My Soul to Keep (34 page)

Quickly, Jessica shook her head. She stared at the floor.

Alex sighed. “I’m sure you know that if you weren’t my sister,” she said, “I would have been on the phone by now to every researcher I could think of to find out what this is. I would be flying in a team to prepare a study that would set hematology on its tail, from the
AMA Journal
to the
New England Journal of Medicine.
I would be on CNN and the
Today
show. Make no mistake. You understand where I’m going?”

“Alex …”

“I’m not talking about fame, if that’s what you think. And this has nothing to do with journalistic ethics or whatever you were talking about when you gave me this sample. We’re way beyond that. I’m a researcher. It’s my life.

“And do you know what hurts me? There are a lot of folks out there who think researchers have discovered all of the cures for these diseases we have, from AIDS to sickle-cell to you-name-it, but we’re just sitting on top of it because it isn’t politically expedient or financially viable enough, or bullshit like that. I hear that all the time. Especially from us, because of that Tuskegee experiment with syphilis—a bunch of white doctors letting the brothers suffer on even though they had a cure. Let them die, one by one, just to see how syphilis fucks up a human being.

“I’ve worked with patients who would not have died if a treatment using these Supercells had been available. And the minute you put this sample in my hand, you gave me knowledge that could help save lives in ways I haven’t even thought of. This is what I’m talking about. And if I have that knowledge and don’t act on it, then guess what? What all the folks have been saying is true. Except, this time, they’re talking about me.”

A tear ran down Alex’s face, which otherwise was rigid as stone.

Her chest tight, Jessica clutched her own cheeks with her fingers. Now she knew what people meant when they said their breath was stolen away. The implications of her sister’s words were making her world spin again. Jessica wiped away her own tears.

Her voice was faint. “Alex, I know where the blood came from, and it doesn’t matter. Even if I told you, it wouldn’t change anything. It won’t help anybody.”

“Of course it would. Our team could meet with them to learn the process to create these Supercells and multiply them. Or we could help them broaden their research, open it up to testing on human patients. Anything would help, Jessica. If you let me know who’s directing their research, I wouldn’t even tell them where I got the name—”

“Oh, Lord Jesus …” Jessica said, wringing her hands between her knees as she stared at the floor. She was shaking her head.

“Take your time.”

“Alex, it’s David’s blood.”

Alex’s face didn’t change, as though she hadn’t heard. She stared at Jessica, not blinking.

“It’s David’s blood. It’s from his veins. Remember when I told you how his scars heal up? He told me why. He has unusual blood. I found a sample he’d drawn, and … I just wanted to know what was so unusual about it, I guess.”

Without speaking, Alex turned in her chair to stare out the window, where their cars were parked side by side as a uniformed security guard strolled past. Slowly, Alex curled her hand into a fist that was so tight it looked painful.

“I broke my word to my husband by showing you this blood,” Jessica said, “and that’s on my conscience. It always will be, no matter what. But what you’re talking about—the studies and the cameras and the research—he’s been running from that his whole life. That’s why he never told anyone, not even me. If it were me, Alex, I’d do it. I’d give up my freedom and my life and do whatever it took for doctors to poke holes in me and help people. But that’s not our choice to make for him. He’s made it. He wants to live his life.”

“But … how is his blood—”

“All he knows is that he never gets sick.” The half-truths were the best she could do, and Jessica knew she had said too much already. Too, too much. Jesus help her.

Alex folded her hands on top of her desk and rested her cheek there, as though her bones had collapsed. Her red, weary eyes faced Jessica. There was nothing in those eyes. “Okay,” Alex said tonelessly.

“Okay what?”

“Take the blood back. Get rid of it. Take it away.”

It took Jessica a few seconds to absorb what Alex had said. She meant to sweep it away, pretend it never happened.

“You can live with knowing about it, Alex? And that’s all?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said in the same dead voice. “Guess I’ll find out, won’t I?”

Jessica watched Alex pour what blood remained in David’s test tube down the sink, and she washed it away with a powerful stream of water. She gathered her slides together and dropped them into a McDonald’s bag someone had left from lunch. She gave the bag to Jessica, who tossed it into a looming, empty garbage bin in the parking lot as they walked outside.

Jessica saw her sister gazing back at the bin, shoving her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. She wondered if Alex was just in shock, the way Jessica had felt when David told her the truth. Or, maybe she was thinking about all of her empty hours of research ahead, when she would always know she’d had the answer right in her hands. Now, Alex would be a hypocrite. Jessica realized she was going to cause her sister pain that she would never fully understand.

The security guard was reading a paperback in the light of his own car parked at the curb, and Jessica was glad he was nearby. Alex waved at him, and the guard waved back.

“I guess this is why you all are leaving,” Alex said in the van’s window after Jessica closed her door.

“Mostly. Yes,” Jessica said. “He doesn’t feel safe here anymore. The tree episode was a close call for him. If he ever went to a hospital …”

“Last I checked, there were hospitals in Senegal too.” Alex’s eyes glimmered.

“I know. He just needs to live somewhere we aren’t known.”

“I’m not going to lose you, am I? You better not go off without a trace or anything. Please don’t do that.”

Jessica squeezed her sister’s hand. “Oh, no, Alex. Never. You’ll hear from me. You always will.”

Alex smiled at her in the darkness. “I feel like a fool tonight,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because these past two days, staring at those slides, I was here thinking this was something to do with man. All those years of medical school, all that studying, I looked under that microscope tonight and thought I was witnessing the work of man. I should have recognized God’s work right away.”

Jessica nodded. God’s work. That was it exactly.

“Keep God close to him,” Alex said. “One day, when David is ready, he’ll do the work he was born to do. You’re right. It’s not up to me or you to tell him when. But when that time comes, I’ll be ready too.”

Jessica felt wholly relieved at her sister’s levelheadedness. Alex was really something else. Maybe it was right that she’d brought David’s blood to her; now, she wasn’t isolated. She needed her sister’s friendship.

“It’s not an accident I married him, is it?”

“No. Nothing is an accident, little sister,” Alex said. “Not a thing in this world.”

She leaned over into the window, and the sisters hugged for a long time.

Alexis Jacobs felt at peace. Lord knew she deserved it.

The lunacy of the past two days, from her racing heart to her adrenaline rushes, had served their purpose. She didn’t have to spend any more hours mulling, wondering, obsessing. Now, she realized, she could rest her muddled mind for a while. Just relax.

Amazing as it was, she’d somehow put David’s blood out of her mind—at least from a clinical standpoint. She’d have plenty of time to pore over the notes she’d made to reinforce what she’d known all along, that there was hope; there were answers.

Tonight, waiting for the elevator’s slow climb up to her apartment, Alex was thinking about her sister. What was she in for now? She’d been moved to see the glow in Jessica’s face, the way she was embracing a real-life miracle, ready to march with it. If only it weren’t about David, yet again. Miracle blood. David could have two heads and be a charter member of the Ku Klux Klan, and it wouldn’t matter to Jessica. Alex didn’t know why, but Jessica had always been determined to hold on to him no matter what. And Alex had always tried to do her sisterly duty, questioning her at every turn: Didn’t you jump in bed with him too fast? (Hell, seemingly overnight, Jessica had gone from gushing about her first date with him to gushing about how great he was in the sack.) What do you mean he won’t get an AIDS test? (Alex had never forgiven David for that; though now, of course, she could see why he’d refused.) Isn’t twenty-one a little young to be getting married? Hadn’t you planned to wait longer to start having children? Jessica, don’t you think you’ve let yourself get too wrapped up in what he wants?

Jessica had always had an answer, an explanation, an excuse.

It was like Jessica didn’t feel whole without that man. Sometimes, from the way she interrogated Alex about her love life, Alex got the feeling her sister thought being single was some kind of curse. She never seemed to believe her when she said she was just fine, that she liked living alone. How else, except through being alone for a while, could you ever discover who you really are?

But Jessica didn’t get it. And now what? Was David finally going to overshadow her entire life, taking her on some quest to protect his bizarre physiological secrets?

Alex was worried about her sister. But she wouldn’t think about it anymore, not tonight. Tonight, she just wanted to sleep.

Alex expected her two cats, Sula and Zoe, to trip her at the door because she was so late and hadn’t fed them since morning. But when she let herself into her apartment, the cats weren’t in sight. She dropped her briefcase on the black-and-white checkerboard floor and locked her deadbolt.

Her apartment, in an eight-story Art Deco building on South Miami Beach, was furnished entirely in black and white, from the black leather couches to her zebra-pattern beanbag chair. Even Sula’s coloring was black and white, and Zoe was pure black. When Alex’s attorney friend, Kendrick, visited her, he tried to tell her she was psychotic for decorating her apartment to match her cats.

“Sula? Zoe? Mommy’s home, guys,” Alex called, shaking their box of cat food in the kitchen. Still not so much as a hello.

It was nearly one
A.M.
Maybe they’d reported her to the ASPCA and moved to a new home, she mused. Fine with her. She could save some money on kitty litter and cat food.

The light was blinking on the white answering machine on her kitchen counter. She pushed the button to rewind the tape and let it play while she poured food into her cats’ empty dishes.

One message from her mother, of course. Next, Kendrick confirming their plans to see the Alvin Ailey dance company on Sunday. (Was he going to turn into something, with his fine self? Jessica, for one, would be relieved.) The last message, from only fifteen minutes before, was from David Wolde himself. Alex’s heart jumped with renewed fascination; this man’s blood, someday, might lend insights that could change world medicine. Her baby sister’s husband.

“Listen, Alex, it’s after twelve-thirty and I was wondering if it would be too unreasonable to expect my wife back here soon.” He was pissed, not even pretending to be in a good mood. David pampered Jessica to death, but he never cozied up to anyone else. “Perhaps you can resolve whatever this is during the daylight hours?” the voice went on. “It’s late, and this is very disconcerting. I’m debating whether to come search for her—”

Alex pressed the button to erase the messages. Jessica must have made up a hell of a story to get out of the house so late, and Alex knew she wouldn’t help the situation by calling David if she didn’t know the story herself. Jessica would be home soon enough, if she wasn’t by now.

Where were those damn cats? They always hid when she brought strangers to the apartment, but any other time they were all over her as soon as she came home for another precious few minutes. Maybe they were asleep, which was exactly where she needed to be.

But first, she needed to chill out. If not, she’d spend another night staring at the ceiling.

Alex poured herself a glass of white wine from the half-full bottle Kendrick had brought, turned on her black torchere lamp to a dim setting, and put on her new Anita Baker CD. Then she opened the glass sliding door leading to her balcony, which stretched from her living room to another glass door in the bedroom.

The breeze smelled thick and nearly sweet to her, like the ocean coated with sugar. She left the door open behind her and leaned across the iron railing to gaze three blocks east toward the black water. From seven stories up, she could see the fanning leaves of palm trees and the Spanish-style courtyard with a fountain that had seduced her into buying the one-bedroom condominium, even though she still thought it was overpriced. She could watch that gushing fountain, with its green-shaded lighting inside the pool of water, all night long.

No more thinking about David or his blood. Not tonight.

Alex closed her eyes, enjoying her favorite refrain of Anita’s song. She sipped the wine and savored the fine, pure taste. She could smell the ocean, and feel a restless calm, all around.

Alex heard the sharp crack against the back of her head before she felt it, and when she did, the pain was sudden and blunt.

Then, it seemed to be gone. What she felt afterward wasn’t nearly as startling. It was liberating.

She was flying.

She was

“You’re crazy,” Sy said, standing over Jessica’s shoulder at her computer terminal.

“This has to get edited. Am I right? Then let’s get it done,” Jessica said, her eyes locked on the type on the screen. She spoke rapidly, without inflection. “Who was it you asked me to call? I’m not going to get anywhere with the housing people in Washington. The best they’ll say is that they’ll conduct an investigation of the trafficking charges. I’ll add that here.” She pointed between two paragraphs, her finger barely trembling.

Kira was sitting at the desk in front of Jessica’s, flipping through the pages of a coloring book she’d brought. She whirled around in the too-big chair. “Mommy,” she said in a whine thinly disguised as a whisper. “Do you have crayons in your desk?”

“No, sweetheart. Use the red pen Mommy gave you.”

“I used red already. See?”

“I’ll look in a minute, Kira. I’m working.”

Sy leaned over Jessica, his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t do this, kiddo.”

“What do you mean, ‘Don’t do this’? I am doing this. We can finish this in two hours, Sy. It’s running Wednesday.”

“Now we’re leaning toward Sunday. We have time. You have more urgent things to take care of right now. I don’t even know what the hell you’re doing here.”

Irrationally, Jessica felt enraged. “What am I doing? I’m doing my job. That’s what I’m goddamned doing,” she hissed, blinking back unexpected tears. Floodgates. Just waiting.

Her hand fumbled on the keyboard, highlighting a large paragraph in bright green. She gasped. She couldn’t think of what to do. What if she erased it accidentally? What then?

Sy reached over to push the
CANCEL
key. The green went away. The paragraph was fine, untouched. Everything was fine. Fine.

“Where’s David, Jessica?” Sy asked her patiently.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think he’s at home.”

David had mentioned an errand he needed to run home for, something to do with an inspector’s appointment, and he’d left Jessica with her mother and Kira at the hospital. And Randall Gaines was there, too, talking to Bea in a corner. Jessica hadn’t wanted to be there anymore, that was all. So she took Kira’s hand and told Bea she’d be back, and somehow she ended up in the parking lot and spent ten minutes in the sun looking for the minivan until she remembered that it was gone because David had taken it. So, she pulled open the door of a cab and told Kira to get inside, and here she was. Here she was.

Sy spoke softly. “How’s your sister?”

“Fine,” Jessica said, feeling moisture trying to slip from her nose, so she wiped it with her knuckle. “She’s fine. No change. You know. Nothing new.”

“Aunt Alex is sleeping,” Kira said, waving her pen instructively at Sy as she spoke. “She hasn’t waked up yet.”

Sy squeezed Jessica’s shoulder hard before turning to walk away. “You need to go, Jessica. I don’t want to see you here when I get back from my cigarette break. You’ll do more harm than good right now.”

A sob caught in Jessica’s throat. That’s what Peter would have said. Exactly what Peter would have said.

It was all wrong, all wrong, all wrong.

Peter was supposed to be here. And Alex was supposed to be at work at her lab, not taped up and plastered and strapped in a bed in an intensive care unit. She was supposed to be waiting at the other end of her telephone with a smart-ass crack, not breathing into tubes from a machine, in a three-day-old coma. Three eternities. And more likely ahead.

Alex wasn’t supposed to jump from her balcony and try to kill herself. Jessica never would have believed it was a suicide attempt—Alex was so clearheaded, with a heart so full of faith—but the police found a note that Alex had typed to her and Bea on the screen of the computer in her bedroom: first I’m sorry, and then a verse from Ecclesiastes: And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Jessica had memorized her sister’s words, sobbed over them, prayed over them. Those words kept her awake at night. She had brought Alex knowledge and sorrow.

Everything, everything was wrong.

“Mommy, this phone isn’t working,” Kira complained.

“Hang up and dial nine first,” Jessica said, not thinking clearly enough to wonder whom Kira could be trying to call.

A glimpse of beauty inside ugliness is what David had said about Adele; that was how Jessica felt, right now, about Kira. Jessica had dressed Kira meticulously that morning, parting her hair into two short, neat puffs, giving her a shirt with a frilly collar to wear beneath her pink denim overalls and lace-fringed socks to wear with her loafers. Since the news of Alex’s fall, Jessica hadn’t let her daughter out of her sight.

She had done this. She had made this happen. She had lied and stolen and broken a promise, and she made it happen. Alex had been going along just fine, loving her life, and then Jessica had to bring her something, a secret, that made her want to die too soon. And now nothing would ever be right again. Nothing.

You can live with knowing about it, Alex?

Step on a crack. Break your sister’s back.

“Hi, Daddy,” Kira giggled into the telephone handset. “Nope. Guess where. Wrong. One more guess. No,” she said, and laughed. “I’m at Mommy’s work. Coloring my book. Yes. Right next to me. But can I talk to you first? Pleeeeeez? Okay, Daddy. Wait.”

Jessica sighed, pushing the buttons to clear her computer screen. Sy was right. Nothing would improve just because she was hiding away here. It was time to go back to the hospital.

“Mommy … Daddy wants to talk to you,” Kira said.

The telephone cord was too short to reach Jessica, so she stood and sat at the edge of her coworker’s desk to take it. As she did, she rested her hand on top of Kira’s head as though to balance herself.

“Bea has been looking for you for an hour, calling here frantic. What happened, Jess?” David asked her.

“I just had to leave,” Jessica said quietly.

“All right, darling. I know how hard this has been, but stay there and let me take you back to Jackson. There was some news a short while ago.”

“News?” Jessica asked, nearly whimpering, expecting grief.

“Alex opened her eyes. She’s done it twice.”

Overwhelmed with joy, Jessica sobbed. She couldn’t speak.

“I’m on my way to you. Wait downstairs with Kira, mi vida.”

Jessica mumbled something and hung up. A few coworkers were gazing at her from across the room, feeling too awkward to approach her. She understood. Hardship had no friends. It was a solitary task.

Kira was rubbing Jessica’s elbow, gazing up at her with wide brown eyes. “Mommy, don’t be sad,” she said. “You’re always sad. Please don’t be sad.”

Jessica sobbed again, wrapping her arm around her daughter. Oh, this child. She’d been so blessed to have this child.

“I’m not sad, Kira,” she said into her ear. “How could I have a little girl as precious as you and be sad? I’m crying because I’m happy. People cry when they’re happy too.”

At that, Kira smiled. She found a napkin on the desk and wiped it across the tears watering her mother’s face.

While Randall Gaines took Kira to the gift shop to look at a big white teddy bear that had caught her eye, Dr. Ivan Guerra led the family to the hall just outside of the ICU waiting area. Jessica could hear the television set playing a rerun of Roseanne as the physician fixed a hopeful expression on his young, mocha-complexioned face. He was the same doctor who had tended Uncle Billy, and the sight of him made Jessica fearful of unthinkable news. He must think their family was horribly accident-prone.

“I’m concerned about overwhelming her,” Dr. Guerra cautioned, “so I want to limit her visitors to two right now.”

David rested one hand on Jessica’s shoulder, one hand on Bea’s. “You two go,” he said. “I’ll go catch up to Kira.”

Jessica had visited her sister’s bedside all weekend, but she was always stunned by the sight of her. She did not look like Alex at all. Jessica didn’t know if it was from medication or injuries, but her body looked swollen the way Uncle Billy’s had. Her face, especially, was like a stranger’s, round and fat. The rest of her was dwarfed by the beeping machines and devices hooked into her flesh, her nose, her invaded bronchial passage.

Alex’s nose and jaw had been broken in her fall. She’d broken many other bones, including parts of her back—but somehow. when Jessica gazed at Alex’s face, it was her sister’s broken nose and jaw that most pierced her heart. With her bandages and swelling, she looked as though she had been severely beaten. The awful sight made Jessica ask herself: Who did this to you?

But Alex had done it to herself. Seven stories down. Her fall had been broken by a tall coconut palm and the thick clump of gardenia bushes near the courtyard’s fountain, where she landed. If she’d fallen closer to that fountain, the police told Bea, she’d be dead for sure. Solid concrete all around. Somebody’s watching over this lady, he said.

Bea clasped Alex’s hand first, leaning over her. “Pumpkin …” she said, nearly whispering, “I don’t know why it is that everybody in the family has to fall out of a tree this year.”

Alex’s eyes fluttered open, nearly startling them. She gazed at them with her eyelids half shut. Jessica laughed, excited, clutching her mother’s shoulders. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Thank you.

“Honey,” Bea went on, “you’re going to be just fine.”

Alex didn’t move, but a snake of tears crept down the side of her face. With the edge of Alex’s pillowcase, Bea wiped Alex’s face; miraculously, Bea herself was not crying. “I know. I know, Pumpkin. You’re scared. Anybody would be. But Dr. Guerra just told us some very good things about you. So you just leave it all in God’s hands, and don’t you worry about a thing.”

Alex’s lips moved, as though she wanted to speak, but Jessica and Bea both hushed her.

“You just rest,” Bea said.

“The doctor said not to talk, Alex.”

Alex worked her dry lips around, giving Jessica a glimpse of the thin metal wires holding her jaw in place. Again, she felt a gripping surge of anger. Was it Alex she was so furious with? Or only herself?

“We know you love us, Pumpkin,” Bea said, as though they were holding a conversation. “And we know you’re sorry for causing us worry. Just put that out of your head. Don’t even think like that. We just thank the Lord you’re still here with us, and the rest of it doesn’t even matter. Want to see Jessica now?”

After drying her own face, Jessica took her mother’s place and clasped Alex’s hand, careful not to disturb her IV tube. Alex squeezed her fingers with surprising strength, and Jessica smiled.

“It’s okay, Alexis,” she said. She wished she could speak to her privately, just for a moment.

Was she upset about anything in particular? the police asked when Alex was first brought in. Yes, Jessica had said, dazed. She’d just asked me to come to her office to talk to her. Did you expect her to try something like this? No, Jessica said, her face afire with guilt. Never. She didn’t understand. Yes, Alex must have been disappointed about the real origin of the blood, feeling as though something that she’d worked so hard to find was wrested away.

But suicide? She thought she knew her better than that.

Jessica leaned over the bed, estimating where Alex’s ear would be behind the thick bandage wrapped around her skull. “We’ll make it okay,” she whispered. “There’s a better way than what you did. We’ll find a way, Alex. Both of us. Together.”

Confusing sounds issued from Alex’s mouth: a whisper, a grunt. “Sun … won … put … me …” The words sounded nonsensical.

“You can tell me later, okay? I can’t understand,” Jessica told her tenderly, stroking her fingers. “Don’t talk now.”

“Putch … me …” Alex’s breathing was labored.

“What’s she saying?” Bea asked.

“I don’t know,” Jessica told her mother, frustrated. Alex sounded like she was delirious, or maybe Jessica couldn’t understand her sister’s words because of the wires and tubes.

“Does she want to write it down?”

Jessica glanced back at Alex’s face. Her sister’s eyes were closed, though her breathing hadn’t changed. She must be so weak. “You okay, honey?” Jessica asked her.

Alex squeezed her fingers in response, more feebly this time, her eyes still closed.

“We better leave her alone,” Bea said. “We’re not going far, Alexis. All right? We’ll let you rest, but we’ll be right here.”

Very faintly, Alex smiled. No one but kin would have seen it.

There was no talking Bea into leaving the hospital, even though they’d tried ever since Alex was admitted in the predawn hours on Saturday. One of Alex’s friends, a sister who was a resident at Jackson, had found a reclining chair and moved it into Alex’s room while Dr. Guerra turned a blind eye, so Bea even had a decent place to sleep.

“You all go. Just go,” Bea instructed Jessica, David, and Randall Gaines in the waiting room. She didn’t look like a woman whose daughter was critically injured, barely out of a coma after a suicide attempt. Her hair was combed, her lipstick fresh. She was in control. Jessica couldn’t remember much control at all in the awful days after her father had died. But, then again, maybe that was where Bea had learned it. Sorrows lining her pockets.

“Get some sleep, Mom,” Jessica said, hugging her.

“You too, baby. You look like someone punched you under your eyes. David isn’t beating on you, is he?”

“Oh, stop,” Jessica said, laughing despite herself.

No, David wasn’t beating her. Far from it. He was saving her. If Kira was the beauty in her life, David was the anchor.

She felt so much guilt. For stealing the blood. For showing it to Alex. And now, she felt guilty for the fight she started with David just before the telephone rang at two
A.M
.—the call she’d always known would come, somehow—when Bea was screaming that Alex had fallen from her balcony.

The night had been cursed. When Jessica came home after her meeting with Alex, she met David standing on the front porch with the car keys in his hand.