The Timer Game. Susan Smith Arnout

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СКАЧАТЬ Look at the words while I point.’

      Katie repositioned herself and Grace smelled the ripe sleep smell of her young skin. Grace pointed and read aloud:

      ‘Today is MondayHere we goYour socks are close bySomeplace low.’

      ‘Someplace low, someplace low,’ Katie muttered, rolling to her knees and scanning the carpet. Grace saw a wink of hot pink under the bed ruffle. Katie scrambled to it. ‘Aha!’

      The timer dinged. ‘You beat it. You beat the timer. I didn’t hide those very well, did I?’

      ‘Nope,’ Katie said cheerfully. She pulled on both socks and trotted back to Grace with the second clue. Grace reset the timer and read:

      ‘Far from hereIs underwearNear a windowDown the stair.’

      ‘Down the stair!’ Katie urged. ‘Come on!’

      ‘No running on the stairs!’

      Katie shot ahead, running. Helix joined her, his leg banging on each step. The staircase opened into the living room and by the time Grace had made her way down, Katie was yanking on a pair of flowered underpants under her nightie, Helix prancing and yipping in tight circles around her.

      ‘Come on, hurry!’ Katie thrust a clue at Grace, and Grace reset the timer and read aloud:

      ‘Your T-shirt’s pinkAnd if you lookUnder a sinkIt’s in a book.’

      ‘This is too easy today,’ Katie protested, heading for the kitchen.

      ‘Maybe you’re just too good.’

      Katie bent and opened the door under the kitchen sink and pulled out the Spot book and the T-shirt. She squirmed out of her nightie and pulled the T-shirt over her head. ‘Read,’ she commanded, her voice muffled.

      Grace reset the timer and read the next clue as Katie’s face breathlessly emerged.

      ‘So take the bookPut it awayThen take a lookBehind the clay.’

      ‘I didn’t leave this book out.’

      ‘Helix likes to read at night when we go to bed.’

      ‘You’re funny.’ Katie carried the book through the archway into the family room, glancing at the rumpled foldout bed and covered cage. She stood for a moment staring at the shelves jammed with games, books, abandoned dolls. She found the clay bin and moved it aside, snatching up the shorts and a clue.

      ‘Put the book away!’ Grace reminded, as Katie pulled on her blue shorts. A thumping sound like a heavier Helix signaled the approach of Jeanne, making her way slowly with her cane down the stairs into the kitchen. Katie shoved the book onto the shelf as Grace reset the timer and read:

      ‘You’re almost done.To find your shoesLook by a cage.No time to snooze!’

      ‘Well,’ Katie sniffed confidently. She pulled the blanket off the cage and sat down next to the gerbils. Yin padded in a revolving wheel. At almost five, he was elderly, and his back was a slow-moving checkerboard blur of brown and white fur laid out in a neat grid of alternating squares. Helix nosed the cage and yipped.

      ‘Stop already, Helix,’ Grace said. ‘It’s not like you’ve never seen gerbils before.’

      Through the archway in the small, sunny kitchen, Jeanne poured kibble into a porcelain bowl and the sound brought Helix clacking into the kitchen as Katie put on her first shoe and adjusted the Velcro straps. She found the note and the balloon under the second shoe and put it on before she handed the note to Grace to read out loud. Grace had written in block letters:

      ‘You have fun!At school, at playAnd know I love you!All the day!’

      ‘That was fast today,’ Katie said wistfully.

      Grace was silent, thinking about how she still had to tell her daughter what had happened, how her instinct was to delay. ‘Come on, sweetie, maybe you can practice at breakfast.’

      

      ‘Okay, so the front page is the section you don’t want to read,’ Jeanne said. She turned to a new section. ‘Oh, and also Metro. You can skip right over that part today.’

      Grace shot her a look.

      ‘Why?’ Katie asked. She looked up from her bowl, where she had been picking out all the letter M’s and putting them in a soggy row on the table.

      Grace reached for a hairbrush on the counter and moved behind her. ‘Tip your head.’

      ‘Why doesn’t Mommy want to read the front page or Metro, either?’ Katie said more loudly. Grace brushed through a golden tangle, snapping a tie around Katie’s ponytail.

      ‘You want to practice now? Pretend you’re holding Yin up in front of the class?’

      Jeanne glanced pointedly at the kitchen clock. She was wearing a blue muumuu that matched her vivid blue eyes. Her eyebrows rose in penciled wings that waggled, giving Grace the clear message that time was passing and she had a job to do. Katie was absorbed in the soggy cereal, oblivious.

      ‘I’ll tell everybody Jeanne did it. She’s a scientist and she did it.’

      ‘Was,’ Jeanne corrected. She reached across the table and snapped a dead leaf off an iris. She’d brought a bouquet the night before. Jeanne’s home overlooked a canyon and she cultivated flowers in her backyard.

      Part of what Grace had learned from her sponsor during the three years they’d been paired in AA was the names of flowers. The other part was more subtle, and had to do with how to live life. Grace was working on not beating herself up so much. She’d never drunk when she was pregnant, no matter how bad the flashbacks; that was the big one. But she was still working on facing things head-on. She had no idea how she was going to tell Katie.

      ‘And it didn’t hurt them,’ Katie said.

      ‘No,’ Jeanne said.

      ‘Okay, pretend I’m holding Yin.’ Katie stroked a finger down an imaginary back. ‘See, we each carry these things inside – these fighter things …’ She looked to Jeanne for help.

      ‘T cells.’

      ‘Right. And they’re like commandos, like Rambo or something, and they fight with everything they think’s bad. So …’ She stopped, her knowledge exhausted.

      ‘So what happened was,’ Jeanne picked up the thread, ‘scientists figured out a way to make it be okay.’ She hesitated and cut a quick look at Grace. ‘Your mom actually did this kind of thing when she was a doctor.’

      Grace froze over the paper, waiting, always waiting for Katie to ask why: why she’d quit doctoring. Jeanne shot her a look of apology, a shrug, a what was I thinking? look.

      Katie beamed at her mother, oblivious, and crowed, ‘But now she does CSI, like on TV.’

      Jeanne’s shoulders relaxed. ‘That’s right. So. This little guy started out brown. And Yang, the СКАЧАТЬ