Chapter Seventeen

That mannequin dad, pacing in his basement. Running his fingers through his wispy hair. Sitting on an old weight bench down there now, too short for him so his knees are up like a grasshopper. An old photo album balanced in his lap, the box it was dug out from still open.

“Dear?” his wife’s voice calls down.

He looks up to it.

She doesn’t call again.

Back to the computer monitor. Page after page of kitten pictures. He saves them, saves them.

“Daddy?” his daughter says, halfway down the stairs, her hand light on the handrail.

“Yes?” the dad says.

She doesn’t have the next part of the question though.

The calendar flips to the next day, a Saturday.

 

 

There’s a new trampoline in the backyard, its boxes and straps and various tools still on top of the grass, like they’re going to get picked up later. Mannequin children bouncing up into the sky, their silky hair following them back down. Screams of delight. The sun beating down. A tall wooden fence as backdrop.

The dad turns away from it all.

The cell phone in his hand still has the image his brother texted him. That slip of bulletin-board paper.

The dad pulls a pen from his shirt pocket, looks to the house to be sure his wife doesn’t have him in her sights, then uses a felt-tip marker to crib the number from that strip of paper onto his forearm. Small, tight letters smearing on beige plastic.

And then he breathes.

“Watch me! Watch me!” his daughter screams.

The dad creases his face into an empty smile. He tracks his daughter up into the air and leaves her there, turns around, cupping his hollow torso around the cell phone so that he’s shaped like a question mark.

He punches that number into the keypad. Gets a front desk of some kind.

“Yes, yeah, I’m, um. About the offer on the bulletin board. Six weeks, right?”

His call’s passed back, up the chain of command. No apology, an efficient feel to it all.

Government?

“Yes, I’m just calling about—” he starts, the one time there’s a presence on the other end, but then it’s back to the hold sound.

Behind him, the kids are staying in the air longer and longer. “Daddy! I’m taller than you! Daddy!”

He nods, closes his eyes. Can’t turn around yet, because his face would be a giveaway.

Finally, “Yes?”

A gruff voice. One with no time for this.

“Um, yeah,” the dad says, the cell phone held to the side of his head with both hands now, so not even one word will get away. “I just wanted to know. You’re doing a study, right? I just, we have, my family. Certain allergies. A history. I just wanted to be sure—”

Listening, listening.

Nodding.

“No, no, not for me. This is— I think I know somebody in your, for those six weeks. Okay, four left, yeah, four.”

Behind him now, his son goes rocketing off the trampoline at a bad angle.

“Daddy!” his daughter shrieks.

The dad switches the phone to the other ear. Takes a step away from the commotion.

“But, but. Is there any way I could, you know. See him? Or even just— I understand he can’t take phone calls, is that correct? No, no, of course I haven’t been in contact— It’s just—he’s my… I haven’t—”

At which point his wife brushes past him, all business.

He turns, vaguely aware.

She returns with their son on her hip. His plastic arm flopping against his side, the angle all wrong.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, dear,” she says.

The dad holds the phone out like a shield, like proof. “I was just—I was…”

“Yes?” she says.

The dad opens his mouth once, can’t trust it, then opens it again, and all that comes out is that long shrill beep. “XXXXX.”

Then, not looking down to do it, he ends the call.

A very real unmannequin dog explodes against the backside of their fence, slobbering to get through.

The rest of the neighborhood dogs hear it, join in.

The dad’s mouth still open. “XXXXX.”

The album in the basement is still open too, to a snapshot of two lanky kids at a pool. One of them running for the edge, to jump in, the other already in the air, pulling himself into a cannonball.

It could have been any one of us.