Saving Elijah

me it was morning.
    "You missed Kate's recital. They need you now. Alex and Kate."
    "I know their names, Sam."
    He looked over at Elijah. "I meant if you just go home for one night, it might reassure them. And you need to get out of here."
    "Why?"
    "Because you've been sitting here for seventeen days."
    Seventeen days. The ghost's deadline was approaching.
    "Do you think God is watching this, Sam?"
    He shook his head, then lowered it, eyes closed. "I don't know."
    "Are you praying?"
    He sighed. "My mother's doing enough praying for everyone. I really think tonight you should go home. I'll stay here with our little guy."
    I hadn't the will to say no.

    *    *    *

    I got home about 7:15 that evening. Poppy greeted me at the door, panting and jumping. My in-laws and my parents and Alex and Kate were already in the dining room. My mother-in-law had set the table with the tapestry mats and the good white china, as if by making my homecoming a festive occasion she could wipe out the reason I hadn't been coming home. Mary had also made a lamb roast, one of her specialties.
    "We're so glad you're here," Tom said.
    Charlotte kissed me. "You needed a break."
    Is that what they thought this was? I kissed Alex and Kate, gave each of them a long hug. That was what I'd come home for, wasn't it?
    "Sit down, sit down," Dad said. "Have something to eat."
    I sat down in the empty chair, since Mary was in my seat. She spooned a serving of lamb onto my plate, smothered it with sauce, and reached over to set it in front of me. Poppy sat at my feet, looking at my plate with soulful eyes. I looked from the dog to my plate heaped with food and fought the urge to slip Poppy every bit of it.
    "How is he?" It was Tom who finally asked.
    "He's the same," I said.
    Everyone was silent, even Mary. Except Tom, who kept asking Alex questions. "What sport are you playing, Alex?" Shrug. Basketball. "What position?" Shrug. Forward. "You like it?" Grunt. It's okay... "I hear you like math." Shrug. Teacher's an asshole. "I hear you're quite the baseball player." Frown. Shrug. Who cares?
    Tom started in on Kate. "So, you scored thirteen hundred on the PSAT. That's quite a score."
    Kate shrugged—was it catching?
    We'd been waiting for her scores. I tried to be happy for her, I said I was proud of her. It sounded incredibly phony. I was no good to Alex and Kate without Elijah.
    "Let's talk about something else," Kate said.
    But we didn't. We went through the rest of the meal in virtual silence, forks clinking against the good china plates. I felt as if I had entered an alternate universe. Hospitals are so insulated and isolated and self-contained you can forget the rhythm of the outside world. You know only the hospital, only those walls, only this room and these doctors, nurses, machines. After a while you begin to feel the hospital's rhythm inside you like a new pulse beat, like a new heart. Being at home with my children was no longer normal. It was odd.
    After dinner I tried to look over the mail but couldn't focus, then wandered from room to room and stood for a while in each of them, looking around. Den, dining room, living room. Finally I went into the kitchen, where Charlotte and Mary seemed to be engaged in a contest to see who could be the most helpful. I appreciated it. But Charlotte, doing dishes?
    Indeed. She was standing at the sink, swirling water with a vegetable brush. "Oh, there you are, Dinah." She turned off the faucet, stripped off the Playtex gloves, dried her hands, then moved toward me, blood-red nails touching wisps of auburn hair at her neck. She seemed to have touched up the gray roots since I saw her the last time.
    "Want some coffee?" She put her arm around me.
    "No thanks." Charlotte hugging me? I pulled away.
    She took a few steps back and began burrowing into a cabinet, straightening the spices. Charlotte, who barely knows nutmeg from a double boiler.
    Mary filled me in on the status of the laundry, then moved on to who had called lately. Sam's boss, who'd visited a few days before. Friends. A few colleagues. Miss Stanakowski, Elijah's teacher. She and the children were making a card, she was praying for him every day.

    *    *    *

    I heard a tinny sound, a beat, from somewhere deep in the house. Probably Alex, holed up in his room with his earphones on.
    I made my way through the front hall and stood at the foot of the staircase, listening. I realized I was standing just below the worn place in the carpet on