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  "You're smothering the little bastard, darlin'," said Thatcher. "Mark my words, he'll turn out funnier than he already is 'cause of you, you can bet on it-"

  "Well, he won't be like you-"

  "What'd be the matter with that?"

  "Just shut up, Thatcher, please shut up--

  "If he just talked normal like a normal person-"

  "It's fucking Thanksgiving, Thatcher, so shut the fuck up-

  "I know my holidays," he said. "Don't you be telling me to shut up-

  "I'll tell you-"

  We waited to hear what she threatened to tell. An aphasic look passed over her face, as if she was unable to say what her brain insisted she should relate. Lifting her chin as if for a facial exercise, she rubbed her neck; pushing herself from the table, Susie slapped her knees with her hands in an offbeat rhythm. When she coughed it came without sound.

  "Darlin' -?" Thatcher asked, staring dumbly at his wife; she pointed to her throat. "Sue-?"

  "She's choking," Avi said. No sooner had he said it than he reached her, lifting her from her chair as she slumped. Encircling her waist, clasping his hands across her stomach, he shoved up and in, attempting to dislodge what she'd aspirated.

  "Help her, dammit-" Thatcher shouted.

  Susie flopped in Avi's arms as if she were stuffed with rags; closed her eyes, holding in tears, and showed no signs of recovery. Thatcher jumped from his seat, and, without warning, began hitting Avi in the face, seeming to have decided that it was his fault that she so suffered, his frustration total, his rage absolute, screaming without words, slapping as Avi squeezed. Cuts opened above Avi's eyes; blood reddened the corners of his mouth, and I turned away. Avi seemed oblivious to Thatcher's blows as he undertook his work; appeared almost at peace, as if he felt he was receiving the payment he deserved for all that he had done.

  "Get away," Thatcher shouted, shoving Avi aside, embracing his wife in his own arms, applying so vigorous a grip as to lift her feet off the floor. Her purple lightened with gray undertones. As they grappled there without sound I thought how like some private drama glimpsed briefly through a window in the night the scene seemed to be; by the crowd's noise I gathered that they were not so detached as I.

  "She's dying-"

  "Oh, God, Susan-"

  "Help her."

  Her arms dangled, her fingers snatched at air, her toes turned inward, brushing against the floor. A feeling as reprehensible as it was human entered me, and at that moment I knew I would be glad to watch her die; that I could have no trouble hearing, no problem forgetting, this scream in the night. Then, awakened as if by a siren's sound, I felt Lester take my arm.

  "Together," he said, without speaking. "It has to be. Come on."

  As in a painfully clear and fully recollected dream we glided across the room. Thatcher held his wife closely, as if to keep her soul from escaping; he'd so exhausted himself that we had no trouble pushing him gently aside. We lay Susie down upon the floor; Lester knelt before her, between her legs. I took my position behind her, propping up her body, putting my arms around her waist, clasping my hands beneath her heavy breasts.

  "Close your eyes," Lester said, placing his hands upon her temples. Her perfume was sharp in my nostrils, a fragrant blend of spice and oranges, a clove-stuffed potpourri worn as if to ward away the plague. My hands grew ever-warmer as I pressed them into her flesh; warmth rose through my arms, over my face, sent a column of fire rising up my spine.

  "Push," Lester said. Without warning my memories burned through my walls.

  -Push.

  The smell of cloved oranges suffused the ward's antiseptic air, overcoming alcohol's refreshing sting when I inhaled, holding open my mouth as if I were drowning, and wished to sink all the sooner. The hospital room's lights were so bright I thought they must be trying to set my eyes aflame, so that I might never speak later of what I saw. When I moved my head, first to one side, then to the other, I glimpsed my face, framed by askew halos, reflected in surrounding mirrors. Susie readjusted me, taking hold of my head in her hands, turning my face toward hers. My eyelids seemed weighed down with lead; as she kept her unwavering watch over me I believed, looking up, that she had been suspended from the ceiling, and wondered why.

  -Push, Thatcher said.

  -Like a train, Gus said. Breathe in. Out. Gets air in the head.

  -Push, the doctor said.

  Susie held me firmly, as if suspecting I might try to turn my head too quickly, and so snap my neck: offering no consolation, whispering no assurance, she took rather than brought, comfort. I couldn't see what was happening; the notion came to me that they'd decided to dissect me, for want of better to do. Glancing toward my feet I found that I couldn't see them; my legs served as framework for a snow-white tent; heads bobbed beyond its peaks, as if an encampment were climbing in. Susie pressed her hands against my skull. I began not to notice so much, after that; the pain elsewhere grew too great. My thighs shivered with the touch of chilled metal; I imagined them taking up shards of shattered mirror in order to scrape me away.

  -Push.

  A baby, I thought, realizing I was pushing without thinking; though I couldn't feel my body I felt too well the pain. I'd never known how large the smallest baby might feel. My pelvis seemed to be coming apart; I clenched my teeth together, wishing I had something to chew. Looking up, I stared directly into Susie's inverted eyes, so black and still that they could have been shaped from obsidian. I hurt all the more, once it was done.

  -A boy, I heard Thatcher say.

  -Competition, said Susie.

  "Push."

  Opening my eyes, feeling her shivers as she rasped out an unending cough, I allowed her to pull away. Blots of wet potato smeared Lester's shirtfront. He fell to one side; blood streamed from his nose and he lay on the floor hyperventilating, shaking as if too much voltage had shot through him. Thatcher helped Susie to her feet; I crawled over to Lester, gathered him up and cradled him in my arms, pressing my hand beneath his nose to halt the flow of blood. What remaining sense of time I retained disappeared as I sat there holding him; I would have been content to remain as we were, frozen in our pose unto eternity.

  "Mother," he said, seeing me, not seeing me. I smoothed his hair; a moment longer and the bleeding stopped. Thatcher and Susie made noises that could have been those of laughter or of tears; I couldn't tell and had no desire to look. That I could be, in these circumstances, a bringer of life struck me as being incomprehensibly unfair, knowing as I did that having stolen one person from the grave, I'd allowed another to be led closer to his own.

  "You okay?" I whispered. He nodded, not opening his eyes, resembling a newborn kitten as he lay there. The room's silence jarred me into more mundane consciousness; raising my head to see where everyone had gone, I saw them all still there. They stared at Lester; even Susie looked up from her husband's bosom long enough to glance our way, as quickly turning back toward him, her features holding as much of anger as of shame, and not a sign of gratitude. I could only imagine that, having seen the face of her angel of death, she recognized it as one she'd known all along.

  "God bless," said Thatcher. "God bless us. I was right, Susie, I was right. Wasn't I? I was right. God bless-"

  "God damn," Lester whispered, so that only I could hear. Bernard edged closer to us, holding his drink, keeping his distance, his face no less pale than Lester's. He looked down upon us as if from a mountaintop, for the first time since I'd known him seeing through me as he stared at another.

  "Hallelulah," Bernard said. If I hadn't known better I'd have sworn he understood.

  That night, later on, Lester and I talked our hours away.

  "Everyone does have their reasons," he said. "As do They. It scares Them as it scares us."

  "Why have I stayed there as long as I have?" I asked.

  "Where would you have gone?" We lay in darkness in my lightless house; we didn't have to see each other in order to talk. "What would you have done?"

  "I k
now now what I could have done-"

  "You didn't then," he said. "Don't let blame lay its head in the wrong bed, Joanna."

  "There were things I could have done," I said. "That really is the greatest sin. Seeing evil and doing nothing."

  "Children learn their parents' sins better than their virtues," Lester said. "We should expect no more from Them than They expect from us. Only once will change come overnight and until that day comes you have to fight as you can, when you can. Until then, you get by."

  "You almost sound like Bernard."

  "Even a blind hog roots up an acorn, now and then."

  "I've spent years trying to be like him," I said. "Like the Drydens. I shouldn't deserve better than they deserve. Avi knows that, he's accepted it. You saw him this afternoon-"

  "He does as he does for different reasons," Lester said. "Why are you so hard on yourself?"

  "I've always thought someone should be," I said. "I wanted her to die. For what they did."

  "A human response to human acts. It's understandable."

  "Not to me," I said. "Not now, not anymore. Not to me or to you or-"

  "Understandable to Them," he said. "Joanna, the godlike in humanity is bad as well as good, and the evil that lives in people more than meets its match in Theirs."

  "That's no excuse," I said. "I've brought so much of this down on myself. Some of my friends always said I must be an emotional masochist-"

  "Most people are," he said. "I suppose I am. Don't you think a certain masochism is essential in a messiah? A certain sadism on Their part is sure unavoidable."

  "But now I see how much I could have done differently-"

  "When he was alive the other afternoon Gus told me something," Lester said. "He believed that if he hadn't gone to the knoll that day history since then would have been very different. Therefore he thought he was the one to bear ultimate responsibility for why the world is the way it is, today."

  "He told you that?"

  "In so many words."

  "What did you say?"

  "I asked him if he wasn't unsure whose shot was truly the one that killed. That it could have been Oswald, after all. He told me, it didn't matter, he was there, he could have done something else. The more he talked the more it became clear to me that he was as troubled for having to bear the guilt without receiving recognition as over anything else. I told him that as far as I understood it, neither he, nor Oswald, nor even Kennedy could have been there and everything would still have happened as it did. That didn't improve his mood. I suppose I could have predicted that."

  "If so much is predestined by Them why do They give us what we perceive as free will?"

  "It is free will as to how we get there. It's all in the perspective. It's more worthwhile to consider how much worse it all could have been."

  "How?"

  He had no answer; I suspect he knew, but saw no need to say. "What did the Drydens do to your baby, Joanna?"

  "I don't want to think about it-"

  "You thought about it earlier today," he said. "The baby was unplanned?"

  So much of my life seemed to have happened so long ago, in another country, to another person, as I supposed it had. As I grew older the sense of disconnection pervaded my spirit, the feeling that moments existed only as they occurred; when certain stray memories eked their way into my soul they were, to a point, easy enough to slough off as nothing more than vague recollections of shows once seen, of books once read. Only when my guard slipped accidentally, as it had that afternoon, or deliberately, as it did now, could I relive a life consciously lost.

  "I'd broken up with Avi but hadn't told him yet," I said. "About the same time Thatcher had to go on a business trip to Buenos Aires. Bernard wasn't able to make it. I was sent in his place. I'd only seen Thatcher once or twice before then, and never for so long a time. During the flight down he noticed me, I guess. He fished with all his lures. He seemed so different then, so charming, so-"

  "So he hooked you," said Lester.

  "At forty thousand feet," I said. "I'd come to suspect that I was sterile, but I wasn't. At first I thought I could get an abortion. The only way I could have made the connections was through Thatcher, and he wouldn't hear of it, as I've said--

  "He knew it was his baby?"

  "There was the possibility it was Avi's," I said. "A fifty-fifty chance."

  "He knew that." I nodded. "And Susie?"

  "Nothing happened when she found out, which surprised me. I'm not sure how quickly she noticed the relationship. She was always running around doing something and at that point Thatcher was still subtle about it. The longer I was pregnant the more I wanted to have the baby, whosever it was. By the time I went into labor I wanted my baby so much. I'd taken such good care of myself, I quit smoking, I didn't drink-"

  "What happened?"

  "They'd told me. Thatcher told me. He said He'd see to it that I had the best doctor in the company. I wanted a natural childbirth and he said no problem. Gus was my Lamaze partner. We'd practice in the office at lunchtime. They took me to Beekman when it was time. Susie and Thatcher and Gus. Avi knew I was pregnant but I swore I'd had the test and discovered it wasn't his, and I hadn't, I didn't want to know. I didn't want to lie to him and I lied just the same."

  "Then?"

  "They put my gown on me. Stuck something in my arm while they were-" While they were shaving me; while Thatcher shaved me. He'd asked if he could, and no one minded but me. "I was so doped up. I remember lying on the table. I remember having my baby, and then I passed out. That's what I remembered-"

  "I know."

  "When I woke up again it was in recovery. I was the only patient. Thatcher was there. I asked him where my baby was." I paused. "I never even got to hold him. Thatcher told me later it was Susie's idea. At the time he just said shit happens. She'd insisted, he said. They didn't want to let me see him but finally did. He was all wrapped up. He had dark hair, like Avi."

  "Did he say why-?"

  I shook my head. "Maybe just for the hell of it. I don't know."

  I started to cry, and then I couldn't stop; he held me, and I sobbed without ceasing for most of the rest of the night. No sooner had my memories bolted than I at last locked the door behind them; their odor would forever cling, their prints still scar the places they'd been.

  "How could I do what I've done?" I finally asked. "I stayed with them. With him. How could I do that-?"

  "If you can't say," Lester said, "no one can."

  We lay there without speaking for long minutes after that, watching the room appear around us as dawn approached, lifting the veil from a new day's darkness.

  "Joanna?"

  "What?" I said, barely hearing myself.

  "Even when people try to do right it so often turns out wrong. It's in the nature of things," he said. "For the longest time I wondered why They didn't just end it all and start over again fresh. This world seems such a lost cause, I didn't think we deserved another chance. It came to me, after awhile, how different Their outlook must be, and as I thought about it I got the perspective you need sometimes. Theirs is greatness, but by its magnitude it must be so provincial. Who was Leonardo, next to a tree, or Tolstoy next to a tidal pool? What's Rome, compared to a star?

  "In the end I realized that even so, we must be worthiest of all, to hold our own when judged against such perfection. Why else would They bother? But now, They know the time's almost here for Them to interfere with us more directly, even though They know that holds its own peril. They're shaking the dice of the universe."

  "What must the Messiah do?" I asked.

  "Think with Their mind, and see with our eyes. Then everyone involved can understand."

  "There couldn't have been any other way to do this?"

  "Why is the sky blue and not green?" he asked. "I don't know, Joanna. I guess not. Sometimes you know, you don't know, you understand, you can't understand-"

  "There's too much now that I know without understanding yet," I said.
"This way and no other?"

  "I have to be truthful," he said. "I'd've preferred another way, myself."

  "I love you, Lester," I said, not expecting a response; no longer wishing for one, certainly not hoping for one. He nodded. "Why must it be so unavoidable?"

  "Cain and Abel," he said. "Jesus and Judas, Kennedy and Oswald, Nazis and Jews. God and Godness. Without the dark, would the light seem half as bright?"

  TEN

  Did he elaborate this morning?" I asked Lester as we rode through the Bronx, passing the abandoned stadium, driving through the Army-guarded courthouse district. The street was blocked on our left, where a building's facade, feeling the tug of years, slumped onto the pavement to take its rest. We sat in the back of the car; Avi sat up front, considering all we cruised by, seeming deaf to our worlds. "I hardly saw him. What did he have to say?"

  "Not a lot," Lester said. "He thanked me again. I don't think it was for helping Mrs. Dryden. It was like he was thanking me in advance for what he thinks I'll do. I tried to remind him that I had no say in the matter, but all he did was smile and nod his head."

  "Once he conceives his reality everyone's stuck with it," I said.

  "You see Mrs. Dryden before she left?" he asked.

  "She avoided me. Didn't look very pleased about anything, but then she never does. She didn't even look at her newspaper."

  "Has she already taken off?"

  "Her flight wasn't leaving until late this afternoon."

  "You think this's been his plan all along?" Lester asked. "What he wants me to do?"

  "It'd be so unlike him to have a specific goal in mind," I said. "Do you think They'll have a response to his request?"

  "They'll answer, but I don't know how."

  "Would They involve Themselves if They didn't have to?"

  "I've never understood Their criteria," he said. "Why They send church buses off roads into rivers. Why steeples blow down in windstorms. Why so many saints died young. Maybe They would. Maybe not."