I shrugged again.
She turned and shot a wild look down the hall. But instead of standing, as I thought she would, she closed her eyes. She appeared to be fighting something, summoning stillness through strength of will. Then she let out a deep breath through her white teeth, and I could smell it a foot away—the rot and decay, the remains of an undigested meal.
She opened her eyes again, squinting a little. “Did you read that?” She was looking at Leo’s typed page on the chair beside me.
I waited a second before answering. “Yeah?”
“It’s okay.” She leaned forward in a gargoyle-like crouch. She set a damp palm on my arm. “It’s okay, you know,” she said, breathing it out, as if she were talking herself toward something.
Her fetid breath and her hand on my arm made something squirrel through my gut.
I leaned closer to smell her breath again, disgusted with myself—disgusted and interested, both.
When she spoke again her voice was lower than usual. “I keep telling myself, worry is the problem. That’s the thing to work on, right?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a problem with my mind.”
“Well—” I thought about it. Something snagged. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” She looked raked clean, purged for some reason, by the question. She stuck out her tongue—laughing? And I could see it, with its layer of white scum, slide back over her teeth. Between last night and now there was something looser about her, more disjointed, more tantalizing. She swallowed, grabbed my hand in hers. Her eyes were bouncing from thing to thing. “You’re right, Linda. Of course you’re right. It’s stupid to worry about worry. Look, Drake’s back, and Leo’s here, and you’re here, too. Everything’s good.”
“I’m here, too.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Everything is,” I nodded. “I know, I know.”
“Not even a cloud in the sky. And those are birds singing, right?”
“Chickadees.”
“See, you know. I knew you’d know.”
And because it seemed so easy to make her happy now, I added, “And purple martins.”
“Purple martins, okay.”
“Um, and”—I listened—”two loons.” Though that was the whine of a motor, possibly. Maybe I was making things up, exaggerating slightly.
“Two loons, of course. I should know that. I should know. The thing is to let myself take things as they really are, like this—”
In a flash, I saw the white field of ice that was the lake last night.
“We just need to know the truth—” she said.
Here was the truth: everyone else was still sleeping—everyone but us. I nodded.
“Hey, you’re wearing my headband,” she said. Her eyes stopped on my face.
“Hmmm,” I acknowledged, relishing the feel of her gaze. The old ache was still there, but it had changed. It had become part of my head—it had both affixed itself to me and disappeared.
“Looks good on you,” she said.
Then Patra’s phone rang. Star Wars did three notes before Leo appeared from the back room—instantly, like a grouse flushed from the bushes. Patra seized the phone and jumped up to get closer to the deck, saying: “Hello?” and “Thank you, yes!” I stood up too, holding onto the blanket that was still warm from our bodies. I kept my eye on Leo in the doorway, but he never once glanced in my direction. He was watching Patra, who was agreeing enthusiastically with the person on the phone as she paced up and down, nodding continuously. “Good, good, good.” She paused midstep to take something in. “I’m trying to do that. I’m really, really trying. I am.” She brightened. “I’m feeling so much better now it’s morning. It’s a turning point, maybe? Yes, he is perfect in God’s eyes. That’s what I’ve been thinking. And guess what? I didn’t even tell you the most important part.” She started pacing again, heading toward the table. “He had breakfast! What? Pancakes. What was that? So sorry about the connection, but absolutely, yes, that’s true. Yes, we are! We are so grateful.”
When she got off the phone, she turned to Leo with a huge, haphazard grin on her face, which gradually closed down as she stood there.
One look at Leo, and that smile went out of business.
Did they ever, to your knowledge, call a doctor? I was asked.
Patra said, “That was the practitioner, Mrs. Julien?”
“Yes,” Leo confirmed. Though it had been Patra of course, not him, who spoke to her.
“She said we should be grateful?”
“We are,” he told her.
There was a new stillness to him this morning, an economy of gesture, as if he’d realized how little movement was required to sustain himself. I watched him assemble some kind of smile on his face. There went his lips, pointing up.