Sweet Lamb of Heaven (19 page)

And just yesterday Burke spoke to the group at length.

“Chinese native,” he mumbled, looking down at his feet. Burke has the bearing of an absentminded professor. “
Acer griseum
. Paperbark maple. Beautiful, peeling red bark, this great, faded red I've never seen anywhere else. I remember having the impression that it was melodies made by the flow of cellular division, the phloem and xylem. The movement of sugar in the trunk.”

For him the voice—something like humming or singing, he said, a pure music sometimes like a chorale, sometimes like a Glass symphony—seemed to issue from a certain tree in the arboretum where he worked. The tree sang and its music was holy.

“But you know. Maybe it wasn't really
coming
from the maple tree or Shamu,” said Navid. “Maybe they were both sort of like one of those ventriloquist's dummies—like the sound or the song were being thrown
onto
them.”

I spoke for the first time. I said I'd been quite sure, when I was hearing the voice, that it was closely associated with Lena. It was either part of her or attached to her, but she was no ventriloquist's dummy. I said how its monologues would follow the movements of her eyes, at times, commenting on what those eyes beheld.

“Assuming it's not technology or communications from extraterrestrials,” said Big Linda, “maybe it can have many kinds of living hosts.”

“ET, really?” said Navid. “Hadn't gone
there
. But now that you mention it.”

It seemed we were almost considering levity, or at least some of us were, and others were resisting and disapproving, at least that was how I interpreted the silence.

Kay spoke, softly as always.

“I know something,” she said.

Heads turned.

“I mean—I don't have all the answers, I don't mean that,” she went on carefully. “But I know part of it. I thought everyone did, until this meeting, hearing what Linda said, what all of you have, I thought we all knew that part of it, but now I think maybe that, with us hearing things, maybe I have this particular piece, and others have other pieces. I guess?”

Kay has that insecure person's mannerism of ending her statements with question marks.

“What piece?” asked Navid.

“It—so what we heard is, how can I put it,” she said nervously. She was looking down at her hands in her lap, as though embarrassed by her claim to knowledge. “It exists in most things that live. It's language, or the innate capacity for language, is a better way to put it. You could say it's the language of sentience.”

“Trees don't have language. Trees don't have
opinions
,” objected Navid, kicking the floor with his toes.

Kay looked up at him. It was a different look from those she usually gave him, I realized. It was sympathy.

“It's not that we're the only ones who have it, or hear it, or
are
it,” she went on, so quiet that I had to strain to hear. “What's different about
us
, different from how it is with the other animals and even the plants—what happened with Lena and Anna and in my case with Infant Vasquez? What's different is that we're the only ones it
leaves
.”

Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within plant cells and between plant cells, between plants of the same or related species, and between plants and non-plant organisms, especially in the root zone . . . plant roots communicate with rhizome bacteria, fungi and insects in the soil. These interactions . . . are possible because of the decentralized “nervous system” of plants.
—Wikipedia 2016

IT WAS A LONG
meeting, a meeting that went on for three hours instead of one, and by the time we dispersed afterward it seemed that Kay had always had a clearer understanding than any of the rest of us—Kay's hospital infant, an infant with a hole in its heart that lived for only three days, had somehow imparted more to her than the voice had told the rest of us in months. Even years.

Kay had heard more. Or Kay had listened with a greater aptitude for hearing.

I hadn't thought I was special, just equal. Equal, at least, I always assumed. But by the time I left the meeting I was unsure, unsure and diminished.

After the meeting I suspected I wasn't equal, and more, that there
was
no equality. Our idea of equality is a fiction useful mostly for the purposes of fairness, for law and economics. Elsewhere it's an empty husk, a costume we put on when we get up in the morning. In the length of our legs and arms, the breadth of our shoulders, the tendons that give us strength or weakness, our beauty or lack of it, sharp or dull intelligence—we aren't equal at all, and we never have been.

7

SOUL IS A UNIVERSAL FEATURE

N
OT MANY TOURISTS FLY INTO ANCHORAGE IN WINTER. IN SUMMER
there are backpackers galore: the small airport is full of tower-like packs with attachments dangling from them and duffel bags lumped on the floor in archipelagos of nylon and canvas. Among them you see hippies milling, hikers, hunters, fishermen, naturalists and wilderness fans of all stripes, talking excitedly about their planned itineraries as they wait for their car rides or small-plane connections. They crowd beneath the terminal's fluorescents in a fug of B.O. and patchouli and bug spray, headed for Denali and other points west or north.

But January is quiet in Alaska. When we flew in, the airport was almost deserted. It had that peculiar desolation of an empty public space, and in the silence our roller-bags squeaked and our footsteps rang out. Lena squealed at the sight of a rearing grizzly in a glass cage, which a placard claims is the largest bear ever shot. Paws raised, it looms over the polished expanse of floor in a perfect embodiment of overkill. She stood beside me and gripped my hand as she read aloud the sign at the bottom of the case: W
ORLD
R
ECORD
K
ODIAK
B
ROWN
B
EAR
. The bear's reared-up stance was upright, almost gentlemanly.

Ned wasn't there to meet us, happily, only a driver at the curb. Everything had been choreographed by his staff; there was a schedule with places, times, and tasks listed:
4:30 p.m. Consultant Appt.
1: Wardrobe.
He's as disinclined to be in my company as I am to be in his. No good words will ever pass between us now.

We had an appointment with his lead media person right off, in his campaign office; we were instructed today, before the first press conference tomorrow. There are even clothes I have to wear, looks custom-designed for me as though I'm Sarah Palin. Clothes have been picked for Lena, too, apparently.
Really?
I thought.
Even for the small time?

Ned has to do everything with corporate shine, he needs to be at the top of his game from the start. And he requires similar performances from his associates.

So we met with them and tried on the clothes. It was tedious standing around as they recorded our sizes and made adjustments, trying to keep Lena in one place. A hair and makeup person came and practiced painting our faces, taking pictures of us colored in different palettes. Lena was turned out like Shirley Temple at first and looked like a beauty pageant contestant, so I said no. The media consultant trotted out a second outfit, slightly less frilly, and agreed not to curl her hair into ringlets.

I know I won't be able to stand Ned's platforms and opinions, much less concur with them, so I'm doing my best to learn nothing more than I have to about what I'm shilling for. This is a farce I'm acting in. Except for one dinner with some women's church group, I don't have any conversations on my to-do list. I hold Lena's hand whenever I feel doubt, press her to my side when I find I'm quizzing myself on how I could have been so easily brought to heel.

But I'm not willing to take risks: I stay close to her all the time. I was given a second chance, I was rescued after a shipwreck, and my goal isn't ambitious. It's just to keep our heads above water.

After the meeting with the wardrobe consultant we were driven to the house, once our home. I felt anxious walking in, not sad or nostalgic; the abduction had erased even the vestigial possibility of that. But I did feel off-kilter entering the place. Lena was merely intrigued and ran around trying to identify what she remembered.

Ned has a housekeeper so everything is neat, and he's replaced the furniture I chose with items that are new and more generic. There's beige upholstery and beige drapes, a bland beige background everywhere; there are cut flowers on mantels and tables, as though the premises are being kept at the ready for a meet-and-greet. Behind shining cabinet doors there's a huge flat-screen TV, and photographs of snow-covered mountains have been placed on the white walls, no doubt by a decorator connected to his media team. They're Alaskan mountains, of course—discreetly labeled at the bottom lest anyone doubt Ned's loyalties.
Chugach Range. 2008
.
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
.

Wrangell-St. Elias, I remembered telling Ned once, was larger than Switzerland. He'd shrugged: to him national parks were a waste of rich mineral and timberland.

But now he has pictures of them.

“Where'd my room used to be?” asked Lena. “Did I have my own room?”

“You did,” I said. “But mostly you slept in the bed with me.”

We stood at the door of the very small room that had been the nursery, which now contains an exercise bike and free weights.

“It doesn't
look
like my room,” objected Lena.

“Your daddy likes to stay fit,” I said.

THE NEXT CONSULTANT
made her practice standing beside me in front of a video camera. She showed us the footage on her laptop, showed Lena how she was fidgeting and playing with her hair. Lena should stand still and smile and keep her hands clasped together, she said, or at least let them hang by her sides. She shouldn't move around, said the consultant, because it would distract from Ned.

“Your daddy's going to make a little speech, and then he'll answer questions.”

“What if I have an itch?” asked Lena.

The consultant smiled and said the whole thing would be over before she even knew it.

The initial response to an anomaly is typically to ignore it; this is how the scientific community has responded to the seeming anomaly of consciousness.

Then, when the anomaly ceases to be ignored, the common reaction is to try to explain it within the current paradigm . . . to date, no such effort in any discipline—be it chemistry, quantum physics, chaos theory, or computing—has proved fruitful.

No matter what theory is put forward, the central question remains: How can immaterial consciousness ever arise from matter?

When it comes to consciousness itself, science falls curiously silent. There is nothing in physics, chemistry, biology, or any other science that can account for our having an interior world.
—Peter Russell, huffingtonpost.com 12.2013

I DON'T WANT
to see my Anchorage friends, because to see them again now would bring them into this queasy distortion of my life, the fake alliance with Ned. It makes me ashamed, even though I'm looking down the barrel of his gun.

Some know about the kidnapping, some don't; others know about how it resolved, others don't. I can't stand to do the mental accounting of who knows what, can't bear to revisit the ordeal—it was hard enough writing it down for myself. I don't need to listen to sympathy or indignation on my behalf.

And from the few calls I made while I was panicking, I have the lingering feeling that most of them don't believe I was trapped into making this deal with Ned. None of my friends here seem to understand the urgency of my fear. They live in a personal world where rules are followed and fairness reigns; they're mostly white and mostly middle-class, meaning they feel entitled to justice for themselves and expect it for all the other people in their lives. Corruption belongs elsewhere, other countries, Wall Street or Congress, lobbyists.

They tried to be sympathetic when I talked to them, as people have to in the face of a missing child, but I felt, behind their commitment to sympathy, a steady seep of disbelief as though they suspected I was exaggerating or dramatizing. I was failing to stay normal, so either my perceptions were biased or I'd mistaken the facts of the case.

Because their take is that Ned's a good guy, basically. Too handsome and too charming, one of my friends wrote me, and sometimes you resent him for that. But as soon as you see him again you forget the resentment—you like him again the moment he speaks to you.
He's maybe a bit of a playa,
she wrote.
There've always been rumors, but there are always going to be rumors when a man's that HOT-HOT-HOT
[sic]. Men aren't monogamous anyway, they're just not
built
that way, and
I'm sure it was hard to live in the shadow of the light he sheds
. . .

That was the kind of email I got from my Anchorage friends about Ned. He's not a credible kidnapper to them. They figure he probably just missed his kid. Maybe he missed her desperately.

The first time we saw him was an hour before the press conference to announce he was running. We sat in his campaign office, waiting to go into the room with the small stage and podium where the reporters were going to be; Lena was in modified pageant gear, only half as gaudy as the outfit they'd first put her in, and no ringlets. I was in a suit that made me look like a first lady, and they shellacked my hair with spray so that it was big on top and swooped up at the bottom. The makeup artist gave me pink lips.

Ned came in while they were working on us, making his usual pretense of jocular fatherhood—bending to hug Lena, then grab her face and say “Got your nose!” (She jerked back at this, banging into the hairdresser standing behind her.) He acted as though he'd already greeted me, as though we'd spent hours together earlier that day—for the benefit of the staff, possibly, he squeezed my arm as he passed—preparing himself, maybe, for the public embraces we'd been asked to perform.