Reaching Through Time (9 page)

She smiled warmly at Drake. “Hello.”

“Hi,” he managed to say.

Dennison beamed his daughter a glorious smile. “Good news, Gina. I’ve just hired Mr. Iverson for the summer.”

D
rake blinked. He had hardly gone through a real interview and yet just like that he’d been hired. It wasn’t what he’d expected, but he was glad he’d gotten the job. “Um—thanks. What do you need me to do?”

“Follow me.”

“You’re not going to stick Drake in our nasty old basement, are you, Daddy?” Gina asked.

“It’s not so terrible,” Dennison said. “Besides, it’s where the boxes of my artifacts are stored.”

“I don’t mind,” Drake said, feeling his face heat up. Gina was so pretty; he wished she’d leave so that she wouldn’t have to see him follow with his limping, lurching gait.

He’d never forget the day in seventh grade when Sheila Morgan had sidled up to him in the cafeteria and said, “Hey, you’re cute. Are you new?”

Several schools had been funneled into the newly built
middle and high school at that time. Drake had looked up from his textbook and half-eaten sandwich into her dark brown eyes. He’d never met her, but everybody knew Sheila, the most popular girl in the school. Drake had stammered and Sheila had glanced around at her clique of friends and said, “I may let you walk me to my next class.” The bevy of girls snickered and poked each other.

And Drake momentarily forgot himself, stood up and stepped toward her. His chair teetered backward and he stumbled forward, catching himself on the table as his leg buckled. The look of disdain on Sheila’s face was one he’d never forgotten. She’d flipped her hair off her shoulder and said, “Maybe tomorrow,” and swished away, her friends buzzing around her like worker bees around the queen. Now, years later, he didn’t want to see that look cross Gina’s face.

“Come on,” Dennison said.

Gina stepped up next to Drake. He moved slowly, trying to control his rocking gait and conceal his handicap as much as possible.

“Daddy is a dear,” Gina whispered. “But he’s a slave driver.” She smiled and Drake’s heart melted. She hardly seemed to notice the way he walked.

The basement was down a flight of stone stairs that left Drake straining and his legs wobbly. He worried that the stairs might disqualify him from the job—and from Gina’s attention.

The basement was lit by lamps—Tiffany lamps, he was certain of that—and a bare overhead bulb. Two tall stacks of brown boxes lined a back wall. A fire crackled in a small woodstove in a corner, mingling the smell of smoke with damp and must. Gina wrinkled her nose. “Daddy—”

“This is fine, sir,” Drake said quickly. “All I need is direction.”

“Yes, well, there’s a lot to do before we return to Harvard after Labor Day.”

Gina leaned toward Drake. “I’ll bring fresh flowers for you every day.” She dropped the bundle she carried next to a cut-glass vase on an old table.

“That’s nice of you. But I’ll be all right down here.”

The professor walked to the stack of boxes and opened one, withdrawing an Indian arrowhead with a tag attached. “These are from an old archaeological dig in the Northeast. I need you to accurately record each artifact by date and tribe. These boxes represent the culture of tribes all the way to the Midwest, and the boxes are in a jumble, without order, so I need everything recorded legibly in chronological order. Most of the boxes have a date span marked on the outside, but every piece must be verified and matched to this master sheet.” He held up a sheaf of faded paper. “I’m writing a textbook, so accuracy matters.”

Tedious work, Drake thought, but not difficult. “All
right.” He glanced around the basement. “Where’s your computer?”

“Our what?” Gina asked.

“Everything must be recorded by hand in this book.” Dennison picked up a thick ledger with leather covers.

“You’re serious?” Drake said before he could stop himself. “I can bring a laptop from home—”

Dennison shook his head. “Sorry. There’s no way to get such things to work up here. This house isn’t wired for much more than basic electricity.”

“I just need to plug it in and turn it on. I’ll record everything, save it to a file.”

“No,” Dennison said firmly. “I want it done by hand.”

Without a computer, the job took on a new complexity. “When can I start?” Drake hoped he sounded eager and enthusiastic, not the way he really felt about the job.

“Start tomorrow,” Dennison said. “Be here by nine. Leave at four.”

“I won’t be late.”

Drake slid his cell phone from his pocket, checking the time. The screen was dark, which he thought odd because it had been fully charged when he’d left home. He understood that there might not be cell service up here, but he didn’t understand why the timekeeping function had stopped working. He shook the phone, embarrassed.

“There is a grandfather clock upstairs. It will let you know when it’s four o’clock every day without fail.”

Drake couldn’t imagine not depending on his cell, but he shrugged and said, “I’ll listen for it.”

Back upstairs, Drake again looked at the clock. It appeared too old and decrepit to keep time, but the hands were pointing to eleven o’clock. He did some quick math—if he’d left home around eight-fifteen, arrived at nine according to the old clock and it now read eleven, the clock really was screwy. He couldn’t believe he’d been here two hours already. On cue, the clock chimed, the sound clear and melodious as a bell. He shook the professor’s hand.

Gina opened the front door for him. “See you tomorrow.”

Her smile was radiant, and Drake felt a tug on his heart. He returned to his car telling himself to stop imagining the impossible. Girls like Gina were dream fodder. He’d known since preschool that bias against the handicapped was never stronger than among his own kind.

“I’m telling you, Mom, that house has to be seventy-five or eighty years old.” Drake and his mother sat at the kitchen counter eating spaghetti and meat sauce. He’d filled her in on his new job.

“There are a lot of old houses in this area.”

“Maybe so, but number thirteen didn’t look that old. I’m serious. The furniture looked new, the floors all shiny.”

“It’s probably a replica. New builds can look old if the homeowner’s willing to spend the money,” his mother said. “Although I don’t care too much for your sitting in a damp basement all day. Promise you’ll take your lunch and eat outside in the sunshine.”

Drake dropped his head in exasperation. “Mom, I’ve got a job to do—it’s not supposed to be a day at the beach. I want to keep this job.”

“And I’m glad for you, but can it hurt to take some time for lunch outside?”

Drake recognized her protective instincts, so he changed the subject. “Listen, communication isn’t the best up there.” Who was he kidding? It was nonexistent. “No cell service, no wireless. They may not even have a phone. This guy likes his privacy.”

She frowned. “I don’t like knowing we can’t get hold of each other.”

“I’ll send up smoke signals if you want.”

She eyed him humorlessly. “What’s this man paying you to sit in his basement and wade through old musty boxes?”

Drake felt heat crawl up his neck. He’d never asked. How could he confess that Gina had distracted him to the point that he’d have taken the job for free? No need to mention Gina to his mother at this time. “Enough,” he said. “It isn’t rocket science.”

“Is this how you really want to spend your summer? In a basement by yourself pawing through artifacts instead
of having fun, maybe meeting kids you’ll be going to school with?”

People who were perfectly formed couldn’t identify with people like him. Drake had CP. He was broken. Damaged. Invisible to most of the able-bodied. “Yes,” Drake said firmly. “This is exactly what I want to do.”

T
he next morning, Drake parked his car in the brush and retraced his steps from the day before to the great house. The house looked razor sharp against the brilliant blue sky. Gina waited at the gate beneath the trellis, the purple wisteria swaying in the early summer breeze above her head. She waved and he grinned and waved back.

“Hi,” she said, swinging the gate open for him. “We have a surprise for you.”

She was his surprise. “I like surprises.”

She fell into step next to him. He felt awkward at first, but once more, she didn’t seem to care how crazily he walked. Inside the house, she called, “Daddy, Drake’s here.” She led Drake into the first room off the hallway. “This used to be the dining room, but with only me and Daddy living here, it was expendable. We turned it into a library, and now, your workroom.”

The room glowed sunny and bright from a large bow window. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases stretched along one wall, and a long oak table had been set up in the middle of the room. Boxes were stacked like steps on a third wall.

“Are those the boxes from the basement?” Drake asked.

Gina nodded. “I told Daddy it was wrong to make you work down there like a mole, so we moved the boxes.”

He wondered if his handicap had spurred them to make the change. Embarrassing. An old man and a girl catering to his problem. What next? A ramp up the porch? “Did you and the professor carry them up?”

“No, silly,” she said. “We have a dumbwaiter in the hallway. We loaded the boxes and brought them up here.”

A dumbwaiter—a device once used in old houses to move goods and food between floors before elevators. It made sense, but he still felt inadequate. “I like this room better.”

“Me too.”

Dennison bustled into the room. “Good morning.”

“I like the move upstairs,” Drake said. “Thanks.”

Dennison waved him off. “Let’s get you started.”

Drake crossed to the table just as the clock in the hall chimed. He counted the gongs silently while listening to the professor’s instructions. He heard eight gongs. Impossible. He’d left his house at eight o’clock to drive here and yet now the clock was chiming eight. Yesterday it had been right on the money about hitting eleven, but now it
was off by over an hour. It was the weirdest clock he’d ever been around.

“When you leave, no need to hunt for me—I’m often preoccupied in the afternoons.” He turned away. “Until tomorrow, then. Same time.”

Drake watched them both leave the room. He sighed and limped over to the pile of boxes, heaved one onto the table and set to work.

By noon, Drake had hardly made headway on the first box. Reading the old, brittle and faded labels attached to each artifact was difficult, and recording each on paper by hand was intense slow work. He didn’t want to make a mistake, so he checked and double-checked his spellings and descriptions before laying each piece aside. He missed his computer, where it was easy to correct errors.

He worked in silence, hearing the chime of the clock every hour. He decided that not having Gina around him while he worked was probably a good thing; her presence would have distracted him. He felt a powerful attraction to her. Usually he became invisible once girls saw his deformity—a pathetic truth he’d learned to face. Yet when he looked into Gina’s eyes, he felt whole. Stupid, he told himself. There were no jocks around to impress her. No other guys vying for her attention. Hadn’t she told him she and her father lived alone in the house?

When Drake’s stomach growled, he stretched, laid down his pencil and picked up his bag lunch. He decided
to go outside because he wanted to check out the place—not because his mother had asked him to. He went around to the backyard and found a wooden bench in the middle of a path surrounded by colorful gardens. Roses scented the air and bees hummed around flower heads. Sunshine warmed his back.

“How do you like my gardens?”

He looked up to see Gina on the path, her hands full of gardening tools. The sun’s rays bounced off her dazzling white blond hair like dancing fireflies and made his heart skip.

“Beautiful,” he said, telling her two things at once.

She laughed and settled beside him on the bench. “Want some lemonade? I made it this morning. I can run up to the kitchen for it.”

“I’m good,” he said, not wanting her to leave, not even for a drink of something cool.