relax slightly in her arms, Megan said, “Meat loaf, potato-and-cheese casserole, one of your favorite dinners. And for dessert, Verna’s best muffins with ice cream. I’ll be in the kitchen, whenever you’re ready. Take your time, honey.”
She got off the bed and stood over him and smiled and bent down and kissed his cheek. The boy still stared at nothing, as though in a state of shock, but she was pretty sure that he was coming around.
His computer and desk lamp were off. A thick sheaf of papers, held together by a spring clip, lay to the right of the keyboard.
Megan wondered what he had printed, but she didn’t take a look at it. Every child needed privacy and trust, but that was especially true of Woody, who had an extreme aversion to his personal space being invaded. For all of his limitations, he was a good kid, and whatever he’d been doing, he would sooner or later share it with her.
After switching on one of the nightstand lamps, she left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
She went down the narrow back stairs, which terminated in the kitchen.
The meat loaf stood on a wire rack, in a pan, beside the ovens. When it cooled and firmed, she’d cut two servings to be reheated. Covered with foil, the finished potato-and-cheese casserole waited in the warming drawer. The back door proved to be locked, as she’d known it would be. Verna Brickit was an entertaining curmudgeon, but she was also as reliable as the rising and setting of the sun.
Megan put plastic place mats and paper napkins and flatware on the breakfast table.
For whatever reason, Woody ate with less haste and was more content at dinner if the meal was served by candlelight. Megan put six small, red votive glasses on the table and inserted a four-hour candle in each. The candle glow must always be filtered through red glass. If the holders were clear, the flickering flames agitated Woody. If the glass was blue, he lost his appetite. If it was green, he grew depressed.
She didn’t put china on the table, but set it on a counter for later service. She required one plate, but Woody needed a plate for his meat loaf and three shallow dishes, one each for servings of the potato-cheese casserole and the two accompanying vegetables. If one food touched another, he could not eat it. She didn’t know why, and perhaps neither did he.
When Woody came down from his room, she would put the carrots and the cauliflower on the stove to cook and pour his “cocktail.” If Megan was drinking a white wine, Woody wanted a clear, flavored water. If she was drinking red, he wanted grape raspberry to match the color of her cabernet. Trapped as he was within his condition, he nevertheless sought connections between them, however awkwardly.
She allowed herself one or two glasses of wine in the evening. Now, as she waited for Woody, she poured Caymus cabernet.
At the window in the back door, she stared at the yard where, in her current canvas, Woody stood feeding the deer. Only a few of her works featured the boy, but once she painted him in a setting, the place never seemed right again without him in it. In spite of his autism or perhaps because of it, he possessed a gravity that she couldn’t explain, that bent the world around him, reshaped any venue and colored it anew and gave it fresh meaning. The yard now, without him, looked incomplete, like a simple sketch, a study for a more serious scene. She supposed that it wasn’t Woody who transformed those places where she’d painted him, but rather her love for him that made her see a mystical quality in them.
At the end of the lawn, in the gathering dusk, the forest darkled into a castellated architecture of turrets and battlements, just as she portrayed it in the current painting. She hadn’t quite known why she’d given it an ominous character, but now she realized that it represented the evils of the world that contrasted so starkly with Woody’s innocence, which would be such a threat to him if anything happened to her and she was no longer here to protect him.
She went to the table, where earlier she’d left a half-read novel. She sat and found her page and began to read again. The day had been one of accomplishment, and her pleasure felt earned. The story was