He slid over on the bench to make room. I pressed my cheek to his unyielding shoulder. If it’s true that underneath we all seethe with lunatic notions, irrational beliefs, and bizarre wishes, fear knocks them out into the light. Over the year of Maddy’s illness, I was by turns remote and accusatory with Robin. It was my child who was under threat. It was my child getting thin, my child being punctured and invaded, my child who might never grow up. Robin’s son was a standoffish young man named Vince who worked as a hospital orderly and was uninterested not only in his father but, from what I could tell, in any normal human contact. At night, lying in the dark, I could not banish the thoughts. The world could do without Vince more than it could do without Maddy. Why not him? The shame of it distanced me even further from Robin, who had done nothing but stand by me, observing my anguish from afar with a look that said: Let me in.

“I know it’s hard on you,” I said.

“What is?”

“The way I am. What’s happened. Everything.”

He squeezed me a bit roughly, I thought. “I don’t like you going up there on your own. Why don’t you see if Beth or Ella will go with you?”

I looked at him in surprise. “They bailed on me.”

“Is that what happened?” It had grieved him when my friends and I had parted company.

“You know what happened! We drifted apart.”

“Well, can’t you drift back together?”

“It’s too much for you, isn’t it?”

He crossed his arms. “All I’m saying is, being isolated is never a good thing.”

After a minute, I added cautiously: “Who knows? Maybe Norma will be there.”

“Our new neighbor?”

“It would be nice if she is.”

“Well,” he said, “I’d rather that than you being alone.”

17

After the last of the factory towns, the road ran through mile after mile of cropland fitted to the earth like carpet, broken only by corrugated sheds and farm machinery lined up on paved lots. Every so often there appeared a barn in such a perfect storybook shape, painted such a perfect red, that it seemed to have come off the cover of a brochure. But don’t ask me; I’m not the one to gauge the truth of appearances. These days the outside world strikes me as either a backdrop or a façade, with brushed-on highlights and hidden seams that I could expose if I looked closely enough.