Before Tomorrowland (5 page)

And Lee was going to be there to hear it. That was something else.

Lee had idolized Mr. Lou Gehrig from the time he was ten, when his father bought a big wooden Silvertone radio for the living room. That summer in 1932, the family had gathered around to listen
to a game in which Lou scored four home runs against the Philadelphia Athletics. On the fourth home run, his father had jumped out of his chair and spun Clara around with this crazy, high laugh
that Lee hadn’t heard before or since. That was a good summer.

Now Gehrig was retiring because of a disease. Lee couldn’t even remember its name, but he knew it was tougher to treat than even his mom’s cancer. Gehrig’s decline had been
gradual but steady since last year. It started about the same time Lee had to give up playing ball himself to take care of his mom full time. Lee often thought about that coincidence. He’d
been good enough to get interest from a couple colleges. Now he didn’t know whether they’d want him or not. Probably they would, but he couldn’t very well leave her. It was just
one of those things.

Clara elbowed him in the ribs and stood. “It’s Fifty-Ninth Street,” she said, pushing him out of his seat with her portfolio.

“Easy!”

She gave another playful swat of the portfolio.

“Do that again and I’m grounding you,” Lee said, but he was grinning, too.

As they crossed Madison Avenue, Lee saw the first costumes. A few baggy jumpsuits in bright green and purple, a couple black domino masks, one flowing red cape, all of them turning heads and
earning snickers from the shirtsleeves and fedoras around them. As they crossed Park Avenue, they caught up with two particularly colorful gentlemen. One, short, wore a blue top and yellow pants
and the silver barrel of a vacuum cleaner strapped to his back. The other, taller, wore a bright red shirt, a yellow belt, and black tights. They both brandished fake guns, silver and detailed.

Lee had no idea who they were supposed to be, but his mom sure did.

“Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon!”

She marched up to the two men like they were long lost friends. The short one was Buck Rogers, and if Lee compared him to the comics, maybe Buck Rogers in his later, less active years. Flash
Gordon was only a couple years older than Lee, and had a lanky walk that emphasized his big yellow belt buckle.

“Lee, now would be the time for the camera!”

Lee fished the camera out of his mom’s pack. Buck and Flash immediately struck poses with their futuristic arms. Flash was especially serious about his performance. “Greetings from
Mongo, fellow travelers,” he shouted, loud enough for several normal pedestrians to turn. “Zarkov sends his regards!”

Clara clicked. “Thank you! Oh, you both just look wonderful! Where did you get that fabric?”

Buck fingered his lapel. “I used one of my wife’s evening gowns.”

“Really?” Clara and Lee said in unison. Clara was impressed; Lee, amused.

“The boots are my father-in-law’s, he used to be a jockey and they were just sitting around. I painted them with an oil base. It hasn’t quite dried yet.” He raised one
hand, showing fingertips covered in blue smudges.

As they continued walking across Lexington Avenue, Clara ogled their weapons. “Your guns are so authentic!”

“I took a welding class last year to prepare for the convention,” said Buck.

“That’s some serious commitment.”

“Tell me about it!” said Buck, who then proceeded to tell them about it. Lee listened to most of his incredibly detailed chronicle while shaking his head.

They reached a throng of people, many in costume, gathered outside a theater. Buck tucked his hand into that evening gown lapel, like a gentleman. “M’lady, would you allow us the
honor of escorting you and your young charge into the hall?”

“We would!”

“We would?” asked Lee. Clara shot him a reproachful look. Lee felt only a little bad. “We would!”

Lee didn’t know what to make of this. From his mom’s description of the World Science Fiction Convention, he’d expected a bunch of boring lectures and debates about made-up
gobbledygook. Somehow his mom bringing a costume hadn’t prepared him to see other people parading around in their own. He wondered what the guy’s wife thought of losing her evening
gown. Also:
M’lady?

It was just one more thing Lee didn’t quite get about his mom’s peculiar world of fandom. She had read science fiction and comic books for as long as he could remember, but until
now, her participation in subculture had been limited to monthly gatherings at a used bookstore specializing in dime novels and pulp magazines. The place was as dank as a workman’s boot, and
the other members of the club, mostly men in their twenties, were each a different shade of awkwardness incarnate. It was clear they adored his mom, and Lee was nothing but grateful, even touched
by their respect for her. Still, he found it easy to joke. When his mom said they were trying to brainstorm a name for their group, Lee suggested “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
“Don’t be mean!”
she’d said with a half-smile and a playful punch. They called themselves “geeks”—a term Lee always thought was slang for circus
freaks. He didn’t get that, either.

To each his own,
he resolved. He liked to dress up in a colorful uniform and swing a bat; they liked to dress up in women’s clothes and pretend to shoot aliens.

They entered the lobby and saw a sign:

Lee searched the lobby for an elevator, but the men started up a large wrought-iron stairway. He held out his arm for Clara, but she pushed it away. “I’ll manage, thank you.
I’m feeling good today, honey.” She never called him “honey.” Their comic-strip friends waited for them on the landing. Clara gave Lee’s arm a reassuring squeeze and
started up without apparent effort. He stayed close by her, just the same.

On the second landing, Lee saw a group of well-dressed young men. They were the sophisticated smoking types, old before their pimply time. They were handing out yellow pamphlets with the words
READ THIS IMMEDIATELY! A WARNING!
One spectacled boy leaning against the ironwork stepped toward Buck. “Do you believe in democratic fandom?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Buck, edgy with sarcasm. “Do you believe in a democratic country?’

The bespectacled boy snorted. “Escapist.”

Buck kept walking. “Elitest!”

“What was
that
all about?” Lee whispered to his mom.

“Just silly subculture politics,” she replied. “It’s complicated. I’ll explain later.”

At the third floor, they came into a foyer with a registration table. A pretty young woman whose name tag read
BETH!
greeted them with a forced smile. “Hello!
Welcome to the WorldCon!” Lee thought the truncation of the name sounded awkward, at least coming from her, and he got the sense that BETH! felt the same way.

Clara nudged Lee and said, much too loud, “See? I told you there would be girls here!” Lee closed his eyes and tried to disappear. No luck. The young woman smiled through Lee’s
pain as Clara bent to sign them in. “Aren’t the costumes incredible? I think Buck here is just dead-on,” she said. “I haven’t seen any women dressed up yet,
though.”

“I saw one, I think,” BETH! replied.

“I thought about going as Princess Aura, but I think that time has passed,” Clara joked. “I think Beth here would make a good one. Wouldn’t she, Lee?”

Sometimes, Lee wondered if the brain cancer had turned his mom into a total nitwit.

“Do you know if Alex Raymond is here?” asked Flash Gordon.

“Who?”

“Alex Raymond? The cartoonist? He created…” He pointed at himself. “Well, me.”

“And you are?”

“He’s Flash Gordon,” said Clara, her voice dropping to the octave she reserved for disappointment. “Surely you must know Flash Gordon.”

“I don’t actually know anything,” the young woman apologized. “My brother’s organizing this thing and he’s paying me to help out. All this stuff’s Greek
to me.”

“What did you just call me?” Clara’s voice was now an octave even lower: the register she reserved for righteous indignation. Lee had only heard this voice a dozen times in his
life. Once when he shoplifted a candy bar when he was six, and the all the other times when he couldn’t escape her political arguments with Uncle Randy. Uncle Randy was a “sociopathic
fascist,” to use her words, but otherwise a nice guy.

“What. Did. You. Just. Call. Me?” Clara said this again after Beth responded with nothing but a blood-drained face and a slack jaw. Even Flash and Buck weren’t sure what to
make of Clara, and they began inching away from her and Lee, then moving quickly into the auditorium behind Beth.

“Mom, look! I think I see H.G. Wells!” The lie was enough to get Clara to shut down the death stare with which she was now melting BETH! into a teary-eyed pool of confusion. As Clara
craned her neck with restored excitement, Lee picked up their registration packets and name tags and pushed her toward the auditorium while mouthing a sincere “I AM SO SORRY” to a
pretty young woman that he knew would never again give him the time of day.

“Where is he? Where did you see H.G. Wells?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“But you said—”

“I lied.”

She stopped and stared him down. “You lied?! Lee Lucas Brackett, you know how I feel about lying—”

“Yes. It’s the same way I feel about you biting the head off some girl whose only sin is a degree of ignorance about a comic book icon which, in this case, and with all due respect,
Mom, fell
completely
within socially acceptable parameters.”

“She called us all geeks! Do you know how dismissive and condescending that it is?! About as dismissive and condescending as you’re talking to me now!”

“No she didn’t! She said that all of this was Greek to her.
Greek.
As in: ‘All this geek stuff is a foreign language to me.’”

“Don’t you use that word with me, too!”

“Mom. You use that word to describe yourself and all your friends!”

“But that’s different. We can use that word, but our enemies can’t.”

“Enemies?! Wait. How am I your enemy?!”

Lee thought he could hear the gears in her head whirring as it tried to formulate a response. As she mulled, she held him with a blazing stare, and in that moment, Lee allowed himself to
consider that, yes, brain cancer
had
done a number on his mom, and in ways the doctors said could be impossible to anticipate.
Don’t be too surprised if she hears things, sees
things, smell things that are not there.
Perhaps Lee just experienced an example of this. Perhaps not. He only knew that his mother’s mind must sometimes be a terrifying place, and his
heart broke for her all over again.

He was about to say he was sorry when the fire in her eyes extinguished. Softness returned, and so did her smile. “Bygones,” she said, and grabbed his arm tight. “Would you do
me the honor of escorting me inside?”

“You’re incredible,” Lee said with a laugh.

“I know,” she said.
“Avante!”

Arm in arm, they walked into the auditorium. It reminded Lee of the basement headquarters of his mom’s reading club, except larger, better organized, and with less mildew. The space was
painted and accented to evoke an Arabian palace, though the details were obscured by the convention décor. A banner hung across the balcony:
THE FIRST WORLD SCIENCE FICTION
CONVENTION
. The walls were plastered with poster-sized reproductions of several different science fiction magazines like
Thrilling Wonder Stories
,
Startling Stories
, and
Amazing Stories
. Images of rampaging robots, green-skinned aliens, men in space suits, women in capes, kids in jet packs, and many gleaming rocket ships looked down upon a space crowded with
several rows of exhibitors hawking books, comic books, magazines, and toys. Dozens of people milled about. Some were in costume. Most were not. Conversation echoed throughout the hall. Excitable.
Passionate. Full of laughter. The air smelled of paper, coffee breath, and sweat.

“My people,”
whispered Clara.

She tugged harder on Lee’s arm. She was a kid in a candy story fighting to contain her glee. Then, gaining adult composure, she said, “You don’t have to come in here with me if
you don’t want to. I can just do a quick walk-through with my portfolio—”

“Are you kidding me?” he countered. “We came all this way, I want to see some…rockets, or space things. And you in action.”

“All right. But at a distance. This is work for me, you know.
‘Can’t have some kid nipping at my heels while I’m doing my business!’
” She was mimicking
his father, and one of his many reasons why he could never take Lee on the road with him, even for a day trip. Lee laughed, even though he didn’t find it all that funny.

His mom sauntered down a row of tables. She locked on to one exhibitor and thrust a friendly hand at him with such directness that the man was taken aback. But then he reached and shook it, and
within seconds, she had him flipping through her portfolio. Lee was about to approach and eavesdrop when a hand grabbed his arm.

“You read this one yet, kid!?” asked a slovenly gentleman who was shoving a yellowed hardback novel in his face. The title was
The Secret People
and the cover depicted a
near-naked woman with pale skin diving into a pool of water, surrounded by gray-colored humanoid figures. “It’s fulla everything a kid like you could want. Action, adventure, mystery,
gnomes, and no shortage of dames, I tell ya, all set in the future world of 1964.”

Lee couldn’t tell if the man was a bookseller or a street hustler. “Gnomes?”

“Yeah, gnomes! Or maybe they’re pygmies. I don’t know. I only skimmed it. But I’m sure you’ll love it!”

Lee tore himself away from the man’s pitch. “Thanks very much!” he said with a wave and continued down the row. His mom was long gone. He told himself not to worry and walked
down the aisle. He passed tables with more pulp novels, some comics, and a few illustrators set up and doing sketches for fans. They all seemed more or less the same to Lee, except one. The placard
stopped him: