The Question of Miracles (13 page)

This last part made Iris's mom laugh. “Does it matter what they look like?” she asked. “We're going to eat their eggs, not take them to the prom.”

“They might as well look good,” said her dad. “A healthy flock can be yard art. A pleasure to see through the kitchen window in the morning.”

He'd reserved an incubator for them to rent. And he told Iris that she could be in charge of naming “the girls.”

“We're going to have at least half a dozen hens,” he told her. “That way when they start laying, we'll have plenty of eggs for us, and some to give away to friends. I'll bet Katherine McBride wouldn't say no to a freshly laid dozen eggs every now and again.”

Her dad whistled a lot lately. Along with his gardening books, he had gathered a collection of titles like
Living Off the Grid
and
A Biosustainable You.
One day when Iris came home from school, her dad was out back, setting up a tumbling composter. “Check this out, Pigeon,” he said.

The composter was a black plastic octagon raised up on triangular legs that let it spin freely. “We just put our kitchen scraps in here,” her dad told her, “and we rotate it every couple of days, like this.” He grabbed the handholds and gave the composter a spin. “In a couple of weeks, finished compost will be ready for our garden. And the whole thing is rodent-proof.” He beamed a smile at her.

Iris imagined a swarm of rats trying to breech the composter, unable to get in. “Great, Dad,” she said.

Iris's mom was busy too, and at the dinner table she told them about her research. A grant proposal she'd written with one of her colleagues had been approved, and she was working on a new project. “Betty and I are looking into defensins,” she reported over a bowl of beef stew.

“Is that a real word?” Iris asked.

“Sure is,” said her mom. “Defensins are manufactured by the body. They're naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides.”

“Slow down, Professor,” said Iris's dad.

Her mom laughed. “That's a fancy way of saying that they are the first line of defense against infection. But some people don't seem to make enough of them. That might be why some people get sick, and other people don't. We're trying to learn more.”

Could the unfairness of who got sick and who didn't really be explained? Iris wondered.

And Iris herself was busy. There was homework, of course, and caring for Charles, and more afternoons spent with Boris. Iris still didn't
love
Magic. But it was something she and Boris could do in the rain. And there were some things she liked about it.

She liked that when she played Magic, she became a Planeswalker—a magician with the ability to walk from one plane of existence to another. And she liked the game's balance between preparedness and uncertainty.

Boris taught her how to build her own deck, balancing Land cards and Spell cards. Iris liked that she could build her deck any way she wanted, and she liked that after she shuffled it, there was no way to know which seven cards she would draw.

Most of all, she liked being in charge of a world. Even if she lost a game, she could look back at the cards in her graveyard and see where mistakes had been made. And then she could reshuffle her deck, reanimating everything that had died, and challenge Boris to a rematch.

They were dealing out their cards for a third game one rainy afternoon, a tray of snacks and cocoa off to one side. They sat on the floor of Boris's bedroom. He and his sisters had gotten a puppy a few weeks earlier, a velvety black spaniel named Flora, who lay sprawled above them on Boris's bed, gnawing determinedly on one of Charlotte's slippers.

“Your dog is pretty cute,” Iris admitted.

“She'd be a lot cuter if she hadn't chewed the corner off my Liliana,” Boris said.

“You can still use the card,” Iris said for the fourth time.

“But its resale value,” he moaned.

They took turns rolling the die. Boris rolled a two; Iris rolled a six, so she got to choose who went first.

“You go,” she said.

They fell into their game, and didn't talk about much other than the cards in front of them. That was something else Iris liked about Magic—when they were playing, everything else sort of went away.

It didn't bother Iris when Boris beat her again. She'd won only a few times, but Boris never took it easy on her, so when she did occasionally win, she knew it counted.

“You should consider incorporating some red cards into your deck,” Boris advised as they cleaned up.

“I'll think about it,” Iris said.

She heard the doorbell ring. “Gotta go.” She snapped a rubber band around her deck and shoved it into her backpack.

“See ya,” answered Boris. He was carefully stacking his cards and sliding them into the deck box. Flora lay stretched out on the bed, fast asleep. She'd worn herself out with all the slipper chewing.

It had been a while since Iris and Boris had talked about their list, since they'd tried to contact Sarah. After the EVP failure, Boris seemed to want to avoid the whole thing. Iris figured it had made him really uncomfortable, watching her cry like that, and listening to all that silence they'd recorded.

But Iris hadn't forgotten about her desire to speak with Sarah, and she hadn't forgotten, either, about Boris's miracle.

“Hey,” said Iris, before she left the room. She tried to make her voice sound casual, like this wasn't something she'd been thinking too much about. “Didn't you say the Vatican would be visiting in the spring? To check out your miracle?”

“Uh-huh. Next month, I think.”

“So, do you think . . . I mean, would it be okay if I came over that day?” Iris felt nervous, worried that Boris might think this was a weird request.

Boris looked up. “You want to be here when the Vatican visits?”

Iris shrugged. “I guess. I mean, yeah. If it's okay.”

“It's going to be really boring,” he warned.

“That's okay with me.” Iris held her breath, waiting for Boris to answer.

Boris blinked. “I guess,” he said. “Maybe you could ask them . . . you know, about the miracle thing.”

Iris smiled. “Really?” she said. “You wouldn't mind?”

“Why would I mind?” asked Boris. “We're friends, aren't we?”

 

That night when Iris got home, she found her dad setting up the incubator in the living room. Charles was curled up on the hearth in his usual spot, watching him.

The incubator was about the size and shape of a mini-fridge. It was silver, stainless steel, with a large rectangular window in the front. A set of digital numbers flashed across the top, next to the words ReptiPro 6000.

“This baby's got two automatic egg turners,” her dad said, patting the top of the incubator and grinning at Iris and her mom. “It'll turn the eggs six times a day. It's got a fan to circulate the air, and it's got this light you can switch on to check on the eggs. It's got a highly accurate digital display. It's top of the line.”

Iris's mom snorted a little, like she was trying not to laugh. “Great, Frank,” she said. “We're all set, then.”

“We're going to have the healthiest flock of chickens in the valley,” he said, ignoring her.

“Umm . . .” Iris looked around the room. “So, where are the eggs?”

“They'll be here in seven to ten days,” her dad said. “I ordered Buff Orpingtons from a farm up near Astoria.”

“How long will it take them to hatch?” asked Iris's mom.

“About three weeks.”

“Well,” said her mom, “I guess you'd better get busy on that coop.”

“It's not that big of a rush,” said her dad. “The chicks will have to live inside for at least a month.”

“
Excuse
me?” said her mom. “What was that?”

“Oh, yeah,” said her dad. “Four weeks, maybe six. Don't worry. I'll build them a playpen in the kitchen.”

He patted the top of the incubator once more, and then headed, whistling, to check on dinner.

The eggs arrived exactly a week later. A dozen of them, just like a dozen eggs you'd buy at the store, all light brown, all perfect.

Iris's dad was beside himself with excitement. Very carefully, one at a time, he transferred the eggs from the shipping container to the incubator.

“If we're lucky,” he said, “eight or ten of these eggs will hatch. If we're really lucky, at least half of them will be pullets—girl chickens.”

“What'll we do with the boys?” Iris asked. “We're not eating them.”

“No, no, we already talked about that,” her dad assured her. “I met a couple of guys in town, at the hardware store. They have a bigger farm not too far from here, and when I told them about our plans, after they stopped laughing at me and calling us “city folk,” they offered to take any cockerels we hatch.”

Iris was suspicious. “Are
they
going to eat them?”

“I made them promise they wouldn't.” Her dad shut and latched the incubator door. “They breed chickens for egg laying and shipping, and they said they could use some new studs for their flock.”

That sounded okay to Iris. “So we'll end up with, like, four chickens?”

“Maybe more,” said her dad. “Think positive.”

He pressed a couple of buttons on the front of the incubator. It started humming, and the temperature readout on the digital display began to rise.

 

Iris's dad had big chicken-coop plans. He wanted to make it look like a miniature version of the homestead, with a front porch and dormer windows and everything. Iris teased him that he'd have to set up a mini-composter by its back door, and a mini–wind turbine too.

He bought a chicken-coop blueprint off the Internet and then spent several evenings modifying it to more closely mimic the house.

“What do you think, Pigeon?” he asked one night after he'd spent hours poring over his work.

Iris had been sitting across from him, doing her math homework. She looked at his plans, but they didn't seem to make much sense from that upside-down angle, so she got up and went around to her father's side of the table.

Right-side up, the blueprints still didn't make any sense. “Is that how you open the coop?” she asked, pointing.

“That's the ramp,” he answered. “So the chickens can get inside. To open the coop, see, there are these hinges and the roof flips open.”

“Oh, yeah, I see now,” said Iris. She didn't.

“Maybe I should make a few more modifications,” he muttered.

 

The next day when Iris made her way up the driveway after the bus had dropped her off, she heard a pounding sound from around the back of the house. It wasn't raining hard, just a steady drizzle, so Iris detoured from the gravel driveway and followed the noise.

She found her dad on the back porch, surrounded by lengths of wood and boxes of shingles and nails. He was hammering together what looked to be two of the walls of the coop. He held a line of nails between his lips, and his expression was one of deep concentration—furrowed brow, tightened jaw, narrowed eyes.

“Hey, Dad,” Iris said. “How's it going?”

“Grmlph,” he answered.

“Huh,” Iris said. “You want something to drink?”

“Coffee,” he said, or at least that's what Iris figured he said. Coffee was his answer to most questions.

Charles was curled in a blanket on the center of the kitchen table. Only the tips of his ears stuck out. Iris pulled the blanket up a little, to cover them.

She spooned coffee grounds into the filter and filled the coffeemaker with water. Then she flipped the switch to “On” and sat at the table to wait for the coffee to be done.

“How was your day, Charles?”

The lump on the table didn't make a sound.

The coffee brewed. Its warm, nutty scent filled the kitchen.

The lump began to move. Ears emerged, and then a nose.

“It's like you're a heat magnet, Charles,” said Iris, and she scooped him up and plopped him onto her lap, blanket and all.

When the coffee was done, Iris placed Charles on her chair, tucking him in again. Then she got her dad's favorite mug out of the cabinet and filled it.

“Good talk, Charles,” she called over her shoulder as she headed back outside.

Her dad was sitting cross-legged on the porch, staring at what he'd built. From the look of the mess of wooden slats tilting to one side, Iris guessed he must have used all the nails he'd held in his mouth, and probably most of the rest of them too. Nails stuck out at all different angles.

“How's it coming?” Iris asked.

“Not great,” he answered.

Iris nodded. She handed him his mug.

He took a sip. “Good coffee.”

They sat together for a while, watching the walls of the chicken coop list farther to one side. At last Iris said, “Maybe a simpler design?”

“You think?” Her dad sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Maybe we shouldn't have moved here,” Iris said. Her voice was quiet, and she wondered if her dad hadn't heard her. But then he reached over and squeezed her hand.

“You miss California?” he asked.

Iris shrugged. “I miss some things,” she said. “I miss the ocean.”
I miss Sarah,
she thought.

“I miss things too,” said her dad. “But there's lots of good stuff here. Like Boris. Like this house. And the eggs. I can't wait to see how many hatch.”

“Mom's job is good too, right?”

“Mm-hmm. She's in her element.”

“And you don't mind being home all the time?”

“I love it,” said her dad. “Even on days like this, when I discover I'm no chicken-coop contractor.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Dad. You're good at lots of things.”

“Thanks, Pigeon,” he said. “You're good at lots of things too. Making coffee, for one. Excellent coffee.”