M I C H A E L 13 страница

lawyer.

I buried my face in my hands. "I was an idiot. Rufus is going to fire

me.

"Why? Because you said what nobody has the guts to say? The hardest

thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier

to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have

been wrong in the first place."

She turned to me, holding out a steaming, fragrant bowl. I could

smell rosemary, pepper, celery. "I made you soup. From scratch."

"You made me soup from scratch?"

My mother rolled her eyes. "Okay, I bought soup someone else made

from scratch."

When I smiled a little, she touched my cheek. "Maggie," she said,

"eat."

Later that afternoon, while my mother did the dishes and cleaned up in

my kitchen, and with Oliver curled up at my side, I fell asleep on the

living room couch. I dreamed that I was walking in the dark in my favorite

Stuart Weitzman heels, but they were hurting me. I glanced down to

discover I was not walking on grass, but on a ground that looked like

tempered glass after it's been shattered, like the cracked, parched landscape

of a desert. My heels kept getting stuck in the crevasses, and finally

I had to stop to pull one free.

When I did, a clod of earth overturned, and beneath it was light, the

purest, most liquid lava form of it. I kicked at another piece of the ground

with my heel, and more beams spilled outward and upward. I poked

holes, and rays shined up. I danced, and the world became illuminated,

so bright that I had to shade my eyes; so bright that I could not keep

them from filling with tears.

June

This, I had told Claire, the night before the surgery, is how they'll

transplant the heart:

You'll be brought into the operating room and given general

anesthesia.

Grape, she'd said. She liked it way better than bubble gum, although

the root beer wasn't bad.

You'll be prepped and draped, I told her. Your sternum will be

opened with a saw.

Won't that hurt?

Of course not, I said. You'll be fast asleep.

I knew the procedure as well as any cardiac resident; I'd studied

it that carefully, and that long. What comes next? Claire had

asked.

Sutures—stitches—get sewn into the aorta, the superior vena

cava, and the inferior vena cava. Catheters are placed. Then you're

put on the heart-lung machine.

What's that?

It works so you don't have to. It drains blue blood from the

two cava, and returns red blood through the cannula in the aorta.

Cannula's a cool zvord. I like how it sounds on my tongue.

I skipped over the part about how her heart would be removed:

the inferior and superior vena cava divided, then the aorta.

Keep going.

His heart (no need to say whose) is flushed with cardioplegia

solution.

It sounds like something you use to wax a car.

Well, you'd better hope not. It's chock-full of nutrients and

oxygen, and keeps the heart from beating as it warms up.

And after that?

Then the new heart goes to its new home, I had said, and I'd

tapped her chest. First, the left atriums get sewn together. Then

the inferior vena cava, then the superior vena cava, then the pulmonary

artery, and finally, the aorta. When all the connections are

set, the cross clamp on your aorta is removed, warm blood starts

flowing into the coronaries, and...

Wait, let me guess: the heart starts beating.

Now, hours later, Claire beamed up at me from her hospital

gurney. As the parent of a minor, I was allowed to accompany her

to the OR, gowned and suited, while she was put under anesthesia.

I sat down on the stool provided by a nurse, amid the gleaming

instruments, the shining lights. I tried to pick out the familiar

face of the surgeon from his kind eyes, above the mask.

"Mom," Claire said, reaching for my hand.

"I'm right here."

"I don't hate you."

"I know, baby."

The anesthesiologist fitted the mask to Claire's face. "I want

you to start counting for me, hon. Backward, from ten."

"Ten," Claire said, looking into my eyes. "Nine. Eight."

Her lids dropped, half-mast. "Seven," she said, but her lips

went slack on the last syllable.

"You can give her a kiss if you want. Mom," said a nurse.

I brushed my paper mask against the soft bow of Claire's

cheek. "Come back to me," I whispered.

M | C HAEL

Three days after Shay's death, and two after his funeral, I returned to

the prison cemetery. The headstones formed a small field, each one

marked with a number. Shay's grave didn't have one yet; it was only a

small raw plot of earth. And yet, it was the only one with a visitor. Sitting

on the ground, her legs crossed, was Grace Bourne.

I waved as she got to her feet. "Father," she said. "It's good to see

you."

"You, too." I came closer, smiled.

"That was a nice service you did the other day." She looked down

at the ground. "I know it didn't seem like I was listening, but I was."

At Shay's funeral, I hadn't read from the Bible at all. I hadn't read

from the Gospel of Thomas, either. I had created my own gospel, the

good news about Shay Bourne, and spoke it from the heart to the few

people who'd been present: Grace, Maggie, Alma the nurse.

June Nealon had not come; she was at the hospital with her daughter,

who was recovering from the heart transplant. She'd sent a spray

of lilies to lay on Shay's grave; they were still here, wilting.

Maggie had told me that Claire's doctor had been thrilled with the

outcome of the operation, that the heart had started beating like a jackrabbit.

Claire would be leaving the hospital by the end of the week.

"You heard about the transplant?" I said.

Grace nodded. "I know that wherever he is, he's happy about that."

She dusted off her skirt. "Well, I was on my way out. I have to get back

to Maine for a seven o'clock shift."

Shay that I would look after Grace, but to be honest, I think he wanted

to be sure she'd be looking after me as well. Somehow, Shay had

known that without the Church, I'd need a family, too.

I sat down, in the same spot where Grace had been. I sighed,

leaned forward, and waited.

The problem was, I wasn't sure what I was waiting for. It had been

three days since Shay's death. He had told me he was coming back—a

resurrection—but he had also told me that he'd murdered Kurt Nealon

intentionally, and I couldn't hold the two thoughts side by side in my

mind.

I didn't know if I was supposed to be on the lookout for an angel,

like Mary Magdalene had seen, to tell me that Shay had left this tomb. I

didn't know if he'd mailed me a letter that I could expect to receive

later that afternoon. I was waiting, I suppose, for a sign.

I heard footsteps and saw Grace hurrying toward me again. "I

almost forgot! I'm supposed to give this to you."

It was a large shoe box, wrapped with a rubber band. The green

cardboard had begun to peel away from the corners, and there were

spots that were watermarked. "What is it?"

"My brother's things. The warden, he gave them to me. But there

was a note inside from Shay. He wanted you to have them. I would

have given it to you at the funeral, but the note said I was supposed to

give it to you today."

"You should have these," I said. "You're his family."

She looked up at me. "So were you. Father."

When she left, I sat back down beside Shay's grave. "Is this it?" I

said aloud. "Is this what I was supposed to wait for?"

Inside the box was a canvas roll of tools, and three packages of Bazooka

bubble gum.

He had one piece of gum, I heard Lucius say, and there was enough

for all of us.

The only other item inside was a small, flat, newspaper-wrapped

package. The tape had peeled off years ago; the paper was yellowed

with age. Folded in its embrace was a tattered photograph that made me

catch my breath: I held in my hands the picture that had been stolen

from my dorm when I was in college: my grandfather and I showing off

our day's catch.

Why had he taken something so worthless to a stranger? I touched

my thumb to my grandfather's face and suddenly recalled Shay talking

about the grandfather he'd never had—the one he'd imagined from this

photo. Had he swiped it because it was proof of what he'd missed in

his life? Had he stared at it, wishing he was me?

I remembered something else: the photo had been stolen before I

was picked for Shay's jury. I shook my head in disbelief. It was possible

Shay had known it was me when he saw me sitting in the courtroom. It

was possible he had recognized me again when I first came to him in

prison. It was possible the joke had been on me all along.

I started to crumple up the newspaper that the photo had been

wrapped in, but realized it wasn't newspaper at all. It was too thick for

that, and not the right size. It was a page torn out of a book. The Nag

Hammadi Library, it read across the top, in the tiniest of print. The

Gospel of Thomas, first published 1977. I ran a fingertip along the familiar

sayings. Jesus said: Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings

will not experience death.

Jesus said: The dead are not alive, and the living will not die.

Jesus said: Do not tell lies.

Jesus said.

And so had Shay, after having years to memorize this page.

Frustrated, I tore it into pieces and threw them on the ground.

I was angry at Shay; I was angry at myself. I buried my face in

my hands, and then felt a wind stir. The confetti of words began to

scatter.

I ran after them. As they caught against headstones, I trapped them

with my hands. I stuffed them into my pockets. I untangled them from

the weeds that grew at the edge of the cemetery. I chased one fragment

all the way to the parking lot.

Sometimes we see what we want to, instead of what's in front of

us. And sometimes, we don't see clearly at all. I took all of the bits I'd

collected and dug a shallow bowl beneath the spray of lilies, covered

them with a thin layer of soil. I imagined the yellowed paper dissolving

in the rain, being absorbed by the earth, lying fallow under winter

snow. I wondered what, next spring, would take root.

'There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle."

-ALBERT EINSTEIN

EPILOGUE

Claire

I have been someone different now for three weeks. It's not something

you can tell by looking at me; it's not even something I can tell by looking

at myself in the mirror. The only way I can describe it, and it's weird,

so get ready, is like waves: they just crash over me and suddenly, even if

I'm surrounded by a dozen people, I'm lonely. Even if I'm doing everything

I want to, I start to cry.

My mother says that emotion doesn't get transplanted along

with the heart, that I have to stop referring to it as his and start calling

it mine. But that's pretty hard to do, especially when you add up all

the stuff I have to take just to keep my cells from recognizing this intruder

in my chest, like that old horror movie with the woman who has

an alien inside her. Colace, Dulcolax, prednisone, Zantac, enalapril,

CellCept, Prograf, oxycodone, Keflex, magnesium oxide, nystatin, Valcyte.

It's a cocktail to keep my body fooled; it's anyone's guess how

long this ruse might continue.

The way I see it, either my body wins and I reject the heart—or I win.

And become who he used to be.

My mother says that I'm going to work through all this, and that's

why I have to take Celexa (oh, right, forgot that one) and talk to a shrink

twice a week. I nod and pretend to believe her. She's so happy right

now but it's the kind of happy that's like an ornament made of sugar: if

you brush it the wrong way. it will go to pieces.

I'll tell you this much: it's so good to be home. And to not have a

lightning bolt zapping me from inside three or four times a day. And to

not pass out and wake up wondering what happened. And to walk up

the stairs—upstairs!—without having to stop halfway, or be carried.

"Claire?" my mother calls. "Are you awake?"

Today, we have a visitor coming. It's a woman I haven't met, although

apparently she's met me. She's the sister of the man who

gave me his heart; she came to the hospital when I was totally out of

it. I am so not looking forward to this. She'll probably break down and

cry (I would if I were her) and stare at me with an eagle eye until she

finds some shred of me that reminds her of her brother, or at least

convinces herself she has.

"I'm coming," I say. I have been standing in front of the mirror for the

past twenty minutes, without a shirt on. The scar, which is still healing, is

the angriest red slash of a mouth. Every time I look at it, I imagine the

things it might be yelling.

I resettle the bandage that I'm not supposed to peel off but do

when my mother isn't there to see it. Then I shrug into a shirt and glance

down at Dudley. "Hey, lazybones," I say. "Rise and shine."

The thing is, my dog doesn't move.

I stand there, staring, even though I know what's happened. My

mother told me once, in her dump truck-load of fun facts about cardiac

patients, that when you do a transplant the nerve that goes from

the brain to the heart gets cut. Which means that it takes people like me

longer to respond to situations that would normally freak us out. We

need the adrenaline to kick in first.

You can hear this and think. Oh, how nice to stay calm.

Or you can hear this and think. Imagine what it would be like to

have a brand-new heart, and be so slow to feel.

front of the dog. I'm afraid to touch him. I have been too close to death;

I don't want to go there again.

By now the tears are here; they stream down my face and into my

mouth. Loss always tastes like salt. I bend down over my old, sweet dog.

"Dudley," I say. "Come on." But when I scoop him up—put my ear against

his rib cage—he's cold, stiff, not breathing.

"No," I whisper, and then I shout it so loud that my mother comes

scrambling up the stairs like a storm.

She fills my doorway, wild-eyed. "Claire? What's wrong?"

I shake my head; I can't speak. Because, in my arms, the dog

twitches. His heart starts beating again, beneath my own two hands.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

For those wishing to learn more about the topics in this book, try these

sites and texts, which were instrumental to me during this journey.

ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY

Death Penalty Information Center: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.

Death Row Support Project, PO Box 600, Liberty Mills, IN 46946.

(Contact them if you want to write to a death row prisoner.)

Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights: www.mvfhr.org.

Murray, Robert W. Life on Death Row. Albert Publishing Co., 2004.

Prejean, Sister Helen. Dead Man Walking. New York: Vintage

Books, 1993.

. The Death of Innocents. New York: Random House, 2005.

Rossi, Richard Michael. Waiting to Die. London: Vision Paperbacks,

2004.

Turow, Scott. Ultimate Punishment. New York: Picador, 2003.

A B O U T T H E G N O S T I C G O S P E LS

Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York:

Random House, 2003.

. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979.

Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library. Leiden, the

Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1978.

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