He felt her body trembling and realized that she was crying. He wished that he could cover her with his own body and shield her from the pain, but there was nothing he could do except hold her.
At last she stopped crying and sat up. "Let's go see the kids," she said. "You up for it, Lazarus?"
"Sure," he replied, sitting up and wincing as someone stuck a needle in his cerebral cortex.
In the living room, he looked around. "Where're Lucy and Ned, and John, for that matter?" he asked.
"I don't know," Marlene replied. "They were gone when I got back."
Karp turned his attention to the twins, who were sitting somberly on the couch. He wondered if they were crashing from their sugar buzz of the morning. "How were Pops and Grammy?"
"Grammy didn't know who we were," Zak said dejectedly.
"A lot of people confuse you and Giancarlo," he'd replied.
"No, I mean she didn't know who any of us were," he said, angrily wiping at the tears that rolled down his cheeks. "She kept calling Mom 'Josephine' and thought we were the neighbor boys from down the street."
"She asked if we were the naughty kids who ripped up her flower garden yesterday," Giancarlo said, his lip trembling. "She didn't know it was Christmas. She saw the presents and thought it was her birthday. She even opened Grandpa's presents. Why is this happening to her?"
Karp's heart suddenly ached for his children. Concetta Ciampi was the only grandmother they'd ever known. She'd been there for their births. She'd watched over them when their busy parents had been too consumed with work, changing their diapers and reading bedtime stories. Now she was being taken from them in the cruelest way imaginable. The outward appearance was the same, but the woman inside was leaving them.
"I don't know," he said. "But you need to know that she can't help what is happening to her."
"Is she dying?" Zak sniffled.
"In a way," Karp replied. "But her mind is dying before her body is ready. We've just got to do our best to let her know that we still love her-that we understand that she's still in there somewhere-and support Grandpa, too. This is very hard on him."
Later that night, the boys had settled onto the couch with him and Marlene to watch It's a Wonderful Life. He sent a silent thank-you to Frank Capra, wherever he was, for the film's life-affirming message.
The credits were rolling, and the twins had been sent off to bed, when Lucy and Ned-whom Karp thought looked a little like Alan Ladd in the movie Shane with his new coat and old cowboy hat-returned.
"Where's John?" Marlene asked.
Lucy looked troubled. "Gone…for now."
"What do you mean gone?" Karp asked. "What was all that heart-of-darkness stuff about earlier?"
"He went to find David Grale."
"David Grale is dead. He bled to death at the altar in St. Patrick's Cathedral."
"I know, Daddy," Lucy said. "He knows it, too. But he's been having this dream, and, well, he says he needs to at least try to locate Grale."
"Why? What's supposed to happen if he doesn't?" Karp asked. He didn't like all this spiritual mumbo jumbo; it bothered him in a way he didn't understand, which made him irritable.
"He won't say…not exactly," Lucy said as Ned stepped behind and wrapped his arms around her.
Karp tried to ignore the way his daughter seemed to melt into the cowboy. "Well, what did he say inexactly, then?"
"Oh, just that tens of thousands of people might die. A little Armageddon, New York style."
Karp made another mental note to talk to John about doomsday prophecies around his spiritually impressionable daughter. "Where was he going?"
"I don't know, and I don't think he did either. Just that it was going to be dark… Sorry, Dad, I don't know any more than that and I'm tired. It's been a long day, and I want to go to bed. I love you."
Lucy then led Ned off to her room. Karp looked away rather than watch the pair disappear down the hallway. "They're naked in there, you know."
Karp asked Marlene if she knew where Jojola was going. But she either didn't know much or she didn't want to talk about it. All in all, it's a strange way to end Christmas Day, he thought. But the pathos wasn't over yet.
As he and Marlene lay in bed that night, the conversation had again turned to her parents, especially her father's growing frustration and instability.
"I'm worried about what he's going to do," Marlene said.
"You mean when she dies?"
"No. I'm worried that he may snap and hurt her. He's going crazy with the fear that something is going to happen to her on one hand, and the guilt of wishing that she'd just die on the other."
"Maybe it really is time to put her in a nursing home," Karp said.
Marlene shook her head. "I asked him again today, pleaded with him. But he won't hear of it. It's the guilt. He said, 'What if she's in there somewhere, waiting for me to come and get her out, but she can't tell me how. I can't just take her from the home she loves. I can't be that cruel.' So he just sits there hating what she's becoming, and hating himself for it."
She turned to Karp and put her hand on his chest. "If I ever have Alzheimer's and I can't do it myself," she said, "I want you to shoot me before you start to hate me."
"I could never hate you."
"I'm sure my father would have said the same thing."
23
Sunday, December 26
John Jojola joined Lucy and Ned at a small thai bistro on Bayard and Bowery. He'd dressed for dark work over his thermal underwear-black waterproof boots, black pants, black turtleneck. He carried a small black knapsack containing the Rigel 3250 goggles, a small flashlight, black gloves, a black ski mask, and his fourteen-inch, razor-sharp hunting knife. Marlene had tried to give him a gun before she left with the boys, but he turned her down. "I'm going to find a man," he said, "not kill one. My knife should be sufficient for the rats."
The meal ended when an immense hairy man appeared in front of the restaurant and pressed his incredibly filthy face against the window in an effort to see in. His brown-button eyes found the trio and locked on Jojola.
"There's Booger," Lucy announced and turned to Jojola. "It's not too late to stop this and just come home." She didn't sound as if she thought she'd convince him, and she was right.
"I can't, Lucy," Jojola said. "I had the dream again last night. Charlie said I'm running out of time."
The dream was always the same, with only minor variations. In it he was running, crouched over through low, narrow tunnels like those he'd encountered in Vietnam when he was pursuing the Vietcong into their underground lairs. As he ran, he passed sudden openings leading off into the dark, any of which could hide an enemy who waited to leap out and kill him.
In the dream, Jojola was pursuing a Vietcong leader he had faced during the war, known only by his Vietnamese nickname Cop, which meant Tiger. A former teacher, Cop blamed the South Vietnamese government for the murder of his family, and was the most ferocious and intelligent of the men he and his childhood friend and army recon partner, Charlie Many Horses, had been assigned to track and kill. Always, Cop had managed to stay a step ahead of them.
Once, during the war, Jojola and Charlie Many Horses had been dropped by helicopter into a valley where villagers had reported sightings of the guerilla leader. The two split up to reconnoiter the area when Jojola jumped a Vietcong soldier who was preoccupied with trying to disguise the entrance to an underground bunker. Prodded by Jojola's knife, the man pointed into the hole and said, "Cop."
Unable to deal with a prisoner, Jojola had been forced to slit the man's throat and drag him into the bush before returning to the hole. He knew he should wait for Charlie. He also knew Cop was near but rarely stayed anywhere for long.