The Nest (3 page)

“No, I don't think so. It's not like that, really. There's a lot that's . . .” He searched. “Not working like it should. And some of that they can treat. But a lot of it has to do with his level of ability and how he might develop in the future. Whether he'll be low-functioning or high-functioning.”

“Low-functioning,” I said. It sounded like something you'd say about a machine, not a person.

“I know, it's an awful term.”

I rearranged a baking dish so it wasn't taking up half the rack. “So . . . we're high-functioning?”

He gave a small chuckle. “Supposedly. Though, some days it doesn't feel like that, does it?”

I was wondering if he was thinking of me. I definitely felt low-functioning sometimes.

“It's something to do with his DNA, isn't it?” I said.

He looked at me. “That's right.”

“Congenital,” I added. It made me feel better to have the words. As if knowing the names of things meant I had some power over them.

“Right. He was born with it. It's very rare, apparently. There aren't a lot of recorded cases yet. It only got named a couple years ago.”

I was about to ask what the name was, but didn't. I wasn't sure why. This was a word I didn't want to know.

Later, when I was going to bed, Mom hugged me and thanked me for being so brave.

“I'm not brave,” I said.

“I'm sorry we've been away so much. It won't be like this for always. . . .”

I didn't want her getting teary again, so I said, “We should do something about that wasp nest. I don't want to get stung again. And it's pretty close to the baby's room,” I added, hoping that would make her take it more seriously.

“We'll take care of it.”

“Did you ever believe in angels?” I asked. She smiled. “When I was little, I think I might have.”

“Not now?”

“I don't know that I do, Steve. It's a nice idea. But I don't think so.”

Before I turned out my bedside light, I went through my two lists. First I read all the things there were to be grateful for. A lot of the time I felt pretty low, and I didn't know why really, and I thought this was a good way of reminding myself of all the good things in my life. The list was pretty long by now, about four pages torn from a notebook. Sometimes I added new things. The last thing was: Our baby.

Next was the list of people I wanted to keep safe. I didn't really know who I was asking. Maybe it was God, but I didn't really believe in God, so this wasn't praying exactly. It was a bit like how Nicole blessed people at night. This was me wanting to make sure that all the people I knew wouldn't get hurt. I started with Mom and Dad and Nicole and the baby and then went through my grandparents
and my uncles and aunts and cousins and my friends Brendan and Sanjay. If I lost my place, or started worrying I'd skipped someone, I began at the beginning again, just to make sure. I always ended with the baby, to make doubly sure I hadn't forgotten him.

Then I turned off the light, pulled the covers over my head, adjusted my breathing hole, and slept.

I
DIDN'T THINK
I
'D SEE THEM AGAIN, BUT
that night I did. I was in the beautiful lighted cave, and my focus was a bit clearer this time. The walls reminded me of those rice paper blinds Brendan had in his bedroom. The cave's curved walls soared all around me. It felt good to be inside, like feeling the sun warm on your face through the car window even though it's winter outside.

And I was aware of the angels, moving about overhead, on the walls, on the high domed ceiling,
wings aflutter, a pleasant thrum filling the air. And then, suddenly, one was much closer to me, and I knew instantly it was the same one I'd talked to before.

“Hello again,” she said.

I still couldn't focus properly on her face. It was like that time the eye doctor dilated my pupils and I couldn't read anything or see anything close up. The angel seemed so near that she was just a blur of light. She was all black and white. I didn't feel at all afraid of her. Light radiated from her face. Her dark eyes were very large. No ears that I could make out. Her mouth was somehow sideways. Her face was divided by geometric patterns.

“How are you?” she asked me.

With each word I felt like I was being caressed, something very soft brushing my cheek, my throat.

“Fine.”

“And your family. Holding up all right, I hope?” She was very polite.

“I think so.” It seemed I should say something back. “How are you all doing?”

“Oh, very busy, as you can see. Very, very busy, as always.”

“I didn't think I'd see you again.”

“Well, of course you'll see us again.”

I liked her an awful lot. She just seemed so easy and friendly—and I'd never been very good at having friends. At school I spent most of my time reading at recess and lunch. I did crosswords. I liked those. I didn't like the way kids talked to one another. I was not a very popular kid, never had been.

“We're here to help, and we'll stay until our work is done.”

“Fixing the baby?” I said tentatively. I wanted to make sure I understood properly from last time.

“Absolutely. That's what all this is for.”

There was a brief pause, and I looked around at the beautiful cave, and the light alone made me joyful.

“When will you fix the baby?”

“Very soon. Don't you worry.”

“What I don't understand is . . .” I didn't want to be rude.

“Go on,” she said gently.

“Well, how are you going to fix the baby?”

Would it be some angelic surgery? Did it involve spells or actual medicines or just words of power? Would they touch him with those magical gossamer caresses I was feeling now?

“Well,” she said, “first of all, ‘fix.' It's a rather odd choice of words, isn't it?”

I laughed with her. “Yes.”

“We talk about fixing cars or a dishwasher. This
is a human being! The most glorious and complicated creature on the planet! You don't just go in there and repair him like an engine. It's incredibly difficult at the best of times.”

“I'm sure it is.”

“And in this case, quite impossible.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. For the first time I realized I was standing on some kind of fibrous ledge, and if I peered straight down, I saw that the cave went much deeper and began to contract into a circle of bright light. There was a lot of fluttering activity down there, but the light was almost blinding. I preferred the softly filtered light through the walls higher up.

“I don't understand,” I said. “You said you could fix the baby.”

“‘Fix.' ‘Repair.' These are just words, really. Let's not get hung up on them. What matters is
your baby will be perfectly healthy and well.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“It's just not something you can patch up with a bit of string and sticky tape. No, no, no, we have to do this properly. Go right back to the beginning of things. Go deep. That's the proper way to do things. No half measures around here!”

“You mean going right inside the DNA?” I said, still not sure I was following her but wanting to sound knowledgeable, maybe even impress her.

“DNA—aren't you the clever one! Yes, good, you're on the right track. And we'll go deeper back still. That's where it will make the most amazing difference.”

“So you can make him better,” I said, relieved.

“Of course we can. Be careful, though.” Her voice was softer, confiding. “There might be some people who try to get in our way.”

I shook my head. “Who would do that?”

“You don't even usually see them, but you know they're there.”

Immediately I thought of my nightmare somebody, darkly standing at the foot of my bed, and how just a few nights ago in my dream, the angels had come and burned him away like mist.

When I woke up, it was morning and I felt really happy. And then, waking up a bit more, I realized it was just a dream and no angels were going to fix the baby.

In the afternoon Vanessa brought a big plastic bag with some hunks of an old wasps' nest in it. She showed them to us on the kitchen table. Nicole got in there right away, touching everything. I held back. Looking at it made me feel like washing my hands.

“Is this supposed to make me less scared of wasps?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I just borrowed it from the lab. I thought you guys might be interested.”

Inside were rows and rows of empty little hexagonal cells.

“It's like honeycomb!” Nicole said.

“Right,” said Vanessa. “And it all starts with the queen wasp. She begins the nest. Sometimes it's underground, sometimes it's in a tree, or hanging from a branch, or under the eaves like yours.”

“How does she make it?” Nicole wanted to know.

“It starts with just a little bit of wood fiber and saliva that the queen spits up, and she makes a little stalk from the roof, then a sort of umbrella, and on the underside, a few little paper rooms like these ones here. The queen lays one egg in each cell.”

“And it hatches into a baby wasp,” Nicole said.

“Well, yes, it hatches, but it's not a wasp right away.”

She was just like a teacher, the slow calm way she talked. It irritated me, but what she was saying was actually interesting. “The egg hatches into something called a larva.”

Nicole narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What's that?”

“It's sort of white and wormy, and it doesn't look like much. It's just got a mouth and black dots for eyes, and all it does is eat and eat.”

“What does it eat?” Nicole wanted to know.

“I'm glad you asked,” she said, and she really did look glad. “Usually dead insects. The queen might go and chomp the head off a bumblebee and bring back the decapitated body. Wasps can kill insects much bigger than themselves.”

“We saw one with that crazy big spider, remember?” I said to Vanessa.

“Whoa!” said Nicole, impressed.

“So the larva grows and grows and then seals itself inside the cell with silk. It doesn't eat anymore. And it's not called a larva anymore.”

“It's a pupa,” I said, remembering biology class. I wanted to show Nicole that Vanessa wasn't the only one who knew interesting things.

“Yep,” she said. “And even though the pupa isn't eating anymore, it's changing inside. It's transforming. And then when it's all done, it cracks the seal of its cell! And it crawls out! A full-grown worker wasp!”

She did that last part really well, acting out a giant wasp muscling its way into the open, pretending her hands were a pair of hungry mandibles.

“Cool!” said Nicole, looking at all the cells in the nest. “There must be so many of those guys!”

“Except they're all girls,” Vanessa said.

Nicole looked delighted. “Really?”

“Yep, every one. And then they start building the nest bigger, and feeding the new larvae.”

“More dead bugs,” Nicole said.

“Yes. Although, once they're adults, the wasps eat only nectar. And they pollinate plants when they do it. It's not just bees that do that. Wasps are important too. Our planet needs them.”

“So what does the queen do now?” I asked. “Now that everyone's working for her.”

“The queen just lays more eggs. That's it.”

Nicole asked, “Do they all become queens?”

Vanessa shook her head. “These ones are all sterile.”

“What's that mean?”

“They can't make baby wasps. But at the end of the summer, when the nest is all finished, the queen lays her last eggs. She makes some males and females who
aren't sterile. And these females become new queens and start their own nests next year.”

Finally I touched a hunk of the nest. It had a rustly dry feeling. “It's ugly.”

Vanessa shrugged. “I don't know. I think it's sort of beautiful. Everything makes nests. Birds for their eggs. Squirrels make dreys to sleep in through the winter, bears make dens, rabbits burrows.”

“We don't make nests,” Nicole said, laughing.

“Sure we do. Our houses are just big nests, really. A place where you can sleep and be safe—and grow.”

He came right to the door.

I was all alone in the house. Mom and Dad had taken the baby to the specialist. And Vanessa had left early, to drop Nicole off at a friend's house a couple of blocks away. I was supposed to pick her up in two hours.

I was reading in my room when I heard the handbell that seemed so out of place on a city street. I tried to get back to my book. It was one I loved, that I sometimes read when I wanted something fun to escape into, but I couldn't concentrate. I just heard the faint sound of the knife guy's van getting closer, and each peal of the bell growing louder.

My window faced the street, but I wouldn't get up to look. I just lay on my bed, the book a jumble of unreadable words. Another peal, and I knew the van was right outside my house. I waited for the motor sounds to fade, but when the bell next rang, it hadn't moved. The van's motor idled. I waited. Maybe someone across the street was getting him to do something. I felt like there was a shadow in my room, getting thicker.

When the knock came, my whole body jerked.
It was not a polite knock. We had an old-fashioned metal knocker, and it slammed against the plate three, four, five times.

I lay very still. I took a jerky breath into my stomach and tried to hold it, one, two, three, four, but I couldn't. I needed more air.

Slam! Slam!

Nightmare fear jolted through me. I wished the floor would slide open and my bed would go down and the panel would seal me in and keep me safe.

I gasped air and slid off my bed. I commando crawled to the window and pulled myself up to kneeling. I poked my head above the sill. I saw the houses opposite, a letter carrier going from door to door. When I lifted my head, I saw the street, and then the van at our curb. A little higher, and I saw our lawn and the path leading to the front door. There was no one inside the cab of the van.

The knife guy was definitely at my doorstep, hammering away.

Our next-door neighbor, Mikhael, was mowing his lawn, but he was wearing headphones and didn't even seem to notice the knife guy. A few cars passed by on the road.

Slam! Slam! Slam!

The noise made red electricity in my head. Paralyzed, I stared through the window, and finally I saw the knife guy walking back toward his van. Eyes just peeping above the windowsill, I followed him. Halfway down the path he suddenly turned and looked straight up at me. Right at me in my bedroom, like he'd known I was there all along.

With one of his misshapen hands he pointed at his van. With his other hand he lifted a knife and turned it to and fro so the light caught the blade. It wasn't like a normal kitchen knife. It was bigger
and had a weird curve to it. He shrugged as if asking a question.

Desperately I looked over at my neighbor. He was still pushing his mower, facing our house now. He must have seen the knife guy by now! Why wasn't he calling the police? Maybe he'd decided it was just best to ignore a crazy old guy with a big knife.

The knife guy started to walk back toward my house, and I lost sight of him as he stepped onto our porch. I ducked down against the radiator, its metal cool against my cheek. My heart pounded so fast, I worried I might pass out. If he knocked again, I would run out the back and jump the fence into the next street.

But a few seconds later I heard the van motor deepen, and when the bell pealed again, it was farther away. Soon I couldn't hear it anymore.

I went downstairs, my knees watery. Warily
I looked through the tall skinny window beside our front door. Lying on the porch was the big, strangely curved knife.

“It's very odd,” Dad said, looking at the knife. I'd brought it inside and put it in an old shoe box. Considering its size, it was surprisingly light. The handle had a good grip and felt . . .
right
in my hand. I didn't need to touch the blade to know how sharp it was.