Best of all, it wasn’t going to cost Victor a dime.
When given a winning lottery ticket, most people don’t wonder how they came to receive it. They’re just lucky, they figure. The same was true of the parents who’d received brochures from Harmony House.
Five days later, Eddie packed his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles suitcase and got into the car with his father. “This is for the best,” Victor told him on the drive from Philadelphia. “These are people who can help you a hell of a lot better than I can. It’s not that I don’t want to, believe me.”
Eddie nodded, knowing with certainty that his father was not telling the truth. Eddie didn’t understand why people sometimes told the truth and sometimes lied. He just knew that was the case. Dr. Fenton would later tell him that he was the best human lie detector ever tested.
Upon taking exit 24A off the 295 into Woodbury, Victor glanced at his son. “They will even help you with your experiments, which you know I never could.” At least this statement was true. Why they would help Eddie was something else entirely.
Eddie looked out the window of his father’s Volkswagen Bug as they rode up a long driveway. An eight-foot-high barbed-wire fence lined the perimeter, but most of it was hidden by lush greenery. Rolling lawns and beautiful gardens surrounded the facility. There was a single guard at the driveway gate who already knew Victor’s and Eddie’s names. They were expected. Victor was surprised by how poorly marked the place was, almost like they didn’t want anyone knowing about it who didn’t already know. That was, of course, exactly the idea.
“Do they have yellow Jell-O?” Eddie grinned mischievously. He could never mention his favorite food without cracking an awkward smile, which was the only kind he knew how to make. Purple Jell-O, or any other purple food, had the exact opposite effect on Eddie. But yellow Jell-O was the one food that was as fun to say as it was to eat. Eddie’s question was also an invitation to play the one game he and his father could enjoy together. The Rhyming Game.
“I bet so, don’t you know. But if they do not, uh, make another pot.”
“Am I to believe that I can just leave?”
Victor struggled to rhyme his reply. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. I doubt you can just go.”
“So this is my jail where I will receive no bail?”
“Look, Eddie, you can’t think of it like that.”
Eddie raised his hands in triumph because Victor’s response didn’t rhyme. “The winner and still champion.” He had memorized the response watching professional wrestling. Eddie liked games. He wished his father would have played more with him, but his father just didn’t seem to like them, so Eddie settled for the Rhyming Game.
“Yellow Jell-O.” Eddie’s smile slowly faded as he stepped out of the car and onto the grounds of Harmony House for the very first time. He closed his eyes and stood completely still, slowly rotating his head from side to side. Victor knew enough not to get out of the car, or ask Eddie a question, until his son spoke first.
Eddie liked what he heard, which was next to nothing. No passing trains. No interstate rumble. Only leaves RUSTLING in the wind. A dog BARKING somewhere in the distance. It was a Rottweiler. An old one. Eddie recognized the sound from the dog his grandparents kept on their modest farm in Saylan Hills.
Eggplant was among the crops his grandparents grew, and Eddie never failed to mention how he felt about purple food every time he visited. They didn’t seem to appreciate it much, which might explain why they had answered no when Victor had asked if Eddie could live with them, a few years back.
Eddie finally opened his eyes and turned to his father. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I can stay here.”
Dr. Marcus Fenton approached them with an inviting smile. “Welcome to Harmony House, Edward. I’m Dr. Marcus Fenton.”
Eddie stared at the ground. “I don’t like being called Edward.”
“What would you prefer that I call you?”
“Eddie.”
“Well, Eddie, then that is what I will call you.”
His tone disarmed Eddie, who not only smiled as best he could, but even glanced briefly at Fenton’s eyes. They didn’t make him feel uncomfortable the way most people’s did. He made a mental note to ask why later.
“I would like to be the first to welcome you to your new home.”
“Why would you like to be the first?”
“Because I have been looking forward to meeting you for quite a while now.”
“How long is that?”
“Since Dr. Tuffli first wrote me about you, several months ago.”
“What did he write about me?”
“That you were a truly extraordinary young man.”
“Is that why you invited me to live here?”
“We invited you to live here because we think it is the very best place for you.” Fenton never looked away from his newest patient. “Eddie, would you like a tour of your new home?”
Eddie nodded. “My dad can come, too.”
Fenton showed them his office, the play yard, the cafeteria, the recreation room, the infirmary, and every other common room patients used in the facility. In each space, Eddie closed his eyes and stood completely still, slowly rotating his head from side to side. Victor grew increasingly impatient with each room, but Fenton acted like he had all the time in the world. He understood better than the boy’s own father that Eddie needed time to process each space in his unique way.
When they finally arrived at patient room 237, which already had the name Edward Parks written in the name slot, Victor looked relieved. Only now did he truly believe the invitation was real. They walked into the cement-block room. After rotating his head from side to side, Eddie turned to Dr. Fenton. “There is no way I can live here.”
Victor immediately blurted out nervously, “Shut up, Eddie.”
“Why not?”
“Too hard. The surfaces. The surfaces are too hard.”
“I understand.” Fenton glanced around at the cinder-block walls, realizing he should have anticipated this.
Eddie quickly became upset. “Hard surfaces produce echoes. Can’t you hear them?” He rotated his head, listening to the echoes that only he could hear. “It’s making my head hurt.”
Dr. Fenton attempted to allay Eddie’s concerns. “No, Eddie, I can’t hear any echoes,” the doctor said.
“I would be too uncomfortable to live in this room.”
Victor’s blood pressure skyrocketed. “Eddie, goddammit—”
The doctor cut him off quickly. “Curtains might help.”
Eddie thought for a moment. “Yes, I agree. Curtains might help.”
“I’ll have someone on the staff put some up right away.”
“Really?” Victor could hardly believe his ears.
“Really. Eddie, do you have a preference of colors?”
“Red, yellow, blue, green, and orange. In that order, with red being first choice. But no purple. Definitely no purple.”
“Red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and no purple. Got it.”
“I won’t have to eat purple food, will I?”
“No, Eddie. You won’t have to eat any food you don’t want to.”
“I don’t like purple food. I don’t like plums, I don’t like eggplant, I don’t like purple berries, and I don’t like purple grapes. Green ones are okay, but not purple ones. They look like bruises, and bruises hurt. Purple food reminds me of bruises.”
“I promise that no one here will ever force you to eat any purple food.” And it was the truth. The human lie detector confirmed it. The most senior doctor on the grounds of Harmony House then excused himself to find someone to put up the nonpurple curtains that would later become the inspiration for Eddie’s acoustic tiles.
Victor Parks’s last words to his son before leaving were, “Never forget I love you, and I always will.” Eddie nodded, mechanically repeating the sentence. The intonation and emotional resonance were poor replicas of what he’d just heard.
Eddie could hear his father starting to cry as he turned and walked away on the cold linoleum tiles Eddie would soon become so familiar with. It was the last time he would ever see his father. Victor put his face in his hands all the way to his car.