Charlie saw, as soon as Margot passed the door, that something had shifted, as if the cheery bright curtains of Margot’s God-fearing manner had parted just a bit, showing some illegible darkness behind. “Couldn’t stand to wait,” Charlie said.
Margot nodded. “Your ma told me everyone wouldn’t be here till eight. What’s this all about, anyway? I thought your ma said mum’s the word, and now all of a sudden we have another meeting with Manuel Paz.”
“I’m not so sure myself.”
She smacked her fresh maroon lipstick. “Well. I guess we’re gonna find out.” The hand-holder, the fast-talking, buxom-smothering Margot seemed wholly absent now, spooked off perhaps, given way to this second Margot, the sort of Texan ma whom Charlie knew very well, with that long hard stare into the country’s emptiness, something lofty and possessive and damningly maternal in her eyes, as if she’d already told the world how to behave and she wouldn’t tell it again.
Margot grunted as she pulled her equipment from her pack. Her wish that Charlie leave her alone with her patient was palpable, a risen temperature in the room. Mothers, Charlie thought. Mothers, always staking their claims. The voice of his brother—and not just Oliver’s voice, it now seemed to Charlie, but also the story of their family, the whole story of Bliss, Texas—belonged now to another clinging, imperious, grief-wracked mom. It struck Charlie, for some reason, as hilarious. He tried not to laugh, but the attempt at suppression only made the laugh come out in an audible, hiccupping way. Margot, clamping a touch screen to a swivel arm, turned to scowl at Charlie. “What could possibly be so funny?”
“Nothing. I was thinking of something else.”
“Um.” Margot had the touch pad in position now. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it could take a while to finish setting up. Maybe you could go somewhere to wait?”
“I’ll be quiet.”
Charlie was very patient there, in the chair beside Bed Four. As Margot attached the EEG sensors, Charlie could feel her straining to ignore him, like a hand pressing his face away. Ten minutes passed, and the displays were glowing as Margot coordinated her fingers into the place where she did her palm reading.
“Good morning, Oliver. A? B? C? D?”
“Good,” the robot voice eventually said. “Morning.”
“Look who came to visit you early today.” Margot gestured toward Charlie. “A? B? C?”
“Hi Charlie,” the computer spoke.
Hi Charlie, as if he had not been there for an hour, as if he had only just arrived. Hi Charlie: but that strangeness was only the final nudge, the little upsetting breeze that brought the whole rotten roof of things crashing down on him.
“Oliver,” Charlie said, “what did I just do?”
“What do you mean?” Margot asked.
“What did I do after I woke you up?” Charlie leaned over the bed to speak into Oliver’s face. “What was I doing until I stopped and opened the window?”
“What were you doing?”
“I’m asking Oliver a question.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Why ridiculous?”
Margot relinquished Oliver’s palm. “What is this, some sort of a test?” She looked down her nose at Charlie, with the sourest glare of disappointment.
“It’s just a simple question.”
“Please leave us alone.” Margot’s voice was proprietary, not unlike Ma’s voice, as if Margot and her patient shared a love the world couldn’t possibly comprehend.
“Oliver,” Charlie said again, his voice crackling now. “What was I doing before Margot came in here?”
“Charlie—”
Oliver’s face was just inches away. His breath fogged Charlie’s glasses. “Please tell me. Tell me something. Anything. I don’t know, our cow. What was the name of our steer at home?”
Charlie turned to Margot, who just kept her trembling hands folded in her lap. “Let him answer,” Charlie told her. “Pick up his hand and let him answer.”
Margot shook her head in slow, sorrowful turns. “I can’t,” she said. “I won’t. Not like this, with you yelling at me.”
“Please,” Charlie said. The devastation of an understanding collapsing upon him, Charlie perceived now what a truly shoddy, desperate house it had been. The poverty of Charlie’s pages, Ma speaking to this shell of a son, all he and his mother had never said about the events of that night. “Faith,” Margot had often said, as she fingered the cross on her chest. “We must have faith.” Faith: maybe that was the name for it, the cheap, cracking adhesive that bound their desperate lives together. A ridiculous, outrageous, and unending faith. Like one of those holy rollers pitifully babbling away their sorrowful past under the sway of pure illusion, might Margot have pressed her fingers to her patient’s left thumb and believed that she found what she needed to find? Might Charlie and Ma have, too?
“Listen to me,” Margot said.
But Charlie bolted from his seat, spent a while staring into the framed vintage poster for Calamity Jane. “You know I have to tell them.”
Margot wouldn’t look at him, but Charlie could see her panic, flushing into her neck. She was still for a moment, then she scooted her chair right up to the bed, planted her fingers firmly to their spot. Charlie still had some reckless, careering hope that he might be wrong. And yet, a moment passed and another. Margot stared intensely at the neurofeedback monitor, readjusted her grip several times, an EMT searching for a flatlined pulse. From down the hall, Charlie could hear Peggy shrieking with laughter at someone’s joke.
“I can’t find anything,” she said, “just now.”
“No.”
“It’s not perfect!” Margot’s expression was fierce, which only made the fact more apparent: the furious, pent-up denial of someone who expects accusation. “It’s not a perfect science, but I promise you.”
“Did you really think no one would find out?” Looking at the woman, Charlie really did now feel a kind of pity for her. “How long did you think you could go on like this?”
The heat out the window plumed into the room. “Please,” Margot said. “Please just leave us alone.”
*
Ma was climbing from Goliath when Charlie stepped back outside. Manuel Paz was out there, too, sipping at a coffee against his squad car at the far side of the lot, the Ranger’s right boot hitched up against the fender. It was not even eight, but Charlie could already feel the heat penetrating his skull. Manuel, eyeing Charlie, sauntered up in his roomy, West Texan amble, arrived in time to hear the substance of the short exchange between mother and son.