A trembling seemed to rise from his neck and ripple through his face.
Oh, God, I thought, he’s going to howl or scream, and everything I’ve done will be destroyed in an instant.
Grandpa would be very angry at me again. Dr. Patrick had just made a big point of our not pressuring him with questions. They’d all think I was doing this deliberately.
“Wait!” I cried. “I have something I wanted to give you very much.”
I went to my closet and grabbed Willie’s Superman figure.
“You know who this is?” I asked him. He shook his head. “You don’t know who Superman is? Faster than a speeding bullet? What kind of a childhood did you have?” I asked, of myself more than him. I brought him the figure. “Superman can fly. Bullets bounce off him. He’s the strongest man in the world.”
I put the figure in his lap. He took it and looked at it closely.
“I’ll tell you all about him,” I promised. “He was my brother’s favorite hero. See the cape? My brother had a Superman cape, too. I know where it is. I’ll be sure you get it so you can wear it when you want, okay?”
He looked at the figure again and then nodded.
“I’ll find one of Willie’s Superman comics, and I’ll read it to you.”
He wasn’t smiling, but the trembling was gone. I took a deep breath of relief.
His eyes were on my breasts now. He looked interested but not so much sexually. His memory is stirring, I thought. What was his sister like? Was she older? Did he have more than one? What about his mother? How was nudity treated in his home? So many questions were bouncing about in my head. I was just as driven by my own curiosity about him and his past as I was by the desire to get him to remember and go home.
“I’ll finish dressing,” I said. “Then we’ll go back to Willie’s . . . to your room, and I’ll find Willie’s Superman comics and read one to you. You know what a comic book is, right?”
He shook his head.
He’s from another planet, I thought. That’s it. We have an alien creature in our house. I laughed at the idea, found a blouse, and put it on while he watched me, seemingly fascinated with everything I did for myself and everything about me. I wasn’t feeling embarrassed by it anymore, either. I was feeling . . . important.
Smiling at him now, I got behind h
is wheelchair and began pushing him out of my room.
I’m going to solve all this, I thought. I’m going to do what private-duty nurses and psychiatrists haven’t done. I’m going to find out exactly who he is. And how he came to be here.
But until I did, it was probably better if I didn’t tell anyone anything.
I didn’t want them to come up with a reason I should stop.
16
At dinner, my Count Piro was more fascinated by Aaron than he was by me or anyone else. He stared at him and hung on to every word he said. Aaron knew he was under a spotlight and a microscope and had come prepared. He just didn’t expect that spotlight to be held by the poisoned boy. He was thinking more about my grandfather. That was clear the moment I greeted him at the door.
Grandpa Arnold only wore a tie at dinner when we had his business associates and their wives for dinner or someone from the government. He dressed up for holidays, but usually, if he still wore a sports jacket, he didn’t wear a tie. Aaron had come in a dark blue jacket and slacks and a light blue tie, and he wore an expensive-looking watch I had never seen him wear.
“Well,” he whispered, standing back for my approval, “think I’ll pass muster with the old man?”
“You look very handsome, Aaron. He’s not an old man,” I said, even more sharply than I intended.
He just smiled. “He’s older than my father, and my father is an old man to me most of the time.”
“Whatever,” I said, and led him to the dining room, where everyone had already gathered. When Dorian complimented Aaron on his watch, he explained that it was a gift his paternal grandfather and grandmother had given him on his sixteenth birthday.
“I wear it only on special occasions,” he added.
Grandpa didn’t say anything, but I could see from the twinkle in his eyes that he was pleased to hear that dinner at our house was a special occasion for Aaron. But I was paying more attention to Count Piro’s reaction than to Grandpa’s. The boy watched how Aaron ate, eating when Aaron did, and whenever Aaron paused to say something or listen to something, Count Piro paused, too.
Although Dorian knew that I had given him Willie’s Superman figure and had read some of the Superman comics to him, showing him the pictures as I did, she knew nothing about my questions concerning his family. Just as something about me had reminded him of someone, I thought something about Aaron now was reminding him of someone, someone he looked up to. Was it an older brother or his father?