“And can you tell me how to do that?”
“If you want it, you’ll figure out a way.”
Sweeney reaches over and takes Danny into his lap, cradles him as if the boy were still an infant. Danny burrows his head into his father’s chest.
“I love you,” Sweeney manages to say. “But I don’t want to go back.”
When it comes, Danny’s voice is muffled.
“You have to go back, Dad. You’re not done yet.”
“I think I am,” Sweeney says. “I think I’m done.”
Danny shakes his head and, despite Sweeney’s attempts to hold him in place, the boy wiggles out of his father’s arms.
“You have to stop the doctors, Dad. They’re trying to make me into someone else.”
“They say they can bring you back to me.”
“And you believe them?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” Sweeney says. “I’m so tired. I’m exhausted.”
“You just need some sleep,” Danny says.
Then the boy brings his feet to the lip of the cliff, his toes dangling over, and raises his arms above his head, hands pressed together. As he dives, Sweeney yells his name.
It’s high tide and the ocean has pushed in and flooded the canyon of boulders below. Danny’s arc is impressive but there’s no way to tell if he’ll clear the rocks. Rather than wait to find out, Sweeney stands and makes his own dive, screaming all the way down. There’s nothing graceful about his fall. He flails as he plummets and he hits the water with a hard slap, stomach first.
It’s freezing and it’s murky. His eyes sting and his lungs begin to ache almost immediately. He searches for Danny. He pushes with his arms, kicks with his legs, but it’s as if he is swimming through mud.
He thinks he sees movement below and angles his body downward. His progress is agonizing, each stroke and kick enervating him. But he does manage to descend. He feels the temperature of the water drop. Feels his skin contract and pimple. His genitals try to retreat inward. His body begins to quake but he continues to dive.
He sees something moving on the bottom of the ocean. Something waving to him. A pain ignites in his temples, a terrible pressure. He knows he’s about out of air.
And then he sees them. Danny and Kerry. Mother and son. He floats in place above them and they stare up at him. Kerry tilts her head back, opens her mouth. Bubbles escape and rush toward the surface. She’s naked and there is a blue tinge to her skin and Danny is in her scar-free arms. Danny is shrunken, an infant again, the size of a small hen. He is bald and featherless and blue like his mother. His mouth is clamped on Kerry’s left breast and he feeds with a heavy, aggressive sucking.
Sweeney opens his own mouth to speak. To release the last, crucial words and give birth to an absolution that can change everything. The impulse begins in the brain, which sends the signals to activate this redemption. The lungs push his last breath upward through the trachea and against the vocal cords. The glottis bursts open and the cycles of contraction and expansion commence, causing the cords to vibrate the sound of an unmitigated forgiveness.
And in the instant that Sweeney speaks, an exchange is made. The words flow out to the mother and the child. And water rushes in over the father’s tongue, past his teeth, and down his throat. It is the coldest water he has ever felt. Cold enough, he knows, to wake a dead man.
He is flooded with water, choking on water. His lungs and his stomach fill with cold water. He tries to push up to the surface but his arms and legs are entirely spent and he is paralyzed. And then everything begins to fade. Sound, vision, even the cold on his skin. And Sweeney slips, at last, into the dreamless vacuum.
28
Later, he thought he could remember being carried. He thought he could remember the sound of a doorbell, but muted, as if the chime were ringing underwater. And maybe he heard an engine throttling up as it receded into the distance. That was about it. The whole of the world was reduced to sound.
Vision didn’t return for hours. The first thing he saw was Alice Peck’s face. She was hovering over him, pulling something cool and damp across his forehead. Then he was out again for a while, until he heard pages being turned. He opened his eyes to see Alice sitting on the edge of his bed, reading the final issue of Limbo. He tried to speak but nothing came and the effort revoked his consciousness once more.
When he returned it was to the smell of chicken soup. He blinked and brought the bowl into focus. It was on the nightstand, steaming, and Alice Peck was stirring it with a spoon. She lowered herself to the mattress, brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek.
“Do you think you can eat?” she said. “It’ll help to eat.”
He nodded, tried to sit up, and failed.
Alice lifted his head from the pillow with one hand, brought some broth to his mouth with the other. He slurped it, let it pool in his mouth and then slide down the throat. The effort was exhausting, even with Alice’s support. She sensed this and eased him back onto the pillow.
“How long?” he asked. The words came out as a croak.
“I found you on my doorstep,” she said, “about six hours ago.”
“Danny,” he said.
“Danny’s fine,” she said. “He’s up in his room and he’s fine.”
And now he thought to look around. He was in his own bed, in his room in the basement, dressed in clean sweatpants and a T-shirt.
“Lucila gave me a hand getting you down here,” Alice said. “No one else saw you. And I didn’t get a look at whoever dropped you off. They were gone by the time I got to the door.”
She reached out and pulled a bottom lid low and studied Sweeney’s eye. She said, “More soup?”
He shook his head and said, “Danny.”
Alice nodded. “I know. We’ll get you upstairs to see him as soon as possible. But he’s okay, I promise you.”
He tried to sit up and she stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“I’ve called you in sick,” she said. “Can you tell me what happened?”
He opened his mouth and managed only, “Danny.”
She fed him another spoonful of soup, spilled most of it down the chin and mopped it up with a facecloth.
“Your blood pressure’s back to normal,” Alice said. “And so are your pulse and your pupils. You had me a little worried when you first arrived.”
He said, “Danny,” one more time and then he fell back to sleep.
ALICE WAS GONE when he woke up again. Nadia had taken her place. She was seated on the edge of the bed, reading Limbo. Without taking her eyes from the comic, she said, “I didn’t think you’d ever come around.”
When he didn’t respond, she put the book down and studied him.
“First time can be overwhelming,” she said, all tender concern, which was not her strong suit. “But you’ll get used to it.”
He forced an elaborate swallow and said, “Last I checked, my door had a lock.”
She shrugged.
“I thought you’d be expecting me,” she said. “Besides, locks are for the frightened. And you’re not frightened anymore, are you, Sweeney?”
She looked a little haggard, he thought. Her eyes were dim and her hair was pulled back and limp. In a pair of jeans and a sweater, she looked more like a fatigued soccer mom than the matriarch of a biker tribe.
“Alice will be back soon,” Sweeney said, his voice still a croak but getting stronger.
“No she won’t,” Nadia said. “Alice is upstairs telling Daddy that you’re an addict and a menace to yourself and your boy and the Clinic. So let’s get your ass in gear because we don’t have a lot of time here.”