Awash in Talent (6 page)

While she jabbered on, I dug around in my bag for my phone to call a cab. Beth explained the intricacies of being an Other-Talented Healer, as she now seemed to be calling herself and Katarina as a group. The taxi driver arrived and looked at me as if I should be going into the hospital, not leaving it, but Beth was oblivious. Once we were in the taxi, speeding back toward Hope Street, Beth squirmed in her seat and produced a piece of paper from her shorts pocket.

Occasionally wiping at my brow, I studied the paper in the variable light and finally made out that it was a list of names and contact information sorted by country. Beth pointed to the top of the page and said, “This is all the special people like me and Katarina, so we always know where the others are, all across the world.” The words across the top read, “Other-Talented Healers.” The rest of the print was terribly small, but when I turned it over, I saw that Katarina was listed in Providence, Rhode Island, and Beth was there, too, but in California.

“Beth,” I said, puzzled, “Mom got one of these from the doctor in Ethiopia. Did you know that?”

“She never showed it to me,” she said, her pitch rising.

“Beth,” I said, deliberately, trying to model calm behavior for my sister, “do you think she was trying to keep you isolated from people like you?”

It didn’t work: she burst into loud tears. “My only knowledge about Other-Talented Healers comes from my memories of Africa. And I’ve never met any other regular telekinetics, either!”

I had to go around the taxi and peel her, distraught, out of the back seat when we arrived. The house radiated an eerie silence only partially blotted out by Beth’s sobs. I hoped Carlos’s wife really would call me when she found out what happened, but then again, she had to come back to the house some time, so I turned my attention back to my little sister.

“Don’t cry, Beth. I’m sure Mom was protecting you. I don’t know about the Other-Talented Healer list, but I’m sure Mom and Dad were considering the special telekinetic schools as an absolute last resort if you couldn’t control your power.”

“Well, I’m going to write to every last person on this list now. But why would the school be a last resort? Katarina went to a special school for firestarters in Boston and she told me it was wonderful to be with other kids like her and not feel like an outsider, but still be more special than the others because she could heal the burns, while they could only start the blazes.”

“I did my research, Beth. The schools for telekinetics stifle Talent, quash creativity. They wouldn’t let you go outside on a nice day, much less let you study fourth-dimension architecture. It would be much worse than your regular middle school. They’d probably make everything aluminum and keep you sedated besides.”

“No, Katarina said her school was a really creative place and the most stifling thing they did was cover the new students’ rooms in fireproofing, which seems reasonable, don’t you think?”

“Katarina—some lady you’ve never met before—had time to tell you all this after you finished puking? I’m skeptical.”

Then she said it. “I think I might like to defer my enrollment at RISD and go to the telekinetic school here on the East Side that the police officer mentioned.”

I was disappointed that she could be so easily led astray. I thought perhaps her young teenage mind would let go of the idea sooner rather than later, so I didn’t fight her.

When we got inside, she said, “God, Emily! What happened to you?”

It was about time she noticed I’d literally taken the punches for her. “Nothing. Carlos’s wife isn’t going to press charges against you, in case you were worried about that.”

She helped me wash up, and it wasn’t that bad. By the time Beth took her hands off me, it was hard to tell where the blood had come from. I was glad to see that any bruising was going to be under my clothes, as if Carlos’s wife had had the foresight and skill to land her blows in the most traceless way possible.

The next morning, Beth made an appointment to talk with her prospective school’s principal. “Classes are starting soon,” she said. “We have to make a decision now.”

I’d already made my decision, sure that the school was a clandestine gulag and Katarina must have misinformed Beth, or had a skewed perspective because she’d grown up in communist Russia or somewhere even worse. So I decided to take the situation back into my own hands. “I’ll go with you to meet the principal,” I said. “We’ll have a nice walk.”

“I obviously can’t work in a hospital that uses aluminum,” said Beth as we hiked up Hope Street, “but I think I’d like to apply my Talents to helping people somehow, something that wouldn’t interfere with my architectural studies.”

“That will be great,” I said. I stopped in my tracks at Benevolent Street. “Hey, are you thirsty? I didn’t realize it was going to be so hot today. Hey, why don’t I stop in here and get us something to drink?” It was the recital hall building, so I figured there must be vending machines.

“Do you have to?” she said, looking the clock on her cell phone. “I don’t want to be late.”

“You stay here,” I said in my best casual voice. “I won’t be a sec.”

Leaving her sighing with impatience behind me, I ducked in the side door and tried to divine where the vending machines were. My brain was filled with visions of how I would hide the aluminum can until I could get it right up to her mouth and scrub her lips with it. Even if she could still make it all the way to the school, her powers would be too depleted to demonstrate to the principal. They’d think she was a nutcase.

I had taken the list of people like Beth from my mother, and in the confusion, they had left it with me in Ethiopia. By now, the desert sun had bleached its contents clean, if it hadn’t destroyed the very fibers of the paper.

When my aluminum can action sequence was fully calculated, I found myself standing before the vending machine in the basement of the recital building. It sold orange Fanta, Coca-Cola, and Nestea products—no RC Cola to be seen—in
plastic bottles
.

Damn the persistent, pernicious, progression of plastics into every aspect of our lives! I felt sick to my inner core, as if the absence of aluminum were my kryptonite. I wobbled out the same door I’d come in to find Beth patiently waiting at the corner of Hope and Benevolent. She waved and smiled. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Beth, I’m feeling really sick. Do you think you can make it to the school on your own?”

“What happened to you?” she asked as I came closer and used her shoulder for support.

“I’ve got to get home, that’s all. The school’s right on Hope Street. You’ll see a great big grassy lawn surrounded by a wrought iron fence.”

“Gee, if you’re sure you can get home, I guess I can get there.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said gruffly. I turned away to make my point. I looked back to see her almost hop up the street with optimism I couldn’t begin to imagine. She would demonstrate her powers for the principal, and tour the well-lit school filled with unquashed creativity, and flourish in both architecture and health care, without me. I kicked the sidewalk and bumped shoulders with disoriented freshmen on the way back to the house.

I was reminded of the first time I’d seen the new, expensive model of
Homo erectus
standing in the department’s museum. Made of wax, plastic, and human hair, it had an eerie presence as it stood there naked, just shorter than most of the museum’s visitors. It had been based on the actual skeleton of an individual unearthed by one of the professors on a previous mission to Africa. I had stared into the glass eyeballs and wondered what that anonymous person had ever done, all those thousands of years ago, to merit such everlasting fame at my prestigious university. What was so great about Beth that she could be literally awash in Talent, while I was only fair to middling at everything I did, even the dirty, dusty things I’d had such enthusiasm for? How could I ever hope to make a mark on the world, compared to my extraordinary sister? She couldn’t really be that extraordinary because I’d ignored her myself for the first thirteen years of her life. But still, here she was, six years younger than me and ready to start up her own architecture firm and magical health clinic while I was ready to . . .

I couldn’t fill in the rest of the sentence before my door was there, demanding a key. I entered the house and looked wistfully at the apartment door across from ours. I was ready to give up entirely, maybe devote my life to helping out at Beth’s clinic, as I sat in the chair facing the window. My future lay before me, empty. I lived on Hope Street, but I had no hope.

Until I saw that familiar threadbare car pull up in front of the window. Carlos’s wife got out and went around to the other side, and I held my breath for several long moments until she reemerged with a cheap plastic wheelchair she must have been unfolding. She wheeled it around, then opened the car door and, as if it were just another child’s car seat, set Carlos into it. I could barely feel my heart working away under a breathless sensation that my life had meaning again.

She wheeled him out front, considered the three steps to the front door, and left him there. I glued myself to the wall next to the window so there would be no chance she would see me. I nearly jumped to the ceiling when she pounded on my door, but I was able to keep quiet. I was saddened that she still felt threatened by me. I patiently waited through her double and triple check that I wasn’t there to somehow ruin her precious life. When I heard her go into Carlos’s place, I returned to the window.

Carlos sat in the wheelchair under the blazing sunlight. His face had no color, as if all the blood had drained away. All because of my terribly Talented sister. My legs twitched with the need to go out and meet him, but I prudently waited and saw that Carlos’s wife was bringing out some of their belongings, perhaps initiating the eventual move across town or across the planet or however far she thought would be sufficient. She laid some boxes in the back seat, then set a stack of textbooks on Carlos’s lap, as if to provide entertainment for him while she worked. When she darted back inside, I was drawn inexorably through the door toward him. Quietly, I approached him, noting that the drapes on their side were drawn, so she probably wouldn’t see us from inside.

“Hi, Carlos,” I said.

“Hi, Emily,” he responded.

He still recognized me! His eyes were unfocused and he displayed a complete lack of interest in the books in his lap, but he still recognized me, the love of his heart.

“Are you leaving?” I asked calmly.

“Yes. For some reason my wife is obsessed with moving out of here. Maybe she found bedbugs or something.”

Bedbugs had passed through Providence years before, not to return except to the houses where they’d sprayed with organic pesticides. His bizarre rationalization led me to believe that he didn’t remember my sister’s treachery. Adrenalin took over. I stood behind the chair and grasped the handles, looking for a moment at the dramatic part in his hair. Then I glanced at the blinded window one last time and pushed. It was hard going, so I stopped, lifted the books off Carlos’s lap and placed them respectfully on the ground. He made no remonstration, so I headed off.

I wasn’t Talented or apt to become famous like Beth. But I was going to have something much more rare. I was going to have true love.

I thought that if I could wheel Carlos to the medical school, I could claim spousal abuse and they could look him over. With his anemia and weird wounds, they would be sure to at least keep his wife away from him long enough to investigate. Within minutes, he would be mine to care for and nurse back to full, vigorous health.

Then I heard it: the unmistakable sound of his wife’s voice.

“Hey,” was all she could come up with. She even didn’t have the eloquence to state what was wrong with the situation. She really didn’t deserve someone as smart and refined as Carlos. Instinctively, I knew I wouldn’t have time to explain all that to her, so I ran. The right wheel began to wobble and squeak loudly, slowing me down while simultaneously announcing my presence to the neighborhood. My spousal abuse claim would be much more credible if she would only act a little more cavalier about who wheeled his chair around. I was going to have to shake her. I looked left to see whether I could dart into the street, but before I could make the turn, the chair stopped short. My sister stood in front of us, her hand outstretched in a traffic cop’s signal.

“What’s going on here?” she shrilled.

I tried to turn the chair within the small radius she offered, but she could see what I was up to, and I felt the handles slipping out of my hands. I gripped them more tightly, held on for dear life, as she tried to pry Carlos away from me. The pressure from that had barely ceased when I saw Carlos’s whole body lifted out of the chair into a semi-natural standing position. He was clearly too weak to stand on his own, and his limbs hung limply until, like a marionette, he started walking. My sister had a lot to learn if she ever wanted to perform telekinesis clandestinely, because Carlos walked impossibly, with his hands swinging in the same direction as his legs, instead of in the crosswise rhythm that has allowed humans to keep our precarious bipedal balance for thousands of years now. That said, I already noticed a marked improvement in her concentration. She was barely squinting when she flopped Carlos into the arms of his waiting wife.

“Hey,” I said to Beth, indignant.

“Hey what?” she said.

“What right do you have to take away my only chance at happiness?” I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. I stopped when the strangest feeling overtook me: I was moving involuntarily. My sister lifted me up and placed me firmly into the wheelchair. From there, I couldn’t move, no matter what I did. I felt a strong bond with Carlos, who’d undergone that sensation of loss of control at the hands of my sister not once, but twice now.

“I’m sorry, Emily, but I think you’re criminally insane.”

“Insane? I’m the sanest person here.” I couldn’t even crane my neck to check on my love Carlos, on my one patch of goodness in a world that was rapidly becoming unbearable.