Perfect Little World(86)

“Fruity Pebbles it is,” she said, and Cap cheered, jumping to his feet and running to the kitchen. Izzy swung her feet onto the floor and followed her son, listening to him hum “You Are My Sunshine” as he gathered the bowl and spoon and a napkin to set the table. Izzy reached into a cabinet and, in the very back, she retrieved the box of cereal and poured a generous amount into the bowl, the skittering sound making Cap shake with excitement. Izzy returned to the table with the almond milk and soon Cap was powering his way through breakfast, still humming, his legs pumping. Izzy made herself a cup of iced coffee with concentrate from the fridge and she sat at the table with Cap. The breakfast table was strewn with Magic Markers and paper, as Cap had been drawing the night before, several pictures of an idea he had for an amusement park where kids wore jet packs and flew around. She held up one of the drawings, the sign for the park announcing it as FLY WORLD. One child’s jet pack had apparently caught on fire and the child was hurtling to the ground, but there were staff members waiting with a trampoline to catch her. “It’s a good thing you made sure there were trampolines at Fly World,” Izzy said to Cap, pointing to the faulty jet pack in the picture. Cap shrugged as if to say, Of course you need trampolines if you’re going to run a successful jet-pack amusement park. “Even though the jet packs sometimes blow up,” he said, so earnestly that Izzy felt her heart flutter, “nobody ever dies at Fly World.”

At the mention of death, Izzy waited to see if Cap would once again bring up Hal. For the past seven months, ever since Cap had been reunited with Izzy and he had realized that it would be only the two of them instead of the traditional families of the other children, Cap would often ask about his father. And Izzy was dismayed and slightly embarrassed to realize that she didn’t have much to offer in the way of answers to Cap’s questions. He would ask what Hal’s favorite food was and Izzy, who honestly had no idea, would try to remember any food that Hal ever ate. It was like walking through a fog into a world that Izzy could not entirely believe had really existed. Her time before the complex, before the Infinite Family, felt, for better or for worse, like a punishment that she had endured and was now free of. She did not even have a picture of Hal when she moved into the complex, but had found a few pictures online and printed them off for Cap. She had considered e-mailing the Jacksons and asking for more pictures and details of Hal’s life, but decided that involving Mr. and Mrs. Jackson in her new life, especially since they had never once contacted Izzy after Cap’s birth, would be a mistake. And so Cap and Izzy made their way with what little Izzy remembered of Hal. His penchant for soda in glass bottles. His fondness for the Velvet Underground. His easy humor and genuine kindness in the classroom. Whatever she gave Cap, it did not seem to be enough. Before, he had nine other dads, plus Jeffrey and Dr. Grind and all the other male staff members who would come to the complex, but now, in the transition, it was as if he had lost a permanent claim to those men, and now it was just Cap and Izzy, no father to speak of. A few times, Cap, making peace with his new situation as best as he could, would say to Izzy, in confidence, that he would sometimes make-believe that Dr. Grind was his father. “I know he’s not my real dad,” Cap then admitted, “but he’s, like, my number one pretend dad.” Izzy had no strength to argue or try to find a sensitive way to expand the topic. She merely nodded and said, “I know exactly what you mean.”


Now that Izzy had graduated from college, with a bachelor’s degree in art that she could not imagine putting to any use, she had moved into the kitchen at the complex to work full time. Chef Nicole had decided to leave to start her own restaurant, and Izzy had taken over as the head chef, and she loved the idea of staying close to home, to be near Cap and the other children.

Of course, now that the families had broken into individual units, the work was a little less involved. Families ate breakfast in their own homes, so Izzy was only responsible for the children’s snacks and lunches and the entire family’s dinners, which were still a communal affair. She missed Nicole, who had given Izzy a new set of knives as a present when she left, but she enjoyed the quiet of the kitchen and having access to any ingredient she could want and all the freedom to make the menus.

The children’s snack was due at 10 A.M., so Izzy baked some seasoned kale chips, chopped carrots into sticks, and scooped out individual portions of cashews. She also used the juicer to make a beet squeeze juice that the kids loved, a mixture of beets and apples and ginger. Once she had arranged the food and drinks on trays, she took them into the classroom, where the children were waiting.

They were lifting various toys using a fixed pulley, as the science teacher, who came three times a week to work with the kids, watched over them, cheering as each child lifted the toy of their choice with the pulley. When the children noticed Izzy, or, more important, the snacks she was holding, they cheered. Irene let go of the rope and a sock monkey flopped back to the floor. “Snack time,” the teacher yelled, and she went over to her desk to prepare the next project while Izzy sat on the floor, the children surrounding her, and handed each of them a bowl of food and a cup of juice. Cap and Jackie sat in her lap as they ate their snacks. Even with the separation of the children, Izzy was happy to see the ways in which the kids still treated the other adults with such affection. And she was also pleased, in moments such as this, where she held on to both Cap and another child, splitting her attention, that Cap was more than willing to share her. As they all finished their snacks, Irene showed Izzy her new pair of glasses, pink and white stripes, and Izzy told her how wonderful they looked, which made Irene smile. The teacher came back to the group and called them to attention. Each child gave Izzy a hug and placed their cup and bowl back on the tray.