Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [9]
“Do you think money grows on trees?” he yelled. “I work hard to make a good living. For you. For the kids. To keep us in this house. To keep Andi and Truman at that school—”
“That’s bullshit. We have plenty of money. I know it, the bank knows it, St. Anselm’s knows it, and so do you.”
“Look, can we stop? It’s late. I’m tired. I worked all day.”
“And all night, too! That’s the problem!”
“Damn it, Marianne, what do you want from me?”
“No. What do you want, Lewis? I thought it was me. The kids. But I was wrong. So tell me. Say it. Come right out with it for once. What do you want?”
I’d given up on Lost in Space by this time. I was standing in the doorway, too. It was quiet for a few seconds and then I heard his reply. His voice was quiet. He wasn’t shouting anymore. He didn’t need to.
“I want the key,” he said. “The key to the universe. To life. To the future and the past. To love and hate. Truth. God. It’s there. Inside of us. In the genome. The answer to every question. If I can just find it. That’s what I want,” he finished, softly. “I want the key.”
I closed my bedroom door after that. Truman and I didn’t say a word to each other; we just sat on my bed and watched Dr. Smith camp it up in his velour space suit. What else could we do? How could we compete with the future and the past and God and truth? Mom with her paintings of birds’ eggs and coffee cups, me and Truman with our stupid, crappy kid stuff. It was laughable. My father didn’t give a rat’s about the bands I liked or Truman’s latest cartoon crush. Why would he? He had better options. I mean, who would you hang with if you could—Johnny Ramone, Magneto, or God?
The next morning Mom was up early. I don’t think she’d slept at all. Her eyes were red and the kitchen smelled of cigarettes when me and Truman came down for breakfast.
“Let’s go to the Flea. You want to?” she said.
She loves the Brooklyn Flea Market. She finds inspiration there. In all the sad and broken things. The frayed lace, the battered paintings and damaged toys. They all have past lives and she loves to imagine what they might be, then tell us their stories.
We jumped in the car and headed to Fort Greene. That day she found a gnarly three-legged planter she said was Elizabeth Tudor’s chamber pot, a magnifying glass Sherlock Holmes had used at Baskerville Hall, and a silver dragon ring Mata Hari had worn as she faced the firing squad. I found a vintage Clash T-shirt. And Truman, he’d dug in every box of junk—pawing through rusty locks, broken fountain pens, corkscrews, and bottle openers—until he’d found what he was looking for: a key, black with tarnish, about two inches long.
I was with him when he found it. He got it for a dollar. The dealer said she’d found it on the Bowery in some boxes of junk dumped on the sidewalk outside the Paradise, an old theater.
“Owner let the place go and the roof fell in,” she said. “Now the city’s going to tear the whole thing down to make way for a gym. Goddamned mayor. That theater was built in 1808. Who uses all these gyms anyway? Whole goddamned world’s fat as hell.”
“Do we have silver polish?” Truman asked as we walked back to our car.
“Under the sink,” Mom said. “Look, Tru, that’s a fleur-de-lis on the top. A sign of royalty. I bet it belonged to Louis XIV.”
She started to tell us a story about the key, but Truman made her stop. “It’s not a pretend thing, Mom. It’s real,” he said. When we got home, he polished it until it gleamed.
“It’s beautiful!” Mom said when it was all shiny. “Look, there’s an L engraved on it. I was right! It’s for Louis, don’t you think?”
Truman didn’t answer. He put it in his pocket and we didn’t see it again until two days later. It was a Tuesday night. We were all in the parlor—me and Truman doing our homework, Mom painting. And suddenly we heard the front door open. It was Dad. We looked up at each other, surprised.
He walked in carrying a bouquet of flowers. Awkwardly.