Heathern (21 page)

"Nothing happened when she found out, which surprised me. I'm not sure how quickly she noticed the
relationship. She was always running around doing something and at that point Thatcher was still subtle about it.
The longer I was pregnant the more I wanted to have the
baby, whosever it was. By the time I went into labor I
wanted my baby so much. I'd taken such good care of
myself, I quit smoking, I didn't drink-"

"What happened?"

"They'd told me. Thatcher told me. He said He'd see to it
that I had the best doctor in the company. I wanted a natural
childbirth and he said no problem. Gus was my Lamaze
partner. We'd practice in the office at lunchtime. They took
me to Beekman when it was time. Susie and Thatcher and
Gus. Avi knew I was pregnant but I swore I'd had the test
and discovered it wasn't his, and I hadn't, I didn't want to
know. I didn't want to lie to him and I lied just the same."

"Then?"

"They put my gown on me. Stuck something in my arm
while they were-" While they were shaving me; while Thatcher shaved me. He'd asked if he could, and no one
minded but me. "I was so doped up. I remember lying on
the table. I remember having my baby, and then I passed
out. That's what I remembered-"

"I know."

"When I woke up again it was in recovery. I was the only
patient. Thatcher was there. I asked him where my baby
was." I paused. "I never even got to hold him. Thatcher told
me later it was Susie's idea. At the time he just said shit
happens. She'd insisted, he said. They didn't want to let me
see him but finally did. He was all wrapped up. He had dark
hair, like Avi."

"Did he say why-?"

I shook my head. "Maybe just for the hell of it. I don't
know."

I started to cry, and then I couldn't stop; he held me, and I
sobbed without ceasing for most of the rest of the night. No
sooner had my memories bolted than I at last locked the
door behind them; their odor would forever cling, their
prints still scar the places they'd been.

"How could I do what I've done?" I finally asked. "I
stayed with them. With him. How could I do that-?"

"If you can't say," Lester said, "no one can."

We lay there without speaking for long minutes after that,
watching the room appear around us as dawn approached,
lifting the veil from a new day's darkness.

"Joanna?"

"What?" I said, barely hearing myself.

"Even when people try to do right it so often turns out
wrong. It's in the nature of things," he said. "For the longest
time I wondered why They didn't just end it all and start
over again fresh. This world seems such a lost cause, I didn't
think we deserved another chance. It came to me, after
awhile, how different Their outlook must be, and as I
thought about it I got the perspective you need sometimes. Theirs is greatness, but by its magnitude it must be so
provincial. Who was Leonardo, next to a tree, or Tolstoy
next to a tidal pool? What's Rome, compared to a star?

"In the end I realized that even so, we must be worthiest
of all, to hold our own when judged against such perfection. Why else would They bother? But now, They know the
time's almost here for Them to interfere with us more
directly, even though They know that holds its own peril.
They're shaking the dice of the universe."

"What must the Messiah do?" I asked.

"Think with Their mind, and see with our eyes. Then
everyone involved can understand."

"There couldn't have been any other way to do this?"

"Why is the sky blue and not green?" he asked. "I don't
know, Joanna. I guess not. Sometimes you know, you don't
know, you understand, you can't understand-"

"There's too much now that I know without understanding yet," I said. "This way and no other?"

"I have to be truthful," he said. "I'd've preferred another
way, myself."

"I love you, Lester," I said, not expecting a response; no
longer wishing for one, certainly not hoping for one. He
nodded. "Why must it be so unavoidable?"

"Cain and Abel," he said. "Jesus and Judas, Kennedy and
Oswald, Nazis and Jews. God and Godness. Without the
dark, would the light seem half as bright?"

Did he elaborate this morning?" I asked Lester as we
rode through the Bronx, passing the abandoned stadium,
driving through the Army-guarded courthouse district. The
street was blocked on our left, where a building's facade,
feeling the tug of years, slumped onto the pavement to take
its rest. We sat in the back of the car; Avi sat up front,
considering all we cruised by, seeming deaf to our worlds.
"I hardly saw him. What did he have to say?"

"Not a lot," Lester said. "He thanked me again. I don't
think it was for helping Mrs. Dryden. It was like he was
thanking me in advance for what he thinks I'll do. I tried to
remind him that I had no say in the matter, but all he did
was smile and nod his head."

"Once he conceives his reality everyone's stuck with it," I
said.

"You see Mrs. Dryden before she left?" he asked.

"She avoided me. Didn't look very pleased about anything, but then she never does. She didn't even look at her
newspaper."

"Has she already taken off?"

"Her flight wasn't leaving until late this afternoon."

"You think this's been his plan all along?" Lester asked.
"What he wants me to do?"

"It'd be so unlike him to have a specific goal in mind," I
said. "Do you think They'll have a response to his request?"

"They'll answer, but I don't know how."

"Would They involve Themselves if They didn't have
to?"

"I've never understood Their criteria," he said. "Why
They send church buses off roads into rivers. Why steeples
blow down in windstorms. Why so many saints died young.
Maybe They would. Maybe not."

The streets around us appeared not to have been swept
for years; where windows weren't boarded over, or shuttered closed, they had been broken out, leaving over the
sidewalks an icy frosting of bright broken crystal, a
diamond-paved road. As Brooklyn and Queens were now
part of the no-man's land across the river, and as Staten
Island had seceded years before, the Bronx remained the
only borough other than Manhattan still existing under the
nominal aegis of the government of the City of New York;
yet, the Bronx was to Manhattan as a colony might stand in
relation to its ruling empire: a strategic outpost whose
inhabitants could be easily overlooked, whose defenses
required constant supervision.

"There'd be any number of things They could do, I
suppose-"

"Limitless," he said. "Godness would leave the details to
God. That's where His interest lies, after all."

My father's family were from the Bronx; it was so hard to
imagine anyone living here. My grandparents lived near the Hub, at 149th and Third, until they moved to Co-Op City.
The rot they'd escaped trailed them, but didn't catch up
until they were long gone. What had been the South Bronx
was now nothing other than sweeping acres of brick left to
erode back into the earth from which they had been taken,
a postindustrial compost heap. In the north Bronx, and
along the border, the neighborhoods were indistinguishable from those of southern Westchester, far from Thatcher's
estate: that is to say, decrepit, overcrowded, dangerous and
awaiting a perpetually delayed rediscovery. Army personnel were stationed throughout the Bronx, for no reasons
other than to secure the southeast quadrant against assault
from Long Island, and to protect the homes in Riverdale
which so many officers had commandeered for themselves.
The population had proved so efficient at killing itself off
that assistance from the Army was seen as unnecessary; the
average Bronxite's life, in those days, was twenty-three.
Jensen, a newer immigrant, entered half-life at twentyseven.

"Where is everybody?" Lester asked, seeing along the
Concourse nothing but endless blocks of emptied buildings. I shook my head. Signs were posted upon rusted
window-grates and locked doors, familiar signs seen
throughout the borough, each of standard design, each
bearing the yellow grin and pro forma notification: PROPERTY
OF DRYCO. NO TRESPASSING. "I wouldn't think he'd find this
neighborhood a sound investment."

The farther north we drove, the more people we saw; one
or two per block. "He has plans," I said. "He started buying
it up several months ago. You know the wall downtown,
around the Battery?" Lester nodded. "He foresees the water
rising high enough one day to warrant moving the operations up here, Bernard tells me. He'll tear it all down
eventually. I hesitate to think what he'll build in its
place-"

"Did he make everyone leave?"

"Not everyone," I said. More natives came into view:
remaining residents huddled at street-corners, leaned
against doorways, clung to lampposts as if expecting the
wind to rise and carry them all away. They seemed only
partially real, as if the uncertain conditions under which
they lived caused them, over time, to fade away before they
might be erased. In the lot of an abandoned gas station a
cluster of thin women watched two older men circle around
each other, lifting their arms over their heads, performing
some manner of ghost dance upon the asphalt plain.

"Thatcher believes you can bring Jensen out of his coma,
I'm sure," I said.

"I'd think that if he came out of it Thatcher'd only kill
him when he was done with him. I doubt he'd want to be
reawakened, considering."

We turned onto Gun Hill Road; in those days, an
appropriate name. The hospital buildings rose before us,
appearing as an embassy in a war-torn country. Surrounding streets were secured by countless guards; atop stacks of
sandbags were head-high coils of razor-edged wire. Our
driver edged us past concrete pyramids and stelae erupting
at unpredictable intervals through the road's pavement. At
several checkpoints we were allowed passage, and moved
to the next station. Through our car's insulating walls I grew
conscious of a distant whirring, the sound of a swarm of
locusts.

"Where are we going in?" I asked.

"The emergency room entrance is safest," Avi said,
speaking to us through the intercom. "We had no information at the office as to how we reach the experimental
floor-"

"I thought we ran it."

"That doesn't mean we know anything about it. We'll ask
at the desk once we're inside."

Looking out the window as we rounded one last corner, I
saw the source of the oncoming noise. A covey of Emergency Medical and police helicopters was settling down across
the way in a vacant field smoothed down by repeated
landings. The breeze whipped up by the rotors lifted the
dry soil toward heaven, spinning it into dust devils.

"Stick close," Avi said as we got out of the car, walking
swiftly into the hospital and passing through the emergency room's electronically locked bars. The Bronx's missing
population rose up around us: hundreds were jammed into
the waiting room, crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder along
benches attached to the walls, lying in heaps, on stretchers
or on blankets aligned in haphazard rows upon the floor.
Children's high crescendoes rose in atonal counterpoint
against adults' hushed drones. Hospital staff stepped warily
through the crowds as if over a minefield, handing out
forms, taking temperatures with digital thermometers, giving small cups of water to the overheated, slipping drugs to
those who'd come ready to bribe. Nine television sets, none
working, hung from the ceiling, attached to a grotesque
chandelier; their pulsing screens sedated and soothed those
awaiting who chose to look up.

Avi tugged at an extern's sleeve; the man coughed,
sounding tubercular.

"How do we get to the experimental floor?"

"No English," he said, in that language. The first patients
from the helicopters began coming in. We stepped aside,
allowing the newcomers entry.

"Out of the way," an orderly screamed, pushing a gurney
stacked three deep across the floor. "Nurse! Get 'em ready
back there."

"Yo, yo, watch your back, watch your back-"

"Nurse!"

An unending stream of gurneys carried in the casualties:
young blacks, Latinos, and police, men and women-that
is, those old enough to be called men and women. Those
police still on active service assisted in clearing the way for
their own, kicking aside people lying on the floor that the space they occupied might be used. They swung their clubs
with impunity, surely estimating that it was safe to do so
while medical personnel were so near.

"Avi, get us out of here," I said. "This is dangerous-"

"Legal danger, though," he said. "Stay with me."

A supervising nurse greeted one of the police captains;
together they judged their patients. Orderlies hustled away
each gurney bearing a policeperson, once the captain
ascertained their condition; civilians weren't sped off with
such fervor. The nurse paused at each to await the captain's
word before marking, or not marking, upon each patient's
forehead the mark of solace, the purple X of triage. A young
man whose legs were gone below the knees wailed so
loudly as to drown out all others' screams. The captain
patted his head.