AJ giggled. “You once referred toDekalogaswhimsical.”
A bleat of laughter escaped Lorraine Bell, and her eyes darted approvingly to Noah before another spasm overtook her. AJ and Noah froze in helplessness.
Then AJ pulled a chair up to her bedside. “I’m glad to know he didn’t get the Kieslowski gene from you,” she said, and Noah closed the door.
They left half anhour later, after a lively discussion about films. During the visit, AJ had been so focused on understanding what Lorraine was saying and treating it like a completely normal interaction that she hadn’t even let herself take in some of the details.
It was only now as they drove back down the Mass Pike, a light rain drumming on the windshield, that AJ could feel her own perturbation at the abject horror of Lorraine’s situation—the constant involuntary movement, the way her eyebrows went up and down, the way, when she was listening, it seemed like her tongue was trying to escape her mouth.
“The side effects are—” Noah broke off, shaking his head.
“It must be so frustrating,” said AJ, trying to keep her voice steady so Noah wouldn’t notice she was crying. “She’s with it, you can tell—she’s just trapped.”
Noah nodded. “Nothing sets her off like people talking to her like she’s incompetent,” he said. He cleared his throat. “You were amazing.”
AJ looked out the window. She didn’t feel amazing. She felt wretched for Lorraine and even more wretched for Noah. His mother wasn’t the only one who was trapped.
“Age,” said Noah tentatively. “It’s okay to be upset.”
There had been one particularly painful interlude when his mother had knocked over a cup of water and started screaming. Noah had been at her side in a heartbeat, so loving, so gentle, touching her face as if it weren’t a nightmare, holding her as if she weren’t a husk.
Until that moment, AJ had only guessed at his caliber—as a person, but also as an actor. Now she knew his entire life must be a performance, approximating human normalcy, all the while silently keeping vigil for his mother as she lived out her fate in that room.
“I couldn’t do it,” AJ said, a sob escaping her.
The windshield wipers etched silver hour lines across the glass.
“You could,” he said, knuckles white on the steering wheel. “But I hope you never have to.”
The day before theAstronauticalspanel, Emily awoke with a fever, which meant she couldn’t accompany their mother to Mike’s all-day chess tournament in Lenox.
“You need to stay with her,” Katie Graves informed AJ. “Everyone else has arealcommitment during the day.”
AJ seethed as her mother packed Mike’s lunch, viscerally aware that the only thing she shared with this woman was the shape of their hands.
Then she trudged to the hall phone to let Eudora know she couldn’t make it. “I’ll besureto pass that on,” said Mrs. Gilroy. Her tone did not inspire confidence.
Meanwhile, with Emily in bed and everyone else out of the house, AJ found herself in the rare position of being in charge. She blasted the air conditioner at sixty-eight degrees. She jumped the laundry line andthrew all of her clothes into the washwithoutsorting them. She opened the brand-new box of Reese’s Puffs and sat in the catbird seat on the sectional, watchingAstronauticalsat full volume.
Two episodes in, a juddering sounded from the ancient laundry machine. The wash had stopped mid-cycle, leaving the load inside completely sodden. AJ tried to restart it, to no avail.
Her head was inside the drum when the phone rang. It was Noah.
“What’s going on?” he asked irritably.
“Emily’s sick,” said AJ, and she relayed what Mrs. Gilroy clearly had not.
The line went silent. Then, “This really isn’t a good day for you to not be here.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Even as AJ snapped at him, she felt a rush of guilt thinking of Eudora—they’d planned a full agenda to take her mind off the impending performance. “Look, I have to go. The washer’s having a coronary.”
She hung up before he could make her feel worse and traipsed back into the laundry room to survey the damage. The clothing was too wet to put directly into the dryer, so AJ grabbed a bucket and began squeezing out each item.
She was so annoyed at having to do this that she almost missed the doorbell when it rang. Whoever it was didn’t go away. AJ wiped her red hands on her flannel pajama pants as she stalked to the front door, yanking it open.
She gave a start. “Noah.”
He stood on the other side of the screen, his dark T-shirt and jeans absorbing the daylight. They eyed each other warily. Then, Noah tilted his head. “What’s up with the washer?”
