Cornerstone

by Misty Provencher

  When we pull up in front of the Addo’s trailer, Garrett waves two fingers at woman in a silver car who pulls out of the space that we pull into. I wonder briefly how many new Contego and Alo show up in a day. My mom is probably right about there being thousands.

  I hop out of the car and walk up the twitchy front steps without bothering to wait for Garrett. It doesn’t matter. He hasn’t even gotten out of the car.

  I knock three times before the Addo finally comes to open the door. He’s wearing navy blue sweats today, the pants pulled up over the white knee socks again and the same sandals.

  “It’s always open, you know.” he says. “I’ll have to start wearing my pedometer if you’re going to make me walk to the door every time you show up. I suppose my doctor will be thrilled.”

  I step into the artificial sun of his enormous kitchen-house. “Shouldn’t you keep it locked?”

  “For what purpose? To keep the world out? Fah on that, Nalena. The world gets in whenever it wants to anyway, doesn’t it? What’s the point to wearing out a perfectly useless lock?” He works his way around his gigantic table to a cupboard and takes out two cups. He pours hot water from a kettle on the stove and drops in tea balls.

  “You can close that door, my dear.” he says. “Garrett’s not coming in. He’s going to sit out there and sulk. He could do his surveillance in here just as well, but he’d rather sit out there and pout about something that isn’t even going to happen. Oh well. Too bad for him. And now he’s going to miss out on the cookies too.”

  “Surveillance?” I ask. “For what? The Fury?”

  “Probably.” Addo says. “Maybe. Definitely. I say, let everyone feel as though they’re doing something useful if that’s what puts them at ease. At the very least, it keeps them out of my hair.”

  The Addo takes a plate down from on top of the fridge. There are only three cookies on it.

  “There would be more, but I was terribly hungry.” he apologizes as he lays the plate in front of me, along with the mug of tea. The smell of the tea, as pungent as a forest, catches in my nose and relaxes me a little. “Cookies are my weakness.”

  “Addo, ” I begin carefully because I’m not sure what question I need to ask in order to get the answer I want. “Is someone trying to...”

  “Snuff me?” he giggles, taking the seat beside me. “Oh yes. Probably. Actually, probably most certainly. But maybe not who you think.”

  “Who I think?”

  “Oops. Did I get it wrong?” Addo raises an eyebrow and suddenly, in the back of my head, I hear the Addo’s voice, small but clear as he says: Roger, right-o?

  “Holy crap.” I gasp. I put my hands over my ears.

  “The holiest kind.” Addo laughs.

  “How did you do that?”

  “It’s amazing what we can do when we recognize our connection to one another.”

  “You mean you can read my mind?”

  “Wouldn’t that be a hoot?” Addo slaps his knee. “No, my dear, your thoughts are your own unless you choose to share them. And sharing takes some projecting on your part. Thank goodness for that, right? However, common sense and body language are terrible little traitors.”

  “Is my father one of them?” I ask.

  “The Furis?” Addo chuckles. “That was the name they were originally given, you know. Did anyone tell you what it means?”

  I shake my head as Addo pulls the sugar bowl over. He spoons heaps into his mug.

  “It means thieves, among other things. And yes, Roger has always dabbled among them. He resisted longer than most, but I’m afraid his instincts have finally been dulled. He doesn’t seem to have any more ‘go’ left in him.”

  “He’s insane?” I ask.

  “I’m afraid he may be.” The Addo’s eyes drop mournfully.

  “I don’t really want to talk about him.”

  “Then let’s not.” Addo says, tinking his tea spoon on the side of his mug. “Do you know that when the Furis figured out their name, they actually rallied themselves enough to agree on calling themselves The Fury?” He throws down his spoon and wiggles his fingers in the air. “Wooo...The Fury!”

  He swats the sound away and drops his hands in his lap with a laugh.

  “Bah.” he says. “Somebody thought that sounded scarier, I bet. You see what happens when a community is shaped in the hands of morons?” He picks up his spoon again, chuckling to himself as he dumps the fifth spoonful of sugar into his cup. He leans back in his chair, stirring lazily.

  “Are they all evil?” I ask. Addo grunts a laugh.

  “Nah. They haven’t got the focus it takes to be evil.” he says. “I think they’d love to be considered the bad guys, the lowbrows...even the people who graffiti on old ladies’ cars. But they haven’t got that kind of determination. The Fury are more like fish riding a Ferris wheel. They go round and round, suffocating, without a clue that they don’t belong there. And no matter how uncomfortable they get, they still want another ride. All they do is want, want, want, want, want.” He motions to the plate of cookies. “Are you going to eat those? Mmm, mmm. Just the right amount of chocolate chips. They’re awfully good.”

  He looks at my hand gripping my tea cup, then at the plate and then my face, as if there is something wrong with me for not scooping up a cookie. After he just referred to the people that want to kill him as fish on Ferris wheels. However, Addo seems completely at ease, aside from only having eyes for the plate of cookies in front of me.

  “Seriously.” he says. “They’re spectacular.”

  “No, you go right ahead. I’m not hungry.” I give the plate a little push toward him but he shakes his head and pushes the plate back to me as if he insists. I ignore it.

  “Is that why you don’t seem worried about the threats from the Fury? Because they’re too self absorbed to be a real problem?”

  “Oh no, my dear.” He sips his tea. “I don’t worry, only because it’s useless. But the Fury, they mean to be quite a huge problem. They’ve been at it for a while and they may have actually come up with something substantial this time.”

  “What do they want?”

  “It’s funny. This time, the hullaballoo is all about what they don’t want. They don’t want spiritual evolution. They don’t want anything less than one hundred percent freedom. In other words: nothing. Lives totally devoid of responsibility. They also insist on having zip for consequences and they’re all for instituting a big goose egg for knowledge.” He swallows and leans forward, his face close to mine, as if closeness equals clarity. I smell the chocolate on his breath. “With those dopes in the captain’s chair, every one of our lives would be a singular event. No one would be responsible for anybody else. No one would get one iota smarter than what they manage to scrape together in their own lifetime. Human evolution...and I’m not talking monkeys here, but our spiritual humanity, what we’re all really here for...would come to a screeching halt. We’d never reach our full potential. The Fury, if they grew large enough, could destroy the human race and everything humans have worked to achieve from the beginning of time. At a break neck speed too.”

  “What are we trying to achieve?”

  Addo shrugs like everyone knows the secret to life on Earth. “Knowledge. Love. If you got those, then you got the whole enchilada: peace, understanding, growth, unicorns and rainbows. All that. Uh, duh.”

  I just blink at him. He smiles and I see a cookie chunk stuck between his teeth.

  “My mom told me what my father did. To her and to my grandfather. You said you knew him. Can you tell me what he was like? I mean, before he was one of them?”

  “Hmm.” he says. “ I can.” He finally snags a cookie. “I’m just going to have one of these, if you’re not.”

  “Sure.” I say. I watch him close his eyes as he chews, his eyebrows arcing blissfully.

  “Oh, these are good. Really, really, good.” he says. When he opens his eyes and sees that I’m still here, he salutes me with the what’s left of his c
ookie. “Well, okay. Let’s see...Roger.” He takes a bite and the crumbs rain down on the front of his sweatshirt. He licks his finger and dots them up before sliding a second cookie off the plate.

  “He was in Addo Chad’s branch of the Ianua, so I didn’t actually meet Roger until he’d asked for your mother’s hand in marriage. He was tall, thin, knew how to look a person in the eye. He had a great handshake. He was always an extremely passionate young man—crazy about your mother, crazy about starting a family. In fact, it’s because of him that I’ll never forget how your conception was announced. The minute your dad found out Evangeline was pregnant, he arranged for the high school marching band to parade down your grandfather’s street. He was out in front, waving a banner with the news.”

  “What about his parents? Where were they?”

  “Gone.” Addo says. “Both of them. They’d turned to the Fury and abandoned Roger when he was only six or seven years old. Roger talked about that all the time, about all the mistakes his folks had made and how he was never going to do that to his own kids. He could talk about it for hours, all the things he was going to do different. Quite ironical.”

  “Who raised him?”

  “Roger was an only child, just like his father was before him. I never met Roger’s parents, or even your great grandfather, who ended up raising your dad. From what Addo Chad had told me, Alexander was in his late seventies and was already a medical wreck when Roger was left on his doorstep. I imagine the disabilities made Alexander’s parenting pretty swiss-cheese-ish, but he did manage to get Roger through his Junior year of high school. Ten minutes after Alexander passed, however, Roger ditched his education. He’d received the sign of the Alo, had met your mother and was eager to start his family. Addo Chad had worried that Roger may have been more enamored with the community’s financial support of the Alo than he was actually eager about becoming one of the Alo. Still, Roger went through with the Impressioning. So, it seems that Roger’s choices, which he usually made in order to avoid all the rough little rides in life, are the exact same choices that eventually landed him right on the back of a bucking bronco. There’s a lesson to be learned in that.” The Addo leans back in his chair, finishing his second cookie, as if he’s pondering the lesson himself.

  “Do you think I could talk to Addo Chad?”

  “Doubtful.” Addo shakes his head gravely. “He passed away last month.”

  “Oh.” I say. Addo shrugs as if these things happen, but a moment of silence rises up between us, with the Addo staring at the table top before chuffing a smile like he is revisiting memories. He scratches something off the table with his fingernail and looks back at me.

  “What else did you want to know?”

  I have no idea. “My father...he was pretty lazy.”

  “Ugh. Is that all you heard?” he asks. I shrug and nod at the same time, confused. Isn’t that what he was trying to tell me? My father is a slug? Always has been? Addo shakes his head as if he can hear my thoughts after all. “There are always two ways of looking at any one thing, Kiddo. You could definitely say that Roger was lazy and always looked for the simple way out of everything. And I could say that Roger was a man who had been steeped in failure and was overwhelmed by his fear of it. Now, which of us do you think is right?”

  “You, probably.” I mumble, feeling ashamed, but the Addo’s sudden cackle startles me in my seat.

  “Wrong!” He slaps his palm with the opposite hand. “We’re both right. You see? Paradigms. Funny little contraptions. They make what we believe...true.” He holds out a hand, pinched together at the fingertips and then spreads them like a blooming flower. “So now, kiddo, it’s up to you to choose what you believe about your father.”

  Addo takes a swig of his tea and in the back of my head I hear, Your answers will come to you if you just let them.

  I squint. “Please stop doing that.”

  “Sorry.” he says, licking the crumbs off his mouth. “My lips were just tired.”

  “Well, I guess I should tell you that I made my decision.”

  His eyebrows peak with interest. “Oh? Another?”

  “Well, no. I already said I was choosing the Simple Life. I just wanted to tell you I’m going to stick with that.” I wait for him to say something, but he only folds his hands in his lap. I clear my throat and thrum a finger on the table while we stare at each other. I get so uneasy, I finally stand up. “So, okay. I guess I’ll be going.”

  “What’s the big hurry? You’re perfectly safe here, you know. Actually, even safer than me, since you’ve got the abilities of the Contego.”

  “You can erase them or whatever you have to do.” I tell him. He seems unconcerned by my admission, so I try to clarify. “It’s just that...I can’t be Contego. I need to choose a Simple Life.”

  “Need to?”

  “My mom needs me to have a Simple Life. She wants me to...”

  “Hmm.” he grunts. “So that’s Evangeline’s decision. Good, good. But you also mentioned that you’d made yours. So what is it that you decided?”

  I don’t like him insinuating that I can’t think for myself. I stand straight, my back rigid, and look right down into his eyes as I say, “We don’t want my father coming after us.”

  “Hmm.” he grunts again. I can’t tell if he’s grunting about the flavor of the cookie or about what I’ve just told him. “We’re getting closer. Honor thy parents. Definitely. But honor, my dear, that ain’t the stuff you’re using to make this decision, now is it?”

  He taps his temple and gives me a shotgun finger with a wink. I take a breath, hearing Garrett repeat in my mind, Never bring fear to a fight. In my head I also tell Garrett to shut up, since this is a decision, not a fight. And it’s anger I’m bringing, not fear. In the back of my head, I hear Addo say, Eh. Same thing.

  “Stop doing that.” I tell him, dropping back down on my chair.

  “Sorry.” he says, picking up and extending the dessert plate. “Cookie?”

  “Go on and just have it.” I tell him.

  “No, no, no. That wouldn’t be hospitable at all.” He sets down the plate but continues to eye the cookie between sentences. “So, what else is there? Aside from your parents. Who are you exactly? Is all of you Contego or just part of you?”

  “Why don’t you just read my tea and let me know?” I say, frustrated. Addo just laughs, slipping the last cookie off the plate.

  “Now what fun is that?” he asks. “Tell me yourself.”

  “I don’t know!” I say, gripping my head in my hands. Addo tsks gently.

  “Of course you do.” he says. “You’re the only one that knows.”

  He is quiet then, except for his open-mouthed crunching. I can’t help but be annoyed. It’s only my destiny at stake, after all.

  “Could you stop chewing and help me?”

  “How would it help you for both of us to be unhappy?” he asks. Cookie crumbs spray from his mouth. I sigh, and throw up my arms. How can he be a wise man? I don’t know the answer he wants. I search my brain for every reason I would want to be a warrior the same way I rifle my pockets when I’ve lost money. I dump every idea into a heap and sort through them, sure that one has to be the thing I’m really looking for.

  “I want to be with Garrett.” I say. “We have to be Contego if we want to be friends, right?”

  It’s a brainless, transparent, weakling-girl kind of an answer. It comes flying out of my mouth and it’s not even the truth. Friendship will never be enough. Still, I wasn’t planning on broadcasting how totally stupid I am about him. I blush and Addo rolls his eyes.

  “That’s what you’re going to base your decision on? A boy? Ugh. Dummy.” He shakes his head. “At least we’re getting down to it. So, tell me, what happens if the romance flops?”

  “It’s not like that.” I grumble, even though in my head I hear, Oh yes it is, but I can’t figure out if it was my thought or the Addo’s. I pull my face out of a scowl in case it wasn’t him.

  �
��Love is an honorable thing to base a life upon.” Addo says, swabbing the crumbs off his face with the back of his hand. “But that’s not what you’ve got here, because love is like an amazing Bordeaux, or properly aged Gouda or pickles. It’s got to have time to ferment on a shelf in a quiet chamber, and then to be proven good, despite itself.” He adds, “What you’ve got right now is more like a cheese stick...with some moonshine and cucumbers. It’s no wonder that all you can do is act loopy. If you want good pickles, my dear, you have to let all those nutty hormones settle first so you can actually see what’s floated to the top. This being what it is, what else have you got in your decision-making arsenal?”

  I’m glad I don’t have to answer because the phone rings. Addo stands up and shuffles over to answer it. I give up the idea of arguing how important Garrett’s friendship might be to me as Addo picks up the receiver and holds it to his ear without saying hello. Instead he says cheerfully, “I’m in the middle of counseling, so stop interrupting. Come get me if you have to. Door’s open, like always.” and he hangs up without waiting for an answer. He grins at me. “No worries. Just the Furies. They like to prank me and breathe heavy in the phone.”

  I’m sure my jaw is hanging open. Positive. The friendship and the good pickles and whatever else we were talking about in the last ten seconds is gone.

  “They’re calling you? Threatening you? Aren’t you...” I freeze on the word. I shut my mouth. A wide, proud grin unfurls across the Addo’s face.

  “Exactly.” He salutes me with his cup. “Never bring that anywhere worth going.”

  “Aren’t you worried though?”

  “About them? Nah. You probably don’t know, but the Furies show up every now and then, especially when they’re brains are good and pickled. The Contego usually get them before they even get into the trailer park.”

  “What if they didn’t?”

  “Oh, I know a few things.” Addo winks at me as if he’s just told me a whole secret. I figure it would be rude to ask exactly what it is he knows, so I don’t.