The Kidney Hypothetical

by Lisa Yee

  “Ricky, dear Ricky,” Monarch said, pouting. “Now, who am I going to go to when I need a penguin?”

  Before Ricky could even begin to process what was happening, Monarch let go of one of her cowboy hoots and away we went.

  I wasn’t sure what just happened, but I was convinced that we were in trouble. As we sped onto the freeway, I gripped the seat with one hand and held Stuart with the other. Fear and panic were tinged with elation. I had never felt so free.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Monarch said.

  “No,” I said, my voice sounding higher pitched than usual. Trying to breathe normally was difficult. “I don’t know why you went back to make fun of Ricky. Now they’ve gotten a good look at us. We could have gotten arrested.”

  Monarch let go of a long laugh. “Seriously? By a mall cop? I don’t think so. Calm down, Ivy League. We’re just having kicks, okay?”

  She patted my thigh.

  “So then,” Monarch continued. “Tell me why our rescue mouse is named Stuart. Is there some sort of cultural or sociological significance to that?”

  “My mother read Stuart Little to me,” I explained. “I loved it so much that when she reached the last page, I made her start over again immediately. When I was little I felt like him, like an oddity.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I stuttered and wasn’t good at much. My big brother, Jeffrey, was the king and my father had little time for anyone else. When Dad did pay attention to me, I’d get so overwhelmed, my stutter would get worse.”

  “Did he get mad at you for that?” Monarch asked.

  “He never said anything, but my father couldn’t look at me when I was sputtering and stammering.”

  The memory of those days caused a sharp pain to shoot through me.

  “You certainly don’t have any trouble speaking now,” Monarch said. “So what’s Jeffrey up to these days? Still king of the world?”

  “We buried him on the day I turned nine, not that anyone noticed it was my birthday —”

  “Higgs … I am so sorry.” She sounded sincere.

  I looked in the side mirror. There was a police car following us. I checked the speedometer. When the car pulled alongside us, my body went rigid as I stared straight ahead. This was a real cop, not a mall cop.

  “Do not speed. Do not swerve. Do not swear. Do not do anything,” I whispered to Monarch even though the cop couldn’t hear me.

  For once, Monarch did what she was told.

  After what seemed like an hour, but probably was only a couple of minutes or less, the police car pulled in front of us and took off.

  I slumped back into my seat and held my head in my hands. “Oh my god!” I screamed. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” Monarch asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I thought we were going to get pulled over.”

  “We did nothing wrong,” she said.

  “Not according to Ricky and Petty’s Pets,” I reminded her.

  “That was nothing,” Monarch said, brushing it aside. “Hey, Higgs. You were talking about your dad and your brother. What you said was pretty intense.”

  “Oh, that. Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “Forget I even mentioned it.”

  I know I was trying to.

  We were parked outside the iffy Mart. Night had fallen. Monarch had a fresh pack of cigarettes and I was in possession of a large cherry slush bomb and a Mr. Gooey Chewy. I hadn’t had one in years. My father hated all candy, especially ones that could pull out your teeth.

  The Mr. Gooey Chewy tasted like Christmas. As I chewed and chewed and chewed, I took out a package of unnaturally bright orange cheese and tore a corner off for Stuart. He seemed cautious at first, then began to nibble. I liked watching him eat. I gave him more.

  Monarch and I were sitting on Rolvo’s hood, something I had never done in my entire life. The silver BMW was on the other side of the lot, and so were two blue Mini Coopers, parked side by side. “Do you think they’ll find us?” I asked. “I wonder what would happen if we got caught.”

  Monarch traced the rooster on her lighter with her finger, then lit up her second cigarette. “No one’s gonna catch us,” she assured me as she blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “We’re smarter than pet store people.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just am,” she said confidently. “So then, let’s talk about Higgs Boson Bing.” I hoped she didn’t want to continue our conversation about Jeffrey, so I was relieved when Monarch asked, “Who hates you?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  I fished a shoe box out of the dumpster and lined the bottom with newspaper before gently setting Stuart inside.

  “It’s a perfectly good question,” Monarch answered as she watched me use a pen to poke holes in the lid of the box. “I’m going to help you figure out who’s trying to bring you down. C’mon, fess up, Higgs. There must be lots of people who want to see you fall.”

  “Golly, gee. Thanks, Monarch.”

  “Oh, there you go again, getting your feelings hurt. Of course people hate you, Higgs.”

  “Why would you say something like that? Why?”

  “You really want to know?”

  Against my better judgment, I nodded.

  “Well, first of all, you’ve got that good-looking thing going for you.”

  I tried not to smile when I heard that. Maybe Monarch’s assessment of me wouldn’t be too painful after all.

  Then she continued. “You reek of good breeding. Well spoken to a fault. And you’re smug. Plus, there’s the sense of entitlement. And cheating on your Harvard application?” Monarch shook her head. “That’s low. If someone went to all the effort of making those flyers, they must hate you.”

  I had heard enough.

  “Do you hate me?” I asked.

  “Is that your bonus question?”

  I shook my head. I was fairly certain Monarch didn’t hate me. Why else would she have spent all that time with me? Was it the money? I wondered. I bought groceries for her, let her drive Rolvo. Hell, I gave her a diamond necklace.

  Monarch continued puffing on her cigarette, acting oblivious to me sitting next to her. She had a small scar on her chin.

  “Stop it, Higgs.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop staring at me like that, it’s creepy.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “What about me?”

  “What’s your story? How come you get to ask me questions, but I’m limited to what I can ask you? Where is the justice in that?”

  “There is no justice in this world. So tell me, who hates you?” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “I want to crack this case.”

  I took another bite of my candy bar and was glad that it took me so long to chew it. Then I began.

  As I went through my suspect list, Monarch listened carefully. “… I was pretty sure it was Rosalee Gomez.”

  “Why would she do something like that?”

  “Because we made out,” I said.

  Monarch whistled. “Wow, you’re that bad, huh?”

  I had to laugh. “No, I’m actually really good. Would you like to find out for yourself?”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Anyway, she wanted us to be more than we were. A woman scorned and all that.”

  “Okay, next. Tell me more about Mr. Hertz.”

  “Avis,” I corrected her. “It’s Mr. Avis….”

  “You tried to get your assistant principal fired?” Monarch asked after I told her about him. I thought I detected a hint of admiration in her voice.

  Stuart crawled up and down my arm. “There were lots of others involved, but he’s always had it out for me.”

  “Okay. Who’s next?”

  I told her about Samantha Verve, and how Zander Findley and I have never liked each other.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I don’t even know. Or maybe he did somethi
ng to me. We’ve been enemies for as long as I can remember. Neither of us has ever talked about it. We both just hate each other. But he seemed genuinely surprised when I told him about the Harvard thing.”

  “Give me another name.”

  “For a while, I thought it might be Mr. French, the school janitor. He’s the definition of a dick. Drives a car that’s so old the windows won’t even roll up. I’ll bet he sleeps in that thing.

  “There’s nothing wrong with not having a house,” I hastened to add. I had forgotten that Monarch lived in the woods. “But you should see this guy, he’s just a loser. He’s like forty and still working as a janitor at the very same school he graduated from. Or maybe he didn’t even graduate —” I could hear myself digging my grave even deeper. Chances were that Monarch didn’t graduate from high school. I wondered how long, if ever, she even went. Still, she was pretty well read. But then, Albert Einstein didn’t graduate from high school. Not that Monarch was Albert Einstein.

  “Hey, then there’s Roo,” I offered up, in hopes that we could change the subject. “She was my girlfriend for over two years.”

  Monarch sparked to the word “girlfriend.” She sat up and looked interested. “Did you love her?”

  I shook my head. “No, we were just … together, that’s all.”

  “Did she love you?”

  I let go of a deep sigh. “Well, she told me she did about twenty times a day.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “At first, it was disconcerting, then it was nice, but after a while, it was just annoying. Every time she said it, I could tell she was waiting for me to say ‘I love you’ back.”

  “So did you say it?”

  “Sometimes, but it’s not the sort of thing you should say if you’re not really sure. Right? I mean if you’re going to say it, then it should be the real thing.”

  Monarch gave me a wicked smile. “My, my, Higgs Boson Bing is a romantic?”

  “Hell no!” I said, setting her straight. “Romance is overrated.”

  “So what caused the split?”

  “A hypothetical about whether I’d give her one of my kidneys.”

  “I hate hypotheticals,” Monarch said.

  My heart soared when I heard this.

  “Is there anyone else on your list?”

  I nodded. “Nick,” I told her. “He’s my best friend.”

  “Tell me about Nick.”

  “Nick Milgram and I have been best friends practically all our lives,” I began slowly. I struggled to find my voice. “We met in second grade. He was the new kid, but neither of us had any friends.”

  “Why?”

  “I was small, and I talked funny. You know, stuttering and stammering.”

  Monarch didn’t say anything. Her silence reminded me of Dr. Raleigh’s. She didn’t say much either.

  I took a deep breath. “My parents were busy building their separate universes. Mom worked for the Jet Propulsion Lab in robotics. She was on the Cassini mission and a real rising star. Dad’s practice was taking off too. He was getting a lot of attention, mainly because of his ‘painless dentist’ ads.”

  “I don’t like dentists,” Monarch said. I tried not to take it personally. “Dentists and doctors and lawyers,” she continued. “They are all so pretentious. Scientists are okay.”

  “Mom was always working late, or on the road, speaking at science conferences and stuff. Dad was doing his own thing, so that left me and my brother, Jeffrey, at home all the time, and then later, with Charlie, my sister.”

  “Alone?” Monarch asked.

  I shook my head. “No, we had a nanny, Marie.”

  I checked on Stuart. He looked up at me with his little red eyes and wiggled his nose. I gave him some more cheese. He had me trained well.

  “I was always following Jeffrey around. He was ten years older, but I think he took pity on me. I pretty much clung to him, until I met Nick.

  “At school, lots of kids used to tease me about the way I talked. But not Nick. He never made fun of me and I never made fun of him either. Back in those days, he wasn’t book smart like he is now. In second grade, he couldn’t even read. So there we were, two losers. One who couldn’t read and one who couldn’t talk.”

  Monarch took the Mr. Gooey Chewy from me, took a bite, and gave it back. “So how did Nick learn how to read?” she asked.

  I broke into a big grin. “I taught him. I’d read to him, but I had to go slow because of my stutter. Yet slow was exactly what he needed. And ironically, the repetition of the stuttering helped. Well, that and the reading teacher his parents hired. But I like to think that it was mostly me. I also started going to a speech therapist at school. Zander Findley was there too. His stutter was worse than mine, though I’m sure he’d deny that. It’s something we’ve never discussed.”

  I laughed at the thought of it. Higgs Boson Bing and Zander Findley, Sally Ride High School’s top two leaders, started out as losers in speech therapy. I knew who he used to be, and he knew who I was. It would have been double suicide if either one of us revealed the truth about the other.

  “Go on,” Monarch urged.

  I cupped my hands around Stuart. “Jeffrey excelled in everything he did. My parents were so proud of him. ‘He’s my Harvard legacy,’ Dad used to boast. ‘The next generation of Bing dentist!’ My father was big on this legacy thing. Mom had always wanted a girl, so she doted on Charlie, her little princess — and then there was me. Stuttering Higgs. Mediocre grades. Medium height. Nothing special. If it weren’t for Nick, elementary school would have been hell. But it wasn’t. We had fun. I never stuttered around Nick.

  “After he began to read, teachers discovered what I knew all along. That Nick was really smart. And he knew all along that I had things to say. We’d pretend to be Batman and Robin. Only, we took turns being Batman since neither one of us wanted to be the sidekick.

  “So one day I came home from Nick’s. It was a Friday afternoon. Mom’s and Dad’s cars were in the driveway, which was weird, because they were hardly ever home during the day. Marie met me at the door. Her eyes were red. She was cradling Charlie, who would have been five. Marie started to say something — and that’s when I heard it. It was the most awful noise. It didn’t sound human, but it was. It was my mother.”

  Monarch didn’t say anything, but by the way her lips were pursed, I could tell she was worried. The ash on her cigarette grew long. I got off of Rolvo and started pacing. It felt like my organs were collapsing.

  “Higgs?”

  I started to cry. Silently, at first, then full-out sobbing, making sounds like I heard that day coming from my mother. Monarch didn’t move, and I almost forgot she was there. I was hysterical and she had the grace not to mention it.

  I placed Stuart gently in the box and secured the lid. “I don’t want him to drown,” I tried to joke.

  “We don’t have to talk about this,” Monarch said softly.

  “It’s okay.” I took big greedy gulps of air. “I want to.”

  I jumped up and down a few times, to shake off my stress, and then explained, “My brother died in a car crash. He was drunk and slammed his Corolla into a light post. I stopped talking completely. My parents were so worried about me they sent me to a therapist. Dr. Raleigh tried to get me to open up. Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, fifty-five minutes per session. It was pretty much a waste of my parents’ money since I had nothing to say. But somehow that made them feel better.

  “Mom quit her job to be home with Charlie and me. Dad really dove into his job even more.

  “ ‘Higgs, are you all right?’ my mother would ask.

  “ ‘Higgs, don’t do this,’ my father would say.

  “ ‘Higgs, are you there?’ Charlie would ask, peering into my eyes.

  “The only person who didn’t question me was Nick. Sometimes he’d read Batman comics to me. Other times, we just hung around. We didn’t need to talk. When I wasn’t with Nick, I was in the garden. Mom started
the garden on the recommendation of her therapist. It was something we did together.

  “Then one day, I saw something I wasn’t supposed to —”

  I shut my eyes tight at the memory of it.

  Monarch leaned in toward me. “What did you see, Higgs?”

  I shook my head, but I could still see it.

  “It was nighttime,” I continued, “and, as always, my father was late coming home. My mother had given me some asparagus to take to our neighbors on the next block. We grew so much we were always giving stuff away. I liked doing that. I still do.

  “Anyway, on my way to the neighbors’, I saw my father’s Porsche parked around the corner. I started running toward it, but stopped before he saw me. Dad was just sitting in his car, crying. I had never seen him cry before. That’s all my mother did. But my father was stoic, even at the funeral. Thanking people for coming. Shaking their hands. Comforting them as my mother stood by his side and sobbed. All the while, Charlie and I leaned against each other with our heads down, allowing ourselves to be hugged by strangers.

  “When I saw my father, I was shaken. He wasn’t just weeping — no, he was really crying and yelling, and he was slamming his fist on the dashboard. I had never been so scared in my life. That’s when I decided that I’d do anything to make him stop. To make him feel better.”

  “So what did you do?” Monarch asked, her eyes wide. “What could you do? You were just a kid.”

  “I knocked on the car door and my father looked up, surprised. He wiped his tears and I got in and sat in the passenger seat. We were both silent for the longest time, and then I asked, ‘Are you going to be all right?’ No stutter, no stammer.

  “My father looked surprised. ‘Yes, Higgs,’ he said. ‘Thank you for asking.’ Then he hugged me and told me he loved me. He had never said that before.

  “At that moment, it was like I had channeled Jeffrey. I decided that I would be my father’s Harvard legacy. I would be all that Jeffrey couldn’t be —”

  Before I could finish, we were interrupted by a scratching noise. I took Stuart out of the box and handed him to Monarch while I went into the iffy Mart and returned with a bottle of water. I filled the cap and set it on Rolvo’s hood. Wordlessly, Monarch handed me my mouse.