You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [54]
Samuel’s body was numb. He sat cross-legged on the floor, holding his head in his hands, the rattling sound still there in his ears. He saw spots darkening brown on his khaki shorts and realized tears were dripping from his cheeks. He wiped them away and stared at the knitted rows of blue carpet dissolving into infinite pattern.
He heard rope chafing on the cleats of the Sunfish, the halyard snapping against the mast. He felt very tired, as if he’d been running through the woods at school for hours and hours, all the coming pain of his brother’s death arriving in a wave too strong to survive awake. Trevor. Who had been with him in those spare hours in the house, whose room and company he longed for. His brother who had never made friends of his own, who seemed forever lonely.
It will drive them crazy, he thought, this pain. What Samuel had said, what he knew. There was nowhere for it to go. It would lay his parents’ world to ruin. He’d live with his mother somewhere; his father wouldn’t be able to bear him. He remembered standing in the main hall with Mr. Kinnet, trying to convince himself it wasn’t true about Jevins. He tried with his whole spirit to go back there now, to the place where he could believe it was a stupid dream, that his mind was being squeezed in the fist of some evil pretender. He prayed like they did in chapel, Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses . . .
The sail flapped in the breeze.
“Ready?” Trevor called.
The window faced east down the strait. Standing by it, Samuel couldn’t see the boat. Or the sun emerging from behind the bank of cloud. Only the rays of light striking the bridge’s red arch, shining on the water.
“Careful now, you two,” he heard his mother call from the deck, the desperation she tried to hide within the rise of her voice not hidden from Samuel.
Then no more sounds. He turned from the window heavy lidded, his body lowering itself down onto the bed. He laid his head on the pillow and sleep dragged him under.
SAMUEL WOKE TO the feeling of a hand against his cheek. His mother was sitting by him on the edge of the bed.
“You should come up for supper,” she said. “There’s kedgeree and I saved you some lemonade.”
He clutched her arm.
“They’re fine, Sam, they’re fine. They were only gone a little while, they’re up there now finishing their dinner. Everything’s fine.” She ran her hand through his damp hair, a frail look of relief still hovering in the creases of her face.
“He was too hard today, your father, he wasn’t fair.” Her fingers rubbed his scalp. She looked as though she might cry, but she didn’t.
“There are things you don’t know, Sam, things that make it hard for him.” She paused and looked down at the floor.
Samuel held his mother’s hand, muscles he never knew he had letting go with relief. To be here, his mother’s pulse against his fingers, her face above him, the most familiar thing in the world, listening to her voice, knowing Trevor was upstairs, the house safely around them. He needed nothing more.
“This business your brother told you about—your father’s dream . . . Well, it’s true he had that dream. And that they didn’t call until the next day, but there’s a good reason for that. He’d seen William just the week before down at the hospital in Southampton, and they knew he wasn’t doing well so it makes sense he would have a dream about it, because of his health, his cousin’s health.”
She glanced up at Samuel and then away again, out the window. “Your father gets upset when he hears you talking about knowing these things, or dreaming; he gets worried, because he loves you and he doesn’t want you to get confused. It’s important you don’t get confused. There are coincidences, but it doesn’t mean the world doesn’t make sense. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Samuel sat up and hugged his mother.
“Darling,” she said, “if you’re having nightmares, if they’re bad, we can find someone, someone you can talk with.” He closed his eyes and pressed his face against her shoulder.
Upstairs,