“All right.”
Mom hung up and swallowed big.
“They said he’s got to go to the station for a report, but they can’t come pick him up,” she said. “They’re too busy with storm stuff.”
Mom had once told Circa about a technique she used to get through a panic attack. When she felt one washing over her, she’d picture a traffic light changing to red to remind her to stop that thought, and then turning green to tell her to push right through the panic. But right then, judging from the way she jumped up and began searching through the cabinet for her pills, she was ignoring all traffic signals. Circa could count on her fingers the times Mom had left the house to go anywhere but church, and now she was going to have to take a mystery kid to the police station.
“I bet the cops will know just what to do,” consoled Circa, joining Mom at the counter. “Maybe his parents will even be there waiting for him.”
Mom pushed hard to turn a childproof medicine bottle lid, oblivious to Circa’s optimism. The hot water running in the bathroom made the pipes in the wall knock and clang.
“He must have some kind of amnesia,” Mom said, tapping out the pink pill onto her palm.
Circa searched for the least mushy apple on the counter, her mind drifting toward that soft swivel chair waiting for her in the studio. If Mom and Miles had to go the police station, then she could finally get some time alone at the computer to practice her skills, without anyone to tell her all the things she wasn’t capable of.
“He’ll get his wits about him soon,” Mom went on.
Mom will be okay, thought Circa. After all, if you can’t be okay at a police station, where can you be?
“No big deal, right?” said Mom. She swallowed the pink pill.
It occurred to Circa that Mom never took her medicine before without Dad handing her a mug of milk and a sandwich, bagel, or hunk of cake to have it with. That is, until today. More than once, she’d asked Mom why she’d want to take a pill that made her so tired all the time. Mom would always just say, “Because tired is better than the alternative.”
“We’ll just drive him to the police station and come back home,” Mom said, scooping herself a sip of water from the faucet.
Circa coughed. “We?” she said.
Circa instantly saw the light turn red on her plans once again. She flung the apple hard into the trash can, making the plastic lid spin. Couldn’t the boy have found a better place to bring his ordeal? Maybe to a family in need of an ordeal? Didn’t he know that they might not have room for his and theirs?
“But Mom,” she said, “you know, I was really hoping for some alone time at Dad’s computer today. You know, to maybe get better and better so that I can maybe do the Memory—”
“All right, listen,” Mom interrupted, glancing over at the reunion picture once more. “I don’t mind if you mess around with your dad’s Photoshop for fun, and we can maybe do for now without selling his equipment, but let’s just not mention the Maple Grove project anymore, okay? I just can’t—”
Mom’s chin began to quiver as Circa realized something for the very first time. Plain and simple, Mom blamed Dad’s work for killing him. That’s why she couldn’t bear to talk about, think about, or even go near it. Circa, on the other hand, believed with every shard of her broken heart that the exact opposite was true. That Dad’s photo work was their best way to keep part of him alive. Only, at that moment, feeling unhinged by the raw hurt in her mom’s eyes, Circa couldn’t find the words to explain herself. So instead, Circa reached out for a big hug, and she made no promises.
“You know what, Mom?” she said. “Nurse, I mean Miss Lily at the Res— I mean at the place—she always said that Dad and I were like a rainbow up there.”
“You know what, Circ? You’re a rainbow right here,” said Mom, mustering a weak smile as she smoothed Circa’s hair away from her eyes. All Circa could think was how Mom’s color-drained face was in dire need of some pinkening, like Dad had done for all those Linholts lying flat on their kitchen table, when a voice from across the room startled them both.
“Thank you,” Miles said.
He stood in the doorway wearing a different, much less stained shirt. His hair was damp and arranged somewhat. His sunburn was even more shocking now, but something else struck Circa more than that. Now that the boy was wiped down, the familiarity she’d felt before was suddenly specific and undeniable. It was something about the way his eyebrows slanted up with the crinkle in between. It was a lot like her own father’s.
“I feel a little better,” he said. “Thanks.”
Circa looked up at Mom, who didn’t seem to be moved at all by the brow crinkle. Circa decided to chalk up the familiarity to her own grief.
“Miles, we’re going to drive you up to the police station,” said Mom.
Miles shot Circa a panicked look, like she’d totally ratted him out for using their house. He looked like he would have bolted out the door if there was any bolt left in him at all.
“To see if they can help you,” said Circa.
“Have you gone to the police at all yet?” said Mom.
“No, not yet,” said Miles. “I didn’t really have much to tell them.”
“Well, it seems we’ve got no choice but to start there,” said Mom, searching her purse for keys that were already in her hand.
“Okay,” Miles said, hoisting his backpack. “But before that…can I please have an apple?”
“Sure,” said Circa. She searched the baskets, finding the second-least-mushy apple as Mom turned away and whispered a silent prayer.
Toots (as in Tootsie) so looked forward to New Year’s Day every year, when her three friends from the future (a.k.a. “Future Guys”) would appear on the big console TV for a chat. From 1:23 to 1:53 p.m. mountain time, she’d sit down with a big bowl of Jiffy Pop, and the four of them would exchange tales of Hong Kong Phooey vs. Spider-Man, Neil Diamond vs. Coldplay, and Space Invaders vs. Minecraft. Decades later, Toots would have the triple joy of meeting the Future Guys in person. They would, after all, be her very own children.
Getting Miles to the police station involved three false starts for Mom. Circa waited in the front seat of the car, and Miles sat in the back with his head leaned against the window. During Mom’s third trip back into the house to get something she’d claimed to have forgotten, Circa finally spoke up.
“Just so you know, she might not be able to do this,” she said to Miles. But then Mom came out for the last time. Without a word, but with a lot of drawn-out breathing and hands clamped tight on the wheel, she drove them straight into town.
The station had two white glass globes that said POLICE, one on either side of the front steps. The building sat directly across the street from the Maple Grove Residence, and Circa felt pulled over there like a magnet as she and Mom and Miles walked up to the big station doors.
“Can I just go to Maple Grove for a minute while you guys are here?” she whispered to Mom, who instantly shot her a look that said no way.
“Not by yourself,” Mom said.
Well, then who in the world with? thought Circa. She glanced back over her shoulder across the road and saw scrawny Stanley, the teenage custodian, over in the iris garden sneaking a smoke. Stanley immediately locked eyes with Circa and blew her a big, exaggerated kiss. Much as Circa longed to go and visit the non-Stanley parts of Maple Grove, Mom had not been entirely unreasonable in her ruling. Dad had never let Circa go alone either, for the same smoochy reason.
The inside of the police station was nothing like what Circa had expected. She had imagined a swarming mob of criminals in various stages of fingerprinting and mug-shot making. A crowd of scowling people that, upon Miles’s entry, would part in the middle to reveal a tearful little couple on a bench who waited hopefully for their boy, whatever his real name might be, to come back to them. But there were no criminals b
eing booked. And worse yet, there were no tearful parents. Just a stumbling man wailing some kind of patriotic song and a whole bunch of people jabbering away on phones. Circa tried to make out what they were saying, but the conversations all merged into one big crazy story about looting, flooding, and fights in surrounding areas.
Mom stepped forward and explained their problem to a man called Sergeant Simms, who was wedged into a metal desk that squeezed him on all sides like it was more suited for a Sergeant Simms Jr. Circa and Miles stood behind quietly as Mom sat in a chair and went round and round with the cop about the police department not having a Found Person Report per se, just a Lost Person Report. How he figured they would have to classify this as a “Code 32.” Most all of his unhelpful sentences came with finger quote marks and a per se tacked onto the end. Miles leaned slightly closer to Circa during the Mom-and-cop back-and-forth.
“Wonder what a Code Thirty-two is?” he said.
“I bet it just means special case,” Circa said.
“Maybe it stands for ‘Can I please just get me a honeybun and start this fail of a day over?’” whispered Miles. It was the first thing she’d heard come out of his mouth that wasn’t tragic. He looked at Circa with the most subtle grin she’d ever seen on someone. And there was that Dad crinkle between his eyebrows again.
“Young man,” called the desk sergeant. “Yes, you, could you please step around here and answer a few questions for me?”
Mom stood so that Miles could have her chair. Mom shrugged at Circa as if to say she’d tried her best to handle things right. Sergeant Simms began by taking a picture of Miles’s face with a cell phone. Then, after asking Miles twenty questions that had little to no answers, the cop removed his cap and wiped the sweat from his bald head.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “We’re going to have to turn this over to Child Protective Services.”
“Okay,” said Mom, nodding.
“Only problem is, they are just as deep in the weeds, per se, as we are,” said the sergeant. “And frankly, ma’am, I believe this boy needs medical attention, and soon.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I thought as much too.”
“I strongly advise you to make the emergency room your next stop,” he said.
Mom looked like she’d been splashed in the face.
“Next stop?” she said, wringing her hands. “But I thought you all would help him.”
“Ma’am—” the sergeant began.
“Can’t you find his family?” she said. “Someone’s bound to be looking for him, right?”
“Ma’am,” he began again. “All we can do right now is send out an electronic notification that this kid has shown up in Wingate. Beyond that, what would you have me do with him? I’m sure not gonna lock the poor guy up with Uncle Sam over there.”
Across the room, the stumbling man was saluting every person who walked past. Mom had wrapped her purse strap so tight around her fingers, the tips were purple.
“Where I’m going with this,” said the sergeant, “is that I imagine if you get this boy to the hospital and have him treated…by the time he’s released, you probably will have heard back from Child Services.”
Sergeant Simms shoved Miles’s info into a big yellow envelope. “Plain and simple, ma’am, the boy needs a doctor, and now,” he said. “Now beyond that, due to the recent storm damage stretching the district’s resources so thin, per se, I’m going to rely on your compassion and goodwill until we find out who he belongs with.”
Circa made it a point to look for Miles’s crinkle every time the man threw out another per se, but the crinkling mood seemed to have left him as fast as it had come on.
“Who knows?” said the policeman. “Maybe the hospital will admit the boy, and his mama will show up just in time to pay the bill and whisk him away.”
“Yes, who knows,” said Mom. She turned to leave with Circa and Miles following behind.
“Just please let us hear something soon,” Mom said, without even a look behind her. Circa wondered if she was speaking to the sergeant or to God.
A perfectly good tuba. A perfectly good chair. One could only hope that the perfectly good musician didn’t meet the same fate.
Another short, silent car ride later, Circa, Mom, and Miles arrived at the hospital. The packed-full parking lot made Circa think that the people who weren’t at the police station might very well be at the emergency room instead. Inside, the big waiting room was a mint-green, flickery-lit place with cable news playing on TVs high up in every corner. Mom lingered for a minute in the doorway. When she went to pull a paper number from a dispenser, she walked as though every step was an effort. Circa wondered if that was what pushing through a panic looked like.
Mom returned with a number eighty-seven just as Circa and Miles found three empty chairs in a row. After they settled into the hard plastic seats, Circa took in the whole strange scene around her in stolen glances. In every direction, people of all ages were coughing violently, pressing their arms across their tummies, holding bandages over bleeding wounds, or keeping ice on wrapped-up hands or feet. A woman with a screaming baby was demanding to be seen and threatening to go over the check-in person’s head. She quieted down only when a security guard approached.
Circa didn’t know about Miles, but she had never actually been inside a hospital before. Turns out, it was just as bad as she’d seen on TV. All these bright lights. All these weary faces. Enough visible blood to keep Circa on the edge of woozy. If ever a place needed to be Shopt, it was this room, she thought. An instant garden of giant sunflowers over there, or maybe even a few floating puppies mixed in with these groaning people and their paper numbers.
Every one of the small overhead screens was showing scenes of still-fresh devastation all across the Southeast, flashing up lists of donations needed and where to take them. Circa and Mom had been careful not to watch the news since the ordeal had happened, and hearing about it over and over from four different directions instantly turned Circa into one of the people with her arms pressed across her aching belly. Circa kept looking at Miles to see if any of this bombardment of information sparked a memory in him. But he just sat there, slumped and staring in the direction of a poster that listed all the appropriate times to wear a germ mask. When Miles sank low enough for Circa to see over him, she noticed that Mom was kind of zoned out herself.
“Maple Grove is nothing like this,” Circa said to him as she shifted in her seat. “I mean it’s kind of medical, but they hide that part to make it homey,” she added, but no one was listening.
“I didn’t think we’d be gone this long,” said Mom, looking at Circa worriedly. She kept opening her eyes big like she was trying to focus them. “I just knew we’d be home by now with it all fixed.”
Circa thought about how Mom had always been at home after taking a pink pill, not having to be in charge of much more than a nap. “Maybe a snack from the machine will help,” she whispered to her. “You haven’t really eaten today, Mom.”
“Okay,” Mom said distantly as she rummaged through her purse for some cash. “Circ,” she said. “If I’m a little weird, please help me do some of the talking, okay?”
“Sure,” said Circa, embarrassed for Miles to hear that. No wonder Mom had told her she couldn’t be Dad, she stewed. It was because Circa was going to have to be the mom from now on.
After Mom left for the vending area, Circa dug out some Jolly Ranchers left in her pocket from who knows when. “She’s usually at home when she’s taken her medicine,” she said.
Miles just bounced his leg nervously and closed his eyes, like he was desperately searching for a shred of a something inside his head.
“You awake?” she asked as she handed over a green apple Rancher.
“Yeah. Thanks,” he said, straightening himself up in his seat. He popped the candy into his mouth. “So what’s Maple Grove?”
he said as he slurped. “Why do you want to go there so bad?”
Circa blew a fuzz off her cinnamon Rancher. “It’s this place here in town. Kind of like an old-folks’ home. And I want to go there because it’s real special to me,” she said. “My great-aunt Ruby lived there before, and we go—I mean went—all the time. And besides, I just feel like my dad would want me to check on our friends.”
A voice called the next three numbers over a loudspeaker. Miles scratched wildly at a mosquito bite on his thumb.
“You might like to know that these friends I’m talking about have also forgotten a lot of things,” said Circa. “But sometimes they do remember, and that’s when it’s fun.”
“Yeah, okay,” Miles said skeptically, trying to free the candy from his back teeth.
“So at that reunion spot where you came from,” Circa said. “Did you maybe see a man there with a plastic poncho? In an old blue Jeep?”
Miles stopped bouncing. “I really don’t know if I did or not. Why? Is that your dad?”
“Never mind,” said Circa. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why do you keep asking me if I saw him?” he said.
Circa pressed her arms into her tummy again. “Because that’s where they said he died,” she said. “At the reunion place. He was there to deliver that picture.”
“No way,” said Miles, squinting his eyes like he was calculating the weirdness of it all.
“Number eighty-seven!” a nurse called out loud enough for a room three times that size. Circa stood and waved Mom over from the snack machine, where she was trying to smooth the creases from an uncooperative dollar bill. A couple minutes later, Mom and her Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew joined Circa and Miles in a small triage area, where a nurse checked Miles’s blood pressure and temperature before showing them to their own curtained room.
Then a different nurse came in. “This wraps around and ties in the front,” she said, handing Miles a pale blue gown that was frayed at the edges. “Your mom and your sister can help you tie it up.”
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