All the Time in the World (26 page)

“I had a dream I was Pale Male's friend,” Matt says.

“Oh yeah? Could you fly?”

“Yes, but I lived in the park, and I couldn't land on his building because there were pigeon spikes.”

“Was it fun to fly?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says. “But I was scared.”

“I think I'd be scared too, that high up,” I say.

“I wasn't scared to fly, I was only scared because I didn't know anyone. I couldn't talk to George or Daddy or Gramma. Or you or anybody. I was just a bird. I couldn't talk at all,” he says. “And I couldn't chirp to Pale Male because I couldn't get on the building.”

“Were there any other birds you could chirp to?” I ask him.

“No,” he says. “There weren't any other birds. I was alone.”

“Well, I'm glad it was just a dream,” I say, “cause I like talking to you.” I kiss him on the forehead. “Goodnight, love bug.” I click off the light. I shut his door and stand in the hallway for a minute before I go back out to the living room to pick up and do the dishes.

Half an hour later, I have cued up a trashy TV marathon for myself and am about to place a food order online when sudden, hysterical crying comes from down the hall. At first I think it's Matt, and I hurry to his room, but when I open the door, Matt is asleep with his covers up over his head. The cries are coming from George. In his room, I can make out his silhouette sitting up in bed, and something smells disgusting.

“I'm sorry, buddy. I'm turning on the light,” I say, and when I flip on his bedside lamp, I can see he's covered in vomit, sitting in a pool of it, all over his pillows and sheets and Chickie and the rest of his unfortunate comrades. He must have thrown up multiple times before he was even able to cry.

“Oh George, oh buddy, oh no,” I say. “It's okay, Georgie. We'll clean you up, okay? I'm sorry, pal.”

“Tummy huuurrrrrrt,” he wails, and I pick him up and run to the bathroom, holding him out in front of me with my arms almost all the way extended.

I sit him down on the floor when we get there, pull back the shower curtain, and start running the water into the tub, trying to get it to a gentle temperature, willing it to get there quickly.

“If you feel like you have to throw up again, lean over the potty, okay?”

“Want Puuuup,” he sobs. I pull the neck of his pajama top wide so that it won't touch his face as I pull it off over his head. “Don't like it, don't liiiiiiike it!”

“I know, Georgie. We're going to clean you up,” I say, and I pull off his pants and underpants and his little fuzzy sleep socks. As soon as he is naked, he kneels in front of the toilet and manages to get all the vomit in the bowl. Unfortunately, it is now coming out the other end too, all over the floor.

I want to cuss like a sailor. Georgie is weak and weepy, literally sitting in a pile of shit. I take off my own socks and roll up my pants, then take off my shirt so that I'm only wearing a tank top. I lift him up and set him in the tub. All he can do is sit there and cry as I run the water over him, wipe his face, wipe his bum, and try not to kneel in the diarrhea on the floor. When he is clean, I plug the tub until it fills up about six inches; then I let him lie back with his head on a towel pillow as I run out to the hall and root through the closet for something to clean up the floor. I leave the bathroom door open so I can see him, and I grab an old towel, a bottle of bleach tile cleaner, a roll of paper towels, and a plastic bag for garbage. I run back toward the bathroom. The chicken! The chicken that Lila's teenage daughter made, probably undercooked, and then force-fed to the boys. I want to call Lila up and take my foul mouth out on her. Just as I decide that's a productive course of action, George sits up and vomits again, right into the tub.

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “Shit, shit, shit, shitty shit!” I press my fingertips to both sides of my nose and suck the tears back up into my eye sockets. George is crying and splashing at the water, trying to keep all the yucky stuff away from his body. I throw the old towel down over the stain on the floor and pet his head while trying to avoid the little splashes.

“Honey, please don't do that. Let me drain the water, and we'll wash you off again,” I say. I don't hear the key in the latch or footsteps in the hallway, but before I can stand up to retrieve the shower head, Scotty walks into the bathroom. He detaches the nozzle and holds it out to me.

“Daddyyyyy,” George wails, and I'm about to suggest that Scotty roll up his sleeves, but he is already doing it. He kneels down next to me as I rinse George yet again. Then Scotty helps George lie back against the towel.

“Hi, baby George,” says Scotty. “Are you not feeling good?”

“Tummy hurrrrrt,” George moans.

“Food poisoning,” I say, trying to keep a tone in my voice that won't alarm Georgie. “Undercooked chicken, I think. Mary made dinner, Matt said.”

“Is Matt sick?” asks Scotty.

“No,” I say, and I laugh at the irony. “Matt refused to eat it. He said it tasted yucky. He got in trouble.”

Scotty looks amused also, thank God, or I'd be such a horrible jackass. “Did you call Lila to see if she was sick?”

“No.” Lila doesn't want to talk to me.

Scotty pulls out his phone and sends her a text. A minute later, he gets one back.

“Yep, they're all sick,” he says. “Mary hasn't stopped throwing up in the last hour, so they're taking her to the ER to get a hydrating IV, Lila tells me.” I shouldn't feel vindicated, or satisfied, but I do. I feel both of those things. They poisoned George.

“Do you think we need to take him?” I ask, and I hope he's not having the same horrid ER flashbacks that I am, but he probably is.

“Let's wait a little bit and see how bad it gets,” Scotty says. “He might work it out earlier, since he's littler and probably ate less.”

“Maybe we should just leave him in the tub then.” George's eyes are drooping, and it looks like he's about to go to sleep. I hand Scotty a towel, and he covers George with it.

“Don't move that towel in front of the toilet.” I stand up on painful knees. “There's a mess under it. I was about to clean it up. I need to throw his bedding in the wash too.”

“Oh man, Charlotte, I can do that. It's really awful,” Scotty says. “You stay here with him. I can clean up.”

“I think he wants you,” I say. “He calmed down once you got here. He's so sick. You stay. I don't mind.” Scotty shifts off his knees to sit on the floor, with one hand in the tub, stroking Georgie's forehead.

Back out in the hall, I plow through the closet until I find some rubber gloves, and I snap them on. I strip George's bed and put the bedding in the washer, along with Chickie and the other animals.

“I can't believe Matt didn't wake up,” Scotty says, after I throw the clothes in and start the laundry and then return to deal with the bathroom floor. There's absolutely no way to look graceful and effortlessly competent when you're scrubbing crap off the bathroom floor, so I don't even try.

“He's a heavy sleeper. They both are.” I start stuffing all the rags into the trash bag. “Okay if I ditch this towel?”

“Please,” he says.

“I don't know if I'll ever eat chicken again,” I say, sitting down against the base of the toilet. And there we stay for the rest of the night, jumping every time George tosses or turns. In the wee hours of the morning, when I wake up with my head on the toilet, I see a sleeping Scotty holding a sleeping George's hand over the rim of the tub, and I decide that it's perfectly okay to let them sleep it off in the bathroom.

February, twelve days after

Georgie sits on the floor, his lower lip jutting out. We are forty-five minutes into naptime, and no one is sleeping. The way he keeps listing to one side with droopy eyes is cute and funny and mildly exasperating, but he will not admit he's tired and get into bed. Every time I suggest it, all he says is “Pup,” and then he returns to the serious business of holding a Lego in one hand and barely moving.

“You can be with Pup if you get in bed,” I say. “But Pup needs to stay put, you know that.”

“Pup not in my bed,” he says.

“Did you leave him in another room?”

“Pup not here.”

“Well, he has to be here somewhere.” I pull back the bedspread. “Please get in bed, George. I'll look for Pup while you're having your rest time.”

“Pup going on an adventure.”

“Where did you put him, honey? In Matt's room?”

“We missing Pup.”

I pick through the pillows, animals, covers, and glance between the wall and the bed, but he is right. Pup is not in his bed. I look underneath the furniture, in the animal hamper, in the closet, and in the multiple bins of toys, but I don't see even a wink of golden fur.

George finally gives up and topples over sideways. I pick him up off the floor. He gets a few good shin kicks in before I get him to his bed, but once he is there, he stays put.

“I'm going out to look around while you rest, buddy. When you wake up, I bet I will have located that tricky little doggy.”

“Tahr-lette, Pup gone.” I don't answer George this time because I'm sure he's projecting Pup onto Gretchen, or something else heartbreaking and deeply psychological.

An hour later, I'm not so convinced. I have been through Matt's room, the bathrooms, looked under all the guest beds, and opened every drawer, cupboard, and bin, which is no small feat in this apartment.

Mae is in the living room, watching a cooking show with no sound and knitting something that looks like it will one day become a large poncho.

“Mae,” I say, “do you have any idea where George's little dog got to? That stuffed golden retriever? Pup? Did he maybe take it somewhere, like on an outing?”

“I haven't seen it,” says Mae. “He's been asking for it since the morning after, the morning we were home from the hospital. But I haven't seen it anywhere.”

“I thought we brought him home from the hospital,” I say. “But maybe we didn't.”

I call the hospital, and they pass me around to multiple departments. No one has seen Pup. They all seem sympathetic though, like they want to help, so I believe that they are looking. I thank the last person I speak to and tell her I'll come by and look around at some point.

On a whim, I call the NYC taxi authority. I'm on hold for almost twenty minutes, and when I finally speak to someone, he tells me they don't have anything like that in their facility. Like he could have looked all the way through their inventory in the five seconds of silence that elapsed after I asked.

George wakes up soon after, and he doesn't ask me about Pup, doesn't seem at all surprised that I haven't found him. But I spend the rest of the day, the week, the month opening doors I think I haven't checked around yet, and then holding back tears when it turns out that neither Pup nor Gretchen is hiding behind them.

April, eight weeks after

Poisoned little George wakes up one more time, around 4 a.m. in order to dry heave and let go of the rest of his meal out the other end. I am asleep on top of the bed in the guest room closest to the bathroom when I hear him and Scotty moving around. I spring out of bed, my heart pounding like it always does when I wake up suddenly. At the end of the hall, I can see Scotty kneeling on the bathroom floor, with his knees on either side of the toilet, holding George's tired body upright while he finishes up on the potty. I go into Georgie's room and unearth some clean clothes and a pull-up diaper that is left over from six or seven months ago to give to Scotty.

“We probably need to keep him home from school,” I say, as Scotty helps half-sleeping Georgie into the new pajamas. “I'll have to take him with me when I drop off Matt though.”

“I can be a little late to work,” says Scotty. “I'll stay until you get back.”

“Are you sure?” I say.

“I think I need the sleep, anyway,” he says.

I'm glad he wants to sleep. It seems like it's been a while since he did anything other than stay up late in some corner of the house. “I'm going to pull out the trundle and sleep in George's room,” I say. “Just in case he's got anything, you know, left in there.”

“Thank you, Charlotte. God, that was … kind of
harrowing
, wasn't it? Watching him get so sick.”

“Yeah,” I say. Scotty picks up Georgie. I go in to kiss his sickly little cheek, and Scotty hugs me around George. I guess maybe it looked like I was leaning in for that reason? I'd rather pretend that there's nothing awkward about this moment, so I kiss the side of George's head a few times and hug Scotty back, then let him carry Georgie in and deposit him on his bed.

After the animals have been liberated from the dryer, I throw in the stuff from the washer and turn it on, feeling a pang in my chest that George has obviously been missing Pup without mentioning it. I pull out the trundle in George's room and am reminding myself just to doze and not to fall asleep, when all of a sudden, Matt is calling me.

“Charlotte?”

I sit up. It feels like no time has passed, but the sun is super bright all of a sudden.

“Did you sleep in here?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I rub my eyes. The sun is so bright. The sun. Is so. Bright? “Oh no!” I say, and I sit up. “Matt, what time is it; do you know?”

He's unconcerned with the time. “Why did you sleep in George's room?”

“George got sick. The chicken made him sick. We were up very late.” I look at the clock. 8:17—no way will I make it to school with Matt by 8:30. Crap.

“Chicken made him sick?” Matt looks worried.

“Not all chicken. Just
that
chicken. You were right; it was yucky,” I say as I run down the hall, into the kitchen, and start throwing things into his lunch box. “Matt, do you want these tiny oranges in your lunch?”