“Did it? Are you really saying that you aren’t concerned about what’s going to happen to me? About how that will affect you?”
“Janie—” Cabel gives her a helpless look.
“Well?”
“Well what? What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell the truth. Aren’t you worried? Not even a little bit?”
“Janie,” he says again. “Don’t. Why are you doing this?”
But he doesn’t answer the question.
To Janie, that says it all. She closes her eyes. “I think I’m a little stressed out,” she whispers after a moment, and then shakes her head. At least now she knows. “Got a lot on my mind.”
“Oh, really?” Cabe laughs softly.
“Some great vacation week, huh?”
Cabel snorts. “Yeah. Seems like forever since we were lazing around in the sun.”
Janie’s quiet, thinking about her mother, her father, and everything else. Cabel, and her own stupid problems, as Cabel calls them. And now, she wonders, Who’s going to pay this hospital bill? She hopes like hell Henry has money, but by the looks of him, he’s homeless. “No insurance,” she groans aloud. Bangs her head against Cabel’s chest. “Ay yi yi.”
“It’s not your problem.”
Janie sighs deeply. “Why do I feel so responsible for it then?”
Cabel’s quiet.
Janie looks up at him. “What?”
“You want me to analyze you?”
She laughs. “Sure.”
“I’ll probably regret saying anything. But it’s like this. You’re so used to playing the responsible one with your mother. Now you see this dysfunctional guy, somebody tells you he’s your father and boom, your instinct is to be responsible for him, too, since he appears to be even more fucked-up than your mother. God knows we never thought that was possible.”
Janie sighs. “I’m just trying to get through it all, you know? Get through the messes one by one, hoping each time it’s the last one, and then I look beyond it and realize, crap, there’s one more. Just hoping that someday, finally, I’ll be free.” Janie looks over at Henry and walks over to the side of the bed. “But it never happens,” she says. Looks at her father for a long moment.
Thinking.
Thinking.
Maybe it’s time to change.
Time to be responsible for just one person.
“Come on,” she finally says to Cabel. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him. Let’s just go. Wait for them to call my mother when he’s . . . when it’s over.”
“Okay, sweets.” Cabel follows Janie out of the room. He nods to Miguel at the desk and Miguel offers a sympathetic smile.
“Now what?” Cabel says, grabbing Janie’s hand as they walk out to his car. “Food?”
“I think I’d rather you just drive me home, will you? I need some process time. Better check on my mother, too.”
“Ah. Okay.” Cabel doesn’t sound thrilled. “Tonight?”
“Yeah . . . ” Janie says, distracted. “That would be good.”
1:15 p.m.
Janie flops onto her bed. Sinks her face into her pillow. Her fan full blast and blowing on her, window and shade closed to keep the heat out. It’s hot in the house, but Janie doesn’t care. She’s still recuperating from last night. She falls hard into an afternoon sleep. Her dreams are jumbled and random, flitting from a creepy, hairy homeless man chasing her to her mother stumbling around drunk in the front yard naked, to Mr. Durbin threatening to kill her, to a parade with all the people from the Hill lined up along the street, watching. Pointing and laughing at Janie the narc girl.
Then she dreams a horrible dream about Miss Stubin dying, and even though she’s already dead, it still hurts. In the dream, Janie cries. When she wakes, her eyes are wet.
So is the rest of her. She’s sweating so hard her sheets are damp.
And she feels like somebody beat the crap out of her.
Janie hates naps like that.
4:22 p.m.
She slips on her running shoes, stretches, and heads out the door, water bottle in hand. Thinks maybe this is what she needs. She hasn’t worked out all week.
She walks down the driveway, feet crunching the gravel, and eases into a jog. Pounds the tar-patched pavement, her shoes making dents in the black blobs that are made even softer by the sun. Sweat pours down her back, between her breasts. Her legs are tired but she keeps going, waiting for that rush to hit. She runs all the way to Heather Home without realizing where she’s going. The rhythmic step, the measured breathing, both slamming bad thoughts and memories through her head, trying to pound them out.
Not really succeeding.
Up the drive and into the cement parking lot she runs and then she stops. Stands in a parking space whose lines look tired from years of wear and lack of paint. Looks up to the sky, above the enormous maples, picturing that night a few summers ago when she sat out here with three of the Heather Home residents for the Fourth of July fireworks. They oohed and ahhed over the display, even though one of them was blind.
Blind, like Janie will be.
Oh, Miss Stubin.
Janie, breathing hard, lowers herself to the hot cement and the tears spill out freely, the pain of being eighteen and in love with a guy who can’t talk about what’s happening to her, and feeling this huge weight pressing into her chest, smashing her down, holding her back, keeping her from really living like a teenage girl should be living, and she wonders, not for the first time, why all this shit is happening to her. Thinks that she made a horrible mistake, taking the job with Captain and accelerating her own blindness for the benefit of others. Wonders what it would be like if all of it had never happened to her, if she’d never read that damn green notebook, if she’d never ridden that train where it all started when she was eight. If she could actually be in control of her life, just once.
Wonders if she should really do what she’s been afraid to do all this time.
Save herself and screw the rest.
“Give me a fucking break!” she shouts up to the fireworks that are no longer there. “What the fuck do I have to do to just be normal? What did I ever do to deserve this crap? Why?” She sobs. “Why?”
Also, not for the first time,
there is no answer.
5:35 p.m.
Janie picks herself up.
Wipes the dirt from her shorts.
Starts jogging home.
6:09 p.m.
She slips into the back door of Cabel’s house. Exhausted and empty.
He looks up from the kitchen where’s he’s fixing a sandwich and blinks at her.
“Hi,” she says. Stands there, her tear-stained cheeks streaked with summer road dust and sweat.
Cabel’s nose twitches. “Wow. You smell disgusting,” he says. “Come with me.”
And then he leads her to the bathroom. Turns on the shower. Kneels down to take off her shoes and socks as she sets her glasses on the counter and takes out her ponytail. Helps her out of her sodden clothes. And then he holds the curtain aside for her. “Go on,” he says. She steps in.
He watches her, admiring her curves. Reluctantly turns to go.
And then he stops.
Thinks Janie might need some extra pampering.
He slips off his T-shirt and shorts. Boxers, too. And joins her.
6:42 p.m.
“Hey, Cabe?” she says, drying her hair, feeling refreshed. Grinning. Putting all thoughts but one aside for the moment. “You wanna go get Jimmy a raincoat and we’ll take care of you?”
Cabel looks at her.
Turns his head and narrows his eyes.
“Who the hell is Jimmy?”
11:21 p.m.
In the cool dark basement, she whispers, “It’s not Ralph, is it?”
Cabel’s quiet for a moment, as if he’s thinking. “You mean like Forever Ralph? Uh, no.”
“You’ve read Forever?” Janie is incredulous.
“
There wasn’t much to choose from on the hospital library cart, and Deenie was always checked out,” Cabel says sarcastically.
“Did you like it?”
Cabel laughs softly. “Um . . . well, it wasn’t the wisest thing to read for a fourteen-year-old guy with fresh skin grafts in the general area down there, if you know what I mean.”
Janie stifles a sympathetic laugh and buries her face in his T-shirt. Holds him close. Feels him breathing. After a few minutes, she says, “So what, then? Pete? Clyde?”
Cabel rolls over, pretending to sleep.
“It’s Fred, isn’t it.”
“Janie. Stop.”
“You named your thing Janie?” She giggles.
Cabel groans deeply. “Go to sleep.”
11:41 p.m.
She sleeps. It’s delicious.
For a while.
3:03 a.m.
He dreams.
They are in Cabel’s house, the two of them, snuggling up together on a couch, playing Halo, eating pizza. Having fun. There is a muffled noise in the background, someone calling out for help from the kitchen, but the two ignore it—they are too busy enjoying each other’s company.
The cries for help grow louder.
“Quiet!” Cabel yells. But the calls only grow more intense. He yells again, but nothing changes. Finally he goes into the kitchen. Janie is compelled to follow.
He yells out, “Just shut up about your stupid problems! I can’t take it anymore!”
There, lying in a white hospital bed in the middle of the kitchen, is a woman.
She’s contorted, crippled.
Blind and emaciated.
Hideous.
It’s old Janie.
The young Janie on the couch is gone.
Cabel turns to Janie in the dream. “Help me,” he says.
Janie stares. Gives a slight shake of her head, even though she is compelled to try to help him. “I can’t.”
“Please, Janie. Help me.”
She looks at him. Speechless. Shudders, and holds back the tears.
Whispers, “Maybe you should just say good-bye.”
Cabel stares at her. And then he turns to the old Janie.
Reaches out with two fingers.
Closes her eyelids.
Janie struggles and pulls out of the dream.
Frozen.
Panting.
The world closing in around her again. She struggles to move. To breathe.
When she is able, Janie stumbles on numb toes across Cabe’s basement floor and up the steps, out the door. Across the yards and to her tiny, stifling prison.
Lies on her side, counting her breaths, making herself feel each one, in and out. Staring at the wall.
Wondering how much longer she can hide it all.
SUNDAY
August 6, 2006, 10:10 a.m.
She stares at the wall.
And pulls herself out of bed to face another day.
Janie finds Dorothea in the kitchen, fixing her mid-morning cocktail. It’s the first time Janie’s seen her since they talked.
“Hey,” Janie says.
Janie’s mother grunts.
It’s like nothing happened.
“Any word on Henry?”
“No.”
“You doing okay?”
Janie’s mother pauses and gives Janie a bleary look. She fakes a smile. “Just fine.”
Janie tries again. “You know my cell phone number is here next to the calendar if you ever need me, right? And Cabel’s is here too. He’ll do anything for you, like, if I’m not around or something. You know that?”
“He’s that hippie guy?”
“Yeah, Ma.” Janie rolls her eyes. Cabel got his hair cut months ago.
“Cabel—what kind of name is that?”
Janie ignores her. Wishes she hadn’t said anything in the first place.
“You better not get knocked up, alls I can say. A baby ruins your life.” Janie’s mother shuffles off to her bedroom.
Janie stares at her as she goes. Shakes her head. “Hey, thanks a lot,” she calls out. She pulls out her phone and turns it on. There’s a text from Cabel: Didn’t hear you leave. Where’d you go? Everything okay?
Janie sighs. Texts back. Just woke up early. Had some stuff to take care of.
He replies. You left your shoes here. Want me to bring them, or?
Janie debates. Yeah. Thx.
11:30 a.m.
He’s at the door. “Mind if we go for a ride?”
Janie narrows her eyes. “Where to?”
“You’ll see.”
Reluctantly, Janie follows him to the car.
Cabel heads out of town and down a road that leads past several cornfields, and then acre after acre of woods. He slows the car down, squinting at the occasional rusty mailbox, scanning the woods.
“What are you doing?” Janie asks.
“Looking for two-three-eight-eighty-eight.”
Janie sits up and peers out her window too. She says suspiciously, “Who lives way out here in BFE?”
Cabel squints again and slows as they pass 23766. He glances in his rearview mirror and a moment later, a car zooms by, passing them. “Henry Feingold.”
“What? How do you know?”
“I looked in the phone book.”
“Hunh. You’re smart,” Janie says. Unsure. Should she be outraged or eager?
Or just ashamed that she didn’t think of it first?
Another mile and Cabel turns into an overgrown two-track gravel drive. Bushes scratch the sides of the car and the track is extremely bumpy. Cabel swears under his breath.
Janie peers out the windshield. The sun beats down between the tree branches, making it a striped ride. She sees something blurry about a quarter-mile away, in a clearing. “Is that a house?”
“Yeah.”
After a couple of minutes, Cabel driving agonizingly slow over the bumpy driveway, they come to a stop in front of a small, run-down cabin.
They get out of the car. In the gravel turnaround there’s an old, rusty blue station wagon with wood panels. A container of sun tea steeps on the car hood.
Janie takes it all in.
Bushes surround the tiny house. A wayward string of singed roses threatens to overtake a rotting trellis. A few straggling tiger lilies are opened wide, soaking up the sun. All the other flowers are weeds. Outside the front door sits a short stack of cardboard boxes.
Cabel steps carefully through pricker bushes to the dirty window and peers inside, trying to see through the tiny opening between curtains. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s here.”
“You shouldn’t do that,” Janie says. She’s uncomfortable. It’s hot and the air buzzes with insects. And they are invading someone’s privacy. “This place is creeping me out.”
Cabel examines the stack of boxes in front of the door, looking at the return addresses. He picks one up and shakes it near his ear. Then he sets it back down on the pile and looks around. “Want to break in?” he asks with an evil grin.
“No. That’s not cool. We could get arrested!”
“Nah, who’s going to know?”
“If Captain ever found out, she’d kick our asses. She’s not going to go easy.” Janie edges toward the car. “Come on, Cabe. Seriously.”
Cabel reluctantly agrees and they get back into the car. “I don’t get it. Don’t you want to know more? The guy’s your father. Aren’t you curious?”
Janie looks out the window as Cabel turns the car around. “I’m trying not to be.”
“Because he’s dying?”
She’s lost in thought. “Yeah.” Knows that if she doesn’t invest in Henry, she can write him off as a problem solved when he dies. He’ll just be some guy whose obituary is in the paper. Not her father. “I don’t need one more thing to worry about, I guess.”
Cabel pulls the car out onto the road again and Janie glances over her shoulder one last time. All she can see are trees.
“I hope his packages don?
??t get all wet next time it rains,” she says.
“Does it really matter if they do?”
They ride in silence for a few minutes. And then Cabel asks, “Did you get anything from Henry’s nightmare yesterday? I was afraid to ask after our little misunderstanding of doom.”
Janie turns in her seat and watches Cabel drive. “It was mostly the same as before. Static. Colors. Woman in the distance and then I saw Henry in the dream too. Always sitting in that same chair. He was watching the woman.”
“What was the woman doing?”
“Just standing there in the middle of a dimly lit room—it was like a school gymnasium or something. I couldn’t see her face.”
“He was just watching her? Sounds creepy.”
“Yeah,” Janie says. She watches the rows of corn whiz past in a blur. “It didn’t really feel creepy, though. It felt . . . lonely. And then—” Janie stops. Thinks. “Hmm.”
“What?”
“He turned and looked at me. Like he was maybe a little bit surprised that I was there. He asked me to help him.”
“Other people in dreams have seen you too, right? They talk to you.”
“Oh, totally. But . . . I don’t know. This felt different. Like . . . ” Janie searches her memories, thinking back through the dozens of dreams she’d experienced in her life. “Like in most people’s dreams, I’m just there, and they accept that, and they talk to me like I’m a prop. But they don’t really connect—they look at me but they don’t really see me.”
Cabel scratches the scruff on his cheek and absentmindedly runs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t get the difference.”
Janie sighs. “I guess I don’t either. It just felt different.”
“Like the first day I saw you at the bus stop and you were the only one who would look at me, and our eyes sort of connected?” Cabel’s teasing, sort of. But not really.
“Maybe. But more like when Miss Stubin looked at me when I was in her dream back in the nursing home and asked me a question. Sort of a recognition thing. Like, somehow she just knew I was a dream catcher too.”
Cabel glances at Janie and then back at the road. His forehead crinkles and he tilts his head quizzically. “Wait,” he says. “Wait a minute.” He presses down on the brake and turns to look at Janie again. “Serious?”