Eighteen
The boy was asleep, and the incandescent blob of sunlight on the wall was at a high point in its burned-in groove, still well above the bed. Doctor Marelli entered the room and it was a submersion. The shaft of sun was made to waver by some wind-stirred tree branch just outside the window. The dirty, semi-opaque glass colored and affected the light that came through, making a dream of the outside world and making inside so very strange, like an underwater reality. The light green walls of the room seemed to wear on them the gradations of depth, with a dazzling band of near-white closest to the ceiling/surface, all the way down to the deep emerald layer which enveloped the bed and hung above the tile floor. An unknown instinct made the Doctor want to step only on the white tiles, as if these were coral heads mounding solidly out of the sea bottom, and the black tiles were the spaces in between, paths down to the abyss into which her weight could sink unstoppably.
She approached him, his back to her, and the sheets of the bed were covering every sign of him, so that only the size of the wrapped object and the apparent slimness of the limbs within meant to her: here lies a child. He moved under the sheets almost imperceptibly and she placed her hand on him. When he began to stir awake, she was alarmed by a sense of having violated his physical separateness. Immediately she thought: this is not a child. It was the way he passed into wakingness, gently rolling over, his face still covered with white fabric. And this sudden hand on him, her hand, did not frighten him in the slightest. As if this touch, this first flesh-to-flesh contact between them, were no surprise at all, but rather expected as the only possible way the day could have begun. He rolled over onto his back, and she dared not remove the hand, fearing that the withdrawal of what had been placed so innocently would call attention to the optional interpretation of the act. As if only in silence and stillness could there be any true communication. When he did not pull the sheet from over his face, her old dread of cadaver, of failed medicine, (the aversion that had driven her to psychiatry and away from any medical practice too deeply steeped in the flesh and mortality), made her pull it down for him.
His eyes were still closed, held there not by sleep but now by the gentle pressure of his will. The mouth was in that serene state of muscular abandon, and the eyes were as still as stones beneath the pink lids, each with its dark fan of long lashes. There was that barest glint of saliva in the seam of his lips. He appeared to her suddenly as a jewel, shimmering in shallow water, indescribably beautiful. His movements of just a minute before, his rolling-over, his waking up, these were forgotten; and she was taken by the perfection of his stillness, a stillness atypical of the living. And then within her, once again, there rose up a panic in the face of even illusory death.
“William? Are you awake?”
She moved her hand away at last. And as if the lost contact meant that she were losing her mooring, the submerged churning of the sea licked around her knees, making the room alive with unseen currents and eddies, and precarious. So she re-placed the hand quickly on his cheek.
“William? Wi- ”
“No… I’m not.” still with eyes closed, and her hand on his cheek.
“Oh… okay then. Are you talking in your sleep then?”
He didn’t answer. No change of expression traced over his face. She passed her thumb over his lips, but nothing reflected back from him, save for that disconcerting serenity.
“I’m asleep, but I can talk to you.”
“Well, I’m glad about that William, because I was hoping to talk, just a little bit.”
She dragged the chair right up to the bed and arranged herself in it. While looking down at the boy, her mind produced an absurdity, but she did not recognize it as such. Instead, she noted it in her growing mental dossier on the subject of William Rivera. Willie was just laying there on his back with his eyes closed, utterly passive. His silent attitude suggested neither a self-enforced restraint nor the eagerness to speak. But she now believed suddenly that if the boy were to speak again, she must touch him again, thus completing some as yet indiscernible circuit between them. So the same hand was now again placed on Willie’s chest, peeling down the white sheet and spreading open the pajama top, so she could touch his bare skin.
“William, are you still asleep?”
“Yes.” He answered immediately but kept his eyes closed .
“In case you were wondering, my name is Dr. Marelli…” then remembering her purpose for being there, “William, do you know where you are?”
“I’m sleeping.”
“Yes, I know that. But do you know where you’re sleeping?”
“I’m in my bed.”
“Your bed?”
“Yes.”
And within her began to prickle an irritation, as the words kept rising unbelievably from his corpse’s lips.
“Do you think– You mean, your bed in your room, William. Are you asleep in your room?”
He answered that one with silence, though the question did occasion a faint wrinkling distress of the skin between his closed eyes. She accepted that answer and began to see the outline he was sketching for her to work within.
“Alright William. Tell me about your room… I mean, I’m looking around here and you’ve got all these interesting things all over the place. I’d love for you to tell me about them. Whaddaya say William? Why don’t you tell me about your one favorite thing in this — in your room.”
She looked at him for any sign of either engagement or rejection, but nothing on his face had changed, except that he had turned his head minimally toward the source of the speaking. It encouraged her.
“Yes, I can see there are so many, but I’m sure you’ve got a favorite thing. Oh, tell me what it is William. Tell me and I’ll tell what my favorite thing is from my room.”
He clenched and bared his teeth with the effort of forming the word and then said: “Guess.”
“Guess huh?” And the irritation revived. “Oh my, there are so many things. I don’t think I could guess, William… I know what, why don’t you give me two or three things to choose from, and I’ll see if I can guess that way. Okay?”
The boy brought both his arms out from under the sheet, and laid them at his sides. He became somewhat restless then, scratched his nose, but still did not open his eyes. All the movement nearly made her lift her hand from his chest.
“There’s some stuff on my bureau…” he blurted, clipping himself off at the end, as if there were more words attached to the ones he’d spoken that were not yet ready to be heard.
“Yes. Yes there are. Is one of those things your favorite?”
And releasing an over-held breath, he said “No!”.
Through his warm skin, she felt the beating in his chest quicken.
“Where is your favorite thing, William?”
“Sometimes he’s on my bureau… but not now.”
“He? Where is he now?”
“He’s in the little house.”
Now he brought both his hands up around her forearm and squeezed it hard.
“I don’t see the little house, William.”
The boy’s speaking became even more strained, as if each syllable were a small, painful birth. The difficulty clouded his face, made him scrunch up his eyes even harder.
“It’s by the door.”
The Doctor felt that his mounting distress signaled they were drawing nearer to something, and she feared her clumsiness would keep them from reaching it.
“I don’t see it, William.”
“By the hall door! The hall door!” He shouted out, gripping her arm to the point of pain, and kicking his legs under the sheet.
“What’s in the little house?”
“He’s in there, you see `im. He hates it in there but she always puts `im back. It’s dark. He doesn’ like it. We gotta get’im out!”
Both her hands were on him, pinioning his shoulders to the bed as he writhed violently; intent, it seemed on getting all of himself tucked under the sheet and hidden away.
“Who is in the little house, William? I can’t see him. Tell me! You can say it, c’mon.”
“Leg-wah! Leg-wah!” he cried out through his tears.
She let him go and he vanished under the white sheet, making himself into a small bundle that trembled under her hand.
“I’m sorry, William. I won’t do that again. Don’t cry. Your mother will be here soon.”
And to herself Dr. Marelli wondered: …and will you be awake for her?