Midnight Wonders

7.3.3. Autumn Leaves on the Windowsill

Annabel was gone again for a while. Emma came to stay at their house, and Luc was almost surprised when she had been there for the entire day and still asked around dinnertime if she could stay for that night, and maybe a few more nights. He appreciated it, but of course she was welcome and he told her so. He wondered if there would be a time when she was not and didn't like to think of that, but he supposed that her asking reduced the chances of such a time coming by much, and then he didn't think about it again because he'd already thought much of it and it didn't really matter anyway.

She went back to work, or volunteering, and in the mornings she and Luc ate breakfast together and went to the bus stop together and rode on the bus together. Then, in the afternoons, they rode home together. Sometimes Emma had to stay behind at her day-care place, and sometimes Luc had to stay behind at school, and then he had to go home alone, which was okay. Well, it felt okay, but he didn't really know what was okay and what wasn't okay anymore.

But at home he was never alone. Kind of. Cora and Tristan were always doing something, and usually Luc was either doing nothing or doing something by himself, because most of it was work and also because he liked being with people but sometimes doing things with other people took a little extra energy, and he was low on that these days. And high on caffeine, mostly because Tristan liked using the machine and Cora liked the taste (though her coffee was more milk than anything, so did she really like the taste?) and they now had an excess of coffee beans that they were trying to work through. He couldn't tell if it was doing anything to him because there were many other factors that could be causing his strange sense of implosion.

One Saturday morning Luc found Cora scrubbing down the kitchen counter. It wasn't dirty. He told her so.

"Just because you don't think so doesn't mean it's true!" Cora said, wringing soapy water out of the white hand towel she was using. "Look." She shook out the towel to show Luc smears and spots of color. She went back to work.

Luc just watched her. He should have offered to help—that was the right thing to do. It was the normal thing to do. But he just stood there. She just continued cleaning the counter. They were both ghosts.

"You don't have to clean," Luc said, because it was the only thing he knew how to say. "You can just let me do it."

"You go to work all day," Cora said. "Besides, I like cleaning."

"How?" It was a genuine question. He wanted to know, because he couldn't bring himself to like it even though he'd done it a hundred thousand times before. There was no enjoyment in the moment. There was not necessarily dislike, either. He did things and sometimes they felt like nothing. Maybe everything just felt like a chore. Luc felt dramatic again.

"I like doing things," said Cora, which sounded a little passive-aggressive, particularly since Luc didn't, but maybe she didn't know that. "I haven't been able to do anything for so long and I'm catching up." She continued for a moment, then paused, looking at him. "You don't have to like doing things; you've been doing a lot of things while I've been doing nothing."

"You haven't been doing nothing," he said.

"Neither have you."

Luc didn't know if she meant now or before. He didn't know which one he would believe more.

"But if you do want to do something, can you go outside and water the plants?" Cora said. "Just a little bit, and mostly the ones here near the wall." She gestured to the wall in question.

So Luc went outside and did, not really because he wanted to, but then he didn't not want to either. He stood there letting water mist out of a hose onto glistening plants and looked up at the sky and wondered why it was so blue and beautiful like he'd told Kay about. It was blue and beautiful for these five seconds because in the next five seconds it would be storming and then sunny and then hailing and then hot. But right now it was a still, perfect blue. Somehow, it seemed a bit of a betrayal to be exactly what he'd described.