20.
The Mission
THE DAY AFTER OUR FIRST SONGWRITING SESSION was a Monday, and everyone in the house got up early. Janice was up at six A.M. to get to her part-time job at the church. I lay on the couch while she got ready, pretending to be asleep. I watched her whisk by, and I wondered what she used to be like before Jared’s illness. Did she look different? She was pretty now, but it was easy to see the worry lines when she grimaced. And it was easy to see in her eyes that she didn’t sleep much. I tried to think if I had ever heard her laugh. I pictured her, rearing back her head and opening her mouth, but no sound escaped.
She walked up to me before she left and rested a palm on my forehead. I held my eyes closed tight. She moved my tousled hair out of the way and touched my brow in different places, feeling for a fever. I didn’t open my eyes until the hand was gone and I heard the click of the front door lock. A light perfume hung in the air around me.
An hour later Meredith rose, and I got up from the couch and watched in fascination while she prepared herself for school. For nearly an hour, she meandered in and out of the bathroom near the kitchen, glossing her lips, blow-drying her hair, trying on three or four different combinations of clothing. She knew I was watching, but she didn’t say anything. She just went about her regimen, talking on the phone at times, listening to headphones at others. Finally she grabbed some kind of pastry from the toaster and breezed right by me and out the front door.
“Have a pleasant day at school,” I said.
She closed the door hard, and I went to the front window to watch her. She ducked into a car full of girls who looked identical to her in hairstyle and dress. But none of them was as beguiling. None of them had that mystery, that fiery look in their eyes. Meredith could try to blend in, but it was impossible. Her intensity and her beauty betrayed her. Right before I turned away, I saw her look up at the window. She met my eyes and smirked so quickly it was almost imperceptible. But I saw it. She was looking for me, hoping I’d be there to torment one last time before the official start of her day.
I woke up Jared soon after she left, and then looked on while he cooked us “Scrambled Eggs Whitcomb.” He made room for me by the stove and turned the gas on underneath the pan. Then he took me through the secret process. First, he added cream to whisked eggs. Then pepper, sea salt, and a splash of green Tabasco. He whisked again and poured them into the pan (he showed me right where to scrape with a half-melted plastic spatula). When they had been properly executed, Jared and I took them upstairs and ate steaming forkfuls while he worked on finessing our song from the night before.
I practiced my bass part, stopping only for intermittent bites of spicy eggs. I was feeling better in the light of day, and I found I had a gluttonous appetite. We finished all the eggs and moved on to the toaster pastries. They were frosted and filled with syrupy apples and spices. I ate two, but I could have consumed the entire box.
“Jeez,” said Jared, “didn’t the old bat feed you?”
We practiced our song easily ten times that morning before Jared stopped to rest. I ventured out of the room and down into the front yard to attach his “pegs” to my Voyager. The procedure didn’t take long. Just some unscrewing and tightening of a few nuts and bolts with a socket wrench from his father’s old toolbox. I fastened the white footrests to the center of the wheel so tight that my palms were raw when I was finished. But the pegs were on securely, and the bicycle was ready for a passenger.
When I was done, I stopped in the front yard and watched the purple tennis shoes twisting around a bare tree branch. I remembered what Jared had said about them being a signal for Meredith’s parade of amorous visitors. The laces were begrimed now from hanging up so long, and the lining was frayed. The color had faded to brownish lavender. I walked directly over to the tree and grabbed on to a low limb. I brought the other hand up and pulled myself up and into a prime climbing spot. The bark scraped across my stomach. I sat down on the long branch, just as I’d seen Jared do, and shifted my way down. When I got far enough, I plucked the sneakers from their place and held them up by the laces. They were smaller up close. Meredith had delicate feet. I kept them aloft and surveyed the neighborhood. It felt good to be up high again. I stayed up there a minute or two, shivering in the wind, before I dropped back down to civilization.
Inside, I tried the handle to Meredith’s room. I don’t know why I expected it to be locked, but the door opened. It smelled like her all over the room. Or at least, it smelled like the row of cuisine-themed beauty products on her dresser. Moisturizing Almond Body Butter. Nutrient-Enriched Apple Face Lotion. Pomegranate Power Scrub. Was the idea to slather yourself in sweet sauces and fruity relishes? To prepare yourself for consumption? There were clothes all over the floor and I was afraid she wouldn’t even notice the shoes, so I set them on her bed, neatly, side by side. I thought about leaving a note, but I decided she would understand my message without one. “Meredith,” I hoped the shoes would shout, “why are you doing this with the shoes? You don’t need to do this with the shoes. Put them away and choose me!”
EVENING CAME AND WE ALL SAT DOWN AT THE TABLE again. A “real” dinner this time, complete with some kind of roasted beef that dissolved in my mouth, and a dessert of peach cobbler that was even better than the morning pastries. Conversation at the table was minimal, but not entirely unpleasant. Janice asked Meredith about her day, and Meredith responded with mostly single-word answers. Fine. Yes. No. Okay. Lame. Whatever. She didn’t look at me once. Janice made sure we were all attending the Youth Group meeting that week. We were. Then Jared cleared his throat.
“Mom,” he said, and stopped for dramatic pause. “I need you to sign Sebastian and me up for the talent contest at Immanuel. We’ve formed a . . . group.”
Janice’s tired eyes brightened noticeably. “Oh, Jared, that’s great,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get you to sing at that thing for years.”
“Well, your dream has come true, Mother,” he said. “At long last.”
“What are you going to sing?” she asked, transporting more food onto my plate.
“ ‘Stupid School,’ ” I blurted.
“What?” said Mrs. Whitcomb.
Jared laughed in a short high-pitched burst. “Sebastian’s just kidding,” he said. “We’re probably doing a hard rock version of ‘Awesome God.’ ”
Meredith smiled smugly at Jared, her mouth full of cobbler.
“Oh,” said Janice. “That sounds like your style.”
She looked over at me, and I thought I saw a pinch of admiration in her expression. “Is Sebastian comfortable playing a religious song?”
“Of course,” said Jared.
“I like the tune,” I said quietly.
“Me too,” said Janice.
We continued eating our dessert. Meredith excused herself. I expected a sarcastic comment, but she left quietly and proceeded to barricade herself in her room again. I watched her disappear with longing.
“I think this is a good idea,” said Janice.
She beamed at me. Then she walked over and put a hand on Jared’s shoulder.
“I do, too,” said Jared.
She left her hand there a moment. Something seemed odd about it, and I soon realized that it was the first time I had seen her touch him (when he wasn’t fake-collapsed on the floor). It was only a second, then it was over, and she walked to the sink to begin the dishes. She flipped on the radio. Jared shook his head violently at me. He mouthed something at me that looked like “What were you thinking?” I shrugged. Then Janice looked out the kitchen window and turned around. “Does anyone know why Meredith took her track shoes down?” she asked.
WE WAITED UNTIL MIDNIGHT TO COMMENCE OUR mission. We spent the evening hours listening to record albums at a reasonable volume. As soon as one ended, Jared sent another one spinning. MC5, The Stooges, The New York Dolls, Television. The theme of his audio lecture was the birth of punk. We listened, then went to bed at eleven without being asked. We lay in the dark, across the room from each other, just like the first night I stayed over. Only this time we didn’t speak.
At twelve o’clock exactly, Jared tapped me twice on the shoulder, which was the agreed-upon sign, and we padded softly across his carpeting to our clothes. Jared dressed in three jackets, with his leather coat on the top. He pulled his hat tight over his head and put on a pair of thermal fingerless gloves. “So I can still smoke,” he said, wiggling his pink fingertips. He pulled his hat down, and I saw that it was a face mask with eyeholes. He put his glasses on over the mask. I stared.
“You got a problem with my ninja mask?” he said.
I shook my head and fastened myself inside my bubble coat. I put a stocking hat on under my bicycle helmet. We crept to the foot of the stairs and started down. There was no sound behind Meredith’s door, and the light was out under the crack. We advanced through the kitchen and into the living room. Then we were outside and the whole neighborhood was dark around us. Even the streetlights looked dim.
My bike was kept in the garage now, so we had to take it out a side door. In the driveway, I hopped on and held it steady for Jared’s ascension. Using my back to balance himself, he stepped onto the pegs and then grabbed onto the back of my seat. I turned around and looked down at his worn black sneakers, sitting perfectly on the rests.
“Onward,” he said, cracking an imaginary whip. “Onward, man-child!”
I began pedaling. It was hard at first with the extra weight, but once I got going it wasn’t so bad. Soon I fell into a rhythm and our speed increased. Jared had been worried we might be spotted by the North Branch “pigs” (which he explained to me were officers of the law), but there wasn’t a car on any of the roads. After a while, he moved his hands from the seat and grabbed on to my sides.
“I’m not trying to touch your wiener,” he said. “But it’s just easier this way.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
I manned the bicycle through the night air, going as fast as I could. And when I looked back at Jared on occasion, his lenses were fogged, but his eyes were open wide. Whenever we went down even the smallest hill, he tightened his grip on me. I pretended not to notice. We didn’t start talking until we had successfully made it out of North Branch without problems. Then Jared shouted at me, through the wind.
“So do you really think your grandmother has supernatural powers?” he yelled.
He seemed to be completely serious.
“She knows certain things,” I said. “That’s all I can say.”
“If she sees us, will she, like . . . do things to us with her brain?” he asked. “I saw this movie once where a little girl could start fires with mind power. She burned a barn.”
“She can’t do anything like that,” I said. “She’s just very attuned. She cultivates the metaphysical.”
“I don’t want to be brainwashed,” he said. “That would be fucked up. I want to think my own thoughts, not someone else’s.”
“Jared, are you afraid of Nana?” I asked.
“No,” he said, a bit too quickly.
“We won’t stay long,” I said. “I just need to see that she’s well.”
“Great,” said Jared. “We’re walking right into her firetrap.”
I got a second wind on the path near the freeway and picked up the pace. There were only a few automobiles zooming by, and they either didn’t notice us or didn’t care to slam on their brakes and ask what we were doing out so late. I didn’t stop pedaling until I got to the bottom of Hillsboro Drive.
“We’ll walk from here,” I said.
Jared hopped off the pegs and we began to work our way up the hill until the dome was in our sights. The top glass panels cast back a powder blue moonlight, but inside the lights were all off. I guided Jared past the storage shed and up around to the back of the dome. The darkness inside could mean so many things. Most likely Nana was asleep, but it could also mean that she wasn’t there at all.
“How did you live out here in the woods like this?” whispered Jared. “This is spooky as hell.”
“You get accustomed to it,” I said.
“But aren’t there bears and lynxes that prowl around looking to maul your ass?”
He looked over his shoulder, his eyes darting madly through his mask holes.
“Just deer and raccoons,” I said. “The occasional fox.”
“What about rattlers?” he asked, studying the dry shrubbery.
We approached the dome on the side of Nana’s bedroom, and I squinted, trying to make out her form on the bed. But something was obscuring my vision. It looked like Nana had hung another curtain of some kind. I walked closer, right out in the yard. Jared stayed back. “What are you doing, dipshit?” he said. “You’re in plain sight.”
I kept walking. There was definitely something on the dome. I stepped right up to the glass. I followed its contours with my eyes. It was Africa.
“Is she in there?” Jared asked.
I looked up higher. There was Saudi Arabia. Iraq. Turkey. The Ukraine. The entire back side of the Geoscope had been completed. I couldn’t make out the color scheme exactly, but it looked like blues and purples. It was expertly done. The contours of each country were precise and captured with artistry. Africa alone must have taken hours.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Sebastian?”
I heard him traipse across the hard lawn.
“Have you gone . . . holy shit!” he said. “Is that the post-Soviet bloc?”
I turned around to face him.
“It’s a Geoscope,” I said. “It was our project before I left.”
His eyes traveled the mural from north to south.
“It’s kind of awesome,” he said.
He ran his hand over Angola, then pointed toward Russia.
“How did she get way up there with that bony little body?”