How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [110]
And he sure can’t control this. Which is part of the trouble. He wants to protect me from it all, wants to make me go home so I don’t have to see him this way.
We fought about it. I stood beside his bed and started singing a kid’s song that drives him nuts, “The Wheels on the Bus.” I don’t know why he hates it, but he does, so I started singing it over and over and over.
Finally he looked up at me and said, “Why are you doing that?”
“Because I want you to start acknowledging my presence. I want you to talk to me. If you won’t, I’ll sing. And I can come up with a lot of crazy stupid songs.”
He stared at me. Hard. And here is what’s true: His eyes are just the same, the most beautiful color of green. Not exactly light green, but like a pool in a forest, still enough that you can see yellow rocks in the depths. Katie has his eyes, and I’m praying and praying that our baby has them, too.
I touched the very tips of his fingers, where they are unburned. “You can’t give up on us, Oscar. We love you.”
He kept looking at me, and a million things were moving in those irises, but he still didn’t speak.
So I started to sing again. He tried to ignore me, closed his eyes as if that would make me go away.
After about seven rounds, he growled, “Enough!”
“Talk to me and I’ll stop.”
“What do you want me to say, Sofia? That everything is going to turn out okay? It would be a lie. My face is gone and I’m crippled and I haven’t got a clue what to do if I’m not a soldier. Maybe I should have considered that before, but I never thought—”
I stood there, listening.
He turned his face away and there were no tears, but his voice was raw from not speaking for so long. “I can’t talk yet, Sofia. I just can’t stand it. Don’t ask it.”
The nurse came in then and apologetically said it was time to take care of the wounds. “It’s pretty grim,” she told me. “You need to wait down the hall.”
But I could still hear him screaming.
God, I have to call my mother. I wish she could be here.
Ramona
After dinner, Katie heads upstairs and I find myself pacing, restless, hoping Sofia will call. It’s odd that I will have nothing to do for days on end. It’s so strange I don’t even know how to start to fill them. In the warm night, I sit out on the front porch and think about calling Ryan. Or Sarah, who has been slammed with obligations since she returned from India. Maybe she could come over and tell me about her travels.
Finally I pick up the phone and do what I have been resisting most of the day: I call Jonah.
“Hello!” he says, and sounds genuinely happy to hear from me. “What are you doing up so late?”
It’s nine. I laugh. “Well, I don’t have to get up in the morning, so I’m living decadently.”
“No work tomorrow?”
My breath gusts out of me. “It’s been a bad day. I was wondering if you might want to come by and sit outside in the backyard with me.”
“Now?”
“Yes. If you’re not busy or whatever.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I have to finish some business, but I’ll be over right after that.”
I go to the kitchen and gather things for us—a shawl to put over my shoulders, an old blanket to sit on, and tidbits from the kitchen. An orange and two small pastries that should get eaten, and my phone in case Sofia calls. I wash my hands and face and spritz on a bit of perfume that he has said he likes. Not all men do these days, but I buy unique things from a shop in Manitou sometimes, handmade perfumes with colorful names.
I wait on the front porch, shawl around my shoulders, and when I see Jonah coming up the walk, everything in me rushes outward to meet him. Physically, I stand and go down the steps toward him. He’s wearing a light-colored shirt, open at the neck, and jeans, and again I feel that little shock: This is Jonah!
He greets me with a kiss. “Hi.”
Taking his big hand, I say, “Let’s go to the backyard.”
I lead the way, walking on the old, crumbling sidewalk between the house and the lilac bushes. Our arms brush the cold leaves.
We sit down