“Alonso likes everything very strong.”
Coffee winces at his mother even while he laughs. She looks over at him, exasperated but helplessly fond, and an unexpected stab of jealousy makes Bird stare down at the rough-glazed mug in her hands. It’s such a simple expectation, the love of a parent. She has imagined that one day her mother might come to accept her like that: not precisely understanding her daughter’s quirks, but accommodating them. Carol Bird would approve of the affluence and cleanliness of this kitchen, but she would have never tolerated Coffee’s glaring nonconformity to its aesthetic.
Coffee bumps his knee against hers, a question in his eyes. Bird forces herself to smile and sip the tea, which leaves a prickly burn on the tip of her tongue.
“Alonso tells me you’re planning to go to Stanford,” his mother says.
“They’ve delayed admissions,” Bird says. “They might even cancel the fall quarter, so I don’t know. But I was thinking that I might take a year off. See the world. Maybe I won’t apply to Stanford at all.”
Coffee stares at her. “When did this happen?” he asks.
She isn’t sure — she has avoided thinking about her future for weeks. Maybe this new idea has been percolating in her subconscious all that time, waiting for release. Or maybe it was just the sight of Coffee and his mother, so different but utterly sure of each other’s love. She knows she can’t have that, and she’s so tired of trying.
So she shrugs. “Nothing like a coma and a plague to make you reconsider your life plans.”
Coffee and his mother give her the exact same long, considering look, as if they are peering out of a tunnel from beneath their eyebrows. Bird bites her lip to keep from laughing.
“Well, you know,” his mother says after a moment, “my Alonso is going through a difficult time right now. We really have no idea when he’ll be free to even continue his studies, let alone tour the world. I’m afraid that he doesn’t have much time to spend on a relationship.”
Bird leans back in her chair, a little surprised that his mother would express her disapproval directly. Bird’s only had two boyfriends before, and both of their mothers had glowed with self-satisfied pride to see the girl their sons had brought home for dinner. Of course, both Paul and the long-forgotten Wes had been Black. Is this what she gets for dating a white boy? Or, at least, a Brazilian boy who looks white? But then again, it could be what she gets for dating an ex-fugitive with an ankle monitor. Alone at the hazy crossroads of race and culture and the drug war, Bird struggles to think of what to say.
“Mom!” Coffee slams his mug down on the table. His mother turns to him, her expression imperturbable. She says something in soft Portuguese and he responds in the same language, his own consonants clipped and harsh. She sighs and turns back to Bird.
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. I know that high school relationships aren’t marriages, I just don’t want to see you get hurt. He’s not in a position to make a long-term commitment.”
Coffee groans and sinks into his chair. “Who said she wanted one, Mom?”
On impulse, Bird leans over and takes his hand. “I do,” she says. “Want one. With him.”
Coffee freezes. “Not a nightmare,” he says softly.
His mother looks between them, startled and hurt and then, for a very brief moment, hopeful.
“For heaven’s sake, Emily,” she says, her words exasperated but her tone unreadably full. “You aren’t Romeo and Juliet.”
“No,” Bird says, taking his other hand for good measure. Flying or falling, she won’t let go of him now. “Just Bird and Coffee.”
* * *
Bird steals what happiness she can, but nothing can stop the world from flooding back in. Her mother calls just as she and Coffee have fallen back on his bed, scattering the papers and books and pens like confetti.
“Emily,” her mother says while Bird stifles her giggles and bats Coffee’s hand away, “your uncle is in the hospital. V-flu. I suppose you’ll have to bring Aaron.”
Coffee takes her hand. Bird stares at him while her mother speaks, mild exasperation the only detectable emotion in that cool voice. “It’s a bad enough case that they need to keep him under surveillance, but they seemed fairly confident of a good prognosis. Goodness, what a mess. I had three meetings scheduled this afternoon.”
“And Nicky had the nerve to get sick?”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. But leave it to your poor uncle to catch this just when we’re getting the vaccine.”
Bird can’t trust herself to respond, so she just rests her forehead against Coffee’s and stares at his parted lips.
“He’ll be all right,” Coffee says when her mother finally hangs up.
“Charlotte’s mom died yesterday. He could die too.”
He doesn’t respond, just pulls her closer and, cupping the back of her head with one hand, guides her down to the hollow of his shoulder. She breathes him with long, shuddering breaths, but the terror inside her is too dry and deep for tears. After a few minutes she feels steady enough to pull away.
“I have to get back to school and pick up Aaron. Can I just sneak out the window? I’m not sure I can face your mother again.”
Coffee grimaces. “I’ll tell her to behave herself. And to give you a ride — she has a driving permit.”
And she does behave herself, her conversation guarded but perfectly polite as she gets Aaron from in front of the boy’s lower school and then takes them all to GW, one of the District hospitals with a ward cleared for v-flu admissions.
On the ride over, Coffee distracts Aaron with questions about the songs he’s learning to play on the guitar.
“ ‘Dock of the Bay,’ ” Aaron says, ticking them off on his fingers, “ ‘Somebody That I Used to Know,’ some Beatles song Mr. Henry likes —”
Coffee laughs. “What Beatles song?”
“Something about wood and a bathtub. It’s weird. I want him to teach me twelve bar blues, but I don’t know enough yet. But I found the tabs for ‘Poison Ivy’ online.”
At this Bird twists in her seat. “No!”
Aaron crosses his arms. “What? It’s a good song.”
Bird feels half of her mouth lifting into a grin and forces it back down. “You know exactly why, and don’t look at me like that. Do you want Mr. Henry to stop teaching you?”
“The Coasters are awesome. I can play ‘Poison Ivy’ if I want and you can’t stop me.”
“What’s next, ‘Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On’?”
Now even Aaron’s mulish frown twitches. “Not in front of Aunt Carol.”
Coffee fiddles with the unfastened end of his seat belt. “I am missing something,” he says.
“ ‘Poison Ivy,’ ” Bird says. “Come on, you have to know it!” He shakes his head. Bird’s mock-disapproving sigh dives into a hiccupping giggle. “He’s gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion, that poison ivy.”
“It’s a plant,” Aaron says.
“It is not a plant,” Bird says, still laughing, remembering her mother’s expression when granddad would get to that part on his Coasters collection. She’d been thirteen when she figured it out.
Coffee doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but she can tell from that half twist to his lips that he’s figured out the important part.
“Maybe you could play it for me first,” Coffee says diplomatically, and Bird grows aware of a feeling somewhere between her stomach and sternum, something at once painful and beautiful, swelling like a tumor until she has to gasp to breathe.
“Emily, are you all right?” his mother asks softly. Bird twists herself straight again, her cheek pressed against the soft taupe leather seat of the embassy car.
She nods, swallows painfully, and manages a soft “Yes.”
His mother purses her lips, exposing deep lines that cross her face like channels of water through rock. But she has laugh lines too, crinkles around her eyes that are deeper versions of the ones that
write across Coffee’s face when he smiles.
I love him too. She keeps the thought safely inside, but his mother gives Bird one startled glance before pulling into the hospital’s visitor entrance. They find Carol Bird sitting in the lobby, typing intently on a razor-thin laptop balanced on her knees.
“Hi, Aunt Carol,” Aaron says, taking a few hesitant steps to her. “Where’s Daddy?”
“In his hospital room,” she says, still typing, “I’ll take you there in a minute, but we have to put on quarantine suits.”
Bird has a brief fantasy of ripping that tiny, expensive laptop from her mother’s hands and throwing it into the revolving doors. Even Coffee’s mother looks startled.
“I think we should leave, Alonso,” she says softly.
Bird’s mother finally seems to register the presence of someone other than her daughter and nephew.
“Oh,” she says, lowering the screen. She frowns at Coffee. “Emily, I don’t think they’ll allow that many visitors.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” Coffee’s mother says, her tone frigid. “Because we are leaving. Alonso has a meeting with his lawyer to prepare for.”
Coffee and Bird glance at each other from across the maternal battle line. He gives a rueful shrug and the utter absurdity of the situation makes that painful, beautiful thing pop inside of her. They start to laugh at the exact same moment.
“Well,” her mother says. “I’m glad someone can find this situation amusing. Emily, what in heaven’s name is going on with you these days?”
“I could ask the same of you, Alonso.”
He decants his laughter like bottles of too-old wine — most turned to vinegar, but a few precious vintages like this, sweet and dry and redolent of dark fruit. She gets drunk on it until he wipes his eyes and stops, looking warily down at his mother. She snaps something in Portuguese and then walks back toward the entrance.
“Call me,” Coffee says, tenting the fingertips of his left hand against Bird’s right. He says good-bye to Aaron and Carol Bird, who hardly acknowledges him, and lopes after his mother.
“Emily,” Carol Bird says, “I think it’s long past time we had a serious discussion about your life choices recently. A court date? That woman!”
Bird would laugh again, except he isn’t here to understand it. “Mom,” she says, leaning over and shutting the laptop with a gentle click. Carol Bird pulls her hands back at the last minute. “Let’s see Nicky first.”
The entrance to the quarantine ward is crowded with police and soldiers, far more than Bird would expect in a place like this. Are they worried about deathly ill v-flu patients attempting a breakout? She’s even more confused when she sees a reporter and her cameraman interviewing a doctor.
“Is something else happening?” Bird asks.
Her mother looks at her and then abruptly away, critically examining the patterned sleeve of her suit jacket as if she’s just now noticed a spot the dry cleaner missed.
“One of Senator Grossman’s aides was admitted this morning,” she says.
Bird might have taken longer to put this together, if not for her mother’s obvious discomfort. She remembers where she last heard that name. “Senator … the one that you and Dad came back with? Don’t tell me, he’s one of the rich assholes who broke the quarantine?”
Carol Bird twists her sleeve back and forth between two fingers that are at least a week past their scheduled manicure. “Now, Emily, no one broke the quarantine. We had a special dispensation.”
“You came back with someone who was infected. And then at Thanksgiving … Was it you? Did you give this to Nicky?”
At this, her mother’s eyes snap up with their old steel. “There is no way to know how your uncle got sick, though I’ll remind you the new cases in the city started before we got there.”
“Em,” Aaron says, elbowing her in the side. His eyes have gone wide. “Does this mean we’ll get sick too? Like Dad?”
Bird draws her hands up beneath her armpits. “No,” she says, looking straight at her mother. “Because we all have the vaccine.”
Carol Bird’s jaw has gone stiff enough to crack the bone, but she doesn’t say anything. In public, she doesn’t dare. She has so much to lose while what little Bird has left seems to trickle between the fingers of her tightly clenched fist. When they push their way to the front of the visitor’s line, a nurse checks their names against a list of patients cleared for visitors.
She takes them to a waiting area with plastic benches and signs warning of biohazards and transmission dangers. They each take translucent yellow smocks, caps, gloves, and masks.
“The ward nurse will get you in a few minutes,” she says, and leaves.
Even her mother looks unnerved. Bird helps Aaron with his smock, then ties her own, her fingers clumsy and cold.
“The trouble with this flu,” her mother says, snapping the gloves over her fingers with an efficiency of long practice, “is that the incubation period is exceptionally long. Really, everyone knows they need to sequester anyone exposed to it, sick or not. But that would lock up half the country, at this rate. So stupid not to do this properly, when it first happened. A few thousand twenty-day quarantines, what’s that compared to …” She blinks slowly and looks away from the doors and back to her daughter. She had forgotten them, Bird realizes. She had been about to say something she shouldn’t.
“Someone made a mistake when this first happened?” Bird thinks of that tender hole in her memory. The forgotten piece she told herself to never forget. Does her mother know it?
“Of course they did,” her mother snaps. “Don’t you even watch the news? It was a public health disaster.”
She meets her daughter’s suspicious stare coolly, but Bird catches worry folded into the corners of her mother’s mouth, the firm clasp of her gloved hands. Bird almost presses her advantage, but just as she’s about to speak she sees Aaron between them, awkwardly pulling down his cap. His father is beyond that door. He hasn’t forgotten that for a moment, though Bird and her mother have been trying. They focus on the abstract as a defense against that concrete terror. And they have left Aaron, without these complicated adult fortifications, alone and vulnerable. She wishes for Coffee, who understands Aaron so well. She wishes that Nicky were happy and at home and this was some big mistake. But it isn’t, and one of them has to be the grown-up.
She takes Aaron’s hand just as the ward nurse — a middle-aged Asian man with a paunch nearly hidden by the quarantine smock — opens the door.
“Nicky Washington’s family?” he says, his voice muffled by the paper mask. “Put your masks on and follow me.”
The quarantine ward is a large room filled in with a transparent grid of plastic dividers hung from the ceiling on hooks. In each rectangular section are a bed and a boxy air filter. The room must have at least four hundred beds, each one occupied.
“The worst cases are in their own rooms. Your father is responding well to treatment.” He leads them down a row in the back. The nurse looks down at his clipboard and then stops toward the end of the aisle. “He’s awake,” he says softly. “You can stay for half an hour.”
Bird squeezes Aaron’s hand and he squeezes back. Nicky appears distorted, cartoonish behind the plastic barrier of his tiny quarantine cell. He waves. The nurse unzips the partition to let them inside.
Nicky has an extra white blanket pulled around his shoulders, but he looks oddly exposed without his black do-rag. The few scraggly strands of gray she remembers have multiplied into owlish tufts by his ears, and his ragged ends could use some of that Afro sheen that she stole from him last week. His skin looks gray too, like an ashy elbow, except that it gleams with sweat in the bright fluorescent light.
“Hey,” her uncle says, smiling at Aaron. His shoulders are oddly rigid beneath the blanket. For a moment his fear is written plain across his forehead, and then he forces a smile and holds out his arms. “Come here, boy,” he says gruffly, and Aaron jumps across the bed to hug him.
Over Aaron’s head, Nicky nods at his sister. “Thanks for coming, Carol,” he says.
Carol Bird only glances at her brother before turning away, so obviously uncomfortable at the display of emotion that Bird would laugh if she weren’t trying so hard to keep from crying.
Her mother’s hand closes over her elbow. “Why don’t we wait outside, Emily?” she says softly. “I think it’s time you and I had a talk.”
* * *
Bird has grown accustomed to the sight of faces half-hidden by masks, but she shudders at the intensity of her mother’s wide brown eyes. Her fear she expects — it hasn’t left her for a moment in her mother’s company since that day with Felice and her father — but her disorientation catches her off guard. She has changed in the two months away from her mother. And while the emerging Bird is stronger than Emily in many ways, she lacks her defenses.
“I’m going to trust that the boy is a phase. You’ll meet plenty at college, maybe someone better for you than Paul. I do like confidence, but there’s a fine line and sometimes Paul seemed to have more than his share.”
Bird’s mouth opens against the cloth mask. “Funny you only mention it now,” she says.
Her mother clicks her tongue in annoyance; a lifetime of habit makes Bird flinch against the plastic chair and lower her eyes. “More importantly, Emily, what are you planning to do? The worst of the pandemic is over, now that we finally have a vaccine. Stanford might not even open next year and I don’t think it’s wise for you to defer your education. I had a talk with your college guidance counselor, and she says that there’s a very good chance you can go to Georgetown if you apply for the emergency admissions program.”
Love is the Drug Page 27
