Virgin

  “I’m usually pretty good but this one slipped by me. I kinda feel like I let him down.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Preach doesn’t feel that way,” Carrie said, plucking the hair from his palm. “But I do apologize for this, and tell him I’ll do my best to see that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Oh, no!” Pilgrim said, agitatedly waving his hands in front of her. “You got me wrong. It ain’t your fault.” He pointed a finger at Augusta. “It’s hers. Look at that gray hair straggling all over the place, and that’s a gray hair Preacher found. She’s supposed to be wearing a net. I know ‘cause I useta work in a diner and we all hadda wear hair nets.”

  “He has no right to say that, Sister,” Augusta snapped.

  Just then the basement phone began ringing in the far corner of the kitchen. Hilda Larsen went to get it.

  “It’s for you, Sister,” Hilda called from inside. “Your brother.”

  Uh-oh, Carrie thought as she hurried back into the kitchen and took the receiver. Brad never called her at Loaves and Fishes. This could only mean that his American Express bill had arrived.

  “Hi, Brad. I can explain all those charges.” Well, most of them, anyway.

  “What charges?”

  “On the card. You see—”

  “I didn’t get the bill yet, Car. And whatever it is, don’t give it a second thought.”

  “I went a bit overboard, Brad.”

  “Carrie, I’ve got more money than I know what to do with and no one to spend it on. So let’s not mention AmEx charges again. That’s not why I called. It’s about Dad.”

  Carrie felt all the residual warmth from her hours with the Virgin this morning empty out of her like water down a drain.

  “What about him?”

  She asked only because it was expected of her. She didn’t care a thing about that man. Couldn’t. The mere mention of him froze all her emotions into suspended animation.

  “He passed out. They had to move him to the hospital. They say it’s his heart acting up again.”

  Carrie said nothing as Brad paused, waiting for her reaction. When the wait stretched to an uncomfortable length, he cleared his throat.

  “He’s asking for you.”

  “He’s always asking for me.”

  “Yeah, but this time—”

  “This time will be just like the last time. He’ll get you all worked up thinking he’s going to die, get you and me going at each other, then he’ll come out of it and go back to the nursing home.”

  “He’s changed, Carrie.”

  “He’ll always be Walter Ferris. He can’t change that.”

  Brad sighed. “You know, I wish you’d take one tiny bit of the care and compassion you heap upon those nobodies down there and transfer it to your own father. Just once.”

  “These nobodies never did to me what that man did. It’s because of him that I’m down here with these nobodies. We can both thank him for where we are.”

  “I’ve managed to do okay.”

  “Have you?”

  Now it was Brad’s turn for silence.

  Carrie wanted to ask him why he hadn’t been able to sustain a relationship. It seemed every time he got close to a woman he backed off. Why? What was he afraid of? That he was like his father? That a little bit of that man hid within him? And that if he had children of his own he might do what his father did?

  But she couldn’t say that to Brad. All she could say was, “I love you, brother.”

  And she meant it.

  “I love you too, Carrie.”

  Suddenly she heard voices rising in the Big Room.

  “I’ve got to go. Call me soon.”

  “Will do.”

  As Carrie turned away from the phone, she saw Augusta coming toward her.

  “Honestly, Sister. That wasn’t my hair. Mine’s long and thick. That one Pilgrim gave you is short and fine.”

  “It’s okay, Augusta.” She brushed past the old woman. “What’s going on in the Big Room?”

  “Probably another fight. You know how they are.”

  But it wasn’t a fight. The regulars—Rider, Dandy, Lefty, Dirty Harry, Poppy, Bigfoot, Indian, Stony, One-Thumb George—and a few of the newer ones were clustered around one of the long tables. She saw Dan standing on the far side of the circle as Dr. Joe bent over Preacher who sat ramrod straight, holding his hands before his face.

  “A miracle!” Pilgrim was screeching, dancing and gyrating among the tables of the Big Room. “I always knew Preacher had the power, and now it’s come! It’s a miracle! A fucking miracle!”

  Carrie pushed closer.

  Preacher was staring at his hands, muttering. “I can see! Praise God, I can see!”

  She stepped back and stared at the short strand of gray hair in her hand. It hadn’t come from Augusta. She recognized it now. It was the same length and color as the stray strands Carrie had been trimming from the Virgin a short while ago. It must have stuck to her sleeve downstairs and fallen into the soup as she was adding the ingredients.

  A miracle …

  She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry, she wanted to grab Pilgrim’s hands and join him in a whirling dervish.

  Oh, Pilgrim, she thought as she hurried back through the kitchen and down to the subcellar. If only you knew how right you are!

  Yes, it was a miracle. And Carrie had a feeling it would not be the last.

  “Preacher can really see again,” Dan said for the third or fourth time. Evening had come and they were cleaning up the Big Room after dinner. “Not well, mind you. He can recognize his hand in front of his face and not much more, but at least that’s something. He’s been totally blind for forty years.”

  Carrie had decided to hold off telling Dan about the piece of the Virgin’s hair in the soup. He’d only go into his Doubting Thomas routine. She’d wait till she had more proof. But she couldn’t resist priming him for the final revelation.

  She glanced around to make sure they were out of earshot of the volunteers in the kitchen.

  “Do you think it’s a miracle?” she said softly.

  Dan didn’t look up as he wiped one of the long tables. “You know what I think about miracles.”

  “How do you explain it then?”

  “José says it might have been hysterical blindness all along, and now he’s coming out of it. He’s scheduled him for a full eye exam tomorrow.”

  “Well, far be it from me to disagree with Doctor Joe.”

  Dan stopped in mid wipe and stared at her. “Aw, Carrie. Don’t tell me you think—”

  “Yes!” she said in a fierce whisper. “I think a certain someone has announced her presence.”

  “Come on, Carrie—”

  “You and José believe in your hysterical blindness, if you wish. All I know is that Preacher began to see again within hours of a certain someone’s arrival.”

  Dan opened his mouth, then closed it, paused, then shook his head. “Coincidence, Carrie.”

  But he didn’t sound terribly convinced.

  Carrie couldn’t repress a smile. “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see what?”

  “How many ‘coincidences’ it takes to convince you.”

  Fruitless Vigil in Tompkins Square

  Approximately 1,000 people gathered last night for a candlelight prayer vigil in Tompkins Square Park. Surrounded by knots of curious homeless, many of whom call the park home, the predominantly female crowd prayed to the Virgin Mary in the hope that she would manifest herself in the park.

  Sightings of a lone woman, described as “glowing faintly”, and identified as the Blessed Virgin, have been reported with steadily increasing frequency all over the Lower East Side during the past few weeks.

  Despite many recitations of the Rosary, no manifestation occurred. Many members of th
e crowd remained undaunted, however, vowing to return next Sunday evening.

  (The New York Post)

  SIXTEEN

  Manhattan

  “Something bothering you, José?”

  Dan and Dr. Joe ambled crosstown after splitting a sausage-and-pepper pizza and a pitcher of beer at Nino’s on St. Mark’s and Avenue A. José had been unusually quiet tonight.

  “Bothering me? I don’t know. Nothing bad or anything like that, just … I don’t know.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve put that many words together in a row all night, and six of them were ‘I don’t know.’ What gives?”

  José said, “I don’t know,” then laughed. “I … aw hell, I guess I can tell you: I think two of my AIDS patients have been cured.”

  Dan felt an anticipatory tightening in his chest and he wasn’t sure why.

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s not just my diagnosis. They were both anemic, both had Kaposi’s when I’d seen them in July. They came in last week and their skin had cleared and their hematocrits were normal. I sent them to Beekman for a full work up. The results came back today.”

  “And?”

  “They’re clear.”

  “Cured?”

  Dan saw José’s head nod in the dark. “Yep. They’re now HIV neg. Their peripheral smears are normal, their CD4 cell counts are normal, their skin lesions are gone. Not a single goddamn trace that they were ever exposed to HIV. Hell, they both used to be positive for hepatitis B surface antigen and now even that’s gone.”

  José sounded as if he was going to cry.

  “But how—?”

  “Nothing I did. Just gave them the usual cocktail, and let me tell you, man, they weren’t all that reliable about taking their meds. Fucking miracle, that’s what it is. Medical fucking miracle.”

  Dan’s mouth went dry. Talk of miracles did that to him lately. So did talk of people seeing the Virgin Mary in his neighborhood.

  “Miracle. You mean like … Preacher?”

  “I can’t say much about Preacher. I’ve got no medical records on him from when he was blind, so I can’t say anything about the condition of his retinas when he couldn’t see. All I can say is that his vision has improved steadily until it’s almost twenty-twenty now. But … these two AIDS patients, they were documented cases.”

  Dan sensed a certain hesitancy in José.

  “I wouldn’t happen to know these two patients, would I?”

  José hesitated, then sighed. “Normally I wouldn’t tell you, but they’re going to be in all the medical journals soon, and from then on they’ll be news-show and talk-show commodities, so I guess it’s okay to tell you they’re both regulars at your Loaves and Fishes. You’ll hear their names soon enough.”

  Dan stumbled a step.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Well, you knew some of them had to be HIV positive.”

  Dan tried to remember who hadn’t been around lately.

  “Dandy and Rider?”

  “You guessed it.”

  “They had it but they’re cured?”

  “Yep. Both with a history of IV drug use, formerly HIV positive, now HIV neg. You figure it out.”

  Dan was trying to do just that.

  He knew Carrie wouldn’t have to think twice about an explanation when she heard the news: the Virgin did it.

  And how was he supposed to counter that? Damned if he wasn’t beginning to think she might be right. First Preacher gets his sight back, then people all over the area start sighting someone they think is the Virgin Mary, and now two of their regulars at St. Joe’s are cured of AIDS.

  The accumulated weight of evidence was getting too heavy to brush off as mere coincidence.

  He glanced at José and noticed he still looked glum.

  “So how come you’re not happy?”

  “Because when I gave Rider and Dandy the news they gave me all the credit.”

  “So?”

  “So I didn’t do anything. And if they go around blabbing that Dr. Martinez can cure AIDS, it’s going to raise a lot of false hopes. And worse, my little clinic is going to be inundated with people looking for a miracle.”

  A miracle … that word again.

  Dan clapped him on the shoulder, trying to lighten him up.

  “Who knows? Maybe you’ve got the healing touch.”

  “Not funny, Dan. I don’t have the resources to properly treat the people I’m seeing now. If the clinic starts attracting crowds I don’t know what I’ll do.” Suddenly he grinned. “Maybe I’ll direct them all to Saint Joe’s Loaves and Fishes. If they’re looking for a miracle, that’s the place to find it.”

  A knot of dread constricted in Dan’s chest, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Don’t even kid about that!”

  José laughed. “Hey, think about it: It all fits. Preacher regained his sight there, and both Dandy and Rider are regulars. Maybe the cure-all can be found at Loaves and Fishes. Maybe Sister Carrie’s stirring some special magical ingredient into that soup of hers.”

  Dan forced a smile. “Maybe. I’ll have to ask her.”

  Carrie held up two zip-lock bags.

  “Here they are. The magic ingredients.”

  When he’d mentioned José’s remarks to her this morning, she’d smiled and crooked a finger at him, leading him down to the subcellar. It was the first time he’d been down here since he’d carried in the Virgin. After Carrie lit the candles, Dan saw that the Virgin looked different. Her hair was neater, tucked away under her wimple, and those long, grotesque fingernails had been clipped off. The air was suffused with the sweet scent of the fresh flowers that surrounded the bier.

  Carrie then reached under her bier and produced these two clear plastic bags.

  Dan took them from her and examined them. One contained an ounce or so of a fine, off-white powder; the other was full of a feather-light gray substance that looked for all the world like finely chopped … hair.

  He glanced back at Carrie and found her smiling, staring at him, her eyes luminous in the candle glow.

  “What are these?” he said, hefting the bags.

  “Hers.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Carrie reached out and gently touched the bag of fine, gray strands. “This one’s her hair.” She then touched the bag with the powder. “And this is what’s left of her fingernails.”

  “Fingernails?”

  “I trimmed her nails and filed the cuttings down to powder.”

  “Why on earth … ?”

  Carrie explained about the strand of hair in Preacher’s soup, and how he’d begun to see again almost immediately after.

  “But that was coincidence,” Dan said. “It had to be.”

  She trapped him with those eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “No. I’m not sure. I no longer know what I’m sure of or not sure of. I haven’t been sure of much for a long time, and now I’m not even sure about the things I’ve been sure I couldn’t be sure of.”

  Carrie started to laugh.

  Dan shook his head. “Sounds like a country-western song, doesn’t it?” Then he too started to laugh.

  “Oh, Lord,” Carrie said after a moment. “When was the last time we laughed together?”

  “Before Israel.”

  Slowly, she sobered. “That seems like so long ago.”

  “Doesn’t it.”

  Silence hung between them.

  “Anyway,” Carrie finally said, “I’ve been dosing the soup with tiny bits of her hair and her ground-up fingernails every day since she arrived.”

  Dan couldn’t help making a face. “Carrie!”

  “Don’t look at me like that, Dan. If I put in a couple of snippets of hair I mix it with the rosemary. If I use some fingernail, I rub
it together with some pepper. Tiny amounts, unnoticeable, completely indistinguishable from the regular spices.”

  “But they’re not spices.”

  “They are indeed! You can’t deny that things have changed upstairs since the Virgin arrived.”

  Dan thought about that and realized she was right. In fact, strange things had been happening at the Loaves and Fishes during the past month or so. Nothing so dramatic as the return of Preacher’s sight, but the place had changed. Nothing that would be apparent to an outsider, but Dan knew things were different.

  First off, the mood—the undercurrent of suspicion and paranoia that had prevailed whenever the guests gathered was gone. They no longer sat hunched over their meals, one arm hooked around the plate while the free hand shoveled food into the mouth. They ate more slowly now, and they talked. Instead of arguments over who was hogging the salt or who’d got a bigger serving, Dan had actually heard civil conversation along the tables.

  Come to think of it, he hadn’t had to break up a fight in two weeks—a record. The previously demented, paranoid, and generally psychotic guests seemed calmer, more lucid, almost rational. Fewer of them were coming in drunk or high. Rider had stopped talking about finding his old Harley and had even mentioned checking out a Help Wanted sign he’d seen outside a cycle repair shop.

  But the biggest change had been in Carrie.

  She’d withdrawn from him. It had always seemed to Dan that Carrie had room in her life for God, her order, St. Joe’s Loaves and Fishes, and one other. Dan had been that one other for a while. Now he’d lost her. The Virgin had supplanted him in that remaining spot.

  Yet try as he might he could feel no animosity. She was happy. He couldn’t remember seeing her so radiant. His only regret was that he wasn’t the source of that inner light. Part of him wanted to label her as crazy, deranged, psychotic, but then he’d have to find another explanation for the changes upstairs … and the cures.

  He stepped past her to stare down at the prone, waxy figure. She looked so much neater, so much more … attractive with her hair fixed and her nails trimmed.