The House of Tomorrow

by Peter Bognanni

  I took it, and watched the crumbs fall to the carpet.

  “He’s all I think about,” she said. “It’s not healthy. I know that. I try to turn it off, but it’s impossible. From the time when I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed, I think about everything that’s going on with him. I scan him for symptoms. I try to judge his mood, his social progress. Everything. I know it’s unfair to Meredith.”

  “And to yourself,” I said.

  She took another bite and raised her eyebrows.

  “And that,” she said.

  She looked down at the disassembled balance beam.

  “It was so much easier when they were babies. I could handle that. It was so simple. There’s this little person, and you just have to hold it, and feed it, and change its diapers. And you can even do other things when it goes to bed.”

  “It?” I asked.

  She smiled. “That’s the way I used to think of Meredith and Jared when they were babies. Just tiny things. Its. I was terrified of being a mother both times. I felt like I was too young. Now I see how easy I had it. I still had room to think about other things back then. I still thought about myself.”

  I took a bite of my cookie. It was hard as a rock.

  “Now,” said Janice. She waved her arm over the room. “Now I have this.”

  She hopped off the table like a child, and pushed her hair over her ears.

  “I hate to break it to you, but it’s not what I dreamed of.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It just felt good to be a part of something after Jared’s illness. And I can teach here. I know it’s not the same as being a real teacher but . . . you know. It’s something.”

  She looked out into the hall. “You can borrow the guitar, Sebastian,” she said. “Just keep an eye on him for me. Can you do that?”

  I chewed another bite of cookie, swallowing what felt like sand.

  “Now go look around the church,” she said. “I’ll check outside.”

  She waited for me to catch up to her and we walked side by side for a few steps. She put her arm around me, for only a split second really. Then she removed it and we split paths. I headed into the hallways of Immanuel and Janice walked outside without her coat, a half-eaten cookie still in her hand.

  Around the children’s classrooms, I felt that inexplicable sense of trepidation creep back into my body. God was in every church. That’s what Janice had said at Youth Group. I couldn’t stop wondering: if he’s here, where is he hiding? I looked in the small window of each classroom door, half expecting to see the Holy Spirit, floating around over a bulletin board. But all I could see was darkness.

  I thought about the band while I wandered the short hallways. I wanted to tell Jared that he couldn’t make decisions for both of us. But I knew better. It was his band. He needed me, but he could find someone else if he ever dared to make another friend. I started singing “Stupid School” to myself as I wandered, but I couldn’t get the tune right.

  “Why, teacher, why,” I sang out.

  My voice was still soft and unsteady.

  “Why, teacher, why!” I tried, louder.

  “Not here,” said Meredith.

  I looked behind me in the hall. There was nobody there.

  “Hello,” I yelled. “Meredith?”

  Next to me was the boys’ bathroom. I heard Meredith’s voice again, quieter this time. “I said you can’t do this here,” she said.

  She was in the bathroom. With a guy. My whole body sank. I took two steps to the door. I inched it open just enough to look through. I saw her standing up over somebody. She met my eyes and took a step to the side. It was Jared. He was breathing heavily, taking a drink out of a small wax cup.

  “You need to get up,” said Meredith. “I’ll help you to the van.”

  “Give me a minute, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Her voice was soft and composed. I’d never heard her speak that way to Jared before. She reached down and pushed the hair out of his eyes. He didn’t protest.

  “Jared . . .” I said. I walked inside.

  “Not now, Judas,” he said. He sipped loudly.

  “I’ve cleared up our little misunderstanding,” said Meredith. “We need you to go get Mom.”

  “Mom?” I said.

  “Janice,” said Meredith.

  “Meredith doesn’t want your bod, Sebastian,” said Jared. “It’s the sad truth. You’re too skinny. Not her type. There will be no”—he burped—“romancing in the near future.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Meredith looked at me severely, making any possible argument on my part irrelevant.

  “I don’t see you moving,” she said. “Someone needs to get Janice.”

  Jared looked up at me for the first time.

  “I think I’m having a rejection,” he said.

  I stared dumbstruck.

  “Fine,” said Meredith. “I’m going. You stay here, Sebastian. Just sit with him. Get him anything he needs!”

  She cruised by me and started into a run by the time she reached the door. She swung it open and was gone in seconds. Jared handed me his empty cup and I filled it with cold water from the tap. The fluorescent lights above reflected off the laminate floor.

  “What happens when you have a rejection?” I asked.

  “Your body goes after the new organ. It involves the immune response. Now just sit down and shut up,” he said.

  He was shivering a little now, breaking out in a cold sweat. He removed his glasses and stuck them in his pocket. His eyes looked much smaller.

  “Actually,” he said, “I changed my mind. Talk to me.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Anything,” he said.

  “Everything I know about is boring,” I said.

  “It’s okay. You’re a boring person. Just talk.”

  He smiled with his jaw clenched. And I suddenly remembered something and stuck my hand in my back pocket. I was wearing the same pants from the night in the dome, and right where I left them were the photographs I had removed from Nana’s album. There were three in total, each one discolored and faded.

  “Look,” I said. “I found some pictures in the dome.”

  I handed him one of the photos.

  “Who are those people?” he said. “Nineteen eighties porno stars?”

  I snatched it back immediately.

  “Okay,” he said, trembling. “I didn’t mean it. Let me see. Give it back.”

  He took the picture again and looked closely at it.

  “These are your parents, aren’t they?” he said.

  He held up the first shot. It was a picture that had been taken outside in the backyard of our old ranch home in a small town east of North Branch. My parents were standing beside a tree. It was the only tree in the front yard. My dad wore a shirt with a V-neck and his chest hair came out in dark tufts. He had a long mustache and a pair of caramel-tinted sunglasses on. My mother stood next to him in a strapless dress, looking caught by surprise. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, even in the weathered picture.

  “My mom used to lift me up to the little perch in the tree,” I said. “She’d hold me up there long enough to get a look, then I’d scream and she’d put me back down.”

  “Did your grandmother tell you that?” asked Jared.

  “No,” I said. “I remember.”

  I flipped to the next shot. They were sitting on the lawn, on a red-and-blue-checked blanket. “My dad mowed the lawn with a pair of gardening shears. It was so small he could accomplish the entire task by hand. In the summer, there were fireworks in the park down the street. We could see them from our patch of yard.”

  I moved to the third shot. My parents were lying on a double bed and a baby was curled up asleep between them. The baby
was me.

  “What’s that thing?” said Jared.

  He laughed. Then he stood up and ducked quickly into a stall. He heaved and I heard his vomit land in the toilet bowl.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Man,” he said. “There’s something about Youth Group. It just has this effect on me every damn time.”

  He chuckled to himself and then threw up again. I looked down at the picture of myself as an infant while I waited for Jared. My father’s hand was holding on to my bare foot. His thumb was pressed against my big toe. He was kissing the back of my shirt.

  “Hey,” said Jared.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Your mom was pretty,” he said.

  I looked at her, lying next to me in the photo. She was smiling. Her eyes were closed this time. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Can I tell you something,” Jared said. “A secret.”

  I didn’t answer him. My eyes were locked on the picture.

  “I haven’t been taking my medicine,” he said.

  My eyes leaped up.

  “What?” I yelled.

  I felt my mouth go dry. He heaved again.

  “What do you mean, Jared? Today?”

  I stood up and rushed to the door of the stall. And that was the moment Janice and Meredith returned. They burst through the door, Meredith first. Both of them looked at me like I’d done something to Jared. I just pointed toward the toilet and stepped out of their way. My face must have said everything. They rushed past me, straight to the stall door. On the way, Janice knocked the photos from my hand with her elbow, and they whisked into the air. I tried for one moment to catch them, but they all went in different directions, and I was left standing, looking at my parents on the floor.

  “Jared,” said Meredith. “Keep your eyes open!”

  On my knees, I peered through the stall door and saw Meredith holding him like a doll. Her inky eye makeup was running down the side of her face. She kissed Jared’s wet hair.

  “Pick him up,” said Janice.

  She turned around. “Sebastian,” she said.” Please. We need you!”

  I managed to grab only the photo of myself as a baby. Then I ran to the bathroom stall and picked up Jared’s legs. The soles of his canvas sneakers brushed across my chest. He was unconscious, humming something to himself. What was he humming? His laces were untied. I thought his shoes might fall off. I watched them carefully. We all started running. I recognized the tune he was mumbling just as we made it to the van: “Teenagers from Mars.”

  And we don’t care.

  23.

  Applied Synergetics

  IT WAS IN THIS WAY I FOUND MYSELF BACK IN THE hospital. Waiting in the same room, with the same cola machine buzzing in the corner. This time the television was off. There were no other lives, just Meredith and me sitting for two hours in total silence. During that time, Nana’s incident returned to my memory. As did her frightened face, and her nighttime assurances that I was leaving her. How could she have known even then? I thought now. True, it was Nana who eventually implored me to leave, but maybe she’d been right when she said it was already happening. I looked back to the hallway, almost expecting to see her being wheeled out. Instead, I saw Janice.

  It was time to go, she said. There was nothing more we could do. She would stay in Jared’s room, but there was no place for us. She would call with updates. That’s the best she could do. As she related this information, her voice sounded like it was coming from someone else entirely, some half-alive person now residing in her body. And when she reached into her pocket for the van keys, I saw that her hand was shaking.

  The ride home was uncomfortably silent, except for Janice’s quick mention of canned spaghetti for our dinner. I didn’t dare speak. When we arrived at the house, Janice just motioned for us to get out of the van. So we did. Then we stood rigid in the yard watching her back out of the drive. Her taillights receded into the ill-lit streets ahead. She did not wave good-bye.

  “I’ve never seen her like that,” said Meredith.

  The night was foggy, and the porch suddenly seemed like a refuge. We both turned and stared at the yellow bulb, the angels beneath.

  “Well,” she said. “I guess we should eat some canned spaghetti.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  We shuffled into the house, dropping our coats and hats on the floor. There was already a light on in the kitchen and we followed it like a star. I sat down at the table while Meredith opened up a tin can from the pantry. She slopped the contents into a small pot and turned on the burner. “It’s actually ravioli,” she said. “Is that all right?”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s not bad,” she said. “Jared eats it cold out of the can. But I wouldn’t recommend that. My dad used to tell him that’s how they ate things in the army.”

  We didn’t talk while she stirred the simmering pot. When it started to heat up, a heady odor filled the room. Sweet and strange. Meredith pushed a wooden spoon around in lazy circles. It didn’t take long to cook, and in minutes she dished it out in mismatched bowls. She slapped a spoon in my hand.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, sitting down. “Why the hell wasn’t he taking his meds? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  I blew on a spoonful of pasta to cool it down. It was dark orange, plastic-looking. It bubbled in the pool of my spoon.

  “He didn’t tell you anything?” she asked.

  “Not really.”

  I blew again, then glanced up and found Meredith’s eyes still on me. Her eyebrows were arched just slightly.

  “I have a theory,” I said.

  “Well.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I think it might have had something to do with side effects, and beginning school again. He was ashamed.”

  Meredith took this in. Then she let her spoon clatter to the table.

  “That’s bullshit!” she said. “Jared’s smarter than that! And he knows better than to care about the other morons in his school and what they’ll think!”

  “But it’s impossible not to care,” I said.

  “It’s possible,” she said.

  I took a bite of the pasta. It tasted good at first, but the aftertaste was acidic. It burned in my mouth. For the first time, I felt I could actually taste the additives. I had a sudden and irrational craving for Nana’s whole wheat spaghetti with tomatoes. I let the head of my spoon sink down under the orange surface.

  “You care,” I said.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’ve watched you with your friends. I hear you on the telephone. You seem to care a lot about what people think.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I do things the way I want.”

  “Sometimes, perhaps. But you speak differently on the phone. Not like you’re speaking now. And you laugh in a certain way when you get into the car with your friends. I see it. I watch you.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this from you,” she said.

  “I see the boys you admire,” I continued. “You care. You care what people think of you. And so does Jared.”

  She got up and walked to the sink. She tossed her full bowl of ravioli into the basin and the glass broke, sending shards skating over the stainless steel. She said something over the noise I couldn’t hear.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Jared is better than that!” she yelled.

  Her face was red.

  “Better than what?”

  “He’s better than me. It’s that simple, okay?”

  I stood up. “That’s not what I intended to say,” I said.

  She stayed standing by the counter, facing away from me.

  “Don’t come over here,” she said. “Just stay where you are.”

  I stood near my chair.

  “If he wasn’t my brother,” she said, “I probably wouldn’t even be h
is friend.”

  She dipped her finger in a spot of sauce on the counter and smeared it around.

  “But he is your brother and you love him. So it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay,” she said.

  She looked into the sink. “Things haven’t been okay with me for a while.”

  Jared’s words came back to me all of a sudden. They formed in my mouth.

  “People get sick, you know?” I said. “Bad stuff happens. We can’t help it.”

  Meredith looked at me skeptically.

  “Jesus,” she said. “What a mess. All of this.”

  I got up and brought my bowl to the counter. I picked up the chips of white glass, pinching them between my fingertips, and placed them in the trash under the sink. They clinked into the bag. I washed the tiniest fragments down the roaring garbage disposal. By the time I was done with Meredith’s wreckage, she was gone. The door to her room was closed and something told me not to open it. I turned off the lights in the kitchen and walked upstairs, completely enshrouded in darkness, feeling the wall for a light switch.

  THE KNOCK CAME AROUND ONE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING. At first, I thought I had invented it. I was asleep in Jared’s bed, but in my dream I was sitting in a hospital room between two beds. They were both obscured by thick white sheets. I was waiting for someone to tell me who was in which bed. A doctor maybe. Someone who could help. In my groggy semiwakened state, I expected a hospital worker at the door of Jared’s room. When I opened the door though, there was a pale girl in a tank top and underwear. She didn’t speak for a few minutes, and when she did, it was in a whisper.

  “Nothing sexual, okay?” she said.

  Her words sounded crisp. I could hear every syllable.

  “Meredith?”

  I was still trying to wake up. My eyes were so heavy.

  “I just need to . . .” she began.

  She didn’t finish her sentence. I stepped out of the way. I could barely distinguish her form as she walked by me and fell onto the bed. She rolled herself into the wadded sheets and pulled the covers up around her. We’d forgotten to turn on the heat and the room was cold. The humidifier was silent in the corner.