But he is aware of you. He is leading, you must follow.

  “Michaela? Mrs. McManus? Wait—”

  You have snatched up your purse from a table, on your way out of Dr. M___’s office. Hurry, hurry!—not a backward glance. An hour’s free consultation scheduled by the Institute, no time for a polite apology to the astonished grief counselor as you half-run out into the corridor, to the stairway and down, out the rear exit panting and stumbling into blinding sunshine desperate to confront your lost husband—Gerard? Gerard! But your throat seems to have shut tight, barely can you hear your own scratchy voice calling to someone who has disappeared from sight.

  Where has he gone? Was it Gerard? You seem to know that you are expected to follow him but—he seems to have vanished . . .

  Make your way through the parking lot, along rows of vehicles, all of them unoccupied, unfamiliar. No one. Nothing.

  Of course it’s possible that the middle-aged man in the baseball cap is a stranger who’d gotten into his vehicle and driven away in the time required for you to emerge from the rear door of the office building—but you don’t think so. It is more likely (you think) that he’d entered the office building and taken an elevator—the building is seven floors, a labyrinth.

  “Hello? Hello?”—but there is no one in the parking lot.

  No witnesses. No one to question. If the man in the baseball cap had just parked his car in the lot you have no idea which car it might be.

  Not the leased car, which you have driven here. (The vehicle still registered in Gerard McManus’s name.)

  In blinding sunshine you stand uncertain. You are very excited—an adrenaline shot to the heart. At the same time you feel ridiculous, unmoored.

  Oh Michaela, what has become of you!

  You should have come with me, when you had the opportunity.

  You were a coward. You will pay for that now.

  For an agitated half hour you drift about the parking lot like flotsam idly lifted by an invisible tide. Re-enter the building, make your way along a windowless corridor, exit again by another door, indeed you are unmoored, lost. In the parking lot you consider waiting for the man in the baseball cap to return—but understand that no matter how long you wait in this lot amid a small sea of glittering and glaring vehicles, no matter how long you stand absurd and hopeful in bright sunshine, eyes stinging with tears behind dark-tinted glasses, foolish heart hammering like death, Gerard in his newly purchased khaki shorts and bright blue cap is not likely to return.

  Gone.

  45

  Demon-Goddess

  . . . floating on a wide dark river in a small boat, with a small glowering-white sail, no higher than five feet. A shallow river but a fast-running river. In the bruised sky, flashes of heat lighting. Though Gerard has eluded Michaela he has told her the name of the river where they will meet: Rio de Piedras.

  But when will they meet?—Michaela is desperate to know.

  On all sides shrieks of wild parrots, monkeys. Banks of wild-growing purple wisteria, gigantic lavender bushes, luridly blossoming cactus trees. Out of the shadows the demon-goddess Skli emerges. A naked female figure with a shrieking mouth, breasts drooping past her bony rib cage, gaping vagina like a raw wound. Instead of fingers, long curving talons.

  Lightly, teasingly, these talons brush along Michaela’s bare arms which are highly sensitive.

  Oh, unbearable! With a convulsive shudder Michaela is rudely awakened.

  She sits up, stunned. Several minutes are required for her to regain her consciousness, her strength.

  She stares at her arms, that are still faintly scarred. Draws a forefinger over the long vertical scars, shivering.

  Michaela had not ever cut her arms. Hoping that finally she’d convinced Iris Esdras that this was so. I am not punishing myself. I am not suicidal.

  Barefoot she goes to check the hall closet where the likeness of Skli has been hidden in a shadowy corner, covered by a towel. Satisfied that yes, the ugly thing is exactly where she’d put it, weeks ago. (No need to check beneath the towel!)

  And the squat stooping figure of Ishtikini is still in the cupboard beneath the bathroom sink though she can’t recall whether she’d left it facing the wall or, as it is now, its small beady leering eyes facing whoever stoops to peer inside.

  And come kiss me! I’ve been waiting.

  46

  Blindsight

  Michaela, come with me!

  There is a place for you, with me.

  Each day, each hour she searches for him in Santa Tierra. Knowing that he is awaiting her. That possibly he can see her without being able to communicate with her.

  (Had he been aware of her in the third-floor window, staring down at him in the parking lot? Had he been constrained, unable to acknowledge her? As Michaela, in the grief counselor’s office, stood rooted to the spot for crucial seconds, unable to break free, speechless.)

  It is possible that in the other world, the spirits of the dead may be blind. Their senses may be stunted in some way. Had Gerard not told Michaela of cruel neuroscience experiments in which infant monkeys, cats, mice were kept in total darkness until their eyesight deteriorated, and they became blind?—yet in other respects their senses were normal.

  And had Gerard not told her about the phenomenon of “blindsight”—a recent discovery of neuroscience that proves that individuals who have suffered damage in the primary visual cortex of the brain can (often) sense an object though they can’t “see” it. Claiming not to “see” anything, nonetheless they point without hesitation to the object. Asked why they are pointing at something they claim isn’t there, they can offer no explanation.

  Michaela wondered at this. How is it possible?

  Gerard tried to explain: the eye can be “blind” while the brain “sees”—something we call “sight” occurs, but not to the conscious agent.

  But—how is that possible?—Michaela laughed, alarmed at the limits of her understanding.

  Gerard assured her: much that seems impossible is possible. And much that seems possible will turn out to be impossible.

  Michaela thinks of this now—blindsight. Something we call “sight” occurs, but not to a conscious agent.

  As suffering might occur, unspeakable suffering, but memory is erased in amnesia like raindrops in water, and so there is no sufferer.

  Alone in Santa Tierra searching for her lost husband.

  Wanting to protest—she’d begged to be allowed to donate bone marrow, to save him. But there had been no guarantee that such a procedure would have saved him.

  As a widow Michaela is tireless, alert. The widow’s life is the life of a penitent bearing her (grotesque, bleeding) heart on the outside of her body. Sleeping only two or three hours a night has sharpened her senses, she believes. Razor-sharp. By her count she has been a widow for approximately 750 hours.

  No matter her circuitous route downhill from Vista Drive Michaela makes her way unerringly to the historic district of Santa Tierra—the Plaza de la Catedral de Santa Teresa. Here is a ceaseless stream of visitors in and out of the Spanish-style cathedral with its gleaming gilt basilica, tourists crowding one another on the cathedral steps taking pictures with their cell phones. The mood is festive, celebratory. There is a continual flurry of pigeons, white doves. At midday there are no shadows and at dusk shadows are obliterated by dazzling lights. It is Michaela’s strategy to appear to be moving randomly among the pedestrians so that if she is being observed she will not arouse suspicion. Yet Michaela is suffused with the zeal of a hunter, scanning the ever-changing scene for the lost husband.

  Michaela, where are you?

  Why did you abandon me?

  She wants to protest: she hadn’t abandoned him. There was confusion when he’d seemed to stop breathing. She had held him so long tightly, desperately. She’d breathed for him, into his lungs that were frantic for air, but then something had happened and she’d allowed herself to be lulled into believing that it was for the best, she might leave him, and then return to him; but when she was allowed to return, something had happened in the interim and he was gone.

  The stripped bed, the sharp toxic odor of disinfectant that has entered her soul. Glare of white walls. Void.

  Futile to protest—Forgive me, Gerard!

  Hearing again that final heaving sigh. And then—silence.

  Michaela has become feral in the past several weeks. She spends as much time as she can outdoors and when she is home—that is, at the rented house on Vista Drive—she is often sprawled in the unmade bed she’d once shared with Gerard in a season of such oblivious happiness, she can scarcely believe it was once theirs; in a dazed and intermittent sleep, punctuated by fits of coughing/sobbing. Often Michaela doesn’t dare remove her clothing for there is the vague dread that she will be wakened in the night and summoned to the hospital—Hurry! Your husband cannot breathe. (It isn’t clear whether the bone marrow extracted so painfully from Michaela’s left hip has been preserved, or if it has been allowed to deteriorate. Michaela seems to recall that she’d been informed the bone marrow could only be used if Gerard was strong enough to endure the transplant procedure but then there’d been the confusion of a transfer to another medical facility with a more skillful medical team . . . ) Michaela rarely sits down to eat, and never food she has prepared herself—this would be tempting fate: to be called away suddenly to the hospital, to the intensive care room where Gerard is struggling to breathe.

  How much more practical then to open a can of Progresso soup which she devours unheated, with a spoon; a can of pumpkin pie mix, also devoured with a spoon; six-ounce containers of cottage cheese, applesauce, yogurt. In the Santa Tierra Cancer Center the wife of the very ill patient had become accustomed to scavenging untouched food from Gerard’s trays and so now she eats when the opportunity arises, as feral creatures do. Feral too in her appearance, androgynous-seeming, as well as anonymous: Michaela dresses in a kind of sexual camouflage, long trousers on even very hot days, T-shirts of Gerard’s that droop from her shoulders, a scuzzy wide-rimmed straw hat to protect her sensitive skin and dark-tinted glasses to protect her sensitive eyes. In a loose tangle like scribbling from a mad pen her hair falls over her shoulders, uncouth mane of a wild creature. Backpack strapped to her back, shamefully worn running shoes. No one from the Institute would recognize her, identify her as the attractive and even (once) stylish young wife of their colleague from Harvard, Gerard McManus.

  If Michaela’s memoir students happen to see her in this feral state they would be stunned with dismay, pity, shame. Their professor!

  But of course, Michaela has never been their professor. Just an adjunct, an impersonation.

  In the crowded and bustling plaza Michaela is painfully visible. No one else is alone here except Michaela.

  Keenly alert to solitary male figures. Nearly everyone she sees is with at least one other person, most are with families. Her heart aches, she stares with envy. She has no child, and now she has no husband. Rare to see a man by himself in Santa Tierra’s city center unless the man is a Latino or Native American, not a tourist or casual visitor but someone who works here.

  Rarer still to see someone who superficially resembles Gerard—white, late-middle-age, tourist or visitor—unaccompanied by a wife.

  Michaela stares transfixed by women of her own age who are with men, or with families; she feels a twinge of envy at the sight of them, actual pain in her chest. Such women seem to Michaela bathed in light even as they appear to be oblivious of their good fortune.

  To take another for granted—Michaela has forgotten what such a luxury is.

  She’d never taken Gerard for granted. They had not known each other that long, Michaela had never felt entirely at ease with him.

  This was the nature of a “late” marriage, she supposed—the knowledge that things might so easily have gone otherwise.

  SOON AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL IN Santa Tierra Gerard and Michaela had visited the beautiful Catedral de Santa Teresa, in the city’s oldest quarter. At the rear of the church they’d observed the conclusion of a mass, long lines of communicants approaching the altar railing with hands clasped in prayer and eyes devoutly downcast. Forty years, Gerard remarked wryly to Michaela, since his last communion.

  Forty years! Yet, he said, he remembered vividly.

  The communion wafer—size of a half-dollar, white, very thin, very dry, tasteless. You did not chew the communion wafer but allowed it to melt in your mouth.

  And this was the body and the blood of Christ?—Michaela asked.

  The body of Christ, not the blood. The blood would be the wine.

  Gerard laughed, to indicate the absurdity of such beliefs. Yet his laughter sounded wistful, Michaela thought.

  He’d been raised as a nominal Catholic, Michaela knew. Neither of his parents had been devout Catholics. Michaela had attended Unitarian services with school friends as a girl but had not been taken to religious services by her parents. She had no romantic nostalgia for religion.

  If humankind has a religion, Michaela thought, it must be the religion of humanity. Human feeling, human love. Human responsibility.

  But love is not so readily accessible. The experience of loving can be fraught with fear as well as happiness.

  Michaela had asked Gerard if he missed his religion and Gerard said no, of course not.

  It’s truth that we crave, Gerard said. Not delusion.

  Yes!—Michaela agreed.

  If truth can be a comfort. As delusion can.

  He wasn’t sure that he had ever believed in God, Gerard had said thoughtfully, but he missed the “certitude” of those days: the Baltimore Catechism, the prayer books, rosaries.

  The inexpressible solace of a rosary, twined about the fingers. Each bead a prayer, and each prayer heard by God.

  You miss the possibility of pleasing someone, or something—for, if you obeyed God, God was pleased with you.

  Such a simple religion! Or so it was presented, to children.

  Christianity in America is like an endangered language, Gerard thought: the instinct is to preserve it, as the instinct is to preserve endangered species. But maybe that is a futile gesture. Maybe all things are born, flourish, and eventually die, and it’s a mistaken kindness to interfere with this cycle.

  What he’d really missed, Gerard said, was being a child. Loved by his mother without qualification.

  Laughing, and then coughing. (As Gerard was doing frequently since arriving in Santa Tierra.) Michaela didn’t laugh but protested that she loved him without qualification—“I am the one who loves you now.”

  Perhaps yes, Michaela was jealous. Is jealous. Of all who’d loved Gerard McManus long ago before he’d become her husband.

  Tremulous now entering the dim interior of the cathedral. Oh, what a risk Michaela is taking! Returning to the very place where she’d whispered boldly in a man’s ear I am the one who loves you now.

  Recalling how she’d slipped her hand into Gerard’s hand as they stood together waiting for the mass to end, how startled she’d been by the mechanical singsong of the priest’s voice, that had sounded almost mocking, like an advertising jingle.

  A hot dry air, an air depleted of oxygen, barely stirred by six-foot fans set at strategic places on the stone floor of the cathedral.

  Michaela is feeling weak with loss, how often she’d taken Gerard’s hand unexpectedly. She had never reached for another’s hand in such a way—she’d had lovers but had not so unreservedly loved them, as she’d loved Gerard.

  Or perhaps she hadn’t had lovers. Acquaintances who’d been men, with whom she had slept. (Not many!) But no one like Gerard.

  Spontaneously reaching for his hand, to slip her fingers through his. While walking somewhere, or waiting in line. In crowded places. A gesture of childlike affection.

  Her heart had swelled, such happiness! To slip her fingers through his.

  Because you are my husband. Because no one else has this right.

  Inside the cathedral Michaela is feeling disoriented. There is no mass this afternoon—only just rows of pews, glaring-bright stained-glass windows, statues scattered through the church. Milling tourists. Yet, essentially—emptiness.

  Michaela tries, but cannot remember where she and Gerard stood. Had they slipped into one of the pews for a few minutes? But which one?

  She does remember that they’d admired the life-sized carvedwood statues for which the Catedral de Santa Teresa is renowned in the Southwest. Painted vivid, bright colors, as an imaginative child might paint them, the statues are primitively rendered but none is grotesque and several seem to Michaela quite beautiful. There is the Virgin Mary in a robin’s-egg blue robe, her face blandly doll-like, cream-colored; in her arms the Infant Jesus, whose skin is even lighter than hers and whose rosebud mouth is very pink. Only a few feet away, the somber, life-sized likeness of Jesus in resplendent robes, a halo positioned over his head, right hand lifted palm-out in a greeting that looks startlingly vernacular.

  In the center of Jesus’ chest is a grotesquely exposed larger-than-life-sized heart pierced by a spear and topped with dancing, painted flames.

  “The Sacred Heart of Jesus”—Gerard identified the statue for Michaela.

  In this depiction Jesus has a gaunt bearded Hispanic face, an expression of impassive and noble resignation. His lips are improbably red, his eyes have been painted shiny-black as a crow’s eyes.

  But why is the heart exposed?—Michaela shuddered.

  That’s the tradition, Gerard said, a little stiffly.

  Yes, but why?—Michaela persisted.

  Because it’s the tradition, Gerard told her. The Sacred Heart of Jesus could not exist if not exposed.

  Adding then, as Michaela stood quiet: You don’t question tradition.

  Yes, but you did, Michaela pointed out. You’ve always questioned tradition.

  Always, Michaela is flattering her husband. Half-conscious, by instinct. A kind of heliotropism, irresistible.

  All the Church is, is tradition, Gerard said. There is no foundation otherwise. You have faith in faith. “The Sacred Heart of Jesus” was a devotion introduced into the Catholic liturgy in the seventeenth century, at the bequest of a nun who’d claimed to having had a private vision of Jesus nineteen days after Pentecost.