M I C H A E L 10 страница

classmates. This was not a lesson you had to teach someone like me,

whose waistline was larger than her bra size; or Cheryl Otenski, who had

gotten her period in full view of every other sixth grader during an assembly

where she happened to be wearing white pants. "Late bloomers,"

the teacher called it—that was close enough to my last name for me to be

the butt of every joke for the remaining week.

I had told my mother I had the bubonic plague and refused to get

out of bed for three days, spending most of it under the covers and wishing

I could just miraculously skip ahead ten or fifteen years to when my

life surely would be more pleasant.

After seeing Shay, I was sorely tempted to pull the same act. If I

stayed in bed when the verdict was read, did that mean the plaintiff lost

by default?

Instead of driving to my house, however, I found myself pointing in

the opposite direction and turned into the emergency entrance of the

hospital. I felt as if I'd been poleaxed, which surely qualified me for medical

attention—but I didn't think that even the most gifted physician

could cure a skeptic who'd come to see the light: I could not remain as

emotionally unattached from my client as I'd believed. This wasn't, as I'd

told myself, about the death penalty in America. It wasn't about my

career as a litigator. It was about a man I'd been sitting next to—a man

whose scent I could recognize (Head & Shoulders shampoo and pungent

industrial soap); whose voice was familiar (rough as sandpaper, with

words dropped like stepping-stones)—who would, very shortly, be dead.

I did not know Shay Bourne well, but that didn't mean he would not

leave a hole in my life when he exited his own.

"I need to see Dr. Gallagher," I announced to the triage nurse. "I'm a

personal..."

What?

Friend?

Girlfriend?

Stalker?

Before the nurse could rebuff me, however, I saw Christian coming

down the hall with another doctor. He noticed me and—before I could even

make a decision to go to him—he came to me. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

No one except my father had ever called me that. For this reason,

and a dozen others, I burst into tears.

Christian folded me into his arms. "Follow me," he said, and led me

by the hand into an empty family waiting room.

"The governor denied Shay's stay of execution," I said. "And Shay's

best friend died, and I was the one who had to tell him. And he's going to

die, Christian, because he won't let me try to find new evidence to exonerate

him." I drew away from him, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. "How

do you do it? How do you let go?"

"The first patient who died on my table," Christian said, "was a

seventy-six-year-old woman who came in complaining of abdominal pain

after a meal at a posh London restaurant. A half hour into the surgery, she

coded, and we couldn't bring her back." He looked up at me. "When I

went into the family waiting area to speak with her husband, the man

just kept staring at me. Finally, I asked him if he had any questions, and

he said he'd taken his wife to dinner to celebrate their fiftieth wedding

anniversary." Christian shook his head. "That night, I sat with her body

in the morgue. Silly, I know, but I thought that on one's fiftieth anniversary,

one didn't deserve to spend the night alone."

If I hadn't been swayed before by Christian's charm, good looks, or

the way he called the trunk of his car a boot and the hood a bonnet, I

was now completely smitten.

"Here's the thing," Christian added. "It doesn't get any easier, no

matter how many times you go through it. And if it does—well, I suspect

that means you've lost some part of yourself that's critically important."

He reached for my hand. "Let me be the attending physician at

the execution."

"You can't," I said automatically. Killing a man was a violation of the

Hippocratic oath; doctors were contacted privately by the Department of

Corrections, and the whole event was kept secret. In fact, in the other executions

I'd studied before Shay's trial, the doctor's name was never

mentioned—not even on the death certificate.

"Let me worry about that," Christian said.

I felt a fresh wave of tears rising. "You would do that for Shay?"

He leaned forward and kissed me lightly. "I would do that for you,"

he said.

* * *

If this had been a trial, here were the facts I'd present to the jury:

1. Christian had suggested that he swing by my house after his

shift, just to make sure I wasn't falling apart at the seams.

2. He was the one who brought the bottle of Penfolds.

3. It would have been downright rude to refuse to have a glass. Or

three.

4. I truly could not establish the causal line between how we went

from kissing on the couch to lying on the carpet with his hands

underneath my shirt, and me worrying about whether or not I

was wearing underwear that was a step above granny panties.

5. Other women—those who have sex with men more often than

once during a senatorial term, for example—probably have a

whole set of underwear just for moments like these, like my

mother has a set of Sabbath china.

6. I was truly hammered if I had just thought of sex and my mother

in the same sentence.

Maybe the details here weren't nearly as important as the outcome—I

had a man in my bed, right now, waiting for me. He was even more beautiful

without clothes on than he was in them. And where was I?

Locked in the bathroom, so paralyzed by the thought of my disgusting,

white, fish-bellied body being seen by him that I couldn't open the

door.

I had been discreet about it—lowering my lashes and murmuring something

about changing. I'm sure Christian assumed I meant slipping into lingerie.

Me, I was thinking more along the lines of morphing into Heidi Klum.

Bravely, I unbuttoned my blouse and stepped out of my jeans. There

I was in the mirror, in my bra and panties, just like a bikini—except I

wouldn't be caught dead in a bikini. Christian sees a hundred bodies a day, I

told myself. Yours can't be any worse than those.

But. Here was the ripple of cottage cheese cellulite that I usually

avoided by dressing in the dark. Here was the inch (or two) that I could

pinch with my fingers, which vanished beneath a waistband. Here was

my butt, large enough to colonize, which could so craftily be camouflaged

by black trousers. Christian would take one look at the acoustic

version of me and run screaming for the hills.

His voice came, muffled, through the bathroom door. "Maggie?"

Christian said. "Are you all right in there?"

"I'm fine!" Fmjat.

"Are you coming out?"

I didn't answer that. I was looking inside the waistband of my pants.

They were a twelve, but that didn't count, because this label had resized

downward so that fourteens like me could feel better about themselves

for being able to squeeze into the brand at all. But hadn't Marilyn Monroe

been a size fourteen? Or was that back when a size fourteen was really an

eight—which meant that comparatively, I was a behemoth compared to

your average 1940s starlet?

Well, hell. I was a behemoth compared to your average 2008 starlet,

too.

Suddenly I heard scratching outside the door. It couldn't have been

Oliver—I'd put him in his cage when he kept sniffing around our heads

as we'd rolled across the living room carpet having our From Here to Eternity

moment. To my horror, the locked doorknob popped open and

began to twist.

I grabbed my ratty red bathrobe from the back of the door and

wrapped it around myself just in time to see the door swing open. Christian

stood there, holding a wire hanger with its neck straightened.

"You can pick locks, too?" I said.

Christian grinned. "I do laparoscopic surgery through belly buttons,"

he explained. "This isn't dramatically different."

He folded his arms around me and met my gaze in the mirror. "I can't

say come back to bed, because you haven't been in it yet." His chin

notched over my shoulder. "Maggie," he murmured, and at that moment

he realized that I was wearing a robe.

Christian's eyes lit up and his hands slipped down to the belt. Immediately,

I started to tug him away. "Please. Don't."

His hands fell to his sides, and he took a step back. The room must

have cooled twenty degrees. "I'm sorry," Christian said, all business. "I

must have misread—"

"No!" I cried, facing him. "You didn't misread anything. I want this. I

want you. I'm just afraid that... that... you won't want me."

"Are you jokingl I've wanted you since the moment I didn't get to examine

you for appendicitis."

"Why?"

"Because you're smart. And fierce. And funny. And so beautiful."

I smiled wryly. "I almost believed you, until that last part."

Christian's eyes flashed. "You truly think you're not?" In one smooth

motion, before I could stop him, he yanked the wide shawl collar of the

robe down to my elbows, and my blouse along with it. My arms were

trapped; I stood before him in my underwear. "Look at you, Maggie," he

said with quiet awe. "My God."

I could not look at myself in the mirror, so instead, I looked at Christian.

He wasn't scrutinizing breasts that sagged or a waist that was too

thick or thighs that rubbed together when the temperature climbed

above eighty degrees. He was just staring at me, and as he did, his hands

began to shake where they touched me.

"Let me show you what I see when I look at you," Christian said quietly.

His fingers were warm as they played over me, as they coaxed me

into the bedroom and under the covers, as they traced the curves of my

body like a roller coaster, a thrill ride, a wonder. And somewhere in the

middle of it all, I stopped worrying about sucking in my stomach, or if

he could see me in the half-light of the moon, and instead noticed how

seamlessly we fit together; how when I let go of me, there was only room

for us.

* * *

Wow.

I woke up with the sun slicing the bed like a scalpel, and every

muscle in my body leering like I'd started training for a triathlon. Last

night could effectively be classified as a workout, and to be honest, it was

the first exercise routine I could see myself really looking forward to on a

daily basis.

I smoothed my hand over the side of the bed where Christian had

slept. In the bathroom, I heard the shower being turned off. The door

opened, and Christian's head popped out. He was wearing a towel. "Hi,"

he said. "I hope I didn't knock you up."

"Well. I, uh, hope so, too..." Christian frowned, confused, and I realized

that we were not speaking the same language. "Let me guess," I

said. "Where you come from, that doesn't mean getting a girl pregnant?"

"Good God, no! It's, you know, rousing someone from their sleep."

I rolled onto my back and started laughing, and he sank down beside

me, the towel slipping dangerously low. "But since I've knocked you up,"

he said, leaning down to kiss me, "maybe I could try my hand at knocking

you up..."

I had morning breath and hair that felt like a rat had taken nest in it,

not to mention a courtroom verdict to attend, but I wrapped my arms

around Christian's neck and kissed him back. Which was about the same

moment that a phone began to ring.

"Bloody hell," Christian muttered, and he swung over the far side of

the bed to where he'd folded his clothes in a neat pile, his cell phone and

pager resting on top. "It's not mine," he said, but by then I'd wrapped his

discarded towel around me and hiked to my purse in the living room to

dig out my own.

"Ms. Bloom?" a woman's voice said. "This is June Nealon."

"June," I said, immediately sobering. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes," she said, and then, "No. Oh, God. I can't answer that question."

There was a beat of silence. "I can't take it," June whispered.

"I can't imagine how difficuft all this waiting has been for you," I

said, and I meant it. "But we should know definitively what's going to

happen by lunchtime."

"I can't take it," June repeated. "Give it to someone else."

And she hung up the phone, leaving me with Shay's heart.

M I CHAEL

There were only seven people attending Monday morning Mass, and I

was one of them. I wasn't officiating—it was my day off, so Father

Walter was presiding, along with a deacon named Paul O'Hurley. I participated

in the Lord's Prayer and the sign of peace, and I realized these

were the moments Shay had missed: when people came together to

celebrate God. You might be able to find Him on your own spiritual

journey, but it was a lonelier trip. Coming to church felt like validation,

like a family where everyone knew your flaws, and in spite of that was

still willing to invite you back.

Long after Father Walter finished Mass and said his good-byes to

the congregants, I was still sitting in a pew. I wandered toward the

votive candles, watching the tongues of their flames wag like gossips.

"I didn't think we'd see you today, with the verdict and all," Father

Walter said, walking up to me.

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe that's why I needed to come."

Father Walter hesitated. "You know, Mikey, you haven't been fooling

anyone."

I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. "No?"

"You don't have to be embarrassed about having a crisis of faith,"

Father Walter said. "That's what makes us human."

I nodded, not trusting myself to respond. I wasn't having a crisis of

faith; I just didn't particularly think Father Walter was any more right in

his faith than Shay was.

Father Walter reached down and lit one of the candles, murmuring

a prayer. "You know how I see it? There's always going to be bad stuff

out there. But here's the amazing thing—light trumps darkness, every

time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into

the light." We both watched the flame reach higher, gasping for

oxygen, before settling comfortably. "I guess from my point of view, we

can choose to be in the dark, or we can light a candle. And for me,

Christ is that candle."

I faced him. "But it's not just candles, is it? There are flashlights and

fluorescent bulbs and bonfires..."

"Christ says that there are others doing miracles in His name,"

Father Walter agreed. "I never said there might not be a million points

of light out there—I just think Jesus is the one who strikes the match."

He smiled. "I couldn't quite understand why you were so surprised

when you thought God had showed up, Mikey. I mean, when hasn't He

been here?"

Father Walter started to walk back down the church aisle, and I fell

into step beside him. "You got time for lunch in the next few weeks?"

he asked.

"Can't," I said, grinning. Til be doing a funeral." It was a joke between

priests—you couldn't schedule anything when your plans were

likely to be changed by the lives and deaths of your parishioners.

Except this time, as I said it, I realized it wasn't a joke. In days, I'd

be presiding over Shay's funeral.

Father Walter met my gaze. "Good luck today, Mike. I'll be praying."

Out of the blue I remembered the Latin words that had been combined

to create religion: re + ligere. I had always assumed they translated

to reconnect. It was only when I was at seminary that I learned

the correct translation was to bind.

Back then, I hadn't seen a difference.

When I first arrived at St. Catherine's, I was given the task of hosting a

heart: St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney's, to be precise—a French priest

who'd died in 1859, at the age of seventy-three. Forty-five years later,

when his body was exhumed, the priest's heart had not decayed. Our

parish had been chosen as the U.S. location for the heart's veneration;

thousands of Catholics from the Northeast were expected to view the

organ.

I remembered being very stressed out, and wondering why I had to

battle police lines and roadblocks when I had turned to the priesthood

to get closer to God. I watched Catholics file into our little church and

disrupt our Mass schedule and our confession schedule. But after the

doors were locked and the onlookers gone, I'd stare down at the glass

case with the organ sealed inside. The real wonder, to me, was the

course of events that had brought this ancient relic all the way across

an ocean to be venerated. Timing was everything. After all, if they

hadn't dug up the saint's body, they never would have known about

his heart, or told others. A miracle was only a miracle if someone witnessed

it, and if the story was passed along to someone else.

Maggie sat in front of me with Shay, her back straight as a poker,

her wild mane of hair tamed into a bun at the base of her neck. Shay

was subdued, shuffling, fidgety. I glanced down at my lap, which held

a manila envelope Maggie had passed me—a piece of art left behind by

Lucius DuFresne, who'd passed away over the weekend. There had

also been a note on a piece of lined paper:

June has refused the heart. Have not told Shay.

If, on a long shot, we won this case—how would we break the

news to Shay that we still could not give him what he so desperately

wanted?

"All rise," a U.S. marshal called.

Maggie glanced at me over her shoulder and offered a tight smile,

and the entire courtroom got to its feet while Judge Haig entered.

It was so quiet that I could hear the tiny electronic gasps of the

video equipment as the judge began to speak. "This is a unique case in

New Hampshire's history," Haig said, "and possibly a unique case in the

federal court system. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons

Act certainly protects the religious freedoms of a person confined

to an institution such as Mr. Bourne, but that doesn't mean that such a

person can simply claim that any of his beliefs constitutes a true religion.

For example, imagine what would happen if a death row inmate

announced that by the tenets of his religion, he had to die of old age.

Therefore, when balancing the religious rights of inmates against the

compelling governmental interest of the state, this court is mindful of

more than just the monetary cost, or even the security cost to other inmates."

The judge folded his hands. "That being said... we are not in the

habit in this country of allowing the government to define what a

church is, or vice versa. And that puts us at a standstill—unless we can

develop a litmus test for what religion really is. So how do we go about

doing that? Well, all we have to work with is history. Dr. Fletcher posed

similarities between Gnosticism and Mr. Bourne's beliefs. However,

Gnosticism is not a flourishing religion in today's world climate—it's not

even an existing religion in today's world climate. Although I don't presume

to be the expert on the history of Christianity that Dr. Fletcher is,

it seems to me a stretch to connect the belief system of an individual

inmate in a New Hampshire state prison to a religious sect that's been

dead for nearly two thousand years."

Maggie's hand slipped back through the slatted rails that separated

the first row of the gallery from the plaintiff's table. I snatched the

folded note she held between her fingers. WE'RE SCREWED, she had

written.

"Then again," the judge continued, "some of Mr. Bourne's observations

about spirituality and divinity seem awfully familiar. Mr. Bourne

believes in one God. Mr. Bourne thinks salvation is linked to religious

practice. Mr. Boume feels that part of the contract between man and

God involves personal sacrifice. All of these are very familiar concepts

to the average American who is practicing a mainstream religion."

He cleared his throat. "One of the reasons religion doesn't belong in

a courtroom is because it's a deeply personal pursuit. Yet, ironically,

something Mr. Bourne said struck a chord with this court." Judge Haig

turned to Shay. "I am not a religious man. I have not attended a service

for many years. But I do believe in God. My own practice of religion,

you could say, is a nonpractice. I personally feel that it's just as worthy

on a weekend to rake the lawn of an elderly neighbor or to climb a

mountain and marvel at the beauty of this land we live in as it is to

sing hosannas or go to Mass. In other words, I think every man finds

his own church—and not all of them have four walls. But just because

this is how I choose to fashion my faith doesn't mean that I'm ignorant

about formal religion. In fact, some of the things I learned as a young

man studying for his bar mitzvah resonate with me even now."

My jaw dropped. Judge Haig was Jewish?

"There's a principle in Jewish mysticism called tikkun olam," he

said. "It means, literally, world repair. The idea is that God created the

world by containing divine light in vessels, some of which shattered

and got scattered all over. It's the job of humanity to help God by finding

and releasing those shards of light—through good deeds and acts.

Every time we do, God becomes more perfect—and we become a little

more like God.

"From what I understand, Jesus promised his believers entry into

the Kingdom of Heaven—and urged them to prepare through love and

charity. The bodhisattva in Buddhism promises to wait for liberation

until all who suffer have been freed. And apparently, even those longgone

Gnostics thought that a spark of divinity was inside all of us. It

seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness

are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place—

because we become better people in it. And that sounds, to me, a bit

like why Mr. Bourne wants to donate his heart."

Did it really matter whether you believed that Jesus spoke the

words in the Bible or the words in the Gospel of Thomas? Did it matter

whether you found God in a consecrated church or a penitentiary or

even in yourself? Maybe not. Maybe it only mattered that you not judge

someone else who chose a different path to find meaning in his life.

"I find under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons

Act of 2000 that Shay Bourne has a valid and compelling religious

belief that he must donate his organs at the time of his death," Judge

Haig pronounced. "I further find that the State of New Hampshire's plan

to execute Mr. Bourne by lethal injection imposes a substantial burden

on the ability to exercise his religious practices, and that they therefore

must comply with an alternate means of execution, such as hanging,

that will allow organ donation to be medically feasible. Court's adjourned,

and I want to see counsel in my chambers."

The gallery exploded in a riot of noise, as reporters tried to get to

the attorneys before they left to meet with the judge. There were

women sobbing and students punching their fists in the air, and in the

back of the room, someone had begun to sing a psalm. Maggie reached

over the bar to embrace me, and then quickly hugged Shay. "I gotta

run," she said, and Shay and I were left staring at each other.

"Good," he said. "This is good."

I nodded and reached out to him. I had never embraced Shay

before, and it was a shock to me—how strong his heart beat against my

own chest, how warm his skin was. "You have to call her," he said.

"You have to tell the girl."

How was I supposed to explain that Claire Nealon didn't want his

heart?

"I will," I lied, the words staining his cheek like Judas's kiss.

Maggie

Wait until I told my mother that Judge Haig was not Catholic, like Alexander,

but Jewish. No doubt it would inspire her to give me the speech

again about how, with time and perseverance, I could be a judge, too. I

had to admit, I liked his ruling—and not just because it had come out in

favor of my client. His words had been thoughtful, unbiased, not at all

what I expected.

"All right," Judge Haig said, "now that the cameras aren't on us, let's

just cut the crap. We all know that this trial wasn't about religion, although

you found a lovely legal coatrack to hang your complaint on, Ms.

Bloom."

My mouth opened and closed, sputtering. So much for thoughtful

and unbiased; Judge Haig's spirituality, apparently, was the kind

that made itself present only when the right people were there to

see it.

"Your Honor, I firmly believe in my client's religious freedoms—"

"I'm sure you do," the judge interrupted. "But get off your high horse

so we can settle this business." He turned to Gordon Greenleaf. "Is the

state really going to appeal this for a hundred and twenty dollars?"

"Probably not, Judge, but I'd have to check."

"Then go make a phone call," Judge Haig said, "because there's a

family out there who deserves to know what's going to happen, and

when. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes, Judge," we both parroted.

I left Gordon in the hallway, hunched over his cell phone, and

headed downstairs to the holding cell where Shay was most likely

still incarcerated. With each step, I moved a little more slowly. What

did you say to the man whose imminent death you'd just set in

motion?

He was lying on the metal bench in the cell, facing the wall. "Shay," I

said, "you okay?"

He rolled toward me and grinned. "You did it."

I swallowed. "Yeah. I guess I did." If I had gotten my client the verdict

he wanted, why did I feel like I was going to be sick?

"Did you tell her yet?"

He was talking about June Nealon, or Claire Nealon—which meant

that Father Michael had not had the guts to tell Shay the truth either, yet.

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