Free M. T. Anderson by Feed Page B

said to me, “You’re a wonderful boy. I know I’m your mom, but I can say that you’re a wonderful boy. Isn’t he, Steve?”
    My dad was conked out at the table going over the news on the feed, but he pulled himself up, and she was like, “Isn’t he a wonderful boy?,” and my dad was like, “Sure, yeah, yeah,” and my mom was like, “You’re as handsome as a duck in butter.”
    “Where does she live, anyway?” my dad asked.
    “I don’t know. Like, two hundred miles from here. I’ve never been there. Why?”
    “Just asking.”
    “You’re a catch,” said my mother. “You’re pewter.”
    That was no help at all, and the next day, I did really bad on a test, and I came home, and Violet chatted me to say she couldn’t talk, she was, I don’t know, learning ancient Swahili or building a replica of Carthage out of iron filings or finding the cure for entropy or some shit, and I was sitting around, staring at a corner of a room, where two of the walls and the floor came together, and my mom and dad caught me doing it, and my mom came up and hugged me.
    I could tell it was all staged. They’d tried to find me. I patted Mom a little on the back, enough to say,
Okay, yeah, enough for affection. You can back off now, Ma.
She did, and I hoped they would leave, but they weren’t done. So I had to sit there and listen to about me.
    She said, “You’re just the boy we wanted. You’re good enough for any girl. You’re just what we asked for.”
    My dad was meg uncomfortable and kept on moving from foot to foot.
    My mom ran her fingers through my hair, and rocked me back and forth, even though I was standing, and she said, like a poem, “You’ve got your father’s eyes and my nose.”
    “And my mouth,” said my dad.
    “And my hands,” said my mom.
    “And the chin, dimples, and hairline of DelGlacey Murdoch.”
    “What?” I said.
    “This big actor,” explained my mom. “We thought he was like the most beautiful man we’d ever seen in our lives.”
    “Well,” said my dad, “we
thought
he was going to be big.”
    “We saw a feedcast with him in it the night we . . . the night you were made.” My mom winked.
    “What?” I said. “What was his name? You never told me about the actor.”
    “He was . . . What did you say his name was again, Steve?”
    “DelGlacey Murdoch.”
    “DelGlacey Murdoch,” said my mom, kind of smoothing things over. “That’s right. And we thought he was the most beautiful man we’d ever seen. So after the movie we went right to the conceptionarium and told them, ‘We want the most beautiful boy you’ve ever made. We want him with my nose and his dad’s eyes, and for the rest, we have this picture of DelGlacey Murdoch.’”
    I said, “I’ve never even like
heard
of DelGlacey Murdoch.”
    My father played nervously with his pinstripes. “He didn’t . . . he didn’t really take off the way like we expected. After that movie, he was mostly . . . I guess . . . small roles.”
    “He starred in some things,” said my mom. “Steve, he starred in a lot of things.”
    “Straight to daytime,” said my dad.
    “Honey, he was the most beautiful actor ever. So we went into the conceptionarium, and told the geneticists what we wanted, and your father went in one room, and I went in the other, and . . .”
    “Hey — hey — I don’t want to hear!”
    “You know what he was in?” said my dad. “Remember
Virtual Blast
? He played the fifth Navy Seal, with the croup. You know, coughing.”
    “He was in the feature with all the crazy utensils,” said my mother. “A few years ago? That one? He was the doorman in the pillbox hat.”
    I had already pulled up a list of his feed-features and I was going over them. None of them got more than two stars. My parents were checking my feed, I could feel them like prodding it, and my mom was like, “It doesn’t matter what he was in,” and she m-chatted something to my dad, and so he was like, “No, no, that isn’t the