IT WAS CLAY’S INSTINCT TO CONSULT THE WASHINGTONS. Put four heads together. A conference, strength in numbers, the wisdom of their more advanced age, but none of them had ever seen anything like this. They huddled and inspected like Caravaggio’s Thomas and friends. Incredulity was about right.
“You’re feeling all right, though?” Ruth didn’t see how that was possible.
Archie just shrugged. He’d said it over and over again already.
“Well. This is something. We need to think about getting him to the doctor.” G. H. felt this clear. “Not back in Brooklyn. Here.”
“We have that pediatrician’s number.” Ruth had done her research for when Maya and Clara and the boys came to visit. They’d never had to use the information, but they had it.
“He needs the emergency room,” G. H. said.
Clay nodded, grave. Been there, done that, like any parent worth his salt. A glob of peanut butter lurking in a berry smoothie. An overconfident leap from the jungle gym. Labored breath one terrible winter night. “You’re right. This shouldn’t wait.” How he wished it could.
“Where’s the hospital?” Amanda was unsure what to do with her body. She walked in circles, she stood and sat like a dog that can’t get comfortable. “Is it far?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes—” G. H. looked to his wife for confirmation.
“Farther, I think. You know these roads—it’s probably closer to twenty, maybe longer? I think it depends on if you take Abbott or cut over to the highway—” Ruth didn’t want to care. She didn’t want what it would entail. She couldn’t help herself. She was human. “Do you want some water or something?”
Archie shook his head. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I feel okay, I really do.”
“We just need to be certain, honey.” Amanda actually wrung her hands like an amateur character actor. “You’ll give us directions? Unless someone’s phone has suddenly started working? No?”
“I can give you directions,” G. H. said.
“You’ll draw us a map. The GPS is no good. You’ll make us a map. And we’ll go.” Amanda went to the desk. Of course Ruth kept a cup of sharpened pencils, a pad of blank paper.
“I can draw you a map. But it’s very simple once you get back to the main road—”
“I got lost.” Clay put a hand on his son’s shoulder. He could barely look at them. “I got lost. Before.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda asked. “Lost?”
“It’s not simple at all! I went out. To go and find out what was happening. To get to the bottom of—whatever. And I drove down the lane and I passed that egg stand and I thought I knew where I was going, and I was wrong. I drove around, then I turned around, then I was really lost. I don’t know how I found my way back. I heard that noise and I thought I was going to lose my mind and then there it was, the turn I had been looking for, the road up to the lane up to the house. It was just right there.”
“So you didn’t see anyone. Or anything. You didn’t go anywhere.” Amanda sounded accusatory, but this was a relief: he hadn’t even had the chance to look! They were all overreacting. There was nothing. An industrial accident, those noises four consecutive controlled explosions, the power loss easily explained. Not great! But not the worst.
“I could show you the way. We’ll go too. All of us.”
“No.” Ruth was firm. Her whole body shook. “We’re not leaving. We’re not doing that. We’re waiting here. Until we hear something. Until we know something.” She would let them stay, but she wasn’t risking her life for them.
“There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll drive them. We’ll talk to someone, find out what people know, maybe we’ll fill up the car, come right back here.”
“You can stay. All of you. You can stay here, in this house, with us.” This was as far as Ruth could go. “Just stay here.”
“Stay here.” Clay thought about it. He’d been thinking about it. “Until—until what?”
“But George, you can’t leave. You can’t leave me here, and I can’t leave, and that’s where we are,” Ruth said.
“What if it’s forever?” Amanda could not wait. Her son was sick. “What if the cell phones never come back—I mean, they barely worked out here before, when everything was normal. What if the power goes out, what if Archie is truly sick, what if we’re all sick, what if that noise made us sick?”
“I’m not sick, Mom.” Why wasn’t anyone listening to him? He felt fine! Yes, it was weird his teeth had fallen out. But what was the doctor going to do—glue them back in? Something (his own instinct? some other very quiet voice?) told him to stay where they were.
Ruth wondered what Maya was doing. She wondered why it seemed perfectly viable to her that her grandsons had heard that noise in Amherst, Massachusetts. They had only milk teeth, barely held in place at all. Maybe the noise had knocked those loose, and reduced their mothers to hysterics. If you couldn’t save your child, what were you doing? She knew they could not choose to stay with her, not when their child was sick. “I don’t think I can go out there.”
“It will be fine.” G. H. couldn’t promise that. They’d all been waiting for some decisive moment. Some corner being turned. Perhaps this was it, the gradual descent into illogic, the frog finding that the water is at last too much to bear. The hottest year in recorded history, hadn’t he read that once? But the boy was sick, or something was wrong with him, and that was the only information they had. “You can wait here.”
“I can’t stay here alone.”
“We’ll pack up, we’ll go to the hospital, and then we’ll go back to Brooklyn,” Clay thought aloud. “You don’t need to drive us there. A map should be fine.”
G. H. began to draw.
“Or we could come back. We could leave Rose here with Ruth, and we can come back for her.” Amanda didn’t want the girl to have to see what was happening to her brother. She thought this might be less worrisome.
“I can stay with Rose. I can even pack your things, you can go right now.” Ruth liked a project.
“Fine.” Clay stood. That made more sense. Let the adults do what was needed. They’d come back for Rose.
It was Amanda who realized, or Amanda who said it. The five of them had been so preoccupied by the situation. A shame: the perfect day. The light playing prettily across the pool, its reflection dancing across the back of the house, the green more lush from the rain, and not a cloud to be seen. “Where’s Rose?”