“Keep your voice down, honey. There is one very tired, equally discombobulated young woman down the hall trying to sleep.”
Jay didn’t need reminding.
“Marc and I are anything but palsy-walsy. I have communicated with him precisely twice in the last umpteen years-three times, counting tonight: once, back in… whatever it was… 2000?-when you were in tenth grade-to ask if you could use the house on the snye for the band; then once again to let him know you’d graduated from high school, summa cum laude and valedictorian of your class. Bragging rights. And tonight to let him know our present situation.”
Jay didn’t dare speak. He could feel words as sharp and belligerent as sticks and rocks piling up behind his teeth. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was so angry about; he just was.
“He’s fine about you being there, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
That helped a little. But not much. It had been a very long time since Jay had thought of the house on the snye as belonging to anyone else but himself. Now it was as if his hold on the place was being threatened from every side.
“What about her?” he said, nodding toward the spare bedroom.
“That’s for you two to decide-you and Miriam.”
“Who?”
“That’s what Marc called her. He thinks it’s up to you guys how you deal with this. And I agree.”
Jay crossed his arms, leaned back, and banged his head a couple of times against the backboard. “I dunno, Mom. I can just barely wrap my head around having a sister. But sharing a place with her?”
His mother smiled sympathetically. “Marc thinks there might be something she’s running away from.”
“What? She rob a bank?”
Lou shrugged. “More personal, I’m guessing. He wouldn’t say. Or didn’t know.”
“Or didn’t care,” said Jay.
He looked away, knowing his mother would be regarding him attentively and wishing she wouldn’t. Her hand was still on the comforter, stroking his foot. He slid it out of her reach. She didn’t speak and eventually he glanced her way again.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
She shook her head. “It’s not just Mimi. Something’s up. Something’s been bothering you for a while.”
Jay rolled his eyes. “Like my life, for instance?”
Lou smiled.
“You think that’s funny?”
“No,” she said. “I would say your life was pretty good.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“You’re going away in just a couple of months. Back to school. You’re going to love that.”
“I know. Of course I will. And I am a fortunate child. Believe me, I do realize that. You know I do.”
“But?”
“But…” He couldn’t tell her what was going on up at the snye. He could talk to Lou about almost anything, but not this. Not something she might see as threatening. And it was threatening, though he didn’t want to see it that way.
“You take life very seriously, Jay,” she said. “It will always be a bit of a burden for you. But I wouldn’t be much of a mother-let alone a doctor-if I didn’t know that something’s been on your mind for a while now.”
Jay looked at her frank expression. Nothing really ruffled her. Hell, she worked in the ER: crash victims, heart attacks, mortally wounded children. Why couldn’t he talk to her?
“Are things okay with Iris?”
“Sure. Of course. Why shouldn’t they be?”
Lou shrugged. “Just probing,” she said.
Jay glowered, without having any noticeable effect on her attentive smile.
“Is she still coming home this summer?”
Jay nodded. “In a week or so.”
“Good.” Lou grinned. “What a surprise this is going to be for her.”
Jay didn’t bother to comment. Right now Iris just seemed like one more thing to have to try to juggle, and he had run clean out of hands. He slid a little down in his bed, hoping his mother would get the hint and leave. She didn’t move. She was staring across the room at nothing.
“She’s very pretty, isn’t she?” said his mother.
“Who? Iris?”
“No.” Lou shook her head. “Iris is pretty. I adore Iris, as you know. But I was talking about Mimi.” His mother smiled at him in a way that made him think that she could see clear inside him, all the way down to thoughts he was trying very hard to hide from himself.
PART TWO
The room was quiet, but Mimi was there, up there, just beyond seeing. She wasn’t talking, but he could sense her, hovering nearby, like an angel. Maybe she was an angel. Maybe he had died without knowing it and this black hole was hell with her only an arm’s length away. So close, if he could only move his arms.
“I know you’re there,” she said, her voice quiet. “I think you can hear me.”
She had found him.
She had found him, but he couldn’t do a thing about it, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move. She would go and he wouldn’t be able to stop her, or follow, or call after her.
“I want you to come out from there,” she said. “I think you’re hiding, Cramer, and I want to talk to you, okay?”
And this was the hardest thing of all, he thought. Because all he wanted in the whole world was to talk to her and it was beyond him. She was beyond him. And maybe it would be that way forever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Despite the avalanche of shocks and surprises, or maybe because of them, Mimi slept like a baby. The revelation that capped the evening-that someone had used her own camera to shoot footage of her-had stunned her speechless. Luckily Jay had been right beside her. She had grabbed on to his arm for support, and he had taken the camera away from her, gently, before she dropped it, as if it were a grenade with a loose firing pin. It was his serious eyes as much as his strong grip that held her up. And his eyes seemed to say, Let’s keep this our secret.
“Good of him not to steal the JVC,” Jay said when they were alone. But the look in his eyes said what Mimi was thinking. It wasn’t good. It was intimidating.
They were in the guest room; he’d gone out to get her fresh towels, and just as he returned, her cell phone rang. She didn’t answer it, and, luckily, Jay got the hint and left her alone, pulling the door shut behind him.
She had gone to bed, missing the comforting sound of traffic, of car horns and sirens. Of cabbies arguing with drunk passengers.
The next thing she knew she was waking to birdsong and a radio playing classical music softly somewhere off in the blond house.
She pulled up the blinds and looked out at the garden. Jay came into view, walking from around the corner of the house in jeans and a ratty denim jacket, heading down toward the river with a carpenter’s tool belt hanging around his hips, the hammer tapping against his thigh.
“Very Village People,” she murmured.
