Only Alien on the Planet (16 page)

For once Caulder didn't stand back and let me go first. He was too passionate about this. I could see Smitty over Caulder's shoulder as I followed him into the room. “He's asleep,” Caulder whispered to me. Heaven knows the kid looked like he needed it. Smitty's face was still absolutely shocking. He was like something out of a refugee camp, hollow eyed and drawn.

He wasn't asleep. His eyes had come open when Caulder whispered. He watched us as we came softly into the room, his face unreadable as ever. Caulder saw those eyes and froze, staring. They were looking at each other for the first time.

Caulder cleared his throat. “I'm sorry all this stuff happened to you,” he said, his voice gone rough. “I hope you don't mind that we're here.”

Smitty didn't answer. His eyes flicked across mine and then away. He closed them again and he sighed, a long, slow breath. “Come in,” he said finally, and for a moment, I was afraid Caulder was going to faint. You could hear the medication thick in Smitty's voice. He sounded like he was trying to talk through a dream.

“I'll get some chairs,” Caulder said. I took a step toward the bed, and then another. Smitty's eyes were still closed.

All I did, I swear, was touch his hand. The way he looked was so pitiful, and I didn't stop to think. I just reached out and touched him.

Alarms went off. Immediately his body went rigid, and suddenly he was pulling his breath in hard down his throat. The monitors went absolutely haywire and Caulder flew out of that room on the wings of panic. I jerked my hand away and stood there like an idiot, staring down at Smitty.

The whole thing didn't take longer than a second—one of those kind that feels like years. Then, head pressed back into the pillow and chest heaving, he was trying to bring himself back. His hands were clenched in the sheets. You could feel the tremendous effort he was making for control.

And when he finally opened his eyes—what did he see? Me. Me with my mouth open. Me wishing I could drop right through the floor and die. He kept his eyes on me for only a second, breathing like he'd run a long, long way, then he closed them again. He let go of the sheets.

Caulder and the doctor came in like the cavalry to the rescue.

It was the first thing I had done. The very first.

Smitty sighed. The doctor stood in the doorway for a moment, reading the monitors. She nodded at Caulder and left. She hadn't even looked my way. My cheeks were flaming.

“Geez, Ginny,” Caulder said, scowling at me. And then he looked at Smitty. “Are you okay?” he asked. I'd never heard Caulder's voice like that, so gentle. I was beginning to think Smitty hadn't heard him when Smitty finally gave a little nod.

“Good,” Caulder said. His eyes turned silver again and he started messing with his notebook.

I stood there watching Caulder—I had to look at something— and then I swallowed, and made myself look down at Smitty. He was not looking at me.

“Sorry,” I said. I felt so stupid.

He didn't answer me at all, but some color came up in his cheeks.

Caulder was sitting way out on the edge of his chair with his hands kind of clasped together between his knees. I sat down in the other chair. I didn't know what to do with myself.

“I've been wanting to talk to you for so long,” Caulder said. But then he said, “Forget it.” He picked up his World History book and started leafing through it. “Forget it. We're supposed to be doing our homework.”

Smitty just lay there, breathing, staring at the ceiling, one hand lying over his heart.

Caulder spent the rest of the time reading to us out of the text while I drew pictures in my notebook. I didn't belong here. I was only making things worse. But when I thought about not coming back, it made my heart sore.

We'd been there about forty-five minutes when Caulder took a quick look at his watch and got up. While he put the chairs back, I put on my coat. Caulder picked up my books and gave them to me, and then we stood beside the bed.

Smitty looked up at us vacantly. “Not necessary,” he said, his voice slurred and ragged.

“What isn't?” Caulder asked.

There was a long pause. “Coming here,” he said.

“You mean us?” Caulder asked, sounding surprised. “You don't want us to come anymore?”

Smitty said nothing.

“I hope you don't mean that,” Caulder said, putting one hand on the bed. “Are you saying you don't want us?”

Smitty closed his eyes. “No,” he said finally. And then, “Come.”

“All right,” Caulder said. “That's what we were hoping.”

Smitty didn't look at us again. “Okay,” Caulder said. “See you tomorrow.”

Silence.

Caulder led the way out the door. The doctor met us in the lobby. “How'd it go?” she asked. She was looking at me.

“Maybe I shouldn't come back,” I said. I was right on the edge of embarrassing myself; I had to keep blinking. It wasn't like the doctor couldn't have told how upset I was.

“Don't you want to?” the doctor asked.

“That's not it,” I said. “I don't think I'm going to be any good at this. I'm afraid—” I shifted my books around and fixed my eyes on the woman sitting behind the desk across the room—"I'm going to end up slowing things down.”

The doctor reached out and patted my arm. See? Like just a normal gesture.

“I think you ought to keep coming,” she said. “I think he wants you to. Trust me. It'll get easier. Okay? It will. I'm almost sure. Come tomorrow. See how you feel then.”

Caulder kept talking at me, all the way home, trying to cheer me up. But he didn't understand. I couldn't say much back to him.

And then, of course, the family wanted to know how things had gone. I told them that Caulder thought we'd had a grand success—he and Smitty had held their first conversation. Smitty had said three things. It was all a miracle to Caulder.

“You didn't connect with him yourself,” Charlie guessed later that night when we ran into each other in the hall outside the bathroom.

I stopped and leaned against the wall, hugging my robe around me because I was so cold. I'd been cold like that all evening, maybe for days. “Worse than that,” I told him. “I made a total fool of myself, Charlie. I hate being a jerk, I just
hate
it.” And then I told him what happened. It was almost the hardest thing I'd ever done, trying to talk about it. “After that,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could, “he wouldn't look at me. He wouldn't even
look
at me.”

Charlie sucked his toothbrush thoughtfully.

After a minute, he pulled the toothbrush out and pointed it at me. “Maybe,” he said, “he was embarrassed. Maybe that's why he wouldn't look at you. Think about it. Everybody's treating him like he's a psycho case. And then he spazzes out in front of you. How's he going to feel? Especially if he likes you. I think he's probably totally humiliated. I would be.”

And so would I. I'd never thought of it that way.

“If he has any normal feelings at all, he must feel totally weird about himself,” Charlie said. He started into the bathroom. “And always remember the male ego,” he added, grinning. He gave me a little wave and closed the bathroom door.

I did a lot of thinking that night. I tried to climb inside of Smitty's head and see things through his eyes. It was very difficult.
You don't know this person at all,
I told myself.
Not at all. And you're so full of yourself, how will you ever learn anything?
I figured out, finally, I was going to have to forget everything I ever knew, forget everything I had ever assumed or expected. This was a new thing, something I had to learn. Because I wanted to.

So, I did go back the next day, holding on as hard as I could to Charlie's perspective. I tried to forget myself. I took a completely passive attitude; I watched. Over the next couple of days, I began to pick up on Smitty's new language. A sigh, a change in his breathing—how stiffly he held himself, whether he was looking at us or not, the amount of sheet he had wadded up in his hand, the tiniest tightening around his eyes or his mouth, these things began to take on the significance of a shout.

But things weren't coming along fast enough for Caulder. I think what he'd expected was some kind of sudden awakening on Smitty's part. “How are you feeling?” Caulder would ask. Or, “What do you feel like doing today?” Or “How's the food?” He was expecting answers and conversation and friendship. All he was getting was the occasional vague answer, and never to a direct question.

Smitty didn't look directly at us very often, but you could tell he was aware of us. He was listening. Undoubtedly, he felt the waiting. The hovering. It really must have been painful for him, very embarrassing.

I tried to explain things to Caulder. “You're too impatient,” I said. “We need to spend more time talking to each other, so
he can hear us, instead of trying to involve him directly. You're pushing him too hard. Let me remind you, sonny—you can get real nasty if somebody pushes you when
you
don't feel like talking.” But Caulder wanted to hear words out of Smitty in the worst way, and I knew what he was like when he had his mind set on something. There was no way I was going to talk him out of asking his questions.

So, one day, at the end of that first week, when we'd just come in and Caulder hadn't had a chance to take over yet, I decided it was time for me to intercede. Praying that I wouldn't do anything wrong this time, I stood close to the head of the bed. “Smitty,” I said quietly, holding my books hard against my chest. “I don't want to bother you, but I wonder if you'd mind helping me with my math. I'm getting behind.”

Smitty blinked at the ceiling.

“I wouldn't ask, but I really need the help.” This was absolutely true. All I'd had for help was Caulder now for days. I was dangerously close to losing my grade.

When Smitty did a slow nod, I got a little adrenalin rush. Caulder pushed a chair into the backs of my legs just then, and I was glad to sit down. “Yes,” Smitty said. They still had him on drugs, and his reactions were slow. He turned his head and he looked right at me for the first time since that night. It kind of took my breath away.

“Yes, what?” Caulder asked, sitting down in his own chair.

“We're going to work on my math,” I said lightly. I bent over and put the rest of my books on the floor.

“Are you sure you're ready for that?” Caulder was asking him.

I sat up and glared at him. “Shut up, okay?” I said. Caulder was offended, of course. But he did shut his mouth. After that, it was interesting. We had to figure out how we were going to hold the book so everybody could see it, and where to put the notebook so Smitty could write—but so nobody would be touching anybody by accident.

Smitty had kind of pulled himself over on his side. That was the first time I'd seen him off his back. It was also the first time in days I'd seen him actually look at anything. A little color was coming back into his face.

I watched that face as he read over the problems, his cheek on his hand. I was still thinking it was a gentle face. He had a nice mouth—not soft, but sensitive. His lips were pursed slightly now as he tried to focus on the work. His eyes were still very dark, and his hair was wild.

He picked up the pencil and began to write.

“Talk,” I said gently. “You can explain it to me in words now.”

Cheek still cradled on his hand, he looked over at me.

“You can do it if we go slow,” I said. “I'll understand it better.”

Without moving, he seemed to fade away inside of himself. But after a moment, he came back. “All right,” he said.

Caulder was sitting there next to me, listening to us with fierce intensity.

It took a long time for Smitty to get through that first problem. It was a whole new way of thinking for him. It really was like he had to translate from one language to another before he could speak. It
made him hesitate in funny places, looking for a word, or the turn of a phrase. He was very shy about it. But he did well. And the second problem was easier.

When we finally left that day, Smitty spoke a quiet good-bye.

I felt good. I felt like I'd done it the way Charlie would have. I had connected, and it hadn't hurt me, or Smitty, or anybody.

I hardly even noticed how quiet Caulder was, all the way home.

A
fter a couple of weeks, I decided to tell Charlie everything from the beginning. Not leaving out a thing. Not sparing myself any humiliation. I needed to do it; it was time I got somebody to really help me.

“What I don't understand,” he said to me once I'd finally gotten through it all, “is why you're so ashamed about what you did. Did you kiss him because you were trying to shock him, do you think? Or were you just frustrated? Or was it just the flaming of a sudden passion?” He grinned at me.

“It was not flaming passion,” I said. At least, that's exactly what I'd been hoping it wasn't.

“Emotions are so complicated, aren't they?” he mused. “They're never pure and simple. I guess you just have to be as honest as you can. I think you have to follow your heart, Ginny. Look—you've got an unusual thing going here—you've got a chance to build a real relationship with somebody. There are people who never get that chance in a lifetime. Listen very hard, and follow your heart. Your heart is good. It's your brain that gets you into trouble. Anyway, I don't think you should be ashamed. I think you've been doing the best you can.”