That couldn’t be taken away, despite ruin, despite time.
That night I drove out and we went walking through the orchard in the dark. During the day, the workers Lazarus had hired called to one another and the picking machinery was noisy. But at night you could hear every breath, every beetle.
I told Lazarus about my brother. I looked for blame everywhere: if we’d never lived in New Jersey, if we’d breathed different air, if he’d had a different diet, had never come to Florida, if we’d had different parents, grandparents, a different genetic makeup, maybe his cancer wouldn’t have happened. There was another, earlier theory my brother had told me about, the uncertainty principle, a theorem that predated and informed chaos theory. The simple fable to illustrate it explains that a cat will live or die depending on the utterly random decay of a single atom. And so it was for Ned. One cell affected another; one bloody random cell utterly defined everything. Why it should happen to him, it was impossible to know. There were not hundreds of possible answers, but thousands. All unknowable and random. All out of reach.
“What do I do for him?” I asked Lazarus. I thought a dead man would know such things.
Lazarus laughed. He rarely did. “You’d have to ask him. It’s different for everyone.”
“If you had a few weeks to live, how would you want to live it?”
I wanted him to say, Like this, walking with you in the dark. I wanted him to help me through, but Lazarus wasn’t like that. It wasn’t his fault. He was too trapped in his own life to really think about someone else’s.
“If it was me, I’d want to be free. Like I used to be. I thought my life was nothing, until I lost it. If people knew who I am, they’d want to know what happened to Seth, and I doubt they’d believe me. They’d think I killed him, took his money. So here I am. Stuck.”
Trapped in the wrong shoes, in the woods where every path led back to the exact same place. I understood how Lazarus might want to be in his own skin again. This wasn’t his life. That was why I wanted to remember everything about this night. I was going to lose it, all of it, I could tell standing there. Sooner or later. Ruin. I looked at every leaf, every star.
“I think I’ll be found out anyway,” Lazarus said. “I think people are starting to realize I’m not the right Seth Jones.”
The feedstore had balked the last time he’d tried to make a transaction over the phone. Why didn’t he ever come in to place his order? He’d had to talk to the manager, who had known the real Seth Jones and who said, “What’s wrong with you, Jonesy? Frog in your throat?”
“Flu, damn near pneumonia,” Lazarus had answered. But he was worried. The year of their bargain had passed. Come and gone. He’d been thinking about leaving, and now he thought harder. Maybe he would already be gone if he hadn’t made a promise to the old man. If I hadn’t driven out, wearing that red dress. Filled my mouth with ice and kissed him.
Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn’t that the point? Happily ever after doesn’t mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone?
So now. So here. So him. The heat, the black night, the stars, the moment, the ever after floating inside of us.
There was something wrong with the crop. That was the other reason he didn’t feel right about taking off. He led me out to the place where lightning had struck. A few cars passed on the road, but no one paid any attention. We were a man and a woman walking through the past. The hole in the ground had widened greatly, the earth was falling in on itself, inch by inch, revealing a rocky, hard core. At the outer circle more and more trees were dying. One day they were filled with fruit, the next they were leafless and black.
Around the circle, there were still a few trees with red oranges. Now I saw it. Not icefruit or snowballs, but ruby red. Red worlds, red globes, beautiful in the dark. How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I’d had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms.
“I want to pick some,” I said.
We took one of the ladders and set it against a tree; I climbed up and tossed the oranges to Lazarus.
“Enough,” he said. “We’ll never eat them all.”
But I couldn’t stop. More and more. I’d been starving; not anymore.
It was a cool night, but these oranges kept in heat. Little globes of burning sunlight. We carried the basket together. For this one night, in love, in love. Everything meant something to us. Black sky, black trees, red oranges, sweet smell of the earth, the heat when he whispered to me, the sound of our feet on the dirt paths, the sprinkler system switching on, water falling.
We took off our clothes in the orchard and went under the sprinklers. In the night air, under water, we could embrace each other any way we wanted to. There was no one for miles around. No one else at all. I loved the way he felt, so real, so here, so now. I loved his muscles under his skin, the heat from his body, the way his kisses burned. I loved the way it hurt, the way it made me know I was alive, now and in the ever after, seeing red, wanting to go down on my hands and knees, not caring if there was another person in the universe. No wonder people did this however and with whomever; with strangers, in parking lots, desperate, greedy; joined together, you can imagine you’re not alone, the only one. So different, because when you are in love, that’s the joke: you feel your aloneness so deeply it hurts. When I’m not with you.
“Stop thinking,” Lazarus said to me.
I was freezing, without clothes, soaked by all that cold water, the sprinklers, the starlight, the now, the now.
I kissed him and let the rest fall away. He sat on the ground, pulled me down. I was in his lap with him inside me, able to look right into his eyes, the way they were like ashes. I ran my hands down his back. I felt everything. There wasn’t another man, shadowgraph or not. It was just him. Skin, muscles, bones, heart, blood, red, heat.
I just let go. I gave up, gave in: I stopped fighting being alive.
It was the time I would remember, more than the fish, tub, ice, pond, fast, hard, slow, baby; it was this, drowning while I knew he was thinking about leaving. We were a human example of chaos theory, thrown together by circumstance. We didn’t belong together, I knew that. But for one night we were perfect.
When we went back to the house I took a hot shower. I was shivering, even when I got dry and had dressed. I took a sweater from the bureau drawer in the bedroom, then went into the kitchen. Lazarus was wearing the clothes he’d had on before; he still had mud on him. He was sitting at the table. He looked at me when I came into the room. I could tell from his expression that there was always a price to pay. The ruin. The sorrow. The ever after.
“Without you I would have been completely alone,” he said.
I looked at his mouth, the bones of his face, his ashy eyes, his wide hands, and the way his veins roped through his arms. Blue and red. Alive. I looked hard. I wanted to remember that he’d wanted me once. I put this moment into the ever after, the core of everything I’d ever known.
He had cut all of the oranges I’d picked in half. It looked as though there was blood on the table, but it was only juice. These were the oranges that had been bringing the most profit at market. People liked how rare they were, the splash of color in a fruit bowl, in their mouths. He’d been getting double the price, but not anymore.
The ones he’d cut in half were black in the center. All that sweet red fruit that tasted like a surprise, that was gone. The oranges were rotting from the inside out. I’d heard about such occurrences. A tree that had been hit would stand for months and no one would guess it was dying at its center until it fell to the ground. Effects took time; you looked away, you thought you were safe, then they happened. Before you knew it, everything had changed.
The story is always about searching for the truth, no matter what it might bring. Even when nothing was what it appeared to be, when everything was hid
den, there was a center not even I could run from: who I truly was, what I felt, what I was deep inside.
CHAPTER SIX
Hope
I
Renny’s family had brought a lawsuit against Orlon University. Ever careful and prudent, the university protected itself, like a creature that could only think to sting. My brother’s research was gone. Someday someone else would collect similar information and would interview lightning victims, photograph them against a white wall, but that would be then. Not now. In the now that we lived in, everything went through the shredder and was turned to dust.
I had thought of a way to give my brother some of the life he wanted to live. Something that might please him, interest him, something to remember in the ever after. I asked Nina, and she agreed, so I phoned my brother at work. I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since Nina had told me. My brother and I weren’t exactly used to the truth. So I dodged it a bit longer.
“Before they shred it, get the Dragon’s file,” I told Ned.
I had managed to gain a referral from Craven, my cardiologist, so that I could speak with the attending cardiologist in Jacksonville. When I asked about the Dragon, the cardiologist told me the old fellow came back stronger both times he’d been struck by lightning. He was an ox of a man who still walked ten miles a day.
“We ran tests on him. He said he was too old to give us more than one day to study him. Said it was a waste of time. According to the facts of his condition, he should have stayed dead. His heartbeat was less than ten beats a minute, slower than a bear in hibernation. He was eighty-seven years old when his second strike took place. He was knocked flat on his back and received so many volts it was immeasurable. Then he got up and had lunch. He refused all medical care, and as far as we know, he’s the healthiest old bastard in the state. Go figure.”
“You want me to steal his file?” my brother said now when I phoned him. “As in just take it?”
“Right now.”
Ned laughed; he seemed pleased at the idea of a small criminal act committed against the university.
“If I get caught, I’ll say you’re the mastermind.”
I was nervous about seeing Ned. I thought I’d say something stupid. Wouldn’t that be just like me. I figured a public place might be best; with people around, I might behave myself. I might not cry.
I met him at the diner in town for breakfast and he handed over the file.
“The Dragon’s an anomaly. One of a kind. Even if he’d talked to us, he would have done nothing for our study. He’s what people doing research call an ‘anecdote’ — a great story, but meaningless in the greater scheme of research. Just a lucky old bastard. And since there’s no longer a study, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Let’s go see him,” I said.
Ned had ordered a single scrambled egg and toast. He hadn’t even eaten half.
“We’ll be back by tonight,” I assured him.
“We never had anyone go out there and examine him. We can’t even be sure he’s still alive. Plus . . .” He played with his food. “Plus, I’m not feeling so great.”
“I asked Nina and she said you could go.”
“You asked Nina? What am I, five years old? Do I need permission?”
Leave it to me to say the wrong thing. I signaled the waitress and ordered rice pudding and tea. When I turned back, my brother was cleaning his glasses on his shirt. I saw that the skin under his eyes was scaly with rosy patches.
“She told you,” Ned said. He didn’t seem particularly angry, only disappointed.
“I sort of forced her to, Ned. I mean, I’m your sister. I should know if you’re ill.”
“Like I know about your life? Let’s face it, we don’t even know each other.”
“Ned,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t want it this way!” He really was angry. “No sorrowful ‘Ned.’ Don’t say it that way. No bullshit. No standing on the porch. I really couldn’t stomach that.”
Now I was pissed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not coming home, either. Don’t wait for me. Don’t think anything’s going to turn out differently. Don’t think there’s something you can do to prevent it. And for once in your life, don’t think it’s about you.”
I got up and went outside. The heat was crazy. I felt as though I were suffocating. Melting, but melting into what? I had wanted to give my brother a gift. Do something he’d been wanting to do. A single memorable day. Stupid, as usual. Mistake, naturally.
My brother had paid the bill and now he came outside. We didn’t look at each other. Finally Ned spoke. “Am I supposed to apologize for dying?”
“Yes. Apologize. How fucking dare you?”
I was too loud. My eyes were hot. I really might have been going crazy. I glared at him. I hated my brother. I thought if I was left behind again, I would break into pieces. I thought about how everything came too late.
My brother and I stood there in the heat. Pissed. Sweating. Older than we’d ever thought we’d be. This wasn’t our natural habitat. I wanted to rewind things. Maybe Ned did, too. He’d calmed down.
“I heard you helped paint the room for the baby,” he said. More neutral, cheerful territory, if it weren’t so tragic.
“I would have preferred red. I’m seeing some shades of it now.”
“Okay. I apologize,” my brother said. “It’s all my fault. Fuck me with my fucking goddamn cancer.”
Now he was the one to turn away. Ruin. The word I despised. It was happening to him.
“We’ll just have to turn you around, so Death isn’t standing at your feet. Then he won’t be able to take you.”
Ned laughed. He pulled himself together. Faced me again. Once you knew, you saw it. His face looked different. Thin. Tired.
“There’s no fooling that son of a bitch.” My brother shook his head, amused. “I love that story.”
“Why? It’s terrible.”
“It’s true.”
We both thought about that.
“Well, in the story Death is tricked.”
“Only twice, little sister. Then he gets what belongs to him.”
“The Dragon’s still alive and he tricked Death twice.”
“So, we’re off to see the Dragon. Is that why? Find out the tricks of the trade? It ain’t gonna work, baby girl.”
“We’re just going,” I said. “Think of it as a field trip.”
“You’re not the only one who knows a secret. Nina told me. You’ve got yourself a boyfriend.”
“Now we’re even,” I said.
Did I sound jaunty? Did I sound as though I could make it through the conversation?
“Yeah, you get to fall in love; I die. Very even.”
I thought that the people inside the diner were in a different universe, one where there was sustenance, hope, good health. The heat could wear a person out. Maybe there was nothing I could do for Ned. I was ready to back down. Then my brother turned to me.
“Your car or mine?”
“Seriously?”
“How many times do you get to see a dragon?”
It took two hours to get up north; I drove and Ned slept the whole time. Nina had told me he’d tried chemo when he’d first been diagnosed, but it had made him so sick he hadn’t been able to work; the doctors had agreed that the treatment was doing more harm than good. He was trying to last until January, when the baby would be born. It seemed unlikely that he would.
“Jesus, I’m drooling,” Ned said when he woke up.
We got to the outskirts of Jacksonville at noon. Hotter here. Impossible, but true. The air conditioner of my car started to sputter. Overworked, pissy. We pulled into a gas station and I got out to check the directions I’d gotten off the record from the cardiologist who’d treated the Dragon. I’d begged him, as a matter of fact. I told him I was a lightning-strike survivor who needed hope. He had no reason to disbelieve me.
There
were several back roads we’d have to take and I worried that the ride was too bumpy for Ned.
Every once in a while I would look at him.
“Stop that. Just concentrate on driving. Fuck it,” he added when we went into a ditch. There was a trailer and a fellow sitting outside. “Pull over,” Ned said.
He got out and spoke with the elderly man in the lawn chair. It looked as if this fellow had the same lawn chair I had. Acres’ Hardware. I guess it was a statewide chain. Ned and the old man shook hands and spoke a few words, then Ned came back to the car. “Five miles up. But the Dragon won’t talk to us without an introduction, so says the gentleman in the lawn chair.”
“What does that asshole know?”
I noticed the fellow was locking his door, heading for our car.
“That asshole’s the Dragon’s son.”
“Hey,” our new companion said as he got in the backseat. “I’m Joe.” He was about seventy years old. Minimum. “I’ll take you to see my dad.”
“We never had a father,” Ned said as I got back to driving. “Well, we had one, but he took off.”
“Son of a bitch,” Joe said, sympathetic to our plight. “My dad is right up the road.”
“Now I’m dying and leaving my own kid before he’s born,” Ned said.
My throat was drying up. That kind of talk could make you cry; you had to concentrate and start counting right away, or you’d lose it.
“That’s different.” Joe had lit a cigarette; I kept my mouth shut, even though it would be weeks before I could get the stink out of my car. “That’s not abandonment. You don’t want to leave, so you’ll probably linger.”
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