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I touched her cheek and left. I walked into the hall and closed the door behind me.
After two steps I started shaking so much I couldn’t move. I wasn’t ready yet. I had thought I was but I was wrong. Five more minutes with Frances. A few more questions. I just needed five more minutes with my friend. Then I would be all right and able to go on to whatever was next. She would understand that. She would know how to stop my shakes and push the demons back.
I returned to her door and opened it. The music was playing. Frances sat with her face in her hands weeping so hard her whole body shook violently.
“Oh Jesus, Frances!”
She looked up. Her face was crimson. Her cheeks were shiny from tears. She waved a hand at me to leave. I did not know how to help, how to save my friend from a fate so hopeless and decided. But I could fetch the doctor. Maybe the doctor had something that could calm her down and at least let her rest.
Dr. Zabalino was downstairs in the lobby talking to the receptionist. The sight of me racing toward her must have said everything. I started explaining what happened but she was hurrying for the elevator before I was three sentences in. I started after her but she stopped and slammed a hand against my chest.
“No! If you want to stay here and be protected, don’t move till I get back. But you ca
The light above the door illuminated the floor numbers. When it stopped at Frances’s, I turned and walked to the receptionist. She wasn’t ignoring me or reading poetry this time. Her eyes were bright and alert, like those of a small animal that’s just realized a much bigger one is very close.
“What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
I slapped my hands down on the desk loud enough to make her cringe. “Don’t give me shit! What happens now?”
“Usually the doctors can fix things. Dr. Zabalino is very good. She’ll know how to help your friend. But it’ll be harder to help you because you haven’t chosen yet. That’s the worst. Making up your mind, because there are so many reasons for and against it. That’s why you should stay here until you’ve decided. Fieberglas is the safest place for you. Outside it’s very, very dangerous. There are things out there—”
“Tell the doctor I left.”
“You can’t!”
“I don’t want to be here. I’ve got to—Just tell her I left.”
“But—”
The clatter of my heels against the stone floor rang out again in that quiet place as I walked to the door. Through a window, I saw Erik Peterson in his taxicab, the light from the portable TV flickering on his face. I pushed open the heavy front door. The air outside was cold and smelled of pine and stone. I felt no desire to return to the “safety” of the building.
“Erik? Let’s go home.”
He looked up. “You finished?”
“Yes. Do you mind if I sit next to you?”
“Not at all. Hop in.” He reached across the passenger’s seat and threw open the door. The overhead light came on a weak yellow. I walked around the front of the car and got in but didn’t close the door. I needed a moment just sitting before my life could continue.
“How’d it go in there, Miranda? How’s your friend?”
“Sick. Is this your family?” On the dashboard was a small metal frame with three oval photographs inside. A boy, a girl, a wife. The girl wore a cheerleader’s sweater and flirted with the camera. The pretty woman looked straight at it, expressionless. The boy—
“Yes. That’s my wife Nina, our daughter Nelly, and Isaac.”
“He looks like you.”
“Isaac died of meningitis two years ago. One night he didn’t feel well and went to bed. The next morning he was gone.” He gestured for me to close the door. I hesitated so as to have another, closer look at Isaac in the dim light. Erik started the car. The strong smell of exhaust fumes filled the air.
“I’m so sorry. What was he like?”
“Interesting you ask. Most people when they hear about it just say they’re sorry. They’re embarrassed to ask questions. Or they feel uncomfortable.
“What was he like? He was a pistol. You couldn’t keep the kid down. He woke up at five every morning and went full tilt till you threw him into bed at night and shut his eyes for him. I guess he was hyperactive, but my wife said he was just too interested to sit down. We miss him.”
I pulled the door closed and we drove away from Fieberglas. The gravel crunching beneath the car tires sounded very loud. As we drove onto the street I looked down at my hands in my lap and saw they were both clenched into fists. I was fearful something might stop or hold us back, but that was egotism or paranoia. Nothing stopped us; nothing met us but the night in front of the headlights.
“Once when Isaac was a little boy, I mean really little, I walked into the bathroom and saw him standing next to the toilet barefoot. The seat was up and he was dangling a foot over the bowl. I asked what he was doing, because with that kid, it coulda been anything. He said he’d bet himself he couldn’t put his foot in the toilet. For some crazy reason he was frightened of doing that. So there he was standing, daring himself to do the thing that scared him most.”
“Why was he afraid to do that? Had it been flushed?”
“Oh, sure.” Peterson took a hand off the steering wheel and gave an airy wave. “But you know how it is when you’re a kid: you got different monsters than the ones you got as an adult.”
I slid forward to get as close as possible to the photograph. The boy did look like his father, but even in the picture there was a wildness in his eyes that said he was a pistol.
We returned to Crane’s View the way we had come. Passing the drive-in theater, I worried that something would again be playing on the giant screen, but it was blank. Erik continued talking about his son. I asked questions to keep the conversation going. I didn’t want to think about what to do because I knew my whole life would depend on that decision once we got home.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“No. God, cigarettes! I’d love one too.”
He pulled a pack of Marlboros from beneath his sun visor and handed them to me. “I think I got two left in there. Have a look.”
I slid them out.
He pushed in the cigarette lighter on the dashboard. “All the things we’re not supposed to do anymore, huh? You know what I say? Cigarettes are gooood!”
The lighter popped out and he handed it to me. I lit up for the first time in years and took a deep drag. The smoke was harsh and raw in my throat but delicious. We sat in a nice silence, smoking and watching things pass by.
“There’s a 7-eleven up here a-ways. Would you mind if I made a quick stop and bought more smokes and some other things? I told the wife I’d bring them home and she’ll be real mad if I don’t.”
“Please, of course stop.”
He sighed. “That’s one of the bad things that’s happened since Isaac died. Nina gets real upset about small things. Before, she was as calm as summer, but now if even the slightest thing goes wrong, she has trouble with it. I can’t blame her. I guess we miss people in our own ways.
“Me, I think about all the things I’ll never be able to do with the boy. Take him to see the Knicks, watch him graduate from school. Sometimes when I’m alone in the house, I go up to his room and sit on the bed. I talk to him too, you know? Tell him what’s been going on in the family, and how much I miss him. I know it’s stupid, but I keep thinking he’s near me in that room. Nina cleaned it out completely after he died, so it’s only a small empty place now, but I can’t help thinking he’s around there sometimes and maybe can hear me.”