Part 25 (2/2)

This was the first time JT had seen her without a T-s.h.i.+rt, and it took every ounce of willpower not to stare. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were like melons, straining at her pink halter-style top. Her vast, doughy belly folded over onto itself in several places. For bottoms, Amy simply wore a pair of baggy black shorts with the waistband rolled down low, beneath the folds of flesh. Susan quickly tugged the shorts up an inch or so; from the look on her face, JT guessed that it had been a very long time since she had seen her daughter without a T-s.h.i.+rt too.

In the meantime, Abo had gotten a sleeping mat, and they all helped Amy lie back. Then Abo draped a sheet over her, for although her skin was dry and the temperature was well over a hundred degrees, she was s.h.i.+vering.

”Is that comfortable?” JT asked.

Amy shrugged.

Though worried, he wanted to make light of things. ”You're on the Lava Swim Team now, you know. Pretty elite.”

”Are there T-s.h.i.+rts?”

”Are you kidding? T-s.h.i.+rts, hats, duffel bags, the whole shebang.”

”Good,” said Amy, closing her eyes. ”I was never on a team.”

Susan tucked a small towel under Amy's head, and JT was going to suggest that she try and drink some water, but Amy got that look in her eyes again. She covered her face with her hands and bent her knees and wiggled her toes in the sand.

”I think something's wrong,” Evelyn ventured, from over JT's shoulder.

”Amy,” said Susan. ”Amy, look at me.”

Amy rocked her head from side to side and gouged her heels into the sand.

”Amy?” Susan said. ”Honey?”

Amy didn't answer, and JT wasn't happy about this. ”Any history of seizures?” he asked Susan.

Susan shook her head.

”I don't think this is a seizure,” Evelyn offered.

Then Amy went limp again. This time, however, she didn't open her eyes. She kept her elbow crooked over her face. JT glanced down and saw a large circle of wetness under her hips. He didn't know if she sensed it or not.

”I'm not a f.u.c.king epileptic,” Amy said in a m.u.f.fled voice.

Susan stood up and hugged her arms to her chest. Evelyn s.h.i.+fted to give her some s.p.a.ce. The others-JT, Jill, and Peter-just sat there beside Amy, not knowing what to do. JT himself was hoping the whole problem would just go away, when Bud walked up.

”Thanks for the help out there,” said JT.

”How's she doing?”

”Not good, actually.”

”What's wrong?”

”Not quite sure.”

Bud squatted down. ”Hey. Remember me?”

Amy opened her eyes. She looked at Bud and his big white beard and then looked around at all the other faces. Then she closed her eyes again.

”What's the matter,” she said. ”Haven't you guys ever seen a fat person before?”

It wasn't a seizure, Evelyn knew that much. Julian had seizures. This wasn't a seizure. She wished people would listen to her. How was it that she was fifty years old and a full and tenured professor of biology at Harvard University, and still people didn't listen to her, unless she was up at the lectern? And even then.

Peter's fear was that it was appendicitis. She'd had it for days, and he should have known, and now the tiny useless organ had ruptured. He thought of all the appendicitis scares his mother had had-all those stomachaches, high up, low down, deep in the belly, dull, sharp, throbbing, incessant. Always he'd taken her to the hospital; always the pains turned out to be gas. Peter had grown to think of appendicitis as something from the 1940s, old-fas.h.i.+oned and extinct, like polio. Now, with it staring him in the face, he'd done nothing.

Thinking of his mother's trips to the hospital made him think of hospital beds and clean sheets. How nice it would be, to crawl into a freshly made bed. And then he thought about Miss Ohio folding linens in her sun-drenched laundry room, telling her pimp-husband how Peter was still tied to his mother's ap.r.o.n strings.

An odd thought, but there it was.

Mitch.e.l.l traipsed along the sh.o.r.eline, whistling for the dog.

It was Jill who put it together. She watched Amy go rigid, watched how she dug her heels into the sand and made little gasping noises. She saw the long slow leakage underneath Amy's hips on the sand. She thought back to the night that Sam and Matthew drank the margaritas, when Peter said something and Amy got mad and left. That walk. That waddle.

She told herself it couldn't be possible. A girl would know. Her mother would know.

Then she remembered stories she had read in magazines over the years. Lack of education. Denial. Overweight to begin with.

Susan had gone off to get Amy some water. With Susan gone, Jill gave herself permission to look at Amy's stomach. And she knew. She didn't know how she knew; she just knew. She put her hand on Amy's forehead.

”Could you give me a moment?” she asked JT and Peter.

JT seemed relieved. He stood up and went over and conferred with Dixie and Abo. Peter stayed and Jill didn't argue.

”Amy,” said Jill, ”is it your stomach?”

Amy nodded her head.

”How bad?”

”Really bad.”

”Amy,” said Jill, ”would you mind if I felt your stomach?”

Amy opened her eyes and looked at Peter. Then she closed them again. ”Fine.”

Jill laid her hand on Amy's belly. The skin was warm and sticky, and there was a raisin-shaped mole just below her navel. She felt around. She was wanting to feel nothing so that her suspicions would be wrong. But just below Amy's diaphragm, a little to the left, she felt a lump. It was roundish, maybe the size of a plum. Jill pressed, and it rolled beneath her fingers. An elbow, perhaps a foot; Jill couldn't be sure.

She took a deep breath and, not knowing what else to do, gently began to ma.s.sage Amy's belly. She had never rubbed another woman's belly before, she realized; in fact, it was possibly the most intimate thing she had done to anyone lately, except Mark.

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