James Kelly - Itsy Bitsy Spider

As I heaved myself out of the beanbag chair, my father gave me one of those lopsided, flirting grins I knew so well. “Does the lady have a name?” He must have shaved just for the company, because now that he had come close I could see that he had a couple of fresh nicks. There was a buttonsized patch of gray whiskers by his ear that he had missed altogether.

“Her name is Ms. Johnson,” said the bot. It was my ex, Rob’s, last name. I had never been Jennifer Johnson.

“Well, Ms. Johnson,” he said, hooking thumbs in his pants pockets. “The water in my toilet is brown.”

“I’ll… um… see that it’s taken care of.” I was at a loss for what to say next, then inspiration struck. “Actually, I had another reason for coming.” I could see the bot stiffen. “I don’t know if you’ve seen Yesterday, our little newsletter? Anyway, I was talking to Mrs. Chesley next door and she told me that you were an actor once. I was wondering if I might interview you. Just a few questions, if you have the time. I think your neighbors might..

“Were?” he said, drawing himself up. “Once? Madame, I am now an actor and will always be.”

“My Daddy’s famous,” said the bot.

I cringed at that; it was something I used to say. My father squinted at me. “What did you say your name was?”

“Johnson,” I said. “Jane Johnson.”

“And you’re a reporter? You’re sure you’re not a critic?”

“Positive.”

He seemed satisfied. “I’m Peter Fancy.” He extended his right hand to shake. The hand was spotted and bony and it trembled like a reflection in a lake. Clearly whatever magic—or surgeon’s skill—it was that had preserved my father’s face had not extended to his extremities. I was so disturbed by his infirmity that I took his cold hand in mine and pumped it three, four times. It was dry as a page of one of the bot’s dead books. When I let go, the hand seemed steadier. He gestured at the beanbag.

“Sit,” he said. “Please.”

After I had settled in, he tapped the touchpad and stumped over to the picture window. “Barbara Chesley is a broken and bitter old woman,” he said, “and I will not have dinner with her under any circumstances, do you understand?” He peered up Bluejay Way and down.

“Yes, Daddy,” said the bot.

“I believe she voted for Nixon, so she has no reason to complain now.” Apparently satisfied that the neighbors weren’t sneaking up on us, he leaned against the windowsill, facing me. “Mrs. Thompson, I think today may well be a happy one for both of us. I have an announcement.” He paused for effect. “I’ve been thinking of Lear again.”

The bot settled onto one of her little chairs. “Oh, Daddy, that’s wonderful.”

“It’s the only one of the big four I haven’t done,” said my father. “I was set for a production in Stratford, Ontario, back in ’99; Polly Matthews was to play Cordelia. Now there was an actor; she could bring tears to a stone. But then my wife Hannah had one of her bad times and I had to withdraw so I could take care of Jen. The two of us stayed down at my mother’s cottage on the Cape; I wasted the entire season tending bar. And when Hannah came out of rehab, she decided that she didn’t want to be married to an underemployed actor anymore, so things were tight for a while. She had all the money, so I had to scramble—spent almost two years on the road. But I think it might have been for the best. I was only forty-eight. Too old for Hamlet, too young for Lear. My Hamlet was very well received, you know. There were overtures from PBS about a taping, but that was when the BBC decided to do the Shakespeare series with that doctor, what was his name? Jonathan Miller. So instead of Peter Fancy, we had Derek Jacobi, whose brilliant idea it was to roll across the stage, frothing his lines like a rabid raccoon. You’d think he’d seen an alien, not his father’s ghost. Well, that was another missed opportunity, except, of course, that I was too young. Ripeness is all, eh? So I still have Lear to do. Unfinished business. My comeback.”

He bowed, then pivoted solemnly so that I saw him in profile, framed by the picture window. “Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?” He held up a trembling hand and blinked at it uncomprehendingly. “I know not what to say. I swear these are not my hands.”

Suddenly the bot was at his feet. “O look upon me, sir,” she said, in her childish voice, “and hold your hand in benediction o’er me.”

“Pray, do not mock me.” My father gathered himself in the flood of morning light. “I am a very foolish, fond old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; and to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.” He stole a look in my direction, as if to gauge my reaction to his impromptu performance. A frown might have stopped him, a word would have crushed him. Maybe I should have, but I was afraid he’d start talking about Mom again, telling me things I didn’t want to know. So I watched instead, transfixed.

“Methinks I should know you…” He rested his hand briefly on the bot’s head. “…and know this stranger.” He fumbled at the controls and the exolegs carried him across the room toward me. As he drew nearer, he seemed to sluff off the years. “Yet I am mainly ignorant what place this is; and all the skill I have remembers not these garments, nor I know not where I did lodge last night.” It was Peter Fancy who stopped before me; his face a mere kiss away from mine. “Do not laugh at me; for, as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child. Cordelia.”

He was staring right at me, into me, knifing through make-believe indifference to the wound I’d nursed all these years, the one that had never healed. He seemed to expect a reply, only I didn’t have the line. A tiny, sad squeaky voice within me was whimpering, You left me and you got exactly what you deserve. But my throat tightened and choked it off.

The bot cried, “And so I am! I am!”

But she had distracted him. I could see confusion begin to deflate him. “Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray… weep not. If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me…”

He stopped and his brow wrinkled. “It’s something about the sisters,” he muttered.

“Yes,” said the bot, “ ‘…for your sisters have done me wrong…’ ”

“Don’t feed me the fucking lines!” he shouted at her. “I’m Peter Fancy, god damn it!”

After she calmed him down, we had lunch. She let him make the peanut butter and banana sandwiches while she heated up some Campbell’s tomato and rice soup, which she poured from a can made of actual metal. The sandwiches were lumpy because he had hacked the bananas into chunks the size of walnuts. She tried to get him to tell me about the daylilies blooming in the backyard, and the old Boston Garden, and the time he and Mom had had breakfast with Bobby Kennedy. She asked whether he wanted TV dinner or pot pie for supper. He refused all her conversational gambits. He only ate half a bowl of soup.

He pushed back from the table and announced that it was her nap time. The bot put up a perfunctory fuss, although it was clear that it was my father who was tired out. However, the act seemed to perk him up. Another role for his resume: the doting father. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We’ll play your game, sweetheart. But just once—otherwise you’ll be cranky tonight.”

The two of them perched on the edge of the bot’s bed next to Big Bird and the Sleepums. My father started to sing and the bot immediately joined in.

Their gestures were almost mirror images, except that his ruined hands actually looked like spiders as they climbed into the air.