Itsy Bitsy Spider | Page 2

look just like I thought you would." She smiled, stood on tiptoe and raised a delicate little hand over her head. I had to bend to shake it. The hand was warm, slightly moist and very realistic. She had to belong to Strawberry Fields; there was no way my father could afford a bot with skin this real.
"Please come in." She waved on the lights. "We're so happy you're here." The door closed behind me.
The playroom took up almost half of the little house. Against one wall was a miniature kitchen. Toy dishes were drying in a rack next to the sink; the pink refrigerator barely came up to my waist. The table was full-sized; it had two normal chairs and a booster chair. Opposite this was a bed with a ruffled Pumpkin Patty bedspread. About a dozen dolls and stuffed animals were arranged along the far edge of the mattress. I recognized most of them: Pooh, Mr. Moon, Baby Rollypolly, the Sleepums, Big Bird. And the wallpaper was familiar too: Oz figures like Toto and the Wizard and the Cowardly Lion on a field of Munchkin blue.
"We had to make a few changes," said the bot. "Do you like it?"
The room seemed to tilt then. I took a small, unsteady step and everything righted itself. My dolls, my wallpaper, the chest of drawers from Grandma Fanelli's cottage in Hyannis. I stared at the bot and recognized her for the first time.
She was me.
"What is this," I said, "some kind of sick joke?" I felt like I'd just been slapped in the face.
"Is something wrong?" the bot said. "Tell me. Maybe we can fix it."
I swiped at her and she danced out of reach. I don't know what I would have done if I had caught her. Maybe smashed her through the picture window onto the patch of front lawn or shaken her until pieces started falling off. But the bot wasn't responsible, my father was. Mom would never have defended him if she'd known about this. The old bastard. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, shuddering with anger, after years of feeling nothing for him.
There was an interior door just beyond some shelves filled with old-fashioned paper books. I didn't take time to look as I went past, but I knew that Dr. Seuss and A. A. Milne and L. Frank Baum would be on those shelves. The door had no knob.
"Open up," I shouted. It ignored me, so I kicked it. "Hey!"
"Jennifer." The bot tugged at the back of my jacket. "I must ask you ..."
"You can't have me!" I pressed my ear to the door. Silence. "I'm not this thing you made." I kicked it again. "You hear?"
Suddenly an announcer was shouting in the next room. "... Into the post to Russell, who kicks it out to Havlichek all alone at the top of the key, he shoots ... and Baylor with the strong rebound." The asshole was trying to drown me out.
"If you don't come away from that door right now," said the bot, "I'm calling security."
"What are they going to do?" I said. "I'm the long lost daughter, here for a visit. And who the hell are you, anyway?"
"I'm bonded to him, Jen. Your father is no longer competent to handle his own affairs. I'm his legal guardian."
"Shit." I kicked the door one last time, but my heart wasn't in it. I shouldn't have been surprised that he had slipped over the edge. He was almost ninety.
"If you want to sit and talk, I'd like that very much." The bot gestured toward a banana yellow beanbag chair. "Otherwise, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
It was the shock of seeing the bot, I told myself -- I'd reacted like a hurt little girl. But I was grown woman and it was time to start behaving like one. I wasn't here to let Peter Fancy worm his way back into my feelings. I had come because of mom.
"Actually," I said, "I'm here on business." I opened my purse. "If you're running his life now, I guess this is for you." I passed her the envelope and settled back, tucking my legs beneath me. There is no way for an adult to sit gracefully in a beanbag chair.
She slipped the check out. "It's from mother." She paused, then corrected herself, "Her estate." She didn't seem surprised.
"Yes."
"It's too generous."
"That's what I thought."
"She must've taken care of you too?"
"I'm fine." I wasn't about to discuss the terms of mom's will with my father's toy daughter.
"I would've like to have known her," said the bot. She slid the check back into the envelope and set it aside. "I've spent a lot of time imagining mother."
I had to work hard not to snap at her. Sure, this bot