“I saw in People magazine that good-looking doctors rate number one on the list of best catches,” I said, trying to lighten the conversation. But Henry’s expression darkened, told me it was the wrong thing to say.
“I don’t practice medicine much anymore,” he said, like he was spitting out something rotten.
“Too bad. You’d be good at it. A disease would take one look at you and fly out the door.”
“Is that a fact?”
“That look alone might cure cancer. I read that a person’s moods can kill or cure, depending.”
His eyes narrowed like I’d hit a nerve. “Is there anything you don’t know or haven’t read?”
“I read a lot. But most of that magazine stuff’s bogus. Junk food for your brain. You know, ‘Hubble Telescope Sights Elvis on Mars.’ That kind of thing.”
“So why do you read them?”
“Oh, I don’t read them,” I said, trying to decide if I wanted jasmine body lotion or honeysuckle. “I look at the headlines while I wait at the checkout. They’re funny and they pass the time and tell you about people.”
He looked doubtful. “For instance?”
“Oh, what makes people happy. What worries them. What they’re scared of.”
“So what makes people happy?”
“True love.”
“What worries them?”
“That they won’t ever find it.”
“And what scares them?”
“That maybe they will.”
I picked the jasmine lotion and looked back over my shoulder. Henry was studying me like adults do, like I was smarter than he’d thought, like I knew too much for a kid. I remembered what I’d overheard the hospital social worker tell him.
“Zoë’s street smarts are a kind of armor she wears to protect herself,” she’d said, making me sound like an armadillo. “She’s taken care of herself since she was old enough to walk. Her mother spent more time in mental hospitals than not, and Zoë’s father—your half-brother, I gather—left right after conception. Over the years, Zoë’s lived in the neglectful and permissive care of one or another of her mother’s boyfriends, or, occasionally, alone. Under the circumstances, she’s an extraordinary child.”
Imagine that. Me, extraordinary.
“You look funny,” I said to Henry. I was tired of everybody scrutinizing me like something under a microscope.
“I was just trying to decide if there’s a tiny, smart-mouthed grown-up zipped inside your sneaking-up-on-twelve-year-old body.”
“Yeah? You gonna look inside my ears with your doctor flashlight when we get back?”
“I might.”
He followed me to the pet-food aisle, and started eyeballing me again while I was deciding which kind of cat food to buy. I chose the one with four different flavors and set it in the cart. He looked at me like I was touched in the brain.
“What?” I said, with as much attitude as I could muster.
“What’s the cat food for?” he asked, as though I was planning to eat it myself.
“Oh, gosh, let’s see.” I drummed my cheek with my fingertips and rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. “What would cat food be for? That’s a hard one. Cat food. Oh yeah, it’s for the cat,” I said, flashing a fake smile, trying not to let my voice show what a doofus he was.
“I don’t have a cat.”
I studied his face. He really didn’t know. An animal slept, hunted, and ate not twenty yards from his front door and he didn’t have one clue. What was it with grown-ups, anyway? Life zipped right past them. “Oh, he’s out there all right,” I said. “Big as life.”
“Out where?”
“In your yard,” I said. I could not believe that the President of the United States had actually let Dr. Henry Royster cut him open. The article I’d read about it in the library was old, but it said that Henry graduated first in his class at the famous Johns Hopkins University Medical School, was a distinguished naval surgeon, and even operated on the President before leaving medicine “to become one of America’s preeminent artists”—things your average moron did not usually do. Henry was looking at me funny again, probably wondering if, after everything I’d been through, my mind had snapped. The way people used to look at Mama. I didn’t like this look. I didn’t like it at all.
“You’ve actually seen this cat?”
I wheeled the cart into the paper-product aisle, trying to think how to explain it—the way I sometimes felt the presence of living things without actually seeing them. It would be impossible to explain to somebody this clueless. “He’s there, all right. Betcha fifty dollars,” I said. Adults take things more seriously when money is involved.
“What?”
“I’m good for it!”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So?”
“You gamble?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “Everybody gambles.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Like when you used to cut people open, you always knew exactly how everything was going to work out.”
Henry started to say something but then stopped and said, “Point taken.”
“So, is it a bet?”
“Certainly not.”
“Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?” I asked, climbing up two shelves to get the box of tissues with yellow butterflies on it.
Henry plucked me down, set me on the floor, snatched the box from my hand, and put it in the cart. “Do you ever let anybody do anything for you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Why not?”
“I depend on myself, that’s why,” I said, “and don’t
