Moose and Goose

Chapter Seventy-eight

"Wait, where are you going," Judith asks Jerome when he sprints off her porch. He doesn't drop his sweatshirt until he reaches the sidewalk, and she watches him continue down the path without answering her.

"This is insane," Stevie says under his breath while storming toward the stairs. Sheryl takes a deep breath with her eyes shut to gather her thoughts and calm herself.

"Judy, why aren't you in school?" Judith returns to her with her lips agape, unable to think of an answer in time. "Nevermind. Get inside and head to your room. I'll have it ready for you to quarantine after I finish Vera's oatmeal bath."

"Quarantine," she repeats in the form of a question, and Sheryl emits another weary and annoyed sigh against her cashmere sweater. "I feel fine."

"And so did Vera until an hour or so ago. You've been around them just like me and Rembrandt; we probably all have it." Judith glances at her left arm when a nagging sensation stretches from her elbow across her limb, beckoning her to scratch.

***

Droplets of water bead off the ends of Vera's textured hair and glide down her pale back, trickling onto the bed of steaming water her body's submerged in. She shivers in the middle of her tub with her knees to her chest and her teeth chattering.

Sheryl's sitting on the edge of the bath, shaking oats from brown packets in the water and staring helplessly at her feeble daughter.

Judith steps away from the bathroom door, past Vera's bed, and into the hall. She hears slow rhythmic thumping, so she follows the sound to Stevie's partially open door. She peeks through the crack and watches him. He's lying with his head at the end of his bed and his feet on his pillows, tossing a baseball against his wall beside his window.

She gently taps her knuckles on the door, and he tilts his head back to look at her, then back to what he was doing.

"Can I come in," she asks, and he shrugs. Judith steps over the threshold, shutting the door behind her. "Are you okay?"

"I'd probably be happier if y'all would stop asking me that." His wrist flicks with each toss, and as the ball strikes the Michael Jackson poster, it resembles her heart beating. He catches it, his fingers squeezing around it like a snake to its prey as he wrestles with what's bothering him. "Judy?"

"Yeah?" She steps toward him, and he stares at her to his left. Gazing into his eyes, she notices sadness that she feels isn't from their isolation. It's a look she rarely sees when his cold exterior cracks. "What's wrong?"

He opens his mouth to answer but exhales his breath when someone knocks on the door. As he veers his head forward, wiping his eyes with the back of his free hand, she exits his room and rushes to the banister.

Overlooking the living room, she watches Rembrandt at the door with Kacey.

"Good morning. Is Judy home," she asks, her voice barely audible over a rerun of Gunsmoke. "I told her I'd come by and get her today, but I'm a few minutes late."

Judith hears him answer her but can only decipher smallpox.

"Oh, wow, okay," Kacey trails off in thought. "Okay, well, can you please tell her I dropped by? Also, let her know I'll pray for her and the rest of you."

"Will do," he says monotonously, shifting his weight onto the other side. "You have a nice day now."

Judith watches him shut the door, then return to his seat in front of the television. He lifts a tin can of Coors to his mouth, and his adam's apple bobs as he gulps the last bit.