The Nest (6 page)

I held the baby, and he was small but not as light as the last time I'd held him. Because he was sickly, I always imagined I'd barely feel his weight, that he would float up and away. But in my arms he was surprisingly solid. I thought about what was inside, all the wet weird things we have in our bodies that make us work. And then deeper still, all the
little squirmy cells and inside them the threads of DNA that tell everything what to do. And with the baby I pictured them like strings of Christmas tree lights, only some bulbs were missing, and others were winking, and some had blinked out for good.

And I didn't know what was going to happen or what it all meant, or what I was supposed to do about it.

“No one's perfect,” Vanessa said, “that's all I'm saying. Your brother seems to have a lot wrong with him right now. But it might not always seem that way.”

I knew I shouldn't ask, but I couldn't help it.

“That wasp you took,” I said, “did you learn anything else about it?”

Vanessa looked uncomfortable. “Hey, you know, I'm sorry if I got you all freaked out about the wasps. Your dad wasn't too happy about it.
He said you tried to knock down the nest.”

“That wasn't your fault.” I hoped Dad hadn't said anything mean to her.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” she said.

“I know!”

“Anyway, he asked me not to talk about it anymore.”

“Oh.” For a minute I said nothing, but then I felt angry. “I won't tell him anything. I'm just curious what it was.”

“You promise you won't tell him?”

“Promise.”

“You're not going to do anything else stupid with the nest?”

“No! So, what are they?”

“I showed it to my prof, and she agreed she hadn't seen one like it. She pinned it and took some pictures, but when she started to dissect it,
there, uh, wasn't much of anything inside.”

I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“It just kind of collapsed, like an empty shell.”

Whenever I got a panic attack, it almost always started the same way. There was a hot flush in the nape of my neck, and it would travel down my back and then out my arms, and sometimes my legs, like I'd been struck by lightning. And then came the feeling that I was going crazy, that I'd end up curled into a little ball and never, ever be right again.

“Probably I just put too much ethyl acetate in the killing jar,” Vanessa was saying. “I might've dissolved it.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to take a big breath into my abdomen.

The wasps weren't normal. They weren't filled with the normal stuff.

After dinner that night the baby wasn't interested in his bottle, and his little body seemed really floppy.

“Maybe it's the heat,” Dad said. It was blistering outside, and even with the air-conditioning on, it wasn't much better inside.

“He's not right,” Mom said, and she seemed really worried. Dad drove them to Emergency.

Nicole and I watched television, and I kept letting Nicole have more and more cookies until Dad came back.

“They're keeping him overnight,” he said. “Mom's staying.”

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“They think it might just be a virus.”

“Like a cold,” Nicole said, still watching television.

Dad ruffled her hair. “Right.”

After Nicole was in bed, I asked Dad, “Is it serious?”

“They're not worried about the virus too much.
It's just . . . he needs to be strong for the heart surgery, and he needs it soon. But they don't want to risk anything until he's as healthy as he can be. We just have to hope for the best.”

“Okay,” I said.

He hugged me good night, told me to get some sleep, told me he loved me. As I was coming back from the bathroom, I glimpsed him sitting on the edge of his bed in his underwear, taking his socks off. His head was lowered, and I could see the patch where he was losing his hair. He got one sock off and massaged his toes and then seemed to forget about the other sock. And then he wasn't even massaging his toes anymore. He was just sitting there, not looking at anything at all.

In bed I did my lists. I said my sort-of prayers twice, because I was worried I might have missed someone. Without Mom and the baby, the house felt lonelier.

I pulled the covers over my head and wrapped myself up like a cocoon.

Inside the nest it was dimmer than ever, but my focus was the clearest yet. Suspended from the ceiling was a big gauzy bundle of white that looked like silk and spit and cobweb. It took up nearly half the nest and gave off a fierce heat. When I peered down from my little ledge—had it been built just for me?—I could see, just outside the circular exit, a swarm of worker wasps hovering and beating their wings, angling cool air inside the nest. I felt the breeze against my face.

“The baby's pupating.”

It was the queen, her antenna grazing me. I hadn't even heard her coming. Her wings were noiseless.

“He's not a larva anymore,” she said. “The baby's eaten all he needs for now. He's spun a little
nest around himself, and he's just concentrating on growing.”

I tried to peer inside, but the baby was sealed away within its white cocoon. I thought of myself asleep in bed, all wrapped up in my blankets.

“I didn't know if you'd come back,” the queen said to me.

“I don't seem to have a choice.”

“Oh, of course you do, my dear. Of course you do. You want to come. That's why you're here.”

I wasn't at all sure about this. But I felt differently now. If Dr. Brown was right, this was just a dream. It felt real, but it wasn't. It had no power over me.

“So, what happens next?” I asked.

“Well, the baby will grow, and then he'll be ready.”

“To replace our baby.”

“Goodness me, you're doing it again. This, right here, is your baby.”

“Our baby needs a heart operation.”

“He's in the hospital right now,” said the queen. “I know. He'll be home in the morning. Your mother will be very sad indeed. She'll try to be brave, though. They'll have told her they can't perform their surgery until the baby's stronger. And very crude surgery it is, if you don't mind me saying. They do their best, don't get me wrong, best intentions and all that, but it's still primitive. Be loving to your mother. Because the fact is, the baby won't ever be strong enough to have the operation.”

“You don't know that!” I said, and had to remind myself none of this was real.

“He doesn't have long. The doctors will be vague. They'll say, ‘Oh, when he's stronger.' Maybe they'll even believe it themselves.”

“You're sure?”

“It's very sad. But he doesn't have long. How are the others bearing up?”

I felt like my head was being crammed full of crumpled bits of paper, and I was trying to unfold them all to read the answers, but the printing was too small and the paper too torn. Nothing made sense.

I muttered, “Nicole doesn't really understand.”

“Merciful. And your father?”

I thought of him sitting on the edge of the bed. “I don't think I've ever seen him sadder.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Who's taking care of you?”

“I'm fine.”

“Who's looking after you? Who has a tender word for you?”

“They do; they're just tired.”

“Of course. They must be shell-shocked. Shattered. Every parent's worst nightmare.”

Defiantly I said, “But you're here to make everything better, right? To make a healthy baby.”

“Of course. But we couldn't do it without you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I stung you, it was so I could talk to you, yes. But there was another reason. We took a little bit of you, a little bit of your DNA. Just to help us get the baby started. It's not just any old baby, remember. It's your family's.”

“So . . . the baby's going to be a twin?”

“Oh, goodness gracious, no. We take care of all those little things once we have the raw ingredients. But we still need your help in another way.”

“How?”

“We're clever, but we can't do everything. There's a point where we'll need you.”

“Why don't you talk to my parents about it?”

“Out of the question. They're far too busy. Adult minds get so cluttered.”

“None of this is up to me!” I was forgetting myself again. This wasn't real, any of it.

“No?” she said. “You're more important than you think.”

I couldn't help being curious. “What would I do, anyway?”

“Right now you don't have to do a single thing.”

“So when?”

“We'll let you know. Right now all you have to do is say yes.”

This was new. So far in my dreams all I'd been doing was listening and watching. Like dream TV. Now I was being asked to do something.

“Have you noticed you never call the baby ‘Theodore'?” the queen said.

“How did you know his name?”

“I know everything you know. You've never once called the baby ‘Theo.' Why do you think that is?”

I shrugged.

“You're not ready to give him a name because you don't know if he'll live. It's a bit like admitting he's not a real person. And he's not, is he? Not yet. Not until we're done. I think you know what that means.”

“What does it mean?”

“That you're ready to say yes.”

“But what am I saying yes to?”

“‘Yes' is a very powerful word. It's like opening a door. It's like fanning a flame. It's the most powerful word in the world.”

The queen was maddening, the way she talked, the way words poured out of her and spiraled around.

“But you're still not telling me—”

“‘Yes' means yes and everything that entails. We'll finish the baby, and you'll go into his room one morning and there he'll be, and he'll be healthy and it'll be like the old one was never there.”

“As if my parents wouldn't notice!”

“No one will ask questions,” the queen said. “You think they'll care when they discover he's healthy? You actually think they'll wonder, ‘Hmmm. How can he be so healthy all of a sudden? How worrying! How suspicious!' They'll just be so grateful. And it will be Theo. Just healthy. And before you know it, you'll forget all about that crappy little broken baby.”

I felt like I'd been slapped. Those were the first unkind words she'd spoken.

“That's mean,” I said.

“Sometimes the truth hurts. Now, just think how
happy your parents will be. They'll be so happy, and everything will go back to the way it was. Happy, happy, happy.”

“Happy . . .” I suddenly caught the smell of freshly cut grass again, felt a cooling summer breeze.

“That's right. And all you have to do is say yes. Yes to the end of suffering and heartbreak. Yes to making your mother and father happy. Yes to making a better life for everyone.”

I thought,
It's just a dream anyway
.

I thought,
It has no power over me
.

I thought,
Why not?

“Fine,” I whispered.

“I'm sorry. I didn't hear that.”

“Yes,” I muttered.

“More clearly please.”

“Yes, then! Yes! Yes!”

I was aware of a vast welling sorrow in my chest,
like a huge breath I didn't know needed exhaling. I was crying.

“There now,” said the queen kindly, and her antennae brushed my tears away. “There, there. Let the sadness out. You've done the right thing, Steven. Such a brave, wonderful boy. Thank you.”

And I cried, and woke, my blankets all tangled up around my breathing hole, smothering me. I pulled my head clear and sucked in air. For a moment I was confused and couldn't remember what had happened. When I did, I felt sick in my stomach. I'd done something terrible. I'd said yes. I'd agreed to help the wasps replace the baby.

Breathing deep, I tried to calm myself. Dr. Brown had said dreams felt very powerful but they weren't real experiences. Right now this didn't make me feel one bit better.

I whispered to myself, “I didn't mean it.”

Like I was hoping someone would reply. Like someone would forgive me.

“I didn't mean it,” I said again.

“I didn't mean it,” I said fiercely, teeth pushed against my pillow.

A
T AROUND ELEVEN THE NEXT MORNING
, Dad went to pick Mom and the baby up from the hospital. The baby was crying and seemed more energetic. Mom looked wiped out, but she smiled and said it was amazing anyone could get better in a hospital with all the beeping and buzzing and people coming in and out at all hours.

“How is he?” I asked.

And Mom told me everything the queen had told me in my dream—almost everything. “When he's
stronger, he'll have the operation. Maybe as soon as this week. But the doctors said he can stay at home till then. We just need to take extra care with him and make sure he doesn't get all limp again, or his fingernails or lips get blue. And then, with a bit of luck, he'll have the operation.”

“And then he'll be all better?” asked Nicole, running her truck back and forth over an action figure.

“He'll be better,” Mom said. “Not all better. There's always going to be things . . . different about him.”

It was the first time Mom and Dad had really said that to Nicole. I watched her, wondering what she'd do. She shrugged.

“He looks fine to me,” she said, and went off to find a different action figure to maul.

“Is it risky, the operation?” I asked Mom.

“It's complicated, but they're so good at these kinds of things now.”

She smiled bravely, and I gave her a hug and said I was sure everything was going to be okay, and I tried to sound as reassuring as possible. Just like the queen had told me.

Dad made lunch, and we ate it inside. They were doing it for me, because of the wasps. The baby had taken a full bottle and was having a nap upstairs. Mom had the baby monitor set up nearby.

“I called an exterminator,” Dad told me. “They're coming Friday to take care of that nest.”

It was Tuesday. That was in three days. I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Soonest I could get,” he said. “They're crazy busy this year. It's a terrible summer for wasps.”

We were cleaning the dishes when we heard the crying. We all stopped, and the back of my neck went electric. It was normal baby crying, but it was
not a sound we'd ever heard from our baby. He was quiet. He'd never really cried. At most he made a gentle kind of bird trill. Blaring over the monitor right now was a big full baby wail.

Eyes wide, Nicole said, “Is that Theo?”

Mom and Dad were both rushing for the stairs. I followed. I took the stairs two at a time to keep up. When I entered the baby's room, Mom and Dad were leaning over the crib, peering down. The baby was deep asleep, breathing evenly, little hands balled into fists.

From downstairs we could still hear, faintly, the sound of a crying baby over the monitor.

“Weird,” I said.

Dad picked up the transmitter part of the monitor and switched the channel. From downstairs the noise stopped.

“We must be picking up someone else's monitor,” he said.

“The new people next door have a baby, don't they?” Mom said.

Dad nodded.

I knew it was crazy, but I couldn't help thinking it wasn't the baby next door. It was the baby outside our window, growing in the nest.

That night Mom and Dad closed their door all the way, but I still heard them talking. I think they talked about me a bit, because I caught Dr. Brown's name, and then I'm pretty sure they were discussing the baby. When I crept down the hall to hear better, Mom was telling a dream she'd had the night before in the hospital. In the dream a nurse came and told her that there'd been a mix-up and they'd given her the wrong baby, and the nurse had the right baby, and there was nothing wrong with him, he was healthy. And I couldn't really hear what else
Mom was saying next, because she was crying, but I heard her say the word “ashamed,” and Dad's low soft words were covering up her choky little gasps.

It was very dark in the nest now. I could barely see the walls, and then I realized it was because the baby had grown so large, it was blocking out most of the light. I felt its presence all around me, though I could make out only its outlines. The nest was very humid. Last winter we'd gone to the zoo and visited the rain forest pavilion, and it had been really crowded with people in their puffy coats, and all the monkeys and gorillas and their thick animal smell and their food and their poo. It was overpowering, and I'd had to go outside to breathe in the icy air. It was like that now in the nest.

Almost at once the queen was before me. I didn't
want her touching me with her antennae, but I knew it was the only way we could talk.

“Delightful to see you, as always,” the queen said. “So nice of you to drop by.”

“Was that the baby we heard today?”

She gave a little hop of excitement. “Quite a set of lungs he has on him, yes?”

“It scared us all.”

“A healthy wail, that's all, not like the sickly little bleats from that one in the crib. Oh, but I am so glad you heard him! He's crying out to you, to let you know he's ready to be born and loved by you all! He wants to meet you more than anything. He's growing just as fast as he can! Would you like to see him?”

“I don't—”

“Oh, come and see the baby! You can't see him at all from down here. It's too dark. There's better light
higher up. I'm sure you'll fall in love with him.”

Once again I felt myself taken hold of and lifted. As we moved closer, I was aware of the baby's impressive mass. I realized that, from below, all I'd seen were the shadows of a back and bottom and legs. Now, suddenly, at the very top of the nest there was light and I was peering down at the baby from above.

Gone was the silky covering. From the ceiling the baby hung suspended on a narrow stalk that looked like an umbilical cord, except it fed right into the back of the baby's head and was formed from the same papery material as the nest itself. And the baby . . .

“Oh,” I breathed, and again, “oh . . .”

“He's turned out very well,” the queen said proudly.

I took a big breath of the humid air, and strangely it didn't smell bad anymore. It smelled like a baby's milky breath.

“He's so beautiful,” I said.

“Isn't he?”

He was all soft flesh and dimpled wrists and knees, and the most perfect bowed mouth. And I knew it was unmistakably our baby, before anything had gone wrong with its DNA, before it had come out of my mom's womb, before it slept in the crib in the bedroom down the hall from me.

“Can I touch him?” I asked.

“Not yet. We're not quite finished yet.”

And when I looked more closely, I saw little teams of wasps moving over the baby's body—a little fingernail that wasn't quite complete, the lobe of an ear—and they were regurgitating matter from their mouths and sculpting it into baby flesh.

I watched these small construction sites, fascinated, and all the thoughts in my head, those hot
prickly coils of static, somehow melted into a perfect quiet pool. I was so still inside.

“The pupal stage is quite comprehensive,” the queen was saying, “but there's always a few last little bits to polish up. A few odds and ends. We like to take our time. Make sure it's just right before we put it into place.” She called out to her workers: “Excellent work, ladies! Well done!”

The workers didn't seem to hear, or at least didn't make any reply. Maybe they couldn't talk.

“It's incredible,” I said.

“Why, thank you. Some people don't appreciate how skilled we are. They can't see all the work that goes into it. They don't look closely enough, do they? I like to think of us as stonemasons. Like those workers who built the great cathedrals or pyramids. Thousands of them it took, and decades to complete sometimes.”

The queen turned and called out cheerily to her workers again.

“Tremendous, ladies. Keep it up!”

Again they ignored her.

“Important to keep their spirits up,” she confided to me. “They don't tend to get a lot of outside praise. Good for morale. Feel free to say something to them. It does buck them up so.”

Awkwardly I called out, “Nice work, everyone!”

More quietly the queen said to me, “They don't live long, you know. A few weeks. But they have lots of energy. Their entire lives they give to this project. Just for you and your family. And look, there he is. Your little baby Theo. You can't tell me that's not him. Just without those unfortunate mistakes.”

I remembered what Mom had said, about her dream, how they'd just made a mistake at the hospital. How they'd given her the wrong baby.
And then they'd brought her the right one.

“When I said yes, what does it mean? Exactly.”

“Ah, well, I'm very glad you asked. When your baby is ready, we'll need to bring him into your house, into his crib.”

“How will you do that?”

“You'll be helping us. That's what you said yes to. When we're finally ready, all you have to do is open the window in the baby's room and remove the screen. That's all. We'll do the rest. That's not so hard, is it? Just open the window and remove the screen. Open the window and remove the screen.”

“Open the window, remove the screen,” I repeated.

“Precisely.”

“But what about our baby?” I asked.

“There you go again,” the queen chastised.

“He's getting an operation soon . . . ,” I said.

“Not going to happen,” said the queen. “He's not going to live.”

I swallowed. “You're sure?”

“I'm sure. And so are you. You've already made your choice, Steven. You can have your proper baby—or no baby at all. Which do you think is better for your family? It's not even a choice! A choice requires a bit of thought, a bit of a tussle. You didn't need to think about this at all. It's something or nothing. But we do need to give you the new baby before the old one dies.”

I thought of all the agony Mom and Dad would endure if the baby died. I couldn't bear it, knowing I might have stopped it. Then I clenched my teeth, reminded myself I was only dreaming.

“None of this matters,” I murmured.

The queen's head angled in surprise. “Doesn't matter?”

“This is just a dream. Just my mind.”

“It's all right, Steven,” she said. “I know this must be very difficult for you.” She stroked me with her antennae, and I somehow felt forgiven. “Anyone would struggle with this. Would you like some help, knowing if this is real?”

I nodded.

“Of course you would. All right, then.”

Very quickly she darted toward me and bit me. I cried out as the twin points of her mandibles pierced the back of my hand.

“I'm sorry,” she said gently, “but now you'll know.”

I cradled my hand, and the pain swelled to fill me up, then turned to blackness—and for the first time in a long time, I felt that things were going to be all right.

On the back of my right hand, in the morning's light, were two small red welts.