TEST WAS SITTING on the living-room floor with Elizabeth and George, unpacking the Lite-Brite from its musty, mildewed box. She divided the Lite-Brite pegs between the kids. Immediately, fastidious George began sorting pegs, one by one, by color, into Dixie cups he’d gotten from the kitchen for just this task.
Elizabeth, red bangs curling in front of her eyes, hurriedly heaped her pegs in one pile, her legs bent backward under her in a way that hurt Test’s knees and hips just to look at.
The Lite-Brite was Test’s, from her childhood. Many pegs had been lost along the way, sucked up by a vacuum, chewed by dogs, wedged under cushions. Most of the black construction paper patterns had been used up moons ago.
Still addled after what had happened the night before, Test wanted nothing more than to spend the morning with her children. Be Mom. She was pulled in so many directions—mom, cop, wife, runner, but mostly cop. With Claude off to get extra house keys made before he headed to St. J to finish setting up his exhibit, Test luxuriated in the calmness of this morning as Mom. Feeling so tranquil, she hardly had to work at all to quell her thoughts of the case simmering on the back burner of her mind.
“I wanna make a clown,” Elizabeth said.
George pushed the construction paper pattern for a clown at her face.
“I wanna make a clown by my own self,” Elizabeth stressed.
“You need the pattern,” George said and dropped a purple peg into a Dixie cup.
By the time he gets his pegs all sorted it will be noon, Test thought and smiled.
As Elizabeth worked on her freestyle clown, Test wondered idly if Lite-Brite was made anymore. She did not recall seeing it in stores. She thought she recalled some fiasco of Lite-Brite causing house fires and getting banned. Maybe she was thinking of the Easy-Bake oven.
She put a hand on Elizabeth’s head, stroked her daughter’s hair, pleased to have her thoughts occupied with nothing more than the nostalgia of old toys.
She’d hauled the Lite-Brite down from the attic, where she stored a cache of toys from her childhood. Spirograph and paper dolls. Shrinky Dinks kits. Operation. All of the games and toys were tactile, required fine motor skills and imagination. Whenever she took a toy down from the attic, the kids glommed onto it, their emotions foamed over into a near hysteria, ecstatic to see a toy none of their friends had, as if the toy were from some alternate universe instead of the seventies and eighties. They’d fall into the silent attentive worship of the toy, and forget all about streaming videos and iPads. For an hour, anyway. Soon enough—too soon—their interest would slacken and they’d tease for a keypad and a screen. As much as Test and Claude had done to raise their children in a rural area and get them outside for hikes and explorations, mushroom foraging, sledding in the winter and swimming in the river in the summer, the kids still pleaded for their screen time. What was it that created such a lunatic addiction to watching? What primal need did voyeurism feed?
Test could not claim immunity. Nor could Claude. In bed at night, after they spoke about the day, made love, or fiddled with remnants of work, they flipped on the flat screen affixed to the wall opposite their bed and stared at it for a couple hours. Often they dialed for dollars. Most of what Test watched she could not remember two days later. She wondered people had done with their evening time before all this technology. She could not remember herself. Read, she supposed. Yes. She had read a lot more books before streaming video and their 42-inch HD flat screen had come along. Made love more too, perhaps.
She and Claude had made a “date” for later, after the kids were in bed. Claude would be back from St. J. in time for the four of then to make ice-cream sundaes and watch Ratatouille. Then, it was adult date time. Test and Claude wanted three children. An only child had seemed a lonely existence to Claude and Test. Two children felt like a census bureau statistic. Three seemed just right: The Goldilocks trifecta.
“Can you help me sort, Mama?” George asked, looking up at her with her husband’s deep brown eyes.
“Of course,” Test said and readjusted how she was sitting to rid her hip of a dull pain.
She helped George sort the pegs as Elizabeth, tongue sticking out for utmost concentration, continued crafting with purple and white pegs an image that looked more like a balloon than a clown.
Test’s cell phone rang on the arm of the couch near her head.
“Daddy said ignore it,” Elizabeth said and twirled her hair in her fingers. She still pronounced her S sounds with a shh, from giving up her binky late.
“It might be your daddy,” Test said. Claude had told her if she was taking the morning off, to take it off. For real. But she couldn’t just ignore her phone if it was about the case, even if she were not expected or required by North or anyone else to participate in it.
“No,” George said and picked a purple peg from a Dixie cup and dropped it into another cup. Apparently there were two shades of purple. “Daddy’s ringtone is ‘Back in Black.’ ”
Smart kids. Too smart. Test disliked Claude’s ringtone. She was perplexed how her artistic, romantic husband liked AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, and System of a Down. Pearl Jam, she understood. While Eddie’s lyrics were nearly as inscrutable as R.E.M.’s, Test adored his voice, and his looks, even if his hair was thinning and his face’s once refined structure had grown puffy. Test was at least in good company in being unable to escape time’s wrath.
She glimpsed her cell phone as it rang. UNKNOWN CALLER. A telemarketer. How did they get cell-phone numbers?
“ ‘Lizzy, it’s my turn!” Georgie shouted.
Test’s phone stopped ringing.
“I don’t wanna wreck mine!” Elizabeth shouted.
Test put a consoling hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “Let’s select a new pattern for your next turn,” she said as Georgie plucked pegs from the Lite-Brite.
“No!” Elizabeth wailed and slapped at George.
“Here,” Test said, and got to her feet with a groan, her hip making a popping sound. She took her phone from the couch. “We’ll take a picture. How’d that be?”
Elizabeth pondered.
“When your brother makes his design, you can destroy it before your next one,” Test said.
Elizabeth smiled.
Test’s cell phone rang in her hand.
“Don’t answer,” George said.
UNKNOWN CALLER. Test was tempted. Bur resisted.
She took a photo of the Lite-Brite clown and sat again, placing the iPhone in her lap.
“After, can we watch a video?” George said.
“Not today,” Test said.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“Why?” Elizabeth said, joining in, keyed on the idea instantly.
“Because,” Test said. The image of her drawing her 9mm and pointing it at her own child invaded her mind, made her shudder. “I want us to spend time together.”
“We can spend time together watching videos,” George protested.
“That’s not the same thing.” Test smoothed her hand over the rug beside her tucked legs. It was polluted with dog hair. Test couldn’t bring herself to vacuum it up. Once it was gone, it was gone.
Her thoughts returned to the eddying backwaters of her mind, mulling Jed King’s role in all this.
Her cell phone rang.
Three calls in ten minutes.
unknown caller.
Elizabeth’s eyes were on her. So were George’s. Test grabbed the phone and started to push herself up off the floor.
“Mom,” Elizabeth pleaded.
“I need to see who’s calling,” Test said. Her left foot was asleep and she had to shake the life back into as she limped onto the couch.
“I’m gonna watch a video then,” George snipped.
“No,” Test put a finger up in the air. “Give Mom one minute.”
Whoever had been calling didn’t wish to leave a message.
“You said you wanted to spend time together,” Elizabeth protested.
Test’s phone stopped ringing. Damn it. She sat there, thinking.
“Play,” Elizabeth whined.
“I am,” Test insisted, though her attention was drifting from her kids, as much as she wished it wasn’t. The case was like being swept into a strong river. The only way to avoid being taken away by it was to stand far from its banks. She could have turned her phone off earlier. But she hadn’t. She’d stood beside the riverbank. Now, holding the phone in her hand awaiting the next call, she’d slipped into the current and could not get out of it.