14 Degrees Below Zero by Quinton Skinner Page A

T-shirt. Mama was twirling her hair in her fingers. She didn’t know Ramona was there.
    Grampa thought he needed to protect Mama—well, that
was
true. Mama needed protecting. A lot of the time, Mama acted like she didn’t know what to do. That worried Ramona, because Mama was perfect and it didn’t make sense for Mama not to know it. Not perfect like God—that was different. Ramona knew God was perfect, but she didn’t talk about it much because Mama didn’t believe in God. Grampa didn’t, either. But someone had to be keeping the sun in the sky, and making sure the birds came back in the spring.
    Grampa made Ramona worry. He came to the apartment the day before with some nice new presents, but when Ramona played with them she felt Grampa watching her. She felt his . . .
stress.
Grampa wanted something from her, and from Mama, that they couldn’t possibly give him. Maybe when God made Grandma Anna come back, she would tell them all what happened when she died and make everything better.
    Mama hung up the phone and turned around. It happened so fast that Ramona didn’t have time to hide.
    “Ramona, how long have you been standing there?” Mama asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You know what I told you about eavesdropping,” Mama said, kind of mad, kind of not.
    “I know,” said the Perfect Princess. She smiled at the Old Queen, who never stayed mad for long.
    The Old Queen smiled back. “What am I going to do with you?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” said the Perfect Princess, who never did anything wrong, and who always made things right.
    “Well, at least come give me a hug, you little spy,” said the Old Queen, for whom hugs were food, and for whom the Perfect Princess was always available to lend strength.

8. OF ALL THE THINGS HE NEEDED AT THIS STAGE OF HIS LIFE.
    I t was not Lewis’s favorite time of day—mid-morning, a compromise between the promise of the early hours and the gradual setbacks and accommodations leading to the end of his work shift. He stood by a rack of ties doing increasingly desperate math: he’d made about seventy-five dollars so far that morning, enough to almost cover the cable bill. If he skipped lunch every day that week, he might make enough in wages and commissions not to have to dip too far into his remaining savings.
    Of course, that took for granted that he would continue to ignore the increasingly strident demands from the bill collectors that he make headway on Anna’s medical expenses.
    Carew had woken Lewis at six for his trip to the park to void his bowels, nipping and straining at the leash, the poor damned thing seeming to feed off of Lewis’s anxiety. Lewis had popped his antidepressant and—who cared what he looked like—donned his winter coat and hat against the chill. He had shivered in the park while Carew did his thing, one hand on the cell phone in his pocket, fighting off the urge to call and wake Jay.
    Lewis took a deep breath that caught in his chest. His heart lurched. He pretended to examine the rack of ties while listening to the soft piano music filtering through Men’s Wear. The pills made his mouth dry, made his teeth taste bitter. He couldn’t really say what effect they were having on his mood. He was not depressed per se. He sensed his heart drifting somewhere above the rest of him, which made him feel calmer than a month before.
    His doctor wanted him to visit a therapist. She was a new doctor, packaged with the insurance that came with his job at the department store. She was young, thin, and strangely attractive for all her sternness and obvious anxiety over her legitimacy and authority. Lewis had acknowledged that getting his head examined wasn’t the worst idea in the world, but he’d mused out loud to the young doctor—a brunette in black jeans with an uncertain smile—that at this late date in his existence it might be better to leave things alone. He told her about his shortness of breath and the chest pains, and she’d