The House of Tomorrow

by Peter Bognanni

  I wanted to press her for more details, everything she knew about the man, but she was beginning to seem so frail again.

  “Do you have a photograph?” I asked instead.

  “Go to my closet,” she said, “and find my book of clippings.”

  I did as I was told, rummaging through her files and the pieces of old models until I found the mahogany-colored book that housed newspaper scraps about a project of hers. I brought the book to her and she opened it up to the very first page. There was a black-and-white newsprint photo there that I had never seen. It was a picture of Bucky and his crew eating lunch in a park. Across the bench from Bucky was Nana, dressed in a flowing summer dress, her hair long and curly. Bucky was grinning at the camera, and Nana was shielding her eyes from the sun. But then, I noticed another man.

  Seated next to Nana, nearly concealed by her outstretched hand, was a slim man with a hunched posture. His face was kind and bland all except for his eyes, which managed to convey ten emotions at once even in the blur of the dated picture. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him right away. He was so clearly related to me, so clearly my grandfather. He had a mustache and it was even groomed similarly to the way my father’s was in the photo I’d nearly left in the Immanuel bathroom. They could have been brothers, not father and son. And if I had sat down next to them, I might have passed for the youngest.

  “That’s him,” I said when this daze wore off.

  “Yes,” said Nana.

  I looked at the caption: Buckminster Fuller. Josephine Prendergast. Alden Hewitt.

  “I wanted you to save the world, Sebastian,” she said. “That’s why I lied. I’m not a horrible person. Am I?”

  I lay back now, close to her, just the way we used to be when I was five. I ignored the smell of the sheets and pulled her light blanket up over me.

  “No,” I said. “But I’m not going to save the world, Nana. You must know that by now.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while. We stayed next to each other. The bed had been cold when I first got in, but my body was warming it up.

  “I might be saving a family, though,” I said.

  She took my hand, and didn’t squeeze this time.

  “I suppose that’s something,” she said.

  She just rested her palm over mine. I gave her some of the blanket and she tucked it around herself. “It took everything I had left to finish the Geoscope,” she said. “Every last bit. I haven’t been feeling well for some time, Sebastian. Months really. The stroke was the last sign. I don’t have much earthly time left.”

  I sat up. “But you haven’t been diagnosed with anything,” I said. “The doctors haven’t told you anything.”

  She smiled. “Specialists,” she said. “They can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  I stared at her. I wrapped her in a tight hug, and I could feel her ribs. She was wasting away. Her skin felt cool and dry.

  “I hung on as long as I could for you,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know. Just go to sleep, for tonight.”

  “I will,” she said.

  Then I heard a noise and we both looked up. In the doorway stood the Whitcombs, all aligned. Janice stood in front, watching my grandmother and me. Jared and Meredith were behind her, looking around our dome, slightly mesmerized.

  “Is everything okay?” asked Janice.

  She stayed just outside the room.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Jared and Meredith walked up to their mother’s side. They looked more like children than they ever had before. I had never thought of either of them as shy, but both were speechless now, almost clinging to their mother.

  “Nana,” I said. “I’d like you to meet the Whitcomb family.”

  They all stayed frozen like mannequins on display. Nana looked at each one of them and nodded.

  “That’s my friend Jared,” I said, pointing. “And my friend Meredith. And you know Mrs. Whitcomb.”

  I glanced at all of them. “Whitcombs,” I said, “this is my Nana. Her real name is Josephine.”

  Everyone stared at one another for a quiet moment. Then Meredith spoke, shifting in place. “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Jared. “Hi.”

  Nana smiled politely.

  “I have to rest now,” she said. “I’m sorry. But thank you for caring . . . for my boy.”

  The Whitcombs all looked at me. Janice, I could sense, was still waiting for a signal, waiting to call the hospital. All I needed to do was say the word. Meredith and Jared were, perhaps, waiting for me to beg to come back home with them.

  “You’re welcome,” Janice said. “He’s a terrific young man.”

  Nana nodded, half asleep.

  “I can show you out now,” I said. “I’ll stay here tonight.”

  Nana tried a few times to blink her eyes open but they finally fell shut. Her breathing was loud and long. I left her bedside and guided the Whitcombs to the front door.

  “Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?” asked Janice.

  “She’s made the decision to stay home,” I said. “And I’m going to stay with her. It’s her choice.”

  She reached out and put a hand on my back. She held it there a few seconds, then she rushed forward and nearly strangled me with one last hug. She pressed me tight and I held my breath. “Please don’t disappear,” she said, speaking over my shoulder. “Please.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  She held me another moment and then let go. I stood just a foot or two away. I thought for sure she would start crying, but she looked very calm. Her face was still. She touched my arm. “If you need any help,” she said, “I want you to call me. I want you to call and tell me about it. Anytime. Even if you just want to ask a simple question or talk about something from your day. Will you do that? Promise me you will.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “It’s okay to ask people for help,” she said. “That’s how life works.”

  She smiled and put her hands into her pockets. She exhaled, and I watched her breath turn to fog in the air. She looked like she didn’t know what to say next.

  “I just want you to tell me one more time that you’ll be okay,” she said. “I need to hear it once more, then I promise I’ll walk away.”

  Her eyes searched my face, resting on my eyes.

  “I’ll be okay, Janice,” I said. “Really.”

  She pushed a strand of hair aside. Then, true to her promise, she turned around and commenced walking back to the van. Her arms swished against her wool coat as she walked. Her stride was perfectly steady across the lawn.

  “Mrs. Whitcomb!” I shouted out. “Thank you for everything!”

  She didn’t turn around.

  “She knows,” said Jared.

  “He’s right,” said Meredith. “She does.”

  Mrs. Whitcomb stepped into her van, and even through the tinting, I could see her adjusting the heat, and holding the wheel with gloved hands, waiting for her children. Jared and Meredith both looked up at my home, curving up into the dark sky.

  “You’re a crazy bastard, Sebastian,” Jared said. “A real loony. I don’t think I’ll ever be allowed back in that church, and you helped make that happen.”

  “I guess I did,” I said.

  He adjusted his glasses and fumbled around in the pockets of his leather jacket. He pulled something from deep inside. It was his music player, the white headphones wrapped around it, the Buckminster Fuller sticker still affixed to the front. He held it out to me. “Take it,” he said.

  I just looked at it.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’m going to pass this to you, and we’re not going to say good-bye or anything. This is just the last time I see you for a little while. So we don’t need to say it. I’m just
. . . I’ll just sort of hand this to you, and if you take it that means good-bye for a little while, okay? It means that we’ll see each other soon and record a tape and hang out and talk about what school is like. You get it, or do I have to write this all down?”

  “I understand,” I said.

  He held it out again. I looked at him. He met my stare with a purely businesslike look. But he adjusted his glasses once and then a second time. I extended my hand and took the music player. Jared let go of it and then it was in my palm. Right after the transaction, he stepped out onto the lawn, looking over the dome again. He shook his head and then walked back to the van. He slid open the door and disappeared inside. As he moved to the back, I lost sight of him completely.

  Which left Meredith standing in front of me. She looked at the ground in front of her and coughed. She smiled and then frowned immediately after.

  “So are you really going to be all right in there?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s my home.”

  “Okay then,” she said.

  She stepped toward me. “I guess I don’t have much else to say then.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Well,” she said, “I did want to tell you that I thought your last song was pretty good. That’s the only one I heard. And your hair looked great. That was probably the best part of all of it.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And I guess I want to tell you that I’m going to keep an eye out for you,” she said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Outside,” she said. “To see if you’re spying on me.”

  She smiled.

  “What happens if I am?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Then, we’ll just have to see what happens.”

  She gave me a hug then, a real one. There was no kiss at the end, but of course Janice was sitting right in the van. The hug was good enough. It was warm and not too short, and I realized that I had never actually hugged her before. I’d only kissed her and touched one of her breasts. Maybe it was finally time for an embrace of sorts. When she let me go, she turned away slowly and tromped over the yard. And before I could think of anything to yell after her, something perfectly romantic, she was in the van. I couldn’t see her or Jared so I just held up my hand.

  Janice was already pulling out of the driveway and back down Hillsboro Drive, the way she arrived the first day I met her. The van sprayed a little slush off to the sides, and made a noise like it was fording a shallow river. Its brake lights glowed cherry red when it slowed into the first turn. And I watched them fade in the distance. I shivered a little, and then stepped back inside. I took a deep gulp of warm air, and locked the front door behind me. Then I wandered through the dome. Above me the sky spread out over the North Pole. I could just barely make out a crescent moon above it all, and a couple of dim stars. The sky was bright the way it was when I first brought the bass guitar home.

  Nana was asleep in her room. I checked to see if she was breathing okay. She was. I felt her forehead. She didn’t have a temperature. I turned out the bedside light in her room. I heard her mumble something to me in the dark.

  “You’re back,” she said “I sense you. You’re back.”

  “I’m here,” I said. “I’m back, Nana.”

  She quieted, and when I was sure she was done speaking, I left her room and closed the door. I stood there holding the handle, and then made myself let go. I walked to the foot of the stairs. And then I walked up them, growing tired myself now. There was still a faint buzz in my ears from the show. And I wondered who had eventually unplugged the instruments. The bass was back in its home, I guessed. If I wanted to play again, I would have to procure one of my own. There would be no more stealing. No more lying. If there was a Greater Intellect, at least he knew I’d kept my promise. I’d returned the bass when I was done with it.

  I felt for Jared’s music player in my pocket and gripped it tight. Then I walked into my classroom and turned on the light. I let out a small gasp. Sitting on the desk was the computer that Nana had discarded into the forest. It was sitting there, broken, the screen cracked. In front of it was a small piece of notebook paper with my e-mail address written on it. Nana had tried to contact me. She had tried to hook up the broken machine. I sat down at the desk and stared at my dark reflection in the shattered screen. I rested my fingers on the keys. I typed a message into nowhere. A message no one would read.

  It said, “Hello, out there. My name is Sebastian. Things are fine for now on Spaceship Earth.”

  I flipped off the light and went back into my bedroom, where Nana had prepared everything for my return. My bed was made. My clothes were folded. She must have done it all before she fell ill again. I walked over to the northeast side of the dome where I peeked through the clear space of the Mediterranean Sea out at my view of the town. I looked at the few last lights on in the town. I searched, too, for the Whitcombs’ van winding its way through the streets, but I couldn’t see it in the darkness.

  Tomorrow, I would scale the dome in the morning again if it wasn’t too cold. I suddenly found myself missing that weightless feeling. That sense of wonder, hanging suspended in the sky. I’d experienced a version of it playing music, but it wasn’t quite the same. Nothing was the same as seeing it all from a great height like that. It looked like an ideal world from up there. And before I had experienced it, I assumed it was. Now I could see why Nana created her own world entirely, as the paper said. But that didn’t mean I had to do the same.

  I got into my old bed and lay looking up at the night sky for a while until my eyes started to burn. I had no idea how much longer Nana would be alive. Maybe days. Maybe weeks. The more I thought about her condition, the way she looked in that bed, the more I was inclined to take her at her word. A body was composed of energy, and when it stopped making energy, there wasn’t much you could do. Even Buckminster Fuller eventually had to die. He did it just before his eighty-eighth birthday, on July 1, 1983. His wife was in a coma, and she never regained consciousness. She died thirty-six hours after he did. Was he sending her messages telling her to join him?

  Among other things, he left behind a detailed autobiography and catalog of his ideas, though, called The Chronofile. When it was finished, it held over seven hundred volumes. And it weighed ninety thousand pounds. It mapped the progress of his entire life. From his first invention of a cone-tipped oar for his childhood row-boat, to the creation of pioneering spherical structures and new forms of geometry, The Chronofile pieced together every aspect of his life. It covered everything, every thought he ever had. But it never mentioned Nana.

  Really, though, she didn’t need anyone else to tell her story. She would leave behind her own legacy, the first Geoscope in the state of Iowa. I took one last look at it now before putting on Jared’s headphones, nestling the small earbuds in tightly. I scrolled through all the songs, the glow of the screen on my face. I had no idea what I would leave behind when my time came. But it didn’t matter. I was only on the first chapter of my Chronofile. I was barely out of the prologue. And now in the soft blue dark of my room at the top of the dome, I pressed the random key on the music player. I lay back. I closed my eyes. And I braced myself for the noise.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you first to my early writing teachers Wang Ping and Stuart McDougal, for telling me to give this a try. And to my later teachers Edward Carey, Elizabeth McCracken, Frank Conroy, Ethan Canin, Adam Haslett, Chris Offutt, James McPherson, and ZZ Packer, for your unbelievable breadth of knowledge and guidance. Thank you to everyone at the University of Iowa MFA program—especially Connie Brothers, Deb West, and Jan Zenisek.

  A gigantic thank-you to Julie Barer, the best agent on earth (and a great editor, too). Another enormous one to Amy Einhorn, a dream editor and publisher. And to everyone at Amy Einhorn Books and Putnam.

  Without the careful reading of Nick Dybek and Brad Liening, this b
ook wouldn’t be what it is. Tarik Karam was his usual bundle of energy and unwavering support. Thanks to Alex Albright, my earliest fan. And to Denis Hildreth, who let me write a play when I was eighteen. Thanks to Dick Cohn for getting me into a dome. And Blair Wolfram for building so many. And thanks to all my old bandmates, who helped me learn to play unlistenable songs on the guitar when I was young and angry.

  Thank you to Macalester College, where I teach with wonderful colleagues and amazing students.

  It’s impossible to thank my family enough. Kathy Bognanni, thanks for bringing home half the collection of your library for me over the years. Sal Bognanni, thank you for your love of literature and your contagious sense of humor. Mark, thanks for reading my fiction when you were supposed to be studying. And thank you to the rest of my family, the Bognannis and the Rhynas clan, for all the love and encouragement from day one.

  Finally, to Junita, I suspect you know by now that I write primarily to make you smile. Thank you for reading every draft, every change, every typo. Without you, this novel wouldn’t exist. And neither would my confidence to write.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from Peter Bognanni’s next novel

  THINGS I’M SEEING WITHOUT YOU.

  Copyright © 2017 by Peter Bognanni

  1

  The morning after I dropped out of high school, I woke up before dawn in my father’s empty house thinking about the slow death of the universe. It smelled like Old Spice and middle-aged sadness in the guest room, and this was probably at least part of the reason for my thoughts of total cosmic annihilation. The other part I blame on physics. The class I mean. Not the branch of science. It was one of the last subjects I tried to study before I made the decision to liberate myself from Quaker school, driving ve hours through Iowa farm country to make my daring escape.

  I did the drive without stopping, listening to religious radio fade in and out of classic rock, which sounded something like this: “Our God is an awesome Godddddd and . . . Ooooh that smell. Can’t you smell that smell? The smell of death surrounds you!” All I could smell was fertilizer. And as the empty fields and pinwheeling wind turbines passed by my window, I tried not to think too hard about how I had let things get to this point. And I tried even harder not to think of the improbable person I had come to love, who would no longer be in my life.