“I don’t mean Jip. I mean, how long have you been seeing this priest and this voodoo woman? She gives me the creeps.”
“Just a little while, and you shouldn’t judge people by how they look. Even an oyster hides a pearl.” She uncrossed her arms and leaned on the opposite wing of the sofa. “It’s getting to me, Tim. It all started when I surprised Jack in his sleep. My head is hammering all the time. Noises, tap-tapping, and then you come in a bloody mess, and poor Nicholas comes crying in the middle of the night.”
Nick looked away, as if embarrassed to be remembered.
“We’re all on edge, and you have to admit there’s trouble with Jack—”
“It’s a phase,” he said.
“Not a phase, Tim. Not another damned chapter, but the whole rest of the story.”
He looked away from her, and she turned her head in the opposite direction. Cemented in place, just as Nick had seen his own parents so many times, and he began to wonder if this was not part of what it meant to be a grown-up, to reach an impasse in the argument too deep for words. Even for adults. Sinatra kept crooning, and when the songs were over, she flipped the record and they listened to the other side, trapped in the living room by the circumstances of the day.
When the door opened, the woman, bowed with fatigue, ushered in the boy with a hand on his shoulder. Her face was wilted but she seemed clearly pleased by the conversation. Jack Peter looked the same as ever, a bit tamer perhaps, or calm enough at last to bear the weight of human contact. Mr. and Mrs. Keenan rose from their places, expecting some news from beyond, and they both seemed surprised by the simple presence of their son.
“We had a good talk,” Miss Tiramaku said. “Didn’t we, Jack?”
Jack Peter smiled and nodded his head.
“We’ll have to talk again, if that’s okay with you.”
“Do you think you can help?” Mrs. Keenan asked.
There was a moment’s hesitation that stretched and swallowed hope. “Yes,” Miss Tiramaku finally said. “I’ll help.”
By her side, with the deft motions of his fingers, Jack Peter drew figures in the air.
iv.
Tim could no longer remember with any clarity the moment he realized the truth about his son. As first-time parents living on their own far away from any family, how could they be expected to read the signs? Their pediatrician had told them not to worry—each child develops at its own pace, there’s no strict timetable for rolling over or sitting up or vocalizing, no matter what the books might say. The only other baby in their sphere was Nell’s son, Nick, and he wasn’t exactly a prodigy but more or less the same, so what could Tim be expected to know? They eat, they cry, they sleep. They need their diapers to be changed. One day they seem to recognize you, respond to the sound of your voice. They coo, they drool, they smile. They work as designed. The way they are meant to work. Until they don’t.
And then the experts tell you the truth. The doctors, all supremely diffident even when they mean to convey empathy and good bedside manners, they tell you something is not right with your son, and your wife goes to pieces, and you tell yourself that he can be fixed. Everything broken can be made whole again. Bit by bit, day by day, measured in minor victories, Jip could be restored. Faith and hard work will make it so, and then suddenly she says, no, he’s getting worse, if such a thing is possible. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know what a father can do. No need for priests and one-eyed witches and their hocus-pocus.
Ever the good host, Tim saw Miss Tiramaku to the door, said the obligatory “so nice to meet you,” and then watched with relief as Holly drove her back to the rectory. The boys, too, seemed glad to see her go and to have a measure of the old order restored. From the front window, they watched the car drive away, but Tim could detect no signs upon their faces, no hints that they had been spellbound.
Holly must have passed the police car on the road heading in the opposite direction, for no more than five minutes elapsed between her departure and the arrival of the big cruiser in the Keenans’ driveway. Across the street, the Quigleys’ dog barked madly at the man in uniform. The boys drew up at the sight of the policeman, exiting the car, zipping his jacket against the cold, and by habit checking in all directions for some danger. In the gray wash of the winter’s day, his sunglasses seemed fairly ridiculous, a stab at authority and menace but out of place on such a youthful face. With a few brisk steps, he was at the front door. The boys swung around as smartly as soldiers and stood at attention. Officer Pollock saluted them when he came in and flashed his baby-toothed smile when they returned the salute. He shook hands with Tim and then removed his hat, holding it in his hand.
“You just missed my wife, she’ll be sorry. But if you’ve come about the bones, you’re too late,” Tim said. “We’ve lost the hole, too, I’m afraid.”