The Wilds by Julia Elliott Read Free Book Online

says the nurse. “According to the neurotherapists, she’s made enormous strides. Her roaming incident shows some planning, thinking ahead, which indicates enhanced semantic memory.”
    “And you think she knows he’s my father?”
    “She knows he’s somebody. Found him halfway across the complex. I had no idea they’d even been married.”
    “They still are, technically, you know.”
    Elise snorts at this, but nobody pays one bit of attention.
    “Of course. Very odd, though it happens from time to time. Married people in different wings. We don’t do couples at Eden Village.”
    “It really didn’t matter until now,” says the boy, sinking into the chair by the bed. “I didn’t think the therapies would lead to anything, with her so far gone. But still, I figured why not? ”
    Elise claws at her throat, her tongue as dead as a slab of pickled beef. She knows the boy is her son, but she can’t remember when he was born or how he got to be grown so fast.
    “Mom,” says the boy, that familiar tinge of whininess in his voice, and it comes to her: her son home from college for a few days, pacing from window to window, restless as a cooped rooster. He said the house felt smaller than he remembered. Stayed out on the boat all day with the spoiled-rotten Morrison boys. Acted skittish when he came in from the water, pained eyes hiding behind the soft flounce of his bangs. He’d gone vegetarian, looked as skinny as Gandhi, and she fed him fried okra and butterbeans.
    As the two of them sat at the kitchen table making conversation, Bob’s silence leaked from the boy’s old bedroom like nuclear radiation from a triple-sealed vault—the kind of poison you can’t smell but that sinks into your cells, making you mutant from the inside out.
    “Bye, Mom.” The boy pats her crimped hand. “I’ll be back soon.” And they leave her in the semidarkness, window shades down, unable to tell if it’s night or day.

    The therapists have strapped her into the MEG scanner and popped in a retro-TV sense-enhanced module. While they play footsy under the desk, Elise turns her attention to a montage of The Incredible Hulk episodes, breathing in smells of Hamburger Helper and Bounce fabric-softening sheets. She never cooked Hamburger Helper; she never wasted money on fabric softeners. She never sat through a complete episode of The Hulk , but the seething mute giant reminds her of Bob, who watched it religiously after his accident. She remembers peering into his room, standing there in the hallway for just one minute to watch the green monster rage. Then she’d close the door, drift out into the night with her pack of cigarettes.
    Now the screen goes dim and Elise hears crickets, smells cigarette smoke and a hint of gas. Pip’s boathad a leak that summer, and everything they did was enveloped in the haze of gasoline. What did they do? Zigzagged over the lake. Dropped the anchor and sat rocking in the waves, drinking wine coolers and watching for herons. Then they’d drift up to this island he knew. The first time Pip took her to his secret island—the one with the feral goats and rotting shed—she drank until her head thrummed. Bob had not said one word for sixty-two days. Each night before bed she’d stick her head into the toxic glow of his room to say good night, and he’d grunt. She kept track of the days. Ticked them off with a pencil on a yellow legal pad.
    He sat there glued to the TV, waiting for news on the hostages, wondering if Afghanistan had turned Communist yet, trying to figure out who shot J. R. She even caught him watching soaps in the middle of the day— like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives —foolishness he used to laugh at. Now he sat grimly as Marlena mourned the death of her premature son and her marriage to a two-timing lawyer fell apart. The dismal music, the tedious melodrama, and the flimsy opulent interiors sank Elise into a malaise. And she’d leave Bob in the eternal