Free Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard Page B

the chair, she drew Ben aside.
    “You want to wheel her back to room three-fifteen? I think she’d like that.”
    In her room Ben watched Ginny swing the arm of Clare’s table over her lap and set the tray on it.
    “Enjoy your dinner,” she said and hurried out.
    “Guess it’s time to go,” said Ben. He did not move.
    “Don’t go,” said Clare. She could not bear to think of the emptiness he would leave behind him. “They always give me enough for two. Pull up that chair—that regular one.”
    He pulled up the only other chair in the room, and Clare lifted the silver helmet from the dinner plate and exposed a pale corpse of broccoli and a perfectly round veal patty that appeared to have been rolled in sand.
    “Have some fried chicken,” said Clare. She handed him the knife. “I hope you remembered to bring the watermelon.”
    He stared at her.
    “Mother makes the best potato salad in the world,” she went on, tapping the broccoli with her fork.
    “Oh, please. I can’t eat all this.”
    She cut the patty in two and gave him the knife and fork and began to cut her half into bites with the spoon.
    “We can’t go swimming for at least an hour,” she said.
    “That’s all right,” said Ben. “We can sit on the beach and talk.”
    “Homemade ice cream for dessert.”
    “What flavor?”
    She unveiled a watery custard with burnt edges. “Jade.”
    Ben laid down his fork.
    “You know something? Most people in your shoes—your situation , I mean—would be totally depressed.”
    “When you leave,” said Clare, “I’ll be terribly depressed. I’ll wonder if you’re ever coming back. Are you coming back?”
    “I haven’t left yet, and you’re talking about me coming back,” said Ben with a smile. But Clare was not smiling. He would leave and she would never see him again.
    “Please don’t leave. I’ll ask Mrs. Thatcher to bring in one of the comfortable chairs. There are comfortable chairs for the relatives who want to stay all night.”
    “I’m not a relative,” said Ben.
    “You might be. You might be my distant cousin. You look very distant, sitting over there.”
    Ben moved his chair around to her side of the table.
    He’s forgotten about visiting his uncle, thought Clare. But only something extraordinary would make him stay.
    “You can meet my ghost,” said Clare.
    “She does look a little like a ghost,” said Ben.
    “You’ve seen her?”
    “She was just here.”
    “ Who was just here?”
    “The nurse,” said Ben.
    “I don’t mean the nurse,” exclaimed Clare. “I mean the spirit-woman who comes at night. She’s the reason I don’t go nuts in this place. We travel together.”
    “You travel together?”
    “My spirit travels. I leave my body behind.”
    “Jesus,” whispered Ben.
    “I’m talking too much, I know. Now I’ll be quiet. What about you?”
    “Me?”
    “You haven’t told me anything about you.”
    “There’s not much to tell,” said Ben. He knew he couldn’t invent anything as good as her ghost.
    “Start at the beginning,” said Clare. “You wake up. You get dressed and eat breakfast in the dining room.”
    “No, in the kitchen,” Ben said.
    “All right, in the kitchen. You sit down at the kitchen table with your mom and dad.”
    “No, I sit down with my brother. Mom never sits down for breakfast.”
    “My mom doesn’t, either. Okay, you sit down with your brother.”
    A nurse Clare did not know popped her head in the doorway.
    “Finished with your dinner?”
    “Yes, thank you. Could you help me back to bed?”
    When the nurse left, she seemed to draw the last threads of twilight after her. The room was dark; the sky in the window was dark and starless as a well. On the horizon the city crouched like a strange animal, its hundreds of eyes shining. The bells next door were tolling for vespers.
    “Tell me more about you,” said Clare. “I may look like I’m dead, but I’ll be listening.”
    She lay motionless, hands folded on her