Lipstick Woman watched Harry walk toward them, her eyes huge and white.
“Sclera!” Harry shouted. “Sclera!” Sclera—the white of the eye. A word he’d learned in biology; a word he’d never used until now. His jaw popped again. Pain ricocheted up into his eyeballs. He clamped both hands over his mouth and tried to hold his jaw still.
Her jaw, Lipstick Woman’s jaw, kept moving as if she were some actress in a silent movie. For real? Lipstick that color and she thought he was the freak show?
Tell us about Mom.
Dad balled up his fists but didn’t turn round.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, sir—” Lipstick Woman leaned over her desk, eyes flicking toward Harry. Her right hand hovered as if waiting to pound on some imaginary panic button. “But your wife collapsed on the flight from Fort Lauderdale.” The woman lowered her voice. “I’ve been told she’s on her way to Raleigh Regional.”
Collapsed? Raleigh Regional? The pressure built again—hot, bubbling lava.
“Can you be more specific?” Dad used his monotone voice, the one that gave nothing away.
“The crew thinks”—more eye flicking in Harry’s direction. What is her problem?—“it may have been a heart attack, sir. Obviously we don’t know for sure.”
Heart attack? How was that possible? But his grandmother had died of a heart attack at forty-seven. Mom had just turned forty-seven. But Mom couldn’t have a heart attack. Mom couldn’t die.
The volcano erupted and Harry started spinning.
“Sir, I realize this is a difficult time for you, but I need you to control your son.”
“Control my son?” Dad’s voice was jagged ice. “And how do you propose I control a young man with Tourette’s after you just informed him that his mother may have had a heart attack?”
Did Dad have to repeat the words heart attack?
“There’s no need to take that tone.” The woman picked at her tightly fastened top button. “You need to calm down. Sir.”
“I’m perfectly calm. Ma’am.”
Spinning around and around. Spinning, clucking. Repeat, repeat.
“If you can’t control your son, I’ll have to call my supervisor.”
Shit, no. Dad would go ballistic and make the situation a thousand times worse. Could it—Harry strummed his fingers, pranced on his toes—get any worse?
The tics ended like a twister hauling ass back into the sky. Exhaustion replaced chaos.
“Harry.” Dad stalked past him without making eye contact. “Ignore this woman. We’re leaving.”
Poker players had tells; so did Dad. No other way to read him. Dad did quiet anger, suppressed anger, with his fingernails digging into his palm. Until he blew. What to say that wouldn’t set Dad off? Not the truth. Not, Are you as scared as I am? Because this was Dad, not Mom. Dad didn’t believe in trading emotions.
“Dad?”
“Mom’s tougher than a marauding Celt in a kilt. She’ll be fine.”
“You really believe that?”
Dad slowed to a normal pace, but he didn’t answer, not even as they walked back out into the gray Carolina afternoon. Drizzle fell from the sky; pinheads of rain marked the lenses of Dad’s glasses. Dad, who wiped his glasses so frequently that Harry often wondered if it was a compulsion, seemed not to notice.
The cop on traffic duty blew his whistle, and Harry imitated the sound. Sometimes it was easier to give in and release the tic before it transformed into a full-blown hurricane. The tic lasted only a few seconds; the stare from the cop, longer.
“I have to go to the hospital.” Dad stepped into the crosswalk without looking. “Can you handle this, or do we need Max to pick you up?”
Mom had taught him to ignore critics, but how did that line of thinking work when your toughest critic was your own dad?
“You remember about me and hospitals?”
Dad sighed. “I’m your father. I know that you’re phobic about hospitals, being behind the wheel of a car, spiders, and flying.”
Right, like Dad knew much about that last one.