Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  And Dad explodes. “Beneath me? Thomas almost died out there on the playground! He healed himself in front of civilians! He can’t go back there.”

  Grandma squints at him. “He was already exposed to the doctor. You’re not worried about that.” She sucks in a breath. “You are taking him to the Attic.”

  “He belongs with me.”

  “He’s never belonged with you before.”

  “It’s different now,” Dad insists.

  “Don’t try to tell me it’s because of Trisha. You asked me to come out here. You practically begged me to fill her shoes. Not that you needed to beg. This wasn’t the plan.”

  “What’s the plan?” I ask.

  They ignore me.

  “What the hell have those monsters thought up now? What brave new scheme do they need Thomas for so badly?”

  “It’s not like that,” Dad says, but his voice has grown quieter.

  Grandma drops her voice in response. “Please, Michael. Tell them no. Whatever they want, tell them no. Do you remember what you went through? Because I remember. I will never, ever forget what they did to you and Viv.”

  “Who’s Viv?” I ask.

  “And you were an adult, making an adult’s choices. Thomas is a child! I know you’ve never been a parent to him, but you have to be one now. Trisha can’t protect him anymore.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  Dad looks at me over his shoulder and swears. He kicks his door open, slams it shut, and stalks into the house.

  “Excellent,” Grandma says.

  “Excellent?” I say. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I think I just bought you a childhood.”

  Dad has shut himself in his office, and we can hear him typing on his keyboard. I wish he’d call someone so I can eavesdrop on the conversation.

  Grandma steers me to the kitchen table and pushes me into a chair.

  “Sit. I’m gonna fix you something to eat. You look like a bag of bones.”

  I do feel more…less substantial. I pull up my shirt and examine my chest, which is sucked up tight against my rib cage. “I think I lost about eight, no nine, pounds,” I say absently.

  “About fifteen percent of your body weight,” Grandma calculates in her head. “Not good, but over twenty percent is seriously dangerous. You’ll live.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  She smiles at me from the open fridge. “You’ll also eat whatever I put in front of you. And fast. I’m surprised you’re still standing. Got it?”

  I nod.

  Grandma cracks six eggs into a bowl, adds milk and cheese, and whisks like a madwoman.

  “So…I’m assuming I lost weight when I healed myself.”

  She nods.

  “So I burned up like a mega-amount of calories to heal that fast.”

  She pours the mixture into a skillet and starts chopping broccoli and spinach. Ugh. I hate spinach.

  “Our abilities are not magic. They are pure science. And they don’t work for free.”

  I look at my chest again, and my stomach, and I try to feel where the fat cells are in my body. A quick mental assessment tells me there aren’t many left.

  “Could I have chosen what fat cells, or muscle cells, my body burned up for energy?”

  “If you’d been thinking that clearly, yes. But I know from experience this is easier said than done when you’re in pain and time is critical.”

  “Have you ever been in that situation?” I ask her. “I know you had cancer, but have you ever had to yourself quickly?”

  “Not anything life-threatening,” she says. “I’ve been lucky. Your dad, though, he’s the one to ask.”

  “Dad’s almost died before?”

  “Several times I know of, and probably several more I don’t.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh, Thomas,” she says, stirring the vegetables into the eggs. “He’s the one who should tell you all this.”

  “But he won’t!” I say, suddenly furious. “He won’t tell me anything. He didn’t even tell me he had any ability. I hate him, Grandma, I hate him! I wish Mom were here and not him. It isn’t fair! Why did she have to die and he get to live?”

  Grandma squats down in front of me and hugs me close.

  “I know you miss your mom, honey, we all do. She was so good, so very good. And she loved you with all her heart. But she loved your dad, too. There’s good in him, and she saw it. Just give him some time.”

  “You sound like Luke Skywalker,” I say into her chest. “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t care what happens to me. His men are more important than I am. He wouldn’t even go to the doctor with me. He didn’t see me in the hospital.”

  “He did today,” she says.

  I pull back from her and wipe my eyes. “He had an agenda. You said it yourself.”

  Grandma checks on the eggs, stirs them a bit, then slides the heaping mound on a plate and sets it front of me. I dig in. I’m ravenous.

  “You know, some people are born to be parents. Me, if I do say so myself. Harry. Your mom. We just have a desire to pass a piece of ourselves along, and we’re willing to sacrifice and protect and honor that responsibility. It’s not only innate, but it’s also a choice. A daily choice. Sleep in or feed our child? Pursue our dreams, or help our children pursue theirs? Buy a new car, or save for our children’s future. For us, these were no-brainers. We want you to have more than us. We want you to be more than us. Your dad never wanted a child.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “He is married to his job. He sacrifices, and protects, and honors all his responsibilities his job entails. He never had to do more because your mother was here. But he will step up. He can do no less.”

  “Because I’m a responsibility,” I say. “Not because he cares about me.” I thump my chest.

  “He doesn’t know you very well, and you don’t know him either. Give him a chance, Thomas.”

  “Will I even have a chance? He can’t stay. He needs to go back to work.”

  “I don’t know how much choice he has. He doesn’t have a normal job, even by military standards.”

  I ponder this. Somehow, I know she’s not referring to his role in the SEAL teams. She’s talking about something else.

  My body starts to shake as I finish up my eggs. Grandma notices the trembling in my hand and gently takes my fork away.

  “Time for bed, soldier,” she says.

  I open my mouth to protest, but no words come out. I feel my legs sliding out from underneath me.

  Grandma catches me about the waist and holds me up. “Not yet, young man. You’re too heavy for me to carry. Now move!”

  I put one foot in front of the other and fight to hold myself upright as Grandma continues to order me. Any drill sergeant would be proud of her.

  We make it to my room and I collapse on the bed. Grandma tucks me in and kisses my forehead, just like Mom used to do.

  “You’re gonna sleep for a while,” she says softly. “Don’t fight it. Get your rest.”

  My eyes are already closed. I’m two sheep away from bliss. But I think of Grandma’s kiss, and I think about Mom, and I think about why God would let someone be born without the ability to heal themselves.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wake up in a cold sweat, my sheets soaked. Gross. I wrap myself in my robe and walk out to the living room.

  It’s completely dark. Must be the middle of the night. I make my way to the couch when a voice nearly stops my heart.

  “Are you alright?”

  I calm my heart and clear my throat. “Dad. You startled me.”

  I cannot see his eyes, or any of his face. He’s like a black statue sitting in the corner of the couch.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks again.

  “Fine. Shaky. The usual.”

  I hear him shift. “Can I get you some orange juice?”

  “What?”

  “Orange juice. Your mother probably would have tapped a vein wi
th it by now if she were here.”

  I feel like he’s making fun of her. It pisses me off.

  “She took good care of me.”

  “Better than I’ve ever done.”

  “You said it, not me.”

  Dad has the audacity to laugh.

  “This isn’t funny,” I say.

  “Laughing beats the hell out of crying,” he says.

  “What do you have to cry about?”

  Dad is silent for several heartbeats. “She was my wife, Thomas. I loved her.”

  “And now you’re stuck with me.”

  “I’ve been stuck with you since the moment your mom told me you were coming. I’m not about to cry over it now.”

  “You asshole!” I yell.

  “I can be. I knew what you’d have to deal with. I live it every Goddamn day. I didn’t want to put you through that.”

  “You played, and I paid. Great. Thanks a lot. The least you could have done was told me. Told me that I’m like you.”

  I hear him sigh. “I hope to God you’re nothing like me.”

  “I’m not a heartless asshole, that’s for sure,” I say.

  “I think you’re pretty heartless where I’m concerned,” he says.

  I don’t reply.

  Dad rises and stops in front of me. “I have to go back, for a month, maybe two. And then I’m done. I promise you I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll be counting the minutes,” I say.

  Dad doesn’t say anything else. He walks past me and goes back to his room.

  I sit on the couch in the exact spot Dad was sitting. Even though the room is cold, the space that Dad vacated is still warm.

  I’m still sitting in the same spot when Grandma comes out in the morning.

  “Thomas,” she says, sitting beside me. “You’re awake.”

  “Guess I didn’t sleep much,” I say. “I woke up hours ago.”

  Grandma laughs. “Honey, it’s been two days. You must be starving.” She gets up and goes straight for the kitchen.

  Holy crap. Two days? My stomach rumbles eagerly.

  I follow Grandma and lean against the counter.

  “Have you ever read Frankenstein?” I ask her. She’s whipping more eggs.

  “No. I’ve seen the movies, though.”

  “I haven’t read it either, and I never got to see a movie about it, but the way I understand it, Dr. Frankenstein sews a body together and basically, a bolt of lightning gives the body life, right?

  “As far as I know.”

  “Do you think that could really work?”

  “You mean the bolt of lightning?”

  “Yeah. I mean, our brains run on electrical impulses. It should work in theory.”

  Grandma sniffs. “Theory is not reality. A bolt of lightning would stop a heart, not start one. And it would probably fry a brain.”

  “A direct bolt, yeah,” I say. “But I think there’s something there. We’re just a bunch of tissue animated by energy.”

  “Energy?” Grandma asks. “Is that what you think? What about the soul?”

  “The soul?” I feel inward, trying to discern whether or not I have one. “I don’t feel like I have a soul.”

  Grandma gasps. “You don’t? What makes you walk and talk? What makes you laugh?”

  “My brain does that. I can feel it.”

  “Yes, but…the essence of you, Thomas. You like blueberry pie and soccer and sculpting things. You hate the taste of butterscotch and spinach, and you like Tessa’s green eyes. You wrote me a very thoughtful poem. Where does this all come from?”

  “I thought it came from my brain. Positive experiences reinforced become preferences. My taste buds are programmed a certain way. I don’t know. How can it be a soul?”

  “How can it not? If you die, and I feed energy into your body, you will not live. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Maybe only because nobody’s ever figured out the right way to do it.”

  “Maybe because it cannot be done.”

  “Now, where we would be if Steve Jobs’s grandmother had said such a thing to him?”

  “We’d still be running around with Walkmen and CD players instead of iPods. What’s your point?”

  “I could bring her back to life,” I whisper.

  “Oh, honey,” Grandma whispers back.

  “It’s possible, I feel it, in my soul. It is possible. We can heal ourselves perfectly, from the inside. There must be a way to harness that.”

  “Thomas, your mother is gone. Please don’t waste your life hoping for a miracle. Miracles are for the living.”

  Grandma cannot convince me that I have a soul. I simply don’t feel it, so it must not be there. And if I don’t have one, no one does. So it’s possible to re-animate a body and have the real person back, instead of a just mindless zombie.

  I suppose if I’m going to approach this scientifically, though, I have to consider the possibility of souls. If we have a soul, and we die, then what happens?

  A. The soul could go to Heaven, or beyond, or roam around like a shade for eternity; or

  B. The soul could stay in the body, dormant; or

  C. The soul could die with the body, never to return.

  But the bigger question is, if I re-animate a dead body, will all its memories and personality be retained?

  Brain cells, which hold this information, die from lack of oxygen. This is proven even in people who never technically die—if there’s a brain injury, if certain brain cells die, memories and personality die with them, and they don’t come back. They have to be built back. And the person is no longer the same.

  I ponder these questions for hours, writing them down, sketching out possible answers, trying to make sense of it. And I finally come to one conclusion: if I want Mom to be able to come back, I have to believe in the soul.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Grandma makes me stay home the rest of the week, and I mostly sleep and write. Today is Sunday, and I’ve asked her to take me to church.

  She says she grew up going to a small Episcopal church in Tustin. You had to dress up and sit real quiet, and they sang a few songs, and then the minister talked about a portion of the Bible and how it related to real life.

  “Will they talk about souls?” I ask her.

  “They might. I don’t know what the minister is going to talk about.”

  “Then how do we know this is the day we should attend?” I ask.

  Grandma laughs. “This is church, Thomas, not a conference. You don’t get to pick which days you show up. You should go every Sunday.”

  “Why is that?”

  “To reinforce your faith. To build and maintain a relationship with God.”

  “Will they let me in?” I ask.

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Well, God must know, that is, if He really exists, that I don’t belong.”

  “That’s the wonderful thing about God,” she says. “Everyone belongs.”

  The only clothes I have that are nice enough for church are the ones I wore to Mom’s funeral. I don’t want to put them on. Grandma says she understands, and we can wait, buy new clothes this week, and attend church next Sunday.

  I don’t want to wait. Even though I hate these clothes, I dress dutifully, thinking it is fitting that I am paying tribute to Mom again. She is the reason I am going to church anyway.

  “Ruthie? Ruthie Hunt?”

  We both turn to see a woman in a pink suit waving her hand frantically at us and dragging an older man reluctantly behind her.

  “Grace?” Grandma says.

  “It is you! Honey, come here.” She pulls the man up beside her, and he gives us both a smile, as if in apology for his wife’s exuberance.

  “Grace, you look marvelous!” Grandma says, giving her a hug.

  “Oh you too, you too! Where is that gorgeous man of yours? This is my husband, Reggie. Reggie Komanski. I married a Pole, if you can believe that, and I know you can, since you married that Jew. But h
e was one fine man. Is he here?”

  Grandma shakes Reggie’s hand. “He passed away, oh, ten years ago now.”

  Grace clutches her chest. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too. He was a fine man, and a fine husband, even if he was a Jew.”

  They laugh.

  Grandma puts a hand on my shoulder. “Grace, I’d like you to meet my grandson, Thomas.”

  Reggie holds his hand out first. “Hello, Thomas. I’m Reggie.”

  I shake it firmly. “Hello, Reggie. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I hold my hand out to Grace. “And you, Grace. Did you attend school with my grandmother?”

  Grace laughs. “Well I never! Hell-raiser Ruthie Hunt has the politest grandson I’ve ever met. Lord, you do work in mysterious ways!”

  I raise an eyebrow at Grandma. “Seriously?” She waves her hand as if dismissing Grace’s words. “You’ve been holding out on me, Grandma.”

  Everyone laughs.

  Reggie suggests that we all go inside.

  As we walk into the church, Grace leans into Grandma.

  “Are you on the Facebook, Ruth?”

  “No.”

  Reggie turns visibly red. “Facebook. Facebook. Not the Facebook.”

  “Whatever. You should sign up. On the web thingie. We’ll talk.”

  The service is dull as a cloudy day, and only the possibility that the minister might talk about souls keeps me awake.

  Afterward, there is a line out the door, which Grandma says is for shaking hands with the minister. I insist we get in line.

  “Welcome to St. Paul’s,” the minister says as he shakes my hand, then Grandma’s. “Is this your first time here?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  “Well, I hope you come back. We’d love to have you.” His eyes move to the person behind us in line.

  “I appreciate that,” I say. “I have a few questions for you.”

  The minister, Dr. Rumson, his nametag says, shifts his eyes back to me. “Indeed?”

  I glance back at the line of people behind us.

  “I know this is not the proper time, but perhaps I could make an appointment with you.”

  His eyes twinkle, but he doesn’t smile. “If you go inside the church office, just over there, the secretary can schedule you. What’s your name, young man?”