City of Truth (4 page)

The gift-giving ceremony contained one bleak moment. After opening the expected succession of galoshes, reference books, umbrellas, and cambric blouses, Connie unwrapped a fully working model of an amusement park — Happy Land, it was called, complete with a roller coaster, ferris wheel, and merry-go-round. She blanched, seized by the panic that someone who's just been through a brainburn invariably feels in the presence of anything electric. Slamming her palm against her lips, she rushed into the bathroom. The friend who'd bought her the Happy Land, a tall, curly-haired girl named Beth, reddened with remorse. "I should have realized," she wailed.

Was the Happy Land a lie? I wondered. It purported to be an amusement park, but it wasn't.

"I'm so stupid," said Beth.

No, I decided, it merely purported to be a replica of an amusement park, which it was.

Connie hobbled out of the bathroom. Silence descended like a sudden snowfall — not the hot snow of a brainburn, but the cold, dampening snow of the objective world. Feet were shuffled, throats cleared. The party, clearly, had lost its momentum. Someone said, "We all had a reasonably good time, Connie," and that was that.

As her friends and sisters filed out, Connie hugged them with authentic affection (all except Alice Lawrence, whom she evidently didn't like) and offered each a highly personalized thank-you, never forgetting who'd given what. Such a grownup young lady, I thought. But her greatest display of maturity occurred when I said my own good-bye.

"Take care, Connie."

"Thanks for coming, Unc, and thanks for the roller skates. Thing is, I already have a pair, better than these. I'll probably swap them for a sweater." A citizen now. I was proud of her.

* * *

Back at the apartment, the phone-answering machine was blinking. Three flashes, pause, three flashes, pause, three flashes, pause. I grabbed a bottle of Paul's Passable Ale from the fridge and snapped off the top. Three flashes, pause. I took a sizeable swallow. Another. The late afternoon light poured through the kitchen window and bathed our major appliances in the iridescent orange you see when facing the sun with eyes closed. I finished my beer.

Three flashes, pause, three flashes, pause: a staccato, insistent signal — a cry of distress, I realize in retrospect, like a call beamed semaphorically from a sinking ship.

I pushed PLAY. Toby had written and produced our outgoing message, and he also starred in it: My folks and I just want to say / We'd love to speak with you today / So talk to us when you hear the beep / And we'll call you back before we go to sleep.

Beep
, and a harsh male voice zagged into the kitchen. "Amusing message, sort of — about what I'd expect from a seven-year-old. This is Dr. Bamford at the Kraft Institute, and I presume I'm addressing the parents of Toby Sperry. Well, the results are in. The Hob's hare that bit your son was carrying high levels of Xavier's Plague, an uncommon and pathogenic virus. We shipped the specimen to Dr. Prendergorst at the Center for the Palliative Treatment of Hopeless Diseases in Locke Borough. If you have any questions, I'll be only mildly irritated if you call me. From now on, though, the matter is essentially in the Center's synecdochic hands."
Beep
. "John Prendergorst speaking, Center for the Palliative Treatment of Hopeless Diseases. You've probably heard Bamford's preliminary report by now, and we just now corroborated it down here at Hopeless. Please call my office at your earliest convenience, and we'll arrange for you to come by and talk, but I'm afraid no amount of talk can change the fact that Xavier's is one hundred percent fatal. I'll show you the statistics."
Beep
. "Jack? Helen. I'm at the office, working on that neuropathology of spiritual possession piece. Looks like a long day and a longer night. There's some chicken in the freezer."

My reaction was immediate and instinctual. I ran into the study, grabbed Helen's unabridged dictionary, and began looking up "fatal," bent on discovering some obscure usage peculiar to Prendergorst's profession. When the doctor said "fatal," I decided, he didn't mean
fatal
, he meant something far more ambiguous and benign. My eye glided down the
F
entries.

Fast
.

Fasten
.

Fat
.

Fatal
. Adjective. Causing death; mortal; deadly.

Fatalism

Fatality

Fatally

No. The dictionary was lying. Just because Prendergorst's forecast was pessimisitc, that didn't make it
true
.

Fata Morgana
. Noun. A mirage consisting of multiple images. And, indeed, a vision now presented itself to my vibrating brain: one of the few copies of
The Journal of Psychic Healing
that I'd declined to burn, a special issue on psychoneuroimmunology, its cover displaying a pair of radiant hands massaging a human heart.

Fatuous
. Adjective. Unreal, illusory.

Psychoneuroimmunology wasn't fatuous — not entirely. Even the peripatetic prose of
The Journal of Psychic Healing
hadn't obscured the scientific validity of cures spawned by the mind-body connection. There was hope. Oh, yes, hope. I would scour the city's data banks, I vowed. I would learn about anyone who'd ever beaten a fatal illness by tapping into the obscure powers of his own nervous system. I would tutor myself in sudden remissions, unexpected recoveries, and the taxonomy of miracles.

Fault
.

Faust
.

Favor
.

Fawn
. Noun. A young deer.

Because, you see, it was like this: on his fifth birthday we'd taken Toby to the Imprisoned Animals Gardens in Spinoza Borough. Fawns roamed the petting zoo at will, prancing about on their cloven hoofs, noses thrust forward in search of handouts. Preschoolers swarmed everywhere, feeding the creatures peanut brittle, giggling as the eager tongues stroked their palms. Whenever another person's child laughed upon being so suckled, I was not especially moved. Whenever my own did the same, I felt something else entirely, something difficult to describe. I believe I saw the alleged God.

Appropriately, the Center for the Palliative Treatment of Hopeless Diseases occupied a terminal location, a rocky promontory extending from the southern end of Locke Borough into the choppy, gunmetal waters of Becket Bay. We arrived at noon on Sunday, Helen driving, me navigating, the map of Veritas spread across my knees, its surface so mottled by rips and holes it seemed to depict the aftermath of a bombing raid. A fanfolded mile of computer paper lay on the back seat, the fruit of my researches into psychoneuroimmunology and the mind-body link. I knew all about miracles now. I was an expert on the impossible.

We parked in the visitors' lot. Tucking the printout under my arm, I followed Helen across the macadam. The structure looming over us was monumental and menacing, tier upon tier of diminishing concrete floors frosted with grimy stucco, as if Prendergorst's domain were a wedding cake initiating a marriage destined to end in wife abuse and murder.

In the lobby, a stark sign greeted us.
ATTENTION
. WE REALIZE THE

DESPAIR. WRITE YOUR BOROUGH REPRESENTATIVE. WE'D LIKE TO

PUT IN DECENT LIGHTING AND PAINT THE WALLS. A bristle-jawed nurse told us that Dr. Prendergorst — "you'll know him by his eyes, they look like pickled onions" — was expecting us on the eleventh floor.

We entered the elevator, a steamy box crowded with morose men and women, like a cattle boat bearing war refugees from one zone of chaos to another. I reached out to take Helen's hand. The gesture failed. Oiled by sweat, my fingers slipped from her grasp.

No one was waiting in the eleventh floor waiting room, a gloomy niche crammed with overstuffed armchairs and steel engravings of famous cancer victims, a gallery stretching as far back in history as Jonathan Swift. Helen gave our names to the receptionist, a spindly young man with flourishing gardens of acne on his cheeks, who promptly got on the intercom and announced our arrival to Prendergorst, adding, "They look pale and scared."

We sat down. Bestselling self-help books littered the coffee table.
You Can
Have Somewhat Better Sex
.
How to Find a Certain Amount of Inner Peace
.
The
Heisenberg Uncertainty Diet
. "It's a mean system, isn't it?" the receptionist piped up from behind his desk. "He's in there, you're out here. He seems to matter, you don't. He keeps you waiting — you wait. The whole thing's set up to intimidate you."

I grunted my agreement. Helen said nothing.

A door opened. A short, round, onion-eyed man in a white lab coat came out, accompanied by a fiftyish couple — a blobby woman in a shabby beige dress and her equally fat, likewise disheveled husband: rumpled golfing cap, oversized polyester polo shirt, baggy corduroy pants; they looked like a pair of bookends they'd failed to unload at their own garage sale. "There's nothing more I can say," Prendergorst informed them in a low, tepid voice. "A Hickman catheter is our best move at this point."

"She's our only child," said the wife.

"Leukemia's a tough one," said Prendergorst.

"Shouldn't you do more tests?" asked the husband.

"Medically — no. But if it would make you feel better..." The couple exchanged terse, pained glances. "It wouldn't," said the wife, shambling off.

"True," said the husband, following.

A minute later we were in Prendergorst's office, Helen and I seated on metal folding chairs, the doctor positioned regally behind a mammoth desk of inlaid cherry, "Would you like to put some sugar in your brain?" he asked, proferring a box of candy.

"No, thank you," said Helen tonelessly.

"I guess the first step is to confirm the diagnosis, right?" I said, snatching up a dark chocolate nugget. I bit through the outer shell. Brandy trickled into my throat.

"When your son gets back from camp, I'll draw a perfunctory blood sample," said Prendergorst, sliding an open file folder across his desk. Beneath Toby's name, a gruesome photograph of the deceased Hob's hare lay stapled to the inside front cover, its body reduced by the autopsy to a gutted pelt. "The specimen they sent us was absolutely loaded with the virus," said the doctor. "The chances of Toby not being infected are perhaps one in a million." He whisked the file away, slipping it into his top desk drawer. "A rabbit destroying your child, it's all faintly absurd, don't you think? A snake would make more sense, or a black widow spider, even one of those poisonous toads — I can't remember what they're called. But a rabbit..."

"So what sort of therapy are we looking at?" I asked. "I hope it's not too debilitating."

"We aren't looking at
any
therapy, Mr. Sperry. At best, we'll relieve your son's pain until he dies."

"Toby's only seven," I said, as if I were a lawyer asking a governor to reprieve an underage client. "He's only seven years old."

"I think I'll
sue
that damn camp," Helen grunted.

"You'd lose," said Prendergorst, handing her a stark pamphlet, white letters on black paper:
Xavier's Plague and Xavier's-Related Syndrome — The News Is All
Bad
. "I wish I could remember what those toads are called." Had my brainburn not cured me of sentimentality and schmaltz, had it not, as it were, atrophied my tear ducts, I think I would have wept right them. Instead I did something almost as unorthodox. "Dr. Prendergorst," I began, my hands trembling in my lap like two chilly tarantulas, "I realize that, from your perspective, our son's chances are nil."

"Quite so."

I deposited the computer printout on Prendergorst's desk. "Look here, over twenty articles from
The Holistic Health Bulletin
, plus the entire
Proceedings of the
Eighth Annual Conference on Psychoneuroimmunology
and
The Collected
Minutes of the Fifth International Mind-Body Symposium
. Story after story of people thinking their way past cancer, talking themselves out of heart disease — you name it. Surely you've heard of such cases."

"Indeed," said Prendergorst icily.

"Jack ...
please
," groaned Helen, wincing with embarrassment. My wife, the
Sweet Reason
reporter.

"Miracles happen," I persisted. "Not commonly, not reliably, but they happen."

"Miracles
happened
," said Prendergorst, casting a cold eye on the printout.

"These incidents all come from the Nightmare Era — they're all from the Age of Lies. We're adults now."

"It's basically a matter of giving the patient a positive outlook," I explained.

"
Please
," hissed Helen.

"I believe it's time we returned to the real world, Mr. Sperry." Prendergorst shoved the printout away as if it were exuding a foul odor. "Your wife obviously agrees with me."

"Maybe we should bring Toby home next week," Helen suggested, fanning herself with the Xavier's pamphlet. "The sooner he knows," she sighed, "the better." Prendergorst slid a pack of Canceroulette cigarettes from the breast pocket of his lab coat. "When's your son scheduled to leave?"

"On the twenty-seventh," said Helen.

"The symptoms won't start before then. I'd keep him where he is. Why spoil his summer?"

"But he'll be living a lie. He'll go around thinking he's not dying."

"We
all
go around thinking we're not dying," said the doctor with a quick little smile. He removed a cigarette, set the pack on the edge of the desk. WARNING:

DISTRACTING YOU FROM THE MYRIAD WAYS IN WHICH YOUR

GOVERNMENT FAILS TO PROTECT YOUR HEALTH. "God, what a depraved species we are. I'm telling you Toby is mortally ill, and all the while I'm thinking,

'Hey, my life is really pretty good, isn't it? No son of
mine
is dying. Fact is, I take a certain pleasure in these people's suffering.'"