Fear itself

3

“You okay in there, sweetheart?” Simon Childs tapped gently on the bathroom door. Sometimes Missy only wanted to be sure the pager would actually summon him; other times she did it out of pure mischief.

“Mo hah, mo hah.”

More hot. Simon had never had any trouble understanding what his kid sister was saying. He opened the door to see Missy stretched out in the deep clawfoot tub, waving her pink plastic pager over her head, and grinning from ear to ear-oh, how that girl loved her bath. You had to keep an eye on her, though. She’d stay in the tub until she was one big wrinkle if you let her, but when the water got cold, she’d start fiddling with the taps, no matter how many times she’d been warned not to, and more often than not, she’d end up either flooding the bathroom or scalding herself.

And for a strange, out-of-time moment, as he approached the tub, Simon saw his baby sister not as she was now, but as he still held her in his mind’s eye: a darling, round-faced, whitey-blond five-year-old Kewpie doll with a loving heart and an unquenchable sense of wonder. Then she broke the spell by bleating “Mo hah!” again in her deep-toned, uninflected voice. Simon blinked and found himself looking down at a naked, waterlogged, sparsely haired, morbidly obese, forty-nine-year-old idiot with a protruding tongue and slit eyes lost in folds of fat, whose pale skin was tinged blue as a result of the cardiac condition her doctors had predicted would prove fatal before another year had passed.

Best not to think about that, though. Simon and Missy had been abandoned by their mother after their father’s death and were raised by a paternal grandfather as tyrannical as he was wealthy. After his death, it was just the two of them, their trust funds, and the hired help. Simon was fifty-one now; for forty-nine years Missy had been the only constant in his life, and no matter how often Simon told himself it was better this way, more merciful for her to predecease him than for him to leave her behind, he knew in his heart that he was going to be lost without her.

And so despite the doctors’ warnings, Simon spoiled Missy outrageously-why make her stick to a diet if she was going to die anyway? It was like the way the trustees had wanted to send her to retard school after their grandfather’s death. They said she’d never reach her full potential otherwise. What did they know about Missy’s potential-or her happiness? If what made Missy happy was baths and food and Audrey Hepburn videos and staying home with Simon, then that’s what she’d get. He’d had a huge water heater installed so she could bathe all day if she wanted to, and she had free rein in the kitchen, which he kept well stocked-not an easy task: oh, how the old girl could pack it away, and oh, how she could pack on the pounds.

But then, Missy had always been chubby. In fact, when he and Missy were kids, Simon used to think of her corpulence as just another symptom of her Down syndrome, along with her moon face, her sloping forehead, her slanty eyes with their yellow-spotted irises, her flat-ridged nose, her protruding tongue, and her low-set, folded ears.

He knew better now, of course. “Okay, okay, I’ll run some more hot. Get your piggies out of the way.”

Missy drew her legs up. Simon reached down and pulled the old-fashioned, rusty-chained, cork-shaped rubber plug.

“Hey, hey, you braa’,” she barked tonelessly.

“Take it easy, I’m just letting some of the cold water out, make room for the hot.” He replaced the plug, opened the left tap, swirled the water with his hand to mix the hot in gradually, the way their old nanny, Granny Wilson-Ganny, they called her-would have. Then, splashing his sister playfully: “And watch who you’re calling a brat, you brat.”

Missy giggled and splashed him back, paddling the water with her chubby hands, which had only a single crease across the palm.

“Is that better?” Simon asked her, turning off the water and wiping his hands on the bath mat. As he stood up and crossed to the sink to get Missy a washcloth, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and smoothed back his wavy silver hair, which was receding decorously into a handsome widow’s peak.

“Peedee keem.”Peachy keen.

“Okay, then.” He tossed the washcloth into the tub. “I have to go back down to the basement. Page me when you’re ready to get out. And don’t forget to wash your whoop-te-do.” That had been Ganny’s collective term for private parts, male or female.

“Wah yah whoodedo, you braa’!” Missy shouted angrily-after all, she wasn’t a baby-and the washcloth hit the back of the door with a wet thud as Simon closed it behind him.