Miracle (9 page)

“I can do card tricks, and juggle, and make balloon animals. Pop taught me how, so I could help him at kiddie parties.” Inspired by his attention, she flipped the token and caught it on the tip of one finger. “It’s easy stuff.”

“I can’t imagine such skill coming
easily
. Teach me.” He leaned forward eagerly and held out his hand.

Amy placed the token on his fingers and then, cupping his hand in both of hers, showed him how to maneuver it. He bent his head close to hers and she thought her heart would stop. Dazed, she knew only that touching him created an obsession to touch him all over.

They sat there for nearly an hour, their conversation low and private and laced with laughter, the tokens becoming graceful in his hands as she showed him how to make them obey. Pop came back from lunch and stared at them approvingly, then went into his rat-juggler voice and told her, “Come along, luv, n’ leave the young lord to his business.”

Dr. de Savin became brusque and reserved again. “You haven’t eaten yet,” he noted, gazing at her untouched food.

“Neither have you. Here. Take mine. I’m not hungry.”

“No. I have to get back to Atlanta. I’m on duty at the hospital tonight. I told the people I’m with that I’d meet them at the gate after lunch.” He stood and held out a hand. Amy took it, and he helped her to her feet.

“Anytime you want help with your magic tricks, you can find me at the winery,” she said, trying not to sound too desperate. “Here. Take this video token so that you can practice.” She brought it to her lips with a flourish and kissed it. “I give it my magic blessing. It won’t let you down.”

He took the token solemnly. “Thank you.”

She looked into his eyes and forgot shyness. For the first time she studied them long enough to know that they were golden brown with black rims. The brows over them were dramatic wings. His eyes were very private, but startling in the depth of emotion they could express. Right now they were somber, almost sad. He stepped closer to her and murmured, “You have a way of making a person feel happy. It’s a very great talent, and one that you should cherish.
Adieu.
”

Amy watched him leave.
I love you
, she thought with the deep, perfect conviction of a lost soul who had finally found the way home.

S
ebastien thought about Amy Miracle often over the next few days, remembering her charm when she performed with her father and growing increasingly suspicious that her father was responsible for draining every bit of her self-confidence. The girl’s natural ability as a performer was obvious; her appealing, comical voice and gamine face could make a stone wall laugh.

After his rounds one day Sebastien took the token she had given him—he had tucked it in a compartment of his wallet like a good luck piece—and returned to Tom’s cubicle. Propped up on pillows and surrounded by medical equipment, the boy looked forlorn. But his eyes widened with curiosity when Sebastien pulled a chair to his bedside and sat down. “More stories?” Tom whispered eagerly.

“Look.” Sebastien held the video token in front of him, passed a hand over it, then presented both hands to Tom to show that the token had disappeared. “Magic.”

“Neat!”

“I learned this trick from a girl who plays with rats,” Sebastien told him solemnly.

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Such language! I think we’ll have to give you a new tongue as well as a new heart.”

Tom giggled a little, the sound barely audible. “Tell me what she did with rats.”

Sebastien described last Saturday’s events in great detail,
and as he did he again felt the peacefulness that had fallen over him as he sat with the girl. He could easily recall the gentleness of her hands on his as she guided the tokens between his fingers, her head so close to his that her hair had brushed his cheek. He could hear her voice as she relaxed and it became husky, with a pleasing and sultry tone to it.

He told himself that his fascination with her was merely vanity; when she looked at him he saw the yearning in her eyes. He told himself that he would like to indulge her yearning out of pure masculine lust.

He talked to Tom until the boy fell asleep, glanced through the cubicle’s glass wall to the nurses’ station beyond, and when no one was looking he held the boy’s thin, unfurled hand for a moment. He left the token in it, the same token Amy Miracle had given him.

Sebastien was the son of a woman who had prayed to the Catholic saints but had kept a keen eye tuned to the more ancient reassurance of her Celtic heritage. Mysterious forces worked in her world, swirling around people and changing their lives. He honored her memory by choosing to believe that he had given Tom a bit of Amy Miracle’s magic.

Amy knew there was trouble when she got home from work one afternoon and Pop was wide-awake, waiting for her in the kitchen. She was tired and covered in the fine red dust of the vineyard. Laying her sweat-stained straw hat on the kitchen table, she waited nervously. Maisie stood in the corner, her back against her homemade ceramic chickens on the wall. Pop slumped at the kitchen table, one hand clenched and the other wrapped around a can of beer.

“Charley came by,” he said slowly.

Amy stiffened. “I guess he told you.”

“That you’re not gonna see him anymore.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“You think you’re gonna live off me the rest of your life?”

“No. I’ll get a job over in Athens. And I’ll find someplace to live there.”

Pop lifted his hand from the beer, made a fist, and flattened the can with one violent smash. Foam spewed in all directions. “What the hell kind of job can you do? You only open your mouth when somebody forces you to. You’re so damned lazy—”

“I had a paper route from the time I was eight till last year. I’ve been a baby-sitter more nights and weekends than not since I was old enough to get the jobs. I’ve found summer work ever since I turned fifteen. I do everything you tell me to do around here. That’s lazy?”

“You think any of that counts for shit? You gonna pay your bills over in Athens with that kind of work?”

“I’ll find jobs. I’ll work twenty hours a day if I have to.”

“You’ll end up broke and begging me for help! I won’t be responsible for you! To hell with it! You get your ass over to Charley’s tonight and make things right!”

Amy began to tremble. “No.”

He leapt to his feet. Veins stood out in his neck. Maisie clasped her chest. “Do it, Amy, please!”

Gripping the edge of a counter for support, Amy shook her head. “No.”

Pop’s face contorted with a fury she’d never seen before, because she’d never had the nerve to back-talk him before. “You’re outta here! You’re out today!”

“Please, Zack, don’t do this,” Maisie whimpered.

“You promised that I’d have a year after I turned eighteen,” Amy reminded him, horrified.

“I didn’t think you were gonna go piss-head crazy on me! What’s happened to you? Get out on your own and see how you like it! You’ve got a little money in the bank! Go live on it!”

“You promised!”

Pop hurried out of the kitchen, hunched in a way that said his back hurt. The cramped posture made him move with apelike menace. “Out! Out! I’ll show you!”

Amy and Maisie ran after him. Maisie made a keening sound of fear as Zack lurched into the living room and snatched his revolver from the coffee table. He entered
Amy’s bedroom. She clutched the door frame behind him, ignoring Maisie’s garbled pleas to come away.

“Leave my stuff alone! I’ll pack it myself! Don’t touch my stuff!”

Her father waved the revolver. “You got nothin’! It’s in my house—it belongs to
me
. I’ll show you what the real world’s like!”

He pointed the steel-blue pistol at a wall covered in movie posters and fired. The crisp explosions deafened Amy; their sound waves pushed terror through her skin. Maisie screamed.

When the revolver was empty Zack slung it into a corner and began clawing the wall with his fingers. Amy wailed in despair. “No, Pop!” She tried to get in front of him, like a mother hen protecting her chicks.

He shoved her aside. “Take this trash with you!” He grabbed at the dog-eared movie posters she’d bought for a dollar each at flea markets, recreations of classic Three Stooges ads, Mae West, the old film comedies, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in
Bringing Up Baby
.

Amy’s vision clouded with fury. He was violating her sanctuary, when she had asked only for a chance, for respect. She screamed at him until her throat ached, while he threw open her closet door and dumped clothes into the center of the room. Without thinking she grabbed a fly swatter from the window ledge. She brought it down on his shoulder.

He made a bellowing sound of disbelief. Maisie shrieked from the doorway when he turned and swung one fist. It glanced off of Amy’s cheekbone, sending her sprawling across the bed. Shock obscured the pain as she stared up at her father. It was the last insult. Despite all his moods, he’d never hit her before. “I hate you! I’ve always hated you!”

“I hate you, too! Get out of my house! Out!” Breathing heavily, he pushed her cheap stereo off its makeshift stand. Then he jerked the bedspread from under her and slung it to the floor. With one swipe of his arm he cleared her dresser onto the spread. The tiny television set bounced on the floor with an ominous cracking sound.

Crying, Amy scrambled off the bed and hit him again with the fly swatter. The next thing she saw was his hand slapping forward with the dresser mirror poised like a Ping-Pong paddle. Then the mirror crashed upward on her chin, and she felt the sharp slice of glass. The mirror shattered and Amy’s jaw clicked together with a force that sent explosions of light through her vision.

She staggered back and dimly heard Maisie screaming at Pop to stop before he killed her. “All right, all right,” he shouted, but there was a note of fear in it. “I didn’t mean to hurt her!” Then Maisie dragged him from the room, and the next sound Amy heard was the door slamming.

Her legs collapsed and she sank to her knees on the floor. She stared at nothing for a few seconds, but when her head cleared she rose and numbly packed a knapsack with all it would hold. She took a towel from the bathroom, because blood was streaming down her neck. Her face throbbed all over. She sat on the windowsill and made herself breathe slowly until she stopped feeling sick to her stomach. Then she hitched the knapsack over her shoulders and climbed out the open window.

Sebastien was cramming every bit of activity into his last two weeks at the hospital. At four
A.M
. he had wakened without an alarm and read medical journals in bed, with a percolator of coffee on the stark, black-lacquered nightstand and a dish of warm apple tarts on his lap.

By five he was outside in nothing but his running shoes and blue jogging shorts, his long, purposeful strides taking him past the giant magnolias and perfect lawns of other townhouses, the most exclusive ones in surburan Atlanta. At 5:45 he stopped at the ivy-covered building that housed the complex’s spa-quality gym.

There he allowed himself one reckless indulgence. He taped his hands, donned boxing gloves, and spent the next thirty minutes pummeling a weighted bag. It was dangerous to risk his hands, but he was careful. If medicine was his wife, then boxing was surely his mistress, and he loved both. In his teens he had won a few amateur titles, and had
even talked about entering the ring as a professional, much to his father’s disgust.