“I don’t feel any clearer,” I’m surprised to hear myself saying. “I just feel like my body is in all these different pieces and even though it looks like I’m all put together, the pieces are really just floating there and if I fall down too hard, I’ll fly apart.”
“Like a fontanelle,” Henna says.
“A what?”
“The soft spot on top of a baby’s head.” She taps the spot on her own head. “Babies’ skulls aren’t fused together when they’re born, otherwise they’re too big to get out of the mother. They’ve got this spot called a fontanelle that’s just kind of unprotected until the hardness grows in.”
“That makes sense,” I say. “I’m just one big fontanelle.”
Henna laughs lightly. Then she takes my hand in hers and holds it. “Mikey,” she says, but not like she’s about to say anything more, just like she’s identifying me, making a place for me here that’s mine to exist in. I want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like I’m grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn’t say it felt this sad.
The mini-golf park is old and really narrow, so even though Jared, Mel and Nathan are already on hole number three, they’re still pretty much just right there, laughing, looking over to where we sit.
Especially Nathan.
“Ich esse, wir essen.” Meredith looks up. “I’m hungry.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Nathan calls. Henna lets go of my hand. “Anyone want any food?”
Nathan asks, coming over.
“A hot dog,” Meredith says.
Nathan raises his eyebrows.
“A hot dog, please,” Meredith says.
“I’ll help you,” Henna says, getting up. She looks back to me. “You want anything, Mikey?”
“Ich liebe,” Meredith mutters under her breath, “du liebst–”
I aim a sideways kick at her. “Nah, I’m good.”
I watch them head back to the hut which sells your standard mini-golf food: hot dogs and nachos. I watch Henna go inside with Nathan. Jared’s watching, too, then he looks at me and I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking it’s long past time I gave Henna up.
And maybe he’s right.
But she held my hand again. And said she was seeing things more clearly.
I wish I was.
“Two!” Mel shouts, triumphantly.
Midway through our second round of mini-golf – Mel won the first with a score of fifty-nine; Jared had eighty, Nathan ninety-seven, which was pleasing – we have a surprise visitor.
“Hey,” a tired-looking Dr Call Me Steve says, holding his car keys, still wearing hospital scrubs.
“Hey,” Mel says, every word of her body language turning into a smile. “You came.”
“Who could say no to putt-putt golf?”
“Almost anybody,” Meredith says, writing down answers about the adventures of Dieter and Frederika in Hamburg.
“Can I play in?” Steve asks, after Mel introduces him around. (“Wow,” he said, gently palpating my nose. “That’s healing amazingly fast.”)
“You can have my spot,” Nathan says. “I’m doing so bad you’ll be lucky to break a hundred.”
Steve takes Nathan’s putter. “I like a challenge.”
We’re on the new course at the back of the mini-golf place, though it’s only new like New Mexico is new. It used to be jungle-themed but the statues of “natives” were so racist they all had to be removed. Now it’s just leafy with one chipped-paint, fibreglass tiger in the middle, emitting a tinny, pre-recorded roar every four minutes.