Nora Jane (44 page)

Now, with Freddy’s illness, she found she needed company constantly. Even with the children all around her, she wanted other
people in the house. She stayed at the hospital as much as Freddy would let her stay there, but it bothered him if she stayed
all the time. “This isn’t Schweitzer’s hospital in Africa,” he kept telling her. “We don’t need the family moving into the
tent. Go on home and call me every hour. There’s nothing to do here but worry about catching something. I’m more worried about
staph infections than I am leukemia. They’re fixing it, N.J. It just takes time.”

Father Donovan and Mitzi were frequent guests at Nora Jane’s, and Stella came by with Scarlett when she had a few minutes.
It consoled Nora Jane to talk to Stella, since Stella used the Latinate names of the drugs and acted like she understood what
was going on. Father Donovan and Mitzi were helping Nora Jane as an antidote to the thing that was going on between them that
neither of them had any intention of stopping. Also, it gave them a place to be together.

“I have ended up alone all my life,” Nora Jane told them one night. “I do not think I could take care of the children without
him. I can’t live without him now that I have had him here so long. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to wait and
see what happens.”

“He isn’t going to die,” Mitzi said. “He isn’t the type to die. They’ll find a bone marrow donor and he’ll get better.”

“They might not find one.”

“Then they’ll do the stem cell thing.” Father Donovan went near to her and took her arm. “You must be strong, Nora Jane. You
have no choice because of the children.”

“I’m trying,” she answered. “I am trying as hard as I can.”

Three weeks went by and it was the twelfth day of December in the year of our Lord two thousand and three. Because it was
Friday, Tammili and Lydia had rode their bicycles to school. Little Freddy was mad because he was too young to ride his, so
he sulked in the back of his grandmother’s limousine and only stopped sulking when Big Judy’s girlfriend, Lenora, started
talking about her psychic.

“It doesn’t hurt to let her try,” Lenora said. “She told me the spirits are with her so much now they talk to her all the
time, trying to get out their messages to the right people.”

“Witch talk,” Big Judy replied. “The last thing we need now is some dead people in on this. Freddy’s not going to die, Leeno.
Don’t go telling a psychic our names. I don’t want her knowing anything about me and I can tell you right now if Mrs. Harwood
found out you were telling her business to some fortune-teller she’d never hire you to work at another party.”

“It doesn’t hurt to let spiritual people see what they can do. I didn’t tell her anyone’s names yet. I just asked her if there
was any way she could make some gris-gris to help us out.”

“You ought to quit going out every night and seeing all those good-for-nothing people that hang out in the bars. It’s starting
to make you look old, you know that.”

Little Freddy had loosened his seat belt and was almost in the front seat now. He was fascinated by Big Judy’s friend Lenora
and always loved it when she came along to take him to school. In the first place she had beads braided into her hair and
in the second place Big Judy argued with her and that was fun to hear. It took thirty minutes to get from the Harwoods’ house
to Little Freddy’s school and it was usually pretty boring, but when Lenora came along something always started up.

“You just promise me right now that you won’t talk anymore to this psychic about any of my business or the Harwoods’ business,”
Big Judy was saying. “You just give me your promise, Leeno, or we’re finished.”

“I was only trying to help. I want to do something to help. I can’t help wanting to help.” She sat up and looked straight
ahead.

“Yeah,” Little Freddy put in. “She just wants to help Daddy get well so he won’t have to stay in the hospital. We’re tired
of him being there. It’s no fun when he’s gone.”

“Look at what you did now,” Big Judy said. “I’ll be damned, Leeno. He’s going to tell them.”

“No, I won’t. I won’t tell them anything you said.”

“All I did was tell this very nice lady who is able to talk to spirits that I wanted her to be praying for your daddy to get
out of that hospital soon,” Lenora said. “There is more to life than a lot of people think there is. There are certain people
that can find out things the rest of us can’t, and all I was trying to do was to help.”

“What is ‘gris-gris’?” Little Freddy asked. “Like you said maybe she could get some gris-gris.”

Big Judy stopped the car in the parking lot behind the school and turned around in the seat to talk to Little Freddy.

“Don’t go telling this to your momma, honey. We got to be careful what we say to all of them while your daddy’s sick. Leeno
is not going to have any more truck with that lady she was talking about, and gris-gris is what some dumb people call luck.
It’s like when people tell you a fairy is going to come get your old teeth out from underneath your pillow and put some money
there. It’s just a bunch of superstition from a long time ago when people didn’t know anything and had to make stuff up.”

“Yeah,” Little Freddy said. “I know all about that. Nieman got me a book about superstitions and how magic used to be science
before they had the labs at Berkeley. And the scanning electron microscopes or the telescopes at Mount Palomar.”

“That was the easy part and now we’re going to start the hard part.” Freddy was lying in the hospital bed with Nora Jane beside
him. She had on a cap and gown and mask and gloves but she was still able to touch him. In another day she would not be able
to come into the room.

“I’m not going to come in after they start the new drug. I talked to Stella about it. She said isolation means isolation and
that Nieman was fixing a phone you can use by remote control.”

“If Danen lets me have it. They took my cell away because they can’t sterilize it. Can we talk about something else? Tell
me what’s going on at the store.”

“Christmas sales. Francis said they were doing better than they did last year.”

“What else is happening?” He pulled her closer to him but not so close that she would know how scared he was. He was trying
very hard not to let her know that he was scared.

“Big Judy’s girlfriend went to a psychic to see if she could get some gris-gris for you. What else? Mitzi has a crush on Father
Donovan. He brought her over one night because he was leaving St. Anthony’s the same time she was starting over to cut the
girls’ hair. She’s praying for you every morning now.” She started giggling. “Oh yeah, Nieman’s writing a song to the tune
of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ about everything everyone’s doing to help you get well. ‘Five golden rings,’” she sang.
“One nun praying, three rabbis too.”

“How about a bone marrow donor. A perfect one.”

“We’ll find one,” Nora Jane said. “I know they’ll find one.”

Then Nora Jane was gone and Freddy was left alone to examine the room, wish he had his cell phone back, and generally begin
to slump into a decidedly pessimistic mood. In another day the room would become a real isolation ward, a prison. I will become
Rilke’s panther, Freddy decided. No phone, no books, thank God for the poetry I memorized with my fantastic memory, which
these drugs, God knows, may be scouring clean for all I know. How does it begin?

THE PANTHER

IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES, PARIS

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

Freddy remembered the whole poem and that made him feel better. He lifted his eyes and looked toward the large window to the
hall. Outside it stood his brother.

Stuart waved and opened his hands as if to ask a question.

“Come in!” Freddy yelled. “My God,” he said, when Stuart was in the door. “You didn’t fly all the way here for this, did you?
Tell me she didn’t make you do that.”

“She doesn’t even know I’m coming. I wanted to be here. I talked to Danen a few days ago. It sounds pretty good, Freddy. They
seem to know what they’re doing. How are you feeling? How are you holding up?” He came nearer to the bed. He looked good.
Older, thinner, but still outrageously healthy and strong. “May I sit down?”

“Sure. I’m glad to see you. You better call her and tell her you’re here. She’ll go crazy if she finds out from someone else.
I tried that with this mess but her canasta network found out and told her.”

“I didn’t come to see Mother, Freddy. I came to see you. I want to tell you something you have a right to know. I haven’t
told you sooner because Father didn’t want me to, but now I think it’s time. You need to know and I need for you to know.
It may mean something to you, especially now.”

“Tell me then.” Freddy sat up in the bed. He wanted to reach out and touch Stuart’s hand but kept himself from doing it. “Go
on. Say it. What is it?”

“I’m not exactly an adopted child, Freddy. I am Father’s child. My mother was a Polish actress. He met her on a business trip.
It went on for several years. When I was two years old she gave me to him and went back to Poland to marry a man she knew
there. I have always thought I can remember that, but, of course, I can’t. Father told me the day I graduated from medical
school. He was crying. Mother doesn’t know. She thinks my parents died. No one knows. Now you know. Please don’t ever tell
Mother or anyone until she dies. That’s all I ask. Anyway, for one thing I came to be tested as a donor.”

“I should have given you part of Grandmother’s money. That was selfish of me. I’m sorry I didn’t do it. I was just always
so jealous of you, Stuart. You’re taller than I am, better looking, you went to Harvard. It just kept piling up. I’ll give
you the money now. I’ll have to figure out how to divide it. It was three million dollars when she died fifteen years ago.”

“I don’t need any money, Freddy. Father left me plenty. I just want you to know that I’m your brother. That’s what I came
here for.”

“What is your blood type, Stuart?”

“AB positive, same as you, so there’s a chance I’ll match. I hope I do.”

“You being my blood brother, that’s too sweet to believe. Come here, give me a hug if you can find a place around the paraphernalia.
I’m being a great patient, Stuart. You wouldn’t believe my patience and my real thankfulness to the medical profession and
all these wild protocols they pursue like the philosopher’s stone. Well, I think it’s going to work. So does Nora Jane. Come
over here.” He held out both his hands.

Stuart leaned down and put his hands in Freddy’s. “I have always loved you,” he said. “Since the day you were born. You fascinate
me, Freddy. You’re a very special man. An unusual man.”

The next day they moved Freddy out into the hall while the cleaning crew came in and coated the room with antibacterial and
antiviral bleaches and cleaners. Then a new bed and new machinery were brought in and a remote telephone and plastic curtains.
Then his body was scrubbed with an iodine solution and they settled him back in the bed and no one, not a soul except the
doctors, was allowed to enter the room as they systematically began to destroy the marrow in his bones. If no donor showed
up they were going to use marrow that had been grown from stem cells.

Stuart’s marrow didn’t match, but on December 18 a donor was found. His name was Larry Binghamton and he had gone to school
with Freddy and Nieman from first grade until junior high, when his parents put him in a private academy in San Rafael. The
family still belonged to Freddy’s synagogue and that is how Larry happened to be one of the volunteers who signed up to have
his marrow tested. Larry ran a computer firm. He was still the quiet, solemn man he had been as a boy. Now he had volunteered
to undergo the painful process of donating marrow out of his left hip to save the life of a man who had not even been very
nice to him as a boy.

“I feel guilty,” Freddy said when his physician, Danen Marcus, told him the next day about the lucky match. “Should I call
him, write him, send him presents? I don’t know what to think, Danen.”

“I’ll tell him. He’s glad to be able to help. I think he’s proud that he can do it.” Danen was standing by the bed with his
big, fine hands clasped at his waist. He was a tall man, lanky and serious. “We’re lucky, Freddy. I can’t tell you how lucky
it is to find someone this soon. And right here, in town. It’s going to be good. I feel good about it. It’s as close a match
as I’ve seen. Better than some siblings.”

“Call Nora Jane, will you, Danen? Oh, and call Nieman. Never mind, she’ll call him.”

“I’ll call them. As soon as I leave here. Do you want anything? Are they taking care of you all right?”

“What else could I want? Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank him for me.”

“Okay. I will. I’ll be back this evening, after rounds. Try to get some rest.”

Danen left the room and Freddy lay back in the hard white comfort of the sheets and pillows and looked at the light pouring
in the windows onto the pale walls and the hospital bed with all its strange wires and machines—the light pouring into the
room from all over a world full of nuns and priests and hairdressers and polluted air and oceans and microorganisms and genius.
So much genius, and so much left to find out and sing and buy books about. And children everywhere and joy and sorrow and
work to do and causes to espouse and time to do it after all—he was going to have some time, except, of course, time is only
energy caught in fields, if you believe that theory.