Big Brother Read Online Free Page B

judgmental. The electronic device buried in the torso included twenty edicts and exclamations. Little had I known that my mischievous little handicraft would soon become a monster.
    The Fletcher doll was an instant hit with our kids, to whom the mocking recordings of their father’s oppressive decrees helped to endear their stepmother. Taking the teasing good-naturedly, Fletcher had been touched by the scale of my effort, down to engaging Oliver to design an updated digital technology. (Not much better than rubber bands, the governor belts that drove the plastic records and turntables inside the old Chatty Cathys from the 1960s had been prone to snap—which is why few of these collector’s items still functioned.) Dinner guests never wearied of pulling the string. The following year, Solstice had begged me to fashion a similar caricature of her new boyfriend, whose incessant repetition of faddish expressions like “Good to go!” and “That’s my bad!” was driving her crazy. I’d been reluctant. I was still running Breadbasket. To work the same magic, the doll would have had to capture the boyfriend’s build and dressing habits. Sensing my hesitation, Solstice offered to pay. I cited a price high enough to put my sister off, but she attached photographs and a list of pet phrases to an email the very same day.
    Word of mouth no longer depends on gabbing over a picket fence, and with the aid of the Internet the customized pull-string doll business went viral. By that year’s end, I had folded Breadbasket, and Baby Monotonous—though thanks to Fletcher’s goading misnomer some locals believed Baby Moronic was my company’s real name—had headquarters outside New Holland and a full-time workforce. The formula was irresistible: ridicule paired with affection. And while expensive to make, the dolls were far more expensive to buy. Besides, they’d not have been so popular if they were cheap. Costing about the combined price of a KitchenAid mixer and a top-of-the-line Dyson, a Baby Monotonous doll had become a status item, one by popular accord more rewarding than the average vacuum cleaner.
    Aptly for the last father-son interchange, the third time Cody pulled the doll’s string it declared with exalted sanctimony, I want DRY toast! I want DRY toast!
    Both kids fell about laughing.
    “I’d like to know why that thing never stops being funny,” said Fletcher.
    “Doesn’t matter why,” said Tanner, struggling to stand up straight. “They’re always funny, they only get funnier, and that’s why Pandora is rich.”
    “We’re not rich,” I said. Leaving aside my stepson’s inflated assessment of our family’s circumstances, rich was a word for other people, and generally for those one doesn’t like. “We’re only doing okay. And be sure not to say anything like that around your uncle.” I corrected with an eye roll, “Step-uncle.”
    “Why not?” asked Tanner.
    “It’s impolite to talk about money. And your uncle Edison seems to have fallen on tough times. You don’t want to rub it in.”
    Tanner looked at his stepmother sideways. “You don’t want him to tap you.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Didn’t have to.” Tanner may have overestimated his literary gifts. But he was pretty smart.
    D riving to Cedar Rapids Airport, I wondered how four years could have passed, the longest Edison and I had been apart. We had talked on the phone—though more than once his number had been suddenly out of service. He was constantly shifting digs, and often away on tours of Europe, South America, or Japan. It was up to me to track him down by calling other musicians like Slack. Exasperation that my older brother didn’t keep up his end of our relationship was pointless. He always sounded happy to hear my voice, and that’s all that mattered to me.
    In the flurry of ordering bolts of fabric and bales of cotton stuffing, maybe it was little wonder I hadn’t seen Edison. While establishing my headquarters,