The Shadow Wife

  “Do you know him, Alan?” Lisbeth asked. “Gabriel? From the hospital?”

  “I’ve seen him around, but no, I don’t know him personally,” Alan said. “I asked around a bit, though, did a bit of checking, and—”

  “Alan, you didn’t!” Carlynn scolded him.

  “Yes, I did,” he answered.

  “What did you say to the people you asked?” Lisbeth looked worried. “Will it get back to him?”

  “I was very discreet,” he said. “I just tried to find out what kind of fellow he is. Make sure he’s not a womanizer, that’s all.”

  Carlynn knew Alan had worried, not so much that Gabriel might be a womanizer, but that he might want to be seen with a white woman to raise his status. “Lisbeth could be ruining her life if she goes out with him,” he’d told her. “White men might not want her if they find out.” Carlynn had to admit she’d had the same concern.

  “Well, what did you learn?” Lisbeth asked.

  “That he was married before.”

  “He’s divorced?” Lisbeth looked brokenhearted.

  “No, he’s widowed. He was married to a woman—a Negro woman, in case you’re wondering—and she died five years ago of breast cancer.”

  “Oh!” Lisbeth’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, how sad. Poor Gabriel.”

  “He apparently was very attentive to her and cared for her himself as much as he could. And he hasn’t dated since. At least not according to my source.”

  “Who was your source?” Carlynn asked, curious.

  “None of your business,” he answered, but he winked at her, and she was certain she knew. Alan was friends with Lloyd Peterson, Lisbeth’s boss and Gabriel Johnson’s friend and tennis partner.

  “Poor Gabriel,” Lisbeth said again, her eyes full of sympathy.

  Carlynn studied the faces of the tourists as they strolled past the restaurant eating cocktails, laughing and talking, and it was a moment before she became aware of the fact that every single face she could see in front of her—every one!—was white. Gabriel Johnson would feel out of place here, she thought. He managed at the hospital, though, and he was out of place there, as well. He was probably well accustomed to feeling that way.

  Lisbeth spotted him first. “There he is,” she whispered, grabbing Carlynn’s arm again with quiet excitement.

  Carlynn looked through the crowd to see Gabriel walking toward them, his dark face standing out from the pale faces of the tourists. When he saw Lisbeth, he broke into a grin and waved, and the color in Lisbeth’s cheeks grew brighter and her eyes glowed. Carlynn thought she had never looked prettier.

  Gabriel took Lisbeth’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s so good to see you again,” he said.

  “You, too.” She smiled. The two of them looked positively lost in one another.

  “Yoo-hoo,” Carlynn said. “Remember us?”

  Lisbeth laughed. “Gabriel, this is my sister, Carlynn, and her boyfriend, Alan Shire.”

  “Drs. Shire and Kling,” Gabriel said, shaking Alan’s hand and nodding to Carlynn. “We’ve crossed paths in the hospital from time to time. Good to finally meet you both.”

  “Please,” Alan said. “Call us Alan and Carlynn.”

  Carlynn studied his face. She had honestly never thought before about colored men being handsome or ugly or anything in between, the way she did when she saw a white man. But looking at Gabriel through Lisbeth’s eyes, she could see how attractive he was. He wore his hair very short, close and tight to his scalp. His face was fairly long and thin, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses that made him look very serious, but that could not quite mask the sparkle in his dark eyes.

  “Let’s eat,” Alan said, and he motioned toward the door of the restaurant.

  The hostess led them to the upper story of the restaurant, to a table in the darkest corner, away from the windows and the other tables, and Carlynn couldn’t help but wonder if Gabriel’s presence had something to do with her choice.

  “We’d prefer a table by the window,” Alan said, not moving to sit down.

  “Certainly, sir,” the hostess said, as though she wondered why she hadn’t thought of that herself. She led them to an empty table next to a window. Alan thanked her, and the four of them sat down.

  Carlynn felt her own anxiety mount as other diners glanced in their direction, but Lisbeth did not seem to care a bit. She and Gabriel were already chatting, their heads close together as they laughed about some subject that had meaning only to the two of them. Carlynn wondered if she and Alan were needed here at all.

  Their table overlooked the harbor. It was dark outside, but they could see the wharf lights reflected off the boats lined up along the pier.

  “Thanks for getting us this table, Alan,” Lisbeth said, straightening in her seat as though realizing she and Gabriel had been rude to ignore him and Carlynn. She giggled a little, still amused by her conversation with Gabriel, and Carlynn thought she had never heard that girlish sound from her sister, not even when they were children.

  They ordered cioppino all around, and talked about the hospital. Alan and Gabriel had been at SF General for about the same length of time and knew many people in common, so Carlynn and Lisbeth listened as they asked each other about various incidents that had taken place at the hospital. Occasionally, the men included Carlynn or Lisbeth in their discussion, but only due to the demands of good etiquette. The women didn’t belong in this conversation, and that was all right. They smiled at each other as Gabriel and Alan exchanged stories and laughter. The bond between the two men could not have developed more quickly, Carlynn thought, if they had been locked together in a prison cell.

  Once their huge bowls of cioppino arrived at the table, the men turned their attention to the food. Gabriel buttered a piece of sourdough bread, holding the slice in his right hand and using the knife with his left, deftly maneuvering it despite the missing fingers.

  “You and Alan are both lefties,” Carlynn said.

  “Well,” Gabriel smiled, “I was left-handed before this happened.” He nodded toward the injured hand. “I still use it when I can. I can write with it, but I can’t hold a racket. I had to learn to play tennis right-handed, which is still a challenge, as Lloyd Peterson can probably tell you.”

  “What happened?” Lisbeth asked the question neither she nor Alan dared to.

  “I was at Port Chicago,” Gabriel said.

  “My God.” Alan, his spoon halfway to his mouth, sat back in his chair.

  Carlynn exchanged an ignorant glance with her sister. She knew something big had happened during the war at Port Chicago, a town about fifty miles north of where they were now sitting, but she and Lisbeth had been young and well-protected teens at the time.

  “What was it like?” Alan asked.

  Gabriel worked a clam free of its shell. “It’s not the best dinner-table topic,” he said, looking apologetic.

  “I want to hear,” Lisbeth insisted. “Unless…of course, if you’re uncomfortable talking about it.”

  “Do you know what happened at Port Chicago?” he asked Lisbeth.

  Something bad, Carlynn would have answered, but her sister surprised her.

  “An explosion of some sort?” Lisbeth asked. “Some men were loading explosives onto a ship and something went wrong?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Something went very wrong.” He sipped from his drink, then continued. “I joined the navy in 1943. They’d only opened their ranks to Negroes the year before, but I felt it was my duty to volunteer. I already had a degree from Berkeley, and I was married.” He looked at Lisbeth, touching the back of her hand gently with his fingertips, and said only to her, “Which is something I’ll tell you about later.” Lisbeth nodded.

  “I loved to sail, and I wanted to go to sea,” Gabriel continued. “I went through boot camp and training school and then off to Port Chicago, where I expected to ship out. But when I got there, I found out the navy wasn’t letting Negroes into combat. Instead, they put us on the
loading docks, loading munitions onto ships, with no special training whatsoever. We knew it was dangerous, but I don’t think we had any idea how much so.”

  “All the men doing the loading were Negroes,” Alan added as he reached for another piece of bread. “And the guys supervising them were white, if I remember correctly.”

  “That’s right,” Gabriel said. “And there was some wagering going on among the white officers as to whose division could load the most munitions in the least amount of time. So, as you can imagine, safety was sacrificed for speed.”

  “Were you actually on the pier when it happened?” Alan asked.

  “No.” Gabriel shook his head. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I had been. I’d been working the night shift for months, and I don’t remember why, but I got moved over to days just the week before. Someone was watching out for me, though I sure don’t know why I was spared and three hundred other fellows weren’t.” He set down his spoon. “I was in the barracks, about a mile from the pier, and we heard a huge explosion and saw a white light through the windows. We started to run out, but a second explosion hit, this one even bigger, and the next thing I knew, my buddies and I were flying all over the place, the walls tumbling down on top of us. Outside, it was like firecrackers going off, and the sky was yellow. That’s the last thing I remember—that yellow sky. I woke up in the hospital like this.” He held up his hand. “And I knew I’d been very, very lucky.”

  “You weren’t one of the men in the mutiny trial, were you?” Alan asked.

  “What was the mutiny trial?” Carlynn asked as she slipped a clam from its shell.

  “No, no,” Gabriel said. “I received a medical discharge, so I was spared that, too.” He turned to Carlynn. “The Negro seamen were sent right back to doing the same type of work, with no extra training, no counseling to help them deal with what they’d been through, and some of them refused to do it. The white officers testified against them, and they were convicted of mutiny.”

  “Would you have been one of them if you hadn’t been discharged?” Lisbeth asked. Her bowl of cioppino was still full, and Carlynn wondered if she was too nervous to eat.

  “I don’t know the answer to that one, Lisbeth,” he said. “I was angry. I had a degree from Berkeley, and I wasn’t the only one of those men who had tried to make something of himself and been treated more like an animal than a human being. I think if they’d made me go back, yes, I would have fought it. At least I hope I would have had the guts to stand up to the navy.”

  It was hard for Carlynn to imagine life through his eyes. She’d known men in the service. They’d moved about freely, specializing in any area they chose for the most part. How humiliating it must have been for Gabriel, with his educational background, to be told he wasn’t the right color to fight for his country. She wanted to offer him sympathy, but he didn’t seem to need it. His left hand had been blown to bits, and he’d learned to use his right hand. He’d lost his wife, and he’d survived and moved on. She felt joy for her sister that she had found such a fine man.

  Gabriel suddenly looked a bit uncomfortable at having consumed so much of the attention at the table. “Let’s move on to a more pleasant topic,” he said, looking directly at Carlynn. “You two truly do look alike,” he said, lifting a scallop from his bowl. “It’s hard to say which of you is more beautiful. Are you interested in sailing as much as Lisbeth is, Carlynn?”

  “No,” Carlynn said with a shudder. “That was Lisbeth’s passion.”

  “We went out with our father one time,” Lisbeth explained, “and capsized. Carlynn got stuck underneath the boat for a bit, and she decided sailing was not her cup of tea.”

  Gabriel winced. “I don’t blame you for that,” he said to Carlynn.

  “Lisbeth was a much better swimmer than I was,” Carlynn said.

  “The same thing happened to my sister and myself when we were kids,” Gabriel said. “We were sailing on this estuary in Oakland when we capsized. She was stuck underneath for a couple of minutes. I dived under and got her, and she wasn’t breathing when I brought her to shore.”

  “What happened?” Lisbeth asked.

  “Well, she was essentially dead,” Gabriel said. “But my great-grandmother was there. We were having a picnic, and all the aunts and everyone were with us. Granny grew up in the South, in Alabama, and she was a healer.”

  Lisbeth and Carlynn exchanged quick glances.

  “One of my aunts did mouth-to-mouth on her, but it didn’t work. Then Granny came over and held on to my sister’s shoulders, and said, ‘In the name of Jesus, child, breathe!’”

  His voice rose, and when a few of the diners turned to look at him, he grimaced. “Sorry,” he said to his tablemates with a laugh. “I got carried away. Anyhow,” he continued in a softer tone, “my sister started breathing. In a few minutes, she was good as new.”

  The three of them stared at him in silence.

  Gabriel looked at Lisbeth. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked. “I’m sorry I shouted.”

  Lisbeth touched the back of his hand. “That’s not it,” she said. “You didn’t say anything wrong.”

  Carlynn was ready to explode with questions, but Alan beat her to it. He leaned forward in his chair. “Tell us more about your granny,” he said.

  Gabriel didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at them suspiciously, and Carlynn wondered what they were giving away on their faces.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  “Please,” Carlynn said. “Just tell us about Granny.”

  “Well, she had a reputation,” he said slowly, leaning back in his chair, still obviously confused by whatever strange hunger he saw in their eyes. “She always fixed me up when I was a kid.”

  “Do you mean she cleaned your cuts and put Band-Aids on them?” Alan asked.

  “Or did she use herbs or her own special poultice?” Carlynn added.

  Gabriel shook his head. “No. If I had a cut or hurt myself she would hold me, or put her hand on the place that had been injured, and she’d go into a trance of some sort and talk about God and Jesus, and I’d be better. Everyone in the family turned to her when they were sick. Even the neighbors. Even the white neighbors. I remember wishing she was still alive when I lost my fingers, although I’m not sure she could have done much about that.” He smiled.

  “What was the most remarkable healing she ever performed?” Lisbeth asked.

  “I think bringing my sister back from the dead was pretty remarkable,” Gabriel said. “But she also cured a neighbor boy’s polio.”

  “Was this polio diagnosed by a physician?” Alan asked.

  “Yes. And it was very obvious that he had it. He needed to use an iron lung sometimes. But Granny actually moved into his house, into the same room he lived in, and she’d pray with him and…I don’t know what-all she did, but that kid was cured in a month’s time.”

  Alan turned to look at Carlynn, and she could see the question in his eyes. Can we tell him? he was asking her. They couldn’t keep hounding Gabriel with their own questions without telling him why they were filled with curiosity. She liked Gabriel, but she’d only known him for slightly more than an hour. And he worked at SF General, and he also liked to talk a lot. Who might he tell?

  Lisbeth caught her eye, giving her the slightest of nods.

  “All right, I’m beginning to feel left out here.” Gabriel set down his spoon, but the frustration in his voice had a playful edge to it. “You three are communicating with each other wordlessly, back and forth across this table, and I would love to know what the secret is.”

  Carlynn took in a breath. “Can you keep this quiet?” she asked him.

  “Of course.”

  “I seem to be able to heal people sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how it happens, but that’s why we’re asking you questions about your great-grandmother. We’re all very interested in the phenomenon.”

  “My.” Gabriel looked a bit stunned. “I wasn’t ex
pecting that. Tell me more. How do you do it? Who have you healed?”

  The three of them started talking at once, and the conversation lasted into dessert. They speculated about everything. Could his great-grandmother have cured the neighbor of polio without living in his room with him? And what did invoking the name of Jesus have to do with her healing?

  “I think it’s all the same thing,” Alan said finally. “Whatever your great-grandmother did and what Carlynn does is connected. It’s not the religiosity involved. But maybe it does have to do with faith. I just don’t know.”

  Gabriel looked at Lisbeth. “You must have this ability, too,” he said. “After all, you have the same genetic makeup as your sister. Have you ever tried?”

  The color rose to Lisbeth’s cheeks. “I don’t have it,” she said with certainty. “There must be something more than genes at play.”

  Gabriel covered her hand with his. “I guess one healer in a family is enough,” he said.

  By the time they left the restaurant, Carlynn had the feeling she’d known Gabriel for years instead of hours. He fit in well with the three of them, and his adoration and admiration of Lisbeth was clear.

  “Can we give you a lift home, Lisbeth?” Carlynn asked.

  “I was hoping to have the honor of driving Lisbeth home,” Gabriel said before Lisbeth could answer.

  “I’d like that.” Lisbeth easily put her hand through Gabriel’s arm, and the two of them started walking down the wharf together, and this time Carlynn didn’t even notice that Gabriel’s face was not like any of the others.

  21

  MIDMORNING FOUND THE WOMEN’S WING BUSTLING WITH activity. Two sets of triplets had been born overnight in addition to twice the usual number of single births, one of them to the wife of a popular local sportscaster. Newspaper reporters and photographers clogged the corridor, where a security guard was doing his best to keep them from disturbing the patients. The nurses were frantic, and extra staff needed to be called in. Although it was nearing the end of July, the weather was still unseasonably hot for Monterey, and the air-conditioning in the Women’s Wing was not working properly. Engineers trying to fix the problem added to the mayhem in the hallway. Some of the rooms were ice-cold, the mothers and babies bundled in blankets. At the other end of the corridor, perspiration dripped from the new mothers’ foreheads as they nursed their nearly naked infants.