Saving Elijah

Sam's arm as we moved toward the Magills and the Sterns. Talked with the Magills about their daughter's college choice, listened while they said they had meant to come to the hospital but just couldn't make it, heard more than I could ever have wanted to know about the Purcells' $60,000-over-budget, six-months-overdue addition.
    "How's the job hunt going?" I asked Addie, who'd faithfully visited, who'd painted the beautiful dinosaur chest in Elijah's room. Only last month, she'd lost her job with a New York publisher when a European conglomerate purchased the company.
    "I've decided I'm not going to get another job," she said. "Paul and I de cided we can afford for me to take a break. Twenty-two years I've been working, commuting. I'm going to take it easy for a while."
    "Sounds good to me," I said. "You can always go into business painting furniture."
    She smiled. "Actually, I'm not going to be a total lug. I'm going to teach the nursery art class at the Jewish Community Center this summer. Thursday afternoons. Hey, maybe Elijah could come."
    "I tried putting him in that class once, Addie. Last year, when Sue Weinberg taught it. It didn't work out too well."
    "Oh, I didn't know."
    "Of course, he's doing so incredibly well now, he might be okay."
    She touched my shoulder. "Well, I'd say we ought to give Elijah another try at art. We start in a couple of weeks. What do you say?"

    *    *    *

    I mingled and chatted and smiled until just after the cake was served.
    "I heard your son was sick, Dinah," said Ann Louise Remson, a real-estate colleague of Becky's. A wiry blond woman, she always dressed in conservative knit suits, stockings, and pumps, as if she'd just stepped out of the Talbots catalogue. She had a clipped way of talking, and an abrupt manner that always made me think she bestowed time by assessing what any particular person could do for her. A local shrink wasn't on her radar.
    "Is he all right now?" she asked, looking past me to a group over by the piano that included the Magills and the Lawrences. According to the gossip from Becky, Bill Lawrence had made a fortune in computers over the last few years. Maybe Ann Louise was zeroing in on them, in case they bought a bigger house anytime soon.
    "Yes, he's fine," Sam said. "Thanks."
    "It's wonderful that you're here tonight."
    I looked at her.
    She sighed. "I mean ... I don't know. If my Patty or Louis got sick like that, I swear, I don't think I could ever leave them again. Not for a minute."
    Becky was staring at me, I could feel the heat of her eyes. I didn't care.
    "You know what, Ann Louise?" I said. "You're a jerk." Her mouth opened wide enough to catch a squadron of flies. I turned to go. "I'm sorry, Becky, Mark. Sam, I need to go now." As I headed for my wrap I could hear them making apologies for me, explaining that I'd been under a lot of strain lately. And Sam and I had yet another confrontation when we got home, this one silent and full of accusatory stares.

    *    *    *

    I needed a diversion, and the best I could come up with was a Wednesday matinee. The Art House is the kind of place you don't see much anymore, at least outside of New York City, since they've all been turned into twelve-screen movie parks. At the Art House you get serious films and foreign films, beautiful, slow-moving films about small, poignant moments. The kind of films Sam, whose favorite movie is The Terminator, fell asleep watching, always insisting afterward that he'd seen every frame. My testing him after a foreign movie was one of our running jokes. When I woke him up at the end of Babette's Feast, he said, "Loved it!" "Oh yeah? What was it about?" He grinned and said, "Let's eat."
    They were already showing the trailers when I pushed open the doors to the theater that afternoon. The whole space pulsed with the light and noise of car crashes, gunshots, helicopter rotors, explosions, and shrieks. Why were they showing a triple-testosterone trailer at the beginning of a movie like II Postino?
    I began to walk down the wide aisle. When the trailer ended and the screen went dark for a few seconds, I swayed.
    "Whoa. You all right?" The voice was male. He caught my arm.
    I turned around but could make out only a broad black shape. "I'm okay, thanks."
    Now a voiceover and a second trailer were heralding, ta-da!, the ultimate in action and adventure.
    "What do you think they'll say after everything's been called the ultimate?"
    "What?" I looked back at the dark