Paint by Magic (5 page)

Dad cleared his throat a few times before answering, but when he did speak, he was on another track. "You didn't really throw the TVs away, did you, Pam? Not, like, out in the
trash,
right? That would be going a little bit far, I think. Those sets cost
bucks.
"

"Let's just say they've been safely removed from the scene," Mom replied serenely. Her voice was back to normal now. Dad looked hugely relieved.

"Now," continued Mom, "dinnertime is conversation time. Let's hear about how your day went. Crys, you may go first."

"Go where?" growled Crystal in her nastiest tone.

"Tell us about your day, dear. The high and low points."

Crystal just glowered at her. "This is definitely the low point," she muttered.

I just kept eating. So did Ashleigh and Dad. We all felt there'd been enough talking already at this meal.

But the meal
was
delicious, we had to admit. "And isn't it amazing," Dad said when we'd finished, "that we've actually sat here for nearly an hour all together—and the phone hasn't rung even once?"

Mom smiled a secret smile. "That's because I turned off all the phones.
And
the pagers. No ringing and beeping disturbing meals anymore. Not in
our
home."

***

That night after dinner Mom made us help her clean the dishes and wipe the counters. Then she tried to shepherd us all into the family room, but Crystal was so pissed about missing Prince Charles that she stomped upstairs to her room and wouldn't come down, even when Dad bellowed for her. And Ashleigh escaped to her apartment over the garage with the excuse that she had to study. I'd bet anything she was watching one of her shows, but if she was, she kept the sound down so nobody heard it.

I sat there on the family-room couch between Dad and Mom. Mom asked Dad to read aloud from
The Wind in the Willows,
even though we already saw the video. I sat there trying to listen to the book. On video it's a cool story about these animals called Toad and Mole and Badger who have all these adventures on the riverbank. In the film Toad is really hysterical, totally proud and boastful. He lives in Toad Hall, his mansion, and he drives like a maniac. I kept waiting for Dad to get to that part, but listening to a book isn't like watching TV. There aren't any pictures to keep you interested, so you have to imagine everything for yourself. I kept thinking about other things, like how I was going to tell Doug all about Mom tomorrow and how Crystal and I still hadn't shown Dad the paintings by Fitzgerald Cotton. I glanced over at Mom to see if she was listening to the story. She had her eyes closed and her head tipped back against the couch pillows. She might have been totally into the story, or she might have been sound asleep, for all I could tell. Or she might have fallen into another trance.

"
Mom!
" I shouted, jostling her arm.

"Good heavens, Connor, what has gotten into you tonight?" she cried, her eyes flying open. "Can't you just sit still and listen to a few chapters?" She shook her head, turning to my dad. "See, Grant? Too much TV. Destroys kids' imaginations so they have no attention span."

"Sorry," I said. "Sorry, Mom." I settled back on the couch. "Go on, Dad. I'm listening already!"

And I did try to listen. I tried very hard to concentrate, but my mind was ticking along at a zillion miles a minute trying to make sense of what was going on in our house. When Dad finally finished reading, I said I was going upstairs to bed. And Mom said she'd be up in a few minutes to tuck me in and kiss me good night. And would I like a bedtime story?

Bedtime tucking and kissing were things she hadn't done since I was, like,
two.
"Sure, Mom. Whatever."

I really did head for the stairs. But then I detoured into the living room. I wanted to get that book of paintings and look at it again, and I wanted to show it to Dad.

I looked everywhere. On the coffee table. The bookshelves. The couch.
Under
the couch. But the book was gone—as if it had never been there at all.

Then I saw Mom watching me from the doorway, arid her eyes weren't full of terror—they were full of something else. A hardness—a coldness—that made her seem like she was a different person altogether standing there watching me. I didn't bother to ask her about the book. Somehow I knew what she'd say.

I just scurried past her up the stairs and dived into my bed. She didn't come up to kiss me, after all. And there was no bedtime story, either.

Remember that movie we saw where the kid's mom turns out to be an alien?" I asked Doug as we sat in the school cafeteria the next day. "I think that's what's happened at my house, for real." He just sort of gaped at me. "They got my real mom, and left one of
them
in her place, all disguised."

"Sure, Connor. Whatever you say." But he looked interested.

Usually
Doug's
the one with stuff to tell. His mom is in the news a lot because she keeps getting elected for all sorts of things in state politics, and she moved to Washington, D.C., last spring to work with the president on some special commission. No one knows for sure when she'll be home again. Doug and his sister get to visit her during school vacations, though. And Doug's dad is a famous rock climber who is hardly ever home because he's breaking records scaling the highest mountains all around the world. Doug is afraid he'll break his neck, but so far that hasn't happened; if you ask me, it'll be Doug's little sister, Becca, who breaks her neck first. Becca is only five, and she's always doing stuff to drive Doug crazy. One Saturday morning just last month, she managed to climb up on top of their refrigerator and leap over to the top pantry shelf, where she hung by the tips of her fingers—screaming her head off—until Doug finally heard her. Their nanny was still asleep and wouldn't have heard a stampede of rhinoceroses—she's that old. Anyway, Becca was just trying to be a mountain climber, like Mr. Ito, but Doug told her she could have been killed. For a whole week after that, he let Becca carry his
Star Wars
key chain around for good luck and safe landings. It has a red light that flashes when your palm warms the metal Death Star, and Doug says it might have magical powers, like a charm. He says he always aces his tests when he has it in his pocket.

Doug tells me all sorts of interesting stories every day, and usually all I have to say is stuff about what I watched on TV or how sickening Ashleigh sounds talking to her boyfriend on the phone while Crystal and I are eating dinner. But now, finally, like it or not, I had some real news.

"What's so weird about her?" Doug asked me now.

"She's thrown out all our TVs," I reported. "
And
disconnected my computer and PlayStation and taken my phone. Crystal's, too. And she's going to work part-time.
And
"—I'd saved the weirdest for last—"she cooked dinner last night. From
scratch.
"

Doug jingled his
Star Wars
key chain. "Freaky."

"Yeah." But I wasn't sure how to tell him about the art book or the way Mom kept freezing up. I wanted to check that book again to see if maybe I'd only imagined how much the woman in those paintings looked like Mom.

"Hey, you want to come over after karate?" Doug asked. "You could stay for dinner, too. We're ordering pizza."

"Yeah." I felt relief course through me at the thought of going home with Doug rather than back to my own house—where who
knew
what Mom would be doing?

But it turned out not to be so easy. Doug and I both had karate after school, then rode the last bus home. As we were walking up the street to Doug's house, I heard a voice calling to us.

"Yoo-hoo, Connor!"

Yoo-hoo?
I glanced across the street, and there was Mom in our front yard, raking leaves.

"Mom!" I stopped so abruptly on the sidewalk that Doug crashed right into me. I didn't know she'd
already
cut back on her job.

"There you are!" she cried, her voice sounding really happy. "The very boys I've been waiting for."

She was wearing jeans and a big sweatshirt, just as if it were a Saturday instead of a weekday. And she had been working hard, I could see that, pulling into a big pile by our fence all the leaves that had fallen from the ash tree. Her cheeks were bright red from the wind, and she looked way younger than a mom should look.

"Come on, boys! I've got a lovely leaf pile for you to jump in, and when you're finished playing, there are oatmeal cookies cooling in the kitchen."

Leaf pile?
I was embarrassed. "I was going to Doug's," I mumbled.

My mom dropped her rake in the pile of dry leaves and walked over to us. "No, I want you home. But you're welcome to come in and share Connor's snack, Doug."

"Cool," he said to Mom.

"You two finish up here, and I'll go make you some hot cocoa to go with the cookies," Mom said, and she handed me the rake.

She turned and went into the house, closing the door. I hardly dared to look at Doug. But when I did, he was just standing there, staring after Mom.

"Wow," he said. "Cookies and cocoa?"

I shrugged. "I told you,
aliens.
"

"Yeah, I can see that." Doug shook his head. "I thought you were kidding." He kicked at some leaves. "Well, let's do these fast. What happened to your gardener?"

"Mom said we don't need him anymore." I started raking, and Doug stuffed the leaves into the big green bin. Neither one of us actually jumped in the big pile of leaves. But when all the leaves were cleared away, I sort of wished we had. It might have been fun.

We went in and had our snack, and Crystal came home and had a cookie, too. Mom asked Doug if he'd like to stay for dinner, and he said sure. He phoned his nanny, then Mom sent us up to my room to
play,
but she made Crystal stay down in the kitchen to cut up vegetables for the stew. We could hear Crystal's complaining, even with my bedroom door closed.

It seemed really
weird,
just to be sitting there without any computer games or anything. Like, what were we supposed to
do
? Doug was looking totally bored, and I'm pretty sure it was only the smell of the beef stew that kept him from running home to his pizza next door.

"I didn't know your mom could cook," said Doug, with a sidelong glance over at me. "Or is Mrs. White here today?"

"Nope. Somehow Mom's learned to cook—
and
she told Mrs. White we don't need her anymore," I replied. "Just like she told the gardener.
And
Ashleigh."

"Seriously freaky," Doug said.

"Tell me about it." I scuffed my shoes on the carpet. There wasn't a single thing in the whole world to do. Doug just sat next to me, jingling his
Star Wars
key chain, looking around as if maybe something would happen. But nothing did.

"So, did you see
Mad Scientist
last night?" he asked after a while. "It was the one about the gun dealers arming the Corpses, and then the scientist brought them back to life—it was so gruesome!"

"Oh, yeah, I've seen that one before," I replied.
Mad Scientist
was one of my favorite shows, and I'd seen all the episodes. Now they were showing only reruns. Not that I'd be able to watch even reruns anymore.

We sat in silence again, and I could even hear the ticking of the hallway clock. I could also hear Crystal whining down in the kitchen. Doug shifted on the bed, and I bet he was thinking about leaving, and I almost wanted him to leave because it was so embarrassing just sitting there.

But then I had an idea of something we could do. Something I should have done already but didn't quite have the guts to do all alone.

"Want to see something?" I asked Doug.

"Sure." But he didn't even look at me.

"Come on, then," I said, standing up. "But be quiet. We can't let my mom hear us or she'll go ballistic."

Now Doug looked at me with a spark of interest. "Hear what?"

I led him silently down the stairs to the living room. "There's a book you have to see," I whispered to Doug. But the big art book wasn't back on the coffee table. I scanned the shelves. It wasn't there, either.

"What?" hissed Doug.

"
Shhh,
" I said. "She's hidden it someplace. Come on, let's look." I peeked into the kitchen. No book, and no Mom, but Crystal was there, chopping potatoes with quick, angry thrusts. When she saw me and Doug, she raised her knife threateningly. We ducked out again and looked into the family room.

Mom was there, knitting something out of soft green yarn.

Knitting
? I didn't think Mom even knew how to knit. In fact, I
knew
she didn't know how, because she always laughed about ladies who did knit, and said she couldn't see spending time twisting yarn around little sticks when you could buy perfectly elegant sweaters ready-made from Nordstrom or Bloomingdale's or from any of the fine catalogs.

And now, here was Mom, knitting. No, wait—she
had
been knitting, but now she was just
sitting
there with the yarn on her lap, her hands holding the needles in position like crossed swords. She wasn't moving a muscle.

I felt a flutter of fear in my stomach—that moth batting against a lightbulb. "
Mom,
" I whispered.

"What's she doing?" hissed Doug. He stared wide-eyed at my mom. We walked over to stand in front of her. "Look at that smile..."

She was smiling the same teasing smile I'd seen in the art book, with the same lift to the chin and quirk to the eyebrows, as if she were playfully daring someone to snap her photo. Someone unseen—

But in her eyes was a look of terror. Worse than terror this time. Her neck muscles were taut, bulging—as if she were struggling to move her head but couldn't. Her nostrils were flared.

"Mom!" I grabbed her arm—and she suddenly relaxed.

"Oh, Connor—thank you. I was—stuck."

"
Stuck?
" I asked wildly. "What do you mean,
stuck
?"