Face Of The Monster

24 - Wind

Ricky is sitting up in his bed, a sideways smile on his face.

I try to smile back at him, but my lips won't obey. It's miraculous, really, to see him sitting like that, but my face won't respond appropriately. My lips feel like they're bound by invisible weights.

In the two and a half weeks since I saw him last, Ricky has grown a bit of a beard, which upsets me. Why wouldn't they shave him here? He came in clean-shaven. Some of the hair on his head has begun to grow back as well as his eyebrows and eyelashes. He's lost even more weight, making his eyes seem even more sunken than usual. His face is still melted to the side, but he is smiling. That much is indisputable.

"Good morning," I tell him. The curtain is open. Outside, the courtyard glows green with manicured grass. "You seem to be doing much better."

Ricky's smile twitches, a gesture I suppose is replacing his laugh. He watches me as I seat myself beside him on the bed. My body feels heavy, my mind, heavier. I don't want to be gentle with him, talk to him. I want him to take me in his arms and care for me the way he has been taken care of for the past weeks. I want him to feed me and whisper to me and bathe me with soft, gentle hands.

He won't. He's sitting up, but he isn't doing any more than that.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" I take his hand, guide it to my stomach. My skin is growing back into my stretch marks. My belly rises like the swell of a wave in a still ocean. "I should have come sooner. I was just busy."

Ricky looks at me, grunts. I try not to let myself grow too excited. It's more than last time, but it still isn't much. It still doesn't mean he will make a full recovery, still doesn't mean he's going to learn to walk again.

I pass my hand over his forehead, fingertips brushing the sparse hair on his scalp. "Your therapist says you're doing well. She says you can hold my hand now."

The slack side of his face lifts again, that laborious smile. I see the fingers on his right side moving.

"Go on then," I say to him. "Take my hand."

The smile slides away. The fingers move, hand turned upward like a beached whale. I can see his face darkening with effort, but his arm doesn't move. I watch, feeling the action in my own arm, but I don't move. I let him struggle, feeling a perverse rush of anger while he tries. "Hold my hand," I say again. "She said you could. She told me you learned how."

I hear a voice, Phoebe's, I think, telling me to stop. Telling me that I am being wicked, evil for no reason at all. There are tears in his eyes. He wants, so badly, to hold me, but I am just out of his reach. I realize that I have his fragile spirit in my hand right now; I can crush it. I can close my fingers around it and let it crumble to dust in my palm.

I shouldn't, though. "It's alright," I say to him. "I know you can't move your arm. I know. I was being mean. I'm sorry."

The words are so simple, so juvenile, that I feel tears in my own eyes. Mean, something we so often were as children, an impish longing that never leaves us. To hurt someone else and feel that rush of power, knowing that you have affected something, no matter how awful. I reach across his paralyzed body and take his hand. It's smoother than it used to be, the dead skin of his callouses cycled through into dust.

His fingers close around mine. His eyes light up hopefully, jumping between mine. See? they seem to say. I really can.

A sigh wheezes out of me. "Well. It's progress," I say. What I don't say is, but it isn't enough.

I need him home and I need him now. Money has gone tight, suddenly but surely. I've talked to Isabel and she has agreed to chip in for food, for the rent, for the bills if she is going to stay with us, but what she's willing to pay still isn't enough. Ricky's mother is sullen, withdrawn, no longer cooking or cleaning, but now sitting and eating.

I schedule appointment after appointment, but by the end of the week, the fridge is always empty and everyone needs things. Tiago needs to make cupcakes for his class party. Cande needs sixty-five dollars for a field trip. Cristiano's jeans are ripped, he needs new ones. Sofia ripped her comb to bits. Juan doesn't drink water; he wants Mountain Dew.

It soothes me to know that I have a safety net. There is always Phoebe at the bottom of the lake, ready to cradle me to sleep if I go under. She has become the bottom of my well, always waiting with forgiving arms when I falter. A week's groceries left on the counter, fresh fruit and cereal and milk and eggs. Twenty dollars slipped into my wallet, two crisp ten dollar bills. Two men in the living room fixing my picture window when I come back from work, Phoebe curled up on the loveseat, supervising.

She is alive, but not in the way she used to be. When Chloe left, she took something with her. Phoebe talks on the phone with her friends, but she never says much. She turns down invitations, saying she is busy, she has appointments, she just isn't feeling well. She stays at the office with Lars until I come at the end of the day and take her home. She holds me tight when we say goodbye, cries sometimes. Often, I take her home with me. She is so horribly distraught, so hopelessly lost on her own front porch that leaving her feels like walking away from a helpless infant.

Yet she still has time for my problems, welcomes them, in fact. Let me work, she says. Let me forget for awhile. So we sit at the kitchen table late at night and she talks me through my feelings, through my past, through the disparity between my writing and my life. My fantasy and my reality. We talk and talk and she becomes in control again, becomes the charismatic, capable woman I met the first day I walked into her office. But then, when I kiss her goodnight and go to take a shower, she slips into the bathroom and sits on the counter, afraid to be alone.

Isabel has noticed her, of course, and so have the kids. Cande glares, won't talk to her. Tiago likes her a lot. He pets her hair and sits in her lap, asking her all sorts of questions about herself. Sofia stands on the periphery of these discussions, interjecting a question of her own sometimes. Cristiano likes to make little messes to get her attention. He knocks over the vase if she brings flowers, dumps out her purse if she leaves it unattended, fills her shoes with Froot Loops when she leaves them by the door.

Juan is the worst. He doesn't like her at all. He plays tricks on her, makes her cry. He hid under my bed one night and talked to her, whispering about god knows what. All I know is, I walked in to find her sobbing her guts out, pulling at her hair, while his little voice floated up from under the mattress, laced with deceit. He takes her things, her phone, her glasses, her bras. Phoebe avoids him studiously.

I almost tell Ricky about her. She has become such a fixture in my life, such an important piece of my puzzle. But he wouldn't understand. He would be confused and then, he wouldn't be able to respond. I press my face into his neck and tell him that I love him. I tell him that I'll come back soon, although I know it isn't true. I can't stand to come back here until he has made progress. Real progress.