The Great Interactive Dream Machine (14 page)

But Aaron was already moving on to Wimp. “Talk to me, Wimp.”

Wimp blinked. His name tells it all. He's the third-shortest kid in class. He and Aaron were eye to eye. “Martha's Vineyard. It's an island off Cape Cod.”

“I know it's an island off Cape Cod,” Aaron said.

“Actually, my parents own most of it,” Wimp remarked. “I grabbed a commuter flight back.”

But now Aaron was bearing down on Dud. “Tell me about it, Dud.”

“Santorini. It's a Greek isle. My parents have a villa there. Fishface sent me over, and I flew back on the Concorde. Fishface is a genius.”

Aaron's mouth opened and closed.

He wandered back to my desk, half relieved, half disgusted. “Well, anyway, they're back. They weren't even missing. They were with their
parents,
for Pete's sake. And they made lateral moves.” He dropped his ThinkPad on my desk and propped it open. “Let me just make a note of that.”

“They took
vacations?”
I smacked my forehead. “What are they going to want next,
frequent-flyer miles?”

He waved a small hand. The classroom was in its usual uproar, but he lowered his voice. “Not vacations. They're rich kids. Their parents are never around. Their parents are always on yachts or something, keeping their distance. In a way, it's a little bit sad. They got what they most wanted—a little time with their families. They got their wishes.”

Three wishes.

“So it takes the Emotional Component of two
or more,”
Aaron said. “Let me make a note of that.”

“Aaron, they've all got big mouths. What if they tell on us?”

“What us? They're giving Fishface all the credit.” Aaron rolled his eyes. “Anyway, if you're talking about adults, who'd believe them?”

I closed his ThinkPad lid for him. “Aaron, let's call it quits right now. Let's not—”

“You kidding me?” He was already gearing back up. “Most of the great discoveries of science are accidental. I've got my original formula stored here in the ThinkPad and at home on my technopolis. We've got Fishface's version on the Black Hole terminals. Once I get the two synthesized, we're talking—”

But Mr. Thaw suddenly invaded the classroom. “MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS,” he roared, and everybody fell into the nearest seat.

Mr. Thaw scanned us from the front of the room. Nothing wrong with his eyesight.

“Ah, nice of you to drop in, Dupont, Astor, Ulrich.” His old voice dripped with sarcasm, but what was he going to do to them? Pug had already given his North Africa report, so he was half off the hook. Dud's grand-mother left Huckley School four million and change in her will. And Wimp is an Astor. These aren't deserters you shoot.

But Mr. Thaw was still scanning the room. Then he spotted us, though I was as far down in my seat as I could get. I was practically sitting on the back of my neck.

“Zimmer. Lewis. According to my battle plan, this is the day for your oral report. ‘Victory in Europe: The Crucial Final Months,' I believe? You may begin at once. Bring up your heavy artillery.”

“No.” Aaron's head hit his desk. “No, no, no, no.”

I panicked. How could we be thinking oral reports with all we'd had on our minds? School should come later in life, when you can concentrate better.

Aaron climbed out of his seat, looking older than Mr. Thaw. We didn't have a note between us, and Aaron couldn't take his ThinkPad with him. You can figure for yourself what Mr. Thaw thought about ThinkPads.

“You too, Lewis,” he said, nailing me. “Out of your foxhole and up here on the front line.”

Aaron trudged up the aisle. I followed, my head whirling. Maybe I could talk about that dream of mine when we were British schoolboys being evacuated.... Maybe I could ask Mr. Thaw to take off his shoe and sock and show us his missing toe from the Battle of the Bulge. He might be willing. Maybe I could ...

Then we were at the front of the room with every eye on us. Fishface smiled quietly. Behind us Mr. Thaw was propped against the blackboard, ready to pounce on our first factual error. You could feel him back there, hear him breathing.

“Picture it,” Aaron said in a wobbly voice. “The crucial final summer of the war dawning on a battle-weary Europe. Italy in—er—Allied hands at last. France—ah —crying out for liberation. While in England massive multinational forces gathered for the ... important invasion of Normandy.”

“Important, to say the least,” Mr. Thaw grumbled behind us.

Go, Aaron, I thought. Keep it rolling. Fill the whole class period. But he wasn't having one of his better days. He was reaching for every word. Boy, did I wish I could reorganize my cells out of there. If Emotional Component alone would do it, I'd be on Mars.

“... England, brought low by—let's see—five years of war, was the great staging area for the D-day invasion of ... like, June sixth ...”

“When suddenly a crazed and desperate Hitler, his unspeakable empire crumbling around his ears, launched the last and most demoralizing weapon of an inhumane war.”

Except Aaron didn't say those last words.

Somebody else did. It was a lady's voice from the door. She was standing on the threshold, and she was quite an unusual sight. An old lady in complete Women's Voluntary Services uniform, along with cotton stockings, ripply hat, and a gas mask container hanging from her shoulder.

Miss Mather.

For some reason she was carrying a monkey wrench and a tire iron.

She strode into the classroom on squeaky shoes. Everybody blinked. “What's this?” somebody said. “Virtual reality?” Behind us Mr. Thaw wasn't breathing.

“‘Doodlebugs' and ‘buzz bombs' the British public called these pilotless payloads raining sudden death upon the London landscape,” Miss Mather proclaimed, “an early example of the ramjet engine in unfortunate action. The Nazis launched them by day and by night from their infernal installation in the Pas de Calais, and now the embattled Britons must endure one final challenge on their long road to victory!”

Miss Mather had remembered when our oral report was due, even if we hadn't. Aaron's eyes were bulging at her like Nanky-Poo's. Relief was breaking over his brow. It was like she'd stepped right out of World War II to tell us all about it.

It looked like we'd planned her as our oral report all along.

“It was women, naturally enough, who won the war. Women on the assembly line.” Miss Mather waved her wrench. “Women behind the wheels of a thousand careening ambulances.” She waved her tire iron. “Women stitching up the fabric of a torn civilization!”

She had us all in the palm of her hand even before she hit Omaha Beach for us. We were all there with her as she liberated Paris. By now a few people at the back of the classroom were up on their desks, yelling, “On to Berlin!”

Finally she wound down in the exact last minute of class. By then her old voice was young.

She'd done our oral report. Then she turned our way.

But her old eyes skated past us. Her wrench and her tire iron hit the floor as she opened her arms to Mr. Thaw.

“Hello, Teddy,” she said to him.

Mr. Thaw often said, “Contrary to popular opinion, it is perfectly possible to flunk summer school.” But nobody did. I got a B. Aaron got a B plus.

After the day Miss Mather did our oral report, she said we didn't have to report for dog duty anymore. We were like out on parole, but we were always welcome to drop by for teatime.

Once school was over, it looked like we had summer pretty well wrapped up. I was basically hoping that nothing more would happen. Something did.

August is New York's stickiest month, and the smart money's out of town. But even on the hottest days Mom walked home from Barnes Ogleby in her business suit and Adidas. She's something of a power walker. One afternoon she came home pretty much wiped out, and we made a pitcher of iced tea with mint. She was sprawled on the living room sofa, sipping, when the front doorbell rang.

“I'll get it!” Heather yelled from her room. It couldn't be Muffie, who was in the Hamptons and had seemed to forget she knew Heather. It couldn't be Stink, who actually didn't know her. But Heather was still living in hope. I kind of wondered if it might be the C.I.A.

Mom and I waited. Then Heather showed up in the doorway, looking confused. Her eyes were big and blinky. She was forming silent words with her mouth:
It's ... her.
Heather pointed to the floor.
It's the old bat from down
—

“Thank you, my dear,” Miss Mather said, stepping into the doorway. Same old Miss Mather, except there was something different about it. Of course she wasn't wearing her W.V.S. uniform, not in this weather. But there was something else. She'd painted all her nails with red polish.

The iced-tea glass hung in Mom's hand.

“Ah, Josh,” Miss Mather said, peering into the living room. “How nice to see you. Nanky-Poo sends her regards.”

Mom nudged me, and I stood up. Miss Mather came forth. “Mrs. Lewis, I have been remiss about paying calls and not nearly as neighborly as I should have been.”

We'd lived here on top of her since I was preschool. Mom's eyes were huge. “... Tea?” she said.

Miss Mather smiled.

I went out to the kitchen for another glass. We didn't have vanilla wafers, but I found some Oreos. When I got back, Miss Mather was sitting on the sofa next to Mom where I'd been.

“I was myself a Pence girl, you know.” She leaned nearer Mom. “They show improvement later on.”

Heather was still in the doorway, amazed.

“Thank you, Josh.” Miss Mather took the glass in her little red-tipped claw. “You may sit over there.” She pointed me into a chair and turned back to Mom. “Such a well-mannered boy. He does you proud. I do enjoy the calls he pays on me with his little friend.”

Mom's head revolved slowly between Miss Mather and me. I hadn't ever happened to mention to her about dog duty.

“Josh?” she said faintly. “Calls?”

“Why yes.” Miss Mather slapped one of her sharp little knees. “Josh is quite like a great-nephew to me. Of course I have always thought of you all as ... extended family.”

“Us?” Mom murmured.

“And so I wonder if I might ask a great favor.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“As I expect Josh has told you, I have recently rekindled an acquaintance with an old beau.”

She meant Mr. Thaw.

“Beau?” Mom said. “Oh.”

“It is all thanks to Josh and to his little friend that Teddy Thaw and I have been reunited. Fate and our own foolish pride had kept us apart.” She laid a small paw on Mom's sleeve. “Though he little realized it, Josh played his part as Cupid.”

From the doorway Heather made a strangled sound.

Mom edged up on the sofa. She'd already had a long day, and her mind was trying to process this data.

“That would be Mr. Thaw, the History teacher at Huckley, and ... you, Miss Mather?”

“Call me Margaret,” Miss Mather told Mom. “All my friends do. At least they did when they were alive. Teddy and I agree that we have lost quite enough time. More than fifty years, in fact.” A faint color came over her face. She was blushing.

“Of course it will be just a small wedding at home. But as I have only a small number of blood relatives left, I wonder if you would all attend. And perhaps see to some of the arrangements. Just a few flowers, just a few friends.”

In the doorway Heather stared.

 

After Miss Mather left, Mom gazed into her empty iced-tea glass. She was lost in thought, almost cyberspaced. “Josh, will I ever need to know why you and Aaron have been paying calls on Miss Mather?”

“I don't think so, Mom,” I said. “With any luck, no.”

 

You may have read about the wedding in
The New York Times,
the “Lifestyles” section:

It was that last Saturday in August, the most humid day of the year. Miss Mather's living room was banked with flowers. Mom had rented an organ and hired a lady to play it. Quite a few people turned out, considering this was summer in the city. Several people from the apartment building came, including Mr. and Mrs. Zimmer. A small group of Huckley faculty members came, though Trip Renwick was still up at soccer camp. And some other people too. After all, as
The Times
said, the Mathers and the Thaws are among the oldest families in New York.

Dad came. My dad. He flew in from Chicago. He said he had to see this for himself. Hey, whatever it takes.

The aisle was just the middle of Miss Mather's living room. Heather went first, carrying a small basket of daisies. She'd given Mom a lot of grief about this.

“I'm supposed to start my career as a bridesmaid for an eighty-year-old bride? Mo-om.” But she got a new, really mature dress out of it. And she secretly thought that bridesmaiding was basically a pretty grown-up job. She was thirteen by now, and it had really gone to her head.

“But I'll need three-inch heels to complete the look,” Heather said. “I'm not negotiable about that.”

Next down the aisle were Aaron and me in Huckley dress code. I was burning up in mine. He was carrying a cushion with the rings. I had Nanky-Poo on a leash. She waddled along with a new bow in her topknot. We looked ridiculous, and Heather's still calling me Cupid.