The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (25 page)

“Wait,” said Wallace. “Did you say propel?”

Faye nodded, a gleam in her eye. “I did indeed. Jasper has created the best darned propeller this world has ever seen.” She looked at Jasper. He looked back and, as he held her gaze, a moment passed between them—a moment that passed so very quickly and silently that no one else even noticed. But Jasper would remember it in times to come. He had seen something there, and Faye had let him see it. In a subtle but profound way, that changed everything.

Thursday night, after supper, Miss Brett began to read aloud the last chapter of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
It had been ages since they had last heard the story—Miss Brett had put Alice aside some time back, holding off on the final chapter. It was something she had done in childhood, too. She had not wanted the story to come to an end.

All the children were on the edge of their seats, listening with every ounce of their bodies, looking forward to the conclusion. Miss Brett took her time, savoring the book, reading only small sections, leaving the children time to think.

“Remember,” she said, “there is often much sense in the nonsense we find.”

The sounds of sleeping children filled the house, and Miss Brett, sleepy herself, took her candle and, as she did every night, walked over to each child and placed a kiss upon each forehead.

“Goodnight, sweet angels,” she said to Lucy and Faye, who,
sleepy as they were, were still slightly awake.

“I remember when Miss Brett first told us about Alice,” Lucy whispered as Miss Brett’s candlelight faded from the room. She squirmed with pleasure at the memory.

“You remember everything, Lucy,” said Faye, feeling the weight of sleep bearing down upon her.

“Oh, I’d so love to have a friend who was mad,” said Lucy.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Faye said. She was getting a bit grumpy. “And the story isn’t real.”

“Oh, come now, Faye,” Lucy said, curling up right next to her. “You loved it as much as me.”

Faye felt the warmth of Lucy’s breath on her arm and the little girl’s hand in her own, and she didn’t know why this made her cry. But she was glad the lights were out so Lucy couldn’t see her tears. Crying in silence until her mind began to work again, Faye thought to herself how much like Alice she felt. Falling down the rabbit hole could not have been loonier than her life was now.

Alice, when asked by the Caterpillar to explain herself, had said she couldn’t because she wasn’t herself anymore. This had struck home with Faye. She found she still cared so very much for the other children, who said they were her friends, though at times she had been terrible to them. And now, they were planning some crazy escape—by flying over the farm? With a new invention? In search of their parents? Who were kidnapped by men dressed like bunnies and ducks and ladies in bonnets? Could anyone believe such nonsense?

But, strange as it was, there was sense in the plan.

Faye softened. “So... right, well, yes,” she whispered. “I did. And all the rhymes and poems and lullabies, too. Remember
piggy toes?”

But Lucy was long asleep. Faye kissed Lucy’s head and felt the heaviness of sleep come down.

T
ELEPHONIC
R
EASONING

OR

WALLACE’S SPECIAL SECRET

A
fter the kitchen was clean and everyone was asleep, Miss Brett relaxed in her rocking chair. The children certainly saw themselves in the stories she read them. They were, in so many ways, on some crazy adventure with nonsensical characters who offered no answer to the mysteries at hand.

And Miss Brett was not much different from them. She had always expected to live out her teaching years in a small, single-room schoolhouse somewhere out in the country, or perhaps at a small neighborhood school where she would teach many children, and then their children, and then theirs. She had expected to settle down in a small house or apartment with window boxes full of geraniums and at least three cats, to start. But she’d been intrigued when Mr. Bell had suggested she call at a downtown office about that “special opportunity.” She could never have imagined just how “special” the situation actually was.

Miss Brett had said that, yes, she would be interested. Mr. Bell took her hand and held it tight, a subtle spark of excitement in his voice. She adored him, and she considered him, as much as anyone had ever been, her mentor.

“I think you are the one, my dear Astraea Brett,” he had said in his odd accent. She had wondered at times if he was Welsh, but there was something of an eastern European roll to some of his words. At times, the accent almost seemed to come from Arabia.

Mr. Bell’s wizened face had broken into a grin, and then he nodded, mumbling to himself. He had always been a bit unusual. Mr. Bell seemed to be age itself, crooked and shrunken, but energetic beyond compare, flitting around the campus of the teaching college, gliding down its halls. His black cloak and scarf, along with his almost silent movement, sometimes made him appear to be a giant bat as he rushed from classroom to classroom. Miss Brett thought he had an unusual grace, like a man who had once been a dancer. He always wore a black felt cap that seemed to have been made in the early part of the last century. It seemed to slip right down to the bridge of his nose, sitting upon his great black spectacles. In the years she knew him, she could not remember clearly whether or not she had ever actually seen his eyes, but she supposed she must have, at one time or another.

While Mr. Bell’s ways were odd, and many of the other students found him queer, Miss Brett had had few champions in her life, and she knew in her heart that she had one in Mr. Bell. She believed in him as he believed in her. During her two years at the teaching college, they had become quite close. Miss Brett remembered telling him how she had lost her parents to pneumonia when she was fourteen and that she had been alone in the world since then. He had been so kind to her. And he had asked if she truly had no family—no family at all. He had showed such understanding, nodding and thoughtful, when she had answered, “Yes.”

Miss Brett had unpacked her things that morning before the children came. In her sunny room was lovely floral wallpaper, a single medium-sized bed, a desk and bureau, and a big comfy chair covered in soft red velvet. If it were to rain, or if the chores were done early, she would invite all the children into her room and read to them from this chair. She quite liked the room—it was cheery, and she saw it as something of a sanctuary.

She thought about being there, and Mr. Bell, and why she was chosen. A shiver ran down her spine and she shook it off. Mr. Bell would never lead her into something he didn’t feel she could handle.

She placed her handbag on the bed and walked down the hall to look around.

With the driver looking over her shoulder, she took a peek into every room. The two other bedrooms were set for the children. She found there was also a tiny room on the other side by the back door. That room contained only one thing: a telephone, which was, to Miss Brett’s astonishment, an almost glowing shade of red—the only telephones she had previously seen were black. In fact, Miss Brett had only used a telephone three or four times in her life. She found them fascinating and very modern.

“The telephone is not for use,” the muscular driver had told her. “If you pick it up, we will know.”

“Well, I won’t use it, then,” she said. “I hadn’t planned to, so I won’t.”

“Unless,” the man said.

“Unless what?” she asked.

“Unless,” the man repeated. He then walked out of the house, leaving Miss Brett to answer the question for herself.

Miss Brett closed the door to the telephone room and left it closed, turning the small key already in the lock. What “unless” would ever require a telephone call?

Now, sitting in the rocking chair, Miss Brett opened
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
and began rereading the last chapter. As she read, she could hear rhythmic breathing coming from the bedrooms.

Poring over the last paragraph, when Alice’s sister contemplates Alice’s adventure and how she will one day grow up, her breath caught as she thought of these children who would also grow up one day. She closed the book. She smiled. Miss Brett knew that the children were asleep.