Hidden

by Catherine McKenzie

  On Sunday, while Zoey’s with an eye doctor to check if her problems are optical, Brian and I see the neurologist. He’s come in on his day off, and though he claims to be happy to do so, the fact that he’s dressed like a teenaged boy sends a different message.

  We thank him for taking the time, and I sit quietly while he flips through Zoey’s charts and tests results, and Brian reels off possibilities like answers in a multiple-choice exam. Dr. Coast shakes his head at each of them, and eventually Brian runs out of suggestions. The clock on his wall ticks loudly, a reminder of each second passing by.

  Dr. Coast finally puts down Zoey’s file. “I understand that this must’ve been a trying few days for you, but I think that everything that can be done has been done.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Zoey.”

  I hear the words, but they don’t bring relief, not yet.

  “But how can that be? She fainted twice in twenty-four hours. And her headache? The blurry vision. That’s not normal, is it?”

  He leans back in his chair. The hood of his brown sweatshirt reminds me of a monk’s cowl.

  “I understand your confusion, and if I were at the beginning of my career I’d be running a whole battery of tests to be 100 percent sure. But I think Zoey’s had enough tests, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Brian says, concern edging out his usual professional medical tone, “but we need to be absolutely positive. Surely you understand.”

  “I do. Unfortunately, we often have to live with uncertainty in these kinds of situations. We know so little about the brain, really, despite our efforts. But if I had to give you my best guess, I’d say it was stress related.”

  “She’s eleven,” I say. “There’s nothing stressful going on with her. She … she’s a good kid. Things with her are good.”

  “The beginning of adolescence can be a very stressful time. Surely you remember?”

  Brian makes a frustrated noise. “She’s not like other kids. She takes things in stride. And with her IQ …”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that in her file, but that might just mean she’s better at hiding things. And those competitions she does must be stressful.”

  Brian’s jaw clenches and I reach for his hand. He squeezes it and glances at me as if to ask, Are we on the same page? We are.

  “She likes those competitions,” I say. “We don’t push her to do them. And she’s been doing them for years without incident.”

  “Perhaps she’s changed the way she feels about them?”

  “She would have told us.”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize it herself.”

  “So that’s it? We take her home and … what?”

  “Monitor the situation. Make sure she eats well and exercises and makes time for things that are relaxing. Talk to her. If she’s experiencing anxiety, I can recommend someone, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. My bet is that this won’t happen again.”

  “This is crap,” Brian says. “We know her. I was with her right before this happened. And I’m telling you that if she’d been ‘stressed,’ we would’ve known. No.” He leans forward, resting his hands on the front of the doctor’s desk. “No. I’m afraid we’re going to have to insist that you pretend like it is the beginning of your career.”

  A couple of hours later, we’re standing in the sterile viewing room for the MRI machine, watching Zoey being loaded in.

  The technician sits to the right of us in a white lab coat, her eyes on the screen. Thin slices of Zoey’s brain appear like they’re coming out of a deli cutter. The whole room feels like the future, and it is husha-husha silent except for the clicks and whirs of the machine.

  Zoey looks pale and skinny and small in her washed-out blue hospital gown, the soles of her bare feet the only thing less than pristine. I can feel the tension seeping out of Brian next to me. I place my hand at the base of his neck and begin rubbing gently. Something that’s always calmed him in the past. The muscles in his neck start to unclench.

  “You don’t blame me, do you,” he asks, “for the competitions?”

  “Of course not. And I agree, Zoey loves them. She always has.”

  “She really seemed okay. Everything was like it always is. If those damn TV cameras weren’t there, no one would’ve had to know about it.”

  “Were they there last year?”

  “It’s something they were trying this year because of how popular those spelling bees have become.”

  I nod. I’ve watched them myself sometimes. Some of the same kids from the spoken word circuit are involved in them too. But Zoey’s never shown any interest.

  “I want to kill the little bastards who put that video up,” Brian says. “When this is resolved, I’m going to figure out who did it.”

  “I don’t think that will solve anything.”

  “Might make me feel better, though. Might make Zoey feel better.”

  “I’m guessing Zoey would prefer to pretend this never happened. And then there’ll be a poem about it. Diving for the floor/for all the world to see/words failing me.”

  “Yes. That sounds like her. And like you.”

  “No, she’s better. She’s braver.”

  “You always discount your talents. I don’t know why you do that.”

  “Years of practice?”

  He shakes his head. “Apropos of nothing, and sorry I didn’t ask before, but how was your thing?”

  “My thing?”

  “The funeral.”

  I suck in my breath. “You know, in all of this, I’d forgotten about it.”

  And this is true. I’ve barely thought about Jeff from the moment I got Zoey’s tearful phone call. Maybe an aftershock is coming, but for now my mind seems to be fixating on the right things. The right now.

  “It was … sad,” I say. “Do you blame me? For not being there? At Nationals? Maybe if I had been …”

  “You’re here now. That’s what counts. And like you said, this wasn’t our fault. There’s no one to blame. Dr. Coast is probably right. Not about the stress, but about it being nothing. He has to be right.”

  “He does. He really does.”

  Brian takes my hand, and we twine our fingers together as another slice of our daughter’s brain thunks into place on the screen beside us.

  CHAPTER 24

  One Minute in a Thousand

  I never wanted to quit my accounting practice. I loved everything about it, really: the little old ladies with their shoeboxes of receipts; the local cash businesses that wanted you to help them circumvent the tax man just enough so that they could still feel honest; the puffed-up businessmen who were expecting you to be impressed with the size of their bank accounts, and were quietly infuriated when you refused to give in to their satisfaction.

  The problem was, I couldn’t make a living at it. Not really.

  It held together, after a fashion, when Claire was working and we were happy living in my condo. But things got tight once Seth was born, even though Claire went back to work sooner than she wanted to. We were cramped in the condo, the three of us, Seth’s colourful toys staking out more and more territory, but neither of us wanted to take up the offers of financial support from our parents.

  We bumped along, staying barely on the right side of debt— I’m an accountant after all—but we wanted more kids. We needed a house. I wanted Claire to be able to take as much time off as she wanted when our next baby was born, or to stay home even, if that was her choice. And further down the road there was summer camp, and school trips, and college tuition to think of.

  So I knew what I had to do. It had been selfish to resist the inevitable for so long. And if I could be happy everywhere else, I thought it wouldn’t matter much if my nine-to-five wasn’t everything I wanted it to be.

  There was only one place that could solve my problem. Johnson Company—maker of widgets and whatchamacallits—was the biggest employer in town, and the only busi
ness that had an accounting department. It occupied a low, sprawling campus that was trying to pretend it was located outside of San Francisco, and before the consultants got a hold of it, it wasn’t that bad a place, really. When the Art Davieses and the Don-What’s-His-Names were running the show, I bet it was even fun on a regular basis.

  You know, office fun.

  I knew before I started that it wasn’t for me, but it was a path to other things. We could buy a house. Less working on the weekends trying to balance the books would mean more time for the family, for me, for golf. And kids should have a house, right, with a sandbox and a swing set in the backyard? With friends on the same street whose houses they could run in and out of like Tim and I did as children.

  The last remnants of the idyllic parts of my childhood were still to be found in the shaded streets in the neighbourhood we’d now be able to afford to live in if I took the job, and I wanted to give that to my family.

  I wanted it very much.

  So I wrapped up my practice and we went into escrow. I started working for Art and found my rhythm. Then Claire got pregnant, even though we’d stopped trying, and it seemed to confirm my decision, a pat on the head from the universe telling me I’d done the right thing.

  And right up until the moment our doctor was moving a wand around Claire’s stomach in primordial goo searching for something that wasn’t there, I really thought I had it.

  I thought I had it all.

  After I ran away from Claire’s daycare, and Claire, and Tim, and the Kiss, I still couldn’t quite believe that what I’d seen had taken place. I spent a couple hours walking around in the rain, letting it seep through my clothes till they clung to me like skin. When I stepped into the Woods, looking for a place to hide, the rain’s clatter and the rustling leaves blocked out everything else but the wish that I hadn’t turned and ran, that I’d stood and fought.

  Fought for Claire.

  Fought for the life I held in my hand for a minute.

  But I’d relaxed my grip. I’d taken my eyes off the ball — just for a second—and my club was whistling through the air with no purpose. A whiff, they call it in golf, after the windy sound your club makes when you swing and miss.

  That windy sound was in my head, my heart, my lungs.

  That windy sound felt like the soundtrack to taking a swing and missing my life.

  I had to go home sometime, I knew, even if it was only to pick up things to change into before I slunk off to some hotel room, or wherever it was husbands whose wives were cheating on them with their brothers spent the night. There had to be some place that fit the bill, right? There was probably even a greeting card for it, but greeting cards don’t tell you how to feel; they assume it. Happy on your birthday. Sad someone died.

  Black and white.

  White and black.

  But how are you supposed to feel, really, when all your worst fears, things you’d never even imagined could happen, actually do happen, actually do come true?

  Hearts don’t come with an owner’s manual.

  Someone should do something about that.

  It must’ve been a couple hours before I got back to our house. I don’t know what I expected to find there, but what I found was Tim sitting on the front steps with his suitcase by his side. He was smoking a cigarette, and I was fighting the urge to ask him if he’d gotten that from Claire too when he said, “About time you got here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He stood up. “You’re taking me to the airport. My flight leaves in an hour.”

  I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, that he could get his own self to the airport. But then it occurred to me that driving him to the airport would be an excuse to not have to face Claire yet, to not have that conversation, whatever it was going to be.

  I nodded and slopped in the puddles that were my shoes towards my car.

  Inside, I could feel the wet dripping off me like I’d stepped out of a shower. Claire would’ve been pissed if she knew I was in the car in my present condition, and that gave me a small measure of petty satisfaction.

  Tim shoved his suitcase into the back seat and climbed in next to me. I started the engine, turned on the wipers, and listened to them slap against the glass as I pulled out of the driveway.

  “Jeff—”

  “No. I’ll drive you to the airport, but that’s it. I don’t want to hear it. And if you don’t like it, you can get there on your own.”

  He paused. “All right. If that’s what you want.”

  I turned on the radio, turning it up full blast, like I hadn’t done in years, and certainly not with someone else in the car. It was some stupid ’80s station, playing a Rush song I hated—there’s never any need for Rush, really—and I could tell by the way Tim was clenching his hands that he wanted to turn it off.

  Denying him this, even if I was cutting off my own nose to spite my face, was another notch of satisfaction in a day where every notch counted.

  If I could’ve made the radio play “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” through sheer will power, it would’ve made my day.

  I turned off the road at the airport exit. “What airline are you flying?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you going to check your ticket or should I drop you wherever?”

  “It’s not that big an airport. I’ll figure it out when I get inside.”

  “You don’t even have a ticket, do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Right. Whatever. Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, but not, you know, that quietly.

  He cleared his throat in a way that let me know he’d heard me despite the computerized crap screaming from the car’s cheap speakers.

  “Pull over,” Tim said.

  “The terminal’s right ahead.”

  “I mean it, pull over here.”

  I slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. The front wheel bumped against a large rock. “Suit yourself.”

  Tim got out of the car, and I sat there, waiting for him to get his suitcase out of the back, thinking that it was par for the course that he was going to get the last word.

  My door swung open.

  “Get out,” he said.

  I looked up at him. He loomed large as always but also, in a way, he looked small, like Seth when he was trying to act like a grown-up.

  “Just go, all right?”

  “No. Get out. Let’s do this right for once.”

  I got out of the car. It was still raining, but it was more of a foggy mist. A perfect setting for a duel, or whatever Tim had in mind.

  “Are you saying you want to fight?”

  “Not exactly. I want to tell you something first, and then I want you to hit me.”

  “You want me to hit you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What the fuck, Tim?”

  “Just …” Trust me, he was going to say. “Will you do it, already?”

  “All right. Fine.”

  I raised my fists, trying to remember the last time I hit someone in the face. Trying to remember if I’d ever hit someone in the face.

  “Hold up,” Tim said. “Listen to me first.”

  “I don’t need you to say something to make me hit you.”

  “That’s why I need to say this first.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to give you some advice, Jeff, and then you’re going to hit me and I’m going to fly out of here.”

  “Get on with it, then.”

  “One minute doesn’t erase a thousand.”

  “Of all the … what the … maybe it does.”

  “No, not unless you let it.”

  “How would you know, anyway?”

  “I know, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

  “No, I need you to tell me.”

  He sighed. “I let one moment, one idea, ruin my thousand moments, all right? And I’ve regretted it ever since.”

  “And what? That�
��s supposed to make me forget about today?”

  “It should.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I don’t know anything. That’s my whole point. She was sad, Jeff. She was vulnerable and I took advantage. And I’m a complete asshole for doing that, but that’s all it was. It didn’t mean anything. Not to her. And I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry I had anything to do with it.”

  “You’re sorry.”

  “Yes. I’ve been feeling like a jerk for a long time. Ever since I found out about you and Claire. Before that even. And when you feel like that … well, let’s just say it’s not much of a stretch to start acting like one. I fucked up. I’ve been fucking up forever. And I’m sorry. You’re my brother, and I’m sorry. Now hit me, and go home to your wife.”

  I stood there staring at him, a foot away, as wet as I was now. My brother. Someone who knew things about me I’d forgotten. Someone who I betrayed, and who betrayed me in return.

  Hitting him wasn’t going to solve anything.

  But I did it anyway.

  When I got home from the airport with grazes across my knuckles and a dull ache in the joints of my hand, I felt like Grady Tripp at the end of the Wonder Boys. Too many things had happened in too short a time span. Did people’s lives really change this quickly? Years of sameness, and then a few hours, a few moments, and everything’s different? But, yes, of course they can. It happens all the time.

  My clothes had dried on me in the way that only happens after you’ve been soaked to the bone, and they felt stiff and uncomfortable. I wanted to strip them off, climb into a steaming shower, and then sleep, but I knew that might be a long way off.

  When I walked through the front door, Claire was sitting on the couch in the living room under the reading lamp with her feet curled under her, staring off into space. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the wastepaper basket nearest to her was full of balled-up Kleenex.