“It seems a great deal has been done already. But thank you.”
The priest looked at her a moment. He shook his head. Some form of sympathy had relaxed his face, drawing down the corners of his mouth and allowing his cheeks to hang in small jowls along the line of his jaw. He looked away, toward the worktable. “I phoned Doctor Norstar. I hope you don’t mind.” Dempsey resorted again to the gesture: the two hands lifted, parted, as if releasing a bird into the air, then the hands lowered to her lap. Father Dunphy clamped the icepack more firmly on his head. “Doctor Norstar, when I talked to her, told me that because of confidentiality laws, she could not discuss your case. But she quickly added that, even if she could talk, she had no time. She added that the whole business was under continuing review and she didn’t know when—if ever—there would be a final disposition of the case—” He was trying to gesture with his left hand but found it awkward, the movements angular when, it seemed, he’d intended them to be more flowing. He finally switched hands, leaving the right hand free to weave in and out, back and forth, as he talked.
Dempsey listened. She sat up straight and did what could never be less than appropriate in response to what the priest was saying, the parted hands, the return to her lap. “Nothing is ever certain, Doctor Norstar finally told me—apparently having decided to ignore the confidentiality law—until the patient is dead and there’s an autopsy. And even then, according to her, the doctors could be wrong. She seemed somewhat exasperated by the whole business.”
Dempsey, not wanting to repeat the gesture too often, decided to speak. “She’s kept quite busy.”
“I don’t doubt it. But she became even more impatient—abrupt is the better word—when I used the word miracle. She very distinctly told me the word had no interest for her. It was none of her concern, she said. She would stay as far away from the subject as possible and could cooperate only in strictly medical matters, and reluctantly even then.”
The icepack had slipped to the right and was no longer covering the bump. He moved the towel back farther on his bald head, but again it centered.
“What I want to do, I wouldn’t want to do without your permission, without your cooperation, so I’m hoping you’ll agree.”
“Agree? To what?”
“I intend to go to the cardinal. I’d tell him about the cure—the possible miracle.”
Dempsey’s instinct was to lean forward but she didn’t want her spine to lose contact with the back of the chair.
“Miracle?”
“Your cure. Your inexplicable cure.”
“Who said it was a miracle?”
“The doctor—Doctor Norstar—said there was no known explanation—”
“No known explanation—someday it could be known.”
“Perhaps it’s already knowable.”
“More likely it’s not.”
“But you do believe yourself to be cured, don’t you?”
“I accept what Doctor Norstar tells me. I always have.”
“And you accept her inability to account for what’s happened?”
“I have always accepted the doctor’s inability. Yes.”
“You know that Johnny prayed for your cure—”
“Yes. I know.”
“The day he came to the cathedral. After I’d given him Communion, he prayed. That you’d be cured.” The priest reached up and took the icepack from his head and held it with both hands against his thigh. “Johnny said—”
“You want me to take that—the ice. Father? Change it?”
“No. No it’s all right.” He gripped it tighter as if afraid she might take it from him by force. “What I’m saying is this: I would like to present the facts as they stand now to His Eminence—”
“You want to tell him I’m cured—and it’s a miracle.”
“That determination has yet to be made. I myself would make no claim. But I would like to initiate an inquiry—”
“No.”
“You mean you would not cooperate?”
“I would do whatever I could to stop you or his… whatever he is.”
“His Eminence.”
“Yes. That’s the one.”
“The inquiry, of course, could go forward without your participation.”
“Then let it.”
“Why are you so dismissive of God’s mercy?”
“Because maybe it isn’t a mercy.”
“A cure? From an incurable illness? From an epidemic?”
“But is it a mercy? I mean, why me? Why only one of us, why not everybody? All those others, they have the right to ask, ‘Why her and not me? Why her and not my lover, or my husband, or my wife?’ Or they could ask why are Johnny Donegan’s prayers answered and not mine, all those times I said them. Or the one question I keep asking myself over and over again, “‘Why me and not my son?’”
“Your son?”
In an uninflected voice, she said, “He died right after he was born. Of AIDS. I’d infected him in my womb. I killed my son. Why me and not him?”
Quietly the priest said, “I’m sorry. Truly I am. I will pray for him.”
She couldn’t not say it: “That he’ll be cured?”
After a pause, Father Dunphy managed to say, “Does it mean nothing to you that you’ve been given a new life?”
“It means a great deal. Instead of a life of one devouring malignancy, I’ve been given a life of a different but equally devouring malignancy.”
“Oh? I don’t understand.”
“My AIDS has been taken from me and in its place I’ve been given an unrelenting sense of shame. I repeat, ‘If me, why not everybody?’ Doesn’t anybody know how ashamed I am? That I have a shame that gives me no peace? I am in agony, even as I talk to you now. At least there were times when I could laugh at my illness. But this is nothing I can laugh at. It gives me no moment in which it is not ‘Why me and not everybody?’ And allow me to add that Johnny, too, as much as I have loved him, has been taken from me. Our wonderful lovemaking was in defiance of death. Now, it would be without its meaning, and I tried but I can’t do it.”
“But couldn’t you see it all differently? Quite differently?”
“How differently?”
“Couldn’t you be a sign from God that mercy still exists?”
“Me?” Dempsey said scornfully. “Me. A sign from God? Do you know who I am? The word disbeliever doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
In more forceful tones, Father Dunphy said, “I find that more convincing of what I just said than anything else you could have said. Hear me now. No one—no one—no matter who they are and no matter what they may have done, never—never—are they beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Being who and what you are qualifies you more than you know to be the one chosen for an extraordinary proof of God’s infinite love. Will you at least consider that?”
Dempsey stood up and extended her hand. “The ice is really melting. You should probably give it to me.”
After more than a moment’s pause, he held it out to her. “I assume that is your answer. I assume you prefer that I go.”
She took the ice from him and said, “I thank you for coming, Father. Our conversation has, indeed, been helpful in its own way.”
Without turning around, he said, “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how?”
“Allow me to help get you safely on the elevator.”
“Thank you.”
“You are most welcome. And I mean that.”
After she had closed the elevator door without mishap, Dempsey went to the kitchen and dumped the soggy compress into the sink. She tugged one corner of the towel, preparing to unzip the plastic bag and empty the water from the melted ice. Instead she reached up to the spice rack and shoved the jars, bottles and tins from one side to the other, as if working an abacus. Nimbly her fingers moved until, on the third shelf, she found what she was looking for, the oregano, a jar the size of a flashlight battery. The blue pills were inside. She and Winnie had agreed that she would not take them until she had arrived at a torment that was no longer tolerable. Father Dunphy’s visit had guided her to that moment.