Godmother Night

by Rachel Pollack

  Eleanor shook her head. “No, I still keep my place in the city. But I’m here more and more. To be honest, Kate, since Jesse and I broke up I’ve simply thrown myself into this work. I love it here, all the great teachers, the people who come for the workshops, the warmth and the sincerity of their quest. It’s really sustained me.”

  Kate nodded. Jesse, she thought. Was that a he or a she? She said, “How long has it been since the breakup?”

  “Oh God, who knows? Yesterday? Ten years ago?”

  Before Kate could pin it down any further, Rob, who ran the front desk, came into the lounge. “Excuse me, Kate,” he said, “there’s somebody here who’d like to see you. I told him you were resting and weren’t giving any consultations, but he kind of insisted.”

  “It’s okay,” Kate said, and put her mug down on the pinewood coffee table. She leaned over to touch Eleanor’s shoulder. “Sorry. We’ll talk more later.”

  “Sure,” Eleanor said. “I’d love to.”

  The middle-aged man waiting in the office looked out of place in the Open Circle, with its huge quartz crystal in the center of the desk. Unlike Rob, who wore a slightly shabby sweater and loose jeans, the visitor wore a gray suit and striped tie. The suit looked like a tailor had made it just for him, though anxiety had rumpled it as if he’d just woken up in it. His hair looked like he’d left the marines about three weeks ago.

  “Carl Harmon,” he said, and held out his hand. He shook hands like a salesman, Kate thought, with practical firmness. Just like her.

  “Glad to meet you,” she said. “I’m Kate Cohen.”

  “Yes. Yes, we—my wife and I—we saw your picture in the Gazette. That’s our paper. Actually, Alice saw it first.”

  “How can I help you, Mr. Harmon?”

  “Right. Sorry. I’m usually pretty focused.” He took a breath. “Look. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sure you have to prepare for your conference.”

  “It’s all right,” Kate said. “Really. We don’t start for hours.”

  “Well, I better explain then.” If she’d wanted, Kate might have saved him the time. Alice Harmon was sick, of course. Very sick. In fact, her doctors had sent her home from the hospital, secretly urging Carl to avoid any heroic intervention. She might last six weeks, they said, or six months, but she almost certainly would die. Of course, when Carl talked about the article, he dutifully spoke of Kate’s help for people preparing for death. Kate always stressed that aspect, bringing the interviewers back to it. But he really came—of course—for the other thing. Hope. Maybe Alice Harmon would fall into that special group: the ones Kate Cohen could bring back.

  The Gazette interviewer, like so many others, had tried to press Kate on what made the difference. “There’s no category,” she’d said. “No special criteria.”

  “But aren’t you setting yourself up—and please excuse me here—” Kate had waved a hand. “As a kind of God? Deciding who gets to live and who doesn’t?”

  “Not at all. I don’t make any decisions. I simply observe what happens. All I have done is allow intuition to return to its rightful place in our encounters with death. Do you realize that most of the people I see have already been written off by the doctors? I would not fault their doctors; believe me, the more I learn of the medical profession the more I respect it. But it’s the doctors who decide nothing can be done. And they do so on the basis of objective criteria. The same rules for everybody. By trying to save everybody, in the same way, they end up writing off a few people who might not have to die.”

  “Wait a second,” the interviewer said. “If you’ve got some magic potion, why not give it to everybody, and see who gets better and who doesn’t?”

  “If I did have a magic potion, I would agree with you. But I don’t. All I do is admit that some people will die, no matter what we do. And because I’m willing to treat death as a friend, death will sometimes tell me who does not have to die.”

  “Death will tell you? Are you describing death as a person?”

  “No, no, of course not. But death is a power. And if we allow ourselves to become intimate with death, that power becomes our ally.” Alice Harmon had read all that. She’d shown it to Carl, who’d come running, hoping that Kate Cohen’s alliance with death would save his wife from that undesired intimacy. He said, “I’ll be honest with you. I usually don’t hold much with that New Age stuff—” he didn’t notice Rob wince—“but if you can help us, either way, I don’t know how we could thank you.”

  Kate smiled. “I’ll get my things.” In her room at the back of the center, Kate picked up her small black doctor’s bag. She touched the polished leather. Louise had seen it in a nostalgia catalogue and had given it to Kate a year ago, partly as a joke, partly as a tribute. Show it to a modern doctor, Louise had said, and he’d probably wonder how to open it. Kate had loved it from the moment she saw it, though she’d joked that carrying it might get her arrested. When she’d seen Laurie’s worried look, she’d laughed and said, “Mom, it’s okay. If the cops come after me for carrying a doctor’s bag without a license, I’ll just tell them I carry my shrunken heads in it.”

  Leaving the Open Circle now, she noticed Carl Harmon’s slight nod of approval at the bag. She smiled. Maybe the cops could make a case after all. They drove in Harmon’s blue Mercedes. On the way, he began the recitation of his wife’s medical history. He’d gotten as far as the word “pancreatic” when Kate stopped him.

  “Please, Carl,” she said. “I don’t want to know any of that. Not the diagnosis, not the treatment, not anything.” Harmon’s anxiety level leaped enough to make the car lurch. “First of all,” Kate said, “I’m not a doctor. Not only will the words mean very little to me, I can end up in jail if I even pretend to do anything with them. Or if anyone just thinks I’m doing something with them.”

  The Harmons lived in a three-story wooden house on a rural road about three miles from the Open Circle. The master bedroom may have been upstairs, but Alice Harmon lay now in what looked like a guest room, except that the original bed had been replaced by an electrical hospital bed. Ribbons, a trio of dried corncobs, some sort of tribal doll tied on by its hair, and a handmade get-well card with a child’s lettering all helped to decorate the bed’s metal frame. Kate wondered if Mrs. Harmon might be less alien to the New Age than her husband believed. A walker stood beside the bed. The half-open door of a night table revealed a bedpan. A pill lay on a saucer next to a prescription bottle. Kate glanced at it, and then at Mrs. Harmon’s relaxed face. Demerol, she thought, or maybe even the hard stuff.

  Carl wavered between pointing to Kate and his wife, as if he couldn’t remember his etiquette lesson on whose name to speak first in an introduction. Finally he said, “Alice, this is, umm, Kathryn Cohen.”

  “Kate,” Kate corrected him.

  “I’m so glad to meet you,” Alice Harmon said. “When I read that article—in the Gazette?—I was so excited. You just said all the things I’ve been thinking about, and trying to say, to all those doctors—” she made the word sound like a curse—“for months now.”

  Kate glanced quickly at Carl, who looked down at the pale pink carpet as if his wife had embarrassed herself. Kate thought how she liked Alice Harmon. And hated her work.

  Alice went on, “Anyway, I told Carl I just had to meet you. Even if—well, you know.” Kate nodded. She knew indeed. Alice laughed, a harsh wheezing noise. “I’m afraid I just sent him off to fetch you. I do that sometimes. Take advantage of him. He’s so sweet.”

  Kate sat down in a wooden chair alongside the bed. “I’m sure it’s okay,” she said. “I think Carl probably likes doing things for you.” She took Alice’s hand, causing Alice to open her eyes a little in surprise. So few people touched the dying. Kate wondered if they feared getting stuck, as if the dead would pull them in after them. Alice’s hand felt doughy, inflated with some kind of lifeless paste. The skin was yellow, the fingernails almost white. Alice said, “Are you going to read my palm? I’m afraid th
at’s just what poor Carl was scared would happen. I made him read that article and he said it sounded like you told fortunes or something.”

  “Alice,” Carl said, “that’s not fair. You know I wanted—”

  Still holding Alice’s hand, Kate turned her head. “It’s okay,” she told Carl. “She won’t shock me. People have accused me of casting Tarot cards and seeing if the card of Death shows up.” She turned back to Alice. “I’ve been shocking people for years. It’s fun, isn’t it?”

  Alice moved her head on the pillow. The muted light from the lamp beside her accented the yellow skin, the dark layers around the eyes. “I guess,” she said, and Kate cursed herself for trying to feed Alice straight lines.

  She said, “Do you mind if I look you over a little?”

  “You’re the doctor.”

  Kate laughed. “Don’t say that. You’ll get me in trouble.” She looked at Alice’s eyes, and the flesh around her eyes. She examined the tongue and stroked her neck, she rubbed her feet and worked the joints in her elbows and knees. Almost as a distraction, she noticed the various signs of decay, the colors and textures of a dying body. Kate had first started these routines as a way to help people accept her judgments by letting them see her doing something. Some of it she’d learned in weekend courses on alternative medicine; other parts she’d made up herself. And yet she’d begun to notice things. Patterns, colors, signs. Sometimes she wondered if she could do it all on her own, without waiting for her godmother.

  When she’d finished her routine, she smiled at Carl and said, “Do you mind leaving us for a minute?”

  “Oh,” Carl said. “No. Of course not.” He backed out reluctantly.

  “You see?” Kate said in a low voice. “That proves I’m not a doctor. I send people out of the room after I’ve done the examination.”

  “Better yet,” Alice said, “you speak directly to the patient and not to the family.” Though her voice sounded tired, she added, “I suspect that’s why they call you a ‘patient.’ You have to wait until someone decides to tell you what everyone already knows.”

  “Right,” Kate said. “Maybe we should change it to ‘impatient’ and shake things up a little.” Without a pause she said, “Alice, what do you think of life?”

  Alice said nothing for several seconds, then, “To tell you the truth, Kate, I find it very strange.”

  “And your own life?”

  She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I feel like…I feel like I wished I’d known how strange it all was when I was younger. Does that make any sense?” Kate said nothing. “I truly thought that you were supposed to plan everything. That’s what my mother taught me. Marriage, children, money. Vacations, pleasure. If you made the right plans, and they came true, then you had a good life. And if you made the wrong ones, or they didn’t happen, well, then you might find yourself bitter, or unhappy. But you would know why. Just like in the movies. But now—” She sighed, then moaned slightly, tired or in pain. Kate suspected that she moaned without noticing it. Probably scared poor Carl without knowing she was doing it. “Now it all seems so very strange. And it’s not just, you know, the sickness. Please don’t think being ill has unsettled my brain. Even before…Sometimes I would just stare at things. The furniture. The lawn. Even Carl, sitting in his chair watching television. And think to myself, What is this?” Her attempt at a laugh changed to a wheeze and then a groan. “Tell me something. Do you think I made myself sick in some way? I worry sometimes that I turned against life.”

  Kate shook her head. “No,” she said. “Death goes where it wants and does what it wants. Think, Alice, who are we to believe we can summon death or send it away?” Eyes closed partly, Alice nodded. Kate said, “None of us have been in the world for more than, oh, one hundred years at the most. I know many people say we’ve lived many times, but I’m talking about who we are this time around. And death—death has been traveling this planet for hundreds of millions of years.” Now Alice closed her eyes completely and smiled.

  When she opened them again she said, “I thought—oh, I don’t know—that maybe I just gave up or something.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  Alice smiled. “No, I…Secretly, Kate, I think maybe I’ve seen through it all. All the things my mother told me. And everybody else. And maybe that’s why I’m dying.”

  Kate held Alice’s hand between both of hers. “Dear Alice,” she said. “Let me tell you something that happens to some people. Sometimes we know where we’re heading. We know before we know. If we stop seeing death as the great enemy, then sometimes it will talk to us. Teach us.”

  “So I’m going to die?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked at that yet.”

  “Looked?”

  Instead of answering, Kate closed her eyes. She took several deep breaths, turning herself inward to the darkness deep inside her, inside the world. She didn’t need to detach herself like this. She could look for her godmother whenever she wanted. It just made it easier. Easier to tell the truth.

  Kate wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she opened her eyes. She loved the darkness, the temptation to dissolve herself, to let go of all her secrets.

  The first time Kate had looked for her godmother by someone’s bed she’d expected to see her the way she’d always seen her, as a friendly middle-aged woman in bright clothes and an outlandish hat. Instead, Mother Night had appeared as a tracing in the air, something that didn’t go away but wasn’t really there. Like a hologram, Kate thought, like the beautiful princess in that old space movie.

  Now, when Kate didn’t see Mother Night at the head of Alice Harmon’s bed Kate thought something had gone wrong. For just a moment, she thought her godmother had taken away the gift, and now she really would have to do it on her own. And then she remembered, and turned her head.

  The moment she saw her godmother standing at the foot of the bed, anger jolted Kate. She’d been so sure of this one, so confident. Relief followed the anger. Alice, lovely Alice, was going to live. To stand in front of the mirror and stare at her healthy body with all the amazement she’d found in the furniture, or the grass, or her husband’s boredom. And yet, the anger remained as well, or something like it. For the ones who died, Kate actually did something. For the others—she was a messenger.

  The messenger became aware that Alice was looking at her. Kate gave it her best payoff smile. As she did so, some of the old excitement flooded her. She said, “I have something to tell you, Alice.” Alice seemed to be frowning at her. “My sense of this—what death has told me—is that I can help you.”

  “Help?”

  “You don’t have to die, Alice. Not now. Not from this illness.”

  “You mean I can last longer?”

  “No, no. I mean you can recover.”

  “Is this—this isn’t—you’re not just trying to make me feel better?” Kate shook her head. “Did Carl ask you to do this? Tell me this…this fairy tale so I will suffer less?”

  Kate sighed. She called out, “Carl? Will you come in here, please?”

  Carl took a step into the room and waited. The sight of his wife’s agitation rippled his own face with fear. Kate reached into her black bag and took out two small brown dropper bottles. She said, “I want both of you to listen to me. Carl, I have told Alice that it’s my deep belief that she will live, and recover.”

  Carl whispered, “Oh my God.”

  Kate said, “Right now, she is afraid to believe me.” She turned to look directly at Alice. “But Alice—and Carl—it actually does not matter if you believe me or not. It doesn’t matter what I say.” She held up the bottles. “This is what matters. Three drops in water. Three times a day. Three days. And then you will know. You will know by how you feel. Just three days. Will you do that for me?”

  Carl took one of the bottles and held it up to the light as if he could analyze it. “But what is it?”

  “Nothing but simple herbs boiled down to a liquid.”

&nb
sp; “Then how—”

  “Just three days. That’s all I ask.”

  Carl said, “Does she have to stop her regular treatments?”

  “No. But when she starts to feel better she may want to start tapering them off.”

  There was a long silence, and then Carl said, “This is—God, I can’t—I don’t know what to say.” But he did, for a moment later he added, “How—what are we supposed to pay you?”

  “Nothing,” Kate said.

  “What?”

  Kate glanced at Alice, who lay back with her eyes closed. She was smiling. Kate took a card from the bag and gave it to Carl, who frowned at it. “Wait six months. Three days to turn the illness around, the rest of the time to believe that it really happened. Then, if you want, you can send a check to the Godmother Foundation. Or me, personally, if that seems more straightforward to you. You can also ask me to send you a bill, if the other way makes you nervous. But not before six months. One day early and we send it back. And Carl—if you and Alice decide to send nothing at all, that’s all right. I know you think I’m working you on this, but I’m not. I like money. I like it a lot. But I also like doing this work more.” She stopped, tired suddenly. Glancing toward the empty spot at the foot of the bed, she wished Mother Night, or her phantom, would stick around, just once, for all the tedious stuff that came afterward.

  Carl thrust the card in his pocket and reached over to pick up one of the bottles. Stepping over to his wife, he placed it in her hands. He whispered to her, “What do you say, Halo? Shall we give it a try?” Kate left the room without waiting for Alice’s answer.

  Writing quickly, she left a note for Carl. “I’ve decided to walk back. It helps me prepare for my lecture. Lots of luck to you and Alice. Kate Cohen.” Once out of the house, she worried about her dismissive tone. Would Carl drive around looking for her to apologize? Maybe she should look for a side street.

  It was late afternoon, about three hours before her lecture, and almost entirely dark. Kate was beginning to wonder if she should look for a store where she could call the center and ask for someone to pick her up when she heard the rumble of a motorcycle rolling up slowly behind her. A voice she hadn’t heard in months drawled, “Kind of cold to be out walking, isn’t it, kid?”