Critical Injuries (24 page)

Recently Martin's been hinting he wouldn't mind selling the agency, or the large part of it that's his to sell. “I'd kind of like to take the money and run. Do some travelling, reward myself before it's too late. I get tired, you know, trying to keep up. So many changes.” She hadn't figured out what she thought about this, but now needs to tell him to yes, sell, run off, indulge himself, do anything his good heart desires. Because this is not a matter of snip-snap and she's striding as if nothing has happened back into her life.

Her fiercest desire right now is to run screaming out of her own skin, her own life.

She can't even kill herself. She can't even lift a finger to do that much. Who would help her?

Jamie says, “But if you want to see Martin, we'll try to figure out a way, don't worry.” How assured, how confident this young man sounds. Her cleaned-up, capable son. Maybe Alix, too, can be saved. Not, of course, through Serenity Corps, not as someone named Starglow. Alix has something, though. She knows something about faith, even if it's blind, dumb, stupid faith, and where did that come from? In the aftermath of her father, not to mention her brother, not to mention, maybe, even her mother, how was it she could come, so quietly, so surreptitiously, to believe anything at all?

A self-satisfied, self-assured stranger must have looked good to her. A Master Ambrose, preaching serenity, what could be more appealing? Who, choosing between the tender, broken-hearted story of an Alix and the peaceful, floating, weightless, and transparent possibilities of a Starglow, would not choose to be Starglow? Ditching a whole sorry past. Opting for a whole unknown, silvery future.

Now she and Lyle have gone off to court together. That's nice, although they're probably not exactly having a meeting of minds. And Madeleine's someplace on water, in air. Everyone's gathering in some new formation, for some new purpose.

Her son is silently holding her hand, or at least that's what he appears to be doing, and is staring rather bleakly off into space; or out a window for all she can tell.

She hears a sound from herself like a laugh, and Jamie looks down at her sharply. She's remembering, though, that in those first dreadful weeks after James, she longed, wished, desired desperately, not to be able to feel. And then something similar, again, after Jamie himself. And now she has achieved her longing, her wish, her desire; except of course what she meant was, she wanted not to be able to feel her feelings. That had nothing to do with her body. This is fulfilment not only far too late, but also twisted in the extreme.

She should have paid better attention not only to this hospital's many fundraising campaigns for its various medical miracles, but also to stories of grief in general. It's not as if there's any shortage of those, it's not as if a hundred of them don't land on the doorstep every day. It's entirely possible that some victims of torture, say, actually pray for nerves that can no longer flicker or twitch or respond, can no longer be touched by the electric impulse, the wire, the brand. She should know if there are people somewhere, in some circumstance, who would consider her blessed. She should also know if there are people who would rise to this circumstance, and how they would do that. She is, in the scheme of things, too ordinary for this. Extraordinary events regularly occur to ordinary people, and what are they supposed to do then? How do they learn, on the fly, what to do?

She is too small in spirit for this one. She is exhausted. She is insufficient to the task. Lyle and Alix are just coming through the door, looming up beside Jamie, as she says, “Help me.”

She has almost never heard herself say that before. Isn't that odd. What kind of person is it, who hardly ever says “Help me”? They look startled, too.

Well, how do they imagine she feels? Dependent, surely, and doomed and despairing. Terrified, really. “Help me,” she says again, but even she has no idea how they might do that. She would like to feel sorry and tender towards their bewilderment, all that concern on their loved and individual faces, their no doubt genuine desire to do as she asks and help her, really help her, but how can they? Moreover, any one of them can turn around, walk away. They have that choice, and she couldn't stop them.

She has to close her eyes because it would be really bad, too cruel, if they could see how much, right this minute, she hates her beautiful, reliable Lyle, her tough, weak-willed Jamie, her soft-hearted, soft-headed, gossamer Alix. There's a goddamn internal flame, if anybody's looking for one.

Still. “Help me,” she cries, her eyes flying open again, trying to demand, hoping to insist, but willing, right this moment, to beg.

A Clear, Steady Gaze

She's here again, on this day of his sentencing. Coming through that courtroom side door with four other young, anxious prisoners, Roddy scans the room and yes, finds her, third row back. Looking just the way she did a week ago. Same dress, even.

His terror subsides, although does not vanish. The suspense of her presence, or absence, that caused his hands to tremble, is relieved, but there is still the suspense of his future, as it will be defined by the judge. None of this is in his control. But then, look what he did before, when he did have control; or believed that he did.

His grandmother and his dad are out there, too, watching him come in with the others, looking nervous and sad, even though he's caused so much grief, and shamed his grandmother, and made his dad angry. He nods to them, and smiles, as best he can. His grandmother smiles back, his dad nods. But after that, and he knows this is weird as well as amazing, his eyes need to swerve back to the girl.

The picture he's tried to hold of her in his mind's eye this past week is perfectly true.

There were moments of doubt. He was afraid, a little, that he'd made too much of her, had made her, for one thing, too beautiful; but no, there's that pale, pale skin, like she's not even really from earth. Grave eyes that see right into him, through him.

Maybe it would be too thrilling to be any closer, some kind of shock; but if he could touch her skin, put just his fingertips on her breasts, if she would let him do that, and if she would take his head between her hands and lay it to rest on her lap and look down at him with those steady eyes while he looked back up into them — maybe that would be everything. He feels it could happen. Everything has already shifted, it's all unpredictable, so how can he know what's possible and what is not? Look at her, looking at him. What does she see?

It sounds almost crazy, even inside his own head, but it's still true: he has fallen, toppled, plunged into some kind of love.

He doesn't think this can be what people mean when they talk about love. If other people felt this, the whole world would be lit, the air everywhere would be radiant.

He can get through this.

Oh. He hadn't realized he wasn't sure about that.

He sits very straight on the bench, much straighter than the four others. He isn't tall, he isn't large, but he can take up space here, he can be significant. Although in her eyes he'd be significant, love or not. He forgets.

In the brief, long week between pleading guilty and today, he has learned some things for sure:

That he cannot count on mercy, because even though what he did was so quick, only a few seconds, it was also large, with awful results. He can't imagine a length of time that's right for balancing out those two things;

That even when a place is very busy and noisy and possibly dangerous, and contains a multitude of questions that are supposed to be answered and many hours are totally filled, there are spaces of unavoidable time when pictures rear up. Too often, but not always, it's the moment in Goldie's, those seconds that won't be undone no matter how many times he has to see them unfold. Or sometimes the pictures are of his grandmother's house, the stone walkway in from the street to its grey-stuccoed homeliness, and going through the aluminum front door and up the mottled yellowy-browny carpeted stairs to his own room, with his own muddled colours and his own pictures of intricate, transformable creatures pinned to the walls, and his own life that isn't his any more, like he's dead now, or gone off to be reincarnated a new way;

That going to sleep isn't safe. Sleep can easily be more troubling than being awake. Because he's been having dreams, awful ones about his mother, as bad as when he was a kid, after he and his dad moved. This week, even the dreams that start out good, with his mother playing with him maybe, or hugging him, the two of them happy, and young too, turn bad, so that when he wakes up he's scared he hasn't been just crying out in the dream, but for real. Last night, his mother was paralyzed. She couldn't even speak. And where she was paralyzed was on the top railing, crouched there, of what looked like a bridge, although he couldn't make out anything besides the railing, no expressway or railroad or river below. She was wearing something glittery, a gown, or maybe it was her skin under moonlight. She looked at him. She was asking him with her eyes to do something, asking him to help her. He couldn't tell, and she couldn't say, whether she wanted him to lift her down or push her off. He would have to decide, because he had to do something, it was night, and cold and she couldn't help herself so he had to. He thought, in the dream, “My mother.” She was familiar and helpless and frightened, strange and, mainly, sad. He was trying in the dream to understand what he should do: push or pull. What he did was reach out in the gentlest of ways and give her the gentlest of pushes so that down, down she went, vanishing soundlessly into the darkness.

Jesus. He woke weeping. And cold. And hoping that in his sleep, he'd made as little sound as his mother had in the dream. He wiped tears from his eyes, from his cheeks.

Then he set out to restore, in the dream's place, the details, each feature and shape, shift and shade, of the steadying, salvaging figure he saw, who saw him, for the first time a week ago. And now he can see that that vision is real and true because here it is, in this room, a few feet away: that one bright thing to hang onto, that one lighted face.

What does she see with those pure eyes resting on him? Ordinarily he doesn't like being stared at. Well, he's not all that attractive. This is different, though. Her eyes don't stop at his skin, or even his bones.

If he could hear her speak again in that airy voice, what might she say? Since matters of guilt or anger don't seem to concern her, he doesn't think she would say, “I forgive you.” Those would be words to do with the past. She sounded before like someone more interested in the future.

Well, there could be romantic and loving words. Those would be nice, but possibly too large a miracle, too unlikely for words.

Something simpler, then, and more possible. “I like you, Rod.” Or “It's my belief you're a good person.”

She's on her own today, no lean stepfather, contemptuous lawyer, loving husband, bearing his unbearable details into this high-ceilinged room. Could she be here on his behalf, on behalf of the whole family of that woman, her mother, the whirling lady in the wrinkled blue suit? Or is it how it seems, that she's here to look at Roddy with her own thoughtfulness? The room doesn't feel real, it's like he's in another dream but this time somebody else's. Like he could just float right away. All of this, every part of it, his light-headedness and the powers of her clear, steady gaze, would sound crazy, he knows that. But that just makes it more like what she said last week when he was in court, that it didn't look like anybody understood, except him.

When his name finally gets called, just like last time he has to go sit beside Ed Conrad, stand up for the judge, sit down, try to listen. She's there behind him, though. He doesn't know what name to call her even in his thoughts.
Starglow
feels sort of right,
Alix
more real.

Like Roddy and Rod, maybe. The judge uses
Rod
. He says, “This was a most unfortunate, reckless event. Through no fault of her own, a woman lies paralyzed, because of a young man's careless, criminal act. For which he can give no good reason. I will tell you, young man,” and he stares down at Roddy in a way that's quite different from hers, angry, even though if anybody here was going to be angry it ought to be her, “I am very, very tired of dealing with people like you who think they can just take whatever they want, no matter who gets hurt in the process. You boys who feel you're entitled to anything you feel like, without working for it, or deserving it, and with no heed for anyone who gets in your way.”

But that's not right! Roddy wants to rise up and protest. It does matter that someone got hurt. He would have heeded, if he'd considered beforehand the possibility that heed would be required. He doesn't feel entitled to anything he feels like. Only, it looked easy, that's all. And it had to do with being Mike's friend: not so much doing it, not the robbery, but the weeks of planning, all those conversations, all those rehearsals. Something they did together, the way they always did things together, only this time aimed at a spare white and chrome high-rise future, and freedom.

“I would like to make an example of you, to be frank. So that anyone else like you out there would learn loud and clear that no one's entitled to violence, or to take something without having earned it. But I'm restrained somewhat by the fact that you have no previous record and despite some family difficulties, you do have the support of those nearest you. And so in trying to balance the seriousness of your crime against your prospects for rehabilitation, I am sentencing you to eighteen months of closed custody, to be followed by two years' probation. It's my hope and my intention that during this period, you will receive the counselling and educational help that will steer you onto a more productive path. You have much to atone for, young man. And you have an opportunity here which I hope you'll take advantage of, and learn to appreciate.”

What Roddy hears is,
Eighteen months
.

Eighteen months is forever. As everyone stands again, Roddy turns, desperately seeking her eyes. Which are on him. They steady him. How will he survive eighteen months?

Ed Conrad leans close and tells him, “It'll work out to maybe twelve months, you know. Even ten if you do all right. You're lucky, it could've been a lot worse. This judge, he can be a real bugger. You got off lighter than I thought you could hope for. Anyway, use the time well, you'll be okay.” These are the kindest words, or the kindest tone, anyway, Ed Conrad's used with him.

Roddy's lucky? Even twelve months is one-seventeenth of his whole vanished life. A huge long time.

A cop takes his arm. “Come on then, you got places to go.” Roddy has just the briefest, tiniest of impulses to shake off that grip and leap and grab her hand and run with her and hurtle over the benches and past all the people, including his grandmother, who is crying, and his dad, who has an arm around her shoulders, out the door, down the halls, into the sunshine, into the town and then into the country, to run and run, on and on. He could do that with her. She'd be like a shield, something like that.

He did that before, didn't he? Bolted from Goldie's, ran and ran, although alone. Wound up lying, for just a few precious moments, in the darkness under the stars, totally content and at peace.

Already, she has vanished. By the time he's been hauled back to that side door of the courtroom, and has turned one last time for one final look, she has taken that skin, that flying, flaming hair, that thin straight spine and those perfectly knowing eyes out the other set of courtroom doors, the one used by free, innocent people.

He has a moment of doubt. Does she not know?

Of course she does. Only, she's a lot older than him, and she knows what is necessary and what is not, and a last look would have been possible but must not be necessary. She must believe he is ready, something like that. He straightens his shoulders, as if he's not scared and not guilty, even though of course he is guilty, and is so scared of what's next he could fall, bones collapsing, to the efficient tiled floor.

Here he goes, instead, off into the future that's supposed to pay off the guilt, punish the sin, but it can't save him. Nobody would believe what he believes can save him; but who could he tell anyway? Only her, a closed, two-person circle of knowledge, but she's gone, and handcuffed, he's being marched away to the van that'll take him on to the next place: no looking back, also no need for goodbyes.