11

Ted looked up from a glittering locomotive he held in his hands. “Peter,” he said. “This is a piece of work.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yes. Four hundred and fifty dollars. It had better be beautiful.”

“When will you be ready to use it?”

“I don’t know. Months from now, I suppose.” He turned to the soldering iron at his elbow. “When I retired, I told myself that I would spend most of my time down here with my trains. I told myself that I’d probably be bored stiff after a month or two, but that I’d try it out and see. And you know what? I’m not bored at all.”

He held the soldering iron, a long, dark pencil, away from the light on the workbench. It glowed when it was held into the darkness, and a satisfied look came over Ted as he put the iron back down on its holder. He put the locomotive into a box lined with crumpled tissue paper and uncoiled a loop of solder. “Of course, my wife thought I was crazy, years ago, when I bought my first set. Maybe she still thinks I’m crazy.”

He used a pincher to snip off a length of the lead-colored wire. “I’m rewiring the whole thing. Making it all new.” He touched the soldering pencil to the lead and the scent of solder touched me, metallic and pure, then a quiet sizzle.

“Look over against the wall. Go ahead and pick it up.” Ted looked away, then looked back. “Carefully.”

I stepped in to the shadows and stood beside a range of mountains, with pine trees struggling and failing at the treeline, and snow taking over from there, up to the peaks.

“Go ahead. Pick it up.”

I stooped and picked up the mountains. They were not heavy, and holding them up to the light from the workbench, I felt like a god; I felt the silliness of the entire enterprise of making toy mountains, and the beauty of it.

Later, as my mother was getting dressed, she pulled at an earlobe and found a hole in it with the point of an earring. It was the expensive set a worldly and overweight boyfriend had given her a couple of Christmases ago, a urine-colored gem. It was Russian topaz, although my mother called it beryl over the phone to one of her friends. I had done some reading about the neosilicates, in the days when I had an interest in books and new information. I guess you could say, before I started to take a real interest in drinking. I believed my mother didn’t know the full value of what she had.

I knew it was wrong, and I knew I could never go through with it but I saw the topaz and thought: money. Money, so I can run away. The plan was simple, even when I knew I could never carry it through. I would steal the topaz, and sell it to one of the criminals—one of the elegant, sophisticated, dangerous students on campus.

I had, of course, nowhere to run, and I would not have left under the best of circumstances. I had to stay where I was to take care of Mead, and Mead’s parents. But the mind is a busy monkey, and never rests. It makes up plans the way bored hands toy with clay, first one shape, then another.

“I’m going out,” my mother said.

“Obviously.”

“I got a new job today. I’m going to be selling coffee machines to offices. You didn’t know I had a new job, did you?”

“No, I didn’t even know you were looking. I mean, seriously looking.”

“We both live in our own worlds. Mother and son, in the same house, but on different planets. I’ve sold a lot of things in my life. I have a knack for it. Remember last year I sold copiers? Until the sales force got cut back. I set a sales record for the month of February.”

I remembered. We had gone out to dinner, and I had eaten lobster for the first time.

“And February’s not the greatest month for business, usually. We could survive on alimony,” she continued. “But I don’t want to just survive. Besides, I have some pride.”

Sometimes I didn’t like my mother, but I’ll say one thing for her: she does have pride. “So you’ll be able to set records,” I said, “selling coffee machines.”

“That’s right. Coffee machines and dried soups. And coffee, of course, and tea.”

“Congratulations.”

“I can’t tell when you’re sarcastic anymore. I’ve lost touch with you completely.”

“I mean it—congratulations. Really.”

She picked up an eyebrow pencil, a worn-out stub. “I thought my life would be different than this. I thought it would make sense. Of course, I’m proud of how I’ve made it—of how we both have made it, you and me.”

I smiled. It was rare that she would talk about herself, and talk about me, in a thoughtful way.

“Sometimes I feel mean,” she said. “It’s because I’m tired. Sometimes I feel tired the first thing in the morning, and tired all through the day, and then I can’t sleep at night. And it all starts over again.”

Perhaps she was simply trying to make me feel guilty. It certainly worked. If she knew the truth about me, it would kill her.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back. Very late.” She fluffed her auburn hair with both hands. “What’s in the bag?”

I rolled it tight, so she couldn’t see into it, but told the truth. “Paints. Colored pencils. I thought I might do some drawing.”

“I used to think you’d be an artist. A person with talent. And drive. A person with a lot of drive.”

“I don’t have much drive.”

She looked at me, almost a Lani-quality stare for a moment. “I worry about you.”

“No need to worry. No problems here.”

“You spend a lot of time with Lani. What’s she like?”

“She’s a good friend.”

“So is Mead, and you know I’ve never quite liked him. Too quick on his feet. He always looks like he’s about to disappear.”

“Lani is a good person.”

“I wonder. You know I’m not prejudiced. But I wonder what sort of person Lani is.”

“You don’t like her because she’s black.”

She threw down her eyebrow pencil, and it skittered along the counter. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“Lani is the best person I know. She’s an athlete. And a pianist. And she’s brave, and she cares about people. She’s a good person, maybe the kindest person I know.” I would have fought a shark to protect Lani at that moment.

“I hope so. Because you know something, Peter? I’m worried. About you. Sometimes I think there’s something very wrong.”