“Martina and I, we got along okay in the beginning.” Sandusky took a bite of the red egg mixture and grimaced. He washed it down with a sip of coffee. “I would correct her grammar and she would correct my politics. Then, one morning, I caught her looking at me as if she could see all that secret stuff you don’t tell anybody, you know? And I felt like I did when I was fifteen. The summer my dad died.”
The flush had stayed in his face, and his voice had become so soft I could barely hear him. I stirred my oatmeal, waiting until the emotion had passed. “What makes that weird, Sandusky?”
He took another bite of the eggs, this time chewing as if he couldn’t taste them. Tears floated on the rims of his eyes. “She got me to tell her something I never told anybody else, not even Linda. And the next thing I knew, we were fifteen minutes behind schedule. Only I didn’t feel like I told her, Linameyer. I felt like I showed her. Like I took her back with me.”
“Some memories are strong enough,” I said. “They hold the power to sweep us with them.”
He nodded, and wiped at his eyes. “God, this shit is terrible,” he said, pushing his plate away by way of explanation. “That wasn’t the worst of it, Ben. It was after that. She treated me like she didn’t respect me anymore. Here I’d shared something crucial to me, and it was as if I no longer met some hidden standard.”
I took his hand and squeezed it. He pulled away and sipped his coffee. “And that’s why you don’t like Martina.”
“It’s as if she’s got a label for the whole world. I mean, I make mistakes, and I say stupid things, but I treat people the same, no matter who they are. Unless they hurt me.” His entire face was red. He smiled at me over the rim of his cup. “I like you, Linameyer.”
“I like you too, Sandusky.”
“I just don’t want to see her fuck you up even worse. You’re interested in her. You go to bed with her or something and then she starts treating you like dirt, and it could fuck you over.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I promise.”
* * * *
After breakfast, I went down to the lake and watched the sailboats catch the midmorning light. As I watched, I tried to think of nothing at all, but Martina’s face kept appearing in my mind. Finally, I walked back to my car, and drove to her apartment.
Martina lived in one of the renovated Victorian mansions on Gorham. I had to drive nearly a mile out of my way on one-way streets to get to the building. My breath was coming in little gasps, and it felt as if someone had punched me through the heart.
People can get stuck in time.
I felt a thin thread of relief when I saw that the house still stood. I was afraid, somehow, that it would have disappeared with Martina. I parked the car in a numbered parking space in the back lot and went inside.
The building smelled of wood polish and dust. I took the stairs two at a time. With each step, I realized that the heartache I felt was not sadness, but anger. Martina had tested me and judged me unworthy, just as she had done to Sandusky. Only I wasn’t going to take it. I was going to find out her little secret.
The door to Martina’s apartment stood open. She sat on the couch, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the floor. Swan Lake played faintly in the background, and a tiny old woman, dressed all in black, sat at the battered kitchen table.
“So,” I said to Martina. “What is it about you that I would never believe?”
Martina didn’t glance up, but the old woman did. Her face had no wrinkles, except for the laugh lines around her eyes. Her body had shriveled and her hair had grayed, but her features would stay the same forever. “Are we compatiable, young man?”
“Yes, we are, Mrs. Correga.” Somehow her age didn’t surprise me.
“And you want me for your radio show?”
“Let me talk to Martina first.”
Rosaura stood up. With her gray hair piled on top of her head and her arthritic slowness, she looked even smaller than she was. “You do not think, Martina,” she said. “At least this young man came to talk to you.”
“I can handle it, abuela.” The bitterness in Martina’s voice sent a shiver down my back.
“No, you can’t.” Rosaura turned to me. “I would like to do the show, dressed as I am now.”
“That would be fascinating, Mrs. Correga. Come to the station on Thursday, at 11:30. I’ll explain what to do then.”
She nodded once, then walked toward the back of the apartment, moving with the same willowy grace I had seen once before. I waited until I heard a door close toward the back before I spoke again. “What am I too narrow-minded to know?”
“She was beautiful once,” Martina said.
“She still is, if you know how to look.”
Martina rested her chin on her knees. “She really did dance for Eva Perón.”
“I know. And she’s lived here ever since.”
Martina nodded.
“You did something to her, and you did the same thing to Sandusky. Only he says it made you lose respect for him.” With each sentence, my vocal control slipped. The words vibrated, as they did when I interviewed a hostile guest on the talk show.
Martina pulled her legs closer, as if she could wrap herself into a tiny ball. “He ran away when his father was dying, couldn’t bear to watch the old man in pain, although the old man wanted him around. Sandusky’s been trying to make it up to him ever since. That’s why he brings his father up when he’s losing an argument. As if his father were a saint or something.”
A missing piece to Sandusky. That explained a lot: his unwillingness to try new things; the kindness he showed to people with problems; the hurt on his face when he had talked with me that morning. I inched forward into the apartment. The ceiling sloped, making it difficult for me to stand. “What do you do?” I asked.
“You ever talk to people?” She leaned forward. I sat down across from her. She didn’t seem to mind. “They have memories—a moment that they carry in their hearts, like a snapshot of a long-dead lover. And it’s that moment that gives them meaning.”
I suddenly remembered the brittle feel of Rosaura’s fingers when I first shook her hand; although her skin appeared elastic, it still felt old. “Like your grandmother being the prima ballerina for the Compañía Nacional de Argentina.”
“Like that.” Martina glanced down at her hands. The gesture seemed like Rosaura. “If I want to, I can grab that moment and let them wear it.”
“And you did for your grandmother in the studio.” My voice had slipped from interview to interrogation. The impossibilities of Martina’s claim impressed me less than her unwillingness to be honest with me from the first.
“Or I can actually bring the memory to the surface and let them relive it. I did that with Sandusky.” Martina looked up at me. She clutched her hands together so hard her knuckles were white. “You saw my sister on campus. She hates it when people ask her if she’s Rosaura.”
She had tested other people the same way. And they had failed too. “Then you do this a lot.”
Martina shrugged. “Enough that it has scared a few men away.”
“It seems that it would scare a lot of people away, Martina.” I clenched my fists. It wasn’t scaring me—or perhaps the anger covered the fear.
“I don’t tell my friends anymore,” she said. “I wanted to tell you.”
The floor was hard. I shifted a little to ease the physical discomfort. “Why me?”
“Because you seemed like someone who would like me anyway.” She whispered the sentence. “I started doing this when I was three, like some people start reading. My parents brought in a priest to exorcise me. When that didn’t work, they gave me to my grandmother.”
The words softened me a little, made me picture the young Martina, a little girl with a power that frightened the people around her. I couldn’t make her relive the event, but then, I didn’t need to. “Have you done this thing to me?”
Martina tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I tried.”
I stiffened. All those times she had looked at me so deeply, I had thought that she was interested in me. She had only been interested in ferreting out my past. “And?”
“You don’t have a moment, at least not yet.” She stretched and slid farther away from me. “I suspect you’re living it, at the station, or something.”
“And that made me special.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve met other people like you. I like you, Linameyer.”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” I said. I got up, nearly hitting my head on the slanting ceiling. “You insult me, you test me and you try to invade my privacy. I’m amazed Sandusky even talks to you after the way you treated him.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Martina had to tilt her head back to see me. She looked like a child. A confused, frightened child.
“Yes, you did. You have an ability to see people’s strongest memories and you view them without even asking permission. Then you judge people based on that past event and act as if that event defines their life.”
“It does.” Martina pushed herself onto the couch so that she didn’t have to look at me from such an odd angle.
“No,” I said. I didn’t move. I enjoyed her disadvantage. “It doesn’t. It seems to me that your grandmother has done a lot since she left Argentina. She had children, she raised you. And you probably weren’t the easiest child to be with. Your grandmother is a spectacular woman—and it wasn’t just because she danced for Eva Perón.”
“I’ve been doing this for a long time—”
“And you see what you want to see.” I walked to the back of the room, stared at the pictures on the wall, of Martina at various ages, Rosaura in her tutu, and Martina’s sister standing in front of a dock. “You accused me and Sandusky of being closed mirrored, when you had a special gift that allowed you to see parts of a person’s life. And you let that gift blind you. You let what you see define the person as much as some people let the word ‘nigger’ define a black man.”
“I do not!” Martina was on her feet.
“You do.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “And the really sad thing is that if you used that gift right, you would have been able to help people instead of hurt them.”
I pushed my way past her, and hurried down the stairs. My car looked like home—a place to retreat to, a place to be silent in. I had never said things before like I said to Martina. But then, I had never met a person with such a unique gift before—and such a desire to waste it.
Two weeks went by. Rosaura showed up for the talk show and was a huge hit. People loved her stories about Argentina, the ballet, and about raising children in a strange country. Sandusky and I switched restaurants, and Martina avoided me. Sometimes I saw her working in the newsroom, but every time I smiled, she turned away.
One morning, I was checking my mail in the employees’ lounge when she rounded the corner. She stopped in the doorway. I stared at the station newsletter, waiting for her to go away.
“You got a minute, Linameyer?” she asked.
I tucked the newsletter back into the slot with the rest of my mail. Other rolled newsletters stuck out of the remaining boxes like hundreds of cardboard tubes. “I suppose.”
She came in and closed the door. “I’ve been thinking about what you said and I was wondering what you thought I could do to help people.”
I looked her over, trying to see if she was serious. Her face was paler than usual, and she had deep circles under her eyes. Little lines had formed beneath her lips, as if she hadn’t smiled for days. “You really want to know?”
She nodded.
I went over to the ratty pink couch and sat down, then patted the cushion beside me. Martina sat on the arm. “You said to me when I saw Rosaura for the first time,” I said, “that people get stuck in time. Sandusky’s stuck at fifteen, trying to make up to a dad who will never forgive him. You can see that, but you don’t reach out. You don’t help people move forward again.”
“How could I do that?”
“By asking if they want your help and then telling them what you see, how they’re stuck, if they’re stuck. Then they’re free to get counseling or to resolve the problem on their own. But you’ve helped them. You’ve given them vision.”
Martina had hunched over, as if my words were physical blows instead of sound. I watched her for a moment, then said softly, “You’re stuck too. You’re still a three-year-old whose parents thought she was possessed. That’s why you use your gift as a weapon, to make sure you get other people before they get you.”
She raised her head, eyes shiny. “You can see too?”
“No.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Sometimes I don’t need to. Sometimes it’s real obvious.” I stood up. “I’ve got a cat to feed. I’m going home.”
I grabbed my mail out of the box and opened the door.
“Linameyer?” she said.
I turned. She was still hunched over, her eyes sunken into her face. “I’ve been a real bitch.”
That was the closest thing to an apology that I would get. “I know,” I said. “But I like you, Martina, even when I’m mad at you.”
She smiled, and her face lit up. I loved it when Martina smiled. “That mean we’re friends?” she asked.
“I think so.” I grinned. “Tomorrow—breakfast with me and Sandusky?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said. And then, almost a whisper: “Thanks, Linameyer.”
“You’re welcome.” I closed the door, giving her a moment of privacy, and walked down the hall. My mood had lightened. She had asked. She wanted to change. And I had changed. I had finally spoken up for something I believed in and it had made a difference. An ever-so-small, ever-so-important difference.
<
* * * *
Lethe
PEG KERR
M
ATTHEW SLEPT LATE; he had been called out in the middle of the night to deliver a baby. Arriving back at the clinic at dawn, he had immediately fallen into bed. Now, an urgent knocking jolted him awake two hours past his usual rising time. He dragged himself out from underneath the blankets and stumbled groggily to the dispensary door, opening it to admit a boy.
“Hev’rae—Gremekke?” the boy asked, panting, peering up uncertainly at the wooden placard above the door frame.
Matthew glanced at the shelf, saw that Gremekke’s kit was gone, and shook his head. “No, he’s out. Will I serve? I’m his assistant, Hev’rae Mateo.”
“Oh!” the boy exclaimed, relieved. “If you’re a healer too, can you come with me? An accident—a man’s hurt very bad, blood coming from his mouth.”
“Yes, I’ll come. Let me get my kit.” Matthew picked up his satchel of medical tools and supplies, which was emblazoned on the side with the symbol for the Peace Corps. “What happened?” he asked as he ushered the boy out.
“My father, Pietro the stonecutter, sent me. His crew was working raising blocks, and the scaffolding collapsed…” the boy grimaced.
“How far?”
“It’s the nearest part of the city wall—but please hurry, Hev’rae.” The boy led the way, weaving nimbly through passersby and ducking quickly around corners, kicking up little puffs of dust as he ran. Matthew jogged in his wake, his kit banging against his hip with every step. He still was not accustomed to Calypso’s gravity, which was slightly higher than Earth’s, but before he had a chance to become winded they came into the plaza before the second eastern gate. More dust lingered in the air there, as well as the smell of freshly split wood. A latticework of ropes and boards hung, twisted and broken, from the upper walkway, and a group of workmen was crouched around a still form lying on the ground underneath.
One remained standing, anxiously scanning the alley entrance. When he saw them, he hurried forward, a burly man with large, dusty hands.
“My father, Pietro,” said the boy, pointing.
“This way, this way!” The stonecutter beckoned, gesturing for the others
to step aside. “Jokko can move his toes, barely, but we didn’t want to hurt him any more, so we haven’t tried moving him.” He lowered his voice. “He says his chest hurts him real bad inside. I’m afraid some of his ribs are broken and are piercing his lungs. Maybe even grazing his heart”
Matthew nodded and knelt beside the injured man. He was young, Matthew judged, barely in his twenties by Earth reckoning. He had fallen on his side on a heap of stones and lay draped over a large boulder, twisted like a broken rag doll.
“I’m the hev’rae, Jokko. I’m here to patch you up since you’ve decided to try walking on air. Are you able to get deep enough breaths?”
Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology] Page 16