In the night room Page 0,106

Tim a cup filled with sugar.

“Aren’t you likely to throw her into some . . .”

Tim was seated on the ground, his arm around Willy, pouring sugar into her mouth.

“We had this girl go into insulin shock last year, and—”

“She’s not diabetic, Philip. She has a very unusual condition.”

With a flash of his old, mean-spirited self, Philip said, “Must be restricted to fictional characters, I guess.” Then, seeing Willy take the cup into her own hands and wash another mouthful down with the soft drink, he added, “Seems to be working, anyhow. Should we get her to the hospital?”

“No hospital,” Willy said, a little thickly.

“Tim. You know she belongs in an E.R. Please.”

“I know she does not. Back off, Philip.”

He did so, literally, holding up his hands in conspicuous surrender. A few seconds later, Willy stood up and, knowing what was required of her, did her best to look abashed. Gently, almost convincingly, she told Philip that her “condition” could not be treated in an emergency room and that she was grateful for his concern.

“Well, if you say you’re okay . . .” Baffled, he looked back and forth between them, half-understanding that he had missed something important and explanatory.

“We’re on our way,” Tim said. Philip did not acknowledge him. His gaze had settled on Willy, and he looked as though he was capable of standing there for the next couple of hours.

Willy thanked him for the sugar.

“I’ll see you at the reading,” Philip said, without taking his eyes from her.

30

From Timothy Underhill’s journal

She told me what I wanted to hear and she wanted to believe, that the shock of seeing that house had pushed her deeper toward disappearance than she had ever been. She meant that what had happened to her was an exception and that she had her “condition” under control.

Willy passed the next moment that might have tested her, our arrival at the Children’s Home, with perfect equanimity. It looked exactly as she remembered it: a hideous building with a dirty stone facade, narrow windows, and stone steps leading up to an arched doorway. It matched her memory because I had driven past the massive old building a thousand times in my youth.

A couple of candy bars, no more; she was pleased by the harmony between the building and her memory of it.

The interior was a test of another kind, for I had invented Willy’s memories out of a generic muddle of institutions I had seen largely in movies. She kept saying things were “in the wrong place” and giving me unhappy glances, as if I had neglected a hypothetical duty to create accurate representations of things that existed outside of fiction. The lounge where she’d dealt with Tee Tee Rowley was on the wrong floor; the Ping-Pong table we glimpsed on our way past the game room was on the wrong side of the room; the dormitory was all wrong, since it had individual rooms instead of being a big communal barrack.

And the “real” Children’s Home in Willy’s mind had no matron, because I had neglected to supply it with an administrative staff. The Children’s Home on South Karadara Street, however, came splendidly equipped with the regal, kindly Mercedes Romola, who welcomed us into her spare little office, sat us down, and spoke the magical words “Mr. Underhill, it appears you are in luck.”

The very sight of Mercedes Romola told Tim that Lily Kalendar’s life could have been very little like the one he had fashioned for Willy Patrick. The matron exuded warmth, practicality, and common sense; she had iron-gray hair, a comfortable skirt and jacket, and a level, intelligent gaze. She was like the perfect fourth-grade teacher, a woman whose natural authority did not inhibit a sense of humor that, in its sly appearances, hinted at the existence of a private life more raucous and freewheeling than could be revealed in the public one. The matron instantly conveyed a sense of solidity and specificity that transferred itself to Lily Kalendar. Her life had contained no missing transitions or amnesiac passages: it had been lived minute by minute, in a way that made a pantomime of fiction.

“In fact,” she told him, “you are in luck in several ways. As you would expect, we do not release information concerning our present and former charges without obtaining permission beforehand. And in this case, the special circumstances surrounding the child’s transfer to the shelter, especially the notoriety of her father, make us wish to proceed with a great degree