“So, what about judgment? Are the commandments what we’ll be judged on?”
“You must think for yourself. Decent people will judge themselves. But the truly evil will be punished through endless, empty awareness.” Again, he was gone.
The reports of spontaneous healing were overwhelming the Vatican daily. All that could be done now was to collect the tidal wave of information, to be sorted through later.
Cardinal Giuseppe Guglieamo, Vatican secretary of state had been professionally skeptical. Then, he heard the tapes of the radio and watched the 16-millimeter film of healings, taken by the American television networks. Now, as the last of the film wound through the projector, he dropped from his chair to his knees, looking up to the
screen as to a crucifix. The projectionist slipped silently from the room after the last scene ended in a white flash of film leader.
The kneeling figure carefully removed his fragile glasses to mop his eyes. His faith, pushed to the sidelines through years of administration, was restored. He remained on his knees, the pain moving up his legs to his back until the spasms drove him prostrate. He endured it as a penance.
The projectionist remained outside the massive double doors, unsure. Once, he looked inside to the cassocked figure now lying prostrate on the marble, like a newly ordained priest, arms outstretched. A rosary the cardinal had worn largely as decoration for two decades was now moving slowly through his long, delicate fingers. An hour later, the cardinal moved the doors barely open, his slight frame slipping through. He paused and touched the projectionist on the arm, wordless acknowledging the man’s vigil. He moved down the long hall toward the Papal apartments.
They spoke in comfortable Italian. “Your holiness, I believe what I have seen and heard is, is unexplainable, except as miraculous. Taken together with the voice, it is overwhelming in its impact.”
“Yes, Lord Cardinal. Several of the nuncios have had a similar experience. I think it is time for me to know for myself. But all of this must be deeply confidential at this time. Our obligation is most solemn and weighs on us to be diligent but also to act with dispatch. Please bring me the film and recordings tonight.”
The next morning, Pope Paul VI addressed thousands from the balcony above St Peter’s Square. He would ignore all the normal protocols for investigation of miracles, and bypass the Bishops Conference. He spoke now without prepared remarks. It echoed through the square.
“I have seen with these eyes. I have seen with this heart. I have heard his voice. Those of you who also have seen and heard, know in your hearts it is real. Go now and pray, as will I.” He pronounced a benediction. Then he turned and stepped inside. The throngs in the square drifted away in silence.
Chapter 10
An intrepid caller had asked the visitor about Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Kali, Krishna, Rama, Siva, Vishnu.
“Think of all of these manifestations as essentially the same. They show your need to understand god in a cultural context. It is appropriate and it happens everywhere, across creation.”
“Then why do we make war in the name of our particular god?”
“It’s never the real reason. It’s a rationalization. An excuse for something else.”
Eileen knelt on the damp ground of their tiny yard, feeling the moisture dampening the knees of her jeans. This was when she was at peace, in the midst of the turmoil that their lives had become. Fences, gates and security people now enclosed their home, all provided by the network.
Margaret had become her only companion, besides Luke and the baby. Continuing at the hospital had been impossible. She had been besieged, like Luke, by the media and those seeking intervention with the visitor, on their behalf.
“How’s everything between you two, you and Luke?”
“Different. He’s under an incredible strain. He really leans on me now. It’s like this is the only place he can escape it. People just connect it all with him and it’s a burden that’s crushing him.” She thought of the last two days.
“I just don’t think I can do it anymore, Ei. And I feel like a Judas for even considering something like this. But sometimes I feel like I just can’t walk into that studio one more time. That would end it, at least for me. It would be over and all this hysteria would wear itself out pretty soon.”
“That’s your choice. You could stop it, at least for yourself.”
“What I also get is that something else is coming. Some kind of a big change, maybe. I think he’s leading up to it. Or he’s just making me know it.”
“So that’s why you’re staying with it?”
“Yeah. I can’t run out now. I know it’s a big deal and that I’m supposed to be part of whatever it is. But I think that I could stop after that.”
Hearing himself say it made the idea of retreat more tangible. Since the visits had begun, Luke was overwhelmed by the responsibility. He was a believer, not a holy man. Why had he been chosen instead of Billy Graham, Dr Martin Luther King or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen? He had shrunk back from the news media completely, wouldn’t respond to the shouted questions that waited outside the studio every day. Now he began to see this withdrawal as a tactical error because it shrouded him in mystery and it only intensified the reporters’ interest
But now he knew it would be over when he decided, and he could endure it until then. At breakfast the next day he decided something else. “Honey, I’m gonna start talking about how I feel, on the air today. I didn’t want you to be surprised, so I’m telling you now. You’re my wife.” She listened for the next hour as he described the turmoil and self-doubt consuming him. Now there were no unknowns between them. She saw his struggle as much in his hands as in the words. The barely discernible tremble had started a few weeks ago. Now the physical manifestation was made more noticeable by what he said. She was really worried about him for the first time.
When he was finished, she waited for a moment, then began to play back to him what he had been saying. He could barely hear her; she was so quiet and calm. “And the last thing I’ll say is that, yes, you’ve gotta get out as soon as this thing you’re sensing actually happens.”
The limousine driver gunned the engine to clear the crowd blocking the studio gate. They scattered, looking more like an angry picket line then believers at a vigil. Some looked in at Luke, who pretended to read the newspaper in the back seat, and he sensed the hostility. He was guilty of not granting their particular miracle. Jake took all of this without noticeable effect. “Howya doin? Hi! Good ta see ya. Thanks for comin’ by.”
Luke wished he could be a not-give-a-shit guy, like his producer. He got a glimpse of what it must be like when he would sip down a couple of drinks, getting fairly blasted from this rare consumption of booze. He would think,’so this is how it feels to not give a rat’s ass.’ He envied those blessed with nonchalance. Since he was a kid, he needed to have everything planned out in advance. What he would wear. Where he would go and how to get there. What might go wrong and how to get around it. What he would say. His existence was a continuous rehearsal, mostly for things that never happened.
The newsman with the incredibly deep voice was wrapping up the 9:55 report and Luke was ready to go. “And that’s News. Next report at eleven. Bulletins at once. Now Luke Trimble and Voices in The Night on KOGO, San Diego and the ABC Radio Network.”
As Larry’s mike light blinked off, he rose and swished out of the announce booth like Loretta Young descending a staircase. The deep voice of authority would be gone until the next newscast, replaced by a mid-range chatter. Larry’s exit invariably caused Jake to laugh-snort into Luke’s headset.
“Luke Trimble, Voices in the Night coming to you from sunny San Diego. Tonight I’d like to talk about me, and what’s been happening. Because I’m not so sunny. Imagine if you were in my place. Think what that would be like. How your life would be turned upside down. How stressed out you’d be and how unsure whether you were up to the job. Imagine how the attention and media coverage would affect y
our family, your home. That you couldn’t go out to a movie or for a pizza. Consider how it would feel to be in the middle of a miracle and not know why you were there.
“Sometimes, I think I can’t come in here one more time. But I know I have to, because you and he need me to. I’m tired and I’m sick to my stomach every minute I’m awake. Then I think I’m being a big baby and to start acting like a man. The only peace I get is when I fall asleep.”
Eileen sat stunned in their kitchen. She hadn’t expected him to go this far. Jake said nothing, looking away toward his dials and knobs.
Chapter 11
The visitor still hadn’t returned.
For weeks now, he’d been silent, and most of the calls revolved around that. A few blamed Luke’s outburst, but most were sympathetic to the pressure.
Eileen saw the tension begin to dissolve. He played with the baby for hours every afternoon, lying on the carpet alongside Jeremy, or on their huge bed. When they were both exhausted, Luke would lay on the sofa, the boy asleep on his chest, lulled by his father’s heartbeat. Luke half-dozed. Eileen watched them both from the kitchen. She never knew she could be this happy, despite the pressure they were under. Sometimes, on a baby- wakeful night, she would sit on the rocking chair in the nursery, Jeremy squirmy in her arms. Luke talked on the radio and she rocked back and forth in the darkness, wishing he were home. She thought of their trip cross country in the Healey on these nights and felt much older than the two years since then. Those simpler days were a storehouse of a freedom she could draw on now, when she needed it.
She fantasized a future without celebrity, with her husband and child, and time for herself when the baby was older. For the delicious pleasure of leafing through a magazine without interruption. For an unhurried shower, drying her hair and getting dressed before noon.
She looked out through the gate toward the sidewalk they used to walk into town. To push Jeremy in his stroller along it would be a vacation. But the curiosity-seekers were always there, outside the high fence, peering back at the pretty prisoner. Some day, soon, they could be free. Luke had promised and she believed. She would give him this time and then they would take down the gate and fences and live a life again.
Jake, on the other hand, was living full-tilt, now. By not seeking solitude, he got it. By embracing the crowds, he became theirs and they gave him room.
“What looks good?”
The girl across the table studied the menu hard, as though there would be an exam. He only half believed that she was real, and with him. She was a major ball-breaker, but she looked so good, he tolerated her campaign to improve him. Sandy’s name was really Delores. How did the nickname translate? Lori maybe, but Sandy?
She had dragged him from store to store in LaJolla. No more glasses held together with tape. Contact lenses. Clothes. Haircut. The ancient Jeep had to go too. She wouldn’t ride in it another day. The Corvette would be okay, the Porche would have been better, but, small steps. Jake figured he was three months away from hating her.
Her materialism was getting tedious and he could sense the end hurtling toward them. Otherwise, he would have liked her. She was funny and ready to laugh. And she loved sex even more than he did. But he was a bum at the core, knew it, and liked himself for it. She wasn’t going to change him. He would stay a sow’s ear, just cleaned up a little.
“I’m going with the cheeseburger platter, side of rings.”
“No he’s not. We’ll both have the house salad, dressing on the side and minestrone soup. Two iced teas. And more bread. Thanks.” The waiter was dismissed “Jake, you can’t eat crap all the time. You have to eat good food. You’ll be a fatty by forty.”
“I’ll stop at MacDonald’s later-15 cent cheeseburgers. Goooood”
“Fuck you.” But she smiled.
Sandy kept men just outside her emotional perimeter. But Jake was the dangerous kind because he had a good heart. She didn’t think he was capable of using her the way she was using him. She knew he might fall for her if she allowed it, but she wouldn’t. She would move on in time to a safer man, when Jake got too close. Only she knew the reason why.
She had been pretty, but the plainest of girls once, her family so poor she had one cotton dress hanging alone in the closet. She wore it every day to the new high school where the surfer boys and pretenders talked behind her back. She was utterly lonely, never spoke, and walked the three miles home every day while the others rode in their cars.
At first she didn’t notice the car that was pacing her walk along the side street near home, a Cadillac Eldorado. The man inside was older than her father. He smiled, beckoning by pushing the passenger door open. She stood looking for a moment but knew she would go to the gleaming chrome and leather. She liked the way he talked to her but she said nothing. An hour later, he dropped her near home, driving away with things of hers she could never regain. But she had submitted to what he made her do in the front seat of that car. It left her with a power she could use, and a shame she would never escape.
She was popular at school the following year.
Jake didn’t tell anyone about the book because he didn’t think he could carry it off. But he started writing every day about what had happened on the air the night before. To his surprise, the words spilled out on paper easily. Years of directing others in the studio and on the phones had given him a keen ear and deftness with words. Somebody had to get this down from a first-hand perspective and Luke was a mess at the moment, barely functioning, feeling too deeply.
“What’s this?”
Sandy had tiptoed in, hoping to wake him up with some half-asleep sex. Instead she side tracked to the strewn papers on his makeshift desk. Jake stirred, his hair tangled and covering his face until he pulled it back.
“Ah, just some notes on what’s been happening.”
“Fuck, it is. This is a book.” Sandy, despite her beach girl looks, had earned a fine arts degree, grinding it out with seven years of night classes. But most people didn’t bother to look beyond her thoroughly appealing surface to discover a razor sharp mind and discerning taste.
She crashed into a chair and pulled out her glasses, settling in for an evaluation. An hour later she looked up. Jake had been watching her for a sign while she picked through the pages. “This is incredible. Do you have any idea what you’ve got here?”
“Just some ideas. It’s pretty rough.”
“No. It’s got everything. This could be the book of the century for crisakes. Now what you’ve gotta do is tell Luke about it. Put both your names on it and have it ready to publish. The first book out is going to have an advantage and you can be sure there are already a dozen writers working on this story already. But you guys are first-hand. Now you have to keep it right up to date. Maybe even start a publisher typesetting it as you go.”
Her estimation of Jake had shifted with the reading of the pages. The subtlety of emotions he described and the poignancy of the prose caught her by surprise. There was deep religious and historic context too. She had miscalculated badly. He was gifted and he didn’t know it. Jake noticed the change in her as they sat in the shaded half-dark of his apartment. She spoke to him now with an undertone of respect. Control of their relationship had subtly shifted to him. Maybe she wouldn’t be a disposable pain in the ass. Maybe she could be a friend, after all.
Chapter 12
They sat over dinner. She was pregnant again and beginning to show. Luke remembered what she looked like the last time. She was so small that he’d kidded her then that she was a pregnancy with feet. But she looked so beautiful he would stare at her for long minutes.
“What?”
“Look at you. You look like a sunset, all pink.”
“Well, don’t tease me about this when I’m big as a house, but I really like being pregnant. I just wish we could go out more and show off.”
“Did you send the pictures to your folks and my mom?”
“Yep, and they’re gonna flip when they see those side
views. My mother is out of control again. She thinks she’s the first grandmother in the world.”
“Too bad we’re not back home. They’d really love to have you around.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Mom would wear me out running to baby stores. But it’s nice the way we talk now. We’re real buddies all of the sudden.”
“Well, you moms have something in common.” Luke paused before what was next.
“Jake’s writing a book. Wants my name on it along with his. All about the visits and everything.”
“Jake? You’re kidding.”
“No, and it’s really good. That goof can write his ass off. He’s a really brainy guy under all that spastic stuff.”
“So are you gonna put your name on it? You are the focal point of all of this.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t write it. I can’t write a letter, much less a book. And I’m too close to it, anyway. But I can give Jake some ideas. He’s real mellow with that.” Eileen felt a rush of relief. The book proceeds could pay for a comfortable life when Luke walked away from the maelstrom. Her family would be safe and secure.
The visits continued regularly now. Whenever he came, they would shut down the other callers so the phone system wouldn’t crash. “What is it like in what we call heaven,” Luke asked.
“Everyone will know quite soon, now. The time is near for the merging of the physical and spiritual worlds, but you mustn’t be afraid. It will be very beautiful and endless. It’s happened many times before. Your scientists have witnessed it and described it as dying stars. But they’re just seeing the physical energy being released.”
“But, could you describe it?”
“Think of all the things in your life that you love to do, the people you love to be with, the ones who’ve passed on, the places you want to be, the adventures you long to have. Now think of these without the effort, pain and suffering that can come with them.”
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