In One Person

catch her breath.
    I looked at Elaine; I felt truly lost. It surprised me that Emily was sitting next to Elaine on a couch facing the kitchen TV, which was off; the girl was curled up beside Elaine, who had her arm around the thirteen-year-old’s shoulders.
    “Tom believes in your
character
, Bill,” Mrs. Atkins said to me (as if my
character
had been under discussion for hours). “Tom hasn’t known you for twenty years, yet he believes he can judge your character by the novels you write.”
    “Which are made up, which are make-believe—right?” Peter asked me.
    “Please don’t, Peter,” Sue Atkins said tiredly, still struggling to suppress that not-so-innocent cough.
    “That’s right, Peter,” I said.
    “All this time, I thought Tom was seeing
him
,” Sue Atkins said to Elaine, pointing at me. “But Tom must have been seeing that other guy—the one you were
all
so crazy about.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said to Mrs. Atkins. “Tom told me he had ‘seen’ him—not that he ‘was seeing’ him. There’s a difference.”
    “Well, what do I know? I’m just the wife,” Sue Atkins said.
    “Do you mean Kittredge, Billy—is that who she means?” Elaine asked me.
    “Yes, that’s his name—Kittredge. I think Tom was in love with him—I guess you
all
were,” Mrs. Atkins said. She was a little feverish, or maybe it was the drugs she was taking—I couldn’t tell. I knew the Bactrim had given poor Tom a rash; I didn’t know where. I had only a vague idea of what other side effects were possible with Bactrim. I just knew that Sue Atkins had
Pneumocystis
pneumonia, so she was probably taking Bactrim and she definitely had a fever.
    Mrs. Atkins seemed numb, as if she were barely aware that her children, Emily and Peter, were right there with us—in the kitchen.
    “Hey—it’s just me!” a man’s voice called from the vestibule. The girl, Emily, screamed—but she didn’t detach herself from Elaine’s encompassing arm.
    “It’s just Charles, Emily,” her brother, Peter, said.
    “I
know
it’s Charles—I hate him,” Emily said.
    “Stop it, both of you,” their mother said.
    “Who’s Kittredge?” Peter Atkins asked.
    “I would like to know who he is, too,” Sue Atkins said. “God’s gift to men
and
women, I guess.”
    “What did Tom say about Kittredge, Billy?” Elaine asked me. I’d been hoping to have this conversation on the train, where we would be alone—or not to have it, ever.
    “Tom said he had
seen
Kittredge—that’s all,” I told Elaine. But I knew that
wasn’t
all. I didn’t know what Atkins had meant—that Kittredge was not at all who we thought he was; that Kittredge was more like us than we ever imagined.
    That poor Tom thought Kittredge was
beautiful
—well,
that
I had no trouble imagining. But Atkins had seemed to indicate that Kittredge was and wasn’t gay; according to Tom, Kittredge looked
exactly
like his mother! (I wasn’t about to tell Elaine
that
!) How could Kittredge look
exactly
like Mrs. Kittredge? I was wondering.
    Emily screamed. It must be Charles, the nurse, I thought, but no—it was Jacques, the dog. The old Lab was standing there, in the kitchen.
    “It’s just Jacques, Emily—he’s a
dog
, not a
man
,” Peter said disdainfully to his sister, but the girl wouldn’t stop screaming.
    “Leave her alone, Peter. Jacques is a
male
dog—maybe that did it,” Mrs. Atkins said. But when Emily didn’t or couldn’t stop screaming, Sue Atkins said to Elaine and me: “Well, it
is
unusual to see Jacques anywhere but at Tom’s bedside. Since Tom got sick, that dog won’t leave him. We have to drag Jacques outside to
pee
!”
    “We have to offer Jacques a treat just to get him to come to the kitchen and
eat
,” Peter Atkins was explaining, while his sister went on screaming.
    “Imagine a Lab you have to force to
eat
!” Sue Atkins said; she suddenly looked again at the old dog and started screaming. Now Emily and Mrs. Atkins were both screaming.
    “It must be Tom, Billy—something’s happened,” Elaine said, over the screaming. Either Peter Atkins heard her, or he’d figured it out by himself—he was clearly a smart boy.
    “Daddy!” the boy called, but his mother grabbed him and clutched him to her.
    “Wait for Charles, Peter—Charles is with him,” Mrs. Atkins managed to say, though her shortness of breath had worsened. Jacques (the Labrador) sat there, just breathing.
    Elaine and I chose not to “wait for