Meningoencephalitis? Birds carry it.
Cat scratch fever?
No, no and no. Of course, she’d owned a few parakeets and fed pigeons in the park countless times. She adored cats, had had several over the years. There might very well have been scratches, but fever?
Each doctor who beamed into Maddie’s eyes and viewed as deep in as he could saw normal, healthy-looking retinas. Nothing wrong with those vital slivers of neural tissue located at the back of the eyeball. No degeneration or even inflammation.
Where the optic nerves stemmed from the retinas also appeared normal. Beyond that point couldn’t be seen with an ophthalmoscope. The cause had to be in there, somewhere beyond.
At the optic chasm, perhaps, where the optic nerves split and ran to the left and right like an intersection of a four-lane highway. Or possibly further on in the thalamus, where the optic nerves fed into the switchboard-like geniculate bodies.
The search for a diagnosis proceeded into the visual cortex and on into the cerebral cortex, a region of the brain that still baffled medical science when it came to the part it played in seeing and processing what was seen. All sorts of astounding things could be going on in there that the scans weren’t picking up.
Despite their sizable fees the doctors were at a loss.
Maddie’s visual system had just shut down, turned off, closed shop.
And Lord knows why.
Maddie vowed to kick the shins of anyone who proposed another scan.
Early on, at one of the most prestigious eye clinics, a young female neurobiologist, relegated to a third-team silent observer, had dared to speak out of turn with the suggestion that Maddie’s blindness might be psychologically caused.
Her words were lost to everyone but Maddie, and she only recalled them when the rummage for a pathological reason ran out of steam.
Could the psyche block a person’s ability to see? It wasn’t a common occurrence but neither was it unheard of. In fact, over the past fifty years, the number of reported cases of hysterical blindness, as it was called, had increased considerably.
According to psychiatry, the condition was brought about by chronic emotional stress. The unconscious, overloaded with such stress and tired of putting up with it, converted it into a physical disorder, such as blindness.
It fit. The more Maddie thought about it the more comfortable she felt with it, although the hysterical label bothered her some. She’d never been in a state of hysteria, there’d never been any tantrums or uncontrollable anxieties. Of course, those things could have been going on in her unconscious, couldn’t they?
Possibly.
Anyway, no more doctors, no more scans. She was tutored in Braille. She also learned to tap about with one of those long white canes and to trust the guidance of a specially trained dog.
It wasn’t so terrible, being blind, she tried to convince herself. Consider all the ugliness she wouldn’t be visually subjected to. Still, blind was blind, and she hadn’t seen enough beauty to satisfy her.
Normally, a person who couldn’t see couldn’t do much, wasn’t expected to. There were traditional limitations.
Maddie was determined to surpass those limits, stretch them as far as her black would permit, and then some, if she could. It was, she believed, much a matter of spirit. Her spirit was her ally, just as stumble and fumble were her enemies.
She exercised her functioning senses, her hearing, smell, touch. They became increasingly enhanced. Eventually she found, as she’d hoped, that she was able to consolidate them into a sort of super-perception.
See, her spirit said, told you so.
The white cane stayed propped in a corner next to her dresser. The guiding dog was contributed to someone who needed it.
Elise was seldom around. Maddie’s blindness would have deprived her even more.
Maddie lived with Uncle Straw.
And now, this remarkable, valiant, spirit-charged woman lives with me, Mitch thought, as there on the upper terrace of Straw’s Kinderhook house, he turned and gave his attention to what she was into at the moment.
She was putting on a little show.
She had Wally blindfolded with one of Straw’s neckties. The luncheon plates, glasses and all had been moved to one side so about half of the tabletop was clear. On the cleared part lay a black and white hundred-dollar baccarat chip, a keepsake from the night Straw and Wally had met at the Golden Nugget.
“Find the chip,” Maddie told Wally. “Go ahead, find it.”
Wally reached out with her right hand. She changed her mind three times before deciding where she believed the chip was located. She was way off.
“I don’t think it’s possible,” Wally said, “not for me, anyway.”
“You weren’t seeing with your fingers,” Maddie said. “As I told you, you have to see with your fingers. Try again.”
Wally missed again. She laughed and pulled off the blindfold.
Maddie would show her it could be done. Of course, no blindfold was needed. “Place the chip anywhere,” she said.
Wally kept the chip in her fist. She winked at Straw. “Okay,” she challenged Maddie, “now, you find it.”
It was something both Straw and Mitch had seen Maddie do numerous times. Spatial reckoning was her label for it.
At first it had been a notion inspired from having heard all those neurologists and neurobiologists speak about the vagaries of the human brain, how one special process of it could override another special process, how it was frequently forced to be cross-worked, how impulses and signals from banks of hundreds of millions of rods and cones circuited information back and forth at the rate of a quadrillionth of a second.
Thus, Maddie visualized her brain as a tremendous tangle that might not always function as perfectly as it was supposed to. Tradeoffs of responsibilities could be going on in there, especially between the sensory cells.
For instance, occasionally, hearing cells might smell and smelling cells might hear.
Touching cells might see.
And, maybe, rather than mutually agreeable switching like that, certain more aggressive cells took over doing things they were not supposed to do on their own.
Whenever they felt the urge or were asked to emphatically enough by the landlady.
Spatial reckoning.
Seeing with the fingers.
A way for Maddie to know things were where they were.
She couldn’t do it at will. It wasn’t something she could absolutely depend on, as she wished it would be. Nor did she believe that her fingers could literally see. However, from all her practice at it and the many times she’d been right, she felt there was something to it. The neurobiologists would scoff at her notion, but by their own admission, they didn’t know everything.
Maddie held her hand above the tabletop and concentrated. After about a minute she gave up. “No fair,” she said.
Wally was impressed that Maddie had perceived that the chip wasn’t on the table. She was further impressed when she suddenly flipped the chip into the air heads or tails fashion and Maddie somehow knew she had and made a mid-air stab at it.
The sparrows were pecking at the figs.
Mitch shooed them away. Less than a minute later they were back on the railing getting set to make another foray. Like me and 47th, Mitch thought.
Maddie pinched his earlobe, as she often did when she wanted his entire attention to what she was about to say. “Be a love,” she said, “and fetch the things from the saddlebags of the Harley.”
Mitch realized almost immediately what the things would be. He knew her, what a tricker she was, the beautiful, all-time, undefeated champion rascal of the world. He did some exasperation and shook his head incredulously because it was unbelievable that he could love her so much.
“And while you’re at it,” Maddie told him, “why don’t you show Straw your new hog.”
Mitch and Straw went down to the Harley. Straw admired it all around, ran his hand over it in places. �
��Great-looking machine. I’ve never been on one.”
“Never too late.”
“For many things. What do you think of my Wally?”
“I think you’re almost as lucky as she is.”
Straw appreciated that nice way of putting it. They traded smiles, were eyes to eyes for a suspended moment.
Mitch took a bank check from his shirt pocket, handed it to Straw.
“What’s this?” Straw asked as he always did.
“The mortgage payment.”
“Don’t you think it’s time we did away with this nonsense?”
The apartment of the Sherry had been Straw’s. He’d wanted Mitch and Maddie to have it as a wedding gift. Straw insisted, reasoned that the apartment was territory familiar to Maddie, from the go she’d be at home in it. Mitch compromised. Straw could give half the apartment to Maddie, he’d buy the other half. Thus, the monthly mortgage payments. They were sizable and with interest included.
“Really …” Straw protested.
“June and July are also in there,” Mitch told him. He’d gotten that much in arrears.
Straw didn’t look at the check.
Mitch felt three months lighter.
He unbuckled the saddlebags and took out the two pistols. One was a Glock M-22, a real stopper, the pistol preferred by Secret Service and Drug Enforcement guys. The other was a Beretta 92F Centurion, a backup weapon but also one that had good take-down power.
As a jeweler Mitch had been licensed to carry. Still was but hadn’t for years.
He did a little scoffing grunt. “Next,” he grumbled, “she’ll be wanting to take up knife throwing.”
Chapter 17
The following morning, while Maddie helped with the breakfast dishes, Mitch went out to find a place to shoot. He wanted to be done with it so he and Maddie could devote the rest of the day to sloth and passion.
He had in mind the old barn out in the middle of what the Strawbridges had always called the West Meadow.
The undisturbed meadow made it appear as though it would be an easy half mile; however, it turned out to be more of a wade than a walk with the perennial rye grass as it was, thick and crotch high.
Good for the legs, Mitch told himself as he pushed ahead, noticing the contradictions of Queen Anne’s lace, less romantically known as wild carrot, and huge hydra-headed purple clover
He, the intruder, was the cause of countless grasshoppers to bound about, for red-winged blackbirds to be flushed up. Garter snakes were running ahead of him.
The sun hadn’t yet gotten to the dew deep down. He was soaked to the knees. He paused mid-meadow to look skyward. The moon was a leftover piece of tissue.
The barn was large and lonely. No one visited it anymore. The elements were having their way with it, peeling its coats, bleaching it, promoting rot and rust in places. A dying barn. Its roof looked healthy, though, Mitch noticed. That would help prolong its stand.
He’d intended to use one of the exterior sides for the shooting, but now it occurred to him that considering Maddie’s handicap it would be more prudent to do it inside where there were walls all around.
He went in. He saw right away the roof actually wasn’t all that good. Sunlight was shafting through it in numerous places. No loft. It wasn’t that kind of barn. It had high rafters. An owl was asleep in one. Bats were hung from others.
On the left was some farm machinery past use. A hay rake with its big, curved intimidating prongs. Next to it, a hay baler that looked as though it resented obsolescence and would like nothing better than to compact something or someone.
There were other abandoned items. A lot of rat droppings. Mitch heard the scuttling of mice claws on the wooden floor, hornets whizzing.
He returned to the house for Maddie. She had the weapons and everything in a plastic shopping bag that she refused to give up. She slung it over her shoulder and followed Mitch across the meadow.
She’d been in the barn many times when she was sighted but not since. She had a vague recollection of it. Outstanding was the time Uncle Straw had come as close as a trouser leg of being bitten by a copperhead there. The snake had sprung and gotten its fangs snagged in the woolen fabric.
Mitch tried to move the old potbelly cast iron stove that was in one corner. It was too heavy but he outwitted it, disassembled it and put its manageable components back together where he wanted it, out in the open before the rear well.
He counted off ten paces from the stove and placed at that spot the enamel-topped kitchen table with one leg missing and another wobbly. He covered the grimy surface of the table with some newspaper he’d brought along. Laid out the pistols, clips and cartridges.
“You’re too good to me,” Maddie remarked.
“Just trying to stay even,” Mitch said, which made the next turn with those words hers. “Hold out your open hand.”
She did.
He slapped the Beretta into it.
“Is it ready to shoot?” she asked.
“No.”
“So why are you giving it to me?”
“So you can load it. A shooter should know how.”
“Give me a clip.”
“They’re on the table.”
She found one. “It’s empty.”
“Load it.”
She fumbled around before she found the carton of nine-millimeter cartridges. She sure hated fumble. She removed a round from the carton and felt it for shape and size.
Like a tiny, hard penis, she thought, and then, upon second thought, like a not so tiny clitoris. She often thanked the power in charge of handing out such equipment that she hadn’t been given a shy, find-me-if-you-can sort.
Mitch told her how to load the clip. A couple of times he was tempted to guide her fingers but knew she’d be miffed if he did.
Finally, she had in all the clip would hold. Fifteen rounds. “Now I put it into the handle, right?”
“The butt.”
“Okay, the butt.”
She inserted the clip partway.
“Ram it in,” Mitch told her.
“That’s what the actress said to the bishop,” she quipped. She rammed the clip into place.
Mitch showed her how to break open the barrel of the Beretta so a sixteenth round could be put into the chamber. She did it the second time without his help. “Now?” she asked.
“You ready?”
“In which direction do you suggest I shoot?”
“Wherever except at me.” Letting her shoot the first load on her own would teach her a lot, Mitch figured. She might even want to quit after a taste of it.
She held the Beretta slack-armed, didn’t have much of a grip on it. She pointed it at anything and pulled the trigger. Kept it pulled as though that was her only option.
The pistol nearly jolted itself out of her hand. As the sixteen rounds fired in rapid succession her aim was snapped further upwards. The last couple of rounds splintered boards at the peak of the roof.
The owl fluffed itself and turned its back on the disturbance below.
The bats tightened their talons.
The mice scurried to the fields.
Maddie was astonished. She hadn’t expected such ferocity. It was as though the Beretta was a lethal infuriated creature on the end of her arm, one that would do her bidding. She liked the smell of the exploded gunpowder, the way the concussion caused her ears to ring.
Now Mitch taught her. The importance of a solid stance, rigid arm, a tight two-hand grip. The advantage of holding her breath and squeezing the Beretta’s trigger rather than jerking it.
She improved with each load. The cast iron stove became her target, her adversary. Her sense of direction was uncanny. Mitch spun her around several times to try to confuse her, but she brought her aim to the stove and fired at it.
Her hits rang and ricocheted. Eventually, almost as many hits as misses.
The smoke from so many explosions layered in the air in the barn. The carton of ammunition for the Beretta was
depleted. Mitch told her it was.
Again, she’d astounded him, he thought, and again he’d enjoyed it. His blind love, on her way to being a sharpshooter. However, enough was enough. They should go out to the bluff, its mossy spot, do anything to one another. The proposal didn’t get out of his mouth because …
“Now,” she said, extending her arm, “hand me the Glock.”
Chapter 18
“The patient’s name.”
“Kalali.” He spelled it for her.
“First name?”
How many Kalalis could there be in this hospital, Mitch thought. “Roudabeth,” he replied.
“Are you a relative?”
“Brother-in-law.”
“Her condition is improved.”
“How much improved? Is she conscious?”
“All I’m allowed to tell you is her condition is improved and that she’s no longer in intensive care. For anything else you’ll have to speak to her doctor.”
“What room is she in now?”
The middle-aged woman with the teenage hairstyle and nearly no chin had already caused her computer to escape from Kalali. She took a persevering New York breath and punched it up again. “Room eleven eighteen east,” she informed Mitch in a tone that conveyed that was the last he’d get from her.
He gave her a New York ambiguous thanks and went from patient information to the last-minute gift and other stuff shop off the lobby. Not especially to buy anything, only to sort of hyphenate what might be his next move.
He hadn’t intended on being there at New York University Hospital this morning. On his way downtown he’d admitted how much he wasn’t looking forward to another day of poking around 47th. At practically that same instant someone vacated a taxi right there and Mitch climbed in. He’d allowed his intuition to tell the driver where to go.
All along he’d been hoping for a conscious Mrs. Kalali. She’d seen the swifts, might be able to make them from the police photo files. At least she could describe them. Mitch had kept up on her condition, phoned the hospital to inquire twice each day, even during the weekend from Straw’s. Each time he’d been told there was no change.
But now on Monday morning apparently there’d been a change. Mrs. Kalali was improved. That might mean she was no longer unconscious, perhaps well enough to talk.
West 47th Page 18
