Mercury Boys Page 2

  Online, Saskia waded through old newspaper articles, encyclopedia entries, and chemistry texts. She read about his home city, Philadelphia, and what it had been like during his lifetime. But she still had questions about Cornelius’s life. She wanted to know why he’d given up photography. Was it because he’d made more money in lighting? Or had he grown tired of his studios? None of the sources said.

  She stared again at his face, trying to tease out an answer from his expression. But he was inscrutable. A little like Josh McClane.

  At six thirty, hunger pangs drove her out of her room and into the kitchen. She microwaved a Healthy Choice frozen meal—there were about fifty of them stacked in the freezer—and joined her father in the small adjoining living room. She usually tried to stay out of there. The carpet stank of cat pee. Saskia wouldn’t have been surprised if the previous owner had been a crazy cat lady.

  “I’m not sure I like this,” she said after the first bite.

  “Which one is it?”

  “Spicy Caribbean Chicken. Too much pineapple.”

  “Oh, I like that one. Leave it for me.”

  “Hey, Dad, can you get more of the Chicken Alfredo Florentine?” She’d been living on those for the past week, and they still tasted pretty good. Cereal boxes and Healthy Choice meals were the extent of their culinary choices now. Saskia’s mother had been the chef in the family.

  “Sure.”

  “Which episode is this?” Saskia pointed her fork at the TV.

  Lately her father had taken to watching Gilmore Girls, an old show about a young single mother and her only daughter who had moved to a small Connecticut town. The daughter was witty, pretty, and polished. Her mother was the sassy owner of a bed-and-breakfast. Cleverly they bantered their way through life against the background of bucolic New England scenery.

  For some unknown reason, her father couldn’t get enough of the show. He’d watched every episode at least once. Saskia was almost sure they’d moved to Coventon because of that. She suspected she and her father were stand-ins for the main characters, Rory and Lorelei, only less charming, attractive, and well adjusted. Instead of owning a big bed-and-breakfast, they owned a ranch that reeked of cat piss. Instead of a mother-and-daughter team, they were father and daughter—two peas in the same dysfunctional pod.

  “The one where Rory goes for a joyride on a yacht with her new boyfriend.”

  “I didn’t realize she was such a rebel,” observed Saskia.

  “I know. It’s completely out of character.”

  “What happens next?”

  “In some other episode, she has to do three hundred hours of community service,” her father replied.

  “Serves her right.”

  “I disagree. That punishment’s a little extreme. Other than this one crime, she’s a pretty good kid.”

  “Come on. What if I went for a joyride on a yacht?”

  Her father turned to her. “Depends. How big is the yacht?”

  His cell phone rang. He reached for it on the coffee table, amid a clutter of newspapers, empty coffee cups, and MCAT review books. Her father was a nurse, but he had hopes of someday going to medical school.

  “Hello, Emefa,” he said, hitting pause on the show.

  Saskia made a face.

  Her father and mother exchanged curt, awkward pleasantries. Then he cupped the mouthpiece and asked, “Are you home?”

  Saskia shook her head.

  “You should be home,” he whispered.

  “I don’t want to talk to her,” she whispered back.

  “She’s your mother.”

  “You don’t want to talk to her.”

  “That’s different; she’s not my wife anymore. She’ll always be your mother.”

  Saskia frowned. Her father frowned. He said Saskia was in the shower and would call her mother back. Then he hung up and exhaled.

  “What does she want?” Saskia demanded.

  “She wonders what you want for your birthday.”

  “She hasn’t asked me that since I was eight years old.”

  “Well, she’s asking now.”

  “She’s bribing me. Trying to buy my forgiveness.”

  “That’s an interesting interpretation, Sask. Maybe she just wants to be nice because she loves you. And because she misses you.”

  Her father pushed aside some of the mess on the coffee table to make room for his feet.

  All of their belongings, table included, were new and cheap. When he wasn’t studying, working, or watching Gilmore Girls, her father was assembling IKEA furniture. At all hours, Saskia could find him on the floor puzzling over assembly instructions. She’d suggested buying furniture at a consignment shop or Goodwill, but her father didn’t want anything “old or used.”

  Or attached to memories. To other people’s happiness and heartache.

  Saskia stared at the frozen screen, at Lorelei and Rory sitting in Luke’s Diner, smiling over their cheeseburgers. What her father wanted, really, was a fresh start. A clean slate. But he was an adult; he should know better. Even Saskia knew better, and she was a kid. There was no such thing as a real do-over. People carried their emotional baggage with them until the very end.

  “Dad, do you ever feel like we maybe made a mistake . . . moving here?”

  “No,” he said firmly, scratching his stubbly face. Lately, no matter what time it was, he always had a five-o’clock shadow. “It was the right decision. We’re just in a transitional period. And transitional periods are tough.”

  “You sound like a self-help guide.”

  “Where do you think I got the wording? Listen, in a few months, we’ll feel like we were made for Coventon.”

  “I hope so.”

  Saskia started to straighten up the coffee table, but stopped when she found an ashtray underneath a copy of the Sunday New York Times. She’d caught him smoking a couple times outside, too. Until they’d moved here, she’d never once seen him with a cigarette. She wondered if he’d smoked in the past, or if this was a new thing. A new bad habit to go with their new bad life.

  “Hey, Dad,” she announced, “I’m going out tonight.”

  “You are?” He looked a little apprehensive, but his voice was encouraging.

  “Yeah, out with a friend. Her name’s Lila. I met her in school.”

  “See, honey, I told you you’d make friends here.”

  “I said a friend. Singular.”

  “Well, that’s a start. A good start! What’s the mission—studying or girl talk?”

  Saskia ate another forkful of Spicy Caribbean Chicken, even though her stomach protested. “I don’t know. Both?”

  “Well, have fun. I mean it. Try to let go of some of your worry and just . . . live.”

  “Oh god, Dad, talk about self-help wording . . .”

  He waved his hand toward the TV. “It’s this,” he griped. “Too much estrogen.”

  “You’re the one who watches it!”

  “I know, I know. Hey, my shift starts in two hours—I won’t be home when you get back.”

  “Drink some coffee,” she told him.

  “Don’t worry, I’m living on it. These irregular shifts are killing me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fifteen minutes later, her teeth brushed to get the taste of pineapple out of her mouth, Saskia climbed into Lila’s car—a big old Buick that had seen better days. The front fender tilted to one side, and dings and dents bruised the body. The interior wasn’t much better, but a car was a car. At least Saskia was out of the house and going somewhere.

  “Ready to meet Robert Cornelius?” Lila asked.

  “He’s just Cornelius to me.”

  Lila looked at her quizzically.

  Saskia shrugged. “He looks more like a Cornelius than a Robert, don’t you think? I mean, he’s definitely not
a Bob.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Lila put her foot on the gas, and the car lurched forward. She told Saskia how she’d bought the Buick last year with money earned from her library gig. “It’s a clunker, yes, but at least I’ve got some freedom. It’s torture being around my brothers and sisters all day.”

  “How’d you get your job?”

  “My mom works at Western Connecticut State.”

  “She’s a professor?”

  “No, she works in the cafeteria. She’s been there ever since my dad walked out. Fifteen years now. She’s one of the serving ladies.”

  Saskia appreciated how Lila didn’t mince words. “Does she like it there?”

  Lila gave her a cryptic smile. “She has a lot of friends. She knows everyone—even the president of the college. She asked him about a part-time job for me while she was serving him mac and cheese.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. My pay grade’s good, too. I think the president has a soft spot for older Latinas—or for mac and cheese.”

  “Do you work a lot?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t mind. It’s quiet. Sometimes I do my homework there. Anyway, it’s mostly grunt work: answering emails, making calls, scanning. I’ve become an expert at retrieving and returning daguerreotypes. They’re fragile, so we have to be really careful.”

  “Will you keep your job over the summer?”

  “Hell, yeah. I hope to score more hours, too.”

  “I probably shouldn’t ask this, but are there any other jobs available?”

  Lila glanced at her and stuck out her bottom lip. “No, sorry. My department’s not hiring.”

  “I have no idea what I’m gonna do this summer,” Saskia said, as much to herself as to Lila. “I’m kind of dreading it—all that free time.”

  “I hate free time, too. Because it means babysitting all my brothers and sisters.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Five, all younger. They’re like a pack of wolves.”

  “I’m an only child.”

  “Lucky!”

  “Hey, what’s this?” Saskia asked after a few moments. She examined an insect charm dangling from the rearview mirror.

  “That? A dragonfly.”

  “It’s really pretty.” It was. Sleek and silver, with four paper-thin, filigree wings, the dragonfly was both elegant and lifelike.

  “Thanks. My grandmother gave it to me before she died. She was the best. She was, like, the one person who was always there for me. Always rooting for me.”

  “When did she pass?”

  “Last year. Springtime. Right when the crocuses came out—those were her favorite flowers. I think she waited to see them before dying.”

  Saskia fingered the charm. “Why a dragonfly?”

  “Well, there’s a story behind it.” Lila glanced at her sheepishly. “You wanna hear it?”

  “Sure.”

  Lila cleared her throat. She gripped the wheel a little tighter, her eyes on the road. “Okay, so, it’s kind of a fable. There was this pond, and at the very bottom lived a bunch of water bugs. Every once in a while one of them would get the urge to swim up. It would get to the top and climb onto a lily pad. Then it would transform into a beautiful dragonfly. The dragonfly would want to tell the others what had happened. But it couldn’t. Because it couldn’t go back into the water. All it could do was buzz above the surface. And when the other water bugs looked up, they didn’t recognize their old friend because it looked so different.” She hesitated for a moment, her brow furrowed, as if she were unsure of whether to continue.

  “That’s sad in a way,” Saskia said quietly.

  Lila shrugged. “In a way,” she echoed. “The meaning, I guess, is that you can’t communicate after certain lines are crossed—like the line between the living and the dead. But just because someone’s dead doesn’t mean they’re really gone. They’re just in a different place.” She sighed.

  “Sad but beautiful, too,” Saskia added, and meant it.

  “My grandmother gave me that charm so I wouldn’t forget her, but you know, she didn’t need to. I still think about her every day.”

  “Do you think it’s true? That when people die, they’re still . . . somewhere?”

  “Personally?” Lila shook her head. “I don’t know. My family’s Catholic. They believe in heaven, hell, angels playing harps—the whole shebang. Me? I’m a realist. Much as I loved my grandma, sometimes I think death’s the end. Finito.” She took one hand off the wheel and pretended to slash her throat with her finger. Then she flicked the turn signal. “So I guess we’re lucky, right? We made it here alive.”

  Western Connecticut State’s campus was a maze of stately buildings, statues, benches, and square patches of lawn bisected by brick paths. Walking beside Lila, Saskia felt a little starstruck by the college students scurrying past: the girls all seemed worldly and glamorous; the boys looked like handsome extras from the CW network.

  There had to be some magic that happened between high school and college, Saskia reasoned. It was almost like a fairy godmother waved a wand and made all the geeky, gawky high schoolers turn into Cinderellas and Prince Charmings when they finished senior year.

  By the time the two of them reached the library, Saskia felt downright intimidated. The place reminded her of the White House: huge white columns preceding a massive white edifice. She hunched her shoulders and hid behind her hair as they walked inside. Lila flashed her ID at a guard sitting behind a desk. He nodded, and Lila led Saskia through a vast, air-conditioned foyer. From behind, Saskia couldn’t help but notice Lila’s body language. Her posture was bold, her stride assertive. She obviously felt at home. This was her place, where she belonged. Saskia envied that feeling. She could barely remember it.

  There were wide stone corridors on three sides, and a circulation area a hundred yards in. The girls proceeded down a corridor and several narrow hallways and up one escalator before arriving at a door marked the howard and alice steerkemp daguerreotypes collection in glinting bronze letters.

  “Who the heck are Howard and Alice Steerkemp?” Saskia whispered.

  “Filthy rich alums,” Lila muttered, pressing her ID card against a sensor. The door unlocked with a metallic click.

  Inside, the girls were greeted by a man with thick black glasses and a perfectly bald head. He had a faint coffee stain down the middle of his “Campus Security” shirt, and his name tag read rich. “I had a bunch of good jokes and no one to tell them to,” he said to Lila. “What took you so long?”

  “Tell me one now,” she replied.

  He tapped his head. “Can’t remember any. You gotta be here when the lightning strikes, you know?”

  “Sorry, lost opportunity.”

  “You got that right.” He frowned at Saskia. “Who’ve you brought?”

  “My friend Saskia. She wants to see the daguerreotypes.”

  Saskia swallowed and forced a smile, tucking a coil of hair behind her ears. “Hello.”

  He gave her a curt nod and turned his attention back to Lila. “Now, you know Marlene’s back, right?”

  “What? She said she was coming back Monday.”

  “She must’ve changed her mind.”

  “Is she here now?” asked Lila.

  “Nah. She stepped out, probably fifteen minutes ago. Maybe gone for the night. Maybe not.”

  Lila shot Saskia a nervous look. “No one’s supposed to be here after hours except for my boss, Marlene, and Rich. But since Marlene’s usually gone, and Rich doesn’t mind, sometimes I come anyway.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t mind? I stick out my neck every time you come in here at night.” He turned to Saskia, his expression softening. “She comes all the time. ‘Why?’ I ask her. ‘You’re young—get out there. Grab life by the horns. Don’t end up like m
e, a relic of the past.’ You know I still have VHS tapes and a Blockbuster card?”

  Confused, Saskia shook her head.

  “You know I come because I like the company,” Lila said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He groaned. “Go on, then. Go on and do your thing. I’ll keep a lookout.”

  “Don’t let her know I’m here.”

  “Do I ever?”

  Lila scurried past him, tugging Saskia behind her.

  “He’s funny,” Saskia whispered.

  “He is that.”

  “What’s his story?”

  Lila shrugged. “He’s one of those people who missed the train to adulthood, I guess. He lives in his mother’s basement and pays her rent.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe he’s onto something, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lila let go and slowed down. “Like, not that I want to live in my mother’s basement, but I’m not sure I want to get married and have kids. You know, go the conventional route.”

  Saskia looked at her to make sure she was serious. She was.

  A moment later Lila paused in front of a large wooden door. “You ready?”

  The Howard and Alice Steerkemp Daguerreotypes Collection room was a stark, sterile-feeling place with identical filing cabinets on three sides. The cabinets were very tall, reaching well above Saskia’s and Lila’s heads, and the drawers were wide and flat. Lila pointed out a series of numbers and letters on each one: the department’s classification system.

  “This room is temperature controlled—always sixty-eight degrees,” Lila said matter-of-factly. “And low humidity. Daguerreotypes don’t like damp or extreme temperatures.”

  She pulled open a drawer and selected a white box. “All the photos are in acid-free containers,” she continued, “’cause acid causes decay.”

  Inside was a tattered leather case, roughly six by eight inches. It had been ornate once, with a series of gold flourishes and curlicues around the edges, but was now scuffed and tattered. Lila fingered it gently, then lifted the cover, revealing the image of a woman with a ponderous expression. Her hair was parted down the middle and pulled back severely. She wore heavy earrings and a brooch on her high-collared blouse. Her hands were neatly crossed in her lap. The black-and-white image seemed to capture the essence of the woman without the distraction of color.