The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [42]
Breathless, heart rate rocketing, he took a metal rod and “tickled” the raisin-black precipitate. Nothing. Was it a dud? Not yet dry? He tried again, with a little more force …
The result was an ear-splitting explosion and thick, reddish-purple clouds that expanded as if in slow motion, filling the room. Mrs. Burun, from upstairs in the kitchen, let out a scream before scrambling down the stairs. Panic-stricken, she pushed open the door and tried to see through the dense purple clouds. “Noel! Noel dear! Where are you? Are you all right?” She heard a faint noise on the other side of the room. Flapping at the air with both hands, she groped her way towards the sound. “Noel?” Her voice quivering, she strained to catch a glimpse of her son, fearing the worst. “Noel? Where are you? Please answer me, dear …”
“I’m over here, Mom. I’m cool, everything’s cool.”
Noel was sitting on the floor, his clothes and face blackened with smoke as in a Disney cartoon. He put his hand to his forehead and felt a warm patch of blood. When his mother finally reached him, he had a grin on his face. “I just need a styptic drug, Mom, a haemostatic agent. A bit of ammonium aluminium sulphate. Or maybe some tincture of iodine. Top shelf. I made them for situations just like this.”
His mother put her arms around him, squeezed him with all her might while faintly sobbing. She then examined his face and saw that his eyebrows had been blown off. “Whatever it is you did, don’t do it again! No more explosives. If you don’t promise, I’m going to make your father get rid of this lab forever. Toss everything into the trash bin. Do you understand? Noel, I’m talking to you!”
Noel promised, but he had his fingers crossed, and his toes crossed for good measure. And he wasn’t really sorry; his only regret about the explosion was that he couldn’t tell his father what had happened, about their success in making Nitrogen Iodide. For Henry Burun had left that morning on a two-week business trip: the first week in upstate New York, the second visiting his brother in Long Island. So Noel wrote his father a letter, care of Uncle Phil:
Dear Dad,
You’ll never guess what happened. We did it!! It worked, just like you said it would, Dad, we made the NH3NI3. I tickled the precipitate just like you said, with the brass rod, and a huge bang went off in my left right ear. It’s still ringing! There were humongous reddish-purple clouds and a funny smell like chalk dust and sulphur and iodine. All three blotters went off! There are holes all over the blotters! The time is now 7:30 and my ears have been ringing since 12:30! It’s driving me nuts! My face was all black too and I have no eyebrows! Mom was really mad but she cooled down a bit. I didn’t tell her about our surprise for her. I finished painting the lab walls white like you said and it looks pretty cool. I miss you, Dad.
Your son, Noel
Noel’s letter arrived but his father never read it. For around the time Noel was tickling the nitrogen iodide crystals, his father was in a water-filled quarry south of Lake Placid, in his Pontiac, slowly sinking to the bottom.
After another all-nighter, as the sun rose for the first time in 2002, Noel was sitting at his usual position atop the staircase, head bowed. He had been playing back these and other memories for almost an hour. He opened his eyes and stared down at the door leading to the basement. The wood had been wallpapered over and the doorknob removed. That door led to another door, which he had avoided opening for years. He stood up. It’s time, he said, to open it.
The lab was still there, its flasks and test tubes shadowed in dust, its walls shaggy with cobwebs. On the table were rubber gloves, a small pair handshaking a larger pair, and on a door hook were two yellowing lab coats, a child’s resting on the back of an adult’s. His father’s brown leather medical bag, an heirloom from his father, was sitting on the floor, locked.
Noel had ranted and raved whenever his mother tried