This Is How It Always Is(89)

“You aren’t lying. You aren’t pretending—”

“Not anymore,” said Claude.

*

In the thirteen days that had passed since Rosie’s midnight text, Claude’s stubbly bald head had sprouted weak downy shoots, but he still looked like a cancer patient, and that’s what everyone assumed he was. Rosie had learned during Poppy-her-sister’s first round of chemo, and a thousand times since, that once one of your identities is sick, that’s the only one that matters. She knew the sympathetic looks she was getting were only because everyone assumed her child had cancer, but she didn’t care. She felt deserving of the kindness of strangers, in fragile need of a little extra space and succor, so she was grateful for their blessings, however misguided. Whether Claude could see everyone around him assuming he was dying, Rosie wasn’t sure, but that didn’t matter either. Claude felt like he was dying, so he’d have appreciated the conjectures, had he raised his eyes from the ground long enough to take them in. He did not.

Rosie thought eighteen hours on an airplane was the perfect occasion for heartbreak anyway. Into every life, a certain amount of misery must fall, and if you could get some of it to coincide with the eighteen cramped, queasy hours you had to spend in coach, so much the better. Claude stared out the window with swollen red eyes, waved away all proffered food, chain-sipped ginger ale, and garnered sympathy for his mother.

Rosie had sold the trip to Penn and Claude together. It’ll be an incredible opportunity, she’d said, to travel somewhere new, to see the world, to help those less fortunate.

“No one is less fortunate than me,” said Claude.

“Than I.” Penn did not care for “than” as a preposition.

“You are healthy and strong and able”—Rosie felt there was more at stake here than grammar—“with food enough and clean water, a safe neighborhood, a secure home, indoor plumbing, medicine when you need it, family and friends who love you, a world-class education, and a very cute dog. You are more fortunate than many, many people.”

Claude rolled red-rimmed eyes. “If it means I don’t have to go back to school, I’ll go anywhere.”

“That’s true too.” Rosie tried not to seem too eager. “This trip would allow you to take some time and perspective, to take a break from here.”

“From here or from me?” Penn said.

Claude looked up, alarmed. His parents didn’t fight often enough for it to be no big deal when they did. On the one hand, Rosie was gratified to see him notice something, anything, that wasn’t happening inside his own head. But this wasn’t a conversation to have in front of him, and they both dropped it. Later though, Penn said, “Thailand is a long way to go just to get out of an argument.”

“That’s not why I’m going.”

“Sure it is.”

“I need to do something to mollify Howie.”

“You never have before.”

“That’s why. We can’t afford for me to lose this job.”

“It’s never going to come to that, and you know it.”

“It’s a good cause, Penn. The clinic serves Burmese refugees, undocumented residents, people from the hill tribes. It’s important work—”

“In which you’ve shown no interest until this moment.”

“It’s not that I wasn’t interested. It’s that it was never possible before with the kids and school and—”

“What part of that has ceased to be true now?”

“It’ll be good for her—him—whomever to see a little bit of the world,” Rosie stumbled. “Thailand is friendly, safe—”

“Not as safe as here.”

“We need to slow down. We all need to slow down. You need a break from researching vaginas. This child needs a break from school, from secret keeping, from Aggie, from this whole situation. This family needs a break from all the weight and drama—”

“And you need a break from me,” said Penn.

Rosie closed her eyes. “And I need a break from you.”

He watched her behind her closed lids and said nothing for moments that stretched on like Wyoming highways. Then he walked away. So she was able to coincide heartache with international air travel as well.

*

She didn’t call Carmelo until she was actually at the airport. She didn’t want to be talked out of it. Predictably, her mother was full of being a mother.

“What about malaria?” she led off.

“We took drugs.”

“What about typhoid?”

“More drugs.”

“What about that tropical fever?”

“Dengue?”

“Yeah, dengue.”

“We’ll use DEET.”

“Isn’t DEET bad for you?”

“Not in small quantities.”

“Are small quantities enough to prevent mosquito bites?”

“We brought long sleeves.”

“Won’t it be hot?”

“You live in Phoenix, Mother.”

“What about the boys?”

“They’ll be fine.”

“How long are you going for?”

“I don’t know.”