Invincible Summer(42)

Lucy’s still crying. Melinda bounces her carefully, says, “Shh.”

“Can you go deaf from ear infections?” I ask.

Melinda says, “Chase—”

“Just answer the question.”

She sighs. “I think, yeah, it’s theoretically possible.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah, Everboy, and it’s theoretically possible I could go deaf from listening to you whine, all the time, that someone’s gonna go deaf! Shitdamn!” “God, don’t say that. Never say that again.”

“Shitdamn!” Did she get that from Noah? I’ve never heard Noah say shitdamn. Did she hear it from Dad? Or, God, from me? Did I give her that word?

The clinic is the ten longest miles of my life away from the house. I kill the motor in the closest parking spot and make Melinda give me Lucy so I can carry her inside. “You go get paperwork or something,” I say, and I sit in a chair with Lucy. “Heyyyy, Luce. Stop crying, baby girl, okay?”

Her chin trembles.

“Say my name, Lucy. You know who I am?” I hold her close. “I have you. You’re safe with me. I’m sorry sorry sorry.”

Melinda sits down beside me with the forms and asks me questions, Lucy’s middle name and native language, just like the forms at the speech therapist’s. Without Noah to snark, everything’s going quickly. I actually know the answers this time, until I realize, two questions late, that I gave my address and not Lucy’s.

“Shit, go back, change that one. That’s my dad’s address.”


She looks up. “I thought Lucy lived with your dad.”

“No, I live with my dad. Lucy and Gideon and Noah live with Mom. Only Claudia and me with Dad.”

“Oh, I—”

“You what?” “I thought you lived with Noah.”

God, how many times will she have to sleep with one of us before she understands that nobody lives with Noah, Noah just sometimes lives with you.

“He’s not your boy,” I say, quietly. “And he’s not mine either.”

She scratches her chin with the end of the pen and fixes the address.

The part where we actually see the doctor is pretty pain-less—especially for Lucy, who gets a big dose of children’s Tylenol—but the waiting is brutal. All of it. Waiting for the nurse to call our name, waiting for the nurse to take her vitals, waiting for the nurse to get the doctor. Waiting to hand over my Dad’s credit card to pay. We’re standing in line at the pharmacy downstairs when I seriously can’t handle it anymore. I hand Lucy to Melinda and head outside and try to breathe. Sea air and all that, but it’s not helping.

I call Noah’s cell phone. This is about as productive as calling Gideon.

“Noah, it’s me.” I tell his voice mail. “By the time you ever listen to this I’m sure you’ll know all about Lucy’s ear infection and she won’t even have an ear infection and she’ll probably be like seventeen and about to go to prom, but . . .

but I’m scared and I want you to come home. I’m really really scared. You have to stop running away, man, I need you, and I’m going seriously crazy just here with Melinda so please come home, okay? Even if you get this message fifteen years from now. Stay home. Stop running.”

“Feeling better?” Melinda is standing behind me, paper bag with Lucy’s ear drops dangling from those stupid long fingernails. Luce has her head buried in Melinda’s neck, and I wonder what she thinks of her perfume.

I don’t say anything.

“I’ll drive,” she says.

“No.” I get into the driver’s seat.

She gets in, studying me. “I thought he wasn’t your boy.”

I stare at the dashboard. “I lied.”

“Oh, yeah?” She pulls the seat belt over herself, over Lucy.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Didn’t want to share him.”

I turn the key in the ignition.

“Well, that hardly seems fair.” Melinda plays with Lucy’s hair. “He always shared me.”

I try to breathe slowly.

When we get home, Noah’s in the kitchen, eating banana bread. I know by the weirded-out look on his face when I hug him that he definitely didn’t get my message. But he’s here and I’m here and Lucy can hear. “Um, hi?” He pats my head, probably getting crumbs all

in my hair. He holds out the pan to me. “Want some?”

I do, of course. I take what Noah offers and hope he’ll offer himself.

But I’m not complaining. He already gives me more than he gives anyone. Even if he never answers his damn cell phone, he still calls every day. s i x t e e n

A dding the extension to the balcony is pretty fun because it’s my father and me twenty feet up in the air with a bunch of tools, and neither of us has a clue what he’s doing. Every once in a while Noah or Mom will come out here, mutter something about we’re going to kill ourselves, then disappear—literally, in Noah’s case.

I sort of like that Mom cares about Dad the same way

Noah cares about me.

“So she loves you, right?” I ask him, because I guess this is the simplest way to describe it.

“We were married for like twenty years, Chase,” he says, hammering a nail where a nail completely doesn’t need to be.