“One thing,” Brillstein said. He cleared his throat and looked down. He had put the flats of his hands together, the fingertips prayerfully touching his mouth. After a moment of communion he raised his eyes to look at her decisively. He parted his hands. “Don’t talk about — you know, what we discussed — about your worries in terms of the accident. Don’t talk about any of that with anyone else. Just for the moment. Talking with your priest is all right. But not with friends. Just for the next few days. I need to think about it.”
“It’ll hurt the case,” Manny said in a grave voice. “We won’t talk about it.”
Carla had expected this. She was on her feet, ready to go. She sipped the last of her Pepsi. The back of her neck felt loose and tired. She had to get home and lie down. She wanted to see her mother. She wanted to apologize for yelling yesterday when she was cleaning up Bubble’s room.
“I’d better get you home,” Manny said. He took her elbow.
“Wait,” she said and gathered herself. “I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to hear any speeches. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care what happens. I’m telling the truth. To anyone I feel like.”
For a moment Brillstein was eager to answer. His eyes opened as wide as they could. They were still small but they sparkled. He even went so far as to part his lips to talk — but then he squeezed them together, rolled them between his teeth, and made his mouth lipless.
Manny backed a step away from Carla. He shifted to face her completely. He had his arms low and out at his sides, setting the weight of his thick body onto his thighs, like a sumo wrestler ready to absorb a blow. “Are you crazy, woman?”
“No, Manny.” Carla took a breath and it became a yawn. She was so tired. “I’m not fighting you about it. I’m not fighting with anybody. But nothing will change my mind.”
“Don’t worry,” Brillstein said anxiously to Manny. He leaned forward and touched Manny’s left arm gingerly, careful as he tried to soothe the beast. “I don’t think it matters. Let me work with it for a few days.”
“No!” Manny shouted. Brillstein blanched. His hands went up immediately as if Manny were pointing a gun at him. Manny stamped his right foot. It had never occurred to Carla before, but her husband resembled a bull, with his thick body, glowering eyes, and that tight helmet of black hair covering a ramming head. He had no horns — but otherwise he was a bull. “No,” he repeated in a deep tone. He sounded very Spanish. “They killed my son. They were responsible.” He pointed to Carla. “Not her!”
“Take me home, Manny.” Carla walked slowly to the door. She wondered where Max’s wife was waiting. Was there a different waiting room? Or was she allowed into intensive care?
Brillstein tried to soothe Manny with words: “Of course they’re responsible. They’re going to pay. Don’t worry.”
“They have to pay.” Manny’s voice sounded at least an octave lower than was normal.
“Take me home,” Carla said again. This time Manny came.
In the parking lot, as they got into his father’s car, Manny said, “Don’t worry. I’m going to drive slow.”
“Drive the way you want,” she told him honestly. “I don’t care.” On the way home she fell asleep.
The car’s tires hummed on a metal bridge, rumbling underneath her dream. She walked into a white room dressed in a red T-shirt, very bright red and very long. It covered her knees.
Bubble was at her left breast, feeding. He looked up at her thoughtfully while his mouth worked. She felt him pull the sustenance out of her chest, on a string from her heart.
He blinked his eyes.
He was no longer a newborn. Now he stood a few feet away, a toddler. He bent his knees, his chubby legs wrinkling, and laughed hard, showing a mouth of tiny white teeth.
What’s so funny? she tried to ask, but no words came out. She was frustrated.
They were outside, on a lawn that rolled down and away, disappearing into sky, a pale sky, almost white. Bubble came up close, his face as big as the world. She felt his breath on her neck.
“I’m going bed,” he said.
He ran away from her — too quickly — until a man’s hand stopped him. Bubble took the hand. It belonged to Max. He smiled back at her.
“I’ll get him home safe,” Max said.
Everything was going to be all right, she knew. She tried to tell Max she understood but her mouth still couldn’t make sound.
Max led Bubble away. Bubble was pleased to be with him. Hand in hand they walked off the green earth into pale sky.
20
After nine days in the hospital Max’s head still ached — at least dully — all the time. And he felt dizzy if he walked more than a few steps. He couldn’t see that well either. Everything in his room seemed to have been covered in cellophane and out his window the world looked foggy even when the sun shined. They said his vision would clear up; but he was worried.
When he first regained consciousness, in the dimmed agony he could feel through the fever, drugs, and mental confusion, he regretted what he had done. Later in the week, though, when Carla came to see him, he didn’t. She had recovered herself. Her eyes were bright and her thin body had energy, almost too much energy. Her darting movements — from the side of his bed to the tray to get him something — made his head hurt. She talked nonstop, too, about how she had finished packing Bubble’s room, giving the stuff away to the Church, how she had visited his grave with her mother and afterwards they had kissed and made up for all their crazy arguments of the last six months. “Poor Mama,” Carla said. “I sent her home to be with her new husband. She’s had no time to be with him. I can’t believe how patient she was with me.”
Max enjoyed the lively talk of her awakening — as long as she kept still. When others visited their speeches hurt even if they did keep still, because he had to remember things. It seemed that to remember used the bruised part of his brain; listening to Carla’s present life required a section that had gone unscathed. The painless present, he called it, and discouraged visits from the past, especially his former office staff, his friends, his mother and sister, Debby’s relatives and even Debby herself.
Debby was furious with him, anyway, and probably didn’t want to stay much longer than her daily hour-long visits. She made no recriminations the first few days until Max had stabilized. On the fourth day she sent Jonah to the waiting room with his grandfather. She settled by the window — her back erect, her eyes as alert as a cat waiting for prey — and made a speech. Her long face was composed, her profile backlit by the gray winter light. He couldn’t see her features distinctly at that distance. The fuzziness acted as a flattering camera lens — she looked as young as when they first met.
“I’ve had a long talk with Bill Perlman.”
“Another one?” Max said.
Debby ignored him. “He told me to stop treating you with kid gloves. I’ve been scared to just say what I—”
“Say what you want,” Max said. It would be a relief to hear her anger. Let the worst happen: it wasn’t as terrible as he once thought.
Debby cleared her throat. “I know you think there’s nothing wrong with you since the plane crash. But there is something wrong. Terribly wrong. You don’t seem to want to live anymore. At least not with me. And you don’t want to do any of the things that we used to do together. You don’t want to work, you don’t want to make love, you don’t want to…be with me. You don’t even want to go to the movies with me. You can’t even bear to sit in the dark next to me doing nothing…” She dropped her head. It was an elegant movement: only her chin and face fell; her long neck remained straight. She was a grief-stricken swan. “Jonah feels you don’t want to be with him.”