Itsy Bitsy Spider | Page 3

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 had at least a human

equivalent intelligence and would be a free citizen someday, assuming
she didn't break down first. But she had a cognizor for a brain and a
heart fabricated in a vat. How could she possibly imagine my mom,
especially when all she had to go on was whatever lies he had told her?
"So how bad is he?"
She gave me a sad smile and shook her head. "Some days are better
than others. He has no clue who President Huong is or about the quake
but he can still recite the dagger scene from Macbeth. I haven't told him
that mother died. He'd just forget it ten minutes later."
"Does he know what you are?"
"I am many things, Jen."
"Including me."
"You're a role I'm playing, not who I am." She stood. "Would you like
some tea?"
"Okay." I still wanted to know why Mom had left my father four
hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars in her will. If he couldn't tell
me, maybe the bot could.
She went to her kitchen, opened a cupboard and took out a
regular-sized cup. It looked like a bucket in her little hand. "I don't
suppose you still drink Constant Comment?"
His favorite. I had long since switched to rafallo. "That's fine." I
remembered when I was a kid my father used to brew cups for the two
of us from the same bag because Constant Comment was so expensive.
"I thought they went out of business long ago."
"I mix my own. I'd be interested to hear how accurate you think the
recipe is."
"I suppose you know how I like it?"

She chuckled.
"So does he need the money?"
The microwave dinged. "Very few actors get rich," said the bot. I didn't
think there had been microwaves in the sixties, but then strict historical
accuracy wasn't really the point of Strawberry Fields. "Especially when
they have a weakness for Shakespeare."
"Then how come he lives here and not in some flop? And how did he
afford you?"
She pinched sugar between her index finger and thumb, then rubbed
them together over the cup. It was something I still did, but only when I
was by myself. A nasty habit; Mom used to yell at him for teaching it
to me. "I was a gift." She shook a teabag loose from a canister shaped
like an acorn and plunged it into the boiling water. "From mother."
The bot offered the cup to me; I accepted it nervelessly. "That's not
true." I could feel the blood draining from my face.
"I can lie if you'd prefer, but I'd rather not." She pulled the booster chair
away from the table and turned it to face me. "There are many things
about themselves that they never told us, Jen. I've always wondered
why that was."
I felt logy and a little stupid, as if I had just woken from a thirty year
nap. "She just gave you to him?"
"And bought him this house, paid all his bills, yes."
"But why?"
"You knew her," said the bot. "I was hoping you could tell me."
I couldn't think of what to say or do. Since there was a cup in my hand,
I took a sip. For an instant the scent of tea and dried oranges carried me
back to when I was a little girl and I was sitting in Grandma Fanelli's
kitchen in a wet bathing suit, drinking Constant Comment that my

father had made to keep my teeth from chattering. There were knots
like brown eyes in the pine walls and the green linoleum was slick
where I had dripped on it.
"Well?"
"It's good," I said absently and raised the cup to her. "No really, just
like I remember."
She clapped her hands in excitement. "So," said the bot. "What was
mother like?"
It was an impossible question, so I tried to let it bounce off me. But
then neither of us said anything; we just stared at each other across a
yawning gulf of time and experience. In the silence, the question stuck.
Mom had died three months ago and this was the first time since the
funeral that I'd thought of her as she really had been -- not the papery
ghost in the hospital room. I remembered how, after the divorce, she
always took my calls when she was at the office, even if it was late, and
how she used to step on imaginary brakes whenever I drove her
anywhere and how grateful I was that she