Even after your worst binges, your hangovers never last this long. It’s been four days since the party, and it just seems to be getting worse. I’m used to you complaining that you’re tired, but this time it doesn’t seem like an act. You can barely get a shovel to break the earth. Yesterday you fainted while picking tomatoes.
“My throat hurts,” you croak as we walk to breakfast. We’re late. Some people have already finished eating and are heading out to the fields. It took me forever to get you out of bed this morning, and I’m trying to hurry you to the house, but you refuse to go much faster than a slug. “Feel my forehead,” you say. I am losing my patience. I am starving.
“Fine.” I put my back of my hand on your forehead. You are burning up. “Shit,” I say.
“It’s hot, huh?”
I nod. I don’t know what to do. This is something I can’t fix.
“I can’t work today,” you say. “I’m sorry.”
We stand there for a moment, in the middle of the trail, not talking. Are you asking for my permission? Are you waiting for me to say it’s okay for you to go back to bed?
“You should get some rest,” I finally say, and it feels a little like defeat, like you won this round. Sadie: 1; Max: 0. “I’ll find Lark and tell her you’re sick.”
“Thank you.” You seem relieved with your victory. “I’m sorry, Max.”
“I know.”
I know it’s not your fault that you’re sick, but I can’t help being a little mad at you. It’s always something, isn’t it? Something to make you a little less accountable, something to force me to take up the slack.
I find Lark cleaning up in the kitchen. I see a flash of her and Marshall from the other night, her naked shoulders painted with moonlight, her hair wild with the aftermath of sex, and I get a sick feeling in my stomach. But it passes, and I just see you there in the dark. Anger is replaced by a kind of apathetic sadness, a halfhearted disappointment. Of course Lark is cheating on Doff. She’s your mother, isn’t she?
“Darling!” she says when she sees me. “Where’s your other half?”
“She’s sick. Really sick. Like I think she needs to go to the doctor.”
Her face falls, but not like a mother’s who is worried about her daughter. “The nearest clinic is almost an hour away,” she finally says. She is annoyed. This is an inconvenience for her. “It’s probably the flu,” she says, a hint of guilt showing in her eyes.
“But her throat hurts too. She says it’s swollen. It could be something worse. She might need antibiotics or something.”
I can tell Lark doesn’t know what to say, and I suddenly get it. I understand how a mother could abandon her child and run off to have her own adventures. Maybe Lark doesn’t have the gene or whatever it is that makes you want to take care of someone else, to think of someone else’s feelings at all.
Her usual carefree confidence dims. She is unsure of herself in this unfamiliar territory. I must take the lead. “Call the clinic,” I tell her. “Tell them we’re coming. I’ll get Sadie.” Lark nods, and she looks like you when you’ve done something wrong.
When I get back to the trailer, I find you shivering. You have pulled all the blankets off both of our beds and are wrapped in a cocoon in the corner, with just the fuzzy pink top of your head sticking out. “I’m freezing,” you say, but it’s already at least eighty degrees outside. When I pull the blankets down, your face is drenched with sweat. “Everything hurts,” you moan, and you start to cry.
I manage to get you dressed. You insist on wearing as many layers as possible and bringing the blankets with us. Your skin is hot and slippery with sweat, but you’re shaking like you’re naked in the snow.
It takes a while, but we make it to the house where Lark is waiting. “Mommy!” you cry and shove yourself at her. She doesn’t quite know what to do with the giant crying ball of blankets, but she puts her arms around you as best she can.
“The clinic’s expecting you,” she says to me.
You pull the blankets off your head. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” You stare at your mother with a child’s heartbreak, and the beginnings of tears push the fever from your eyes. Lark’s eyes go wide with fear and shock. She had no idea she was supposed to even consider such a thing.
“Oh, um, yes, of course,” she says. “Of course I’m coming with you.” She glances at me for a split second, as if checking to make sure she got away with the lie.
I drive. You lie across us with your head on Lark’s lap. She runs her fingers through your hair but says nothing. It is a long, silent drive. I don’t feel like listening to the radio, don’t want to hear sad twangy songs or someone yelling at me about my sins. At one point, you burst awake and shove the blankets off you almost violently, tearing off your layers of clothes until you’re wearing only a tank top and underwear. “Open all the windows!” you cry. “I’m melting!” You hang your head out the window the rest of the way there, panting like a dog.
The clinic is just past Hazeldon, not much more than a little house with a sign. Lark and I wait in the tiny lobby on plastic chairs while you go with the doctor. A middle-aged woman sits across from us reading a People magazine from two years ago. She looks up when we sit down, purses her lips, and goes back to her magazine.
“You’re a good friend, Max,” Lark says.
“Thanks.”
“What do you think is wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.” I realize that must have sounded bitchy, but I don’t really care. Lark is quiet for a minute. I pretend to look at a wrinkled edition of Crafting Quarterly magazine. I still haven’t eaten.
“I’m going to find a store and get something to eat,” I say, standing up. “Want anything?”
“No, thank you.”
I move toward the door, but Lark grabs my hand. “Wait,” she says. “Sit for a minute.”
“I’m starving.”
“Here,” she says, pulling a granola bar out of her Indian-print fabric purse. “See, I’m not totally useless.” She tries to laugh, but that just makes what she said even sadder.
We sit there in silence while I eat the granola bar. The woman across from us keeps sighing loudly, like she wants us to hear her, like she is trying to tell us something.
“Is Sadie okay?” Lark says, not looking up from her knees.
“I don’t know. We have to wait to see what the doctor says.”
“No, I mean in general. In Seattle. Is she okay?”
I don’t say anything for a while. I try to think of how to package my answer, how to best protect you. But then I realize that the granola bar didn’t make me feel better at all, it just made me hungrier, and I’m so tired and so frustrated and so sick of always thinking of you first.
“No,” I say. “She’s not okay.”
Lark is quiet for a moment, then says, “I got that impression.”
I feel anger welling up inside of me. I want to say, What, do you want a trophy? Should I congratulate you for noticing that your kid’s fucked up?
I want to say, Well, what do you fucking expect? But instead I just say, “Yes.”
“What is it like? What is her life like in Seattle?”
I stare at Lark, hard, until she finally looks up from her knees. She looks at me with such sadness, such regret, that my heart loosens a little. Your pain isn’t entirely her fault. Few things are ever entirely one person’s fault. She looks at me with yearning, with a real desire to understand. Sadie, it’s not just you who is lost. It’s not just you stuck in the middle of nowhere.
“She needs a mother,” I finally say.
Lark buries her face in her hands. Her body shudders as she weeps. I put my hand on her back and rub in slow circles the way I remember my mother doing when I was a kid and needed to cry. The lady sitting across from us looks up and grimaces, her face contorted in judgment. “What?” I say too loudly. She gets up in a huff and moves to a chair on the other end of the waiting area.
I don’t want to talk anymore. I want to be in the field with the sun on my back and the dirt in my hands. I want to feel my muscles burn at the end of the day, want the pure satisfaction of physical labor, my body telling me I’ve done enough, I can rest, I’ve earned it, I’m allowed to let everything go. I let Lark cry. I let the grumpy woman sit in the corner and judge us. I try to imagine what it would feel like to not care how they feel.
The doctor enters the waiting room and tells us to come with him. He leads us down a short hallway into an exam room, where you are sitting on the examination table, your bare feet dangling off the side, a Styrofoam cup of water in your hand. You are pale, but you smile when we enter. “Have a seat,” the doctor says, and Lark takes the chair closest to you, holding your hand in hers.
“We won’t know for sure until the tests come back in a couple days,” the doctor begins. “But I’m pretty certain Sadie has mono. She has a lot of flulike symptoms, her temp’s a hundred and two, but her lymph nodes are definitely swollen and her spleen is slightly enlarged. Those things usually don’t happen with just a flu.”
“Is that bad?” Lark asks.
“Well, she’ll get better, but it’ll take some time. Mono’s a virus, so no antibiotics are going to help. Unless she gets strep, too, which is highly likely. For now, she just needs a lot of rest. And ibuprofen for the fever. Drink lots of water and eat well. Popsicles are great for the sore throat. Gargle with salt water.”
“How long is ‘some time’?” I ask.
“She’ll probably start feeling better in three or four weeks, but she’ll need to take it easy for a couple months. Especially no strenuous physical activity, because of the enlarged spleen. It can rupture really easily if she’s not careful, which would be a real nightmare.”
“So no work at all?” I say, surprised at my own voice. “We work on a farm. That’s, like, what we do.”
“Unfortunately, no,” the doctor says. “She should really stay in bed until she starts feeling better. Another thing is that this is highly contagious. I understand that you live in a very close-knit community and share the same facilities and utensils with several people?” He looks at his clipboard as he says this, as if he doesn’t want to dignify the statement with eye contact.
“Yes,” Lark says.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but it might be a good idea to quarantine her for a while. At least until she stops coughing for a few days in a row. Make sure she doesn’t share plates or cups or silverware with anyone.”
“Quarantine?” you say. “Like, be alone?” This is your worst nightmare.
“You don’t want to get all your, um, your . . . people sick, do you?”
“No,” you whimper.
“They might already be infected, actually. It’s pretty hard to avoid when you’re living so closely with such a large group.”
“Oh no,” you cry. “What if I got everyone sick?”
“Nobody’s sick, Sadie,” I say, glaring at the doctor. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.”
Lark is by your side as we leave the room. She crosses her fingers as the receptionist runs her credit card. She sighs with relief when the card is approved. You sleep the whole way back, curled into the fetal position, trying to turn yourself into a baby, trying to go back in time. Lark stares out the window, her eyes distant and wet.
I can’t help but be reminded of a similar drive we took long before, in what now seems like another world, with me in the driver’s seat as usual and you curled up beside me, trying to make yourself as small as possible. But instead of sun and golden fields and blue sky, it was winter in Seattle. The road was a swamp of brown slush, and everything else was the gray and white of thick clouds and old snow. Everything around us, cold and lifeless. And you, groggy and fragile beside me, and for the first time in our lives, I could not imagine what you were feeling.
This was two years ago, the winter of sophomore year. There was no question it would be me who would take you. You never had to say I’d be the only one who would ever know. Not even the father, although you refused to call him that. You preferred “That Guy” or “Sperm Donor.” You refused to even call him by name. And as much as I tried to get you to talk about it, all you could do was pretend you had no feelings at all, like it was just as routine a medical procedure as getting your wisdom teeth out. You joked, “Oh, come on, Max, you’re not getting all pro-life on me, are you? Next you’re going to tell me you signed up for one of those camps where they pray the gay out of you.”
But the sound coming out of your mouth was not laughter. I could tell beneath it you were choking, you were gasping for air, you were screaming for someone to hold you. I tried, but you wouldn’t let me. You pushed me away and said I was being melodramatic.
“Just because you call yourself a feminist doesn’t mean this isn’t a big deal,” I said.
“This is only a big deal if I make it a big deal,” was your response. “I don’t want it to be a big deal. Therefore, it is not. It’s simple logic.”
But it was not, Sadie. It is never that simple with you.
You were so quiet on that car ride home. “Are you in pain?” I asked.
“They gave me good drugs.” Your voice sounded like it does when you’re drunk. After a minute, you said, “The snow is pretty. I like it when it covers everything, before it starts to melt. When it makes everything go away.”
I thought you fell asleep, but then I saw the slightest movement. You placed a hand on your belly, and suddenly your fingers seemed so thin and frail. You think your big sunglasses hide everything, but I saw the tears running past the rims and collecting on your chin, making a wet stalactite of sorrow. I saw your chin tremble as you held your breath. I saw you mouth the words, I’m sorry.
This, too, this sickness now—it is something some boy gave you. You will inevitably blame him, whoever he was. His mouth on yours. The invisible virus. Mono is not called “the Kissing Disease” for nothing. Sadie, there is so much pain passed between bodies. And you have felt it all.