Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

As she slid closed the door to the compartment, Oz looked at Lou. “I guess she’s not so bad.”

“Oz, she went to take a smoke.”

“How do you know she smokes?”

“If the nicotine stains on her fingers hadn’t clued me in, the fact that she reeks of tobacco would’ve been enough.”

Oz sat next to his mother, who lay in the lower bunk bed, arms across her middle, eyes closed, her breath shallow but at least there.

“It’s us, Mom, me and Lou.”

Lou looked exasperated. “Oz, she can’t hear you.”

“Yes, she can!” There was a bite to the boy’s words that startled Lou, who was used to virtually all of his ways. She crossed her arms and looked away. When she glanced back, Oz had taken a small box from his suitcase and was opening it. The chain necklace he pulled out had a small quartz stone at the end.

“Oz, please,” his sister implored, “will you stop?”

He ignored her and held the necklace over his mother.

Amanda could eat and drink, though for some reason unfathomable to her children she could not move her limbs or speak, and her eyes never opened. This was what bothered Oz greatly and also gave him the most hope. He figured some small thing must be out of sorts, like a pebble in a shoe, a clog in a pipe. All he had to do was clear this simple obstruction and his mother would join them again.

“Oz, you are so dumb. Don’t do this.”

He stopped and looked at her. “Your problem is you don’t believe in anything, Lou.”

“And your problem is you believe in everything .”

Oz started to swing the necklace slowly back and forth over his mother. He closed his eyes and started saying words that could not be clearly understood, perhaps not even by him.

Lou stood and fidgeted, but finally could not take this foolishness any longer. “Anybody sees you doing that, they’ll think you’re loony. And you know what? You are!”

Oz stopped his incantations and looked at her crossly. “Well, you ruined it. Complete silence is necessary for the cure to work.”

“Cure? What cure? What are you talking about?”

“Do you want Mom to stay like this?”

“Well, if she does, it’s her own fault,” Lou snapped. “If she hadn’t been arguing with Dad, none of this would’ve happened.”

Oz was stunned by her words. Even Lou looked surprised that she could have said something like that. But true to her nature, Lou wasn’t about to take any of it back once it was said.

Neither one looked at Amanda right at that moment, but if they had, the pair would have seen something, only a tremble of the eyelids, that suggested Amanda had somehow heard her daughter, then fallen deeper into the abyss that had held her so very tightly already.

Although most of the passengers were unaware, the train gradually banked left as the line curved away from the city on its way south. As it did so, Amanda’s arm slid off her stomach and dangled over the side of the bed.

Oz stood there stunned for a moment. One could sense that the boy believed he had just witnessed a miracle of biblical dimension, like a flung stone felling a giant. He screamed out, “Mom! Mom!” and almost dragged Lou to the floor in his excitement. “Lou, did you see that?”

But Lou could not speak. She had presumed their mother incapable of such activity ever again. Lou had started to utter the word “Mom” when the door to the compartment slid open, and the nurse filled the space like an avalanche of white rock, her face a craggy pile of displeasure. Wisps of cigarette smoke hovered above her head, as though she were about to spontaneously combust. If Oz had not been so fixated on his mother, he might have jumped for the window at the sight of the woman.

“What’s going on here?” She staggered forward as the train rocked some more, before settling into its arrow path through New Jersey.

Oz dropped the necklace and pointed at his mother, as if he were a bird dog in search of praise. “She moved. Mom moved her arm. We both saw it, didn’t we, Lou?”

Lou, however, could only stare from her mother to Oz and back again. It was as though someone had driven a pole down her throat; she could form no words.

The nurse examined Amanda and came away even more sour-faced, apparently finding the interruption of her cigarette break unforgivable. She put Amanda’s arm back across her stomach and covered her with the sheet.

“The train went around a curve. That’s all.” As she bent low to tuck in the bedcovers, she saw the necklace on the floor, incriminating evidence of Oz’s plot to hasten his mother’s recovery.

“What’s this?” she demanded, reaching down and picking up Exhibit One in her case against the little boy.

“I was just using it to help Mom. It’s sort of ”—Oz glanced nervously at his sister—“it’s sort of magic.”

“That is nonsense.”

“I’d like it back, please.”

“Your mother is in a catatonic state,” the woman said in a cold, pedantic tone designed to strike absolute terror in all who were insecure and vulnerable, and she had an easy target in Oz. “There is little hope of her regaining consciousness. And it certainly won’t happen because of a necklace, young man.”

“Please give it back,” Oz said, his hands clenched together, as though in prayer.

“I have already told you—” She was cut off by the tap on her shoulder. When she turned, Lou stood directly in front of her. The girl seemed to have grown many inches in the last several seconds. At least the thrust of her head, neck, and shoulders seemed emboldened. “Give it back to him!”

The nurse’s face reddened at this abuse. “I do not take orders from a child.”

Quick as a whip Lou grabbed the necklace, but the nurse was surprisingly strong and managed to pocket it, though Lou struggled hard.

“This is not helping your mother,” the nurse snapped, puffing out the odor of Lucky Strikes with each breath. “Now, please sit down and keep quiet!”

Oz looked at his mother, the agony clear on his face at having lost his precious necklace over a curve in the track.

Lou and Oz settled next to the window and spent the next several rolling miles quietly watching the death of the sun. When Oz started to fidget, Lou asked him what was the matter.

“I don’t feel good about leaving Dad by himself back there.”

“Oz, he’s not alone.”

“But he was in that box all by himself. And it’s getting dark now. He might be scared. It’s not right, Lou.”

“He’s not in that box, he’s with God. They’re up there talking right now, looking down on us.”

Oz looked up at the sky. His hand lifted to wave, but then he looked unsure.

“You can wave to him, Oz. He’s up there.”

“Cross your heart, stick a needle in your eye?”

“All of that. Go ahead and wave.”

Oz did and then smiled a precious one.

“What?” his sister asked.

“I don’t know, it just felt good. Think he waved back?”

“Of course. God too. You know how Dad is, telling stories and all. They’re probably good friends by now.” Lou waved too, and as her fingers drifted against the cool glass, she pretended for a moment that she was certain of all that she had just said. And it did feel good.

Since their father’s death, winter had almost given over to spring. She missed him more each day, the vast emptiness inside her swelling with every breath Lou took. She wanted her dad to be fine and healthy. And with them. But it would never be. Her father really was gone. It was an impossibly agonizing feeling. She looked to the sky.

Hello, Dad. Please never forget me, for I won’t ever forget you . She mouthed these words so Oz couldn’t hear. When she finished, Lou thought she might start bawling herself, but she couldn’t, not in front of Oz. If she cried, there was a strong possibility that her brother might also cry, and keep right on going for the rest of his life.