Heathern (26 page)

"Nothing-"

"Your sister saw, Lester. What did she see?"

"I don't know-"

"You do," Bernard said.

"Nothing, nothing, nothing-"

"Tell me-!"

"No!"

The second of the two mannequins was on the far side of
the room, near Avi; without words of his own he pulled a
shotgun which had been circumcised at each end from
beneath his coat and, taking his cue, fired both barrels. The concussion tore at our ears; as I heard the sound I watched
the torso disintegrate into uncountable splinters, blackening the walls when they embedded themselves into the
pallor. Lester curled himself against his sister-mannequin's
wheels and screamed long and loud. Thatcher let his hand
slip from my mouth in his moment of being overcome by
the drama; I sank my teeth into the webbing between his
thumb and forefinger.

"Goddamn you," I said; before I could move more than a
foot away from Thatcher, after he released me, I found Jake
at my side, slipping one of his hands into mine, placing the
tip of his scalpel at the juncture of my jaw and neck.

"Please, Joanna," he said. "Don't."

"Jake," Thatcher said. "Just keep her back."

"Are we quite finished?" Bernard asked, turning away
from his microphone. Thatcher wrapped his handkerchief
around his injured hand; I hadn't drawn blood.

"Keep her quiet, Jake," Thatcher said. I thought I heard a
knock at the room's door; no one else gave signs of having
noticed. Bernard tapped the mike with. a finger to make
certain the equipment hadn't been damaged by the concussion. The music changed; Tallis's forty-part motet spilled its
waterfall of voices over us. I watched Avi reload.

"Here comes a chopper to chop off your head," Bernard
said, deepening his voice from its natural low baritone into
one suitable for a cartoon wolf. "What's the matter, Lester?"

"Please stop-" he said.

"You both hear footsteps again," said Bernard. "Not your
father's footsteps. Whose are they? What does your sister
do?"

"Makes me hide. In the pantry." Unexpectedly, seeming
as a fish cast from water onto land, he began rolling across
the floor, coming to rest against the wall opposite from Avi;
between them, not three feet from where he lay, was his
sister-mannequin. "She stands in the door. In front of me."

"You see her white sweater. The footsteps come closer.
You hear them stop. What does your sister say?"

Lester stared up at the mannequin, his eyes as bright with
fear as any animal's.

"Thatcher," Bernard said; caught himself. "Lester! What
does she say?"

"Stop it," I repeated, attempting to demand, rather than
plead; plead I would have done had I thought the response
would have been any different. The rap came again at the
door. Jake pressed his scalpel against my neck enough that I
might know its coldness. "You've done enough to him.
Stop it-"

"Answer me," Bernard said, his smile reflecting the shine
of the room's constant light.

Thatcher lifted a finger of his unharmed hand to his lips.
"Hon," he said, winking at me, "you might learn something if you pay attention."

"Lester!" Bernard shouted, and Lester's reaction was to
flatten himself into his wall as if wishing it might swallow
him up. Avi took aim. "What does she ask your mother?
What does she ask?"

'Why?"

A hail of papier-mache rained upon Lester, surrounded
him within a cloud of plaster-dust. As he screamed he
began banging his head against the wall as if trying to
smash himself into nonexistence. I slung out my arm,
pushing Jake to the floor, and ran to the glass; pounded my
fists against its thickness, would surely have broken
through had not the doctors and Thatcher and Jake dragged
me away, pulling me across the floor, struggling to take me
from the room. As he gripped my arms, Thatcher whispered
into my ear as if to pass words of love.

"It might be dangerous, interrupting them," he said.

As I heard the music again I remembered the angels I'd
been shown.

Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te, Deus Israel

I have never put my hope in any other than you, God of Israel

"Your sister's sweater now matches the walls," Bernard
said. "Is this any way for a messiah to act, Lester?" Again,
Bernard set aside his mike, and spun round in his chair to
face us. "Would you please keep it down back there?"

I tried breaking free again; Jake restrained himself, as if in
these circumstances he found it impossible to bring the
usual end to the confusion. When Thatcher and the doctors
got me into the hall we collided with the policeman who'd
been knocking at the door.

"Mister Dryden, sir," he said, handing Thatcher a thin
sheet of white paper with stripped-away edges. "Emergency, sir. For your attention."

"Your mother sees you, Lester," I heard Bernard say.

"Teletype?" Thatcher muttered to himself, glancing over
the paper. "Who'd send anything by-" Allowing the sheet
to flutter slowly to the floor he turned on his heels; opened
the door that led to the staging area, and went in. Plucking
the paper from the air before it landed, I read; realized at
once why he'd left. I knew what he intended to do, and
couldn't stop him.

"Do you see her?" Bernard said.

FLASH GET OFF NXR

NXR 57E-LA #*($894 FLAH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLA
EARTHQUAKE 9.1 RICTER STRUCK S C ALIF EPICENT
LAX22993((((((

GET OFF GET OFF AND STAY OFF
MORE MORE MORE STRUCK 5 30 PST PLS RPT PLS RPT MORE
THOUSANSDEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Entering the room I saw Thatcher twisting the shotgun
out of Avi's hands. Lester crouched near the mannequins' wheels, tracing his fingertips through the powder and
crumbs on the floor. There was a dent in the wall; his hair
appeared coated with reddening snow. For the first time he
looked so old as he was.

"What are you doing, That-" Bernard began to say. I
was reminded of classical scenes of apotheosis when
Thatcher fired the gun. Lester flew upward into the air, his
arms and legs free of gravity if not inertia; neither seraphim
encircled him, nor did cherubim sail round his head; the
white sky against which he ascended misted over in a fine
red shower. As if in the approach of a tornado pain pressed
into my ears; when the sound resounded it came as
thunder, deep within the midst of the gale. A thousand
bells rang through my head as the noise decayed. Lester
descended, thrown from heaven; a babe pitching earthward, end over end. Once he landed I ran to him, hearing
nothing but chimes a-buzzing in my brain; I knelt, soaking
my clothes in his blood, knowing I could not close the
wound in his side. There was nothing to be done that hadn't
ensured that it would be done.

"You idiot," Bernard screamed. "Thatcher, you fool. What
are you doing-"

"You killed her," he bellowed, so consumed by anger he
didn't notice Avi yanking the gun away, slinging it across
the floor, far from his reach. "Saves her one day, kills her
the next. Fucking lying sonofabitch-"

"Thatcher-!"

"She's dead, she's dead, I know she's dead-"

"What's he talking about?" Bernard asked. "Thatcher,
you idiot-"

Jake entered the room, stopping when he saw blood. Avi
steered Thatcher away, holding his arms as he led him out.
"You and your fucking God!" he shouted. "I know she's
dead. What'll I do-"

"The treatment shouldn't involve the death of the subject," Frank said, his voice calm, what I heard of it; sensed, rather than truly heard. The music played; I found Lester's
pulse.

"What'll I do, what-"

"You idiot. You--

"Japan," Thatcher shouted to anyone listening. "I said
Japan-"

Lester's eyes opened as I held him; his lips moved,
issuing no words that I could understand. Fearful that my
moment's deafness would keep me from hearing what was
left to say, I lowered my dead ear until it rested against his
lips; heard nothing. Bringing up my arm I readied myself to
place my hand over his reopened scar; lifting his own hand,
he pushed mine away. Blood came with his words when he
finally spoke, and I finally heard.

"Please," he said. "Momma."

"Joanna," Jake said, standing behind us, his voice clear
and deep. "Endtime, Joanna. Never need to suffer overlong."

Endtime, yes. Not releasing Lester's hand, scooting out of
Jake's way, I nodded, knowing that the spirit, and not the
act, mattered, and so gave my blessing to the euthanasia
Gus had taught Jake so well. Avi, returning, crossed over to
our tableau. My hand was wet with Lester; I thought there
could be nothing left in him but his spirit.

"Shema Yisroel," Avi began, in his father's tongue, and
as he prayed, I added my parents' voice to his psalm.

"Hear us 0 Lord," I said, "the Lord thy God is one God."

One in act, in form, if not in spirit: God, Godness, if the
act is despicable, how might the spirit save? Jake extended
his pinky; its blade shone in the pitiless light. Reaching
around Lester's head, he found the spot he sought; then,
when Lester left, I felt such heat rise through me. Shortly I
thought I should at last combust, and know my flames grow
hotter and brighter, until in my incandescence I would burn
down the world around me and all who lived in its fire.

"Joanna," Avi said. "Let's go."

Their hands hold the sun, but never burn; Their eyes stare
into the fire, but never melt. Their plans proceed as They
desire, and not as we would wish them to proceed; neither
can Their actions be judged as we would judge our own,
nor can They undo what must be done. There was no more
reason for Them to answer than there was for us to ask.
Take such comfort, then, as can be taken, knowing that
those who are gone can never know how much you miss
them; Their most difficult lesson is that only by living
briefly with others will you at last learn how to live with
yourself. They were Two who once were One and would be
One again, once the day came. But that day, I knew it was
time to go; I had mouths to feed.

One day a woman told her daughter a story. "Once I
was walking down the avenue and I saw myself coming
toward me."

"How is that possible?" her daughter asked.

"Spirits break through from the world of confusion
sometimes," she said. "Before she could say anything to me
I walked up to her and told her, 'You don't belong here, you.
Begone!' She disappeared like fog in the night."

The notion of such comminglings disturbed her daughter. "How do you know you didn't send her out of the world
of confusion?"

"Angel," she said, "once you know there is a world of
confusion you're no longer in it."

Susie's body deplaned the next morning and, walking on
its feet, strolled calmly back to her car; the scientists arrived that afternoon, under separate cover. Her plane prepared to
land at the moment the earthquake struck, shaking the
field, rocking the control tower; the pilot turned the plane
around, that they might reach more solid ground, and so
they landed in Salt Lake City. Thatcher was pleased.

No one claimed Lester's body and so he was buried on
Hart Island, in the potter's field, on Monday morning.
There was no service, not that he would have desired
eulogies, nor even wanted me to attend; there would have
been no point. As he was laid to rest I was meeting Bernard
in a coffee shop on Cedar Street, safely anonymous, alone
in the world.

"Look at it this way, sweetness," he said. "Even if he'd
been the messiah it would have come to this eventually."

"Tell me what's been going on, Bernard," I said. "After
much longer you won't be able."

"Taking more of an interest in your work?" he asked,
appearing not entirely pleased. "I'd have never guessed you
cared."

"Lying comes to naturally to you now," I explained. "I'd
appreciate it if I knew you respected me enough to tell me
the truth, one more time. Like you once did."

His coffee's waves broke over the rim of his cup as he
lifted it to his mouth. "Ours is a world of artifice, after all,"
he said. "Mirrors and smoke and mirrors. The question isn't
so much what sort of reality can be made, but how much of
any reality can anyone deal with, I think. Perhaps we
should have asked your boy if you become a saint when
nothing surprises you anymore."

"You don't," I said. "Were those papers Avi found
forgeries?"

"He did confess to having been approached-"

"Lester always had his reasons for doing things," I said.
"When did you have them slipped up there?"

"Thanksgiving morning," he said. "The Irish boy that
worked for us last summer, I had him run them up."

"What's real and what's not, Bernard?" I asked. "You
even keep Thatcher in the dark about it, don't you?"

"Wouldn't you say it's his element?" he sighed. "You'll be
dealing with this soon enough, I suppose. Once I begin
programming that damned computer I won't have time to
turn around. Bear in mind, though, that particular aspects
of this situation can be told to no one beyond this table," he
said, looking around; in those days a place such as the one
in which we sat was still, usually, safe. "Those who break
silence so often wind up broken. You know me too well to
know that isn't one of my threats."