Hiram, on the other hand, is bewildered, resentful, sometimes at a complete loss how to react. He spends much time alone in his room, lost in vid comedies and antique nineties TV shows.
On the day that Chloe decides to return home, it is a surprise to Jonathan. He departs the autobus with his pouch in hand and walks slowly through the moist cool air to their roadside rain shelter, then up the short drive to the front porch. The porch lights are on, burning warm as newborn stars in the general nebular blue-gray of evening.
He opens the front door and is porting his pad to the house monitor when Penelope stands before him, hands folded in front of her, biting her lower lip.
“Mom’s home,” she says.
Jonathan nods as if he already knew this, steels himself, and walks through the sitting room into the dining room. There, Chloe sits at the table with her back to him, papers and two pads laid out before her. Jonathan wonders if these are legal documents. Divorce papers. He doesn’t quite know what his reaction will be if they are. Relief, perhaps.
Chloe starts a little at the sound of his feet, turns, meets his eyes. She is dressed in a slim gray suit with flared culottes and has cut her hair to a short nimbus around her head. She arranges the papers and stacks them to one side as he approaches.
Penelope stands in the hallway, and Jonathan hears Hiram’s heavy tread on the landing.
This is the first time they have met since Jonathan’s return from Green Idaho. “Hello,” Jonathan says.
“Hello,” Chloe says. “How were the interviews?”
“Horrible,” Jonathan says.
Chloe looks away. “It was Marcus convinced you to join, to go… wasn’t it?”
“It’s tangled. I don’t think they’re going to prosecute me. I’m not legally connected to… all that.”
Chloe looks down at the table and persists. “Did Marcus convince you?”
“He was persuasive, but I was certainly ready for a change. I didn’t know about all that…”
“Jonathan, I’ve never believed you knew about any of it.” Jonathan starts to sit, then glances at Chloe as if asking for permission. She opens her mouth, looks away. “Marcus always seemed a little ripe,” she says.
Jonathan sits. “When I learned what they were up to, I started banging up things.”
“I heard about that on the fibes,” Chloe says. “A pick.” Then, together,
“Jonathan, I’m sorry—”
“Chloe, this is so painful—”
Jonathan wants her face to come alive in amused recognition of this silly collision of words, but her features are still wooden. She refuses to look directly at him.
“I’ve been preparing documents for my therapist,” she says. “Past history, specific goals. A journal. She seems to think I’ll come out of this relatively quickly. They’ve changed my monitors four times, just to avoid any more complications. She wonders how you’re taking it.”
Jonathan shrugs. “I’m burned,” he says, voice rough. “It’s hard to sleep nights.”
“I don’t bear you any grudges, Jonathan. You did not know.”
Jonathan blinks rapidly, taps his fingers on the table.
“It’s going to take me time to reach my own balance,” Chloe says. “A month or two. What I need to know is, will you be there, will you work with me, wait for me?”
“I’m no hero,” Jonathan says. His throat seizes and he coughs into his fist. “I screwed up.” He clears his throat again. “I’ll be dealing with advocates and judgments for years. I’m the only survivor, besides Marcus, and Marcus has wrapped himself in half a billion dollars’ worth of legal apparatus. We don’t have that option. I’m no prize to support you in your need, Chloe.”
“I don’t know what I feel right now, Jonathan, but I do not hate you.”
Jonathan smiles wistfully. “It would be easier for both of us if you did, maybe.”
“No,” Chloe says. “I won’t be the one to scrap everything we’ve made.”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“You have never told me what you want from me. You’ve always left me to try to figure it out on my own, and only warned me when I made horrible mistakes. I need more than that, Chloe. After all the shit I’ve survived, I’m a little desperate… I’ll probably need therapy if I don’t get support from you. From this family.”
“I understand,” Chloe says. “I’ll try.”
“I’ll try, too,” Jonathan says. “I’ll be here.”
Penelope enters the dining room in quick steps. “We need both of you,” she says.
“We’ll be trying,” Chloe says, and holds on to her daughter’s hand. Hiram stands in the shadows, glowering hopefully.
Chloe reaches with her other hand for. Jonathan’s. He goes the extra few inches, powerless to do anything else, and feels some comfort just touching his wife, connecting with the dry warmth of her fingers.
Hiram comes out of the shadows. “This is pretty syrupy,” he says, and his voice breaks.
Dinner that evening is slow and quiet; the house feels like a soft and healing wound.
Jonathan and Chloe lie in bed, separated by twelve inches of sheet and blanket, and listen to each other breathing.
It will be days before Jonathan gets much sleep. Chloe, however, is soon breathing quietly, regularly. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, hoping this is not another violation, some further breach on his part.
He is nothing without her, them. That scares him more now than ever, and he thinks again of escape, breaking away, finding real peace and contentment.
But he knows he will never do that.
He is a family man.
0/4
There are no tribes, no heroes, no gods or godly inspired prophets, no angels or sublimely superior individuals. There are only children.
The grizzled man walking beside the highway out of Green Idaho knows that. He’s had everything burned away but his childish core.
He talks to few, says very little. The scars on his face are vivid and crudely patched together. He endures the snow and the wind.
Sometimes he will say to himself that his name is Jack. Sometimes, Carl. He is not sure who is in charge from day to day, not that it matters.
He has work to do.
He is trying to go home.
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* * *
December 22, 1996
Lynnwood, Washington
AFTERWORD
The variety of Tourette syndrome described in this book is fictional, and is not meant to reflect the lives or attitudes of any who experience Tourette. For information about Tourette, there are a number of sources.
In the United State,
Tourette Syndrome Association
42-40 Bell Boulevard
Bayside, New York 11361
In England,
Tourette Syndrome Association
New Administration Office,
Old Grange House,
The Twitten, Southview Road,
Crowborough, East Sussex, TN6 1HF
Performing a search on the Internet, you’re likely to find hundreds of pages of material on Tourette syndrome from the TSA and other organizations.
For all who have at one time or another been odd or out of sorts dysfunctional, the discovery is just beginning.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Greg Bear
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-0724-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Greg Bear, Slant
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