Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

“Right.”

In the cool and damp motel room Lamb folded down the bed for the girl and arranged all the pillows while she showered, and when she came out shivering in the tiny white towel he scooped her up, naked and damp towel and all, and set her in the sheets and pulled the blankets over her.

“Now,” he said and handed her the TV remote, “I’m going to be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get us more nighttime meds and hot soup from the Jewel over there and we’ll just find an old movie or make fun of the news guys till we fill our bellies and fall asleep, right?”

“Okay.”

“Good. What kind of soup?”

“The hot kind.”

“Like spicy?”

“No, please.”

“You want something with noodles in it, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Noodles and cold medicine and pillows and TV and sleep. Who doesn’t want that? And tomorrow, fried eggs and hot coffee.”

“Gary?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“I don’t actually feel sick anymore.”

“We just want to give you a little more soup and medicine and sleep so you’re really strong. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We don’t want you having a relapse.”

“Okay.”

“Tom?”

“Yes.”

“When I get back”—he pointed to the bed—“can I lay there? In the space beside you?”

“Duh.”

“I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

She rolled her eyes and grinned. “I’ll find something on TV.”

“Be right back, my dear.”

Imagine you’re in bed. That little old twin bed, back at home. The sheets wrinkled and soft and cool. Your legs clean and strong. Your shoulders sliding down your back, just melting away. Right? Say you’re reading a book. You let it fall a little, into your knees or upon the satin edging of a deep vanilla-colored plush. Cars shushing past outside. You’re just napping in there, just resting and reading, your body recharging. You can barely read the print on the page. The truth is you’ll feel a cold and empty sagging at the bottom of your heart. Everything outside is metal. Your body will feel a little blank. It wants my warm arms and legs beside it, right? It wants our old open sky outside our little bunk room windows. It wants the river and the soft purring of the nightjars perched in the trees, and it wants the wild grass seeds in your hair and in your little white socks. It wants the heat of our little breakfast fire in the mornings, how it warms your chest and the fronts of your arms and shoulders and opens all the pores in your face and repeats itself in your eyes. Fresh breeze cooling your back. The smell of sage and the smell of snow on the wind. Hands wrapped around your little metal cup of instant. You’ll be in your little gray city room, lost to me. A thousand miles away. The little bunks and the barbed wire and the withering bluebonnets gone. And you’ll turn into your pillow and wonder was I ever real? Was it all a dream?

There will be such an awful beauty in your heart. A wound like a seal upon it. It will lie over all the cracked and hard city like a soft, bright-colored film. Your own face overlaid with the face you wore when you were with me in the mountains. A brighter face, a younger face, a soft one that mirrors the weather. You’ll read books—little paperbacks—looking for the kind of sentence that keeps the wound alive. And you must keep it alive. Don’t you ever forget this hurt. Don’t you ever forget what you’ve seen with me. It will save you. You’ll be like an apple tree among all the ash-colored buildings of that granite city. Close your eyes. Turn away from the book in your lap, turn away from the sounds of everyone around you. Take a slow deep breath. Listen. It’s the sound of the wind rushing through the box elder outside our window. It’s the sound of me whispering. I’ll be with you this way.

The two left the motel in the morning, before the sun was up. The frontage road was quiet, traffic lights still blinking red, gas stations bright in the bleary cold. Everything was over. The day was a shade cooler, a shade grayer than the day before.

“Last day,” he said when they pulled out of a Chevron station. Little cold needles of rain turned to sleet. “And here comes winter.”

“It’s only October.”

“That’s ice,” he said, nodding at the windshield.

When they came into Lombard the streets were black with rain and ice, the parking lots of grocery stores and strip malls nearly empty.

“Nobody’s up,” Lamb said.

“Lucky for us.”

“Desolate as the field behind the cabin,” he said. “That stretch to the base of the mountains. See? You’ll find that same openness if you look for it.”

She cried deep and shaking and coughing sobs, and he pulled over in front of an empty pharmacy so she could get it out. Snot ran down the girl’s face and he reached across to wipe the tears from her cheekbones and chin. He leaned in and caught them with his mouth, and kissed her with his eyes open, checking the parking lot around them.

“Right?” he whispered, and she nodded. “This is how we said it would go, didn’t we?” She closed her eyes and opened them and closed them. “I never lied to you, did I?”

“No.”

“Didn’t I let you stay longer with me?” Then he straightened her yellow sweater, brushing it down with an open palm. She watched him. “I’ll make you a promise, okay?” He leaned in and spoke with his face very close to hers. “Valentine’s Day,” he said. “I’ll come find you, right? We can be together for a little while. That’s less than four months.”

“You will?”

“Just over a hundred days. Can you carry this that long?”

“You’ll come back to get me?”

“I’ll come visit. I’ll be very careful, and I’ll protect you. Right?”

She nodded.

“We’ll go back to our white hotel. Or out to those little falls by the river. I’ll send you a sign. And when you see it you’ll wait there for me. And I’ll take you away in this wonderful old truck for an hour, or two or three, right? You’ll have to keep your eyes open all the time for the sign from me.”

“What will it be?”

“A ribbon tied some unlikely place. Or at Christmastime, a tiny blue lightbulb in a string of white lights. Or a broken window, like that little broken window in the cabin.”

She was crying all over again.

“Oh, sweetie,” he said. “Oh, sweetie, it’s your cabin. It will always be yours. I’m going to leave it for you. Didn’t I say I would? And you can live there forever when I’m gone.”

“Maybe.” She was trying to say something.

“I can’t understand you.”

“Maybe in a few years?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we could just tell everyone.”

“I think you may be right,” he said and again wiped the tears from her face with the back of his sleeve. “I think it may have to be that way.”

“I think. They. Would under. Stand.” Her chest heaving up and down and her words froggy.

“Because it’s love, isn’t it?”

She nodded and ran the inside of her hand up against her wet nose.

He drove slowly out of the parking lot and onto the street. “You remember the plan, right?”

“Yes.”

“Now, Tom. You have to collect yourself. You have to be brave. Remember all the things we said about keeping everyone safe.”

“I know.”

“Can you stop crying now?”

“I’m trying.”

“This is how it has to be for a little while.”

“I know.”

“You keep yourself well and strong so when I come back for you everyone will believe it was good for you, right? Doesn’t that make sense?”