Pictures of You (13 page)

He stepped back from the road and unzipped his corduroy pants and then quickly peed and zipped himself up again. When he came out, she had a bottle of water. “Hands,” she said, and splashed the water on them like a fountain.

She shooed him into the car and then got in herself.

“I’m hungry,” he said, and she dug into her purse and gave him some cheese crackers.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with you,” she said quietly, and she rested her hand on the top of his head and she got that worried look all over again, which made him feel smaller than he already was. “Please don’t look at me like that,” she told him.

He flinched and looked at her, but she was staring straight ahead at the road.

“I played endless games with you,” she said. “I let you play hooky and took you out to movies that weren’t age appropriate.” She glanced at him and then looked back at the road. “The whole time I was pregnant with you, I sang you the same song every day, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ by the Beatles. I rubbed you through my belly and talked to you. You were small as a minute and I loved you. I did. And I do. How many times did I take you the emergency room? How many nights did I sleep on the floor beside your bed and argue and plead with all your doctors? Your dad adores you. He’ll do anything for you, anything so you’ll be safe and happy.” She turned the wheel. “I do what I can. Everybody deserves to be happy, don’t they?” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him when she said it.

He knew enough not to ask too many questions. Especially not
now, when she had that look on her face. He watched the road ahead, the world turning into something unfamiliar and strange.

He touched her arm and she pulled it away. “Let me just finish this,” she said, but he wasn’t sure what she meant. She never finished anything, even when Sam did his best to help. She started painting a mural of trees on his wall and stopped after two walls, so that Charlie and Sam finished it on their own. She started writing a mystery about a librarian who commits a murder, and gave it up after chapter four. “I know the ending, what’s the point of writing it?” she said.

His mother beeped at another car and changed lanes. He studied the clock on the control panel. One hour passed, then two. They had been driving over two and a half hours when the fog came in. “Damn,” she said, craning her neck. “How am I supposed to see through this?” He opened his window so the fog came in. “Don’t do that!” she said, and he shut it, but the cool air collected and his lungs tightened.

He sat up straighter, stretching his lungs so they could take in more air, the way the doctor had told him to do. He glanced at the signs. “Hartford,” he said. “Bob’s Big Boy Burgers.” He swiveled to the other direction. “Gas, Food, Lodging!”

He couldn’t help it. He coughed and his mother turned toward him. “Take your inhaler,” she said automatically, and then he reached into his pocket, pulling out lint, two pennies, and then he felt for the plastic tube but instead of his inhaler, there was a Batman adventure figure. He glanced at his mother in horror. She was frowning again, hunched over the wheel. Then she turned to him.

“You don’t have it?”

That morning he had checked for it, he had felt the plastic in his pocket, but it must have been this toy. Instantly, he felt panicky. “You didn’t take your inhaler?” His inhaler was supposed to go everywhere with him. The school nurse had an extra one locked in her cabinet, but he avoided her at all costs when he saw her in
the hall, because he didn’t want her embarrassing him by asking him loudly “How’s the old asthma today?” like she had the last time, making all the other kids laugh. “How’s the old asthma?” they asked him, like the asthma was a person. Extra inhalers were in the house—in his room, in his parents’ room, even in a special drawer at the Blue Cupcake. “Aren’t you glad we have inhalers to make you feel better?” his dad always asked, but Sam wasn’t so sure. His inhalers were everywhere and nowhere because he’d never let anyone see him use one. If he felt wheezy, he’d tell the teacher he had to pee and then he’d go into one of the stalls in the bathroom and even if no one else was in there, he’d flush the toilet to mask the whooshing noise the inhaler made.

“Are you sure it didn’t fall out? Is it in the backseat?” She slowed the car and felt around in the back with her free hand. “It’s all the fog, the damp,” she said. “I’ll turn on the air conditioner. That should help. You wait and see.” She shut all the windows and turned it on, but all it did was make them both cold, and this time, when he coughed, the wheeze was louder.

“Can you hold on?” she asked him. “We can call your doctor and get a new prescription phoned in somewhere. How about that? Can you wait?” She glanced at her watch. “It’ll be fine,” she said, “I’ll call your doctor, have him phone in a prescription.”

He coughed again, felt his lungs narrowing, which always made him panic. “Mom—”

“We’ll find a hospital, then. We’ll go to an ER.”

“I can wait,” he said. He hated the emergency room. You never knew if they were going to make you stay overnight, and they put in an IV needle, which he hated most of all because you were attached to it and the medicine they gave him always made his heart speed like a bird wildly flapping in his chest.

“I’m fine,” he said, but he could barely get the words out. They both heard the accordion sound of his lungs, the thin gasping wheeze, and his mother seemed to deflate.

“Oh, baby, you’re not fine,” she said.

She wrenched the car around in a U-turn, startling him, making him bump back against the seat. She made a left onto another road. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. We’ll go back and find a town. Then we’ll come back. There’s still time,” She picked up her phone and dialed. “Pick up, pick up,” she said, and then she clicked the phone shut and looked at the map again and suddenly she was spinning the car around, changing direction on the road again, and all they could see was the fog. “If I could just see a bloody sign …,” she said, and then he coughed again.

The fog was so heavy now, he couldn’t see the road in places. “Mommy,” he said, “I’m sorry!” and then he coughed, and it was like breathing through a straw.

“I’m sorry, not you,” she said. “I’m the one who’s sorry.” She grabbed her phone again; she punched in three numbers: 911, the numbers he was supposed to call if he was in trouble. She shouted into the phone. “If I knew where we were I could drive to a hospital!” she yelled, and then she suddenly threw the phone out into the fog. “Okay,” she said, drawing herself up. “Okay.” She looked at him. “Someone will be here,” she said. “You’re going to be all right.”

“Who’s coming?” He wheezed, trying to suck in air.

“Someone,” she promised.

They both heard the car. She leaped outside. When he started to unbuckle himself, she reopened the door and shook her head. “Stay in the car,” she ordered, “Don’t get out until I tell you to. I’ll make sure they see us,” and when he moved to the door, she jerked his hand away. “I said, stay in the car! Don’t make yourself sicker!”

Then she drew herself up, like she knew what she was going to do, and for one moment he couldn’t see her. He unbuckled his belt and ran out by the car door. She was swallowed up in the fog. And then she moved closer and looked back at him and then there,
coming toward them, were headlights, and she lifted one arm and waved and for the first time that day, he saw her smile, blooming like a flower, full of hope.

The headlights were coming too fast, so that he ran toward her, forgetting all the things she had told him never to do, calling her name, calling Mommy, and then she turned to him, not moving, standing still until it was too late, and then she had only a moment to stare at it, too, as though she couldn’t believe it was finally here.

There was a great terrible noise, like the air screaming and breaking apart. Something slashed his arm and Sam cried out, and then he was running. And then he knew the sound screaming in the air was him. He could see that his arm was bleeding, gashed open as if someone had poured red poster paint into it. It hurt but he tried not to cry because sometimes crying just didn’t do any good. “Mommy!” he screamed, but he didn’t see her in the fog. What if she was hurt? Hysteria bubbled in his body. Where was she? Why wasn’t she calling to him? He ran. His feet skipped over twigs and brush and the air suddenly grew hot. He ran into the woods, panting, and then crouched, his hands over his head, his eyes squinched tightly shut. He kept hearing the crash, over and over. His arm burned, and no matter how he gripped it, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. He couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t catch his breath! Don’t cry, he told himself, panicking, because he knew crying, like laughing, could make it worse, but the sobs kept heaving from him. Shaking, he curled himself into a tighter ball, he tried to purse his lips, suctioning the air up like a straw. Any minute his mom would call his name. Any second she’d wrap her arms about him. “Where’ve you been?” she’d say.

Don’t look. Don’t you dare look
.

And then he glanced up, and for a moment, he saw a woman standing there, in a white dress with long black curls racing about her head and she looked just like the angels in his Sunday School book and his breath stopped. An angel, he thought, amazed, a
real angel, and then, he thought, did that mean his mother was dying and the angel was taking her to Heaven? Tears flooded his eyes and he sobbed harder. The angel looked right at him so that he began to shake, and then she looked toward the place where his mother had been, as if she were motioning him. He tried to move toward them, but the angel and his mother both vanished into the fog, as if they were together, leaving him behind. “Wait!” he screamed. “Don’t leave me! Come back!” Then he heard another car, a door slamming and a voice calling, “Jesus,” and then Sam came out from the woods, his airway so tight he felt light-headed and he didn’t see his mother at first—
don’t look, don’t look
—just two cars crashed together, and the angel was gone, and then he saw flames, hot and white, and an ambulance and two men in white were standing there, and when they saw him, one man moved toward him. “There’s a kid!” he said. Everything was moving so quickly. Sam took a step, too, and he tried one last labored breath, as loud as a warning whistle, before he collapsed into the man’s arms.

He woke up and he was moving in an ambulance on a small white cot. The two men were beside him There was a battery-operated nebulizer for him to breathe into, the bubbling, familiar sound of it, and he felt his lungs grow bigger. “That’s it, breathe,” said one of the men, and Sam did. His lungs opened, and even though he felt better, they said he had to go to the hospital.

“Where are they?” Sam cried, panicked. The two men looked at each other.

“Where’s my mom?”

“She’s following us in the car,” one of the paramedics said.

“John—” the other man said to him sharply.

“I knew it! I knew she was fine!” Sam said. He craned his head to look out the front window, but all he saw was the fog.

“You’ll be fine, too. Good enough to pitch a little league game.”

“I don’t play baseball.”

“What? Now that’s a crime!”

“Soccer,” Sam said, though that was partly a lie.

Rest easy, they told him. They explained that he just had to see a doctor at the hospital, to make sure he was all right, and that his father had been called and was coming right away.

“Just a little asthma attack,” said the paramedic. “Happens to the best of us.”

“Does it happen to you?” Sam asked, but the paramedic shrugged. “My cousin gets them,” he said. “Had them since he was your age and he’s in his fifties now.”

Sam lay still and thought about the fog, and how it could fool you. He thought about what he could tell his dad when he saw him. He thought of his mother turning toward him when she could have stepped out of the way, and he thought of the angel looking at him and then at the place where his mother was, and he folded his hands tight.

He felt a whip of fear. He couldn’t see his mother following in any car from where he sat. Was she really there? “Is my mom still behind us?” he cried, and the paramedic gave Sam his hand and let him hold it. Sam heard one of the men swallow.

“Of course she is,” he said. “Of course. Don’t you upset yourself now. Your job is just to relax and to feel better.”

S
AM HADN’T FELT BETTER
. Not back then, and not right now, either.

His grandparents hadn’t helped. His father didn’t help. His father watched him. Every time someone mentioned his mother being dead, he shut his eyes and hummed. He pressed his hands against his ears, or he quickly left the room so he wouldn’t have to listen a second longer, he wouldn’t have to think about why his mom wasn’t with him.
Don’t say it. Don’t say anything
. Inside, he felt flooded with tears, but he wouldn’t let himself cry because he knew if he did, he would never stop.

The people who came to the house looked at him like he had
a secret.
What happened, what happened, what happened?
Sam didn’t have many friends, but his father had let him invite Don over to play chess, but Sam had the feeling that Don was letting him win every game because he felt sorry for him. “You don’t have to let me win,” Sam said.

“Who’s doing that?” Don said, but shortly after, Don said he wanted to go home. Sam saw the relieved way Don ran to his mother when she came to get him.

He thought of his mother watching him when she should have been watching the car coming toward him. It was his fault. All of it. “Where were you going? Why did she have a suitcase?” his dad kept asking.

“I don’t know,” he always answered.

“God helps those who help themselves,” his grandma had said to his father, and his dad had snorted, but Sam kept turning that phrase over and over in his mind. How could he help himself so God would help him and his mom? He shut his eyes. Think, he told himself. Think. He had seen an angel with his mom. Maybe he had to find out where she had taken his mom and if his mom was all right there, and then maybe there could be a miracle and none of this would have happened. But how was he supposed to do that?