Tanya’s look is still effective on Christi. It takes a lot more than a look to steer Becky toward or away from an action or deed she should or should not be doing. As a matter-of-fact, I don’t know if a Mac truck would be more effective.
“I need a new backpack,” Becky says.
“You graduate in a month and a half. Can’t you make that one last?”
Becky looks at her mom. “I’ll need a new one for college anyway.”
“This one doesn’t seem to have any wear,” I point out. “Didn’t we get you this at Christmas?” I reach over to pluck it from her chair. Not realizing its weight, it immediately clunks to the floor. “What in the hell do you have in this thing?” I drag it toward me, half expecting her to try to grab it back and say it’s none of my business. She doesn’t. There’s something up.
“My books,” she says. “Same things I’ve been hauling around with me since I was a child like Christi.”
“I am not . . .” The look stops Christi’s attempt at defense.
I stand and heft the bag to my shoulder. “My God! This must weigh fifty pounds. What’s this doing to your spine?”
“That’s my point,” she says. “A lot of the kids are starting to carry the Ergo. It’s actually called the Ergo Student Pack. It’s designed to distribute the stress of the weight over the entire body. And it has a special padded and waterproof pocket for my computer.”
I struggle into the backpack until it feels like it’s sitting on my back correctly. “This actually doesn’t feel too bad once you get it on.”
“Try carrying it for five miles,” she says.
“You don’t ever carry this five miles.”
“You obviously haven’t been in my school much, have you, Dad?” My title, Dad, comes out like it’s a bad word. “It’s the size of a city block and sometimes I have to get from the third floor in one corner to the first floor in the opposite corner in five minutes. Why don’t you take it outside and try jogging with it.”
I pull the pack off and set it on my chair.
“In a day, I’d guess that I walk a good five miles,” she says.
I lean on the chair. “Let’s do a little math. How many classes do you have?”
There’s a flash across her face. She obviously didn’t expect the math. “Six and lunch.”
“Okay. Let’s figure the worst case. Top corner to bottom opposite corner, or back for every class change. We’re going to do the extremes here, figuring two blocks if you always take the longest way, and I’ll give you a half block for two floors up. That would be two and a half blocks between each class for a total of fifteen blocks. I’ll give you two blocks to and from your car. We’re up to nineteen blocks. Just for the heck of it I’ll add a half block each, in and out of the house. The total is twenty blocks. If we were to average ten blocks per mile, we would get two miles, a long reach from five miles, and since I exaggerated everywhere, it’s probably no more than a mile . . . in small pieces at that.”
“It feels like five miles while I’m carrying that.”
“Zach,” Tanya says. “You’re complicating the issue with facts.”
“Oh! I didn’t realize. Sorry.” By this time I have the backpack open and am pulling out books.
“What are you doing?” Becky demands.
“Seeing what you’re studying. When’s the last time you slipped something past me?”
Her jaws tighten. “Never,” she says quietly.
I look at the first book. “Pre-cal. Wow! This is a heavy one. Advanced algebra. Asian history. Economics. A three ring binder.” I open it. “Wow! This is at least a half ream of blank paper. American history. Another binder of paper. Look at that. Some of it has notes written on it. Physics. Chemistry.” Becky’s look could easily rival her mother’s. I ignore it because I fall under the power of only one look in this house. “There are three more books in here, and two notebooks, and I’ve already counted seven subjects. Do you generally take two maths, two histories, and two sciences at the same time?”
Christi has stopped eating and is intently watching. Becky doesn’t answer. Instead she pushes herself between me and her backpack. Her aura normally hovers about the blue range. When she walked into the kitchen and announced she needed a new backpack, her emotional color was tight against her body as though she was trying to pull it in, out of my sight. She has a long way to go to be able to do that, even if she did know about my aura reading ability. Her personality has her wearing her emotions on her sleeve, being unable to hide it from anyone, let alone me. Now, caught, reds are pulsing from her like flares from the sun. She angrily shoves everything back into the bag and then carries it out of the kitchen. Christi snickers.
“Why doesn’t she just stop at saying she wants a new backpack?” I ask Tanya.
“Because you would have said that there was nothing wrong with the old one.”
“Which I said anyway.”
“She knew you would so she hit it from a different angle. I don’t think she expected you’d look inside of it.”
“She just lied to me, to both of us.”
“True.”
“You don’t think we should do something about it?”
“What’s there to do? She was caught. She lost. She’s embarrassed, and she’s stuck with the old backpack for the remainder of her time in high school.”
“That old backpack is but four months old. It still looks like it did when it came off the store shelf.”
“A bit of an exaggeration.”
“No more than five miles and fifty pounds of books.”
“She’s out of style.”
“Oh!” I will lose. The man-of-the-house has no defense against the female gender when the words, “out of style” come bubbling from their mouths. “How much?”
“$199.00.”
I make a gag sound—not all that much a fake—and blink my human eye and my acrylic eye back at her. I look down at Christi. “Did you know about this?”
She shrugs.
“I just told her to ask you,” Tanya said. “I didn’t know she’d overload her pack.”
“Humph! How about we give it to her for graduation?”
“In her words, ‘get existential!’ That’s not an appropriate graduation gift.”
“Appropriate to her would be a Ferrari.”
She laughs, then stands and says to Christi, “You ready to go?”
“Yep.” Christi moves her bowl to the sink and then picks up her backpack, which I’m sure weighs no more than ten pounds.
“I’ve got an early appointment so I’m going to drop her at school.” She kisses me. “Write well, and good luck with your appointment.”
Christi kisses me on the cheek and says, “Love ya, Dad.”
“Did you see those toenails?” I say to Tanya.
“Kind of cute.” I give her my look. “Just ignore it. It’ll go away eventually.”
Then they are gone and I’m standing in the kitchen alone. About a minute later Becky comes banging down the stairs and slams out the front door. I look out the window to see her backpack hanging off her shoulder as though all that’s in it is a pencil and her nail polish. She’s a short-timer. Why get serious about school work now? Just worry about staying in style. She throws the pack into her car ahead of her and is gone.
Now I’m alone in the house, staring down at Becky’s half-consumed orange juice and bagel. “Get existential?” I suddenly feel old.
Chapter 3
The appointment that Tanya referred to on her way out the door is with my ocularist. Eliza Parker-Plumb, BCO, is carved as a curved arch into a slab of Western Red Cedar. I asked her once what BCO stood for. Board Certified Ocularist, she told me. Below the arch is an etching of the human eye. I stop and analyze the carving for a few seconds, having never paid much attention to it in the past eight years. Below the eye, and carved in fine script is, “Since 1996.”
I go in.
The wait isn’t long.
“Very good,”
Eliza says during the exam. “This one continues to be a perfect fit. How has it been feeling?”
“Like it’s my real eye. I virtually forget about it until someone brings it up.”
“As it should be. The eye socket has remained amazingly stable. I don’t think you’ll have any problems along that line for many years. In two years we’ll start looking at you for a new prosthetic. Maybe we should be considering an ocular motility implant.”
“You mention that at least once a year. I’m not so sure.”
“Why is that, Zach?”
“It’s one thing to have something custom made to pop in and stay on its own. It’s quite another to start doing surgical things to my face just so that my eyes can move together. I had quite enough of that for a lifetime already. It’s not very patient-friendly from what I’ve read, and it is not all that perfect either. There isn’t necessarily a one-to-one track.”
“You’ve probably been reading old information. Europe’s made some amazing advances in ocular motility, and it’s starting to take hold in the United States. It’s been slated as being very, ‘patient-friendly,’ as you say, and quite a bit less expensive.”
I only nod my head.
“I’ll round up some information and get it to you so you can do your own research.”
“Thanks, Eliza. I guess I could do that.”
“Remember, it’s for your benefit, not mine. The research is for you.”
“Right.”
“Sit tight while I polish your prosthesis.”
Prosthesis! I don’t like the word. It makes me feel like a cripple. Even fake eye would be better. Artificial eye would be all right. How do people with one leg feel about it? Do they call it their prosthesis or artificial leg, or just leg? I’d prefer when someone is asking about my ocular prosthesis, that they simply say, “How is your eye doing?” Like, “How is your leg doing?” or “How is your knee, or hip, or heart for that matter?” You don’t say to someone about their artificial heart, “How is your cardio prosthesis?” I smile at the thought and then slowly leaf through the latest copy of People while Eliza polishes my eye in the other room.
When I leave I have an appointment card in my hand for my next annual polishing, on the back of which is a web-site address where I can read about ocular motility.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I won’t.
I don’t like the idea of someone sewing my acrylic eye to the muscle in my eye socket. Does that mean that in order for Eliza to polish it, it would have to be removed and then sewed back in once a year?
Maybe I won’t.
Chapter 4
As Becky’s graduation looms closer, things get crazier and the demands on the budget become ridiculous. Now it’s the class trip. When it was first being planned by the senior class, Becky wasn’t going to go, much to my relief. Then at the last minute, the day the deposit was due, she changed her mind.
Now it’s the only thing she talks about, and Tanya and I are trying to figure out how to budget it in. “It’s only fifteen-hundred dollars,” Becky had said, as if the word “only” would make it more palatable, and more affordable. The deposit went on the credit card.
“Let’s make it her graduation gift,” I say, “instead of the new computer for college. Her old laptop is probably sufficient anyway. We could throw $500 cash in and it’d come up to the price of the computer.
Tanya hardly considers my idea. “That wouldn’t be fair.”
“I’ll bet the other parents are giving the trip as the graduation gift. When I graduated I think I got a fifty dollar bill, and I was happy with it.”
She ignores my comment. “Tom and Beth are giving Sarah a car for graduation, and they’re paying for the trip.” Sarah is Becky’s best friend. Her parents are close friends of ours only by nature of sitting together at swim meets.
“They’re rich. We’re not.”
“So? We’re not talking the difference between a trip and a car.”
“For them, the trip is small potatoes. For us $500 is a stretch. Becky has some savings. How about we make a deal with her that she pay half, and we’ll give the other half as a graduation present, plus seven fifty toward the computer.”
“No.” she shakes her head. “It wouldn’t be right. I’d feel like we’re being stingy. We can afford both.”
“It’d have to come out of her college fund.”
“No it wouldn’t. We could liquidate some stock.”
“That’s our retirement.”
“That’s nearly thirty years away. Fifteen-hundred dollars isn’t going to make a hill of beans. That’s like fifty dollars a year.”
I blink at her logic, of which I’m sure there is none, but I don’t challenge it. It makes little difference because I know I’m going to lose in any case. I might as well call the broker and place the stock sell order. Tanya also knows she’s won. She stands and carries her tea cup into the kitchen, effectively ending the debate.
Becky goes off to Cancun, and for most of the second week in June we enjoy the quiet in the house. Christi’s Girl Scout camp overlaps Becky’s graduation trip by five days. Tanya and I make love once in the kitchen and twice in the living room. One of the nights we spend the entire evening in front of the sofa with pillows and a comforter, naked, watching old movies. We feel like kids again, doing things we shouldn’t just because we know we can get away with it.
“If you put this in your next novel, I’ll deny even knowing you.”
“I wouldn’t, and even if I did, I’d change the names to protect the innocent.”
“We aren’t innocent. What names are you going to change? The kids?”
“And the dog.”
“The dog isn’t innocent. He watched everything.”
“Okay. I’ll use his real name.”
“What about the neighbors?”
“Have they been watching?”
“I hope the hell not.”
“Then they’re innocent; I’ll change their names.”
We sit in serious contemplation for a time. She asks, “What’s the next one going to be about?”
I think for a moment. “Consider a desolate family in Oklahoma during the dust bowl of the thirties. While drilling for water, the fifth such attempt on their dry, sagebrush-covered eighty acres, they strike a steel container. They dig it out with pick and shovel, and then open it to discover two-hundred thousand dollars in gold and currency.”
“Why two-hundred thousand?” Tanya asks.
“It’s arbitrary. It could change. The amount isn’t important. There’s been a legend in the nearby town of Shadow Gulch that a group of three men, who called themselves the Billy Bison Gang, ran down a stage coach and killed all the occupants, taking a company payroll. The occupants were three women, two children and two drivers.”
“That’s a little excessive, isn’t it? Why would they kill them all?”
“So that there were no witnesses. Not a half mile away, the horse they used to pack the payroll steps into a gopher hole and breaks its leg. They have to shoot the horse. Nearby there is an abandoned farm. They bury the loot and hang low, until a few days later when they go into town for some whiskey, and to steal a horse. The one woman who had been left alive . . .”
“Wait a minute. You said they were all killed.”
“It just looked that way. One was playing possum. Anyway, she saw them and started screaming her head off. Before you know it there’s a gun battle as a dozen of the town’s men come running with their guns. In under a minute, all three of the Billy Bison gang lay dead in the street, along with the town barber and the woman. The sheriff was at the barber’s place on the edge of town, poking the barber’s wife.”
“That’s terrible.”
“They never find the strong box. Even the legend starts to die until fifty years later when Grandpa and his son-in-law, Jeremiah, run into it with their drilling rig. They think at first it is a coffin, but then Jeremiah reminds Grandpa that most of the old coffins are made
from wood. So they dig it out of the ground and drag it into the house. With the family standing around it, Jeremiah unlatches the box and opens it. They are astonished; the men are excited. ‘No!’ yells the mother, daughter of Grandpa. ‘This is the devil’s work!’ She slams the lid and throws the latches. Between the excitement and then the sudden declaration by his daughter, Grandpa has a heart attack and keels over, taking two of the nearby candles with him. To make a long story short. . .”
“Thank you. I’m becoming sorry I asked.”
“. . .the house burns to the ground, taking all the occupants with it. The strong box is so heavy that it only takes a little bit of fire around it to weaken the floor enough that it falls into the cellar. It is there that it remains, undamaged, for nearly fifty more years, until 1980.”
I stop. No particular reason—something about not giving up a story until it is written.
“And then what?”
“That’s where I stop because that’s where the story really begins.”
“Oh! You make me sit through all that and then, nothing more?”
“I guess I could add that in 1980, gold topped $800 an ounce. Figure maybe fifty pounds of gold in the box, plus whatever else—do the math.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Six hundred and forty thousand dollars.”
“Not all that much.”
“It’s a hell of a lot when the people who find it are not only willing to kill but have a reason to kill to keep it.”
“Aha!” She thinks for a moment. “Why are we sitting around naked?”
“I don’t know. That was your idea.”
She kicks my ankle. I fain being hurt, and then we wrestle until the constant proximity of our naked bodies leads to hard, sweaty love making. When it is over we snuggle in the dark with the television off and the comforter thrown aside, enjoying the heat and odor of our sex.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 41