It was more than he could digest.
“Rosina and Genet …,” I began. “Suffice it to say, I had an hour to get out of town. As I was leaving, climbing over Missing's wall, I said my good-byes to Hema, Matron, Gebrew, Almaz, and to Shiva, my brother …” I stopped. I had hit a roadblock. “Shiva, your other son … ?”
Stone swallowed. This was proving impossible. And yet he needed to know, particularly if it was painful.
“My son …,” he said, trying out the word.
“Your son. You want to see what he looks like?” He nodded, expecting me to pull out a wallet. “Look at that mirror behind you.”
He hesitated as if this might be a joke, a trick. But he turned, and our eyes met in the mirror, startling me, because it was suddenly more intimate than I'd expected. “Shiva and I are mirror images.”
“What is he like?” he asked without turning around.
I sighed. I shook my head. I dropped my gaze. He turned back to me.
“Shiva is … very different. A genius, I would say. But not in the usual way. Impatient with school. He'd never answer an exam question in a way that might make him pass, not because he didn't know … He has never understood the need to subscribe to convention. But he knows more medicine, certainly more gynecology than I do. He works with Hema doing fistula work. He's a brilliant surgeon. Trained, but by Hema. No medical school.” None of this would have been difficult for Stone to discover on his own had he been interested. He was interested now.
“I was very close to Shiva when we were little boys.”
Stone's eyes were unblinking. I couldn't tell him the details of what had happened since. I had told no one. Only Genet and Shiva knew the truth.
“He and Genet did something to hurt me that I cannot forgive …”
“Something related to the hijacking?”
“No, no. It happened long before. Anyway, I was and still am very angry with him. But he is my brother—my twin—and so when I had one hour to leave the city, when the time came to say good-bye to Shiva— well, it was very painful for both of us.” Suddenly I found myself fighting for composure. It was terribly important for me not to cry in front of Thomas Stone. I pinched the inside of my thigh. “As I was saying good-bye to Shiva, he handed me two books. One was his Gray's Anat omy. That was his most valued possession. He dragged it around like a blanket.
“And the second was your book, with that bookmark inside. I didn't know how he got it, or how long he had it. I didn't even know you had written a book. The book was hardly opened. I don't think Shiva ever read it, certainly not like he devoured his Gray's. He probably saw and read the bookmark. But you have to know Shiva. He wouldn't be curious about the bookmark or the letter she referred to. Shiva lives in the now. I don't know just how he got the book or why he wanted to give it to me.”
Stone remained silent, his gaze on the empty basket between us, as if it stood in for all that was unknown about his past, our past. His look of pain was so intense, it pierced me. “I can ask him,” I offered. I wanted to know just as much as Thomas Stone did. “I will ask him,” I said.
Thomas Stone was a world away. When he lifted his gaze, I understood the depths of his sorrow; I saw it in a darkening of his iris, even though that delicate structure should not change color. I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon—the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill—was mere surface. The surgical persona was something he had crafted to protect himself. But what he had created was a prison. Anytime he strayed from the professional to the personal, he knew what to expect: pain.
When he spoke, his voice sounded tired, old. “And here I thought you had it, and you thought I …”
“What do you think is in the letter?”
“How I wish I knew,” he said abruptly. “I'd give my right arm …”
It had been a few months since I met Thomas Stone. The anger I felt obliged to have had subsided. The story he told me of his childhood, his mother's death—it should have been enough to forgive him, but I didn't think I was ready for that. I hadn't forgiven Shiva, so why forgive Thomas Stone? Even if I had forgiven him, a perverse streak in me refused to let him know that. But I had unfinished business with him.
“There's something I have to tell you,” I said. I never thought I would be ashamed in front of this man. “Something I was charged to tell you by Ghosh.” Ghosh's wish had seemed irrational to me at the time. But now, looking into that hard, craggy face, I understood why Ghosh had wanted me to reach out to Stone. Ghosh knew Thomas, but Ghosh had overestimated my maturity.
“Ghosh had a dying wish which I promised to fulfill. But I didn't. I ignored it. I hope you—and he—will forgive me. Ghosh told me that he felt his life would be incomplete without my doing this … His wish was for me to come and find you. To let you know that he considered you a brother.”
This was hard, both because I could recall Ghosh's labored breathing, could recall Ghosh's every word, and because I was now seeing the effect these words had on Thomas Stone. Other than his mother, and Dr. Ross in the sanatorium, who had ever expressed love for him? Sister Mary Joseph Praise perhaps, but did she ever get to tell him, and if she did, did he hear?
“Ghosh was disappointed that you never contacted him. But he wanted you to know that whatever your reason was for being silent all those years, it was all right with him.” Ghosh had felt it was shame that kept Thomas from looking back. He was right, because it was shame that colored his face now.
“I'm so sorry,” Stone said. I don't know whether he was speaking to me, or Ghosh, or the universe. It wasn't enough, but it was about time.
If there were other people in the restaurant, I was no longer aware of them. If there was music playing, I couldn't hear it.
I studied my father as I might study some specimen set before me: I saw the smile that struggled for purchase on his face and failed, and then I saw the haunted and hunted look that came in its wake. God help us if such a man had tried to raise us, if he had taken us away from Ethiopia. With all the sorrow and loss I'd experienced, I'd never have traded my past at Missing for a life in Boston with him. I should have thanked Thomas Stone for leaving Ethiopia. The love he felt for Sister Mary Joseph Praise had come too late. She was the mystery, the great regret that he would take to his grave—and he would regret nothing more than not knowing what she said in that letter.
“I'll write to Shiva,” I said. “I'll ask about the letter.” I suppose I understood Thomas Stone's shutting people out. After Genet's betrayal, I never wanted to have such strong feelings for a woman again. Not unless I had a written guarantee. I'd encountered a medical student from Mecca, a saint compared with my first love; she was kind, generous, beautiful, and seemed to transcend herself, as if her existence was secondary to her interest in the world and the things in it, including me. My belated and muted response must have pushed her away, lost me any chance of a future with her. Did I feel sad? Yes. And stupid? Yes, but I also felt relieved. By losing her, I was protected from her and she from me. I had that in common with this man sitting before me. I thought of a watch that had stopped ticking, and how it showed the correct time twice a day. He paid. I rose with him. At the door of the restaurant, our hands in our pockets, I waited.