The Question of Miracles (4 page)

“The twins are addicted to reality television,” Boris told Iris.

“At least we're not addicted to stupid computer games,” Molly shot back, and Charlotte cackled like that was the funniest insult she'd ever heard.

Boris settled in with his snack, and Iris poured herself some cereal. It took her a minute to find the refrigerator; its doors were surfaced with the same white paneling as the row of cabinets that surrounded it. “Cool,” she said when she found the handle and pulled it open.

She poured milk over her cereal. Boris took one look at the jug and shook his head. “Two percent,” he said.

They ate their snacks. When they were almost done, Boris said, “Is it weird for you to be here? You know, at a friend's house?”

Iris had told him the week before that her best friend back home had died. She had the feeling that Boris already knew, like maybe his parents had told him or something, and she didn't want it hanging out there like some big untouchable secret, though she didn't want to talk about it either. She hadn't offered any details, and she was glad that Boris hadn't asked for them.

“No,” said Iris. She almost said, “Is it weird for
you
to have a friend over?” but decided at the last minute that she didn't really want to be mean.

But she also didn't want to talk about Sarah. Not with Boris.

Or her parents, though they kept trying. When Iris had asked them what they thought about ghosts—just in general, nothing specific, they had given each other worried looks and started talking about the counselor they thought Iris should maybe visit. Dr. Shannon.

Iris didn't like the sound of that at all. She'd had to go to a psychiatrist a few times already, right after Sarah's death. He'd given her a bunch of dolls and encouraged her to do whatever she wanted with them. She just lined them all up side by side as he nodded and studied them like what she'd done had some deep meaning.

Then he'd given her some paper and asked her to draw a picture of her favorite people, and when she'd drawn three stick figures—a tall one for her mom, a medium-size one for her dad, and a cat-shaped one for Charles, he'd asked, “Why did you only draw three?”

This seemed like a completely stupid question to Iris, who answered, “Because Sarah is dead. You know that, right?”

Not very long after that, her parents announced that they had found a buyer for the house and that the three of them were moving to Oregon. One of the move's redeeming characteristics was that it had put an end to the visits with the psychiatrist, and Iris had figured that was that. But apparently her mom and dad had different plans.

Probably talking about ghosts wasn't the best way to discourage future visits to mental health care professionals. But Iris couldn't shake the feeling that there
was
a ghost—her best friend's ghost—living at the farmhouse with them.

Not living. That was the wrong word, of course. Ghosts don't live. That was the whole point. So . . . what? Existing? Floating?

Whatever the right verb was, Iris felt sure of the facts. Sarah was there. At the homestead. In the closet under the stairs.

Boris's mom came into the kitchen while Iris and Boris were still eating their snack. Iris liked her right away. For one thing, she introduced herself as Katherine rather than Mrs. McBride. Iris didn't like it when adults wanted kids to call them by their last names. It didn't seem democratic.

Katherine also didn't ask them if they wanted hot chocolate; she just went ahead and made a big batch, stirring it in a pot on the stove rather than microwaving it cup by cup. And there was whipped cream in the refrigerator, which she didn't hold back on.

“Thank you,” Iris said when Katherine handed her a large, hot mug. The mug had a picture of a fluffy orange kitten curled up in a hammock with the word
Catnap!
underneath.

“Sip carefully,” Katherine warned. “It's hot.”

She gave Boris a cup too and put two more on a tray for the twins.

“Where's Eileen?” Iris asked Boris.

He shrugged. “Probably at a friend's,” he said. “C'mon. I want to show you my Magic collection.”

It was clear from Boris's room that he had lived in the same house since he was born. It would take at least a dozen years to collect that much
stuff.

His room was as neatly organized as the kitchen pantry. He had a four-poster single bed. On top of each post was a carved pineapple. There was a desk that was made out of the same kind of wood as the bed, and the top of it was entirely cleared off except for a closed black laptop and a brass lamp. The bookshelf across from the bed held a few toys—a Rubik's Cube, a dragon statuette, an old stuffed elephant—and neat rows of books. Boris slid open the closet door to reveal stacked bins marked
LEGO BRICKS, WOODEN BLOCKS, LINCOLN LOGS, CHEMISTRY STUFF, MAGNETS, MISCELLANEOUS PARTS,
and
ACTION FIGURES
. And far to one side were three tall boxes marked identically—
MAGIC CARDS.

Iris sighed and spun around in the chair by Boris's desk. This was going to take a while, she could tell, so she made herself comfortable and sipped her chocolate.

Boris launched into an enthusiastic lecture about all things Magic, and Iris did her best to look interested. This got a lot harder after she'd finished her hot chocolate and there was nothing to preoccupy her. It was growing more and more clear why it had been so long since Boris had had a guest.

Finally Boris said, “I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to build you a starter deck so that you can get a feel for the game. I'll teach you how to play. You can be, like, my Padawan.”

“Uh-huh,” said Iris. “Sure. That sounds great.”

It actually sounded the opposite of great.

But being in Boris's room
felt
almost great, which surprised Iris. The hot chocolate was first-rate, and at least there was plenty to do over here. Maybe learning to play Magic would be a small price to pay.

“So if you don't have a lot of friends over,” she asked, trying to be nice, “who do you play Magic with?”

“My dad, mostly. Sometimes this kid Bradley up the street, but he's only eight and kind of a geek.”

Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh,
Iris ordered herself.

Then she remembered that she was supposed to call her mom. “Hey,” she asked, “can I use your phone?”

Boris was absorbed in his cards, quickly sorting through stacks of them and occasionally setting one to the side. “It's in the kitchen,” he said, without looking up.

On her way back to the kitchen, Iris poked her head into each of the open doorways she passed. The room right next to Boris's was clearly the twins'; it was divided down the center by a strip of blue masking tape—across the floor and back up the wall on the far side. Stepping into the room, Iris looked behind her at the doorway. The blue line of tape ended at the white molding that framed the door, and Iris wondered if each twin was careful to use only her own half of the entrance.

Based on how the girls dressed, Iris would have guessed that their tastes would be identical in every way. But she would have been wrong. One slice of the room was as neat as Boris's, and the other was practically a masterpiece of filth. Unmade bed, socks and pajama bottoms everywhere, books and toys and hair ribbons all sloshed together on the bed and spilling onto the ground. Not one object, though, crossed that blue line on the floor. It was like the stuff knew better than to try.

The next room was a bathroom, with all the usual towels and scrunched-up toothpaste tubes. Across the hall was Margaret and Eileen's room. It had twin beds too, and again the room was clearly divided by its occupants. Eileen's side had a stack of schoolbooks on its desk and two pairs of boots strewn on the floor near the bed. Margaret's side looked more clinical. Not so lived-in. Like its occupant was dead.

Iris knew that Boris's sister Margaret wasn't dead. She was away at college. She told herself to stop being morbid and moved on.

There was one more room at the end of the hallway, in the opposite direction of the kitchen. Iris decided that it must belong to Boris's parents, and she didn't want to get caught snooping there, though she was curious what it might look like.

Instead, she headed the other way. She could see the twins on the floor in front of the TV; their empty hot chocolate cups sat on an end table as they stared, transfixed, at what must have been
Dance School Dropout.
A skinny girl in a pink tutu sat crying on a wooden floor. Two other girls, in identical skirts, stared down at her with their arms folded across their chests.

In the kitchen, Iris found Katherine at the round white table, sipping a cup of tea and reading a novel.

“Excuse me?”

Katherine blinked and looked up. “Need more hot chocolate?”

“Umm . . . no . . . I mean, yeah, more hot chocolate would be great . . . but I was wondering if I could use your phone? To call my mom?”

“Of course.” Katherine gestured to the wall near the stove, where a phone was hanging.

Iris had never seen a phone like this in an actual house before, only in old movies. It wasn't wireless; a long, tightly curled cord connected the red plastic receiver to the base, where twelve buttons in a little square were marked with numbers, an asterisk, and a hashtag.

“Can you get online with this phone?” Iris asked.

“Nope,” Katherine said. “All that phone does is make calls.”

“Then what's that for?” Iris pointed to the hashtag. “Isn't that for Twitter?”

Katherine laughed. “It's a whole new world,” she said, more to herself than to Iris.

Iris picked up the handle and punched in her mom's work number.

Her mom answered in her business voice. “Dr. Abernathy here.”

“Hi, Mom, it's me.”

“Iris,
there
you are!”

“I'm at Boris's house.”

“Can I talk to his mother?” she said.

“Mm-hmm,” said Iris. “Just a minute.”

She held the phone out to Katherine. “My mom wants to talk to you.”

Katherine put down her book and reached for the receiver. The cord stretched straighter as Iris passed it across the table.

“Hello, this is Boris's mom, Katherine.”

Iris couldn't hear all her mother's words, but she heard the murmur of her voice. The up-and-down of it.

“It's my pleasure,” said Katherine. “Iris is welcome anytime.”

They talked for a couple of minutes more—Katherine asked Iris's mom how she was enjoying life in Corvallis, and what her specialty was at the university.

Iris waited as her mom responded, picking out words here and there like “infectious disease research” and “lots of rain,” and then she heard the upturn of her mother's muffled voice, as if she'd asked a question.

“American Dream is the best pizza joint in town,” Katherine said. She sounded almost as enthusiastic as Boris had about Magic.

Finally they hung up. Katherine rose to replace the receiver, then mixed more chocolate and milk in a pot, lighting the burner and stirring until the chocolate steamed. Iris went back to Boris's room to get her
Catnap!
mug. Boris was sorting through a stack of cards with a satisfied expression on his face.

“You want another cup of hot chocolate?” Iris asked.

“Huh?” Boris looked up. “Oh. No, thanks. I still haven't finished mine.”

Iris scooped up her cup and took it back to the kitchen.

“Do you have any more whipped cream?” she asked after Katherine filled her cup with hot chocolate.

“A woman after my own heart,” said Katherine, pulling the red and white canister from the door of the fridge.

Iris was pretty sure that a game of Magic was waiting for her back in Boris's room, so she slid into one of the kitchen chairs. “What are you reading?”

“Just a silly novel about a silly woman,” Katherine said. “I don't get much time for pleasure reading, so I'm not sure I'll finish it.”

Iris nodded, even though she'd never started a book that she hadn't finished. She sipped her cocoa and tried to think of an interesting question to ask.

“Have you always lived here?” Not thrilling, but a start.

Katherine shook her head. “I moved every three years growing up,” she said. “My dad was in the military. But I decided that when I had kids, I'd make sure they had a stable life. So we've been in this house since just a few months after our first daughter was born.”

Iris licked away her whipped-cream mustache. “That's nice,” she said.

Katherine's expression changed, like she had just remembered that Iris had been recently uprooted, like maybe she knew why. “Of course, moving can be great, too,” she added. “A fresh start.”

Hearing the echo of her parents' new favorite phrase made Iris lose her taste for the sweet drink, and she set her cup back onto the table.

“I guess,” she said. She thought about going back to Boris's room, but before she did, she said, “You know, even if you try to give your kids a really stable life, sometimes things happen that aren't part of your plan.”

Katherine nodded. “That's the truth,” she said. “Has Boris told you his birth story?”

Iris shook her head, a little embarrassed to have the image of Boris being born spring to her mind.

“You should ask him about it. Talk about things not going the way you expect.” She sipped her tea. After a minute she said, “Boris is my miracle.”

Iris could have laughed, but the tone of Katherine's voice stopped her. She sounded completely sincere.

Katherine said, “Well, all children are miracles. But some are more miraculous than others.”

Iris didn't know what to say to this, so she stood up. “I think Boris wants to teach me how to play Magic,” she said. “Thanks for the cocoa.”