Eleanor (30 page)

“Jack, Jesus,” Paul starts to say, and then Jack says, “Mrs. Witt!” He goes to his knees on the floor, and repeats himself: “Mrs. Witt, Mrs. Witt!”

Paul leans over and sees Agnes on the floor, and he says, “Oh, fuck, Aggie,” and he vaults over the bed and into the space between the bed and the wall. Eleanor struggles to follow, but settles for lying down on the bed and crawling to the edge like an earthworm. She instantly wishes that she hadn’t.

Her mother is on the floor in her nightgown. She’s on her back, and her skin is pale—almost blue, Eleanor thinks—and her hair is unkempt. Her chest moves up and down, but her breaths are shallow. She rattles when she breathes, and Eleanor wonders how they could have missed it.

Jarshmerschar
.
 

They weren’t even thinking about her.
 

“Turn her on her side,” Paul says, and Jack takes Agnes’s feet and Paul grabs her shoulders, and they push her onto her right side. She weighs almost nothing, and they almost turn her onto her belly by mistake.
 

The rattling sound goes away, replaced by a brittle wheeze. Almost immediately color begins to return to Agnes’s face, but her eyes remain shut.
 

“It was her tongue,” Paul says. “She was choking on it.”

“She’s breathing better,” Jack adds.
 

Eleanor feels as if someone has yanked her batteries out. She stares at her poor mother, and a hideous wave of guilt breaks over her.

“I should have been here,” she says, sobbing.
 

“Jack, nine-one-one,” Paul says, ignoring Eleanor. “Now.”

Jack runs out of the room, and Eleanor looks up at her father. Her mouth hangs open in horror.
 

“Dad,” she says.
 

Her father puts his hand on Eleanor’s head, and he says, “It isn’t your fault,” and then he crouches down beside Agnes and takes her hand and says, “They’re coming, Ags. They’re coming now.”

Ags
. He hasn’t called Agnes that in years.

Jack comes back. “They said three minutes,” he says.
 

“Three minutes,” Paul repeats.
 

Eleanor watches her father squeeze her mother’s hand, and the four of them wait silently for the second ambulance of the day to arrive and make everything okay. On the television, the ghost of Esmerelda turns in slow, balletic circles, then collapses to the floor in a fit of giggles.

The hallway bustles with activity. A man in a surgical mask pushes an empty gurney, wheels spinning and rattling, past Eleanor. Two nurses in white and purple scrubs stroll by, laughing.
 

Jack rocks back and forth on his heels, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt.

“Hi,” Eleanor says.
 

He looks up. “I didn’t see you come out,” he says, nodding in the direction of Agnes’s hospital room.
 

Eleanor leans against the wall. “They say she’ll be here a few more days,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “They’ll make her better.”

Eleanor yawns. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so tired. What’s going on?”

Jack looks around, then steps backward, out of the path of a boy in a wheelchair. “Well,” he says. “I was hoping you’d come with me.”

Eleanor is tired. This is her mother’s third prolonged hospital stay since the day they found her on the bedroom floor. Agnes has already been a resident of the third floor for six days this time. The last stay was nine days. The one before that was thirteen.
 

“Jack—” she begins, but he puts his hand up.
 

“Look,” he says, rather earnestly. “You’re growing up too fast. I’m not saying we should go to the movies or something. I know you’re worried about your mom. I’m just saying—I want to show you something. And I think it would be good for you to get away for a couple of hours.”

“I can’t,” Eleanor says. “Dad isn’t coming until six, and I don’t want to leave her alone.”

Jack nods. “I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” Eleanor says. “I need to go back in.”

“Is she doing okay?” Jack asks.
 

“They’re doing more donor tests. Apparently my mother’s body won’t accept just any new liver.”

She looks away from Jack, who doesn’t seem to have much to say now.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and turns back to the door.

“Wait—” Jack sighs. “Come with me.”

“Jack.”

“I promise, I’m not trying to be a jackass,” he says. “I was riding home last night, and I was thinking about my mom, and—you know about my dad—I was thinking about if this was my dad in here, like your mom, and I was thinking—if this was my life, every day, taking care of him, and he was—and he was like your mom, you know—not making it easy on me, I guess. If that was my life—and I don’t mean to say your life sucks, I don’t mean that—I was just wondering, like, what would be a nice thing that you might do for me.”

Eleanor watches him. His cheeks are flushed with color, and his eyes are bright and nervous, and it hits her then: Jack is trying to take care of her. She didn’t recognize it at first, because nobody has tried to take care of her in years, but she sees it now.
 

“And?” she asks him.

“Well—I was here the other day and your dad was in the room with you,” Jack says, and Eleanor nods, and he goes on in a rush: “And your dad was going through the bills, and your mom was—sleeping, I guess—and you looked so tired, Ellie. And I rode home, and I saw something, and I thought—if you were me and I was you, what would you do for me? Because you always are thinking about things like that, and so I tried to, too.”

“And?” she repeats.
 

“And I just thought that—well, like I said,” Jack says. “All this is too much. You have to grow up too fast. So I had an idea. Just a little one—but an idea.”

“Jack,” Eleanor says, exasperated. “What is it?”

She is grateful that he suggested the bus instead of their bicycles. She has healed well from her injuries, but her hips still ache, strangely, when the weather is bad, and lately the weather is usually something very close to bad, and she worries about her ability to stay on a bicycle on a steep hill in a stiff wind.
 

The bus lets them off at Splinter Beach. It’s raining, but only lightly. The clouds overhead blot out the sky, and a soft late-morning mist blankets the ocean and hides the shore from view.
 

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” she says.
 

“It’s a good idea,” Jack answers.
 

He’s carrying a duffel bag, and wearing a backpack over his windbreaker. The hood is cinched tight around his face. Little wet, dark dots appear on the jacket. She looks down at her own raincoat, and though she is grateful for it, she still wishes she was in her mother’s hospital room.
 

Although, she must admit, it is nice to breathe some fresh air.
 

“Come on,” Jack says.
 

He steps off the sidewalk and down into the beach grass. Eleanor stays on the sidewalk and watches the bus trundle away, belching black smoke. She takes a deep breath, filled with carbon dioxide, and lets it out.
 

“Ellie,” Jack says, out in the hip-high grass. “Come on.”

“I’m not sure,” she says again.
 

Jack sighs gently and trudges back to her. She’s tall, but he’s taller, and he looks down at her and says, “Ellie, your mom is going to be just fine.”

Eleanor shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have left. She could wake up.”

“Look,” Jack says, stepping a little closer. “Things are bad. I know they’re bad, but—you have to take care of yourself first.”

“Or what?” Eleanor asks. “Or I won’t be any good for her?”

“Right,” Jack says.

“She’s pretty messed up,” Eleanor says. “I could be a thousand times more tired and I’d still be better than an empty hospital room.”

Jack shrugs, then turns and indicates the sea and the distant island. “Look out there.”

“It’s foggy,” she complains.

“It’ll burn off before we get there,” Jack says.

“There’s no sun to burn it off.”

“There will be,” he says.
 

“We’ll get lost,” she says.
 

“We won’t,” he says. “It’s a straight shot from here to there.” He draws an imaginary line between his chest and Huffnagle Island.

“The boat’ll turn over.”

“Then I’ll flip it right-side up,” Jack says.
 

“We’ll freeze and drown.”

“It’s pretty cold,” he agrees. “So let’s agree not to turn the boat over.”

Eleanor wraps her arms around herself. “It doesn’t seem safe.”

“I bet it’s safer than that bus ride,” Jack says. “I thought he was going to run three lights.”

“Sharks.”

“Too cold.”

“Undertows.”

“That’s why we stay in the boat,” Jack says, and laughs.

“There’s nothing to do out there,” Eleanor says.
 

“That’s the point.”

She watches her breath turn to steam. “I’m too cold already.”

Jack holds up the duffel. “I brought all kinds of things that my mom used to knit,” he says.
 

Eleanor looks at the bag. “Can I see?”

He unzips the duffel and pulls out a wool scarf and a cowl and a pair of bulky mittens. Eleanor takes the mittens and pulls them onto her hands.

“Mm,” she says. “Oh, that’s nice. Scarf.”

He loops the scarf around her neck once, then twice.
 

Eleanor peers into the bag. “How about a hat?”

“Take your pick,” Jack says. He produces a goldenrod beanie and a burgundy cap with a pom-pom.
 

Eleanor takes the beanie and pulls it on. Her red hair curls from beneath the hat. She immediately feels cozy and warm.

“I wish I’d met your mom,” she says.
 

“Me, too,” Jack says.
 

Eleanor frowns, then leans forward and kisses Jack’s cheek. His skin is cold and pink.
 

He smiles and looks away, and his face becomes a red balloon.