All the Time in the World (30 page)

“Well, I know that now, I guess.” There is sheet music on the piano in front of me, Beethoven's Thirteenth Sonata. I have never thought to ask who decided that this was the music that should be displayed in the parlor, or how they came to that decision. “Anyway, we got into the waiting room of the doctor's office, and I expected it to be a relief with the air-conditioning on full blast, but instead it felt damp and sweaty. There was this miserable-looking baby with bright red fever spots on her cheeks sitting on the lap of her Jamaican nanny and wailing into the woman's stomach. Another little boy, with this like
absurd
amount of energy propelling him around the room, was barking out a cough every fifteen seconds and putting his hands all over every toy in sight. His mother sounded like she had the same ailment. And the lights in those offices, they're green, and they buzz. No matter how nice the office is, you know?”

“It has that universal smell too,” Scotty says. “Like antibacterial soap and tongue depressors.”

“The boys didn't want to go in,” I say. “So we sat on the floor in the hallway outside the suite until the doctor was ready to see us, and Matt and I talked about all the things we'd rather be doing instead of getting shots. George wasn't talking yet. Somehow we turned the conversation into a song, kind of a bluesy-folksy tune. I saw it as an opportunity to educate them about Johnny Cash, but Matt kept singing over me, at the top of his lungs. He was totally hilarious. I couldn't be strict at all. I couldn't keep it together because he kept making me laugh. And I thought, wow, their grandmother must think I'm the most irresponsible, irreverent influence on these kids. I figured she'd probably say something to—to you guys, and you'd never trust me to take them to an appointment again.”

“She's not like that,” says Scotty.

“Nope. She was gracious and saintly about our antics. Even as the song got increasingly crude and ended up with the title ‘I Can't Take Another Shot,' she was smiling away.”

“I Can't Take Another Shot,” he says. “It does sound like Johnny Cash. Are you sure you need the piano? I can see if we have a banjo in one of these closets.”

“There are no banjos in this house,” I say. I play through the song for him before I can come up with another excuse for delay. Scotty starts to join in when he catches on to the refrain, and I wish the boys were awake.

We are interrupted by a horrible sound, terrified screams coming from the right wing of the apartment.

“It's Matt.” I look at Scotty, searching for affirmation that what I'm hearing is real. “It sounds like Matt, right?” I'm standing, about to reach for his arm, wanting to pull him to his feet and then push him until he takes off running, the way I think he should have, the way I want to.

“He'll calm down.” Scotty's voice is measured, detached. Like his mother's.

I leave the parlor quickly and go for Matt's room, not sure what I expected of Scotty. When I get there, I see that Matty has gotten out of bed, taking most of the covers with him. He is trying to claw his way free in the middle of the room. It's not clear whether he is awake or asleep or somewhere in between, but he is so distressed that I can't stand it. I charge into the fray. I take a couple of whacks to the pelvis, kneel down to try to disentangle him, and take an elbow to the side of the head.

“Matt,” I say, trying to be calm and not too loud. “Matty, Matt, Matt, it's Charlotte. You were sleeping, okay? Just having a dream. Wake up, honey, it's okay; it's me, Charlotte.”

“He's here, Charlotte! He's in here; he's in here!” Matt sobs. “He'll put me back in the hole, pleeeeeease—”

“Shh, shh, there's no one here but me and you.” I clamp my arms around him and hold his arms to his sides until he stops flailing, and I end up in a pile of blankets on the floor, holding him while I try to get his hysterics under control.

“Noooo, the fooooooxxx,” he wails.

“There's no fox, love bug. Shhh. We can turn on the light if you want, and you'll see,” I say. “Do you want to turn it on?”

“There was a fox.” Matt tries to catch his breath. “He was in here, and he took me to his hole and put me down there. I don't want to go in that hole!”

“It's okay now,” I say. “It was just a dream. No fox is getting in here, babe, and nobody will put you in a hole.”

“I don't want to be alone! Mommy is alone. I don't want to. I don't want to!” Matt dissolves into sobs again. I hold him against the front of me. I want to sob too, because I have no good answer.

After what feels like hours, he cries it out and goes back to sleep in my arms. I am afraid to move for fear I'll wake him up again. More than once, I think about shifting him off me so I can pick up his bedclothes, but each time I start, I can't get over the paranoia that he'll wake up if I move. I don't know how long I sit there, in a deep void of uncertainty, before Scotty appears in the doorway. He lifts Matt off me, and I scoop up the sheets and blanket and spread them out over the end of Matt's bed. Scotty puts him back in bed and tucks him in, and when I stand up, parts of my body have gone to pins and needles.

“Was it a night terror?” He is whispering even though there's no longer a need. We head back out to the kitchen.

“He definitely couldn't get out of it,” I say. “But he was speaking in sentences. Maybe it was just a bad dream.”

“He used to have them, when he was younger,” Scotty says. “What happened to your face?” He puts his hand up next to where Matt hit me, on the edge of my right eye socket. He doesn't touch me, but I can feel his hand there.

“He thought someone, maybe something, was after him. He was trying to get untangled from the sheets.” I wince, which is uncalled for because he's not touching me.

“Do you want some frozen peas?” he asks. “It looks like it's going to be a thing. A bruise.”

I don't want frozen peas. My head feels heavy, and what I want is to put the side of it down into Scotty's hand and have him hold me up for a minute. I straighten up at the thought.

“It's okay for now,” I say. “I'll get a bag of ice before I go to bed.”

I move to the opposite side of the kitchen island. I am close to emotional overload. I need to let myself feel helpless for a minute with no one watching. Scotty follows me, standing really close in order to inspect my face. Is it written all over me, this need for consolation? Our unspoken boundaries have been holding us just exactly the right amount of together and apart in this house, but right now I am overwhelmed with the feeling that they may have been redrawn tonight, without premeditation. There is one person on the planet who knows the ins and outs of my daily life. There is one person who comes close enough to know what my daily joys and trials are. It used to be Gretchen, and now it's Scotty. And this kind of communion isn't the same with Scotty as it was with Gretchen, because it just isn't. I tried to make it that way, but it's impossible.

“Charlotte.” He's still whispering. “You can tell me.”

Scotty no longer has that expression, the one that had emerged briefly before he collected himself and came to help me. I have seen him wrestling for the last few weeks against the impermeable place that he goes to, and I want him to win. I want him to beat it, for the boys' sake, and so I keep still as he focuses intently on my face. He's looking for something, and I don't know if I want him to find it.

“It was a nightmare.” I do my own intent focusing, on the five feet of space on the floor between us. I don't step back, but neither does he step forward. “I guess I don't think it was, you know,
overly
psychologically complex. It was something about a fox.”

“The fox who wants to eat his face off? Or the fox with the loud voice?”

I want to laugh, but we don't do that here, and I'm suddenly conscious of all the rules I'm breaking. “I didn't realize there was more than one fox.”

His face is so serious, and his eyes could be burning a hole right through me. The muscles above my stomach feel tight in an emotional way I don't recognize. Is it possible there's an emotion that exists that I haven't yet experienced? I feel like if I move, I'll give myself a hernia, so I am rooted to my spot. A flush is creeping across my face, and as I meet Scotty's eyes, I almost wish for shell-shocked to return. Because what I see there is sharp, like a million kinds of pain, and all of them acute.

“There are two foxes. Three, if you count the ‘mean Swiper.'” His voice is so quiet. Searching my face. What does he want to see?

There's a wild drop in my stomach, and I want to cry, but it's not my tragedy; crying would be unfair. “I must have missed that episode.”

“I think mean Swiper was in one of the books,” he says. I cast around in my mind for something else to report on. He wants to keep talking to me, and I want to let him because there isn't anything else I can do. And maybe I want him to talk because I want to talk too.

“We went to the playground today, the far one, on the west side of the park,” I say. “The Mariners' Playground. We walked there, even Georgie. I wanted to wear him out so he would sleep better. It seems to have worked.”

“Baby George,” Scotty says.

“I think there are things,” I say, “that neither one of the boys knows how to express, things they aren't telling Dr. O'Neill or me or you. Matt was truly terrified when I went in to get him. He is terrified that he might end up alone because he thinks that Gretchen is alone wherever she is.”

When I realize I've used her name, I'm horrified. I don't know how to get myself out of this unbearable moment.

Scotty closes his eyes, and when he opens them, it's there again, his scrutiny of my face, and all of a sudden I know.

I know he's thinking, what if my hair were a shade or two blonder? What if I were a few inches taller, smaller through the hips? I already hold his kids, protect them, feed them, talk them out of their nightmares. I'm in the room across the hall. And most importantly, I was there, on that day, in this life, in the middle of this family.

Maybe this is a logical option, this attempt to will my eyes to turn from brown to blue. If I tried to turn him into Gretchen, it's only fair that he should try to turn
me
into her. Maybe this will make him feel better, at least for an hour?

Now he does take a step forward.

I'm working so hard to keep my breathing silent that I end up holding most of it and then having to work twice as hard at it when I realize I need to let it go. Scotty's eyes are glassy, and the rims are a beautiful translucent red. He
would
have to be a pretty crier, like a movie star, just to make this moment, the first release of tears, more difficult. But the tears won't spill. He won't let them out. He's waiting to see what I'm going to do.

Maybe this action will provoke Gretchen's wrath, and she'll walk through the door to make it stop?

He takes another step, and I haven't moved, I haven't shaken my head or laughed uncomfortably or done anything proper or decent that could possibly shatter his fragile spirit. He is so close to me that I could chart a course through his five-o'clock shadow. He can tell that I am holding my breath now, so I let it out in a rush that touches the side of his neck. His mouth is right next to mine for a second that feels like an hour, and then I feel his cheek scrape down the side of my face until his head has dropped onto my shoulder.

I can't help it. I cry. I cry and he cries, and I let him hold me around the waist. I let him pull my hips in against his own. I wrap my arms up underneath his shoulders and hold him like I've just held Matt, like I held Georgie earlier.

I'm not Gretchen, but I have strong arms.

*   *   *

HOURS LATER, I
wake up, disoriented because the lights are still on, and everything is as we left it in the living room, only it's close to two in the morning. I shift Scotty's head so that he is sitting fully upright with the side of his head on the back of the couch instead of the half-sitting position we've been sleeping in. There is a warm red blotch in the middle of my chest below my collarbone where his temple left its mark, and the corner of my eye socket is throbbing.

I am engrossed in trying not to wake him as I shift out from underneath him, so I don't notice Matt until I am standing fully upright, pulling the neck of my T-shirt to rights. When I do, I start and almost gasp, and he jumps a little in response.

“Is Daddy sleeping on the couch tonight?”

“I think so, maybe. Why aren't
you
sleeping?”

“My bed's all wet. I think I spilled my water. Why is he gonna sleep on the couch?”

“He was really tired.” I arrange a bunch of throw pillows on the opposite end of the couch from where Scotty sleeps, noticing that the covers are dingy. Historically, the pillows have been in pristine condition, and I'm trying to pinpoint the moment that changed. “And kind of sad.”

“Did he have a nightmare?”

“Yes, I think maybe he did.”

“Are you gonna sleep out here with him?”

“Let's go change your sheets.”

“Can I have some more water?” Matt starts to move in Scotty's direction, and I step between him and his sleeping father.

“Not if you peed in your bed, sweetie.”

“I didn't pee in my bed! I spilled my water! I need more!”

“Okay,” I say, herding him back through the hall to his bedroom. I turn on a dim lamp and strip his bed, which he definitely peed, but may also have dumped his water on in order to mislead me.

“Daddy should go in his bed.”

“Your dad is very tired. I think we'd better let him sleep until he feels better.”

“He had a nightmare?”

“Yeah.” The mattress pad is soaked through, so I take that off too.