59

“Nothing,” he said. “I knew nothing.”

He took a step back, and I followed him. A chair fell over behind us. “You didn’t help her, knowing how much she hated to get her hands dirty?”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Stratton.”

Rick was agitated, but he was able to hold it in. I was so close to him that I could sense the workings of his emotions, the interplay of uncertainty and confidence.

“That’s why I forgot, isn’t it?” I said. “Because the truth was too much to bear. You helped her.”

My brother slapped me.

I was shocked at what I had said. I was shocked at his blow. My jaw did not work, and I gasped, a half-laugh, a sound of wonderment.

I rubbed the numbness on my cheek. “I wonder what that means?” I said after a long silence. “Yes. Or no.”

“You can’t talk to me like that, Stratton,” he said, his eyes hard. “You can’t get me confused with your sickness. I’ve helped you in ways you can’t even guess. I’ve been a good brother to you. Stratton the man of dignity. Stratton the gentleman. I crash my car, lose my money, and people say: just like his father.”

“Dad wasn’t like that.”

“Like me, you mean. Sure he was. You remember Dad the way you want to, practically inventing him. All he wanted was constant adoration. He played around with other women. I knew it. Everyone knew it. You’re good, Stratton. Nobody in the whole family was like you. You always did belong to some other time. Not this place. Not now. You were the one who cared.”

“Don’t say bad things about yourself, Rick. You’re a good brother.” I put my arms around him. “And you hit pretty hard, too.”

We laughed, with tears in our eyes.

Then, emboldened by emotional fatigue, or with my desire to be truthful, I said, “Rick is right. I hear voices. I see people who aren’t there. People made of light.”

Dr. Ahn looked at me like someone hearing a recitation, a poem she had heard many times before.

Go on, I told myself. You’ve started. Don’t stop. “I am sicker than Mother ever was,” I said.

The walls seemed to step back. Dr. Ahn closed her eyes, and then slowly opened them. She was not a therapist in this conversation. She was a bearer of a part of the truth, a Cassandra who was believed. And Rick was not happy, it seemed, at my sudden confession. His lips worked but he didn’t say anything.

“It’s true. I want to tell you everything. Shall I begin? Shall I tell you about a feather I found? A feather that could make my wishes come true?”

Rick did not know what expression to wear on his face. “Things like that don’t happen.”

“Maybe it’s just a talent that Mother gave me, along with her feeling that the world should be a place where people can look out a window and see something beautiful. Something that makes them want to go on living.”

“You’re serious,” he said, speaking almost entirely to himself, in a tone of discovery. He straightened his shoulders. “Whatever you want to tell me,” said Rick solemnly. “I’ll listen.”

I felt like a comic, trailed by the spotlight, about to announce in his brisk, delightful way, the medically verified terminal illness of each member of the audience.

I told them all—the entire story, from the cold riptide to that moment we all shared, the three of us, in the chilly air-conditioned air of the hospital.

No Divine voice interrupted me. The Assembly of the Others was silent—empty.

It is not enough, at last, to confess, to share the secrets. These days that have accumulated are gone. The weight the mind feels is all the places and people who are not present. The landscape knows without knowing a thing: It is inhuman and lovely, trees and lagoons. The gardener spades, fertilizes, reseeds. We tell the story of what has happened. We think the story is true. The sky is a hole big enough for the world.

Neither of them spoke. And it might have taken a long while, or it might have been a fairly short recitation of events, of hallucinations.

I knew that as I spoke I was altering my future, because never again would I be allowed to think of myself as a normal human being. I was destined to stay in the hospital I had designed, with the person from whom I had inherited my illness.

At last I had told everything.

Dr. Ahn and Rick were diminished, stunned figures. I concluded, “All I want to know is: Did I really kill DeVere? Did I kill Blake?”

Rick was pale.

The answer was obvious. “I must have,” I said.

I felt desolate, stripped of my memory of even recent events. But it was good to know the truth.

“What should I do?” I said at last. I turned to face Dr. Ahn. “Tell me what to do.”

She did not want to speak. She was sorry, I felt, to have come here today. “I can’t tell you. There is so much I can’t understand—about your family, about the mind. I had such hopes as a young woman. I believed in myself.”

I said, “If I stay here in this hospital I’ll be close to Nona—”

“But you won’t get well,” said Rick, completing my thought. “Besides, you aren’t certain that you didn’t try to hurt her. It might be better to stay away from her.”

My breath was gone. Rick had used a matter-of-fact tone, but his words punished me. It was impossible to think for a few moments. Then I nodded weakly. It might be better to stay away.

Rick found himself able to smile. “Have some faith. People recover from things like this.”

Rick had always believed. He had always been sure. I envied him at that moment more than at any other time in my life.

“I have no special knowledge anymore. Ignorance is almost like a blessing.” Dr. Ahn was thoughtful. “I want you to go to Los Cerritos tonight. I know the staff there, and we can begin to help you.”

“I’ll drive him,” said Rick.

Dr. Ahn did not respond. When she spoke again it was not to mention Rick driving me, and it was not to discuss any of what I had described. She said, “Someone killed Ty DeVere and Blake Howard.”

“Perhaps they were suicides after all,” said Rick.

“And it’s possible,” I said, before Dr. Ahn could make any further remark, “that Nona is mistaken. Maybe no one tried to take her life here in the hospital. Maybe it was a dream.”

“Why not?” said Rick, as though someone had suggested a party.

“That would be the best hope,” said Dr. Ahn. “That it was all a waking dream, every last blow, every drop of blood.”

“You don’t believe that?” I asked.

She shook her head sadly. “Valfort is sure you have done harm. I’m not.”

“Then the men killed themselves—like Peterson,” said Rick lightly.

She could not answer for awhile. “Maybe I have always wondered if there are such things as angels,” she said.

“It would be a wonderful thing if there were,” said Rick, sounding bright, tired of heavy talk, eager for some sort of action.

“Wonderful,” agreed Dr. Ahn. “But frightening.”

On my way to see Nona, to say good-bye, I stopped by the children’s hospice. I felt athletic in my sweatpants and sweatshirt, and noted to myself the irony that I was coming not from the outdoors but from confinement.

I was eager to see Stuart. I thought that maybe I would have time to make him another one of my paper horses.

But his bed was empty, perfectly made up and abandoned. Every sign of Stuart’s presence, his comic books, his posters, was gone. Stuart was no longer here.

I told myself: When I open my eyes I will look and I will see him.

He was not there.

Nurses were watching. Keep an eye on Stratton Fields, they must have been cautioned. But because my family had built so much of the hospital, they would keep their distance, hover, follow me wherever I went, surrounding me with a careful silence.

Not here.

Stuart is gone.

Rick and Barry followed me, giving me a few moments with Nona. I leaned over her bed. What could I tell her?

Don’t leave her, I told myself. Stay here with her, where you belong.

I kissed her lightly so she might not stir from her sleep.

She opened her eyes. For a moment she looked fearful. Then relief flushed her features. “I’m so glad it’s you,” she said.

There was no way I could bring myself to tell her that we had lost Stuart. We would grieve together someday, when she was strong.

Her eyes were beautiful. I wanted to stay just as I was, gazing at her. “Who else would it be?”

Her voice was weak but distinct. “I remember my dream,” she said at last.

I waited for her to speak again.

“Rick,” she said. “I’m afraid of Rick.”