much of it belonged to Robby? There was an expectant silence.
“Hi,” Robby said. “How was it?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was now my father. Robby was now me. I saw my own features mirrored in his —my world was mirrored there: the brownish auburn hair, the high and frowning forehead, the thick lips pursed together always in thought and anticipation, the hazel eyes swirling with barely contained bewilderment. Why hadn’t I noticed him until he was lost to me? I lowered my head. It took a moment to process what he was referring to. I just shrugged and said, “It was . . . fine.” Another pause during which I realized I was still staring at the computer he was now blocking. Robby looked over his shoulder, a pointed gesture that was a reminder for me to end this interruption and leave.
I shrugged again. “Um, I just wanted to check if you guys had, y’know, brushed your teeth yet.” This inquiry was so lame, so unlike me, that I blushed at the inappropriateness of it.
Robby nodded, standing in front of the computer, and said, “Bret, I was watching something about the war tonight, and I need to know something.”
“Yeah?” I wanted him to be genuinely interested in whatever he “needed” to know, but I knew he wasn’t. There was something off about his curiosity, something vengeful. Yet I wanted to make contact so badly that I let myself believe he wasn’t distracting me from something he didn’t want me to know. “What is it, Rob?” I tried to sound concerned but my voice was flat.
“Will I be drafted?” he asked, cocking his head, as if he sincerely wanted an answer from me.
“Um, I really don’t think so, Robby,” I said, moving in slow motion to the bed Sarah was lying on. “I’m not even sure if the draft exists anymore.”
“But they’re talking about bringing it back,” he said. “And what if the war’s still going on when I turn eighteen?”
My mind fumbled around until it reached: “The war won’t last that long.”
“But what if it does?”
He was now the teacher, and I was the student being manipulated, so I had to sit down on the edge of the bed in order to concentrate more fully on how this scene was playing out. This was the first time since I moved in that Robby was engaging me in a conversation of any kind, and when I tried to find a reason my stomach dropped: What if Ashton Allen had gotten in touch with him? What if Ashton had warned him about Nadine finding the alleged e-mails? My eyes were darting around the room looking for clues. I saw the two boxes half-filled with clothes marked SALVATION ARMY and swallowed hard, fighting off the small and rising panic I was becoming used to. I realized that this had been a scene so rehearsed that I could predict the last lines. I looked back at Robby and couldn’t help feeling that behind the indifference was disgust, and beyond the disgust, rage.
He seemed to notice my suspicions when I found myself staring at the boxes, and he asked, more urgently, “But what if it does, Dad?”
My gaze jumped back at him. The “Dad” did not sound right. He was playing a game, and my instinct was to play along, since that was the only way I was going to find any answers. I wanted to crush the phony specifics and get at some larger truth—whatever it was. I didn’t want to accept anything from him under a false pretense; I wanted him to be genuine with me. But even if he was just going through the motions, he had still initiated a conversation and I wanted to keep it moving.
“Well, you don’t want to . . . die for your country,” I said slowly, thoughtfully.
At the word “die” Sarah stopped playing with the doll and looked over at me worriedly.
“Well, then what should I do?” he asked casually, unconcerned. “If I’m drafted into the army?”
A long pause while I formulated my answer. I tried to come up with simple, practical advice, but when I glanced back at the Salvation Army boxes I suddenly hardened and decided not to play the game anymore. I cleared my throat and, staring straight at him, I said, “I’d run away.”
At the moment I said this whatever false light was animating Robby went out in an instant, and before I could reframe my answer he had already shut down.
He knew I was daring him. He kept standing in front of the computer and I wanted to tell him he could step away, that the face of the missing boy was gone and he didn’t need to block what wasn’t there anymore. Helplessly, I looked at Sarah—who was whispering to the doll—and then back at Robby.
“Why is your sister in here?” I asked quietly.
Robby shrugged. He had already lapsed into his usual silence, and his eyes had become speculative and cold.
“I’m scared.” Sarah tightly hugged the Terby.
“Of what, honey?” I asked, about to move closer to her, even though the presence of the Terby kept me at a distance.
“Are there monsters in our house, Daddy?”
This was Robby’s cue to move away from the computer—the moonscape was now pulsing from the screen— and his confidence that I would become locked in a conversation with his sister relaxed him enough that he sat back down on the floor and recrossed his legs and resumed playing the video game.
“No, no . . .” I shivered as my mind flashed on the rush of images I had dreamt since Halloween. “Why do you ask that, honey?”
“I think there are monsters in the house.” She said this in a thick, drugged voice while hugging the doll.
I wasn’t aware I had said “Well, maybe sometimes, honey, but—” until her face crumpled and suddenly she burst into tears.
“Honey, no, no, no, but they’re not real, honey. They’re make-believe. They can’t hurt you.” I said this even as my eyes took in the black doll in her arms and all the things I knew it was capable of, and then I noticed that the doll didn’t have claws anymore. They had grown, and warped; they were talons now, and they were stained brown. I began formulating plans to get rid of the thing as soon as possible.
Sarah somehow knew that there were monsters in the house—because she now lived in the same house that I did—and she knew that there was nothing I could do about it. She understood that I couldn’t protect her. And at that point I realized the grim fact that as hard as you try, you can hide the truth from children for only an indefinite period, and even if you do tell them the truth, and lay out the facts for them honestly and completely, they will still resent you for it. Sarah’s spasm of crying ended as quickly as it began when the Terby suddenly gurgled and rotated its head toward me, almost as if it didn’t want this particular conversation to continue. I knew Sarah had somehow activated the doll but I had to clench my fist to keep from crying out and moving away, because it seemed so intently to be listening to us. Sarah smiled miserably and held the doll’s grotesque beak (the beak that nibbled flowers at midnight and gutted the squirrels that had been found strewn across the deck—but it was just a matrix of sensors and chips, right?) to her ear as if it had asked her to. She cradled the thing tenderly, with such uncommon gentleness that with any other toy it would have moved me, but at the sight of this thing my stomach dropped yet again. And then Sarah looked up and whispered hoarsely, “He says his real name is Martin.”
(
“Oh . . . yeah?” I whispered back, my throat constricted.
“He told me to name him that.” She kept whispering.
I could do nothing but stare at the thing. From outside, as if on cue, we could hear Victor barking, and then he stopped.
“Is Terby alive, Daddy?”
(
“Why?” I asked hesitantly. “Do you think he is?” My voice was quavering.
She held the doll up to her ear and listened carefully to it and then she looked back up at me.
“He says he knows who you are.”
This forced me to speak up quickly. “Terby’s not real, honey. It’s not a real pet. It’s not alive.” I was intensely aware that I was still glaring at the thing, shaking my head slowly back and forth as if consoling myself.
Sarah held the doll up to her ear once again as if it asked her to.
I restrained myself from grabbing it away from her (I could smell its rotten scent) as she sat up to listen more carefully to what the doll was telling her. And then she nodded and looked back up at me.
“Terby says not in a human way but”—and now she giggled—“in a Terby way.”
She clutched the thing, rocking back and forth, delighted.
