Lost and Wanted(73)

“Do you need something for your ears, too?”

“Yes, please,” Simmi said, and so I went downstairs again, to Jack’s small bathroom, where I keep most of the medicine. I found him already on his bed in his pajamas, trying to read Harry Potter to himself, although we normally read it together. I thought he might have wanted Simmi to come upon him doing this; he gave me a wary look, as if he expected me to expose his ruse.

“Simmi needs some medicine for her ears,” I told him. I couldn’t find the antibiotic ointment, and so I googled “ear piercing care.” The first blog that came up suggested witch hazel, something I had left over from when Jack had stitches on his eyebrow in kindergarten. I took this and some cotton rounds for Simmi. Jack followed me upstairs.

“Simmi,” I said from outside the door. “I have something for your ears. Jack’s here, too, but he can go downstairs if you want.”

She opened the door. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt instead of pajamas, and I hoped Jack wasn’t going to be embarrassed about his, which were a little too small for him, patterned with sporting equipment.

    “He can come in.”

“My dad used to use this when we scraped our knees.” Simmi sat on the toilet seat, and pushed back her braids so that I could examine the piercings. The skin was red and maybe a little inflamed, but there was no pus or scabbing; it wasn’t as bad as I expected.

“Witch hazel,” Simmi read off the package.

“That sounds like Harry Potter,” Jack said.

Simmi laughed.

“I am Witch Hazel,” Jack declared, hamming it up.

“You can’t be a witch. You have to be a wizard.” Simmi gasped suddenly. “Ow—that stings!”

“Wizard Hazel zaps you with his Phoenix Wand!”

Simmi covered her ear with her hand. “That really hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jack was overexcited, hopping up and down. “You need Hermione to mix you a potion!”

I touched his arm. “Go ahead,” I told him. “You can wait for Simmi in your room.”



* * *



—

When they were in bed, I got a beer from the fridge, thought about working on the electroweak paper, and instead watched the trailer for a French detective show that everyone in our department was suddenly crazy about. Then I watched a few more trailers, which I find is a good way of keeping up, without actually wasting time watching television shows. I was still doing it when Terrence texted to ask if Simmi wanted to talk. I said that we were having a great time, but that the kids were asleep and I was doing some work.

Great! Terrence texted back, will call in AM, and I thought I could hear his relief. Almost as soon as I’d sent it, Simmi appeared.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

“Can I have some more of the witch hazel? My ears are hurting again.”

“It didn’t sting too much?”

“It stopped after a second.”

    I got her the solution and the cotton pads, and she disappeared into the bathroom. She came out a few minutes later, but instead of going back to the bedroom, she stood in the doorway, playing with the plastic package I’d given her.

“These are cool.”

“The cotton rounds?”

“Can you use them for makeup?”

“You don’t wear makeup, do you?”

Simmi looked sideways. “Sometimes my dad lets me play with it. At home.”

In college Charlie had kept her cosmetics in a plastic case with separate compartments, like a makeup artist. I wondered if she had continued using it. Was that the makeup Simmi meant?

“Is Jack asleep?” I asked her.

She nodded. “For a while.”

“He sometimes falls asleep before I’m out of the room.”

Simmi gave me a knowing look, as if she were familiar with this quality in little boys. “I sometimes have trouble sleeping.”

“Me, too.”

“Women don’t sleep as well as men.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“My mom said it’s because we’re supposed to wake up when babies cry.”

“You have a while before you have to worry about that.”

“She said my dad used to be the one to get up and give me a bottle.”

“You have a great dad.”

Simmi looked at me from under long lashes: “But you had to do it yourself.”

“Your mom told you that?”

Simmi shook her head. “No. But didn’t you?”

“My mom stayed with us for two weeks after Jack was born. But yes, after that.”

“Is that weird?”

“Getting up at night?”

“Not having a husband.”

I looked at Simmi, and she looked innocently back.

“I’ve never had a husband, so it wasn’t weird for me.”

    “What’s Jack’s dad’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“Nope.”

“What if you just, like, ran into him? Like in Starbucks or something?”