Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 33

DIMLY, BRODHAM WAS AWARE that the Blue was engaging in some form of telepathy.

He was on the ground beside the road, his wrecked car beside him, Vickers slumped unconscious in the passenger seat. The Blue knelt over him, held him with his eyes as if they were tractor beams, pulling him inexorably closer. It was reading his memories, page by page like a newspaper. Only, unlike a newspaper, the flow ran both ways.

Thoughts of his past flitted unbidden through his mind's eye.

Clarice in a flowing white dress walking under a flower-woven awning, the bleached-sienna sand of Duck's Head beach stretching in either direction like a ribbon, dotted with sunbathers and colorful umbrellas. Wind tearing through his fiercely combed-and-gelled hair. Behind him, blue water curling over the horizon into infinity. Soft white breakers. Clarice unlinking her gossamer arm from her white-haired father and stepping toward him, smiling like summer.

Clarice again, now in a blue gown in a white room, face red from exertion and a masked man urging her to keep trying, just a little more, you're doing fine, and the tinkling cries of a newborn filling the delivery room like glass windchimes, and little Robert was in her arms and Clarice was smiling again.

Two-year-old Robert taking his first tentative steps through the sunlit parlor. Six years old, running into the house screaming after slicing his palm open on his new Swiss Army knife. Sixteen years old, sullen as Brodham snuffed out the cigarette he'd caught him smoking, shouting.

Clarice, scared, then angry. Curling away from him in bed. Wisp of brown hair escaped from the bun falling across her neck. Skin sagging as the years took their toll. Brodham, thinking about reaching out and brushing away the lock of hair, stroking her neck, holding her like he used to. Never doing it.

Robert, eighteen, packing his beat-up Chevy Lumina for college. Robert and Clarice hugging, Clarice crying. Robert and Brodham shaking hands, Robert's eyes cast down, away from the father who missed the baseball games, the birthday parties, dinners and bedtimes. The father always away for work.

An empty house. Clarice walking slowly up the stairs, missing her boy already, crying alone. Clarice, angry. Clarice, frustrated. Clarice, Clarice, Clarice.

A month later. Blue lights flashing through frosted windows. Two police officers standing on the doorstep in the snow. Clarice collapsing into his arms, shaking too hard to cry. Brodham listening to the officers through a fog. Overdose. Painkillers. Nothing they could do. So sorry for your loss.

A polished wooden box, crouched like death at the front of a silent room. Handshakes. Pats on the back. Condolences. Robert, eighteen years old, eyes closed, hands crossed, wearing the blue suit. He'd hated that suit.

A cold field, grass crunchy with ice. Gray stone markers, invisible to the couple walking silently past. A single marble slab. Robert Anthony Brodham. 1990 – 2008. A stupid punchline to an achingly cruel joke.

Two years later. Clarice, a living corpse. Therapy. Antidepressants. Outbursts. Slipping away in the cold, silent house. Out of Brodham's reach.

Dark nights. Insomnia. Stroking Clarice's shoulder, praying she won't wake up and shake off the hand again. She does wake up, but instead of slipping away, she slides closer. Warm body beneath a satin nightgown. Twenty again, holding each other. Making love, clumsy, unfamiliar, perfect. Dawn light sweeping through the windows to carve away the chill from their entwined bodies.

More years. Slowly but surely, Clarice stops pushing away. The two cling to each other and move on from Robert's death. Learn to stand on four legs.

Three in the morning. A call from the facility. Security Breach. Level 9. Get here immediately. Clarice, sleeping like an angel as he slips out the front door.