by Lisa Tucker
If only he had talked to her about what he was going through. Instead, he focused all his attention on making sure nothing like this ever happened again. He bought and read books about childhood diseases that were dense and difficult, intended for pediatricians. He learned the signs of all kinds of illnesses, and he taught Kyra what to look for, too. It was David who figured out that Michael was allergic to mold spores, and David who decided Michael was also allergic to dust mites—after the mold remediation contractor had spent months tearing open the walls of their house and Michael was still sneezing. They hired someone to clean every week, and David or Kyra vacuumed Michael’s room every day. As David always said, “We have to be on the safe side.”
Part of Kyra knew that the safe side was a chimera, like the pot at the end of a rainbow, but she didn’t argue with her husband. She was afraid, too, now that she understood just how fragile her family’s happiness was. Michael had completely recovered, yet it felt like a great chasm still separated her from David. Gone were the days when they would broil steaks and do logic puzzles. They had more time now that Michael was older and a better sleeper, but they’d lost the inclination to do anything together other than work harder, ever harder, to protect their precious little son.
Part Two
TWELVE
It was the middle of the afternoon, and Michael had a big mosquito bite on his elbow, but he was still happy to be on the boat. For the last few minutes, he and April had been on the lower deck, in line at the concession stand. April was the lady’s name, or at least she’d told Michael to call her that, “like the month.” They were about to order hot dogs, which Michael was excited about, though he hoped they were the healthy kind: turkey or chicken or at least all beef. He’d already told her he didn’t want French fries. He loved how they tasted, but he’d heard his father say that fried food is a heart attack waiting to happen.
Now that he’d been with the lady for a few hours, he’d had time to daydream about what it would be like when he got home. He was proud that he could tell his parents that he’d held April’s hand and sometimes the rail, too, that he hadn’t had any drinks with caffeine or sugar, that he’d tried not to scratch his mosquito bite because he remembered it could get infected if he scratched, that he hadn’t talked to strangers or forgotten to wash his hands in the bathroom or eaten (much) unhealthy food. He’d even let April take his picture after she’d told him that her camera wasn’t the digital kind but old and really special: you could hold the photo in your hand and watch it come to life. He liked watching the pictures develop so much that by the time April gave her camera to a white-haired lady, to take a photo of the two of them, he smiled right on cue. April’s cheeks looked pink in the picture, but his didn’t. It was another thing he could tell his parents: that he’d insisted on wearing sunscreen, though April had had to buy it on the boat where it cost twice what it would have cost on land. But she said it was okay. “I don’t want you to get burned,” she said, and smiled. Then she said under her breath, “I should have thought of this earlier.” But Michael told her everybody forgets something. “Even my daddy,” he said. “And Mommy says he has the memory of an elephant.”
While he was eating his hot dog (so yummy, but unfortunately not the healthy kind), April was asking him questions about his mom. She was sucking on a mint; she had thrown her hot dog away after one bite. Where does your mom work? What does she do there? Does she like music? What songs does she listen to? Michael answered them all as well as he could. He knew the name of his mom’s company, but all he knew was she did something with math. “She really likes numbers,” he said. “Four is her favorite, just like Big Bird’s.” He was about to tell April that Big Bird had a song about four, but then April started humming it. He thought the song was too young for him, but still, he couldn’t resist chiming in when April got to the chorus: “I just adore four; the number—one-two-three—for me!” But afterward, he clarified, “I really like six better.”
April smiled. “I think I know why. You have a birthday coming up soon, don’t you?”
He thought nobody in the world knew about his birthday except his family. His birthday was in the summer, which meant you never got to bring cupcakes to school and celebrate—and he didn’t have a school anymore anyway.
“It’s June twenty-third, isn’t it?” She smiled and handed him a napkin. “And you’ll be six.”
His hot dog was long gone, but April was pointing at his upper lip. He wiped it with the napkin and handed it back to her. He could feel himself grinning.
“Let’s think of today as an early celebration. We can do whatever you want now.”
She stood up, and they started walking toward the ramp. The boat had just docked, and everyone was rushing off, but April said they were in no hurry.
Michael was thinking. There were so many other places he wanted to go: how could he pick just one? But then he remembered a kid at his second kindergarten saying that Six Flags in New Jersey had a giant Ferris wheel. One of Michael’s books had a Ferris wheel on the cover. He loved the idea of a wheel that could take him so far up that he would feel like he was part of the sky. But when he’d asked his parents if he could go, his father said it wasn’t a good idea: the Ferris wheel might break, or, more likely, Michael would pick up a germ from all those children standing in line, some of them sick, no doubt, with parents who were too irresponsible to realize that their sick child could infect hundreds of other kids.
He didn’t want to get sick. Plus, shouldn’t he be going home soon? The sun was still way up in the sky, but the light looked sort of yellow-orange, which his mom always said was a sign the sun was getting tired. He didn’t want his parents to get so worried they would decide this day had been a mistake. But on the other hand, in case they did decide that, he should do everything he could now, while he still had the chance.
“If you want to go back home,” April said slowly.
They were off the boat, in the parking lot. Michael felt like his legs had turned into stiff boards now that he was walking without the motion of the waves. He thought about it for less than a minute before he told her no, he didn’t want to go home yet.
After he told her about Six Flags, she nodded and pulled out a cell phone. He wondered if she was going to call his parents—and sort of hoped she wasn’t, so they couldn’t say no—but instead she called the theme park, to see how late they were open. “Nine o’clock,” she said, hitting the off button. “We’ll make it.”
“What is that?” Michael said, pointing to the phone’s screen. It was very blue, light blue and dark blue and several shades in between, with white blobs that could be clouds or snow on top of mountains.
“It’s called utopia,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”
He shook his head.
“Well, I didn’t know, either, when I picked that background for my phone, but today, I do.”
He wasn’t sure what she was saying, but he forgot about it when she leaned down and kissed him. Her breath smelled like lemons, from the mint she’d been sucking on since she threw away her hot dog. Which reminded him to ask why she did that. Wasn’t she hungry?
“I don’t really eat,” April said, and opened the back door of her gray car. He hopped in, and she belted his seat belt and then got into the driver’s seat. When he asked her why she didn’t eat, she shrugged and looked at him in the rearview mirror. “I’ve been told it’s something very wrong with me.”
“You should only eat if you’re hungry,” Michael said. He was just repeating what his parents had told him a thousand times. “The clean plate club is not a health club.”
She laughed. “Good one. Maybe I’ll try that on the doctors.” She started the car. “But in the meantime, we’re off to Six Flags. More of our utopia.”
Michael had been reading since he was three years old—he’d learned accidentally from watching his parents read t
o him; that was why they had started calling him gifted—but if he’d had to spell the word April kept using, he would have been way off. It sounded so goofy: You-Toe-Pea-A. He wondered if it was something on the computer, like YouTube, which his parents used to watch political speeches.
They were driving away from the beach, toward the entrance to the highway. He was playing with his favorite toy, the red windup robot, watching the robot try to walk on the armrest vibrating from the engine of the car. April was trying to explain what utopia meant.
“It’s like the perfect place, buddy. Like everything we’ve seen today: the whale breaching and the ocean waves and even the crisp white paper sleeves that held the hot dogs. It’s you and me singing together. It’s your mom loving numbers.” She took a breath. “It’s you loving your parents so much and them loving you. Does that make sense?”
It didn’t, but he was distracted trying to find the robot’s key, which had fallen onto the floor. He knew he couldn’t reach it with his seat belt on, but he wanted to see it. Then he wouldn’t worry that it was really lost.
A few minutes later, he heard April say something. He couldn’t make out the words, but her voice was so scared that he looked up. In the rearview mirror, her eyes looked big and her face looked as pale as his, even though she hadn’t used sunscreen. “I have to pull over,” she said, and then she did, so quickly that she didn’t use her turn signal and the car behind them honked.
She leaned her head against the steering wheel. He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear her breathing fast, like she’d been running for miles. When he asked what was wrong, she said, “I’m feeling sick,” and then she was totally quiet. Michael was quiet, too, because he knew people who are feeling sick don’t like to talk.
After a while, he looked down and there was the robot key, peeking out from under the passenger seat. He didn’t know whether he could take his seat belt off now, but he didn’t really care that much about the key anymore. He was scratching his elbow, wondering what his mom and dad were doing. Normally, when his dad got home from the college where he worked, they would all take a break together and have something to eat. But seeing Michael was the best part of the break, according to his parents, though for Michael the best part was the goofy songs and funny stories.
As he stared out the window at the empty street—nothing but a brown field, a rusted truck, and a seafood restaurant that said Out of Business on a big white sign—he wondered if his parents could still have fun without him. But he wasn’t really worried about how they were doing. Maybe this was because, if they weren’t having fun, neither was he anymore. And if they were sort of scared, so was he.
THIRTEEN
Courtney knew she was in trouble when she put on a slouchy brown jacket, her floppiest hat, and sunglasses, and drove to the West Mt. Airy neighborhood where her ex-husband lived. She had too much time on her hands, but a normal person with free time does not spy on her ex-husband’s family. The problem was she couldn’t stop herself. She felt as if she was tumbling down a steep hill with no branches or brush or even rocks to break her fall.
It had all begun on a Tuesday night in October, when she went to her favorite deli after work and ordered a mushroom cheese steak. Such a normal thing to do. Yet a few hours later, she had vomited so much blood that her perfect white bathroom looked like a crime scene. Her legs were wobbly, but she managed to drive herself to the hospital, all the while telling herself that this was merely a precaution. “There is nothing wrong with me,” she said to the foggy windows of her car. It was after midnight, and the streets of her little town were nearly deserted.
When the hospital released her two days later, she followed up with the gastroenterologist, a smart, friendly man with the unfortunate name of Dr. Downer. Dr. Downer ran a tube into her stomach and found “suspicious cells.” It looked like cancer, but he couldn’t be sure because her stomach was so inflamed. “Do you take ibuprofen?” he asked, and she nodded. Didn’t everyone?
One wall of the doctor’s office was covered with a poster of the digestive system. Courtney was staring at the part under the transverse colon called the jejunum. She wondered if the word derived from the same Latin root as jejune, which meant silly or childish. Meaning the jejunum was the silliest part of the digestive system?
He took out a pad and wrote prescriptions for two kinds of pills to reduce stomach acid. He told her to avoid citrus and a bunch of other foods, none of which she ate that much anyway. Then he said, “You have to reduce your stress. It’s very important.”
“I’ve always been a nervous kind of person,” she told him, twirling a piece of her hair between her fingers. It wasn’t true, but it might as well have been. She’d been like this for years and years now.
“Then it’s time to change.” He looked so serious, which scared her, as it was probably meant to.
As she left his office, she told herself that she would do it, somehow. She would become so calm that people would remark how serene she seemed. She would become a person who was so calm that she couldn’t have cancer and die.
Though she meant this, still, a month or so later, she’d surprised herself at how well she’d succeeded at her goal. People at work had remarked that she seemed “relaxed” and “peaceful.” At meetings now she sat still as a sphinx, not chomping on candies or biting her lips or twirling her hair. The only tic she had left was ChapStick. She used it every hour, sometimes many times in one hour, and she never went anywhere without a tube of it in her pocket.
The people in Courtney’s department knew she’d been in the hospital, but they didn’t know the rest of it. She hadn’t told anyone about the suspicious cells—not because she was afraid they wouldn’t understand, but because she didn’t want her office to change from the safest place in her life to another place that reflected back her image of herself as a person who had problems, a person who wasn’t normal enough to belong anywhere.
If only she’d told Betty Jean, her supervisor, about the cancer scare, she might still have her job. Or maybe not. Courtney no longer had any idea. Betty Jean wasn’t a bad person, but she had a very short fuse. She’d directed her anger at Courtney a few times, always about some little thing in the documentation that Betty Jean had suddenly decided to care about and huff and puff until Courtney cared, too. Everyone in their department knew that Betty Jean was like this, but everyone, including Courtney, knew how to defuse the situation by nodding along and taking copious notes, some of which would later be thrown away. It wasn’t that hard to handle. It was really nothing compared to the other things that Courtney had been through, which was why it was so odd, what happened on that particular night in December.
Courtney was working late, but her project was relatively unimportant. She was merely helping out because Betty Jean had asked her to. She was planning to go home soon, even thinking about ordering a sandwich from her favorite deli: the first time she’d dared to go back there since she’d gotten out of the hospital, though Dr. Downer had assured her that the deli was not responsible. It was either an ulcer or it was those dangerous cells, lurking inside her stomach, waiting until they could be biopsied for the third time at the end of February. Surely the inflammation would be gone by then, as Courtney was taking the medicine and eating the special diet and being calm. She’d even stopped tearing at her fingernails. Her hands looked so clean and young. She liked to click her new nails on her desktop.
When Betty Jean came roaring into her office at about six thirty, to tell her the letter she’d written was completely unacceptable, Courtney had already shut down her computer and taken out her keys from her purse. The problems Betty Jean had identified were trivial. If only Courtney had written down her suggestions and said nothing more. But she was so afraid of losing her inner peace that she begged Betty Jean to talk about this tomorrow. When that didn’t work, she claimed she had a headache, which was true. Finally, she blurted out that al
l of this was unnecessary. She was working from a sample letter—and Betty Jean herself had written the sample. Most of the stylistic problems the woman was so obsessed with had been taken directly from the sample. So it wasn’t possible that the errors were that serious, was it?
“You never listen!” Betty Jean was shouting, standing over her. Was she pounding her hand on the desk or on her own forehead? “Everyone has this problem with you. Don’t believe it? Trust me, people talk around here, and you’re getting a reputation. You’re not going to make it in this company if you don’t learn to shut up and listen!”
Courtney had been doing technical writing for a long time, but she’d only been at this particular company for ten months. She was the newbie; still, she felt sure it wasn’t true that everyone had a problem with her. But when Betty Jean took the sample letter from her desk and ripped it up, barking that it was no justification for Courtney’s mistakes, Courtney started to cry. And Betty Jean kept yelling for at least ten more minutes, because in truth, the woman didn’t know how to handle the fact that she had made someone cry. The next morning, though, she must have realized something had gone wrong because she went to Human Resources to report an “incident” with Courtney Hughes.
Olivia, the HR rep who summoned Courtney upstairs, “just to talk,” agreed that it sounded like she hadn’t done anything wrong. Of course the Incident would have to be investigated, which Courtney expected now that it had become the Incident, capital I. But Olivia said Betty Jean was known to have some “anger management issues.” “You’re not the only person who has been on the receiving end of her temper,” Olivia said, sighing and crossing her small hands. “I’m speaking off the record, of course.”
