Under Shifting Glass (19 page)

“Pity it can't talk,” she says. “Then it could tell us what to do.” As she turns the flask over in her hands, her fingers seem to tremble, or else she's just clumsy, and the flask falls—it falls out of her grip.

“No!” I cry.

But of course, the flask doesn't fall far. It's only an inch or so to the desk, so it simply skids a little, knocks into one of the wooden pillars that stand on either side of the arch that houses ScatCat and the friendship bracelets.

The pillar wobbles.

“Oh—I'm so sorry,” Zoe says, grasping the perfectly strong flask and righting it again.

“Did you see that?” I ask.

“Of course I did. It was me who dropped it,” she says.

“No,” I say. “The pillar.”

“What?”

I stretch out my hand and touch it. It moves again.

“Loose piece of wood?” says Zoe.

But I know it isn't, and actually she knows it isn't, too. At least, it is a loose piece of wood, but it wobbles not as if it's broken, but sturdily, as if there's a purpose to its wobbling. My heart gives a little thump, just as it did when I discovered the too-short drawer that hid the flask. I put my hand up to the curved wooden surface of the column and I pull. I expect it to give way immediately, but it doesn't.

“Let me try,” Zoe says. She jigs with her fingers, pushes her nails, which are longer than mine and painted a vivid red, into the gap between the pillar and the surrounding
surfaces. And there's the answer: It's not just the pillar that's loose, but the apparently solid piece of mounting behind.

“You do it,” she says suddenly.

Is she afraid? Beautiful, bold Zoe?

My smaller, quieter hands get to work. I readjust my grip and pull. This time, pillar and mounting come straight out, revealing themselves as the front end of a small, perfectly crafted compartment about an inch wide and eight inches deep. The sort of place you might hide a document or a letter.
Thrum, thrum, thrum
goes my heart. And from the look on Zoe's face, so does hers.

But the slim wooden box is empty. I turn it upside down and tap it on the bottom, just to make sure. There's nothing in it at all, not even an old button or a pin.

“Oh,” says Zoe, somewhere between disappointed and relieved.

I'm already turning my attention to the second pillar. Of the desk's two “matching” drawers, only one actually concealed a secret space, so I shouldn't expect the second pillar to move. . . .

But it does.

It wobbles just like its twin.

Its twin.

A little pair of pillars. Joined.

“Oh, oh,” says Zoe again.

I pull out the second pillar. It conceals an identical one-by-eight-inch secret space. Only this box isn't empty.

“What is it?” says Zoe.

“Don't know.”

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum
.

It contains an envelope.

I shake it out onto the desk and it lands facedown, so I have to turn it over to read the writing.

For Rob
, it says.

Am I surprised? No, I am not surprised. Nothing surprises me anymore. Especially when it's part of a pattern. You think things end, but they don't; they begin all over again. Like summer follows winter or night follows day.

“Don't open it,” says Zoe.

“I have to.” The loopy black writing is Aunt Edie's. “It's from my aunt.”

“From her, but not to you,” remarks Zoe.

“It's not sealed.” And it isn't. It's one of those old-fashioned envelopes you have to lick. “If Aunt Edie didn't want anyone looking in this envelope, she could have sealed it. But she didn't.”

“Even so,” says Zoe.

“Look,” I say. “It was you who said, ‘Pity it can't talk.' Well, maybe the flask just did.”

“Okay,” says Zoe. “Do it.”

She's talking like the envelope is an unexploded bomb. And it is, in a way, or so I find when I tip its contents out.

There's just one sheet of pale cream paper without an address.

My darling, darling boy
, it begins.

“Read it aloud,” says Zoe.

So I do.

My darling, darling boy
,

You will never read this—one of a lifetime of things you'll never do—so I don't really know why I'm writing it. Except I have to talk to someone and the only one I want to talk to right now is you
.

It's been only four hours since they took you out of my arms. They didn't want me to hold you at all, they said it would be “easier” that way. Easier not to hold my own son?

You just looked asleep, a baby snuggled in some blankets, napping. You fooled me with your beautiful face and your perfect little lips. You'd wake at any moment, I thought, wake and open your eyes and look at me
.

That's why I couldn't leave you alone in the cot, even when I had to go to the bathroom. I couldn't bear the thought of you waking alone, waking when I wasn't there
.

When they came to take you away, I didn't cry. I didn't scream, not out loud, anyway. I just thought, as the little white shawl of you disappeared through the door: I should have unwrapped you. Why didn't I unwrap you? I never saw you naked, never held you skin to skin. Never saw your feet
.

And now I'm back home, sitting at my ordinary desk, writing with my ordinary pen. Writing to you. But perhaps you already know that. Because now I'm not so sure you've gone after all. I can still feel you, so close. I can feel the breath you never took on my cheek. So do you know what I think, darling boy? I think one day you'll wake after all. And when that day comes, I'm going to be right beside you still
.

Until then, my darling boy, keep safe
.

Love you forever
.

I pause. I can barely say the last word.

“What?” says Zoe.

“
Mommy
,” I read.

I'm wrong about not being surprised anymore. My head is zinging with surprise. I see (as if she were in the room) Aunt Edie holding her dead child in her arms. Because that's what it means, doesn't it? That Aunt Edie had a son, Rob, a baby who was born dead.

“That's so sad,” Zoe says, all ghostly quiet.

“Yes,” I say, zinging. “And no.”

“No?”

“Well, yes—of course
yes
.” The very idea of Aunt Edie holding her dead child is enough to tear my heart out. “Sad then—but not now.” I pause. “Don't you see?”

“What? See what?”

I hold up the shimmering green flask. “This. What this could actually be?”

“A soul, you said a soul . . . oh, my gosh,” Zoe says.

“
I can still feel you so close
. That's what she said. All those years ago.”

“No.”

“Yes,” I say. “It has to be.”

“But what's that . . . that thing got to do with Clem?”

“Everything. Remember when I was out in the park, when I put the flask between the snow babies? You remember? And it sort of slipped, or Clem took it, under his arm. And it looked like the flask
belonged
somehow, and I thought that Clem was saying something, or the flask was saying something . . .”

“What? Saying what?”

“Zoe—if you were a soul, a lost soul, the soul of a little boy who died, what would you want?”

“A body.” Zoe's whispering. “I'd want a body.”

“Yes. Of course. Which is why it must have kept coming back to the bottle, to a thing that looks a little like a rib cage, to the only place of safety it could probably find. But inside this hard, hard glass, you'd never give up looking, would you?” I think of all the times the breath sat on the windowsill, looking out. “You'd be wanting, yearning . . . searching for your real other half, your perfect match . . .”

“. . . your twin,” says Zoe.

“Yes.” We hold each other's gaze a moment. “And Clem,” I go on. “Think about Clem.” My mind is rushing again. “Why do you think nothing's making any difference? The doctors, the medicine?
It all went so well
. That's what Gran said. So the doctors can't understand why Clem isn't doing better than he is.”

“Because he has something missing, too.”

“Yes. It has to be. Richie always had more of everything. He was—he is—the bigger twin. He didn't have the damaged heart. He had a greater share of the liver. . . .”

“And now they're separated,” Zoe says. “You think Richie has the greater share of their joint soul?”

“Yes. Or all of it, maybe. What if Richie has all that life force pounding in him and little Clem has nothing?”

“Which is why he's fading. . . .”

“Yes. Exactly. Because it's not just a body that makes us alive, is it? Whatever Pug says about Mrs. Nerg. We're not just blood and bones.” I hold up the shining flask. “We're something more.”

I come to a breathless pause.

“You have to get to the hospital,” says Zoe. “You have to go right now.”

I run into the hallway, where Gran is making preparations for bed.

“We have to go to the hospital,” I shout at her. “We have to go now.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” says Gran. “It's nearly eleven o'clock.”

“No, you don't understand. We have to go now.”

“We're going tomorrow, first thing. That's time enough.”

“It isn't. He won't last that long.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

I hold up the flask. I'm talking about holding the hope of Clem's life in the palm of my hands.

“You should be going now,” Gran says to Zoe.

Which is when the phone rings.

It's Si.

Si says we need to get to the hospital right now.

Zoe hugs me tight. “Good luck,” she whispers.

But I don't think luck will have anything to do with it.

The journey to the hospital passes in a blur. A blur of colors. I cannot take my eyes from the flask; it swirls and changes continually. The closer we get to the hospital, the more definite the new colors become. Peach, apricot, a flutter of pink. As we enter the hospital parking lot, there isn't a single thread of green left. Not one. I don't know what it means, but the new colors are strong and warm, and in that my courage holds.

We arrive, ascend the fifteen floors, and buzz to get access. A nurse greets us, avoids eye contact, and leads us to a different ward in the Intensive Care Baby Unit. I see Richie at once. There are a million wires going in and out
of him, and arranged around him, overhanging him, are machines that hum and beep and flash. The bandages, which cover most of his tiny chest, disappear beneath his huge diaper. His fragility shocks me: If Richie is like this, then Clem . . .

Clem.

Where is Clem?

Clem is not lying beside his brother in the cot.

He is not lying in an adjacent cot.

Clem is not there at all.

Without Clem beside him, Richie does not look whole; he looks like a ghost of himself.

“Poor little thing,” says Gran in a whisper. “Oh, you poor little thing.”

“Where's Clem?” I ask the nurse in a voice far too loud for this hushed and beeping place. “Where's my other brother?”

We cannot be too late. We cannot.

“This way,” says the nurse, and we follow her through the ward to a side room.

Mom is sitting in a chair and Si is sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. Mom has Clem all bundled up in white in her arms. He's not hooked up to any machines and there's not a single tube or wire going in or out of him. This should be good news, but from Mom's face, I know it isn't. Mom
isn't crying, but it looks as if she has been. It looks as if she has been crying all night.

The only part of Clem that isn't swaddled is his head. I'm close enough now to see his skin. It's not the right color—it's a pale and slightly sweaty gray. Gran asks some question without moving her lips and Si shakes his head. But I already know why they've taken the wires out of Clem and put him in Mom's arms.

They've put him there to die.

The hush in the room is suffocating, heavier than snow. The only thing holding Clem to the earth is his mother's love. Mom is holding that gray body as I imagine Aunt Edie once held Rob. Holding him so close that you would have to kill her before she let go of him. And Si is so close to Mom he's part of it, too; Mom is holding Clem and Si is holding Mom. They're all wrapped up there together in defiance of the whole world.

I take out the flask.

I don't know what I expect to happen; I haven't got that far. But this is what happens: nothing.

Nothing at all.

I wait and I wait and I wait and there's still nothing. No matter how I turn or hold or offer or clutch the flask.

I feel hopeless, sick, foolish.

Please
, I say, I beg.
Please
.

No reply.

No reply at all.

It's as if death has taken our breath away and filled the room with stillness and silence and we're all just waiting and waiting for the terrible thing we know must come.

For minutes and minutes, there's nothing in this room but death, unless it's grief. That's one thing you can hear: grief, crying for itself like it did in “For Rob.” I can hear all the notes and twists of it, sobbing and sobbing for the little boy who was never to grow up, whose life ended almost before it began. Edie's Rob. My Clem.

It's as if, somewhere very close, Aunt Edie is still playing the tune, her tune, “For Rob,” and weeping.

“No,” I cry out. “No!”

Or maybe I don't cry out, because nobody hushes me, nobody does or says a thing. We're all in the same space and not in the same space. All locked together and apart. So I don't know, when the tune begins to change, whether it's me who's singing, or someone—something—else. Knowing what's inside and what's outside my head—I've never been very good at that.