But Raoul was talking again. “By the time I got there with the nurse and the receptionist, Austin was ranting that they’d killed his patient. I said that I thought we should call the police and, just like that, all the bluster went out of him. I was careful not to say who I was, and Austin assumed I was connected to the hospital. He said we’d all be sorry for our interference, then he left. After he had gone, the head let me go in and talk with Sarry.” He took a deep breath. “They had bandaged her wrists to stop the blood, but there was so much of it over her ….”
“Ye spoke tae her before she died?” Harrison asked in a wretched voice.
Raoul looked at him blankly. “Died? What are you talking about? I’ve just told you they bound her wrists, and a little later, when the doctor finally arrived, they gave her a transfusion.”
“But … are ye saying she’s nae dead?!” Harrison jumped to his feet in agitation.
Raoul looked at him and then at me in dawning horror. “Oh God, don’t tell me you’ve both spent all these hours thinking she was dead? I said Sarry had cut her wrists, I didn’t say she had died! But I’m an idiot—of course that’s what you would think. No wonder you both looked so shattered when I got here!”
Harrison’s face changed. “She’s nae dead,” he said to me, as if I had not heard Raoul’s words. I slumped in my chair.
Raoul shook his head, “I’m so sorry to have put you both through this. It was just so confused there, and when I spoke to you Sarry was in the process of having a transfusion. I only called in the first place so you wouldn’t worry over me being so late.”
“Sarry’s alive,” I whispered, wanting to hear the words again and again.
Then Harrison was demanding to hear the whole story from the beginning because, for him as for me, the fact of Sarry’s death had been all that mattered when Raoul had told it the first time. Raoul smiled and obliged, and Harrison and I interrupted constantly and in the middle of it we realized that we were all ravenous so we phoned for pizza. Given the circumstances, we ought still to have been grim, but the news that Sarry had not died after we had spent hours mourning her was such an incredible relief that Harrison and I were elated, and Raoul ended up the same.
Later, when the pizza had arrived and we were eating it in hot slabs straight from the box, Raoul said, “I stayed because I wanted to speak with Sarry before I left. She’d fainted from loss of blood and shock, and the transfusion took place while she was still unconscious. She woke very groggy and confused, but when the nurse tried to administer a sedative, Sarry begged not to be drugged. Not even the usual small dose. Dr. Abernathy decided under the circumstances to permit it. But she wanted Sarry to rest, so I was only given a few minutes with her.”
He paused to take a drink, and Harrison and I waited expectantly.
“She looked so small and frail … and utterly exhausted. But very calm. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so calm. I told her that I was sorry I hadn’t got there sooner, and she said, still with this calmness, that she would rather be dead than devoured by the wrongness inside her. I asked if that was why she had cut her wrists. She said that she hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do—that if Dr. Austin had succeeded, she would have been helpless because the sickness is very strong now. Ironically that poor little nurse who saved her from Austin probably ended up pushing her the final inch, because Sarry had thought when the nurse talked of getting the doctor, she meant him. But the nurse also found an unbroken ampoule that Austin had left behind, and she means to send it off to be tested. I’ll be very interested to hear the results.”
“I cannae believe he did this,” Harrison said. “He must know he’s stepped over the line legally as well as ethically.”
“I doubt he is capable of caring. On the drive back it occurred to me that the sickness of spirit might erode logic and reason when it goes far enough.”
I was bothered by this conclusion. “Aaron Rayc must be a lot further gone, if we’re right about him, but he doesn’t strike me as anything but cool and calculating.”
“I was thinking about that, too,” Raoul said. “I’m wondering if Aaron Rayc isn’t some sort of anomaly. It seems to me that the end result of the sickness would usually be a sort of complete mental disintegration; a hollowing out that leaves a human shell. But in Rayc’s case the wrongness is able to go on operating after it has traveled its usual course.”
I shivered. Raoul sounded so certain, so convinced of his theories, but the truth was, we knew frighteningly little of the sickness and what it would do to its victims. “Do you think Austin’ll try to get to Sarry again?” I asked.
“She’ll be safe. I’ve hired security for her. He’ll be there by now.”
“Surely Dr. Austin will be charged for what he tried tae do!” Harrison protested.
Raoul frowned. “I’d like to say yes. Dr. Abernathy struck me as a strongly ethical woman. But I think the medical profession has always been a bit of an old boys’ club, and they would far rather deal internally with their dirty linen.”
“He should be in jail!” Harrison said.
Raoul asked about Daisy. He sounded hoarse and he looked exhausted. After Harrison told him what Daisy had said about the virus and Rayc’s finances, I suggested we ought to go. Raoul asked if we would mind if he sent us home in a taxi. As we waited for it, Harrison wondered again why Rayc would fund so many disparate groups, and Raoul said it was almost certainly just another way to sow despair and pain and discord. Once we released his weird financial dealings to the media, he would go from influential friend of the stars to persona non grata. His charity, too, would fall from grace. “He will still be what he is, but his power to cause harm will be weakened,” Raoul concluded.
“But not stopped,” Harrison said grimly.
Raoul didn’t take that up. He agreed that we should use Gary Soloman, but said the journalist had to make absolutely certain that Aaron Rayc would not learn who had blackened his name. Because if he did know who had destroyed him, he was likely to be utterly ruthless.
I shivered. “You make it sound as if he would send someone to kill us.”
Raoul gave me a level look. “I think that someone infected by wrongness would not stop at murder.”
* * *
Harrison and I sat in silence as the taxi bore us away from Raoul’s church house. The gliding motion of the taxi and the flickering of streetlights against dark, silent streets soon lulled me to sleep. I dreamed that I was a wolf in the ruined city, only this time a dog was running beside me, a great white-furred beast that, when I looked at it, nuzzled me on the cheek. I was startled to feel both its devotion and its desire, and my wolf-self responded with a quickening of her own desire. The shock of this woke me with a start.
Harrison was leaning over me. “Ye … you’re home,” he stammered.
“Thanks,” I said, touched that he had gotten the taxi to bring me all the way home first.
Despite it being so late, Da was up with Neil and Tich, and they were in the middle of reworking a song when I entered the kitchen. The song they were reshaping was one of my favorites, a lovely ballad full of wistful hope and gentleness, but what they were doing with it seemed jarring and uneven to me. When they had finished the run-through, Neil asked what I thought and I wished he hadn’t.
“I’ve always liked that song.” My voice sounded scratchy with tiredness.
Da sighed. “So did I. Which is maybe why I don’t like this version.”
“Why don’t you leave it as it is?” I asked.
“I need a song that Neo Tokyo can play. I can just hear Aaron saying that it’s slight compared with the big topics they usually tackle.”
“Slight!” I almost shouted. “Why is it that people always think bad, dark things are more real and important than things that lift you up and make you feel life is worth living? You ought to tell them that in a song.”
“Wow,” Neil said.
I felt silly then, but Da surprisingly gave me a hug,
and for a minute I was immersed in his essential gentleness and smells. But I began, after a blissful few seconds, to feel other things. His worry about money, his concern for Serenity, and his inner dialogue about musical integrity. Rather than pulling away as the weight of his feelings began to press down on me, some instinct born of all that had happened that night made me hold him even more tightly, lay my cheek against his, and use the only weapons I had against the yammering of his doubts and worries—my love for him, and the lovely, radiant memory of the Urban Dingo concert.
When I let go, Da looked slightly dazed. “Alyzon. What did you—”
I cut him off, not sure myself what I had done. “I think what you and the guys do with your songs and music is really important, because it’s an antidote to the despair coming from everyone else.”
“Your da couldn’t have found better words, Aly Cat,” Neil said.
Da looked at me closely. “Are you OK, Alyzon?” I remembered then that I had called him earlier to tell him about Sarry and to explain I would not be home until late.
“Oh, Da, I should have said at once! We misunderstood when Raoul called about Sarry. He said she had cut her wrists, and we thought she was dead, but she wasn’t.”
“How is she then?” Da asked.
“She’s had a blood transfusion and she’s sleeping peacefully.”
“Why’d she do it?” Neil asked, sounding baffled. “A kid your age, your da said.”
“She’s had a much harder life than I have, Neil. Her mum died when she was really little, and she doesn’t have any brothers and sisters. She’s been alone since she was about five.”
“Poor kid,” Tich said.
My eyes burned, my throat ached, and I felt I could sleep for centuries and still be tired.
“You look all done in, Aly Cat,” Da said gently. “Go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”
I stumbled upstairs, took off my outer clothes, crawled under the bedding, and was asleep almost at once.
* * *
I woke what seemed five minutes later, my head fit to burst. I staggered to the bathroom, certain this was the result of whatever I had done to Da. I dry-swallowed a couple of headache pills, splashed water on my face, and brushed my teeth, the events of the previous night surging through my mind.
I went to the bedroom and was startled to see that it was lunchtime. Serenity was sitting up on her bed, dressed and holding a notebook on her lap. She looked calm, and although she smelled of licorice as strongly as ever, there were no gasoline or burning-hair smells. Before I could think what to say to her, there was a brief rap at the door. Jesse poked his head in to say Mum wanted to know if Serenity was ready to sit. Serenity rose and all but glided out, the same blankness in her expression.
I went downstairs to find Da on the verge of leaving to rehearse with Neo Tokyo. There was none of the weariness I had seen in his face when I had come home the night before, and, to my delight, the air around him was bending outward as powerfully as it had used to do. There were even a few sparks.
“You seem pretty happy,” I said.
“Inspired is the word you want, Aly Cat. And you can blame yourself for it; what you said last night.”
“What I said?” I echoed.
Da grinned. “You said that lifting people’s spirits wasn’t anything to do with telling them to be happy or sad. What was important was to lift people up so that for a little while they could get a clear view.”
“I said that?”
He laughed. “Maybe I jazzed it up a little. Or maybe your words sparked it, but that’s what I ended up writing a song about. I wish I had time to play it through for you, but I’ve gotta get traveling. Not much rehearsal time before it has its day in the sun.”
“You seem OK about playing with other people now,” I said.
Da shrugged. “I felt like the integrity of my music was the same as my loyalty to Losing the Rope. Then a couple of nights ago Neil tells me I’m a fool to think it; that music doesn’t belong to anyone once it’s made, and that no musician belongs to a single band. He reckons that if Rayc Inc. want me to play solo or Neo Tokyo wants me to do this function, then why not? After all, Losing the Rope can still play together and we’ll continue to write our songs. And last night, writing this song with them for me to play with Neo Tokyo, I realized there was something exciting and invigorating in mixing it up with other people and other styles. And of course, music and songs are ageless and timeless when they are really saying something important.”
He glanced at his watch and began to pull on his battered bomber jacket. Watching him, I felt that the sunshine slanting in the window was drenching me and the world with some bright warmth that made the whole dark night seem like an evil dream. Sarry was stable, Serenity seemed to have found some peace, and Da was his usual wonderful self.
“What if Neo Tokyo don’t like what you have?” I asked.
Da just smiled his old sweet smile. “I have the feeling I can convince them.”
I laughed aloud out of sheer happiness. “Da, I honestly think you could convince the world of anything with your music.”
He looked startled and pleased, and it hit me that even though the sickness may have targeted Da, he wasn’t just an empty vessel. No one was. He might not know about the black corrupting force stealing through the world’s spirit; he wasn’t fighting or hunting it; he was simply living. But just by living his good strong life, he was its adversary. He was the sort of person whose presence filled you up and shone beams of light into the dark corners of your mind, showing you that there was no monster under the bed or vampire outside the window.
That he hadn’t needed me to save him made me feel a delicious lightness and a crazy desire to burst into song.
* * *
Jesse asked me a bit later to help him in the yard. He had made a swing, but he needed someone to hold Luke in the seat so that he could adjust the rope. We were in the middle of a maneuver that involved me holding a gurgling Luke while Jesse made a knot when I heard a car door slam and an engine start. Instinctively, I turned to wave to Da. But instead of his battered van, I saw a green van pulling away from the front of the house.
A cold hand seized my heart and I swept Luke up, ran inside, and raced up the stairs. In half a minute I was pushing into Mum’s studio, panting hard. She looked up at me from behind a canvas rectangle mounted on her big easel, beautiful and tranquil as a paint-smudged angel.
“Where’s Serenity?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” Mum said vaguely, her face turning back to her easel as if it was compelled by some magnetism.
“But you never let a sitter interrupt a session,” I almost screamed at her.
“She didn’t break it,” Mum said. “I’ve finished the portrait.”
I gritted my teeth. “Where did Serenity say she had to go?”
“She didn’t say,” Mum murmured.
I thrust Luke into her arms, uncaring that she would smear him with paint. “Maybe you can manage to pay attention to the real world long enough to watch him,” I said coldly, turning on my heel and slamming out into the hall. Some bit of me protested that I was being unfair, but a terrible fear was building in me.
I almost collided with Jesse on the stairs. “Alyzon, why in the hell did you just …,” he began, then he stopped, seeing my face. “What’s the matter? Where’s Luke?”
Mirandah came out of her room. “What’s all the yelling?”
“Do you know where Serenity went?” I asked her.
“I saw her getting her coat,” Mirandah said. “She said she was going to see a documentary. Why?”
I heard the muffled sound of Luke beginning to cry in the studio, and I felt a little like doing the same. Yet some sensible bit of me was asking what on earth I was making such a fuss over. It could easily be that Serenity had gone to a movie. Hadn’t she seemed much calmer today? So why did I suddenly feel such frightened urgency?
It was the van, I thought.
�
�Did Serenity say where this documentary was playing?” I asked Mirandah.
She shook her head, but Jesse said, “The only place I know where they play documentaries is the theater in the mall. Alyzon, why are you asking all of these questions about Serenity?”
“I … I just have this feeling she might be in trouble.”
“In trouble?” Jesse and Mirandah exchanged a baffled look.
I heard Mum call out, and went reluctantly back along the hall to her studio, knowing I deserved her reproaches for the way I had snarled at her. And yet Mum never reproached anyone for anything. So what did she want?
I pushed open the studio door and Mum was still sitting there with Luke in her arms. He was tugging delightedly on the long coils of red hair. I must have imagined him crying, I thought confusedly.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” I said.
She didn’t acknowledge the apology. “Alyzon, would you like to see the painting of Serenity?”
This was so unexpected that I laughed harshly. “Mum, I can look at it later. I have to …” But she turned the easel, and I stopped talking because the portrait was one of the best and most terrible Mum had ever painted. Serenity, dressed all in black, was standing with her hands hanging loosely by her sides gazing straight out of the canvas. Most of the bottom of her face was empty space, like in a Magritte painting, and you could see into the small cavern of her skull where a fire blazed. One eye was also a blank opening so that you could see the flames clearly through it as if it were a small window, while the other was Serenity’s normal eye, staring out with the same expression that I had seen in her eyes just before in the bedroom: blind and blankly serene. A blue-centered almond floating on a sea of flame.
“What … what is this?” I whispered. I looked at Mum, feeling frightened and sick. “Why did you paint her like that?”
Mum answered almost casually. “Before your father came into my life, there was a darkness in me. I could feel it trying to consume me, and I thought I was going mad. Then I fell in love with Macoll, and it was suddenly easy to fight. For a time I thought I would defeat it, but then I realized that it can’t be defeated. Not once it’s inside you. But I found out that I could use painting to fill the gaps in my heart and mind so that there was nowhere for it to grow. Nothing of me is available to it when I paint.”
Alyzon Whitestarr Page 31