by Scott Rhine
His jogging to our station wagon scared me. Dad didn’t run from things. If I made a thump climbing back into my room in the middle of the night, he would dash through my bedroom door with his baseball bat. He’d faced genocidal generals and interviewed jihadists without flinching.
Once we were in the wagon speeding away from the scene, I moistened my mouth. “When can I go back to playing?”
“You can’t. I’m sorry. It’s too risky. Too public. I can’t cover for you.” The tires screeched through a high-speed turn. Dad didn’t normally go above the limit. Tonight, he was topping 55 in a 30 zone.
“What’s on that memory card you took?”
“I’m ashamed of stealing, but I couldn’t leave any evidence. I swore to Althea.”
“Swore what to Mom?”
“I can’t tell you. Pretend the game never happened.”
“You’re not making sense.”
At the rate he was traveling, I thought he might ram our garage door, but we barely squeaked through the opening. He slammed on the brakes. “Go pack. We’re visiting relatives in New York tomorrow.”
“Will we be back for the first day of school on Tuesday?”
“What do you care? You’re a year ahead already. We’ll stay for the big family holiday picnic.” He hopped out and held the house door open for me.
I remained seated in the wagon. “You hate Mom’s family. Give me something to go on.”
“I can’t lose you, too.” Dad pounded the tennis ball hanging from the ceiling like a tetherball. “You can do things you’re not even aware of.”
“Like what?”
“Ask your aunt.”
“Fine. Let’s call her.”
“In person.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You set off the gym’s fire alarm. Why?”
“Because turning out the lights could’ve injured too many people.”
“Is that why you stand at that spot every practice, in case you need a distraction?”
He waved his hands. “Enough. You are my daughter. In this, you will respect me. Pack. We leave tomorrow morning, after I call my clients to cancel. Our tenant can bring in the mail.”
I crossed my arms and dug in my heels. “I’m not leaving this car until I get an answer.”
Dad wiped his face. “I’ll give you your mother’s cell phone.”
“What the hell?”
“Language!”
This was the Twilight Zone. Did I take the victory or push? I was getting a phone and time off school. With no kids of her own, Aunt Audra would spoil me rotten. “You just bought yourself one day question-free.”
2. Gifts
After I packed, Dad handed me the phone. It was fully charged, and he’d kept paying the monthly bill on it because every couple of days, he would call it to listen to her voicemail message. Holding it made me feel more connected to her. He went back to his room rather than watch someone else use it.
I had to sit on my window seat to boost the signal to two bars. The first thing I did with it was call Dina to try it out. “How did the game end?”
“We lost,” she replied. “What else was going to happen without you? Why’d you leave?”
“That head-butt shook me up more than I expected. I couldn’t understand what Dad was saying for a while.” I shifted topics to avoid questions that I didn’t know the answers to. “When is your next driver’s test?”
All the juniors in my school had a license except for me and Dina. I was too young, and she got way too nervous. I once watched the parking part of her exam. She had hit the cones in both reverse and forward. The little fake head had popped off the broomstick and rolled under her tire.
“I can only retake it once a month, and I have to earn the money to pay for the test.” Dina paused for a moment. “Wait a minute. You’re calling from an iPhone!”
“Score!”
“What apps have you bought so far?”
“Uh… none. I don’t have a credit card or an iTunes account of my own.”
“What came with the phone?”
I checked. “My mom’s music collection, Secret Passages, Trivia Crack, and some audiobooks.”
“I love trivia.” She gave me her online handle and challenged me to a game. We hung up to play.
My parents limited me to an hour of screen time a day, approved DVDs only rather than commercial broadcast TV. Technically, the phone wasn’t a TV screen, a loophole my brother once used to watch an entire season of Dr. Who on his laptop. Besides, this was a one-day free pass.
When I won a second game before Dina scored more than one piece, she called me back. “How did you do that?”
“I’m really good at guessing. My brother’s the same way.” He’d scored one point shy of perfect on the Math section of his ACT, and then he successfully challenged the question he got wrong.
Dina’s voice changed a little. “So how is Zaki?” She’s the only one who called him by his full name, probably because she had a bit of a crush on him. I couldn’t figure out why. He’s tall and quiet, but so is a coat rack. Maybe he’s just the only guy who never yelled at her.
“He’s in the same state, but he rarely talks to us anymore.” When he’d first started, he’d visited us every weekend. “Spends all his time doing cryptography and computer programs. MIT fits him like a glove.”
“I’d love to go to an expensive school like that.”
With him. I put a finger down my throat in a gagging motion. I’d bet my lunch money that she was drawing little hearts on her notebook. “Didn’t we tell you about the scholarship? Turns out we’re descendants of the original Boston Colony settlers. That in combination with his Math testing earned him a free ride.”
“I don’t remember any Morrises in the history book from eighth grade.”
“My mom’s side—Hutchinson.” Mom hadn’t changed her name after getting married, probably because of her PhD in psychology and the papers she’d already published. “It’s a Viking name. In Old German, it means soul or hug.”
Dina swallowed hard. “That’s your mom, alright. She gave great hugs. Look, I need to say prayers.” She didn’t cover her head outside of religious services, but her Muslim family was strict enough to bow toward Mecca five times a day. “Don’t stay up too late practicing the solo version of the game.”
“Night,” I said, pulling up the solo game to earn a trove of second-chance coins like Dina had. It was, after all, a three-day weekend. At two in the morning, I found out you could challenge people around the world. By five, I was challenging players who were still awake in former French colonies. I knew nothing about French film or history, but I turned out to be great at guessing and spotting patterns. I only went to sleep when the phone battery died. I didn’t want to wake Dad up for the charger.
****
Dad shook me awake Saturday morning. “Isa, you should have showered by now.”
Still in my team jersey, I winced at the bright light. “Can’t we go tomorrow? The cookout isn’t until Monday afternoon.”
“Sloth is a sin.”
“But they’re so cute.”
He picked up the phone and shook his head in disgust. “The battery is dead. How late were you up?”
“I was playing Mom’s … music and lost track.” I felt guilty about the lie because he looked so sad when he hugged me.
“It’s okay. I was going to use the GPS to get us there, but I think I can remember the way.”
“Just use the car charger.”
“Alas, that went with your mother’s BMW.”
“No one in America says, ‘alas.’” I grabbed the souvenir MIT hoodie from my dresser. “Get out so I can change.”
He gestured toward the bathroom. “Wash up first and use your deodorant. Your body makes smells now when you exercise. We don’t want your aunt’s eyes to water when she greets you. I’ll make you some Pop Tarts and wait in the wagon.”
I sniffed my armpits and socks. Whoa. We usually showered after the game, so it w
as technically his fault I stunk. Thus, the blame canceled out his credit for being right on this rare occasion.
After showering as fast I could, I slipped on clean everything, picked a book for the car ride, and ran downstairs. Dad had left a plate of Reese’s Cup Pop Tarts and a mug of hot cocoa for me on the card table. Apart from Christmas, he only made cocoa to use up extra milk in the fridge when we would be gone past the expiration date. I checked the date on the jug in the trash as I sipped—September third. We would be gone at least five days. What wasn’t Dad telling me?
By the time I shambled out to the garage with my unicorn Pillow Pet, the trunk was packed, and he had his favorite photography gear in the back seat. He’d even brought the custom lenses, filters, and high-end film. For some reason, he was wearing his tan photographer’s vest, the one that made him look like an African explorer.
“Are we shooting a wedding on the way?” I asked.
“I want it to look that way.” He handed me a plaid wool blanket. “Put this over you and crouch down in the seat.”
This meant we had a white van parked in front of our house again. The stake-out vehicle stood out like a biker bar in our upscale residential neighborhood. If they thought Dad was alone on a shoot, they might not follow him. I rolled my eyes at his cloak-and-dagger behavior, but lying down was what I was planning to do anyway. “Why can’t the feds leave you alone?”
“I’m a foreign national who has covert meetings with an Iranian importer in Arabic. We’ve also let new arrivals stay in our basement while they get on their feet.”
“None of that makes you a spy. Why are they so interested now? Did you piss off another Senator?” After he published an embarrassing clip of one good-old-boy being honest, my folks were audited for six straight years by the IRS.
He shrugged. “I think the NSA is interested in Zak joining one of their projects, and they may be doing background research to get him clearance.”
“Wow. Sophomores are doing advanced research now?”
“You’re forgetting the two years of online college credit he took in high school. After attending a year plus a Summer session, he only has a few semesters left in his undergraduate degree.”
Overachiever. He made me look lazy for only being one year ahead. I crawled into the seat and snuggled under the blanket. “On the bright side, with my phone battery dead, they can’t track it.”
“They don’t need to. They just break into my car afterward and download where I’ve been from its computer.” He said this so matter-of-factly, it must have happened to him before. He put up with a lot so I could finish high school with my friends in the only home I had ever known. My last thought before I drifted back to sleep was that I should probably cut him a little more slack.
****
In upstate New York, near the old forests, Dad woke me for a late lunch at a gas-station grill. They had gyros bulging with spiced meat, worlds better than the watercress tea sandwiches my aunt would serve. She was probably vegan or something. I paid cash for a mess of meat and dairy products to-go while Dad filled the gas tank. I slurped my hand-scooped orange milkshake as I walked out to join him. Mmm. When I handed him his warm, grease-stained sack of good smells, he looked guilty. I stopped slurping to say grace.
Dad whispered, “Later tonight, after your aunt tells you some things, you’re going to feel betrayed and lied to.”
Because I wanted to hear what he was saying over my chewing, I switched to the soggy fries with magic spices sprinkled on top.
“You said I wasn’t a spy, but that isn’t completely true.”
I choked on a mouthful of fries, and Dad had to smack me on the back.
“Easy, child. The month I met your mother, I was a journalist embedded with UN troops.”
“You were doing the genocide exposé, and she was working with Doctors without Borders.” Mom was a shrink specializing in treating the trauma caused by witnessing violence or being a victim. I could see how those people would need healing from mental wounds as much as from bullets.
“I had lunch with a lot of folks. They’d give me tips.”
“That sounds vague.”
He chewed on his Middle-Eastern sandwich. “The CIA and MI6 aren’t all guns and explosions like they show on the movies. Mainly, they’re normal people, stationed around the world, who listen for a living. They watch the local news and read the gossip rags to let the Crown know if they hear something important. Not many people in the US speak other languages, so they’re pretty shorthanded. The station chief at a wartime embassy has his hands full making sure everything will get shredded if hostile forces overrun their position.”
I had to read between the lines. “So different embassies dropped hints when they wanted you to investigate things for them?”
He nodded. “When people pointed fingers at the Russians for selling surplus land mines, the Russian attaché gave me a lead about someone dumping toxic waste in the river.”
“Makes sense. During a war, the EPA and local police won’t be checking on companies. How did you know the story was legit?”
“Russians are human, too, poppet. They need drinking water, and no one wants to see what happens to children who bathe in that mess, especially their own. I collected a lot of evidence before I realized what kind of monster I was chasing.”
I held up a hand. “Not another story about a mass grave while I’m eating.”
“This story was different. I didn’t publish it, and I burned my notes. A lot of powerful people wanted to know the secrets I uncovered. They revoked my press credentials when I didn’t share.”
“I thought you retired to be with Mom.”
“Both are true.” He ate in silence until I worked up my nerve.
“Why did you burn your notes?”
“I crossed a line. As a journalist, you don’t take sides and never get personally involved.”
I took a guess. “You saved some of the mass-murderer’s victims.”
He glanced up, surprised. “How?”
“Mom said she fell in love with you because you were brave, handsome, and incorruptible.”
Dad chuckled as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I was stupid and blessed with blind luck. Blessed in so many ways.”
“You stopped the killer.”
He fished a dime roll out of his vest pocket. “I carried these to give to children overseas. They all love coins.” He clenched the roll in his fist and hefted it. “It comes in handy when someone jumps you in a dark alley.”
“Like brass knuckles.”
Handing me the roll, he whispered, “You may need it more than I do now, poppet.”
It was an odd gift.
“Is this the same roll you had when you met Mom?” It might wear a hole in my jeans pocket, so I held it on my lap, uncertain.
“Better. All of those are from before 1965. More silver.”
I opened the Mitch Albom novel and pretended that every family did weird stuff like this. However, a little knowledge was worse than total ignorance. How have I been betrayed and lied to, and by whom?
3. Old Money and Older Secrets
Dad announced us at the wrought-iron gate, and the maid buzzed us in. Then we drove up the long, tree-lined road to the mansion. The main house was brick, two stories, and full of nooks and crannies where a kid could hide. Sliding down the wooden banister into the foyer was awesome! One time, I had sprayed starch on my socks and went “ice skating” in the ballet studio. They had subdivided the old ballroom into the mirrored ballet room and the home theater.
I sighed. In another month, the leaves would change. The maples flared in red and gold, while the ash trees turned a deep purple. “Must be nice living in a place like this.”
“Your mother preferred our home over it.”
“What?”
“Hutchinson property follows the eldest woman in the family or the oldest woman with a female heir. So you’ll get to decide someday.”
Holy crap. The huge old house t
ook on new dimensions with that tidbit. “Today must be the day for secrets.”
“You have no idea,” he replied, parking along the curve in front of the main entrance.
I frowned. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“I’m not permitted since your mother died. I’ll be unloading at the guest cottage.”
Cottage. Hah! It had three bedrooms, a great room, and a huge bay window. “Don’t let them treat you like this.”
He handed me the memory card from the volleyball game wrapped in sandwich baggie for protection. “I pick my battles. Chat with her about your Trivia Crack experiences and then show her the last play on this.”
Puzzled, I climbed out, leaving the blanket and trash, but taking the roll of dimes. Is somebody going to jump out at me in the hallway?
I knocked on the dark wood jamb framing the beautiful beveled-glass doors. The two doors together made a stylized apple tree. Forewarned, Aunt Audra opened the left door herself. Her platinum-blonde hair was done up in a chignon. “Darling! You’re getting to be such a young woman.” She looked and talked a little like Eva Gabor from that old Green Acres show, only her accent was more Bostonian. The athletic one in the family, she had been on the tennis team in college. Majoring in Medieval History, she somehow sat on the boards of several big companies. “Come into the parlor. Your father said you wanted to share something with me.”
She wore high heels and an expensive skirt suit even at home.
I followed, uncertain as to how to start. “Dad gave me my first phone last night.”
Audra waved her hand. “Those batteries don’t last.”
“That’s what I said. I only played Trivia Crack for maybe eight hours.”
Her parlor had been redone in burgundy and gold, resembling a set on some period piece about Versailles. “Crack?” She sat on the divan and placed both hands on her lap.
“It’s an app.”
“App?”
This was turning into a Studio C routine. I needed to show her, so I plugged the phone into the nearest outlet. While I waited for it to come back to life, I told her how fun the guessing game was.
