"Take it easy, Chris," Kimberly gently advised him.
He cleared his throat. "If you like. Kimberly will help you get what you want together for your move."
"I'm going now?"
"Soon," he said. "Grandmother Emma arranged for you to go see your mother tomorrow. Felix will be taking you. Day after that, he'll drive you to Greataunt Francis. There's not much time now before a new school year starts for you, and you need to be settled in. adjusted, and comfortable. Those are your grandmother's exact words," he concluded.
He lowered his head for a moment. Then he sighed deeply and sat up again. "You'll be all right," he continued, smiling. "We'll bring you back here for visits time to time as well, and next summer we'll all go to the cabin at the lake, maybe. You'll do fine, just fine."
"Sure you will," Kimberly said.
The eagerness with which she wanted to get rid of me didn't slip past me. I glared at her, putting on my Ian face and turning my eyes into Ian eyes. It worked. She looked away quickly.
"What about when Mama gets better?" I asked.
"When and if that happens, we'll see," he replied. "But for now, you've got to concentrate on yourself. You can't dwell on your mother and your brother or me."
"Your father's right, Jordan," Kimberly said.
"You don't know what's right," I said. "When my mother gets better, you'd better go away."
"Jordan!"
"It's all right, Christopher."
"It's never all right to be disrespectful. Kimberly's only been trying to help make things easier for you. The truth is she would have been a better companion than your great-aunt Francis, but there's nothing I can do about it and that's that," Daddy said, growing irritable.
"You're getting tired, Christopher," Kimberly said. "You should take a rest."
"Yeah, right. Anyway," Daddy said, looking at me, "that's the way it is and will be. When anything makes you upset or unhappy from now on, blame it on your grandmother," he told me, and started to wheel himself out from behind her desk.
Kimberly rushed to help him. "Fie needs a nap," she told me as she pushed him along.
He was staring down at the floor, his shoulders turned in, his head lowered.
She looked back just before the doorway. "This is why it's better for you to do what your grandmother wanted," she threw back at me, and pushed Daddy out of the office.
I sat there staring at Grandmother Emma's desk and I thought maybe she was right.
That night I began to arrange my things, the things I would take with me. Nancy came up after dinner to help me. I didn't want Kimberly doing it. Nancy knew everything by now and while she worked, she told me she would probably leave the March Mansion soon herself.
The following day, just as Grandmother Emma had arranged from her hospital bed. Felix took me to Philadelphia to set my mother in the hospital. He told me Grandmother Emma had set things up so that he could take me there from time to time, even from Great-aunt Francis's home.
I wondered aloud if Ian would ever visit Mama again. Felix didn't say.
Although Mama's nurse, Mrs. Feinberg, was happy to see me. I could tell from the way she greeted me and looked at Felix that she already knew about Grandmother Emma. Considering all the bad news that had fallen around and over me, she was eager to tell me something good.
"Your mother has made a little progress with responses," she said. "It's too soon to tell what it will mean, but her doctor is very happy about it. Every little change looks big to us now. But don't get your hopes up too high too quickly, Jordan. People often take years to make significant progress."
Mama didn't look any different to me when I entered her room, but I immediately noticed that her hand wasn't opening and closing the way it had. It was still.
"Go on," Mrs. Feinberg urged. "Talk to her."
I sat beside the bed. Mrs. Feinberg and Felix stood in the doorway watching. I decided Mama had to know every-thin because that might get her angry and excited enough to force her to get well.
"Hi, Mama," I said. "I've come back to see you and I hope you're getting better and that you'll get better even faster because until you are. I have to go live with Great-aunt Francis. Grandmother Emma had a stroke and is in the hospital and Daddy, who is in a wheelchair, can't take care of me properly."
I hesitated, glanced back at Mrs. Feinberg and Felix, who both smiled at me and then left, and then I turned back to Mama and took her hand into mine.