A Stand-In for Dying Page 12

  When the doctor’s hand had stopped moving, Ray nodded and smiled. “There’s still HibernaTurf,” he said. “I’m no saint. But maybe I’m not the devil either.”

  “Validity on a scale of seven?” asked the doctor.

  “Four or five. There are still things you don’t know about me...things I can’t tell even you, that keep me from ever getting to seven. But you’ve helped me more than I imagined possible. Thanks.” Ray realized that this was probably the last time he’d see Dr. Jensen. This was as far as she could take him. There were some places he could only go alone.

  When Ray left Dr. Jensen’s office that day, he felt grateful for being relieved of the burden of thinking he’d been responsible for ending his mother’s life. He was suddenly more aware, however, of the responsibility he bore for eventually ending the life of the stranger whose body he would someday occupy. He might deserve his place on the planet, after all, but did he deserve it more than the unknown stranger? With that quandary he was all alone.

  19

  MARCUS SAT ALONE in the balcony of the Church of the Double Helix as the music swelled from the massive pipe organ to fill every crevice of the building. The procession below moved deliberately down the center aisle toward the stage and fanned out on either side of the altar. When the last people had reached the front and the aisle was empty, the music paused, then resumed in a lower key and a stately beat as all eyes turned toward the back of the church.

  The bride cleared the edge of the balcony and came into view, her right hand in the crook of the arm of the tall man beside her with the gleaming head. Marcus spotted Corinne in the front row by the aisle, a tear trickling down her cheek as she watched the bride approach. Why was he watching from a distance and not by Corinne’s side? And who was the child beside her, a boy of five or six, on whose shoulder Corinne’s right hand rested.

  When the bride reached the end of the aisle, she turned briefly toward Corinne, who lifted her veil to kiss her.

  “Natasha,” Marcus mouthed silently. “My daughter.”

  Now Natasha turned toward the man who had walked her down the aisle. He lifted her veil, turned and bent to bestow a fatherly kiss, giving Marcus his first glimpse of him in profile. He had Marcus’s body, but the face of a stranger. A wave of nausea washed over Marcus as he watched the strange man kiss his daughter. His vision blurred momentarily, then cleared in time to see Natasha ascend the steps to the pulpit and take her place beside her groom.

  The minister entered from the side and emerged from the shadows into the brilliant light that illuminated the hooded silver robe. From the figure’s gait, he could tell it was a woman. When she reached the pulpit, she turned to face the congregation, and Marcus saw a fringe of flaming red hair outlining her hood. Then she looked directly at him and he stared into the familiar green eyes that shone brilliantly even from across the church’s span.

  “Terra!” he shouted aloud, gasping for breath. The hood fell away and her flowing hair cascaded in slow motion to her shoulders.

  Corinne shook him by the shoulders until his eyes finally opened. She stared into the unseeing eyes, the pupils dilated so wide that they nearly obliterated the irises. His whole body shuddered.

  “Marcus, Marc!” She shook him harder. He sighed deeply and blinked.

  “You’ve been having a nightmare,” she said when he’d finally come around. “You were shouting.”

  His eyes filled with tears as their colored irises reclaimed terrain from the dwindling pupils. He reached up to touch her face and gave silent thanks that the future he’d just seen wasn’t real, at least not yet.

  “What was I shouting?” he asked later while Corinne was pouring coffee in the kitchen.

  “It sounded like ‘terror,’” she replied. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not right now. I’d prefer to let it just fade away on its own. It was only a dream.” Marcus was grateful for the ambiguity of his exclamation. It was more than just a dream, but he wasn’t about to let Corinne into this corner of his mind.

  The dream didn’t fade from Marcus’s awareness as he’d hoped. The images lodged deep within his being and threatened to crush his spirit.

  Marcus sat, sometimes for hours, his shoulders slumped and his face impassive. Even Corinne could no longer reach him. While desire had always glowed in his eyes when he gazed upon her body, he now barely noticed her and showed no interest at all in making love. Even when she’d reach over in bed to touch him, he’d roll over with his back toward her and pretend to sleep.

  Even more striking was the change in his emotional response to Natasha. His daughter had always been the light of his life and had never failed to bring a smile to his face. Now her presence brought him only pain. He’d gaze at her from across the room, then turn away so that she might not see his stifled sobs.

  Natasha had just turned six and was bright beyond her years, already developing the grace and beauty that had first attracted Marcus to Corinne. She was in a growth spurt that brought her up to the vee of Corinne’s ribcage. Not visible to the casual observer, however, was the maturation of her tissues, the cellular building blocks of her body and the chromosomes in their nuclei, half of which bore telomeres that would never diminish in length.

  “Come watch me ride,” Natasha implored one afternoon, tugging at her father’s arm. “You won’t believe what we can do.”

  Marcus mustered a smile and accompanied her to the paddock where Cinnamon was grazing. The horse came running to greet her and stood patiently while Natasha saddled her. The girl was atop the horse in minutes, cantering around the perimeter of the corral. Marcus leaned against the fence and watched her put Cinnamon through her paces. They moved to the center of the ring and the horse began prancing in place, first to the right, then to the left, and finally stretching out her forelegs and bowing her head.

  “See, Daddy, I’ve taught her to dance.” Natasha beamed. Marcus laughed. The spontaneity of the emotion took him by surprise. It was his first moment of peace since the nightmare.

  His pleasure was short-lived, however, interrupted by the appearance of a man by the fence on the opposite side of the paddock, who was also watching Natasha. The man appeared in his mid-twenties, rugged and handsome, with a shock of wavy blond hair and blue eyes that studied her with such intensity that they threatened to pierce her body. Marcus had never seen him before. Beyond the man was a white car with the driver’s door ajar. With the sun reflecting off the windshield, Marcus could barely make out the outline of a second figure sitting in the passenger’s seat.

  A shiver ran up Marcus’s spine. Why would a strange man show such interest in his daughter? The image flashed through his mind of the stranger in the dream kissing the adult Natasha at the altar, and he tasted vomit rising in the back of his throat. She seemed so vulnerable, still smiling at him from atop her palomino, and at the same time innocent of the forces that could at any moment rip her life apart.

  Natasha swung Cinnamon around to make another pass around the ring. The horse, upon seeing the stranger, suddenly reared, spilling her rider to the ground. Natasha landed hard and lay motionless on her back while Cinnamon lunged halfway toward the stranger at the fence, then stood firmly between his line of sight and her mistress, snorting and pawing the ground.

  Marcus clambered over the fence and ran to Natasha, for the moment taking his eyes off the intruders across the corral. She was still unconscious when he reached her, but breathing. Her right arm was askew at the elbow and looked broken, her only visible injury. He hesitated, however, to move her without knowing whether or not her neck had been injured.

  Cinnamon came around and shoved Marcus softly aside with her head, then nuzzled Natasha gently. The girl opened her eyes. “Oww! My arm!” She braced her left arm against the ground and began to sit up.

  “Wait, sweetie,” Marcus warned, “Don’t move just yet.” He ran his hand softly over the smooth top of her head and she settled back. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed
that the blond man and the car were gone, already out of sight.

  Marcus ripped a loose board from the fence, stood on one end, and snapped it in half, creating a bodyboard almost exactly Natasha’s length. In a few minutes, she was lashed to the board to stabilize her neck and in Marcus’s arms, her injured arm cradled closely to her side. She looked lovingly into his eyes, releasing a surge of affection.

  As they sped to the hospital, Marcus’s thoughts darted from threat to threat: the threat from within that could at any moment end his existence and put Natasha and Corinne in the hands of a stranger, the threat from without from the intruders at the corral, and the new threat of whatever medical tests might be done on his daughter that could lead to the discovery of the Conversion, a crucial nexus in the web of secrets he kept from Corinne, from Natasha, and from the world. At least this time, he was here to protect her. It was still too soon to write himself out of the script.

  *****

  Corinne had begun to wonder whether Marcus had fallen out of love with her. When she looked closely in the mirror, she saw tiny lines radiating from the corners of her eyes and a deepening of the folds around her mouth. Her breasts were still round and firm, but she saw hints of creases beneath them as time and gravity began to take their toll.

  And when she watched him sleep, she looked for the same hallmarks of aging that she saw in herself, but saw none. As haggard as he appeared in the throes of melancholy, the contours of his face in sleep were as smooth and unblemished as a twenty-year-old. Could she be leaving him behind? And could his love for her be so shallow that these differences would matter?

  The night after the accident, Marcus had embraced her tenderly from behind in the bedroom while she was changing for bed and they’d made passionate love, which reassured Corinne that he still loved her and desired her. Whatever was behind his bout of despondency at least wasn’t about her or about aging. She welcomed the return of Marcus’s vitality and his emotional reengagement with her and Natasha.

  When Corinne brought Natasha to the doctor for a follow-up visit one week after the accident, her arm had completely healed. At the hospital, a scraping of skin had been converted into pluripotent stem cells and then into a mixture of osteoclasts to reabsorb damaged bone and osteoblasts to lay down new bone. Together these cells, injected at the site of the fracture, remodeled the structure of Natasha’s damaged ulna, the narrow bone in her forearm that had snapped in the fall.

  Ever since the process of inducing stem cells from skin cells had been streamlined enough to become an office procedure, this had become standard protocol for treating fractures and shortened the healing time dramatically. Most fractures healed completely in a few weeks. But Natasha’s recovery was remarkable even for this treatment.

  “She must have really great genes,” commented the doctor. “I’ve never seen anyone recover so quickly from that bad a break.”

  “Her father’s side, I guess,” said Corinne laughing. “I always take forever to heal.” Beneath the banter, though, was a nagging feeling that there was more to Natasha’s speedy recovery than chance. And she wondered how it might connect with the parts of Marcus’s life that he kept so deeply buried.

  20

  IN THE MONTHS that followed Ray’s treatment with Dr. Jensen, his anxieties rapidly melted away and he soon moved as freely in the world as Lena did. He agreed to let Lena redecorate their home. The slick, hard surfaces were soon replaced by textured fabrics, the feel of which Ray grew to love. Now that their home was no longer a prison, Lena began to flourish. Ray hadn’t seen her so happy since the very beginning of their courtship. He loved seeing the corners of her eyes crinkle whenever she smiled or laughed. And his own face lit up from the light radiating from hers.

  When Ray saw himself smiling in the mirror, it was like looking at a stranger. “So this is what it feels like to be normal,” he thought. “This is what it means to be happy.”

  Ray also saw in the mirror the indelible marks left by the passage of time: thinning hair, a softening of his jawline, an extra fold of skin under his chin, and some bulging around the waist that defied all his efforts to keep himself trim with diet and exercise. For most people, these changes marked an inexorable progression toward death. For Ray, it marked movement toward a different, and in some ways equally daunting destiny, the moment when he would stop being himself and would assume the life of a stranger.

  Lena was delighted at her newfound opportunity to explore the world. Ray’s companionship was an unexpected bonus. He was like a curious child, discovering the world for the first time. Many everyday experiences were new to him, even if previously sampled via virtual reality. And when they traveled together, all of his senses were fully engaged.

  “Lena, come look!” he’d exclaim, gazing over a grove of olive trees or holding out a palmful of multicolored sand.

  “Taste this,” he’d urge her, popping a morsel from a street vendor into her mouth.

  Lena was never happier, though, than when she was working. She loved meeting and interviewing creative people, then lovingly crafting verbal portraits of what made them beautiful to her. Now that Ray no longer depended upon her presence to feel secure, she was free to resume her work and develop her craft.

  “I have a new assignment, Ray,” she said one day upon returning home, “and I want you to come with me this time.”

  Ray was intrigued. Lena had never before invited him for a glimpse of her personal world. This was new territory in their relationship.

  “Why now?” he asked. “What’s so special about this one?”

  “She’s an artist,” Lena replied, “no, more than just an artist. She has some very special talents. For one thing, she’s a synesthetic.”

  “You mean her senses bleed together?”

  “Yes. She visualizes sounds and she hears what she sees. Even the textures of things she touches transform into music and pictures. She’s an extraordinary talent. I’d like you to meet her.”

  When Ray and Lena arrived at the artist’s studio the next afternoon, it was like walking into a fantasy world. They were completely immersed in color and sound, which seemed to blend so synchronously that it was impossible to know where one ended and the other began. Even the boundaries of their bodies melted into the surrounding space.

  The artist led them outside into a lush garden where their senses were sufficiently freed to permit a dialogue.

  “Ray, meet Haley Sellica,” Lena said. “Haley, this is my husband Ray.”

  “Delighted to meet you,” said Haley, extending her hand and making eye contact. Her hand was soft and warm, but her handshake was firm and assertive.

  Haley was pleasing to the eye, but not beautiful in the conventional sense. She looked in her mid-thirties. Her skin was clear and smooth, her hair somewhere between sandy and brown, pulled tightly back in a ponytail and secured by a plastic clip. She was dressed plainly in a white, men’s button-down shirt, at least a size too big and hanging over khaki twill pants that looked as though they’d been washed a few too many times. Both garments, speckled with multi-colored paints, hid a body that was trim and healthy, but as nondescript as her dated clothes. Her whole appearance seemed incongruous for someone so attuned to creating beauty.

  Haley read the question in Ray’s eyes. “You’ll have to forgive my appearance,” she said, passing a hand down the front of her body and smiling. “I try not to upstage my work.”

  Ray listened intently as Lena conducted her interview. He hadn’t heard her work since they’d first met and he’d been her subject. He was as fascinated to hear how her technique had evolved as to learn about the woman they’d come to see.

  Haley had long been aware of her special gift, but she didn’t always know that everyone else experienced the world differently. When she’d created her first painting, everyone around her knew right away that she’d be capable of transforming the world of art with a unique vision. When she’d composed her first sonata, they realized that her talent was multi
-layered and her potential limitless. She was given every possible tool to nurture that talent.

  When the interview was done, Haley led them back into her home for a more detailed tour of its contents. This time, the first thing Ray noticed went beyond the sights and sounds. As he walked through the rooms, he became attuned to their aromas, which he inhaled deeply, arousing a medley of emotions evoked by his sense of smell. The aromas flowed and shifted with the visual images and the music, reproducing with remarkable fidelity the artist’s synesthetic perceptions.

  Across one wall was an expanse of shimmering butter yellow canvas, accompanied by the subtle hum of a sweltering afternoon, and the smell of fresh sweat mixed with honeysuckle blossoms. Standing before it, Ray felt a deep sense of longing for something that felt like a lost memory, but had never been part of his actual youth. Crossing the threshold into another room, he found himself looking at swirls of black, accompanied by a deep base cadence, and the smell of charred flesh. Ray felt a flash of the horror that he’d experienced on the day of the fire, but it vanished as soon as he’d moved on to the next image. None of the emotions evoked by the pieces lingered beyond the physical boundaries of the work.