Scarecrow

She asked to see him on the fifth day.

She’d spent the fourth writing. Propped up against the pillows with a board across her knees and a pencil Maddy had found for her, filling page after page in her round, right-leaning hand. She didn’t show me. When I tried to look, she turned the board over and said not yet, in the voice she’d used when I was small and tried to see my birthday presents early.

On the fifth morning, she put the pencil down and said, ”Tell the Director I’d like a word.”

I didn’t move.

”Lucas.”

”You don’t have to see him.”

”I know I don’t have to.” She looked at me steadily. ”I’ve been running from that man for nineteen years. I’m tired of running. I’d like to look at him.”

He came at noon.

He stopped in the doorway, the way he’d stopped on the threshold of Father’s house. Leaning on his cane. Not coming in until he was asked.

Mother was sitting up. Maddy had brushed her hair and pinned it back. She’d asked for that. She was wearing a gray hospital gown with the sleeves too long, and the tube was still in her arm, and she was so thin that the bones of her wrists showed. She looked at him from the bed with her back straight and her hands folded on top of the board.

She looked like the photograph. Not the face. Something in the way she held it.

”Halvard,” she said.

”Dorothy.”

They looked at each other for a long time.

I was standing by the window. Genny was in the chair in the corner, with her knees drawn up, very still. Mother had wanted her there. She’d said Genny would remember it better than I would.

”Come in,” said Mother. ”Sit down. You look terrible.”

Something happened at the corner of Crane’s crooked mouth.

”So I’m told,” he said, and came in, and lowered himself carefully into the chair at the foot of the bed.

”Thank you,” said Mother.

Crane went very still.

”For the doctor,” said Mother. ”For coming. I was dead, or near enough. I know it. My children would have had to bury me under the tree beside their father, and they’d have done it by themselves, with a shovel, and nobody to say the words.” She held his eyes. ”You stopped that. I don’t know why. I don’t believe it was kindness. But you stopped it, and I’m alive, and I’ll see my daughters grow another day. So thank you.”

Crane didn’t say anything for a long moment.

”You’re welcome,” he said quietly.

”Now,” said Mother, ”I have one question for you. And I’d like the truth. I know you’re very good at saying true things that aren’t the truth. My son’s told me. I’d like the other kind.”

”Ask.”

”The first winter,” said Mother. ”After the locks. When the Retention Act passed. Did Trevor come to see you?”

Crane looked at her for a long time.

I watched his face. I’d been watching it for days now, learning it, the way Genny learned a chart. I saw the moment he decided. I didn’t know what he’d decided.

”Yes,” he said.

Mother didn’t move.

”He walked to the dome,” said Crane. ”Eighty miles. He came to the east locks and asked for me by name, and they let him in, because they were frightened not to. He came to my office. I’d been told he would. I had the list on my desk. Thirty-one families. And a thirty-second line at the bottom, not yet signed. Dask, D. Class A. Retention offered pending.”

The machines beeped softly.

”Pending what?” said Mother.

”Pending the registration of her child,” said Crane. ”As a Project asset. At birth.” He didn’t look away. ”That was the Council’s condition. They knew what Trevor was. They wanted to know what his son would be.”

In the corner, Genny had stopped breathing.

”He didn’t ask me for a place on the list,” Crane said. ”Not for himself. Not for you. He stood in front of my desk and asked me to strike your name off it. He said if you were ever offered, you’d say yes. For the baby’s sake. For the medicine. He said you’d trade yourself for it without thinking twice, and you’d never let anyone see what it cost you.” A pause. ”He said he wouldn’t let you.”

Mother’s hands had gone very tight on the board.

”So I struck it off,” said Crane. ”And I never asked you. That was true, what I told your son. I never asked you. Because Trevor asked me not to.”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Mother was looking at him. Her face was white. Her mouth was a hard straight line. Her eyes were bright and very wet, and she didn’t blink.

”He told me we were both offered,” she said finally. ”And that he’d said no. For both of us.”

”I know,” said Crane. ”He told me he would.”

”He lied to me.”

”Yes.”

”For nineteen years.”

”For eleven,” said Crane quietly. ”Then he died. You’ve done the other eight yourself.”

Mother made a sound. Not a laugh. Not a sob. Something with both in it.

She turned her face to the window and didn’t say anything for a long time. Crane didn’t either. He sat at the foot of the bed with his hands on his cane and waited, the way he’d waited in the field with his back turned. As if he’d decided long ago that whatever came of telling her, he would sit and let it come.

”Why tell me now?” Mother said at last, to the window.

”Because you asked for the truth,” said Crane. ”And I find I’m tired too, Dorothy.”

When Mother turned back from the window, her face had closed again. Like a door.

”One more thing,” she said.

”Yes?”

”Whatever my son decides. You’ll go on treating me.”

Crane was quiet for a moment.

”As long as I’m able,” he said.

”That isn’t an answer.”

”No,” Crane agreed. ”It’s the true one.”

They looked at each other across the foot of the bed. Two people who’d known each other since one of them was fifteen and lying on a table and the other was holding her hand. I could see all of it in the look. Everything that had happened in between.

”Then I think you should go now, Halvard,” said Mother.

He stood. Slowly, both hands on the cane. He looked down at her for a moment, as though there were something else he wanted to say.

He didn’t say it.

He inclined his head to her, very slightly. Then to Genny in the corner. Then to me. And he went out.

Mother didn’t speak for a long time after the door closed.

She sat against the pillows with the board on her knees and her hands folded on top of it, looking at nothing. Genny got up out of the corner chair and came and sat on the end of the bed without a word, and put her hand on Mother’s ankle through the blanket, the way Garnet did.

I stayed by the window.

”He chose for me,” Mother said finally. Very quietly. ”Without telling me. He walked eighty miles to make sure I’d never have to choose, and then he walked eighty miles home and told me a story so I’d never know he had.”

”He was protecting you,” said Genny.

”He was protecting Lucas,” said Mother. ”From being registered. From being an asset, before he’d even been born. And protecting me from having to decide whether to trade my son for my own life.” She closed her eyes. ”He knew what I’d have chosen. He was right. I’d have taken it. I’d have taken it and told myself the Council would never really use it, and I’d have been wrong.”

”Then he was right,” said Genny.

”He was right,” said Mother. ”And he lied to me for eleven years. Both things.” She almost laughed. ”I’m beginning to understand that’s how it works in this family.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me across the room.

”Come here, love.”

I came and sat on the edge of the bed. She turned the board over.

It was four pages. Her round, right-leaning hand, pressed hard into the paper. Across the top of the first page, underlined twice, it said: If you go.

”I’m not going to tell you what to choose,” she said. ”I told you that in the field, and I meant it, and nothing’s changed except that now I’m the thing on the scale. Which makes it even less mine to say.” She tapped the board. ”But I’m going to tell you how. If you choose to go.”

She read it to me.

Don’t do it for me. That was the first line. If you go, go for the girls. I’ve had my life. They haven’t had theirs.

Make him write everything down. Every promise. Every condition. Make him sign it and seal it, and make him give the paper to Genny. Not to you. To Genny.

Genny’s head came up.

Never let him separate the girls. Not for school, not for medicine, not for safety. Not even to put one of them with me.

Find out what the Accord is.

She stopped there, and looked at me over the top of the page.

”It’s in the AVALON file,” I said. ”One line. Transit will be facilitated under the provisions agreed in the Accord. He told me it was the surrender terms. The invaders’.”

”I know,” said Mother. ”I read it too. Seven years ago. That’s why it’s on the list.” Her voice was very quiet. ”I was in that war for five years, Lucas. I was on the roof of an invader ship while it burned. They didn’t surrender. Not to us. They never once acted like anything that could surrender.” She looked at the line on the page. ”I never understood how the war ended. Nobody I fought with did. One week they were coming down out of the sky over every dome on Earth. The next week there was a parade.”

The room was very quiet.

”Find out,” said Mother. ”Whatever it costs. Promise me.”

”I promise.”

She turned to the last page.

There was only one line on it, in the middle of the paper, written larger than the rest.

Never choose for them without telling them.

She looked at it for a long time.

”Your father loved me so much he lied to me for eleven years,” she said. ”So that I’d never have to carry it.” She put the board down in her lap and reached out and took my face in both hands. Her hands were warm. ”Don’t love your sisters like that. Do you hear me? Whatever you decide, you tell them. All of it. And you let them have a say, even if it’s only a say. They’re not things you carry. They’re people.”

I couldn’t answer. I nodded.

She held my face a moment longer. Then she let go, and leaned back against the pillows, and closed her eyes.

”Go and find Garnet,” she said. ”She’ll be eating pudding. Tell her everything. Tonight. The three of you. And then come and tell me what you’ve decided.”

Genny got off the bed. She stood by it for a moment, looking down at Mother. Then she took the board off Mother’s lap, all four pages, very carefully, and held it against her chest with both arms.

”I’ll keep this,” she said.

”I know you will, darling,” said Mother, without opening her eyes.