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“Now
is the time to make real the promises of Democracy,” Dr.

King said.

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“Now
is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

“Now
is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all God’s children.”

That was the first time Tennessee saw just how politics, once you dug through everything that was worthless, could leave you stunned. There were some people who had the ability to tell other people what was worth wanting, could tell them in a way that was so powerful that the people who heard them suddenly had their eyes opened to what had been withheld from them all along.

When it was over, Tennessee turned off the radio and her friend wiped her hands on a towel. “Now that would be worth getting shot for,” her friend said thoughtfully.

“What a thing to say.”

The friend shook her head. “Think about it, to have the chance to say all that, to have it played every year on your birthday so people remember you. I would die if I could do as much as that.” At the time, Tennessee had not understood the logic, but fi ve months later her friend was dead from a sepsis that had seemed at first to be nothing more than a fever. She had decided she didn’t need to go to the emergency room until it was very late. She kept saying that she could tough it out. Later, when Tennessee was alone with the baby, she thought often about that January night in the kitchen and Dr. King’s speech and how her friend had been right: it was better to have done something, to have stood for something great and gotten shot for it than it was to never stand up for anything and die like everybody else. Tennessee had meant to do something with her life. She had thought that one day she would make a speech that addressed the simple details of daily existence that the politicians all neglected. She had always thought that one day she a n n p a t c h e t t ❆ 116

would find a way to stand up for the things that people were afraid to say, and let them know it was fine to ask for what you needed. She had thought there would be plenty of time, that she would go back and finish college and how people would respect her for that. But now she was in a hospital bed and she wondered if she might in fact die just like her friend, which was to say, die like everybody else.

While Jesse Jackson gave his speech, Kenya sat on the fl oor of the auditorium finishing her math homework in a spiral notebook.

Afterwards she lost a glove and it had taken them awhile to fi nd it under the bank of seats in front of them. The glove was the reason they were among the last people to leave. So Tennessee was surprised when she saw the boys and their father standing out in the snow. Most of the crowd had gone already. It was a lousy night.

She saw the three of them talking and she turned away, wanting to get Kenya, who had no hat, out of the weather as soon as possible.

But then Tip was walking towards her, wearing a slight red jacket that would not have been enough to keep a cricket warm. When he stopped he wasn’t more than three feet away from her. She could see that he was talking to Mr. Doyle but she could not understand what he was saying for the relentless thud of her own heart beating in her ears. He had passed her countless times in his life and it never failed to cause a flush of adrenaline: a singular desire for flight. Would this be the one time he would notice her?
Are you following me?
She pushed her hand down on Kenya’s shoulder harder than was necessary, as if forgetting that Kenya knew better than to say anything. But there was nothing to worry about, Tip never saw them. He passed by them, still talking, into the night thick with snow. Then walking halfway backwards he stepped off the curb and into the street, into the lights that she only at the moment realized were coming towards them. He could have been anybody. He was a boy stepping out in front of a car he clearly did not see. Tip kept his r u n

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head in his books, in the clouds, with the fishes. He didn’t pay attention. She pushed him, but not because he was hers. She pushed him because he was there and the car was there. She pushed him so hard she was certain she had sent him sailing up through the falling snow and into the night like a punch from a cartoon character.
POW!
He spun off towards the stars. Had she knocked him clear to safety?

She had never hit anyone as hard as she hit Tip, and then, as if in reply, she was hit by the car. She held up her hand and felt it crack against the front fender. For a single second she had touched him, and even if it happened through gloves and coats, it was miraculous.

She had not touched him in over nineteen years.

The car had not hit him. She had pushed him away. She had saved him.

The Asian nurse in the bright blue scrubs was back and slid a thermometer beneath her gown and under her arm. He wanted to know how she was feeling.

There was a night two years ago she could have touched him easily. She was coming home from work, changing trains at Park Street, when she saw Tip leaning back against a wall, a backpack hanging from one shoulder. He was reading and he was alone, no Teddy, no Mr. Doyle. Tennessee had never thought of it before but in all the years she had been looking for the boys she had never seen either one of them by themselves, though of course they were older at this point and surely went places without each other all the time. The station was crowded and she didn’t have to stand too far from him.

She liked the way he seemed so comfortable. He wasn’t looking around or shifting his weight from side to side. He was handsome, but handsome wasn’t the thing you’d think of first because his head was tipped forward and he didn’t smile. What you’d think if you saw him was that he looked smart. He looked like someone who had a purpose in this world. He wasn’t some kid who was hanging out a n n p a t c h e t t ❆ 118

riding the trains. He looked exactly like what he was, a college boy.

While he was waiting, a pretty Spanish looking girl walked by, black hair long down her back and big gold hoop earrings, high heels on her black boots, and for a second she glanced back over her shoulder at the boy who was reading, the boy who didn’t notice her, and Tennessee smiled.

The B train to Boston College pulled up and Tip got on and without even giving it a thought Tennessee followed him up the steps and into the car and sat down across from him. All the people and all the trains and all the cars on the trains and seats on the cars and yet there he was right in front of her. It was dark by then and she could see him and see his reflection in the glass behind his head. She kept her eyes out the window but it didn’t even matter. She could have been looking anywhere, and he never once so much as straightened up his neck. After a concerted effort she could see that he was reading a book called
Inland Fishes of Massachusetts.
It was written by three people, Hartel, Halliwell, and Launer. She took a pen from her bag and she wrote their names on the palm of her hand.

Normally when she saw him she didn’t do more than sweep her eyes briefly past the places he was, but now they were together on the gently rocking train. For once in her life there was nothing but time.

When the train finally made its last stop, Tennessee felt a prickly sweat of dizziness come over her. Everybody stood up and gathered their packages and scarves. It was October and dark and she followed Tip nearly two blocks down the street before she remembered that Kenya was still at the after-school program and she was now very late picking her up. She stood where she was and watched him until he finally turned at a corner and the night swallowed him whole. She didn’t know why he’d be going out to Boston College or who he was going to see, it wasn’t her business to know, and she paid a second fare to get back on the train going home.

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For the rest of the fall and that winter Tennessee made no effort to find Teddy and Tip. She didn’t take Kenya to lectures or political rallies. She did not save her money to buy symphony tickets on the rare nights they played Schubert. Something had shaken her on the train. It was time for her to think of the boys as grown now, time to focus her attention on the daughter she had. She did, however, work hard to get a copy of
Inland Fishes of Massachusetts
. She tried for weeks to find it in a regular bookstore, but she didn’t have any luck.

She was starting to think that Tip must have bought the last copy for himself. Then, fi nally, on a Saturday it occurred to her to look for it at the Coop. There were three of them, but the book cost forty-fi ve dollars. For an hour she stood in the aisle and read the fi rst chapter while Kenya looked at a textbook on ornithology, beautiful photographs of birds with drawings of their feathers and bones. On the train home, Tennessee wrote down the things she could remember in her notebook while Kenya stared out the window at the sailboats cross-hatching the Charles. There was nothing she liked better than taking the Red Line over the river.

“What are you doing?” Kenya asked.

“Writing down what I read in the fi sh book.” Kenya waited only for a second. She wanted to be patient, but there was such a short time before they lost the view. “Mama, look at the boats,” she said.

Tennessee put down her pen and glanced up. “Nice,” she said, and then went back to her work.

“Why do you care so much about fishes?” Why, when there were so many pretty boats.

“They’re interesting,” her mother said.

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sure he was in the right room. Tennessee closed her eyes and fell back to sleep or didn’t, but when she looked again there were two of them there and one of them said, “See, she’s awake.”

“She’s awake,” Tennessee said quietly. Her tongue was heavy in her mouth and she had trouble making the words. The skin on her lips had cracked and bled and the blood had dried. This time there was something she wanted and she remembered to ask for it while they were there. “Water?”

“I’ll get you some,” one of them said.

“You can’t get her water.”

“Why not?”

“She’s probably having surgery in a couple of hours. She may not be allowed to have any water.” Then the voice turned to her. “Has anyone else given you water?”

Tennessee thought about all the comings and goings. Water would have been nice, a little ice even. She felt like she had a fever now. “I don’t remember.”

“I’ll go ask.”

“I’ll ask,” the other one said, and he was gone.

Now the second one, the one who was left in the room with her, walked towards the bed. “I think this is harder than he realizes,” was what he said.

Tennessee tried to fix her mind on all the nurses to think of which one had been shy. When the nurse was closer he sat down on his heels so that his face was just a foot away from hers and slightly lower. He wasn’t wearing scrubs. He was wearing jeans and a heavy green coat. The strip light above her bed that had been such a source of irritation made it possible for her to see. Even in the wake of medication and pain and a sharp blow to her left temple she knew him. She had not seen him in years but she knew him like he was one of her own. How was it that he was the one who had come r u n

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to her? Had he heard about her accident and come to see if she was okay? But that didn’t make sense. Maybe she was still asleep. Maybe the sleeping and the waking and dreaming had finally become one thing. She looked at the light in his hair. It was still that same strange dark red color it had been when he was a child. Tennessee pressed her eyes closed tight.

“Are you in a lot of pain right now?” Sullivan said.

“Where have you been?”

“Excuse me?”

“All those years you haven’t been home.” She felt like she had no experience talking. Her mouth was hot and dry.

“I’ve been a lot of places. I’ve been in Uganda for awhile now.” When he was a child, when she was a little bit more than a child herself, she had been afraid of Sullivan. Everything Sullivan could do to her boys could be done secretly, with no way for her to protect them. He could shove them up against the wall when passing in the hallways or smother them with pillows in their beds at night until they were too frightened to sleep. Did he pinch her boys when no one was looking? Whisper in their ears that his parents had reconsidered the adoption and now the orphanage was coming to take them away? Her children had stolen his sweet life as the baby, after all. He would never again be the only child, the only son. She watched him closer than his parents did. Sometimes she watched him closer than Teddy and Tip.

But this boy dragged her boys around. They hung from his neck and propped on his hip. This boy seemed nothing but patient in the afternoons when she sat in the far corner of Blackstone Park and waited with a book that she pretended to read for hours at a time. Even when he thought no one was watching, he was good to them.

“No water,” Teddy said from the door, his voice so small and apologetic it was difficult to hear him over the hum of the light strip.

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“What did I tell you?” Sullivan kept on looking at Tennessee.

“Who’s that?” she whispered.

“Teddy,” Sullivan said, and took her hand.

There was so much churning inside her chest she wondered if her heart could stab itself on that one broken rib. She had not meant for this to happen. She had not. For a moment she allowed herself to believe they didn’t know. They were only coming to see her as the woman who had acted to save their brother. But this was not the visit of grateful strangers. She thought of her own face now, cut and bandaged, ugly. To see her in bed like this. When Teddy walked up to stand beside her, Tennessee closed her eyes, even though everything in her said to open them.

“I wanted to check on you,” Teddy said in his church voice. “See if you were okay.”