The Wake Up

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Gwen stuck her head out into the bedroom. She was holding a toothbrush in one hand.

  “But you didn’t know it was her birthday.”

  “Right. I didn’t. But I had an idea of something I wanted to give her. But it would have been for no occasion in particular, and I was worried that it would have been mean to do that without giving Milo something. I actually have a thought on that, too. But it’s a wild thought, and I’m not sure I’m ready to do it. Or even willing to do it. But if it’s her birthday, then it’s okay to give something just to her. And then I can think about the Milo thing a while longer. But you need to okay my Elizabeth idea. It’s kind of big. You might not want me to do it.”

  He watched her eyebrows lift slightly. She was wearing just a wrapped towel, a huge bath sheet. Aiden could have gazed at her all day.

  “Okay,” she said. A little tentative. “What is it, hon?”

  “I was thinking . . . Penny.”

  Silence. Then Gwen let out a sputtering laugh.

  “Is that a joke? I know money’s a little tight, but . . .”

  “No. Not a penny. Penny. That little gray mare she loves so much.”

  “Oh,” Gwen said. “Penny. Wow.” She moved over and sat on the edge of the bed beside him. “That is big.”

  “I know what you’re thinking. At least, I think I do.”

  “Do you? What am I thinking?”

  “Well. It’s a weird thing to have to talk about. But we know not every two people who’ve been together for a few months will be together for the rest of their lives. Even though I honestly think we have a shot. But . . . she could always keep the horse here. And come ride here. I’d like to think we’d all still be friends no matter what. Actually, I’d really like to think we’ll all be living here always. I mean . . . except that the kids’ll grow up and go off on their own.”

  They sat together in silence for a time in a slanted beam of light that shone through the bedroom window. A strong wind blew the leaves of the scrub oaks outside. Aiden could hear it, and see the leaves whirling in place. It would be both windy and hot that day.

  He could feel the turmoil Gwen felt, but nothing clear emerged. Nothing that would help him judge what she would say next.

  “She’d love it,” Gwen said. “I know she would. Thirteen is young to own a horse, though.”

  “On her birthday she’ll be fourteen.”

  “Oh. Right. Duh. Still young for a horse.”

  “Not in ranching years, it’s not. I got my first horse when I was seven. I’ll teach her everything she needs to know. Just like my stepfather did for me.”

  “I guess . . . okay. Yeah.” He watched her face soften into something like a smile. Not really a relaxed smile. But then, relaxation wasn’t something either one of them expected of their lives together. “That will be really nice. Thanks.” She almost rose to go. But then she stopped herself. “If you don’t mind my asking . . . what were you thinking about giving Milo?”

  “Oh. That. You know what? Not ready to go there. Is that okay if I’m not ready to go there? I’m so confused about it, and I’m thinking it might be the worst idea I ever had. I promise if it gets any more firmed up, I’ll tell you.”

  “Yeah,” Gwen said. “That’s fine.”

  But she was disappointed. Aiden wished he didn’t know that. He missed the old days, when he wouldn’t have known.

  “How much of a hurry are you in to get to work?” he asked her.

  “I got a few minutes. Why?”

  “I want to tell you the story of the horse my stepdad gave me when I was seven.”

  Aiden waited until 7:00 a.m. on Elizabeth’s birthday, but couldn’t bring himself to wait longer. He rapped on her door with the backs of his fingers.

  “Hey, sleeping beauty. If you’re gonna sleep the day away, this is not the right day to do it.”

  He heard what sounded like a muffled groan from the other side of the door.

  “I’m awake,” she said. But she sounded asleep.

  “You decent in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  Aiden creaked the door open and peered in. She was still in bed, wincing into the light from her window, and the hall light.

  “Okay, I get it,” he said. “I woke you up. But only to wish you a happy birthday and give you your present. And when you see your present, I expect I’ll be forgiven.”

  Aiden watched her face come alive. Sleep fell away from her eyes.

  “What did you get me?”

  “You think you’ll be able to learn that information from the comfort of your own bed? I don’t think so.”

  She swung the covers back. Reached for a robe draped over the end of the bed to cover her white-with-bright-red-hearts pajamas.

  “My present from both you and my mom?”

  “No. Just from me.”

  She came sailing across the hardwood in his direction, but he blocked the doorway and halted her with a hand like a stop sign.

  “Shoes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s outside.”

  “Even so . . .”

  “Trust me. No bare feet around . . . this present.”

  Elizabeth sighed and began to dig through her closet.

  “I’ll meet you out on the front porch,” he said.

  He joined Gwen outside. She had brought two mugs of coffee, and she handed him one. Then she smiled at him, and the smile made every part of him—from his neck down—burn up and melt away at the same time.

  “You’re about to make a young girl very happy,” she said, and kissed him briefly on the lips.

  Aiden turned his head to Penny, who stood with her reins looped around the porch rail but not really tied. She was clean for the first time Aiden could remember. He had stayed up late the night before giving her a bath. He had conditioned her mane and tail and braided them. Or at least braided the top hairs of her tail so the braid trailed down, centered over the bulk of the tail. He had even clipped away the long whiskers around her lips and chin and nostrils. Both her saddle and bridle were adorned with comically large gift bows.

  “Hear that, Penny? We’re about to make a young girl very happy. Though I expect you’ll be the one in charge of that on the average day.”

  Aiden reached down and patted Buddy on the head. The dog had a haze of hair growing in everywhere now, and only the slightest dark scar to mark the spot where the rope had burned his neck. The dog leaned against Gwen’s legs and wagged his whole body, squinting his eyes with joy.

  Elizabeth came bursting out the front door and onto the porch. Then she froze, and just stared. She was looking right at the mare, but couldn’t seem to process what she saw. Or did not dare say out loud what the situation seemed to be, in case she was wrong.

  “Happy fourteen,” Aiden said.

  A strange pause.

  Then Elizabeth said, “You’re giving her to me?”

  “I am.”

  “She’s mine?”

  “She’s yours if you want her to be.”

  The girl broke her statue-like pose and moved across the porch boards toward the mare. Penny picked up her head and nickered a greeting in her throat. Elizabeth burst into tears. She ran down the three porch stairs and threw her arms around Penny’s neck.

  “Is that good crying?” Aiden asked, leaning over to speak into Gwen’s ear.

  “I expect so.” Then she projected her voice down the stairs. “Honey? You okay?”

  “Okay? Okay? This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life!”

  “Yup,” Gwen whispered back to Aiden. “Good tears.”

  Meanwhile Elizabeth had her helmet on—it had been hung on the saddle horn—the reins in her hand and her foot in the stirrup. She swung onto her new horse’s back.

  “Whoa, honey,” Gwen called. “Seriously? In your pajamas and robe?”

  But it was too late. Girl and horse were too far away to hear, loping off over the hills. Bows and all.

  Just then Buddy whip
ped his head around and looked back at the house in alarm. His normally erect ears drooped and then pinned themselves back against his neck, and he bolted off the porch and slithered under Aiden’s front steps.

  Aiden looked around to see what had startled Buddy.

  In the doorway of the house stood Milo, leaning on his crutches. The look on the boy’s face stopped Aiden in his tracks. As Milo took stock of what was happening, his reaction—his emotions regarding the scene—built up like a gale storm, and Aiden felt it, too.

  Milo was furious, but also deeply wounded.

  Aiden tried to cross the porch to the boy, but he spun on his crutches and hurried back toward his room. Then he put on a burst of speed and tripped over his crutches—or his own feet—and fell sprawled on the Persian rug.

  Aiden ran to him and tried to help him up, but the boy shook him off violently.

  “Don’t touch me!” Milo screamed.

  He clambered to his feet, wedged his crutches under his armpits again, and headed for his room.

  Aiden heard and felt Gwen move up behind him. They stood and watched together as Milo’s bedroom door slammed. Then they heard two loud bangs that Aiden could only guess were crutches hitting the door, one after the other.

  “I’ll go talk to him,” Gwen said.

  At least the boy had an appointment to start seeing Hannah soon, Aiden thought. Maybe that would help. Then he reminded himself that the sort of help she could deliver might take years. If it came at all.

  She emerged about twenty minutes later. Aiden was standing at the kitchen counter mixing up batter for the waffles they planned to have for Elizabeth’s birthday breakfast. If she ever rode home and dismounted.

  “How is he?” Aiden asked.

  She sat at the breakfast table with a deep, deflating sigh. “Seems we have a whole different set of problems with him now. First he wouldn’t accept you, and he wanted to act out against you. Now he wants your approval really bad. Like, more approval than it’s reasonable to think he’s going to get.”

  “He said that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  Aiden poured a fresh mug of coffee and set it on the table in front of her. Her old one was probably still on the front porch somewhere. Wherever it was, it was cold.

  “Thanks,” she said. “He just has to accept the fact that it’s Elizabeth’s birthday, not his. I think it was just hard for him because it was such a huge present. Really above and beyond what you would normally give somebody for their birthday. He knows Elizabeth is special to you, and that you two get along really well. And it hurts him.”

  “How much of that did he actually say?”

  “Enough for me to get the idea. You have to give me credit for knowing him.”

  “I do. I think I should go in and talk to him.”

  “And say what?”

  “Not sure,” Aiden said. “But here I go. And we’ll find out.”

  Milo was lying on his belly on the bed in his room—what had used to be the TV room—arms and legs thrown wildly out to the sides, his face pressed into the pillow. Aiden found it hard to understand how the boy could even breathe.

  Aiden could feel that Milo’s rage had drained away, leaving only the most heartbreaking loneliness and loss.

  He knocked on the door a second time, even though he had already opened it. He knocked as an announcement that he was about to attempt to enter.

  Milo turned his head to one side and peered at Aiden briefly through swollen red eyes. “What?” he asked, his voice artificially hard.

  Aiden grabbed the back of the only chair in the room. Sitting on the bed with the boy would not do. It would have been a wrong move even to try. He pulled the chair close to Milo’s bed, but not too close. He sat a respectful distance away. Not quite close enough to reach out and touch Milo’s shoulder, had he wanted to. Touching was not on the menu when Milo was trying to be safe in his room.

  “So when’s your birthday?” Aiden asked.

  “Not for seven months!”

  “Oh. Well, that’s too bad. But you know I’ll do something really special and nice for your birthday, too. Don’t you?”

  “No you won’t. You love Elizabeth.”

  He didn’t go on to say, “And you don’t love me.” But it hung there in the air as if it had been said. And it was true. Ignoble but true. Aiden loved Elizabeth and did not love Milo. He was trying. And maybe he would get there someday. But so far Milo had just made it too hard.

  “Tell you what,” Aiden said. “We’re still going to let Lizzie have her special day. Because it would be wrong not to. But first thing tomorrow you can get in the truck with me, and we’ll go into town together. And we’ll find some more of that . . . what do you call that stuff?”

  “What stuff?” Milo asked. He had his head up off the pillow now, and was braced on his arms, half rolled over to face Aiden.

  “The stuff you use to do mosaics. The pieces.”

  “Tesserae,” Milo said.

  “Right. We’ll get you some really nice tesserae so you can start another project. And maybe we’ll even go to a secondhand furniture store I know and get something you can work on.”

  Milo sat fully up on the bed, using both hands to swing his bad foot around. “What about your coffee table? Here in the big house? You don’t want me to mosaic that one?”

  “Well, it has that glass in the middle. Can you attach mosaic work to glass? If you can, I’d be happy to have an original Milo mosaic on my coffee table.”

  “I could look in that mosaic book you gave me. Maybe it says.”

  “Okay. We’ll figure it out.”

  “What kind of tesserae can we get?”

  It was clear that Aiden was ready to wrap up their conversation and move on to breakfast. And that Milo didn’t want him to go.

  “I have a friend—well, a guy I know, anyway—who sells tile. You know, like for counters and floors. All different patterns and colors and materials. I’m sure he has some broken ones. Or some scraps left over from cutting them to fit.”

  “Tiles would look nice,” Milo said. The look in his eyes betrayed the fact that he had left the room in his head. Left the moment.

  “There’s one thing I’m going to ask you to do, though. I’m not going to say it’s a condition. I’m not going to say you have to do it if you want us to go out and get all this stuff tomorrow. I’m just going to ask you nicely to do it.”

  “What?” Milo pulled himself back into the moment with clear difficulty.

  “I want you to come to the table and eat something. You need to eat. Everybody needs to eat.”

  Milo shook his head. “I’m mad about Lizzie. It’d ruin her birthday.”

  “How about if I bring you in a waffle? Here in your room. Will you eat it?” Aiden paused, not sure if he was about to go a step too far. But the feeling, the truth he was about to identify, was there in the room. It was all around them. Gwen had even told him it was true, because Milo had more or less admitted it to her. He jumped in. “For me?”

  A pause.

  Then Milo nodded softly.

  As they tucked into bed that night, Aiden could feel the weight of something Gwen wasn’t saying. But he didn’t know how to draw her out, and he didn’t want to press any issues.

  “You were amazing today,” she said. “Great father stuff.”

  But that wasn’t it.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Aiden turned off the light, and they lay in the dark for several minutes in silence.

  “That story you told me before,” Gwen said. This was it. He could tell. “About your first horse. Magic.”

  “Right. What about it?”

  “You weren’t . . .”

  Then it seemed she would never continue.

  “I wasn’t what?”

  “Thinking about that with Milo? About Misty’s foal, when she foals?”

  “I was thinking about it. Yeah. I was thinking it would be this huge statement of trust. And that mayb
e if I treat him like I think he’s trustworthy, he might be able to find it in himself to step up to that.”

  She didn’t answer for a time. Aiden felt he knew what she was thinking. Not because he was so deeply tuned in. Because it was what anybody would be thinking.

  “But what if he . . .”

  It was a sentence she left unfinished.

  “That’s why I’m not at all sure I’m willing to do it,” Aiden said.

  “Thank you for taking me,” Milo said.

  He was sitting on the passenger side of the bench seat of Aiden’s truck, his bad foot propped at an angle on the seat, nearly touching Aiden’s thigh. Aiden had placed the boy’s crutches in the bed of the truck to get them out of the way.

  “You’re welcome. I think you did a great job on that first project.”

  “You do? Really? You’re not just saying that?”

  “If I didn’t really think so, I wouldn’t bring it up again if I didn’t have to. I think you know it was good. And maybe it’s time to believe what you know.”

  They drove along Aiden’s country lane, board fences flashing by. The trees grew so tall and leaned so close together above the road that it felt like driving through a green tunnel.

  “So what do you think of Hannah?” Aiden asked after a time.

  “Who?”

  “The psychiatrist.”

  “Oh. Doctor Rutler,” Milo said, slaughtering her name. “She’s okay, I guess. Why?”

  “I just wondered. I like her. I was wondering if you liked her, too.”

  “You know Dr. Rutler?”

  “Oh, yes. Very well. I see her, too. Didn’t your mother tell you that?”

  “I don’t think so. I guess she told me you saw her, but I thought she meant just . . . you know. To talk to her about me seeing her.”

  “No, I see her on my own. For myself.”

  They drove in silence for a mile or so. Aiden glanced over at Milo. His hair was freshly combed, slicked back, and Aiden knew for a fact that Gwen had not been around to help the boy get ready that morning. And yet he was clean and groomed, in fresh clothing. As though the trip were something like a job interview.

  “What do you have to see her about?” Milo asked after a time.