"But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living...for the price of wisdom is above rubies," The Book of Job Chapter 28 verses 12,13,18
Alice supposed it's her fault. Well, her and her husband's. She was born with a plain name and had always had plain daydreams. House. School. Nurse. So when her son began thinking up these fantastic worlds, she encouraged it. What was she supposed to do? Tell Bobby no? Besides, it was she who had begun calling him Iceman when he was little. Bobby had always loved the cold and anything to do with it. He loved ice cream, frozen peas, and polar bears. He would only wear shirts that looked like snow, jeans of the palest blue, like the sky after the first frost.
In truth, Alice was jealous. Jealous of her son's ability to create this whole world of special powers and super fast jets and code names and costumes centering around a school in Westchester, where her parents had lived before coming back home to Long Island. She was jealous of his ability to fall into this world, play it through dinner, through his bath. Everything became apart of his game.
When that Mathew Shepard boy was murdered, Bobby had turned on the TV one night and seen the mob, the people screaming about God's will and morally right or wrong. He asked why everyone was so upset. She could have explained it, she knew. She could have told him the truth but instead Alice said, "Some people are a certain way, different from everyone else."
Bobby had nodded solemnly like he understood in the way little boys do and said, "Like mutants." He then refused to tell her where he had heard that word. She guessed her in-laws could be blamed for that, buying him the encyclopedia set. It was too much for a seven year old.
She should have stopped all the games when he began involving that sad-eyed boy from down the street. John. He always smelled like smoke and Alice would never let Bobby go over to his house, for fear that while they were playing one of John's parents would fall asleep with a cigarette and burn the house down around them. But boys need friends and she felt old when she thought about saying, 'don't play with him anymore'. Bobby was only eight.
She should have stopped them when Bobby, John and that boy whose parents had emigrated from what used to be the Soviet Union years ago began calling their fourth grade Math teacher Magneto. She should have stopped them when another child, this time a girl, fell into their mists. She worried about Bobby not developing properly and stunting him emotionally from comparing him to his brother, so she hadn't.
Ronny did all the right things, as far as anyone was concerned. He played sports well enough, did well enough in school, had fine friends. Ronny did not play outside for hours no matter the weather. Ronny didn't surprise his mother when he entered a room behind her. Ronny did not leave his windows open in the winter. Ronny was perfect at being just above mediocre.
Alice supposed she should have stopped Bobby, broken up the whole thing when he began visiting the man down the street, in the big old house with the wild front yard. She felt bad for him though and thought maybe Bobby and his friends would get a sense of history once they found out he had lost the ability to walk in Korea. After a time she began to suspect that his mental stability, and not the wheelchair, was the reason he had a live-in nurse. She couldn't be sure. Whenever she saw the young man who cared for him he was always wearing sunglasses and walking away. Alice didn't think she would have enough to say if she ran up to him. She had asked him once if Bobby and his friends were a bother, if she should tell them to stay home but his eyes had glanced around behind the dark glass, and he said, "No. He's got like, this great imagination." She had laughed and said thank you. That had been it.
She should have stopped the game when they died the girl's hair with bleach they must have stolen from out of a cupboard, staining her lovely red bangs. The boys and the girl had denied everything and only blamed Magneto. Alice had tried to talk to Bobby and John, who was always over even after the other children were dragged home. She tried to ask them why they insisted on calling Mr. Lensherr that name; didn't they know it was rude? John had just looked at her with those dirty blue eyes. Bobby had taken a patient tone and explained, "He wants to kill all humans Mom. I don't think he cares if it's rude." Then he had grabbed John's hand and pulled him up the stairs into the bedroom; John had made sure not to let go of his cookie.
She should have stopped the game when Bobby and his friends started getting into fights in gym class, hitting other students, screaming about Mutant Rights, whatever those were. Howie had tried to talk to Bobby but he was insistent that the Gym was something called a Danger Room and he hadn't been fighting students, he'd been practicing saving them with robots. Howie had tried to explain that his classmates weren't robots, but Bobby had sighed and said, "You don't understand." Alice should have made him talk to the school psychiatrist but she didn't want to be one of those mothers, the ones who put their children on prescription drugs when they're only ten for Christ's sake.
When John burned down his shed she knew the game had to end. When the police first arrived, he had thrown lit matches, telling them that he was dangerous. Later he said to the firefighters he had been practicing with his mutation. John had been sent away, after the police chief saw his father hit him. Alice was going to offer to take him in, so he could finish out the school year with his friends and not have to go all the way to Australia to stay with relatives but she couldn't. She was too afraid of where he and Bobby might go to practice next. Bobby had not taken it well.
When the talk on the street turned to the possibility that the old man, or his nurse might be a pedophile- because what man wants to be a nurse and not a doctor?- Alice knew the game had not ended where she thought it might. She had tried grounding Bobby, forbidding him to go to that home or see his friends but a twelve-year-old boy is a hard thing to hold. He was adamant that he'd sneak out his bedroom window, convinced it was the end of the world.
She knew it had gone too far. It wasn't that she hadn't been paying attention like the parents whose children burn themselves with Rosh Hashanah candles or drank bleach. If she was anything, she was vigilant. But how could she end it? No one would answer that question. The lawyers say for him to plead temporary insanity. Thirteen-year-old boys have overactive imaginations she wants to tell them. Alice knows she could explain about the game, the whole thing but what judge would believe her? They'd think she was a bad mother, and she wasn't. She watched her children around open flames and attended every parent teacher conference, read all the notes that came home.
She had never thought he and his friends would kill that boy. She didn't even know what a Sentinel was supposed to be.