We Own the Sky(30)

I resented Janet being here, in our home, in London. A woman who had spent her life between rural Suffolk and Kenya, who always said that city life wasn’t for her. After Anna’s father had suddenly upped and left for his beloved Africa, Janet said there was nothing for her in Suffolk anymore. Her husband’s abrupt leaving, a month before Jack was born, was rarely discussed. He had a calling, Janet said, a desire for solitude, to be closer to God. A desire to be closer to the village girls, Anna said, although she could not say such a thing to her mother.

The church arranged the flat for her. A little place above a Lebanese

barbershop on Praed Street, just a few doors down from the drop-in center where she served goulash to the homeless in return for a book of prayer. She tried, but she could not hide her pain, her shame at being abandoned. You could see it in the slight hunch she had developed in her shoulders, the sag of skin on her face that had nothing to do with age.

“We did a story about Daniel,” Jack said, “and they throwed him in with the lions but they didn’t eat him because they would get in troubles.”

I didn’t like Janet teaching Jack Bible stories but now wasn’t the time. “Ooo, I know that one about the lions,” I said. “That’s a good one.”

Janet smiled at me approvingly.

“Right, beautiful,” I said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

We took longer that evening with Jack’s bedtime routine. We both read  Shark in the Park, and then we tucked him in, doing  snug as a bug in a rug, once, twice, three times. How could I reconcile all this, the way he lay down, clutching Little Teddy and his flashlight, tucking his knees up to his chest, with what we had just been told?

When I got downstairs, Anna and her mother were sitting in silence, rigid, their familial response to crisis.

“I am very sorry to hear the news,” Janet said, looking up at me.

“Thank you, Janet.”

She shook her head. “Poor little mite,” she said. Little mite, like a helpless Victorian child, Tiny Tim but worse.

“I will be praying. For you all, every day,” Janet said, looking down into her lap. Anna remained still. She had not moved a muscle since I entered the room.

“I don’t think Jack needs prayers right now,” I said. She was acting as if he was dying. “This is something that can be cured. That’s what they’ve said.”

Anna’s mother nodded sympathetically, but there was something robotic about her reaction, a rote response, as if she was counseling a wayward drunk at the drop-in center. She kept shaking her head. “Of course, of course, but what a terrible thing. And so young. Just a child.”

I couldn’t listen to her anymore and left the room, taking refuge in the office upstairs. There was something about her response, a smugness, almost as if she had always known this was going to happen. Poor little mite, as if Jack was forsaken, done-for already.

  *

After Janet had gone, we sat in the living room. Anna, still pale, sat in silence, watching the finance channel. Later, we looked at a list of pediatric neurosurgeons that Dr. Kennety had already emailed us. When she went up to bed, I sat downstairs and heard her pause outside Jack’s door and then go into his room. In a little while, she came out again and I could hear her start to cry.

I went to check on Jack. I could see the light of his flashlight through the half-open door. He liked to sleep with his flashlight so he could find his way to the bathroom. Every night, he said, it was like having an adventure.

I watched him through the door. He was lying on his side, looking at his

Pokémon trading cards. They were spread out, organized in rows and columns as if he was playing solitaire. He got it from Anna. The classification. The need to order things. Her color-coded Tupperware. Her spreadsheets and lists.

He inspected each card with his flashlight, turning it to see every detail, before placing it down on the bed. I could hear him whispering to the cards—“you go there...there you are...you sit down there with him...” He liked to organize them into teams, dividing them by color, by type, by whether they lived on the land or in the sea.

“Hello, beautiful,” I said, as I walked into his room.

“Hello, Daddy.” He pointed to his Pokémon cards. “I’m putting them in

teams.”

“That’s cool,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

“This is the naughty team,” Jack said, pointing to one pile of cards. “And these are the good ones. And tomorrow, in the morning, they’re going to have a big fight.”

“Wow,” I said, “and who’s going to win?”

Jack considered the question. “The naughty ones,” he said, and then laughed loudly.

“C’mon, you should sleep now.”

“Okay,” he said, picking up the cards and putting them on his bedside table.

He settled back on his pillows, and I tucked him in again. “How do you feel, Jack? You don’t feel dizzy or anything?” I looked at the left side of his head. The temporal lobe.

“No, Daddy,” he said, his eyes beginning to close, and then quickly he was asleep. I watched him as his breathing began to deepen, little question marks of hair wrapping around his ears, the light brown moles on his nape. A little me, Anna always said. A little me.

I kissed his forehead and sat for a while on his sofa with the sprinkles of stars and dancing comets. I stilled myself, trying to slow down my breathing, so I could listen to him. But it was not enough: I could still hear my breathing, my heartbeat. So I held my breath for as long as possible—ten, twenty, thirty seconds—and then finally, all I could hear was Jack, the sound of him breathing, the occasional snuffle and murmur, the only sound in the world I wanted to hear.