Christopher Boucher - Golden Delicious

At rehearsal the next day, the Community Theater wouldn’t look at me. The tension between us was so distracting that I went out to the lobby during break to talk with her. When I asked her if she was OK, she didn’t respond. “Are you not even going to acknowledge me?” I said.

The building didn’t say anything.

“Are we not talking now?”

Then Eric shouted for everyone to get back to work. Right before my scene, though, the wig stopped me in the vom and said that Banda was going to do my lines instead.

“How come?” I said.

Eric pursed his lips.

“Do I still do the lines in Act Three?” I asked.

COMMUNITY THEATER ( shouting )

I’ll tell you your line . Your line is, “I’m sorry, Community Theater. I’m an asshole, Community Theater. I never should have said that stuff about theater.”

ERIC WIG

Wait — what stuff about theater?

COMMUNITY THEATER

Or asked you to speak in prose.

ERIC WIG

You asked her to speak in prose?

COMMUNITY THEATER

Your line is, “Now I’m leaving to live a sad, lonely life.”

I stood there.

ERIC WIG

Why would you ask her to speak in prose?

I didn’t mean anything by it. I—

ERIC WIG

Maybe you should go, .

COMMUNITY THEATER

No — say your line first, asshole!

I’d never seen the Community Theater like this: so— irate . My thoughts were frightened.

COMMUNITY THEATER

( her voice booming, Mother-like )

Say. Your. Lines .

“I’m leaving,” I said, “to live my sad life.”

COMMUNITY THEATER

My sad, lonely life.

“My sad, lonely life,” I said.

Then I walked out of the theater. And I never went back.

All of a sudden, it seemed, my family was broken — my sister in the auctionwind, my Mom up in a Nest somewhere, and my father basically living at the forge. During her first few weeks as a Mother, my Mom kept promising a visit: “Next Tuesday,” she prayed. “The Thursday after this one. I’ll stay overnight.” But two months after her recruitment, we still hadn’t seen her once since she’d left — there was always some excuse, some secret emergency.

We never were told what her mission was, either — whether she was in combat, or renovation, or semiotics, or reconnaissance, or some other secret sect we hadn’t heard about. I always looked for my Mom’s name in the Core —which ran two or three stories a day about the Mothers — but I never once saw it there. Even so, though, I imagined that she was part of those stories: defending bessoffs against a pair of parentheses down by the Quarry; hunting down the sentences that had ripped through a page by Kirkpatrick Circle, or maybe helping to repair the tear itself.

In that story? The newspaper said that the Mothers had flown in a giant piece of masking tape — one as big as a worryfield! I imagined my Mom lifting a whole corner of the tape onto her shoulders, struggling with dozens of other Mothers to move it, slowly lowering it onto the paper.

It was OK that we didn’t see my Mom, my thoughts told me sometimes: she was helping to protect us; she was keeping us safe. But it never met my missing.

I missed my father, too. Once he started working at Muir Drop he didn’t stop — not even when his skin took on a gray tinge and his ears became gears. The Community Theater was right about him; these were sure signs of workhosis, caused by an addiction to work. I hoped he might scale back his hours after he caught up on his meaning payments, but by then it was too late: he ate, breathed, and slept work. The only time I saw him the entire month of March, in fact, was “Bring Your Son to Work Day.” That morning, he marched me through the compound, pointing out complicated machines that took raw need and forged it for demand. “That’s the separator,” he said.

“What does it do?” I said.

“Separates,” he said.

“Separates what?”

“The self from others,” he said, as if I should have known. Then he pointed to a black tube that ran off the machine. “See that vacuum hose? It adds tasks. But it needs negative pressure, and the gaskets always give us trouble.”

I was confused. “Oh,” I said.

At the end of the day, he led me out to the Bicycle Built for Two and shook my hand mechanically. “Are you coming home?” I asked.

I could see him scanning the inquiry. “I’m in the middle of my shift, ,” he said.

I said goodbye to him, got on my bike and rode home. But I didn’t go inside — instead I went over to the worryfields, got down on my knees, and folded my hands. “Mom?” I prayed.

It was quiet for a while.

“Mom?” I prayed. “It’s .”

After ten or fifteen minutes I heard the scratching of an arriving prayer. “Hey,” my Mom prayed. She was out of breath.

I stood up.

“What is it, ?” she prayed.

I didn’t know what to pray. “I’m—” I started. “I—”

“What? Spit it out!”

“I’m hungry,” I blurtprayed.

“So eat ,” she prayed. “Have some chips.”

“We don’t have any,” I prayed.

“ You ate them all, you mean.”

“Plus I can’t eat chips for dinner again,” I prayed.

“Why don’t you ask your father to make you something?”

“He’s at work.”

No response.

“I’m pretty sure he’s got workhosis, Mom,” I prayed.

My Mom grunted.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. Then she prayed, “There should be some futurebeans in the pantry.”

“When are you coming home?” I prayed.

“After this tour,” she prayed.

“Do you miss us?”

Someone behind her was screaming — howling. “Of course I do,” she said.

“Where are you right now?” I prayed.

“Right above you,” she prayed.

I looked up.

“Right over the house?”

“Yes, but high,” she prayed. “Look up.”

“I am looking up,” I said.

“We’re right above the clouds.”

“I can’t—” I said. “Where?”

“Hold on a second.” I heard the rush of wind. “See us now?”

“No,” I prayed. “I don’t see you.”

“See a peach-colored cloud?”

“Yeah,” I prayed.

“Look to the—” she prayed. Then there was quiet.

“Mom?” I prayed.

But the prayer had gone dark.

“Mom?” I prayed.

“Mom?”

I found the futurebeans in the pantry, poured them into a pot, and heated them up. But they tasted like shit — they were spoiled, or maybe just too old. They were the worst beans that I’d had — that I would have — in my whole entire life.

A few days later a prayer came in from my Mom. “ ?” it said.

I didn’t answer.

“Sorry our prayer got disconnected the other day,” she prayed.

I didn’t answer.

The next day she tried again. “ ?” she prayed. “Are you there?”

“Fuck you,” I prayed back.

“Excuse me?” she prayed.