We Are Gathered

by Jamie Weisman

  “I don’t know where she is!” I had to tell him. Wherever he had been, he could not have known what happened. He was running toward me with such joy; I feared the disappointment would kill him. He had survived, but his beloved had not. “I think she died,” I shouted. “Eva. A long time ago.”

  It was as if he didn’t hear me. He just kept shouting, “Don’t move. Don’t be scared. I just want to see you. I won’t hurt you!”

  “I know you won’t,” I said. “I know you’re a Jew.” He was close enough for me to really see him now. Elias was changed; of course, he would have changed. Sixty years had passed. He looked a little older but still young, not nearly as old as I. He’d gotten fatter, but hadn’t we all wanted to be fat after the war; after we had nearly starved, hadn’t we wanted to never have an empty cupboard again, to always have a refrigerator full of meat and cheese and milk. Hadn’t Julius laughed at me the first time we went out to dinner in America when I ordered two of everything and tried to wrap up the steak in a napkin to put in my purse. When they brought me coffee and a little silver pitcher of milk, I looked around for something to pour the milk into, and then asked Julius if we could take the silver pitcher—there was one on every table, so I was sure the hotel wouldn’t miss it. Julius had said that would be stealing, and I had said, Is that such a crime? My husband examined the pitcher of milk, and told me, If you want a silver pitcher, I will buy you one. I don’t want the pitcher, I said. I want the milk.

  We stood face-to-face now. Elias had survived, but he was different, and I barely recognized him. He was no longer handsome, but he wouldn’t be, of course. His beauty had been tied up with his innocence and his courage, loving a girl when the world was about to end but not having experienced its end.

  “We thought you were lost, but you were here all along.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “You’re old.”

  I said, “I know. Why aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Not as old as I am. At least you don’t look it.”

  “I feel it.”

  “Eva is dead. Michael found a man in a refugee camp who saw her killed. She died in Bergen-Belsen,” I said. “And I thought you were dead too. All these years I thought you were dead. Your sister found me after the war and she was certain of it. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been in terrible places,” he told me. “Where the rivers boil with blood and doctors kill people instead of saving them. Men in white stomp through the halls carrying sharp knives, and people lie in beds with their arms outstretched getting poison pumped in their veins, begging for more life. The lights are so bright there that everyone looks old, even the newborn babies. That’s why babies cry when they’re born. They see their death. Where I was, everything that looks pretty is ugly, and that means everything that’s ugly should be pretty, but it’s not. Or if it was, I couldn’t see it.”

  “I was there too.”

  “I thought you’d be younger. And prettier.”

  “I think you’re thinking of my sister. She was the beauty of the family.”

  “Can you fly?”

  What a thing to say! But maybe that was not an unreasonable question in whatever place he had been. “No.” I shook my head. “Not yet, at least. Can you?”

  “No, of course not. You’re the one who should be able to fly. But you should be younger, prettier . . .” He looked up to the sky. “Nothing is ever the way it’s supposed to be for me. I always get the wrong side of the coin. Old, not new; ugly, not pretty. Stupid, not smart. Dead, not living. Tails, not heads.”

  He reached out for me and held me by the shoulders, held me strong, hurt me a little, but I didn’t pull away. I was afraid of losing him.

  “Will you fix what’s wrong with me?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I can,” I said. “Too much time has passed.” I was sad for him. He wanted Eva, but he got me. Perhaps it was not a better fate to survive that way. I think he was realizing it too, and we both blinked at each other. I didn’t cry though. I had a talent for not crying, not crying when I got on the train that took me away from my mother, not crying when I saw Levi killed, not crying when I learned that my mother and my father were dead, not crying when Julius died. If you want the milk, Julius said, drink it now. I told him that I wasn’t thirsty or hungry, so he called the waiter over and asked if we could buy the silver pitcher. The waiter didn’t know what to do. No one had ever asked to buy the silver pitcher before. He got his manager. Julius reached for his wallet, and the manager saw the tattoo on his wrist, and said, “Sir, you may have the pitcher. Compliments of the Plaza.”

  “You have to,” Elias insisted. “Please,” he begged. “I can’t stay this way.”

  The water was swirling around our ankles. The hem of my dress was wet, and the young man’s trousers were wet. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were tiny silver fish in the water. And bits of gold and maybe diamonds.

  I reached up to Elias and placed my hands, my old bony hands, on either side of his face. “Everything is fine now,” I told him. “I can’t remember the last time I was hungry. Everything will be fine. You did what you had to do. All is forgiven. All is forgiven.”

  I leaned my head against his chest and heard his heartbeat. The sound of life, of all life, so fast in a baby, then slower as we age until there is one last clap and we’re done. Seeing Elias, my heart was happy. People talk of heartbreak, the pain you feel there, but there is also joy there, a quicksilver lightening, a skip, a song in my heart. I know, I know, Julius, it all comes from the brain, but you feel it in your heart, and it is your heart that makes things final. You have a thought, you speak your last words, but it isn’t over until the heart stops beating. I counted out his heartbeats. My own heart is so slow that the doctor wanted to put in a thing to make it keep working, a pacemaker. Annette was mad at me, but I said, No, it’s slowing down, thank God; I should be so lucky that one day it will just come to a stop.

  Of course I would get an old wrinkled fairy, tired and sad and maybe a little crazy. She wasn’t making any sense. Who was this Eva she kept talking about? Was that supposed to be my fairy? She kept saying how beautiful she was—figures, there was some last-minute switch, and I don’t get the fairy, I get the witch. They’re probably the same thing anyway, fairies, good witches, bad witches, bitches. My girlfriend, my love, Serena, that bitch was beautiful and evil, so I am probably better off with hideous and good. This fairy didn’t seem very powerful though, no wings, a pink dress and jacket that looked like something my mother would put in the pile to be taken to the Salvation Army, but I had no choice but to believe her when she said everything would be fine. She got the part about being hungry all the time, how the meds do that to me, fucking with the satiety center in the hypothalamus so a stack of pizzas reaching the moon couldn’t fill me up. I’d puke before my brain said to stop already.

  I was trying to remember what was supposed to happen now. She kept talking about my taking her away, but I thought she was supposed to take me away, link her arm through mine so we could float up to heaven. I was pretty sure I was supposed to kiss her. Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t know if I could. She had brown splatters all over her face, her skin was papery and crinkled as if some little kid had wadded it and then tried to stretch it out again like a hundred times. It was weird when she touched me, though, because her hands were soft, and for a minute, I felt safe and happy. The last time I felt that happy, my mom was pushing me on a swing. How high do you want to go? she asked me. Would you like your feet to touch the clouds? Yes! Yes! I wanted my feet to touch the clouds. There was music coming from somewhere, classical, and there should be classical music, right, because fairies were old like Mozart and Beethoven. Your fairy isn’t going to come floating down to AC/DC or the Rolling Stones. She’s going to arrive with violins and a little flute, a harp maybe.

  “Something’s wrong with my brain,” I told her. “And I really need help. The doctors can’t fix
me. My mom and dad are giving up. I am pretty sure no one is ever going to love me.”

  “Don’t say those things,” she said. “Eva loved you so much. Someone will love you. I used to think the same thing. Worse even. I thought the world was a terrible place; how could anyone ever love someone after seeing what people could do to one another? But I found Julius. He had suffered even more than I did, and he loved me. Children he lost, and then I gave him children, and he loved them too. Could you see any of this from where you were? No.” She searched my eyes. “No. It seems you don’t know all the terrible things that happened. Eva was killed. Levi was shot dead. My mother and father, your mother and father. Your sister survived, but I am sorry. I don’t know if she’s still alive. We lost touch a long time ago.”

  “My sister’s alive,” I said. “In a way, she’s lucky. She only wants what the world can give her, and she’s really, really good at not seeing all the shitty things that happen. The world’s more shit than good. But don’t tell my sister that. She thinks there’s redemption in a shopping bag.”

  My fairy’s eyes were gray and glassy. They looked a little watery, loose in the sockets. I had the sudden thought that they were going to pop out and I would have to catch them because they were actually precious gemstones that would hold the secret to something, the answer to a question so important that I didn’t even know how to ask it.

  “A shopping bag,” she said. “Redemption in a shopping bag.” She laughed, and it was a really beautiful laugh, a laugh in a foreign language if there is such a thing. It definitely wasn’t an American laugh, not even one in English. It was a laugh I’d never heard before. “Redemption in a shopping bag,” she said again. “Elias”—she squeezed my face—“let’s go back to where you were. It’s probably better there. The bug hole, the worm hole, the cut in the sky, let’s go through it. I’m ready. Eva’s not here. There isn’t anything for you here. Let’s go back there. I’m never going to die. That’s obvious now. But everyone has to leave somehow. Isn’t that why you are here? To take me away?”

  “I think it’s the other way around. You’re supposed to save me. You’re the one with all the magic.”

  She closed her eyes tightly. I could see the veins bulging around her eyes. She clutched her hands to her chest. “My heart is breaking,” she said. “Seeing you and remembering Eva. I know the heart doesn’t really break. Julius taught me that. You feel sad in your brain, and the brain tells the heart to hurt and makes you feel pain here—in the chest—but it hurts, Elias. It hurts so much.” Her face was flushed red; she reached for my hands. “I don’t think we have a lot of time, Elias. We need to go now.” She stumbled a bit, falling into me.

  “I’m not Elias.”

  “Of course you are. Who else would you be?”

  Who else would I be? That was a good question. “Can you make me someone else?” I asked. “Is that something you can do?”

  She shook her head against my shirt. “I’m not the magical one. You are.” She dropped my hands and held her arms out. “Look at me. I’m old and tired. Yes, I survived the war, but that wasn’t magic. It was luck. You’re the magical one. You survived. You survived and stayed young.”

  The music stopped. Suddenly, like in a game of musical chairs. There were shouts now, of joy or fear, I couldn’t tell. Shouts but no sirens. I listened for them. Then the sky fell apart, crumbled, and let in so much light that it seemed like all the stars were being drawn to us, an uncountable number of suns bearing down on us. We had only a moment, the smallest fraction of time, before we’d burn to death. I looked up to where the shouts were and now I could see them all, see all the fairies dancing, tossing flowers in the air, shouting with delight at the end of the world. There were flowers everywhere.

  “We have to go now,” I said. I scooped her up in my arms. She put her arms around my neck. Someone would come to rescue the fairies. They’d never be allowed to die. We had to find a way to get to them.

  “Thank you, Elias,” she said. She let her head fall back, and her eyes darted back and forth, following the leaves and branches as I rushed us toward safety. Her eyes were moving, moving so quickly. There was a name for it, a name I’d learned in medical school. Nostradamus? No, nystagmus.

  The music started again. This old fairy was heavier than she looked. She was probably centuries old, and after so long, her body must have become denser so inside of her, rather than carbon and calcium, I would find lead and mercury. I got closer and saw all the fairies dancing, the young ones, the pretty ones, the ones who were not meant for me. My fairy’s eyes were closed, and I thought I heard her humming. The circle opened, and in the center was a woman in white. Veiled and illuminated, her arms lifted to heaven, the queen of the fairies. She looked squarely at me. I had seen her before. I suddenly realized I had seen her before, and I had done something terrible to her, something for which there was no atoning. She looked through my skin, through my skull to the tangle of my brain. It was her fault, I realized. She had cursed me, and no one could fix me.

  Then I knew why I had been sent this ancient fairy. She was the only one who could undo the curse. In all the stories I ever read, the oldest witch, the oldest king, the oldest wizard, they were always the strongest, and even though she didn’t look like much, given her unworldly weight and her wisdom, she had to be more powerful, able to stir the seas with a twitch of her finger. And she was mine. She had said it. All was forgiven. Now I understood. If the queen of the fairies, who looked so beautiful, so lovely all in white, enchanting, my mother would say, as if it were a compliment, when what it really meant was that your beauty could cast a spell, an evil spell—most spells are evil—and curse the brain of the young doctor so he could no longer cure the sick, so he would become fat and ugly and stupid; if she had cursed me, it would take a strong fairy to break the curse, an ancient one with potions and powers unknown even to the queen.

  “You did nothing wrong,” my fairy murmured. “All is forgiven.” Her eyelids were as thin as crushed flower petals, veined and lilac in color.

  “I need you to help me,” I said. She was getting heavier by the minute as all the power of the universe was condensed into her small ancient body. I was determined not to drop her. I knew I was being tested. The circle closed. Confetti in the air.

  The crowd rushed away from us like water down a drain, leaving the castle suddenly empty, the glasses still full of wine, flowers in the vases, cake on the plates. I staggered up the hill. I thought we were going to be burned up or left alone in a wasteland, but there we stood, a fat, stupid hero carrying a leaden, tired fairy, and it was cool and quiet and very still. Where had they all gone? And in such a hurry. Balloons bobbed in a man-made breeze from slow-turning fans in the tent. We had our choice of tables.

  “Lay me down,” she said. “I’m so tired.” Someone had left a sparkly gold shoe on the dance floor, Cinderella’s shoe maybe; there could, of course, be more than one story at a time. I was not the only one suffering in the world. Some poor mistreated princess who had lost her throne might have come here seeking the assistance of the fairies. I lay her down on the floor. There were three silver fans turning overhead and a string of bright lights, rose petals and confetti on the floor, a half-eaten giant white cake on the center table. Her eyes were still closed. She moaned and turned her face to the side. My God, my God, I realized, she had to die to save me. It had taken so much out of her, every last scrap of energy; she had used all of it to expel them, all of them who had wished me unwell.

  Cake! Maybe the cake was magical—why else would it be here? I sprang up and sank my hand into the cake. “Here,” I said urgently. “Here.” I had a fistful of the stuff, too much cake, too much icing. I nipped a piece off, opened her mouth to put it in. The icing smeared on her lips, the cake sat on her tongue. She didn’t swallow it, but she smiled. She tried to sit up, beckoned for me to come closer. She said, cake falling out of her mouth, “I can’t believe you found me. Eva would be so happy you survived. That’s
true love, you know. Wanting someone to live even after you die.” She touched a bony finger to her lips and examined it, the white and pink icing. She lay back down, turned her head away from me. The veins in her neck bulged.

  I felt the curse lifting, the doctor in me returning, like blood through an arm after the tourniquet is removed. Heart failure! She was in heart failure. I looked down to her feet, fallen apart in the shape of a V, and saw her swollen legs, doughy and sodden. If I had my stethoscope, I would listen to her lungs and hear the telltale sloshing of extra water, the drowning that comes when the blood returns to a weakened heart, a heart that can’t push forward anymore and, exhausted, keeps the blood waiting but can’t stop it from returning, returning, even though this is the end of the line. Fairies have hearts, I realized. So do hummingbirds and armadillos, rhinoceroses and sorority sisters. Dinosaurs had hearts too. Dragons must. And unicorns. Everything that breathes. Hearts that fail. Hearts that stop.

  I dragged a chair over and propped her legs up, then sat Indian-style with her head in my lap. Her neck was damp with sweat, her breath shallow. I smoothed the gray hair off her face; even the lightest touch of my hand left a bruise. I watched it blossom under my thumb, a lilac flower on her cheek. “Elias,” she sighed.

  I started to tell her that I am not Elias, but then I thought maybe I was. Maybe there was a mix-up all along, and I should just be whoever this worn-out fairy wanted me to be. It had to be better than being Steven Shapiro. “Yes?”