a dress of her own. “Do you think you could be comfortable in this one?”
Angela nodded but seemed distracted.
After some awkwardness she got the dress on, albeit with difficulty, as Angela stood limp and pliable in front of her. She was wondering if she had to find shoes for her too—whether they wore the same size—and then giving up and heading for the bathroom sink for a glass of water when T. came in.
He put an arm around his mother and steered her over to the bed to sit down.
“She suffers from trichophobia,” he said. “Now and then. One of a number of complications.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is,” said Susan.
“No one does. It’s a fear of loose hairs.”
Susan gazed at him dumbly, sitting on the edge of the bed with his mother, slowly patting her hand. After a few seconds she ducked through the bathroom door and filled a cup.
“It’s intermittent,” said T. “But when it—she tries to wash them off.”
“Animal hairs, too? Because in that case—”
“I don’t think so,” and he shook his head. “It’s long hair that’s the trigger, mostly. This extreme disgust with long hairs. And it’s if they’re loose, only. Not if they’re on your head.”
There was fear of everything these days, she found herself thinking—as though it was magnanimous. A generosity of fear.
The fear of litigation. Was there a name for that?
She remembered an earlier impulse.
“Listen,” she said abruptly. “I haven’t asked you yet, but I do want to know. How was he?”
“How—?”
“In those—those days you were down there with Hal. How did he seem?”
T. gazed at her levelly, idly draped an arm around his mother’s shoulders.
“He seemed all right,” he said mildly.
“It’s that—you’re the only one I can ask.”
T. nodded, his head barely moving, and gazed past her to the open window.
“He was worried about me,” he said. “I was nothing to him, but he was still worried.”
She waited. On the nightstand a clock was flashing 12:00.
“He was preoccupied, though,” he went on. “He was down there looking for something.”
“You,” she said.
“Yes, but—yes and no, I got the feeling.”
She preferred not to look at him straight on, so she switched her gaze to his mother instead, who was studying her own bare feet. The toes were polished light pink.
“I should say, I do know why he went down there,” T. said gently, after a minute. “But in the end it wasn’t that. I mean yes, he was recovering. He slept a lot. A bit of binge drinking. And in his spare time he was looking for me. But also, he was—I remember thinking he was like a child.”
“A child?” she asked. It surprised her.
“There was something childlike about him. Like someone who’s never left home. That’s what it was: someone who’s lived in one place all his life. And then suddenly travels to a new country.”
On the wall beside them the African plain was palely visible. She reached out her right hand to sweep her fingers over the painted fringe of tall grass that grew up from the floor.
Of course, you couldn’t feel the grass.
Still the smoothness of the wall was somehow disappointing.
“But he had traveled before,” she said softly. “I mean we traveled together. Mostly before the accident. We did road trips. And we went to Europe, once. He was impressed by Europe.”
“I didn’t really know him,” said T. “As you said. That was just how he struck me.”
They sat there quietly for a while in the dim light of the bedside lamp, until T. turned and looked at the wall painting, one of the big spreading trees. Possibly an acacia, Susan thought idly. They looked different over there.
“Hunting, you know, it wiped out some of them,” said T., scanning the animal figures in the background. “It’s not a leading cause of extinction around here anymore. But Africa, yeah. Monkeys killed for the bush meat market, for instance. Elephants for ivory, rhinos for powdered horn. You know: some Chinese people, a folk-wisdom group that isn’t actually particularly educated in Chinese medicine, think it’s an aphrodisiac. Globally, mostly the driver is habitat loss. But soon the leading cause is going to be climate change. Or too much carbon, anyway.”
“What?” asked Susan. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head.
“Is it time to go home?” asked his mother, raising her head.
“I think so,” said T., and helped steady her as she got up. “Sorry,” he said to Susan. “We were hopeful she would last a little longer this evening.”
“Please, no,” said Susan, and turned to