father says, coughing from the mysterious illness that keeps him at home as well.
“I disturb,” she says to the small face in the mirror. She hears the word splash and surface, like a scary catfish, whenever her name is mentioned.
She is visiting a doctor in the city, Doctor Hargreaves. He is a tall man, like her father, with glasses on the tip of his nose. Sometimes he wears them on his head, and his hair eyes stare into the heavens. Or the fluorescent lights. He does not hurt her, and he does not frighten her, he just asks questions about what she does all day, about her pretend games.
“And when you get this feeling . . . is that what it is, Suzanne, is it a feeling? When you get this feeling, could you tell me what it’s like?”
The child shifts on the long leather sofa. Her mother is waiting outside; her father sits in the corner pretending to read. He pretends a lot, just like her.
“It . . .” What can she say about the blurting urge? “It’s a feeling of know—”
“No?”
“Like when you’re listening to a story and you think the child will get away or maybe they’ll get caught or maybe they’ll wake up and it’s all a dream and then you know, you just know, they’re gonna get caught.”
Dr. Hargreaves smiles. “Or maybe they get away.” He taps her head with his file folder.
“Yes,” Suzanne says, sliding off the couch. “But not when I get the feeling.”
There will be further visits. Dr. Hargreaves talks to Suzanne’s father, who is nodding.
In the car on the way back, there is not much talking. Suzanne’s mother has been to visit Aunt Sophie, who has passed along a new colouring book and crayons for Suzanne. The child sits in the back seat with the crayons all around her. She has broken one already, the forest-green one, possibly her favourite. She has overworked it, colouring the entire forest both underfoot and overhead, and in the green world, which has only a black-outlined frog in it, she has added a penguin in a penguin house.
I only get the bad news, she tells her doll, Annabelle, at night in bed. But if I let people know in time, they can maybe stop it. I bring the bad news, but it can still be good.
Her father is reading Alice in Wonderland to her. She knows the story by heart. The girl falls down the hole and everything changes. It’s just like Carla. Is her father crying as he reads of the girl tumbling head over heels, or is he just happy when she lands safe and sound?
“Papa, it’s just a story. Sometimes she goes through mirrors. She does it all the time.”
She has seen her father look in a mirror like he could fall through it, press his pale thin face up against the cold, shiny surface and feel it disappear.
“Papa,” Suzanne says, her little hand trying to encompass his.
When he cries, it is like a small animal fretting. It is not loud or scary. It’s a small sorrow, and Suzanne is not afraid and can hold his hand or, once, his head, and wait. Her Papa comes back, wipes his face and eyes. They have an ice cream cone, if there is any ice cream in the fridge. Or they go to the cold room in the basement and hunt for a bag of secret chocolate raisins.
This father of hers. She asks him, one morning, to put on his suit and tie. She says it’s dress-up day and puts on her tunic.
“See? I’m dressed.”
He goes into the bedroom and remains there a long time, but when he finally comes out he, too, is dressed. He is wearing the blue-grey suit and the tie Suzanne likes, the one with the dark red diamonds. His shirt is a little wrinkly, but he looks nice.
“Papa, your shoes.”
For the plaid slippers do not go with the outfit, despite the dark red in them. He finds his shoes under the living room chair and slowly, laboriously, bends to put them on.
“Beautiful, Papa. You’re beautiful.”
The man looks down at his daughter, her light brown hair in a ponytail, her tunic neat and collar straight.
“We’re all dressed up,” he says, “with nowhere to go.”
“Let’s go see Mommy!”
He has not heard her suggestion.
“Let’s go see Mommy at work!”
Most days Robert drives Adele to work, but when he is not well, she takes the bus that gets her close to the office. The town is not big, but the company she works for is on the very edge of town in the new business park. Suzanne climbs into the back seat. She finds a crayon that was lost and props it up in the car-door ashtray so she won’t forget it.
“Mommy will sure be surprised,” she says, but the man in the front seat hears her. His blue-grey shoulders go up and down, he sighs once, and starts the engine.
From the back seat, with her feet up, Suzanne watches the town go by sideways. Mrs. Reidel’s house cruises into view. Her trees are fighting with the wind. Soon it will snow, and they will rest.
“Will I go back to school?” she asks suddenly, as if it has just occurred to her that she might not.
Her father jerks his head to the right to let her know he is listening.
“Yes . . . of course you’ll go. But, listen, maybe . . . maybe we can make a little deal. Like, a secret between us, you know?”
“Oh, yes!” Suzanne inclines her face toward the secret as her father pulls into the parking lot of her mother’s building. He turns the engine off and swings around to face her.
“How about when you go back, you don’t tell people when you get a special feeling, okay? It will be our secret, just you and me and no one else. What do you think, Little Sue?”
Suzanne flips the thought over in her mind. It is not like she has any particular choice when it happens. Could she keep such a feeling inside? Would it hurt?
They walk into the reception area and take the stairs up to the second floor. Suzanne knows her mother’s desk. It is near the window, and she has a leaf plant there, drinking the sunlight.
But she is not at her desk. Suzanne recognizes the rock she has painted and given to her mother as a paperweight. It is sitting on the desk, and it is working; it is weighing down a bunch of papers that would otherwise fly away. Suzanne’s father is talking to the lady her mother works with, who is telling them that Mrs. Cardinal has gone out to lunch.
“It’s early for lunch,” Robert Cardinal observes, wondering whether or not to go home.
The woman tries not to stare, but she is studying the man they have all heard about, who stays home all day while his wife goes out to work, stays home with his child who, herself, does not go to school. The father of the child who died.
“Will she be back soon?” he asks.
The woman is vague about soon, about people being sick of the
