He turned away. His steps took him to the sink. A saucepan and some silverware were still in the drainer. He quietly hung the saucepan on the pegboard next to the refrigerator. When he picked up the silverware, he could feel that it was still wet. He dried it, spoon by spoon, fork by fork, dropping each piece into its proper compartment in the top drawer beneath the drainboard. He listened for Dempsey, but the clang of the dried silver was the only sound he could hear. Soon he would turn around and see where she was.
He let fall the last spoon into place; closed the drawer, folded and hung the dishtowel on its prong. He straightened out a row of glasses on the shelf above. When he turned around, he saw Dempsey sitting at the table. She had peeled an orange and was pulling one of the slices free of the others. He hadn’t smelled the orange until now. Dempsey put the slice in her mouth and began chomping on it. “When I felt like Rice Krispies, that’s when I was being cured. The snap, crackle, pop. Remember? The virus was leaving my body. That’s why I had to lie down. It was at the same time you were praying in the cathedral. That’s when it happened. I was being cured. Snap. Crackle. Pop. Like demons being driven out, God’s command. ‘Leave her. Leave her.’ And the virus, it left me. I was cured. I am cured.”
When Johnny said nothing, she continued. “Can you stay at your mother’s tonight?” Her voice was low, almost mournful.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I have to be here.”
She was pulling threads of pulp from the separated slice. “I want you to stay at your mother’s.”
“I have to stay here.”
“Because I’m crazy and can’t be left alone?”
“Yes.”
“Then call Doctor Norstar and tell her I’ve gone crazy and ask her what you should do. Call her.”
She got up and went to the wall phone just outside the bathroom. She punched the numbers she knew so well. “She’ll be at her apartment by now. Unless she’s still at her new office. I wish I’d gone up and seen it. I wonder what it’s like.” She held the phone away from her so Johnny could hear the voice. “Doctor Norstar. Hello. Doctor Norstar.” The voice sounded like someone in desperate need of Doctor Norstar.
After Johnny had heard what the doctor had to say, he hung up but kept his hand on the phone a few seconds, then drew it away. He lowered his head and saw that there was a toothpick fitted into the groove between two floorboards. He had been picking his tooth while talking to his mother the day before. “You’re cured,” he said quietly.
“Yes. I know.”
He looked again at the phone. “You’re cured.” This time his voice tried to sound louder. Dempsey said nothing. He looked toward her. She was still at the table looking at the peeled orange she held in her hand. “You’re cured,” he said again. He moved toward her. “You—you’re cured, she told me.” He reached out his hand toward Dempsey’s shoulder. She pulled away. “But you’re cured!” he said.
“I know.” Her voice was barely audible.
“Do you know what that means?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“It means—it means—it means you’re—you’re cured.”
“Yes.”
“But—shouldn’t we do something? Say something?”
“What?”
“Something. Anything. Sing! Dance!”
Dempsey rubbed the tip of her fingers gently over the surface of the orange. “You make it sound like it’s the same as something like winning the lottery,” she said quietly. “Like we’re supposed to yell and jump up and down and hug each other as if we were on television. But it’s not the same. I’m cured. You prayed I’d be cured. And now I am. It’s not like the lottery. At least I don’t think it is.”
Making as little sound as possible, Johnny sat down across from her. He waited a moment, then said, “You—you think—I mean—it couldn’t—you don’t believe that just because I prayed… Do you believe that?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
“Then can’t we just sit here?”
Johnny looked over at Dempsey. She was staring. Her mouth slightly open, her eyes filled, it seemed to him, with sorrow and fear and possibly with love. “What?” he whispered.
“Nothing.”
She looked up toward the ceiling. Johnny, too, looked up. The two of them, slowly moving their heads, searched the upper reaches of the entire room as if they might find there some presence, seen or unseen, some wise and gentle counsel that would explain to them what had happened and tell them what was happening now. They found nothing. Johnny looked at Dempsey’s hand. She was slowly tugging another slice free from the rest of the orange. “Please say something,” he whispered.
She waited a moment then said in a voice no louder than his. “Would you like some orange?”
Because he could refuse no offer she would ever make, because his love and his yearning were streaming out of him, escaping through every pore, reaching toward her, toward infinity, he said, “Yes. Thanks.” She set a slice in front of him. He waited, then picked it up and put it into his mouth and held it there. He didn’t want to chew, but after a few seconds, he chewed anyway.
A foghorn sounded from a distant ship. Johnny stood up and moved as quickly as he could to the outer deck. He wanted to throw up. He grabbed on to the rail and thrust his head out over the water. Nothing came. He leaned back and raised his head. “Don’t let her—don’t let her be cured—not by me. Not by me,” he whispered. “Don’t—” Again he leaned out over the rail. The water was gliding alongside the boat, thin, curled ripples the only disturbance made by the ferry’s lumbering bulk. “I mean—I mean—thank—”
He hiccupped. After a held breath he tried again to say the words. But he hiccupped three times in quick succession. He looked out over the water. He saw the Verrazano Bridge; he saw Governor’s Island, he saw a freighter and a container ship. One by one he looked at each of them and, as if in salute, he hiccupped to the Verrazano Bridge, to the freighter, to the container ship. He hiccupped to the water below. He hiccupped to the moon above.
10.
Dempsey was completely confused in her quest for some suitable response to her cure. Numb at first, then restless as well, she became desperate to find some task that might lead her, if not to serenity, then at least to a minimal measure of stability. When a fit of trembling came to her, her first thought was that the illness had returned. She was having the familiar chill. She would shake. Her teeth would chatter; her bones shudder, and then the sweats would come. After that, perhaps a decent sleep, some welcome rest, the wet sheets cooling against her fevered flesh.
A possible peace suggested itself. She was still sick. She had not been cured after all. It had been a gigantic mistake. Nothing now would be required of her, no word, no deed, no response at all. She could just shake and shudder away, let the sweat seep out and then be given, perhaps, some good and blessed rest. All would be as it had been. Her death, faithful at last, had returned and she found solace in the trembling that racked her now.
But the trembling passed; the stupefaction remained.
Her Lazarus painting was not a possible response. The needed concentration and energy were nowhere to be found. Her skills were somewhere, but she felt no certainty that she could find them and put them to use. To occupy herself while thinking through her predicament, she decided to scrub the floor. The entire floor of the entire loft. With a hard-bristled brush, on her knees. Without hurry, she moved paintings and equipment, furniture and rugs, plants and books. With a firm circular gesture she scoured the gray painted wood, an active froth rising as the soapy water drew out the accumulated grime and dirt that had survived the perfunctory mopping she’d given the floor from the day of her arrival in the loft. Starting at the elevator, she worked her way through her studio area, finding two paintbrushes she’d forgotten she had, one unfinished painting from six years before (not half bad, considering how greatly her work had improved since then), and seventy-six cents in change. There was also a wooden spoon she didn’t recognize, possibly left behind by the previous tenant, a dead mouse long decayed, and under the rug, one of Johnny’s maroon socks. She would wash it and see that he got it back.