by Tim Sandlin
Mitchell stares hard at Bing, trying to catch the message he is sure Bing has hidden beneath his words. “That is positive?”
“Correct. Potential is good. Staying stuck on the wrong side of the cage is bad.”
Mitchell slaps Bing on the thigh. “I understand you, brother.”
Bing slaps Mitchell on the thigh. “I do not understand you.”
Mitchell motions to the media mess across the picnic grounds and lawn. “Soon as this is over, I’m packing for Africa, and if anyone asks, you get the credit.”
“Rosemary has a credit card.”
65
Krystal Lee — on loan from San Diego Now — does Sarah’s makeup while Sarah sits in a director’s chair, her eyes closed and her hands resting on a knit bag in her lap. Rosemary paces.
Krystal Lee says, “I never get to make people look worse than they are. This is good training for when I move to Hollywood.” The women are set up outside because the light in Sarah’s trailer isn’t adequate. The miracle will be outside; Krystal Lee wants to see Sarah’s face under miracle conditions.
As she works, Krystal Lee chews Spry gum, careful to keep her lips pursed so she doesn’t smack. “You have naturally luminous skin,” she says. “Too bad you’re sick.”
Sarah says, “Too bad.” She is wrapped in flowing white Egyptian cotton. The Goddess look. She is barefoot and her hair is pulled back behind her ears. Naturally luminous or not, Sarah’s bruise-colored eye bags hang dark on her pale skin. Krystal Lee has orders to make her already sickly pallor worse. Rosemary can’t handle looking at her sister. She appears dead.
“God only knows you can bail on this is you’re not comfortable,” Rosemary says. “Are you comfortable? I wouldn’t blame you if the whole thing came across weird.”
As Krystal Lee applies white lip gloss over dark lip gloss, Sarah opens her eyes. “Turk Palisades would murder us both if I bailed now.”
Rosemary’s eyes go slick. “I don’t care about Turk. I care about what is right for you.” She circles clear around Krystal Lee, glances at Sarah’s face, kind of shivers, and then circles back the other way. “When I dreamed up this plan it seemed perfect. You know, perfect.”
Sarah starts to nod but Krystal Lee stops her. “Freeze.”
“But now I don’t know,” Rosemary says. “I won’t be able to bear it if something goes wrong.”
“That’s a wrap.” Krystal Lee takes a photo of Sarah with her cell phone. She plans to put this job on her web site. “Don’t touch your face. You look dandy.”
Rosemary says, “Dandy?”
Krystal Lee gathers her makeup in a large box that was originally sold to hold fishing tackle. “For a girl who is supposed to look like she’s on death’s doorstep, she looks just the way she should.” Krystal Lee heads back to her car. She has no interest in sticking around for the miracle. It’s almost time for Say Yes to the Dress on TLC and if she hurries she can catch the fight with the sister-in-law.
Sarah watches Krystal Lee walk away, then she turns to Rosemary. “I don’t want to bail, Rosie.”
“I’m just saying you can, I’m not saying you should.”
“I am sick of being sick.”
Rosemary kneels in front of Sarah and takes her hands. “Since Dad died and Mom went nuts, you’ve been mother, father, sister, and friend to me. Without you I’m meaningless. You’re what keeps me from flying apart and splattering across the universe.” She starts to weep quietly.
Sarah touches a tear at the outer edge of Rosemary’s left eye. “I had a dream last night that Mom was here, wherever here was in the dream. She’d cut her hair short.” Sarah nods, picturing their mother as she looked in the dream, which wasn’t the same as she’d looked when they last saw her. “Did you ever tell her about all this?”
Rosemary blinks quickly, the sign that she is choosing between lies and truth. She goes with truth. “I wrote Mom, right after your second operation, at that religious farm in Denmark. I told her about your illness.” Rosemary is quiet for a moment. Sarah waits, without the need to prompt.
“Mom wrote back to say her true family at the farm practices no contact with their random, earthly relations in order to find God free of distractions. She told me not to bother her.”
Sarah gazes down at Rosemary. It’s more or less the way she had it figured, but it’s a relief to finally know for sure that the sisters are on their own.
Rosemary says, “I didn’t tell you because you had enough trouble. I thought I was protecting you.”
“I wish you didn’t protect me all the time.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t do that.”
“So why tell me now?”
“I don’t know why now. I guess you deserve to know everything I know, before you go up there.” She tips her head to indicate the rock, the risers, cameras, and the ever-swelling crowd. “I was so hurt by the bitch I burned her letter.”
The tears are flowing freely now. Rosemary doesn’t even try to wipe them off as they drip down her face, running her eyeliner.
Sarah cups Rosemary’s face between her palms and draws her close. “You’ll be fine, Rosie. You are strong.”
Rosemary sniffs. “Could have fooled me.”
“Besides, you have your boy. He won’t allow you to fly apart.”
Rosemary is so surprised, the tears stop. “Bing?”
“Bing knows what matters and what doesn’t. If you get confused, ask him”
Rosemary repeats herself. “Bing?”
Sarah smiles for the first time in several days. “Here he comes now.”
Rosemary turns to see Bing approaching in a knuckle-walk, which is a posture he hasn’t used probably in as long as Sarah hasn’t smiled. The Armani is wrinkled and dirt spotted from his nap under the fig. His hair is all over the place.
“You look handsome today,” Sarah says.
Bing stops beside Rosemary. He looks down at himself, checking to see if he is handsome. He doesn’t buy it, but he knows Sarah is incapable of a lie.
Sarah speaks to Rosemary. “Doesn’t Bing look handsome, Rosie?”
Rosemary says, “Stand up straight.”
Bing stands.
“Where’s your shoe? And your cap?”
Bing raises first one foot and then the other. He’s only wearing a single jelly. He feels the crown of his head, like a dodderer searching for his glasses.
“I must have left them over there.”
“We’ll have to find them soon, before your disciples steal them for souvenirs.” Rosemary brushes off Bing’s shoulders. “Turn around.”
Bing turns. She slaps at his back, raising a dust cloud. “Are you certain you know what you’re doing?”
Bing turns full circle, back to face her. “I am not.”
“I mean with Sarah. Are you certain you can fix her?”
Bing looks to Sarah in her flowing white gown. He is awestruck at the fragility. “No. I don’t know. I will try as hard as I can.”
“You better do more than try. If you fail, I’ll cut off your leg and beat you with the stump.”
“Is this true?”
Rosemary eyes take in the by-now huge crowd. “And if I don’t kill you, those people over there will.”
Sister Starshine — out of her radio togs and into the Starshine look she stole off a 1965 Cher — breezes over from the direction of the reporter clot. Her voice is more mellow than usual, the result of a double Xanax dose. “Rosemary, dear, Turk wants you on camera.”
Rosemary exhales a puff of air. “Oh, hell.”
“He says the concerned sister will add pathos.”
“I’ve had about all the pathos I can stand.” She touches Bing on the lower arm. “Go find your cap and shoe. You look lost.”
66
Rosemary follows a semi-stoned Sister Starshine off across the lawn into the media circus. As they walk along the roped off God seekers, people reach out across the line, hoping to touch them without knowing who they are. Rosemary a
nd Sister Starshine are on the inside, so they must be somebody.
Sarah stands to watch her sister move away. Rosemary is wearing a short, black skirt and a sleeveless light blue shirt, both from Gap. Toms shoes. From the back, she looks younger than she is.
“Poor Rosemary,” Sarah says.
Bing is also watching Rosemary’s backside. “She is filled with tension.”
“This is harder on her than it is on you or me. She feels responsible.”
“What for?”
“That’s how love works. The hurt intensifies as it passes from the person in pain to the one who loves the person in pain.” Sarah turns back to Bing. “Take care of her.”
“I will if she will allow it. I don’t think she will allow it.” Bing points to the fig tree. “My hat is there. Will you walk with me?
Sarah touches her fingertips to his arm. “I’d love to walk with you.”
Bing takes off his lone jelly so now they are both barefoot. They promenade like kids going to the dance across the grass. Near the tree, they pass a line of concrete picnic tables on each side. Behind them, people shout Bing’s name and hold up signs he can’t read. Far off to the side, Rosemary is at the microphone, answering questions they can’t hear.
Sarah says, “It is a lovely day.”
Bing says, “I don’t know lovely. Is it the same as love?”
“It means nice. A good day to be alive.”
“But then all days are lovely days. I never saw a day I wanted to be dead.”
“I have.”
“That is sad.” He thinks hard about a day where he might want to be dead. A day in decontamination maybe. He says, “A bad day would be night, I guess.”
Sarah speaks without looking at Bing. “I had a baby, you know. A girl.”
“I did not know.”
“She died trying to get out of me. The doctors performed a Caesarian and something went bad. That’s why I hurt so much now. They made a mistake.”
Bing has no idea on Caesarian. “That is sad.”
Sarah touches his arm. “When you stop my pain, it won’t stop hers.”
“Rosemary, or your baby?”
“Rosemary. My baby is in no pain now.”
“No, she’s not.”
“Rosemary won’t be better unless you make her better.”
“She says she’ll be happy, after you are well.”
At the tree, they come upon the hat and jelly, right where Bing left them. Sarah stops and turns to stare into Bing’s eyes. Unblinking, he looks back into hers. He’s growing accustomed to human eye contact. He likes the feeling it brings.
“I don’t see how this can turn out the way Rosemary wants it to,” Sarah says.”
“Maybe.”
“No. It won’t be possible.”
“That is what a miracle is. Rosemary explained it to me. It’s when I do a thing that is not possible.”
They stare at each other for a few moments. Bing sees her eyes are still pinpricks so she must be taking medicine. Sarah sees he is a frightened boy.
“I almost forgot.” Sarah digs into the knitted bag. She pulls out the Droid phone. “I promised you this.”
Bing slips the phone into his pocket without looking at it. “Thank you, Sarah. I will return it. After.”
As he reaches down for his engineer’s cap and the lost jelly, Sarah says, “I wish I could give you more.”
Bing places the cap square on his head. He says, “Me too.”
67
The young man from the acacia tree who had been seen by one person in his life now stands behind the sacrificial stone with the whole world watching, or at least a sizeable portion of the whole world. Bing wears Oudry’s engineer’s cap, and both pink, sparkly jellies. Sarah lies on her back with her head to Bing’s left. She closes her eyes against the sun.
Behind Bing, on the risers with a view of Bing’s back and partial view of Sarah, range Rosemary, Turk, Dr. Chavez, Sister Starshine, Persephone, Mitchell, and a couple more guys in suits that aren’t known to Bing. Rosemary is positioned on the end so she can see her sister’s face. Turk has a monitor to catch the CNN camera feed. Rosemary can see the monitor too, if she wants, but she doesn’t want. She sees nothing and no one except Sarah.
Out past the cameras, the crowd spreads across the lawn into the picnic area and the trees. People stand on picnic tables. A few have climbed trees. To Bing, it is the largest gathering of humans he’s ever seen, somewhat like a field growing faces and heads for a crop. Considering the numbers, the lawn is eerily quiet. It’s like waiting for first serve at a tennis match.
Sarah flickers her eyes and looks up at Bing. “You okay?”
Bing places his hands in position over her forehead and womb. He says, “Do you know what will happen?”
“I think so. Do you?”
“No.”
Sarah tilts her head back to look at Rosemary standing at the edge of the riser. Sarah winks at her sister.
Rosemary blanches.
Sarah looks back at Bing. She says, “Go.”
In the silence, Bing moans. A whisper of a moan, almost empty of sound. The moan of awakening from a long sleep.
Sarah closes her eyes again, and breathes a sigh.
Bing mumbles words, or, to be specific, syllables. Bonobo, African syllables. The hair on the back of his neck lifts. His palms grow warm, then very warm. He tastes metallic saliva. He smells burnt hair. Bing closes his eyes and sees a rusted crack running across corrugated tin. The room is hot, humid. He hears scratchy music. A man and woman are slow dancing. The man’s hand is cupped to the woman’s lower back. The woman’s chin leans into the man’s throat. The woman glows like the sun behind Rosemary’s hair. Bing hears a tone, more than a hum. The tone is midrange and constant, and he sees pink. The entire world is flat pink. The woman turns to him and nods. Bing knows who she is.
He howls!
It’s over. He doesn’t need to open his eyes. He says, “Sarah left.”
Behind and to his left, Rosemary’s voice: “What?”
“She’s gone somewhere else.”
Dr. Chavez jumps off the riser and pushes Bing to the side. The doctor feels Sarah’s neck for a pulse. He doubles his fist and slams it into Sarah’s chest.
He shouts, “Defib!”
A woman Bing hasn’t seen before rushes forward with a blue box that she opens to reveal a machine.
Rosemary strikes Bing on the back of his head. “What have you done?”
“Sarah’s pain is no more.”
“You asshole.”
Rosemary’s eyes are red wild, more animal than Bing has seen in a lifetime with animals. She throws Bing a look of hatred, then shoves him out of the way and runs to Sarah’s body where Dr. Chavez is hooking up wires from the machine.
Bing watches them shock Sarah, knowing it is past the time of bringing her back. The cameramen are in a scrum, pushing, shoving, shouting obscenities at one another in their rush to film Sarah’s death. Behind them, the crowd surges forward, or much of the crowd surges and the rest goes dormant in sadness. The ones moving forward and the ones not moving cause a clash. People fall. People scream.
Someone grabs Bing’s arm and spins him. Turk: “You killed her.”
“Yes.”
Turk is in a fury, ready to strike Bing down, but he doesn’t. Instead he barks. “Mitchell, get the car.”
Mitchell says, “How’s that?”
“The car, dammit. We’re leaving.”
Persephone strides forward and slaps Bing in the face. She says, “You are a charlatan.”
Bing doesn’t fathom charlatan but he says, “Yes,” anyway. He knows he deserves whatever charge anyone can bring.
Turk pulls his arm. “Let’s go, Messiah.”
Bing looks at Rosemary and Sarah. The crowd is moving so fast Rosemary has to fight to stay with her sister. Between shocks, Dr. Chavez breathes into Sarah’s open mouth, so Bing can’t see Sarah’s face. It doesn’t matter.
&
nbsp; He says, “Rosemary might need me.”
“You’ve done enough for Rosemary,” Turk growls. “You’re mine now.”
“Is that proper?”
“Mitchell,” Turk yells over the melee. “Go!”
Mitchell runs interference for them as they fight through the crowd. Turk drags Bing away from Sarah. Bing doesn’t resist.
68
The car isn’t a car. It’s an Infiniti SUV. Big, black honker with tinted windows and fat tires. Mitchell drives, although Bing can tell the car isn’t Mitchell’s. It belongs to Turk or the radio station or somebody, but Turk wants to sit in the passenger seat where he can keep an eye on Bing in the middle line of three rows of seats. He has Mitchell push a button that locks both Bing’s door and window. Even the seatbelt locks. No chance for escape.
Because they are parked in, Mitchell drives off one curb and up another before he hits a driveway leading to a real street. No one speaks as he tries to race to the radio station. It would be a ten-minute drive only they get stuck behind a two-tier cattle truck driving right through San Diego on city streets. When they finally pass Bing can see runny dung dribbling down between the truck slats. He wonders how they got cows on the top level.
He wonders where Sarah is now. She’s not in her body. He knows that much. Dr. Lori had nothing but contempt for those who buy into existence after death. She told Bing it was the same as belief in the tooth fairy, although she never got around to telling him who the tooth fairy is supposed to be.
Bing listened to Centered Soul radio at Rosemary’s small house and in her car, so he is familiar with afterlife terminology — heaven, reincarnation, transmigration, the Great Whatever, Nirvana, Happy Hunting Ground. He isn’t certain what this means other than people don’t want to stop when their bodies do, but Rosemary puts stock in it, so it must be worth thinking about. The whole coming back again idea is a comfort.
“Don’t you look smug,” Turk says. “I trust you are proud of yourself.”
“I don’t think so,” Bing says. “I have caused Rosemary distress. We didn’t intend that.”
“Forget Rosemary. She hates you.”
