Lost and Wanted(106)

I scrolled down, and then panicked. Had I somehow erased a part of it?

“Where’s the—”

“That’s what she meant,” Terrence said. “Unfinished.”

I read it through again, as if something might change, and again.

“Terrified of—”

“Not the actual dying,” he said. “Just not being here.”

There was a catch in my throat. As far as I could remember, Charlie and I had never talked about that fear. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“Simmi used to look at our wedding pictures a lot before it happened. When she was little she would ask where she was, why weren’t there any pictures of her? Then one day Simmi said: ‘That was when I was dead.’ Very matter-of-fact. We tried to explain to her the difference—that not being born yet isn’t the same as being dead—but she couldn’t understand.”

    We were quiet for a moment.

“Could you forward this to me?” I asked him.

“Yeah. I would have anyway—you didn’t need to break in.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Terrence shrugged. He had picked up a pink rubber ball from the kitchen counter and was squeezing it, first one hand and then the other. His forearms tensed and relaxed.

“I should go back upstairs,” I said. “Jack never wakes up, but if he did and I wasn’t there, he’d freak out.” I stopped, because I thought it sounded insensitive to Terrence’s situation, but he just nodded. I picked up my keys from the counter. I was almost at the door when he spoke.

“You wrote back.”

“What?”

“To Simmi.”

“Once or twice.”

“Four times.” His voice was matter-of-fact: “Email and text. But you didn’t know it was her.”

“Not until she sent me ‘Cottleston Pie.’ Then I knew.”

“Who’d you think it was before that?”

“The thief,” I said.

“Not a ghost.”

“No.”

“Because you don’t believe in them.”

“I’m a scientist.”

Terrence shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

“Why—do you?”

“It’s not believing,” Terrence said slowly. “It’s a physical thing.”

“Your memories.”

Terrence let out a breath.

“Terrence, I—”

He was suddenly fierce. “It’s knees—okay?”

“Knees?”

“In my back. She had really long legs, right? She liked to sleep all curled up. Sometimes they’re there when I wake up, sometimes not. Just like before.”

    “Like phantom limb syndrome. There’s a lot of research on that—it’s well documented.”

Terrence shook his head. “Not like that.” He came around the counter suddenly, and pressed his fist against my back. “Like this.”

His knuckles rolled off my vertebrae. Then he took his hand away, but we were still only a few inches apart. I was scared that if I looked at him, he would know how I felt when he touched me. I was scared he knew already.

“You don’t have to believe me.”

I tried to answer carefully. “It’s confusing enough for adults,” I said. “For kids—”

“No kidding.” Terrence was leaning back against the kitchen counter. The sleeves of his shirt were still pushed up to his elbow, and I saw the new tattoo for the first time: three elaborate green-and-orange goldfish, like a Chinese painting, in a wheel on the inside of his right forearm.

“Did they really believe in ghosts?” Terrence asked. “Those scientists?”

I didn’t know what he meant at first. “Which ones?”

“You know,” he said. “The ones who made the typewriter.”

“Enough to build at least three machines.”

He leaned forward, his forearms on the counter. “And these were real scientists?”

“Some people think they were the best of their generation. That they saved physics.”

“Saved it from what?”

“Relentless calculation.”

Terrence smiled suddenly.

“You mean boring old math,” he said.





10.


Terrence and Simmi went to L.A. for spring break, two weeks at the end of March. I worked the first week, and hired Julia to take care of Jack. The second week I took Jack on a real vacation: we went to Costa Rica to see olive ridley turtles nesting on a black sand beach on the Nicoya Peninsula. Our guide let Jack, wearing rubber gloves, assist a newly hatched turtle down the beach and deposit it carefully into the Pacific.

    Jack and I got back on the Friday before school was to start up again. Terrence and Simmi had returned midweek, and Terrence had gone down to spend a few days at the new Brooklyn Zingaro, leaving Simmi with her grandparents. He texted me from the train on Saturday; Simmi’s grandparents were bringing her home at six, and he was running late. Would it be possible for me to give her dinner with Jack, since Carl and Addie had plans in the evening? I said yes and Jack was delighted. He wanted to make lasagna, and so we went to Trader Joe’s for the ingredients.