“You gonna be all right?” Ian asked me, very softly. “You wanna see Scarcross?”
I nodded.
“You sure?”
Upstairs, on floor eleven, Fr. Scarcross was waiting—the man I thought might have been Ian the night before. This time I would meet him: I would draw back the curtain. It scared me. I could taste the copper pennies on my tongue.
“When will I see you?”
“Tomorrow at lunch.”
“Take care of my mother.”
“Your mom is all right. Take some money for a cab.”
Ian gave me fifty dollars.
“Call Peaches.”
“Who’s Peaches?”
“The cabbie. I love you.”
“I love you too, asshole.”
“And don’t you forget it!”
“Five days to the prom.”
“Five days to the prom!”
Someone was having a birthday, I could tell, because while Lucinda Delaney, the social worker at St. Osyth’s, briefed me on my duties as an AIDS ward volunteer—transporting patients to and from their rooms, reading to them, just helping pass the time—Sr. Cynthia Rose, with the crack deliberation of a bomb squad expert jerked away from Happy Hour, poked a handful of candles in a lopsided cake that was less cake than candles, and about as appetizing.
“Keep an eye out for this one,” Sr. Cindy warned Lucinda, a modish young woman with a gold spike in her tongue. “He’s full of shit and mischief. At least last night he was.”
“Toby Sligh’s a baby,” the social worker lisped, and tightened the spike in her tongue once, and coughed. “That’s what disturbs me. Can you handle this, Toby? These people aren’t projects. They’re people.”
I said I could.
“It’s better that you focus on just one patient,” Lucinda continued, taking out some Murine. “Though it tends to be harder on you when they go—Jesus, these contacts! You guys wear contacts?”
We told her we didn’t.
“Fucking things,” Lucinda said.
“I’ve got some idea who Tobias wants to talk to,” Sr. Cindy interjected, pointing at me with a candle. “Fr. Scarcross.”
“Fr. Scarcross? Why Fr. Scarcross?”
I didn’t have a reason.
“He spoke to us at school.”
Lucinda looked at Cindy, who was humming at the cake. Scowling, she whipped a scythe of black hair from her eyes.
“Fr. Scarcross is brilliant, but his mind is going, Toby. He’s liable to say anything.”
Sr. Cindy said, “Who isn’t?”
“Two days ago in chapel he made perfect sense to me.”
“Two days is a lifetime for someone with AIDS,” the social worker said. “You like William Shakespeare?”
“Who?”
“William Shakespeare. He’s kind of this writer. Like Aretha Franklin sings.”
“I might have heard of him.”
“And that other one,” she added.
“Mrs. Dickinson.”
“Ms. Her name’s Emily, Sister.”
“Yes, Mrs. Dickinson. And Blake. And the Bible! He likes to be read to. And sometimes to perform. He’s a marvelous—”
“Actor!”
They chortled at each other. Their in-jokes were unsettling. I let their laughter curdle.
“What kind of an actor?”
“A performer, you know,” Sr. Cindy said demurely. “Eli is a performer.”
“Eli?”
“Elijah. Father’s Christian name’s Elijah.” Lucinda sucked a Tic-Tac. “But we call him Ja for short.”
So they called him Elijah. And Eli. And Ja. And I hadn’t even been introduced to him yet.
“You know,” Lucinda told me, tossing Sister her Zippo. “We try to keep things at St. Osyth’s confidential. The fact you go to school where Scarcross has spoken, where he might even have friends—”
“I won’t tell a soul,” I swore.
“It isn’t that, Tobias,” Lucinda said measuredly. “It isn’t not telling. It’s much, much more than that. It’s listening so … Well, so they know they’re being heard.”
“Like confession?”
“Like confession.” Sr. Cindy backed me up.
“You can’t bare your heart to someone who doesn’t listen. Confidentiality is just the better half of compassion. It isn’t not telling. It isn’t just that. It’s caring so much that all you want to do is listen.”
“Like God,” Sr. Cindy said, getting metaphysical, and continuing in a vein that made the social worker squirm. “God is the Listener. The priest is just the ear. What if you told God your sins and He squealed?”
“Maybe He does,” I argued. “Maybe that’s history.”
“Gawd! Another deep one!” the social worker hooted. “Don’t get deep, Toby Sligh! Get stupid!”
“Okay.”
They lit the candles. I swiped some waxy icing.
“How’d he get the virus?”
Their looks were licensed weapons. I was trying to be clever, but I was weakening inside.
“That isn’t a question we ask here, Tobias.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m curious. I’m stupid.”
“There’s stupid and there’s stupid,” Lucinda said, and stood.
“Talk with your ears, not your mouth,” said Sr. Cindy.
“You’re weird, all you Catholics,” Lucinda said, and left.
Hap-py birthday to you!
Hap-py birthday to you!
Hap-py birthday, Fr. Scarcross!
Hap-py birthday to …
“I’m twenty-five years old,” Elijah Scarcross lied, in response to the chorus: “How old are you now?” He lay still in bed with his cake in his lap. He wasn’t twenty-five. He was double that, at least. And in his drawn condition he looked older than the earth. His shoulders tapered down beneath a translucent nightgown, giving his head a totem’s disembodied bigness, and what remained of his frame lay immobile on the bed that buoyed up his body like a dead man on a life raft. He lifted some cake to his lips and chewed slowly, the outline of his jaw exaggerated through the skin as if illuminated by subcutaneous lanterns. And his neck and chest were speckled purple with lesions. They looked fresh and glossy, like flowers after rain.
“Twenty-five?”
“I’m incapable of telling a lie. Tell this young person I’m incapable of lying.”
Lucinda, who was distributing cake to two men who might have been twenty-five but who looked similarly ancient, called out in Spanish to the starved Cuban woman, who barked and made a fist. Lucinda hurried over.
“Its true, Toby Sligh. Elijah doesn’t lie. He’s the only honest Catholic I’ve ever met.”
“This cake, for instance. This is horrible cake. Who made this cake?”
“I did,” said Sr. Cindy.
Fr. Scarcross clicked his tongue and took another wary bite.
“This cake is what you give to someone you want to kill. Do you want to kill me, Sister?”
“Sometimes, Elijah, yes.”
Scarcross’s laughter extinguished several candles on a slab of cake Lucinda had left burning at his bedside.
“Another honest Catholic!” Fr. Scarcross declared, his laughter erupting into hyperventilation. Lucinda rubbed his shoulders while the spasm subsided. Scarcross settled back into himself like potter’s clay.
“How are your eyes?” Sr. Cynthia asked him.
Fr. Scarcross touched his face and smiled wistfully at no one. “I’ll just have to see with other things,” he said and shuddered. His hands fluttered down to his sides like lighting birds. “Is this young man honest?”
He was talking around me.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Sr. Cynthia said.
“Are you honest?” Fr. Scarcross repeated, very slowly. Though thick with medication, his voice was musical.
“That’s a question you should never ask a liar,” I answered.
He was quiet for a while.
“He’s hon
est,” Scarcross said.
“I want to introduce him to your roommates, Elijah,” Lucinda interrupted, and took me by the hand. “This is Peter,” she said, and introduced me to a frail man fiddling with an I.V. needle dripping from his chest. “Peter, this is Toby.”
“Hi, Moby,” Peter mumbled. “My needle is infected.”
Lucinda made a note.
“Be careful around Eli,” Peter said. “He thinks he’s God.”
“I am!” Scarcross shouted.
Peter huffed, “Stupid queen! You really have to whisper! ’Sgot ears like fucking Dumbo! You fart and it’s a headline! Fr. Ja hears everything!”
“I’ll get another needle,” Lucinda promised Peter, and left him fumbling idly with the leaky yellow tube.
“We call him ‘Fr. Ja’ because Ja is love, Moby,” Peter informed me as we headed away.
“It’s Toby, not Moby.”
“It’s what?”
I turned to him.
“It’s Toby, not Moby. My name is Toby Sligh.”
“Too bad,” Peter sighed, and smiled semi-rudely. “In that case, me and André won’t get to see your d—”
Lucinda cleared her throat. “Be nice now, Peter.”
“I’m always nice, girlfriend! See ya later, Missy Thang!”
I shook my head vaguely and followed Lucinda to the bed beside Peter’s, where another man lay.
“This is André,” she began. “André Lopez, this is Toby.”
André Lopez didn’t answer.
“Toby Sligh,” Lucinda said.
André Lopez tried to smile, but his lips were caked with ulcers, and his tongue, faint with thrush, strained in vain to pry them open. He was handsome for a man who was dying, I thought, his face drawn back by an invisible hand. Underneath the muslin blanket you could make out where his body, once muscular and hardened, had given rein to AIDS. André closed his eyes and sighed an infantile sigh, and I was reminded of the baby in the cage the night before.
“Yesterday you were a child,” I told him inexplicably.
He cast a glance at Lucinda that said, “Translate, please.”
“André was a dancer in Miami,” said Lucinda.
André smiled at me.
“Wanna … dance?” André said.
After a while Lucinda leaned over, pried our fingers apart, and escorted me away. She mumbled something to me I couldn’t understand and led me to the bed where the Cuban woman lay. Underneath her arm was a box of Havatampas—empty, I would learn, except for orange peels—and she lay there tense and coiled as a jack-in-the-box, her unblinking eyes glowering up at the ceiling as if through sheer volition she held the clinic up. I wanted to speak, but I could only stare.
Lucinda said, “Magda doesn’t talk much, Toby.”
I said, “Hola, Magda.”
“ Maricón,”Magda said.
“Do you understand Spanish?” Sr. Cindy called over.
“No,” I informed her.
“Es mejor,” Lucinda said.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting beside Scarcross, who was staring at his hands, and the partition had been drawn. I could make out Lucinda’s and Sr. Cindy’s footsteps disappearing in a military tattoo down the hall, and the curtained-off space containing me and Fr. Scarcross was filling up with silence and pneumoniae breathing. Outside I heard a kettledrum of early summer thunder, and through a V in the curtains I saw thunderheads form. Scarcross’s dead eyes were pivoting toward me. They were terrible with mucus. He began to speak to me.
“Books … I want books. … I made a list for you … Can you read, child?”
“What?”
“Can you read?”
“My name’s Toby.”
He coughed into his fist and cast a doubtful glance at me.
“Can you read, Toby Angel?”
“Toby Sligh … I can read.”
“How old am I really?”
“Twenty-five, like you said.”
A spasm rocked his body and his hands gripped the bedrail. He was groaning. I rose from my chair.
“It will pass!”
Outside, it was raining. I stared out the window. I watched two water droplets running races down the glass.
“There now, it’s gone. The pain is gone, Toby. It’s raining. I can hear it. Will you give me your hand?”
The hand in his lap reached for mine, and I took it. He held on to me lightly. It felt like we were floating.
“You aren’t afraid, are you? I thought you might be frightened. I feel your heart beating through your wrist. Feel my heart.”
His fingers pressed mine to his pulse, which was racing. Every other second it would drop an awkward beat.
“That’s where my life will fall through,” he confided. “I’ve always lacked grace… . I’ve always made a sloppy exit.”
He coughed and his hands wafted up to his face. His fingers pressed his eyelids and collapsed into his lap.
“My eyes—it’s a cytomegalovirus. It means I’m going blind. I can’t read anymore… . Come closer. Lean in. I can barely see you. We only have words now. Describe yourself to me.”
“I—”
“Let me guess. I’m good at guessing, Toby! I can make you out a little, if you lean closer in… .”
I drew a sharp breath as I leaned into Scarcross. He was wheezing. His breath fanned my eyes. It was sweet.
“You have soft eyes …”
“Yes.”
“And dark hair …”
“Yes.”
“But your soul is light, Toby. It’s lighter than air! How old are you?”
“Seven—” I stumbled. “Seventeen.”
“You sound older.”
“What?”
“You sound older, Toby!”
“I feel older.”
“No. You feel seventeen. And you wouldn’t think, to look at me, that I was twenty-five… . Are you frightened yet?”
“What?”
“Are you frightened, Tobias? So many people are. Are you frightened of the truth?”
I said I wasn’t.
“That’s good. You shouldn’t be. Because lies—” He was trembling. “Because lies are God’s weeds. We’ll tend to our garden. Be lieless, like children.”
“About what?”
“About what? About everything, Toby! … We’ll talk about our life and our friends and our family and be absolutely honest. I would like that very much.”
“More than books?”
“More than books. Because words, these words we say … These words are not books… . These words are not lies… These words are our spirit… . These words are our truth. Will you do that for me, Toby? Tell the truth. Will you promise?”
“I … promise.”
“When I ask about your day, will you tell me every detail? You won’t say it was okay and just let it go at that? Will you tell me what happened, and how it made you feel? It would make me so happy if you did that, Tobias. To hear an honest person, to hear one authentic voice … All our lives, you know, we’re searching just for that. All we ever want is to speak honestly to someone. You’d think it would be simple, to speak the way we feel, but—”
“It isn’t.”
“No, it isn’t. That’s the virus that we carry. We save honesty for God and lie to everybody else. … A waste of precious breath. A precious waste, Tobias. Would you like a lie?”
“What?”
“Would you like to have a lie? Just one, a free one, to carry round in your pocket?”
I looked at him.
“Now, now … You go ahead and take it.”
He plucked something from the air and he handed it to me.
“I don’t want it, really.”
“You tuck it in your pocket… . One lie is not a lot, when we consider all we’ve got.”
“Do you get a lie?”
“What?”
“Do you get a lie, Eli?”
Fr. Scarcross touched his throat and turned his face away from mine. It fe
lt as if we were in the room with someone else. Far away, across town, I could hear a siren singing. In an intimate voice, Scarcross spoke to no one there:
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, & bid thee feed
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
“Dost thou know?” Scarcross whispered. “Do you know, Toby Sligh?”
When I told him I didn’t, his reply filled the room.
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, & he is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
“List, list, list … My list is on the table. You tuck it in your pocket. You have a little lie.”
Outside, it was pouring. Fr. Scarcross touched my eyes.
“God bless you, Tobias. God bless you, Toby Angel!” He was falling asleep now. “You guard me while I dream.”
The Tempest, Shakespeare
Experience & Innocence, Blake
The Bible
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Toby's Lie Page 8
