“Did you hear them?” he said. “Did you hear the crowd when we left?”
He was grinning like a fool.
“I heard,” I said.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I absolutely can’t believe it.”
We headed out of town and toward the hill above the town. Only moments ago we had been onstage, now we were in a speeding vehicle. It had all happened so fast. I felt stuck in two different moments. The roads were a little slick from melting ice, but Janice drove fast. I closed my eyes when an oncoming car came by. But there wasn’t an image to be found in my head this time. No Nana. Nothing at all. Just an empty space where there had formerly been pictures. I shivered thinking about what this might indicate. My ears were still ringing, and I listened for any waves of communication in the air. I listened for a voice in the static.
“Did you see me smooch the baton girl?” asked Jared.
I didn’t answer.
“I totally smooched the baton girl,” he said.
He kept his hand on my shoulder, and squeezed.
33.
See You Forever
THE BRIGHT BEAMS OF THE VAN’S HEADLIGHTS CREPT slowly over the countries of the Geoscope before coming to rest somewhere in South America. In the days of old, the gleam would have illuminated the rooms of the dome like the inside of a city bus; now it was impossible to tell what was happening in there. All you could see was a bright blotch of Surf Green or Lavender Mist and only the vague impression of something beyond. So it was only when the headlights had been switched off and the dome was dark again that I could detect the single light in Nana’s bedroom. It shone weakly at the back, like candlelight.
“Do you have any idea what’s wrong with her?” I asked.
My hand was already gripping the door handle.
“Another stroke maybe,” Janice said. “I don’t know for sure. But she needs attention. I could see that. She’s in bad shape.”
Janice looked straight back at me, and I was glad she was there.
“And she wants to speak to me. Is that correct?”
Meredith turned around and nodded. She looked right into my eyes. I had never seen her so serious.
“I’ll go in alone,” I said. “Then we can call the ambulance. Just let me talk to her by myself, first.”
I looked at Jared. He blinked twice. I yanked the van door open and stepped out into the clear evening. Aside from the soft huff of the van, all was quiet. I crunched over the stiff grass and up to the door of the dome. It was unlocked, and the glass door swung open with a light push. The last time I had been inside the dome with Jared, everything had been covered in paint-stained plastic, but now all of that was gone, and the place looked much the way it had the last ten years. It was neat, all arranged, and it appeared to me now like a kind of museum exhibit for a race of humans that had never actually lived. Here was the future that had never come to be. It was all planned like a party, but nobody had showed up.
I drifted through it like a ghost, passing the sleek white leather couch and the NordicTrack. I paused when I reached the door to Nana’s bedroom and pressed my ear to the wood. She didn’t make a sound inside. My throat was so dry I could barely swallow. I wanted to open the door, but I was having a hard time getting my hand to make a move. I eventually pushed it half open. And that was enough. I saw Nana right away, lying on top of her bedspread in a mismatched tracksuit. Green on the bottom, pink on the top. She looked like a wilted flower.
Her head was propped on three pillows. Her shoes were on, unlaced. And she had lost weight somehow, become an even smaller human. The room smelled musty and dank; the thick odor of unwashed clothing and an unbathed body met me at the door. She had tried to cover it up with lavender and spice candles, but I nearly choked when I slipped into the room. She had her eyes closed. I swallowed a breath and spoke her name.
“Nana.”
Her eyes flipped open, and she looked directly at me. It took her time to focus. But once she had me in her gaze, it took her even longer to blink. She didn’t cry, or scream, or ask me any questions straight off. She just looked me over. Her eyes were bloodshot, her lids heavy. Finally she readjusted her pillows and pointed vaguely at my head with a lumbering swing of an arm.
“Your hair is too long,” she said. “You need to be shorn.”
Her voice was husky. I wondered if she had spoken to anyone else besides Janice while I was gone. How much had she spoken in any given day at all?
“You were the last one who cut it,” I said.
She sighed and rolled over onto her side. And even though she was in this weakened state, I was still afraid of her. I could see her standing up any minute and chasing me from the dome, brandishing the crowbar she used with those high schoolers once. I pictured her hollering at me, dashing through the woodland.
“Everyone outside is worried about you,” I said quietly. “They think you need to go to the hospital.”
She made a harsh breathing noise and shooed at me.
“They don’t know anything,” she said.
“This isn’t an emergency?” I asked.
“Negative,” she said.
“You’re not . . . dying?”
“Negative,” she said. “Not in the next few hours at least.”
I took another few steps into the room.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “Things haven’t been the same since my collapse, you know that. But we don’t need to speak about that yet. It’s not as important as some other things.”
“Like what?” I asked.
She reached for a nearby glass of water, but it was too far away. I went instinctively to the side of her bed and edged the glass closer. With a touch of her old quickness, she grabbed my fingers right when they left the glass. She squeezed them hard. “Like how you left me.”
She held on tight, her thin hand in a viselike grip.
“You instructed me to leave,” I said, nearly in a whisper.
The bones of my fingers pinched against one another.
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“I think you knew what I really meant. But we can quibble over technicalities if that’s what you desire.”
She released my fingers and they throbbed with pain. But I didn’t show it. I was ready to hear anything she was willing to say to me.
“So,” she said next. “Tell me. What did you think about when you were out in the world?”
“What did I think about?”
“You must have had time to ruminate when you were gone. Free to do whatever you wanted. I imagine you have some questions you want to ask me.”
“I suppose,” I said.
I tried to look thoughtful, but in reality my mind was empty of everything. She didn’t rush me, though. She just lay there, taking small sips of her water, leaving cloudy lip smudges on the side of the glass. The first question came out on its own.
“Why didn’t you ever talk to me about my parents, Nana?”
Nana didn’t look surprised or upset at all by the question. She looked, in fact, like she may have been expecting it. She took a long sip of water.
“I didn’t want to impede your growth,” she said. And for a moment I thought that was all she was going to say. But she took a breath and started again.
“Just tell me how were you supposed to innovate if you were constantly stuck in a past you didn’t even remember? What was I supposed to do? Torture you every day with memories? Is that what a kind guardian does? Just tell me if you think that’s true.”
Already, her voice was growing sharper and more confident. I simply shook my head.
“You disagree with me. That’s fine. I tried to do what was best. Now I guess you’ll shake your head at all my ideas and everything will be erased.”
“That’s not true.”
“But it is true. This is my punishment. I see that now.”
“Your punishment for what?”
“Ask me another question,” she said.
I looked around at the countries on Nana’s side of the dome. From the inside they looked like colorful camouflage. I walked over to the glass and reached my hand out to touch it. “Was my father like me?” I asked. “Was he supposed to take over all of this?”
She thought a moment this time. Or at least she was surprised enough to take pause. “Yes,” she said eventually. “He was like you.”
“How?”
“Obstinate. That’s how he was. Just like you. And always plotting. Also . . . he looked like you. His face was similar. Thin with those sad eyes.”
“Nana . . .”
“And he broke my heart every day he was alive.”
I turned around. She set down her water glass, and her arm was shaking.
“Just like you,” she said. “He was supposed to lead the next stage. But he chose not to. He could have been brilliant.”
She closed her eyes, and I walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge. She didn’t touch me. “Ask me something else,” she said in a quieter voice. “Just keep asking, please. For now. Can you do that?”
I tried to steel myself. I swallowed. Each breath was harder than the last.
“What happened with Bucky?”
She almost sat up, but lost a little strength on the way and readjusted herself on her pillows. Her eyes moved from my face down to her hands.
“You really want to know?”
I nodded.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen to me closely.”
She paused a second to look at the visible walls of her Geoscope, like she might find the story written there. I waited on the edge of the bed. Her eyes swept over the ceiling as she began to speak.
“You already know that I met him when he came to Edwardsville,” she began. “And it was the single most exhilarating time of my life. It changed me entirely. He was an old man by that time, but he was still a whirlwind of energy. A spark plug of a man, glasses as thick as agate. When he spoke, he seemed like a bright impetuous child, and he loved explaining his ideas to young people, you see.”
She was smiling now, already transported.
“I was a secretary in the department of Religious Education at the time. He came into the department office one day and simply introduced himself to me. He talked for over an hour about how young people like me were going to be the ones who solved all of humanity’s problems. There was enough ingenuity and imagination to transform all of humanity into a prosperous race, he told me. All it was going to take was the right pressure from young people to make it happen. He ended our first meeting by asking me to help him and his assistants with the planning and organizing of his new architectural project. It would be a Geoscope prototype built onto the top of the new auditorium.”
“A Geoscope?” I said. “I thought you said he never built it.”
“He never built the one he wanted,” she said. “But he built this first one. I was there for every step of the process, from the drafting to the construction. And during that time, I fell in love with him. I dreamed so many times that he would discover me, and fall in love with me, too. But he never did. He never even remembered my name.”
“I don’t understand, Nana,” I said. “You were never . . . involved? I thought you said that you were going to move to New York. You were perfect for each other.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m afraid these are just fantasies I’ve indulged over the years, Sebastian. I wish things had happened that way. But they didn’t.”
It took me a moment to digest this information, and all it explained. I could barely move. But I chose to speak again before I lost my nerve.
“I always wondered,” I said, “if he was my grandfather.”
She sat up the best she could. She looked weaker now. Just this brief conversation looked to have drained her energy. “I never told you that,” she said.
“I thought you were waiting to tell me.”
She smiled. “I wanted to give you hope,” she said. “I wanted you to be great.”
There were tears in her eyes now.
“Then who was my father’s father?” I asked. “If it wasn’t him.”
“One of his assistants,” she said. “One of Bucky’s assistants on the SIU project. A man named Alden. He was intelligent, too, in his own way, but not dynamic like Bucky. He was more introspective, I suppose. Tall and thin with the saddest eyes imaginable. He taught architecture. After Bucky was gone, we had a brief affair. I was in shambles. But he inspired me to go back to college, to study architecture. I was going to show Bucky what he had missed. Alden helped me get into school, but he left soon after to return to his job. He never believed the baby was his.”
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.