Free 31 Hours by Masha Hamilton Page B

asked him how he felt. He said fine. ‘Any fatigue or anything?’ He turned angry suddenly. He called me a nag—” She cut herself off, and Vic could see a flash of hurt in her expression before it cleared. “Later he was in his room—his old room, I mean—he was looking out the window, and I came and stood behind him and grabbed his waist, tried to scare him, playfully, you know, and I guess I did scare him because he jumped and turned. He was hanging on to that old stuffed elephant of his, and he looked so worn. God, he looked ancient.”
    Jonas’s mother’s eyes were shiny. She took a sip of tea. Vic thought about patting her hand, but that seemed the wrong gesture between them. “You know how he is,” Vic said. “Sometimes he carries around the world’s problems like an overstuffed suitcase.”
    Jonas’s mother didn’t seem to hear. “I asked him what was wrong.He said nothing, and then he got mad again, then apologetic, one right after the other. Then he left.”
    Vic sipped her tea. “Well,” she said after a minute.
    “I know.” Jonas’s mother ran a hand through her hair and kind of laughed. “Oh, I know, it doesn’t add up to much, the way I’ve told it. But a mother can sense things. Something is wrong.” She worried the fabric of Vic’s couch a moment more, hesitating. “Do you think, could it be drugs or something?”
    Vic smiled; she even felt some relief because this was beginning to feel like a typical parent conversation. “No, Mrs. Meitzner. Jonas doesn’t even drink.”
    “Of course. You’re right. But something is . . .” Jonas’s mom trailed off and reached her left hand back to rub the right side of her neck. “For three days, I’ve been calling, leaving messages, and he doesn’t answer and he doesn’t call back. That’s not like him, either. And today I went by his apartment and—no answer. So I thought maybe . . . maybe you would know something. When did you last talk to him?”
    “I think it was . . .” She’d thought of Jonas often, for sure, and made repeated calls, but how long exactly had it been since they’d spoken? With dance rehearsals, and then the drama with her mother and Mara, the days had begun to blur. She couldn’t sort it out right now, not with Jonas’s mom staring at her. “Last time I talked to him,” she said, “he seemed—” Tired, maybe, and busy, but mostly he’d seemed romantic every time she’d spoken to him over these past few weeks. And intense, and passionate. And full of life and desire and longing, and now she suddenly remembered the last time, a week ago Tuesday—longer than she’d realized. It had been a quick conversation, and she’d been on the street headed to rehearsal, but still she’d felt it all when she’d heard his voice on the phone, and she’d wanted to see him, to hold his face in herhands, and would have found a way to do that, to meet him at least on some street corner and kiss him, kiss him in some private place, if she hadn’t already been late. “He seemed fine,” she said.
    “Okay. Well, good,” Jonas’s mother said, though she sounded unconvinced. She was silent a moment and then made a motion as if dusting off the palms of her hands on her pants. “Enough. You’ve probably got plenty to do on a Sunday afternoon.”
    “No, no,” Vic said.
    Jonas’s mother rose and took her cup into the kitchen, set it in the sink. “He was such a funny baby,” she said. “So serious, even then. But one time, he was maybe eleven months then, and he was sitting in his high chair in the kitchen, and suddenly, out of nowhere, he started laughing, and that made me laugh, and then he laughed at me laughing, and on like that, as if the laughter itself were an entire conversation.” She gave a small, sad smile. “If you . . .” she hesitated, “if you talk to Jonas in the next day or so, Vic—I don’t want to sound pathetic, but tell him to call his old mother, okay?”
    As soon as she was gone, Vic