The Pact

  Chris wondered whether God had met Emily yet. He closed his eyes, imagining the long blond hair he'd wrapped around his hands like reins; the point of her chin and the soft blue hollow of her throat where he could touch his lips to her pulse. He remembered something he'd read that night: "A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." He hoped, now, Emily had that.

  As he drifted off to sleep, still kneeling on the floor like a penitant, Chris heard God. He came on the sounds of footsteps, of key turns and disembodied whistles. And He murmured, stirring the fine hairs on the back of Chris's neck: "Forgive, and you shall be forgiven."

  GUS WAS AWAKENED BY a heavy object falling across her chest. Startled, she began to fight her way out, only to realize that it was Kate pinning her. "Get up, Mom," she said, her eyes shining, her smile so infectious that Gus momentarily forgot waking meant she'd have to get through another day.

  "What?" she asked groggily. "Did you miss the bus?"

  "There is no bus," Kate said. She sat up, cross-legged. "Come on downstairs." She poked under the covers, receiving a grunt from her father. "You too," she said, and ran from the room.

  Ten minutes later, Gus and James walked into the kitchen, dressed and bleary-eyed. "You want to start the coffee," Gus asked, "or should I?"

  "You can't start the coffee," Kate said, bouncing in front of them. She grabbed each of their hands and drew them toward the shoji screen that separated the kitchen from the living room. "Ta-da!" she trilled, stepped away to reveal a scraggly, potted eucalyptus tree, hastily decorated with a handful of glass balls and ornaments. "Merry Christmas!" she sang, and wrapped her arms around her mother's waist.

  Gus glanced at James over Kate's bowed head. "Sweetheart," she heard herself say. "Did you do all this?"

  Kate nodded shyly. "I know it's kind of dorky, the tree from the foyer and all, but I figured if I cut down something outside you'd be pretty bummed out."

  Gus had a fleeting image of Kate pinned beneath a fallen pine. "This is lovely," she said. "Really." The Christmas lights, small and winking, were on a timer. They faded in and out, reminding Gus of the ambulance parked outside the hospital when she was summoned for Chris.

  Kate walked into the living room and happily settled herself beneath the small tree. "I figured you guys weren't around enough, with everything that's been happening, to decorate." She held out a package to Gus, and another to James. "Here," she said. "Open them."

  Gus waited while James unwrapped a new DayTimer calendar in a faux alligator-skin cover. Then she tore away the wrapping paper from her own gift, a pair of jade earrings. Gus stared at Kate, still beaming, and wondered when her daughter had been to the mall. She wondered when her daughter had decided that at all costs, she was going to celebrate a normal Christmas.

  "Thanks, honey," Gus said, hugging Kate close. And she whispered into the shell of her ear, "For everything."

  Then Kate sat back down again, expectant. Gus fisted her hands in the pockets of her robe and glanced at James. How did you tell your fourteen-year-old you'd completely forgotten Christmas this year? "Your present," she announced extemporaneously, "isn't quite ready yet."

  The smile fell away from Kate's face in degrees.

  "It's ... being sized for you," Gus said.

  A wall went up between them, solid and unforgiving for all its transparency. "What is it?" Kate asked.

  Unwilling to lie any further, Gus turned to her husband, who only shrugged. "Kate," Gus pleaded, but her daughter was already on her feet and accusing.

  "You don't have anything for me at all, do you?" she said thickly. "You're lying." She flung her arm out toward the eucalyptus. "If I hadn't done this lame Christmas thing, you would have just moped around today like you always do."

  "Things are different this year, Kate. You know that with what's happened to Chris--"

  "I know that because of what happened to Chris, you don't even know I'm around!" She grabbed the earring box out of Gus's hands and threw it against the wall. "What do I have to do to make you see me?" she cried. "Kill someone?"

  Gus slapped Kate across the face.

  A heavy shock settled over the room, the only sound the faint hiss of the lights as they glowed and faded. Kate, palm pressed to her burning cheek, whirled and ran out of the room. Trembling, cradling her hand as if it did not belong to her, Gus turned to James. "Do something," she begged.

  He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. And walked out of the house.

  IT WAS ONE OF THOSE rare years when Christmas and Chanukah overlapped. The world was celebrating, which meant that Michael got the day off, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

  He had been sleeping on the couch for months now, so he did not know if Melanie had awakened yet. But he showered in the downstairs bathroom and made himself an English muffin to take in the truck. Then he drove to the cemetery to visit Emily.

  He parked some distance away, preferring the walk for the solitude and peace it offered. Snow crunched beneath his boots and the wind bit at the tips of his ears. At the cemetery gates, he paused to stare up at the wide, blue bowl of the sky.

  Emily's grave was over the top of the hill, hidden by the crest. Michael walked along, thinking about what he would say to her. He had no qualms about speaking to a grave; he talked all the time to things that conventionally were considered unable to understand--horses, cows, cats. He puffed up the last bit of the long path, to the point where he could first see the grave. There were flowers there, brittle stalks now, from the last time Michael had come. And ribbons trailing, and bits of paper bleeding into the snow. And Melanie, sitting on her bottom on the frozen ground, unwrapping gifts.

  "Oh, look at this," she said, when he was close enough to hear. "You're going to love it." And she draped a sapphire pendant over the dead necks of the roses Michael had left behind.

  Michael glanced from the glittering jewelry to the other presents, arrayed like offerings on either side of the marker. A single-cup coffee maker, a novel, several tubes of oil paint and the expensive brushes Emily favored.

  "Melanie," he said sharply. "What are you doing?"

  She turned slowly, dreamily. "Oh," Melanie said. "Hi."

  Michael felt his jaw clench. "Did you bring these things?"

  "Of course," Melanie said, as if he were the crazy one. "Who else?"

  "Who ... who are they for?"

  She stared at him, then raised her brows. "Why, Emily," she said.

  Michael knelt down beside her. "Mel," he said softly, "Emily is dead."

  His wife's eyes filled immediately with tears. "I know," she said thickly. "But you see--"

  "I don't see."

  "It's just that it's her first Chanukah away from home," Melanie said. "And I wanted--I wanted--"

  Michael pulled her into his arms before he had to watch the tears streak down her face. "I know what you wanted," he said, "I want it too." He buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes. "Will you come with me?" He felt her nod against him, her breath warm in his collar. They walked down the path of the cemetery, leaving behind the paints and the brushes, the coffee maker and the sapphires, just in case.

  THE MANCHESTER AIRPORT WAS mobbed on Christmas Day, full of people carrying fruitcake tins and shopping bags ripping at the seams with their presents. Beside Jordan in the waiting lounge, Thomas bounced in his seat. He frowned as his son knocked the small folder with his tickets off his lap for the thousandth time. "You're sure you remember how to make a connection."

  "Yeah," Thomas said. "If the stewardess doesn't take me, I ask someone else at the gate."

  "You don't go yourself," Jordan reiterated.

  "Not in New York City," they said simultaneously.

  Thomas's feet danced impatiently, kicking at the metal rungs of the brace of seats. "Cut that out," Jordan said. "Everyone in this row can feel it."

  "Dad," Thomas asked, "do you think they have snow in Paris?"

  "No," Jordan said. "So you'd better come b
ack home to use those skis." In an act of outright bribery, he'd deliberately bought Thomas a pair of Rossignols for Christmas, giving the gift to his son before he left to join Deborah for the holiday.

  There had been a couple of transatlantic telephone calls, a heated exchange about whether or not Thomas was old enough to travel that far alone, and a flurry of compromise. In fact, for a few days, Jordan had refused Deborah's request. But then he awoke in the middle of the night one weekend and went in to Thomas's room to watch him sleep. He found himself thinking of Dr. Feinstein's questions to Chris Harte: What is it about this that scares the hell out of you? And he realized that his answer was the same as Chris's had been. Up until this point, Thomas's whole life had been filled with Jordan. What if, when given an alternative, it did not remain that way?

  He'd called Deborah the next morning and had given his blessing.

  "Flight 1246 to New York's LaGuardia Airport, now boarding at gate three."

  Thomas jumped to his feet so quickly he tripped over the carry-on bag. "Whoa, hang on," Jordan said, reaching up a hand to steady him. He paused, about to lift the duffel, his eyes on his son. And Jordan realized that he would see this moment forever--one of life's gallery of pictures--Thomas with his head in profile: the soft fuzz of early adolescence on his cheeks, the concentration-camp thinness of his bony arms, the flapping orange "youth" ticket grazing the waist of his jeans. Clearing his throat, Jordan hefted the carry-on bag. "God, this is heavy," he said. "What have you got in here, anyway?"

  Thomas grinned, his eyes dancing. "Just ten or twelve Penthouses," he said. "Why?"

  It had still been a sore point, something they did not talk about but rubbed sharply against every now and then when passing too close near the refrigerator or sidling out of the bathroom. With relief, Jordan felt the tension of the past week dissolve. "Get out of here," he said, and embraced his son.

  Thomas hugged him back, hard. "Give mom a kiss for me," Jordan said.

  The boy drew back. "On the cheek or on the lips?"

  "The cheek," Jordan said, and gently pushed Thomas toward the boarding ramp. He took a deep breath then, and walked toward the plate-glass windows parallel with the belly of the plane. He would wait, he thought, just in case Thomas changed his mind at the last minute. With his hands in his pockets, Jordan stood sentry, watching the jet taxi to the runway and lift on the wind, until it disappeared from his range of vision.

  "MERRY CHRISTMAS," THE OFFICER SAID, grating open the door of the isolation cell.

  Chris sat up, uncurling from the floor. The Bible had fallen beneath the bunk; he quickly slipped it into the waistband of his pants. "Yeah," he murmured, rocking back on his heels.

  The officer grunted at him. "You want to wait till New Year's?"

  Chris blinked. "You mean that's it? I'm out?"

  "Superintendent's feeling charitable today," the officer said, holding the door open so that Chris could pass through. He walked swiftly down the corridor, stopping at the control room. "Where now?"

  "Go Directly to Jail," the officer said, laughing at his own joke.

  "I meant, which security level?"

  "Usually you go back to max," the officer said. "But seeing as how your cellmate said you were provoked, and how you didn't have a DR before you went in the hole, we're putting you back in medium." He opened the door for Chris. "Oh, yeah," he added. "Your buddy Hector's back downstairs."

  "In maximum?" The officer nodded, and Chris briefly closed his eyes.

  Steve was reading in the cell when Chris came in. He slid into his bunk and tried to bury himself under the pillow, smelling that horrible jail smell in the detergent but luxuriating in the very fact of a pillow. He could feel Steve's gaze on him, even through all these layers, deciding whether or not he should speak.

  Finally, because it was coming sooner or later, Chris took the pillow off his face. "Hey," Steve said. "Merry Christmas."

  "Same to you," Chris answered.

  "You all right?"

  Chris shrugged. "Thanks for telling them about Hector." He meant it. Hector was not one to forgive someone for ratting on him.

  "It was nothing," he said.

  "Well, thanks anyway."

  Steve looked away, picking at a nubby pill on the worn sleeve of his shirt. "I've got something for you," he said casually. "For Christmas."

  Horrified, Chris panicked. He'd never thought about giving gifts in here, for God's sake. "I don't have anything for you," he said.

  "As a matter of fact," Steve said, reaching beneath his bunk, "you do." He extracted a nasty looking instrument, fashioned out of the shaft of a Bic pen and a long, lethal-looking needle. "Tattoos," he whispered.

  Chris wanted to ask how he'd gotten the needle--he could not imagine any weekender sticking that up his ass--but he knew that if he was going to do this, he didn't have time. Jail tattoos--and the items used to create them--were illegal. Having one, right out in the open, raised you a notch in respect because you were flaunting your trespasses right under the officers' noses.

  What Steve was really giving him for Christmas was a way to save face.

  He held out his arm, unsure if he really wanted to do this but clearheaded enough to realize that if he wanted to escape AIDS, he'd damn well better go first. With a quick glance toward the officer making rounds, Steve took out a lighter--another contraband surprise--and held the needle over the flame.

  Chris rested his elbow on his knee and felt the first searing burn of flesh. It smelled oddly sweet, like roasting meat, and it sent pain straight down to his groin. Clenching his fist, he watched his own blood run down his bicep as Steve heated, carved, and cut. Then he felt Steve squirt the ink cartridge from the Bic into the wound, rubbing it into the raw skin where it would permanently set. "You can't see till you wash it off good," Steve said, "but it's an eight ball." He looked up at Chris, his eyes clear and sharp. "Because we both seem to be stuck behind it."

  Chris pulled his sleeve down as far as it would go, licking at his fingers to rub off the residue of blood and ink. An officer drifted by the cell, and Steve pressed the lighter into his hand. "Do one for me," he said. "Please."

  Chris's hands shook as he cauterized the needle and pressed it against Steve's upper arm. Steve jerked, then tightened his muscles. Chris drew the circle, the figure eight, and the black background. Then he rubbed ink into the cuts and quickly pressed the needle back into Steve's hands.

  Their fingers brushed. "Is it true," Steve asked, without glancing up, "about the baby?"

  Chris thought of Jordan, who had told him not to say a word to anyone. He thought of these matching tattoos, branding them two of a kind. And he thought of words he'd read last night in the filth of the isolation cell: "Listen to my voice and I shall be your God, and you shall be my people."

  Chris stared at his friend, his confidant, his congregation. "Yes," he said.

  IT HAD BEEN A GOOD VISIT. Michael stood up, as was his custom now, and watched Chris leave the basement of the jail. Today, he had not been planning to come. But seeing Melanie at the gravesite had unnerved him, and he wanted to tell someone about it. In the end, he hadn't told Chris--it didn't seem quite right, after all--but something about being here on Christmas Day eased his conscience. If he had not had the chance to speak to Emily that morning, at least he could talk to Chris this afternoon.

  He wished the officer a happy holiday and jogged up the stairwell to the control room. It was the only way out of the jail; you were locked inside to visit with an inmate.

  He stood patiently behind a woman in a camel's-hair coat, her hair concealed by a fluffy mohair cap. "Yes," she said to the officer. "I'm here to visit Chris Harte."

  "Popular guy," the officer said. He bellowed over the loudspeaker, "Harte to Control."

  Michael felt his heart squeeze under his ribs. "Gus," he said, his mouth dry.

  She whirled, her cap tumbling off and her bright fall of hair spilling over the lapels of her coat. "Michael!" she gasped. "What are you d
oing here?"

  "Apparently," he said, smiling wryly, "the same thing as you."

  Her mouth worked for a moment without making a sound. "You ... you visit Chris?"

  Michael nodded. "I have been," he admitted. "Recently."

  They stared for a moment. "How are you," Gus asked, at the same moment Michael said, "How has this been?" And, shaking their heads, they both smiled. A bright blush stained Gus's cheeks, and she glanced toward the staircase. "I better go," she said.

  "Merry Christmas," Michael answered.

  "You too! Oh ... "

  "It's okay."

  "Happy Chanukah."

  "That too." Michael smiled. Gus put her hand on the doorframe of the staircase but did not move into it. "Do you ... I mean, would you maybe want to get a cup of coffee afterward?"

  She smiled, her whole face lighting. "I'd like that," she said. "But I ... Chris ... "

  "I know. I'll wait," Michael said. He leaned against the wall and folded his coat over his arm. "I've got all the time in the world."

  PART III

  THE TRUTH

  And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

  --KAHLIL GIBRAN

  The Prophet

  That a lie which is half a truth is ever

  the blackest of lies; That a lie which is all a lie may be met

  and fought with outright; But a lie which is part a truth is a

  harder matter to fight.

  --ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  The Grandmother

  NOW

  February 1998

  All in all, the Honorable Leslie F. Puckett was not a bad draw for a trial judge.

  Three times in the past, as both prosecutor and defense attorney, Jordan had been involved in cases over which Puckett presided. Rumor had it that his severe approach and razor-sharp critiques of trial attorneys were grounded in his own insecurity about his given name--Leslie not being as masculine as he would have liked--but he dispensed barbs to both prosecution and defense with equanimity. That aside, the only caveat to a case with Judge Puckett was his affinity for almonds, which he kept in glass jars on his desk in both the courtroom and chambers, and cracked open loudly with his teeth.

  Pretrial hearings were usually held in open court, but the severity of Chris's charge and the publicity it had attracted led everyone involved to believe the meeting was best conducted in the judge's chambers. Puckett, black robes fluttering around his ankles, strode into the room with Jordan and Barrie Delaney hurrying in his wake. All three sat down, and Puckett slid an almond out of the glass jar and popped it into his mouth.