“Come on already,” Tilda said, off to the side.
“Why—” Alice complained.
“I get it,” he cut them off. “I just want to learn. Really.” To Sparrow: “Your treatments have cured cancer?”
“I’ve had successes.”
“You’ve put people in remission?”
“At the ashram we’ve—”
“And where’s this ashram at?”
“Western Massachusetts, just north of the Berkshires.”
“And in that ashram just north of the Berkshires, you cured how many people of cancer?”
“Oliver, this is not the place or time—”
“I’m a big girl, Alice.”
Sparrow remained fixed on him, that weirdly intense gaze of hers, holding him, searching out his vulnerability. For an instant, Oliver felt himself drawn in, buckling, wanting to trust her. And it was in that moment — as he felt himself waver — that Sparrow unleashed her smile. The kindness bloomed in her voice: “With care and help and the proper meditation and chanting, we’ve been blessed with a ninety-five percent success rate. And before you ask, more than half of those who come with us do stay in remission.”
“Ninety-five percent? Wow. From yoga and herbal packets?”
“There is science beyond Western science. Coffee enemas purify a bloodstream. Broccoli and other fresh, steamed greens—”
“Really impressive. Really. But here’s what I’m curious about. If ninety-five percent of the cancer patients you gave broccoli enemas went into remission, why aren’t you on the Today show? Why aren’t you consulting with doctors everywhere?”
Oliver paused long enough for the point to impact. “This disease is the worst fucking scourge in history,” he continued. “The single worst. At Whitman, they capture cells at the fucking moment they split, so they can learn whether the new cells are potentially cancerous. You’re telling me the medical-industrial complex can’t figure out if something inside broccoli might contain a cure? Come on. Pfizer’d have fucking stormtroopers marching through that ashram. They’d be rushing those packets through clinical trials like shit through a chicken, monetizing like fuck.”
Oliver’s stare challenged. But rather than meet her eyes this time, he looked slightly higher, to the little gulley, the planted field of gray hairs down the separating groove where her hair parted. She’d probably been the smartest secretary in her department, passed over too many times for promotion, maybe. Or maybe some deep family trauma had caused mental collapse? Whatever it was, she’d risen from the ashes, this grande mystic of the Berkshires, passing her days in careful meditation while bilking sick people desperately grasping for hope.
“It took years before Buddha returned to the castle.”
Sparrow’s voice was not loud but placid, a fall breeze.
“The baby was much older by then, naturally. Buddha’s wife was also older. Though she had not seen her husband for long years filled with hardship, she accepted him into the castle without complaint. And still, another three weeks passed before the Buddha visited her quarters.”
“Women can’t even be Buddhists.”
“Oliver—”
“I read it on the Net. They have to be reincarnated as men. Then they can.”
Sparrow waited, the etched time lines of her forehead remaining flat. “The first thing Buddha’s wife said to him was ‘Did you have to leave?’ Buddha answered, ‘No. But I could not know this without leaving.’ ”
The skin of her cheeks was hard and smooth as carved wood. She let her story sink in, then told Oliver, “I’m not taking money for anything.”
“You fucking shouldn’t.”
Behind him there was a misstep, a bump — the light source flickered, the room’s balance of light and weird shadows recalibrating.
“I think Oliver and I need to talk.” Alice’s hand was steady, moving to her heart.
Sparrow understood, broke from her duel, and hugged Alice. She held both of Alice’s hands even as she backed away, and now their arms improvised a circle. Sparrow whispered; Alice nodded.
As the healer began gathering her bags and books, Tilda and Alice now shared a look, communicating in their own exclusive language. Alice assured Tilda she’d be fine, told them to leave the equipment, though it would be nice if Tilda could turn off the light, please.
Alice motioned to Oliver, patting the adjacent space.
He didn’t sit. He loomed.
She asked if he could hand her the water.
During each of her two gulps, her Adam’s apple seemed inordinately large for her neck.
From the other side of the drywall they could hear the sounds of the women retreating, clumps and whispers, Alice’s mom warning, the baby was asleep.
“If I die in the next little while,” Alice said, “I’m afraid you’ll let your darkness take over.”
His eyes were whirlwinds.
“I’m saying this to help,” she continued, “you shouldn’t take it personally.”
“Just the kind of qualifier that ensures—”
Her raised hand halted his sarcasm. Looking up, she tried to focus on his face, but it proved too difficult. Instead her eyelids landed with force, remained closed.
“I just want you to know. I hope with all my heart that you will fight the darkness and not stay there.”
“I’m not giving up, Alice—”
“You can have a wonderful life without me. You can meet someone else who can be a good partner for you, a good mother to Doe. But that will only work if you open yourself to that possibility.”
“I’m not giving up. If that means someone’s got to be King Dick around here, fine, I’ll take the mantle. But—”
She bit her lip, placed a hand on his knee, felt his tension, the solidity of his resistance.
“I know how hard this is on you. I feel the pressure you’re under. But it’s poisoning you, Oliver. You bring me so much joy. I want to spend years with you. I even want to keep going through this hell with you. I want to be a parent with you. But if I don’t get to do that, I don’t want you to do it alone.”
“Yeah well,” he said, “I can’t worry about that right now.”
“Be open to love, Oliver.”
“Christ—”
“Be open to goodness.”
She took extra care with each word. “I guess I’m just trying to figure out how I want to live with what I have left.”
He looked away, felt himself choking up. “And that’s what Joey Keyboard was about?”
A flinch. Then her mouth rounded, forming the word oh. No sound escaped. Her hand rose, as if she might insert her fingernails and eat them. Her forehead and cheeks reddened, pupils shimmering.
She forced herself to keep eye contact — thinking, studying.
“I need to do something for you,” she finally said. “Come here. Sit.”
She did not wait but reached out, touching the bottom of his jacket, which she lifted, reaching for his belt buckle.
“What,” said Oliver. “Hey.”
Clumsy, careful — still fumbling, for she was out of practice — she unlooped his belt, in a workmanlike manner, and ignored his rumpled shirttails. His extra flesh and flab must have registered, for he had never been heavy like this, but she did not acknowledge as much. Oliver remained tense, unnerved, mildly alarmed. But he wasn’t stopping her from handling his jeans’ top button, lowering his zipper, reaching in.
A musky scent rose into the room. He was warm, sweaty, oddly red, not limp but far from stiff. His jeans and boxers down now to the middle of his pasty thighs. He’d stopped breathing, still was shocked by the happening. When Alice’s hand closed around him, he moaned. Her pace increased and she worked as best she could; he gasped and stared at her hand on him. And now he was looking toward the corner of the bedroom, that spot between the drywall and the weird angle of the roof, where that sliver of space still let in sound and smells. He moaned again, throaty, approving.