He went down to his study and tried to work. The papers sat unmoved. At noon he came up and found Lucas asleep again on the sofa in the sitting room, though the spare bed was made and waiting. Mrs. Doyle had laid a blanket over him with hospital corners and stood there with her hands folded, watching.
"He wanted to be where the people are," she said, before Arthur could ask. Then, with the economy of long service: "He's eaten twice. He hides food in his pockets. I pretended not to see."
Arthur looked at her. "Why would you do that?"
"Because he's seven and he's frightened," Mrs. Doyle said, "and a lecture on manners won't reach either of those things." She adjusted the blanket's corner, which needed no adjusting. "Shall I make up the spare room properly for tonight? With the blue quilt?"
"Yes," Arthur said. "Do that."
He sat in the chair across from the sofa and watched the boy sleep, and thought of Margaret sliding that ring onto their daughter's finger in a room full of June light, and of all the mornings since that he had woken alone to the river light and told himself it was enough.
Chapter 6: Lucas
The bed was too big. That was the first thing. Lucas lay in the middle of it with his arms out and there was still bed left on both sides, and the quilt was so heavy it pressed his ribs down when he breathed. He pushed it off and pulled it back on three times before he gave up and just lay there, cold in the places where his body didn't touch.
The quiet was the second thing. At home — the apartment, the one in Queens — there was always noise under everything: the man upstairs arguing with his television, the pipes knocking, cars going past the window at all hours, Mama coughing sometimes in the dark. He knew the shape of every sound the way he knew the shape of the cracks in their ceiling.
Here there was nothing. Just a low hum, like a refrigerator very far away, and once, the tick of something in the wall. Lucas listened for Mama's cough for a long time before he remembered.
He kept the ring in his left hand. His right hand was in his sweater pocket, touching the bread rolls. There were two of them, from dinner. They were soft and squashed a little, and the pocket was warm from his body. Mama always said to keep something for later. Later might be hungry, she used to say. Now isn't always.
At home he would have put them on top of the dresser, but here there were too many strange places, and Mrs. Doyle — who was not unkind but watched everything — would probably take them away and say they would go stale. So they stayed in the pocket. His sweater had a torn elbow. He liked that tear. He could put his thumb in it.
He did not know what time it was. The clock on the wall had hands and numbers but they glowed, which meant it was night, and the hands pointed at things he couldn't make behave. Three, maybe. At home the clock on the microwave said 3:04 sometimes when he woke up, and he had learned that 3 was the hour when the apartment made its loneliest sounds.
He got out of bed. The floor was cold on his feet. He went down the hall the way he'd memorized it that afternoon — counting doorways, five of them — and down the stairs, keeping his hand on the rail because the dark at the bottom of stairs was always the worst kind. The kitchen was where he'd seen it from the hallway. The light over the stove was on, a small orange glow, and the bread box was on the counter. He could see it. He thought about taking another roll. He thought about whether that would be stealing.
"Can't sleep either."
Lucas froze. The man was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, a glass of water in front of him. The old man. The grandfather man. His bathrobe was gray and his hair stood up on one side, and in the stove light he looked smaller than he had at the gala, less like a wall.
"I was just—" Lucas started, and stopped. Lying was worse. Mama had said lying was borrowing trouble at interest, whatever that meant.
"The bread's in the box," the man said. "If you want some."
Lucas didn't move. He'd learned things from the shelter, from the hallways of buildings, from the three winters of being small and poor in a city that was not. One of the things he'd learned was how to stand still and wait for the other person to show what kind of animal they were.
The man didn't move either. He just sat there in the stove light, holding his glass with both hands like it was keeping him warm.
"I won't take your roll," the man said. "I have my own bread. It's in the box. It's mine, but you can have some of it."
Lucas took one step forward. Then another. He opened the bread box. The bread inside was the long kind, sliced, in a bag that twisted shut. He took one slice and held it in his hand.
"That's a start," the man said.
"What?" Lucas asked.
"Nothing. Eat it."
Lucas ate the bread. It was good. He chewed slowly so it would last, and the man watched him without watching him, the way adults sometimes did when they were thinking about something else. After a minute the man pushed his own glass of water across the table toward Lucas.
"You're shivering," the man said.
Lucas hadn't noticed. He was shivering, a little. The kitchen floor was cold through his socks. The man stood up — slowly, like his back hurt — and took a blanket from the back of a chair. It was the one from the sofa. He draped it around Lucas's shoulders and sat back down.
They sat in the orange stove light. The refrigerator hummed. The clock on the wall said 3:17 in green numbers Lucas could read easily.
"Does it hurt?" Lucas asked. "Your face looks like it hurts."
The man touched his own cheek, surprised. "No. Just tired."
"Okay." Lucas took another bite of bread. "Are you mad?"
"At you? No."
"At anybody."