When Jimmy held up the watercolor of the golden shrine, he knew that everything depended on it. It was his ace in the hole if all other forms of persuasion failed. But he was shocked by Galen’s sobbing reaction.
“Don’t be upset,” he said. It would be a disaster if Galen slipped out of reach.
“Thief!” Galen cried, his hands balled into fists.
The accusation was true. On Lilith’s orders, Jimmy had snatched the picture from a room at the hospital. He felt guilty, but there was nowhere to go now but forward.
“I know your wife painted it,” he said hesitantly. “Now I’m giving it back.”
Galen lifted his head, wiping his damp cheeks with the back of a shirt sleeve. “You think that makes it better?”
“No, but I needed you to recognize the picture. It’s important.”
Galen had a flash of recognition. “I’ve seen you before, in her hospital room.”
Jimmy nodded, holding his breath. No matter what, he couldn’t let Galen throw him out of the house.
“So you’re stalking me?” Galen said bitterly.
“Sort of, but it’s for a good cause.”
This brought a short, barking laugh. But at least Galen had stopped crying. The whole situation was grotesque, including the part he had played. Jimmy held the watercolor up again, but Galen couldn’t look at it. It brought back memories of Iris, cancer, and death.
He had sleepwalked through the agonizing events as they unfolded. Iris showed a surprising lack of resistance to seeing a neurologist about her headaches. She had kept from Galen how severe they were, just as he kept from her the ominous e-mail her father had sent. A brain scan was taken, and the doctor described what it showed.
“See this shadow here? It’s what we call a lesion on the prefrontal cortex.”
“A tumor?” Galen said dully. Sitting beside him, Iris kept silent, gripping his hand tightly in hers.
The doctor nodded. “I’m very sorry. I have to tell you, it’s aggressive, and it probably came on very suddenly, perhaps four or five months ago.”
Just when she came up to me in the museum, Galen thought grimly. He winced. Iris’s nails were digging into his palm like needles.
“There should have been early signs, though they’re not predictable,” the doctor went on. “A quiet person might suddenly become very outgoing and emotional.” He pointed to the image illuminated on the wall beside him. “The lesion is on the right side, just here. The effects can be quite mysterious. In very rare cases, musical abilities appear out of the blue or a mania for painting that was never there before.”
Iris didn’t cry out, but tears started streaking down her cheeks. She hung her head as if ashamed.
“Can you make her better?” Galen asked, his face ashen.
There were no promises. Surgery followed, then radiation. Iris’s parents rushed back, and their accepting mood had changed. They now looked upon Galen as an interloper, a stranger who had taken advantage of their sick little girl. Dr. Winstone as much as accused him of hiding Iris’s symptoms.
Galen suffered through everything as numbly as he could. Iris moved to the spare room to sleep. They rarely talked, and when they did, it was an effort for her to show Galen any signs of affection. She pitied them both, as if a malicious magician had fooled them with his illusions, and now the spell was broken.
One morning she didn’t appear for breakfast. Galen searched for her in her room, but it was empty. He lifted the phone to call 911 when he glanced out the window. Weak as she was, his wife had stacked up her paintings in the back yard and was setting them on fire. He rushed outside and, over her protests, pulled out all the canvases that hadn’t been scorched yet.
“We have to save them. Forget the doctor. You’re a genius.”
A weird, squeezed laugh came from her. “I’m just sick. Art was my affliction.”
Two weeks later, Iris died in hospice care. An orderly made up her empty bed as Galen rummaged through the bedside table for Iris’s things. The orderly seemed to be eyeing him.
“Do you mind? I’m the husband,” Galen said sharply. The vigilant orderly nodded and left. Now Galen knew it was Jimmy.
Iris’s parents couldn’t keep Galen from attending the funeral, but he stayed on the periphery, a silent incidental presence. As the first spade of earth was thrown on the coffin, the mocking voice in Galen’s head said, The comedy endeth. The voice sounded very satisfied. Galen wasn’t. He wanted to lash out at someone or something for the cruel trick that fate had played on him. Like a spindly sprout in a parched field, a plan for avenging a terrible wrong started to hatch in his numbed mind.
Galen pressed his head tightly between his hands, as if to squeeze these memories out.
Jimmy tried to say something that might bring him around. “This picture is very significant. Would you like to know why?”
“Absolutely not.” Worn out as Galen was, he could still get angry.
Jimmy pressed on anyway. “It shows a precious object, a holy relic. Your wife must have seen it in a vision. You are our link to her.”
Galen regarded him with disdain. “Whatever bullshit you’re peddling, you’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t have any money. I just want to . . .” He didn’t know how to finish his thought.
“You just want to curl up into a little ball of misery? I can’t let you do that, and you don’t have to. You’re a prisoner inside yourself. Iris saw it. That’s why she was drawn to you. It’s also why I was sent here.”
Jimmy’s strange response forced Galen to look at him more closely. The smile he wore, which Galen had initially despised, looked different now.
“I don’t need your pity,” he said.
“It would have to wait in line anyway, behind your self-pity.”
Galen was about to drop the f-bomb, as his mother called it when he was a child, but Jimmy suddenly made a move. Getting to his feet, he took two steps toward Galen, who had no time for a defensive cringe. Before he knew it, Jimmy was lifting him up under the arms as if he were a cranky two-year-old scooped up by his mother.
“Good, we have you on your feet. Now take another look. If you know nothing about this picture, I’ll leave you in peace. Not that you’ll find any.”
Was that last bit a taunt? Galen felt uneasy.
“Please, stop looking so afraid,” Jimmy pleaded. “I’m bringing you hope.”
Galen had been jerked to his feet too quickly. The blood was rushing from his head; he felt dizzy. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself not to faint twice in one day.
“We can talk,” he whispered. “Just let me sit down again, please.”
Jimmy stepped back, and Galen sank down on the couch, putting his head between his knees. After a moment, his dizziness cleared.
“Tell me what you remember,” Jimmy coaxed.
Galen looked puzzled. “Nothing important. What she painted was just a symptom of being sick.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Being sick was only a small part of it. When someone is dying, a part of them reaches out for the truth. As they go through the door into another world, they look back over their shoulder to give us a hint about the truth.”
Galen felt helpless to argue back. “Whatever. You sound sincere. But I’m the one who got kicked in the teeth when she died.”
“You’re right. I apologize. You didn’t ask for any of this.”
Galen took the picture from Jimmy with a sigh, doing his best to recreate the scene weeks before Iris’s death. He hadn’t made much time to visit her in the hospital. The strain between them was part of the reason. The other part was that he had thrown himself into his work with ferocity. His days were spent at the research library with stacks of journals in front of him. He typed drafts of articles on the computer far into the night, too drained and distracted to face reality.
Galen took up smoking and threw back a shot of whiskey at sunset, the hour beloved by the demon of depression. Slowly he started to feel a shift inside. He was pulling away from Iris and everything she’d been to him. It was like standing at the rear door of a train as it crept away from the station. Before long, the station lights would recede into a faint dimness, and then nothing.
His escape plan wasn’t perfect, though. Guilt made him drop in at the hospital, usually late in the afternoon, his arrival timed to Iris’s dinner so he could excuse himself after a few minutes. At that point Iris was still eating a little, but the cancer wasted her ruthlessly, sucking out every bit of energy. Galen was relieved whenever he found her asleep, which was often.
On one particular afternoon, however, she was wide awake. Her motorized bed was propped up as far as it could go, and her hair was carefully pulled back and pinned, a few stray wisps framing her pale face. Galen tried to smile, but she had put on a drop of his favorite perfume, and the scent made him feel sick.
“You look nice,” he mumbled evasively.
“Do I? I made sure I didn’t bring a mirror from home.” Iris’s voice was clear, and her eyes glistened. Galen looked away. Her eyes had glistened like that when she was in her mania for painting.
“Please, don’t be afraid of me,” she whispered.
Galen’s hand instinctively moved toward the cigarettes in his jacket pocket, until he remembered where he was. Before his mother died, she entered a spell of truth-telling. She held him captive by her bedside atoning for her mistakes, trying to make amends. If we’re into the truth, he wanted to tell her, I’m bored and fed up. Eat some Jell-O, watch TV. We can’t change the past. He never let the words out though, biding his time like a patient son.
But he wasn’t about to play the same game twice. “The doctor wants you to rest,” he mumbled. “I should go.”
“In a minute,” said Iris, not offended by his rudeness. She gestured toward the metal bedside table, which was just out of her reach. “Can you open that drawer, please? I want to show you something.”
Galen opened it and retrieved a sheet of fine-grained paper with deckled edges
“I didn’t know you brought any supplies with you,” he said.
“I met a nice nurse. She fetched some paper and colors for me. You weren’t answering the phone.”
“You could have waited,” Galen complained.
She read the guilt on his face. “I didn’t want you to feel bad, seeing all the art stuff again. And I was in a hurry. I had the strongest desire to make this picture. Imagine that, after trying to burn everything.”
She took the paper from his hands and turned it over, exposing the image hidden from sight in the drawer. “I wanted you to be the first to see it.”
She wasn’t being cruel. Galen knew this, but his heart began to ache. He dully gazed at the picture. It showed a steepled church in a meadow. There was a golden glow suffusing it. He scowled. The religious thing again. Her disease was showing no mercy.
In a sympathetic voice Iris said, “You don’t have to like it. You don’t even have to keep it. But somehow it’s about you.” Seeing that he wanted to protest, she rushed on. “The image came to me in a dream. I was happy in the dream, for once. Sleep is usually such a black hole.”
She stopped. Galen showed no reaction. Against his will, he had been drawn into a round of deathbed truth-telling again.
Iris tried to keep up her bright mood, even though a tinge of defeat was creeping in. “This isn’t something I can explain or help you through, Galen. I don’t understand it myself. All I know from the dream is that you belong here.” She pointed to the church, and then her hand fell.
She’d spent her energy; her body gave out, and the disease reclaimed her. The color drained from her face. Gray and empty-eyed, her head lolled on the pillow. The transformation was shockingly fast.
Galen couldn’t spare any pity for her. He was too angered by what she’d said: “You belong here.” The words made him want to rip the picture from her limp hands and tear it in two. Instead, he turned around and left. The ache in his heart had turned into the cold heaviness of stone.
Now, in his living room, Galen made a futile gesture. “That’s all I know.”
“I understand. It hurts to go back,” Jimmy said.
Galen flared up. “Screw you.”
Jimmy sighed. “We’re going around in circles here.”
Pulling out his cell phone, he walked into the nearby kitchen. Galen heard a mumbled exchange.
When he returned, Jimmy said, “We understand why you’re resisting this whole thing. It’s too much to take in, and you’re exhausted. But you showed us what to do.”
“Me?”
“‘You belong here.’ If that’s the message, a sign—whatever you call it—we’re going to trust it.” He pointed to the picture. “What your wife saw is real, a gift from God, and now it’s in the right hands. I hope you get to see it. A lot of people are depending on you.”
“I don’t care. God is a lie, a huge criminal fraud. If anybody wants something from me, tell them that.” Galen’s voice trailed off. He didn’t want to think about his failed revenge.
“What if you found out once and for all?” Jimmy asked.
“About what?”
“If Iris saw something real. If God is real. Here’s your chance to find out.”
“You’re insane.” But Galen’s protest wasn’t as angry as before. He could hear the compassion in Jimmy’s voice.
“I’m just going on faith here,” Jimmy said. “But there are people I trust, the way I’m asking you to trust me. They say that anyone who comes into contact with this object is never the same again.”
Galen was poised with a torrent of objections, but Jimmy didn’t give him the chance to release them.
“Here.” He scribbled the number of the conference room on the back of the picture. “We’re meeting at the hospital. You know where it is. The room’s in the basement.”
Galen stared suspiciously at what Jimmy had written. “Do I get paid?”
“That’s not up to me. I’m just the messenger.”
Jimmy didn’t scold him for having selfish motives. He could see that Galen had to defend himself.
“Just think about it. I’ll let myself out.”
Without another word Jimmy stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He paused on the stoop to look up. It was snowing now, and by morning his footprints would be erased, as if he’d never been there. He headed back to the cab. The news wouldn’t please Lilith; but it was her idea, when Jimmy phoned from the kitchen, to appeal to Galen’s curiosity. Jimmy was about to report back when his cell phone rang.
“I think he listened.” It was a woman’s voice, but not Lilith’s.
“Who is this?”
“We haven’t met, but we will soon. I’m Meg.”
Jimmy was confused. “I don’t know any Meg.”
“Just as well. I only wanted to thank you.”
“Really? How do you know about any of this?”
“It’s not easy to explain. But I’ll try when we meet.”
Before he could ask another question, the line went dead. Jimmy brushed the snowflakes from the driver’s-side windshield with his glove. He climbed into the cab, not looking over his shoulder. Somehow he was sure that Galen had come to his front window and was gazing out to make sure he really left.
Jimmy tried not to feel disheartened. He had probably revealed more than he should have. Protecting the mystery of the golden shrine was the group’s first priority, Lilith had warned. Galen might show up with the others just to snoop. He might extort money. Whatever happened, it was time to walk away. An invisible force was at work. If a miserable skeptic was destined to join, fate would find a way.
The cab left light tracks in the thin, new snow as it sped away. Galen waited at the window until it turned the corner and was out of sight. Seeing the intruder leave was a relief, but not enough to remove the tension in his body. He crumpled Iris’s watercolor into a ball and threw it into the trash bin under the sink; then he hopped into the shower.
There was no reason to trust the intruder and his fantastic talk. What had talking done but stir up painful memories and play on Galen’s emotions? Now he was left with nothing except nagging doubts. Iris believed in her vision. The intruder was right about that—she wanted to send Galen a message he couldn’t ignore.
He turned up the hot water until it made red splotches on his shoulders as he stood under the steaming spray. It burned, but his muscles started to relax. Galen drank three beers before he went to bed, idly surfing the Internet to distract himself. Soon he was fit for nothing but crashing into stupefied sleep.
He didn’t know the next morning how he happened to find the watercolor, rescued from the trash, lying open on the kitchen counter. Still less did he know why he got in his car on Saturday, three days later, headed for the hospital and the room number Jimmy had scrawled on the back of the picture. Galen’s heart was racing as he got closer to his destination.
What am I doing? he thought to himself. Doubt, always his default position, began to tug at him.
But another force intervened. You’re going where you belong, it said.
The words were meaningless. Galen almost turned back, but he had come this far. Besides, all he could think about was Iris, the love she’d shown to a lost soul, and how impossible it was to let go.