Pictures of You Page 10

  He scrunched down on the floor of the car. There was a light cotton blanket folded there and he drew it over him. He’d surprise her, jumping out and calling “Boo!”

  It seemed like a long time. He turned around twice, he changed his position and wished for a drink of water or one of the biographies he loved to read, but that would spoil the game. He liked stories where people had something wrong with their bodies that they overcame, like Helen Keller, but when he said so in class, Bobby Lambros hooted, “Big deal, she got famous. But she’s still blind and deaf, dummy!” Then Bobby shut his eyes and waved his arms around and made grunting noises, saying “wa, wa” like in that movie they made about her, and Sam turned away, disgusted.

  Yawning, he curled up in the corner of the car, the blanket tented over him, and then, despite himself, his eyelids began to droop, his muscles lightened, and there he was, on the floor of the car, rolling into his dreams.

  THE CAR WAS MOVING. Sam heard the rivery sound of the road under him, and he sat up, rubbing his eyes, pulling the blanket from him. Cars were zipping past in a blur of color. And there was his mother in front, singing along to some song on the radio. “You are my spec-i-al someone,” she sang, and because Sam thought she meant him, he grinned. Her voice sounded bright, like it was full of bells. The air seemed full of happiness. With one hand, she picked up the cell phone and dialed, listened, and then she put the phone away.

  His neck hurt, his legs hurt, and he was now deeply thirsty, so sluggish with sleep that he didn’t feel like saying boo anymore or playing any game. “Mom?” he said, and he saw her start, felt her slamming on the brakes, pulling over to the side of the road. She jumped out of the car, tugged open his door, and made him get out, too. Her face was white.

  She grabbed him by his shoulders, hard. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “How did you get in the car? Do you know how dangerous this is? How stupid?”

  Her eyes were as bright as mica, and she was wearing a red dress and the long hanging earrings he had given her for her last birthday. She looked different to him, as if the old her had been scrubbed clean.

  “Why aren’t you at school?”

  “Where are we going?” he cried.

  She was quiet for a moment. She took a step toward him and wobbled, and then he saw she was wearing heels instead of her usual sneakers. “Sam,” she said, “we have to get you back to school, right now.” Her voice sped up. She glanced at her watch and her face drooped. “It’s nearly three,” she said in amazement. “How did it get to be nearly three already? Maybe we can call a sitter,” she said hurriedly, reaching for the phone.

  “Why do I need a sitter? Why can’t I stay with you?”

  She dialed, cocked her head. “You can’t come with me,” she told him, and turned back to the phone. “Come on, come on, come on,” she said, and then she finally hung up. “What am I going to do?” she said, and he heard the panic in her voice.

  “Why? Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Because you can’t,” she said sharply. “Not just now.” She paced back and forth. She picked up her cell phone and put it down. Her lower lip quivered.

  “Mom,” he said. “Are you crying?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said. She pointed to her eyes. “Dry. See that? Dry. Nobody’s crying.” She stared down at her watch and then back at him, as if she were deciding something.

  “Mom?”

  “You’ll have to come with me now,” she said finally. “We’ll figure something out.”

  He nodded doubtfully. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Never you mind. Just get in the car and buckle yourself up.” He started to get in the back but she stopped him. “Sit in the front where I can see you,” she said.

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to. I thought I can’t sit in the front until I’m twelve—”

  “Just do what I say and don’t argue,” she said. “Everything doesn’t have to be by the book, does it? Sometimes the book is wrong.” She got in and snapped on her seat belt and took a deep breath. Sam got in and pulled on the seat belt, and the whole time she made this restless tap with her fingers on the steering wheel. Being in the front seat felt funny, wrong. The sky seemed too large, the road too close.

  Usually his mother drove carefully, checking the lights, keeping under the speed limit, always waving another car forward. Now, though, she wound in and out of lanes, beeping her horn, checking her watch every few minutes. The radio was off and all he could hear was the highway and his mother’s breathing, and his own, which was beginning to feel a little jumpy. His mother passed a car that beeped at her and the man driving shouted something. “Oh,” his mother said. “I can’t even hear myself think.”

  Breathe, he told himself. Breathe slowly. Doctors were always telling him he had to relax, that learning to breathe right helped kids with asthma.

  It felt to him like they were driving forever. “Where are we going?”

  “What?” She glanced at him and then, distracted, peered back at the road.

  “Mom?” he said.

  She was silent for a long while and he was about to ask again. “I don’t know who I am today,” she said quietly. He heard her swallow. “This will be a big adventure,” she said, her voice taking on sparkle. “Don’t you worry.”

  His mother was great about inventing big adventures.

  He saw the blue sign that said a fuel stop was ahead. “I have to pee,” he said, but instead of taking the exit, she pulled over along the side of the road. “Come on, you can go here,” she said.

  “Why can’t we go to the rest stop?”

  Her face furrowed in worry. “Because there’ll be way too many people. There will be lines. And we don’t have the time.”

  “Why not? Where are we going and why do we have to rush?”

  “Pee,” she ordered. “Please, please. Pee.” Distractedly, she got out and looked around her.

  Cars were whizzing by. Reluctantly, he stepped out onto the grass. “Go there, behind those trees,” she said, tottering on her heels. “No one can see you. I won’t look.” She looked past him at the road, the blur of cars. “Quick before a cop comes,” she ordered. “It’s all I need, getting arrested for your indecent exposure.”

  He stepped back from the road and unzipped his corduroy pants and then quickly peed and zipped himself up again. When he came out, she had a bottle of water. “Hands,” she said, and splashed the water on them like a fountain.

  She shooed him into the car and then got in herself.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, and she dug into her purse and gave him some cheese crackers.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you,” she said quietly, and she rested her hand on the top of his head and she got that worried look all over again, which made him feel smaller than he already was. “Please don’t look at me like that,” she told him.

  He flinched and looked at her, but she was staring straight ahead at the road.

  “I played endless games with you,” she said. “I let you play hooky and took you out to movies that weren’t age appropriate.” She glanced at him and then looked back at the road. “The whole time I was pregnant with you, I sang you the same song every day, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ by the Beatles. I rubbed you through my belly and talked to you. You were small as a minute and I loved you. I did. And I do. How many times did I take you the emergency room? How many nights did I sleep on the floor beside your bed and argue and plead with all your doctors? Your dad adores you. He’ll do anything for you, anything so you’ll be safe and happy.” She turned the wheel. “I do what I can. Everybody deserves to be happy, don’t they?” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him when she said it.

  He knew enough not to ask too many questions. Especially not now, when she had that look on her face. He watched the road ahead, the world turning into something unfamiliar and strange.

  He touched her arm and she pulled it away. “Let me just finish this,”
she said, but he wasn’t sure what she meant. She never finished anything, even when Sam did his best to help. She started painting a mural of trees on his wall and stopped after two walls, so that Charlie and Sam finished it on their own. She started writing a mystery about a librarian who commits a murder, and gave it up after chapter four. “I know the ending, what’s the point of writing it?” she said.

  His mother beeped at another car and changed lanes. He studied the clock on the control panel. One hour passed, then two. They had been driving over two and a half hours when the fog came in. “Damn,” she said, craning her neck. “How am I supposed to see through this?” He opened his window so the fog came in. “Don’t do that!” she said, and he shut it, but the cool air collected and his lungs tightened.

  He sat up straighter, stretching his lungs so they could take in more air, the way the doctor had told him to do. He glanced at the signs. “Hartford,” he said. “Bob’s Big Boy Burgers.” He swiveled to the other direction. “Gas, Food, Lodging!”

  He couldn’t help it. He coughed and his mother turned toward him. “Take your inhaler,” she said automatically, and then he reached into his pocket, pulling out lint, two pennies, and then he felt for the plastic tube but instead of his inhaler, there was a Batman adventure figure. He glanced at his mother in horror. She was frowning again, hunched over the wheel. Then she turned to him.

  “You don’t have it?”

  That morning he had checked for it, he had felt the plastic in his pocket, but it must have been this toy. Instantly, he felt panicky. “You didn’t take your inhaler?” His inhaler was supposed to go everywhere with him. The school nurse had an extra one locked in her cabinet, but he avoided her at all costs when he saw her in the hall, because he didn’t want her embarrassing him by asking him loudly “How’s the old asthma today?” like she had the last time, making all the other kids laugh. “How’s the old asthma?” they asked him, like the asthma was a person. Extra inhalers were in the house—in his room, in his parents’ room, even in a special drawer at the Blue Cupcake. “Aren’t you glad we have inhalers to make you feel better?” his dad always asked, but Sam wasn’t so sure. His inhalers were everywhere and nowhere because he’d never let anyone see him use one. If he felt wheezy, he’d tell the teacher he had to pee and then he’d go into one of the stalls in the bathroom and even if no one else was in there, he’d flush the toilet to mask the whooshing noise the inhaler made.

  “Are you sure it didn’t fall out? Is it in the backseat?” She slowed the car and felt around in the back with her free hand. “It’s all the fog, the damp,” she said. “I’ll turn on the air conditioner. That should help. You wait and see.” She shut all the windows and turned it on, but all it did was make them both cold, and this time, when he coughed, the wheeze was louder.

  “Can you hold on?” she asked him. “We can call your doctor and get a new prescription phoned in somewhere. How about that? Can you wait?” She glanced at her watch. “It’ll be fine,” she said, “I’ll call your doctor, have him phone in a prescription.”

  He coughed again, felt his lungs narrowing, which always made him panic. “Mom—”

  “We’ll find a hospital, then. We’ll go to an ER.”

  “I can wait,” he said. He hated the emergency room. You never knew if they were going to make you stay overnight, and they put in an IV needle, which he hated most of all because you were attached to it and the medicine they gave him always made his heart speed like a bird wildly flapping in his chest.

  “I’m fine,” he said, but he could barely get the words out. They both heard the accordion sound of his lungs, the thin gasping wheeze, and his mother seemed to deflate.

  “Oh, baby, you’re not fine,” she said.

  She wrenched the car around in a U-turn, startling him, making him bump back against the seat. She made a left onto another road. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. We’ll go back and find a town. Then we’ll come back. There’s still time,” She picked up her phone and dialed. “Pick up, pick up,” she said, and then she clicked the phone shut and looked at the map again and suddenly she was spinning the car around, changing direction on the road again, and all they could see was the fog. “If I could just see a bloody sign …,” she said, and then he coughed again.

  The fog was so heavy now, he couldn’t see the road in places. “Mommy,” he said, “I’m sorry!” and then he coughed, and it was like breathing through a straw.

  “I’m sorry, not you,” she said. “I’m the one who’s sorry.” She grabbed her phone again; she punched in three numbers: 911, the numbers he was supposed to call if he was in trouble. She shouted into the phone. “If I knew where we were I could drive to a hospital!” she yelled, and then she suddenly threw the phone out into the fog. “Okay,” she said, drawing herself up. “Okay.” She looked at him. “Someone will be here,” she said. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Who’s coming?” He wheezed, trying to suck in air.

  “Someone,” she promised.

  They both heard the car. She leaped outside. When he started to unbuckle himself, she reopened the door and shook her head. “Stay in the car,” she ordered, “Don’t get out until I tell you to. I’ll make sure they see us,” and when he moved to the door, she jerked his hand away. “I said, stay in the car! Don’t make yourself sicker!”

  Then she drew herself up, like she knew what she was going to do, and for one moment he couldn’t see her. He unbuckled his belt and ran out by the car door. She was swallowed up in the fog. And then she moved closer and looked back at him and then there, coming toward them, were headlights, and she lifted one arm and waved and for the first time that day, he saw her smile, blooming like a flower, full of hope.

  The headlights were coming too fast, so that he ran toward her, forgetting all the things she had told him never to do, calling her name, calling Mommy, and then she turned to him, not moving, standing still until it was too late, and then she had only a moment to stare at it, too, as though she couldn’t believe it was finally here.

  There was a great terrible noise, like the air screaming and breaking apart. Something slashed his arm and Sam cried out, and then he was running. And then he knew the sound screaming in the air was him. He could see that his arm was bleeding, gashed open as if someone had poured red poster paint into it. It hurt but he tried not to cry because sometimes crying just didn’t do any good. “Mommy!” he screamed, but he didn’t see her in the fog. What if she was hurt? Hysteria bubbled in his body. Where was she? Why wasn’t she calling to him? He ran. His feet skipped over twigs and brush and the air suddenly grew hot. He ran into the woods, panting, and then crouched, his hands over his head, his eyes squinched tightly shut. He kept hearing the crash, over and over. His arm burned, and no matter how he gripped it, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. He couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t catch his breath! Don’t cry, he told himself, panicking, because he knew crying, like laughing, could make it worse, but the sobs kept heaving from him. Shaking, he curled himself into a tighter ball, he tried to purse his lips, suctioning the air up like a straw. Any minute his mom would call his name. Any second she’d wrap her arms about him. “Where’ve you been?” she’d say.

  Don’t look. Don’t you dare look.

  And then he glanced up, and for a moment, he saw a woman standing there, in a white dress with long black curls racing about her head and she looked just like the angels in his Sunday School book and his breath stopped. An angel, he thought, amazed, a real angel, and then, he thought, did that mean his mother was dying and the angel was taking her to Heaven? Tears flooded his eyes and he sobbed harder. The angel looked right at him so that he began to shake, and then she looked toward the place where his mother had been, as if she were motioning him. He tried to move toward them, but the angel and his mother both vanished into the fog, as if they were together, leaving him behind. “Wait!” he screamed. “Don’t leave me! Come back!” Then he heard another car, a door slamming and a voice calling, “Jesus,”
and then Sam came out from the woods, his airway so tight he felt light-headed and he didn’t see his mother at first—don’t look, don’t look—just two cars crashed together, and the angel was gone, and then he saw flames, hot and white, and an ambulance and two men in white were standing there, and when they saw him, one man moved toward him. “There’s a kid!” he said. Everything was moving so quickly. Sam took a step, too, and he tried one last labored breath, as loud as a warning whistle, before he collapsed into the man’s arms.

  He woke up and he was moving in an ambulance on a small white cot. The two men were beside him There was a battery-operated nebulizer for him to breathe into, the bubbling, familiar sound of it, and he felt his lungs grow bigger. “That’s it, breathe,” said one of the men, and Sam did. His lungs opened, and even though he felt better, they said he had to go to the hospital.

  “Where are they?” Sam cried, panicked. The two men looked at each other.

  “Where’s my mom?”

  “She’s following us in the car,” one of the paramedics said.

  “John—” the other man said to him sharply.

  “I knew it! I knew she was fine!” Sam said. He craned his head to look out the front window, but all he saw was the fog.

  “You’ll be fine, too. Good enough to pitch a little league game.”

  “I don’t play baseball.”

  “What? Now that’s a crime!”

  “Soccer,” Sam said, though that was partly a lie.

  Rest easy, they told him. They explained that he just had to see a doctor at the hospital, to make sure he was all right, and that his father had been called and was coming right away.