Part 21 (1/2)

Sarah Eugene Lieber coughed. Her face was red; a vein pulsed at her receding hairline.

Robert stirred, reached out for his mother. Watching her, he began to cry. Tears gathered in his eyes, and his face, thick with baby fat, squeezed the tears out.

Sarah's fit pa.s.sed, and she touched her child's arm, stroked it gently. ”It's okay, honey. Mommy's gonna be alright,” she told him, then she held her palms up. Sores still covered them, red and inflamed, and she cried out.

Robert burst into tears again, his eyes following her as she left the bed.

She checked herself out in the bathroom mirror. Her face was still ripe with blisters, her neck bulged with lymph nodes, hard as rocks, and the nodes below and above her collar bones were enlarged and red. She'd done all they'd asked, had kneeled in their circle and received their hands, their prayers, had gone off her chemotherapy, had been rea.s.sured for weeks that the earth would restore her, .

”And not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing!” she screamed, then began to cry at the pain it caused in her throat. She tore off her gown to stand naked before her mirror. She was no longer thin, but gaunt. Even the smell of food made her nauseous; she hadn't taken more than a few bites of an apple or a banana in weeks. She turned back toward her son, who had sat up and was staring at her, eyes wide, blinking slowly.

She fled the bathroom, went down the hall, looked around her cluttered living room. ”Jimmy?” she called out, but the clock read after ten in the morning: Jimmy was at work, and wouldn't be back until late; he couldn't stand her decomposition, and her newfound faith in her past made him angry. Jimmy had grown up Catholic, and although he hadn't set a foot inside a church since their marriage, he still believed, if rather vaguely, in the tenets and basic dogma of his boyhood church.

Sarah fell to her knees, rifled through a laundry basket overflowing with dirty clothes. She tossed garments out until coming upon a dress. She stood, stepped into it, and padded back to the bedroom to grab Robert.

They called it Earth Cathedral. A sandstone construct in the mission style, the cathedral had been raised by Ca.s.sadaga's founding fathers, men and women who'd fled the Puritanical hysteria of the north, and had been built to the exacting dimensions of an aging Wiccan priest. Stucco textured the two-storied exterior while the gemstone, piercing in the sun, and the tripart.i.te statuary niche centered the parapet. b.u.t.tresses topped with capped urn finials, arched window, and an attic-piercing wound around the building in perfect symmetry.

Sarah parked in the gra.s.s field adjacent to the cathedral.

”Are you okay, Mommy?” asked Robert, his large brown eyes nervously watching her.

She wiped her eyes with the sides of her hands, looked down at her son. ”Don't move, okay? I'll be back in a minute.”

Robert nodded, stuck his thumb in his mouth, watched mildly as his mother slammed the car door and stalked off, leaving him alone. He turned, smacked his palms on the closed car windows, and noticed for the first time how hot it was, even in November, closed up in a car. And how quiet.

10.

Sarah heard the booming voice of Montague Greer. She hesitated outside the door, listening closely, then pushed the doors open and strode in, her palms sliding, pressing down the hem of her dress.

The interior was plain, notably unchurch-like. No sanctuary separated believer from priest. The walls bore no paintings, no graffiti of belief, and the pews were wooden and without padding. Once the pews ended, there was only a high-backed red chair; behind the chair, strangely, a large wooden cross hung by three wires.

She strode down the center aisle. The small congregation turned, watching. Few people made it to the midday service.

Seated in the red chair, Greer watched her, his ancient face expressionless. Then she was standing before him, shaking, and he fixed his eyes on her stomach, where he'd laid his hands the day before.

She took the dress by the shoulders, put her head through its low neck, let the garment slide off her, pool at her feet.

The people didn't gasp; they were silent. Greer breathed in deeply, lifted his eyes.

”Please,” she hissed. ”Please open the door.”

”Sarah,” said Greer.

Sarah, standing naked before him, straightened, looked down at her dress. ”Please,” she repeated.

”What's wrong with death, Sarah?”

”What's wrong with-”

”Yes, death. Stopping. We all must.” At this his eyes clouded over. ”Why are you special?”

She backed up. ”Please,” she asked again. ”I don't want to miss him grow up. Please. Please send me.”

11.

Robert didn't have to be locked in the car long to notice the heat. Sweat beaded on his brow, ran down his cheeks, gathered in his hair. (As soon as Robert saw himself in the car, he began to tremble. Montague watched him carefully as this edged toward convulsion. The memory and image began to merge, the long-suffered dream no dream at all, but only a hazy, long-ago reality.) How long had she been gone? He felt dull. Thoughts moved over him like slow wakes.

Robert climbed over the gears.h.i.+ft and sat on his knees in his mother's seat. His heart sped up as he reached for the steering wheel. She'd never told him not to, exactly, but he understood the tacit prohibition. He glanced around cautiously, but seeing only the sun he turned away, remembering his mother's admonition against staring into it.

Robert looked out the window at what she'd called a church. It looked like no church he'd ever seen.

(Here, his shaking slowed down, as did what he was witnessing. He knew what was coming, though he couldn't think of it. The trance had captured his mind, rendered him only a viewer, incapable of thought. The church was there, crisper than in his dreams, a stark white clay reflecting the sun, and then his mother walked out of the church, slowly; it was as if he were watching film, and this film was missing several clips, as what he saw moved disjointedly, like bad stop-motion animation.) And then the light appeared behind her. Wrapped it tendrils around her. Engulfed her.

Robert watched himself, the boy, staring at his vanis.h.i.+ng mother with mouth agape, eyes wide.

Robert's eyes clicked open. He was pale. ”s.h.i.+t,” he mumbled.

Monty, stroking his chin thoughtfully, said, ”You were under less than a minute when you went into convulsions.”

Robert stared at him. Sweat streaked his cheeks.

”The memory hit before I regressed you, and you screamed your mother's name. It took me fifteen minutes to get hold of you.”

”I-I remember . . . all of it. But I wasn't even five.”

”The mind is a warehouse. Every memory is stored, but as a person ages it becomes more and more difficult to access all the files.”

”Did I -”

”Yes, you described the memory as you reclaimed it. It was much as I remember it.”

”My father told me she burst into some kind of church, and that-”

Monty nodded. ”He didn't think you'd come looking for me, or he imagined I had died long ago. He couldn't accept your mother disappearing in this town. Not here.”

”You should have heard him.” Robert looked up. The last frame of the memory suddenly hit him. ”Where is she?” His mind raced, but the other man only smiled. ”She's not dead, is she?”