Ill put it back, I said, and someone else seemed to be speaking. Inside myself was a man standing off to one side, silent and stunned. I could still feel the warm pressure of her palm on my mouth.
Oh, dont bother! I already did.
Ralph came back. Theyre gone, he said. Walking down the street toward the bus stop. He turned to my wife. Do you really want me to call the police, Ruth?
No. Wed just be all day filling out forms and answering questions. She paused. We might even have to testify in court.
Testify to what? Ralph asked.
I dont know what, how should I know what? Will one of you get the adhesive tape so we can keep this christing needle still? Its on the kitchen counter, I think.
I want another kiss, my father said.
Ill go, I said, but first I went to the front doorwhich Ralph had locked as well as closedand looked out. The little green plastic bus shelter was only a block down, but no one was standing by the pole or under the shelters plastic roof. And the sidewalk was empty. Ayana and the womanwhether mother or minderwere gone. All I had was the kids touch on my mouth, still warm but starting to fade.
Now comes the miracle part. Im not going to skimp itif Im going to tell this story, Ill try to tell it rightbut Im not going to dwell on it either. Miracle stories are always satisfying but rarely interesting, because theyre all the same.
We were staying at one of the motels on Ford Citys main road, a Ramada Inn with thin walls. Ralph annoyed my wife by calling it the Rammit Inn. If you keep doing that, youll eventually forget and say it in front of a stranger, my wife said. Then youll have a red face.
The walls were so thin that it was possible for us to hear Ralph and Trudy arguing next door about how long they could afford to stay. Hes my father, Ralph said, to which Trudy replied: Try telling that to Connecticut Light and Power when the bill comes due. Or the state commissioner when your sick days run out.
It was a little past seven on a hot August evening. Soon Ralph would be leaving for my fathers, where the part-time nurse was on duty until eight P.M. I found the Pirates on TV and jacked the volume to drown out the depressing and predictable argument going on next door. Ruth was folding clothes and telling me the next time I bought cheap discount-store underwear, she was going to divorce me. Or shoot me for a stranger. The phone rang. It was Nurse Chloe. (This was what she called herself, as in Drink a little more of this soup for Nurse Chloe.)
She wasted no time on pleasantries. I think you should come right away, she said. Not just Ralph for the night shift. All of you.
Is he going? I asked. Ruth stopped folding things and came over. She put a hand on my shoulder. We had been expecting thishoping for it, reallybut now that it was here, it was too absurd to hurt. Doc had taught me how to use a Bolo-Bouncer when I was a kid no older than that days little blind intruder. He had caught me smoking under the grape arbor and had told menot angrily but kindlythat it was a stupid habit, and Id do well not to let it get a hold on me. The idea that he might not be alive when tomorrows paper came? Absurd.
I dont think so, Nurse Chloe said. He seems better. She paused. Ive never seen anything like it in my life.
He was better. When we got there fifteen minutes later, he was sitting on the living-room sofa and watching the Pirates on the houses larger TVno technological marvel, but at least colorfast. He was sipping a protein shake through a straw. He had some color. His cheeks seemed plumper, perhaps because he was freshly shaved. He had regained himself. That was what I thought then; the impression has only grown stronger with the passage of time. And one other thing, which we all agreed oneven the doubting Thomasina to whom I was married: the yellow smell that had hung around him like ether ever since the doctors sent him home to die was gone.
He greeted us all by name, and told us that Willie Stargell had just hit a home run for the Buckos. Ralph and I looked at each other, as if to confirm we were actually there. Trudy sat on the couch beside Doc, only it was more of a whoomping down. Ruth went into the kitchen and got herself a beer. A miracle in itself.
I wouldnt mind one of those, Ruthie-doo, my father said, and thenprobably misinterpreting my slack and flabbergasted face for an expression of disapproval: I feel better. Gut hardly hurts at all.
No beer for you, I think, Nurse Chloe said. She was sitting in an easy chair across the room and showed no sign of gathering her things, a ritual that usually began twenty minutes before the end of her shift. Her annoying do-it-for-mommy authority seemed to have grown thin.
When did this start? I asked, not even sure what I meant by this, because the changes for the better seemed so general. But if I had any specific thing in mind, I suppose it was the departure of the smell.
He was getting better when we left this afternoon, Trudy said. I just didnt believe it.
Bolsheveky, Ruth said. It was as close as she allowed herself to cursing.
Trudy paid no attention. It was that little girl, she said.
Bolsheveky! Ruth cried.
What little girl? my father asked. It was between innings. On the television, a fellow with no hair, big teeth, and mad eyes was telling us the carpets at Jukers were so cheap they were almost free. And, dear God, no finance charges on layaway. Before any of us could reply to Ruth, Doc asked Nurse Chloe if he could have half a beer. She refused him. But Nurse Chloes days of authority in that little house were almost over, and during the next four yearsbefore a chunk of half- chewed meat stopped his throat forevermy father drank a great many beers. And enjoyed every one, I hope. Beer is a miracle in itself.
It was that night, while lying sleepless in our hard Rammit Inn bed and listening to the air conditioner rattle, that Ruth told me to keep my mouth shut about the blind girl, whom she called not Ayana but the magic negro child, speaking in a tone of ugly sarcasm that was very unlike her.
Besides, she said, it wont last. Sometimes a light bulb will brighten up just before it burns out for good. Im sure that happens to people too.
Maybe, but Doc Gentrys miracle took. By the end of the week he was walking in his backyard with me or Ralph supporting him. After that, we all went home. I got a call from Nurse Chloe on our first night back.
Were not going, no matter how sick he is, Ruth said half-hysterically. Tell her that.
But Nurse Chloe only wanted to say that shed happened to see Doc coming out of the Ford City Veterinary Clinic, where he had gone to consult with the young head of practice about a horse with the staggers. He had his cane, she said, but wasnt using it. Nurse Chloe said shed never seen a man of his years who looked any better. Bright-eyed and ring-tailed, she said. I still dont believe it. A month later he was walking (caneless) around the block, and that winter he was swimming every day at the local Y. He looked like a man of sixty-five. Everyone said so.
I talked to my fathers entire medical team in the wake of his recovery. I did it because what had happened to him reminded me of the so-called miracle plays that were big in the sticksville burgs of Europe in medieval times. I told myself if I changed Dads name (or perhaps just called him Mr. G.) it could make an interesting article for some journal or other. It might have even been truesort ofbut I never did write the article.
It was Stan Sloan, Docs family practice guy, who first raised the red flag. He had sent Doc to the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and so was able to blame the consequent misdiagnosis on Drs. Retif and Zamachowski, who were my dads oncologists there. They in turn blamed the radiologists for sloppy imaging. Retif said the chief of radiology was an incompetent who didnt know a pancreas from a liver. He asked not to be quoted, but after twenty-five years, I am assuming the statute of limitations on that one has run out.