The House of Tomorrow (27 page)

And we don’t care.

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 his 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.

“I need to be with someone,” she said.

I watched her from the doorway. “Do you want me to get in the bed?” I asked.

The words sounded strange coming from my mouth.

“I think so,” she said.

My feet were soundless on the carpeting. I could just barely make out the small piles of CDs on the floor to avoid them.

“What about the things Jared said?” I asked. “About me and you?”

I hesitantly slipped under the covers, adjusting the sheet over me.

“Let’s not talk about that,” she said. “Let’s not talk at all, for a minute.”

She backed up and I felt the heat from her body. It radiated off her back. I held my hand out, close to her skin, and I could feel the change in temperature. I moved closer until my chest was barely touching the back of her shirt. She grabbed my arm and slung it around her waist. I left it there, my wrist half balancing on the point of her hip.

“Don’t go to sleep,” she said.

“I won’t.”

Her stomach rose and fell with her breathing, taking my arm with it. She spoke again, so quietly. “I don’t sleep with them,” she said.

“Who?”

“The guys who come to my room.”

“You don’t . . .”

“We don’t screw. I don’t screw them.”

“Oh.”

“We do other things.”

“I see.”

My whole body felt like a bass string, humming. She moved her head on the pillow and her hair brushed against my chin. It tickled, but I didn’t want to move.

“I’m going to talk about myself for a minute,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I’m just warning you because people are always talking about themselves. It feels good, though. That’s why they do it.”

She paused.

“Except you. You’re a listener, Sebastian. You’re the only real listener I’ve ever met. You take it all in. I don’t know if I like you yet, but I like that part.”

She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling.

“I’m still afraid of the dark at the age of seventeen,” she said. “There. It feels good to say that out loud.
I’m afraid of the damn dark.
God, it’s true. But it’s not the dark itself, I guess. It’s just that the dark leaves me alone with these thoughts that I don’t like. And they pop back up. The daytime keeps them down pretty well. So does talking, I guess.”

She grabbed on to my hand.

“It’s part of the reason for the . . . boys, too, I guess. They’re so boring most of the time. Just so, so dull. But it’s nice to be touched. That’s another thing that keeps me distracted. Being touched. Like right now. It helps. I don’t know why. But it does.”

She rolled over toward me and then she was in my arms. I could feel her small breasts against my chest. Her forehead was touching mine.

“That’s all I want to say.”

There was a long pause.

“Now I’m starting to fall asleep,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

She kept her eyes closed. Her body relaxed. She stayed that way for nearly a minute before she spoke again.

“Did you actually mean those things you said to me on the phone?”

“I did,” I said.

“I’ll choose to believe you tonight . . .”

She yawned and her voice drifted off. She was moving farther into my arms. I leaned down and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Her eyes opened and she was awake again. “I can’t,” she said.

She whipped the covers off and put a foot on the carpet.

“I can’t sleep here,” she said. “Janice will be back in the morning.”

She put the other foot down and walked right to the door. She stopped in the doorway. I sat up, my back against the wall.

“Just don’t say anything else,” she said. “Just don’t.”

“I want to ask about Jared,” I said.

“What about him?”

“How often does this kind of thing occur? This thing that’s happening.”

“Only once before,” she said.

“And he was treated?”

“He was. They’ll give him a biopsy and then probably he’ll be on an IV all night. Normally that takes care of it. Normally.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Is that all?”

“It is,” I lied. I wanted to say half a million things. I wanted to scream into the quiet neighborhood cul-de-sac.

“Good night,” I said.

She didn’t answer. Without even a look back, she crept out the door and slowly closed it behind her. I waited in the dark for it to open again. But it didn’t, and after a minute or two, I got up and activated Jared’s stereo. I’d seen him operate it enough now to know how to turn it on. I placed a record on the turntable in the dark and started it spinning around. At the last moment, though, I was scared to damage his needle. It was enough just to hear the static as the record revolved around. I lay down next to the speaker and listened to the hisses and pops. It sounded like the air around me had come alive.

EVER SINCE MY FIRST NIGHT AT THE CHURCH, LONG ago, when Nana seemed to know where I’d been, I had been trying to avoid the subject of her metaphysical powers. I didn’t want to consider the real possibility of her telepathic abilities. It was paralyzing. But I realized, after what had happened with Jared, that I needed to start facing the facts more often. I needed to consider the difficult things in life before they snuck up on me.

So, the next morning I sat in the kitchen making toaster pastries and contemplating brain waves. Nonverbal communication. Patterns and signals. In the brief quietude of the early morning, I thought of Nana again, alone in the dome, and I wondered if she was trying to communicate with me. If she was right, and it was my destiny to take her place, shouldn’t I be capable of this kind of communication? Bucky believed he was able to telepathically connect with his infant daughter only days after her birth. So there must be some hereditary component.

I tried, in the Whitcombs’ kitchen, to empty my head of everything that made me resist my powers. I tried to calibrate the rhythms of my thoughts to those beyond the realm of the senses. I didn’t know how to do this necessarily, so I just tried to concentrate on something blank. The color white. I saw it as an empty space in my head, and kept it there, waiting for it to be filled. I held my head in my hands and sat tight. I whispered Nana’s name to the table. “Nana,” I said, “talk to me. I am attuned.”

There was a long stretch of silence. Everything in the house seemed too quiet for me. I thought of absolutely nothing, and gradually unrefined images started to form. There was no direct communication—only mental pictures, some moving, some still.
Image,
Bucky had said, was the root word of imagination. And chances were good that I was simply imagining the scenes that began to form like developing photographs in my consciousness. But there they were all the same. And there was Nana.