14 Degrees Below Zero (20 page)

“Why should I?” Lewis asked, still standing.

“He’s a good man,” Anna said. “You never allowed yourself to realize that. You had too much anger.”

“Why
shouldn’t
I be angry?” Lewis shouted. “You
die
d
! You weren’t supposed to do that.”

“I know,” Anna admitted. “I didn’t like it, either.”

“I’m looking for you,” Lewis whispered.

“Mom, I really wish you’d stayed,” Jay called across the aisle. Anna shrugged.

“Grandma Anna, I saw you the other day!” Ramona cried out joyously.

“I know, honey,” Anna said. “I saw you, too.”

“You were so pretty,” Ramona squeaked.

“Not as pretty as you,” Anna said.

“Class, class!” Stephen said. “This is getting out of hand.”

“He was always like this,” his mother said. “He always had to be the center of attention.”

20. TRANSMITTING WHAT SHE TOOK TO BE PERTINENT FACTS.

“H
ere, put your boots on, honey,” Lewis said. “Carew’s waiting for us in the car.”

“Carew!” Ramona yelled, her tinny voice echoing in the entry chamber of the big house that served as Ramona’s day care.

“Mr. Ingraham?” said Janet. She was about forty, with thick glasses and an indeterminate figure hidden beneath a big sweatshirt. “I need to speak with you for a minute. There’s something you need to know.”

Ramona looked up from wrestling with her boots and fixed Janet with a quizzical upturning of her nose.

“Now?” Lewis asked. He stifled a belch and hoped this woman wouldn’t smell the whiskey on his breath.

“Yes, it’s important.” She turned to Ramona and, in a supremely condescending tone, said, “Can you stay here and get your coat and everything on, sweetheart? I just need to talk to your grandpa for a sec.”

Lewis hated it when people talked to children like . . . like
children.
Even Jay did it sometimes, addressing Ramona in this syrupy singsong that infantilized everyone in its hearing radius. Well, there was no point criticizing her about it.

“Yes, well, all right,” Lewis said, not entirely sure what was going on. He followed Janet through a big playroom full of toys and coloring books and a computer—but no children, apparently they had already gone—into the kitchen. There were kid-sized dishes stacked in the sink, along with those cups with the plastic lids so they wouldn’t spill. Lewis spotted a carton of milk, open and sitting out on the counter.

“You should refrigerate that,” Lewis said.

“What? Oh, sure, all right.”

She put the milk in the refrigerator with a hint of irritation.

“I don’t mean to be annoying,” Lewis told her. “It’s just that it’ll go sour.”

“Mr. Ingraham, there’s been an accident with Stephen Grant, Jay’s boyfriend.”

Janet spoke with such an exaggerated solemnity that Lewis almost burst out laughing.
Of course! That
was what she wanted to tell him.

“Well, sister, I beat you to it. I was there,” Lewis did
not
say; instead he contorted his features into some approximation of concern and worry—this Janet wasn’t going to be chairing any Mensa meetings, but she would certainly notice if Lewis showed an inappropriate reaction.

“Stephen?” Lewis said. “My goodness.”

“He fell,” Janet said. She hugged herself. “He was underwater, and he’s in a coma. Jay is with him.”

“I’ll have to take Ramona,” Lewis said.

“Yes, until Jay has a better idea what’s happening.” Janet paused to shake her head. “It’s awful. I only met Stephen a few times, when he came with Jay to pick up Ramona. He seemed like a very nice guy.”

“Nice guy,” Lewis said. “Yes, yes.”

The sun had set outside, and the snow still fell. Lewis glanced out the window at the lunar landscape of the backyard.

“Jay wants to protect Ramona from this, at least for the time being,” said Janet. “So you shouldn’t go to the hospital. I’m sure you want to.”

“Do they know if he’s going to wake up?” Lewis asked.

“I get the idea they don’t know much right now.”

“And he fell?”

“That’s what Jay said.” Janet’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

“That’s kind of odd,” Lewis said.

“Maybe he had a blackout or something,” Janet offered.

“Could be.” Lewis made a show of thinking about it for about fifteen seconds, then turned on his heels. “Thanks,” he said.

Ramona was waiting by the front door, done up in her thick pink coat, pink hat, pink gloves. Lewis took off his cashmere scarf and carefully wrapped it around her nose and mouth.

“It’s windy out,” he explained. “Your mother should have dressed you better.”

“I had a scarf but I lost it,” Ramona said, guiltily.

“Well, that’s neither here nor there,” said Lewis. He straightened and, not knowing what else to do, reached out and shook Janet’s hand. Her hand was limp and clammy, which was pretty much what he had expected.

“Where’s Mama?” Ramona asked.

“She had to do something, honey,” Janet said, taking it upon herself to butt in for some unfathomable reason. “But your grandpa is going to take good care of you. Right, Grandpa?”

“Right,” Lewis said.

“Bye!” Ramona shouted at the top of her lungs.

In the car Ramona wanted to sit in the back with Carew. Lewis couldn’t begrudge their passionate love for each other. Ramona stroked the scruff of his neck and he responded by licking her giggling face and pressing her into the seat with the force of his affection.

“Are we going to see Mama?” Ramona asked in between courses of Carew’s banquet of adoration.

They were still in the driveway. Lewis’s headlights sliced the snow and mounting darkness. The strangest feeling came over him—the best way to describe it was that he had ceased to exist for a moment. There was a nimbus around things.
Ah,
he thought, remembering the pills.

“Not right away,” Lewis said. “What do you think about a little Ramona-Grandpa time?”

“Sounds good,” Ramona said.

“You know what I like to do when it’s snowy and yucky outside?”

“What?”

“Go to a movie!” Lewis shouted. Ramona pumped her fists in the rah-rah fashion that Lewis had taught her.

“What movie?” she asked.

This hadn’t occurred to him. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Why don’t we go downtown and see what’s playing at Block E?”

When they parked beneath the big shopping block an unforeseen problem arose: Carew. The mutt had been perfectly serviceable to Lewis during the snowy drive into downtown—keeping Ramona occupied and happy, giving Lewis time to think—but now his nonhuman status made him a definite fifth wheel. There was no question of bringing him into the movie—for a moment Lewis considered putting on sunglasses and pretending to be blind, but that was the medication talking. He settled for cracking the window and giving the beast a pep talk.

“You’re not going to like this, but we’re going to leave you here for a while,” he said.

Yeah yeah yeah—What?

“But we’re coming back. Here—” He found half a granola bar in the passenger’s seat and gave it to Carew. He had half an old water bottle, which he poured into a plastic cup.

“I know you can be mellow,” he told Carew. “Be good.”

When he closed the car door, Carew started barking. Lewis hurried Ramona over to the elevators, hoping that the dog would take a nap or something. When he got into the elevator with Ramona, he took one look back and saw that the beast was still yapping.

“Well,” Lewis said. He looked down at Ramona, who was staring up at him with an expectant look. “Yes?”

“I saw Grandma Anna the other day.”

Ramona delivered this news in such an offhand way that Lewis was forced to ask her to say it again. When she did, Lewis touched the wall of the elevator to keep his balance. They stepped out into the walkway by an upstairs bookstore.

“You mean for real, honey?”

Ramona nodded.

“Did she . . . did she
say
anything?”

“No. She just smiled and waved at me.” Ramona walked quickly, so fast that Lewis barely had to slow for her.

“Where was this?”

“At day care.”

Ramona didn’t seem to be looking for any sort of comment or sign of credulity on Lewis’s part. As she often did, she was simply transmitting what she took to be pertinent facts. Lewis took a deep, ragged breath and caught himself just before it turned into a sob. He wasn’t sure at all about what to do after the film, but he knew that he had to keep Ramona happy—and that she would eventually lead him to Anna. The end was coming, he knew that, but before it was over Ramona would lead him to his wife.

There was only one kids’ movie showing. It turned out to be some rot about a talking tree and his forest animal friends and how they had to band together to save their plot of woods from the despoliation of humans. It was a pretty blatant work of PC pro-environmentalist brainwashing, and none too subtle about it. The weather was keeping people away, though, and Lewis and Ramona pretty much had the place to themselves. Ramona noshed her way through a small bucket of popcorn and a soda pop, raptly staring at the screen without a word throughout the whole thing.

Every once in a while Lewis would steal a glance in the darkness at Ramona’s profile, her upturned nose, the bangs that fell over her forehead. She looked so much like Jay.

After the movie they got back in the car—Carew wasn’t asleep, but not screaming his head off, either—and drove out into the night. Lewis could tell it was getting very cold just by the look of the streets; there weren’t very many people out, and the ones who were bore the expression of individuals suffering an exotic generalized torture. Lewis flipped on the radio and heard the local news. No mention of Stephen yet.

“Where are we going, Grampa?” asked Ramona from the backseat. “Are we going to see Mama?”

“Not yet.” Lewis fingered the cell phone in his pocket, but he didn’t turn it on.

“Why?”

“Mama has something she has to take care of,” Lewis said vaguely.

“Are we going to your house?”

“You ask a lot of questions, kiddo.”

He had meant that to be lighthearted, but he was quite unhinged and it came out harsh. There was silence in the car as Ramona brooded in the back.

“Hey, I know,” he said. “How about one of those Happy Meal things you like so much? Would that cheer you up? And maybe after that we can try to find Grandma Anna?”

Lewis looked in the mirror. She wasn’t speaking to him for the moment, but he saw her smile as she stared out the window.

INTERLUDE. HE REALLY NEEDED SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF HIM.

G
rampa could be mean. That was the thing about him that she always forgot, and then he would say something, do something—usually to someone else, but sometimes to her.

What he said hadn’t been very nice. And so she was going to punish him for a while. She didn’t punish him when he was mean to Mama, or to Stephen, or to the girl at the ice cream store, since that was
their
business. But sometimes she wished she could punish Grampa Lewis for them.

She put her hand on Carew’s back, which was furry and rough. She liked the way he smelled, and she liked smelling her hands after she had been petting him.

Grampa was acting weird. He was nervous, and Ramona was pretty sure that there was something he wasn’t telling her about Mama. At least she was getting a Happy Meal. Sometimes they even had stuffed animals in them—little ones, but for some reason she liked the little ones best. It was like the squirrel in the tree movie she just saw. She liked small furry things that made her laugh.

One thing that Ramona didn’t understand was why Grampa Lewis wasn’t taking her to his house, or at least to hers. It was snowy. Grown-ups were always saying it was hard to drive in the snow. It seemed to Ramona that they shouldn’t be out going to the movies and driving around. But she wasn’t sure.

Grampa got her a cheeseburger Happy Meal and paid for it at that funny window. He usually said it wasn’t good to eat in the car, but now it seemed to be OK. Ramona tried to eat her food while Carew tried to take it away from her. Grampa stopped the car a bunch of times to yell at Carew, which was funny.

But what wasn’t funny was what happened next: instead of going toward home (Ramona knew the way), he went the other direction. Pretty soon there were fewer and fewer buildings. It started to look like the country, and Ramona felt a little scared.

“Grampa?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Where are we going?”

“I thought a drive would be nice.”

He had talked about finding Grandma Anna, which was exciting—it meant he believed Ramona had seen her. But it was also strange for a grown-up to be looking for a dead person, since grown-ups believed dead people didn’t come back. They rode for a while without either of them saying anything. Ramona thought about things. Grampa Lewis loved her and would never hurt her. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Grampa Lewis was sort of . . . upset, in a way that made him act like maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. It had kind of been that way since Grandma Anna died, but now it was getting worse. She tried to make things better earlier, when she told Grampa about seeing Grandma, but it just seemed to make him more confused.

The thing about Grampa was that he really needed someone to take care of him. Grandma used to, and it really helped him. She sort of took care of everyone.

Grampa
thought
he took care of a lot of things, but really
he
needed a lot of help. Ramona wasn’t sure she could give it to him. It was awfully hard.

In the backseat, driving into the night, the Perfect Princess took charge.

“Grampa?” she said.

“Yes, honey?”

“Everything is going to be all right.”

Grampa didn’t say anything at first; he held on to the steering wheel for a while, then glanced back. His eyes were shiny.

“Can I take your word for it?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the Perfect Princess. “Because I know.”

“We’re going to find her, aren’t we?” said Grampa Lewis. “We’re going to find Grandma Anna. She’s somewhere out in the snow.”

“Yes,” the Perfect Princess said.

“She wants me to find her,” Grampa Lewis said, driving.

“She wants you to find her,” said the Perfect Princess, said Ramona.