Vergil did not look forward to visits with his mother. He needed them, in some uncertain and irritating way, but he did not enjoy them.
April Ulam lived in a well-maintained century-old two-story house just off First Street. The house was painted forest green and had a Mansard roof. Two little gardens fenced in with wrought iron flanked the steep front steps—one garden for flowers and herbs, the other for vegetables. The porch was screened-in, with a wood-frame screen door mounted on squeaking hinges and reined in by a complaining steel spring. Entrance to the house proper was through a heavy dark oak door with a beveled-glass window and lion-faced knocker.
None of these commodities were unexpected when attached to an old house in a small California town. But then his mother appeared, svelte and dressed in flowing lavender silks and high-heeled gold shoes, her raven black hair barely touched with gray at the temples, coming through the oak door and the screen door and stepping into the sunshine. She greeted Vergil with a reserved hug and led him through the parlor, thin cool fingers lightly gripping his hand.
In the living room, she sat on a gray velvet chaise lounge, her gown flowing lightly over the sides. The living room suited the house, being furnished with items an elderly woman (not his mother) might have gathered over a long and moderately interesting life. Besides the lounge there was a blue flower-print overstuffed couch, a brass round table with Arabic proverbs stamped in concentric circles around abstract geometries, Tiffany-style lamps in three corners and in the fourth, a decayed Chinese Kwan-Yin statue carved from a seven-foot teak log. His father—simply “Frank” in all conversations—had brought the statue back from Taiwan after a merchant marine tour; it had scared three-year-old Vergil half to death.
Frank had abandoned both of them in Texas when Vergil was ten. They had then moved to California. His mother had not remarried, saying that would cut down on her options. Vergil was not even certain his mother and father had divorced. He remembered his father as dark, sharp-faced, sharp-voiced, not tolerant and not intelligent, with a thundering laugh brought out for display at moments of perverse anxiety. He could not imagine even now his mother and father going to bed together, much less living together eleven years. He had not missed Frank except in a theoretical way—missing a father, the imagined state of having a father who could talk to him, help him with homework, be a touch wiser when he was having trouble with being a child. He had always missed having that sort of father.
“So you’re not working,” April said, surveying her son with what passed for mild concern.
Vergil had not told his mother about his dismissal and didn’t even question how she knew. She had been much sharper than her husband and still could match wits with her son, usually overmatching in practical or worldly matters.
He nodded. “Five weeks now.”
“Any prospects?”
“Not even looking.”
“You were let go with prejudice,” she said.
“Almost with extreme prejudice.”
She smiled; now the verbal fencing could begin. Her son was very clever, very amusing, whatever his other faults. She was not sorry he had no job; that was simply the state of affairs, and he would either sink, or swim. In the past, despite his difficulties, her son had usually stayed on the surface, with much splashing and poor form, but still, on the surface.
He hadn’t asked for money from her since leaving home ten years ago.
“So you come to see what your old mother’s up to.”
“What’s my old mother up to?”
“Her neck, as usual,” she said. “Six suitors in the past month. It’s a pain being old and not looking it, Verge.”
Vergil chuckled and shook his head, as he knew she expected. “Any prospects?”
She scoffed. “Never again. No man could replace Frank, thank God.”
“They fired me because I was doing experiments on my own,” he said. She nodded and asked if he wanted tea or wine or a beer. “A beer,” he said.
She indicated the kitchen. “Fridge is unlocked.”
He picked out a Dos Equis and wiped the condensation on his sleeve as he returned to the living room. He sat in a broad-backed armchair and took a long swallow.
“They didn’t appreciate your brilliance?”
He shook his head. “Nobody understands me, Mother.”
She stared off over his shoulder and sighed. “I never did. Do you expect to be employed again soon?”
“You already asked that.”
“I thought maybe rephrasing would bring a better answer.”
“Answer’s the same if you ask in Swahili. I’m sick of working for somebody else.”
“My unhappy misfit son.”
“Mother,” Vergil said, faintly irritated.
“What were you doing?”
He gave her a brief outline, of which she understood little but the most salient points. “You were setting up a deal behind their backs, then.”
He nodded. “If I could have had a month more, and if Bernard had seen it—everything would have been just sweet.” He was seldom evasive with his mother. She was virtually unshockable; tough to keep up with, and even tougher to fool.
“And you wouldn’t be here now, visiting your old, feeble mater.”
“Probably not,” Vergil said, shrugging. “Also, there’s a girl. I mean, a woman.”
“If she lets you call her a girl, she isn’t a woman.”
“She’s pretty independent.” He talked for a while about Candice, about her brazen overtures at the beginning and her gradual domesticizing. “I’m getting used to having her around. I mean, we’re not living together. We’re on a sort of sabbatical right now, to see how things work out. I’m no prize in the domestic department.” April nodded and asked him to get her a beer. He retrieved an unopened Anchor Steam.
“My fingernails aren’t that tough,” she said.
“Oh.” He returned to the kitchen and uncapped it.
“Now. What did you expect a big brain surgeon like Bernard to do for you?”
“He’s not just a brain surgeon. He’s been interested in AI for years now.”
“AI?”
“Artificial intelligence.”
“Oh.” She smiled radiant understanding. “You’re unemployed,” she said, “maybe in love, no prospects. Gladden your parent’s heart some more. What else is going on?”
“I’m experimenting on myself, I think,” he said.
April’s eyes widened. “How?”
“Well, those cells I changed. I had to smuggle them out by injecting them into my body. And I haven’t had access to a lab or doctor’s office since. By now, I’ll never recover them.”
“Recover them?”
“Separate them from the others. There’s billions of them, Mother.”
“If they’re your own cells, why should you worry?”
“Notice anything different?”
She squinted at him. “You’re not so pale, and you’ve changed to contact lenses.”
“I’m not wearing contacts.”
“Then maybe you’ve changed your habits and aren’t reading in the dark any more.” She shook her head. “I never have understood your interest in all this nonsense.”
Vergil stared at her, dumbfounded. “It’s fascinating,” he said. “And if you can’t see how important it is, then—”
“Don’t get snippy about my peculiar blindnesses. I admit them, but I don’t go out of my way to change them. Not when I see the world in the shape it’s in today, because of people with your intellectual inclinations. Why every day, over at the Lab, they’re coming up with more and more doomsday—”
“Don’t judge most scientists by me, Mother. I’m not exactly typical. I’m a little more…” He couldn’t find the word and grinned. She returned the grin with the slight smile he had never been able to decipher.