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“Jimmy?”
He turns to her. It’s dark in the taxi. They’re pulling away from the pick-up bay at O’Hare already, the striped lights of the overhang flashing above. The cab’s engine is a low whir, like the whir of planes coming down to land on the edge of the desert, like the whir of half a dozen copiers assembled in a line along a basement wall.
“Jimmy?” Kim’s flickering silhouette leans closer. “What’s the address?”
So Jimmy gives the name of his mother’s street. The cab driver’s head bobs as he swipes on the turn signal, and they follow the trickling cars onto the freeway. A cartoonish tree sways from the rearview mirror, filling the interior with the bright smell of pine. Some call-in relationship advice show is playing quietly on the radio, the host’s voice a smooth undercurrent—like the engine, another low whir.
The moon is out. The glow of it is coldly fluorescent behind loose clouds that are dyed gold by the lights of the city, grey ribbons streaked with a yellow highlighter. As the cab curves away from the airport, rain starts to fall, just softly. Tiny raindrops glint on the dark windows, sliding backwards in beaded threads.
Somewhere across all the rooftops and highways is the hospital, a red-brick building in Berwyn, with square windows and hallways painted mint green. With a sharp smell of cleaning products, with a view down into a tree-filled courtyard. Jimmy’s knee twinges to remember it.
The cab changes lanes. A man with a Minnesotan accent calls in on a bad line to ask whether to break up with the girlfriend who’s cheating on him. The host makes sympathetic noises at the back of her throat, and the taxi keeps groaning along, and the little cartoon pine tree sways and sways until finally they’re pulling off the freeway and passing beneath rail bridges and old factories and the empty spaces where old factories used to be. Neon pinks and blues spill from all-night bars, glistening in the rain.
And then the old buildings turn into older houses, mismatched weatherboards and brick-and-tiles. In the night, the rooms with open curtains broadcast their interiors to the street, their square windows like television screens showing living rooms in profile, showing a mother washing dishes above a blue kitchen sink. They offer glimpses of bright domesticity between the dark-leafed trees, between the empty front yards and emptier lots. Buildings that were foreclosed when Jimmy was last here five months ago for Christmas are missing now. A letter “B” has fallen from the sign on the Town Hall Bowl.
But still his mother’s house appears from the darkness as it always does, the one unchanging part of the street. The white weatherboard is soft under the streetlamps. Christmas lights still hang from the awnings, tangled and extinguished. She hasn’t taken them down yet this year.
The taxi stops a couple of houses down, idling. The advice-show host on the radio is reading an advertisement now, and the driver dials down the volume then twists back in his seat. The dome light above them comes on slowly, filling the cab with gentle yellow.
Jimmy clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says, gaze flicking again to the white beacon of the old house again, then back. “Yeah, this is good.” He fishes for his wallet in his pants pocket as the driver flicks buttons on the fare machine, as Kim opens her door and steps out onto the street. Jimmy hands over some cash and then joins her.
It’s still warm, the air caressing his bare forearms. Kim’s looking over at the neighbor’s place, a narrow brick bungalow. Her forehead creases.
“It’s this one, next door,” Jimmy says, nodding to his old house. It’s strange that she doesn’t know it already, doesn’t know it without him saying. He adjusts his bag on his shoulder, grunting with the weight of his hastily-packed clothes. Exhales, then crosses the darkened street and approaches the familiar house.
The yard is nearing overgrown, the grass long and dotted with tall weeds. Jimmy climbs the front steps and sets his bag down. He skims his fingertips along the top of the doorframe, through the dust and accumulated dirt until he feels the hard edge of a key.
He takes it down and slides it into the lock.
“Secure,” Kim murmurs, eyes glimmering.
“Yeah, well…” he says, and he gives her a weak grin. He turns the handle, pushing the door inward and stepping inside. Flicks on a light. The bulb spills yellow into the dim entryway, illuminating the striped wallpaper, the hall cabinets.
The air in here feels musty, like the place has been closed up for a lot longer than it really has. Like his mother’s been gone for more than just half a day. Beneath the staleness hangs the achingly familiar smell of home, a smell that changes with the seasons, somehow. It’s been forever since he’s visited at this time of year, May coming into summer, and the warm air smells like trapped sun, like dust and linen.
He turns back. Kim’s hefting his bag through the front door, and he holds out a hand to take it from her, but she just lowers it to the carpet next to her own, then she straightens.
Before them, the patterned hallway vanishes into the darkness. It suddenly seems so cramped and so small. So claustrophobic. He remembers running up and down this hallway as a kid, remembers it feeling back then like an Olympic racing track or an airport runway, but now he thinks he could walk down it in three steps, thinks he could almost touch one end from the other.
“So this is it,” he says softly, not looking at her. He trails his hand along a cabinet, walking down to the kitchen instead. Flicks on the lights in there, too. Today’s newspaper is folded open to the crossword on the countertop. As he picks it up, he hears Kim behind him, her footsteps slowing to a stop. He looks over and says, “D’you want a drink or anything?”
She frowns. “A drink?”
“I meant, like…water,” he says, “or coffee. Do you want a coffee?”
“Jimmy,” she murmurs. She’s standing where the kitchen meets the living room, half-in and half-out of the space. Her forehead creases again.
“Yeah,” he says carefully, and he looks down again. “Okay, yeah.” He lowers the newspaper and opens the top kitchen drawer. The keys to his mother’s car lie there, on top of the old takeout menus and batteries and coupons. He jangles them around in his palm, then looks outside. “Uh, car’s out back.”
So Kim follows him out of the kitchen and into the mudroom, where jackets and coats hang on their hooks like shapeless ghosts, where empty boxes pile against the wall, waiting to be recycled. He leads her out into the darkened backyard. The grass is overgrown here, too, and the old tree near the far fence is a tangled black shape against the moonlit sky.
Jimmy forces open the lopsided door to the garage and then steps inside. The old Volvo is tucked away in here, and he drags the white cover off it, revealing dark seafoam-green paint flecked with age and rust. He slides into the front seat, one leg inside the car and one leg out, and tries the ignition. It splutters and spits and then catches, and he revs the accelerator, the engine grumbling then settling.
He nods to Kim, who’s already standing by the garage door, waiting, and she rolls the door up. The metal creaks. Jimmy settles properly into the driver's seat, shutting himself in, and then he twists on the lights. They shine in warm cones that have Kim holding a hand up to her face as he drives past her, out into the back alley. He idles there in the darkness, the engine chugging. The tall trees of the neighbors are black shapes here, too.
The passenger door opens and Kim hops in, huffing out a breath as she sits. His mother’s old sheepskin covers are still on the front seats, and Kim rubs her thumb over the edge of hers. Her nail traces small circles on the white, flattening the woolen threads, then she looks to him.
And Jimmy wonders why it always feels like he’s waiting for her to say something. Like he’s idling here now because he’s waiting for her permission to leave. So he clears his throat, and looks forward, and drives, slow through the alley and then out into the sleepy Cicero streets. They merge onto the main road, and then turn to cross Laramie Bridge. The old Volvo handles sluggishly, like the tires need air. There’s the flash of train cars and colorful containers through the bridge railings, red and blue and red.
Another turn, and Jimmy follows the next road as it runs parallel with the train tracks, past empty lots and old storefronts. Past an electrical substation that rises monstrously from the earth, pylons and towers and reddened metal coils. Past the old costume shop that’s been on the corner here for as long as he can remember, skeletons hanging in the dark windows. A train rushes down the neighboring line towards them, a burning-white headlight shining in a ringed circle on the front.
And then there’s the hospital, over the tracks.
Jimmy idles at the level crossing as another train goes by, as the red signals flash and clang.
It’s all so much closer to his mother’s house than he ever remembers, so much closer than it had felt when he stayed here after his surgery years ago. Then, it had felt more like another city. Back when it was just him alone in the mint-green ward with the leafy courtyard below and the bone-cold ache in his knee and not enough cash in his pockets.
The train goes by, vanishing all-at-once, and the bars slowly rise up over the level crossing. Jimmy drives across and passes the hospital entrance, and then he’s pulling into the wide, tree-lined parking lot. It’s pretty full even though it’s late at night, but he finds a space and turns into it and stops.
Shuts off the engine.
He sits, just for a minute, in the car, not moving. Kim doesn’t move either. It smells like the past in here, too—like once-damp seat covers, the perfumed scent of something floral and earthy. He releases the steering wheel, the skin of his palms creaking over the leather.
And he and Kim step out into the warm night. The haze of gentle rain is still falling, and the white sign for the hospital glows in flaring neon. As he steps through the automatic glass doors, it feels like stepping into a different time zone—lights glaring and phones ringing and people walking swiftly through the halls.
Jimmy heads up to the front desk and waits. When the woman is free, he gives his mother’s name, and she checks something on a green computer screen then directs him down the hall: two lefts and a right and then ask again at the desk there, okay? He nods. Walks on past the desk, through the swinging doors that feel like a firestop against the rest of the hospital.
But he lingers at the first turn. He stares at the glinting metal sign for the Operating Room. The acidic smell of some industrial cleaner cloys with the fat-edged scent of hospital food that’s wafting up from some ancient kitchen somewhere, even though it’s late at night. He stares at the sign, and behind it are the mint-green walls that had seemed all those years ago like a water’s surface waiting to be broken through, like water churning and churning and never settling, never becoming clear. Seething.
“Jimmy?”
He looks sideways to Kim—who’s here now, somehow, in this hospital. It makes sense without making sense, in the way that a dream does. Kim’s here because of course she’s here, even though she shouldn’t be, even though she wasn’t here then.
Her eyes turn down softly, and he feels her hand on his bare elbow.
“Yeah,” he says, finally. He takes a step in the direction of the OR.
“Jimmy,” Kim says again, fingers trailing on his skin then dropping. “It’s this way.” She nods to the left, and now he remembers the woman’s directions. There’s a sign on the wall here, too. Oncology.
“Oh,” Jimmy says. His pulse hammers. Oncology. “Okay.”
He exhales shakily, eyes lingering on the word until the dark shape of Kim moves from the edge of his vision. It’s easier to just follow her, anyway, follow her as she turns through the seething green hallways, as she takes another left turn then a right, as she stops at the next desk and says his mother’s name.
The sign here says Day Clinic, and it’s emptier than the other waiting rooms have been, with fewer nurses and doctors rushing around. There’s the steady beep of a machine, far off. Somewhere else, a phone rings.
And, waiting, he sees his mother. Sees her before he knows he’s going to. She’s not off in her own room like he’d unconsciously expected, not in the room he realizes he’d built in his mind, the small ward with the view down into the courtyard. He’s not even sure what this area is, this alcove half-off the waiting room, but there’s a muted television playing some as-seen-on-TV commercial for a set of steak knives, and there are a couple of patterned brown armchairs, and there’s the back of his mother’s head and the curve of her yellow cardigan. He knows the one just from the shoulder of it.
Kim comes back from the desk. She must see the direction of his gaze. She touches him again in almost the same spot as last time, and says, “You go. I’ll wait here.”
And he steps away from the tether of Kim.
He wonders if his mother even knows he’s coming. When she looks over she doesn’t seem surprised to see him. She just smiles, face relaxing. Her hair’s grown out a bit since Christmas, curling down above her ears now, somewhere between grey and brown. Her skin is pale, but he’s sure it’s just the hospital lights casting sharp shadows and highlighting every curve of bone.
“Jimmy,” she says, and she rises from the armchair and closes the distance to him. She wraps him in a hug, her arms solid and warm. He lifts his arms behind her, and into his shoulder she murmurs, “Careful of my back, honey.”
So he holds his hands there, hovering like small birds, above the yellow cardigan. He exhales. “You okay?”
“Of course I am,” she says. She pulls back. Tightens her own grip on his forearms and tilts her head to study him. “You look tired.”
He laughs then and shakes his head. “Tired?”
She nods and squeezes his arms. “Have you been sleeping enough?”
Another soft laugh. “Yeah, Mom,” he says. “Yeah, I’ve been sleeping.” The swipes of black-blue seem to darken beneath her pale eyes. “Have you?”
“Oh, well, I need less sleep these days, you know,” she says mildly, but she gives him a small smile, an acknowledgement.
Jimmy smiles back.
Footsteps crack over the floor behind him, and they’re followed by an Irish-accented voice: “Ah now, this must be the son I was promised.”
Jimmy turns to see a woman in scrubs standing behind another of the other brown armchairs in the alcove, her hands resting on the curving back of it, like she’s shifting her weight off her feet.
“You have good timing, Mr. McGill,” she continues. “The bleeding finally stopped a couple of hours ago.”
“Bleeding?” Jimmy says.
The doctor nods. “Bone marrow biopsies are a routine procedure, but we saw some prolonged bleeding with Ruth here, and since it took so long to settle we think it’s best there’s someone around to keep an eye on her tonight.” The words sound rote, and he wonders how many people she’s already said this to, wonders if this is what was told to Chuck over the phone.
When it’s clear she’s still waiting for a response, he nods and says, “Okay.”
“Good,” the doctor says, tapping her fingers on the armchair. “Now Ruth, you need to take it easy, keep your fluids up—and you’ve got the dressings? Good. Your son here…”
Ruth smiles. “Jimmy.”
“Jimmy can change that for you tomorrow, okay? It’ll be hard for you to reach. And call if you have any other concerns.” The doctor taps her palm once more on the back of the armchair, then stands fully upright. She retrieves a paper cup of coffee that’s resting on a waist-high wooden border encircling the walls here. The smell of the coffee, sharp and bitter, finally hits him as she carries it away.
He looks back to his mother, and she lifts a hand to touch his upper arm again. He smiles faintly. “So you’re okay?”
“You know me, honey,” Ruth says, and she chuckles. “I’ve always been lucky. Give me a one-in-fifty chance, and I’ll find a way to win it.” The smile shifts. “Maybe ‘winning’ is the wrong word here.”
He smiles back. “Right,” he says. He swallows. “Well, it’s good to see you, Mom.”
She squeezes his arm. “You, too, honey,” she says, and then she drops her hand. She squares her shoulders, somehow growing taller before him. “Now take me home.”
He chuckles and nods. Picks up her bag from beside the brown armchair. Square wound dressings in shiny plastic packages peek out from inside it, along with a colorful-looking brochure. He catches the beginning of a word—ESSEN—in crisp blue letters that vanish beneath the canvas as he hefts it over his shoulder. He grips the strap tightly and takes a step back out into the main waiting room of the day clinic.
Kim is hovering there, standing above a low table, flicking through a magazine that she can only just reach.
Something in his chest relaxes. Jimmy grins as he walks over. “Hey, there,” he says quietly. “Reading anything good?”
A soft chuckle. “Just catching up on my Horse & Hound,” Kim says. She looks up at him and smiles—and then her eyes flick to Ruth.
So do Jimmy’s. His mother’s eyebrows are up, and he turns from her back to Kim, then back to his mother. “Mom, this is…” He waves a hand, passing from one to the other, like he’s handing over the name: “This is Kim.”
His mother’s eyes twinkle, soft wrinkles forming at the outer edges. “Ah.”
And Jimmy nods. His gaze flashes to Kim, still hovering there with her arms at her sides. He clears his throat then says, “She, uh, she gave me a ride to the airport.”
Another smile flickers over his mother’s face.
“It’s good to meet you, Mrs. McGill,” Kim says, eyes warm.
There’s a fraction of a pause, and then Ruth moves forward and wraps Kim in a hug. Kim’s arms rise, but, in a soft voice, he hears his mother say, “Careful of my back, dear,” so Kim’s hands float above the yellow cardigan, like his did, a few inches away from actually touching.
His mother rubs Kim’s shoulder, up and down, and then they move apart again. Kim’s smile flickers.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” Ruth says, giving Kim’s upper arms a squeeze before letting go completely, just like she always does with him. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Kim’s smile shifts.
“But not enough,” Ruth says, pointing a finger for emphasis. “Not nearly enough.” And she turns and quirks a brow at Jimmy, wrinkles deepening around her eyes.
He looks between them, from his mother to Kim then back again.
And Ruth says, “So how about that going home, then?”
“Right,” Jimmy says shortly, and he nods, catching Kim’s gaze for a fraction of a second—a glimpse of clear blue among the turbulent green walls, her eyes bright and filled with something he doesn’t have a name for yet.
The three of them move, slower than earlier, out of the day clinic. The mint-green hallways of the hospital are still bustling, the off-grey floors polished and squeaking, the wooden fireblock doors swinging between the different departments.
And then they’re outside again. After the bright interior of the hospital, Jimmy’s almost surprised to see that it’s night, that it’s still dark out here save the blue-glow of the moon and the haze of the light rain. As they walk to the car, Jimmy feels untethered, feels like each step is stopping short a few inches above the ground, a few inches above really touching.
He fishes the keys from his pocket and unlocks the passenger door first, holding his hands out to help his mother inside, though she just brushes him away. He gets in the driver’s seat, the sheepskin cover soft and familiar as he settles there. The ignition catches easier this time, the engine running with a steady hum.
He shifts into gear. As they pull out of the parking lot, he glances up to the rearview mirror. Kim’s eyes are only just visible in the dark. They flick to his, and he looks back to the road.
The headlights carve a bright path down past the hospital. Dark trees flicker, leaves shifting and catching the light. The streetlamps here are old iron ones, curving downward, bent over the street like they’re kneeling there waiting for something.
“So, Kim,” Ruth says, her voice quiet over the steady grumble of the engine, “have you been to Chicago before?”
After a moment, Kim says, “I haven’t, no.”
Jimmy smiles. He darts another gaze to the mirror, and says, “Go, Cubs, Go, right?”
Kim’s eyes soften as she chuckles.
The car rattles over the tracks, then again as they cross the second line. Ruth makes another thoughtful noise. “It’s a good city for history, if you like history,” she says, nodding slowly as if agreeing with her own words. After a moment: “Are you from New Mexico originally, then?”
Another pause, and then Kim says, “Nebraska.”
“Ah,” Ruth says, still soft. She laces her fingers together then tilts her head and add: “I’ve never been. Omaha?”
“No,” Kim says, voice quiet. “Just a small town.” And Jimmy can almost sense the air getting heavier with Kim’s thoughts, accumulating mass in the car until she says, “Not on the map.”
He exhales, with a strange feeling like he’d been holding his breath.
Ruth hums. “Well, then,” she says warmly, “I was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, so I know something about small towns.”
Jimmy turns off from the railway line, the car lazily obeying. He looks to Kim in the rearview again. She’s staring away now, staring out the window. As he makes another sluggish turn, he says, “When’d you last check the tires on this thing, Mom? Wow!”
His mother chuckles and then shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t exactly drive it much anymore.”
Jimmy laughs lightly, flicking on the turn signal. “So, I’m hearing: haven’t checked ‘em since the eighties?”
Ruth bats him on the arm. “You stop that,” she says. She chuckles again then adds, “I think I’m going to sell it to Desmond down the road, anyway. He totaled his van back in March.”
“That asshole?” Jimmy says, and his eyes flick up to catch Kim’s blue ones crinkling. “No way, Mom. Jesus.”
Softly: “It’s just taking up space.”
He frowns. They stop at a set of lights, and he turns sideways to look at his mother. And he thinks it’s just the darkness and the unnatural red light that’s casting strange shadows, that’s highlighting every curve of bone. She’s not that old.
He opens his mouth and then closes it again. He thinks of the bright pamphlet in her bag, of the word Oncology.
And then the light shifts to green, and he drives on, turning off into the alley between the backs of the houses, where the old tires of the Volvo creak along the cement. The steering wheel trembles a little beneath his palms. Kim opens the garage door for them, and he coasts inside and then tucks the car back away, shutting off the groaning engine. He feels like he can hear the old thing exhaling, the engine ticking and settling.
The three of them cross the backyard, down the concrete path between the long grass and up to the door. Kim lingers behind him and Ruth, floating there like she’s on the edge of a length of string. When he turns back to her, her lips flutter upward in a small smile.
He smiles back, then turns away and unlocks the door. The lights are still on inside the house from earlier, and he moves through into the kitchen. Sets the car keys down on the counter, puts his mother’s bag beside them. The fresh dressings peek out from the blue canvas.
Kim is standing back at the edge of the room, just inside the doorway. He meets her eyes again. She gives a small cough and looks around her. “You have a very lovely home, Mrs. McGill.”
“Ruth, please.” His mother bustles past the kitchen counter, waving a hand to Kim.
Kim inclines her head. “You have a very lovely home, Ruth.”
“Well, thank you,” Ruth says warmly, stacking newspapers and magazines into one pile on the countertop. “It’s a complete mess.”
Kim smiles, eyes flicking to Jimmy. “I like that about it.”
Ruth returns the smile, and says, “Then I’ll let you stay, Kim-who-drove-my-son-to-the-airport.”
Kim looks quickly to Jimmy again, and says, “I don’t mean to impose—”
“Enough.” Another waved hand from Ruth. “Stay as long as you like,” she says, and then, as her eyes soften, “or at least until Sunday.”
And Kim says quietly, “Deal.” She inclines her head. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Ruth says. She finishes straightening some invisible something on the kitchen counter, then looks up at the two of them. “Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s late,” she says, “and I’m going to bed.”
Jimmy lowers his hands to the countertop. “Can I get you anything?”
Ruth shakes her head. She reaches over and pats the top of his hand. “Just get some rest for me.” She nods to Kim next, then moves away, turning off into the hallway.
“Mom—” Jimmy says, and he darts around the counter and follows her. He catches her at the bottom of the stairs. “Mom, wait, are we gonna talk about this? What happened today?”
“Honey,” she says, her eyes crinkling, “I’m tired. We can talk tomorrow, okay?” She presses her hand to his shoulder, palm warm through his shirt. “I mean it. Get some sleep.”
He shrugs. “I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you , right?”
“Jimmy, I’m fine. I just need some rest. Okay?” She smiles to him then lowers her hand, and, after he nods jerkily again, she moves away. He watches the glow of her yellow cardigan until it vanishes around the top of the stairs.
And he exhales. Turns back and walks slowly again into the kitchen. Kim is standing in the same place. He stands still, too, staring over at her, and he has the same strange feeling he felt in the car earlier, as if he’s waiting for her to say something, or waiting for her to…he doesn’t know what. Waiting for her.
He runs his hand over his face, dragging down his cheeks, and he laughs softly. “Jesus, I’m beat.”
Kim folds in her lips. “Is she okay?”
Jimmy shrugs. “I dunno.” But he laughs again, sharper now, more bitter. “Yeah, I think so.” And then, across the darkened kitchen, the cramped and crowded space that seems suddenly unfamiliar, he says, “Kim, why did you come here?”
Her face shifts.
And now he hears his own question hanging there. He closes his eyes, breathes out through his nose. “I mean—I’m glad you came.” He thinks he is. He doesn’t know. He feels like he doesn’t know anything.
So he opens his eyes again. Kim’s still there, in the middle of the kitchen, equidistant from everything, as if getting any closer to the fridge or the oven would mean asserting herself in this space. Her chest rises and falls.
And then she moves, walking over the linoleum until she’s right in front of him. Her arms come up around him, and she presses her cheek into his shoulder. He floats his hands over her back for a moment, hovering birds, and then he finally lowers them, touching. She’s warm against him.
“Jimmy,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry about your mom.”
He nods, her hair brushing his cheek.
“And Chuck.”
He pulls back. “What about Chuck?”
She makes a face can’t read, and her eyes grow soft. “Are you going to call him tonight?” she says. “Tell him you made it?”
He looks at the clock; it’s even later than he realized. Shakes his head. “He’s probably asleep by now.”
She hums thoughtfully. Her expression shifts like she’s about to say something else, but she doesn’t. Instead, she lets her arms fall and stands there in his childhood kitchen, looking up at him.
He chuckles, short and gruff. “I should probably be asleep by now, too.” He takes a step back, putting some distance between them. He can still feel the warmth of Kim against his chest, and he touches a hand to the spot then turns away.
“Yeah,” Kim says heavily.
He looks back to her.
“We should sleep,” she says, eyes boring into his. She tilts her head.
He hears the unspoken offer in there, in the pronoun choice and the turn of her brow. But he can feel himself shaking his head like somebody else is doing it.
He runs his forefinger and thumb over his lip and looks out into the night; but, instead of seeing into the dark overgrown yard, he just sees himself and Kim, reflected there in the window. The yellow light of the kitchen spills around them, him in his striped blue button-up with his neatly combed hair and Kim across from him. A pair of strangers on a screen. He sees himself shake his head and lower his hand from his mouth.
“Let’s just sleep,” he says, turning away from himself and from her.
Upstairs, warm light bleeds from beneath his mother’s door, and he can hear her television murmuring. No sleep for her yet either, then. He opens the linen closet, and passes sheets and a comforter to Kim, their hands brushing.
They make up the bed in Chuck’s room, Kim pauses to look at the cabinet of old trophies, the shelves of old textbooks. The photograph of Chuck and their parents on the day fourteen-year-old Chuck left for college. Jimmy tucks in his side of the blanket then walks over to stand beside her.
“Do you remember this day?” she asks, pointing to the family standing outside the house. It’s still the same white weatherboard. Only the trees are different.
And he shakes his head. “Just from the photo. I was still too little, really.”
She nods. “I wondered why you weren’t there.”
Chuck looks unbearably young in the photo now, all dressed up, his suit still a bit too big for him. He’d grow into it soon. Jimmy laughs softly. “Probably never thought you’d be seeing your boss like that, huh?”
She gives a wry smile, looking at him sideways. “Well, I never thought I’d be sleeping in his childhood bedroom, either.”
He chuckles. “No kidding.” He huffs out a breath. Takes in the room, the turned-down bed. Looks back to her. “It’s all okay, right? You’ll let me know if you need anything else?”
“Jimmy,” she says quietly, “I’m good.”
“Yeah, well,” he says, and then he smiles, weakly. He stands there in the light of her gaze for a moment, and then, soft: “Thank you for coming with me, Kim.”
She shrugs, a breezy, almost dismissive, thing.
“I probably would’ve got on a plane to Tokyo or Morocco without you there, you know.”
A flicker of a smile from Kim. “Jimmy, we were in the domestic terminal.”
He grins and shrugs.
And she finally chuckles, shaking her head. She moves over to her own bag, the one she’d only just had enough time to pack on their way to the airport. She lifts it onto the dresser and smiles over at him lingering in the doorway. “Goodnight, Jimmy.”
“Yeah,” he says, and then, hand on the handle: “Night, Kim.”
She nods, and he closes the door. In the patterned hallway, light glows from his mother’s room, and the television mumbles quietly.
He doesn’t bother changing the sheets on his old bed. He just unbuttons his shirt, steps out of his slacks. Stands there in his undershirt and boxers. Slides beneath the covers and flicks off his lamp.
And he feels, as he always does when he stays here, that he never really left. That he’s waking up from a dream, that he’s a kid again, and when he opens his eyes he’ll be in this room twenty-five years ago, with his model airplanes hanging from the ceiling and both his parents down the hall and his brother’s room waiting and empty.
It feels like it’s been a lot longer than a day since he was working, since he was hole-punching documents down in the basement of Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill. Since he was sitting at the little square table in his little square apartment, the law school letters waiting in front of him.
The law school letters. They’re still in his bag, almost forgotten. The thought of them feels blasphemous, somehow, now—and maybe it’s seeing Chuck’s trophies, or the photographs of his father outside the store, or maybe it’s just being here in Cicero at all.
The television hums from down the hallway and sleep is a long time coming.
The lawnmower hisses and spits over the grass. Jimmy tightens his grip on the handle, then grunts, pushing the ancient thing forward. He curves it around past the clothesline, where the grass is patchy and brown. The engine is a harsh vibration that seems to rise into the surrounding air, rapping against his ears, his chest. He can feel it in his lungs.
It’s midday and the sun is high, tightening his skin with the heat of it. It reflects brightly off the white paint of his mother’s house. Jimmy squints, twisting the mower down past the living room window.
From the back steps, a portable radio blasts tinny music he can barely hear over the chugging engine. He passes beneath the shade of a tree branch, a sudden rush of coolness, dappled leaves flashing over pale skin, and then it’s back into the pounding sunlight. He shakes his bangs off his face and breathes out through pursed lips, feeling the sweat prickling the back of his neck. And he knows he’s probably going to burn, can already feel the tenderness above his spine as his shirt collar rubs against skin.
The mower splutters over a snapped branch, screaming as the blades hit, and—
“It’s a kind of blood cancer,” Ruth had said, sitting across from him in the living room.
The television’s muted, showing a baseball game from earlier in the week, and Jimmy suddenly desperately wants to turn it off. “Blood cancer,” he repeats flatly. In flat metallic letters behind his eyes, he sees: Oncology.
“Yes,” Ruth says, and then slowly, like she’s a child sounding out the syllables of words she’s not used to: “Essential thrombocythemia.”
He looks to the pamphlet on the coffee table, the one he’d seen in her bag in the hospital. His mother says the end of the word like it’s four separate ones: sie-thee-mee-ah. And he says, “Are you okay? What does that mean?”
In the Cubs game, someone steals second. The sound’s off, but he can hear the cheers anyway, distant and hissing.
The yard stinks of gas and the sharp tang of freshly cut grass. Jimmy fights with the mower, twisting it around the roots of the old tree down near the back fence.
The roots have grown out a lot since he last did this, since he did this every couple of weeks as a teenager. They buckle and ripple over the yard, and he’s leaving patches of long grass everywhere the mower doesn’t fit between them.
On the radio, the music stops and changes to a weather report. He thinks it’s a weather report; he can’t quite hear it over the mower. Something about long hot days heading into summer.
Seems right, anyway. His shirt hangs on him heavily. The gas and the grass smell sweet and cloying together.
“Jimmy,” Ruth says, and he looks over to her. “I’m doing okay right now, I promise.” She stares at him intensely, waiting for him to nod, waiting for him to—what, move on?
He rubs the side of his forefinger over his lip and frowns.
And his mother says, her words small and specific, “I get tired sometimes. I have blood tests every few months. I’m on blood thinners.”
She leans forward with a soft grunt and picks up the leaflet from the coffee table. She holds it out to him, and he takes it. There’s a little cartoon doctor on the front, a bright red stethoscope hanging from his ears.
“I got that for you,” she says, and she waves a hand, gesturing for him to keep it. “This isn’t the exact one I read, but it will help. I can never remember how to explain it properly, anyway.”
He almost asks if Chuck’s heard, but he already knows that answer. Of course Chuck has heard. Jimmy swallows instead. He says, “How long?”
His mother’s face changes, and she leans forward, cardigan-covered elbows coming down onto her knees. Beside her, on the sofa, the old cat Delilah stirs. And then, so softly: “We don’t know that yet.”
Jimmy shakes his head. He feels like he hasn’t stopped shaking it since he sat down. “But did you know at Christmas?”
“Ah, right…” Ruth says, and she sits back again, exhaling with the movement. He can tell she’s trying not to put any weight on her back. Behind her, colorful knitted pillows are a fort against anything harder than downy feathers. She makes a thoughtful sound. “Well, I was diagnosed about four years ago. Coming up on five…”
Jimmy huffs, catching his breath. He wipes the back of his hand over his forehead; it’s slick and hot and horrible. He lifts the collar of his shirt up and dries his upper lip, then lets it fall down, the cotton damp and stretched around his neck.
The mower’s still kicking and hissing in front of him. He grips the handle and pushes it forward again, toward the old tree.
The ground is uneven here around the ancient roots, rising and falling in places where they haven’t yet poked up through the dirt. The dirt dips near the fence, a little gully that used to fill with water when it rained heavily, where he’d sail boats as a kid—sticks with twig masts and leaf sails. Along the dried-up shore, the biggest root rises out of the earth. It has a little knot in the edge that a bird nested in once, that once was a pirate cave, a secret hideout.
He passes the mower by it now, falling into the dip of the ground and then rising again, like a ship on the water.
“Five years ago…” Jimmy murmurs. He looks out the living room window to the overgrown yard, to the long grass with its rising weeds. The yellow heads of dandelions. He wonders who mowed it last. Maybe one of the neighborhood kids. He thinks he remembers seeing an old lawnmower in the garage last night, tucked between the boxes of broken appliances and the gardening tools.
“Jimmy?”
He turns back. Tries to clear his throat. Reaches for his mug of coffee and has a sip. It’s sweet and lukewarm, and he sets it back down with a clunk. At the sound, Delilah lifts her head up and blinks slowly. Ruth scritches between her ears, and the old cat lowers her chin again, nestling it between her curled up back legs.
Jimmy rubs his thumb over his mouth, then frowns. “So if you’ve known that long, what was yesterday? More tests?”
His mother gives Delilah another stroke, then pulls her hand back. “Well, sometimes it can…progress. They have to do a biopsy on my bone marrow to find out what’s going on now.” She waves a vague hand. “That’s what they did yesterday.”
Jimmy rubs his bottom lip again, then exhales. “It’s in your—bones?”
Ruth nods. “I’m seeing my hematologist again in two weeks. She’ll have the results by then.”
“And what does that mean?” he says, leaning forward, closer. “It could be—getting worse?”
She shakes her head, but her words don’t disagree with him. She only says, “We just don’t know yet.”
“Okay,” he says, softly. He looks at the happy cartoon doctor on the pamphlet. Back to his mother. “But how do you feel? Do you feel worse?”
“I feel okay, honey,” she says, nodding. Her eyes glimmer. “I feel the same as I ever did.”
And he thinks it’s just the morning light and the flicker of the television that’s shadowing her face, that’s highlighting every curve of bone. Thinks it’s probably just the pink cardigan washing her out. She’s not that old.
On Wrigley Field, the Cubs hit a home run and the silent crowd cheer.
Jimmy shuts off the mower. It rumbles lazily down to sleep, down to stillness.
The radio’s finished the weather report now, and it’s back to music again. Swinging Sounds of the Sixties, says the host, and then there’s a blast of horns and drums and Dusty Springfield starts singing. It’s all too loud, crackling and rattling the small speaker.
He walks over and turns it off. Lowers himself down onto the top step with a groan, and he looks out over at the backyard, elbows on his knees. Among the roots and the sharp fence corners are dark and tangled patches of long grass, the places the mower couldn’t reach. Pockmarks on the neat and vibrant green.
It’s hard not to see them.
He wipes his hand down over his face, then dries it on his jeans. Exhales slowly.
The door opens behind him, and he shifts forward to clear the space in front of it. Kim steps out onto the back porch, and he twists to look up at her, tilting his head and lifting a hand to block the sun. He croaks, “Hey.”
“Hey there,” she says, softly, and then, facing the yard again: “Look at you. Yard’s looking good now.”
He nods. Moistens his lips, then, voice still raspy: “You been enjoying the show from in there?”
She grimaces. “Nope, way too painful,” she says. “I had to stop watching.”
“Wow,” he says lightly, but he can feel himself smiling. “I’m actually sort of a professional at this, I’ll have you know.”
She steps down a level, and says, “Oh, really?”
“Mm,” he hums, and he scooches over to make room as she sits on the top stair beside him. “I had a little business once. Well—once .”
She turns to him, head angling to keep the sun from her eyes, hand raised.
He chuckles. “Drew up some business cards and passed them out around the block. McGill Mowing, or something, I don’t remember.”
She folds in her lips. “It didn’t catch on?”
“Uh…” he starts, and he stares off at the patchwork yard. Shakes his head slowly. “No, it wasn’t that.” He grins and looks over. “So I didn’t actually want to mow the grass, right?”
She laughs softly. “Well, of course not. In a mowing business, why would you?”
“Right,” he says, smiling, “that’s a sucker’s game.” He brushes some stray grass blades from his knee. “Anyway, I guess I just figured weed killer would strip everything back evenly…”
“Oh no,” Kim says, exhaling the words, drawing them out.
“Yeah, well,” he says, still chuckling, “poor Mr. Tucker’s yard never looked the same after that.” He tilts his head to block the sun again and grins at her.
She meets his eyes, and hers grow soft, the blue of them warm.
He jerks his head away from the house. “If we go for a walk right now, I’ll show you. The damage is still there.”
There’s a long silence. Inside, through the screen door, he can hear the television going softly. A baseball game, he thinks, and he wonders if it’s still the same one as earlier. He looks through a gap in the mesh-work, between the ornate metal pattern of the door. He can see the edge of the kitchen: the fridge with a calendar stuck to the door.
Kim shifts, leaning against the railing that runs down the steps. Her eyebrows twist. “Do you want to tell me?” she says. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I know,” he says, and he scratches his cheek then adds: “I will. I want to.” He swipes at the knee of his jeans again—there’s a grass stain over the denim. He rubs his nail against it then lowers his hand. Looks to Kim. “But later, okay?”
Her eyes grow soft, and she nods.
And Jimmy looks back out to the yard. The old tree shakes, its leaves trembling. The screen door rattles behind him in a faint wind that drops again almost immediately, a gasp of coolness that runs quickly off the thick air like water. He brushes his bangs away from his eyes, his forehead tender and burning under his palm.
The backyard smells of burning gas and cut grass.
“So, what, this is where you slingshotted pellets at soda cans?” Kim asks, looking around the old lot, where the flat earth is dotted with curling oak trees and an old red swing-set. The swings themselves hang on rusted chains, all tangled except for one of those kids one with the little legs holes. Kim points to the oaks. “And that’s where you threw rocks at birds nests, right?”
Jimmy chuckles, kicking the toe of his shoe into the dust. They’re sitting on a low wall that runs along one side of the park, brick and squat, separating the grass and dirt from the sidewalk. “Do you think I was born in the nineteen-forties?”
She shrugs. “I’m just going by your stories. Newsboys on the corner, paper rounds, all that.”
“I didn’t have a paper round.”
She makes a doubtful noise. “No? Just played stickball out in the street?”
“Whatever,” he says, grinning. “And Red Cloud was really up-and-coming, really big-city, huh?”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Well, I dunno Jimmy, you should’ve seen it when the bowling alley first opened up,” she says mildly. “Must have been almost fifty people there.”
“Shame I missed that, then,” he says, nudging his toe back into the dirt.
She chuckles but doesn’t say anything else.
He yawns, pressing his hand tight against his mouth. The park is surrounded by brick bungalows and townhouses. Small windows shine on their upper stories or from their lofts, and gnarled trees frame wide stone steps that ascend to closed front doors. Along the streets, old wooden power-poles rise, the kind with the crossbars and metallic coils and a dozen heavy wires strung between them.
“So, where is it, then?” Kim says.
He turns to her, shifting his palm over the warm brick of the low wall. “What?”
She gestures broadly to the area. “The famous McGill corner store.”
He blinks. “It closed.”
Kim snorts. “I know that, dummy,” she says, nudging his knee. “But it’s still around here somewhere, right?”
He looks off to the east of the park. “Yeah, the building’s still there,” he says, finally. He hasn’t been there in a long time, hasn’t even driven past it. “Last I heard someone new finally bought the place, actually.”
Kim follows the direction of his gaze. “Is it really on the corner?”
“Yeah,” he says, grinning, “it’s really on the corner.” He glances sideways at her. “Okay, I maybe get the nineteen-forties thing now.” And he hops up off the wall, his sneakers sending up little clouds of dust from the dirt.
But the new store couldn’t be further from the quaint past, from the big dreams of his father. It couldn’t be further from the narrow shelves of canned goods, the curling advertisements for Tab and Pepsi, the signs with the prices of eggs and bread.
It’s a video rental, a big flashing sign out front. Just a mom-and-pop place, but they’ve gone all out. The windows are papered over with huge, vibrant posters of new releases. The Fugitive next to Mrs. Doubtfire next to Dazed and Confused. A life-sized cutout of Stallone stands beside the doorway, his arm folded, muscles bulging out of a black t-shirt.
“This was it?” Kim says, looking up at it.
There’s still enough of the old building left for it to be unmistakable: the dark brick exterior, the line of paler bricks that run around the base of the walls and rise to a trimmed lip at the bottom edge of the square windows. The uneven cement work along one edge of the sidewalk, the gap between it and the building where the weeds always poked up and where they’re still poking up now. “Yeah,” he says, “this was it.”
She turns. “Do you want to go inside?”
He looks to her, and he can tell she means it with more weight than just the words themselves. There’s nothing of himself left in there anymore, he thinks. Even the old Band-Aid tin is gone from the ceiling cavity, and for years that had been his one thread of connection. At first, during long summer days or evenings after school, the tin of coins was a reassurance that he was different, that he was smarter, that he wasn’t really one of those sucker McGills—and then, for ten years later, leaving it there because he couldn’t bring himself to keep it anywhere else, it had felt like it meant something different.
Someone jostles past him, heading into the bright video rental. And Kim’s still watching him patiently. She brushes a thread of her hair free from her lips and smiles.
So he nods, and they head inside. The store is jammed with shelves and posters that flutter with the air conditioning. An arcade machine jingles down at the back where the magazine stand used to be, and beside it rises a curtained-off area with age restrictions plastered all over the fabric. There’s still a popcorn machine up near the counter, at least, and, if he didn’t know that his mother had sold theirs, he’d almost wonder if it was the same one.
Televisions are bolted to the green walls all around them, all playing the same flickering commercial for a new Kim Basinger movie. The sound is low: a dramatic piano, raised voices. But somehow everything seems too big and too loud, even though the store hasn’t grown at all, even though, if anything, the place feels smaller, and the explosion in the movie trailer is barely audible.
So maybe it’s just that it feels like this place is already doing better than their old store ever did, that it’s ready to survive where his father couldn’t.
“Jimmy,” Kim says, and he comes back to himself, her hand resting gently on his upper arm.
He’s blocking the aisle, and he shifts to the side to let an old woman shuffle through, a copy of Howard’s End clutched in her hand.
Kim tilts her head slightly at him.
He chuckles. “Not much like the nineteen-forties anymore, I guess.” He looks around, frowning. Folds his palm over his other forearm. “We used to have the counter over there, instead, right by the door,” he says, briefly pointing. He feels like a contractor surveying a space. “And Mom would do the books out back.” A point to one end of the store, where a hanging curtain hides the storeroom. Then another, gesturing to the other end. “And beer and shit down there.”
Kim nods as they move in that direction, to the ghosts of beer fridges. “And now,” she says, as they slow past the shelves, “it’s…romantic comedies.”
“Hah,” Jimmy says, grinning. “Well, Mom’ll be happy.”
“Not a big drinker?” Kim asks.
“Oh, no,” he says idly, “she just loves romantic comedies.” At Kim’s silence, he glances to her again and grins. “Why’d you think I’ve seen so many old Cary Grant movies?”
“I guess I thought you were a man of the world,” Kim murmurs, then she smiles softly, the curve of it toying with her lips. She looks from him to the shelf of videos and examines them, too, reaching out to touch the cover of Frankie and Johnny , then along to Born Yesterday —a new remake, Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson. Her fingers float past that one without stopping, and Jimmy hides another yawn with the back of his hand, the restless night digging at his head. Kim’s fingers dance over Broadcast News… Coming to America … then her eyes cut to his again, and she grins.
“What?” he says.
Her question is soft, almost somber: “Should we rent a couple? Keep up the legacy of the place?”
He laughs dryly. “Well, if I really wanted to keep up the legacy, I’d need to steal something.”
Her eyes flicker.
And he shakes his head, tossing the bitter laugh away. “Don’t worry, I only took from family,” he says. He plucks out a copy of Pretty Woman and turns it over to read the back. Glances to Kim quickly. “I mean, mostly.”
She shrugs, leaning closer to him to look at the tape, too. She hums. “Well, maybe don’t roll the dice on the Cicero judicial system again just for two hours of Julia Roberts.”
He grins. “Yeah, fair enough.” He puts the video back, and then nudges Kim. Waves a hand to the tall shelves where the fridges used to be, though it’s getting harder and harder to remember what they looked like in here, anyway. “Okay,” he says, and he nods, studying the colorful videos with exaggerated solemnity. “What’ve we got?”
Jimmy stirs. The sofa beneath him is warm, and there’s an old blanket drawn up over his shoulder. It smells like laundry and like Delilah. The cat herself is a solid weight in the alcove behind his bent knees.
He must’ve fallen asleep during L.A. Story. The last thing he remembers is Rick Moranis digging a grave. It’s not even the same movie playing, now. Tom Hanks is walking up to a houseboat, a little boy following on his heels. Jimmy shifts, nestling his cheek into the pillow.
Then, behind him, Jimmy hears the hushed voice of Kim say, “Hah, look at that.” Her words are almost too low for him to catch. She must be at the dining table.
And then his mother: “That would have been, oh…’65, ‘66.”
He inhales. Closes his eyes again, just in case one of them can see his face reflected in the dark windows that mirror the bright living room. He tries to keep his breathing steady and deep.
At the table, they’re both silent for a long time, and he thinks maybe they’ve stopped, but then there’s a flick of paper, a page turning, and Kim makes a soft noise. “Wow. He really looked like him, huh?” she murmurs.
“Yes, even then,” Ruth says. Another turn of a page. “Look at them there.” More silence, just the slow voices of the movie, then: “It’d be something to see them together, now.”
Kim makes a humming sound.
“And there’s Chuck, of course,” Ruth says, and she laughs softly. “He seems so uncomfortable in this one, don’t you think?”
There’s a quiet chuckle from Kim. The shift of something heavy over the table, like the album being twisted around, maybe.
And the clink of a mug being set down on a coaster. It’s followed by the rustling of fabric. Until: “So,” Ruth says lightly, “You and my son…” There’s a flick of paper and then, “Should I be asking about your intentions?” It sounds like a joke, but Jimmy can hear the thread of seriousness beneath it. He wonders if Kim can, too.
“We’re friends,” Kim says, plainly.
“Hmm,” Ruth says. “That’s what he said, too.”
It’s silent for a while after that. A woman’s laughter on the television. Another flicked page, then another. “Well, there you go, then,” Kim finally adds.
Yet another thoughtful noise from Ruth, and Jimmy can almost see her face, see the narrowing of her eyes that he knows accompany the sound. He’s not ready for her words, though: “I know he can seem unreliable.”
He feels himself stiffen, and he tries to relax again, tries to slow his breathing. The laughter on the television cuts out, and it’s a different scene now. The score swells. He keeps his eyes closed, looking at the warm backs of his eyelids.
His mother finally continues: “I don’t know how much he’s told you about his life back here, but if you know much at all I understand why you’d think him untrustworthy. Why you might be wary.” A turn of a page, and brighter: “Look at that, that was up at my father’s house in Wisconsin.”
Nothing from Kim still, just the same kind of heavy silence that settles over Jimmy’s skin like a weight.
“This must’ve been in ‘67, I think. Chuck wasn’t with us that year,” Ruth adds. She hums softly, and there’s the flutter of paper.
And still just the silence from Kim, just the thick and seeping silence. He doesn’t quite know what he’s expecting, or dreading, will finally emerge from it, but it’s not what he gets. Kim’s voice comes firm and low: “I have never thought that of him.”
“No?” Ruth says mildly, as his heart tightens. There’s a soft drift of fingertips along the paper. “Well, he can be very loyal, too, you know.” The shift of turning pages. “He’s just…” She sighs. “Jimmy grew up as we lost it all. It made him scrappier.” And then, his mother’s voice growing even quieter: “And maybe it made him think nothing was worth fighting for. Nothing was ever worth hard work.”
Kim is quiet again, and in the quiet Jimmy’s pulse threads against his jaw, beating loud enough he’s sure the two of them will look over and hear it, will look over and know he’s awake. Then the low voice of Kim: “He is a hard worker.”
And Ruth says lightly, “Yes, in his way.”
There’s a long pause before Kim says, “No. Not in ‘his way’.” He hears her exhale sharply. “He works hard.”
A rustle of fabric, and Jimmy tries to swallow as quietly as he can, as he hears his mother breathe in. “Does he, now?” Ruth says, and she makes another soft hum that only just carries over. “And do you work hard?”
Kim say shortly, “I try my best.”
“Mmm,” Ruth says. There’s the sound of a mug lowered to the table again, then: “I hear you did well on the bar exam.” A heavy old album closing. A tap of fingertips. “My Chuck is like that, too. Always wanted to be the best, and, lucky for him, he usually was.”
Thick silence, until, from Kim: “Right.”
A chair is pushed back, scraping over the carpet. Fabric swishes. His mother says, “Then there’s Jimmy.” And suddenly he feels his skin crawl like they’re both looking over at him now, the electric buzz of eyes on him. The hairs prickle on the back of his neck, and he tries to breathe steadily. “Well,” Ruth says, finally. “A hard worker. Maybe I don’t understand him that well, after all.”
And, lowly, Kim: “That seems like a common problem.”
His mother doesn’t reply to that. There’s just the sound of them rising, shuffling footsteps moving to the shelf where the old albums are kept. Soon, another one lands on the dining table, the hollow thud of the photograph-filled pages echoing quietly through the room, and then the plasticky crack of the cover turning back.
“Jesus, Mom,” he whispers, peeling the white dressing away from the purple and blue bruising that’s spreading up his mother’s back. He’s kneeling behind her, the carpet thankfully soft on his knees, and he breathes out through pursed lips. “How bad did this hurt?”
Ruth’s fingers clench on the hem of the pajama top she’s holding up at the back for him, but she chuckles. “Just a little.”
“Shut up,” he says softly. “A little. God.”
“It hurt less than having you,” she says, turning back to look down at him.
Jimmy snorts and waves at her to turn around again. He finishes peeling the old dressing away, trying not to look at the darkened blood on it—but there’s not too much, really. The marbled bruising spreads around from her spine to her waist, blotchy and speckled.
He opens the package with the new dressing, trying to keep his fingers clear, trying not to fold the sticky parts over on itself. He looks at the stormcloud bruising and mutters, “Where do I even put this on?”
“Put it on the bit where it hurts.”
Jimmy shakes his head. “Just trying to figure that out…” And then he sees a little puncture mark, almost invisible among all the mottled blue and green. “Ah,” he murmurs, “I got it.”
He sticks the new dressing over it carefully, trying not to press down anywhere near the wound, trying to keep his fingers as gentle as he can. His mother is steady, calm. There’s a little layer of stretchy plastic over the new dressing, and he peels that away, too.
Then he stands, pushing his palms against his knees to help himself back up. “Okay,” he grunts, “looks good.”
Ruth’s eyebrows lift as she lowers her pajamas back down over her spine.
“I mean, it’s pretty bruised, but it seems okay,” Jimmy says. “No more bleeding or anything.” He swallows. “How’s it feel?”
She frowns thoughtfully. “Tender. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping on my back any time soon.”
He shakes his head. Bends down to pick up the empty wrapper and the old dressing, and he scrunches everything up in his palm, the plastic crackling. Watches his mother shift pillows around on top of her covers, building a little supportive fort, and then he turns to leave—but he lingers in the doorway, staring back. He opens his mouth and then, just above a croak, “Thank you for telling me.”
She looks at him, then frowns, like she’s studying him. She doesn’t say anything, just nods, and goes back to arranging the pillows.
He exhales, and turns again, hand touching the door frame as he moves through.
“Night, hon,” his mother murmurs. “Shut the door behind you, will you?”
He nods, and says, “Yeah, of course. Night.” He pulls the door closed behind him, and stands there for a moment. He hears the creak of springs as his mother lies down, then the soft chatter of the television.
And he pads down to his old bedroom. The door’s already open, and when he steps through the doorway he finds Kim in there, standing over his dresser.
She looks up at him and smiles. “Hey,” she says lightly. “Sorry. I’m snooping.”
He gives a shrugging smile and says, “Go for it.” Pulls the door closed and then wanders over to join her. “Find anything good?”
She turns an old picture to face him: it’s him and Marco on the back steps, staring angrily at the photographer—his father, he remembers. Jimmy has his arms folded around the torn knees of his jean, and he’s got a huge jacket on even though he’s pretty sure it was almost ninety degrees out. Kim chuckles. “This one’s cute.”
He groans and says, “That was my dumb punk phase.”
Kim quirks an eyebrow. “Oh, did that end?”
He huffs and waves a hand at her. As she puts the photo down again, he settles on the edge of the bed, watching. She picks up a picture of him and Chuck over the holidays one year. He knows it from here. He’s up on Chuck’s shoulders, trying to reach the top of the Christmas tree, and they both have their backs to the camera. Kim lowers it again without saying anything. She looks through the other photographs. Lingers over the line of three old matchbox cars that are still racing along the beam at the top of the dresser.
And he finds himself looking around the room anew, too. Sees the faded patches on the walls from his missing posters, the closet filled with all his curling paperbacks and journals. There are some doodles over the door of the closet, made with black marker. Most of them are his own initials turned into other things: the J becoming an elephant trunk or a pirate hook.
“Stars?” Kim says.
He turns to her. She’s just standing there looking at him, so he says, “What stars?”
She comes and sits beside him on the bed, the mattress bouncing. And then she points, up to one corner of his ceiling. He follows her arm but doesn’t notice anything for a long, drawn-out moment, until after Kim drops her arm again, when—finally—he spots them: half a dozen old glow star stickers, almost invisible against the white ceiling.
And he chuckles. “Ah, shit,” he says. “I forgot those were there. That’s embarrassing.”
Kim snorts. “ So embarrassing.” She stares off in the direction of them, then points again. “And is that a spaceship?”
“Yeah, that’s a spaceship.”
She nods. “Very cool.”
He laughs quietly, then says, “Here.” He leans over and flicks off the light, and the bedroom falls into darkness. The shapes of his dresser, the nightstand, the closet doors, all slowly come back as his eyes adjust. And Kim beside him: a dark figure, lightening.
The stars don’t glow at all, though. With the lights off, he can’t even tell they’re there.
So he says quietly, “Maybe glow stars go bad.”
“Probably,” Kim murmurs. “And they must be pretty old.”
“Mm,” he says, nodding. He looks sideways to the dark figure of Kim. “Those might’ve been from the dorky kid who lived here before I did, anyway, you know.”
She laughs and knocks his knee gently with hers. “Shut up.” There’s a silence, long enough for him to tune in to her breathing, slow and rhythmic. “I always wanted some.”
He tilts his head. “Yeah?”
She nods and makes a soft humming sound.
He hears her voice from earlier in his ears, the low one, and he swallows around the feeling of the memory and says, “So what else did you want?”
She turns to him, and he feels her move more than sees her. “What else…?” she murmurs. “I don’t know. A bunk bed, one with a desk instead of a bottom bed. One of those Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots sets.”
He laughs. “Okay,” he says. He shifts closer. “And?”
“A neighbor to talk on tin cans with—like, on a long string.”
He nods, though he doesn’t know if she can see it. Her leg is pressed against his now, warm and solid.
“A house with stairs. A bicycle with a bell and a basket. Someone to throw rocks at my window—or, hell, maybe I wanted to throw rocks at someone’s window.” She chuckles softly. “Maybe I just wanted to throw rocks.”
And his eyes must be still adjusting, because Kim’s face is coming out of the shadows: the glint of her eyes, the dark curve of her brow. The rise and fall of her cheek. He can see, now, that her lips are slightly parted. He inhales sharply.
And he watches her mouth say: “What about you, Jimmy? What did you want?”
He feels the grin coming as it rises from his chest up onto his face, bright and shining. “I don’t know,” he says. “Nothing. A pretty girl in my bed.” He looks at her eyes.
And Kim leans in and kisses him, and it’s sudden and clumsy and it’s been so fucking long, and he groans helplessly, pathetically. He tries to pull her closer, but Kim’s kissing him with a kind of savageness that feels new, that’s hard and fast, and she reaches for him right as he reaches for her and her elbow clacks against his as their arms tangle.
She pulls back from his mouth. She looks down and brushes his hands aside, then moves her palms slowly over his chest and up to cradle his head. They’re still sitting there, side by side, their torsos twisted, facing each other.
There’s a moment filled just with the darkness and their loud breaths, and then Kim leans in and captures his lips again, much softer this time. Her mouth moves slowly against his—then she draws back again, holding him. Breathing together with him in the brightening dark.
When she moves in, her lips are almost painfully light on his, like feathers. Tickling his skin. He holds her waist, his fingers tightening in her shirt, not wanting to move.
As she deepens the kiss, he pulls at her, first gently then strong, pulling her stomach close against his, pulling her so she’s tight up against him, her arms crushed between their bodies, breasts warm on his beating chest.
And then he shifts backwards, falling so he’s lying on the pillows and she’s there above him. Her knee comes down hard on the side of his stomach, and he grunts, and then she’s settling over him, all her weight on his chest, her legs around his waist.
He runs his hands up her thighs, up to her hips, dancing lightly until he finds her belt loops. He hooks his forefingers through them. Tugs on her jeans, and she grinds against him, and then she exhales just as shakily as him, ragged and warm in the dark space between their heads.
“God,” he grunts, and he closes his eyes. Squeezes them tight.
“Hey,” she whispers. “Eyes open.”
So he snaps them wide, gazing up at her. He can only just see her face in the soft light of the window. He laughs, and the sound of it in his ears feels almost manic, and then he kisses her. Drags his hands up from her hips, up to the place just above her waist where her back starts to rise with her ribs, and he holds her close to him, holds her body down to his and the weight of it's in his lungs.
And then Kim’s lifting away, shifting back so she’s straddling his groin and the space is empty between them again. She reaches for his shirt, tugging on the hem, and he leans forward and helps her pull it off him, then he settles back on the pillows again. She leans down and kisses his solar plexus, right over the pit of his stomach, and the pressure sends bright sparks out along his skin. He holds her thighs, like anchors, his thumbs tracing little circles over the warm denim, as she works her way up his chest.
And then he hears her voice from earlier, low and firm, talking to his mother. He still doesn’t know what to do with the words and the way they fill his chest and the strength of them and—
“Wait,” he says.
Kim pulls back, looking down at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he tightens his hands on her, and he thinks that it fucking sucks that she’s still in her t-shirt right now, but he says, “Sorry. We gotta—Kim—” And he does let go of her now, drawing his palms inward. “Can’t do it like this again.”
She frowns, hands stilling on his chest.
He shakes his head. “The whole thing where we fly home tomorrow and we pretend it didn’t happen and pretend it’s all okay. I can’t do that, Kim.” He swallows, and then, throatily: “I can’t.”
Kim moves off him slowly, turning over so she’s lying there beside him with her knees up. She breathes out forcefully, and he watches her chest rise and fall. Watches the profile of her face against the black. And then, finally, she says, “Yeah.” She twists to look up at him. “Yeah,” she murmurs again, “maybe neither can I.”
He gives a little half smile, just a fold of his lips more than anything. “Good.”
“Good,” she echoes, and she returns the almost-smile, too. “Should probably at least talk about it first, huh?”
He nods. Closes his eyes briefly and forces out a breath, then says. “I don’t think I can handle much more talking today, though.” Against his eyelids he sees his mother’s face and the violence of the lawnmower over the dark weeds.
He feels Kim move up the bed a bit, and he opens his eyes to see her head near his shoulder, the turn of her brow tentative and small. And he can feel himself breathing heavily, almost panting, trying to catch something that’s slipping away, but she just nods. “Jimmy,” she says, “I get it. It’s okay.”
He exhales. “Yeah?”
She smiles and then laughs, so gently. “Of course it is.”
He hesitates for a moment, then curls his arm around her. With the touch, she shifts, tucking herself more closely against his chest. Her hand comes down to rest on his stomach. He stares at it there and waits for her fingers to move like they usually do, waits for her to start drawing patterns.
She doesn’t. She just keeps it there, a soft weight.
He watches her hand rise and fall with his breaths, watches it as Kim gazes out into the dark room. The room feels big and hollow now. “Are you upset?” he whispers, finally.
She shakes her head, cheek shifting against his chest. “No,” she murmurs, and then, in a quieter voice: “Not about that.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I mean it,” she says, twisting again to look up at him. Her brow is drawn together, solemn.
So he nods. “But about something else?”
Kim turns away again, tucking her cheek into his shoulder, facing the dark room. He can feel her breathing slowly, can feel the dark churn of her thoughts in the air between them. He lies there with her warm against him, and he waits for a gap in the riptide, waits for the whirlpool to settle. For something to flow.
Eventually, she lifts her hand from his stomach and waves to the bedroom and says, “It’s just that it’s all still here.” And then, even softer: “It’s all still here for you.”
He takes in the dark shapes of his furniture and then squeezes Kim’s upper arm. “It’s only a room,” he says. “A room in a house. Four walls and a door.”
“Mm,” Kim hums, so quiet he almost misses it. She doesn’t move.
His stomach twists, and he squeezes his eyes closed, hard. Like he can trap those last words in his mind somehow, stop himself from having just said them. He rubs his thumb on Kim’s skin, then looks out at the room again, at the varied darkness. The empty corners. “So I’ll get you some stars,” he murmurs, after what feels like a long time. “When we get back to Albuquerque, I’ll buy you some glow stars.”
Kim laughs, a soft, careful-sounding thing. She turns, pressing her mouth to the side of his chest. Her fingertip traces a little star into his stomach, and he thinks she isn’t going to say anything else, but then she does. “Okay, George Bailey, you’ll get me the stars,” she says, her lips moving against his skin. “I’ll take them.” And she looks up at him, her eyes glinting. “Then what?”
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