Nelson had never been able to bring himself to engage in the scourge. For that reason, perhaps, he would never ascend to the head of the Brotherhood as his uncle had.
The abbot of the 536 Brotherhood wheeled himself through the doorway. All the other members of the Brotherhood called him “Prior.” Nelson called him Uncle Jim.
“Well, Nelson, you certainly did a good job upsetting Mavis.”
“Who?”
“The late-shift receptionist.”
“Oh. The apostate.”
“You can’t hold everyone to our standards, Nelson.”
“I can if they call themselves a Catholic but are anything but.”
“Let’s drop it, okay?” Jim smiled. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Nelson took a deep breath. Right. He had not come here to argue with a lowly receptionist. He had something so much more important. His hands trembled with anticipation as he pulled the vials from his pocket.
“These.”
Jim’s eyes went wide. “Is that…?”
“Just found them hidden in a panacean’s home.”
Jim reached out a shaky right hand.
Just don’t drop it, Nelson thought as he placed one in his uncle’s palm.
Jim held it up to the light, a look of wonder suffusing his lopsided features as tears filled his eyes.
“This is it … really it?”
“Yes.”
“Praise the Lord.”
Nelson felt his throat thicken and tears start in his own eyes … so proud to be able to offer his uncle this moment.
“The essence of evil,” Jim whispered. “After all these years … with our dwindling numbers and resources, I was beginning to fear I’d never live to see the day.”
Nelson knew what he meant. The Brotherhood had once numbered in the thousands, but times had changed. The world became more secular as science pushed God farther and farther away. The quiescence of the panaceans hadn’t helped. The Brotherhood existed to oppose them, but with no visible opponent, their ranks had dwindled until they now numbered fewer than two hundred worldwide. Those brothers were well placed to act in case the panacean threat returned—which it had—but still …
“I know it’s been looking grim,” Nelson said, “but you never lost faith.”
“I confess that it wavered at times. We were never assured victory. And we still haven’t won.”
“Not yet, no.” Nelson pointed to the vial. “But that is going to lead me to the source so I can remove this scourge once and for all. I just wish…”
Jim’s gaze flicked toward him. “What?”
“I just wish you could be with me … at my side when we win.”
“That is not God’s plan, apparently.”
“As you’ve always told me, we can’t know God’s plan. Maybe He let me find two vials for a reason … maybe the extra is meant to heal you.”
Jim shoved the vial back into Nelson’s hands. “No. Never.” His expression turned angry. “Why do you tempt me like this?”
“I’m not. I … I simply thought you deserved the option.”
“To what? Circumvent God’s plan?”
“No, of course not. I meant to get back in the fight, back to doing the Lord’s work.”
“The Lord is testing me. Haven’t you been listening all these years? Every affliction has a purpose, every trial is part of His Divine Plan. You’ve disappointed me terribly, Nelson.”
“Sorry. I—”
Jim stared off into a corner of the room. “Leave me now. And take those abominations with you.”
Crushed, Nelson pocketed the vials and turned to leave.
“Finish this, Nelson,” said his uncle behind him. “You were put into my care for a reason. I was struck down for a reason. Everything in our lives has happened so that you could finish this battle. God has chosen you as his instrument, his sword. Do not let him down.”
“Yes, Prior,” Nelson said and hurried out.
He’d simply wanted to give his uncle a chance to regain the use of the dead half of his body. Was that so bad?
Yes … yes, it was. Jim was right. He should not have tempted his uncle that way. He had acted like the Serpent in the Garden.
And it was good that his uncle had been strong in his heart and faith. Nelson still had two vials, and he knew that two miracle cures would be far more convincing than one. A single cure could be written off as a case of good timing and nothing more. But two … a pair of simultaneous cures would put Pickens in the palm of his hand.
9
By the time he’d reached Park Slope, Nelson still hadn’t shaken off the bad residual feelings from his visit to Uncle Jim. He parked in his rented spot in an underground lot on 12th Street and walked up to Seventh Avenue. As he hurried along he was accosted by a well-dressed woman handing out fliers.
“Please donate to the NCLR.”
“What’s that?” he said, pausing.
“The National Center for Lesbian Rights.”
Nelson couldn’t help making a face. The neighborhood had become a sapphic circus over the past decade or so.
“Lesbians. How quaint.”
“We serve the whole LGBT community.”
He knew he should hold his tongue and move on, but silence was acquiescence. He felt compelled to speak out.
“Even worse. Why on earth would I want to help promote dykes and sodomites?”
She shook her head. “You can just say no. You don’t have to be so intolerant about it.”
“Yes, I do, actually. That’s what I’m into. You people like to say ‘Free to be you and me.’ Well, this is me.”
He left her with her mouth hanging open.
A few blocks away, he entered an apartment on the second floor of a 7th Street brownstone that still belonged to Uncle Jim, who’d bought it for a song back in the days before Park Slope had become trendy. Nelson had grown up here, and during that time its price tag had rocketed through the roof.
Nelson hung up his suit jacket and went to the refrigerator where he poured himself a glass of chilled white wine from a five-liter jug. He admitted to two weaknesses: good suits and a daily glass of wine. He didn’t drink hard liquor, but Jesus approved of wine—even drank it Himself during His time in human flesh—so why shouldn’t Nelson occasionally indulge? He favored Carlo Rossi Rhine. He’d tried more expensive varietals and blends but found he preferred the cheap stuff.
Not so with his clothes. The suits were an extravagance, he admitted, but part of the role he had to play in the CIA. The rest of his life was as Spartan as the one his uncle had lived.
Sipping the fruity blend, he looked around his empty apartment and felt a need for someone with whom to share tonight’s success. But, like a snippet of melody from a car cruising past on the street, the feeling faded.
No woman in his life—his vow of chastity assured that. He didn’t think he was meant for a relationship anyway. He knew many women, of course. Came into contact with them every day. But they didn’t tempt him and he was sure most would find him dull. He couldn’t argue with that. By current standards he was dull. He didn’t have a life outside the Company and the Brotherhood and, quite frankly, didn’t want one. He maintained a bland exterior that belied the iron will within. He liked an organized life—which translated as dull.
Take his taste in art. He knew most would call it “monotonous.”
That was because the average person would be blind to its significance. Monotonous? Hardly. The walls were adorned with prints by Thomas Cole, Doré, Masaccio, two by Chagall, and others—even one by “Anonymous.” Someone with narrow vision might find the subject matter repetitious.
True, all the art depicted Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. But that was where the similarity stopped. They were all so different. Even the two Chagalls were nothing like each other—so dissimilar they could have been painted by different artists.
Nelson never tired of his prints. Each piece depicted the most crucial m
oment in human history, the turning point when everything changed and Mankind’s fate was sealed for eternity. Most Christian scholars said the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus were more important. But then, for their ilk, the Old Testament barely existed. Nelson took a broader view. In the panorama of Scripture, the Crucifixion and Resurrection would not have been at all necessary had not Eve succumbed to the Serpent’s temptations and precipitated Mankind’s banishment from the Garden into the outer world of sin and death.
Though Jesus’ suffering might have gained forgiveness of Mankind’s sins, it did not change God’s Plan for Mankind after the Garden: Man was to know pain and grief and suffering and death. Chapter 3 of Genesis contained all anyone ever need know on the subject:
Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Thus was Man’s lot until the Second Coming announced the End of Days, the end of all suffering.
But the panaceans … the panaceans and their potion sought to subvert that. One look at their tattoo and who could harbor the slightest doubt that here was a servant of evil? The Serpent itself had center stage, coiling around the Tree of Life, waiting for Eve, while the star of Mankind began its precipitous fall from grace.
Uncle Jim had taught—and Nelson firmly believed—that tracking the panacea was part of God’s plan too. But Nelson needed human help as well as divine. Deputy Director Pickens was key to that human help. And now he had the means at hand to bring him into line.
AN INCONVENIENT CURE
1
As soon as Tommy rolled over in bed to shut off his alarm clock, he knew something was different. He stared at his outstretched hand. The fingers had lost their sausagey look and were no longer crooked and twisted. He made a fist—without pain.
He jerked upright and checked his other hand: the same.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and pulled up his pajama legs. His knees … the balloonlike swelling was gone. He could see his kneecaps. Same with his feet. He could see his ankle bones.
“Mom?”
He slid off the bed and put his feet on the floor. Then he pushed his butt off the mattress and stood. His legs were shaking but he felt no pain.
I’m standing. I’m STANDING!
He took a wobbly step. And then another.
“Mom!”
He was halfway to the door when she arrived.
“What’s—?”
She froze in the doorway with her jaw dropped open and her eyes showing white all around.
“Look, Mom! Look!” He still had his pajama legs up. “I’m cured! Chet was right! It’s a miracle!”
Then his mother went all white and dropped to the floor. She didn’t pass out, just landed on her knees. She wrapped her arms around Tommy and began to cry. Tommy cried too. He’d cried himself to sleep last night because nothing had happened and he’d thought Chet had lied. But these tears were different from last night’s. Today was the happiest day of his life.
2
“I don’t suppose I can go over to Emily’s tomorrow night,” Marissa said as she poked at her maple-flavored oatmeal.
Laura stood at the kitchen counter with the first of her many cups of coffee for the day and stared at her daughter. Marissa had her parents’ blue eyes and her father’s strong chin. Before chemotherapy had denuded her scalp, she’d had her mother’s ebony hair. It had started growing back in patches but still had a long way to go. Thus the Mets cap that seemed grafted to her head—the first thing on when she arose and the last thing off before bed.
Laura managed a neutral expression even though this sort of thing broke her heart.
“The way you phrased that tells me you already know the answer.”
Though Marissa was only eight, Laura did her best not to talk down to her.
“But everyone’s gonna be there.”
“You can be there by Skype. You’re a whiz with Skype.”
“It’s not the same.”
Of course it wasn’t. Not even close. But …
Seeing tears start to rim her daughter’s eyes, Laura moved over and squeezed next to her in the chair. She snaked an arm around her and hugged her close.
“It’s not forever, honeybunch. Just till your immune system is running at full speed again. All sorts of viruses that your friends can simply brush off like dust will make you very, very sick.”
“I don’t care! Everybody’s forgetting about me!”
When acute lymphoblastic leukemia struck a year and a half ago, Marissa had been misdiagnosed as having juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Not unheard of because the early symptoms were so much alike.
But at least ALL was curable. Marissa’s leukemia, however, didn’t respond to the usual chemotherapy so she’d wound up with a stem-cell transplant—a successful one.
But that meant up to a year of isolation. Laura and Steven and the visiting nurses had had to wear masks around her for the first few weeks. Bottles of hand sanitizer became a fixture around the house.
Marissa’s illness had altered not only Laura’s quotidian existence, but changed her inside as well: It had shattered her sense of control. She had a medical degree, she should be able to protect her only child from a life-threatening illness. She knew how irrational that was, but still it rankled. She’d tortured herself with guilt—why hadn’t she prevented it, what hadn’t she done that she could have? Logical or not, a lot of her sense of control and some of her self-confidence had died with Marissa’s diagnosis.
The good news was Marissa could be outside in the backyard as much as she wished. She wasn’t a Barbie-doll type of girl. Her passion was baseball. Laura’s sports growing up had been swimming and cross-country running, and tennis later. She’d never thrown a ball in her life. But she’d learned. Being a single mother—except on alternating weekends—hadn’t left her much choice.
So, weather permitting, they played catch whenever Laura had the time. She’d bought her a baseball return trainer—with a catcher painted on the net—so she could practice her pitching on her own.
Marissa’s favorite team was the formerly hapless Mets. Absolutely loved the Mets—or “Metropolitans” as she insisted on calling them. And oddly enough, they began winning once she became a fan. She knew the stats of every player and had very definite opinions on who should be played and who should be benched for every game. Laura didn’t understand a word of it. All she knew was that baseball players seemed to spend most of their time spitting. She found it disgusting—the dugouts had to be ankle deep in saliva—but it didn’t seem to bother Marissa in the least.
“Nobody’s forgetting about you. And anyway, Daddy’s coming tonight.”
A sudden smile. “That’s right! I forgot.”
Daddy could always trigger Marissa’s smile, damn him.
“Right. You wouldn’t want to leave him high and dry, would you?”
“No way!”
Right. No way.
Most children of divorce played musical houses between the parents. After the stem-cell transplant, Laura and Steven decided that Marissa should stay in her safe, hygienically structured home environment while they did the shuttling. Steven would arrive Friday for his weekend with Marissa and stay in the guest bedroom while Laura migrated to Steven’s Manhattan apartment. Silver-tongued Steven, as he was known, was a big shot in a public relations firm, with a good salary and better bonuses. A lot of fathers would have objected to the arrangement, but Marissa had never been a pawn in the divorce. Steven Gaines—she was Laura Fanning on her medical degree and had kept her name—was sane enough to put his love and concern for his daughter’s well-being above his ego. And really, with Laura out of the house, he had his daughter all to himself in an environment that protected her. He’d said he couldn’t
see the downside.
A sweet loving man. The loving part had turned out to be the problem. Too loving. His roving eye and silver tongue had shattered their marriage. Laura hadn’t forgiven him for what eventually came to light as not an isolated affair, but a string of them. But she’d put that behind her.
While he was probably still bedding a string of women, Laura had yet to cross paths with any man she found even remotely interesting. She wasn’t looking for a relationship anyway. Her daughter and her job filled her life right now.
She and Steven had already gone their separate ways when Marissa fell ill. The leukemia had necessitated more contact with her ex than Laura had wanted, but proved best for Marissa. Laura’s hurt and animosity at being betrayed abated, but nothing could bring them back together. The past was past and they’d buried the proverbial hatchet …
But Laura knew exactly where.
Her ME salary had been extra money before the divorce and the leukemia. Now, even with generous child support, the regular paychecks and benefit package proved critical for Marissa’s extraordinary expenses.
Laura still managed to treat herself now and again. Like the ticket for a new Broadway play Saturday night. She didn’t remember the name now—some Irish drama. She didn’t care. She loved the theater and didn’t mind going alone. She’d seen pretty much everything on and off-Broadway. The ticket was in her shoulder bag.
This was her life now. She’d been in a bridge club, had a circle of women friends who played round-robin tennis. All that stopped when Marissa fell ill. She missed them, but only a little. Marissa was what mattered. Life would be back to normal—whatever that was—before long. Until then, her life was focused on the little girl huddled next to her.
“And doesn’t the Subway Series start tonight?”
Laura thought “Subway Spitfest” a better title but kept that to herself. Marissa lived for the Yankees-Mets games. She hated the Yankees almost as much as she loved the Mets.
“Mom,” she said with her I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-tell-you-this look, “that’s not till Monday.”