"Hi," Holly said brightly. "You're Kyra, aren't you? I love your barrettes." Your cheap, nasty, pink plastic hair slides.
Kyra wrinkled up her nose. "Who areyou?"
"My name's Holly. I've come to see if your mom needs any help with your brother Casper."
"I'm managingfine,as a matter of fact," snapped Mrs. Beale impatiently. "If I needed any kind of damn help, I would've asked for it long since, wouldn't I?"
"That's terrific," said Holly. "So long as you're coping okay. Now, if I could just see Casper for a minute It doesn't matter if he's sleeping."
"Well, I don't really think so," said Mrs. Beale. She pulled her children in closer to her side, and she shifted herself around so that she was standing in between Holly and the open door to the apartment block.
Holly hesitated. "Mrs Beale, if you won't let me see Casper today, I'll have to make arrangements to see him some other time."
"He's my son; he's sick but I take care of him good. I mean, what makes this any of your damned business?"
"I just need to make sure that he's receiving the best care possible, and that you're receiving all the help you're entitled to."
"Youtalkweird," sneered Thomas.
Holly smiled and pointed to her ear. "That's because I'm deaf. I haven't been able to hear anything since I was a little girl."
"You'redeaf?"said Mrs. Beale in disbelief. She lifted up her eyes to appeal to the sky. "She's deaf, for Chrissakes, and she thinks she can bring up Casper better than me! Do you hear that, Thomas? They'll be sending around a cripple next, to teach you how to skateboard!"
"Mrs. Beale, you don't have to be so negative about this. I'm here to help you out, not to criticize you."
Mrs. Beale jabbed a finger at her. "I don't want none of your help. If it isn't bad enough, bringing up a child who won't be doing nothing in his life but dying. Now, you just get back in your vehicle and leave me alone. I've got enough of a cross to bear without you climbing astride of it for the ride."
"I'm sorry," said Holly. "It wasn't my intention to upset you, but I'll have to see Casper sooner or later. If it's not convenient now, maybe you can tell me when."
"Are you going to leave me alone or what?"
"All right, I'll leave you alone."
"Then leave me alone. Get the hell out of here."
Holly shrugged, trying to look indifferent, even though her heart was beating twice as fast as normal. "I have to warn you, I'll be back, with a police officer if necessary."
Just as she was about to turn away, however, a small figure suddenly appeared in the doorway of the apartment block, like a ghostly apparition. It was a boy. A thin, chalk-white boy, wearing pale green pajamas. He was totally bald, and his face was shrunken in so that his eyes and his ears looked enormously out of proportion. He looked more like a sickly monkey than a human child. Holly was so shocked that she said "Oh my God" out loud.
"Momma!" the boy called out. His voice was surprisingly clear. "Momma, I've puked in my bed!"
Mrs. Beale glared at Holly and bustled up the drive. "How many times do I have to tell you not to come wandering outside? How many damn times?"
"But, Momma, I puked in my bed."
"Okay, okay, we'll get you cleaned up. Now, get back inside."
Holly skirted around the other two children and went right up to the doorway. The boy looked up at her with no curiosity at all. One leg of his pajamas was soaked in sour, milky vomit.
"Leave us alone," said Mrs. Beale. She spoke with her teeth clenched-"Reave us arrone!"-so that Holly could hardly understand her. "Can't you see how sick he is?"
"Of course I can see how sick he is. I can hardly believe that he isn't in a hospital."
"What? There's nothing that nobody can do for him in hospital."
"So who's his doctor?"
Mrs. Beale lifted Casper up in her arms. His wrists and his ankles were as thin as wooden spoons. "Keep your nose out, okay?I'mtaking care of him. Nobody else can take care of him the way I can."
"Mrs. Beale, I'm going to come inside and I'm going to talk to Casper. I insist."
"Shove off, will you?"
"Mrs. Beale, you don't have any choice. If you try to stop me from talking to Casper, Iwillcall the police."
Holly had to wait in the living room while Mrs. Beale changed Casper's pajamas. It was airless and stuffy and grotesquely overfurnished with Louis XIV-style armchairs and glass-topped wine tables and crushed-velour cushions. One side of the room was dominated by a forty-inch plasma-screen TV with a home movie center; the other by a glass-fronted liquor cabinet that was crowded with bottles of bourbon and brandy and amaretto. On the wall, in a lavish gilded frame, hung a blown-up color photograph of Mrs. Beale at Disneyland with Thomas and Kyra and Goofy. No sign of Casper.
Thomas and Kyra loitered in the living-room doorway, staring at Holly with those poisonous-pudding looks on their faces. It occurred to Holly that they probably weren't allowed into the room itself. There were too many breakable statuettes and fragile knick-knacks and simulated-crystal souvenirs. On one table, on a little lace doily of its own, stood a snowstorm of Las Vegas, complete with Eiffel Tower.
Mrs. Beale reappeared carrying Casper in her arms. She propped him in one of the armchairs and sniffed her fingers. "Nothing worse than puke," she said.
She had knotted a red spotted scarf around Casper's head and changed him into faded red pajamas. He sat with his head resting against one of the cushions, staring at Holly unblinkingly. Holly shifted herself closer to him and took hold of one of his chilly little hands. He still smelled of vomit.
"Casper, my name's Holly. I've come by today to say hello and to make sure that you're okay."
"I'm okay," Casper whispered.
"I heard that you were kicking up kind of a fuss this morning."
"It was something and nothing," Mrs. Beale put in. "What do you expect when a kid's as sick as that? He doesn't understand that he has to get sicker to get better."
"I'm not going to get better," Casper said, and coughed.
"Of course you're going to get better," said Mrs. Beale. "Before you know it you'll be playing outside with Thomas and Kyra."
"I've heard you talking on the phone," Casper insisted.
"Casper, little boys who listen to other people's conversations will go to hell, I'm telling you that, as sure as eggs is chickens."
Casper rolled his eyes toward Holly and feebly squeezed her hand. "I'm going to die," he assured her. He was so certain, so calm, that Holly felt a painful constriction in her throat. "I'm not scared. Sometimes I wish that I could go to sleep and never wake up."
Afterward, out on the porch, Holly said, "Mrs. Beale, you have to give me the name of Casper's doctor."
Mrs. Beale kept pulling at her gold chain necklaces, over and over, as if she were trying to saw her head off. "Dr. Ferdinand, that's his doctor."
"Dr. Ferdinand? Okay, where?"
"What do you mean,where?"
"I mean which clinic-which hospital?"
"East Portland Memorial, the children's cancer clinic."
"You have a number?"
"Go find it yourself. I have to go back to Casper."
"Okay, thanks for your help."