“Up where?”
“Overlook Road. You won’t have trouble finding it. The last house and the biggest. The air smells sweet up there. And there’s a view of the town below! That’s how he spends his life now. Every day he looks down at us.”
“The paint factory makes a lot of money?”
“Tons.”
“Why?”
My father hesitates, and then answers softly. “Some special processes they have for industrial oil-based paints. Including one developed by a fool who wasn’t smart enough to get his name on the patent.” He kicks a stone, and it rolls till it disappears under a parked car.
“Do these processes create toxins?”
He glances at me. “Quite the little chemist, are you? What does it matter, Tom? You never cared to hear any of this before.”
“I care now,” I say.
“Sure there are toxins,” he finally says. “They’re called VOC’s—volatile organic compounds. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. And they’ve broken a lot of eggs. But let’s talk about something else. Why was Jason picking on your sister?”
I decide not to tell my father about Sally’s paper-writing business. “He was calling her names.”
“What names?”
“Flabber. And Boulder Butt.”
“No!”
“She does have a rather prominent gluteus maximus.”
My father smiles. “That’s not for him to judge.” He squints down at me. “You have a strange way of speaking, son. Formal. Distant. I’ve noticed it before. Where on earth does that come from?”
“As a matter of fact, the derivation is not terrestrial,” I tell him. “It’s from the nebula.”
“Ask a stupid question, get a nutty answer,” he says, and stops walking. “Okay, lad, are you ready?”
I see that we’ve reached our house. “Ready for what?”
“Put on the armor, take the sword out of its sheath, and let’s go face the turkey meat loaf together.”
19
Look at you two, thick as thieves,” my mother says as Dad and I walk in together. “What’s that about?”
“Just spending some quality time with my son,” he tells her, and sniffs. “I don’t smell turkey meat loaf.”
“We’re not having it tonight.”
He flashes me a look of relief. My father has an expressive face, and he clearly enjoys sharing good news. “What are we having? Chicken? Fish? The aroma eludes me.”
Tom Filber’s belly is empty. I sniff the air and also draw a blank.
“Come to the table and you’ll see,” she says. She tilts back her head and calls, “SAAALLLLYYY, DINNER!”
We offer to help my mother serve the food, but she insists she will bring it in herself. Sally comes downstairs and the three of us sit at the table, waiting for the feast to arrive.
I skipped the turkey meat loaf last night, so this will be my first family dinner on Planet Earth. As we wait, my dad makes polite table conversation.
“How’s the cello going, Sal?” he asks.
“I hate it.”
“Then why don’t you stop playing it?”
“Good fatherly advice,” she says. “Quit.”
“I just meant that no one’s forcing you to play it.”
“I know what you meant.”
My father looks back at her and takes a sip from his water glass. We can hear my mother fumbling around with pots and plates. Whatever she’s dishing up clearly takes intricate preparation.
My father tries again. “Listen, Sal,” he says. “Let’s be on the same side for a minute. Do you want me to phone Jason Harbishaw and tell him to leave you alone?”
Sally glances at me. “Somebody’s got a big mouth.”
“Actually my mouth is average-size for boys in my age range,” I tell her.
“Yeah, well maybe you should put an average-size cork in it,” she suggests.
“He was only trying to help,” my father explains. “He was concerned for you. And I am, too. Jason Harbishaw shouldn’t be calling you insulting names.”
“It’s none of his business if you have a prominent gluteus maximus,” I contribute.
“Say another word and I’ll scream,” she warns us.
“We won’t talk about it further,” my dad says. “But if you ever want me to put a stop to it, just . . .”
Sally tilts back her head and screeches so loud the entire room seems to start spinning. While she is in mid-yell, my mother comes in carrying a big covered platter and stands there, holding it and watching us.
Sally finally runs out of breath and falls silent, her mouth still open.
“Dinner is served,” Mom announces, and sets the platter down on the table.
Oddly, I still can’t smell anything. Also, I noticed that when she carried the platter in, she held one hand beneath it. Whatever is inside can’t be too hot.
“Thank you for cooking, Ruth,” Dad says.
“You’re welcome. Enjoy.”
My father reaches out and removes the cover from the platter. There is no food inside. The platter is filled with white and yellow pieces of paper of varying sizes.
“What’s this?” my father asks. “A joke?”
“No joke,” she tells him. She reaches into the pile of papers on the platter and randomly pulls one out. “Phone company, eighty-three dollars. We can’t pay that.”
“You can’t let them turn off my cellphone!” Sally shrieks.
“Your mother’s just a little overexcited,” Dad says. “Let’s go out for pizza and we’ll talk about this later.”
Mom gives him a look and reaches back into the pile. “Mortgage bill. Overdue. Four hundred and thirty-two dollars. We’re going to lose the house.”
He puts a hand gently on her arm. “Ruth, please. Don’t alarm the kids. No one’s going to take our house.”
She pulls away violently. “STOP! I can’t do it anymore, Graham. Not on what I make at the diner. Not with you drinking it away.”
“Now you know I’ve been looking,” he tells her softly, but she cuts him off.
“We don’t even have money to take your son’s braces off his teeth! What kind of a man are you?”
My father stands up from the table, his face red. “Enough,” he says.
“Not enough,” she snaps back. “You don’t even try! Damn you.” She picks up her fork and throws it at him.
Dad heads for the door.
“Run away,” she calls after him, and hurls a spoon. “Back to the bar. Why don’t you do us a favor and stay there! COWARD!”
We hear the front door open and then slam shut.
The three of us sit at the table staring at each other over our neat place settings and the platter of bills in the center.
My mother slowly draws her hand over her face. The simple gesture seems to age her twenty years. For a moment, I can see the haggard old woman she will become, the drained, deeply lined, careworn face.
Sally stands up from her chair. “Thanks for dinner, Mom. I guess there’s no dessert?”
“No,” my mother whispers, “there’s nothing else.”
“Then I’m going upstairs,” Sally says. “Why doesn’t somebody just pull the lever and flush this family down the toilet?”
She walks out. I am alone with my mother.
“I don’t mind the braces,” I say softly.
She looks back at me, opens her napkin, dabs at the corners of her eyes two or three times, and then begins to weep into it. She’s a big woman, and each time she sobs the silverware seems to rattle on the tabletop.
“It’s okay.” I try to soothe her in my most comforting voice.
“How is it okay?” she asks between sobs. “It’s a disaster. Sally’s right. I wish someone would just put us out of our misery.”
I think for a second of the Gagnerian Death Ray. One gentle push, and there will be no more meals like this.
But that is a decision that must be made by Preceptors on a global level. Right
now I am at this old wooden dinner table, alone with a fellow living creature in pain. It’s true I am a Level-Five GC Evaluator, trained to observe impartially, but it’s difficult to sit here and watch her weep into her dinner napkin.
I quickly access the consciousness of Tom Filber. How can I make her stop crying?
The answer comes back loud and clear from the Ragwellian Bubble. There’s nothing you can say. She’s right. It’s a disaster. Just leave the table before she turns on you.
You want me to leave my mother like this? I follow up. Isn’t that kind of cold?
She’s not your mother, Snailface, he snaps. She’s my mother, remember? And she’s a realist. Nothing you can say will make this better. Get out while you can.
I am surprised by the anger in his response. He should not be able to call me Snailface from the Ragwellian Bubble. Nor should he be able to recognize our separate identities. The part of his consciousness capable of understanding his own situation and reacting with such strong emotions should have been switched off.
Perhaps, given his extended captivity inside the bubble, he is starting to recover his identity a bit. This is a very worrisome development. I must rely on Tom Filber’s practical advice for my own survival during my time on Planet Earth. If he loses his objectivity and regains elements of his own persona and will, my position will become much more difficult. I have to try to comfort her, I tell him.
Go ahead. Dig your own grave, he responds. What’s it to me?
I reach across and offer my mother my dinner napkin.
She takes it and blows her nose into it.
I sit there trying to figure out what an Earthling in her position would want to hear that might be comforting. She is clearly right about the Filber family’s financial plight. The pile of bills is formidable. She is also correct that my father spends his time and money at the Emerald Tavern. I saw him there an hour ago. “He still loves you very much,” I finally tell her softly.
“Who?” she asks between sobs.
“My father. Your husband. I can hear it in his voice when he talks about you. He knows you had dreams that didn’t all come true.”
She peers up at me over the dinner napkin. “I married him at nineteen. Nineteen! I only wish I could climb back through time and slap some sense into that foolish girl.”
“But you cannot,” I tell her. “Time is linear. The choices we make define us, so it is wise to accept them.”
She lowers the napkin and gapes at me. “What are you talking about? I swear, sometimes I barely recognize you.” She takes a long breath. “How can I accept what he’s done to my life? He’s never tried, Tom. Do you understand that? Not once!”
“Yes, I do understand that,” I tell her. “But didn’t he work at the Harbishaw paint factory?” I point out. “He developed a process that made the factory profitable. Stan, the owner, stole it from him. That might break any man.”
She makes a strange sound deep in her throat. At first I think she’s choking, and then I realize that she’s laughing bitterly. “Is that what he told you?”
“Yes.”
She sits there with tears squeezing out of her red eyes, laughing and crying at the same time. “That was the only steady work he ever had.”
“But he did try.”
“I got that job for him,” she says. “Stan gave it to Graham as a favor to me. Because Stan felt sorry for us.” She twists the napkin as if she has decided to wring her tears back out of it. “Stan loved me. I could have had him. I chose your father. Because of his kind eyes, and his devilish smile, and my own immature romantic stupidity. Go up to Overlook Road sometime, and see what I could have had! Instead of this dump with bills that we can never pay.”
She pulls the platter toward her and looks down at it, shaking her head. “Stan gave Graham that job, and it lasted two years before he pissed it away. And then it was gone, just like everything else that he touches. So now he’s invented some grand story of stolen secret processes? Lord have mercy.”
“Maybe there’s some truth in what he says,” I suggest softly.
My mother looks at me and her eyes narrow. “Salt in the wounds. Telling me I don’t know my own husband! I was there. I lived through it. What do you know?” Her voice sharpens. “What do you know about anything?”
“Nothing, Mom,” I tell her. “I am just trying to figure things out during my brief time on Planet Earth.”
“Your brief time on Planet Earth is gonna be a hell on wheels if you give me any more of your attitude when I’m feeling this low!”
I do not like the way our conversation has turned. “I did not mean to give you my attitude. I would take it back if I could.”
Her eyes flash. “One more sassy word out of you and you’ll regret it.”
I attempt to leave expeditiously, but in my haste my elbow brushes a water glass. It crashes over and breaks, spilling ice water all over my mother.
She jumps up. In a split second all of her sadness seems to have been converted to volcanic anger. “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO MY GLASS! GET OVER HERE AND CLEAN THIS UP!”
She grabs something heavy and metallic and waves it over her head. I think it’s a big serving spoon.
I decide not to clean up the broken glass. I have learned in my visit to Earth that threats of physical violence must be taken very seriously.
Mom tries to cut me off, but I put on a burst of speed, sprint to the front door, rip it open, jump down six steps, and flee.
20
It is a cold autumn evening. Tom Filber’s strong legs propel his bike steadily uphill. I need a new vantage point to consider things. I am deeply worried. My entire mission may be in jeopardy.
I steer the bike over to the side of the road and sit on a grassy knoll, looking downhill. The town of Barrisford spreads out beneath me.
There is Winthrop P. Muller High School, empty of students and looking sad in the fading light. The Hoosaguchee River twists like a silver-gray snake, slithering eastward to the distant Atlantic. I see the black thread of Beech Avenue, and I believe I can just make out a black smudge that is the roof of the Filber house. I wonder if my mother has dried her tears and contained her fury.
When I undertook this mission I had no idea that the behavior of humans would be this difficult to evaluate. How can I pass judgment on the entire human species if I cannot even assign blame in my own family? Is my father the cause of the Filbers’ misery or is he a victim? Is my mother a vicious woman or a long-suffering martyr? And what of my mean and bitter big sister? How many horrible family dinners has she been forced to endure?
Here is what most concerns me. The Filber family was not studied before my insertion. The selection of a human specimen had to be completely random. If we screened possible targets it would have been impossible for us to resist selecting a human specimen whose intelligence and sensitivities were a tiny bit closer to our own. This would, of course, have invalidated all my conclusions.
But now I am very worried that in randomly selecting the Filbers, we unfortunately chose an atypically miserable and dysfunctional human family. They may not be representative of the citizens of Barrisford, or of greater humanity. If the Filbers are too far outside the norm, it will render large parts of my evaluation invalid.
Has all my work on Planet Earth been wasted? Have I needlessly dodged my mother’s broom and my sister’s cattle prod? Or is it possible that all the homes I see below contain families that are just as unhappy as the Filbers, albeit for different reasons? There is only one way for me to proceed—I must notify the Preceptor Supervisor of my concerns, and in the meantime continue my work here.
I get back on the bike and continue to climb upward. The evening breeze has quickened to a sharp wind that nips at my arms and face. I see a sign for Overlook Road and turn onto it.
My father was right: the air does smell sweet up here. The houses are large and graceful and set far apart. I knew from orbital observation that there were “haves” and “have-nots” on Plan
et Earth, but it is only as I pedal slowly up Overlook Road that I see for myself how pronounced the disparity is between rich and poor. The Filber house is small and dilapidated. These elegant mansions are ten times as large!
Signs say: DEAD END, PATROLLED BY PRIVATE SECURITY, and KEEP OUT! The very last house on the block is by far the largest of all. It is surrounded by a fence and partially hidden by a cluster of tall trees, but I can see its grand silhouette against the purple sunset. This must be the Harbishaw estate.
Could my mother really have lived in this palace if she had chosen a different husband?
Is this mansion the specter that haunts my father’s waking hours and makes him try to turn off his brain?
I steer my bike off the road, hide it behind a bush, and walk to the fence.
The house is five stories high, with turrets and terraces. I peer through the fence and see a tennis court and a swimming pool. Every bush and tree and blade of grass appears to have been recently trimmed.
A sweet smell is carried to me by the evening breeze. It is the distinctive aroma from the pomaceous fruit of the species Malus domestica—an apple tree! I spot its gnarled trunk and branches inside the fence.
It occurs to me that I know a girl who likes apples. I am an evaluator on an important mission, and I should not put myself at needless risk. Nevertheless, I am suddenly seized by the same boldness I felt when I threw the acorn. Human impulses are difficult to resist.
I climb the fence and drop down silently inside. When I land I freeze and make sure that no one has seen or heard me. My Planet Earth street smarts are on full alert.
I walk to the apple tree and scale its low branches. Leaning far out, I reach for a particularly large and ripe piece of fruit. Just as my fingers close around the apple, beautiful music begins.
I pluck it and glance at the house. A light has been switched on in a first-floor room. A woman in a blue dress sits at a piano, her fingers gliding over the keys. I can see the room clearly from my perch. It has large windows and I see shelves of books and an easel. She is all alone—she must be playing for her own gratification. Her long, flowing black hair cascades down to the gleaming piano keys.