The House of Tomorrow Read online

  “You deserve it as much as anyone else.”

  “Really?” he said. “What do I do with it? I complain all day and ruin it with cigarettes. And I’m not sure I’ve really ever been happy, even before all this.”

  “You used to sing like a girl.”

  He laughed. “You’re right. I did that.”

  “Maybe you just don’t remember how you felt before.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I think memory is strange,” I said. “I don’t really remember my parents. I was five. I should have better memories of them, but I don’t.”

  “What happened to them?” Jared asked.

  “They were commercial archaeologists, flying into Florida. They were on a small plane that went down in a mangrove swamp. Nana never gave me a real explanation about what went wrong with the plane. It just fell out of the sky.”

  “And you don’t remember the way they look?”

  “Not very clearly. Nana has photographs. We look at them every few years, but she discourages it generally. She doesn’t want us to dwell. She doesn’t want us to get stuck in the past. Her philosophy is a futurist one.”

  “That sounds shitty,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “Nana wants . . .”

  “It’s shitty, Sebastian,” he said, “just trust me on this. Those are pictures of your dead parents. You should be able to look at them whenever you want.”

  I thought about the photo album with the red cover. I wasn’t even sure where Nana kept it anymore. It mostly held pictures of my father. My mother was in there, but it had taken Nana a long time to warm to her. So she only came in near the end.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t fully understand it.”

  My eyes had grown accustomed to the light, and I could see Jared facing my cot.

  “But Nana has a plan for me,” I said. “I’m not supposed to question her.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “It sounds a bit grandiose,” I said.

  “For fuck’s sake, Sebastian, just tell me.”

  I held my breath a moment.

  “I’m going to save humanity,” I said.

  Jared didn’t laugh. He just raised his head up and yawned into the dark.

  “From what?” he said in a monotone.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I said. “But every human is put here for a purpose. That’s supposed to be mine.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Let me know how that turns out.”

  He slumped back down on his pillow, and I could hear him grinding his teeth.

  “Listen,” he said. “Let’s get something straight. You’re my friend, Sebastian. Not Meredith’s.”

  “I understand that.”

  “She isn’t friends with guys,” he said. “She uses them or they use her. Or both. I don’t know. And then she never talks to them again. She’s crazy, and I don’t want you talking to her.”

  “We were talking about you.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “You don’t have time to chitty-chat with loose women. We have work to do. And you have to save humanity. That’s a lot of shit to get done.”

  His voice was shaking slightly. I kept quiet.

  “I got the beep, Sebastian,” he said. He rested a palm against his chest. “I got to live and have a band. Matthew from Minnesota didn’t get shit. So it’s got to be a good band, okay? And nobody is going to mess it up or stop it before we get there.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I looked up at the ceiling. I counted the slivers of moonlight, but didn’t finish.

  “What are we going to be called?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Jared. His voice was muffled. When I looked over, he was facing the wall. “I’ve been trying like hell to come up with it. But it has to be something you can feel right away, you know? Something that tells people, ‘Watch out, ’cause these guys are coming and when they’re gone, you won’t ever be the same. Your life will be turned on its head!’ ”

  “Like the Sex Pistols,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “exactly.”

  The room grew quiet again. But I wasn’t tired. I sat up on the cot. It creaked.

  “What about the Dangerous Knives?” I said.

  “Is that a real suggestion?” asked Jared.

  “Sure.”

  “No cutlery,” he said.

  He was silent a few seconds, but I could almost hear the gears starting to turn in his head. “How about The Total A-holes?” he said.

  “Too much,” I said.

  “You’re right,” he said, “Janice probably wouldn’t buy me any more guitar stuff with a name like that.”

  “What about the Church Bandits?” I said.

  “We’re not cowboys.”

  He paused. “How about the Exploding Faces?”

  “How does a face explode?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Like from a missile. There are no wrong answers in brainstorming, asshole.”

  “Okay,” I said. “The Pervs?”

  “No,” said Jared. “What about the Pissy Cargo Pants?”

  “The Sins?”

  “The Projectile Vomits?”

  “The Slacks?”

  “No. The Stool Samples?”

  “The Crash?”

  “The Clap?”

  “What’s the Clap?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. My dad got it in the army.”

  “Oh. The Trash?”

  “No.”

  “The Gas?”

  “No.”

  “The Rash?”

  “No.”

  But then I heard his hand slap against the wall.

  “Wait, what did you say?” he asked.

  He turned around.

  “The Rash,” I said.

  “The Rash,” he said, slowly.

  “The Rash,” I repeated.

  “Wait a minute now,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Actually, that’s sort of badass.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s gross, but not too gross. You can almost feel it. The Rash. You can almost feel your skin start to itch. Like our sound is spreading like a rash or something.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You break out when you hear us. Your body won’t be able to handle it. Because we’re The Rash, fuckers!”

  We sat in silence for nearly a minute. Jared was whispering to himself, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “It’s settled,” he said eventually. “Yeah, it’s totally settled. We’re The Rash.”

  He chuckled.

  “Pretty good, Sebastian,” he said. “I mean I was the one who realized it was good. But you said it. You said it fair and fucking square. Pretty good.”

  I waited for him to tell me he was joking, that I hadn’t really come up with the right name. But he didn’t say another word. He just lay back and was quiet. I listened to his heavy breathing until he fell asleep. I could see him now in the dark. He was facing my side of the room, his mouth wide open. Then I felt my own eyes closing. And sometime, presumably while we were sleeping soundly, the earth started revolving again. It fell back into pace and found its way toward the sun once again.

  IN THE MORNING, I LEFT WITHOUT WAKING JARED. I crept through the house, holding my breath, the bass guitar strapped on again. I walked down the hard carpeted stairs, past Meredith’s closed door, and into the soft blue light of the kitchen. No one was up. The house was filled only with the ticking of a tall clock in the living room. I stopped at the closet for my coat and hat; then I slipped out the front door and into the piercing cold of the morning. I wiped a film of frost off my bike seat with the palm of a glove, and sent the pedals spinning to make sure they weren’t
frozen. I walked the Voyager toward the street.

  I don’t know why I happened to look back; I think it was because I wanted to make sure Janice hadn’t seen me. But when I turned my neck, my glance went immediately to Meredith’s window. She was standing in front of her bedside lamp, wearing only a tank top and a pair of bright blue underwear. She was right up against the window. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore no makeup. She didn’t smile or wave or make any acknowledgment that she saw me looking back. She just watched me for a couple seconds. Then she reached up a thin arm and yanked the shade down over the glass. And she was gone.

  The ride home was a haze. There was frost on the trees and the beige lawns of North Branch. The sky was a dark purple. But I didn’t look up much from the road and my basket. I wanted to make sure the cans of paint didn’t go crashing to the street. And as I embarked on the last leg of my journey, up the hill of Hillsboro Drive, I saw myself only as Nana would see me, pedaling in a vision, cutting through a winter fog after a night of betraying her trust entirely. I imagined myself gradually making my way out of a vision in her mind and riding back into her temporal reality.

  My heart seemed to be beating in every part of my body as I stowed my bicycle in the shed and shrouded the bass in its tarp. I closed the shed doors behind me and began jogging through the woods with a can of paint in each hand. I should have left Jared’s in the night. This was the only thought in my head as I launched into a full run toward the dome. I could see it clearly now, even the deep green pastures of Antarctica. Why did I fall asleep? I should have left in the night. Everything would be fine if I’d only . . .

  The paint cans swayed back and forth with each of my strides. The frigid air poured into my lungs and came right back out warm and white. And I would have continued right up the path and inside the dome if a flash had not caught my eye. Just as my gloved hand rested on the door handle, I saw a glint of something nearby. Sunlight was just starting to pour over our hill. A minute sooner and there would have been no light for a reflection. But there it was. I took a step into the yard and saw that it was a bottle of ice wine. It was half empty, and it sat in a burgundy puddle. I set the paint down on the stoop. I picked up the bottle and sloshed it around. The contents were still tepid.

  “Nana!” I yelled.

  I gripped the bottle tighter.

  “Nana, where are you?”

  Her name echoed off the wall of the dome. I looked around frantically and noticed slight indentations in the frosty grass. Footprints. They led away from the dome and to the small copse of pines at the beginning of our hill’s incline.

  “Nana!” I shouted one last time.

  No response. But I did hear a faint shuffle of clothing. I followed the sound as best I could toward the slope on the other side of the hill. The light was better now, but still too faint to see much. I continued and soon heard another rustle followed by a small groan. The noises were close, and when I looked to my right I saw a figure hunched against a tree. It was hard to make out Nana’s frame at first because she was wrapped in a blanket from head to toe. But her hazel eyes shone as I made my approach, and her bouffant bobbed in the wind. When I reached her, I set the bottle of ice wine at her feet.

  “Nana,” I said. “What are you doing? How long have you been out here?”

  She looked up at me, and her gaze seemed out of focus.

  “What does it matter?” she said.

  “It matters because you’re going to have hypothermia. You’re going to freeze to death,” I said.

  “I don’t care. We’ve been . . . disgraced.”

  “Who’s been disgraced? What do you mean?”

  “Don’t pretend with me, Sebastian,” she said. “I know you foresaw this. That’s why you ran away. You didn’t have the decency to face your Nana.”

  “I didn’t run away from anything,” I said.

  Nana’s face strained and then she coughed loudly.

  “I’ve tried with you!” she said. “But you still exhibit weakness at every turn. You take flight when things get taxing, just like Buckminster.”

  She leaned back against the tree and shut her eyes.

  “I’ve failed with you,” she said, “just like I failed with everything else.”

  From out of the depths of her blanket, a frail hand emerged. In the hand was a crumpled newspaper. She flung the pages at my feet. I gathered the paper up as best I could and flipped to the front page. There, on the cover of the Sunday North Branch Courier, was Nana’s face, frozen in the rictus of a forced smile. Her neck was bent at an odd angle. And there was a small bubble of spit on her lower lip. She looked like a maniac. And behind her, comically small in the distance, was our dome with spatters of green paint near the bottom. The headline read: “Local Woman Wants to Live in Earth of Her Making.” Underneath in small type, it said, “When this planet’s too normal for you, why not move to your own! Area eccentric Josephine Prendergast is doing just that.”

  I glanced back down at Nana, huddled under the tree. Her eyes were wet, but it may have been the cold. “This is not what you told the reporter,” I said.

  “Fiction,” she said. “A hack job. Every word. Libel. My life’s work reduced to a joke.”

  I began skimming the article and stopped when I got to the words “New Age.” This was one of Nana’s least favorite phrases.

  “This is the first I’ve seen of this,” I said. “It wasn’t the reason I was gone.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and burped again. “Where did you venture off to, then? Another brisk morning walk to get away from me?”

  “I was at a friend’s house,” I said.

  It took me a moment to realize that I had really just spoken the words.

  “You’re lying. You don’t have friends.”

  “I do,” I said. “They live in North Branch.”

  She was speechless for a time after that. And I thought for the first ten seconds or so that we were going to discuss the situation civilly. I should have known better. She rose to her feet and began walking back to the dome, her blanket dragging behind her like a soiled cloak. I followed her, the paper still clenched in my hand.

  “Where are you going?” I shouted. “We need to have a conference about this!”

  She kept trudging across the lawn. I didn’t notice at first that she had reclaimed the bottle of ice wine. But I saw it all too well when she stopped to take a long drink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then dropped the bottle on the sidewalk. It smashed to pieces.

  “Nana,” I said. “You’re inebriated.”

  She turned around just long enough to look me in the eyes and mouth one sentence: “And you’re a liar.”

  Then she was inside the dome, laboring up the stairs to my bedroom. I watched her from the outside as she quickly crested the Antarctic Circle. I entered the dome and stood at the foot of the stairs. I heard the sound of objects being moved and overturned, and I thanked the Greater Intellect that my bass guitar was in the shed.

  “Nana,” I said. “Listen. I should have spoken to you sooner. I should have told you. I was afraid to tell you. You have to know that. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t know if she heard me over the racket she was making. Either way, she didn’t answer. I walked up the stairs, but I was met halfway by Nana, stooped over like a hunchback with something heavy in her arms. The blanket was still draped over her, and it was hard at first to tell what she was holding. But it became clear soon enough. It was our computer monitor.

  “Please,” I said. “Nana.”

  Her old body buckled under the weight of the screen as she toddled down the steps, coming right at me. I reached out as she passed and grabbed onto one of the cords. She grunted and gave the monitor a tug, and the cord was wrenched from my grip.

  “Out of my way!” she barked.

  She hobbled down to the landing and kept going toward the fr
ont door. She knocked the door open and headed back to the crest of the hill. All I could do now was stay back and watch as she retraced her steps all the way to the top of the slope. It was here she released the monitor. I watched as it left her hands and rolled down the wooded declivity. It gathered moisture and frost as it tumbled, and whipped off drops into the air. The sound of upset brush was loud in the still morning air. And when the monitor finally crashed into a rocklike trunk of a walnut tree, the sound sent a covey of birds flying from the bare branches.

  Nana took a step backward and slipped. She fell hard to the ground and I immediately ran to her. I grabbed her shaking body and pulled it up, but she fought me at every turn, mumbling something I couldn’t hear. I leaned closer to her.

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  I barely saw her hand before the palm caught me square on my cheek.

  “Leave!” she said.

  I held my face where Nana had struck it. I could feel it warming.

  “You have done nothing but lie to me since I fell ill. You were waiting for this to happen,” she said. “You were waiting until I was weak. So you could . . . tear down everything we’ve been working toward.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “I promised your father after he died. I promised him I would help you, but what can I do? It’s clear to me that you called the paper to sabotage this project. You called them, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You . . . don’t have the right,” she said. “You don’t have the right to ruin this!”

  Nana was up and panting now. In between her sentences she closed her eyes, her jaw trembling. Her arms hung at her sides. They looked too heavy for her to lift.

  “Get out of here, Sebastian,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

  She was walking away from me before I could speak.

  “Nana,” I shouted, “please. Why won’t you listen to me? You have everything wrong.”

  I was watching her through tears now. Her Vellux blanket was covered in mud. She didn’t notice. She gathered it and slung it over her shoulder.