by Dean Koontz
During the few days that I remained in the hospital, receiving treatment for my lesser wounds and undergoing tests to determine the extent of my disabilities, the nurses could do little more for me than turn me regularly in bed to prevent sores from forming as a result of my immobility and lack of sensation in my legs.
Physical therapy began on Thursday. The therapist worked my legs for me, flexing my ankles and my knees, which someone would have to do for me daily from now on, to prevent my joints from locking and my muscles from contracting as the result of paralysis.
I didn’t mourn the loss of mobility, didn’t lie abed in anguish over having become a cripple, which was a word used casually then, not one considered less sensitive than “disabled.” I felt that I had received what I’d earned and that enduring my condition without complaint might be my sole hope of redemption.
Fewer painkillers were now prescribed, and I could no longer retreat into a haze of medication. Neither did I continue to wrap myself in calculated silence. I spoke to everyone, although not in my former garrulous way. I felt that nothing I said could be worth anyone listening, not after the suffering that my presence in the world had caused; for the most part, I limited myself to responses, initiating few exchanges. I remained aware that my grief and acute sense of blame distressed my mother and Grandfather Teddy. But to pretend to feel other than I truly felt would have filled me with self-disgust.
As when I’d been in the ICU, someone was always with me, often more than one person. Mr. Yoshioka visited so frequently, two and three times a day, that I felt obliged to tell him that he would lose his job. He only smiled and said that he had taken no vacations or sick leave for years and had accumulated a considerable number of earned days off.
He came once with Detective Otani, who questioned me about what I’d seen at First National and recorded my testimony regarding Fiona and Tilton. Aurora Delvane had been arrested but professed ignorance of her comrades’ darker intentions. “We were just this sort of little commune; free love, that’s all I ever saw.” She promised cooperation, but she hadn’t yet made bail. The others were on the run.
On Thursday, when covering for Mother and Grandpa Teddy while they went to lunch together, Mr. Yoshioka sat by my bed, his arms resting on the arms of the chair, in one of his characteristic serene postures. “Jonah, do you remember a great long time ago when you were not yet ten, when you were merely nine, and you told me that you dreamed about Miss Cassidy and Mr. Drackman even before you ever met them?”
“Sure. I brought you chocolate-chip cookies.”
“Most delicious cookies. That day I told you of a prophetic dream of my own, in which my mother and sister perished in a fire.”
“I found their pictures,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Did you indeed?”
“In a library book about Manzanar. I Xeroxed the page to keep.”
For a while he stared at his right hand, where it rested on the chair arm, as if he preferred not to look at me, and I wondered if I had in some way invaded his privacy, his sense of what was sacred, by finding and keeping photos of his mother and sister.
When he looked at me once more, he said, “I told you back then that I believe we who have suffered greatly may from time to time be given the grace of foretelling, so that we may spare ourselves from further torment. In those days, I was a bitter young man, so very angry about our internment in Manzanar. My anger was hot, Jonah, so white-hot that for a while it burned away my faith, faith in this country, faith in my father, whose docile acceptance infuriated me, and even faith that life has meaning. And so although I dreamed of the fire seven days before it occurred, I could not believe that it was more than an ordinary nightmare. In my anger, I could not accept there might be such a thing as grace, that I had been given the dream so that I might be spared the loss of my precious mother and sister. I valued my anger too much to let go of it, too much to believe.”
I said, “You couldn’t know it was prophetic.”
“Yes, I could have. If I had not been consumed by anger. If I had allowed myself to receive the transitions and vicissitudes of life with more wisdom and with a more generous heart. Manzanar was wrong. However, the internment camps were created in a time of fear, and the fear was rational. But fear can lead people to do things they would never contemplate in placid times. Fear can blind us, but so can anger.”
I almost said something, almost issued another assurance that he had no blame for the kitchen fire. But judging by the directness with which he regarded me, by his air of anticipation, I thought that he must be waiting for me to consider what he’d said, to sift from his words some essential insight.
After a silence, he continued: “Surrendering to fear destroys many lives. Indulgence in stubborn anger destroys even more. But guilt, Jonah, is no less a destroyer of lives. I speak to you as an expert on all three. Fear can be overcome. You may let go of anger. And guilt can be forgiven.”
Turning my head away from him, I said, “Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean you’re really forgiven. That’s too easy.”
“But you can and must, especially when the guilt is so little earned. The way is simple. You must remember the love you had for the one you lost. Your mother tells me that you adored Amalia. It seems that everyone did. Remember that adoration. Do not let your feelings of guilt turn her out of your heart. Open your heart to her, and bring her back into it, so that she will always be with you. Guilt forbids her entrance. Sorrow instead would be a gift to her, a way forward that allows the hope of happiness. Believe me, Jonah, I am as well an expert in the matter of sorrow and its value.”
83
Later that day, I woke from a nap and heard my mother’s voice and another that I needed a moment to identify. Mrs. Mary O’Toole. She had given me piano lessons at the community center. Something in the tone of their conversation encouraged me to close my eyes and pretend sleep.
“He would sometimes come to the back door of the center in the late afternoon,” Mrs. O’Toole said. “He’d step into the hallway and wait to hear the piano. The piano room is just across from my office. If there was music, he could always tell at once whether it was Jonah or someone else.”
“He doesn’t play an instrument himself,” my mother said.
“But I swear, Sylvia, he’s got an ear. At least he has an ear for that boy. If Jonah was playing, he’d go into the file room next to my office and sit behind the half-open door to listen.”
“And Jonah never knew he was there?”
“No. That’s how he wanted it. He either left before Jonah was done for the day or left only after Jonah had been gone five minutes. To tell you the truth, I thought at first it was a little creepy, but I didn’t feel that way for long.”
Faking sleep, I realized they must be talking about Tilton, that my father had secretly come to hear me play. I didn’t know what to make of that, desperately didn’t want to make anything of it.
Mary O’Toole said, “On only his second or maybe third visit, he stepped into my office afterward and said, ‘Do you feel as I do—that when he plays, God enters the room?’ I guess I misunderstood, because I said Jonah was a great kid but not a saint. So he said, ‘No, I mean to say God enters the room at the sound of Jonah’s playing. That’s how I feel.’ Then he said it was an honor to listen, and he left.”
“I never knew,” Mother said.
“There was a day last winter, I looked in on him in the file room, and he was sitting there so primly, still in his heavy topcoat, holding his hat in both hands, tears just streaming down his face. He apologized to me for his tears, of all things, and said that he’d made of his life an isolation. Those were his exact words. He never speaks so personally, he’s reserved. But he said he’d made of his life an isolation, it was too late for him to be a father to a child of his own. He said, ‘The world is full of beauty, isn’t it? There’s grace everywhere if we’ll just see it.’ He’s such a nice little man.”
Of course, she had not been t
alking about my father. Mr. Yoshioka had come to the center now and then to listen to me play, and I had never known.
The particular day to which Mary O’Toole referred must have been the snowy afternoon when I came out of the community center close behind him, when he had looked so dashing in his topcoat, neck scarf, and fedora. I had delighted him that day when he discovered that I’d memorized a haiku by Naitō Jōsō.
Now, in the hospital room, I acted as if I just then came awake, and for a while I strove to be more my former self with Mrs. O’Toole. But as I pretended a lighter mood than the one in which I was still submerged, a worry grew in me: that Mr. Yoshioka might be in danger. Lucas Drackman, Fiona Cassidy, Mr. Smaller, and my father were still free, on the run or gone to ground. If they saw a police press conference on TV or read the newspapers, they might become aware that Mr. Yoshioka and the Manzanar posse had been instrumental in fingering them for the authorities. Most likely, my father would choose to run, to hide, to slip into another life, but I could too easily imagine the other three being driven by a thirst for revenge.
84
Friday began with news that I hadn’t realized Mom and Grandpa were hoping to receive. My doctors determined that incontinence would not be a condition of my disability. Although my legs were paralyzed, I should be able to pee and move my bowels unassisted. As a first test of this conclusion, a nurse removed my urinary catheter and the collection bottle attached to it, and I was encouraged for the next couple of hours to drink a goodly amount of water.
Finally I felt the urge. To spare me the embarrassment of being attended in this matter by a stranger, Grandpa Teddy carried me into the adjoining bathroom and put me on the toilet.
“Just us guys,” he said when my mother tried to follow, and he closed the door.
After sitting there for a moment, I said, “What now?”
“Now you give it a try.”
“A try?”
“Like always. You’ve been doing it more than ten years, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? I don’t think you’ve been faking it all this time.”
I strained a little but then stopped. “Well …”
He couldn’t conceal his worry. “Well what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know, son?”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“How does it feel?”
“Funny,” I said.
He stared down at me for a long moment, so tall and imposing, a bullfrog to my tadpole. Then his eyes went wide and he made them bug out a little, and he said, “Do you mean funny weird or funny ha-ha?”
I started to giggle, as I suppose he knew I might.
“I’m only asking for a definition,” Grandpa said. “Funny weird, like maybe a flock of birds might come flying out your whizzer? Or funny ha-ha because I look so silly standing here like a pee-pee coach?”
The giggles wouldn’t stop, but the pee started.
Afterward, he held me up at the sink. I washed my hands and pulled a paper towel from a dispenser and dried them. Then he gently lifted me into both of his arms, cradling me, and kissed my forehead. “As long as a man can pee, Jonah, he can take on anything the world throws at him.” He carried me back to my bed, beside which my mother stood smiling even as she cried.
85
Tuesday, eight days after the events at the bank, the doctors and therapist decided that I could go home on Thursday, which was a great way to begin the morning. The nurses and orderlies and everyone had been very kind to me, but I was nonetheless sick of the hospital. None of the gang that took down the Colt-Thompson armored transport had been apprehended, nor had the stolen truck or the third guard been found, but I reasoned that if a bank wasn’t safe, neither was a hospital.
Later that afternoon, I was staring at some stupid afternoon movie on TV, with the sound off, worrying about Mr. Yoshioka, when Mom came in from the hall. “Jonah, there’s someone very special here to see you. You might not want to visit, but you should, even if it’s hard.” I asked who, and she said, “It’s every bit as much about him, sweetie, as it is about you.”
“Malcolm?” I asked.
She nodded. “You can be strong for him, can’t you?”
“I’m scared.”
“No reason to be. He’s worried about you. Aren’t you worried about him?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and let it out and opened my eyes. I knew what my mother expected of me, and why she expected it, and even why she should expect it. I switched off the silent TV. “Okay.”
As ungainly as always, pants hoisted high, four inches of white socks showing between cuffs and shoes, he came into the room, and my mother closed the door as she stepped into the corridor, leaving us alone. He didn’t so much as glance at me but went to a window and stood gazing out at the summer day, which was as bright and warm as if no tragedy had ever occurred in the city.
When he didn’t say anything, I wondered if I should speak first and what I should say, but then he found his voice.
“I came by myself. I know buses. It’s not so hard. One transfer that was a little tricky, that’s all.” After a pause, he continued. “I don’t cry, see. I haven’t for a long time, and I’m not going to start now. You cry in our house, man, it’s like you let them win. I figured that out a thousand years ago. Even when they say ‘Take it to the garage,’ you can’t go out there and get weepy, because they’ll know. I don’t know how they know, but they do. Amalia said sometimes she thought they fed on our tears because they couldn’t make any more of their own. But then she always backed off and said it wasn’t their fault, something had happened to them to make them that way. I’m not so generous.”
I realized that nothing I could say mattered at that moment. Malcolm needed to talk, and he needed me to listen, no matter how difficult listening might be.
“That morning,” he continued, and I knew the morning he must mean, “she got up really early. She had a lot to do before she could take us for some fun without getting a lot of crap from them. She has to make them breakfast every morning, two different ones at two different times because they hardly ever eat together and they never want the same thing. I emptied the last night’s ashtrays for her, those two never think to do it, and changed the birdcage paper, did some other things. When the old man had breakfast and left for work and our old lady had her breakfast tray in her armchair in front of the TV, Amalia still had to do a bunch of stuff, so that when we got home from Midtown late afternoon, she’d be able to put dinner on the table and on the TV tray by the time he came back home bitching about everyone at work. You’d think he had to teach every idiot on the shop floor how to use a lathe every day, as if the whole crew of them can’t remember their job overnight. So Amalia, that morning, she’s peeling carrots and putting them in a bowl of water, and I’m peeling potatoes and putting them in another bowl of water, and we’re getting things done until she comes to the mushrooms. The lord and lady, they like their mushrooms. I mean, if there’s meat in the meal, there’s got to be gravy, and the gravy’s got to be chock full of sliced damn mushrooms. Or if there’s not gravy and it’s lasagna, that damn lasagna better be so thick with mushrooms you could choke to death on them. So Amalia, she’s got pounds of mushrooms, I don’t know how many, and she has to get them cleaned and peeled the way they like them, all before the three of us can catch that bus. But she won’t let me help, she says I’m too rough with mushrooms. Even if the damn mushrooms are in the damn lasagna or covered in gravy, the master of the lathe and his beloved can tell if they’ve been roughly handled, and you better steel yourself for the whining and the scolding and the general all-around pissiness.”
He paused to take a few deep breaths and steady himself. Still he faced the day rather than face me.
“So Amalia, she’s hurrying to get all those mushrooms done, trying to hurry without being rough, God forbid, and I’m watching her hands shake. I mean, she’s so
nervous about those freakin’ mushrooms, about doing them right and getting all of them done on time, as if the fate of the world depends on it. I look up at her face, and she’s focused on those mushrooms, man, totally focused, biting her lip to help her concentrate. She’s this brilliant person, brilliant person, she knows art and architecture, she knows music and books, and she can write, oh man, she can write, she’s going to be the most famous writer in the world or something, she’s got this full scholarship for four years, and they don’t see it or don’t care, all they want to do is bust her ass if she doesn’t prepare enough damn stupid mushrooms or doesn’t do them to the highest standards of the Pomerantz house.”
He didn’t speak for a long time, breathing hard and fast at first, almost gasping, but in time he grew calm.
“They make noises since it happened. The kind of noises they know they’re supposed to make at a time like this. How awful it is. How unfair it is. How much they miss her. How empty the house seems now. But it’s all just noise. There’s not a tear between them. They get takeout for dinner from this restaurant, from that one, and they complain about it. They try TV dinners, and they complain about them. They watch the boob tube like before. I swear, they talk at the walls instead of to each other. I take it to the garage without being told to take it. The only thing that’s really changed about them, besides what they have to eat, is how much they smoke. They’re two factory stacks, worse than ever, like they’re trying to fill the house with smoke so they won’t notice … she’s gone.”
At last he turned from the window and came to the bed and stared at my useless legs.
“She was so damn close to a clean getaway, you know.”
