.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, I hate this stupid place. I need some air.”

  He was already getting up, and when he began his journey toward the exit, I found myself following. It seemed like the right idea. I could already tell that objectionable things happened inside the building. People breathed into machines. Grandmothers were wheeled away to secret rooms.


  So we stepped outside into the early afternoon air. The sun had vanished behind an opaque cloud cover, and a green neon cross above us cast an unearthly light on the pavement. Jared reached back into the tentlike folds of his leather coat and produced a pack of cigarettes. He tapped out a Lucky Strike.

  “You tell Janice about this and I’ll make sure you die in a drainage ditch someday,” he said.

  “Understood,” I said.

  He lit the cigarette and then smoked what looked like a fourth of it in one long inhalation. He pulled in the enormous drag, then coughed it out in a thick, green-tinted cloud.

  “So you really live in that goddamned thing in the middle of the forest?” he asked me, in between puffs. “Is that what you’re feeding me?”

  “You mean the Geodesic Dome?”

  “Yeah. That thing.”

  “I really live there.”

  “And you go to school there?”

  “Nana instructs me,” I said.

  “So is she, like, your overlord?” he asked.

  “She’s my guardian,” I said. “She says we have a bond stronger than the average parental one.”

  I watched him blow smoke through his tiny nostrils.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “We make up for the lack of direct mother-son connection with a greater communicative capability.” I was talking too much, but I felt the words coming against my will. “A kind of telepathic bond,” I added.

  He stomped out his cigarette and immediately reached for another one.

  “You can read each other’s thoughts?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, “but there’s a kind of hyperawareness present. She senses me.”

  Jared considered this. “Okay, then,” he said. “If you can read her mind, then what’s happening to your grandma now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Is she going to die?”

  I felt something inside me drop. I looked down just to concentrate on something. I looked at the flattened cigarette butt lying in front of me. It was still emitting smoke.

  “I resist my powers,” I said.

  And before I could really think about it, I picked up the remains of the cigarette, appraised it, and took a small puff. My first ever. I got a little smoke, and almost immediately began to hack. I took a step backward and steadied myself against a metal bench. My throat and nostrils felt scorched.

  “That’s the filter,” said Jared. “You’re not supposed to smoke that part.”

  The taste in my mouth was horrible. Like the smell of burning plastic. I rested the back of my head on the top rail of the bench. I felt my nose starting to run. I wiped my forearm across my face, but it didn’t stop.

  “Are you crying?” asked Jared.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, man. I’m sorry. I’m sure she’s going to be okay and everything.”

  Jared walked over and stood next to me. He reached in his coat for a wad of old Kleenex. He unwrapped it and handed it to me.

  “People get sick, you know?” he said. “Bad stuff happens.”

  His voice was an octave lower now, and quiet. He sat down next to me, reeking of smoke. Then he glanced at the hospital sign.

  “Believe me,” he said. “This is the kind of shit I know about.”

  Jared looked away. He coughed a little. Suddenly a voice came from behind us.

  “Sebastian!”

  We turned around, and Janice was standing in the doorway, the institutional light of the hospital shining behind her. She walked up to us and pulled the unlit cigarette out of Jared’s mouth. “Are you crazy?” she said. “Have you gone absolutely insane?”

  She snapped the cigarette in half and tossed it in the bushes. Then she shifted her gaze directly to me. Her face softened, and she attempted a comforting smile.

  “I found a nurse,” she said. “I found a nurse to take you to Josephine.”

  MY NURSE WAS A MUSCULAR WOMAN IN OLIVE HOSPITAL clothing. And she spoke to me about brains while we traversed the spare hallways. She spoke about brains in general, but I could deduce that she was really talking about Nana’s brain. She told me that they needed nutrients and oxygen, but that sometimes clots or clotlike things blocked the arteries and resulted in interruptions of blood flow. Some version of this interruption, she said, had happened to Nana. And it had caused a thrombotic stroke and some temporary aphasia. Nana was having some difficulties with her speech. Fortunately, they had been able to supply her with drugs in time to ward off too much permanent damage. Still, said the nurse, strokes killed brain cells; that was what they did.

  When she finished, we were standing at the door to Nana’s room. It was a sizable space, with a row of empty beds. It smelled like moth-balls. Nana had the room to herself, and the second I stepped inside, her eyes fluttered open and followed me, just as they had when she was taken from her home. I walked to her bed where she sat, pierced by a few small tubes. Her skin was pale, and her lips were chapped. Her unwashed hair had been matted down against her head.

  I hefted myself onto her bed and sat beside her. The nurse stood outside, scrawling on her papers. I rested my hand on Nana’s shoulder. When I was five, the only way I could fall asleep was with her hand on my back. That weight had to be there. I needed something to pin me down. I worried that sleeping without an anchor would cause me to drift right through the domed ceiling and out into the night.

  “Nana,” I said now. “I understand you have aphasia. So I’m just going to speak slowly to you.”

  She coughed a single soft husky cough.

  “You told me once,” I said, “that physical bodies are just elements and energies. That they are always changing. That’s what you said.”

  Nana did not look at me.

  “I mean some of the things that are me today, were just proteins and water yesterday. There is no ‘real’ me. I am in a constant state of flux. Right?”

  Nana closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then her eyes opened again.

  “Soba,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  Nana contorted her mouth.

  “You drank soba,” she said quietly. “Coke cola.”

  I looked closely at her. “Janice gave me an RC,” I said.

  Nana winced and shook her head.

  “You should,” she said, “you should not consume . . . these things.”

  “Nana, you’ve had a stroke,” I said.

  This gave her pause. She looked around the room and down at her hospital gown. She seemed to see it all for the first time.

  “I was worried,” I said. “I’ve been out there worrying about you . . .”

  I heard my voice shaking.

  “Sebas-yan,” she said. “You shouldn’t drink these things.”

  She didn’t seem to be listening anymore. I looked out into the hall and the olive-clad nurse was still there. She was watching me. “She’s experiencing some disorientation,” she said. “I wouldn’t pay much attention to what she’s saying at this point. Your grandmother is on some strong medication.”

  Suddenly Nana opened her eyes wide and gasped. I turned to her, startled.

  “You are going away,” said Nana.

  She grabbed at my arm, but her body wasn’t quite getting the messages.

  “No, Nana, I’m right here,” I said. “I’m right here with you.”

  She looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if she was really seeing me.

  “You are going away,” she said. “I know this.”

  Her eyes fell closed. I wanted to reassure her, but she had already drifted from consciousness again. I watched her sleep for a moment. Then I got up and left her bed. I intuited my way back to the waiting room and found Janice reading from a glossy paperback and eating a bag of saltless pretzels. Jared was no longer beside her.
r />   “Mrs. Whitcomb?” I said.

  She looked up at me, chewing slowly.

  “It looks like I’ll be sleeping here tonight,” I said, “but I want to offer thanks again for your help.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said. She got up and threw her arms around me. “Is everything going to be all right?”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  She let go and took another bite of a pretzel.

  “I’m going to give you something,” she said.

  She rifled around in her overlarge handbag until she pulled out a receipt and a pen. She began scribbling something. “Jared wanted me to give you this information,” she said. “If you ever want a day away from your . . . home, you should just call us up or e-mail Jared. I know you kids get on your computers and talk that way sometimes. And Jared is . . . well, he’s had some troubles. But he’s a sweet boy at heart. He’s in the car right now, thinking about his behavior.”

  She handed me a phone number and an e-mail address.

  “Jared told you to give me this?” I asked. I gripped the paper hard in my fingers.

  “Well, he didn’t actually say it, but he doesn’t say much of anything to me. I could just tell he wanted to hear from you again.”

  I stuck the receipt in my pocket, and Janice gave me another hug.

  “Immanuel Methodist,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s where I teach the Youth Group. I’ll bet you would like it, Sebastian. I really bet you would. There’s singing and study groups, and we have outings from time to time.”

  “Nana and I don’t attend church,” I said. “We believe in synergy.”

  “Even so,” she said, “maybe you’ll consider it.”

  She handed me her bag of pretzels and smiled. Then she turned around and walked out of the hospital. Not far away in the parking lot, I could spot the teal minivan. It stuck out, half bathed in a dim parking light in the darkening evening. And directly under the light, coming out of the van’s open sliding door, I could see a black pair of tennis shoes swinging against the side of the van in a steady beat. Jared’s music player dangled at his side, illuminated, and there was something affixed to it. I narrowed my eyes.