The House of Tomorrow

by Peter Bognanni

  “How does it help to say that?” asked Janice, raising her voice. “Tell me, please. Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Janice took a deep breath and her voice softened.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” she said. “I understand. But Jared doesn’t know the way things really were. He has a selective memory when it comes to his dad. You know that. He doesn’t remember the way he was abandoned during the . . . whole process. He doesn’t remember how hurt he was. It’s not going to help him get better to have that man in his life. That’s the hard truth.”

  “So, you’re making that decision for him?”

  “I don’t have to make it,” sighed Janice. “I never hear from him anymore.”

  The room was so quiet, and I wondered if they would hear my breathing.

  “Are you doing okay?” she said finally. “I know I should probably ask that more often.”

  “I’m getting by, Mom,” she said. “Are you?”

  “Well,” she faltered. “To be honest, I don’t have too much time to think about it. I’m working on getting another job. I’m trying to keep us afloat.”

  Meredith didn’t speak, but there was some shifting on the bed.

  “Hopefully,” said Janice, “Sebastian will patch things up with his grandmother soon. He can’t stay here forever.”

  “Yeah,” said Meredith.

  Her voice could have betrayed my presence if Janice had thought for a minute I might be there. Instead, she rose from the bed. The mattress let up again.

  “He’s never going to have a completely normal life, Meredith,” Janice said.

  “Who? Sebastian? That’s for sure.”

  “I’m talking about your brother. He’s always going to have to think about all of this. And so are we. But it doesn’t help things to put him in avoidable situations. You need to learn to live with this and step up. So keep the noise down, okay?”

  Janice sounded so tired. I had never heard her more tired.

  “All right,” she said. “I know.”

  I heard a kiss being bestowed somewhere, then Janice walked slowly out of the room, closing the door behind her. I stayed where I was, trying not to breathe in any spiderwebs. Just to my left was a wadded-up pair of lime green panties that I hadn’t noticed before. I reached out and ran my finger over the waistband. Meredith walked over to the window and opened it back up. She didn’t say a word. Jared pulled himself in.

  “Sweet merciful balls,” he said. “It is cold out there.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “As soon as they amputate, I’ll be fine.”

  He paused. I watched his canvas shoes. “Where’s weirdo?” he said.

  I was about to call out to Jared.

  “He went upstairs already,” said Meredith.

  “What a traitor. I might have to draw on him in his sleep tonight.”

  “Listen.” She stopped him before he left. “I won’t ask what you were doing tonight if you don’t ask about . . . my situation, either.”

  “That smells like a deal,” said Jared. “Now please remove your hand from my shoulder. I’m not sure where, or on what, it’s been.”

  He snuck out the door, and when I heard it close I shimmied my way out from under the bed. I stood up right away and tossed off the down coat that had been smothering me for the last fifteen minutes. Then I wiped my face and hair with my hands, trying to get all the phantom spiders off of me. When I looked back at Meredith, she was back on her bed. She still wore only her boxers and a tank top (with no bra underneath, I observed now). Her beautiful legs were stretched out on the bed. Her lean neck was at a bit of an angle. She was watching me.

  “I didn’t need that tonight,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes and smoothed her boxers over her legs.

  “So, how many times have you spied on me now?” she asked. “Is it ten? Twenty?”

  “Three,” I said. “This was number three.”

  “What’s the allure?” she said. “Don’t you know how to leave people alone?”

  I shook my head.

  “I see that,” she said.

  Suddenly, she reached down and pulled her tank top over her head. She did it so quickly I nearly fainted from the unexpected stimulus. A moment ago, I understood some things about the world; now everything needed restructuring. There were Meredith Whitcomb’s breasts, drooping slightly off her chest. They were ivory and amazing, with a small mole just at the very bottom of the right one. I wanted to press that little spot with my fingertip. Just once. She was still looking at me with no change of expression.

  “Is this enough?” she said. “Is this what you want to see?”

  “Jared’s going to come back down for me, any minute,” I said.

  “Do you want me to put my shirt back on?”

  “No,” I said. “I do not.”

  I looked down her chest to her flat stomach, and down farther to her boxers.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  She got up off the bed and walked up close to me. I could smell her now. Sweat and fruit and sleep and sheets and shampooed hair. Everything all at once. She reached out and grabbed my hand. She pressed it to her right breast. It was cool and warm at the same time. The smoothest thing I had ever touched. The bump of her nipple stuck in the middle of my palm. I didn’t squeeze. I just held my hand right where she had placed it.

  “The shoes were in the tree for my brother,” she said.

  I could hardly listen. My whole hand was tingling, and so was everything below my waist.

  “It was an old track team superstition. For good luck. They have nothing to do with . . . all this. I want him to get better.”

  “I want to kiss you,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  She opened her door and looked out into the pall of the night kitchen.

  “Go to bed,” she said.

  “Who was that guy in here?” I asked.

  “Go to bed,” she said again.

  I stole one last look at topless Meredith before the door clicked shut and I was stuck watching the chiseled features of a half-naked man on a poster. I stood in the hall, not yet ready to go upstairs, trying to catch my breath. According to Bucky, our bodies are just repositories for the metaphysical phenomena inside. Much like a telephone is an agent for transporting our voices, our physical selves are just agents for our ideas. He found them practically irrelevant. I, on the other hand, was beginning to find them more and more relevant each day.

  I looked from the body on the poster back to mine. We could have been two different species of human, this hulking man and I. But when I got to his face, his eyes, I grinned at him. He might have been the male ideal, but he had never seen what I had. His poster was stuck on the outside.

  22.

  Tests of the Will

  NOW THAT I KNEW NANA WAS SAFE, I ENDEAVORED for the first time to unfasten her from my consciousness. This was no easy feat. Nana was, in many ways, all I had ever known. Her thin-lipped smile, her moist eyes, her crescent of milk-colored hair continued to find me in my dreams at night, along with her voice, set to a constant burble of Bucky facts. I could tell by the feeling in my chest when I woke each morning that our synergy had been severed. Yet I knew I could not return to the dome. I knew this because along with my morning pangs came some very different feelings altogether. Sensations that had only begun since my stay at the Whitcombs’. The manic energy of playing bass guitar, for one. Or the feeling of a long feverish shower, with water enveloping every part of me at once. And then, of course, there was the sight of Meredith Whitcomb’s ponytail bouncing up and down in the front seat of a minivan.

  It was the evening of my second Youth Group meeting, and Jared and I were huddled in the backseat.
Meredith was in front with Janice, typing on her phone. For the duration of the ride so far, Jared had been trying to explain to me why we were not musicians, but he could tell I wasn’t paying much attention. This only made him louder.

  “Yes,” he shouted, “we play music! Sort of. But that word ‘musician’ suggests that we have talent. And talent happens to be for boners. It’s the last thing we want!”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off the back of Meredith’s head. The tips of her hair swished each time the van hit a bump. Occasionally, she turned slightly, and I caught a look at her eyes, staring down into the screen of her telephone.

  “So when they ask us questions about our act tonight,” Jared continued, “we just tell them it’s called The Rash. Let them wonder about what it is. Just don’t tell them we’re musicians, or I think I’ll puke up. Are you even listening to me?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but just then Meredith turned around and glared back at us. “What are you plotting back there?” she asked, “the Bed Wetters’ Revolt?”

  “Actually, we were talking about teen pregnancy,” said Jared.

  I waited for Janice to chime in, but she ignored the situation entirely. She was already lost in concentration, whispering something to herself. I moved my gaze to Meredith’s neck, and the almost imperceptible curls at her hairline. The only contact I’d had with her that day was a moment before we left. Jared had given me one of his Black Flag T-shirts to wear, and he had put some kind of gelatinous substance in my hair to push it up. We needed to work on our image, he said. Uniformity between bandmates was key.

  “So, he’s dressing you now?” Meredith had said, standing in the doorway.

  “I’m just experimenting with something different,” I said.

  She studied me. “The hair looks all right,” she said, “could be worse.”

  Ever since my sacred moment in her room on Monday, she’d only spoken to me a handful of times. It was always like that. Two or three sentences and a disappearance. She had yet to acknowledge what had happened.

  Now, on the way to the Youth Group, I was being ignored again. Jared had put his headphones on after the mini-spat with his sister. I pulled one out of his ear.

  “Why don’t you handle all the preparations,” I said.

  “That’s all you had to say,” he grumbled.

  He plugged his ear back up, and I could just make out the guitar part from “California über Alles,” a song Jared tried to listen to at least once a day. He closed his eyes and nodded to the beat. Soon enough, the van arrived at Immanuel, and we rode gradually over the sanded parking lot. I watched the older boys, indistinguishable from their shadows, slouch and idle toward the church. They kicked at one another’s shoes from behind. One of them turned and gave a half wave to Meredith. I felt my entire chest freeze and shatter.

  “What’s with you?” asked Jared, too loudly. “You’re acting like a moody girl.”

  AN HOUR LATER WE WERE IN THE CHURCH RECREATION Room, preparing to walk blindfolded across a balance beam. The activity was about community this time, Janice explained. We gathered around the beam to listen. The idea was that while we walked across, our group mates were supposed to shout encouraging platitudes to help us achieve our goal and conquer our fear. If we toppled off, kids lined the side of the beam to catch us. Because of our diminutive size, Jared and I were placed at the very beginning where nobody would fall.

  “Just tell me!” Jared said.

  “I don’t want to discuss it,” I said.

  “I don’t want to discuss anything, either,” he said. “I just want you to tell me what’s wrong so I can knock some sense into your ass.”

  One of the larger guys from the group made his way across the beam. He engaged in some dramatics while he walked, holding his arms out in a perfect T from his body.

  “You can do it, DJ!” came a low voice from the crowd. “You’re the man!”

  “Jesus,” said Jared. “These are my future classmates. I might as well slit my wrists in the bathroom.”

  “Meredith,” came Janice’s voice from the end. “Your turn on the beam.”

  Meredith sulked to the edge of the balance beam. She pulled at a short skirt and stepped up onto the small foot-space. It was only ten inches or so off the ground (as far as I could tell the activity was more symbolic than a test of athletic ability). Meredith closed her eyes and a short blond girl tiptoed up to fasten the blindfold. Meredith took a hesitant step forward. The group immediately started in with the motivation. “C’mon. Feel it!” “Show that beam who’s boss!”

  She took another step, moving past Jared. I watched her delicate hands form nervous fists. She adjusted her blindfold.

  “Hey, no peeking,” yelled the guy in the Broncos hat.

  Meredith sighed and put her hands back at her sides. She took another step. And then somehow I saw what would happen next before it even transpired. It was a rare moment of prescience. I could tell by her hesitation that her right foot would land off the center of the beam when she took her next step. I could tell she would teeter.

  Then it occurred.

  She put her right foot forward and lost her balance completely, falling sideways. Falling right at me. I didn’t have time to be afraid. All I saw was a body plummeting rapidly toward me. So I put out my arms and caught it before it hit the carpeted floor. Meredith landed in my arms, her head knocking into my skinny chest. My arm was around her warm stomach. I held her for a moment, just to make sure she was steady on her feet. The room broke out in mild applause. Someone whistled.

  “Well done, Sebastian,” said Janice. “Strength in numbers. You see? We’re strong enough to deal with any challenge if we stand by one another.”

  At the sound of my name, Meredith inched up her blindfold over one eye and blinked. She calmly stepped out of my embrace.

  “Way to go, pervert,” she said, just loud enough for me to hear.

  She stood back on the beam and took a deep breath. I watched her move lithely across the rest of the way with absolutely no problems. When she got to the end, she took the blindfold off and gave a little bow. I felt myself grinning like a fool.

  “Oh, my God,” said Jared.

  I had almost forgotten he was next to me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Oh, my holy God, no!” he said.

  “Jared, be quiet,” I said.

  “You have a chubby for my sister. I knew it! I knew it the whole time, you rotten son of a bitch!”

  People were starting to turn to look at us.

  “Jared,” I said. “You have to stop talking right now.”

  He was getting louder and louder with each burst.

  “What did I tell you!” he said. “What did I tell you about her! Not good things.”

  More people were watching.

  “Jared, what are you going on about up there?” asked Janice.

  She was walking down the row of youth-groupers to us. But Jared didn’t seem affected. It was too late to turn him off now.

  “I don’t believe this. What a betrayal. What a supreme fucking betrayal. I’m the one who saved you, Sebastian,” he said, “if you don’t remember. Not her.”

  Everyone in the room was listening now.

  “I’m the reason you’re in an awesome band. I’m the reason you have a home right now. You were just some freak from a dome! And now you choose Meredith. What were you doing the other night when you were supposed to be upstairs, huh? I trusted you, you Judas!”

  Jared was walking away now. His mother tried to stop him, but he shrugged off her hand and walked right out of the Recreation Room. He turned around one last time before leaving. “Oh,” he said. “And you’re completely out of the band.”

  He slammed the door behind him. Once he disappeared, every pair of eyes in the room turned toward me at once. Janice stood, flabbergasted. Meredith looked surprisingly calm. Final
ly, the small girl who had fastened the blindfold to Meredith spoke up.

  “What band?” she asked me.

  The whole Youth Group waited for an answer.

  “Jared and I are in a band,” I said.

  “You mean you were in a band,” said the first beam-walker.

  “Correct,” I said.

  “I didn’t know you were musicians,” said the girl.

  I watched the doorway where Jared had stood only seconds ago.

  “We’re not,” I said. “We’re The Rash.”

  THE MEETING ENDED EARLY. JUST LIKE THE PREVIOUS one. Another Youth Group spoiled. A team of helpers dismantled the beam, and everyone left without a post-activity discussion. A tin of oatmeal-raisin cookies sat on a table unopened.

  “Any idea where he went?”

  I turned around to find Janice behind me.

  “Mrs. Whitcomb,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”

  She closed her eyes and didn’t respond for a moment. Then she sat down on the gray folding table. She tore open the plastic band around the tin of cookies and set it aside. “Of course,” she said, selecting a cookie. “Just like you didn’t intend to steal an instrument from this church. It’s interesting what we intend to happen and what actually happens.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve worked here for four years,” she said. “I have every church possession memorized. You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

  “Why didn’t you mention anything?”

  She took a bite of her cookie and wiped some crumbs from her lips.

  “I’m considering it a loan,” she said, mouth full.

  “A loan.”

  “Sebastian,” she said, “it is a mother’s destiny to be lied to. Do you realize that? People lie to their mothers. That’s the way the world works.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

  “I lied to my mother. Jared lies to me at least once a day. I don’t know what he lies about, but I can see it in his face.”

  She grabbed another cookie from the tin. “Here,” she said, holding it out.