Pascal's Wager (22 page)

“You didn't read the fine print,” one woman muttered, but Frosty silenced her with a hand.

“We don't usually have to restrain patients in the assisted-living area,” she said, gently, as if she were talking to a child. “But it's the only way we can keep her in bed. She seems to be asleep and then the next thing you know, she's wandering the halls.”

A short guy with a ponytail and a wrestler's build stepped up beside her, apparently to take care of her light work.

“Other patients were complaining,” he said. “She was going into their rooms and standing over them while they were in bed.
Couple of people said they woke up and found her poking at their stomachs.” He shook his head, ponytail wobbling. “We can't have that.”

“And I can't have you tying her down like she's Charles Manson! She was terrified when I found her.”

“You don't think the other patients were terrified when they opened their eyes and found her hovering over them?” Ponytail said.

“Why didn't you just lock her door? Or, better yet, why didn't you call me?”

“We don't call family members for every little thing.”

“This is not ‘every little thing'!” I said. “We
will
find another solution to this, or I'll take her out of here.”

“Okay, okay—” Frosty said, her hand on Ponytail's arm, which was pumping up like a bicycle tire. “We'll try locking her door and see if that works.”

“No more tying her down,” I said. “Absolutely none. If there's any problem, you call me—any time, day or night. My cell phone number is on file.”

I waited until every head finally nodded, however grudgingly, and they had all backed off toward the nurses' station. I saw more than heard the mutterings under the breath, the comments to each other. I couldn't have cared less if they'd been a flock of indignant pigeons. I went back to Mother's room. She was still in her chair.

“All right, this is the deal,” I said, crouching once more beside her. “You can get out of bed, sit in your chair, look out the window—but you have to stay in this room at night. They're going to lock it, so don't even try the knob. I promise you this: They will never tie you to the bed again, all right? Are we clear?”

She just looked at me, and then suddenly bolted for the bed and crawled under the covers. I sank down into the chair beside it.

“You want me to talk until you fall asleep?” I said.

She closed her eyes, and I put my head on my arms on the
side of the bed. My heart had stopped racing like a freight train, but my mind was still going, thoughts careening off their tracks and colliding with every turn. I wanted Sam there.

“You're not going to believe this, Mother,” I said, “but I met this guy. In fact, I met him at your anniversary dinner. He's a Ph.D. in philosophy—teaches at Stanford. We were seeing each other—well, sort of—and then, of course, he disappeared. You always said that about men, though, didn't you? You always told me to concentrate on my career—which I did until we started talking about some pretty intense things. Now brace yourself, Mother. We've been talking about God.”

B
y the time I got back to the house that night, it was after midnight. I should have been exhausted, but even after a hot bath, a glass of warm milk, and a bout with a couple of articles in
K-Theory
, my eyes refused to close. My body refused to even sit down. All I could do was pad around the house, pointlessly opening drawers, peering into closets, picking up items and putting them back down. Each shove of a drawer and slam of a door was louder and harsher then the one before it, until I shut the piano keyboard cover so hard the Steuben vase on top dropped over and rolled onto the floor, shattering into five-hundred-dollar shards of glass on the hardwood.

“Get a grip!” I said—to myself. “Just get ahold of yourself! My God!”

The word echoed in the room like a distorted version of Tabitha's Rachmaninoff. When it came back to me, it landed with a thud, somewhere in my chest.

“Okay, sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry that I—what do you call it?—used Your name in vain. But I'm losing it here.”

I definitely was. I was talking out loud to some invisible force I'd always denied was even there.

And yet it was somehow calming. No maniacal head-voice was screaming at me, telling me to get up and run around like a lunatic. Talking to no one had to be something of an improvement over that.

I pulled my legs up onto the bench and hugged my knees against the silence.

“Okay,” I said, “so what do You look like? Let me get some kind of shape in my mind. Work with me here.”

I closed my eyes. No, too dark in there—too many shadows. I stared up at the ceiling. The shape of God. I'd never even considered it.

So consider it now—before you lose your mind
.

“All right, I'll tell You what I think You are,” I said. “I think You're either some kind of cruel, heartless despot with a sadistic mind—or You just know a whole lot more than the rest of us do.”

I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling. “You sit up there or out there or wherever it is You are, and You watch what's going on here. If You're so all-powerful, why can't You just cure my mother's disease? Why don't You swoop down and wipe out all this
stuff
that's been dumped on me that I can't handle? It's pretty obvious I can't handle it—I just took on eight people at once tonight. I don't know what to do, which is no wonder because I don't know what to
think
to begin with. Not with all this psychic pillage and plunder going on, which I can't deal with because I've never had to before. And now when I need to be clearheaded and rational, I'm turning into Tabitha Lane in a train wreck! I don't want to imagine a God who lets that happen! I want to imagine a God who cares about what's going on, who will come in here and untangle this miserable mess—because
I can't
. That's the kind of God I want You to be!”

I brought my fist down on top of the piano. Fragments of glass danced across it. I pulled my hand up to my mouth and pressed, but I couldn't hold back the weeping.

“Please be that kind of God,” I said, “because I don't have it in me. I just don't.”

Sometime later I stopped crying and picked my way amid the crystal slivers to the couch, where I think I talked myself to sleep.

It was after three in the morning when I woke up with the remnants of a dream already slipping away. All I could remember
was the sight of my mother on all fours, knelt over Freda III, lifting her eyelids. I could almost hear Mother's pre-Pick's voice saying,
Pupils equal and reactive
.

I sat straight up on the couch.
Other patients were complaining
, Ponytail had said.
She was going into their rooms and standing over them while they were in bed. Couple of people said they woke up and found her poking at their stomachs
.

“That's it,” I breathed. “That has to be it.”

I was at Hopewell by seven, barely out of my pajamas, hair in a haphazard knot on top of my head. I wanted to see the night crew before they went off duty.

Ponytail didn't attempt to conceal his grimace when I walked up to the counter at the nurses' station.

“Yes, we kept her door locked all night,” he said. “We unlocked it about fifteen minutes ago in case she wanted breakfast. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” I said. “I appreciate your doing that and—”

I had to stop and choose my words carefully. This wasn't something I had done often.

“I need to apologize for last night,” I said. “I was upset and I may have overreacted.”

Ponytail smiled, probably in spite of himself. A heretofore hidden dimple appeared in his left cheek. “It happens,” he said. “We possibly weren't as understanding as we should have been either.”

I asked if it would be all right if I chatted with some of the patients Mother had made house calls to. While Ponytail was making a list, I peeked into her room.

She was already dressed, and Burl was with her.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” I said.

“I generally come by early in the mornings, right after I get off work. She likes to hear what's going on at the lab.”

“Every morning?” I said.

“Pretty much. It's on my way home.”

I thought he would probably have done it even if it meant a twenty-mile detour.

I spent a couple of hours interviewing four of the people on the list. Once they realized I was going to stay until I got the information I wanted, each one of them devised a way to drag out the story, branching off into all manner of unrelated topics, including their entire family history for several generations back. Finally, though, they got around to talking about Mother's night visits.

The first old guy showed me the arm Mother tried to examine. I tried not to react too strongly to the oozy-looking sores he uncovered when he pulled up his sleeve.

The next lady said Mother had yanked her covers back while she was sleeping, and she woke up to find herself being poked and pressed. When I questioned her about abdominal problems, she said that currently she was experiencing stomach pains the doctors couldn't seem to explain.

The other two residents related similar stories: One awoke to find she was having her pulse taken, the other to discover Mother's hands pressing his neck. He went on to describe his ongoing bouts with sore throats.

By noon, I was convinced of one thing—my mother hadn't just been wandering aimlessly through the halls to perform random acts of weirdness on her fellow assisted-livers. She was giving them free medical exams, based on the evidence she was picking up from her own observations.

It was a conclusion that was at the same time reassuring and chilling.

Mother slept most of the afternoon, despite the attendants' urgings to come join the rest of the gang for yoga, square dancing, and the afternoon movie. I hung around and waited for her to wake up while I figured out what I was going to say. When I found myself roaming around her room like a frenzied gerbil, I
sat down in her chair at the window and muttered under my breath.

“Okay God, so if this is You—and I'm just saying
if—
are You going to tell me what to do with all this? I'm grasping at straws here, and I hate that.”

It suddenly occurred to me that it probably wasn't a good idea to be irreverent with God, just on the off chance that such a being did exist.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

Talk about acting as if.

When Mother finally woke up, she bolted out of bed and came to stand next to me. She looked agitated until I got out of her chair and let her sit in it.

“I think I'm getting what you like about that thing,” I said. “It kind of molds to you, doesn't it?”

She blinked placidly and then faded off into sleep again. I crouched beside her. It was becoming my automatic position with her.

Had I conjured up the whole thing—about her examining patients as naturally as the rest of us breathed or swallowed? Was I actually starting to believe that she still had something of herself left, or did I just want so much for it to be true that I was looking for reasons to think that it was? Maybe that was what people did when they said they believed in God.

A deep ache took shape in my chest. That was a question for Sam.

I left at suppertime and went home to attempt to get some work done. What was left of my rational side told me I needed to return to the real world before it got away from me completely. However, the minute I propped up on the couch with a pencil in my hand, I nodded off. I was pulled from sleep by a faraway rapping that seemed to get closer as I peeled my eyes open. Somebody was knocking on the front door.

“Hold on,” I said thickly. I staggered to the foyer and fumbled
for the doorknob. When I finally got the door yanked open, Sam was standing there. Hands in pockets. Face frozen in an uncertain smile.

“Hey, you,” he said.

Later, I was able to convince myself that if I'd been wide awake, I would have slammed the door in his face and let that be the end of it. Only because I was just semiconscious did I first gape like a runny-nosed toddler and then let him in.

In that same self-deceptive conversation, however, I did give Sam credit for not trying to take advantage of my near-catatonic state. There was no reach to hold me, no attempt to kiss me. He just stood there in the foyer with his hands in his pockets and said, “I wasn't sure you'd let me in. I wouldn't really blame you if you didn't.”

“Why wouldn't I?” I said. Some reactions just kick in automatically, no matter how porridge-headed you are.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Because I haven't called you in a week for no apparent reason.”

“Has it been that long?” I said.

His eyes flinched. It ached in me, and I turned and went into the living room. He followed.

“I know I don't have any right to ask this,” Sam said, “but could we not play games here?”

I had my back to him as I sank one knee onto the couch. I could feel him behind me, not crowding me, but with no intention of backing off either.

“Okay,” I said. “You didn't call me for a week and I was at a loss for a reason. I mean, the last I heard, I was compelling.”

That remark stung even me. I turned around in time to catch him wincing.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You caught me at a bad time. No, that's a lie. Seems like it's
always
a bad time with me these days.”

He shook his head.

“Yeah,” I said, “I'm ticked off that you dropped out of sight—you
insensitive, arrogant pig—and you'd better have a good reason or you are out of here, because I didn't let you in just to have you do your little tap dance on my—”

I needed to say
feelings
, but I couldn't. Evidently I didn't have to, because Sam was grinning at me. He was trying not to—but he was flunking.

“What?” I said. “What is so funny?”

“Nothing's funny I just missed you.”

“Yeah, right,” I said in my best sarcastic tone. I glanced at my watch, fighting back a smile. “You have exactly ten minutes to tell me a story that doesn't force me to boot you out of here.”

He nodded at the couch.

“No, I'm going to make you tell it standing up, face to the wall…of course, sit down—you're driving me nuts standing there.”

I dumped my papers onto the floor with a sweep of my arm and tucked myself into a corner of the couch. Sam plopped down at the opposite end.

“I had to go out of town,” he said.

“Something sudden, I take it.”

“No, I knew about it several weeks ahead of time.”

The ache in my chest nudged me to tighten up. “Look, there's no reason why you should have told me you were going off someplace. It's not like we have some commitment.”

“
I
have a commitment.”

“Not to me.”

“To myself—to be available to you while you're sorting things through. I shouldn't have just dropped out of sight without some kind of explanation, and I'm sorry.”

I felt a rising disappointment. I tried to rake it out with a hand through the hair.

“I managed to keep sorting,” I said.

“I'm sure you did.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. We were definitely a pair to draw to.

“All right,” I said, “go ahead.”

“I went to Illinois.”

“In December. Good call,” I said. Then I put up my hand. “Sorry. Go on.”

“You've heard of Wheaton College—maybe not, it's a Christian school. There's a department chairmanship open there, and I applied for it. I made the short list, and they flew me out for an interview. It went well, so I stayed a few extra days to really look the place over. ‘Course, I nearly froze my tail off back there.”

I was staring at him. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You're on the faculty at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but you're considering taking a job at some—” I stopped myself. “At a small college that's only going to offer you one thing you can't get here—a frozen tail.”

Sam shook his head. “They have a lot more to offer than that, at least in my view. I haven't been happy here since day one. Okay, maybe day two. On day one I enjoyed the prestige thing, but that wore off once I realized Stanford isn't a good fit for me. It's an incredible university but—you'll find this out once you get your degree and start interviewing—it isn't about the university name or even the money. It's about the fit.” He was leaning toward me. “I've got a soul-longing,” he said. “I want to teach in a place where I have a chance to see the divine fire in my colleagues, and I'm not going to see that here—not out in the open, not where it can move me along on my own spiritual journey. Is this making sense to you?”

“Nothing you say makes sense to me, Blaze,” I said dryly. “But I can see how it makes sense to you. That's what matters, right?”