You Are My Only (16 page)

“Maybe we should come with you,” Miss Cloris said, and I said, “So long as I know you are right here, I'm fine.”

“Sometimes it's better to take the news slowly,” Miss Helen cautioned.

“There's truth,” I said, “and I want it.”

“Maybe we should invite your mother for a visit, treat her to some courtesies, let her talk.”

“I need some time,” I said, “without her suspecting.”

Miss Cloris stands and starts pacing. Harvey shakes himself awake and trots to the door. “You stay in the side yard,” Miss Cloris tells him, opening the screen to let him through. Then she walks in little circles around the room, pushing at the hair on her head.

“I don't like this,” Miss Cloris says. “Not one bit. The two boys and the No Good and the hiding—and you, Sophie, living as you have, one of the brightest girls I've ever met, sneaking your way into the sun.”

“Childhood should be an adventure,” Miss Helen says. “All of living should.”

“So much inside air,” Miss Cloris says. “It breaks my heart.”

“Though here you are,” Miss Helen says. “That counts for something.”

“Illegally,” Miss Cloris says, “at least according to her mother.”

She keeps walking and pushing at her hair. Minxy rolls and makes the leap to the bright floor. Miss Helen leans against my shoulder, and in the yard, Harvey whines for someone to play. It must be one o'clock by now, or two, my mother working toward the end of her shift, playing her Lotto, wanting her miracle, and maybe her miracle isn't money after all, but the undying of two boys in a fire, the unsmashing of knees, the unlying to me, over all these years. My mother's personals is truth by way of lies. It's the lockup of her, and the gaps in between, and it's the No Good and my father, Andrew Marks, in the bottom of a box, in a story: away on business. And when he came home, what? And when I was born—what then?

“Miss Helen,” I ask, “you okay?” She straightens her head and shifts her weight, and Miss Cloris comes to help her—fits one hand to Miss Helen's face and another to her shoulder until she is sitting up on the couch inside her own balance, her wheeled chair catching the sun spokes in the corner.

“You leaving, child?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And returning?”

“I will.”

“You call. You holler. You don't knock. You understand?”

“Ma'am?”

“Yes?”

“Tell Joey I say hi?”

“Of course.”

“Tell him I'm glad he ended up living here with you.”

“Tragedy and blessing,” Miss Cloris says. “Sometimes they're the same one thing.”

“You were warned,” Bettina says, and she says it so sadly. “You were trusted.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Autumn says, and I echo, “Yes, ma'am, yes.”

“I asked for calm and not commotion.”

“It was an accident.”

“I asked for civility, respect.”

“We weren't meaning disrespecting.”

“Weren't meaning doesn't matter, Autumn. You start running like you did, and this whole place goes to chaos, and now Cavity's in the infirmary—sliced deep and clean right here.” Bettina draws a line above her eye to mark the spot where the skin split after Cavity got to running behind our wheelchair brigade and smacked the floor with his face. Cavity tripped. Cavity's in the infirmary. Autumn kept running; we were flying. “Getting sewn up in the blood zone,” Bettina continues. “Which is your doing.” We sit in a small room with a closed door, Bettina's legs crossed at the ankles, her fingers pulling at the wooden cross that she wears around her neck. My heart is a frog in my chest.

“It wasn't my fault,” Autumn says, “what Cavity did. Cavity is Cavity.” Her hands make somersaults across her lap. She swings her feet above the linoleum floor.

“Do you know what inciting is, Autumn?”

“We were just getting up our speed. We didn't mean harm.”

“This is a
hospital
, Autumn. There is no speed.” She drops the cross and ties up her arms beneath her chest, sighs heavy. She leans back against the lawn-colored chair. There are vertical seams above her nose, between her eyes. There's a rash of red up high on one cheek. She smells like coffee, paste, cigarettes, old ammonia. There's commotion in the hall beyond us, a rectangle of light that comes through the window in the door.

“Do you want to explain?”

Autumn shakes her head no.

“I need to know, Autumn, what the speed was for.”

Autumn's head swings, side to side. “Can't tell. That is our secret.”

“You need to be straight with me, Autumn.”

“Secrets are secrets.”

“You had my trust, Autumn. You had privileges.”

Had,
she is saying. Had. Had.

“It was the crows' fault,” Autumn says at last.

“I don't see how crows could have anything to do with this, Autumn.”

“Because they were flying.”

“You need to tell the truth.”

“That is the truth. They were flying, and we wanted to fly, too.”

Bettina looks from Autumn to me and back again. The ruler of her mouth won't bend.

“We didn't mean to hurt anybody,” Autumn says, pleading. “We're sorry for Cavity.”

“The facts are the facts, Autumn. Always.”

“We were just practicing.”

“Practicing?”

“Stretching our wings.”

“Ma'am,” I say, but Bettina barely glances my way, and Autumn won't look at me either, as if to look at me is to make a suspect of me, as if it were not my fault that we were flying in the first place, practicing our speed, for Baby's sake, for going free.

“We meant no harm,” Autumn says, her lips thin as a fly's wing, bitten into and raw.

“Meaning and doing harm are two separate things, Autumn.”

“Please,” Autumn says. “It won't happen again.” Something in her blue eyes cracks. Something splits and spills, and in this moment I understand that Autumn is the only thing I have. The only sure and actual. I want to reach for the fumbling hands on her lap. I want to hold them, each one, and keep them safe from whatever is going to happen next.

“It's my fault,” I say. “I made her do it.”

“You made Autumn race you down the hall in your wheelchair?” Bettina asks, very quietly, very slow.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You made her swerve and tilt? You made her holler?”

“I didn't hear her holler.”

“You put Cavity in the infirmary?”

“It was me,” I say, “and I apologize.” I won't look at Autumn, because I know she will beseech me. I won't look into her blue eyes leaking. I look hard and steadfast toward Bettina. I say the words as if it's trial and jury, defendant and witness. As if it's seven weeks ago, or eight, or however long since Peter sat there saying I was crazy.

Bettina looks from Autumn to me and back again. She pushes her heels into the floor, stands up, pulls at the cross on her neck, sighs, and now her mouth bends, but it bends downward. She rubs at the rash near her eye. “I need to talk to Nurse Granger,” she says finally. “You two wait here.”

She walks to the door and locks it behind her. She stares in at us through the glass in the door and then she walks away.

“Psshhhahh,” Autumn says, scrubbing at her eyes with the balls of her fists. Her arms are so skinny, it's like they're only made of bone, like skin is the sleeves that Autumn puts on.

“What will she do?” I ask. “What happens next?”

She shrugs and a tear breaks from her eye. “This is State,” she says, shuddering, and I want to reach for her, climb out of these wheels, escape with her to somewhere safe, but the door is shut and Bettina's key has turned the lock. Whatever it is has been done, and Cavity's lying in the infirmary, a line of blood above one eye.

The Volvo coughs to a stop and I'm ready—the kitchen clean and the La-Z-Boy polished, a long glass of ice water sitting still among the towered books, which I have rearranged according to their sizes.

“Have a seat,” I say when Mother drags in. “Put your feet up.” I ease the take-homes from her hands, trade them for Ziplocs of ice for her smashed-in knees. I do not look into her eyes, because if I look into her eyes, she will see that I am lying. That in the basement beneath us her personals are scattered. That in the house next door, they know her story. I have broken her first rule: Be good.

“You play the Lotto?” I ask her, taking the leftovers into the kitchen, slipping them into the cool of the refrigerator, coming back.

“No miracles,” she says.

“Maybe tomorrow?”

“Taking tomorrow off.”

“You are?” I ask, stopping cold in my tracks.

“Marge wants a double shift. Told her she could have mine. Need my rest, Sophie. That's the truth. Need time at home with you.”

I nod. Say nothing. Don't look anywhere near her so she can't see into my heart.

“Now, what's all this for?”

“What do you mean?”

“The niceness of things. The ice water.”

“Just want you comfortable,” I say. “After your long day.”

“You sure that's all?” She looks at me up and down and my stomach goes wormy.

“I'm sure.”

“You don't sound so sure.” She studies me harder, then settles into her chair. Slips out of her white shoes and pulls at the strands of her hair. One of the hairs gets loose and curls free and floats slow to the floor, and now she closes her eyes and lifts the long glass of water to her lips.

“Well?” she says.

“Well?”

“Come and join me.”

I sit opposite her in the cranky old rocker. I creak back and forth, watching the sun heating her Ziploc knees, the ice melt to nothing. “You ready to hear my Kepler?” I ask before she can ask me about my day.

“I suppose I am.”

“ ‘From Nothing to Big Things,' ” I say, my voice suddenly shaking. I cough, pretend it's a tickle. I lift the paper from the floor, where I'd slipped it an hour ago, for this purpose. I start at my beginning: “ ‘Johannes Kepler was born with the skies in his eyes. He was born looking up so he could see.' ” I glance up to find that Mother's eyes are closed. The line between her brows is deep.

“I'm listening.”

“All right.”

“ ‘The skies in his eyes,' ” she repeats.

“I thought …”

“Keep reading.”

I steady my voice over every word and phrase.

We eat dinner in the same chairs, the take-homes in plates on our knees. For a long time, she doesn't talk, just chews.

“So you've befriended Mr. Kepler,” she says at last.

“I liked his story.” I smothered my hot dog with the yellow mustard we keep inside the refrigerator door. It still tastes like water that has boiled many things. When I chew, it slides around in my mouth.

“ ‘Skies in his eyes,' ” she repeats. “ ‘Born looking up.' ‘A heart shattered but still beating.' You know he had a broken heart, Sophie? For a fact? It said so in the books?”

“I just assumed.”

“But why assume?”

“Because look at him, Mother. Look at his life. His father going away and not returning. His children dying, and then his wife. His mother put on trial for witchcraft. His own country locking him out.”

“Johannes Kepler was the father of celestial mechanics,” Mother says. “His mathematics explained the shapes of honeycombs. He created the science of optics. He revolutionized the study of solids. And here you come, with your Kepler essay, talking about sadness and heartbreak.”

“I wanted to tell his story. His real story.”

“That's not what you've done. You've written fiction. Your ideas about how a man feels. A man you've only met in books.”

“How else would I meet him?”

“You know what I mean.”