by Cote Smith
“What about now?” Emile said. “Your boy . . .” He didn’t know his name. He had yet to hear her think about him.
“Brad,” Sue said. “Our Bad Bradley.” Her mind did not go to him. Instead, she thought of her studio, her unfinished paintings and portraits. “He’s great. Truly the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Maybe he and Lia can be friends someday.” Sue checked her watch. “Anyway, I should go.”
Emile walked her to the door. “Stop,” Emile said. He ran back into the living room and returned with the portrait. “I’m sorry. For, you know.” He tried to hand her the portrait but she refused. She touched him gently on the elbow.
“For what,” she said. “I wanted you to see.”
* * *
At Menninger, there was a patient who made up stories he believed to be real. He appeared as they all appeared, at the tail end of the night, right before dawn, brought to Menninger with his family’s consent. He said his name was James and that he didn’t understand why he was there. “Did I tell you about my mother and father?” he would say. “They’re trying to kill me.”
“You’re not doing him any favors by waiting,” Moyer said to Emile. “You know what you can do, so why don’t you just do it?”
They were sitting at Emile’s desk, in the facility basement, surrounded by thrumming machinery. Emile liked it down there. The white noise helped him think. “I need to see all the moving parts first,” Emile said, “before I figure out how they fit.” He didn’t tell Moyer that part of him liked to hear the stories, the amazing things the mind could imagine. He had spent so much of his adult life paranoid, looking over his shoulder, that it felt good to hear that he was not the only one.
“You’re wasting time,” Moyer said. “Just do your thing and let’s get out of here.” He’d become increasingly short as of late, an irritating side effect of his deteriorating relationship with Tracey. He spent all his words and energy on persuading her to stay just a little longer, so that by the time he got to work, he wanted Emile to fix the patients as quickly as possible. But as he often reminded Moyer, Emile wasn’t going anywhere until he talked to Totem, face-to-face.
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Absolutely. He’s very excited about your progress. He has great things in store for you. Though of course he never shares what those things are exactly.” Moyer sighed, dropped his head on Emile’s desk. “She’s going to leave me. I just know it.” He sat there like that for a long moment, until a thought suddenly occurred to him. Emile could see the light go off in Moyer’s head.
“I can’t,” Emile said. “I promised you. I promised Tracey.”
“Please,” Moyer said. “I need to know how much time I have left. A day? A week?” He dropped to one knee. “Surely you know by now, begging is not beneath me.”
“I am aware,” Emile said. He tried not to laugh, as Moyer clasped his hands together, dropped his other knee. “Fine. But I’ll need something from you.”
“Deal.”
“I haven’t even— just bring Totem to me. Now. Do whatever it takes. Tell him his most valuable employee is losing interest. That the business of helping others isn’t everything he thought it would be.”
Moyer looked up at him. “Is that true?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” Emile said. Though it was true. As much as he enjoyed the work, the fact was that no matter how many people he helped, there would always be more. He could cure a patient every day but by dawn the following morning the van would return with another, and when he went to bed the next night, he would always be alone.
“I suppose not,” Moyer said. He rubbed his hands together like he was starting a fire. “Okay. Now. Shall I fetch Tracey? Maybe I should create an excuse of some sort. Say there is something wrong with a patient.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“But how will you . . . you know?”
Emile extended his hand. He had a strong desire to embrace Moyer, this honest man, naive enough to believe Emile had ever stopped listening.
* * *
Emile hadn’t left the night Sue came over and let him keep the portrait he stole from her house. In the morning, he found Claire at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, going over her biology lab notes, waiting. She handed him Lia, smiled, but didn’t say a word.
Jacob came into the kitchen a few minutes later in his work clothes—faded jeans, faded T-shirt. He was normally the first one out the door, but there’d been a storm earlier that morning, delaying the landscaping job he’d been assigned to. He filled his thermos with coffee and leaned against the counter, eyeing Emile, who sat there, bouncing Lia on his knee.
“Why are you doing this?” Jacob said.
“She likes it,” Emile said, pretending he didn’t know what his brother meant.
“You haven’t forgiven me. You don’t want to be here.”
“So.”
“So why are you here? Why do you talk only to Alison? Why do you volunteer to watch Lia?”
“You can’t afford day care,” Emile said. “You need me.”
“That’s it?” Jacob was upset, but his mind was eerily calm, like the breath before you throw a punch.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Emile said. “Your family likes me.”
In all their years growing up together, not once had Jacob and Emile come close to fighting each other. But as Jacob put his coffee down and stood over Emile, Emile wondered if that was about to change.
“Is there something going on here that I should know about?”
“Relax,” Emile said. He readjusted Lia on his hip.
“Give her to me,” Jacob said, and he took Lia from Emile’s hands.
“What are you doing? You have to work.”
“Listen,” Jacob said. “You’re my brother, and I love you. I’m sorry about all that crap before. And you can stay here as long as you want. But understand something: This is my family. This will always be my family. I won’t let anyone come between us. Got it?”
“Hey, I’m not—”
“Emile. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” Emile said, and he grabbed his keys and left the house.
* * *
He couldn’t bring himself to leave, but he needed something to occupy his time, to get him out of the house. He got a job at Aspera Hall, a small, independent movie theater downtown. He worked there most evenings, after handing Lia off to Claire once she returned from class or lab. He saw little of Jacob after their confrontation, save an awkward nod made in passing if they came across each other in the kitchen—two polite midwestern ships passing in the night.
A year passed like this. Two. Emile noticed this about time, the older he got. How it had a way of hiding behind jobs and routines, until he started to think about his life in chunks—a workweek, a pay period, a quarter and a season. Until one day he looked up from the kitchen table and realized the calendar expired months ago. A week later someone at work asked him how old he was, and there was a pause that wasn’t there before. He had to do the math.
He saw Sue less and less, though this required some effort. He avoided the window and picked up a shift at work if Claire and Jacob had the neighbors over. Things became easier as Lia got older, as she learned to crawl, walk, fly, Emile’s arms lifting her to the sky. The two of them started taking trips. To the park. Lost 80. They sat under his tree and watched the leaves fall and crumble. They picnicked in the spring and summer, and Emile discovered different ways to make Lia smile. He disappeared behind his hands and reappeared like magic. He put his thinking face on and let Lia take an apple from the picnic basket and drop it on his head, making her own little Newtonian discovery. She squeezed his heart every day, most of the time with simple things—her tiny hand holding his as they walked from the door to the curb; or, later, how she swayed on his shoulders when he carried her by the street musician on Massachusetts Street, who only knew one song, which he played on what must have been the world’s smallest pi
ano.
She was a serious child, not prone to fits of laughter. She had a certain, what, gravitas, an absurd word for someone so young, but Emile couldn’t think of any term that would better describe her. All of which made him so unexpectedly happy. So happy that when he couldn’t read her mind, he convinced himself that it was okay to not stop and ask why. And when she had a bad dream once during naptime, when she woke herself up screaming in his arms, he did not say, “Tell me about your dream. Tell me everything you remember.”
Instead, he said, “It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t like them,” Lia said. “I don’t want to think them.”
All of a sudden, it seemed, she was nearly four. They were cloud-watching on a blanket at Lost 80. It was a random warm day in the fall. Emile lay down and put his hands behind his head, and Lia copied him. She’d had a bad dream the night before and hadn’t said much all morning. When Emile asked her if anything was wrong, she said she was fine.
Emile rolled on his side so he was facing Lia. He wanted to make her feel better. “Apple, can I tell you something secret? Something only a few people in the entire world know?”
Lia turned her head.
“But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
Lia nodded.
“Here it goes,” Emile said. “I can read minds, Apple. Me. Your uncle Emile. Can you believe that?”
He paused for Lia’s reaction. Her brows hardened, her mouth defaulted to a frown.
“I can tell what people are thinking, even if they don’t say it out loud.”
“Mee-eel,” Lia said.
“It’s true. Ask your mom.” Lia’s little eyes narrowed. Emile could see her start to believe. “So when you say you’re fine, I can tell if you’re just pretending.” He wondered if it was true, if one day he’d able to hear her, or if his head and his heart would always feel overwhelmed, the way they were when he saw, listened, or spoke to her mother.
“Nuh-uh.”
Lia looked away.
“Is it your dreams?” Emile said. He had to ask this time, if only to see if they were still bothering her.
“It’s not dreams,” Lia finally said. Her face changed, grew older somehow in that single moment. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Emile said, and ran a hand through her hair. She had been bald as a baby, but this last year she had finally grown soft dark locks, which Claire put up with handmade pins she bought downtown. “I was the same way, you know. When I was little. I always had this feeling. This feeling that . . .” He realized he still didn’t know how to explain it. “Anyway. Maybe you’re just like me.” Emile took a few strands of her hair between her fingers. “This pin is really neat.”
Lia put a hand to her hair, as if suddenly remembering it was there. “It’s a humbird. Mom got it.” She pulled the pin out and looked at it.
“Do you think it would look good on me?”
“Your hair is too short,” Lia said.
“I know. But it gets hot up there, in my room.”
“Do you miss your hair?”
“No, not really. It’s easier this way.”
“To know minds?”
Emile laughed. “Yes. To know minds.”
Lia’s tone remained serious. “Can I do that?”
“Do what?”
“What you do.”
“I don’t know,” Emile said. “I don’t think so.” He could tell immediately it was the wrong thing to say. “You don’t want to. Trust me, Apple.” He sat up. “Besides, you’d have to lose all your hair. Where would you put your pins? This humbird needs a nest to live in, doesn’t she?”
Lia thought about it. She didn’t have an answer she liked, so she stayed solemn. She would stay this way the rest of the picnic and the drive home. He carried her to her bedroom and tucked her in for a nap she refused to take. She still seemed angry with him.
“Hey, maybe I can teach you,” Emile said. He took the pin out of her hair. “What I do. You know, someday, when you’re older.”
He waited for Lia to smile, but she never did.
* * *
They threw a big barbecue for Lia’s fourth birthday. It was November, but Jacob, the griller, didn’t care. Claire invited a few classmates from graduate school, and Jacob bribed his work buddies with the promise of free beer. The Gilmores came too. Emile avoided Sue and the rest of the crowd and played with Lia instead, chasing her around the backyard. But when it was time for presents and cake, she forgot about him. Jacob and Claire hovered over her chair, clicking pictures, helping her smash cake in her face. Emile retreated inside. He sat in the kitchen and stared out the window, at Lia and Claire, the family he wasn’t exactly a part of. Sue found him there.
“You cut your hair again,” Sue said. “It’s so short.”
Emile kept his eyes on Lia, opening presents outside. She seemed disappointed by every one of them.
“You love her,” Sue said. “It’s so obvious.” She ran her hand over Emile’s buzzed head, with, then against the grain. “She loves you too, you know.”
“You think so,” Emile said. He let his gaze drift to Claire.
Sue moved her hands to his shoulders, dug around for knots.
“Why don’t you pose for me?” Sue asked. “Tonight. Why don’t you meet me in the chair and let’s see what we see.”
“I don’t know,” Emile said. “Maybe.” He stood up to return to the party. “I better get back. She’ll be looking for me.”
A smile wormed across Sue’s face. She swayed past Emile as she made her way to the back door. “It’s never the one we want, is it?”
* * *
That night, after the party died, Claire and Jacob decided to go out. Robert too. Spur of the moment, they said. Just a drink or two. When was the last time? And would Emile mind watching Lia? She’ll never know they were gone.
After they left, the house was too quiet. Emile checked on Lia, balled up tightly in her big-girl bed. He watched her sleep, her mouth open wide, the way he remembered Claire sleeping their one night together.
He went to the kitchen and busied himself with the dishes. He washed sticky plates, silverware, a cake server, kitchen shears, and set them to dry next to the sink. When he was finished, he went to the living room. He looked out the window. A warm glow in the chilled night.
Sue was there, as promised, her back to the vanity. She was already facing Emile, a large sketchpad standing at attention to her left. Emile sat.
She kept the pad hidden from him. Her hand moved quickly at first, darting across the paper with long, violent slashes. She slowed down for the details, switching to a finer point to fill everything in. She glanced up on occasion, and when she did Emile tried to glimpse the drawing through her thoughts. But it was difficult. She had a strange mind tonight. Too many waves racing toward the beach. Images and sounds crashing into each other. He heard questions without answers. How is he? Is he lonely? How long will you keep him there?
Sue pointed at Emile. Or, not at him, but near him. Behind him. She mouthed Lia’s name. Emile turned around.
“Apple, you’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I had another dream,” Lia said.
“Okay. That’s okay.”
“It was dark. Someone, someone grabbed me.”
“I’m sorry,” Emile said. He turned back to Sue, his mind trying to make sense of her competing waves. “Go back to bed, okay?”
“I can’t,” Lia said, nearly crying. “I don’t want to go. I miss you too much.” She leaned against Emile and he put an arm around her. “I miss Mommy. I miss Daddy.”
Emile kissed her head. He took her in his arms and pulled her up on his lap. She hid her face in his neck. Emile held up his hand to tell Sue to stop, but she kept drawing. He turned his back but could still hear her thoughts. They poured out of her now. I need to see him. He needs to see me. You can’t keep him forever. Emile felt his stomach fall. Something was wrong here. He opened the window with one arm.<
br />
“Who are you?” he said, but Sue wouldn’t look up.
“I’m your apple,” Lia said.
“Lia, quiet,” Emile said, more firmly than he intended. Sue’s thoughts whirred around him. He saw the Eldridge hotel room again. Robert frowning in the chair, upset about something.
Suddenly, Sue stopped drawing. She smiled at Emile then disappeared from the frame, and the window went dark. Emile waited, but she didn’t return. He had to get over there. He had to know what was going on. Before Robert returned. He told himself it would only take a minute. He put Lia in her bed and told her to shut her eyes. She obliged, but as soon as Emile shut the door, she started crying.
“Meel, Meel! I don’t want to miss you!”
But he had to know. He ran over to Sue’s. The front door was unlocked; inside, the living room was lit lowly with lamps. Emile announced himself. He made his way down the hall, past the sneering portraits, hissing at him that he shouldn’t be there. The studio was empty.
The light was still off in the bedroom but he could see Sue’s shadow, sitting at the foot of her bed. From somewhere unseen a scratchy record warbled a country song.
“Robert was right,” Sue said, when the song was over. “I have to be myself. Only then will I be well.”
Sue laughed. The record player found the next track, a slow, waltzing melody. “Here,” Sue said, extending her hand. “Shall we?” Emile pulled her up to him, closer to the waves. Sue found his other hand and made him sway. “The word’s out about you,” she said. She bit her lip and ran a finger through Emile’s hair, her eyes fixed on his. “We’re all just waiting, aren’t we?”
“For what.”
“For you. To decide.”
Sue rested her head on Emile’s chest. “Listen,” he stammered, barely louder than his pounding heart.