City of the Beasts (2 page)

Finally his mother's voice penetrated Alex's consciousness and his anger dissolved in a flash, giving way to confusion and horror at what he had done. He got to his feet and staggered back, then ran out as fast as he could and locked himself in his room. He dragged his desk in front of the door to block it, and covered his ears to keep from hearing his parents calling him. For a long time, he leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, trying to control the hurricane of feelings that shook him to his marrow. Then, systematically, he set about destroying everything in his room. He pulled the posters from the walls and tore them to bits; he swung his baseball bat at pictures and videos; he crushed his collection of antique automobiles, and airplanes from World War I; he ripped pages from his books; he gutted his mattress and pillows with his Swiss Army knife; he slashed all his clothes and bedding; and as a final touch he kicked and stomped on his lamp until it was in pieces. He carried out this destruction deliberately, methodically, in silence, like someone performing a necessary task, and stopped only when his strength was spent and there was nothing else to break. The floor was covered with feathers and mattress stuffing, broken glass, papers, rags, and pieces of toys. Weak from emotion and effort, he threw himself down in the midst of that devastation, curled up like a snail, his head touching his knees, and cried until he fell asleep.

Alexander woke up hours later to the voices of his sisters. It was a few minutes before he remembered what had happened. He wanted to turn on his light, but he had wrecked the lamp. He felt his way to the door, tripped, and cursed when he fell on some pieces of glass and cut his hand. He didn't remember that he had to move his desk so he could open the door. The light from the hall fell on the battlefield that had been his room, and on the astonished faces of his sisters in the open doorway.

"Are you redecorating your room, Alex?" his sister Andrea joked, while Nicole clamped her hand over her mouth to choke back her laughter.

Alex slammed the door in their faces and sat down on the floor to think, pressing hard on his cut hand. The idea of bleeding to death seemed tempting; at least that would save him from having to face his parents about what he'd done, but he soon changed his mind. He needed to wash the cut before it got infected, he decided. Besides, it was beginning to hurt; it must be pretty deep, he might get tetanus… He fumbled his way out into the hall. He could barely see because he had lost his glasses in the disaster area and, on top of that, his eyes were swollen from crying. He went into the kitchen, where all his family was gathered, including his mother, who had a kerchief tied around her head that made her look like a refugee.

"I'm sorry," Alex blurted out, his eyes on the floor.

Lisa stifled a cry when she saw her son's bloodstained T-shirt, but when her husband gave her a sign, she took her two girls by the hand and led them away without a word. John went over to Alex to check his injured hand.

"I don't know what came over me, Dad," he murmured, not daring to look up.

"I'm really afraid, too, son."

"Is Mom going to die?" asked Alex, in a voice as thin as a thread.

"I don't know, Alexander. Here, let this cold water run over your hand," his father directed.

John washed off the blood, examined the cut, and decided to inject an anesthetic so he could pick out the glass fragments and stitch the wound. Alex, who felt weak just at the sight of blood, bore the procedure without a word, grateful for having a doctor in the family Then his father applied a disinfectant cream, and bandaged his hand.

"Mom's hair was going to fall out anyway, wasn't it?" Alex asked.

"Yes, because of the chemotherapy. It's better to cut it all at once than watch it come out by the handful. That's the least of it, son. It will grow back. Sit down, we need to talk."

"I'm sorry, Dad. I'll work hard to replace everything I broke."

"It's all right. I suppose you had to get it out of your system. We won't mention this again. There are other things, more important things, I need to tell you. I have to take Lisa to a hospital in Texas, where she's going to undergo a long and complicated treatment. It's the only place it can be done."

"And will that make her well?" Alex asked anxiously.

"I hope so, Alexander. I will go with her, of course. We'll have to close this house for a while."

"What will happen to the girls and me?"

"Andrea and Nicole will go live with their grandmother Carla. You are going to go to my mother," his father explained.

"Kate? I don't want to go to her, Dad! Why can't I go with my sisters? At least grandmother Carla knows how to cook."

"Three children would be too much for her."

"I'm fifteen, Dad, and that's plenty old for you to at least ask my opinion. It isn't fair for you to ship me off to Kate as if I were some package or something. That's always how it is. You make the decisions and I have to follow them. I'm not a baby anymore!" Alex protested. He was furious.

"Well, sometimes you act like one." John smiled and pointed to the injured hand.

"It was an accident, it could have happened to anyone. I'll behave at Carla's, I promise."

"I know your intentions are good, son, but sometimes you act without thinking."

"I told you, I'll pay for everything I broke," yelled Alex, banging a fist on the table.

"You see how you can't control your temper? In any case, Alex, this has nothing to do with what you did to your room. Things were already arranged with Lisa's mother and mine. The three of you will have to go stay with your grandmothers; there's no other solution. You'll be leaving for New York in a couple of days," his father said.

"Alone?"

"Alone. I'm afraid that from here on you will have to do a lot of things alone. Take your passport, because I think you're going on an adventure with my mother."

"Where?"

"To the Amazon."

"The Amazon!" Alex exclaimed, horrified. "I saw a documentary about the Amazon. That place is crawling with mosquitoes and caimans and bandits. There are a zillion diseases there—even leprosy!"

"I expect that my mother knows what she's doing; she wouldn't take you anywhere you'd be in danger, Alexander."

"Kate is quite capable of pushing me into a river filled with piranhas," Alex blurted out. "With a grandmother like mine, I don't need enemies."

"I'm sorry, but you will have to go, son."

"And what about school? It's exam time. And besides, I can't just walk out on the orchestra—"

"You're going to have to be flexible, Alexander. Our family is going through a real crisis. In the Chinese language, do you know what the characters for 'crisis' are? 'Danger' plus 'opportunity.' Maybe your mother's illness will offer you an extraordinary opportunity. You'd better go pack your things."

"What's to pack? I don't
have
anything much," Alex muttered.

"Then take what you have. Now go give your mother a kiss. She's very shaken by all she's going through. It's much more difficult for Lisa than for any of us, Alexander. We have to be strong, the way she is," John said sadly.

Up until a couple of months ago, Alex had been happy. He had never felt any great curiosity to explore beyond the safe boundaries of his own existence; he believed that if he didn't do anything silly, everything would work out fine. He had simple plans for the future. He planned to be a famous musician, like his grandfather Joseph Cold, marry Cecilia Burns, if she would accept him, have two children, and live near the mountains. He was satisfied with his young life. He was a good student and, if not outstanding, he was good at sports; he was friendly, and he never got into serious trouble. He thought of himself as a pretty normal person, at least in comparison with the freaks you find in this world, like those kids who went into that school in Colorado and machine-gunned their classmates. He wouldn't have to look too far in his own school to find some scary types. But no, he wasn't like them. Truth was, the only thing he wanted was to go back to the kind of life he'd had a few months before, when his mother was well. He didn't want to go to the Amazon with Kate. He was a little afraid of his grandmother.

Two days later, Alex said good-bye to the place where he had spent the fifteen years of his life. He carried with him the image of his mother in the doorway of their home, a cap covering her shaved head, smiling and waving good-bye as tears ran down her cheeks. She looked small, vulnerable, and beautiful despite everything. He boarded the plane thinking about her and about the terrifying possibility of losing her. No! I won't think about that, I have to have positive thoughts. My mother will get well, he murmured over and over during the long flight.

CHAPTER TWO
The Eccentric Grandmother

ALEXANDER FOUND HIMSELF in a New York airport in the midst of a crowd with suitcases and bundles, pushing by him, shoving and stepping on his heels. They looked like robots, half of them with a cell phone clamped to one ear and talking into the air like crazy people. He was alone, his backpack slung over his shoulder and a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill in his hand. He had another three folded and stuck down in his boots. His father had cautioned him to be careful; in that huge city, things were not the way they were in the small town on the California coast where they lived, where nothing ever happened. The three Cold children had grown up playing outside with the other kids; they knew everyone, and went in and out of their neighbors' homes as if they were their own.

Alex had traveled six hours, crossing the continent from one end to the other, seated beside a large, sweaty man whose girth spilled outside his seat, cutting Alex's space in half. Every other minute, the man reached down, with difficulty, fished something out of a bag of treats, and proceeded to chomp away, ending any chance for Alex to sleep or watch the movie in peace. Alex was very tired, and he kept counting how many hours were left of that torture, until finally they landed and he could stretch his legs. He got off the plane with relief, looking for his grandmother, but he didn't find her at the gate as he had expected.

One hour later, Kate still hadn't arrived, and Alex was beginning to worry for real. He had his grandmother paged twice, with no response, and now he was forced to get change in order to make a telephone call. He was grateful for his good memory; he remembered the number, just as he remembered her address. He had never been to Kate's house, but he had written her postcards from time to time. His grandmother's telephone rang and rang as he sent a mental plea for someone to answer. What do I do now? he wondered with confusion. It occurred to him to call his father long distance and get instructions about what to do, but that could be expensive. Besides, he didn't want to act like a big baby. What could his father do from so far away? No, Alex decided, he couldn't lose his head just because his grandmother was a little late; maybe she was tied up in traffic, or was wandering around the airport looking for him and they had passed each other without noticing.

Another thirty minutes passed, and by then Alex was so angry with Kate that if she had been standing in front of him, he would surely have said something rude. He remembered all the heavy-handed jokes she had played on him over the years, like the box of chocolates filled with hot-pepper sauce she had sent him one birthday. No normal grandmother would have taken the trouble to remove the fillings of each piece of candy with a syringe and replace it with Tabasco, wrap the chocolates back in silver paper, and arrange them in the box—just to play a joke on her grandchildren.

He also remembered the scary stories she had terrified them with when she came to visit, and how she insisted on telling them with the lights off. Her stories wouldn't have the same effect now, but when they were young, they had almost died of fright. His sisters still had nightmares about the vampires and zombies that escaped from their tombs when the children's wicked grandmother summoned them in the dark. He had to admit, though, that they were all addicted to her bloodcurdling tales. They never got tired of hearing her tell about the real—or imaginary—dangers she had confronted on her travels around the world. His favorite was the twenty-four-foot python in Malaysia that had swallowed her camera. "Too bad it didn't swallow you, Grandmother," Alex had commented the first time he'd heard the tale, but she wasn't offended. This same woman had taught him to swim in less than five minutes by pushing him into a pool when he was four years old. He swam to the other side out of pure desperation, but he could have drowned. His mother, with good reason, got very nervous when her mother-in-law came to visit; she had to watch closely to keep her children safe.

After another hour and a half had gone by, Alex really did not know what to do. He could imagine how pleased Kate would be to see him so worried, and decided not to give her that satisfaction. He must act like a man. He put on his jacket, slung on his backpack, and went outside. The contrast between the heat, the racket, and the bright light inside the building, and the cold, the silence, and the darkness outside shocked him. He had no idea that wintertime in New York was so unpleasant. It was damp and smelled of gasoline; there was filthy snow on the sidewalk and an icy wind that stung his face like needles. He realized that in the emotion of telling his family good-bye, he had forgotten to bring his gloves and cap, which he had no use for in California and kept in a trunk in the garage with the rest of his ski equipment. The wound in his left hand was throbbing, though up until then it hadn't bothered him, and he told himself he would have to change the bandage as soon as he got to his grandmother's. He had no way to estimate how far her apartment was or how much it would cost to get there by taxi. He needed a map but didn't know where to get one. With his ears like ice and his hands jammed into his pockets, he walked to a bus stop.