Edison's Gold Page 2

  “Well, it might not even matter anyway,” said his mom on her way out of the office, though Tom wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that.

  Arright, invention number five-one-six. Do not fail me.” It was later that evening, and Tom was back to the drawing board. He usually found the best cure for a bad day was losing himself in a new project.

  Working quickly, he hooked the robot’s CD-player body to its spatula arm. His latest project, Nanny Golightly, was a huge improvement on his auto-mowers, and potentially the invention to put the Edison family back on the map.

  Once Toys “R” Us bought the prototype, Tom was planning to take everyone—Noodle, Colby, his parents, and his little sister—on an all-expense-paid trip to Switzerland, where all the coolest stuff had been invented. Everything from the electronic wristwatch to the computer mouse to Ovaltine!

  “Naa gooo righh!” Tom’s three-year-old sister, Rose, cheered him on from the corner of his room, where she liked to craft her own creations out of building blocks and dismembered doll parts.

  Downstairs, he heard the sound of his father opening the front door.

  “Time for me to pay the piper, Rosie.” Tom dropped his wrench, then tiptoed to the top of the stairs. If he could hear his parents’ conversation first, he’d be better prepared for the talking- to that would definitely be coming his way later.

  “So?” His mother’s voice. Nervous.

  “It’s official. They laid off my division this morning.” Uh-oh. Job conversations were tense business in the Edison household these days. Tom’s dad had been working for Alset Energy’s Bronx plant as a mechanical engineer for more than ten years, but over the past few months Curt Keller, its CEO, had been cutting people’s jobs right and left. It was an unfair policy, picketers cried, and all because Keller had failed to pay fines for loads of infractions against the Clean Air Act.

  “Well, it’s not like we didn’t see it coming,” said his mother. “You officially said yes?”

  Yes? Yes to what? Tom leaned farther over the banister to listen.

  “My first day’s in two weeks.” Aha. His dad must’ve gotten a new job. That was potentially good news. Maybe they’d all go out and celebrate at Giovanni’s and forget all about Tom’s trip to the principal’s office.

  “Tom’s up in his room. We had a run-in with Phelps this afternoon. Third strike, if you’re counting.” No luck. He could always count on his mom to cut right to the bad news. She was the family’s anchor, while Tom and his dad usually kept their heads above the clouds.

  “Not sure it matters,” said his father. “Given the circumstances.”

  Given what circumstances? Tom thought. Their conversation was growing more confusing by the second. He was more than happy to skip his punishment, but something about his dad’s weary tone made him nervous.

  “I’d better go up and deliver the news.” As soon as Tom heard his dad scuffling toward the stairs, he darted back into his room and jumped onto the bed, grabbing the latest issue of Popular Mechanics.

  “Hey.” The glint from his dad’s glasses peeked through the door crack.

  “What’s going on?” Tom looked up from his magazine as his dad did his usual trick of knocking while entering.

  “Daddeeeeee!” squealed Rose.

  “Another pen explosion?” Tom nodded to the blooming black ink spot on his father’s fraying shirt. At least once a week he’d come home from work with a new mystery stain—grease, mustard, even the rare chemical burn mark.

  “Oh yeah—that.” His dad smoothed over the stain, a little embarrassed. “Must’ve happened sometime between lunch and when I got on the train home.”

  Tom rolled his eyes as his dad took a seat at the edge of the bed and swung Rose into his lap. “Sooo—I have some interesting news for you both,” he said. “I got a new job.”

  “That R and D one in South Orange?” Tom had overheard his parents the other day talking about a couple prospects in New Jersey.

  “Nope. No R and D for me. My title, actually”—his dad tried for a chuckle—“is Waste Engineer. And it’s not as much pay as Alset. But the good news is … it’s not anywhere we’ve been before. It’s a whole new adventure for us. In Wichita.”

  Good news? Tom wondered if it was possible to mathematically calculate the direct relationship between the badness of the news and the forced wideness of his dad’s smile.

  “The same Wichita that’s in Kansas?” Maybe there was a very charming Wichita Street in Yonkers, only a few minutes’ bike ride from Noodle’s and Colby’s houses.

  “The Wichita where that meteor fell.” Tom’s mother had suddenly materialized in the doorway. “Near Dorothy and Toto, too,” she added for Rosie’s benefit.

  No, no, no. This was not a joke. Tom looked from his father’s face to his mother’s. He could feel himself starting to panic. They couldn’t move. His whole life was in New York. And then out of the corner of his eye, he saw the answer to their problems … Nanny Golightly. Aha! It was a little early for the unveiling, but the prototype was basically finished.

  He swung his legs off the bed.

  “Mom, Dad—we don’t need to go to Wichita. Once I sell the patent for Nanny Golightly, we won’t have to go anywhere. We’ll be loaded.”

  “Nanny Go-who?” His dad, who loved anything to do with gadgets, patents, and inventions, couldn’t help but look curious.

  His mother, however, was already shaking her head. “Tom, don’t make this situation worse. We need to be realistic right now.”

  But Tom only had eyes for the invention that would save them all. He placed a picture book into one of Nanny’s oven-mitt hands, then pressed play on the CD player. “Mom, remember how you were saying you never get enough time to read to Rosie?”

  “Look, honey, you can still see Noodle and Colby in the summer,” said his mother, not really listening. “They can visit—”

  “Well, now you can!” Tom interrupted. “Because I recorded three hours of you singing to her, then burned it onto a CD. Six songs, including her favorite, ‘She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.’ ”

  “Roun mountay!” Rose clapped her hands, recognizing the title.

  “See? Already got a request.” And before anyone could utter another word, the sound of his mom’s voice piped sweetly out of Nanny Golightly’s microphone mouthpiece. “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes—”

  “Roun moun …” Rose was all dimpled grin. His mother even looked warily impressed as the robot’s mismatched arms turned pages in time with her singing.

  “You just plop your kid down in front of the robot here,” Tom boasted like a used-car salesman, “and let Nanny Golightly here do the rest!”

  “A little WD-40 through the shoulder hinges there’d do wonders,” pointed out his father, his spirits momentarily lifted.

  “Great idea, Dad.” Tom was beaming. “Love the enthusiasm.”

  This is it, he couldn’t help thinking. It was destiny. Ninety-nine percent perspiration had finally paid off. The Edison family wasn’t moving anywhere.

  “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain, she’ll be coming ’round the mountain.” Abruptly, Nanny’s voice lurched into a Darth Vader bass tone, her arms slowing down. In the next second she sped up, her tin voice now squeaking like a chipmunk’s.

  Smack! The malfunctioning robot hurled the picture book across the room.

  Rose began to cry.

  “Tom! Please stop that thing!” His mother scooped up his baby sister from her father’s lap, as Tom jiggered with Nanny’s buttons and gadget appendages. Too late. With a hollow pop, Nanny’s head sprang off her body and flew into the air.

  Rose immediately stopped crying, so shocked and frightened she could not make a peep.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart.” Hoisting Rose over her shoulder, Tom’s mother hurried from the room. “Just another one of your brother’s crazy inventions.”

  Alone now, Tom and his dad remained silent, staring down a
t Nanny’s decapitated head.

  Disappointment crushed Tom like a boulder. So close, so close.

  “Right.” His father cleared his throat. “As I was saying, there’s lots of cool things in Wichita. You’ll see—”

  “But Dad, what about our other inventions? Like the Clorox battery? I tested it today, and except for a few little kinks—”

  “Son.” Mr. Edison raised a weary hand. “Our weekend projects are fun, and a wonderful way to spend time together, but this is life. And in life, there’s a time when I have to realize who I am … and what I’m not.”

  “But you can’t give up! You’re the best inventor I know!” Tom was on his feet. His mom was a lost cause, but if he could just get through to his dad, maybe there was still hope for the family. “There’s gotta be loads of other jobs here,” Tom continued. His eyes were getting wet and stingy at the edges. “We could start our own invention business.”

  “Son—”

  “I’ll quit school and devote myself full-time to—”

  “Son!”

  Tom’s mouth snapped shut. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had ever raised his voice. “Inventions don’t pay the bills. At least mine don’t. Right now, I need to do what’s best for this family.”

  “But if we worked together—”

  “End of discussion,” said his dad, cutting him off. “We all need to make the best of this situation. For each other.”

  Tom stayed silent and kept his eyes fixed on Nanny’s dinged head, until his father left the bedroom.

  Sitting there on the floor, he came to a sad realization.

  This was the worst day of his life.

  Tom’s basement laboratory consisted of one crooked card table pushed into a dark corner next to the washing machine. His work space and the shelves above it were crammed with books, tools, thingamajigs, and defunct inventions of Edisons past and present: stock ticker, phonograph, and a framed old photograph of Tom’s famous double-great-grandfather or T.E. 1, as the family sometimes referred to him.

  “Why does nothing in my life ever work?” Tom asked the unresponsive photo.

  He had devoured so many biographies of Thomas Edison, however, and knew enough family lore to imagine exactly how his double-great would’ve answered. Something along the lines of, Discontent is the first necessity of progress, or the old guy’s favorite gem, Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

  Tom liked to have pretend conversations with T.E. 1. while he worked. It made him feel like he wasn’t alone in his quests and kept him from ever feeling too sorry for himself. Like when Edison was Tom’s age, for example, he got scarlet fever and lost most of his hearing. That was probably as bad as moving to Kansas.

  Everything that had happened the day before—Wichita, the runaway car, Wichita, Dr. Phelps, the failure of his last two inventions, Wichita—all melted away as Tom fell into work. Reassembling Nanny had been the only thing he wanted to do since he’d woken up on this first official morning of spring break.

  She was his only chance, he was sure, to keep the family put and restore the Edison name.

  “All right, Nanny, expect some minor discomfort here.” Tom yanked a thin copper wire from the robot’s broken glass eye, which he’d originally swiped from an old telescope. Scanning the shelves and tables for a replacement, his own eyes zoomed in on a dusty science-kit telescope, balanced precariously on the very top of the bookshelf. Its dusty lens was calling to him.

  “Sweet. Nanny, ole girl, time to meet your new eyeball.”

  Tom hopped onto one of the lower shelves and felt it tremble under his weight. Then, before really weighing the pros and cons of the idea, he hoisted himself up another wobbly shelf, which groaned under the strain. His fingertips pawed the air, then batted the telescope, shifting it even closer to the ledge.

  The bookcase teetered.

  Tap-tap-tap! Noodle’s and Colby’s faces had appeared at the sooty basement window, and as Tom looked over, he lost his balance, which sent the entire bookcase, loaded with tons of antique machines, toppling down on him.

  “Argh!” Tom covered his head and in the last split second rolled out of the way, right before the splintering, deafening, resounding crash.

  “Tom?” his dad called from upstairs.

  “Are you all right?” his mom shouted, just as worried, plus 10 percent more.

  “I’m fine!”

  “What’d you break?” Dad called again.

  “Nothing. Everything’s under control. No need to come down.” Gasping, Tom peered up at the window, but Noodle and Colby were gone. Seconds later, he heard a clamoring of footsteps above him, then the basement door swung open, and they came barreling down the stairs.

  “What a mess!” said Noodle. “Looks like a land mine went off in here.”

  Tom rolled onto his side and came face-to-face with an antique Leica 35-millimeter camera that had fallen to the floor. A brand-new hairline crack ran down its middle. Tom could tell from its casing and adjustment knobs that the thing must have been at least seventy or eighty years old.

  “Perfect,” he said, studying the newly broken antique. “There goes my allowance for the year.” How was he going to break it to his parents that on top of everything else, he’d also destroyed a family heirloom?

  Colby glanced around the room, surveying the destruction, then reached into her pocket and snuck a quick puff off her always-present inhaler.

  “Aren’t you a little old for fake asthma attacks, Colb?” Noodle teased.

  “Tom just unleashed about six million species of dust mites in here.” She added an extra-phlegm-filled cough to prove her point. Since birth, Colb’s nana had instilled in her an intense fear of anything airborne and potentially disease causing.

  “Yo, lemme see that beast.” Noodle snatched the broken camera out of Tom’s hands and examined its lens and levers. “Sure woulda been tough to be the paparazzi back in the eighteen nineties, huh?” He side stepped past Tom, pretending to fire off glamour shots of Colby. “Hold that pose, babe. Just four more minutes. Yer byootiful!”

  “The thirty-five millimeter wasn’t even invented until nineteen fourteen,” corrected Tom.

  “Why do you know that?”

  In an answer, Tom lunged for the camera, but Noodle was too quick. And with a full four-inch height advantage, he could keep it well out of reach. Tom’s final shove knocked the instrument out of Noodle’s hand, though, and as it crashed to the floor, a two-inch-long paper-covered spool popped out of a spring compartment in the back.

  The mysterious cylinder hit the floor and rolled under the card table.

  “Whoa! What was that?” Thanks to six years of gymnastics classes, Colby effortlessly leaped over the fallen bookshelf, then stretched herself low, between the wall and Tom’s work table, to scoop up the fallen cylinder.

  Tom and Noodle gathered around her as she unrolled the curl of yellowed paper, brittle as a wood shaving, that was wrapped around it.

  “It’s a roll of film!” Tom could hardly believe it. All this time the camera had just been sitting there on his bookshelf, and he’d never even thought to look inside. His mind raced as he tried to imagine what these priceless, undeveloped photographs could be of—Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park lab? An unknown invention?

  “There’s some writing.” Colby squinted as Noodle and Tom jockeyed for a better view of the handwritten note. The letters were cryptic and delicate, as if they’d been scripted with an old feather quill.

  “ ‘When you reach the Bed, Ford. You’re just one hundred yards north of the sun and moon,’ ” she read.

  “Think it’s from the real Thomas Edison?” Noodle wondered aloud.

  “Hey, I’m also the real—”

  “You know what I mean. The famous one.”

  “Who’s Ford? Like Henry Ford?” Colby was biting her lip the way she always did just before she called out the right answer to a math problem at school.


  Beneath the riddle was stamped the print of a rose inside a perfect, thin circle. Tom plucked the roll of film from Colby’s fingers.

  “I wonder how old it is.” He felt the urge to add that roll film was invented by a farmer in Wisconsin named David Houston, but thought better of it, since Noodle would definitely make fun of him for that tidbit.

  “I bet you it’s pictures of scary dead people.” Noodle’s eyes were alive with anticipation.

  “Uh, Dad?” Tom called up to the kitchen. “Can you come down here and promise you won’t yell about the mess?”

  For right now, Nanny Golightly would have to wait.

  So this isn’t the kind of film you take to a Rite Aid and get back in an hour, is it?” Tom stared up at his dad, who was holding the stiff scrap of paper half an inch from his thick-lensed glasses as he inspected the encircled rose beneath the riddle.

  “No, but photographs are nothing more than silver oxide,” he answered, though his thoughts seemed to be somewhere else.

  “And how does that help us, Big T?” said Noodle.

  “Developing them’s not all that different from polishing a tarnished set of knives and forks.”

  “So we’re gonna polish the photos?” asked Colby.

  “Sort of.” Tom’s dad began sifting through his messy workspace, grabbing a few plastic canisters. “This really is something,” he added as he bent down to search through a lower cabinet of grimy, unlabeled plastic bottles. Thankfully, he’d been so fascinated by the roll of film and riddle that he wasn’t too upset about the fallen bookcase. Tom’s mom, on the other hand, would be a different story.

  “What are you looking for?” Tom asked.

  “Sodium bicarbonate, among other things. I thought we had some around here.” After a few more minutes of rummaging, Tom’s dad headed toward the basement’s old, rusty fridge. “We’ll just have to improvise with the old beer-and-baking-soda recipe. Chemically speaking, it’s the same as any low-acid film developer.”