The Book of Michael Page 10

  “I don’t know,” I said, taking the rosary beads.“Do you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even go to church. But I fall back on it. I grew up Catholic.”

  “Went to confession?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you have to confess?”

  “Impure thoughts. Theft.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Nothing big.”

  I looked down at the rosary beads. “What do I do with this?”

  “Keep it. Just carry it around. Hold onto it and pray for your grandmother.”

  “About the God thing. I think that if I was a real religious type, I’d believe that God was punishing me. Look at what I’ve been through.”

  “I thought about that too. I don’t know why you or Lisa had to suffer what you did. All I know is that you have a chance to go on. And maybe live a happy life. Do some good.”

  Tyson was a mystery to me. He really was. Like many kids at school, I had thought he was an arrogant man, an asshole. Instead, he was this other thing. I pocketed the beads and wondered why he believed I could live a happy life. “Happy” and “life” were not two words I could string together in a sentence.

  The car came to a stop in front of the hospital. “Room 567,” Tyson said.“You want me to go in with you?”

  “No.Thanks. I’m okay.”

  He nodded. “I’ll pray for you,” he said.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “I said I wasn’t sure. But it doesn’t hurt to pray. Just in case.”

  “Right.Thanks again.”

  My parents were in the room. Phyllis was lying on her back with the cup of the oxygen mask over her face.My Dad looked at me and I could tell he’d been crying.

  “She’s been here for three days,” my mother said. “She didn’t tell us. Finally the hospital called.”

  “Her lungs?” I asked.

  “And heart.”

  Phyllis looked like she was sleeping but she raised a hand when she saw me and made a feeble wave.

  “Can I talk with her alone?” I asked.

  My mom looked at my dad and then he nodded yes and they left the room.

  Phyllis pushed a button that raised her head until she was in a sitting position. I noticed the wire attached to her arm and the monitor with a quiet hum beside her. She tried to say something through the mask but the words sounded like mush. Her skin was pale as if something had sucked all the color out of her.

  She shook her head back and forth and then lifted the mask off her face and coughed. I sat down in the chair beside the bed.

  “You were in school?” she asked.

  “Yes. I started going again.”

  “Good. Do you like it?” Her words were labored.

  “What’s not to like?” I said sarcastically.

  She smiled and laughed a little before having to stop to suppress a fit of coughing. It took some painful seconds for her to recover.“Hexagram 30. Li. Don’t move forward too quickly. Go slow with clarity and composure. Concentration helps.”

  “I remember that one. Do you think I’m moving too fast?”

  “No. Just work on staying calm.”

  I wanted to ask her how she was doing but I knew I wasn’t going to get a straight answer. The way she looked was terrible. I almost would not have recognized her had I been walking through the hospital ward.

  “Lisa wrote me a poem,” I said. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “Very much.”

  So I read her the poem that I was still carrying in my shirt pocket.

  “Beyond fear and change,” she said. “I like that.”

  “How sick are you?” I finally asked.

  “Sick enough to die if I wanted to.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “When the breathing is bad, it’s very bad. I can’t get my breath and I am very, very afraid. It’s a terrible feeling. And they say there is a strain on my heart. Lungs and heart—not good. Sometimes it’s painful to breathe. So they give me medication. But I’m not sure I want to live like this.” She pointed to the oxygen mask lying beside her. “Darth Vader.”

  “But you can’t die,” I said. “You can’t die because I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t stand to lose one more person. Not you.”

  She lifted the mask to her face and took a couple of breaths from it. “I know,” she said. “I’ve already thought about that. Truth is I’m more afraid of living—like this—than I am of dying. Isn’t that peculiar?”

  “No,” I said.“I’ve been there. In prison, when I thought I’d be there for years, I thought the same thing. I was reading those books about death. I thought about it and considered the idea of ‘release.’ Just make the pain go away.”

  “I remember you wrote me about it. I was worried but you seemed to be dealing with it in a way that was well beyond your years.”

  “I stared it down. I had lots of time. Lots of time to think.”

  “I’ve stared it down too,” Phyllis said, looking into my eyes.

  “You know why I gave up any thoughts of a quick, easy exit?”

  “Yes, I remember.You told me.You wrote that in a letter too. I cried.You said you couldn’t do it to your parents. And you couldn’t do it to me.”

  “Right. Exactly. I wanted to do it to punish everyone else. Everyone. I wanted them to see how badly damaged I was. I wanted them to feel bad when they heard about it. But I knew it wouldn’t be fair to you and my parents.”

  “I’m older, you know. I’ve had a good life.”

  “That’s what I thought you might say.”

  “But it doesn’t get me off the hook, does it?”

  “No,” I said. “Because I need you. I need to know you are there for me.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re ready. I can’t live forever but I’ll hang in there.The doctors have a couple of more treatments that I’ve been holding off on.”

  I reached in my pocket for a handkerchief and discovered the rosary beads. I lifted them out and gave them to my grandmother. She was thoroughly puzzled. “What?” she asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “You’re on your way to sainthood,” I said. “You might need this.”

  Chapter 19

  Action News ran what they had. Which was not much. I didn’t watch it but when we were sitting in the cafeteria the next day, Pen told me that the spin was this: boy wrongly convicted of murder through a miscarriage of justice. Someone should be blamed. “It must make you angry,” he said.“How do you deal with it?”

  I liked Pen. He was sincere and straightforward. He wasn’t the type who I would have chosen for a friend. He and Lisa and Nicole always had some cause going. They were out to save the world. I wasn’t that type. In truth, I was the guy always wondering, what’s in this for me. I was a for–me person. My tribe made up much of the world’s population. But now I was in another tribe. I was in the tribe of victims. If I wanted to, I could live the rest of my life with a big badge. Hell, I didn’t even need the badge or the T–shirt or the cap.You could probably read it on my face.

  “I don’t know if I do deal with it, Pen.Think about it.

  Who should I blame? The police? The prosecutor? My idiot lawyer? The judge and the jury? The media, for sure. That’s a lot of folks to be angry at. I don’t know if I have that much energy.” I decided not to even mention Miranda.

  “I tried putting myself in your shoes. I imagined being you. And I don’t think I’d be handling this as well as you do.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. I’m just not sure I really am handling it.”

  At school, Pen and Nicole both “looked out” for me. It was a funny feeling, to be watched. Protected even. Mr.Tyson was doing it too. Into the second week, kids had stopped staring at me.

  Phyllis had stabilized on the new medication and was allowed to go home. I visited with her and we played Monopoly or threw the I Ching sticks or watched documentaries about wildlife on TV.
Her favorites involved penguins and birds on remote islands. She still did not look healthy and I knew she wasn’t out of the woods. The emphysema and heart problems weren’t going to go away.

  “I always meant to travel,” she said. “But everywhere I wanted to go was so far away. And too expensive.”

  “Where did you want to go?”

  “Fiji. Micronesia. Bali.Vanuatu.The Andaman Islands.”

  “Why those places?”

  “I don’t know. I saw them on world maps. They seemed like impossible places. I guess that was why I wanted to go there. Maybe if I had a million dollars I would have gone.”

  Phyllis still had me go to the store to buy lottery tickets for her even though she seemed to have lost her naive optimism that one of these times she was going to win.

  “Hawker still wants me to sue. A couple of other lawyers have called. I’ve heard my parents talk about it. I guess we would win. I could buy us a round trip ticket to the Andaman Islands.”

  “Mine would have to be one way. Besides, I don’t think I could handle the travel.Those days are gone.”

  The phrase echoed within me. Those days are gone. “What do you think I should do?”

  “About the money?”

  “Yes. About making someone pay.”

  “How would it make you feel, Michael?”

  “It would make me feel bad,” I said. “I’d hate it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. Something to do with Lisa.”

  “You still miss her?”

  “Of course. I think I still love her. How can that be?”

  “You haven’t fully had a chance to deal with her loss.”

  “Something like that. But it’s more. It’s all tangled up with Miranda too. I had really cared for Miranda too. I thought I had been in love with her. But as she changed, I just walked away.”

  “You believed she was going to drag you down with her.”

  “I don’t know what I believed. I just know that I made some bad decisions. Trying to sue for wrongful conviction wouldn’t help anyone. I know that. I received a letter from one of the jurors. She said she was sorry. It was sincere. Isn’t that funny? Only one person had the guts to write to me.”

  “One is better than none,” she said. “There’s a lot of people in my life I’d like to say I’m sorry to. And I’ve never done it. Most of us just want to walk away from our mistakes.”

  “I know,” I said. But as I said it, I realized I wasn’t talking about jurors or lawyers. I was thinking about me. Why did I still feel the guilt? And who was it that I needed to say I’m sorry to?

  “For each ecstatic instant/ We must pay/In keen and quivering ratio/ to the ecstasy,” Phyllis said. “Emily Dickinson said that.” Then Phyllis pointed to the unopened pack of real cigarettes on the table.

  I picked up the smokes. I hadn’t had a cigarette since I forced myself into cold turkey everything in prison. Phyllis studied me. “I can’t believe I gave you your first cigarette.”

  “Hey, what’s a grandma for?”

  Phyllis leaned over and turned on her oxygen tank and pulled the clear mask over her face. She took a deep breath and pointed to the cigarettes. “You light up one of those things while I have this on, and the whole place will light up like the Fourth of July.”

  I held the sealed pack of cigarettes up to my nose and smelled the sweet smell of tobacco. It reminded me of Miranda and that scared me. Miranda hadn’t smoked when I met her. But that changed quickly.Whenever I had kissed her, there had always been the taste of tobacco on her breath. Sometimes when she and I had smoked weed, we’d cover it up by smoking cigarettes. And each time we’d had sex, we both smoked afterwards. At the time, I had believed it was her leading me into all the forbidden territory. She was the “bad” girl I wanted her to be. I had assumed she was way ahead of me.

  But it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I was wrong.

  Phyllis looked tired. “Need a nap?” I asked.

  “Yes.You can stay if you want.”

  “No, I need to get some fresh air. Let me help you to bed.”

  I walked her to her bedroom and felt how frail her body was. I made sure she took her medication and I adjusted the oxygen bottle by the bed. I kept wondering which visit with my grandmother would be my last.

  ***

  Outside, I checked my watch and discovered it was five–thirty. I didn’t want to go home. There was a fire in my head, a madness that would not go away. How did it go? For each ecstatic instant we must pay. Crime and punishment. Maybe the crime was in the living. My greatest crime was that I had been the one who ultimately got to walk away. Not Lisa. Not Miranda.

  My parents had insisted I carry the family cell phone. It was in my pocket. Louis had given me his home phone number. He said I could call him any time at work or at home. I pulled his number out of my pocket and dialed.

  “Louis?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s Michael.”

  “You all right?”

  “I don’t know. I’m mixed up. I can’t seem to put the pieces together.”

  “You want to come over?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sure.”

  He explained where he lived and I caught the bus to his neighborhood. Louis had a small neat house with a well–trimmed lawn. His car was in the driveway.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  I walked in and looked around an amazingly immaculate house. It was quite a contrast to the image I had of Louis when he was at work—old coveralls with grease on them and on his bare arms and face.

  “You live alone?”

  “Now I do. My wife left with the kids when I was in prison. They say that’s common. Want something to eat? I hate eating alone.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let me call my folks and tell them not to wait on dinner.”

  “Now that’s being considerate,” Louis said and faded to the kitchen while I called.

  After I hung up, I followed him into the kitchen and was shocked to see a table with dishes of steaming vegetables and rice.“Hope you like Indian food,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Sit. Eat.”

  “You expecting company?”

  “Nope. I do this for myself. Makes for lots of leftovers. Makes me feel like I got a life. But I don’t really. Perrier?”

  “Huh?”

  “Water?”

  “Sure.”

  “So,” he said.“How’s your grandmother?”

  “Not great, but hanging in there.”

  “Good. Now eat. We’ll talk later.”

  Later was after we had scoffed down curried chicken and rice and lentils and other things that Louis had to provide names for. “My goal is to be a vegetarian.When I worked in the kitchen in Severton, there was another inmate, Luigi, who taught me a thing or two about nutrition and cooking. He had a thing for coriander and tofu. I’ve been meaning to pick up where I left off then but… well, life gets in the way. And work. So now tell me about why you are here.”

  “I’m not sure. I just had this feeling that you would be one of the few people who understand what I’m going through. It’s weird. I mean, I’m starting to get over the panic attacks, but it’s like there’s something gnawing at me. Something I’m supposed to do but I don’t know what it is. I thought maybe you’d felt this way when you got out.”

  Louis collected dishes from the table, took them to a dishwasher, and proceeded to load it very carefully. “Michael, first off, remember that you were innocent. I was guilty. I deserved my time. You didn’t.”

  “But how did you feel when you got out? After the freedom part wore off.”

  “I felt like shit. I’d lost my wife and kids, my job. I ended up with this empty house and I wanted to put my old life back together. But couldn’t. I drank some and that didn’t help. I tried hanging out with my old buddies but they’d all moved on without me. I was Joe Lonesome for a while. I tried to figure a way to make amends to the people I’d
hurt the most. Even the guy who I held up at gunpoint. I traced him and went to talk to him. But he didn’t want anything to do with me. So I tried talking to my wife and the kids but I scared them, I guess. My own kids didn’t really want anything to do with me. So it was still Joe Lonesome. I even wondered if I’d be better off back inside. All it’d take would be one petty crime and I’d at least have some friends. Luigi was in for life.Your old buddy Eduardo would still be there. And I’d have Skullbones to recommend books. It seemed to make more sense.”

  “But you didn’t do it?”

  “No. I got a job fixing people’s exhaust systems. And I redecorated.” He put his arms up. It seemed like the oddest thing to say. “And then I started doing little acts of kindness for people I didn’t know. I reached out. Sometimes I was wrong and people didn’t appreciate it. Other times it did the trick. I’m not saying I did much good. It’s just that it felt good trying.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling. “But if I could, I’d still want to try to make contact with the people I hurt. I’d start with whoever got hurt the worst and then work my way down the list.”

  “You made a list?”

  “A long one. Kept it in my head in Severton. Nothing written down, though. You know who was first on my list.”

  I shook my head.

  “Me. I was. And I was the toughest son of a bitch to get to, I’ll tell you that.”

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 20

  Nicole was the one who first hinted that Lisa’s parents wanted to talk to me. Nicole was smart and she was kind and the death of Lisa had hurt her in some deep, powerful way that sometimes caused her to start crying in school. They had been friends from the time they were young. She truly understood my loss and we had a bond. It was an odd relationship. Like Pen, if she saw trouble—and sometimes it was like a psychic thing—she’d steer me away from it. Through the rest of that school year, I maintained my notoriety where I would have preferred to be anonymous.