Things Not Seen Read online

  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 y
ou 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.”

  chapter 19

  GENERAL BOBBY

  I don’t have a good night’s rest. I miss my electric blanket. The down quilt Mom put on my bed is too light, and it keeps slipping off during the night. And off and on, all night long, I keep thinking about my electric blanket. It’s definitely faulty. It definitely puts out an energy field. And I definitely spent the last seven hours of my life as a normal person tucked underneath it.

  After I finally do get some sleep, I wake up Tuesday morning with a new idea—make that a huge idea, an amazing idea. Because if my condition did have anything to do with a bad electric blanket, there must be a lot of other people who bought that same electric blanket. Probably thousands. And if you get a bad blanket, you send it back. You complain to the manufacturer. There could have been a product recall. There would be records. And if there are records, then there are names. Names of people. And it’s just possible that any one of those people could be…like me.

  Dad’s already gone by the time I get up. Mom says he stayed up late, running different tests, writing down results. Then he left for the lab early. “And he said not to disturb anything in the parlor.” So Dad hasn’t really given up on the blanket either. Still, even if he was home now, I’m not sure I’d talk to him about my idea.

  Mom leaves to get ready for her ten o’clock Introduction to Literature class, and I grab a pen and paper and go to the parlor the minute she’s gone. I thought maybe Dad had taken the information sheets about the blanket to work with him, but they’re on the piano bench. The fronts and backs of all four sheets are covered with Dad’s tiny, precise handwriting. But I’m not interested in any of that. I don’t need to formulate a workable theory. All I need is the model number and the manufacturer. It takes less than ten seconds to jot down.

  My blanket is a twin-size, single-control, Dyna-Rest Supreme electric blanket, model DRS-T-1349-7A. The faded sticker on the metal bottom of the controller unit has the same numbers. And the blanket is unconditionally guaranteed for a period of three years by Sears, Roebuck and Company, Chicago, Illinois.

  On my way into the den, I do the math. The blanket isn’t under warranty. Mom got me this blanket the first day we moved here from Houston, which was in March of my fifth-grade year. I remember the day exactly—cold and windy, no azaleas in bloom, no heated swimming pool in the backyard.

  Sears. You can’t live in Chicago without knowing where Sears is. Sears Tower is the tallest thing in the city, and for a long time it was the tallest building in the world.

  And you think if you know where the Sears Tower is, you know where Sears is. Wrong. That’s an illusion. Because I do a little Internet search and learn that Sears moved their company offices out to the suburbs years ago, about thirty-five miles west—so far away, they can’t even see their huge tower. I pick up the phone and start to dial the main number, and then I remember. I hang up, go to my room, get Mom’s cell phone, carry it to the den, and dial again.

  “Thank you for calling Sears. This calling menu has changed, so please listen carefully. If you know the five digit extension of th
e party you are trying to reach…”

  And the recording goes on for about three minutes. I work my way through the menus and get to the consumer merchandise customer service line. Then I have to slog through nine choices until finally I’m asked to hold for the next available customer service representative.

  After fourteen minutes and a lot of bad music, a voice says, “Hello, this is Renee. May I help you?”

  I try to sound as grown-up as possible, because nobody at any company ever wants to talk to a kid about anything. “Yes, Renee, I’m calling about a possible problem with my electric blanket.”

  “Yes, sir. But first, may I have your name and telephone number?”

  So I give her Dad’s name and the home number, and then she wants our Sears charge account number. “I don’t have the card with me at the moment, because all I really want is some information.”

  “Yes, sir? I will be happy to give you information about your Sears product. May I have the name and the model number, please?”

  I give her the information, and while she’s tapping away on a keyboard, I say, “I need to know if there’s been a problem with this blanket.”

  “Are you experiencing a difficulty in using or maintaining your Sears product, sir?”

  This is tricky. “Well, I’m not sure. It might be acting a little strange.”

  “Do you use a heart pacemaker, sir?”

  “A what?”

  “A heart pacemaker, sir.”

  “No. I…I just want to know if there have been any problems with this particular blanket.”

  “Sir, the notes I have for this product show that we are encouraging any customer who has this item to send it to our customer service center and receive a comparable product of equal or greater value in exchange. Any person using a heart pacemaker should be encouraged not to use this product. And Sears will pay the shipping and handling fees for the exchange. Would you like me to go ahead and schedule a UPS pickup, sir?”

  “Can you tell me how many of these blankets have been returned?”

  “I do not have that information, sir. We are encouraging any customer who has this item to send it to our customer service center and receive a comparable product of equal or greater value in exchange. And Sears will pay the shipping and handling fees. Would you like me to go ahead and schedule the UPS pickup, sir?”