“Yes. She’s still very sick, Jake. She would come herself if she could.” Still, he looked so cautious, so skeptical. Was it anger? Doubt? A mistrust of all adults after what he’d been through? She leaned closer. “She wants to be here with you, Jake. You believe that, don’t you?”
She heard Louise clear her throat. Jake glanced over his shoulder at her in the kitchen and Charlotte saw her stop in her work, wait for a sign from him that all was okay. He looked straight at Charlotte again and said, “Tell my mother I was on my way to Seattle when they caught me. I’m not going back. I won’t live with David.”
“Okay, I will.” She hesitated a moment, then asked, “Jake? Did you leave because David hurt you?” Charlotte knew she was stepping near a line, and for a moment she wondered if Louise might suddenly loom up and snatch Jake into her great arms, carry him out of the room, tall as he was.
But Jake had an answer ready. “He’s too smart to hit me. If he had, the police wouldn’t make me go back.” Charlotte’s throat tightened, but Jake’s face didn’t change—still composed and preternaturally wise. Indeed, he looked so undisturbed it seemed peculiar, given where he was, until she realized that here, for the first time since his mother disappeared, Jake had some hope that his life might change.
The smell of broiling sausage drifted into the room. Somewhere a faucet dripped, or perhaps it had begun to rain. After sitting silently through it all, Eric leaned forward on the sofa so his face was closer to Jake’s. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you something the other day, but I’d like to tell you now.” Charlotte could see Eric trying to smile, to keep this easy despite Jake’s wariness. “I knew your mom when she was a girl. Not much older than you. We used to play together down in the ravine near where your great-grandpa lived. I knew him too. One time—when I first met your mom—she tricked me into looking for seal pups in a cave under the bluffs. When the tide came in I was stuck. I spent half the night in that cave!” He looked down at his hands for a moment. “She’s a special person. She was a wonderful friend to me. You look a little like she did, back then.”
Jake was fixed on Eric’s face, more engaged than Charlotte had seen him all evening, the color and light in his eyes brightening and darkening. She could see him turning Eric’s story over, calculating the likelihood of such an event. If Jake decided it was a ruse to gain his trust, would he walk out? She wished Eric had waited until Jake seemed more comfortable with them—if they had to leave now, there would be no second chance. She was about to change the subject, hunting for something light to say, when Jake tilted his head and asked Eric, “Did my mom used to call you Bo?”
—
Louise walked in with a stack of plastic plates and set the table for four, including Eric and Charlotte without any apparent invitation or question. She brought out an enormous platter of sausages wrapped in biscuit dough, baked to gold, followed by potato salad, pickles, and snap peas. Jake got more talkative as dinner progressed, asking Eric to tell him more stories about his mother when she lived on the farm—he, too, it turned out, had snuck cigarettes from the bunker, at the shy age of eight, and been required to eat one when his great-grandfather caught him, which appalled Charlotte but made both Eric and Jake howl in commiseration. Every time he laughed he seemed younger, less precociously guarded.
It was nine fifteen by the time they finished eating. Jake yawned a few times. Louise got up to make some tea and Eric started clearing the dishes. Only Jake and Charlotte were left at the table. She could hear Eric and Louise talking in low voices through the open kitchen door. Charlotte leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, “I brought a treat for you, Jake. Something small.” She rummaged through her purse and pulled out the white envelope and packages of gum. “I didn’t know what flavor you like, so I bought two kinds. Grape and bubble gum. You can try them both and tell me which one is the best—I’ll bring more the next trip.” She unzipped the plastic tape from the grape pack and shook one piece up for Jake to take. He slid it out, unwrapped its white paper sheath, and crumpled the entire piece into his mouth. “Chew it some before you decide. They lose their flavor pretty quick.” After he’d given it a good go she opened the second pack. “Now try the bubble gum—my favorite.” She took a stick for herself and Jake unwrapped his own, rolling it into a tight curl before he started to put it into his mouth. “Wait,” Charlotte said, taking a clean napkin from the wire rack on the table. “Spit the grape out first or you can’t tell.” He spit the gum neatly into the napkin Charlotte held open across her palm, a silver trail of saliva included. Then he put the second piece in his mouth and chewed with concentration worthy of a sommelier. Charlotte emptied the contents of the napkin into the clean white envelope and folded it closed before slipping it into her purse. “You can keep both packs if you want.”
Louise and Eric came back into the room. “Jake, you and I need to hit the sack, huh?” Louise said. She looked at Charlotte with an expression more grave than her words sounded. “Dr. Reese told me she might be able to help you with your back pain, son. Case it’s a while before we get you to the doctor. How about you let her have a look?” She helped him pull the Mariners T-shirt over his head with a static crackle, his hair clinging to the neckline so it stood straight up for a moment. He seemed unself-conscious about partially undressing, relaxed around them now.
Charlotte asked him to walk toward the far wall and back, then she had him lean over and touch his toes. The curvature was more obvious to her this time, his pelvic crests clearly asymmetrical in height. She wished she knew more about the problem and could give Louise specific advice, if indeed Jake was allowed to stay here. It had been fifteen years since she’d studied either orthopedics or pediatrics, but something about Jake’s clinical picture nagged her. Was it the degree of the curvature? The rapidity with which it must have developed, given that no prior doctor or school nurse had caught it? She picked up his shirt and crinkled it into a sleeve to go over his head. “Thank you, Jake. I know some doctors in Seattle who might help you feel better. Would you be willing to talk to them? If Louise and Mr. Simpson said it was okay?”
“If they can make it stop hurting.”
He put his arms up for his T-shirt but Charlotte stopped when it was halfway over his head. “Just one more part of the exam, do you mind?” She placed her hand softly against his rib cage and turned his body so the lamplight illuminated him from the side. With her fingers, she parted the fine pubescent hair just beginning to grow in the hollow of his armpit, and there in the deep golden cove she saw a scatter of dark freckles. The dermatologic signature of neurofibromatosis. Just like Eric had.
—
Charlotte felt drained. They checked the ferry schedule and realized they were likely to miss the midnight sailing back to Seattle from Bainbridge; it would be quicker to drive around through Tacoma. After an hour and a half on the long stretches of empty highway Eric was sound asleep and she drifted into a half-formed dream of Raney pulling her IV lines out, rising from her ICU bed dressed in jeans and a Mariners T-shirt, looking no more than twelve years old. A light flashed—a car passing—Charlotte jerked awake and swerved hard to the right in a panic. The wheels dropped onto the gravel shoulder and spun with no traction; Eric cried out when his shoulder struck the door. The Saab ended up facing backward on the opposite side of the deserted highway; the headlights sparked on fragments of broken glass, glittering reminders of past tragedies.
They found a motel outside Tumwater and checked in. The room felt damp and close, the carpet uncomfortably nappy. Eric used the toilet and rinsed his mouth, then stripped to his shorts and slid under the bedcovers. He lay on his back with his hands crossed over his chest. How could someone sleep in that position? And yet she knew he would hardly move the rest of the short night. She didn’t take her shoes off until she was sitting on the edge of the bed, then tucked her feet up before they could touch the carpet. She was exhausted but wired, too fatigued to drive or th
ink clearly and too agitated to sleep. The streetlights over the parking lot cast a yellow glow through the windows, and in her buzzing semiconsciousness the room was a television set, she and Eric and Jake and Raney inside while David watched—the one in control was the one least invested.
After a while she turned on to her side, facing Eric, studying his profile in the unnatural, intrusive light. His eyes were still closed, but she knew he was awake. “Are you going to tell me what the gum is for?” he said.
“I wondered if you saw that. Do you need to ask?”
Eric sighed and opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. “Can they really get a DNA sample from gum?”
“Aren’t you the one writing about all the latest genetics research? Yes. Usually. Unsweetened is best.”
“And were you going to get my sample the same way?” He crossed his arms under his head and turned to look at her, but with the light behind his face she couldn’t make out his expression. “Or were you planning to drug me and swab my cheek?”
Charlotte reached over to his chest and ran her fingers over his skin. Pale. Smooth. Almost no hair. “I was hoping you would give it to me. Willingly.” She pressed her fingers softly against the flesh under his arm where the freckles of neurofibromatosis marked him, where she had seen the same sign on Jake. “Will you?”
He pulled her hand away. “Have you asked yourself what you’ll do with the results? Either way? A match, no match? You can help him just by being a doctor. Being a friend. We both can. If Jake has scoliosis, even if he has neurofibromatosis, we can help him get treatment.”
“How can you question it now, with the axillary freckles?”
“Because sometimes we see what we want to see. Not just you—everyone. And the question still begs—if he has the disease, does it matter where he got it? Does it change anything?”
“It feels wrong not to know. Not to take responsibility for it. You know what it’s like to live with this diagnosis. You could help him—as more than some anonymous friend.” Eric stared at the ceiling, his jaw set. “Maybe the real question you should be asking is why you’re so scared to find out if Jake is your son.”
He was quiet for a moment; then, too restrained. “Look at me, Charlotte.” She held her eyes wide in mock exaggeration. “No. Look at me.” He sat up in bed and turned his back to her, parted his thick hair to expose the pink rind of his scar. “Teach Jake how to live with it? The opposite is more likely. You think he needs to watch one more parent . . . There is no cure for this, Dr. Reese.”
“You’ve had an unlucky course. An unusual course for NF.”
“Yes. We don’t choose our luck, do we? Or our parents. Except in this case, maybe Jake can.”
“And is that true for us too? You’re waiting for me to choose so you don’t have to? Choose to give up on marriage and children so you can pretend you would have ever given those a chance? We’re stuck, Eric. Stagnating. The only risks you’re willing to take are ones that don’t include people.”
He was still turned away from her, his feet on the floor ready to get up, dress, and walk out. She almost didn’t know if she cared anymore, which scared her more than the fear he would leave. Then his head sank into his hands with a sigh so close to a sob she wished she could see his eyes, wanted to touch him but couldn’t cross over. After a long time he lay down and said in a resigned voice, “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll take the test.”
—
Charlotte let Jake’s chewed wad of gum air dry, as the instructions said, and mailed it to the genetics lab she had chosen, practically at random, from the hundreds advertised on the Internet. The customer care representative told her not to send Eric’s sample until they were certain they could get an adequate DNA extraction from the gum. She would send Charlotte the necessary buccal swab test kit if the extraction succeeded.
Three days later a small package arrived in Charlotte’s mailbox. The contents looked so innocuous: an envelope, a clear bag, and two sticks that looked much like home pregnancy tests.
Eric read the instructions and slid the cover back to expose a white fabric-like surface on one end. He scraped it against the inside of his cheek a few times, then closed the cover and put the stick into the bag. He repeated the steps with the other stick. Charlotte put the test sticks into the envelope and wrote the date on the flap, filled in the form, and sealed the envelope. It was done. Two minutes for the test, a lifetime to muster the courage, she thought but did not say aloud. It would only take forty-eight hours; the results should arrive on Saturday. It felt like forty-eight days to Charlotte.
And in the course of that time Raney began to improve.
—
Charlotte woke early on Saturday. By the time Eric came out of the bedroom she was immersed in a cleaning frenzy, the living room furniture pushed askew so she could mop in places no one looked or cared about, least of all her. He was wearing a flannel shirt so faded it looked like a chamois, exposing skinny bare legs, his hair going in every direction except straight up.
“You’re cleaning,” he said.
“Sherlock!”
“You’re anxious. You only clean like this when you’re anxious.”
She looked at him sharply and drove the mop hard at a stubborn spot of ancient grime. He walked back to the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee.
As noon approached she found herself at the front window, watching for the postman. But when the small slot beside her front door at last slid open and the day’s mail plopped onto the hall carpet, she made Eric pick it up. He brought the pile of envelopes into the living room and sat next to her. It was there, second from the top. So thin. So innocuous. How could so many lives be so permanently changed by the few words inside it?
Eric handed it to her. She could tell he was nervous, perhaps as much about her as about any test result. “Do you want me to open it?” he asked.
“Yes. Open it.”
“Do you want to read it with me?”
“No. You read it.”
Eric slit the envelope crease with his thumb and pulled out a pamphlet and a few sheets of paper. He scanned the first page, turning it over, and then put the second one on top. Charlotte detected the slightest tightening around his eyes. The concentration on his face made it obvious this page held the results. He put the paper on the coffee table and took her hands. She almost stopped him, felt she had to be ready for the answer, but in what way? He was right—what difference should it make? Wouldn’t they help Jake either way? She closed her eyes and told him to say it.
“I’m not Jake’s father. We don’t match.”
Charlotte felt like a cannon had exploded through her middle, splintering this moment, this day, every day to come. Splintering hope she didn’t even know she’d nurtured. What had she been thinking? How had she let herself slowly, unconsciously, become so utterly convinced that the result would be positive? Eric pulled her into his arms. “Hush. Hush. It’s okay, babe. It’s okay.”
• 19 •
raney
They drove around the Olympic Peninsula for two weeks, staying at cheap motels, or in sleeping bags on beaches or in campgrounds, leaving before the park rangers came by to collect a fee; they spent a few nights in the back of the Tahoe while the rain hammered the roof and the truck shivered in gusts of wind. David would pick up the local papers and read the want ads, applying for anything that remotely resembled bookkeeping. They stopped in every public library so he could use the computer to hunt for jobs. There was nothing locking them into Washington—Raney said he should look all over the country, on the Internet at least. But whether for pride or sheer compulsiveness or because he felt as rejected as these sparsely populated counties seemed, he insisted on exhausting the peninsula before they moved on.
As Raney saw it, she still had a full-time job. Now she had to make Jake believe this move was an adventure. A summer vacation touring the
bleak towns in the farthest, forgotten corner of America, scattered along the broken two-lane roads like lost pennies collecting dust under sofas—not worth the trouble to retrieve. Sometimes, she told Jake, you have to believe in fortune—the world will give you what you need when you need it. Things will work out. Jake promptly reminded her of the last history lesson he had studied in school—Robert Scott’s disastrous expedition to the South Pole, how he nearly died en route only to discover a Norwegian flag already planted, and then actually died eleven miles from getting back home.
—
Three weeks after leaving Quentin they stopped outside Queets for coffee and gas just south of Kalaloch on 101. Raney waited beside the gas pumps, unwashed and unkempt and braced against the biting rain, watching Jake kick an empty beer can down the side of the highway until a logging truck whooshed past and crushed it. David came out of the store after paying, and she pulled him around the building behind the Dumpsters where Jake couldn’t witness or overhear. “We need a home, David. A house, a trailer, a single room and a hot plate. No more fast food, no more roadside Sani-Cans.”
David put his wallet into his back pocket and scanned the sky, squinting in the single sun ray that darted through a cloud break and then vanished again. Looking for heavenly guidance out of this hell, Raney thought, like he might honestly believe heaven or hell cared what happened to their three vagrant souls—specks in the chaff of the universe. But she could see him bending to her ultimatum—or trying it, at least. “Well, there’s the job at the lodge. Hourly—no benefits.” He paused. If he was giving her a chance to change her mind he could wait forever. Let him freeze in the rain beside these putrid garbage bins while she and Jake took a bus back to Quentin. “I’ll drive on over and tell them I’ll take it. For now.” He smiled at her. His smile still made her want to trust him, for one more mile. One last mile. The way some flowers inevitably follow the sun; their biology gives them no choice in the matter.
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