Elise said that there would be more tests today. Michael and Alice could come up to visit the hospital room this afternoon and cheer them up, she said. She looked off at people passing on the sidewalk in the snow, then back at Michael. She squeezed his hand on the table. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and smiled. Alice looked up from her drawing and said, “What about me?”
When Elise and Alice went off to play video games, Michael headed for the bathroom. Standing at the urinal, he could hear thumping and groaning in the pipes. His piss had a sharp chemical smell. The lights made a buzzing sound like a living thing. He wondered where all this might be headed. What if the ocularist died? Maybe they could all start over. Maybe Elise would be a part of that.
“Part of what?” his brother said from somewhere.
The muscle in Michael’s cheek twitched.
When he came out of the bathroom, he saw the Middle Eastern man behind the counter. His impassive face already granting him forgiveness. Across the room, he could see a couple had already claimed their table. The half-eaten pizza lay between them. How long had he been in the bathroom? He walked over to the video arcade, but it was deserted. Called into the women’s bathroom.
“Where is she?” he said to the woman at the table, who looked back at him round-eyed. “Where’s the little girl? There was a woman with her,” he said. The couple stared back uncomprehendingly. The edges of the room collapsed toward its center. The man behind the counter looked at him strangely. Michael demanded to know where they were, and he shrugged. “Why don’t you know?” Michael asked him, pleadingly. The man said Michael was upsetting the customers.
In the front window, unconcerned people loped past. Michael pushed out the door into the cold, then up Broadway, his lungs burning. At the corner of Broadway and Wilson, he called Elise’s cell but it went to voice mail. Called his mother’s home number and her message machine answered again.
He was the do-right man. He’d stayed quiet, hadn’t told them anything. He looked along the street for a sign, any sign. Looked for the white Mercury. Gazed into passing car windows. Taxis. Buses. He bumped into people on the sidewalk. Someone called him a clumsy motherfucker. The L roared overhead.
She was gone.
V
43
ONE NIGHT, AFTER riding his bike back from Deep Eddy Bar, Jack found Kate Ulrich on his darkened porch. When she sat up suddenly, he’d thought of a bird. Alert. Watchful. It took him a moment to recognize her in his fuzzy bike helmet light. She was sitting in a patio chair, stiff, hands over something in her lap.
The ride home had sobered him up some, but he felt unsure of what to do or how to respond. It was as if his muscles had atrophied.
“Can I help in some way?” he said. The headlamp light trembled on the porch windows.
“They are a great comfort,” she said in a low, unsteady voice that worried him. “What did you mean by that?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I understand.” His heart thudded crazily.
“I have these dreams. But they won’t talk to me anymore. They just argue. They’re glum. They want something but won’t tell me what.”
“I see,” he said, stupidly.
She pivoted suddenly, asked him about his daughter. He told her she was taking evening courses at the university, unsure where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do. She was working downtown. She’d moved back home with him.
He stood very still.
“They go through that, don’t they. All that indecision.” Her hands fidgeted over the purse or whatever it was.
“Growing pains,” he said.
“Some decisions are made for us, though,” she said. “You lost your wife.”
“When she died I sort of lost my bearings for a while,” he said. “Got confused. I wasn’t the best father.”
“We always let them down,” she said.
“You’re right. Then we try to make it up to them.” He thought of the new sea green paint, bead board, the smoothness of the sanded floor.
“You know something you’re not telling me,” she said. She held the purse against her thigh. A comfort, he thought, a totem. In the dim light, her face seemed to narrow, to rid itself of something. His legs grew weak.
What could he tell her? He’d gone into the fire, found them. Our dream has no bottom. That was one of the surprises.
“The not knowing is the hardest,” she said. “You think if you only knew, you could handle it.”
He realized how inadequate he was to this moment.
“You were there,” she said.
“I was too late,” he said. “I’m always too late.” She’s tethered me to them in her mind, he thought. She thinks maybe I was the one.
“Elizabeth was terrified of being naked,” Kate said.
He found the rope in his head, groped along it. “She was brave,” he said.
“I can still smell their hair after a bath.” Kate rose from the chair, moved toward the edge of the porch.
“Zadie. She held her hand,” he said.