Safe Passage (32 page)

    
A page of the paper turned. Patrick placed Gideon now—at the kitchen table, the paper spread out across it, Gideon leaning over it, reading the front page.

    
"What do they say?"

    
"They say identification of victims has been slowed because some of them, quote 'had not been wearing their combat identification tags and because records of many had been destroyed in the blast' end quote. No shit, Dick Tracy. 'What we have, in effect'—this is some Marine officer talking now—'is a couple of thousand next-of-kin who don't know whether their sons are alive or dead. Worse, it's going to be a while before some of them get any word.' Does that mean if they're all right, we should have heard by now?"

    
"It doesn't mean anything," Patrick said. The Valium was beginning to work.
Red panic giving way to a beige calm, the headache losing its grip.

    
"You want to hear what Reagan says?" Gideon asked.

    
"I might as well."

    
"'The delay in notification of the families must be a cruel additional punishment for these people who wait in suspense.' I'd agree with that. Wouldn't you agree with that Dad?" Gideon sounded odd, as if his tongue were swollen.

 
   
"Maybe you better go run," Patrick said.

    
"Not today."

    
"It's the best thing you could do for yourself," Patrick said. But Gideon didn't answer, and Patrick didn't press it.

    
"I see no one's too fired up about my theory,"
Izzy
said. "But you're going to hear it anyway. I think it's a combination of Lucifer and too much tea."

    
"What?"

    
"The blindness. I think it's from the cat and all that tea you've been drinking."

    
"
Izzy
, spare us," Gideon said.

    
Izzy
ignored him. "Remember the first time it ever happened?" he asked Patrick. "We'd gone to take Lucifer to the vet, and then you drove me back to school. It was a long drive—a whole hour—and the car was full of cat hair. At my apartment we had a cup of tea and then you left."

   
 
"I'm not sure I follow you," Patrick said. He felt completely isolated inside himself. Outside, his sons were talking. Seeing gave the illusion that other people were with you, but they were not. Of course he'd always known that.

    
"I'm saying I think the blind spells are an allergy to cat fur and tea leaves,"
Izzy
said.

    
"With all due respect, the people at Hopkins ruled out allergies a year ago.

    
"Allergy to one specific thing. But think about it. Number one, ever since Percival left, the cat has been sleeping with you, and it was just about that time that this thing started. Number two, ever since the explosion in Beirut, the cat has been in a panic state, practically sitting on your head all night, and the blind spells have been coming every day. Also, ever since the explosion, we've been drinking tea by the quart. Number three, every time the cat goes away, you improve a little."

    
"Not really."

    
"The first day I got here Mom threw him out and ten minutes later your eyes started to open up,"
Izzy
said. "Yesterday the cat was around, but at first you were all right. Then you drank tea and about ten seconds after that you went blind. Later you went up and took a shower, which washed some of the dander off. After the shower you could see. Think about it."

    
Patrick's heart was hammering again. He was like a child, seized with wild hope. He swallowed, breathed slowly, made himself doubt.

    
"You're at your worst in the morning after the cat's been with you all night,"
Izzy
said. "And what do you do first thing in the morning? You drink tea. And last night you drank tea right before bed. Then the cat slept with you and here you are."

    
A confusion
gripped him. Impossible.
And yet a logic of sorts, a bizarre sort of logic.
He couldn't think of a clever reply.

    
"Some people get
hayfever
and other people get these weird things. How about those sneezing fits when you drink alcohol? Most people would get a stomachache or some kind of hangover. Most people don't react by sneezing."

 
    
"That doesn't explain cat fur and tea," Patrick said.

    
"Remember the summer I was working on that experiment with puppies? When we had to kill all those puppies with the
pentobarb
?"

    
"The summer he had a three-month migraine," Gideon said.

   
 
Patrick remembered hearing about the puppies; he didn't remember
Izzy's
having a three-month migraine. He supposed
Izzy
was sensitive enough to, getting attached to snakes and dogs the way he did. Still…"I don't see the connection," he said.

    
"We were testing them for allergic reactions. Don't you remember? They were from a strain of dogs that had food allergies—they got sick from just about everything they ate. I know I told you about it. And afterward we studied their kidneys and their adrenals. Anyway, the point is, I read seven thousand articles about allergies that summer. I probably knew more about allergies than almost anyone in the country that summer—and I'm telling you what you have sounds like an allergy to a combination of cat fur and tea."

    
Patrick did not let himself take it too seriously yet. He was trying to picture
Izzy
with a three-month headache. Back…when? When he was trying to patent the
RipOffs
, probably. He'd been so preoccupied that summer; he couldn't recall.
Cat fur and tea, so simple.

    
"The main thing is that it takes both components to trigger the reaction,"
Izzy
said. "There are people who get a reaction if they drink chocolate
milk
, but not if they eat plain chocolate. I mean, it can be anything, it can be totally bizarre. There was a case where a guy broke out if he was around dogs, but only if he ate tuna fish right before. He was always eating tuna fish. Or maybe you would break out only if you breathed Old Spice fumes and then went horseback riding.
All kinds of weird combinations.
Have you tried cutting out tea?"

    
"No." He had tried everything else, of course, changed his diet in ten different ways. But he had not stopped drinking tea. Stupid. His sons no longer seemed to be talking outside of him. They were right there, in the room, he could feel just how far away.

    
"You also have to remember that any allergy gets worse when you're under stress,"
Izzy
said.

    
"It still seems a little farfetched," Patrick said.
But why not?
Izzy
was an expert on allergies. It might be perfectly sensible. He would like it to be.

    
"In which case you better go shower the cat fur off before Simon gets back and uses up all the hot water," Gideon said.

    
"Yes, that would certainly confirm it—if a shower has the same effect it did yesterday, once we get the cat out of here,"
Izzy
said. "Of course you have to remember there's still cat fur all over the house."

    
Patrick believed it then. He made himself move slowly and deliberately, but the blood came to his face, his heart beat fast, he might have been liberated. Always before he had solved his own dilemmas, had not thought anyone else could. Cat fur was so simple—and tea!—but sneezing from liquor was simple, too, and abstinence had stopped it. Maybe
Izzy
had broken the code this time—no telling. It would be nice to think he'd passed his good inventor's genes on to one of his sons—especially the one named after the Isaac Singer who'd invented the sewing machine. Nice not having to depend on himself entirely…being able to have moments of weakness, when someone else could help.

    
It was as if, after all, there might be some hope of getting help from outside
himself
.
All kinds of possibilities in that.
Then he thought of Percival and knew he was not liberated, still alone; Percival too.
All of them.
But he was leaning on
Izzy
.

    
"Don't say anything to Mom yet," he said. "It's bad enough, this waiting. Don't tell her about the cat until later."

    
"Oh, I wouldn't,"
Izzy
said with a voice that had a kind of exultation under it.

    
"Me either," said Gideon, in a voice that didn't.

    
Patrick turned around and put his hands out to feel where the walls were. He knew they saw him groping against the walls, but he didn't try to joke about it; he only followed them to the stairway, found the banister, and made his way upstairs to take a shower.

    
Gideon watched his mother and Simon come in from the paper route, but he was so preoccupied that he didn't notice anything unusual at first. He had just figured out what his creeping numbness felt like. It was like tar sticking his muscles together and then gradually solidifying like glue. Every day the glue was getting harder, and pretty soon he wouldn't be able to move at all.

    
"What happened?"
Izzy
asked.

    
It was then that Gideon saw his mother's
RipOffs
all crusted with mud and her face smeared as if she'd been in a fistfight.

    
"She fell," Simon said.

    
"I fell," his mother echoed.

    
Both Simon and his mother looked grim, as if she'd fractured something.

    
"She tripped over that rock on the
Swansons
' lawn," Simon said. Gideon remembered that rock from when he had had the route. It was right in your path as you went from the
Swansons
' house to the house next door. He'd fallen over it a couple of times himself.

    
"I'm okay," his mother said. "I'm going up to take a shower."

    
"Dad's showering,"
Izzy
said.

    
"Then I'll use the other bathroom." There was something very deliberate about his mother, very cold. She went upstairs and Simon did, too.

    
"I'm taking the cat to the kennel to get him out of here for a while,"
Izzy
said when they were gone. Gideon wished someone would stay here to talk to him. He did not want the paralysis to become complete while he was alone. "You vacuum the cat fur off the furniture,"
Izzy
said.

     
Gideon walked to the closet and got the vacuum cleaner out. He vacuumed the family room couch with the
cannister
hose. He vacuumed all the chairs and then the carpet. It took great effort. His fingers were so
tired,
they didn't want to stay closed around the vacuum hose. When he turned around he saw that over the noise his father had come down again. He turned the vacuum cleaner off.

    
"Can you see?" he asked.

    
"A little. I'm starting to." Sure enough, the beginnings of pupils were returning to his father's eyes.

    
"You ought to go outside," he said to Gideon. "Run a couple of miles. That's what you do these days, isn't it?"

    
His father sounded sarcastic. With Percival it was quips and jokes when it came to running, but with Gideon it was always seriousness or sarcasm or anger.

     
"I couldn't run today."

    
"Why? Because you think vacuuming is more important? Read my lips, Gideon: It isn't.

    
In practice, Percival used to drop behind because he didn't like to run with anybody, and his father would say cheerfully, "The only place to run by yourself, Percival, is in front of everybody," and Percival would laugh, saying, "I thought I got plenty of practice running in front when I trained with you, Dad." And his father would laugh, too. But if Gideon dropped behind, his father got irritated. "You're losing ground because you aren't striding out properly right from the beginning, Gideon. You have to stride out right from the start."

    
Couldn't his father see how slowly his hands moved, how his legs dragged, the right more than the left?

    
"Gideon, I'm serious," his father said. "Go out. Don't hang around
here,
it's not good for you. It's not good for anybody, but at least you have a legitimate reason to leave for a while."

    
"Maybe later." He could not say he was sick, because his father would tell him that was just an excuse.