Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,60

myself.

On the other hand, I might agree that it’s peculiar that I’m married and responsible for the city’s leading advertising agency at the same time as I’m living this life in my own universe.

The mayor appointed our mother as head of the Environmental Ministry the same week that I completed my academic degree.

Mother has worked at the Environmental Ministry her entire life. At the transportation and energy offices, she had been in charge of recycling issues and responsible for the city’s road maintenance.

Nonetheless, her appointment came as a shock to those of us who were close to Mother.

There were many of us who were close to her.

I was the closest to her.

Her double identities were so well separated that I had a hard time seeing her in a role as a department head. To me her list of qualifications consisted of slow-cooking and roll-baking. For Mother herself this political success was expected. The animals in the city as well felt that the choice of Rhinoceros Edda was a good one. Mayor Lion knew what she was doing. Her most important mission was to appoint popular department heads. If she made popular decisions, the Mayor’s chances of reelection increased.

We celebrated Mother’s appointment in the evening. It was a Thursday in the beginning of June. There was me, my brother, and Mother and Father. We sat in the kitchen, and Father had bought a bottle of champagne after work. The news about Mother had been in the newspaper and Father got a discount on the champagne.

I don’t recall what we ate.

I smiled dutifully, raised my glass, and toasted.

I was deeply downhearted.

I had applied for an internship at the Environmental Ministry. For several years Mother had been in charge of the Planning Division, which dealt with issues of city planning and resource allotment. Her office was in Lanceheim. I had applied for a job at the Energy Unit in Tourquai. I believed that my future was in advanced energy research.

Now that was impossible.

With Mother as head of the Environmental Ministry my application papers would be questioned. My competency would be closely scrutinized. Even if I were deemed qualified, there would always be a measure of doubt.

I sipped the champagne, feeling confused.

What would I do now?

Time would help me answer that question, but that evening I felt the weight of an unobliging fate. For several years I had set my heart on a career in the Environmental Ministry, a place of employment big enough to hold both me and Mother.

Father gave a little speech.

“In order to gain something you have to give up something else,” he said.

His eyes glistened. I had never before seen him cry. Now a tear of pride was rolling down his cheek.

“But what you have given up, I don’t know,” he continued. “It’s not your family, in any case. Not your friends, either. Or your cooking ability. Perhaps it’s the other way around, because you’ve refused to give up, that you have gained?”

He’d intended to say something else, but Mother stood up and silenced him with a hug.

Eric applauded.

I applauded too. This took the edge off my brother’s irony. My smile, however, was still strained.

Then I recall a cozy evening in the kitchen. I recall that I set my disappointment aside to be happy with Mother. I recall that Eric and Father for once found something around which to unite. We showered Mother with congratulations and prophesied success for her in things both great and small. Not until I turned off the lamp on my nightstand did I again recall the situation that Mother had unknowingly put me in. I brooded a while, but soon fell asleep.

I was no longer the lost bear I’d been before.

I had become aware of myself.

These words from my late teens still apply. This was the way I saw, and still see, myself:

I am a stuffed animal who cannot commit an evil action. I am an animal who is driven to always, as far as is possible, do right.

With that it was said.

Not so remarkable.

Nonetheless, unusual.

This insight about how things stood grew during my secondary school years, but it was in the final grade that these intuitions blossomed into certainty.

When I understood, it was impossible to understand that I hadn’t already understood.

I’d always been the same, but when I was little I was not in command of my actions. Someone else—my parents or teachers or other grown-ups—decided in my place. Besides, I could still not determine what was right and wrong. I was brought up