Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

There was a knock on his door. He paused the iPod, instantly felt a panic attack coming on. He waited. The knock came again, softly. He glanced at his alarm clock: 11:45. It would be her. She’d want to talk about what happened. About the video footage: her own image on her own camera captured by an unknown watcher. His unknown watcher. Had to be. It seemed fatherhood wasn’t the only thing he and Mimi shared.

He wasn’t sure he could face this right now. But it surprised him, bothered him that only half an hour after saying good night, how much he wanted to see her again.

“Jay?”

He let out his breath. It was only Mom. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved.

“Enter.”

The door opened and there was his kind mother in her terry-cloth robe and sheepskin slippers.

“Am I disturbing you?” she said. He had to laugh.

She gently closed the door behind her, crossed the room, and sat on his bed. She patted his foot, under the comforter.

“That a good read?” she asked.

“Yeah, a real thriller,” he said. He held up the score so she could see the cover. She took it, looked at the open spread, and shook her head. “I can’t imagine how you do it,” she said.

He shrugged. “I can’t imagine how you take out somebody’s tonsils.”

“Tonsils are a piece of cake. But reading all these parts. And you actually hear it in your head, don’t you?”

Jay pointed to his earphones.

“I know, but you do read scores. I’ve seen you.”

Jay placed his iPod on the bedside table. “Zouave told me the only time music was ever perfect for him was when he read it. No one’s flat; no one plays too loud. Perfect balance. Perfect harmony.”

His mother nodded in an abstract way, as if perfect harmony was something she didn’t see a lot of at the clinic. She handed him back the score. There was a shift in the expression on her face. He closed the score and dropped it to the floor beside his bed.

“Pretty weird night, huh?” he said.

Lou nodded. “You might say.” She brought her hands together in her lap. “I thought I should tell you I phoned Marc.”

Jay wasn’t sure what he had been expecting her to say-something about Mimi, no doubt. “Really?” She nodded. “You know how to reach him?”

She nodded but with her chin pulled in as if this wasn’t quite the response she had expected. “He’s at the same number I reached him at when you wanted to use the house on the snye for band practice, back in high school. He still pays property taxes on the place, which means he’s on the township roll. Jo found his address and phone number easily enough.”

Jay thought about the balding man in the shades. He imagined him in the same cafe, as if that was where he lived, with a glass of wine in one hand and a phone in the other, talking to Lou.

“What’d he say?”

Lou folded her bathrobe over her knee. “Well, he was a bit surprised.”

“That makes a whole bunch of us.”

“He remembered that he had given you permission to use the house but that it was a long time ago. Seven years, I told him. He also knew you’d gone out west to school.”

“How’d he know that?”

“I wrote him,” said Lou.

“Jesus! So you two are like buddy-buddy and I don’t even know about it?”

“What do you think, Jay?”

That was the sixty-four-million-dollar question. What was he supposed to think? “My father suddenly crash-lands right in the middle of my life via this pretty much grown-up daughter-aka my half-sister-and now I find out my mother is all palsy with the guy.”

“Nonsense,” she said.

“Mom!”

“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.