Here So Far Away(43)

When I reached for it, he gripped my arm. “The other one.”

There was no other one. Just his stump in a compression sock that helped keep the swelling down.

“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know how.”

“Please!”

I faked it as best I could. It was ridiculous, like I was pretending to be a baker kneading dough, and somehow the pretending was weirder and more uncomfortable than actually touching him.

Whether it worked or the pain began to subside on its own, I couldn’t tell. I helped him to his chair, which was crazy hard. It was only then that I saw how much weight he’d gained, how soft he’d gotten. He was soaked with sweat and didn’t fight me when I brought over a cloth and gave him a wipe down. Face, shoulders, arms. He leaned forward so I could do his neck. I worked as quickly as I could. All business. The cloth made a scraping sound against his three-day-old beard.

He was now completely without emotion, like his pilot light was blown out. “What were they thinking?” he muttered.

“Who were what . . . ?”

He waved off the question.

I placed a pack of cigarettes on the side table with his painkillers and a glass of water. “Where’s Mum?” I asked.

“Store.”

Right. I’d heard him ragging on her about running out of artificial sweetener for his tea—the tea he drank to wash down his new afternoon cookie habit—and she was so quick out the door, you had to think she was grateful to have a break from him. “Do you need anything else? Where’s your prosthetic?”

He shook his head, not looking at me.

“Alright, well. I have to go to work.”

Matty was sitting outside the family room, his arms wrapped around his knees. I gave him a hand up and we went to the kitchen.

“I think it’s something called phantom pain,” he said as I poured him a glass of juice. “I read about it at the library. It happens a lot, feeling pain where the limb used to be. Like, probably most of them have it. Sometimes right away, sometimes later. Sometimes for a while, sometimes forever.”

“You’d think they’d have warned him.”

“They must have; it’s in all the pamphlets. I don’t know why he’s trying to hide it.”

“Because he won’t cop to psychological problems.”

“I don’t think it is psychological. I think it’s really real.”

“He won’t get the difference.” I wasn’t sure I did either. If you felt a pain in a limb that wasn’t there anymore, how could it not be psychological?

“Do you think Mum knows what’s going on?”

Mum wasn’t exactly savvy about health issues. Like how she would give Dad insulin in the morning and then serve him dessert at lunch, as if that were the solution. Her whole side of the family was like that. I remember Nan telling Mum that she was depriving us of vegetables because she wouldn’t let us eat potato chips for lunch, and my great-aunt Hester rasping, “Screw the doctor. Any fool can hear my asthma gets better when I smoke.”

“Wouldn’t matter if she did,” I said. “Not when he’s ordering her around like he’s King Louis of France.”

“What should we do?”

I tipped a little more orange juice into his glass. “I will go to the farm. Dad will snooze in his chair. Mum will make him tea when she gets home and let him eat cookies. And you will practice the tuba and do your homework and save us all.”

Francis’s room usually looked like a monk’s quarters, every surface clear, few signs of modern life, so it was strange to see his bed unmade, his clothes piled up on the desk chair. I sniffed one of the shirts. Under the scents of soap and fabric softener was something warmer, muskier.

“What are you doing, honey?”

Rupert.

“I was wondering if I should add this to the wash.”

“If it suits you.”

“I think I won’t. He might not want me touching his stuff.” I put down the shirt and started collecting tea mugs from the windowsill. “Except I’ll take these.”

“He’s not sleeping,” Rupert said. “He thinks I don’t know, but I’m an old man. I get up to pee. I spend a lot of time considering whether I will get up to pee before I do it. As I’m considering, I listen to him pacing in his room.” He picked up a stray mug from the desk. “I’m hoping this woman will take his mind off things.”

My breakfast rolled over in my stomach.

“That same woman he was going out with before?”

“He’s started seeing a new gal from town. Lorissa something.”

Lorissa. Of course her name was kind of foreign.

“Oh. That’s nice.”

“Yes, he needs some fun. More time with people his own age.”

Maybe that was why I’d hardly seen him over the past couple of weeks. I’d thought he’d just been hiding at work.

They’d found the wife’s body in the morning, which was awful, but no one blamed Francis. He had been transformed from a Come From Away rookie cop into a local hero overnight. The farmhouse filled up with houseplants and baked goods that people hand-delivered from up and down the valley. A third-grade class had written individual letters to thank him for protecting the community. Rupert said he returned to work after only a couple of days’ leave, but the acting sergeant was sending him on the easier calls when he could. He was finding it less stressful sitting in his car off the highway with his speed radar than waiting for the next knock on the door.