The dinner is Dad’s idea. He calls from work late Monday afternoon and tells Mom that he called Alicia’s dad and invited their family to come for pizza at 7:30. Mom squawks, but it’s already set up, so we’re having a dinner party.
Except it’s not really a dinner party. It’s a meeting. About me. The dads finally want to talk deep science about the Bobby situation, and the rest of us will have to make the best of it.
When sets of parents get together, it’s always risky for the kids. Back at the beginning of fourth grade I had this friend named Ted. We had fun messing around at school, and he came to my house for an overnight once.
Then Mom got the bright idea that his family should come for dinner. Ted’s parents were nice people, just not educated like Mom and Dad. Ted’s dad ran the parts department at a Ford dealership, and his mom was the secretary at a real estate agency.
It was a bad night. Mom wore a black dress and pearls, and she cooked this fancy meal. Dad wore a sport coat and tie, and he was icing down some expensive wine when the doorbell rang. Ted’s folks walked in wearing jeans and matching Disney World T-shirts, and they handed Dad a cold six-pack of Miller Light to help the party along.
And that night pretty much ruined my friendship with Ted.
But tonight’s different. Tonight is more like a science seminar, and under the circumstances, everybody seems pretty comfortable.
Except maybe for Mrs. Van Dorn. She doesn’t really want to be here. I think she wishes I’d never bumped into Alicia. She shakes Mom’s hand, and they look like they can survive the evening together, but I don’t see a great friendship in their future.
Mrs. Van Dorn is only a little taller than Alicia, so Mom makes her look tiny. She’s got narrow shoulders and slender arms with delicate wrists, graceful hands with long, thin fingers. She’s not as pretty as Alicia, but she might have been, about twenty-five years ago. Her hair is longer than Alicia’s and she pulls it back from her face with a comb on each side. It’s about the same shade of brown. There’s a strength in the way she carries herself, but she never seems to relax, never lets down her guard.
Alicia seems so much more self-confident than her mom. And I think Alicia must get some of that from her dad. Because the professor is way off in his own orbit—out where it doesn’t matter how crazy your hair looks. The U of C has a killer astronomy department, and this guy is way out on the front edge. He’s only in the door three seconds before he starts spouting some theory about spectral analysis and the refractive indices of protein substances, and he’s carrying a big box full of books and papers. Dad nods as the professor talks, and then he flips out some chunks of jargon, and all the while they’re both peering at the well-dressed young man who’s got no hands or head poking out of his flannel shirt—which is me. I’m thinking it’s going to be a long night, and the slightly embarrassed look on Alicia’s face tells me she agrees.
Still, it’s hard to ruin pizza and root beer and ice cream, and once the eating starts, things loosen up. During dinner everyone is careful not to talk about Bobby the missing person—or the cops, or jail time—so there’s nothing to do but chat and try to be happy.
Mom and Mrs. Van Dorn—who has now become Julia—discover that they both went to Northwestern and both majored in English literature. So they’re in academic heaven, talking about this professor and that course, this novel and that poem, and all of a sudden I’m afraid that they might turn into good friends after all. Because I bet that having moms be pals is almost as tough on kids as having moms who can’t stand each other.
So after dinner the dads are in the front parlor with the French doors closed, leaning over a big round table, each scribbling away on pads of yellow paper, spinning out theories like madmen. Dad has his collection of books and articles spread out on a card table within easy reach. I look through the glass door, and I can see my file folder there on the corner of the card table, my time line, and the lists of stuff in my room. It looks like they’ve got a long night ahead of them.
Alicia and I are sitting on the floor at the living room coffee table, and we’re done with our pizza. The moms are sitting on the couch, jumping up every few minutes to pull a favorite book off the shelves, laughing and impressing each other with their deep mutual love of literature.
And I whisper to Alicia, “Let’s go online, okay?” And she nods, as eager to escape as I am.
Mom glances at me as we stand up. She reads my mind—which is something she’s too good at—and says, “Remember, Bobby, if you send any e-mail, erase your tracks from the hard disk when you’re done.”
It’s a lot quieter in the study. I help Alicia to a chair beside the desk. The computer starts humming, and I ask, “Do you use the Net much? It’s pretty visual.”
Alicia pulls her legs up under her on the chair. “I’ve got some pretty good voice and text software, and I’m going to learn how to use those Braille readers. But sites like National Public Radio and news sites have a lot of audio. Plus music sites. But when I need to get information, I usually need a guide. At the library I can get a reference assistant. And as a last resort, my mom’ll always help.”
“Last resort, huh?”
“Very last.”
“Does your mom work?”
Alicia makes a face. “Yeah. She works on me. I’m her big job. She used to work for a public relations company, did a lot of traveling to New York and LA. Now she does a little writing and a little consulting and a lot of looking after Alicia. Unexpected career change. If I get independent enough, she can go back to work without feeling guilty all the time. That’s my big goal. Then maybe I can stop feeling guilty about ruining her life.”
I feel like I should say something more, but I don’t want her to get mad. And she’s already in a half-rotten mood.
So I say, “I’ve got a search engine open. Pick a topic.”
“That’s easy. Type ‘invisible people.’”
I plug it in and hit return. “Jeez! You’re not going to believe this!”
Alicia leans forward in her chair. “Try me.”
“The search ‘invisible people’ hits on 450,623 pages!”
“No way! Read me some.”
“Okay. Here’s the first one: The Invisible People Club. It’s a joke site. They’ve got a picture here with a list of gag names, and the picture frame is empty. Big yuks. Then there’s one—more like ten pages—about a tribe in Brazil called the Invisible People…. Here’s some stuff about women’s rights…the homeless…street people…a rock group called Invisible People, some comic books…CIA spies, computer privacy…now I’m jumping ahead about six screen loads, and…and there’s stuff about UFOs, Eastern religion…and so on and so on and so on. Endless. And weird.”
“How about if you just search for ‘invisibility.’”
“Okay…here we are. Invisibility…. Fewer pages, but still a lot, like, over a hundred and eight thousand. And more interesting stuff. Here’s one about scientists in Texas who are injecting fluids into rats to see if they can make skin transparent so they can do the same to people one day. They want to look at your guts without cutting you open. Nice. And it works, except the stuff they use might be poison.”
“And that’s not a joke?”
“Very real. There are newspaper articles and everything. Then…there’s the Stealth Bomber…ancient Hindu spells, reincarnation…Internet shopping privacy issues…more comic books…spiritualism. Here’s a page called The Invisibility of God, and tons about ghosts…alien abductions…all kinds of stuff…. Whoa!”
“What?”
“This site is called Human Spontaneous Involuntary Invisibility…it’s an essay by a lady, and she’s serious…. She says she’s talked with a lot of people who apparently just stopped being visible to others around them, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes longer…and other people can’t see them or hear them. That’s so weird.”
Alicia giggles. “Look who’s talking.”
“Right. But this stuff is all, like…mystical. What we were talking about on the phone today? I was talking about reality, real people, not a bunch of hocus-pocus.”
“And what makes you so sure that science is so reliable? Or that the university crowd has any better answers than the hocus-pocus gang?”
“Me? Sure? I’m not sure about anything. I’m just saying that this stuff I’m reading about here is all chat, it’s people telling this lady what happened to them, and then she writes about it, and wonders out loud. She’s not saying she ever actually saw anyone in that condition. Like my dad, the scientist, says when he points at me, ‘This is an event!’ I’m right here, and my matter isn’t reflecting or refracting any light. What’s happening to me isn’t hearsay or rumor or theory. So I guess that’s why I’m not into the abracdabra scene. I’m an event.” And out of the corner of my ear I hear myself. I’m being very logical. Like Dad. Pretty scary.
And the logic is working, because Alicia’s agreeing with me. “So apparently no one else who’s had an event like yours is advertising it on the Net tonight.”
“That’s the way it looks. But invisibility is an idea that’s out there in a big way. People are into this. This hypnotist, the one who’s writing about these people who claim they’ve gone invisible? She says people have been working at becoming invisible since about 700 B.C. Listen to this from some ancient writer in India: ‘…concentration and meditation can make the body imperceptible to other men, and “a direct contact with the light of the eyes no longer existing, the body disappears.” ’ That’s what’s happening to me, except I didn’t sit around chanting or praying. I just went to bed, and when I got up, all gone.”
The computer keeps humming and the two of us sit there, silently thinking. Thinking together.
“Bobby?! Emily!” It’s Dad, yelling.
Dad’s tone of voice makes us all rush for the parlor. Mom and Mrs. Van Dorn get to the front of the house before Alicia and I do.
Dad’s on his feet, pacing, and when Alicia and I get there, he stops and looks at me.
“I feel really stupid, Bobby. I didn’t pay enough attention to the information about your room. And then five minutes ago I mention it to Leo, and he takes one look at your data charts, and bingo!—he hits on something!” Dad’s beaming at me, but he’s too excited to stop for more than a second. He turns to Mom. “Now, Emily, I’d like you and Julia to go up to Bobby’s room and get his electric blanket, the blanket itself, and the controller and all the wires. And don’t bang the controller or drop it, all right? And Bobby, I want you to go down to the basement and find my old oscilloscope. Leo and I will try to find something else we need, which I think is in the kitchen. Okay? Let’s go!”
And everyone scatters for the treasure hunt.
Find Dad’s old oscilloscope. That’s not a job. It’s more like a career. Because of our basement. Alicia follows me halfway down the stairs.
“You’d better stop there,” I say, and she does. “Okay, the oscilloscope is a boxy thing about as big as a small suitcase. Has a round green screen on one end, and there are wires and knobs and switches all over it. In most basements, not a problem to find. Down here, big problem. This basement is the kind of place archaeologists dream about. I’m looking at a twenty-year history of the technological revolution in America.”
Alicia sits down on the steps. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, our basement is a high-tech junkyard because my dad can’t bear to throw anything away, especially not something electronic. That’s because, if you’re smart enough, you can look at anything and think of twenty or thirty possible ways that it might be useful at some point in the future, so you just keep it.”
Now I’m picking my way around the heaps and piles and sagging shelves. I look around and I see about twelve different generations of CPUs, three or four black-and-white monitors, two old color monitors, an original Macintosh, six different computer game systems, an ancient tube radio, a little box of broken Walkman tape players and radios, three fax machines, a bin of outdated telephones and cell phones and beepers, and four TVs. And hiding here behind the shipping box for an ancient IBM wheel printer—the oscilloscope.
“Got it!” It’s heavy, and as I move to the stairs with it, Alicia gets to her feet, and I follow her up to the kitchen.
Dad and Leo are pawing through a mound of paper on the breakfast table, the contents of three or four fat folders from the cabinet above the wall oven. That’s where Dad sticks the information sheets and the instruction booklets and the warranty information whenever we buy something. So there are instruction manuals in there for everything from the garbage disposal to the new ink-jet printer to the bike I got for Christmas when I was seven.
And Leo grabs something and holds it up. “This is it!”
It’s the information that came with my electric blanket when it was new.
Leo’s excited now, flipping through the stapled pages. “…And we’re in luck! Here’s the schematic diagram!”
Alicia makes a face. “What’s that?”
Dad’s looking over Leo’s shoulder, and he says, “The schematic diagram shows the electrical details—it’s like a map of how the electricity flows, and it shows impedance and resistance, the voltage at different points, any motors or capacitors, transformers or resistors, things like that.” One of Dad’s degrees is in electrical engineering.
Alicia nods, and I can tell from her face that she’s into the spirit of the hunt, tilting her head to listen as Dad starts rooting through the kitchen junk drawer.
With a little “Aha!” he grabs a small screwdriver set and says, “I think we have everything now.”
Then Mom and Mrs. Van Dorn come down the back stairs with the blanket, and we all follow Dad back to the front parlor, me still lugging the oscilloscope.
Alicia’s father studies the diagram while Dad unscrews the metal bottom of the blanket controller. He looks up and says, “Em, would you plug in the scope?” So I help Mom get the cover off the oscilloscope and find the power cord.
Mrs. Van Dorn says, “What are you looking for, Leo?”
Her husband glances up from the diagram. “Flaws. We want to see if this controller unit is working right. Because if it’s not, it could be generating an unusual field.”
“A field?”
He looks back at the diagram, nodding. “Electric blankets always create an electron field of some sort, because you can’t run power through ten or twelve yards of wire without causing an electromagnetic disturbance. The question is, what kind of disturbance, and what magnitude?”
Mrs. Van Dorn nods, and I can’t tell from her face if she followed all that or not.
Dad’s got the screws out and lifts the metal bottom off the blanket controller. Then he picks up two probes hooked onto wires coming from the front of the oscilloscope, a red one and a black one. He fiddles with a dial and flips some switches, pokes the pointers down into the guts of the controller, looks at the scope, looks at the diagram, frowns, and then touches something else. Except for the hum of the green cathode tube, it’s quiet.
Alicia says, “What’s going on?”
I whisper, “My dad’s poking around with these wires that are hooked to the machine I found in the basement. He’s testing the electrical parts of my electric blanket control.” I see Alicia’s fingers tremble, sensing the tension in the room. Dad yelps and we both jump.
“Ha!” Dad is pointing at the screen. “See that?”
Leo squints. “What?”
“This resistor is way outside its parameters. It’s letting about six times too much power through!”
Mom says, “What’s it mean?”
“Not sure yet. Bobby, have you noticed this blanket being hotter than normal?”
“Nope. Works same as always.”
“Hmm.” Dad makes a note on the sheet, then starts poking around again.
“Dad?” I’m speaking softly.
“Umm…yes?” Dad’s looking at the diagram every few seconds.
“So…you’re checking every part? Like, to see what’s not working?”
Dad doesn’t answer until he makes another note. “…Yes, looking for anything unusual.”
I turn to Dr. Van Dorn. “And when you saw the blanket on my list, was it, like, the idea of force fields just jumped out at you?”
Alicia’s dad nods, his lips pressed tightly together. His eyes don’t leave the diagram, and he taps the sheet and says, “Get a reading on this rheostat, David. If the dial’s out of alignment, that could double or triple the current getting past.”
Dad shakes his head. “I want to check the throughput reactance first.”
I say, “Reactance? Is that like resistance?”
Dad shakes his head. “Different principle.”
Then I get an idea. “Hey, Dr. Van Dorn—should we check out the other stuff on my nightstand? There’s an old phone, and a digital alarm clock too. I mean, they sit right there on the table, right next to the blanket controller. Do you think maybe they’re throwing off electrical fields too? Like maybe they’re affecting the blanket controller? I could run upstairs and get them—Dad, do you think we should test them too?”
Neither of them answer me.
I look at Dad. He squints and touches the probes to a different pair of contacts inside the controller. He glances at the diagram and says, “Leo? Take a look at the value for that third resistor—is that a two or a five?”
Alicia’s dad bends closer to the schematic. “Five. Definitely.” So Dad nods and moves the probes again.
He’s forgotten I’m in the room. Dad’s off in science land with his pal the professor.
I feel my face getting hot, feel my jaw muscles tighten. I clench my teeth, biting back the anger. Because inside my head, I’m yelling at them, at both of them. Hey! Excuse me…WHO had the idea that the answer wasn’t off in theoryville, that the place to begin was at the scene of the crime? What’s that? That was MY idea? Well, what do you know! And guess what? If you’d talk and LISTEN, maybe I have other ideas too. Or does that sound like science fiction to such big geniuses?
A minute goes by, and I’ve got myself back under control. I’m not shouting in my head now, but I’m thinking, Who needs this? I’m supposed to just stand around and be part of their audience? I don’t think so.
I glance at Alicia. She’s not having such a great time either.
So I say, “Hey, Alicia, wanna get some more ice cream? They’ll let us know if anything exciting happens, right, Dad?” I see Alicia’s smile flicker when I say that. Alicia understands sarcasm, even the subtle kind.
Dad doesn’t know I’ve made a little joke. He nods distractedly and says, “Sure…you bet.”
So we leave the science guys in the parlor with no one but their adoring wives to cheer them on.
I yank open the freezer. “Mint chocolate chip or black raspberry?”
Alicia wrinkles her nose. “How about you count to ten and then ask me again—without snarling.”
I laugh, but only a little. “Okay. How’s this: Miss, would you prefer mint chocolate chip or black raspberry?”
Alicia pretends to flirt with me. She bats her eyelashes, tilts her head, and says, “Which do you prefer?”
“Definitely the raspberry.”
She smiles and says, “Then I’ll have mint chocolate chip so you can have an extra-big dish of your favorite.”
By the time we get to the couch in the family room, I’m cured. I can get back to being mad some other time. Right now, I’m just glad to be with Alicia.
I hit the remote and start flipping through the channels. When I get to AMC, Alicia says, “Stop there! I love this movie!”
It’s The King and I, the original one with the bald guy and all the singing and dancing.
I watch and Alicia listens, and then I ask, “What’s it like, just hearing it?”
“Better than you’d think. But that’s because I used to love this movie when I was little. I watched it about twenty times. I’m in replay mode.”
“So, do you see it in color?”
“Yup. And I can see the lady’s dresses, and the little things the kids wear up on the top of their heads, the whole thing. I mean, I see what I can remember, and I probably add stuff of my own. And when they almost kiss, that part gets me—I always wished the king would just grab her and give her a big kiss.”
“How about other movies, ones you haven’t seen?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not so bad if I have an idea what the story’s about. It’s like a radio play with music that’s too loud. When I can listen to a movie I’ve seen, that’s the best. Like Titanic. I can see the whole thing. But for new stories, now I like books better. Then I get to make up the movie in my head. And it’s weird, about people I saw in movies a couple of years ago? Like, I’m never going to see Brad Pitt get old. He’s stuck in my mind from about three years ago. He could keep acting till he’s eighty, but when I listen to a Brad Pitt movie, I’m always going to see him as the little brother from A River Runs Through It. Don’t you think that’s neat?”
She puts a last spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Alicia’s quiet a minute, and I watch her face. It’s the part of the movie where the kids are putting on the play of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And I’m wondering what she really sees. There’s this peaceful smile on her lips, and I think that maybe it’s like she’s in the movie herself, now sitting at the dinner table, now running around on the stage with the kids. I don’t think I could ever get tired of watching her face.
She shifts expression and tilts her face toward me. “You’re staring at me, aren’t you?”
I feel myself blush. “No.”
“Liar. It’s okay. I don’t mind having you stare.”
I gulp. I don’t know what to say, but I don’t want to sound flustered, so I say, “Another question: What do you see when you think of me? What do I look like in your mind?…Brad Pitt?”
Now she’s blushing too, a shy smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t know. I know you’re taller than I am. I know you have a nice smile—because I can hear a smile. It’s something you can’t fake. But I don’t know. I mean, like, I don’t know if your nose is big or not, I don’t know if you’ve got brown hair or blond hair, stuff like that.” She pauses. “And I guess it doesn’t matter. I really haven’t been thinking about how you might look. It’s more like…a feeling I have about you. I know you’re honest, and smart. And kind, at least most of the time.”
“Don’t forget loyal and trustworthy—you’ve got me sounding like the perfect Boy Scout.” I’m choosing words carefully. “But…don’t you wonder what would’ve happened if you hadn’t been blind, and I was my regular self, and we just met somewhere—like that day at the library, except we were both just high school kids?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. You said you were pretty popular before. The popular kids at my school don’t even know I’m alive.”
“How come?”
“Because I’m just average, and they’re all good looking or rich, or both, or super athletes or something.”
“Do you really think you’re average? I’d never think that, not after getting to know you.”
“But that’s what I mean. At school you’d have never gotten to know me. I’m one of those kids you wouldn’t have looked at twice. I’d just be this idiot who bashes into you at the door of the library one day, and all your popular friends would point and say, ‘Hey—way to go, dorkness!’”
The movie is loud, a full orchestra playing while Anna and the king of Siam twirl around and around a wide, shiny floor. But Alicia is facing me, a foot away, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. And I don’t know if I should be talking to her this way.
“But you’re judging them at the same time you accuse them of judging you. It’s like you’ve got a prejudice against the popular kids, and you assume they have a bad attitude toward you.”
“I’m not assuming anything. I’m talking about experience. You can tell if someone thinks you’re nothing. Like, just a few weeks ago, I’m walking toward this beautiful girl named Jessica in the hall, and I smile and look at her, and her face doesn’t change, her eyes don’t connect with me, nothing. It’s like she looks right through me, like I’m not even there.”
Alicia’s eyebrows shoot up. “Hmm…she looked right through you, eh? Like you weren’t even there? Interesting way to describe your old life, don’t you think?”
In the movie, the young girl who’s run away from the palace has been captured, and now she’s on her knees before the king, waiting for her death sentence.
I see what Alicia’s saying, but I’m not going to get sucked into some stupid psychobabble session. So I just clam up, sit back, and look at the TV.
Alicia senses I’ve turned away, so she lets the conversation drop.
We’re still sitting there twenty minutes later when her mom comes in.
“Alicia? Time to go now.”
Alicia stands up and takes her mom’s elbow. “Did they get the blanket figured out?”
I tense up because that’s an important question right now. Mrs. Van Dorn pauses. It’s just a half second, but that pause tells me everything.
She says, “I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask your dad about that. Bobby, it was nice to visit. You have a lovely home…and I’m sure everything is going to work out all right for you.”
I’m standing too, facing Mrs. Van Dorn. I say, “Thanks,” but I don’t mean it. I don’t mean it because I don’t believe what she said—that “everything is going to work out all right.” That’s just something parents say. It’s something they say at bedtime so you won’t lie awake worrying all night like they do. They hope things will work out okay, and they might even believe things will be all right in the end, but are they sure, really sure? And when I look at Dad’s face and see the strained way he shakes hands and says good night to Alicia’s dad, I know I’m right. No one knows anything. It’s all guesswork.
When they’re gone, Mom starts bustling around, cleaning up and taking glasses into the kitchen, all bright and cheery. “Wasn’t this a lovely evening? They are such nice people. I can’t get over how Julia was at Northwestern—you know, we only missed each other by two years. And she took some of my favorite courses, same professors, same lecture halls—David, I should have you calculate the chances of meeting someone like that. Do you know she even took that course on Rilke that I loved so much, the one about the Duino Elegies? I bet the chances of finding someone like that are a million to one, maybe more, don’t you think?”
Dad’s not talking. He’s nodding, and he’s trying to smile, and he’s pitching in with the cleanup, but he’s still working. Working on the Bobby puzzle.
I’m at his elbow at the sink, handing him plates to scrape and rinse. And I say, “So, tell me all about the blanket, Dad.”
Dad keeps busy with the dish brush. “Nothing to tell. Leo’s got a few other ideas, but basically, we ran out of science. Sort of hit a theoretical dead end.” He pauses and looks my way. “But, you know, you did a good job—the way you approached that data collection. Good clear thinking, Bobby.”
“Thanks. So, did you get any other ideas? Any breakthroughs?”
He focuses on the dish brush, swishing the suds around, trying to get a streak of pizza cheese off a plate without getting his cast wet. I can tell that holding the plate puts a strain on his broken wrist. “Wish I had good news, Bobby, but I don’t, not tonight.”
And that’s all he says. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat it for me. He doesn’t say, “But, you know, son, I’m sure everything’s gonna be just fine in the end.”
And later when I’m thinking about what Dad said and the way he said it, I tell myself that I appreciate his honesty. And I tell myself that Dad knows I’m not a little kid anymore, that he knows I’m mature enough to face facts. And I tell myself that in real life, things get messed up, and sometimes they stay that way. And I tell myself I’m proud of myself for being so mentally strong, so tough-minded.
But what I focus on as I head down toward sleep is what Mom says when she tucks me in. Because she says what I want to believe.
“Now, don’t worry, Bobby. You get a good night’s rest. I just know that everything’s going to be fine.”