The dog who didn’t speak much (3/3)

The Salinger code

Now it’s 2016 and I’m watching “Meet the Robinsons” (2007) on my laptop, an animation movie based on “A Day with Wilbur Robinson” (1990) by William Joyce, a children’s book author. The Robinsons are a wacky family of colourful characters including–once again–a nice-looking slender woman named Franny Robinson.

“Girls! You ought to see this!”

We watch the show together and as the credits roll, we’re still confused. How is it that Franny is featured in this film? Is there something hiding in the children’s book? Just to make sure, I order Joyce’s work on the Internet to look at the original script.

“Is it there yet?” asks Miss Berry.

“Do they get the address right?” asks Miss Glass.

“Are you sure your credit card is OK?” asks Miss Hoenikker.

What’s bothering me is that, since our viewing night, Mrs. Robinson still doesn’t show up in my mind. Somehow, she doesn’t register. I ask Franny about it.

“Ghost booking, it happens all the time in the hotel business. Don’t worry, she may check in under a different name.”

When the book finally lands on my desk, I put on the white gloves I use to recover data from smashed smartphones.

“No fingerprints, that’s wise,” says Angela.

I spare you the details of the storyline because I’m not here to read an ordinary children’s book. I’m going straight for the children in the book, hence the white gloves.

The story is set in a paradisiac future–is it 2050 or 3050?–and Mr. and Mrs. Robinson have three children, two girls and a boy. Bummer, that’s a 404 Not Found. But wait, the house is home to their extended family: Grandfather and Grandmother Robinson have five boys and two girls. And there are twins, too, but now everyone is grown up, in their forties.

Grandfather is training a dancing frog band, an uncanny vaudeville act as famous as the magical flea circus. The twin brothers, Dmitri and Spike, live in two flowerpots in front of the house. Franny has a sister, Billie, who is toying with a life-size train across the first floor. Gaston is a cannon man. Judlow fidgets with a brain augmentor. And Art is a space pilot wearing a futuristic uniform. They’re all nuts, but they look eerily familiar to me.

With their sister Franny, they form this lovely family of seven siblings, five men and two women, with one set of twins.

A perfect match.

So, who is this guy, William Joyce, filmmaker, children’s book author, illustrator with several cover pages published by The New Yorker magazine? The only one who could get me out of the dark is this elusive Franny, now Mrs. Robinson.

That’s when I get a video call coming in and she connects with my life.

“I see that you know a lot of Frannys already,” she says.

I don’t know what to tell her. I can’t gather my thoughts for an instant. Where to start. And that’s all the girls need.

“Franny! We’re here!”

OK, sweethearts, come in. Have a seat and make yourselves comfortable. This is your time to chat about lost families.

“What’s it like to live in the future?”

“I love your hair.”

“Are you, like, us… later?”

“The truth is,” she says, “this place runs mostly by itself. Bill lets us wear and do what we want. I live a very ordinary life, raising the kids, and all.”

“Boring,” says Angela.

“Sex is way better than in my youth,” says Mrs. Robinson.

“I mean… No, I don’t mean, you, personally,” says Angela.

“When we get sad,” she says, “we throw a pillow fight. You should laugh at yourself for a while.”

“Not a bad idea,” I say, “but we’re here to find out where you come from, if you don’t mind.”

“Is this about your stupid copyright investigation again?” she asks.

“No, we’re lost,” says Franny Berry. “I’m an abandoned child, Angela is freezing up in hell, and Franny has her mouth zipped for more time than she can remember. If you think that your nice-looking slenderness will spare you, think again. Are you with us or not?”

“Are you suggesting that my Joyce has anything to do with this?”

“Look,” I say, “it didn’t occur to you that in his twenty-twenty vision of a perfect future, people are still wearing… eyeglasses?”

“It’s stylish, that’s all.”

“Ask your dog. He sports a pince-nez. But what nails it for me is that Grandfather Robinson needs a glass eye. It’s totally unnoticeable, so Joyce has to write it down to make sure to slip the word glass into the story.”

“You know what? I think it’s time I have a word or two with that Bill of mine.”

“Don’t do that! We have a rule, no writers allowed,” says Franny Berry.

“She’s right. We must work alone,” I say.

“Then, it would be an honour to join your team,” says Franny Robinson.

That’s when we hear the second video call coming in. The guest’s name is William Maxwell.

“Who is he? Do you know him?” I ask.

“Remember, he’s a friend of Jerry,” says Franny Glass. “Let him in.”

My laptop is low on memory. Let’s hope for the best. I press the button connecting Maxwell to the conference.

“Please, join us Mr. Maxwell,” I say.

“I want to talk to the girls,” he says. “We’ll have more time together next but let me talk to the girls first.”

“Hi, Bill,” says Franny Glass.

“Sorry? Can’t hear you! Better if you let me do the talking. I suppose you heard about my death in 2000. So, how about that? Rumours are greatly exaggerated, huh? Everything’s fine, don’t worry. I’m rolling with the stars up here, an immortal with Jerry and Kurt. We’re having such a good time… Just look around, there’s plenty of time all around us, huh?”

Gently, a big furry cat jumps on his lap.

“That’s Smiley. Say hello to Angela, old boy.”

The cat starts grinning, and his grin grows so large that he’s lost behind it.

“Ah! I’ve met with Homer, you know–not Simpson–, and he’s not blind at all. He knows who you are, kids… Jerry, no!”

In a split second, a black shadow flows across the screen and the video freezes on the last picture of a Labrador licking Bill’s nose.

The thing is, I can neither move a finger nor breathe. The four girls start floating in my head with luminescent blue-green-yellow-pink, er… ever-changing coloured auras around them, like glowing Bollywood stars climbing the altar stairs. On screen, the most archetypal of all time, nice-looking, slender anchorwoman is talking to me in a crystal-clear voice.

“BREAKING NEWS: Our distinguished investigator here is now being enlightened by truth and wisdom. Take a breath, earthling!
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Athena reporting live from planet Earth. After a lifelong investigation, a mortal uncovers the truth about an untold, unseen, unheard-of mystification. A series of fictional characters called Franny have been impersonating me, the Olympian goddess of wisdom, for decades.
“For decades… Let me think, I can take a single breath every thousand years and you search for me for decades? Give him the laurels and the wine! I drink to you, seeker. You remind me of your brother Ulysses. He met this guy, what’s his name, the other Joyce… Streamin’ Jay-Jay, the novelist… Hm, are you all right, sir? He’s totally unconscious, I say.
“Let’s turn to the ladies, then. Franny, how do you feel now that you know who you really are? What’s your first impression, miss? Let me guess… That frowning, you’re Franny Glass?”

“Wait,” says Franny, “where’s the evidence?”

“A non-believer, I like you… Hear me, Frances: you have to admit that you don’t know, at all, why you have five brothers, a sister and a set of twins in the family. It’s total nonsense, right? But what if I tell you that I have the exact same family at home? Would it be a coincidence? I don’t think so, unfortunately.
“Zeus, the father of gods, has seven children. Two girls, Artemis the midwife and me, Athena the wise, then five boys, Ares the warrior–of course, he’s my eternal foe–, Hermes the messenger, Apollo the artist, Hephaestus the weapon maker, and Dionysus the drunkard. And guess what? Artemis and Apollo are twins.”

“This makes perfect sense,” says Franny Glass. “That’s Boo Boo and me, Seymour, Buddy, Zooey, Walt, and Waker.”

“I don’t buy it,” says Angela. “Can you swear that your father is a vaudeville artist?”

“Absolutely,” says Athena. “We, the Olympians, are the first generation of gods to be impersonated by mortals in comedies and dramas. They’re making stage puppets of us to laugh and cry at their miserable lives. And we’re ghostwriting the plays behind their backs, you see. So, yes, absolutely, Dad makes a fool of himself every now and then, but that’s his public sex life, you know.”

“So, there is sex after life?” asks Franny Robinson.

“Forget it. After life, food is everything and everything is food. But there’s plenty of sex for all of you on Earth. Why do you ask? Don’t you have sex like all petty mortals do?”

“In the novel I come from,” says Franny Berry, “I only have sex near the end of the story. You bet it’s mortal.”

Now that I’m enlightened by the truth and wisdom of Athena, or recovering from it, I must say that she lives a very ordinary life nowadays among us, mortals. Her schedule is eternal. On weekdays, she may be distributing food to the homeless or raising money for an orphanage. She comforts the nurse when she’s falling asleep and wakes her up when she feels rested. She gives pretty good advice, too, like: don’t be a fool; that’s too good to be true; ask yourself if you would do that to your mother… Little nuggets of common sense from down the ages.

Like all Immortals, she’s also very fond of games. Athena and her brother Ares, the god of war, play Rock-Paper-Scissors like no one else on Earth. Their rules are ruthless: Mortals mock Athena, Ares kills Mortals, and Athena soothes Ares. It’s a perilous game for Mortals but Athena wins over her brother more often than not.

Anyone can guess that Ares is secretly in love with Athena and that only a fool would dare to poke fun at her. Today’s neuroscientists are more likely to speak about the delicate chemical imbalance between our prefrontal cortex and hypothalamus. IMHO, spinning a good tale is much more helpful to a lot of people than slicing their brain. I cannot blame Jerry, Kurt, John, or Bill for working together on the issue. That’s a cautionary tale that must be told and retold for each generation.

As for the investigation, the girls say they’re glad that I can finally rest the case of copyright infringement. If anyone is to blame, call him the first of poets, this Homer–not Simpson.

There’s one last thing that I must do for the girls. Release this story to the public.

“And how do you plan to get there, so to speak?” asks Athena.

I know that I must try. All writers hope to escape from obscurity and will use the help of however many gods it takes to rise above the Earth, make their name shine like a star and beam their light back to their kindred. But when they get onboard the oft-delayed charter flight to stardom, they soon find that their yearning has one fatal flaw.

Ninety-nine percent of a star’s radiant energy is directed towards idle planets lying in all directions. In open daylight, the one percent left pointing down to Earth can’t reach the ground of the sun-scorched half of the globe.

At night, when they would hope to find insomniacs and drowsy readers, heavy blankets of sweat regularly cover cities and continents with an impenetrable shield of clouds.

And if, by any chance, the line of sight is clear, which may happen from time to time even for the faintest celestial buddies, writers will find out that they are not alone among the zillion stars nested within the arms of the Milky Way, with all their mothers and fathers born since the beginning of storytelling.

“Fine, you’re good to go,” says Athena. “Take all my blessings, you’ll need them.”

“How can I ever show you my gratitude for backing me up?”

“Here’s the deal. My father Zeus told me that I was born fully formed, out of his forehead but, you know me, I have no reasons to believe him. Somehow, I’m sure there’s a Mother of Wisdom waiting for me. Would you mind finding out where she lives?”

A 3-part series:

Part 1/3: A copyright scene investigation

Part 2/3: More family games for rainy days

Part 3/3: The Salinger code