At the corner of Queen and Church, we stopped for the light. Mom turned to look at me, forcing me to do the same, and then simply stood there a minute, like she was thinking of what to do next. “What?” I asked, eventually.
“I can’t figure out what’s sadder,” she said. “That you think he’s genuinely incapable of caring about what happens to you, or that you won’t even try to make him care.”
“Who says I think that? I know he feels for me, enough that my pain hurts him; that’s why I keep it to myself, or try to. And as for him, he just . . .” I trailed off, stymied, before switching subjects: “Also, ‘make’ him? Like what, force him to perform some sort of—fucked-up parody of a socially acceptable emotional reaction to make myself feel better? He’s got Disney movie scripts for that and he’ll trip on them eventually, you give him enough time, but only so long as you don’t put him in a situation where he’s too over-stimulated to remember how they go.”
“And that’s good enough?”
“That’s what I’ve got. Sure, I could insist on him putting what he’s trying to say into a different language, but if I reject the echolalia completely, it just looks like I’m rejecting him.”
“All right, but you can at least give him an idea of what’s accept-able and what isn’t, try to keep him to some sort of behavioural standard. . . .”
“Yeah, and I do. And sometimes he goes along with it, at least halfway, but a lot of the time he doesn’t, and not because he won’t. Because he can’t.”
“You use that word a lot, Lois.”
“Like when it’s appropriate?”
“Yes. And even when it isn’t.”
The light had changed twice by now, but we were still standing there, me starting to waver a bit, light-headed from two days of forced bed-rest. So while what I really wanted was to yell at her—something along the lines of Jesus, can we not do this right in the middle of the sidewalk?—I didn’t. Instead, I took a calming breath and replied, “Listen, I get that you’re worried about me and that’s putting you on edge, which is why you’re trying to pick a fight, here—just like I get that telling you not to worry is . . . impractical, at best. But think back, okay? They don’t know what happened, let alone why, or if it’s even likely to happen again—”
“It happened twice. Twice is a pattern.”
“Once, then again,” I corrected her, “at, like, a third of the original intensity. That’s not a pattern, that’s an anomaly in two parts.”
That made her laugh, at last, not that she sounded super amused. “Oh, so now you know math, Little Miss Innumerate? And medicine. You’re an expert.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the light change once more, debated just crossing rather than waiting—midday traffic was light; that car sitting at the corner had its blinkers on, wasn’t going anywhere—then decided Mom would just think I was trying to get away from her. So I stayed where I was. “Well, I do know there’s no point getting myself all knotted up over predicting the unpredictable, that’s for sure. Just like I know that no matter what happened, it had nothing to do with you telling me not to go up there in the first place.”
“How is this about me, now?”
“It’s not, I just . . . get the feeling maybe you think it is. Like you told me not to go ’cause something might happen, and I went anyway, and something did indeed happen, but the one didn’t make the other. You get that, right?”
Mom sighed once more. “I don’t know, Lois. I don’t know.”
“Me either. Neither of us do; no cure for that, though. We just have to keep going.” A beat. “I love you, by the way.”
A snort. “Oh, fine. Well . . . I love you too. Don’t ever think I don’t.”
“That much, I do know.”
As I glanced back at the parked car, sidelong, something tweaked at my memory. The vehicle itself was a dirt-streaked grey hatchback, driver barely visible—but as Mom drew me into a hug, close enough that I could feel most of the tension had left her, I relaxed just enough into to catch a clear glimpse of the hoodie-shaded face of the man behind the wheel.
“Whoa,” I heard myself say, out loud. “Is that—?”
—Chris Coulby?
My hand jerked up, sketching a truncated wave, but the driver—obviously having caught my move from the corner of his eye—seemed first to stiffen, then stepped on the gas. With barely enough time for its blinkers to click off, the car swerved, pulling a sharp turn south down Church, away from us. I stared after it, mouth open.
“What was that about?” Mom asked. “Somebody you know?”
“Yeah, I—” But here I broke off, no longer sure. A sudden wave of queasiness swept over me, strong enough I had to close my eyes and take a breath, abruptly no longer interested in anything but getting home. “I think I need to flag a cab.”
“Okay, sure—let me.” She waved one over, opened the back door and helped me in, then asked: “Want me to go with you?”
I shook my head. “Good from here, thanks. Just call me later, all right?”
“Absolutely.”