Poster Boy (17 page)

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.” She 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.

“Dad's here,” I told Maggie and high-tailed it down to introduce him to the D.s. Nacie was there first and did the introductions herself. Mr. D. was “hunting firewood,” as she put it.

I directed Dad to drive the car up the hill.

“Just head for the Earth Friendly sign.”

“Can't miss it,” said Nacie.

“Saw it a good mile down the road,” said Dad.

I refused his offer of a ride up the hill and jogged behind him instead. I hadn't been in a car for two months now and wasn't about to start.

“How's Maggie?” he asked, closing the car door.

I was hoping for some sort of comment about the dome. Or the two solar panels positioned on the ground in front of it. Those solar panels, I'd found out, cost twelve hundred apiece. I mean, he had to be impressed.

“How's her energy?” he asked.

“Her energy's a little low. Worn out by the excitement of being out here. Of cave-living,” I said with a little laugh. “I thought her breathing would be a lot better out here but…”

Dad stopped listening and went inside the dome.

“Hi, Dad,” wheezed Maggie from the bed, barely lifting her hand hello.

“I made the bed with my own hands,” I said as he bent down beside Maggie and felt her head. “And the side table, too.”

“You feel warm?” he asked her, ignoring me.

“A little.” She coughed.

“What's that smell?” asked Dad, finally looking around the place a little.

He walked over to feel the dome material, tap on the windows.

“Pretty cool, eh?” I said, ready to point out all the features.

“The air is terrible in here, Gray. This polyester material doesn't breathe, and it would be newly fireproofed with polybromid diphenyl ethers, and these vinyl windows aren't much better. New material, as you know, off-gasses the most intensely. I thought you said it was made of natural stuff.”

“I thought that smell was… well, I didn't think. Sorry, I just assumed since it was — ”

“Not only are you living in some toxic bubble, but you're a front man for it.” He picked up Maggie in his arms.

“I'm sorry. I should have — ”

“Grab her bag and laptop, please,” said Dad. “We've got to get you home, Maggie.”

Man, how could I be so stupid? I picked up Maggie's things and followed. I wanted to defend myself somehow but couldn't think how.

As we stepped out of the dome, who should be standing there but Cynthia from that TV station, Greg the camera-head beside her, zooming in on me. Judging by the excitement in her hungry face, she had overheard the conversation.

“So it's true, Gray, that you've sold out to Solar Industries?”

* * *

Dad and Maggie had left. And since I refused to answer any of Cynthia's questions — which was probably just as incriminating as answering them — she finally left, too.

I was sitting on my stump, thinking things couldn't get any worse when Mr. D. came up behind me carrying an armload of weeds.

“Hi, Mr. D.” I was trying to sound cheerful. “I'm ready to work. Was just saying good-bye to my — ”

“I don't want you here anymore,” he said. “You've deceived me and my wife as well as your good family.” Beside him Litze gave a low growl.

“Pardon me?”

He shook the greenery in his hands.

Oh, shit. Davis's girls.

“Are these yours?”

“Well…” I wanted to say they were only half mine.

“Answer me.”

“Yes.”

He looked so disappointed and so hurt, I felt like crap.

“I will keep this between you and me but, young man, you should be ashamed of yourself for using us in this way.” Litze growled again and bared her teeth. She was definitely not smiling.