The Wake Up

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Milo. Look at it. Can you really not see that it’s good?”

  “I think it’s good,” Milo said. “I just don’t know if it’s good enough.”

  “It’s done. You have the varnish on it and everything.”

  “Yeah.” Milo sighed deeply. Almost theatrically. “It’s done, I guess.”

  “Then I think you need to come out and see your foal.”

  “You said she was a filly,” Milo said, his eyes still glued to the mosaic tree.

  “She’s both. A foal is any baby horse, boy or girl. And then a colt is a boy and a filly is a girl.”

  “That’s confusing.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the tree. Aiden wondered if he needed to haul the conversation back around to what he wanted Milo to do. But Milo got there on his own.

  “What does she need me to do for her? Her mom feeds her with milk.”

  “She needs you to be her person.”

  “Why does she need that? Wild horses don’t have a person.”

  “But she’s not a wild horse. She’s a domestic horse. And you have this amazing opportunity to bond with her now, so she’s known you all her life. So you’re the one person in the world she trusts more than anybody. When the time comes to ride her, it’ll make such a difference. And school is going to start again soon, so this is when you really have the time to put into making her yours.”

  He watched the boy’s eyes go wide at the mention of riding. Still, no matter how hard he tried to tune in to Milo, to leave himself open, Aiden could feel nothing. Either a window had closed on Aiden’s sensitivity to people, or Milo felt no emotion at all.

  “Don’t you want that?” Aiden added.

  “Yeah,” Milo said. “I guess.”

  “Come on, then.”

  Aiden stood and waited. But Milo stayed down.

  “Tomorrow morning,” the boy said, “when the varnish is dry, will you help me make breakfast in bed for my mom? I want it to be a surprise for her like that. That’s why I was working so hard on it. Because tomorrow is her day off. And I wanted it to be done by then. So we can bring it and say, ‘Surprise!’ And she’ll think the surprise is just the breakfast in bed. And then she’ll see the tray, and I’ll tell her I made it as a present for her, and then she’ll really be surprised.”

  Aiden smiled to himself, picturing the scene. “Sure. I’ll help you.”

  “I was thinking scrambled eggs and toast. Because I almost know how to make those. I just need you there to be sure I don’t make a mistake.”

  “You got it. But seriously, Milo. Let’s go see that foal of yours.”

  Aiden helped Milo to his feet, and handed the boy his crutches. They walked together. Through the living room. Out of the house and toward the barn, Aiden slowing his steps unnaturally so as not to leave the boy behind.

  They were halfway there when Elizabeth came trotting out of the barn on Penny, Buddy the dog tagging along behind. She waved as she urged her mare into a gallop, and the three headed up the hill.

  “I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do with her,” Milo said as they stepped through the open barn doors. “How do I make her mine?”

  “You can start by handling her. The more she gets handled while she’s little the better.”

  “Like pet her, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Like that. Get her used to having her head touched. And her ears. And you can run a hand under her belly and teach her to pick up her feet for you.”

  Aiden swung the stall door wide, and they stepped inside. Misty nickered to Aiden, a deep, satisfied rumble in her throat.

  “She’s standing up already,” Milo said.

  “She’s been standing up since a couple of hours after she was born. I told you that. Don’t you remember? You haven’t come out to see her even once?”

  “Not really,” Milo said, his eyes fixed on the filly, who stood close to her mother’s side, head high and nostrils flared, staring back. “I was in my room trying to think of a name for her.”

  “What did you come up with?”

  “Nothing. I still don’t know.”

  The foal stepped up to investigate Milo and his crutches. She reached out and pushed the middle of Milo’s chest with her muzzle. Milo tumbled backward into the straw.

  “Ow,” he said.

  Aiden reached down and helped him to his feet. Helped get his crutches under his armpits again.

  “How ’bout if I get a soft brush, and you can see if she’ll let you brush her?”

  “I can’t,” Milo said. “I need both my hands for my crutches. I can’t really do anything until I can stand up. You know. The normal way.”

  Aiden sighed.

  It was a reasonable point. But at the same time, Aiden knew his young self would have been out brushing Magic on crutches if such a thing had been necessary. Nothing would have kept him away.

  “Okay,” Aiden said. “Let’s turn them out, at least.”

  He took Misty’s halter and lead rope down from its hook outside the stall door, and the mare politely presented her head for haltering.

  “Where’s the halter for the . . . I forget the word again. For a baby.”

  “Filly? Foal?”

  “Right. That.”

  “She doesn’t have one. She hasn’t even been halterbroke yet.”

  “So how can you lead her outside?”

  “You just lead the mother. The foal follows along.”

  Aiden stepped out into the barn aisle with Misty. The foal jumped straight up into the air in her excitement, then skittered to catch up. Aiden led them out into the sun. This would be the filly’s first chance to look around in the sunlight. Feel it warm her skin through her coat.

  He turned to see if Milo was following, and saw the boy leaning in the open barn doorway, dozens of steps behind.

  Aiden opened the gate to the roping pen—the former roping pen—and led Misty and the foal inside. He unclipped Misty’s lead rope, stepped out of the pen again, and closed the gate.

  Misty ambled slowly from one end of the pen to the other. The foal followed sedately for about three steps. Then the wild enthusiasm of youth got the best of her, and she leapt straight into the air again. She bucked and danced on her comically long legs, and galloped in a big circle around her mother.

  Aiden thought he heard Milo laugh.

  He turned to see the boy making his way to the gate on his crutches. He stopped beside Aiden, leaned the crutches against the pipe fence, and steadied himself with his hands on the top rail.

  “She’s funny,” Milo said as they watched her prance. “Only thing is . . .” Then the boy trailed off. For several seconds Milo did not seem inclined to say more. “She doesn’t really seem . . . mine, though. It doesn’t really feel like she’s mine.”

  “I think that’s normal. Especially since you haven’t been down to see her since she was born. I don’t think it’s automatic. I think you have to make her your own. By putting in time with her.”

  “Oh,” Milo said.

  They watched in silence for a few moments. But the foal was settling now. Misty had her head through the pipe rails, grazing on some grass outside the pen. The foal had come back to her side and was bumping underneath the mare’s belly with her nose, wanting to nurse.

  “I’m going in now,” Milo said. “She can be out here without me. It’s not like she needs me to run around. Or have milk.”

  “You don’t even want to stay with her for a few minutes?”

  “I have to go in and see my mosaic again.”

  “But it’s done.”

  “But I have to look at it again and see if it’s good enough.”

  He picked up his crutches and set off for the house.

  Aiden watched him go for several seconds. Then he looked up to see Elizabeth in the distance, watching from the back of her horse. She was up on a high ridge, under a stand of scrub oaks much like the one in Milo’s mosaic. It was the place Aiden had last seen a few of his cattle
. Back when he had cattle.

  She reined her mare around and rode down the hill to him. She turned Penny toward the gate and sat there at Aiden’s side, and they stared at the nursing foal together.

  “I don’t think this is going to work out,” Aiden said.

  “Maybe not,” Elizabeth said, after a brief pause. As if needing to think carefully. “Only, don’t give up on it just yet, okay? Sometimes things take Milo a long time. Like a really, really, abnormally long time.”

  They stood outside the bedroom door, Aiden and Milo. Milo fairly trembled with impatience and fear. The tray of scrambled eggs and toast shook with the boy’s tension, and Aiden could hear the flatware rattle against the plate.

  Aiden knocked gently.

  “Aiden?” Gwen called through the door.

  “Me and Milo. Yeah.”

  “Well, you don’t have to knock. Why so formal? Just come in.”

  Aiden threw the door wide. In that moment he felt a blast of panic radiate from Milo like an electric shock. It almost knocked them both off their feet.

  “Surprise!” Milo fairly screamed. His voice held a sharp edge of anxiety, mixed with the more pleasant emotions of the moment.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Gwen said. She sat up in bed in her nightgown and brushed her long, dark hair off her face with one hand. “What did I do to deserve breakfast in bed?”

  “It was all Milo’s idea,” Aiden said. “And he did the cooking, too. I just supervised. Made sure nothing burned.”

  “You have to carry it,” Milo said, not moving from the doorway.

  It was an obvious oversight. Aiden had taken Milo’s crutches and handed him the tray at the bedroom door, knowing he would want his mother to see him holding it. To know it was from him. But now, of course, the boy was stranded and couldn’t move.

  “Okay, I’m going to carry this over to you, Gwen. But we just need you to know none of this is from me. It was all Milo all the time.”

  Aiden carried the tray to their bed and set it on Gwen’s lap. She stared at it in silence for several seconds. The smile fell from her face, and the mood in the room took on a serious tone.

  “I’ve never seen this tray before,” she said, lifting the plate of scrambled eggs and toast. “It’s beautiful.” She looked up and tried to meet Milo’s eyes, but the boy looked away. “Milo, did you make this?”

  Milo never answered. He seemed unwilling—or even unable—to speak.

  “He did,” Aiden said. “And he planned the whole thing by himself, too. He said he wanted to get you a tray like the kind people use for breakfast in bed, because he knows you like that. So we found one together, and then he made it into a mosaic for you.”

  Gwen looked down at the light-shaded mosaic tree again, then up at Milo. Still Milo leaned in the open doorway and would not look up.

  Gwen began to cry.

  “You don’t like it?” Milo asked.

  “I love it. It’s the most wonderful present ever, Milo.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because I love it so much.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Milo said, screwing up his face.

  “I know, honey. I’m sorry. Grown-ups are weird sometimes.”

  “It probably isn’t good enough,” Milo said.

  Then he pushed away from the doorjamb, reached out for his crutches, and loped away.

  Aiden looked at Gwen, and Gwen looked back.

  “Should I go after him?” Aiden asked.

  “I’m not sure. Let’s give him a minute to burn off whatever he’s feeling. Then you can see if he’ll sit with me while I eat.”

  “Got it,” Aiden said.

  But he didn’t wait long. Probably not nearly as long as Gwen had in mind.

  He found Milo in his room a minute or two later and picked the boy up off his bed in one careful scoop, slinging him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “What are you doing?” Milo shouted. “Put me down!”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re going to go keep your mom company while she has breakfast.”

  “I don’t want to go in there!”

  “Sorry,” Aiden said. “But you’re just going to have to deal with the fact that it’s good enough, and she loves it.”

  “I honestly think the only reason I haven’t given up yet is because of what Elizabeth said to me.”

  He watched Hannah’s face for some reaction. But she was looking down at her notes. She didn’t reply. Just waited for him to continue.

  “I mean, it’s been over a month.”

  “He never goes out to see the foal at all?”

  “See, yes. I usually turn them out during the day, the mare and foal, and sometimes when he gets home from school he’ll lean on the fence and just stare at her. They take the school bus, both kids, and sometimes if they don’t come into the house right away, I won’t know they’re home. Elizabeth usually goes straight out to ride Penny. And then I’ll start wondering where Milo is. If he got home from school okay. So I’ll go out to look for him, and he’ll be standing outside the pipe corral, leaning on the fence. Just watching her. It’s happened four times. It scares me a little, because I don’t know what he’s thinking. The first two times I went out there and suggested I teach him to pick her hooves or get her used to the halter. But he always has something better to do. So now I don’t even try. I mean, it’s as close as he gets to her, so maybe I should just leave it alone. Maybe he’s getting to know her in his own way. But he still hasn’t thought of a name for her. Which is a safe enough thing to do. You know. It can be done at a distance. So I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “What does Gwen think?”

  “Gwen is so scared he’s going to hurt the filly . . . I swear there’s a big part of her that’s hoping it won’t work out. That he’ll never go near her. She’s ready to give up anytime. The sooner the better. I’m holding out because of what Elizabeth said.”

  “I’m going to give you another reason not to give up.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “At our last session, Milo specifically asked me to tell you something.”

  “Tell me something? Like a message?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “He lives with me. Why didn’t he just say it to me?”

  “I have some theories, but it’s not a question I’d want to answer off the top of my head. I’m noticing that the more emotional intensity there is behind a situation in his life, the more trouble he has communicating it. But he made me promise I would tell you this. And I wrote it down word for word, so I couldn’t get it even the slightest bit wrong.” She flipped back a couple of pages in her notes. “Ah. Here it is. In reference to the foal: ‘Tell Aiden I said I’m not going to hurt her. I know he thinks I’m going to hurt her. But I’m not.’”

  “Oh. Okay. Wow. Well, that takes a load off my mind.”

  A silence fell as he let the words settle more deeply. As he let them be heard and accepted not just by his ears, but by the places in his gut that had been afraid. They were only words. A promise. And promises could be broken. But it was a statement of intention, so it was a start.

  “You know what I was thinking?” Aiden asked her. “What would you say to my bringing him in to one of my sessions? Or me coming to one of his? Maybe we could figure this thing out to the point where he could at least say a thing like that to me. Directly.”

  “I think it’s an excellent idea.”

  “Okay. We’ll have to figure out a way to schedule that.”

  She said something in return, but Aiden missed it. His attention had been drawn elsewhere. On her desk, something caught his eye. A four-sided pencil holder. Each side of it—or at least the sides Aiden could see—had been decorated in abstract mosaic work.

  “I’m sorry,” Aiden said. “I missed what you just said. I was looking at that pencil holder on your desk.”

  �
��I’m not surprised.”

  “It looks like the work Milo’s been doing.”

  “It is the work Milo’s been doing. Milo gave it to me.”

  “He made that for you?”

  “He did.”

  “That makes me feel . . .”

  But before he could finish the thought, Aiden had to stop and tune in to the feeling. It felt good—welcome—but he was having trouble identifying it more specifically than that.

  Hannah waited.

  An image filled Aiden’s head. Not of Milo coming to this office and sulking in silence as he’d imagined, but of the boy coming here and opening himself and his life to Hannah. Learning to trust her. The way Aiden trusted her.

  “It makes me feel hopeful,” he said.

  Aiden arrived home at about four in the afternoon and found Milo in the barn, leaning on his crutches, staring into the stall at Misty and the foal. For the first time since the foal was born, it didn’t fill Aiden’s gut with dread. Because Milo had promised. Because he had been so careful about sending Aiden that message through Hannah.

  Tell Aiden I said I’m not going to hurt her. I know he thinks I’m going to hurt her. But I’m not.

  Milo hadn’t seen Aiden yet. The boy had not turned his head. He did not appear even to notice that Aiden was home.

  Aiden stepped into the tack room and found a soft finishing brush, then walked up behind the boy.

  “I think it’s time to do more than just look,” he said.

  Milo jumped. Almost fell down, he was so startled.

  “Aiden,” Milo said, gasping for air. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Come on. I know it’s a little scary. But you need to get to know her.”

  He opened the stall door and stepped inside, then waited and held the door open for Milo. Milo just stood. Frozen. The boy’s eyes went wide, like a deer staring into the headlights of Aiden’s pickup along this lonely back road on a dark night.

  “Seriously, Milo. It’s like a wall, and you have to break through it. You just have to push a little harder.”

  Another frozen moment. Then Milo reached forward with his crutches and moved into the stall. Aiden closed the door behind them.

  “Start on her withers,” Aiden said. “Show her the brush first. Let her see what it is. Then go slow and give her time to get used to the feeling.”