At the Metro entrance she stopped and bought a bouquet of frilly pink carnations speared by austere purple irises from a street vendor, as was her weekly custom, and held the crinkly cellophane wrapper on her lap as she sped underground. She tried to relax into the bright colors, but she could not. Neither was she soothed by the Metro ride, as she usually was. Once in Tall Oaks, she peered out the bus window, trying to spot Walking Man.
By the time she climbed the hill to her house, her shoulder ached from her briefcase strap. She went inside, a mixture of heel-clacks (she kicked off her shoes immediately), cellophane crinkles, and a cheerful “Hi!” She put the cone of flowers on the counter, promising them that she would get them a vase and water as soon as she changed.
“Mommy!” Abbie, her face slightly grimy, pounded down the stairs and smashed into her. Abbie lifted her up, licked a finger, and wiped dirt from her daughter’s cheek.
“What’s up?”
“Come and play a game with me.” She tugged at Megan’s hand and led her down the hall. Jim, in his office, was on the phone. He smiled and waved as she passed. Abbie’s bedroom was a phantasmagoria of toys, a spoiled child’s utopia.
“Okay. But just let me—” Then Megan forgot that she was sweltering in panty hose, that her skirt waistband was too tight. “Where did you get that?”
Abbie yanked at Megan’s hand. “Sit down! Show me how to play!”
Megan shucked her skirt and panty hose and tossed them onto a chair, leaving her in cool cotton underpants and a bedraggled silk shirt. She pushed back her hair, which was wet with sweat, and sank cross-legged to the floor. Very quietly, she said to Abbie, “Where did you find this?”
Abbie smiled. “I don’t know.”
Megan tentatively touched the upturned edge of the Infinite Game Board.
Abbie had unfolded the metal legs, so it sat about a foot off the floor.
About the size and shape of a cafeteria tray, the board had intriguing patterns on its aluminum surface, all of them diminutive, so there was room for many, many games, or suggestions of games, even games that opened outward from other games. A chess- or checkerboard—and indeed, Megan recalled that tiny checkers and chessmen had come with it, sealed into a plastic bag. There had also been colored markers to use with games that required the spinner, in one corner, which pointed toward numbers on colored backgrounds. There had also been a deck of playing cards, and other cards for playing other games. There was a hexagon divided into triangles, each of which held a number; a pair of dice; interlocking squares with a colored dot in each of their grids, a baseball game.
The instruction booklet was long lost. But it had been, Megan recalled, rather thick, printed on thin paper with a font too small for, at least, her own childish eyes to read.
She touched the board again, and remembered the day they bought it. In fact, Megan suddenly realized, the entire day still stood out for her as if it were a set piece she could enter again and again, a day that would never lose its odd numinosity.
* * *
Jill had been sick, and the doctor prescribed cough syrup. Their mother drove down the street to Peoples Drug and said, “Must be my lucky day,” as she zipped into a vacant parking spot right in front of the store.
Jill, as usual, stopped for a second and took a deep breath when she went into the store, then headed for the comic book rack, where she put her nose right up next to them and inhaled more deeply.
“That’s gross,” said Brian.
“They smell
wonderful,
” she said, and held the most recent
Superboy
issue to her face, sniffing it before opening it.
“That’s enough, Jill,” said their mother. “You’re spreading germs.”
“She doesn’t act sick,” said Brian, as their mother, ignoring him, receded to the back of the store.
“You’re just jealous because you had to go to school,” Jill said, piling up her sickbed dues: just about every comic on the rack.
Then Megan saw it.
The Game Board was in a dusty cardboard box with a cellophane front, which displayed its mesmeric diversity. Megan said, “What’s that?”
No one paid any attention to her. She couldn’t reach it, and she couldn’t get Jill to help. Her mother was talking to the pharmacist. She saw a stepstool down the aisle and dragged it over to the shelf.
She climbed onto the stool and could just barely reach the bottom with her outstretched fingers. She teased at the bottom and finally it fell off the shelf, taking down several boxes of tissues along with it.
Megan climbed down. She ignored the tissues, picked up the box, and gazed through the cellophane in a state of complete rapture. It was dusty. She sneezed.
“What’s going on here?” Her mother stood over Megan. “Did you make this mess?”
Megan glanced at the boxes on the floor. “Um, I guess.”
“Well, pick them up this minute. Hand them to me.” She replaced the tissue boxes. “Now where did this box come from?”
Megan embraced the large box as best she could. “I want it.”
“What is it?”
“Games,” she said. “See? Lots of games we could play with Jill while she’s sick.”
“How nice of you to think of your sister.” She lifted the box from Megan’s arms.
Brian showed up with a plastic truck. Jill held about ten comic books.
Their mother looked at Jill’s stack. “You’re just sick. You’re not dying.”
“Mo-om.”
“Don’t whine.”
“I need these.”
“Put half of them back, please.”
“When do I get my allowance?”
“I said—”
“Okay, okay.” Jill slouched back over to the rack and began smashing some of the comic books back in.
“Those are the ones you will get, young lady.”
“But they’re bent.”
“Exactly.”
Megan recalled her sense of deep triumph as her mother asked the pharmacist, “How much is this?”
He frowned. “Don’t recall seeing it.” He turned it over and over, searching for a price tag. “Whew. It’s dirty. Sorry about that. It’s probably been here for years.” He put it on the counter, wiped his hands with his handkerchief, and then ran it over the box. “Well … How about two dollars.”
And then—
“Mom!” Abbie was shoving her on the shoulder. “Play!”
And then, Megan didn’t remember anything else about it.
She frowned. “Be quiet, Abbie. I’m trying to think. About the games,” she added in haste.
Abbie pouted and flung herself on the bed.
It was true. She really couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember playing any of these enticing games, this infinite-seeming phantasmagoria …
Infinite …
“Hey.” Jim stuck his head in the door.
“Hi, sweetie. Do you know where Abbie found this?”
“It was up in your loft. The top of the closet. Next to a stack of old photographs.”
“Oh. They were from the attic. I haven’t even had a chance to look at them.”
“She made me go up and get it. She said you’d be mad.”
“I don’t remember putting it there.”
“Well, that’s where it was.”
“I got some flowers. They’re on the counter. Could you put them in a vase? Please?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s play now,” said Abbie.
Megan stood, picked up the Game Board, and grabbed her clothes from Abbie’s chair. Abbie followed her into her bedroom and sat on the bed while Megan changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and zoris. Megan thought while she changed.
Finally she said, “Tell you what. I need to find the game pieces first, okay? We can’t play anything without the pieces.” As casually as she could, she slid the board on top of a tall wardrobe. “Want to go for a walk to the lake?”
“Yes!”
Bingo appeared immediately, romping and barking.
* * *
Megan walked toward the lake in somewhat of a daze, the weirdness of the day beginning to tell on her. She resolved to take some extra vitamins when she got home. Maybe she should lay off the memory enhancement stuff for now.
She was almost positive that she had not brought the Game Board along with her when she’d gotten married. She had lived at home during part of college, but moved into an apartment later, and could not recall bringing such a thing to her apartment or to her Tall Oaks home. Her old room in Halcyon House was more or less the same. In fact, it was probably exactly the same as when she had left. The bed had not been made, the pile of clothes she’d dumped out of the dresser, all too small, were probably still there—oh, except, she remembered Jill mentioning that Whens had chosen her room. So it might have been straightened a bit. But knowing Jill, perhaps not.
Bingo ranged on his leash, jerking her here and there, sniffing every tree, rock, and bush while Abbie ran on ahead, a flash of green shorts and yellow hair, brightening and dulling as she passed through shafts of sunlight and patches of shade. Megan resolved for the hundredth time to take Bingo to some kind of training course and immediately forgot the thought.
They arrived at a minuscule sandy beach. Bingo almost pulled her over as he lunged for a stick, but she turned around after Abbie tossed a few rocks into the water.
The path had been widened over the years to accommodate service vehicles, and was fairly busy this time of day with joggers, bikers, and other dog walkers. Megan had always felt perfectly safe here. But for the first time, she was anxious when she lost sight of Abbie for a moment.
“Abbie,” she yelled. “Abbie!”
Abbie came around the bend, running toward her. “Look what I found!”
The small plastic soldier crouched on a flat pool of plastic, his rifle aimed at anything in front of him. He was completely Army green, including his skin, and unremarkable to Megan. “Uncle Brian used to play with these when he was little,” she said. “He bought bags of them at the dime store.”
“Dime store? Is that like a dollar store?”
Megan smiled. “Kind of.” Come to think of it, she hadn’t noticed these once-ubiquitous soldiers for years. The much more positive Spacies had replaced them.
“Can I keep it?”
Megan slipped it into her pocket. “After I wash it. We don’t know where it’s been.”
“It’s been on the ground.”
“Right. Okay, time to go home.” Abbie turned around and ran toward home.
Then Megan saw him. The Walking Man. Tiny in the distance, but heading directly toward Abbie. Of course, there was no other way to walk, but still …
Megan began to run, yanking Bingo with her. She wanted to yell
Abbie!
But that would give him Abbie’s name. She settled on, “Hey!”
Abbie turned around. “Get back here.”
Instead, Abbie ran forward. Megan caught a glimpse of the Walking Man disappearing into the trees. Small side paths laced the woods. She continued to run until she caught up with Abbie, and grabbed her tightly by one arm. “Don’t get so far ahead of me!”
Abbie held up one of her feet, upon which she wore a sandal with flashing lights. “These make me go fast. I can’t help it.”
“I can,” said Megan. She had the fleeting notion that the Walking Man could perhaps tiptoe from thin tree to thin tree, making himself as skinny as the tree, like a cartoon character.
She grasped Abbie’s hand firmly. Maybe she really should return Abbie’s classbook. Jim had been keeping it, just giving it to her for school, and supervising her homework time with it.
Megan fell into the maelstrom of dinner, cleanup, and getting ready for tomorrow morning’s meeting before falling into bed.
* * *
When Megan woke up, the next morning, her luminescent digital clock said 3:17
A.M
.
She closed her eyes against the baleful time, but the afterimage insisted that it was an ungodly hour of the morning and that she was fully and absolutely awake. It was, indeed, Saturday, and in just a few hours she was going to make a quick trip to New York to catch a Saturday conference at Columbia.
Ugh.
Maybe Jim was right, even though his oft-expressed wish that she would develop a drug to treat workaholism, and take it, was actually a joke.
At least, she thought it was.
Jill’s message from yesterday, relayed by Jim when he came to bed, that someone had broken into the house, was unsettling. But not to worry.
Of course. Jill never worried. And Brian was staying there. Poor Cindy. She had to be getting to the end of her tether. But maybe not. Cindy was a teacher, although she claimed that she was never patient in the classroom. “That just confuses the kids,” she said.
Slipping out of bed, Megan made her way to the wardrobe. She tripped over a pair of shoes and cursed. Jim’s snoring stuttered, then resumed its regular, comforting cadence.
The Game Board was right up … there. She grabbed it and tiptoed out of the room.
Bingo jumped up from in front of Abbie’s door, huffing and snorting and wagging her tail.
“Shh.” They went downstairs. The Game Board winked and glowed in the dark, which irritated her. She wanted it to be just a normal piece of metal with paint on it. Clearly, it was not.
The stove light lit the kitchen, dimly. The window over the sink was open, admitting the smell of new-mown grass. Megan, thinking about the Walking Man, reached up and pulled it shut and locked it. She set water to boil and sprinkled chamomile tea into a Dumbo-shaped teapot. Come to think of it, that was from the Halcyon House attic. A lot of things here were from that attic. She leaned against the counter and waited for the water to boil and then waited for the tea to steep, hoping that she would become drowsy.
No such luck. Finally there was nothing else to do but take her perfectly brewed tea, perfectly flavored with milk and sugar into the dining room, along with the Game Board, and sit down to have a good long look.
A green dot winked at the upper right corner. Megan leaned forward and took a swig of tea.
It would appear that the Game Board was somehow infused with Q. If it weren’t for the fact that Q did not exist when her mother had bought it for her, this would be no big deal.
The board had not manifested this dot earlier today. A slight shiver ran through Megan. Abbie had handled this. She bit her lower lip, thinking.