Everything Changes

you.”
    “Okay.”
    “Good night, babe.”

    I crawl under the covers much too early, flipping between various news programs and movie channels. There are brush fires in Los Angeles, car bombs in Iraq, and USA is showing a made-for-TV movie in which a lousy actress from a popular sitcom has lost her memory and is being chased through the woods by a masked assassin. Somewhere in all the excitement, I doze off.
    Tamara’s voice on my answering machine awakens me an indeterminate amount of time later. I open my eyes, disoriented by the darkness that arrived unannounced during my unplanned nap. “Anyway,” Tamara’s saying. “I’m worried about you. So give me a call if you get a chance, okay?” It’s strange to hear her voice in the confines of my bedroom. I almost always speak to her from the office or on my cell. My hands search for the cordless, which is buried somewhere in the folds of my comforter. “You can call till whenever,” she continues. “I turn off the ringer when I go to sleep.” There’s a momentary pause. “Whatever,” she continues awkwardly. “I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you, okay? That’s all, folks. ’Bye.”
    My hands locate the phone just as she hangs up. I start to dial her number, but then stop. We’re still suspended in the postkiss ether and if I call her we’ll either discuss the kiss or pretend it never happened, and either option will bring us crashing back down to reality, which isn’t an acceptable scenario to me right now. USA is now showing an old James Bond film, Connery speeding in his convertible past laughably false backdrops. I flip absently through the movie channels, waiting for something to grab me, but every movie seems to star Freddie Prinze, Jr., leading me to wonder, not for the first time, why I bother paying for premium channels. I go to the bathroom. This time there’s less pain and considerably less blood. Still, I pop three preemptive Tylenols before getting back into bed.
    I lie in the dark, my thoughts flitting erratically between Hope and Tamara and my father, before settling with a thud on the dark spot on my bladder. I see it every time I close my eyes and I wonder if it’s growing inside me the way it is in my mind. I address a few tentative words to God, offering up an array of incentives for him to keep me in good health. It’s a few hours before I fall back asleep. When I do, I dream of Camille, the dark-haired physician’s assistant, once again handling my privates, but this time under considerably friendlier circumstances.

Chapter 21
    “Don’t ask,” my mother says in a controlled hysteria. I haven’t, but that’s not really the point. “Peter bought a car.”
    It’s eight o’clock on Thursday morning, and her call has jolted me out of one of those sweaty dreams where it’s cocktail hour and everyone you ever knew in your whole life is there, and you’re searching in vain for a hiding place before they all notice that you’re not wearing any pants.
    It takes me a minute to wrap my brain around what she’s just said. “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    “Who would sell Pete a car?” I say angrily. A good part of my childhood was spent watching out for Pete, and I still get the same instinctive surge of fury whenever someone mistreats him.
    “That Bowhan character,” my mother says tiredly. “Satch. Who names their kid Satch, anyway?”
    “Does he realize that Pete doesn’t drive?”
    “Of course he does. He had the car delivered to our driveway this afternoon.”
    “I’ll come out there today,” I say.
    “I’m sorry to have to ask.” There is a lifetime of quiet pain in my mother’s voice. Someone has taken advantage of her baby, and she wasn’t there to stop it. You would never send your five-year-old out into the world unprotected, but having a grown, mentally retarded child feels like that every day.
    “How did he pay for it?” I ask.
    “He wrote a check.”
    “Peter has a checking account?”
    “He makes money,” my mother says defensively. “Why shouldn’t he have a checking account?”
    “No,” I say. “You’re right.”
    “Anyway,” she says. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It makes me sad. How are things with you?”
    “Fine.” I’m wondering if I should mention Norm’s resurfacing.
    “You didn’t look so good the other day,” she says.
    “Gee, thanks.”
    “I’m just saying.”
    “What, Mom?” I say, irked. “What are you just