The Family

Dr. Parker was a short, dapper sort of man, with very round glasses and very large eyes. He spoke little, but instead listened eagerly and almost anxiously to everything anyone had to say, nodding constantly and making appropriate exclamatory noises at regular intervals. The twins had never quite figured out what their father’s profession was; he kept everything very much under wrap, but whether he sold national secrets with ease, or worked hard to keep national secrets from being sold, he did it immensely well. In his spare time, Dr. Parker leant far back in his leather armchair, dug his heels into the surface of his mahogany desk, and pored eagerly over National Geographic magazines. He had always wanted to be a zookeeper.

Mrs. Parker, a bright, chipper woman, adored her husband, indulged his zoological daydreams, and dragged him about on cruises to exotic lands with special magazine speaker events. She likewise adored her children, indulged their various hobbies and pastimes, and pushed them out of the door on a trip around the world for their gap year, hoping to instill in them a passion for philanthropy. Although neither child seemed particularly eager to begin a new campaign for saving baby llamas in third-world countries, both seemed significantly more appreciative of their faucets and fountain pens, and Mrs. Parker felt satisfied with that.

Eddie and Alice had been born and thus named during their mother’s British phase. Thankfully, even when the phase had worn off and Mrs. Parker could, without bias, assess the legally-incurred social damage to her children, neither name garnered so much untoward attention that the twins could not escape embarrassment within a quick “oh, thank you; yes, my mother has a creative flair for names.” In fact, both of them seemed to take to their names with a sort of individual pride; as he developed a crush for his second-grade teacher, Eddie confided to her that “his real name was, you know, Edmund – like the knight,” and that he would graciously allow her to call him so. Alice would insist on hosting family tea parties from time to time, forcing a large cumbersome top hat upon her father, twisting a bowtie round her brother’s neck, and demanding scones and the “special kind of tea” which her mother would bring back from her travels.

Though knights and tea parties are supposed to become extinct after a certain age for a child, neither Eddie nor Alice ever fully gave up the fancies which had blessed their childhood years.