Mad Skills by Walter Greatshell Page B

whatever you want to do, Mads.”
    “Can we just talk a little while?”
    “Certainly. That would be nice. What would you like to talk about?”
    “Well, first I just want to apologize to you guys. I know I’ve been kind of bitchy since I got home, and I don’t mean to be. I want to let you know I’m not all depressed or anything. It probably seems like I hate everything all the time, which is not true—there are a lot of beautiful things going on that I never noticed before. I’m just not used to talking about them.”
    “That’s wonderful, honey,” said her mother. “Like what?”
    “Well, for instance, I really like that we’re all together like this. I wanted to thank you guys for that. I know it’s been tough for you, and I appreciate it.”
    “Oh, baby, I’m so glad.”
    “We should be the ones thanking you,” said her father. He took his wife’s hand, and they beamed at each other. “You helped us realize that what really matters is family. Through thick and thin.”
    They all stood up and hugged over the coffee table, weeping. After a moment, they settled back into their seats.
    Wiping her eyes, Maddy said, “Also, I love crystals.”
    “Oh?”
    “They’re so amazing, don’t you think?”
    “I guess they are at that,” ventured Mr. Grant.
    Mrs. Grant said, “It’s so nice in the morning when the sun shines through them, and they make little rainbows all over the room.”
    Maddy nodded in polite agreement. “Oh, definitely. It’s also fun to play around with hypothetical variants on the four basic cell-unit types and the geometric tessellations of the seven crystalline systems, just to see what happens. Why stop with the fourteen Bravais Lattices? I’ve worked out Face-Centered, Base-Centered, and Body-Centered Dodecahedral and Octoclinic Systems—you name it. The theoretical configurations are infinite.”
    “My goodness.”
    “It’s better than Legos.”
    Her folks sat nodding for a moment, then looked at each other. “Well!” her dad said heartily. “And on that note, I’m gonna go brush my teeth.”
     
     
    THE Internet was another level of mindlessness altogether, though at least she could bypass all the “user-friendly” junk and write her own programming code. Still, technology was the holdup: Everything was slow—agonizingly slow. The sad fact was it was not all that different from the crude level of consciousness she had experienced in her brain-dead state. To go back to either of those conditions now, Maddy would feel like a goldfish stranded in a puddle. Flopping around and gasping for breath. Which was exactly what she was: a big fish in a little pond.
    So she pretended.
    She was good at pretending: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, angels—she had once fervently believed in them all. One summer her camp counselors dug up an old Ouija board and held a séance, at which Maddy truly thought she had witnessed the raising of spirits. Clearly, she could believe anything. But to resurrect the spirit of Maddy Grant, she needed others around her just as credulous—fortunately, good old Mom and Dad were also sitting at the table, hands joined, intently waiting for the candles to flicker.
    They baked cookies, did dishes together, ironed and folded laundry, played cards and board games in the evenings. All three participated with determined enthusiasm, pushing themselves to conform to their own highest expectations of how a happy family should act. Her folks fulfilled their roles as a loving couple, Dad having moved back in to complete the family unit, and Mom pretending to forgive his infidelities. Maddy was pretty sure they weren’t sleeping in the same bed, but it was the thought that counted. The hope. And, taxing as the effort was, all three of them did sense something real stirring, a spark of normalcy in the damp tinder … or perhaps they just wanted it so badly.
    They even had a chance to perform their dog and pony show in public, on the open-air stage of their front