“The oncology ward is sacred ground. Pain, unutterable sorrow, and resurrection live there; it is a cradle, like an infant’s, of the Source. Bella was just awakening when we came in. By then, the man who would be my teacher, who already was though I didn’t yet know it… we had both donned the required surgical masks and gloves — shimmering raiments of Silence’s heart! — and my human heart broke when I saw her, and saw him—witnessed the care he lavished on my baby. ‘The divine interplay.’ He touched her head with his hand so softly, that bearish hand that had already spent a thousand lifetimes ringing the bells of this world and of worlds beyond — I couldn’t stand it. I was about to faint when a spate of bells clanged me to life. I was startled, for those clangorous sounds had abandoned me from that first moment I sat with him on his shaggy patch of sidewalk — remember? But now I heard them again, was jolted, just as that crack of fire jolted you—twelve times, they rang, a dozen percussive strokes, for it was high noon, and the tower, only blocks away, was tolling. My Sir kept his hand on Bella’s head while he turned to me, his eyes blurred by—… he once told me that tears of Silence are rare as an owl’s, and if one is very lucky, one may hitch a ride on such a raft of teardrops, all the way to the Source. With the most beautiful smile, he whispered, ‘The little one has now broken her contract as well. How magnificent! Come, Cathy, come! Take her in your arms!’ (I was Cathy before he named me Devi.) ‘She’s leaving now! Hold her while the bells ring out!’ And I held her and they kept ringing… later, one of the nurses said that a mechanism in the tower went awry, so the cycle of twelve kept repeating, ten times in all, a hundred and twenty tolls, ceasing only upon my daughter’s last breath.
“Sir made the funeral arrangements. He showed me a napkin sketch of a mausoleum, like an elegant confection, with a filigreed entryway and little benches inside where one could sit. Construction would begin the next day — but how? I never asked, never questioned the phantasmagoric speed with which he made everything possible. On the day of her burial, trucks delivered beds and beds of Million Bells. Do you know the flower? Calibrachoa. We have some in our garden — you walked through it on your way to the beach — I carry seeds around in my purse. Oh, it was a gorgeous celebration, not a funeral but a wedding! My Sir said that now I would hear bells no more — and the ringing would only resume when Bella and I were together again. He told me I’d see her soon, ‘soon enough,’ that’s what he said, and somehow I knew he wasn’t talking about the afterlife. I’d see her soon in this world, or something so much like it that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference… she used to be here, he said — but there was where I’d find her. ‘We will go to the place she now finds herself.’ That’s how he put it. ‘I’ll take you.’ I believed him — and believe him still. That was where we were — are — traveling. We were on our way to the place of ‘a million bells’ when you interceded. When you came to sit on that bench… dear Jerome!
“You are the reason we stopped, and now find ourselves here. That’s what my teacher told me tonight, just an hour before you came.”
—
The rest of the evening was spent shaking off the spell cast by her wrenching, cockeyed illuminations and they danced for their lives to a mixtape of one-hit wonders: “Come On Eileen,” A-ha, the Easybeats, “Spirit in the Sky.” With amazement, he watched Tristen become utterly transported (Jeremy was almost ashamed by his failure to believe the gyrating boy could have been capable of such elegantly frenzied interpretations) before turning his eye to the house. There, a massive robed figure rummaged through the Sub-Zero like some burgling, Edwardian ringmaster. He left his friends to their ecstatic, giggly contortions and went to have a look.
He crept in through the pantry and was about ten feet away when the Great Scot swiveled to face him, holding an enormous drumstick in his paw—gluttonous interruptus.
“Ho ho!” he shouted. His sparkled being seemed to ratify some version of the woman’s more unorthodox claims. “My Devi wouldn’t be glad about my raiding the fridge — she’s worked herself into an awful swivet over my expanding girth.”
“I think you carry it rather well.”
“You’re too kind! Has she been telling you our story?”
“She has. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
“Of course you haven’t. But she tells it with panache, no? All curlicues and oddities being the same, and the occasionally queer yet always quirkily charming turn of phrase.”
“Yes yes, she tells it very well. But I can’t say I understand it all…”
“I can’t say I understand any of it! Please, then, to accept my invitation — the Source’s invitation — to the Society of the Uncomprehending. I’m delegate and chairperson, at your service. Go straight to the Source and ask the horse. Or perhaps I mean the other way around.” He went back to his rummaging. “A reg’lar Scheherazade she is, that girl, no? Or do I mean ir-reg’lar.”
“Is there more?” he asked. What Jeremy meant to say was that he wanted to hear “the Celt’s tale”—the old man’s side.
“More? I should say! For another time… go now! Enjoy the dance! In the end, that’s all it is. A pataphysical rumba.” He laughed uproariously then robbed the “cold drawer” blind. Without looking up, he said, “You’re dreaming of a child as well, no? That’s what she’s doing — she doesn’t know it yet — that’s why you’ve met. ‘A dream of children.’ Lovely! Both of you suffered a great loss; it’s piffle to say whose was the greater. All that comparisoning is the downfall of man. ‘I go, and it is done; the bell invites me…’ Thank Mr. Shakespeare for that one. We can thank him for nearly everything, no? Though I suppose at least we should try to… She’s talked a lot of the bells, no? Got bells on the brain, that one. Oh, you’ll find those children again, both of you — no worries in that regard! But first, you must dance.”
—
Dusty passed on to Snoop everything Ida Pinkert told her. It was the sort of lead that made a gumshoe’s day.
Her name was Claudia Zabert. The old woman hadn’t a clue where Reina found her, and other than the generic sluttiness that Ida alluded to, Dusty couldn’t remember much about her either. The babysitters were neighborhood locals — except for Claudia, who’d been imported from God knew where. She was probably about sixteen when she began working for the Whitmores, around the time Arnold was arrested and hospitalized. Dusty would have been ten. The actress remembered Claudia having boys over and sometimes even leaving the house with them after giving her hush money. Probably just a few dollars, but hey, none of the others did that. Come to think of it, she had tons of sitters — Claudia was the one Reina used the least. Maybe because she was hardest to get hold of.