Life in a Fishbowl
Page 17
“Who are you?”
The Sister turned around and saw an angelic teenage girl staring at her, rosy cheeks, strawberry-blond pigtails, and the widest, bluest eyes she had ever seen. Having watched every episode of Life and Death, the Sister knew this to be Megan Stone.
“I am Sister Benedict Joan, young lady, but you may call me Sister.”
“Okay, Sister, what are you doing in my house?”
Sister Benedict had hoped the Stone family would have been briefed. “Is your mother or father at home?”
“No, they went to see a lawyer. Something about Daddy’s doctors.”
“Ah, I see. Well, Megan, I am here to help take care of your father, and while I’m at it, I will help take care of you and your sister. You can think of me as your friend.” Sister Benedict smiled.
The Cardinal had asked the Sister to be accommodating to the family, and to do everything she could to care for the well-being of the Stone girls. “They are going through a horrible ordeal, Sister. They need our love and support.”
While she was an adequate teacher and a tough disciplinarian at the Annunciation School, Sister Benedict was not well suited to making nice with children. Her smile was creepy.
“Now,” she continued, “is Jacquelyn at home?”
“No, Jackie”—Megan emphasized her sister’s preferred name—“stayed late at school to work in the computer lab.”
“Very good. It’s important that young women learn modern skills.”
A group of workers came in behind the Sister carrying a hospital bed and other hospital equipment. “Where to, Sister?” asked a burly man who trailed the group carrying a clipboard.
“Megan,” the Sister asked, “can you show these gentlemen to your father’s office?”
“Yeah, this way.”
“Young ladies do not say ‘yeah,’ Miss Stone. They say ‘yes.’ ” I can see, the Sister thought to herself, that I have a lot of work to do here.
For her part, Megan just shrugged and led the men upstairs.
***
Glio leaped a metaphorical chasm. Until this point in his short life, he had been singularly occupied with the internal destruction of Jared’s brain. Of course, Glio didn’t think of it as destruction. He was merely fulfilling his preordained purpose in the world. He had no more choice in the matter than does the tide in the ocean. Had Glio stopped to consider the arguments for and against free will, he would have come down heavily on the side of determinism.
But things were changing. Having exhausted the most interesting of Jared’s memories, having sampled and moved on from Jared’s motor skills, having pulled back the curtain hiding the deepest darkest secrets of Jared Stone’s brain, Glio needed something different. He needed to see the world beyond.
His first foray came largely by accident. While Jared and Deirdre sat in the offices of Morrison, Murphy, and O’Connor, a well-heeled Portland law firm, Glio, reaching out and exploring the places he’d never been, ambled his way from Jared’s frontal lobe, to his parietal lobe, to the temporal lobe, down the auditory nerve, winding a long tendril around the cochlea, and all the way to Jared’s eardrum. Glio was surprised to find himself actively listening to conversations in real time. It was fascinating.
“I’m sorry, Deirdre,” an older male voice was saying, “this contract you signed is airtight. And even if we do challenge it, the network attorneys will use a scorched-earth approach to push us back.”
“I’m sorry, Dan, I don’t know what that means.” It was a woman’s voice that Glio immediately recognized as Deirdre’s.
How strange, he thought, to hear memories as they are being made. Glio was glad for Deirdre’s question as he didn’t know what the lawyer meant by “scorched-earth,” either. He wondered, if Deirdre hadn’t asked, could he have asked? Could Glio have found a way to talk to this lawyer? Would it have been any different from Jared talking to the lawyer?
“It means they’ll force you to spend so much money that you’ll be bankrupt before you even get to settlement talks.”
“What if we go rogue?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What if we just leave the house and don’t come back?”
“I can’t advise that, Deirdre. You won’t get any money, and they’ll sue you into oblivion. I’m also not sure Jared can handle that.”
Glio sensed that everyone in the room was looking at him, or rather looking at Jared, though he was no longer sure he could tell the difference between the two. Feeling self-conscious, another entirely new experience, Glio retreated from Jared’s ear and made his way back to safer ground.
Emboldened and excited by the experience, he planned his next foray into the world outside. He wanted to see.
***
Jackie
I have to go soon, Max, my parents are going to be here any minute.
Max
Ok, Solnyshko, you will use new phone for more footage tonight?
Jackie
Definitely.
Deirdre had promised to buy Jackie a new iPhone before picking her up from school and to help her sneak it into the house.
Max
This is good. Do zavtra …
Jackie
And to you, Max.
When Jackie exited the school, her parents were already waiting for her in the parking lot.
“How’d it go at the lawyers?” she asked as she slid into the backseat.
“Not so good, honey,” Deirdre said. “I’m afraid we’re stuck with this for now.”
Jackie just nodded.
“But here.” Her mother handed her a bag from the Apple Store.
“Is it all set up?”
“Yep!”
Jackie leaned into the front seat and kissed each of her parents on the cheek.
Jared, who had been both silent and still until this point said, “Oh, hey, Jax,” seeming to realize for the first time that his daughter was in the car. He took her hand and squeezed it. Jackie couldn’t help but notice how skeletal her father’s fingers and wrist had become. She could feel every bone in his hand.
“You just keep right on making those movies, Jackie,” Deirdre said. “They’re wonderful.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I had a lot of help.”
“From who?”
“Um … it’s a secret.” Deirdre smiled, and Jackie knew what she was thinking. “I do not have a boyfriend, Mom.”
“Okay, okay … whoever it is, though, keep working with them. You guys are doing a great job.”
When they arrived at the house, a security guard opened a gate in The Wall. The seven-foot barrier separating the Stone family from the rest of the world was, despite assurances to the contrary from Ethan Overbee, very much an eyesore. When Jackie had first envisioned the wall, her mind had conjured the image of a giant white picket fence, something protective but neighborly. Instead, she was now looking at a chain-link fence with barbed wire on top. And while the network did stay true to its word to plant hedges, they measured only five feet. The sight of the fence rising up out of the bush was even more ominous than if the hedges hadn’t been there; it was like something out of an apocalyptic science-fiction movie.
Jackie hid the Apple bag under her seat and tucked the phone into her hiking boot as the car pulled into the driveway.
Deirdre stopped short of the garage, control of which had been ceded to the crew, and the three of them stepped out onto the front lawn. A security table had been set up just inside the front door. As two security guards, one man and one woman, were going through Deirdre’s purse and Jackie’s backpack, Ethan stepped into the foyer from the living room.
“Hi, everyone,” he said. “Janet,” he said to the female guard, “please remove Jackie’s shoes. Gunther, take Deirdre’s and Jared’s cell phones.”
“What?” Deirdre shrieked.
“Don’t worry, Deirdre,” Ethan said, his voice dripping with sweetness, “you can have them back when you leave the house.”
Not sure what to do,
Jackie surrendered her boots and Jared tried to hand his phone to Ethan. “Thanks, Jared, Gunther will take that,” Ethan said, gently pushing Jared’s hand to the security guard. Jackie noticed that neither Gunther nor Janet could or would make eye contact with her, her mother, or her father.
“Ethan, this is too much.”
“I’m sorry, Deirdre. This television show is a very important asset for the network, and we need to protect it.”
“Asset? This is our home!”
“Mr. Overbee?” Jackie interrupted quietly.
“Yes, Jackie?”
“How did you know that phone was in my shoe?”
When Ethan smiled, Jackie knew the answer. From the look on her mother’s face, she could tell that Deirdre knew, too. “You have a camera in our car, don’t you?” she asked.
Ethan’s smile widened, but he didn’t answer. “Come with me. I have a surprise for you.”
The three of them followed Ethan up the stairs to Jared’s office in a trancelike stupor. When he opened the door, they saw that the small space had been converted to a fully functioning hospital room, replete with bed, IV drips, and a series of complex-looking machines with blinking lights and digital readouts. Standing next to the bed was not a doctor or a nurse, but a nun.
Looking at the woman, Jackie was immediately reminded of Dr. Seuss’s description of the title character from her favorite childhood book, The Lorax: “Shortish, oldish, brownish, and mossy.”
Before anyone could say anything, Jared let out a big sigh of relief, stumbled across the room, and crawled into the bed, giving the pillow a full-body hug.
“There, there, Mr. Stone, you rest. The Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration will care for you now.”
Jackie turned and ran to her bedroom.
***
The opening scene on that night’s episode of Life and Death was of Jared crawling into bed and Sister Benedict tending to him. There were interviews with the Sister, with Cardinal Trippe, and with the medical team from Saint Ignatius Hospital.
Missing from the episode were the daily interviews with the Stone family. The director and editor repurposed footage from an earlier episode and were able to cobble together some semblance of family reaction, but for the most part, other than Jared in the hospital bed, the Stones were absent.
After Ethan had confiscated all their phones and introduced Jared, Deirdre, and Jackie to Sister Benedict, Deirdre called a family meeting in the upstairs bathroom. It was the only room believed to be completely free of video and audio devices. It was possible Ethan had crossed that boundary, too, but Deirdre didn’t have any other choice.
“Listen,” she told her daughters, “from this day forward, we’re not to help the producers or crew in any way. We’ll fulfill the obligations of our contract but only the bare minimum. When they ask us questions, we use one-word answers. When a celebrity stops by, we excuse ourselves. When we’re not busy, we read books, watch television, or use the bathroom. Do you girls understand?”
Jackie was on board before Deirdre had finished her first sentence. Not Megan.
“But, Mom, we’re on TV!” Megan protested, as if the notion were so patently obvious it needed no further explanation. Deirdre was not to be persuaded, but Megan still put up a fight; she stomped, punched the shower curtain, and whined until Deirdre lost her cool.
“Enough, Megan,” she snapped. “This is how it has to be. Do you understand?”
Megan held her head low, like a vulture, offering only the slightest nod of agreement.
This quasi act of civil disobedience from the Stone women was a new problem for Ethan. He could deal with naked aggression, cold-blooded capitalism, but not this. The show, if it didn’t get more interesting soon, would start to lose viewers, and that would be, he knew, the end of his career. He had to find some way to motivate his cast to work.
***
Jared knew to expect the hair loss, but like so many cancer patients, he wasn’t ready for it. All the other crap the tumor was throwing at him—the headaches, the confusion, the missing memories; the nausea, the fatigue, even the weight loss—were somehow internal. It was almost like if he just tried hard enough, he could find a way to beat them.
The hair loss was different. It was tangible proof to the rest of the world that Jared wasn’t just sick, that he was really, really sick. Jared, of course, already knew this. But now that it was irrefutably obvious to anyone who looked at him—though if Jared was honest with himself, the hair loss was only the crowning achievement of his body’s complete and utter deterioration—it made the whole thing seem somehow inescapable.
Not normally a vain man—Jared thought of his own fashion aesthetic, when he bothered to think of it at all, as “homespun”—his first instinct was to get a toupee. Ethan talked him out of it.
“Trust me, Jared, you don’t want one of those things.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone will know it’s fake. And you know how they say the camera adds ten pounds?”
Jared looked down at his withering body and answered, “I hope so.”
“Yes,” Ethan hesitated, not sure how to react to the gallows humor, “well, it’s even worse with toupees. If they look at all suspect in the real world, they’ll look like misplaced pieces of carpet on TV.”
Jared thought about this for a moment. He was about to shrug his shoulders and move on, but then he remembered something. “One of your producers told me that there are plenty of actors with natural hair loss, and that professional makeup artists can work magic so no one will be able to tell the difference. Isn’t John Travolta really bald?”
“Ah,” Ethan responded. Jared didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but he thought he detected a hint of annoyance. “I see. Well, unfortunately, Jared, the terms of our agreement forbid the network from doing anything more than medically necessary to aid you.”
“Oh.”
“But, hey,” Ethan added, “you’re free to get a toupee on your own. I just don’t think you’d be happy with it.”
Like she had done with the radiation therapy, Deirdre vowed to support whatever decision Jared made with regard to his hair. Which again wasn’t much help.
Not sure what to do, or even what to think, Jared opted for the path of least resistance. America watched him lose his hair.
The Life and Death blog on the People website noted that Jared “went from looking sick to looking terminal.”
Luckily for Jared, he didn’t read People.
***
Jackie’s phone was gone, but she still had her laptop, so she logged on to look for Max. She knew it was a long shot; it was already the middle of the night in Russia, and predictably, Max wasn’t there.
Looking for some other way to occupy her time, Jackie sat down to read the latest onslaught of fan mail. Most of it was very nice, but some of it was creepy. One man, an old man, at least thirty, sent a naked picture of himself. He was fat and hairy, like an ape. Jackie knew she should tell someone, but she worried they would start screening her mail, and outside of school, it was her only connection to the real world. She felt like a bird with an injured wing, unable to fly, too tired to walk.
She read through letter after letter, each offering its “love,” or “support,” or “friendship,” until they started to blur together. Jackie was just starting to nod off when she saw Hazel Huck’s name on the return address of an envelope.
Dear Jackie,
Thanks so much for writing me. I absolutely loved THE REAL FAMILY STONE OF PORTLAND, OREGON. I think it’s terrible that ATN is using the show to hurt your family. I can’t even imagine having no privacy like that, especially at such a hard time. (Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t watching.) Keep those videos coming.
If you want to write back, it’s better to send e-mail to guinevertheglad@gmail.com.
Your friend,
Hazel Huck
Jackie went immediately to her computer.
From: jaxouttathebox@gma
il.com
To: guinevertheglad@gmail.com
Subject: Trapped!
Hi, Hazel—Thanks for writing me back! I was so happy to see your letter. The producer from ATN—a pretty big jerkface named Ethan—took away my phone yesterday so I can’t shoot any more videos. My mom bought me a new one, which I tried to hide in my shoe and sneak into my house, but he took that one away, too. My mom says we’re on strike now, and we’re not to give them anything interesting to film. Anyway, I’m telling you because, really, I don’t know who else to tell. Thanks for listening. YOUR friend, Jackie Stone
Two minutes after Jackie sent the message, she received a Facebook friend request from GuinevertheGlad. As soon as she clicked the “accept” button, an instant message popped up.
Hazel
Jackie?
Jackie
Hazel?
Hazel
Lol. Yes.
Jackie
How did you find me?
Hazel
Your e-mail address is a pretty unique handle.
Jackie noticed that Hazel had over four hundred friends. It made her feel silly for having only twenty, and most of those were really just acquaintances who more than likely felt sorry for her.
Hazel
Listen, I have an idea for how to help you.
Jackie
How?!?!?
Hazel
Have you ever played World of Warcraft?
PART FIVE
Rebellion
Saturday, October 24
Megan Stone liked being popular. She liked it a lot.
Okay, sure, it was horrible that Daddy was so sick, but if her family had to endure the unfairness of his disease, then at least they could do it on TV, where they would be famous, and rich, and powerful. How many other kids’ dads get cancer? Lots. But none of them, Megan was sure, ever get to be on television.