by Dede Crane
“I want to see where Gray lives,” said Maggie. She took a deep breath, chest heaving. “We could go look, anyway…” She started to cough.
“Let’s get you over this coughing first,” said Mom, clearing her own throat. “And, well, I have some news too. I wanted to tell everyone that… I lost that banner commission. Easy come, easy go.”
“You’ve been too busy taking care of –”
“It’s not your fault, Maggie,” cut in Dad. “Your mom could have found time if she’d wanted to.”
Mom glanced down at her hands. “Of course it’s not your fault, sweetheart. It was just not that important. You’re what’s important to me, not some stupid old bank. I’ll finish them one day and sell them to another stupid old bank.” She laughed, but it didn’t sound very cheery.
My parents were too depressing.
“So, Mag, you should come have a sleepover. I’ll cook up some farm fresh eggs for you. Spinach is happening, some wild scallions, fresh herbs. I got some goat cheese from this guy down the road. I’ll make you the best omelet you’ve ever tasted. Nacie gave me a great recipe for stinging nettle soup. And she makes excellent oatmeal bread, and brownies you’d kill for.”
“I thought I wasn’t allowed to eat brownies.” Maggie looked at me accusingly. She coughed, took another big breath, then another.
Man, it looked like it hurt her to breathe. She really had to get out of this house.
“Well, Nacie doesn’t use any junky ingredients, so it’s probably almost macro. I mean, you should see these people. They’re both in their sixties and work like twelve-hour days. Heavy work, too.”
Mom took another bite of the cake no one else had touched after the first gagging taste.
“Some day this week you’ll have to bring her out, Mom.”
“I’m just not sure — ”
“She can rest there as easy as here. And Mag, my dome has these picture windows and from my bed you can see hawks circling overhead for their lunch, watch the duck action down at the pond. I saw a nest in the cattails so I bet there’ll be ducklings soon. And when Litze’s inside, deer will come right up to the dome.”
Maggie’s tired eyes lit up. “Maybe we’ll see that skunk again.”
“Maybe.”
“I really want to go, Mom,” she coughed.
“Okay, okay. I’d like to see the dome, too. But I don’t know if you should stay out there.”
“It would be a lot better than sleeping here,” I said and coughed myself just to prove it.
Dad, the spermbag, made a scoffing sound.
“Hey, what time is it?”
“Five to six,” said Dad.
“Nightly News in five minutes, starring…” I framed my face with my hands.
“We can take our dessert into the living room,” said Mom.
I caught Maggie’s eye as we picked up our cake plates.
“Brownies,” I mouthed.
She licked her lips.
Mine was announced as one of tonight’s top stories, boo yeah, though the announcer didn’t say when it was coming on. So we sat through some stock market scandal — this English guy losing 8 billion dollars for a London bank — then an update on the war in Iraq before they went to commercial.
“I bet you’re next,” said Maggie. Every time she spoke she had to take a couple of loud breaths, as if to make up the oxygen.
“Nobody’s eating their cake,” said Mom.
“I’m pretty full,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Maggie, catching my eye again.
“Julia, your kids are just being polite. This cake is completely inedible,” said Dad.
Mom’s spine straightened.
“Well, you could use some of that politeness,” she said and noisily collected the plates off the coffee table before disappearing into the kitchen. Then came the sound of things crashing into the sink.
“Nice one, Dad,” I said.
Dad pushed back his chair, stood up and left.
“Man, I can’t believe you put up with this crap,” I said to Maggie. “No wonder you’re sick.”
Maggie was holding her chest, which was heaving with each breath. Her eyes were half closed, like she might pass out.
“Mom,” I called and the panic in my voice brought her back in a flash.
“Upstairs,” she said to Maggie, easing her off the couch. “We need to get you hooked up. Come on.” Maggie obeyed and they were gone just as I saw Cynthia’s face fill the screen. “Welcome to Happy Valley Farm.”
Great, I thought, looking around the empty room. I watched the segment alone. Came across even better than I’d thought. I didn’t look half bad on camera, either.
I only hoped that Davis had got the word out and that kids from school were watching it. Namely Ciel. Because not only did I sound damn intelligent, my pecs looked all right coming out of the water.
* * *
I was downstairs answering a couple letters that had come that week. There would be a lot more after the TV segment.
Then out of nowhere, it hit me. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? What was Maggie exposed to that other kids weren’t?
I was typing Silkscreen, Carcinogens, when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Gray. It’s Ciel.”
“Hey,” I said, all excited to hear her voice, then quickly got control of myself. “How’s it going?” I said, keeping it cool.
“I saw you on the news tonight.”
Make her beg for it, I thought. I didn’t respond.
“It was a really great interview.”
“Thanks.”
“I hope you got the letter from the E-Club.”
“Yeah. Got it.”
“The head of the school board wrote us back and said they’d look into it.”
“It’s about time.”
“I hope, uh, Maggie’s improving.”
“Not exactly.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Though maybe it is. All our faults for living like we do and buying the stuff we buy.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
Yeah, I’m right. Get used to it, I thought.
There was one of those uncomfortable gaps and I let her squirm.
“Well, I just wanted to say it was impressive, your interview.”
“Okay, well, thanks for calling.”
“Okay, bye.”
I hung up. Yeah, she wants me, I thought, swiveling a 360 in my chair.
I looked up at the screen. Benzene is a common chemical found in silkscreen wash-ups.
Bingo.
That had to be it. It was something other kids weren’t exposed to, and Mom got into silkscreen about a year or so before Maggie was born. Probably had concentrations of it in her blood when pregnant, so Maggie could have been exposed “in utero” like that doctor said. Hell, Mom used to work in the basement so there was probably benzene in the air, too. And Maggie was always making stuff…
It made perfect scientific sense. And who had figured it out? Not you, Dad.
I was about to bound upstairs when I stopped. This was going make Mom feel guilty as crap. But did I have any choice? No. She had to be told in order to stop exposing Maggie. Couldn’t be good for her, either. I had to tell her right away. I mean, Maggie could finally start to get better. That was the important thing.
Mom was in the kitchen, slumped over some cookbook. She didn’t hear me walk in and startled when I pulled out the seat beside her.
“Oh, you scared me,” she said with a little cry of a laugh. “Sorry to have missed your spot on the news. It’s just crazy around here.” She smiled lamely. “We caught the very end on Maggie’s TV. Oh, I should have taped it.” Sh
e pressed a hand to her forehead. “Oh, why didn’t I tape it? That was just — ”
“Yeah, no worries,” I said, and then decided just to say it, casual like. “So I found out that there’s benzene in silkscreen wash-ups. So Maggie shouldn’t do any more of that. And maybe you, too. Unless there’s some substitute you can use…”
Mom was no longer listening. Her mouth was open, and she’d gone all glassy eyed.
“It’s my fault,” she said in a quiet voice.
“No, no, you can’t think like that. It’s just another thing we should probably avoid — ”
“That’s why you’re okay. But Maggie…” Her voice was all weird and soft.
She stood up, went over to open the deck door and walked outside.
“Where are you going?” She just kept crossing the lawn.
I guess she wasn’t wasting any time and wanted to get rid of it right now.
“Need any help?” I called out as she fished down the studio key from the door ledge and opened the eggplant-colored door. She didn’t answer, just went in and shut the door behind her.
The light went on and then I heard a crash.
I went outside to the deck. Through one of the windows, I saw my mother hurl a bolt of material across the room. I heard a scream and there was another crash.
Holy shit. I ran into the living room where Dad was just sitting in front of the hockey game.
“Dad. Quick. Mom’s in her studio…”
“And…”
“Hurry,” I practically yelled, and he gave me a stern look. “She’s in trouble.”
I went ahead of him onto the deck. The sound of insane screaming and things being thrown filled the yard. Neighbors’ porch lights were coming on, heads popping out of back doors. Dad ran across the lawn and tried to open the door.
It was locked. The key was inside with her. He banged on the door.
“Julia. Let me in.” Something hurled against the window beside the door. A crack like a bolt of lightning ran the length of the window.
I was glad Maggie’s room was at the front of the house and sure hoped she couldn’t hear anything.
“I need the spare key,” Dad yelled at me as he rattled the doorknob. “On top of the fridge. Get it. Now!”
After Dad unlocked the door, I watched as he tried to wrestle Mom into his arms. She fought him like a crazy person. It freaked me out to see her like this.
The studio was messed. Paint dripped over everything, tables were overturned. The half dozen banners she had managed to finish for the bank, which hung on the walls around the room, were now splashed with ink.
Dad was holding her now, hushing her. Her struggling morphed into whimpering, her head lolling back on her neck. Something wet and dark plastered her hair to the right side of her head.
Paint? Blood?
“It’s my fault,” she said through her tears. “I did it. It’s all my fault.”
“Julia, no, it’s nobody fault,” Dad said, sounding almost angry with her. “What in God’s name makes you think that?”
21 Owned
Dad’s friend and coworker, a happy science nerd named Brad, drove Maggie out to the farm. While Brad carried her oxygen machine and backpack, I helped Maggie get from the car into the dome.
Mom had flown east for some “R and R,” as Dad put it. She was going to spend a couple of weeks with Grammy and Aunt Judy, who would “take care of her, make sure she did nothing but rest.” Grammy had been a psychiatric nurse before she retired.
I never told Dad what I’d told Mom about the benzene in the wash-ups. As if I didn’t feel terrible enough.
How could I have known it was going to push her over the edge? I couldn’t not tell her. And it wasn’t her fault. It was the government’s fault for allowing the stuff to be sold in the first place. In fact, this week I was going to write a letter to the company that made the wash-ups and another to the government body in charge of testing it.
Dad was taking time off from work to stay home with Maggie, but first he had some big grant application to finish up. So I was getting my wish. Maggie was going to be my guest for the next three nights.
“You want to sit down?” I asked her. I’d borrowed a second chair from Nacie so now had two. We sat at my scratched-up kitchen table while Brad hooked up the oxygen tank.
“You’re aware, Gray, that there’s no smoking allowed around this machine,” said Brad. “And no candles. This here’s pure oxygen and extremely flammable. It’ll take out this whole dome.”
“Oh, okay.” Shit, I didn’t know. I looked around at my candles. “I guess we’ll just use flashlights at night then.”
Brad went outside to get an extension cord.
“But you probably won’t need the machine out here. I mean, just take a deep breath.”
She did and immediately started to cough.
“Well, maybe I should open the windows. But it’s pretty hot out and having them shut keeps it cooler.” I waved my arms around. “So what do you think?”
Maggie smiled. “It’s cool. Geodesic. That means an open framework of polygons.” She took a deep breath. “It combines a sphere with a tetrahedron.”
I laughed. “Whatever.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” she said, taking another noisy breath. “Davis called to say he couldn’t make it out this week. His dad grounded him after school. He didn’t say why. And some girl called. She had a strange name like Seal…”
“Ciel?”
“Yeah. I told her you’d be back next Saturday. She asked me how I was doing. She sounded nice.”
Oh, yeah. She wants me.
“So, let’s set you up with your computer and the bed. We have drinking water out of the sink tap but no real indoor plumbing. So I set up, behind that curtain,” I pointed, “a kind of uh… toilet, that you can use if you’re not up to walking to the outhouse. Or say you have to go in the middle of the night. I’ll just empty it every morning.”
“Gross,” said Maggie.
“I know but, hey, it’s cave living.”
“Pretty fancy cave.”
“Yeah, pretty amazing, huh? I couldn’t believe when that truck showed up. Isn’t this floor cool?”
She nodded and her breath seemed to catch and she struggled for air. I felt myself tense. Brad came in the door.
“You need to hook up to this?” he asked her, holding up the oxygen tube.
* * *
Nacie brought us extra food and lent us more pillows so Maggie could sit propped up in bed and see the view. Mr. D. even banged together a little lap table that straddled her legs so she could do her school work on her computer. He let me off work. Said I should spend these few days with my sister.
The first day I piggy-backed her down to the pond and we had lunch under the weeping willow, fed the ducks bits of bread. When we tried to check on the duck nest, we were chased away by an angry mother duck. We hunted chicken eggs instead, so I could make her my famous omelet. I warned her to watch out for Clarence but he didn’t come around. As if he could sense she was sick and off-limits. I was beginning to think he was pretty smart for a dumb bird.
I caught one of the monster bullfrogs for Maggie and took a picture with the ugly butt squatting on her head. I took pictures of her feeding a deer cherries out of her hand. Another of her at dusk, standing under a swarm of bats. We watched the sun set, the clouds all crazy pink and lavender. I’d learned that the more pollution there was in the air, the more dramatic the sunset colors, but I didn’t tell Mag that.
After the sun went down, we counted frog croaks. She got tired pretty early and I read to her from Harry Potter. Reading to Maggie was something Mom had started doing, since Maggie’s eyes often ached late in the day. I wasn’t a big reader but got into the story.
I had
a hard time sleeping what with the noise of the oxygen machine. I wasn’t used to sleeping in the same room with someone, and every little move of hers woke me up. Not to mention I was camped on the floor.
Maggie couldn’t go very long without her oxygen. Said she was needing to use it even more than at home for some reason. Luckily it was sunny every day, so the generator kept it going no problem. But I didn’t get it.
“Probably just because I’m excited being here,” she said.
By the third day, though, I couldn’t even take her down to the pond because she needed to stay on the oxygen. Her breathing had tightened right up and was now a constant wheeze.
On the last night, I made her a meal of lamb chops, mashed potatoes and fresh garden peas with Nacie’s brownies for dessert. But Maggie said she wasn’t very hungry and had only a tiny taste of a brownie.
“Do you think Mom and Dad are going to break up?” she asked, boom, out of nowhere.
“Man, I don’t know. They’re just stressed is all. Once this is over… I mean, once you’re better, they’ll chill out and be fine.”
“Don’t be mad at Dad.”
“Well, I’m surprised you’re not mad at him — ”
“It’s a male thing,” she said. “I read about it in National Geographic. Male brains process emotions differently. He’s just really sad.”
“I guess.” I was a guy, and I wasn’t being an asshole.
“When I die, they’ll need you to come home.”
“First of all, you’re going to get better,” I said, clearing the table because I had to do something. “And second of all, I don’t know if I’ll ever come home. It would be like a backwards step.”
Maggie had a coughing attack despite being hooked up to oxygen. It took awhile for her to calm down. I helped her into bed after that and then did the dishes. She was so tired she didn’t even want to be read to.
The next morning, Maggie didn’t look so good, so I was kind of glad Dad was picking her up. I figured she needed new meds. She’d barely touched her breakfast — Nacie’s oatmeal bread and homemade cherry jam — when I noticed Dad’s car turning off the main road.
