The Convulsion Factory Read Online Free PDF Page B

her words at all anymore, because now she’s a professional at this. “You look kind of pale.”
    “I’m okay,” he says, and hauls the bag out of the can. He knows what’s coming next, and then it’s there, Mom’s clammy hand squelched across his forehead to see if he’s running a fever or coming down with chills. She shrugs. She can’t feel much, he’s figured that out by now.
    “You’re always too pale,” she says, and nods to herself as if the act of nodding transforms it into gospel truth. “Maybe you should go to the doctor after school tomorrow.”
    He tells her maybe he will, so she’s happy, and he totes the bag through the garage and drops it by the cans already awaiting pickup. Dusk has fallen, and Alex decides to hang outside in the yard for a while. He fishes into his sock for a joint and smokes it behind a tree in suburban peace and quiet. He watches a BMW that looks like Dad’s cruise past, and when it gets to the end of the block he pretends to press a button and vaporizes car and driver. Foom .
    No doctors, he knows he told a lie. The only way he’ll go to a doctor these days is if he’s carried there unconscious and has no say in the matter. Doctors ask boring questions and make you take off your shirt and he doesn’t want that, and he’s not sick anyway.
    Mom’s always finding some reason to suggest a trip to the doctor, and he always says he’ll go but never does, and she never questions why no office visits in Alex’s name show up on the bills. He doesn’t think she remembers most of the time. Sometimes he tells her he went and needs money to get a prescription at some pharmacy where they don’t have a charge account and she shells out the cash and he spends it on more important things. It’s a good arrangement.
    He finishes the J and waits for most of the smoke smell to clear from his clothes and heads back inside. He watches MTV some more and vacates when they announce they’re going to play a pair of Michael Jackson videos, so he hunts for and finds the Very Important Paper he needs. He takes it upstairs to the rec room.
    He was right, this is where Dad went. In his corner in the back, hunched over his flat worktop while working with plastic pieces and Testor’s glue and tiny bottles of paint. The fruits of Dad’s labors hang suspended by fine wires from the ceiling, models of Fokker tri-planes and Sopwith Camels from the time of the Red Baron, and B-17 Flying Fortresses and Stukas from World War II, all the way up to modern F-16 Falcon and Harrier jets. The ceiling back here is nearly full, and the models just keep coming. Now Dad is working on a kit proudly acquired last week, a scaled down version of a Stealth Bomber.
    Dad is employed as a comptroller for some big corporation with a lot of interlocking squares in the logo, but Alex knows his secret. Dad really wants to be Tom Cruise. They have a DVD player hooked up to the TV but still only one disc, a copy of Top Gun . Dad has watched it at least twice a month for years, and Alex knows that whenever Dad watches he pretends he’s Tom Cruise shooting down MiGs and nailing Kelly McGillis.
    “Dad?” he says, and waits and watches his old man pour himself into the model and close off all else. The model looks silly, like a chunkier version of Batman’s boomerang. “Dad?”
    “Mmmmm?” comes an eventual reply.
    “Got a minute to sign a paper for me?”
    “Mmmmm.” Alex doesn’t know what this means, so he waits, and finally Dad joins two pieces together and says, “What is it?”
    “It’s a permission release for my driver’s training class this final quarter.”
    Dad still hasn’t looked up. Alex could be on fire and roast all the way down to charcoal before Dad would notice, and he finds this funny, the thought of a charred lump standing there between his father and the pool table begging for an autograph.
    “Just put it on the edge of the table, I’ll sign it a little later.”
    “But I need it tomorrow,