The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  “You could say the same about opera…or Vivaldi.”

  “Touché.”

  “Wait’ll you hear the next one!” He was like a teenager.

  “That’s ‘Maybellene’ by What’s-His-Name!” she said, recognizing it almost immediately.

  “Chucker! The Berry!”

  “Chuck Berry! Right. I didn’t think anybody listened to him anymore.”

  “He’s the best. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys—they all borrowed from him. Maybe I long for the naiveté of those days. I like stuff from the sixties and seventies—I love early Beatles, before they started thinking of themselves as artistes. Like anything else, a lot of the old stuff was crap, but the good stuff…there was a simplicity, an innocence about it that’s missing today and will never be recaptured. No one was ranting, no one trying to change the world. They were going for a sound. And there’s a certain purity in that.”

  And I was worried about his memory, Sylvia thought with a mental shake of her head.

  “You’re really into this stuff, aren’t you?” she said.

  Alan shrugged. “It makes me feel good. And I need some good feelings these days. What else can I say?”

  “Nothing more. That’s what matters.”

  “Here comes ‘Florence’ by the Paragons,” he said. He grinned at her as he sang along with the falsetto opening.

  She winced at his sour notes. She felt so close to him at that moment, and realized with a bittersweet pang that she was very much in love with a man she could never have.

  25

  Alan

  “What are you doing?” Alan asked as he entered their bedroom.

  He had rushed upstairs to tell her about the MRI results.

  Ginny’s reply was terse and she didn’t look up when she spoke.

  “I should think that would be pretty obvious.”

  It was. She was taking clothes from her closet and her drawers and placing them in the three suitcases lined up in descending order of size on the bed.

  “Where are we going?”

  He knew with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that there was no “we” involved here, but he used the word anyway. The drum of the rain against the windows filled the room as he waited for an answer.

  “Florida. And it’s just me. I…I need some time to myself, Alan. I need to get away and just think about things for awhile.”

  “You mean about us.”

  She sighed and nodded. “Yeah. Us. What’s left of us.”

  Alan stepped toward her but she held up a hand.

  “Don’t. Please don’t. I just want to get away by myself. I can’t take it around here anymore. “

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Ginny. I know it.”

  “Oh, really?” she said, throwing a pair of slacks into the big suitcase. “And who’s going to make it all right? You? You made a fool out of yourself in front of the Board of Trustees! You’ve lost your hospital privileges! You can’t even get into the office with all those kooks around it! And all you do is hang around the house and have conferences with Tony about how to keep from losing your medical license altogether!”

  “Ginny—”

  “Nobody wants to know us anymore!” Her voice rose steadily in pitch and volume. “It’s like we’re living in a vacuum. All our friends either have something else to do when I call or don’t even bother to return my calls. They think I’m married to a nut! And I can’t argue with them!”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “It’s not just me! Tony may be on your side, but I’m sure he thinks you’re coming unwrapped too!”

  “Is that so?” Alan was suddenly angry—with Ginny and Tony for their lack of faith, and with himself for expecting them to accept something as bizarre as his power without seeing it for themselves.

  He went to the phone at the bedside. “Okay. If I can prove that I’m not crazy, will you stay?”

  “No games, Alan. And no deals.”

  “Will you give me a chance?”

  “I’ve got a six o’clock flight out of JFK. If you can change my mind by then, fine. But I hope you won’t mind if I finish packing.”

  Six o’clock…that gave him five hours. He didn’t know if he could—

  He dialed Tony’s business number and told him to go next door into his office and take a file marked “Timetable” from his desk, then bring it here to the house. Tony agreed, although he sounded hesitant.

  Alan paced the first floor of his home like an expectant father while Ginny labored upstairs with the suitcases. Then a rainsoaked Tony was at the door with the folder. Alan snatched it from him, told him to wait, and took it to his study.

  He pored over the figures, dimly aware that Ginny had come downstairs and that she and Tony were exchanging worried glances behind his back. He saw at once his mistake on the day of the board hearing. Again, it was his memory that had failed him—he’d been only forty minutes off with his calculation of the arrival of the Hour of Power. Forty minutes! Forty rotten minutes! If the meeting had started an hour later, he would have been golden. Instead…

  But he couldn’t dwell on that now. Here, with all the figures in black and white in front of him, he couldn’t go wrong. He even double-checked on a hand calculator. No doubt:

  Today’s Hour of Power would start in approximately twenty minutes.

  He strode into the living room and waved the car keys in the air.

  “Let’s go—both of you!”

  “Wait a minute—” Ginny began.

  “No waiting. I’m going to prove I’m not crazy. Call my bluff and give me an hour. If you’re still not convinced, I’ll drive you to the airport myself in plenty of time for your six o’clock flight.”

  Tony looked surprised at the remark about the flight but only said, “I want to see this.”

  “I don’t know…” Ginny said.

  Alan and Tony together managed to convince her to come along. Then they were in the car and heading through the rain. Alan had a fairly clear picture of the route he would take and was reasonably sure he wouldn’t get lost. He planned to go to the office, let a few of the people in, and heal them before Ginny’s and Tony’s eyes. Alan knew it would be risking a mob scene, but if he could demonstrate to them that he truly had this power, he would have two firm allies. Maybe if he could anchor himself to them, he wouldn’t feel so alone and adrift.

  As he slowed for the light at Central and Howe, Clubfoot Annie hobbled out of Leon’s Superette. Her usual tattered dress was sheltered under an equally tattered umbrella; a plastic shopping bag hung from her free hand. Alan checked his watch, then slammed on the brakes and leaped out of the car, ignoring the startled noises from Ginny and Tony.

  Why go to the office? he thought. Here was someone who really needed healing and wasn’t clamoring for it. Someone who had been tearing at his heart for years.

  “Miss!” he said as he hopped over a puddle onto the curb. “Can I speak to you a minute?”

  She whirled, startled. Her eyes were wide and fearful. “What? I ain’t got no money!”

  “I know that,” Alan said, approaching more cautiously. “I just want to help you.”

  “Get away. Don’t want no help!”

  She turned and started to hobble away.

  “Miss! I just—”

  She hobbled faster, her body jerking left and right like a trip-hammer.

  Alan could feel the rain soaking through his shirt, plastering down his hair against his scalp. But he couldn’t let her go. He trotted after her.

  “Wait!”

  She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes full of fear. His heart broke for her. How many times throughout her life had people made fun of her, picked on her, teased her, tormented her, pushed her around, tripped her, just because of that foot?

  “I’m not going to harm you!”

  And then she tripped. She was looking at him and not at the sidewalk; her foot caught on a raised section of walk and she went
down in a muddy puddle.

  She was crying when Alan reached her.

  “Don’t hurt me! I ain’t got no money!”

  “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to do this.” He grabbed her malformed left foot and ankle and twisted them toward the normal physiologic position. He felt the tingle, the rush, heard her cry out, and then it was over. He took both her hands.

  “Stand up.”

  She looked at him with a puzzled, still-fearful expression, but accepted his help. Her eyes nearly bulged from their sockets when she regained her feet and felt her left sole lie flat against the ground for the first time in her life. She gasped, tested it, then walked in a slow circle, her mouth gaping, utterly speechless. Alan picked up her umbrella and shopping bag and put them back into her hands.

  “Take these and get home and get out of those wet clothes.”

  “Who…who are you?”

  “Just someone who wishes he could have been here for you forty or fifty years ago.”

  He walked back to the car in a cloud of jubilant euphoria. Oh, that had felt good!

  Ginny and Tony were staring out the side windows of the car.

  Tony’s eyes kept darting between Alan and the woman, now walking back and forth on the sidewalk on her normal left foot.

  “Holy shit, Alan!” he kept saying. “Holy shit!”

  Ginny said nothing. She simply stared at him, her face a tight, unreadable mask.

  Alan opened the door on her side. “Would you mind driving home, honey? I’m a bit shaky after that.”

  Actually, he had suddenly realized that he didn’t know the way home. But it didn’t bother him. He felt too damn good!

  Wordlessly, Ginny slid over and put the car in gear.

  “Now you know,” Alan said as they waved good-bye to Tony from their front steps.

  Ginny turned and went into the house.

  “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “I saw it, but…”

  “So you can see why I can’t come out and say that the stories aren’t true.”

  Ginny dropped onto the couch and sat staring at the far corner of the room.

  “God, Alan.”

  “You can see that, can’t you?”

  He desperately wanted to hear her agree. She’d been so quiet and pensive since his little demonstration at Central and Howe. He hadn’t a clue as to what was going on in her mind.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t see that at all. Not only have you got to deny it, you’ve got to stop using it.”

  He was stunned. “What?”

  “I mean it, Alan.” She rose and began to circle the couch, head down, her arms folded in front of her. “It’s ruining our life!”

  “You mean forget I have it? Ignore it? Pretend it doesn’t exist?”

  Finally she looked at him, face-to-face, eyes blazing. “Yes!”

  Alan stared at her. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do! Look what it’s done to you! You can’t practice medicine anymore—the hospital won’t let you admit patients and you can’t get into your office without being mobbed by all the kooks hanging around outside it. Can you imagine what would happen if you publicly admitted that you can cure people? They’d tear you to pieces!”

  Alan was numb. Deny the power exists? Not use the Hour of Power when it comes?

  “So…” Ginny hesitated, took a deep breath, then began again. “So, I want a decision, Alan. I want a promise. I want you to hold some sort of news conference, or put out a press release, or what ever it is people do in a case like this, and tell the world that it’s all a pack of lies. I want you to go back to being a regular doctor and me back to being your regular wife. I can’t deal with what’s been happening here!”

  There were tears in her eyes.

  “Oh, Ginny,” he said, stepping toward her and taking her hands, “I know it’s been tough on you.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  “You haven’t answered me, Alan.”

  He thought of a future full of sick and miserable people with no hope trudging through his office, looking for help, and he saw himself letting them pass by as he stood mute and still with his hands in his pockets.

  “Don’t ask this of me, Ginny.”

  “Alan, I want things as they were!”

  “Tell me: Could you stand on a dock and hide a life preserver behind your back while a drowning man cries for help?”

  “Never mind the hypothetical stuff! This is real life—our life! And we’ve lost control of it! I want our old life back!”

  Regret and resignation suddenly flooded through him. This was it. This was the end.

  “That life is gone, Ginny. Things will never be the same again. I can’t stop.”

  She jerked away from him. “You mean, you won’t stop!”

  “I won’t stop.”

  “I knew it!” Her features hardened into an angry mask. “I knew you wouldn’t do this for me, for us, but I made myself ask. You didn’t disappoint me! If nothing else, you’re consistent! I’ve never come first with you—never! So why should I have expected any special consideration this time?” She whirled and headed for the stairs. “Excuse me. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Alan stood and watched her go, unable to refute her. Was she right? Had he really put her and their marriage second all along? He had never really thought about it before. He’d taken it for granted that they were both leading the kind of lives each of them wanted. But maybe that was the problem: the taking for granted and the living of separate lives. The bonds that had united them early on had long since dissolved and they’d forged no new ones.

  And then the Touch had come along.

  Alan shook his head and walked to the window to watch the rain. The Touch—it would test the strongest marriage. It was exploding his.

  But I can’t give it up. I can’t.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, brooding, mulling the past and the future, watching the rain sheet the screen, wondering how long Ginny would stay in Florida to “think things over.” But he wasn’t giving up yet. He would use the time they’d have together in the car during the trip down to JFK to try to convince her to change her mind. He’d—

  A taxi pulled into the driveway and honked.

  Ginny was suddenly on her way down the stairs, somehow managing all three suitcases at once.

  “I’m driving you, Ginny,” he said, angry that she thought he’d let her go off to the airport by herself.

  She pulled on her raincoat. “No, you’re not!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I—”

  “No, Alan! I’m leaving here to get off by myself. I don’t want to be with you, Alan. Can I make it any clearer than that?”

  That hurt. He hadn’t realized things had got to this point. He shook his head and swallowed.

  “I guess not.”

  He picked up the two biggest bags and carried them out into the downpour to the taxi. Ginny got in the back seat and closed the door while he and the cabbie loaded the trunk.

  Ginny didn’t wave, didn’t roll down the window to say good-bye. She huddled in the back of the cab and let it drive her away, leaving Alan standing in the driveway, in the rain, feeling more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.

  JULY

  26

  Alan

  The divorce papers arrived on Monday morning a week later. Alan fought a sinking sensation as he unfolded them, and shook his head sadly when he read that he was being charged with mental cruelty. Tony dropped by shortly after the mailman left. Alan showed him the papers.

  “Things like this don’t happen so fast,” Tony said as he folded the sheets and slipped them into his inside jacket pocket. “I can almost guarantee you she had this in the works before she left.”

  “So she wasn’t going to her folks’ place ‘to think things over.’ She was going for good. Great.”

  Alan sighed. The marriage had been over for years; he simply hadn’t rea
lized it. He wanted to be angry, and he should have been hurt. All he could do was shrug. He wanted to feel something. He couldn’t seem to feel much of anything anymore. He spent his days hanging around the house waiting to see what the State Board of Medical Examiners was going to do. Not knowing from one day to the next whether he was going to be able to keep his medical license was paralyzing him. He hadn’t left the house once over the long July Fourth weekend just past. One day had become pretty much like any other.

  “Heard from the State Board yet?”

  Tony smiled. “That’s why I stopped over. The board’s not going to do anything until after Labor Day. I talked to one of the members today and he said since there hasn’t been a single complaint registered against you by a patient, or any malpractice suits started, no civil or criminal charges, and no intimation that you’ve harmed anyone, and since a couple of board members are out of state on vacation, he saw no reason for an immediate hearing.”

  Alan felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted off him. “Really?”

  “Really. That gives us two whole months to prepare for the hearing. And I think we’ll really be able to put it to the hospital board by then. They’re either going to have to shit or get off the pot. And after what I saw last week—I still can’t quite believe I saw what I saw—I have a feeling they’re going to go into acute anal retention, if you know what I mean. And then we can sue their asses off!”

  “I just want my privileges reinstated.”

  “Don’t be a jerk, Al! They released your suspension to the Express within an hour! That’s pretty goddamn low!”

  “They deny it.”

  “They lie. We’re gonna nail these clowns to the wall!”

  “Okay, Tony,” Alan said, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Okay. Just calm down.”

  “I’m fine. Just don’t go playing Mr. Forgiveness with those bastards. Once you put on your little show like you did for me last week, we’ll—”

  “No show, Tony.”

  “What?” Tony’s face went slack. “What do you mean, no show?”