13

Some part of Susan shut down.

Numbly she put Andrea to bed (no struggle, the child was exhausted) and went to bed herself. There in the darkness she tried to deny the truth briefly but could not; soon she would wake to its full horror, soon the glands that were protecting her would cease to function, that part of her brain that had short-­circuited would be repaired and the terror would be on her.

Hell was a reality. (If hell, heaven? God? Could he be called on?)

She considered praying, lying there in her stupor, but how? She had never prayed (not even when it was called for, upstairs in the synagogue; then she had merely daydreamed). Admonishments from her childhood, now with the power of absolute truths, came back to her. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain. (What did that mean? Not to speak his name? Not to pray?) God is good, trust Him. (How, when such undeserved punishments threatened her?)

Were they undeserved? She thought of her brother, murdered in the womb, and she following so closely. (Could she have been conceived before his slaying? Had she done it? Can one fetus destroy another? Wouldn’t it be washed away in the same wave of blood?)

She closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep; she would need her strength to fight. But behind her lids was the figure of a man standing on a craggy hill amid flames. She opened her eyes quickly, forcing it away.

“Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” she whispered. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” She paused, listening, as if for an answer, but none came.

“Please, God,” she whispered, “please,” and she felt the futility of prayer.

Later, it might have been hours—Susan’s perception of time was dulled, like the rest of her senses, by fear—Lou entered the room.

“You asleep?” he said.

Would he help her? Could he?

“No.”

“I’m beat.” He undressed in the dark. Approaching the bed, he hit against the night table and cursed.

“I moved it for your phone. Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” He slid into bed, the other side of the bed, far from her. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

If he knew the truth, as surely as she knew it, would he not withhold himself? Could he be an ally?

“Lou,” she said, finally, the decision having taken time.

“Yes?” came back in the darkness.

“Do you believe in hell?”

“Oh, shit, Susan, I’m exhausted.” And he turned to face away from her.

She lay there, saying nothing, until dawn.

At a little after nine in the morning (Susan had slept at most an hour and that was fitfully) the man arrived with the phone. She stood there in the bedroom doorway, watching him install it (there would be nowhere to hide now, nowhere to sleep), avoiding his friendly chattiness, and when he was gone (eventually he stopped trying; he left wordlessly) she sat on the bed, staring at the phone, realizing its full potential.

The logic of hell’s use of it seemed appropriate; no messenger in the darkness, no tempting devil, no, a simple phone call, the longest of distances, hell worked the way men did.

It rang.

“Don’t do this to me,” she spoke to it.

And it rang in response.

“Please, I haven’t done anything,” she pleaded with the shiny black malevolent servant of Satan. “Please!”

Another ring, like a sneer. (What did guilt have to do with it?)

“I have a child!”

And a snicker. (A child? Good. Put her on the phone.)

“God, please, help me!”

And then, mocking her, enjoying her torment, reveling in it, the separate rings joined together into one endless mechanical laugh.

Susan didn’t hear the end of it; she fled the apartment.

Outside in the sunshine (sunshine did exist, therefore God, therefore help, salvation, an end to it), she walked down to Riverside Park (past the castrated pay phone, which did not ring; its silence as powerful—implosion rather than explosion) and sat on a bench.

She prayed.

“. . . If there’s something I’ve done, something I didn’t realize was bad, forgive me. Tell me what it was. Please, God. Tell me. Tell me.”

An old woman was walking nearby (placing one burdensome foot slowly in front of the other, a parody of walking) and heard her. She turned slowly to Susan (even that was an effort) and smiled. (Did she know it was prayer?) But then, receiving only a helpless look in return for her pains, she cranked her body to face away and continued her careful, endlessly grueling task of walking.

God had not answered; his messenger (if the ancient woman was his messenger) had conveyed nothing but pain; Susan was alone—alone on the outskirts of hell, and hell was beckoning to her.

She left the park and took a bus downtown to the only person who might, if she could be made to realize the full weight of Susan’s plight, help her.

Tara sat behind her drawing board (the same sketched woman lying there; the mustache now carefully painted out) listening. And if she disbelieved what she heard, she was generous enough not to let it show. When Susan was finished, staring at the floor, ashamed that these obscenities had to be voiced, Tara took her hands and said, in a voice heavy with concern, “Honey, I didn’t know. I never would have been such a shit to you if I’d known.”

“I know that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me what was happening? How bad it was?”

“I couldn’t. It sounds so crazy.”

“What the hell difference does that make? Whatever it is that’s happening to you . . .”

Susan’s face instantly showed her disappointment. “I told you what it is.”

Tara paused, squeezed Susan’s hands in hers and spoke gently but resolutely. “Susan, I’m on your side and I’m going to do whatever I can do to help you get over this thing, but I can’t lie to you, not and be any help. I don’t believe in hell or God or any of that stuff—” she saw Susan’s eyes fill with sorrow—“but it doesn’t matter what I think it is. What matters is that I’m on your side come . . .” and she paused.

“Hell or high water?” Susan finished the sentence wryly.

“Rain or shine?” And Tara smiled.

“Thank you.”

They held each other’s hands silently for a moment, Susan thanking Tara’s nonexistent God for her. And then Tara spoke.

“Look, it hasn’t harmed you so far, has it?”

“No.”

“Then calm down, will you? You look like pieces of you are gonna fly off in all directions. Let’s go shopping. Come on, time off for something normal.”

Susan nodded yes.

And uptown, on her bed, Sweet William, who had been sleeping, had a nightmare. His legs, running, trying uselessly to get him out of the dream, moved him to the edge of the bed, Lou’s side, and he toppled off it, knocking over the night table.

And the phone.