J. Ward - Lover Eternal

God, she wanted to go back to the hotline's offices. She needed to hear the soft voices of the other volunteers. And the phones ringing. And the drone of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling…

Because with no distractions, her mind flushed up terrible images: Hospital beds. Needles. Bags of drugs hanging next to her. In an awful mental snapshot, she saw her head bald and her skin gray and her eyes sunken until she didn't look like herself, until she wasn't herself.

And she remembered what it felt like to cease being a person. After the doctors started treating her with chemo, she'd quickly sunk into the fragile underclass of the sick, the dying, becoming nothing more than a pitiful, scary reminder of other people's mortality, a poster child for the terminal nature of life.

Mary darted across the living room, shot through the kitchen, and threw open the slider. As she burst out into the night, fear had her gasping for breath, but the shock of frosty air slowed her lungs down.

You don't know that anything's wrong. You don't know what it is…

She repeated the mantra, trying to pitch a net on the thrashing panic as she headed for the pool.

The Lucite in-ground was no more than a big hot tub, and its water, thickened and slowed by the cold, looked like black oil in the moonlight. She sat down, took off her shoes and socks, and dangled her feet in the icy depths. She kept them submerged even when they numbed, wishing she had the gumption to jump in and swim down to the grate at the bottom. If she held on to the thing for long enough, she might be able to anesthetize herself completely.

She thought of her mother. And how Cissy Luce had died in her own bed in the house the two of them had always called home.

Everything about that bedroom was still so clear: The way the light had come through the lace curtains and landed on things in a snowflake pattern. Those pale yellow walls and the off-white wall-to-wall rug. That comforter her mother had loved, the one with the little pink roses on a cream background. The smell of nutmeg and ginger from a dish of potpourri. The crucifix above the curving headboard and the big Madonna icon on the floor in the corner.

The memories burned, so Mary forced herself to see the room as it had been after everything was over, the illness, the dying, the cleaning up, the selling of the house. She saw it right before she'd moved out. Neat. Tidy. Her mother's Catholic crutches packed away, the faint shadow left by the cross on the wall covered by a framed Andrew Wyeth print.

The tears wouldn't stay put. They came slowly, relentlessly, falling into the water. She watched them hit the surface and disappear.

When she looked up, she was not alone.

Mary leaped to her feet and stumbled back, but stopped herself, wiping her eyes. It was just a boy. A teenage boy. Dark-haired, pale-skinned. So thin he was emaciated, so beautiful he didn't look human.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, not particularly afraid. It was hard to be scared of anything that angelic. "Who are you?

He just shook his head.

"Are you lost?" He sure looked it. And it was too cold for him to be out just in the jeans and T-shirt he was wearing. "What's your name?"

He lifted a hand to his throat and moved it back and forth while shaking his head. As if he were a foreigner and frustrated by the language barrier.

"Do you speak English?

He nodded and then his hands started flying around. American Sign Language. He was using ASL.

Mary reached back to her old life, when she'd trained her autistic patients to use their hands to communicate.

Do you read lips or can you hear ? she signed back at him.

He froze, as if her understanding him had been the last thing he'd expected.

I can hear very well. I just can't talk.

Mary stared at him for a long moment. "You are the caller."

He hesitated. Then nodded his head . I never meant to scare you. And I don't call to annoy you. I just… like to know you're there. But there's nothing weird to it, honest. I swear.

His eyes met hers steadily.

"I believe you." Except what did she do now? The hotline prohibited contact with callers.

Yeah, well, she wasn't about to kick the poor kid off her property.

"You want something to eat?"

He shook his head. Maybe I could just sit with you awhile? I'll stay on the other side of the pool .

As if he were used to people telling him to get away from them.

"No," she said. He nodded once and turned away. "I mean, sit down here. Next to me."

He came at her slowly, as if expecting her to change her mind. When all she did was sit down and put her feet back in the pool, he took off a pair of ratty sneakers, rolled up his baggy pants, and picked a spot about three feet from her.

God, he was so small.

He slipped his feet in the water and smiled.

It's cold , he signed.

"You want a sweater?"

He shook his head and moved his feet in circles.

"What's your name?"

John Matthew.

Mary smiled, thinking they had something in common. "Two New Testament prophets."

The nuns gave it to me.

"Nuns?"

There was a long pause, as if he were debating what to tell her.

"You were in an orphanage?" she prompted gently. She recalled that there was still one in town, run by Our Lady of Mercy.

I was born in a bathroom stall in a bus station. The janitor who found me took me to Our Lady. The nuns thought up the name.

She kept her wince to herself. "Ah, where do you live now? Were you adopted?

He shook his head.

"Foster parents?" Please, God, let there be foster parents. Nice foster parents. Who kept him warm and fed. Good people who told him he mattered even if his parents had deserted him.

When he didn't reply, she eyed his old clothes, and the older expression on his face. He didn't look as if he'd known a lot of nice.

Finally, his hands moved. My place is on Tenth Street .

Which meant he was either a poacher living in a condemned building or a tenant in a rat-infested hovel. How he managed to be so clean was a miracle.

"You live around the hotline's offices, don't you? Which was how you knew I was on this evening even though it wasn't my shift."

He nodded. My apartment is across the street. I watch you come and go, but not in a sneaky way. I guess I think of you as a friend. When I called the first time… you know, it was on a whim or something. You answered… and I liked the way your voice sounded .

He had beautiful hands, she thought. Like a girl's. Graceful. Delicate.

"And you followed me home tonight?"

Pretty much every night. I have a bike, and you're a slow driver. I figure if I watch over you, you'll be safer. You stay so late, and that's not a good part of town for a woman to be alone in. Even if she's in a car.

Mary shook her head, thinking he was an odd one. He looked like a child, but his words were those of a man. And all things considered, she probably should be creeped out. This kid latching on to her, thinking he was some kind of protector even though it looked as if he were the one who needed to be rescued.

Tell me why you were crying just now , he signed.

His eyes were very direct, and it was eerie to have an adult male stare anchored by a child's face.

"Because I might be out of time," she blurted.

"Mary? Are you up for a visit?"

Mary looked over her right shoulder. Bella, her only neighbor, had walked across the two acre meadow that ran between their properties and was standing on the edge of the lawn.

"Hey, Bella. Ah, come meet John."

Bella glided up to the pool. The woman had moved into the big old farmhouse a year ago and they'd taken to talking at night. At six feet tall, and with a mane of dark waves that fell to the small of her back, Bella was a total knockout. Her face was so beautiful it had taken Mary months to stop staring, and the woman's body was right off the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition.