City of Truth

by James Morrow

  I stroked my son’s balding scalp. “How’s your imagination working?” I asked him.

  “Pretty good, I guess.”

  “Can you picture Mr. Medicine zapping those nasty old Xavier’s germs?”

  “Sure.”

  “‘Zap ’em, Mr. Medicine. Zap ’em dead!’ Right, Toby?”

  “Right,” he wheezed.

  For over a week, Toby’s remained appropriately chipper, but then a strange Veritasian skepticism crept over him, darkening his spirits as relentlessly as the Pneumocystis carnii were darkening his lungs. “I feel sick,” he told Dr. Krakower one afternoon as she prepared to puncture him with a second IV needle, in the right arm this time. “I don’t think that medicine’s any good. I’m cold.”

  “Well, Rainbow Boy,” she said, “Xavier’s isn’t any fun—I’ll be the first to admit that—but you’ll be up and running before you know it.”

  “My head still hurts, and my—”

  “When one medicine doesn’t work,” I hastily inserted, “there’s always another we can try—right, Dr. Krakower?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Martina took Toby’s hand, giving it a hard squeeze as Krakower slid the needle into his vein.

  Toby winced and asked, “Do children ever die?”

  “That’s a strange question, Rainbow Boy,” said Dr. Krakower.

  “Do they?”

  “It’s very, very rare.” The doctor opened the stopcock on Toby’s meperidine drip.

  “She means never,” I explained. “Don’t even think about it, Toby. It’s bad for your immune system.”

  “He’s really cold,” said Martina, her hand still clasped in Toby’s. “Can we turn up the heat?”

  “It’s up all the way,” said Dr. Krakower. “His electric blanket’s on full.”

  The narcotic seeped into Toby’s neurons. “I’m cold,” he said woozily.

  “You’ll be warm soon,” I lied. “Say, ‘Zap ’em, Mr. Medicine. Zap ’em.’”

  “Zap ’em, Mr. Medicine,” said Toby, fading. “Zap…zap…zap…”

  So it was time to get serious; it was time for Sleeping Beauty’s father to track down every last spinning wheel and chop it to bits. The minute Krakower left, I turned to Martina and asked her to put me in touch with the president of the Healing and Ecstasy Association for the Recovery of Toby.

  Instead of complying, Martina merely snorted. “Jack, I can’t help feeling you’re riding for a fall.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A fall, Jack.”

  “Such pessimism. Don’t you know that psychoneuroimmunology is one of the key sciences of our age?”

  “Just look at him, for Christ’s sake. Look at Toby. He’s living on borrowed time. You know that, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t know that.” I cast her a killing glance. “Even if the time is borrowed, Martina, that doesn’t mean it won’t be the best time a boy’s ever had.”

  She gave me the facts I needed. Anthony Raines, Suite 42, Hotel Paradise.

  I marched up the hill outside the Center for Creative Wellness and placed the call. HEART’s president answered on the first ring.

  “Jack Sperry?” he gasped after I identified myself. “The Jack Sperry? Really? Goodness, what a coincidence. We’ve been hoping to interview you for The Toby Times.”

  “For the what?”

  “Our first issue comes out tomorrow. We’ll be running stories about the fun you and Toby are having down here, his favorite toys and sports, what analgesics and antibiotics he’s taking—all the things our members want to hear about.”

  The Toby Times. I found the idea simultaneously inspiring and distasteful. “Mr. Raines, my son just entered the hospital, and I was hoping—”

  “I know—it’s our lead story. A setback, sure, but no reason to give up hope. Listen, Jack—may I call you Jack?—we people of the HEART know you’re on the right track. Once Toby tunes in the cosmic pulse, his auric field will reintegrate, and then he’s home free.”

  The more Anthony Raines spoke in his calm, mellow voice, the better I felt—and the sharper my image of him became: a tall, raffish, golden-haired bohemian with bright blue eyes and a dropping, slightly disreputable mustache. “Mr. Raines, I want you to mobilize your forces.”

  “Call me Anthony. What’s up?”

  “Just this—for the next two weeks, Toby Sperry’s going to be the happiest child on earth.” No spinning wheel would escape my notice, ran my silent, solemn pledge. “Don’t worry about the cost,” I added. “We’ll put it all on my MasterDebt card.”

  I pictured Anthony Raines organizing his buddhalike features into a resolute smile. “Mr. Sperry, the HEART stands ready to help your cause in every way it can.”

  The next evening, Santa Claus visited the Center for Creative Wellness.

  His red suit glowed like an ember. His white beard lay on his chest like a frozen waterfall.

  “Who are you?” Toby asked, struggling to sit up amid the tangle of rubber. Every day he seemed to acquire yet another IV need: glucose, meperidine, saline, Ringer’s lactate, the various tubes swirling around him like an external circulatory system. “Do I know you?” With a bold flourish he pulled off his plastic mask, as if this bulbous saint’s mere presence had somehow unclogged his lungs.

  “Hi, there, fella,” said Santa, chuckling heartily: Sebastian, of course—Sebastian Arboria—the fat and affable dissembler who’d led the meeting in the roundhouse; I’d empowered Anthony Raines to hire him for twenty dollars an hour. “Call me Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas, if you prefer. Know what, Toby? Christmas is coming. Ever hear of Christmas?”

  “I think we studied that in school. Isn’t it supposed to be silly?”

  “Silly?” said Sebastian with mock horror. “Christmas is the most wonderful thing there is. If I were a young lad, I’d feel absolutely great about Christmas. I’d be looking forward to it with every cell of my body. I’d be so full of happiness there wouldn’t be any room left for Xavier’s Plague.”

  “Is Christmas a warm time?” Toby was wholly without hair now. He was bald as an egg.

  “The night before Christmas, I fly around the world in my sleigh, visiting every boy and girl, leaving good things behind.”

  “Will you visit me?”

  “Of course I’ll visit you. What do you want for Christmas, Toby?”

  “You can have anything,” I said. “Right, Santa?”

  “Yep, anything,” said Sebasian.

  “I want to see my mother,” said Toby.

  Dr. Krakower shuddered. “That’s not exactly Santa’s department.”

  “I want to get warm.”

  Sebastian said, “What I mean is…like a toy. I’ll bring you a toy.”

  “Pick something special,” I insisted. “Like, say, that Power Pony you’ve been asking about.”

  “No, that’s for my birthday,” Toby corrected me.

  “Why don’t you get it for Christmas?” Martina suggested.

  Toby slipped his rocket jockey’s oxygen supply back on. “Well…okay, I guess I would like a Power Pony.” His words bounced off the smooth green plastic.

  Sebastian said, “A Power Pony, eh? Well, well—we’ll see what we can do. Any particular kind of Power Pony?”

  “The kind for a big kid.” Toby’s inhalator thumped like a car riding on flat tires. ”Maybe I look short to you, lying here in bed, but I’m really seven. Can he be brown?”

  “So—a brown Power Pony for a seven-year-old, eh? I think we can manage that, and maybe a couple of surprises too.”

  Toby’s delighted giggle reverberated inside his mask. “How long do I have to wait?”

  “Christmas will be here before you know it,” I told him. “It’s just a couple of days away, right, Santa?”

  “Right.”

  “Will I be better by then?” Toby asked.

  “There’s a good chance of it, Rainbow Boy,” said the Krakower, twisting the stopcock on Toby’s meperidine drip. He was g
etting the stuff almost continuously now, as if he had two hearts, one pumping blood, the other pumping narcotics. “It’s highly likely.”

  Furtively I opened my wallet and drew out my MasterDebt card. “For Anthony Raines,” I whispered, pushing the plastic rectangle toward Sebastian. “Everything goes on this.”

  Sebastian extended his palm like a Squad officer stopping traffic. “Keep your card,” he said. “The HEART’s picking up the tab, including my fee.” He stood fully erect, the pillow shifting under his wide black belt, and backed out of the room. “So long, Toby—Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas,” said Toby, coughing. He threw off his mask and turned to me. “Did you hear that, Dad? Santa’s coming back. I’m so excited.” His plum-colored skin was luminous. “He’s going to bring me a Power Pony, and some surprises too. I can’t wait for him to come back—I just can’t wait.”

  Martina said, “We have to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I think you know.”

  She escorted me into the first-floor visitation lounge, a kind of indoor jungle. Everywhere, exotic pink blossoms sat amid lush green fronds the size of elephant ears. Fake, all of it: each petal was porcelain, each leaf was glass.

  “Jack, I don’t think what you’re doing is right.”

  “In your opinion, Martina.” I flipped on the television—a variety show from Veritas called The Tits and Ass Hour. “In your private opinion.”

  “It’s ugly, in fact. Wrong and ugly.”

  “What is? Christmas?”

  “Lying to Toby. He wants to know the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “He’s going to die soon.”

  “He’s not going to die soon.” I realized Martina meant well, but I still felt betrayed. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Toby’s.”

  I shuddered. “Indeed. Well even if he is really, really sick, he certainly shouldn’t hear about it.”

  “He’s dying, Jack. He’s dying, and he wants someone to be honest with him.”

  On the TV screen, a toothy woman removed the bikini top of her bathing suit, faced the camera, and said, “Here it is, guys! Here’s why you all tuned in!”

  I shut off the set. The image imploded to a point of light and vanished. “All this pessimism, Martina—you sound like my wife.”

  “Don’t be a coward.”

  “Coward? Coward? No coward would put up with the shit I’ve been through.” I chopped at the nearest plant with the edge of my hand, breaking off a glass frond. “Besides, he doesn’t even know what death is. He wouldn’t understand.”

  “He would.”

  “Let’s get something straight. Toby’s going to have the greatest Christmas a boy could possibly imagine. Do you understand? The absolute greatest, bar none.”

  “Fine, Jack. And then…”

  And then…

  The truth hit me like something cold, quick, and heavy—a tidal wave or a falling sack of nails. My knees buckled. I dropped to the floor and pounded my fists into the severed frond, pulverizing it. “This can’t be happening,” I moaned. I shook like a child being brainburned. “It can’t be, it can’t be…”

  “It is.”

  “I love him so much.”

  “Of course.”

  “Help me,” I cried as I worked the bits of glass into my palms.

  “Help Toby,” said Martina, bending down and enfolding me with her deep, genuine, useless sympathy.

  Seven

  On the last day of August, at the height of a seething and intractable heat wave, Christmas came to the Center for Creative Wellness. Sleigh bells jangled crisply in the hallway; the triumphant strains of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” flowed forth from a portable CD player; the keen verdant odor of evergreen boughs filled the air. I’ll never forget the smile that beamed from Toby’s dry, cyan face when his friend Saint Nicholas waddled into the room dragging a huge sack, a canvas mass of tantalizing bulges and auspicious bumps.

  “Hi, Santa.”

  “Look, Toby, these are for you!” Sebastian Arboria opened the sack, and the whole glorious lot flowed out, everything I’d told Anthony Raines to bring down from the City of Truth: the plush giraffe and the android clown, the snare drum and the ice skates, the backgammon set and the Steve Carlton baseball glove.

  “Wow! Oh, wow!” Bravely, wincingly, Toby tore off his oxygen mask. “For me—they’re all for me?”

  “"All for you,” said Sebastian.

  Toby held his stuffed baboon over the edge of the bed. “Look, Barnaby. Look what we got.”

  An entourage of HEART members appeared, a score of pixies, fairies, elves, and gnomes festooned with evergreen wreaths and mistletoe sprigs, streaming toward Toby’s bed. One of Santa’s helpers arrived pushing a hospital gurney on which sat a Happy Land even more elaborate than the layout my niece received after her burn (Toby’s included a funhouse and a parachute jump, plus a steam-powered passenger train running around the perimeter). Three other helpers bore an enormous tree—a bushy Scotch pine hung with glassy ornaments, sparkling tinsel, and dormant electric lights, shedding its needles everywhere.

  “Hi, everybody—I’m Toby,” he mumbled bravely as the helpers patted his naked head. “I’ve got Xavier’s Plague, but I won’t die. Children don’t die, Dr. Krakower said.”

  “Of course you won’t die,” said the elf behind the gurney.

  A tall pixie in a feather cap, holly necklace, and leiderhosen marched toward me. “Anthony Raines,” he said. I had anticipated his physiognomy in every particular but one; far from sporting a mustache, his lip was as hairless as a sentient Satirevian stone. “It’s a privilege to meet someone of your spiritual intensity, Jack.”

  A gnome connnected plug to socket, and the Christmas tree ignited—a joyous burst, a festive explosion, a spray of fireworks frozen against a green sky. As Toby clapped his hands—an effort that left him breathless and doubled over with pain—the HEART members began caroling.

  Oh, Toby, we’re so sad

  To hear you’re feeling bad

  But we can tell

  You’ll soon be well

  ’Cause you’re a spunky lad…

  “Santa, I have a question,” said Toby.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you remember that, er…that Power Pony?”

  “Power Pony, what Power Pony?” said Sebastian with fabricated distress. He smacked his mittens together. “Oh, yes—the Power Pony.”

  Hearing her cue, a slender female elf rode into the room on a magnificent chestnut-hued Power Pony, its bridle studded with rubies, its saddle inlaid with hand-tooled cacti, a mane of genuine horsehair flowing down its neck.

  “What’s his name?” Toby asked.

  Sebastian, God bless him, was prepared. “Down on Santa’s Power Pony Ranch, we called him Chocolate.”

  “That’s a weird name,” said Toby as the machine loped over and nuzzled his cheek. “Look, Dad, I got a brown Power Pony called Chocolate.” He coughed and added, “I wanted a black one.”

  A sharp ache zagged through my belly. “Huh? Black?”

  “Black.”

  “You said brown,” I rasped. These final weeks—days, hours—must be perfect. “You definitely said brown.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Brown’s a great color, Toby. It’s a great color.”

  Toby combed the pony’s mane with his pencil-thin fingers. “I don’t think I’ll ride him just yet.”

  “Sure, buddy,”

  “I think I’ll ride him later. I’m tired right now.”

  “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Toby slipped his mask back on. “Could I see how that Happy Land works?”

  As Dr. Krakower operated the mattress crank, raising Toby’s head and chest and giving him an unobstructed, God’s-eye view of Happy Land, Sebastian twisted the dials on the control panel. The toy lurched to life, the whole swirling, spinning, eternally upbeat world.

 
; “Faster,” Toby muttered as the carousel, ferris wheel, and roller coaster sent their invisible passengers on dizzying treks. “Make them go faster!”

  “Here, you do it.” Sebastian handed my son the power pack.

  “Faster…” Toby increased the amperage. “Faster, faster…” I sensed a trace of innocuous preadolescent sadism in his voice. “Step right up, folks,” he said. “Ride the merry-go-round, ride our amazing colossal roller coaster.” In his mind, I knew, the ferris wheel customers were now puking their guts out; the roller coaster was hurtling its patrons into space; the carousal horses had thrown off their riders and were trampling them underfoot. “Step right up.”

  It was then that I observed an odd phenomenon among Santa and his helpers. Their eyes were leaking. Tears. Yes, tears—children’s tears.

  “What’s the matter with everyone?” I asked Martina.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Their eyes.”

  “Step right up,” said Toby.

  Martina regarded me as she might a singularly mute and unintelligent dog. “They’re crying.”

  “I’ve never seen it before.” I pressed my desiccated tear ducts. “Not in grown-ups.”

  “Ride the parachute jump,” said Toby.

  “In Satirev,” said Martina, “grown-ups cry all the time.”

  Indeed. I surveyed the gathered grown-ups, their dripping eyes, their wistful smiles, their self-serving grimaces of concern. I surveyed them—and understood them. Yes, no question, they were enjoying this grotesque soap opera. They were loving every minute of it.

  Toby was no longer saying, “Step right up.” He was no longer saying anything. The only sound coming from him was a low, soft moan, like wind whistling down the Jordan River.

  A flurry of grim, efficient movement: Krakower cranking Toby’s mattress to a horizonal position, turning on his inhalator, opening the meperidine stopcock. Anthony Raines took my son’s knobby hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Will I see you people again?” asked Toby as the drug soaked into his brain. “Will you come next Christmas?”

  “Of course.”

  “Promise?”