Chapter 23 #2
I freeze with only my shorts on, my stomach roiling in a very bad way. “He’s barfing?” Even the word makes me gag.
“Yes, Jude.”
“Oh fuck. Nora, I can’t do barf. You have to come with me.”
“I was going to come anyway. If that was okay.”
I give her a quick hug, kissing her forehead. “You’re a lifesaver, Nor.”
Something passes over her face, but she smiles and nods. “I’ll go get dressed.”
Both of us manage to make it into clothes and reconvene outside within what feels like approximately thirty seconds, and in another couple of minutes, I’m banging on Farrah’s door. She answers, looking frazzled as hell.
“Oh thank you,” she says, holding open the door for us. This is a two-bedroom suite, and all I can see is the living area.
“Which room is he?” I ask, knowing I sound abrupt. But I need to see Cap.
“There,” she says, pointing at a door slightly ajar. I stride toward it, hearing, “I don’t know what to do. I help him to change, but then he is vomit again.”
I step inside the dark room, where there’s a tiny lump on the bed. But I only make it to the threshold—the smell of vomit hits me then, sending my stomach rolling.
“Oh God—”
I step back out, whirling around, fairly close to panic.
“I’ll check on him,” Nora says, seeing my distress.
“No! I mean, yes, come with me, but I have to see him myself.”
“He is okay. I think he is sleeping,” Farrah says. “But he was asking for you before.” I only register now just how frazzled she looks. Her hair is everywhere; she’s got sweat on her forehead. And—I squint—a blotch of multicolored...
I gag.
“Is Jude sick too?” Farrah asks behind me.
“He’s not good with vomit,” Nora says.
Farrah frowns. “He is scared?”
“I’m not scared!” I bark. “It’s just…that’s not meant to be on the outside.”
Nora’s got the barest hint of a smile on her face. “I’m going to go in.” She doesn’t wait for me, just disappears into the room like a soldier.
“You can wait out here?” Farrah points to the sofa.
“I’m fine,” I manage, covering my mouth with my hand. I take a breath of the relatively fresh air in the living room, then another, then barrel into Cap’s room.
Nora’s squatting next to him on the bed. There are towels, and the hotel’s ice bucket next to the bed. I don’t inspect it too closely. She was right, he’s asleep.
“Poor little guy,” Nora says, stroking his forehead.
I cup his head, forgetting everything for a moment except how beautiful this child is. How much I love him wholeheartedly.
My stomach clenches, only this time, it’s not from the stench, which I can’t currently smell anyway, given I’m still holding my breath. It’s the gravity of my love for my son. He and my family—they’re the only ones I know for sure love me and me them, because they’re stuck with me.
Nora, her tousled red hair loose, her whole body leaning toward the boy who’s like a part of my heart walking around on the outside—she could leave me at any time. She already did leave me.
I let out my breath, and when I inhale again, the stench is overpowering.
Nora sees. “I’m going to crank up the air con; maybe that’ll help.” Damn hotel windows that don’t open. I nod, wondering if I need to run to the bathroom myself, my stomach’s churning so hard.
Just then Cap opens his eyes. “Dad!” he says, weakly.
The urge I had to run vanishes. “Hey, dude,” I say, leaning in and kissing his barf-scented cheek. My stomach squishes, but I just focus on Cap’s face.
“You came,” he says, his voice crackly.
The hum of the HVAC comes on then, and I breathe a little easier just knowing the scent will at least be chilled in a few minutes.
I glance over to where Nora’s closing the little control panel by the bedroom door. “Of course I came. I’m always here for you. Nora’s here too.”
Cap lights up as Nora comes back around the bed. Then he grimaces. “I barfed.”
“I know, buddy.”
“A lot.”
“That’s okay.”
“Can you stay with me?”
“I’m already taking off my shoes.”
“Nora, can you stay too?”
Nora looks to me. “Please stay,” I say, trying not to sound desperate. I can’t help noticing how these are the words running through my mind back when we drove her to the airport that day.
Does she see? Is she scared off by my need for her?
“Of course I’ll stay. Jude, maybe you guys should go wash Cap off? I’ll go tell Farrah what’s going on.”
The relief coursing through me is outsized for the situation, and it’s not just about having help with Cap.
Half an hour later, Cap is bathed, the barf shampooed out of his hair, and in clean pajamas. Luckily the bed seems unscathed, and Nora has mercifully cleaned up the bucket and towels, so the space is clean by the time we’re done.
“You need anything else, honey?” Nora asks my boy, holding his hand as she sits on the bed on the opposite side of him from me.
“No.” Cap yawns again. “I have you guys. I don’t need anything else in the whole world.”
My chest fucking clamps at that. I don’t dare look at Nora. Instead, I sit down next to him, stretching my legs out, and flick off the bedside lamp.
“Wait,” Cap says tentatively.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nora, can you sing our song to me?”
Nora and Cap have a song? Since when? I’ve never heard Nora sing, except for the odd time I’ve caught her singing along to a song on the radio. I’m tempted to ask, but I don’t want to shatter the moment.
I want to hear her sing.
Nora’s quiet, as if deciding, her back against the headboard like mine. The only light is what’s coming in from the window outside—moonlight and the low glow from the exterior lighting. Her features are bathed in the cool light, but I can’t see her eyes because of her glasses.
“Okay,” she whispers finally.
She’s as unable to refuse as I am when he asks stuff in that sweet little sick kid voice.
I hold my breath, waiting.
Then she begins.
Sail bonny boat, like a bird on
the wing…over the sea to Skye.
I actually know Skye. I spent some time in Scotland after Wimbledon way back when, and know it’s an island up in the Highlands.
Nora’s voice is soft and sweet, delicate and almost sad.
I mean, it’s probably the song, too. But I picture her standing by the sea, her red hair on the wind with those dark gray clouds mirroring the gray surf.
Cap is holding each of our hands, and by the time Nora’s finished, his little sweaty hand has gone slack in mine. Nora turned off the air con while we were in the bathroom, so the only sound I hear now is the soft hum of air in the system and Cap’s little breaths.
But Nora’s voice echoes in my mind.
“When did you sing that to him?” I ask.
“All those times he wanted me to put him to bed when I was over at your place.”
“How did I never hear?”
A beat passes. “I always made sure to be quiet.”
The words land like stones in my heart. Had she always been keeping quiet? Had I made it that way because of my blathering presence?
“You have a beautiful voice.”
“Please. Reese is much better.” She’s talking about her best friend back home, my brother Eli’s partner. She’s a famous singer currently blowing up the charts.
“Your voice is yours, Nora. I like it best.”
Nora’s quiet, and I switch the hand holding Cap so I’m able to reach over and touch Nora too.
I brush her hair from her cheek. When she turns to me, her expression is kind of faraway.
“My dad’s mom used to sing that song to me,” she says.
“Her grandmother came over from Scotland as a scullery maid. Grandma said her Nana used to hum that song to her when she put her to sleep. She’d hold her Nana’s hand, calloused from the years of hard work, while Nana sang a song from the home she left behind. ”
I thought I knew Nora inside and out. We talked almost every day back home.
I know her dad is buried in the cemetery in Greenville, not far from Quince Valley, and that she visits him every couple of months.
I know she has a brother who’s a pilot who she loves but doesn’t see much of as he’s based in Cincinnati and does mostly long-haul flights.
Her mom left them when she was too young to remember much of her, and she and her brother were raised in North Carolina but moved to Vermont when she was a teenager.
I know she likes green beans and zucchini but can’t stand any other squash, unless it’s pumpkin pie.
But even then, she prefers sweet potato.
She’s timid and scared of change and speaking out loud and sometimes the dark, and she’d rather read books than watch TV but loves recording videos and watches endless movies with me—the latter because I love them.
Her favorite musical piece is Chopin’s “Raindrop” prelude.
And I know she loves Cap and loves me, at least in some way.
But it’s not enough. I don’t know the story of her family.
I don’t know her favorite book when she was a kid or what she wanted to be when she grew up or whether she misses her mom like I do.
I didn’t know she had a great-great-grandma from Scotland.
As I cup her cheek, my son between us, I feel a kind of desperate sadness, like the time for learning all that is past. Because it is—we’re parting ways in a matter of days.
“What are you thinking about?” Nora asks.
I don’t hesitate. “You,” I whisper.
I swear I feel her cheek warm under my hand. I pull her toward me then and brush my lips against hers, inhaling her floral scent and feeling the soft splay of her hair against my fingers.
When I pull away, Nora presses her lips together as if unsure what to say. A tear rolls down her cheek, glistening in the low light. She quickly swipes it away with her palm.
My heart starts to crack. “Why are you crying?”
“Because we can’t stay here forever.”
Then it fully does.
But I take Nora’s hand, holding it tight on her lap.
“You know when I was really young, when I first started competing, I used to have to go away for weeks at a time. I missed my family. One time I was having a shit day on the court, and my coach was sick. We had this stand-in, and he caught me crying after losing a match. I think I only let myself do it because my regular coach wasn’t there. ”
My regular coach would have screamed at me for crying. This one treated me like a human being. “You know what he taught me about feelings?”
“What?” Nora whispers.
“He said feelings are your brain trying to get you to change something that sometimes can’t be changed. That the only way to keep them from affecting my game, was to remember there was no past, no present. Nothing except the game I was in.”
“Are you saying I should be playing tennis?”
I smile because I know she’s joking to try to deflect. “No, Nor. I’m saying let’s just have these moments right now, without worrying about where we came from or what’s going to happen next. Right now, we’re here in our little fam—our little unit. And I can’t think of any place I’d rather be.”
Nora’s hand feels almost stiff in mine. Maybe I shouldn’t have used a tennis metaphor. But then she looks over at me. “You’re right, Jude. We have tonight, and maybe tomorrow. I’ll just keep my eye on the ball.”
“That’s my girl,” I say, running a thumb over the back of her hand.
She doesn’t say anything after that.