And Clark was smiling up at her, with full eye contact like he knew her, like he welcomed her. Like she was his usually invisible friend. As widely as he grinned at his “friend Daddy” . . . or, once in a while, at me.
“What’s wrong?”
I almost didn’t recognize Simon’s voice. At the sound, however—as angry as it was worried—everything inside me locked up; I could only imagine what my face already told him. But I couldn’t think where to start, how to say any of it, without proving I was exactly as crazy as I was already terrified I might be. I couldn’t not look at him—owed him that, at least—but even as our eyes met, terror meeting confusion in a crackling spark, the only thing I could manage by way of a reply was: “. . . Nothing.”
Broadcasting to both of them, as I did, with my hunched shoulders, avoidant gaze, knotted hands, and drawn-taut mouth: don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask . . .
Simon would’ve probably have backed off if it had been just him. But not Lee. Not my mom, with her innate knack for picking up on exactly what people least wanted to give away, and her utter lack of any reluctance to call them on it, especially when she thought it mattered.
“Answer the question, Lois.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I—” My phone beeped with a calendar alert—thank Christ—prompting me to look down, almost to smile. I stood up, grabbing for my bag. “I gotta go.”
“Excuse me?”
“Go, that’s what I said. I have to—”
—get away from you, from him. Because if I can get far enough away, maybe this thing will go with me, and leave you guys alone; it’s followed me this far, after all. It, she—
(She)
Unlikely. I saw the word inscribe itself across the inside of my head, in Arthur Macalla Whitcomb’s looping scrawl: letters run together, brain knit with bone. So, so very . . . unlikely.
“—go, I have to go. I have an appointment.”
“No you don’t!”
“Yes, I do.” I shoved my phone at Simon so he could read the message alert, and then stood and gathered my coat in one arm while shrugging my knapsack half on with the other. “At the NFA, Mom; nine thirty meeting, Safie and me. We’re presenting to Jan Mattheuis, to get him up to speed on the Mrs. Whitcomb project. It’s been set up for a week.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I’m really not—Simon, you remember, right?” I appealed to him, and while he didn’t exactly nod, he didn’t not nod, either. “C’mon, Mom, what do you think I’ve been doing this all for? I have to. This isn’t the kind of appointment you can miss.”
“Your son is in hospital, Lois. I somehow think they’ll understand, if you—”
“No, they won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh no, you’re right, of course; what was I thinking? ’Cause there’s nothing in this whole wide world that I know, and you just don’t.”
Mom recoiled a bit in her seat, as if from a slap; the venom of my words even splashed onto Simon, who stood as well, putting a hand on my sleeve. “Lois,” he said. But I was still looking at Mom, her face gone rigid in a way that made me want to snort, or maybe give a nasty little grin. Neither would be the smartest move in the world, but after the night I’d just had, I have to admit I wasn’t feeling all too smart.
So—
“What is it you think is gonna happen if I don’t stay?” I asked her. “Like if I’m not within a certain physical range of him the whole time, he’ll never wake up again? All we know is they don’t know anything yet, so he’ll either get better or he won’t, full stop—and nothing I do, here or anywhere else, is going to make a damn bit of difference. Any more than you being there, or Simon not being there, in St. Mike’s, made a difference to what happened with me.”
My voice had gotten louder than I’d intended; both Simon and Mom had backed up a step. Simon was taking the slow deep breaths he used to stay calm, and I could half-read his thoughts already: Easy, easy, she’s just blowing off steam, don’t take it personally. But Mom just blinked, mouth working like—she couldn’t figure out what to say, for once. At all.
“Why would you say that to me, Lois?” she said at last. “This isn’t you. It’s cruel. You were never cruel.”
Fear, I guess, I thought. And pain. And disappointment.
The thing I heard myself say, however—voice gone suddenly hollow; tired, as though pithed—was: “I don’t mean to be. But I’m going, Mom; least I can do, so I’m doing it. I’m always good for that.”
’Bye.
And I shrugged my backpack the rest of the way on, turned, and left.