Mom is asleep in the front seat, or so it seems. Then, more to himself, I think, than to me, Dad says, “That day . . . that day, it . . . just. It just wasn’t what we were expecting to find out there. But mostly what I remember was the sky. My God. It was purple and yellow, and it smelled like lightning, but I couldn’t see any. Do you know what lightning smells like? Don’t. Don’t know that. And the clouds were so low and heavy and with a mind of their own, opening a hole in the sky to let the light in,” he says. He says this to whom, I don’t know.
“How did you guys find the boat?” I ask.
“The boat?” he says, as if just remembering that I’m in the car with him. “The boat. The boat was . . . just there. It was just there. In the middle of all this, there they all were.” He pauses. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to come out the other end of whatever they came out the other end of. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be . . . to not have the words . . . to not have any words to put to your experiences.”
Then he tells me—or himself, I still can’t tell—“You’re a good sister, Lorna. You’ve got a good heart even if you like to keep it under wraps sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that, but just be careful.”
He tells me, “I love you, sport.”
And then we’re home.
FIVE
I MAKE PLANS to see Dave tonight, this time at his house so I don’t have to do the same old dancing-around-my-parents thing that both of us hate.
Can’t wait to see you, he texts, and I tell him, same, with the hearts-for-eyes emoji.
I got the sense at dinner tonight that we were all scared that Callie was going to have another fit while we were out. They’ve been ramping up, getting more intense and unusual ever since that night Dave was over and we had to go to the hospital. Also, it wouldn’t have been the first time she would have had a fit while we were out to dinner. But it didn’t happen, and there was a feeling of relaxation during the whole car ride home, and it wasn’t just that we all had something to drink at dinner, I don’t think.
But then as soon as we got back, Callie ran to the garden and stuck her hands in the dirt and wouldn’t budge until two in the morning. I sat there with her, rubbing her back, until I started dozing off a little. And then I dozed off a lot. I fell asleep basically on top of her, my arms draped over her back, and she woke me up, gently poking me in the cheek with her dirty fingers, staring at me with something like worry. When I opened my eyes, she closed hers like she was asleep too. “Bedtime, kid sister,” I said. She smiled, as if she understood me, as if she’d only just had the idea to go to sleep now, as opposed to at nine thirty when we first got home and instead of running upstairs she ran to the garden to tend to the dirt in the ground.
I go back to my contacts list and open a new text window. hey, I text Stan. how’s yr arctic brother? Having never texted Stan before, or ever even talked to him before the hospital the other night, maybe it’s weird to just ask him about his brother, right out of the blue. But Callie has been acting stranger and stranger, even for Callie. Even before the hospital and definitely a lot more since that night, she’s been running outside to the driveway and getting into my car. She’ll just sit there in the passenger seat, looking as though she’s waiting for me to get in and take her somewhere. Which, okay, fine—she does odd stuff sometimes, but usually when she gets back from the hospital after a bad fit, she’s great! Things go back to “normal” for a while. But this time, it seems like she’s getting, for lack of a better word, worse. And if I tell Mom and Dad, they’ll just want to take her back to Jane, and since that just seemed to make her worse, or at least not make her better, this time . . . Anyway, I’m starting to wonder if maybe Stan’s brother might be getting stranger too. And if he is, well . . . then what does that even mean? And who else can I talk to about this? Stan is literally the only person I know who would have any idea what this is like.
My phone buzzes almost immediately after I press send, and for a second I think Stan must be a weirdo who just stares at his phone all day, but then I see it’s not from him, but Dave. Let me know what you want me to get for dinner, and then the pizza, donut, bento box, and question mark emojis. all of the above pls, I text, and Dave says, On it.
I switch back to Stan’s window and put my phone facedown on my desk and wait. I don’t know why I feel anxious, but I do. I can’t stop thinking about the night at the hospital and how it was weird in a way I can’t put my finger on. I decide to stop thinking about that and instead think some more about Dave and about why I don’t want him to meet my parents, because it can’t just be that they’ll like him, right? Spite can’t be, like, the only thing going on here, I think to myself hopefully.
And then the phone buzzes, and this time it’s from Stan. Hi Lorna. Um. Ted’s OK? Things are OK?