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She was such a damn gem.
“Okay,” River said, clearly catching on that he didn’t want to explain. “Maybe I’ll take off if you’re good to stay with her?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, bye, Bug,” they said, and hugged Gus.
They eyed the window.
“Here, do you want this?” Wes offered, pulling off his hooded sweatshirt.
River took it gratefully, though it was too big for them.
“Thank you,” they said, pulled the hood up, and slipped out the door.
Wes opened the refrigerator and found some cauliflower and carrots that he cut up to stir-fry with the rice. He forced himself to focus only on making even, deliberate cuts, not on what might or might not be going on outside.
Gus chatted while he cooked, telling him about the words on her spelling test and how while red, blue, and yellow were the primary colors, light had its own primary colors, and it was red, blue, and green, did he know?
“And did you know,” Gus went on fervently, “that there’s no colors when you turn the lights off? They disappear! Where do they go? Nowhere! I don’t know. No one knows where they go!”
Wes nodded and asked her more questions, but all the while he was thinking about that. He remembered learning it in elementary school—remembered a few people making much of it, existentially, in pondering (and ponderous) middle school poems.
But it was strange that Gus should bring it up now—the day before his father’s birthday—because this was his father’s problem. He felt like he disappeared when he didn’t have the lights on him. And what Wes had chosen all those years ago, by stepping out of the spotlight himself, was to turn off a source of his father’s light. His dad felt like Wes had made him disappear. And there was nothing he could do about that. No amount of explaining that he, Wes, felt like he disappeared when the lights were on him. It had never mattered, he realized, because his father didn’t feel he disappeared any less for understanding it.
“Wes. Wes!” Gus was saying.
“Huh?”
“You look really weird. And the cauliflower is burning.”
“Shit!”
Wes snatched the pan off the heat.
“Sorry, Gus.”
She shrugged. “Why are you weird?”
“Oh, uh.”
He knew about Adam and Gus’ no lying policy and tried to figure out how to formulate an appropriate truth.
“Remember I told you I don’t spend much time with my family?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tomorrow is my dad’s birthday, so he’s been on my mind. And thinking about stuff with him makes me kind of...stressed-out.”
“Oh. Like Daddy feels about money?”
Wes filed that tidbit away.
“Probably something like that, yeah.”
He didn’t feel the need to disclose that her lights were currently driving him to near panic attack levels of anxiety. One truth was probably enough.
“You could send him an e-card,” Gus suggested.
“Oh, yeah?” Wes said absently.
“Yeah. Daddy says that’s what you do when you don’t really care about someone but you have to keep up appearances.” She shrugged. “Appearances of what?”
Wes snorted with amusement and decided then and there never to say anything in front of Gus that he wouldn’t want repeated in the worst possible context.
“Thanks for the suggestion.”
Wes scraped rice and slightly burned stir-fry into a bowl and put it on the kitchen table. It didn’t look very appetizing, but Gus seemed game.
“Daddy will be home in a minute. We should wait for him because of politeness.”
Wes high-fived her as the front door opened and Adam arrived.
* * *
“Gus is fine,” Wes assured Adam. “And River left because I came over. I, uh, made dinner. Kind of.”
“Daddy!” Gus threw herself at him. “Wes made rice!”
“Thanks,” Adam said, looking at him questioningly. “I’m happy to see you.”
“Me too,” Wes said. “You too, I mean.”
He couldn’t quite get himself together. He knew he was behaving strangely but he had that feeling. The feeling he hadn’t had much since meeting Adam, but had apparently only lain dormant. The sense of being inside his prison of a body as one by one his limbs began to feel strange and alien.
But Adam just smiled at him and followed Gus back into the kitchen.
Wes forced his prison to walk into the kitchen and get bowls out of the cabinet. He made it scoop rice and vegetables into the bowls. He made it say Thanks when Adam got out silverware and asked if he wanted water. He made it bend its legs and sit down at the table and scoop food into its untasting mouth. He made it nod when people talked and made it smile when they smiled.
And all the while, he felt flashbulbs going off in his face as he shrank smaller and smaller inside his panopticon.
After dinner, Adam asked him to stay, but Wes knew that he couldn’t keep up the charade once they were one-on-one. And he didn’t want the alien prison to touch Adam. It felt like watching someone else touch him.
