Finally something he understood. He nodded eagerly. “Do you wanna see where I drew some cowboys on the wall?” he asked.
Ben and May exchanged puzzled glances. “What do you mean, Peter?” Ben asked.
“Where I drew some cowboys. When I was little. Mommy yelled at me, and tried to wash them off, but you can still see them, ’cause I used markers.”
“Ohhh,” Ben said, and it sounded a little like a moan when he said it. “Peter, I mean your new room. Here.”
“Can’t I go back to my old room?”
“Peter, dear,” said May, and she took his hand in hers. Her hand felt cold, but smooth, as if she’d put some sort of lotion on it. He noticed a few brown spots on the back of her hand and wondered what it would be like to connect them. “Your old room is back in Wisconsin. I thought the social worker explained it… . You’ll be staying here, in New York. With us.”
“Can’t we stay at my house?”
“But Peter, this is where we live. And this is where you’re going to live now,” Ben told him, trying desperately to sound upbeat about it. “We’ll make a good home here for you.”
Obviously this Uncle Ben and Aunt May weren’t getting it. “I have a home,” Peter explained, politely but firmly.
“Peter …”
“You know what you need?” Aunt May suddenly said briskly. She didn’t clap and rub her hands. Instead she patted them on her knees. “Some nice, freshly baked cookies. Why don’t you go upstairs and get your things unpacked, and I’ll whip up some cookies. Do you like chocolate chip?” When Peter nodded eagerly, she flicked a finger across the end of his nose in a playful manner. “I thought you might.” She rose as she asked, “Is there anything else you’d like?”
“Yes, please.”
“And what would that be?” She leaned over, hands resting on her knees. “What would you like?”
“My mommy and daddy.”
She winced at that, and Ben, trying to sound kindly but firm, said, “Peter … you have to understand, you’re going to live with us now.”
“I don’t want to,” Peter told him firmly. He wasn’t rude, wasn’t whining or crying. He couldn’t have been more polite if he’d been ordering a meal in a restaurant. “I want my mommy and daddy. Please,” he put in almost as an afterthought.
“They’re not here, Peter …” Ben began.
“Can I talk to them at least? Can you call them?”
“Peter,” and Ben took him firmly by the shoulders. “Your parents … they’re with God now.”
“When are they coming back?”
Ben’s lower lip was quivering. Peter had never seen a grown-up cry, and the feeling made his stomach queasy. He didn’t think it was something that grown-ups did. Ben coughed loudly, took a deep breath, and said, “They’re not coming back, Peter.”
“I want to talk to them.”
“You can’t. They … they went away… .”
“I want to talk to them. Make them come back.”
“Peter …”
“Make them come back!” And the sound and agony that ripped from Peter’s throat terrified the child himself, because he couldn’t believe that it was his own voice sounding like that. His eyes went wide, pupils tiny and swimming in a sea of white, and without another word he turned and bolted up the nearby steps.
Looking a lot older than he had a few minutes earlier, Ben turned to May and sighed dryly, “Well, that went well.”
Peter sat on the floor in the middle of the room, his knees drawn up to just under his chin. He could have been a statue; he was that immobile. The room itself wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t feel especially warm. In Peter’s room—his real room—all the furniture kind of looked like it went together. Here it seemed as if some random stuff had been stuck together in one place. At least none of it was covered in plastic.
Uncle Ben had brought up the last of his suitcases some time ago. Peter hadn’t spoken to him. The truth was, he was embarrassed about his outburst and was quite certain that Uncle Ben was angry with him. So he had felt it wisest not to say anything and hope that, eventually, Uncle Ben would forget that he had shouted in such an inappropriate manner. That’s what his mother would have said. “In-ap-pro-pri-ate, young man,” with her finger waggling one quick downward stroke on every syllable.
Uncle Ben didn’t try to strike up a conversation with him; he didn’t seem to know what to say. For his part, Peter was busy focusing all his attention on the spider that was up in the corner of his room. It was quite big, hanging in the middle of an intricately designed web that stretched from the edge of the ceiling down to the upper portion of the wall. He had never seen anything so morbidly curious. On the one hand, it was incredibly ugly; on the other, it possessed such an elegant beauty that he couldn’t look away. So Uncle Ben would come and go from the room, grunting slightly and wondering out loud why Peter was packing anvils in his suitcases—which puzzled Peter, who couldn’t remember bringing any—while Peter sat there and watched the spider. The sun moved across the sky, the shadows lengthened, Uncle Ben stopped coming in and out, and Peter and the spider stared at each other until time ceased to have any meaning.
The smell of fresh-baked cookies wafted upstairs, seeping in through the doorway and wrapping the tempting fingers of their aroma around him. For a moment he was sorely tempted to abandon his vigil, which had boiled down to waiting for the spider to move. He resisted, however, although he did shift his posture so that he was sitting cross-legged.
Finally he heard footsteps again. He recognized them as belonging to Uncle Ben, but he didn’t bother to turn around. Then he heard his uncle chuckling softly, and that distracted him. He swiveled his head and regarded his uncle, who was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms folded. He was holding a small, wirebound book tucked under his right arm. “What’s funny?” asked Peter.
“You just remind me so much of Ricky, that’s all,” said Uncle Ben. “Same serious face. I’ll show you pictures of him at your age, if you want.”
“Who’s Ricky?”
“Ricky. Richard. Your dad.”
Peter blinked in confusion. “How come you know my dad?”
Uncle Ben’s jaw dropped. “How come I … ? Peter!” he said in astonishment. And then he sat down on the floor with Peter, just like his mom and dad used to. “Peter, your dad … he was my little brother! Didn’t you understand that?”
Peter shook his head. “I thought you were my uncle.”
“I am! An uncle or an aunt is what you call someone who is a brother or sister of a parent … in this case, your father.”
Peter frowned, digesting that bit of information. “So … so Aunt May is my dad’s sister?”
Ben made that odd sound that was a combination of laughter and a cough. “Peter, Aunt May is my wife!”
“You married your sister?” Peter was by now hopelessly confused.
“No, Peter.” Rubbing the bridge of his nose between beefy fingers, Ben said, “We call her your aunt because she’s married to me, which is the other way someone can be an aunt or uncle. By marriage. Understand?”
“I guess so,” said Peter, who thought he did but wasn’t 100 percent sure. Then he took a deep breath and let it out unsteadily. “My mom and dad aren’t coming back, are they?”
“No, Peter,” Ben told him, as gently as he could. “They were killed in an airplane crash. It was an accident.”
“No,” Peter said flatly. “It wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t?” said Ben curiously.
Peter shoved his hand into one of the bags and extracted a stack of comic books. “They were secret heroes. Like … spies. And they were helping their country, and a bad guy, like the Red Skull, killed them.” He held up an old issue of a comic, spine-rolled and tattered.
Ben flattened it carefully and looked at the cover. “Captain America. You like these old comic book heroes?” Peter bobbed his head. “And you think your mom and dad were like that? Why?”
&n
bsp; “Because they were special. Too special to get killed in a stupid airplane accident.”
“I see,” said Ben, very seriously. “That’s an interesting possibility you’ve got there, Peter. I’ll have to think about that one.”
Peter nodded and, satisfied that the conversation was over, went back to what he was doing … namely, watching the corner of the room.
“I see you have a roommate,” Ben commented after a time. “Heck of a spider. They’re good luck, you know.”
“They are?” That surprised Peter. His mother had always hated them and called on his father to squish them whenever one happened to wander unwarily into the house.
“Oh yes. They eat harmful bugs, like mosquitoes. They protect people. That’s what they are, Peter. Protectors. They’re helpful. And in this world, folks need all the help they can get. Right?”
“Right,” Peter agreed.
“Who knows? Maybe my brother—your dad—sent him to watch over you.”
“Maybe,” said Peter. He was looking back at Ben, staring at him as if seeing him for the first time. “I thought only kids had brothers,” he said.
“No, grown-ups have them, too. I, uhm … I brought you something.” He took out the notebook that he’d tucked under his arm and handed it to Peter. “Here you go.”
Peter turned it over and over, then opened it. “There’s nothing in it,” he said curiously.
“I know that. It’s for you to write in. You see …” He shifted on the floor, perhaps to make himself comfortable, or perhaps because he felt uncertain of exactly what to say next. “You said you wanted to talk to your folks. Well … they’re in heaven now, Peter. But they can see you. They can see whatever you’re doing, and they’re watching you all the time.”
“They are?” Peter asked, looking around, brushing a hank of tousled hair from his face.
“Oh, yes. And if you write to them, in this book … they can see it. So it’s just like talking to them.”
Peter stared at the pages, running his hands over the paper respectfully. “But … what will I write to them? Say to them?”
“Whatever you want. Tell him about how things are going with you. About your life, about school … whatever you want.”
“Can I tell them I wish they were here?”
“As much as you want.” Ben smiled, resting a hand on Peter’s shoulder.
Peter considered it a moment more. “If I’m talking to them,” he said at last, “how will I know when they’re talking back? Will I hear them?”
“You won’t hear them with these,” he said, tapping his ears, and then he reached down and tapped Peter’s chest gently. “You’ll hear them with this.”
“My heart? Who listens with their heart instead of their ears?”
“The wisest men in the world, Peter. The wisest men in the world. And I think you can be one of them.”
“Oh.” He riffled through the pages once more. They made a most satisfying noise as he slid them across his thumb. Then he frowned. “Uncle Ben, I don’t know how to write.”
“Ah.” Apparently Ben hadn’t remembered that. “Well … tell you what,” he said after pondering the problem. “At first you can tell me what you want to say, and I’ll write it for you. As you get older, you can write it yourself. How’s that?”
Peter’s head bobbed up and down. The entire idea sounded rather exciting to him. The notion that his parents could be watching right over his shoulder, without being seen, was an exciting one. It made them almost like invisible heroes or something. More importantly, it eased—ever so slightly—the aching melancholy that had threatened to overwhelm him.
Uncle Ben pulled out a ballpoint, balanced the notebook carefully on his knees, and waited expectantly for Peter to start talking. He had a very serious demeanor, like an executive secretary about to take dictation from the president of the United States.
“Mom and Dad,” Peter said finally, “I love you and I miss you. Maybe I’ll see you soon. Uncle Ben is nice,” and he glanced surreptitiously at his uncle to see his reaction. The only hint of it was the edges of his mouth twitching upward. Peter took that as a good sign. “Aunt May is nice, too. I think she made cookies. They smell good.”
“They are good,” Ben assured him under his breath.
“Uncle Ben says they’re good. I think maybe I’ll have one, if that’s okay. But I won’t sit on the couch or chair or anything to eat them, because I don’t like how they feel.”
“Know what? Neither do I,” said Ben, even as he continued to write. He spoke very distantly, as if thinking aloud. “I think I’ll have a chat with your aunt about removing them. No reason we can’t make the house more little-boy friendly.”
“That’d be good,” Peter said.
Ben hesitated, waited. “Anything else you want to say?” he inquired.
“No. That’s all for now,” said Peter after thinking about it a little.
They went downstairs and had cookies and milk while Aunt May insisted that she would attend to putting away all Peter’s clothes, just to help him feel more at home. Uncle Ben kept telling Peter how pleased he was to see Peter’s mood improve, and how they were going to be great friends and a great family, just you wait and see. Peter’s spirits improved with each bite of a cookie and each sip of milk. It was the warmth of the freshly baked cookie versus the chill of the refrigerated milk, and the warmth won out, giving him a pleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Then he went upstairs, and the first thing he noticed was that the spider was gone. “Oh, that awful thing,” said Aunt May. “Don’t worry, Peter. I vacuumed it right up. That nasty spider is dead.”
For the next hour it was very difficult to hear the shouts of “Thanks a lot, May!” and “How was I supposed to know?” over Peter’s pained howls. It took a full day of coaxing and an entire tray of brownies to get Peter to even talk to his Aunt May, and even then there was occasional snuffling or hurt looks. As time passed, the relationship between Peter and his aunt and uncle smoothed out and became a consistent and loving one.
His relationships with the rest of the world, on the other hand, were a bit more problematic… .
II.
THE
DEPARTURE
Why did I listen to her?!?!
Peter Parker adored Mary Jane Watson. There was no question in his mind about that. She was, indeed, hard not to adore. With that luscious red hair … with that exquisite mouth that could start as a pout that could crush your heart, then transform into a smile that could send it soaring into the stratosphere … with those stunning green eyes that could evoke a spring day in the dead of winter … with that laughter as light as a meringue … from head to toe, the girl was as close to absolute perfection as any high school senior girl could be.
She had just one teensy, tiny little problem.
The girl had no sense of time.
At all.
Not only that, but she could never remember times that were told to her. Times of meetings, of appointments, of tests … there and gone. Her mind was filled with the simple joys of living each day to the fullest, and didn’t do well with being bound by such inconveniences as deadlines. Timeliness was for lesser mortals.
So what in the hell had possessed Peter to believe her for so much as a microsecond when she’d said that the bus for the field trip left the school at precisely 8:30 that Friday morning?
Probably because he’d seen her the previous day, late in the afternoon. This wasn’t all that unusual an occurrence, considering that she lived in the house opposite his, their backyards adjoining. Nevertheless, even though he’d known her for twelve years, since she had moved in at the age of six, Peter had had occasional bouts of being tongue-tied around her.
This had been one of those times. She’d been weeding in the garden in the postage-stamp-sized backyard, and noticed Peter coming out of his house to get a hammer from the toolshed for Uncle Ben. She’d waved to him; he had waved back. Then she had stood up, dusting off her ha
nds with an air of having finished her task, and picked up a small stack of books. But rather than going into her house—an off-white A-frame with red shutters—she’d simply stood there, her arms wrapped around the books. He’d had a feeling she was waiting for him to say something, so he’d said the first thing that popped into his mind: “When are we supposed to be at the school again, for the science class trip?”
Without hesitation she’d replied, “Half past eight.” Then she’d flashed that gorgeous smile.
“In the morning?” he asked, and immediately mentally kicked himself for such an utterly lame follow-up.
“Well, yeah, we don’t do that many class trips at 8:30 at night.”
“Right, right.” He ran his fingers through his dark hair, and shuffled his toe on the sidewalk. You’re shuffling your toe? What are you, an infant? This is Mary Jane Watson . . . M. J. The woman you’ve loved since before you even liked girls! Say something, for the luvva God! Something intelligent!
“Well … later,” he said, and immediately he pivoted on his heel, ran inside, sprinted up the steps to his room, and thudded his head repeatedly against a wall that already had a bunch of peculiar marks that constantly mystified his Aunt May.
So it was that 8:30 lodged in his brain. And when he arrived at Midtown High at 8:25, it was just in time to see the yellow Laidlaw school bus hanging a left turn out of the parking lot and heading off down Woodhaven Boulevard.
“Awww, crap!” Peter howled, and he started to sprint. He was grateful that, a year ago, he had actually managed to convince Aunt May to let him start wearing sneakers to school. Through his junior year, she had insisted that school was where you wore some of your best clothes, second only to your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, whatever those were. Aunt May had this occasionally annoying habit of talking like she’d stepped out of a Mark Twain book. Every time she’d say something like “Land sakes!” he half-expected to be able to look out the back window and see a paddle wheeler cruising up the mighty Mississippi, instead of the tree-lined streets of Queens that typified their Forest Hills neighborhood.