The performance continues monotonously, tirelessly. Elliot has now slumped sideways onto the floor, his fingers meshed into the rug’s fibers. David makes quick shapes with his mouth, as if speaking to an invisible entity. He snarls and clutches his hands into fists. Madeleine’s tempo slows to a heartbeat, then quickens again. Finally, David’s legs jerk and his eyes spring open. He stares blankly at the ceiling for a moment, then gives his wife a nod, releasing her from drum duty. Suzanne returns the baby to her, feeling a bittersweet tug as the girl’s body is taken away, vibrating with health and potential.
David crawls to Elliot and leans over his prone form. He places his cupped hands to the back of the boy’s head and blows a long breath into them. Elliot stirs and David carefully rolls him face upward, then blows the same way into his chest. Watching this, Suzanne realizes that she is holding her breath. Something is happening, she sees. Something is passing between them. Whether it is healing or not, she doesn’t know, but there is a thickening in the air that seems to her full of her son, and for a moment she is certain that he has been tapped in some way, freed.
Finally David passes the feather over Elliot’s body, and with a touch at the forehead, the boy awakens. David resumes his tuneless hum and walks a final circle around the child.
“I think that will help,” David says, and puts a hand to Elliot’s head. “It makes sense that he’s been having trouble. He’s battling powerful forces. But I located his guardian animal, and it’s a good one. He’s been fighting without any help up to this point, but now he’ll have some backup.”
Suzanne nods mutely.
“I think you’ll start noticing some changes,” David says, and lowers himself into the easy chair. He closes his eyes. There is a sense of dislocation that Suzanne imagines they all feel, as the reverberations of the drum linger in the air.
“Well, I’m so glad you could come,” Madeleine says, walking Suzanne toward the door, as if she had stopped in for coffee.
In the entrance hall, Suzanne turns to her. “Does David . . .” she whispers. “How much does he . . . or should I expect an invoice?”
“No, no”—Madeleine shakes her head—“of course not.”
“Well then. Thank you.”
She carries Elliot home. The day is blinding, and she feels the disorientation of emerging from a matinee. Her son’s body drapes against her shoulder. The weight of his arms around her neck is achingly pleasant, the closest she will get to a hug. They go slowly up their neighbors’ driveway, over drifts of fallen catkins and past the overgrown yard, the wild violets humming with life. They step briefly along the hot-baked road, then turn into their own driveway, laid with cobblestone pavers. The driveway appears to Suzanne, in her mild delirium, as a throat connected to the house, swallowing her down.
The next morning, while Brian is on the computer, Suzanne brings Elliot out to the backyard. She spreads a blanket at the far edge of the lawn, out of view of the neighbors, and reads a picture book to him. As usual, he ignores her, fixated on combing his fingers through the freshly mown grass, frilled with clippings. She tries to put a melody in her voice as she reads, but keeps reverting to the same mechanical chant. She holds up the pictures, pointlessly, for Elliot to see. Finally, she stops reading. The silence is a balm, and she lies down in the sun, watching strings of red baubles float behind her lids.
After several drifting moments, she is surprised by a pressure on her chest. She opens her eyes to see Elliot resting there. He raises his head and looks at her. He smiles. It takes a beat to process this. She lifts herself on an elbow and looks deeply at him. They stare at each other for a long moment, and Suzanne feels as if her son is finally, lavishly pouring himself into her. She smiles back, and Elliot actually laughs. She laughs in return. She wants to gather him up in her arms, to tackle him with astonished joy. She wants to run through the clump of pine trees and bang on the window of the house next door, shouting. Instead, she keeps still, and for a few airborne moments, her son lolls on the blanket with her, and seems to know her. Tentatively, she puts a hand into Elliot’s hair. Closing her eyes, she lobs up something like a prayer to the summer sky.
It’s true, Brian agrees. He does seem better. They spend the day as a family, outdoors. They take a walk around the neighborhood with Elliot, docile in a stroller. Suzanne returns the waves of drivers in slow-moving cars. The houses they pass are faced with thin stone and brick, self-consciously substantial and too close to the road, but ultimately benign, even kindly. Elliot appears to notice them, too, for the first time.
Suzanne returns to work with fresh energy. Notice, she tells Carlota, as she steps out the door, if he seems any different to you. When she returns home that evening, she finds Carlota asleep on the couch. The television is on, and Elliot is seated on the floor in front of it, transfixed by the screen. Suzanne walks into his sight line and stops. He looks at her without recognition, his eyes dull.
Carlota stirs, shakes herself awake, apologizes. She comes to gather Elliot for bed.
“It’s all right,” Suzanne tells her. “I’ll do it tonight.”
Carlota studies Suzanne for a moment, as if searching for reprobation in her employer’s face.