“I don’t like lamb.”
“I never met a child who did. I guess eating it seems like one of the more barbaric adult practices.”
“It’s sad.”
“I guess it is, in a way.”
Wayne liked that Thomasina could admit this. His father would not have done so, nor would his mother. They did not admit that it was sad to eat rabbits either. He wouldn’t mind their eating these animals if part of them could admit, as Thomasina did now, that it was sad in some way. He didn’t like that they pushed all sadness away.
“Why do you eat it, then?”
“There’s something ancient about the flavour of lamb. People have been eating it for centuries. Grown-ups put the sadness out of their minds because to them, appetite is stronger.”
“Being hungry makes you forget it’s a lamb?”
“Appetite is king.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I need to think about it.”
Wayne did not know any other grown-ups who would admit they needed to think about something. They all came up with some kind of answer, even if it didn’t make sense.
They were on the wildest part of the road now. Wayne knew there were animals in the woods, and birds. Treadway would have found a story in the land that bordered this long, lonely road, and it might even be a story about meat, appetite, hunger. But daily meat, daily appetite, daily hunger. Not the kind Thomasina meant.
When Goose Bay appeared through the trees, there was nothing thrilling about it. The buildings were low and square, with no architecture. They were utilitarian and sat inert against the sky. The hospital had some feeling in it because it stood taller. It had many windows and a sense of mystery, but not an inviting mystery. Every time he had come with his mother, Wayne had sensed that something frightened her. He was not afraid of the hospital but he was afraid of what it did to his mother. It made her retreat from him in the days around his appointments. Thomasina was different.
The closer her truck got to the main gate, the more he felt she wanted to talk. Thomasina believed he was as sensible as she was herself. He could feel that. You can feel the degree to which anyone thinks she knows more than you do. Thomasina might know more facts than Wayne did, but her face told him she believed he was capable of understanding anything she understood. He felt something pop like ginger ale bubbles in his hands. Other parts of his body fizzed too: his scalp, and his cheekbones. His body fizzed like a wave. With Thomasina that was how you felt. You were riding somewhere, and it was exciting.
They parked under the pole with an M on it and walked across the lot.
“Everyone is a snake shedding its skin,” she said. “We are different people all through our lives. You even more so. No one has told you this thing, and I’m going to ask you, do you want to know?”
A woman helped a child out of a van into a wheelchair. There were puddles, and Wayne smacked his sneaker sole into their edges. The hospital hummed and there was a smell of French fries and canned gravy.
“What?”
“If you had a choice between knowing a scary truth and a comforting lie, which would you choose?”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You’d want to know?”
“I’d want to know what?”
“I wish we weren’t in a parking lot.” Nurses and cashiers and candystripers smoked at the entrance, jiggling their feet and rubbing their bare arms. “I wish that inside there weren’t puke green corridors with painted footprints.”
“I know a really cool place inside.”
“You do?”
He had found it the last time he was here, while he and Jacinta waited for tests. He had left his mother eating pea soup with salt beef and dumplings floating in it, which she had said was pretty good for soup in a Styrofoam bowl. He had gone exploring along the corridor with the green footprints, way into the west wing, to a place where a handpainted sign said SISTER ROSITA BONNELL PALLIATIVE CARE WARD. At the end of the ward was a blue door. He led Thomasina to it now.
There were couches upholstered in material with blue fish. A window depicted a woman with a crescent moon and the earth under one foot, and a falcon on her arm. A candle burned. The window was gold and green. The colours were rich and not too hot.
“That’s not even Mary,” Thomasina said. “It’s Isis. Sister Rosita Bonnell must have been a renegade.”
“Is that like a bandit?”
“She must have gone to Bolivia and got herself a splendid education, then come back and done things the Pope would hang her for if he knew.”
“What was the thing you wanted to tell me?”
“When you were born, Wayne, I was there. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Well I was. I was there, and I saw something.”
“I was born in my house. Not here.”
“I know.”
“I came to the hospital after I was born.”
“Do you know why?”
“Because of my blood disorder. That’s why I have to take all the pills. It’s some rare thing.”
“I wouldn’t call what you have a disorder. I’d call it a different order. A different order means a whole new way of being. It could be fantastic. It could be overwhelmingly beautiful, if people weren’t scared.”
“What was the thing you saw when I was born?”
Thomasina wanted to say, A daughter. You were a daughter as well as a son. But what would Wayne do with the truth? He would need more than the truth. He would need a world that understood. What had she been thinking?
“What was it?”
The door opened and a young woman came in wheeling a bearded man with a rose in his hand and an intravenous unit hooked up to his arm. They looked at Thomasina and Wayne for a second, then sat together in front of the candle. The man was dying. He looked as if he wanted the woman to love him, but she looked too tired to love anybody. She looked as if she might die before he did. The room turned into a container for weariness, and Thomasina took Wayne’s shoulder and herded him out. They walked around a bucket full of water with a mop in it, then around a trolley with covered dishes smelling of fried ham and instant potatoes.
“What?” Wayne insisted.
“It’s not the right time.”
“You should have told me before those people came in.”
“We’ll go see Dr. Lioukras.” Thomasina had lost her courage. Prudence. That was what everyone had been trying to exercise. That was the quality she herself lacked.
“What?” Wayne stopped under a pane of wobbly glass. There was no Isis, no nurse, no ham or potatoes. Just tiles with specks in them, and a corridor that led from the dying to the living. He could not hear the rest of the hospital from here.
“I’m not going to see Dr. Lioukras until you tell me.” He put his hand on the sill, which was cold and bumpy and had been painted years ago. This place was like the root cellar his father had shown him at a house out near the Black Cliffs. They had gone in on one of the few hot Labrador days, when little orange moths clustered on thistles and there was a haze over the hay. The root cellar was cool as a plunge in the pond under the big overfall. If Thomasina wanted to tell him a thing, why didn’t she just do it?
Wayne tried to see out the window. It had been made for adults to look out of. It had been made to shed light on this corridor from a height. The light cascaded and made you feel like you were about to realize something. Wayne closed his eyes and tried to discern if he could feel light on his head the way he could feel warmth, or the touch of a hand. Light felt like a thin layer of water. But the door at the end of the hallway clicked open and someone came through but did not walk towards them. Who was it? He realized Thomasina was staring at the person, who was in shadow, and that she looked guilty. Then the person opened the door again, a door with diagonal planks like a dungeon door, and the person went back out. When it closed, the door echoed, and Wayne wanted to get back to the modern part of the hospital. Whatever Thomasina wanted to tell him, she could keep it to herself. He didn’t have to listen to her. He wouldn’t mind a hot dog. He wouldn’t mind a plate of fries and gravy.