The Pact

  "CONGRATULATIONS, DR. HARTE," the receptionist said on Wednesday morning.

  For a moment, James stared at her. What the hell could she be applauding him for? When he'd left the house this morning, Chris had still been sitting on the couch where James had left him the night before, staring blankly at the same Spanish-language television channel. Gus had been in the kitchen, making a breakfast that James could have told her Chris would not eat. There was not much in his life, right now, that could call for congratulations.

  A colleague clapped him on the back as he made his way to his office. "Always knew it would happen to one of us," he said, grinning, and walked off.

  James entered his small consultation room and closed the door behind him before anyone else could say something bizarre. Sitting on his desk was the mail he'd not had a chance to pore over since Friday. But open, on top of the stack, was the New England Journal of Medicine. Their annual report listing the best doctors, by field, was splayed over several pages. And under ophthalmological surgery, circled in red, was James's name.

  "Holy cow," he said, a smile starting somewhere in the region of his heart and spreading outward. He picked up the phone and dialed home, wanting to share the news with Gus, but there was no answer. He glanced up at his Harvard diplomas, considering how the award would look laminated.

  Feeling much lighter in spirit, James hung up his coat and trekked through the corridors, in search of his first patient. If any of the staff knew about Chris's stay over the weekend, they did not mention it; or maybe the NEJM honor had sup- planted the less savory rumor. He stopped at an examination room, pulling the file and flipping through the history of Mrs. Edna Neely.

  "Mrs. Neely," he said, swinging open the door. "How are you doing?"

  "No better, or I would have canceled the appointment," the elderly woman said.

  "Let's see if we can fix that," he said. "Now, you remember what I said last week about macular degeneration?"

  "Doctor," she said, "I'm here for eye problems. Not senility."

  "Of course," James answered smoothly. "Let's get this angiogram out of the way, then." He directed Mrs. Neely to a big camera and seated her in front of it. Then he took the hypodermic of fluorescein and injected it into Mrs. Neely's arm. "You might feel a burning sensation in your arm. The dye is what we're looking for," he said. "It will travel from your vein to your heart, and then around the body, eventually getting up to the eye. The dye stays in normal blood vessels, but will ooze out of the abnormal, hemorrhaging ones that caused your macular degeneration. We'll figure out where they are, exactly, and treat them."

  It took twelve seconds, James knew, for the dye to travel from the arm to the heart to the eye. The light, in the back of the eye, illuminated the fluorescent dye. Like the tributaries of a river, the normal blood vessels of Mrs. Neely's retina branched out in fine, tentative lines. The abnormal vessels were sunbursts, minuscule fireworks, which softened into puddles of white dye.

  After ten minutes, when all the dye was gone, James turned off the camera. "All right, Mrs. Neely," he said, hunkering down to her level. "Now we know where to guide the laser treatment."

  "What's that going to do to me?"

  "Well, we hope it will stabilize the damaged retina. AMD is a serious problem, but there's a chance we can save some vision, although it might not be as good as it was before you noticed the disturbance."

  "I'm going to go blind?"

  "No," he promised. "That won't happen. You may lose some central vision--the kind you use for reading, or driving--but you'll be able to walk around, shower, cook."

  He waited a moment, and then Mrs. Neely gifted him with a lovely smile. "I heard them talking in the waiting room, Dr. Harte. They said you're one of the best." She reached across the small space that separated them and patted his hand. "You'll take care of me."

  James stared into her dilated, distorted eye. He nodded, suddenly drained of all his earlier enthusiasm. This accolade was not an honor, it was a mistake. Because James knew firsthand what it had been like for Mrs. Neely to sit down one evening and realize the door was not the same shape it had been minutes ago, the newspaper was not printed as clearly, the world was not the way she remembered it. The panel at the New England Journal of Medicine would rescind the award when they learned about his suicidal son, on trial for murder. Surely you did not pay homage to a vision specialist who had not seen this coming.

  "YOU PROMISED," Chris said heatedly. "You said the day I got out. And it's already a whole day past that."

  Gus sighed. "I know what I said, sweetheart. I just don't know if it's such a good idea."

  Chris jumped up from the kitchen chair. "You already stopped me once from going to her," he said. "Have you got a sedative in the fridge, Mom? Because that's the only way you're going to do it again." He came so close his words spat against her cheek. "I'm bigger than you," he said softly. "And I'll get by you if I want to. I'll walk the whole way if I have to."

  Gus closed her eyes. "No," she said. "All right."

  "All right?"

  "I'll take you."

  They drove in silence to the cemetery. It was actually within walking distance of the high school; Gus remembered Chris telling her that some kids liked to come there during free periods to do their homework and their reading. Chris got out of the car. At first, Gus looked away, pretending to read a gum wrapper trapped in the fold of the passenger seat. But then she could not help herself. She watched Chris kneel down beside the rectangular mound, covered with its profusion of still-fresh flowers. She saw him run a finger over the chilled lips of roses, the hawked throat of an orchid.

  He stood up far more quickly than she imagined he would and came back to the car. But he went to her window and knocked for her to roll it down. "How come," he asked, "there's no gravestone?"

  Gus looked at the freshly turned earth. "It's too soon," she said. "But I think in the Jewish faith, it's different anyway. It doesn't go up for six months or so."

  Chris nodded and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Which way is the top?" he asked.

  Gus looked at him dumbly. "What do you mean?"

  "The head," he explained. "Which end is Emily's head at?"

  Shocked, Gus glanced wildly around the cemetery. The plots were not straight, but fairly haphazard. However, the predominant number of headstones were facing a certain way. "I guess the far end," she said. "I'm not sure."

  Chris walked away to kneel at the grave again, and Gus thought, Ah, of course. He wants to talk to her. But to her amazement Chris straddled the slight mound and lay down on top of it, his arms holding close the flower arrangements he was crushing, his head and shoes just spanning the six feet, his face pressed into the earth. Then he stood up, dry-eyed, and walked back to the Volvo. Gus put it in gear and continued along the cemetery road, shaking with the effort not to look at her son, whose mouth was ringed with a lipstick of soil as branding as any kiss.

  THEN

  December 1993

  Chris rode up to Sugarloaf in Emily's parents' car because they wanted to hook together their Game Boys and have a Tetris marathon. They were going skiing for Christmas, renting a condo with Em's family. Aerosmith blared from the tape deck, the speakers in the front turned down low. "Jeez," Chris laughed, his thumbs pounding the miniature computer. "You are so cheating."

  Huddled against her side of the seat, Emily snorted. "You are so lying."

  "Am not," Chris said.

  "Are too."

  "Oh, right."

  "Whatever."

  Driving, Michael glanced at his wife. "This," he said, "is why we never had another kid."

  Melanie smiled and looked out the windshield at the taillights of the Hartes' car. "Do you think they're listening to Dvorak and eating Brie?"

  "No," Chris said, glancing up. "If Kate's getting her way, they're probably singing 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.'" He turned back to the small screen. "Hey," he said. "That's not fair."

  "You s
houldn't have answered my parents," Emily said sweetly. "I win."

  Chris flushed. "What's the point of playing if you're going to do that?"

  "It was a fair game!"

  "Fair my butt," Chris shouted.

  "Hey," Melanie and Michael said simultaneously.

  "Sorry," Chris sulked. Emily folded her arms across her chest, smiling faintly. Chris turned toward the window and scowled. So what if Emily could beat him at Tetris? It was a stupid game, anyway, for total geeks. He'd show her this weekend. He could ski circles around her.

  That made him feel better. Charitably, he held out the Game Boy. "Want to play another round?"

  Emily stuck her nose up in the air and shifted so that she wouldn't have to see him.

  "God," Chris said. "Now what."

  "You owe me an apology," Emily said.

  "What for?"

  She turned hot, dark eyes on him. "You said I cheat. I don't cheat."

  "Fine, you don't cheat. Let's play."

  "I don't think so," Emily huffed. "You have to say it like you mean it."

  Chris narrowed his eyes, and threw down the Game Boy like a gauntlet. Fuck the Tetris game, fuck the apology, fuck Emily. He didn't know why he'd let her talk him into riding in her car, anyway. She could be a lot of fun, sure. Then again, sometimes he wanted to kill her.

  CHRIS'S MOM WAS so annoyed that his father had decided to go hunting with a man he'd met on the chair lift, of all places, that she did not speak to him all Christmas Eve morning, while he was getting ready to leave.

  "But he brought his beagle," his father tried to explain. What was the chance of meeting a guy on the chair lift who had carried along spare shotguns and his hunting dog, just for a foray through the Maine woods? And was it his father's fault that when Chris heard about it, he asked if he could go?

  "What are we looking for?" Chris asked, all but bouncing in the passenger seat. "Moose?"

  "Not the right season," his father said. "Probably pheasant."

  But when they met Hank Myers at the end of an unmarked road in the middle of nowhere, the man said it was a good day for rabbit.

  Hank was happy to meet Chris, and handed him a 12-gauge shotgun. The three men tramped into the heavy cover of the woods, with Hank's dog, Lucy, sniffing out the brush piles. They moved in the way of hunters, soft and alert, silence chaining their movements as if they were marionettes.

  Chris kept his eyes trained on the snow, trying to see the strange five-footed pattern of a hare print, the final indentation made by a dragging tail. It was blinding, white on white. After an hour his feet were freezing; his nose was running; and he couldn't feel his earlobes where they stuck out from beneath his hat. Even skiing with Em wasn't as boring as this.

  Who ever heard of eating hare stew on Christmas Eve, anyway?

  Suddenly Lucy pounced. Beneath a tangle of branches Chris saw a flat-footed white hare with a black patch eye take off at a dead run.

  Chris immediately raised his gun and sighted out the hare, which was moving so goddamned fast he didn't see how anyone ever shot one of the things. Lucy was still on its scent, but quite a ways behind. Chris suddenly felt a hand pushing down the barrel of the shotgun. Hank Myers smiled at him. "Don't need to do that," he said. "Thing about hares is, they run in a circle. Lucy won't catch up, but that's okay. She'll run the hare back to where it started."

  Sure enough, as Chris waited, the dog's barks grew softer and more distant ... then started coming toward them again. Out of nowhere the snowshoe hare burst back into the perimeter of his vision, scrambling for the pile of brush where it had been flushed out.

  Chris raised his shotgun, sighted the flying hare, and pulled the trigger.

  The recoil jerked him backward; he felt his father's hand steady his shoulder. "You got him!" Hank Myers crowed, and Lucy leaped over a stump to sniff at the catch, her tail wagging wide as a flag.

  Hank stomped toward the kill, grinning. "Hell of a shot," he said. "Blew it clean apart." He lifted the animal by its ears and held it out to Chris. "Not much left of him, but that's neither here nor there."

  Chris had killed deer; he would have enjoyed hunting moose or elk or bear. But he took one look at the hare and felt sick. He did not know if it was the contrast of the white snow with the bright blood, or the small stuffed-toy body of the hare itself, or the fact that this was the first time he'd preyed on something smaller and more defenseless than himself--but he turned to his side and threw up.

  He heard his father swear under his breath. Chris wiped his mouth on his jacket and lifted his head. "Sorry," he said, tasting his own disgust.

  Hank Myers spat in the snow and glanced at James. "Thought you said he hunted with you regularly."

  James nodded, his mouth a tight line. "He does."

  Chris did not look at his father. He knew he would see the veiled mix of anger and embarrassment that came when a situation turned out in any way differently from what James had expected it to be. "I'll clean it," he said, holding out his hands for the hare, trying to save face.

  Hank started to give him the animal, and then realized Chris was wearing his ski parka. "How about you and me trade coats?" he said, huffing in the cold as he shrugged out of his hunting jacket. Chris quickly slipped into the other man's coat, then lifted the hare and slid it into the rubber pouch in the back of the jacket. He could still feel the hare's body heat.

  He walked beside his father in silence, afraid of saying anything and afraid of not saying anything at all, thinking of the hare that had circled home, expecting safety.

  GUS SLID HER HAND beneath the waist of her husband's boxers. "Not a creature was stirring," she whispered. "Not even a mouse." She rolled on top of him, her hand working between his legs. "Seems I found a creature after all." James grinned, breaking apart her kiss. He did not understand his good fortune, but Gus had given up her anger by the time he and Chris had returned home from hunting. Which was a good thing, given how abysmal an experience it had been. He felt Gus's fingers squeeze his testicles. "Now," she murmured, "is not a good time to laugh at me."

  "I wasn't laughing. I was just thinking."

  Gus raised a brow. "About what?"

  James laughed. "Santa Claus coming," he said.

  Gus snickered and sat up, unbuttoning her nightgown in a slow, sweet striptease. "What do you think," she said, "about unwrapping one of your presents tonight?"

  "That depends," James said. "Is it a big one?"

  "Say yes, buster, and it's the only present you're getting," Gus warned, tossing her nightgown off the bed.

  James pulled her on top of him, running his hands over her back and buttocks. "How about that," he murmured. "It's just my size."

  "Good," Gus gasped, as his fingers moved between her legs. "Because I wouldn't know where to return it."

  James felt her legs clench around his hips and her body open for him. They rolled on the bed so that James was above her, locked their hands palm to palm. He eased inside her and pressed his mouth hard against her collarbone, afraid of what he might say or shout when he lost himself.

  When it was over, Gus dissolved beneath him, her breath labored and her skin damp. James gathered her close, tucked her head beneath his. "I think," he said, "I must have been very good this year."

  He felt Gus whisper a kiss on his chest. "You were," she murmured.

  "YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS," Michael said, "but I heard hoofbeats on the roof."

  Melanie paused in the act of setting her glasses on the nightstand. "You've got to be kidding."

  "I'm not," Michael insisted. "While you were in the shower."

  "Hoofbeats?"

  "As in reindeer."

  She laughed out loud. "I suppose Santa's hiding in the closet."

  Michael scowled. "I'm serious. Wait--listen to that. What does it sound like to you?"

  Melanie tipped her head, hearing what indeed sounded like the scrape and pound of something on a solid surface. Her eye shot toward the ceiling, and then she frowned an
d turned toward the wall that the headboard rested against. She pressed her ear against the Sheetrock. "You hear Gus and James," she announced.

  "Gus and--"

  Melanie nodded, and smacked the headboard against the wall, so that Michael would understand. "Reindeer, my foot."

  Michael grinned. "Gus and James?" he said.

  Melanie flipped back the covers and got into bed. "Who else would be in there?"

  "I know. But James?"

  Melanie shut off the lamp beside the bed. She crossed her arms over her chest, her ears now straining for the next thump and cry on the other side of the wall. "What's the matter with James?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Isn't it easier for you to imagine Gus doing that, rather than James?"

  Melanie frowned. "I don't usually think about either of them doing it." She raised her eyebrows. "Do you?"

  Michael blushed. "Well, sure. It's crossed my mind once or twice."

  "Such lofty pursuits."

  "Oh, come on," Michael laughed. "I bet they've thought about us." In one swift move, he rolled toward her. "We could give them something to listen to," he suggested.

  Melanie was horrified. "Absolutely not!"

  They both settled back on their respective pillows. Through the thin wall came a low, sweet keen. Michael laughed and turned onto his side. Long after he'd fallen asleep, Melanie found herself still listening to her neighbors' lovemaking, trying to imagine those moans rolling from her own throat.

  CHRIS COULD REMEMBER Christmas Eves when it was impossible to sleep, thinking of the race car under the tree, the train set, the new bike. It was a good feeling, insomnia fueled by excitement. Not at all what he was feeling now.

  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the dead hare.

  Chris thought of what his father sometimes said when he was haunted by a really bad day at the hospital: What he needed was a good, stiff drink.

  He waited until his parents finished playing Santa--pretty stupid, considering that Kate didn't even believe anymore--and then crept downstairs to the condo's kitchen. He knew there was a bottle of Sambuca in the freezer. His father and Emily's had done shots over a couple of good cigars the other night. It was still three quarters full.

  Chris found a juice glass in the cabinet and filled it to the brim. He sniffed the alcohol--it reminded him of licorice--and took a sip. Fire ran down his throat, to his belly. Hare, he thought, grinning. What hare?