Although it would seem that, having grieved so hard for Harry, I would not be anguished by the death of a dog, such was not the case. The relationship with a good dog is closer to perfection than that with another human rarely manages to be. They are innocent, and we are not. They ask so little of us, but give so much. Rafael had been a member in good standing of the Clyde Tombaugh Club, a fellow adventurer, loyal pal, and confidant. I drew him against me, pressed his mouth closed, smoothed the fur of his beautiful, noble face. I told him that he was the best dog ever, that I loved him. I wept.
Mr. Reinhardt dug a resting place in a corner of the great lawn, and we buried Rafael in a bed of red rose petals. A small headstone with his name was ordered, to be installed in a few weeks. My reaction was not unique. During the days that followed, I found one or another of my fellow Bramleyans laying a flower on his grave or sitting nearby on the grass, taking comfort from the memory of him.
Dreams are conversations with ourselves. We speak to ourselves in metaphors and symbols about subjects from which we shy. One night I dreamed of encountering Luigi Lattuada at Rafael’s grave. The chef was carrying a copy ofA Tale of Two Cities. He said, “John fifteen, verse thirteen. It’s all you need to know, Adiel. It’s what you are—presented tothe world in a form that tests our comprehension and our souls.” Then Rafael came out of his grave, unmarked by death, and he ran across the lawn with Luigi Lattuada. As they ran, the chef became a boy, and the boy was Harry, and the darkness became daylight, and the birds flew from their night roosts.
After that dream, I found myself revisiting the theory that previously seemed to be unlikely and—I could now admit—unnerving. I’d drawn the effects of the poison out of Rafael and had spared him from death without realizing what was happening. Was it possible that, in so doing, I had also more or less vaccinated him against all illness and disease by some power unknown and unknowable? What if he ultimately died not because he was sick or worn out, but only because, in this world of layered mysteries, there is a time for all things and a countdown clock that can’t be stopped? I couldn’t bring the dead back to life; Lazarus would have been out of luck with me. But Rafael’s long and always healthy life begged serious consideration.
Had I been at Harry’s side when the bullets cut him down in an instant, I couldn’t have brought him back. But if he’d never gone to war, and if one day I’d had a visitation by some radiant being and been told that I could spare my brother from all forms of ill health for the rest of his life by passing to him, by touch, a portion of my years on Earth, would I have declined the sacrifice? Declined and left him vulnerable to disease? I who had spent the first seventeen years of my existence, used and humiliated, yearning for a purpose that would make me feel clean? The answer was clear, the opportunity exhilarating. Since that rescue from Blue Mood and the ride north through the night, I’d felt that my meaning would be fulfilled by being a friend of this family, by doing for them some grace that I could not yet comprehend. And now here I was, the moment upon me.
To bestow the grace that I hoped, surely no magic words, no “abracadabra” or “Hola Nola Massa” was required. With apologies toJiminy Cricket, I had no need to make a wish upon a star. I was a human oddity not just from the neck down. If I was not deluded, the most freakish thing about me was an amazing power that I possessed but did not understand, that I had long lacked the confidence to explore. But how could a mere freak be a healer? A freak ought to know her place and keep to it, shouldn’t she? A freak who thinks too highly of herself might well expect that she’ll become a target and that bad luck will cast her back into another ten-in-one.
No. All those fears were errors of reason and faith. Luck was not evidence of frivolous Fates at play. Luck was what evolved for us from the actions of other people and from our own actions—tides of molasses and runaway delivery trucks. This family shaped my luck by doing what their code of right and wrong required of them. Their unfailing sympathy and kindness might be traced back decades to an earthquake that killed thousands and revealed the moral virtue or depravity of the survivors, a grim orphanage run by grifters, and long hours of piecework in a sweatshop. If kindness that surpassed understanding could be born from so much suffering, then so could it be inspired by the humid sawdust-scented air and fly-infested depths of a ten-in-one. By the mockery and insults of marks who needed to feel superior to someone. It could evolve—couldn’t it?—from being forced to stand nearly naked on a speakeasy stage in the company of exquisitely formed showgirls, while a drunken audience roared with laughter at the antics of a crude comedian to whom a young girl with deformities was nothing more than a prop to be poked and tickled and threatened with terrible violations. The Fairchild family made my good luck, and now I had the chance to give back to them. It seemed to me, but not to them, that the debt I owed was greater every year. I was going to repay love with love to an extent that they would refuse to accept if they knew what I intended. The meaning of my life became clear, and it was thrilling.
My experience with Rafael when he was poisoned and with Gertie when she nearly succumbed to septic shock was that healing took a toll of me. Intuition told me that the gift of lifelong health, if indeed I could give it, would not only temporarily exhaust me, but would cost years of my own life each time that I bestowed enduring strength and vigor on someone. This did not concern me. During my days in the Museum of the Strange, I had not expected to live to be thirty, and I could never have imagined that thirteen of those years would be joyful, as in fact they had been here at the Bram. To want more seemed to be to want too much. The lacerating grief I felt at Harry’s death might mature into a less terrible if enduring sorrow, but I could not harbor many such sorrows and still find life to be a journey of joy. If I lost others as I’d lost Harry, the years before me would be worth living but would never be as blissful as those I had known since September 1930. My love was great. Millennia ago it was written, “Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” John fifteen, verse thirteen. The sentiment was no less true if you substituted “woman” for “man” and “she” for “he” and “her” for “his.” Nor did it make a difference if the “she” was a human oddity. Anyway, the price of this gift might not be as steep as I expected. But if it required everything of me, that was just a way to grieve and in the process bring an end to grieving.
I hadn’t much extended myself when I spared Rafael from poison or relieved Gertie of septic shock; what I now proposed would drain me more profoundly. Because I didn’t know how high the toll would be when the gift was given or how quickly the cost would mount before I could pay it no more, I felt I needed to attend Franklin, Loretta, Gertie, and Izzy in the same day, with as little time between them as possible. Following the news of Harry’s death, Isadora canceled her public performances for six months and settled for a time in the Bram. At the moment, she was in Los Angeles, recording four songs, three of which she had written. In the past year, her two records, released fourmonths apart, had received a lot of radio play. The first broke intoBillboard’s top forty, climbing as high as thirty-seven. The most recent release had gone to number thirty. I was in a family of overachievers, and I loved it; their every success pleased me as much as if it were my own. Izzy would return home in two days, Thursday, March 23. I was prepared to cast my spell, so to speak, on Friday.
Our songbird came home near midnight and was so exhausted that she went directly to bed. I’m sure she enjoyed a sound sleep. In my room, however, I could not sleep at all. I was as excited as I had ever been. I wandered through the vast library in my mind. Novels can show us ways through dilemmas that we might never have thought to follow if left to our own devices. Fiction can introduce us to ideas that seem exotic until we consider them long enough, whereupon they become obvious wisdom; some ideas might even repulse us until we realize we are reacting with a bias that we should want to shed. Of all the novels I’d read and that I revisited during that night, the better ones offered themes and observations that reinforced the decision I had made. Some books by bitter cynics and misanthropes aggressively challenged every value that I embraced; however, the emptiness of their arguments also assured me that I was doing the right thing—which no doubt would have infuriated their authors.
Although I had no doubt that I possessed the power to do as I intended, I lacked certainty as to how to pass the gift of perfect health, of lifelong strength and vigor. No words had been necessary to heal Rafael and Gertie. In the dog’s case, I had not even had a conscious intention of saving him. There was no need to shout,Heal!No white-robed and hand-clapping hallelujah choir would increase the likelihood that I would succeed. As in all things, humility seemed to be the best approach. I was a freak, the veteran of tawdry stage shows, who came from nothing andseemedto have come from nowhere—unclaimed by a father or a mother with blood ties to me. My power was as mysteriousas how my twisted body was able to function. If I did nothing but placed both hands on someone with the intent to pass my gift, surely it would be received.
When I’d drawn the effects of poison from Rafael, I apparently conveyed to him the very benefit I wanted to transmit to my family. I might have done the same with Gertie in the hospital. She had not suffered as much as a cold since then. However, I didn’t want to take the chance of leaving her unprotected.
That night, the hours I spent scheming how best to inoculate everyone without making them curious about my odd behavior was time wasted. In the morning, when I went downstairs for breakfast at the kitchen table, Izzy arrived simultaneously. It was the most natural thing to stand tiptoe, embrace her with my hands on her shoulders, and kiss her cheek. I felt it happen then, like warm currents of air passing through me, out of me, into her. If she was aware of it, she felt less than I did. Her eyes widened for a moment, and there was a catch in her voice, and then she continued greeting me.
Gertie stood at the center island, watching Chef Lattuada pour coffee into a mug for her. I embraced her as I had Izzy. Once more I felt the transmission occur. She frowned. “What just ...”
I said, “Just what?”
“What was that?”
“That?”
“Yeah, that.”
“What that?” I asked.
Cocking her head, looking puzzled, she said, “Addie?”
She was a writer, after all, a novelist in the making, so it was not surprising that she would be more sensitive to events than anyone else. “I don’t know what you’re asking, Gertie.”
After a hesitation, she shook her head and sighed. “Neither do I, amigo. I’ve been up half the night, revising those chapters you haven’t seen. I’m done with them, as done as I can be for now.”
“Gimme, gimme.”
“That’s them, the golden pages,” she declared, pointing to a stationery box on the counter. “Be vicious.”
“You can count on me.”
As I spoke, Franklin and Loretta entered the kitchen. This was a hugging family. The bacon was still sizzling on the griddle by the time I had passed to them the same gift I had given to my sisters.
When I got back to my room after breakfast, I found that the stationery box contained the 280 pages that Gertie had written—and polished, polished, polished—to date. I didn’t start with the two most recent chapters but began rereading from page one, as attentive as her prose required. Although mentally alert and captivated again by the novel, I was physically exhausted. I suspected the legacy I passed to the four of them had cost me every bit as much as I had thought it might. After I finished reading and made notes on the two new chapters, I phoned the kitchen to ask if Chef would send dinner to my room, just a sandwich and a split of cabernet. After I ate, yet again rereading the two new chapters, I brushed my teeth and went to bed with my diary, forcing myself to record the events of this day.
I have just now finished that entry and feel sleep stealing over me. And something more than sleep. Some change is occurring that I never anticipated. I have removed my gloves. How can this be? Whatever this is, it is not death. I’m not afraid, only tired. So tired. I can’t hold the pen any longer. I am ... becoming ...
Forty-Three
How strange this night has been.
