by Неизвестный
Earned it? She wasn’t sure about that. Wasn’t sure she was ready to leave home for a while. These days, it was better here. She loved the familiarity. The safety. Most of all she loved knowing she wouldn’t be shutting her eyes some night and maybe never seeing it again. “Later,” she told him. “Right now, though, I think I want to stay where I am.” And be glad for what she had, and especially for where she was. “Maybe paint my office … ”
David groaned. “What color now?”
“Remember the ocean blue it used to be?” Maggie stood, took one more look at the mother deer, who was looking back at her, too afraid to move. She did understand how the deer felt, needing to move, but not knowing which way. Too frightened to take that first step for fear that what lay ahead was worse than where she was.
“Well, it’s a good thing you want ocean blue because I went to the hardware store the other day, saw they were having a paint sale. In case you might want to paint again, I bought a couple of gallons.” He smiled. “Welcome back, Maggie. It good to be back to normal.”
Normal? This wasn’t normal the way normal used to be. She wasn’t sure it ever would be. Or could be. In some ways, it was worse, because she did still have that deep-down fear that only cancer survivors could know. But in some ways it was better because she appreciated everything differently, now. Yes, she still had her bad days, where it took hold of her and wouldn’t let go. And she expected that might not change. Most of the days were good though, and while she wasn’t sure she’d ever fully understand normal the way she used to, she didn’t supposed it mattered. She’d had cancer. Now, she had life. “Look, I want to go out for dinner tonight. Someplace nice. You know, as in dress up?” It had been so long since she’d even felt human enough to dress up, she wasn’t sure she’d remember how to put on her make-up.
“Give me fifteen minutes to shower, and I’ll be good to go.”
“I’ll need thirty,” Maggie said. On her way through the hall she stopped at the bathroom door, and stared inside. Then she went in and looked at the mirror, still draped with a bath towel. This had been a long journey emotionally. She was still afraid to move forward in so many ways, like the deer in her yard. But there was no going backwards. No staying on the same place, either.
Reaching up, she pulled the towel off the bathroom mirror and started at her face for a minute. Same face, but different in the way only a life journey could change it. She reached out and touched the image in the mirror. Light fingertips against the glass, tracing the lines. Studying the things she’d forgotten.
Maggie brushed away the tear she saw in the mirror, then exhaled a sigh of relief. Smiling at her, the image in the mirror said, “Welcome back, Maggie. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Solomon’s Paradox by Kelly McClymer
Kelly McClymer is a mom, a writer, and a reading tutor for children with dyslexia. She has written in several different genres (historical romance, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery), and is always willing to try another. You can find out more about Kelly on her website http://kellymcclymer.com.
When I heard the key phrase “I never thought I’d see you again,” I immediately thought of a series I’d been planning to write several novels in someday, which fit the theme perfectly: a world where atonement for taking someone’s life means giving up your body for a year to the one you killed, so the dead person has the opportunity tie up a few loose ends. The family members of a person getting one more chance certainly never expected to see their loved one again, especially not when looking at a stranger’s body. But I believe recognition is more than skin deep, especially for those who love us. Needing to keep the story short, I knew I’d concentrate on the impact on just one person. Naturally, I knew the person who’d have most at stake in such a circumstance would be a mother, and so I wrote “Solomon’s Paradox” to explore what could happen if a mother got a chance to help her son tie up loose ends, using his best friend’s borrowed body.
We stood in a huddle around him. Two mothers, two doctors, two court-appointed counselors circling one boy. He lay still and pale, as if he were asleep.
The female doctor touched a few dials on the machine behind her and said in a clinical tone, “Ready.”
The male doctor did not take his eyes away from the screen of pulsing wave patterns as he nodded sharply.
Neither doctor consulted us. It didn’t matter if we were ready.
Both counselors raised their hands in unison as the female doctor turned the final dial. The younger counselor’s hand landed on Nancy’s shoulder as the older one’s hand hovered by my elbow, as if she knew even a gentle touch would shatter my heart.
We all held our breath. Nothing happened.
And then, just before the demands of life would require the weakest of us to draw first breath, the boy opened his eyes. Brown.
He looked around, blinking like a newborn kitten.
The huddle broke as the doctors moved closer, now focusing on the boy in his flesh, instead of the machines. We mothers stepped back, to give the doctors room, or perhaps to distance ourselves from the corrupted miracle to which we were witness.
Our counselors moved back as we did, shadowing our actions, monitoring our reactions.
The doctors paid no more attention to us or our movement than if we had been ghosts. The female leaned close, “Do you know your name?”
The boy nodded slowly. “Jake.”
The doctors made room for me, their gazes simultaneously beckoning and warning me as I stepped forward.
The boy in the bed smiled. “Hi, Mom.”
His voice was wrong, like a child lost in the mall calling some other mother, not me. I thought I had prepared myself well for this moment, but my voice faltered at first when I asked the question that I had to ask. The one even his best friend didn’t know the answer to. “What was your father’s middle name?”
He looked hurt, like a puppy who had expected praise and received a scolding. But he sighed, and answered my question. “Salvatore.”
The thinnest thread of civilization prevented me from letting loose the keening wail inside me. I kept my voice clipped. “He is my son.” I looked up to meet Nancy’s eyes. “Mine.” If I do not claim him, she will. I cannot allow that.
Nancy could not quite stifle her wail before she clapped her hands across her mouth. Her counselor led her from the room.
I felt a hand tentatively brush my elbow and I flinched away. I had to be here. I had to do this. But I didn’t have to like it, and I didn’t indulge the court appointed flunky who was supposed to make the transition smooth.
“Mom?”
I looked at the cleanly shaven face with the slightly squared chin, avoiding his eyes. He didn’t hesitate with his father’s middle name. He was my son. He was Jake, but in a body that was so much more muscular than Jake’s had been. I looked at my counselor, though it was the doctors who hung on my words. “Can I take him home now?”
# #
The counselor had seemed worried as she followed us outside, her gaze flicking from him to me and back again, the hungry gaze of a robin looking for worms. But she had squeezed his shoulder once in reassurance and closed the car door, leaving us alone in the coffin-like stillness.
The boy who would be Jake for a year flinched when the engine of the Explorer growled to life. He reached to turn on the music, his hand mashing the knob without grace. They’d said it would take a few weeks for him to get used to his borrowed body. They hadn’t bothered to indicate how long it might take me.
At the first angry strains of the song, he looked at me. “Since when did you start listening to heavy metal?”
My hand, efficient, graceful, my own, reached out and switched the music off.
He stared out the front windshield for a while, and then asked, “Would you rather I didn’t come home?”
“Where else would you stay?”
He didn’t say anything, but somehow I knew. “With her? With Nancy?” They hadn’t mentioned that
in all the pre-procedure interviews. They’d said she’d agreed with the procedure. Not that either of us had any choice. Eighteen was old enough. No mother needed to sign off on this madness.
His fingers quietly, clumsily, wrapped around the door release. A flicker of atavistic glee filled me. He was afraid. Good. He should be.
I thought about all the times I had warned him not to touch the door release. That he could accidentally open the door and fall out. I took the familiar turns more sharply than usual, and stomped the brake harder at every stop.
I didn’t swerve or speed. The counselor followed behind in her small white beater, observing. I guess there’s not a lot of money in transition counseling.
Yet.
“How does it feel?”
He shrugged. “Weird. Okay.” He turned his head toward me. “As long as I don’t look at my reflection.”
After a pause, and a sharp turn on my part, he asked, “How does it feel to you?”
Like a birthday party with a cardboard cake. “Weird. Like a lab rat.” Jake was the first successful atonement case, and everyone was pinning high hopes on this experiment to pave the way for a better future. For everyone but me, and Jake, I guess.
He laughed, as if I’d told a joke.
I glanced into the rear view mirror and saw our keeper following close behind. “I don’t think it’s funny. Being a lab rat.”
He turned around, looked behind us. His smile faded. “Why did you agree?”
“You didn’t leave me a choice.” I turned the question around on him. “Why did you agree?” He’d been a neuron-enriched ghost on their infernal machine when he’d agreed. But that had been enough.
His answer had the easy confidence of an eighteen year old. “Ben won’t have to go to jail, now. He wouldn’t last a day there.”
Of course. Always looking out for his best friend. But this wasn’t like taking the blame for a broken lamp or a dented fender. “I always wondered if there was anything you wouldn’t do for him. I guess now I know.”
“Be fair,” he protested. “Now you know there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me, either.”
“True.” Be fair. Fair to whom? Not me. I guess that hadn’t occurred to them, while they were both agreeing to trap us in this maze with only one way out, unless I found a better exit.
I wondered what the counselor following behind us would do if I rammed the SUV into a grove of solid oaks like the one by the old cemetery where Jake had loved to do gravestone rubbings when he was five.
It would be too quick for her to do anything but stop before she added to the pile up. The oaks were solid; the SUV was fast. I could take us both out. Maybe. With our luck, the airbags and seat belts would leave us broken but alive instead of properly dead. Still trapped in the maze.
Besides, that kind of quick ending would be too easy for Nancy. She needed to feel every day, every hour, of the next year. She needed to wake up every morning and know that she couldn’t say hello to her son, couldn’t hug him. Couldn’t …anything.
She needed to feel what I’d felt when Jake had been crushed by an engine block because his best friend had been texting and driving on the most dangerous road in our town. What I’d always feel, despite all the counselor’s soothing words about transitions and adjustments, and closure. Atonement. Some things can never be atoned.
# #
I pulled into the garage and closed the door, shutting out the counselor and her beater pulling up the driveway behind me. We got out of the car and headed into the house as if it were just another day.
He stepped up and over the broken step in the garage without pause, just like my Jake had done the last four years.
I stopped. Should I bother to tell him? He is mine for a year, so they say. If everything works like it should. “I had that fixed while you were …gone.”
He looked at me. “That’s the weirdest part of all. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been gone.” He stepped down and bounced on the no longer broken step, harder, testing it. “They told me what’s happened since the accident. But it’s like I read it in a book. It doesn’t feel real.”
For a blinding moment, I could almost see Jake, as he had been. I shook my head, clearing the vision. “What’s real to a boy living in a science fiction scenario?” I quipped, with a bitter edge to the humor. It is up to me to remember what is real. This boy is not Jake. Not really.
He climbed the stairs one at a time to his room. That’s different. My Jake would have taken them two at a time, like a graceful gazelle.
He opened the door and stopped without crossing the threshold. He looked over the banister. “You redecorated.”
“I always wanted a place to paint.” I had given up all thoughts of painting when Rod died and it was just Jake and me left. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to paint any longer. But I had created the studio because it seemed like the thing to do with a room that no longer had a use.
“Why are the canvases all blank?”
I shrugged. “Change takes time.” Unless it comes like a hammer and shatters you. But I didn’t say that, because he was only eighteen and I wasn’t sure he truly understood how the hammer would come down on him again in a year. Maybe sooner.
I pointed down the opposite hallway. “I made up the guest room for you.”
The counselor was at the door. I let her in. She glanced between me and Jake several times as she smiled and chattered about how nice it must be to have my son home at last and how important it was to set up comforting routines to help us both adjust.
I wondered what Nancy’s counselor was telling her, and whether she found it in the least bit comforting.
# #
The first morning almost felt normal, with just a hint of dream fuzziness around the edges. Alarm clock. Knock on Jake’s door. Make breakfast and pack lunch for us both.
He came down the stairs slowly, carefully, just in time to let the counselor in the front door.
He sat patiently eating his toast and eggs while she took his temperature, his blood pressure, pulled a wire cap over his head and plugged it into a little remote control device.
“Everything looks good to me,” she told us, as if we wanted to know. “But the doctors will see if we need to adjust the amount of Gateway at any point.”
Gateway, the choice of lab rats everywhere. The drug that kept Jake in control of his best friend’s body.
I looked at him, finishing his breakfast. Could Nancy’s son come flooding back at any time if the drug failed? How would I know? He already seemed alien to me. “Is there anything to look out for? Warning signs?” I asked.
“No worries.” She waved her hand at my question. “The doctors are remotely monitoring at all times.”
No worries. As if any mother ever had a moment without worries after giving birth. Absurd. Almost as absurd as a woman without a child counseling another woman without a child about a child who, right now, belonged to no one but the heirs of Frankenstein.
She packed all her equipment away in her bag. “I thought we could stay home and work on a transition plan today.”
I shook my head. “I have to go to work.”
She looked surprised. “But —”
Jake put his plate in the sink. “We may as well get on with it.” He smiled. “No point in wasting time.”
She frowned, unhappy with her lab rats as we grabbed our lunch bags and backpacks. I let her out and locked the front door behind her.
I stopped in the line of parents’ vehicles, feeling like a fraud. Jake said what he’d always said when I dropped him at school. “Thanks for the ride.”
He waited a beat, but when I said nothing, he climbed carefully out of the car. The drop-off traffic snaked along slowly enough that I saw him greet a friend. The boy smiled, and then did a double take as he realized he was talking to Jake. The atonement program had worked with the school and the students to prepare them. Judging by the stares and sidelong glances, they were as well prepared as I had been.
I glanced at the dashboard clock. Three minutes extra to drop him off. I had almost become used to skipping that one broken step in the morning routine. Almost.
Traffic cleared and the Explorer headed down the hill to the middle school as if on auto-pilot. I didn’t look in the rear view mirror. He was on his own. He’d signed on for this lab rat life, he’d have to deal with it.
# #
Work had become my heaven and my hell. Everyone I passed, parents, children, teachers, waved at me with that same look they’d given me when I’d shown up for work the day after Jake’s funeral. Wary. Like I carried a plague.
I shrugged it off. Last time the looks had disappeared when I got down to work. Never-ending work is the perfect antidote to never-ending loss.
Fortunately, my job put me in daily contact with people who have so many worries of their own, they don’t have time to borrow mine. Special Education Director in a small district with very little money and plenty of children in need has never been particularly easy or satisfying. But even after I was widowed I always thought I was doing some small good in the world. Nancy and I had joked about it. The Special Ed Director and the Guidance Counselor against the world.
Since the day I found out about Jake, I had cut Nancy out of my life like some people do with one of their kidneys. Painful, but ultimately something I could live without.
I had been going in the back entrance, snaking through the band room and the cafeteria, so that I could avoid walking past Nancy’s cheery yellow guidance office.
To make her feel more accessible to students, some principal in the distant past had installed big hallway windows so that she was visible, inviting anyone, troubled or not, in for a friendly chat. I’d used to admire her for being so open. I never understood how she managed. My nice four-walled office with only one door and a window that overlooked the dumpsters allowed me the privacy to put my head down on my desk when I felt the most frustrated or hopeless.
Like the day they had come to me, the doctors, and told me they could make my son live again. Sort of. For a while. That Nancy and I were the perfect candidates. Surely we, a Special Education Director, and a guidance counselor would understand what it might mean for the future of young offenders if true atonement could be substituted for incarceration. In the right case. After all, our boys had been best friends. They were young. No one said the word stupid, but I could see it hovering on their tongues.