Текст книги "Because of The Brave"
Автор книги: ZA Maxfield
Соавторы: Laura Baumbach,Josh lanyon
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 10 страниц)
She was also a bona fide gas-sucking road hog born in the moments before the oil crisis and was all the more rare for being both way ahead, and far too late for her time. He didn’t blame them for wanting a look at her.
It wasn’t long before he drew a little crowd of people who had known his folks as well, many of whom saw his mom’s car from the street as they drove home from work and stopped to pay their respects. He had the uncomfortable feeling as hands slapped his back and older men and women reminisced that they were talking about someone else’s life.
Peter went to the machine to buy a pack of cigarettes, and then lit up while the boys changed out the tires. From where he sat he had a view of Angel’s Park, a city lot that had been landscaped with grass and a fountain. It had a statue of an angel by a wall on which the names of fallen Hadleyville men, and now maybe women, from all branches of service were inscribed. An uncle on his mother’s side and a number of cousins’ names were there from World War II.
There had been two times, once in Afghanistan and once in Iraq, that Peter thought his name would grace that wall as well. Peter crushed his cigarette out in the sand ashtray. He had been guilty on more than one occasion of thinking that would be the easiest way out for everyone.
Maybe Robin was right. Maybe it was time to bring his shit home.
Peter lay idly in his room as the blue farmhouse-Hospice facility—settled around him the way old buildings often did, with sighs and groans and creaking doors. In the background he heard the distant murmur of televisions, their volume turned way too loud because of the older people watching, but muffled where he was by solid wood and distance and good craftsmanship. Nearer by, across the hall, he could hear his mother’s oxygen pump and it’s eerie rhythm. He wondered if this was one of the times that his mother described when she breathed through
her mouth. He wondered how long she could go on like this, thin and weak, straining for breath until her shoulders heaved while she slept.
When he’d gone in there with Robin to visit with her that afternoon, his mother was having a bad time of it, refusing food and fussing for what seemed like hours as Robin attempted to make her comfortable. She had finally accepted their decision when they both insisted on heavy-duty pain medication, although he saw in her eyes it made her feel vanquished. He wondered how long she’d been so fragile, how long she’d keep fighting the inevitable. He’d envied his mother’s faith in the man who cared for her. At long last her mouth had hung open and slack as she slept, but her upper body still worked hard to bring in air. He’d left for his room then, while Robin went downstairs to the kitchen, presumably to get something to eat for himself and wait until Shelley needed him again.
He hated Robin for his patience. And loved him for it.
Peter put his hands over his eyes. God forgive him, he’d only been there one day and already he wished it were over.
The door to his room creaked and Robin’s head came through tentatively. “I thought you might be awake.” He opened the door more than a crack, but stayed where he was.
“Hi. I was just…”
Robin’s lips turned up in a tired half smile. “Shelley’s been sleeping calmly.”
“That’s good.”
“Can the same be said for you?”
“I don’t do a lot of sleeping.” Peter sat up on the bed. “You can come in, you know. Do I have to invite you in like a vampire?”
Robin came inside, and he closed the door behind him.
“Lock it.”
Robin turned his face toward Peter’s for a minute, and then simply did as he was told. He came to the bed and sat down near Peter, who wasn’t above noticing
that the bed didn’t squeak. Peter caught the scent he was beginning to associate with the man,—laundry soap, hand sanitizer, and something elusive that made him want to lean in. Peter watched Robin’s face while idly contemplating this, picking up the rainbow dog tags.
“This shit is easy for you, isn’t it?” He held up the chain so it clinked when it dropped back down on Robin’s chest. “Out and proud.”
Robin laughed somehow, without making a sound. “Oh, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He had a way of talking-all soft and low-that Peter figured came from sitting at a patient’s bedside. It was soothing and careful and it went straight to Peter’s dick. Robin chuckled and said in his musically accented voice, “I am a black immigrant living in the upper Midwest in a redneck town. Ask me how that’s working out?”
“Yes I tink so…” Peter teased, rolling his eyes. “I grew up in this town, and I was literally –get this– the boy named Hsu.”
Robin’s clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.
Peter fell backwards until his head hit the pillow. “Shit.”
Robin followed him down, but in a catlike and almost predatory move and straddled Peter, giving him a nudge with his hips.
Peter held still. “I thought you said you were nobody’s dirty secret.”
“I am nobody’s dirty secret.” Robin molded himself along the length of Peter’s body, raising the fine hairs all along his skin. “But maybe you’re mine.”
Their mouths met in an incendiary kiss that brought a shiver down Peter’s spine. “Fuck yes,” he breathed into Robin’s mouth.
They kissed again and when they finally broke apart to breathe, Peter met Robin’s eyes and found them full of something compelling and kind. “I’m sorry about your mother. This was one of her bad nights. I have to keep an eye on her so I don’t have long. When she’s like this she’s restless.”
“I never realized.” Peter wanted to hide his face, but didn’t. “How does she stand it? How do you?”
“She has no choice,” Robin smoothed the planes of Peter’s face with his thumbs. “Me? I think I love her. Something about her makes me want to be patient.”
Peter turned away, shamed that he couldn’t say the same. Her illness made his knees weak. Her fragility ate at him. In the final analysis, everything about her current condition robbed him of all the security she’d built into his life and he was sick with dread.
Robin made a hissing noise. “It’s not a crime to be overwhelmed.”
Peter swallowed hard. “Thank you.” Robin’s nearness was making it hard to think. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Robin placed a kiss on Peter’s closed eyelids. Robin’s weight lifted and Peter looked up when he felt hands on the waistband of his jeans. “For now we just feel good, yes?”
He unbuttoned Peter’s fly and carefully unzipped him. Peter’s cock was hard and sprang up into his hands. Robin dabbled a finger in the slick trail of precum on Peter’s belly and brought it slowly to his mouth.
“Geez.” Peter shifted.
Robin pushed Peter’s jeans and shorts down and followed his finger with his tongue. “Going to taste you, soldier man.”
Robin teased Peter’s dick with his hand again, even as he leaned over to the nightstand and switched on the clock radio with the other. He rocked and squirmed on Peter’s leg. Peter stifled a laugh. When he found a soft jazz station, he turned the volume up a little so the room was filled with smooth horns and suspended cymbals.
Robin stopped squirming when Peter helped him shuck off the scrubs he was wearing. It took some complicated contortions to get rid of their shorts but by the time they made contact, flesh to flesh, Peter was so breathless and ready that all he could do was try to stay quiet. Robin teased his way down from abs to groin using his lips and tongue, doing anything and everything he could to make Peter blow
his cool. Peter gasped in a breath when Robin cupped his balls with a strong-fingered hand then snorted a half laugh through his nose.
Robin was agile and voracious; he ran his tongue and lips over every surface, finding and teasing Peter’s highly sensitive areas as though he had done it a thousand times. His hands were so gentle, his touch so caring that the warmth seemed to burn Peter’s skin. He tried to remember the last time he’d been touched by a caring partner. Tried to remember when or even if he’d ever wanted a partner to care. Peter’s chest tightened. He needed to feel as if Robin cared about him if only because he was losing the one person in the world who actually did.
When at last Robin wrapped his mouth around Peter’s cock and sucked his way to the base, Peter let out an almost groan that he was afraid the residents of the house could hear. Peter’s muscles clenched and his spine arched, even as Robin’s long fingers stroked and massaged the small of his back and slipped down into his ass crack.
“No.” Peter shifted onto his side and cupped Robin’s face with his hands. “C’mere. Let me.”
Robin grinned, moving carefully so he could lie on his own side with his legs pointed toward the head of the bed. His cock bobbed within easy reach of Peter’s hands and mouth. Its long, hard length was uncut, the head emerging from the surrounding skin, taut and glistening. Peter’s first act was to push his face into the nest of hair above it and breathe in the scent of sex and man, something that never failed to fire him up in a way that nothing else could. His initial taste of Robin’s cock was electrifying, smooth and hot, the fragile skin slip-slid around the head as it thickened and tightened and pulsed in his hand. Robin tasted briny and bitter and delicious; he gave up a low groan when Peter pulled on his cock with his lips and licked the sensitive slit with his tongue.
Robin made a sound. Like ah, or oh; like pleasure and losing control and come and get me that filled Peter’s heart with pride.
Peter wanted more, and he urged Robin to straddle his head so his cock hung over Peter’s lips, exposing the silky skin of his balls and the tender perineum behind them. He put his hands on Robin’s hips and took one silky orb into his mouth, even as Robin nuzzled his own. They explored each other; Peter licked and teased with his tongue until he could feel Robin’s muscles tremble beneath his hands as he stroked Robin’s firm thighs.
Robin started sucking him off then, expertly swallowing his cock and setting up a rhythm that made Peter arch and twist beneath him. He held himself up on his elbows and knees, his hands snaking under Peter’s hips to finger his hole.
Peter positioned his head and allowed Robin access, so he could take Robin deep into his throat and simply let Robin fuck his mouth. Peter couldn’t keep his hands idle, he moved them over Robin’s toned buttocks and thighs. Over the strained muscles bunching in his back. He loved the feel of Robin under his fingertips. Peter soothed, caressed, and urged him on, yet at the same time, tried to show a tenderness that was entirely new for him.
Robin’s rhythm was as natural and graceful as the man himself, he worked the cock in his mouth and pumped his own into Peter’s and when Peter’s balls tightened and he knew he was going to blow, he could feel the shifting and jerking of Robin’s hips as well. He circled a finger around Robin’s tightly puckered hole and gave himself to pleasure completely, letting Robin come down his throat, swallowing every bitter drop even as he pulsed into Robin’s mouth.
Peter continued to tremble through small, heady aftershocks as his cock softened and slid free. Robin nuzzled and sucked Peter’s overly sensitive skin gently, prodding and licking his balls and settling his cheek on one hairy thigh. Peter held onto Robin’s hips, not letting go of the man, allowing him to soften and withdraw when he chose, letting his dick go with a snap and a sigh. Even then, he wished he could hold onto everything, the quiet moment of bliss and the man who gave it to him, a little longer.
Robin rolled off and righted himself, slipping –in what seemed like the most natural move in the world– into Peter’s arms. They ended up lying chest to chest, with one of Peter’s legs slung over one of Robin’s and his head nestled into Robin’s neck. Robin smoothed small circles at the base of Peter’s spine.
Peter brushed a kiss just under his ear and whispered, “Thank you.”
Robin’s lips grazed his forehead. “The pleasure was all mine.”
“Not quite all yours,” Peter teased.
“I can’t stay; I’ve been longer than I planned as it is.”
“I understand.” Peter rolled onto his back when Robin sat up.
Robin leaned over him with a sated smile and gave him a kiss that tasted of his own cum and sweat. “I want more, soldier man.”
Peter pulled him in again and gave him a kiss that said what he couldn’t yet say for himself. He gripped the back of Robin’s neck and held him there, their foreheads pressed together, without speaking. When he finally let go Robin bumped their cheeks together.
“I’ll come get you if your mom is alert at all later.” His eyes were shadowed with concern.
Peter pushed to a sitting position. “Is she…?”
Robin shook his head. “I couldn’t say… There’s something that happens… the patient becomes uncomfortable and restless. You can’t settle them and every little wrinkle in the fabric of their clothing feels like rocks against their skin. That usually happens near the end, Peter. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if she’s awake…”
Peter acknowledged what Robin wasn’t saying. He watched in silence as Robin pulled on his scrubs. When the door closed behind him, Peter sank back into the pillows. He turned off the radio and rolled over, teased by Robin’s scent on the pillow.
It would be easy to let Robin creep in and out of his room while he stayed in this place, turning the radio up while they made love and opening the window while he smoked, as if he was a teenager again.
Except as a teenager he’d never done anything remotely like that. Not anywhere in town, at any rate. All anyone knew of him was that he was an elusive, quiet boy who took a nice girl to the prom and left a few weeks later to join the army.
Still nude, he rose from his bed and went to the old-fashioned sash window, raising it enough that he could lean out into the night. Despite the warmth of the day there was a chill on the air and a bank of fast moving clouds from the west told him they might be in for a little rain. He lit a cigarette and sat on the sill, half in and half out, looking down over the skirt of the roof to the yard, at the end of which was the shed where his mother’s car sat, waiting to be taken out again.
Once when he was a boy he’d stayed in his Aunt’ house, long before she’d turned the place into a hospice care center, and he could remember with almost perfect clarity sitting in that very same way, gazing out at the distant farmland, beyond the rolling hill, beyond Hadleyburg, wondering what else was there. Even then he’d known, in some deep core within himself that he didn’t belong here. For years he’d thought it was because he was gay.
Now Hadleyburg seemed small and old and tarnished. A serviceable shoe in a world full of designer footwear. It was the very fact that he’d known it for what it was long before he’d left it—before he knew anything else—that isolated him. He’d wanted to soar, to find the very biggest thing he could do, to push himself to the limit of his physical endurance, and yes, he’d wanted to feel what it was like to be a hero.
Yet the man who seemed like a hero to him was Robin, whose exquisite, tender care of a dying woman shamed him in a fundamental way. He blew out a thin stream of smoke and watched the clouds, which were high and moving fast.
The sound of his aunt wrestling garbage cans came to him too late to hide his nudity. “What the hell are you doing?” she called up to him.
He grabbed a bit of the dainty lace curtain and covered himself. “Sorry Aunt Lyndee. I’ll cover up.”
“Not that, are you smoking?”
“Yes ma’am. Sorry. I’ll blow out, but I’m incapable of quitting at this point.”
She marched across the yard with a martial look on her face. “I’m bringing you up a beer and we’re going to have a talk.”
“Not tonight. Mom’s restless, and so am I.”
She paused right beneath him, in the pool of light cast by his window. “All right.” Still standing there she gazed up at the sky. “Looks like rain. Clouds are moving fast.”
He looked around and finally found an area of metal flashing that he could use to stub his cigarette out. “Everything is moving fast.”
“Don’t you put that out on the sill, we just—”
“I didn’t; it’s fine.” He started to get up, trying to keep himself covered.
“Never mind, I’ll get you an ashtray, just keep the window open, Petey, and blow the smoke out. Keep your door closed. It’s bad for your Mom so I’ll get you a fan.”
He stared at her, wondering why she didn’t just tell him to suck it up and be a man. “Thanks, Aunt Lyndee.”
She gave him one of those smiles that reminded him of cookies, probably because when he was little, a smile like that often meant home baked treats were in his near future. “Robin smokes too, what is it with you kids…?”
He watched as she walked beneath his window and under the roof, listening as doors opened and closed. He could hear little flutters of activity everywhere she went. Since she seemed to be headed his way, he pulled on his jeans and buttoned them up.
Seconds later, there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find Lyndee holding a fan, an ashtray, and two bottles of beer.
“Thanks,” he said as he took each item from her. He put the fan and the ashtray on the nightstand, and sat down on the bed. When he relieved her of the beer, she shrugged out of her coat and placed it on the doorknob.
“I’m not here to talk. I just need to relax some. Okay with you?”
He indicated that she should sit down and when she sat on the bed, it dipped precariously. Her small round body—so different from his mother’s petite, dolllike frame—settled comfortably in front of him. She twisted open her beer, and then made a strange face, comical, as though she’d forgotten something. She reached for her jacket and dug in the pocket until she brought out a sandwich-sized baggie of homemade cookies.
For a reason he couldn’t explain, a thousand different places flashed through his mind; vast deserts, ancient streets, oceans full of fish, and clear blue sky. He saw everywhere he’d ever been and nowhere all at once.
Terrible beauty and incomprehensible ugliness.
Aunt Lyndee’s cookies might just have broken his heart, if only because they seemed to be squeezing all the air from his lungs. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek, then twisted off the cap of his own beer.
Sometime after he fell asleep Peter felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He surprised himself by thinking for a change before he caught it to break its owner’s arm, probably because the now-familiar aroma of hand sanitizer teased his nose. He opened his eyes to find Robin’s worried face close to his.
“Why don’t you come with me? Maybe you can help me get your mama to settle down.”
Peter took in the careful way Robin said those words and added up what he wasn’t saying. “Is it bad?”
“It’s not good.” Robin waited while Peter pulled on a shirt. Somehow he’d fallen asleep in his jeans, probably while talking to his aunt. It surprised him how quickly he’d let down his guard in this place.
“Can I…? I just need to brush my teeth.” Peter stalled as they left the room. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Robin nodded, already heading back through the door of his mother’s room.
Once inside his Aunt’s bathroom Peter reached for his toiletry kit. Besides brushing his teeth, he felt the need for a shave. As if he were going for inspection, he tried to make himself as presentable as possible, carefully scraping the foam from his skin with his razor. When he was done he looked in the mirror and tried to decipher what he saw there.
Certainly he was a military man. His haircut said it all along with the olive drab T-shirt and dog tags he wore. But he was also a hometown boy, the product of this tiny enclave of tough-minded Midwesterners who expected him to fill his father’s shoes, and a gay man who longed—more and more frequently—for a companion to warm his bed and share his life. Someone like Robin who was attractive and compassionate. Fearless. He straightened his shoulders as he left the bathroom.
When he entered his mother’s room the only light came from the glow of a lamp next to the bed. Both Robin and Lyndee were there, one on either side of the bed with the railings down. Robin lifted Shelley while Lyndee smoothed the fabric of her nightgown, and still his mother fussed and twisted, her face a mask of pain.
“Hurts,” Shelley murmured when Robin set her gently back down. Robin’s face was full of concern as he stroked the short hair on her head.
“I know, my Shelley. It’s because you’ve just taken your painkillers. You’ll be feeling better in no time now.”
Peter watched as his mother, soothed by the words, instinctively leaned toward Robin. He didn’t blame her, the musicality of the voice and the tender, caring way Robin touched her made him want to lean in too.
Lyndee looked up and what Peter saw in her eyes told him this was the beginning of the end. He’d read the damned pamphlet she’d given him, but he’d known anyway. He’d seen death, both quick and slow, and understood the signs.
“Peter, I think maybe Robin could use some help and I’m feeling exhausted.”
Peter doubted his indefatigable aunt had ever had a moment when she lacked energy, but he didn’t call her on it. “I’m here, you can get some shuteye. I’ll help– if Robin tells me what to do.”
Robin nodded. “Not much we can do, hmm? Wait for the meds to kick in.” He spoke directly to Shelley. “We’ll try to keep you comfortable until you can rest. Right princess? My Shelley is she-who-must-be-made-comfortable tonight. Yes?”
Peter saw his mom try to grin but it turned into a grimace. “Clothes…No clothes…can’t breathe…” Shelley tried to pull off the nasal canula and Robin gently but firmly replaced it.
She picked at the fabric of her gown again, and Robin’s gaze met his. He nodded, and together, they coaxed the offending garment off, slipping the wide shoulders over her arms and pulling it carefully down her body and past her feet. Peter averted his eyes, mortified by his mother’s nudity, further dismayed at seeing her in an adult diaper. Robin’s hand brushed his, snapping him out of the moment.
Maybe Robin had touched him on purpose to give him strength, but the inevitable result was that he snatched his hand back as though it burned, terrified that his mother would see the longing he felt and understand what it meant.
Robin’s eyes met his briefly and he saw a flare of annoyance, or maybe it was only resignation and regret. They worked in silence from then on and when Shelley was finally sleeping comfortably Peter went back to his room alone to get some more sleep. He didn’t expect that Robin would return to the bed they’d
shared just a few hours before, but he still listened for footsteps in the hallway or the light snick of the doorknob before it turned. Eventually, he realized he was holding his breath. His bed felt bigger and colder without Robin in it, and when he finally slept it wasn’t deep.
The following morning brought a sudden, drenching rain that turned the ground between the house and the barn into a muddy quagmire. Robin smoked on the porch while Peter got his coffee from the kitchen. He chose not to penetrate the silence that grew between them, but stared morosely out the window and then went back into his mother’s room to sit with her for a while as she slept.
Peter accepted the inevitability of death. He had a dangerous job. As an Airborne Ranger he’d trained hard and his work required him to test the edge of his abilities and his luck all the time. When Peter pictured his death it came quickly, whether he was smashed at the bottom of a bad jump or killed by an enemy combatant. He never imagined the simple slowing of time and collapsing of reality until he would face it alone at the end of an oxygen tube, waiting as he died by inches.
Something about his mother’s fragile body made him want to hold her hand or sweep her hair back off her face; things he hadn’t done comfortably since he was in elementary school. With a shock he realized he was mimicking the way she’d touched him back then, when she sat at his bedside countless nights to read him a story or reminisce about his father. He pulled his hands back and wiped them on his jeans.
“Back in a bit,” he told her, uselessly. She gave no sign at all that she’d heard him. He left the door slightly ajar behind him and bolted down the stairs, meeting a surprised Robin coming up.
“Peter?” Robin pressed himself against the wall to let Peter go by.
Peter had momentum and he let it carry him past the startled man and through the kitchen to the back porch, stopping only to grab the keys to the truck off the hook by the door. Once he was in the cab he shook his wet hair and sat for a minute. He wished he’d brought his damned cigarettes.
The passenger door opened and Robin climbed in.
“Who’s taking caring of my mother?”
“Lyndee’s with her. She told me to follow you.”
Peter looked out the window. “Great.”
“She was worried about you.”
“It’s mom she should be worried about.” Robin offered Peter a cigarette, and he took it.
“Peter you know there isn’t anything—”
“I know.” Robin lit up and held out the flame.
Peter held Robin’s hand steady and took a drag. “Aren’t you afraid if you touch me people will see?”
“Fuck you, man.” Peter slouched behind the wheel making no move to start up the engine. “A lot of conditioning went into what I did last night. I didn’t even think. It was a reflex.”
Smoke filled the cab until Peter cracked the window on his side. Robin was silent for a long time. “I know that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hate that shit.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“You going to run away again?” Robin asked, his hand on the door handle.
“No.” Peter sat with his arms folded. “But I wanted to be someplace where I could.”
“Come in. I’ll get you breakfast. One time only offer, lots of coffee.”
Peter looked up to see Robin’s eyes on him, and they made him ache inside. He longed to grab that shaggy head and pull it in for a kiss, to feel that hard body
next to his. Robin was oddly familiar, as if their shared history with his mother gave them a deep and meaningful connection and it comforted him.
“That’s twice you’ve made that one time only offer.”
“Trying to throw you a lifeline, soldier man.”
Peter ground his cigarette out in the truck’s pull-out ashtray. “Thanks.”
Peter watched as Robin re-entered the house by the porch door. He’d lost his chance to leave with no regrets the first time Robin smiled at him. He got out of the truck and palmed the keys, running between fat drops of rain back toward the very place he’d planned to run away from.
The rest of that day passed with Robin and Peter coming and going from his mother’s bedroom. She seemed further subdued than she’d been as recently as the night before. Robin kept the lights dim. No one spoke above a whisper.
At one point he got up to leave for a breath of air. She caught Peter’s hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. He looked down at her to find the familiar, intelligent light in her eyes.
“You guys are giving me the creeps,” she told him, quite clearly.
“What?” His heart slammed against his ribs.
“It’s as if you’re putting on a play. Like it’s my deathbed scene but none of it feels real to me.”
Peter sat down in the bedside chair, afraid his knees might buckle. “I’m sorry.”
“Why is everything so unnatural?” she demanded.
Peter looked up at Robin helplessly. He didn’t want his mother agitated.
Robin came to his side, leaning over her and grinning. “Are you giving Peter a hard time? He came here all this way to see you.”
“Did you jump out of the plane Petey? Did you land on Lyndee’s house with your parachute?”
“Sorry.” Peter swallowed the lump in his throat. “Maybe next time.”
After that exchange Shelley needed to rest for a while. She went back to fussing with the fabric next to her skin and trying to push the bedding off her body. Her mouth fell open again and her shoulders pulled up as her chest rose and fell.
“What’s happening?” Peter asked, watching her.
Robin pulled a second chair to Shelley’s bedside, leaning forward to speak into Peter’s ear.
“She’ll come and go, in and out of consciousness. Part of that is due to the drugs. Part is how her body is going to shut down. It will happen slowly, gradually, fading in and out.”
“I wasn’t prepared for this.”
“I know.” Robin leaned back. “I’m sorry, I know.”
Peter looked into Robin’s sympathetic brown eyes. Years of conditioning kept him from reaching for the physical comfort he knew he’d find in Robin’s touch.
Robin stood and drew the cool sheet up over Shelley’s chest for modesty’s sake, although Shelley tried to push it away. She fought everything that touched her skin and struggled for each breath.
“You need to talk to her, Peter. Hearing is the last of her senses that will leave her. She’d like to hear your voice.”
Peter was aghast. In the best of times he’d had little to say to his mother. He’d phoned her often and at great length, rarely going more than a few days without one of their marathon calls, at least when he was stateside, but he had hardly spoken the entire time. What was he supposed to say now?
“Hi Mom,” he ventured, surprised to see his mother physically drift toward the sound of his voice. Her mouth hung open and her chest worked. He tried
again. “I went to town yesterday for a battery and some tires for the Road Runner. Hadleyville hasn’t changed much.”
His mother’s mouth closed and she snorted through her nose. “Bet not.”
Encouraged, Peter sat on the edge of her bed again, wincing when she seemed to react to the dip in the mattress with a small cry. Robin sat down on her other side.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“It’s nothing,” his mother got out. She wasn’t quick to speak, but it didn’t take long before he realized she was listening.
Robin spoke. “My Shelley is reenacting ‘Once Upon a Mattress’.”
Shelley chuckled. “The princess and the pea.” That seemed to cost her, and she took deep breaths for a while. “No wind.”
Peter picked up her hand, which seemed soft and impossibly fragile. “No worries.”
