"Ha!" Atkins cried. "That's a good question, Peter! What do you say to that, Bill?" There was a convulsion of coughing then, and more violent gasping; the boy ran to his dad and helped him put the oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth, but the oxygen was ineffective. Atkins's lungs weren't functioning properly--he couldn't draw enough air to help himself.
"Is this a test, Tom?" I asked my old friend. "What do you want from me?"
Peter Atkins just stood there, watching us. He helped his father pull the oxygen mask away from his mouth. "When you're dying, everything is a test, Bill. You'll see," Tom said; with his son's help, Atkins was putting the oxygen mask back in place, but he suddenly stopped the seemingly pointless process.
"It's a made-up story, Peter," I told the boy. "The unhappy woman who poisons herself--even her feet are made up. It's make-believe--the monster's face in the darkness, too. It's all imagined," I said.
"But this isn't 'imagined,' is it?" the boy asked me. "My mom and my dad are dying--that isn't imagined, is it?"
"No," I told him. "You can always find me, Peter," I suddenly said to the boy. "I'll be available to you--I promise."
"There!" Peter cried--not to me, to his dad. "I got him to say it! Does that make you happy? It doesn't make me happy!" the boy cried.
"Peter!" his mom was calling. "Let your father rest! Peter?"
"I'm coming!" the boy called; he ran out of the room.
Tom Atkins had closed his eyes again. "Let me know when we're alone, Bill," he gasped; he held the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose, but I could tell that--as little as the oxygen helped--he wanted it.
"We're alone," I told Atkins.
"I've seen him," Tom whispered hoarsely. "He's not at all who we thought he was--he's more like us than we ever imagined. He's beautiful, Bill!"
"Who's beautiful--who's more like us than we ever imagined, Tom?" I asked, but I knew that the subject had changed; there'd been only one person Tom and I had always spoken of with fear and secrecy, with love and hatred.
"You know who, Bill--I've seen him," Atkins whispered.
"Kittredge?" I whispered back.
Atkins covered his mouth and nose with the oxygen mask; he was nodding yes, but it hurt him to move his head and he was making a torturous endeavor just to breathe.
"Kittredge is gay?" I asked Tom Atkins, but this stimulated a prolonged coughing fit, which was followed by a self-contradictory nodding and shaking of his head. With my help, Atkins lifted the oxygen mask away from his mouth and nose--albeit briefly.
"Kittredge looks exactly like his mother!" Atkins gasped; then he was back on the mask, making the most horrible sucking sounds. I didn't want to agitate him more than my presence already had. Atkins had closed his eyes again, though his face was frozen in more of a grimace than a smile, when I heard Elaine calling me.
I found Elaine with Mrs. Atkins and the children in the kitchen. "He shouldn't be on the oxygen if no one's watching him--not for long, anyway," Sue Atkins said when she saw me.
"No, Mom--that's not quite what Charles says," Peter corrected her. "We just have to keep checking the tank."
"For God's sake, Peter--please stop criticizing me!" Mrs. Atkins cried; this made her breathless. "That old tank is probably empty! Oxygen doesn't really help him!" She coughed and coughed.
"Charles shouldn't allow the oxygen tank to be empty!" the boy said indignantly. "Daddy doesn't know the oxygen doesn't help him--sometimes he thinks it helps."
"I hate Charles," the girl, Emily, said.
"Don't hate Charles, Emily--we need Charles," Sue Atkins said, trying to catch her breath.
I looked at Elaine; I felt truly lost. It surprised me that Emily was sitting next to Elaine on a couch facing the kitchen TV, which was off; the girl was curled up beside Elaine, who had her arm around the thirteen-year-old's shoulders.
"Tom believes in your character, Bill," Mrs. Atkins said to me (as if my character had been under discussion for hours). "Tom hasn't known you for twenty years, yet he believes he can judge your character by the novels you write."
"Which are made up, which are make-believe--right?" Peter asked me.
"Please don't, Peter," Sue Atkins said tiredly, still struggling to suppress that not-so-innocent cough.
"That's right, Peter," I said.
"All this time, I thought Tom was seeing him," Sue Atkins said to Elaine, pointing at me. "But Tom must have been seeing that other guy--the one you were all so crazy about."