Spoonbenders

by Daryl Gregory

  Irene turned to Frankie. Tears coursed down his cheeks. He was standing stiffly, fists clenched.

  Irene leaned close to his ear. “Stop it,” she said.

  Frankie shook his head.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. Just…let her down easy, okay?”

  The coffin suddenly plunged two feet, and the metal frame shook. Someone in the crowd shrieked.

  “Stop telling me what to do!” Frankie shouted, and ran for the car.

  There was nothing to do but shut the door and wait for Matty to come back into his body. Graciella saw that something was wrong. “Everything okay?”

  “He’s going to be eating later,” Irene said.

  Dad dealt out chicken parts. “A leg to the gentleman with the Ninja Turtle shoes! A breast to the strapping young man across the table. And a lovely pair of thighs to Cool Hand Luke.”

  Irene grabbed him by the arm. “Could you step outside for a second?”

  “Wait your turn, my dear, these boys are—”

  “Now.”

  Dad finally looked her in the face and twigged to her mood. “Uh, Graciella, could you introduce your lads to the miracle that is Brown’s coleslaw? We’ll be right back after this brief interruption.”

  Irene led him into the backyard. Buddy was unspooling a red cable, laying it across the lawn as if he was installing a sprinkler system. When he noticed them, he dropped the cable and walked toward the garage.

  “Stop!” Irene said. “This is for both of you. Did you know about Matty?”

  Buddy put up his hands and backed away.

  “Come back here, Buddy.” He slipped into the garage via the side door. “Damn it!”

  “What are you talking about?” Dad asked.

  “Astral travel,” Irene said. “Remote viewing. Whatever you call it—Mom’s old stunt.”

  “You’re saying Matty is psychic?”

  “Don’t you Trebek me, Dad.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked innocently.

  “You’re still doing it!”

  Dad glanced at the house. “Perhaps we should keep our voices…? I mean—ahem—let’s keep our voices down.”

  “Did you know about this?”

  “I’ve recently learned that, yes, the boy has some ability. He’s had a few experiences, evidently.”

  “He’s up there right now—” She waved in the direction of the attic room and the air above it. “—flying around in space! When the hell were you going to tell me?”

  “Soon. Matty thought you wouldn’t take it well. He asked Frankie’s advice, and then I—”

  “He told Frankie?” Suddenly those sleepovers made sense. “What’s next, getting the act back together?”

  Teddy raised his eyebrows. “Do you think Matty would be willing to do that?”

  “No!” Irene shouted. “It doesn’t matter what he wants. He’s fourteen!”

  “You were nine when we started. Buddy was only five.”

  “You do not get any parenting awards for that.”

  Graciella opened the back door. “Chicken’s getting cold.”

  “We’re not done talking about this,” Irene said to her father. “Not by a long shot.”

  Irene stormed into the house. “Graciella. I want to start Monday afternoon. Because Monday morning I’m moving out of this house.”

  “Okay…” Graciella said.

  “Monday’s a holiday,” her oldest son, Julian, pointed out.

  “I work holidays,” Irene said.

  “Who’s moving?”

  Matty had appeared at the doorway to the kitchen. Heads swiveled.

  “What?” he asked. “What did I miss?”

  “You, me, outside,” Irene said. “Now.”

  “Can I get some chicken first? I’m starving.”

  Irene took a breath. “One piece.”

  —

  Irene sat on the front porch—the new front porch, with its too-smooth tiles—and wished she had one of her son’s joints to smoke.

  Matty’s father liked a good smoke. Irene did, too, back in the day. But that was just another bad habit she’d given up along with Lev Petrovski. She’d never told Matty why she didn’t marry his father. Maybe it was time to remedy that.

  She’d only wanted two things from the man. (Man. Hardly. He was nineteen then, not even drinking age except in Wisconsin.) The first was a certain quality of DNA, by which she meant normal, unexceptional DNA full of dominant genes that would swamp whatever wild-ass trait the child might inherit from his mother and grandmother. She didn’t want a gifted child, an Amazing Telemachus. She wanted a normal son or daughter who would never be tempted to show off on a national talk show.

  The second was Lev’s presence. His continuing presence. It seemed a low bar to require that he merely stick around after the child was born, but Lev couldn’t even manage that. The night she went into labor he was nowhere to be found. One a.m. and he was off with his buddies, unreachable. She’d told him to get a pager, but of course he hadn’t gotten around to it.

  Dad was the one who drove her to the hospital. He wasn’t about to come into the room, however. “I’m not cut out for that,” he said, as if a glimpse of his daughter’s functioning cooch would send him spiraling into madness. She went in alone and lay down alone in a room that to her pregnancy-enhanced sense of smell was a steaming bath of disinfectant.

  She’d never missed her mother so much. There’d been other milestones—birthdays, the death of her cat, her first period, her eighth-grade graduation—after which Irene would steal away to stare at her mother’s picture and hold one-sided mother-daughter talks. But that night in the hospital, pushing out a child into the hands of strangers, made her ache with longing. Even when they finally tucked her son beside her, she was wounded a second time, because she couldn’t show him to her.

  Lev showed up later that morning. He apologized over and over. He expressed wonder at the baby. He said all the right things you should say after doing all the wrong things, but something had closed in her heart. He’d come straight from the bars, clothes thick with cigarette smoke, and she could barely tolerate him holding her son. Before he left the room she decided that he would never hold Matty again.

  His presence was no longer required. And fourteen years later, it turned out that Lev had botched even the DNA portion of the test. The Petrovski genes were no match for the McKinnon magic.

  It was time to have the talk she’d been dreading. Explaining the birds and the bees was nothing compared with the psychos and the psychics. Irene was thirty-one years old, the same age as her mother when she died, and a part of her had always believed that she’d be dead before she had to face this moment. But no.

  Lucky her.

  She was about to go back inside and chase down Matty when Frankie’s yellow Bumblebee van swung into the driveway and screeched to a halt. A moment later, a twenty-foot U-Haul eased up to the curb and parked in front of the house.

  Loretta came out of the van and marched up the ramp, scowling like a demon. The twins scampered after her.

  “Hey, Loretta,” Irene said. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re moving the hell in is what’s going on. We’re God damn refugees.”

  Irene stepped out of her way before she was run over. The twins threw themselves into Irene with a four-armed hug. “Auntie Reenie! We got kicked out of our house.”

  “Some guys came and they put all our stuff on the lawn!”

  “Dad got a truck!”

  “You don’t say? Well, go in, and get yourself some chicken, girls.”

  Mary Alice climbed out of the U-Haul and crossed the lawn. Frankie followed her, looking not so much like he’d driven a truck as been hit by one.

  Mary Alice caught Irene’s eye, then shook her head and went inside.

  Frankie looked up at her. “A temporary setback,” he said.

  “Who kicked you out?” Irene asked.

  “It’s complicated. Is Matty inside?�
�

  “Stay the hell away from Matty.”

  “What now? Why?”

  “You heard me. You’re not his fucking coach. You wait right here. Do not move.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do. I’m a grown-ass—”

  She slammed the door behind her before he could finish. Matty stood in the hallway with Mary Alice, talking in a low voice. He was holding a white foam plate loaded with too much fried chicken and a pile of mashed potatoes.

  “You,” Irene said, pointing at him. “Upstairs.”

  “I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

  The kid didn’t know what a stay of execution looked like. “To your room!” she said.

  “Can I bring the food?”

  “Consider it your last meal,” she said, her voice icy.

  Matty traded a dark look with Mary Alice, then went upstairs with his heavy-duty plate.

  Irene raised her voice. “Dad! I need you out here!”

  He stepped out of the kitchen, still joking with someone she couldn’t see. He saw Irene’s face and frowned.

  “You got to hear this,” she said, and went back outside.

  Frankie was on the porch now. “Don’t bring Dad into this,” he said. “I’m handling it.”

  “You have no idea,” Irene said.

  Dad stepped out, which forced Irene and Frankie to move down the ramp. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Nick took his house anyway,” Irene said.

  “Well, you said he was lying through his teeth,” Dad said.

  Frankie was bewildered. “You know about Nick?”

  Graciella had followed Teddy out of the house. “Which Nick?”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Dad said.

  “We’re going to need more chicken,” Graciella said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Irene said quietly. “I’m done.”

  “At least forty-eight pieces,” Graciella added.

  “Done with the whole God damn show,” Irene said.

  Dad seemed to have finally heard her. “Everybody calm down,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”

  “Nobody needs to fix anything,” Frankie said. “I’ve got it handled. Handled!”

  Irene screamed without words. Everyone looked at her as if waiting for a translation.

  Surely they understood: it wasn’t reasonable to raise a son in this house, under these conditions. He was going to be normal, damn it. He was going to be boring.

  She said to Frankie, “Where’d you rent that moving truck?”

  20

  Frankie

  The plan was simple. Pretend to fall asleep. Sneak out of the house. Empty Mitzi and Nick’s safe.

  Step one fell apart when he found himself unable to lie still. It wasn’t just nerves, it was the fucking humidity. He’d been exiled to the living room couch, where there were only windows to cool him off.

  It took forever for everyone in the house to settle down. The twins were supposed to be sleeping with Loretta in one of the attic bedrooms, but they were too keyed up by the excitement of being in Grandpa Teddy’s house with all these strange kids running around. They kept making excuses to get up. Each of them visited the bathroom, then came down to the kitchen for “cool water” (because bathroom water was too warm?), and then they appeared beside his couch to ask him to make “chocolate milks.” The girls were desperate to find out what the other kids were doing in the basement. Irene and Graciella had gone down there at eleven and told them to turn out the lights, but it was impossible to know from here if they’d obeyed. Buddy had installed some kind of vault-like door, and when it was closed no light or sound escaped.

  Twenty or so minutes passed without interruption from the twins. He wanted to wait till midnight, which was about forty-five minutes from now. Midnight seemed auspicious. No one except Matty knew what he planned—and the plan was going forward, damn it. Yes, his father had “talked” to Nick Pusateri. Dad wouldn’t tell him what they talked about, but it obviously hadn’t worked. Outfit guys had still shown up at his house and thrown out his family, then started dumping their belongings on the lawn: furniture, kids’ toys, pots and pans, piles of clothes. Frankie had shown up just in time to pull Loretta away from a guy. Frankie knew better than to try to interrupt or argue with the “movers”; mixing it up with presumably armed thugs was a quick way to get killed. Loretta’s rage had made her fearless, however. Only the presence of her (bawling, scared) children had stopped her from murdering them. And him. Oh, she hadn’t forgotten that this was his fault.

  Another stretch of minutes crawled past. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, but he still couldn’t make out the face of his watch. He listened to the house, and was relieved that the upstairs bedrooms were quiet.

  He sat up, the back of his shirt a damp rag despite the sheet that Buddy had thrown over the leather cushions.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered to himself. “It’s time, Frankie. Time to—”

  He almost said, “Embrace life.” But he was done with the UltraLife. If he tasted another goji berry anything he’d heave his guts up.

  Using guesswork and clues from dim shapes, he foraged for pants, socks, shoes. His pants pocket held the all-important piece of paper. The empty tool bag was in his hand. There were only two more things he needed before he left the house.

  He went down the stairs, and nearly tripped over the huge industrial drill Buddy had left on the floor—even though Frankie had been looking out for it. His brother had been using it to screw a digital clock to the wall beside the basement door. Why? Who the hell knows. You’d get more answers from a chimp. But at least the red letters told him the exact time: 11:25. Jesus. He hadn’t even made it to 11:30.

  He pushed on the metal door. It scraped open with a sound that he wouldn’t have noticed in daylight, but whose Night Volume went up to eleven. The room inside was lit only by the glow of Super Nintendo indicator lights. Somehow that made it darker.

  “Matty?” he whispered. He stepped into the room. The new bunk beds were stacked against the far wall, but which one was his nephew’s? “Hey. Matty.” His foot caught on an invisible power cord, but he righted himself.

  “He’s over there,” a tiny voice whispered.

  “Thanks,” Frankie answered. Wow, was it cool down here. Had Buddy installed AC? Why the fuck was he sweltering upstairs?

  “Hello?” a familiar voice called.

  Frankie swung toward it. “Marco.”

  “Polo,” Matty said.

  Everybody was still whispering. The boy seemed to be on the lower bunk. Frankie bent low and crept forward, his hand hovering before him in the dark to stop him from cracking his skull against the wood.

  “I need you on overwatch,” Frankie said.

  “What?”

  “You know. Watching over me. Up there.”

  “You’re still going to do it?”

  “Yes, I’m going to do it. Of course I am. Are we not Telemachuses? Telemachi?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I need you, Matty. You’re my—” He tried to think of a great sidekick from Greek myth, but Castor and Pollux were the only dynamic duo he could think of, and Frankie really didn’t want to think about his daughters right now. “You’re my lookout.”

  The room lights flashed on. Frankie stood up, and whacked the back of his head on the bunk frame. He fell back, and nearly dropped onto his ass.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Irene stood by the door, in shorts and a T-shirt, her hand on the light switch. The oldest of Graciella’s sons sat up in his upper bunk, and the youngest one, who’d spoken to Frankie in the dark, automatically covered his head with the blanket.

  “I’m trying,” Frankie said, mustering his dignity, “to have a conversation.”

  “This is not the time,” Irene said.

  “I just wanted to—”

  “Out.”

  “All right, all right,” Frankie said. He tried to shoot a significant look at Matty, but the boy’s eyes were on h
is mom. “I’m going. You don’t have to look out for me.”

  Irene caught up to him as he was heading out the front door. “What’s the matter with you? Where are you going? And what’s in the bag?”

  “Nothing. It’s hot, Irene. I can’t sleep.”

  “I want to talk about Matty. Give me two fucking seconds.”

  “I’ve really got to go.”

  “Where?” she said, exasperated. “Outside?”

  He groaned.

  “I can’t have you talking to Matty right now,” she said. “Not until I figure out what’s going on.” The porch light was on, and her face was half in shadow. She looked both older and younger at the same time.

  “Come on,” Frankie said. “You know what’s going on.”

  “No, I don’t. But when I get to talk to Matty, when we don’t have fifty people in the house—”

  “Are you really going to take him away from us?”

  Irene blinked at him.

  “To Phoenix?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Probably not. But I can’t stay here. Not with all…this.”

  “See, this is why Matty couldn’t talk to you. You hate everything about our family.”

  “That’s crazy. I don’t hate everything.”

  “Just the important parts. Listen—Matty wanted somebody to talk to who wouldn’t make him feel ashamed, okay? This is something to be proud of. He’s really good at remote viewing, maybe even better than Mom someday. But it’s scary, and when it happened to him, he came to me, because he knew that I’d think it was great.”

  “And I’m glad he did.”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad he talked to you. He needed somebody, and if it couldn’t be me, I’m glad it was somebody in the family.”

  “Okay…” Frankie couldn’t think of what to say.

  “But that’s over,” Irene said. “No more filling his head with the glories of extrasensory perception until I get the whole story—from him.”

  “Right. The whole story.”

  Irene’s eyes narrowed.

  “Because that’s what you need!” Frankie said. “Everything. Start to finish.”

  “You gave him the pot, didn’t you?”