After a couple of hours Kate went and sat in the museum café, where she stared out at the people enjoying early spring in the sculpture garden. Why did she never paint? she wondered. Or even just write about painting? She could have done that. She knew from the criticism she’d read that she saw things other people missed or ignored. Maybe, she thought, maybe it was just too easy to take what Mother Night offered. With the gift, Kate could do what nobody else in the world could do. And she could become famous, not to mention rich. She’d just never asked herself if it was what she wanted.
William Reed Evans lived—lay dying—in a house overlooking the sea on the other side of the turtle from Kate’s home. Built one hundred and fifty years ago, which made it old for that part of the world, the wooden house included towers and steeples, curved window bays, and scallops, all of which gave it a look somewhere between stone and gingerbread. The long white car that had picked Kate up at the airport drove through a security check and up a curving driveway past a series of statues, some modern, some very old.
Jason Haverwell was waiting for Kate in front of the house. Did she want to rest? he asked her after he’d introduced himself. The driver of the car had already begun to carry her bags into the house, all but the black leather, which Kate held by her side. No, she told Haverwell, she wanted to see Mr. Evans immediately.
The night before, when she’d returned from the museum to find the tickets waiting on Laurie’s kitchen table, she’d sat for a while, then called Jason Haverwell. She wanted him to know, she said, that the chances of her actually curing Evans hardly existed, and probably she couldn’t do any more than ease his dying, maybe not even that. No matter, Haverwell had told her, no matter. Mr. Evans had asked for her. At least they could try.
They walked down a long corridor lined with paintings, none of them by Evans. At the end of the hall a large oak door opened and a woman stepped out to stand in front of it, arms folded like a barrier. About Kate’s age, the woman was tall, possibly taller than Kate, and very thin. She wore an austere white blouse buttoned up to the neck, and a pleated green skirt of heavy silk that came down to a few inches above her soft brown shoes. She had pulled her brown hair back in a tight bun. Her face carried a detached beauty, only enhanced by the iciness of her stare. It looked like the work of an artist dedicated to aesthetic perfection. “Is this the faith healer?” she said. “Where are her snakes and juju charms?”
“Melissa,” Haverwell said, “please. We agreed to try this.”
“I agreed to nothing of the sort.”
Haverwell sighed. Turning to Kate, he said, “Ms. Cohen, this is Melissa Evans, Mr. Evans’s daughter.”
Kate didn’t bother putting out a hand. “I’m Kate Cohen,” she said. “I’m sorry to meet you in such troubled circumstances.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
“Ms. Evans,” Kate said, “I didn’t ask to come here. I did not push myself on you and your family. Mr. Haverwell called me. Until then I did not even know that your father was sick.”
“And I’m sure you resisted the idea of coming here.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. From the very little I’ve heard, it frankly does not sound as if anyone could do anything at this stage, let alone me. What I do is really very narrow.”
“And just what do you do?”
“I listen to death,” Kate said. “I try to understand what death wants with each person. Sometimes, if death will let the person go, I can help him or her get stronger. That’s all. No miracles. No faith healing.”
Melissa nodded. “No miracles,” she repeated sarcastically. She turned her furious body toward Haverwell. “For God’s sake, Jason, how could you do this? This insults my father’s death. Can’t he at least die with some dignity?”
Haverwell told Kate, “Ms. Evans has been overseeing Mr. Evans’s treatment. She’s a biochemist.”
To Melissa Evans, Kate said, “I have no desire to interfere in your father’s dying. If you wish, I can return right now to the airport and take the next plane home. I won’t see your father or disturb him in any way.”
“But you will send a fee. For your professional services. I’m sure of that.”
“No fee.”
Haverwell burst in, “This is simply too much. To have her come all the way to the door to Willie’s room—and then turn around? No—I won’t have it. You know very well that your father asked to see this woman.”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Jason, you’ve worked for my father all these years and you still can’t recognize when he’s making fun of you?”
“I’ll take that chance. I say we let Ms. Cohen do whatever it is she does. What harm can it cause? She’s already said she won’t interfere with his treatment. And even if she did, what difference could it make? What harm could she do to him?”
Melissa said, “She can harm his dignity. That’s all he has left.”
“And to save his dignity you would block any last spark of hope? I’m ashamed for you, Melissa. You’re better than that. Much better.”
There was a long pause. Kate wondered what she wanted, go home or stay. She looked at Melissa Evans’s narrowed eyes in that beautiful face and thought how much she would like to show her up.
Shaking her head, as if to contradict herself, Melissa said, “All right. But I go with her. I want to see whatever she does.”
“Of course,” Kate said.
Whatever the original function of the room where Willie Reed lay, its transformation into a hospital had obliterated its history far more than in Alice Harmon’s family room. The oversize hospital bed, empty of any cards or totems or any other decoration, dominated the bare room. No paintings hung on the walls, though Kate saw enough faint outlines of frames to guess that the room may once have served as a gallery. She wondered if Evans had ordered them removed, wanting no competition for the display of his illness. Machines lined up alongside the bed—tracking devices for heart, lungs, and brain, IV lines and oxygen tanks—all of them unused, unplugged. Only one device remained in use, a morphine drip attached to the railing and seeping relief directly into Evans’s veins.
Evans lay propped up against a trio of pillows. The sun burning through the wide windows lit up the yellow of his skin, his fingernails, even the sclera of his eyes. He looked plump and rounded, but Kate recognized the bloat of poison taking the place of meat and fat. Alongside the bed a chromium stand contained a glass of orange juice and a plate of baby food, both untouched. On a lower level of the stand Kate saw a pair of shiny clean bedpans, and next to them an open box of incontinence underwear—diapers for adults. A slight smell of excrement hung in the air. Either Evans needed a changing or else he’d leaked into the sheets and his attendants hadn’t gotten around to replacing them. The thought of Melissa guarding her father’s dignity stung Kate’s throat, and she had to clench her fists not to cry.
A young man in a white uniform and an older man in a suit stood up from wooden chairs when Kate and the others entered the room. Haverwell introduced them as Evans’s nurse and doctor. As soon as he had shaken hands with Kate, the doctor excused himself, stopping only to look sharply at the nurse, as if to say, “I can’t stay in the room for this. You watch our patient.” For once, Kate wished she wasn’t holding her black bag.
Though Evans stared at her, Kate couldn’t tell how much he understood. His puffy eyes gave him a quizzical look, accented by his half-open mouth. If indeed he had asked for Kate as a joke, either on his doctors or his own dying, he probably had forgotten the point. Melissa smoothed his thin unruly hair with her fingers. “Willie,” she said, “this is Kate Cohen. The—the healer. She’s going to examine you.” Evans gave no sign of having heard her.
Kate shook her head. What should she do? Go through her routine, check the eyes and the tongue? She probably would blush if she even tried it. In her mind she brought up the image of the paintings she’d seen the day before. Could this yellow sack of skin, these limp hands and staring eyes really have painted
The Railroad at Dawn? Where do we go? she thought. Where do we go before we die, when we run from our bodies?
She realized that Melissa was watching her. All of them were waiting, expecting her to do something. She closed her eyes. No good. That dark refuge inside of her had closed up for today. Nothing inside but invasions of light. When she opened her eyes she saw—of course—her godmother at the head of the bed. The phantom image appeared embedded in the wall, as if it had stood there forever, as if they’d built the whole house around it.
Kate wondered why she’d come. Because of the career move, as Hilda thought? Or because it was Willie Reed? A waste, she thought. A waste of time, a waste of hope.
And then something happened. Maybe Melissa’s hostility did it. Or maybe Mother Night, with her implacable ownership. Or maybe Evans himself, lying so helpless in the grip of an invisible woman. “Turn the bed around,” Kate said.
Melissa said, “What?”
“Turn it around. So the feet face the wall. Now.” She began to tug at a corner of the metal frame. Haverwell and the nurse hovered nearby, unsure of what to do.
“This is ridiculous,” Melissa said. “This is even worse than I thought.”
“Help me,” Kate said to Haverwell. He began to push at the opposite end of the bed.
“Stop it,” Melissa demanded. “Stop it right now.”
In a voice harsher than ice scraped against a brick wall, William Reed Evans said, “No. Do what she says.”
Twice Melissa opened her mouth then closed it, while Kate, still pushing the heavy bed, wondered if Willie Reed considered it all part of the joke. Then one long step took Melissa to the side of the bed, where she flipped a switch to release the brake on the wheels and the bed swung easily around. While Melissa steadied the morphine drip, Kate and Haverwell and the nurse finished aligning the foot of the bed perpendicular to the wall.
Kate didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she forced herself to look at the cream-colored plaster. There stood her godmother, still stuck in the wall, only inches away now from the small hill of Evans’s feet under the blanket. The phantom image darkened, becoming denser, then abruptly vanished. Kate turned quickly to look by Evans’s head, and then all about the room. Empty. No one but her three helpers and Willie Reed, who lay back with his eyes closed and a slight smile turning up his yellow lips.
Exhausted, Kate managed somehow to go through the routine with the two brown bottles. Melissa sniffed the potion and announced she wanted to do a chemical analysis, but otherwise allowed Kate to explain the dosage and, finally, blessedly, to leave the room.
Haverwell, too, said nothing as he led Kate upstairs to her own room. They no longer all dined together, he told her, but she could call down to the kitchen whenever she wanted, and the cook would send something up or, if she liked, set a place in the dining room. He went on to give her more bits of information, including his and Melissa’s extensions, but when he saw she wasn’t listening, he promised to write it all down, and then left her alone.
The room was large and as filled with sunshine as the sickroom on the ground floor. In other circumstances, Kate would have loved it here, the queen-size wooden bed, the cherrywood desk, the view of a terraced formal garden behind the house. Right now, all she cared about was the private bathroom and the pile of fresh towels. She thought at first to take a long bath, but she knew she lacked the strength to do anything more than wash her face. What the hell had she done, she thought, as she splashed hot water on her closed eyes. Either she would make a total fool of herself and blow her infallible reputation, or else—what? Don’t think, she decided. Sleep. She dried her face and left the bathroom—
And Mother Night was there, standing in front of the window, blocking the sun despite her small size. She was dressed in the kind of outfit Kate remembered from her childhood—a long blue dress, sparkling blue shoes, and a wide floppy hat, amber colored, with what looked like tiny golden faces embedded in the folds.
“Godmother,” Kate whispered.
Mother Night turned and stared at her. For several seconds, neither of them moved, and then Kate’s godmother turned her head from side to side. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said, and marched past Kate to the door. For several seconds Kate stood with her hand against the top of her chest, breathing rapidly. And then somehow the fear washed out of her, and she realized how much she missed this terrifying old woman. She dashed out to the landing. Mother Night was already down the stairs and halfway to the front door. Softly, afraid to shout, she called, “Godmother? I’m sorry. Please. I just didn’t know what to do. I’m really sorry.” Mother Night left the house without turning around.
Several times over the next couple of days Kate thought of leaving. She didn’t think anyone would stop her. No one called for her, or spoke to her, or left her any messages. Maybe they were waiting for her to come check on her patient. She knew she should do that, of course. Hilda would have ordered her right down to the sickroom. Somehow, Kate couldn’t make herself go there. She’d already done everything she knew how to do. If she went to see Evans, she would be going for nothing but her own curiosity. And besides, she’d promised her mother she’d come right back.
On the third day, she was sitting up in bed, looking at a book of Evans’s early drawings, when someone knocked at the door. “Come in,” she said, and before Kate had even put down the book, Melissa strode into the room. She was wearing a loose-knit white cotton sweater with a round neck and wide sleeves over narrow black jeans and no-nonsense sandals. She had pulled back her hair again, but not as tightly as the other day, so that it lay in a dense circular weave against the back of her head. Kate thought how it was a pleasure to look at her.
Melissa held up one of the bottles at almost arm’s length. “Do you know what this is?” she said.
“A plant,” Kate told her. “Tinctured in alcohol for six weeks. Vodka, to be precise.”
“Phytolacca Americana. That’s your plant’s proper name. Did you know that it’s fatal in large doses?”
A sick feeling jumped in Kate’s stomach. Godmother, she thought. Her godmother had set her up. She’d let Kate think…Kate said, “I never give it in large doses.”
“No, I’m sure you don’t. In small doses, like the amount in your ‘prescription,’ Phytolacca Americana shouldn’t do much at all. Not for someone like my father. It gives the immune system a boost. My father needs a whole immune transplant. Not to mention several new organs.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said.
Melissa burst out, “Do you know what he did today? He sat up. All by himself. And he ate. He ate a banana and a plate of mashed vegetables and a cup of broth. All by himself. And then he made fun of Jason.” She looked at the brown bottle like she wanted to throw it against the wall but didn’t dare. “How could this stuff do that?”
All the usual words came into Kate’s mind—how she listens to death, how the tincture floats death’s wishes. Instead, she said only, “I am very glad to hear that your father is feeling better.”
Melissa’s anger changed suddenly to tears. “What’s going to happen? Will this genuinely last? Or are you just giving us a little magic? A dropkick to the immune system, and then as soon as you vanish he’ll go right back to disintegrating.”
“All I can tell you,” Kate said, “is that everyone else who’s tried this has gotten better. But if you want a guarantee, I’m sorry.”
Melissa nodded. She looked at the bottle and nodded again before she turned to leave. At the door she stopped and turned. She kept her face blank, but Kate could see it wanting to smile. “By the way, Martin—that’s Dr. Hovin—he’s having a fit.”
Kate saw no one for the next couple of days. Shadow people left food for her on trays outside the door or by her bed if she’d gone out, and then the trays vanished, taking even the crumbs she’d dropped on the floor. Now she really did want to go see Evans. Ten, twenty times she thought of marching into the sickroom to exult over the results of
her experiment. Only, what had she actually done? Wasn’t it just another trick? Kate wondered if she was finally sick of it, if maybe the time had come to stop playacting and shut the whole thing down. Maybe Willie Reed would be her farewell performance.
She called her mother, late, and got the answering machine. Wondering if Laurie and Marcie had progressed beyond the bookshelves, Kate left a message that she had to stay a little longer. Monitor the recovery, she said. She would get home as soon as possible.
She took to walking through the grounds, spending hours moving among the garden, a small woods on the other side of the house, and the paths along the cliff overlooking the sea. The drop wasn’t really a cliff; the slope down to the water contained scrub brush, wildflowers, and even some wind-stunted trees. Kate probably could have made it down and up again if she really wanted, but she was just as happy to sit on the grass above and watch the light move on the water.
She was sitting there, watching a hawk ride the currents above a layer of gulls, when Melissa came and joined her on the fifth day after Kate’s first and only visit with William Reed Evans—the Man Who Didn’t Die, as she’d begun to think of him. Melissa leaned forward with her hands on her thighs, and said, “Is it okay if I join you?” Kate smiled at her, suddenly glad that she’d washed her hair that morning, and that the wind wasn’t blowing it across her face. And glad too that she’d worn her long silk shirt, oversize and with the sleeves rolled up, over leggings and bare feet. Melissa wore another long skirt, but this time with a pale yellow T-shirt instead of a blouse.
“Have you heard the news?” Melissa asked. Kate didn’t answer. “No, I suppose not. My father got out of bed today.”
“I’m glad,” Kate said. “To be honest, I really didn’t know if what I did—the tincture—if it would help at all.”
“That’s not all,” Melissa said. “He got out of bed and started drawing.”
Godmother Night Page 34