Spoonbenders

by Daryl Gregory

  “These are pretty incredible,” Matty said finally.

  “I was about to say, you shoulda tasted Grandma Mo’s, but Buddy’s may be better.”

  “So was it a job interview?” he asked.

  “What? Oh, the skirt.”

  “And the makeup.”

  “I wear makeup.”

  “Not since Pittsburgh. And, uh, it’s all smeared.”

  She dabbed at the corner of her eye. “It’s not been a good day,” she said. She put on a smile to reassure him. He didn’t look convinced. “So how was your day? Is Frankie behaving?”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

  “Neither did you. How about this—we go one for one. You answer mine, I’ll answer yours.”

  “Like you’re really going to answer my questions.”

  She laughed. “I will!”

  He frowned, looking for loopholes in the deal. Teddy would have been proud. “All right,” he said. “But there’s a three-question limit.”

  “You strike a hard bargain, Mr. Telemachus. So is that your first question—was I at a job interview?”

  “You’re just going to say no, then ask me a question. So let’s make this short-answer: Where did you go?”

  “To see a friend.”

  “Was it the guy you talk to on the computer?”

  “How did you—? And that’s two questions.”

  “I’ll use both of them to hear this,” he said. “And it wasn’t hard to figure out. You’re on the computer all the time. I figured it had to be a guy.”

  “I could be a lesbian,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “His name is Joshua.”

  “Josh-u-a,” he said. “Josh. The Joshinator.”

  “So how is it working with Frankie?” she asked. She could see that he wanted to bolt from the table.

  “It’s fine,” he said. Then realized that wasn’t the truth. “It’s…intense.”

  “Intense how?”

  “Two questions,” he said.

  “I also think this answer is worth it.”

  “It got…I don’t know. Uncle Frankie expects, like, a lot out of me? I don’t think I can do everything he wants me to do.”

  “Oh God, is he trying to rope you into that UltraLife stuff?”

  Matty looked embarrassed.

  “Jesus, you’re a kid. I’m so sorry, Matty. I’ll tell him to keep you out of it.”

  “No! I mean, he’s not involving me in that. It’s just that working with him is hard, because he’s so…”

  “Intense?” Irene said. “And grandiose?”

  “That’s it,” he said. “Intensely grandiose.”

  “I shouldn’t have pushed you into working with him,” she said. “I just thought you’d like it.”

  “You didn’t push me into it. I want to do it, to make you some money—”

  “Make me some money?”

  He flushed again. “Make us some money, I mean.” That was the truth as well.

  “Honey, that’s not your job,” she said. “I make the money. You’re the kid. I don’t want you to go through what I did.”

  His eyes widened. “You mean like the ESP stuff?”

  “No, I mean—” She wished he wasn’t so excited by the showbiz history. “I had to become an adult before my time. When Mom died, I was just ten, and suddenly I was the one having to take care of Frankie and Buddy. Even your grandfather.”

  Matty picked up another cookie, looked at it for a long moment. “Frankie said Grandma Mo was so powerful the Russians had to kill her.”

  “Frankie’s a conspiracy theorist. He also says the Astounding Archibald killed her. Or is Archibald a Russian spy now?”

  “I know but…”

  “But what?”

  “She was a spy, right? She worked for the CIA?”

  She worked for Destin Smalls, Irene thought. “She was employed by the government. I’m not quite sure which agency.”

  “So did they, like…train her?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, someone like that, they would have taught her how to—”

  “They taught her nothing.”

  Irene’s anger came sudden as the bite of glass under a bare foot. There was something she’d forgotten. Something about Destin Smalls. But the memory refused to show itself.

  “Mom?” Matty looked concerned.

  “She was a natural talent,” Irene said. She cleared her throat. “They took advantage of her, and used her, and then she got sick. No big mystery.”

  Irene remembered that morning, seven months before her mother died, that Irene found her sitting on the edge of the bed, crying. Then she’d wiped away her tears and driven off with Destin Smalls. That memory, at least, was clear and sharp.

  “Why are you asking about this stuff?” Irene said.

  “No reason,” he said. A lie.

  “Stop it. There’s a reason.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Matty said. “You have an advantage. But you lie to me and I’ll never know it.”

  “I’ve answered all your questions truthfully and to the best of my ability,” she said.

  He twisted his mouth into his thinking face. Planning his next move. “Okay, so this Joshua guy. Do you love him?”

  She wiped her face with her napkin. “I’ve only met him in person once,” she said. “Just this morning.”

  He laughed. “You are really not answering the question.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I love him,” she said.

  A memory was unspooling out of the dark: Destin Smalls and her father, standing in the living room, both of them looking at her.

  “It’s not going to work out,” she said. She recognized doomed romance when she saw it.

  Destin Smalls picked up her mother every morning, and dropped her off every afternoon. She learned to hate the arrival of his car, a gleaming hulk with a grill as wide as a whale’s baleen, and the way her mother hurried out to it. Eager. Laughing sometimes. In the afternoons Irene would watch from the front window as her mother sat in the car with Smalls, talking and talking, delaying her return to the house, her return to her children and husband. Her return to her duties.

  Her mother seemed exhausted by whatever she did all day with Destin Smalls. When she was too tired to make dinner, she’d sit in the kitchen with Buddy on her lap, and instruct Irene on how to cook, only getting out of her seat in emergencies. When Dad came up out of the basement for the meal, he’d heap praise on Irene. She was happy to do the work, until the day she told her mother she’d rather play with her friend.

  “We’re not playing now, we’re making dinner,” her mother said.

  “Marcie’s waiting for me,” ten-year-old Irene said. “You make dinner.”

  “Just put the ground beef in the pan,” her mother said, exhausted.

  “First, brown the meat,” Buddy said. He was standing beside her chair, arms draped over her shoulders.

  “That’s right,” their mother said.

  “This isn’t fair,” Irene said.

  “First brown the meat!” Buddy yelled. He didn’t like it when anyone argued with Mom.

  As the summer wore on, her mother sometimes wouldn’t stay in the kitchen as she cooked. Mom would hand Irene a recipe card and then go up to her bedroom to rest. Irene liked it better that way.

  One morning in late July or early August, her mother was still in the bathroom when Destin Smalls pulled up in his shiny huge car. Irene watched him from the living room, his big rectangle face swimming up to the windshield like a pale fish, peering up at the house. After a few minutes, he stepped out of the car. Irene jumped back from the window. His silhouette glided across the curtains. And then he rang the doorbell.

  Irene ran up the stairs and knocked at the bathroom door. “Mom?”

  There was no answer.

  “Mom? Mr. Smalls is here.”

  “Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” Mom said. Her voice was brittle with false cheer.
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  When Irene returned to the living room, Buddy was opening the door.

  “Hi there, Buddy.” Smalls reached out to rub the boy’s head. Buddy ran into the next room. He hated anyone touching him.

  “She’s not ready yet.” Irene pointed at her mother’s chair, even though her father’s was closer. “You can sit there.”

  Mr. Smalls sat on her father’s ottoman, facing the stairs that led up to the bathroom—and the stairs that led down to the basement, where her father was sleeping.

  “So how’s school, Irene?” Mr. Smalls asked.

  “It’s summer,” she said.

  “Right, right.” He glanced toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

  “She’ll be down in a minute,” Irene said.

  “I thought I heard voices,” her father said. Teddy stepped into the room. He wore pajama bottoms and an undershirt, and his cheeks were shadowed. “How are you doing, Destin? Business good at the spook shop?”

  “Good to see you, Teddy.” Destin stood and extended a hand. Her father hesitated, then shook. He’d taken off the bandages a few months earlier.

  “I was just talking to Irene here,” Mr. Smalls said. “She’s turning into a lovely girl.” He looked down at Irene and smiled a false smile.

  “Are you in love with my mother?” Irene asked.

  “What?” Smalls said.

  “I said, are you—”

  “Of course not!”

  Her father was staring at her. He knew exactly what she was doing.

  From upstairs came the sound of water running in the sink, and then the door opening. Each sound seemed unusually loud. “Sorry I’m running late,” her mother said, and stopped on the stairs. She frowned. Looked at Dad, then at Destin Smalls.

  “Mr. Smalls is a liar,” Irene said, and walked out of the room.

  Later in the week she came home from Aldi’s to find Teddy pacing the living room. “Where have you been? We’ve got to be there by six!”

  Oh, right. Wednesday dinner at Palmer’s to meet his “sweetie.” Somehow, somewhen, Teddy had started dating. She thought she knew why Teddy wanted Irene to meet the woman, and hoped she was wrong.

  “Give me a minute, Dad. It’s been a long day.”

  “Just get into the best dress you got. No—second best. She’s the star, not you.”

  Teddy, of course, was already wearing his most expensive suit, a gunmetal-blue number with navy pinstripes, and one of his more diamond-encrusted watches. Teddy Telemachus never took second billing. “Now hurry up!” he said. “I don’t want her waiting for us.”

  Her being the “sweetie.” He still hadn’t explained why he wanted Irene to come out to a restaurant with them.

  “Jesus, all right already. Could you at least put in a Tombstone pizza for Matty?”

  “I can’t cook,” Teddy said. “Not in this!”

  “I’m pretty sure I can put a pizza in the oven,” Matty said.

  “Good man,” Teddy said. “Just don’t eat the whole thing, okay?”

  “Damn it, Dad!” Irene said.

  Irene went upstairs, but all she could think about was going into the basement and turning on the computer. For the past two days she’d kept edging up to it, warily, as if peeking over the lip of a cliff, only to back away before she lost her footing. But a half hour later she’d approach it again, as if to remind herself that the fall could kill her.

  She imagined an inbox filled with confused messages from Joshua. Or worse, an inbox with no messages from Joshua. Logging into the chat room was out of the question. If she did, she’d immediately start talking to him, which would lead to her promising to meet him at the airport on Thursday, and once she was face-to-face with him, the whole process would repeat, from first touch to hormonal tsunami to the sudden apprehension that their relationship was doomed. The only sane thing to do was nip that Wagnerian cycle in the bud. Kill the wabbit.

  She put on one of the dresses she used to wear to work, back when she worked in a place that didn’t require polyester smocks. Smocks were the official uniform of those hanging on to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder; a parachute that would never open. Joshua said he worried about money, but he was in no danger of plummeting into poverty.

  She emerged from the bedroom to find Teddy bouncing on his feet at the bottom of the stairs. “Is this okay?” she asked him.

  “It’s kinda dowdy,” he said. “Perfect choice.”

  He drove, cursing traffic the whole way. She’d never seen him this nervous. “So how did you meet this woman?” Irene asked. “You hanging out in some senior center you haven’t told me about?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there. It’s a great story, great story. Almost destiny.”

  They didn’t walk into the restaurant until ten after six. Dad scanned the lobby and bar for the mystery woman, and was relieved that she hadn’t arrived yet. Irene apologized again for making him late, but he waved it off.

  “Six-thirty reservation for Telemachus,” Teddy told the hostess.

  “Six-thirty?” Irene said.

  “I knew you’d be late,” Teddy said.

  Their table was available now. Teddy hung his fedora on the brass hat rack, and Irene wasn’t a bit surprised that there were half a dozen hats already there. Palmer’s Steakhouse was Teddy’s favorite restaurant because the rib eyes were thick, the drinks strong, and the prices cheap. The average age in the dining room stayed north of sixty.

  Dad positioned Irene to his left and reserved the chair on his right for his guest. The waitress was pouring water before they’d pushed in their chairs. Teddy had a thing for the waitresses, an all-Ukrainian squad with severe cheekbones, chain-smoker lips, and great legs. They moved the plates on and off the table like it was some kind of Olympic event. Nobody dawdled over the salad at Palmer’s. While you were taking your last sip of soup, the bowl would be gone before you put your spoon down.

  “G and T?” the waitress asked him.

  “You know me too well, Oksana. But I’m going to hold off ordering until my friend arrives.”

  “Another friend, eh?”

  “I’m his daughter,” Irene said.

  The waitress shrugged and walked away. Teddy laughed.

  “I don’t even know why I’m here,” Irene said. “What’s this woman’s name?”

  “There she is now.” Teddy stood up and buttoned his coat. He met her halfway across the room and took her arm.

  Irene had expected that Dad might go for a younger woman—someone in her sixties, perhaps. This woman looked to be holding tight to her early forties with the assistance of good makeup, Tae Bo classes, and money. That little black dress would have cost the entirety of Irene’s little blue paycheck. What the hell was going on here?

  Dad escorted her to the table. “Graciella, this is my daughter, Irene.”

  Graciella. That name seemed familiar. “A pleasure to meet you,” Irene said, and shook her hand. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the first lie. Three…two…

  “I’d say that Teddy’s told me all about you,” Graciella said. “Except that he didn’t say a thing.”

  Honesty, right out of the gate. Whaddya know.

  Irene said, “Well, Dad didn’t even tell me your name till just now.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Graciella said. “I think he likes to play the mysterious man in the hat.”

  “I’ve made a mistake,” Dad said jokingly. “Dinner’s over. So glad you two met.”

  The waitress materialized at the table. “Drinks now?”

  “Oh yeah,” Irene said. “We’re going to need a lot of drinks.”

  —

  The meal proceeded with Palmerian efficiency, propelled by the fast hands of Oksana. The conversation weaved between the flying plates on a river of alcohol. Graciella was a drinker, and Irene was happy to keep pace while she tried to suss out who this woman was and what she was doing with her father. When she fibbed, it seemed to be mostly for politeness; the big lies, Irene su
spected, were lies of omission. She mentioned kids, and said they were all fine (kids were never all fine), but the husband was absent from the conversation—despite the wedding ring on her hand and an engagement diamond the size of a meteorite.

  Dad had turned courtly and solicitous—to Graciella anyway; Irene was left to order her own drinks. Dad laughed at everything the woman said, kept touching her arm, recommended favorite menu items like he was on staff. After they’d ordered dessert (“The lava cake’s stupendous,” Teddy announced), Graciella excused herself to the ladies’ room.

  “So,” Teddy said. “Do you like her?”

  “What the hell are you doing, Dad?”

  “Try to calm down. I know it’s difficult for children when their widowed father falls in love, but I was hoping you could—”

  “Back the hell up. You’re in love with her?”

  “I am,” he said with formality.

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “Dad, she’s married.”

  “Not wisely, and not well. Nick Pusateri doesn’t deserve her.”

  “Who’s Nick—?” And then she remembered where she’d heard the name. “Shit. Is Graciella the mobster’s wife?”

  “Don’t be judgmental. It’s not attractive.”

  “You’re banging a gangster?!”

  “I’m not banging her,” Teddy said. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s throwing no carnal thoughts in my direction. I’m”—he made a vague gesture with three fingers—“cute.”

  “You’re also twice her age.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t fall in love with anyone unless they’re at least half my age plus seven. Bare minimum.”

  “You just decide who you fall in love with, huh?”

  “You should try it sometime. Walk into a grocery store—not that awful place you work, I recommend Dominick’s—and pick out a stranger. Look for the beauty in them. Look at the way they hold a melon. Listen to the way they talk to the clerk. And say to yourself, I love this person.”

  “You do this a lot?”

  “Every day.”

  “You’re going to get arrested.”

  “It would be worth it,” he said.

  “Fine. You’re an emotional daredevil. All I’m saying, you couldn’t try to jump into the pants of somebody who wasn’t Lady Macbeth?”