Draw the Dark (8 page)

Eventually, everyone calms down. Mr. Eisenmann makes a speech about family and brothers and how war divides, and he talks about the Civil War, which I know nothing about, but everyone else who is not new here does. All around, people are weeping; I hear whispers, muttered talk about how there might be others—brothers and cousins and uncles. Across the street, I see Marta smearing away tears from her cheeks because it is all so touching. Even the wolf is crying.

But looking at Mrs. Grunewald and Fritz Hueber, I also wonder if maybe what the rabbi says is true: that we are all brothers under the skin—even if some are wolves.

A hand falls on my shoulder. Startled, I twist my head around and there is Papa. His face is black as a storm cloud, his eyes are thunderous, and I expect a beating. I cringe back, and my feet tangle....

And then he’s on me:
What are you

I blinked and nearly dropped the food tray at Peggy’s feet.

Before I could say anything, a monitor in the old man’s room gave a little
eep
of alarm. The doctor’s head whipped toward some machine and then back at the man on the bed and then she took his hand. “Mr. Witek, can you hear me? Blink if you hear me.”

More bleeps from the machine, and now my fingers began to itch, and I thought:
Give me a pen, give me a pencil, anything. . . .

“Well?” Peggy was semi-pissed. “Mr. Griffith’s room is two doors down.”

“Ah . . .” Confused, I looked from the tray to Peggy, then to the old man on the bed. “Sorry. I wasn’t . . . I got mixed up.”

“Uh-huh.” Peggy’s eyes clicked over my face, and then she nodded. “That’s okay. Let’s just keep moving.... Sorry about that, Doc.”

“No problem.” The doctor was studying me with a curious expression I couldn’t read. “Are you all right?”

Well, I just dropped into another kid’s body, only this time it was like a hand slipping into a glove, like time travel, and I was awake. . . .

“I’m fine.”

“We got it covered, Doc.” Peggy was steering me away. “No problems, right, Christian?”

Later, after the dinner rush, Peggy didn’t ask what I’d been doing or why. That was good. Because I didn’t have any answers.

No, correction: it really got going when I got a look at those
paintings
.

The activities room was set up with about twenty easels. The teacher looked up as I wheeled in Mr. Nelson and pointed me to an empty spot. A rectangle of drawing paper was clipped to the easel: a shaky, half-finished Japanese-style wash of bamboo and some kind of attempt at a bird. I spotted his brushes, and it was all I could do not to grab them.

“Hey,” I said, as I slotted Mr. Nelson before the easel and kicked on his brakes, “that’s pretty good.”

Mr. Nelson’s lips parted to reveal irregular yellow pegs ground down almost to the roots. “Thank you. I used to draw a bit, but then life caught up with me, and I had to go to work to support my family.” He fumbled up a brush, and I half reached to steady his hand but quick jammed my fists into my pockets as he said, “Now they’re supporting me, and I’ve got all the time I need to draw.”

I muttered something about that being nice. Then the teacher moved in, and I backed away. The urge to draw was so overwhelming, though I had no idea what was begging to flow out of my hands and onto paper. I turned, thinking:
Get out, get out, just get out . . .

“Young man,” a familiar voice quavered, “young man.”

Lucy. I hadn’t seen her. She lifted a hand like she was a student in class. “Young man, I need your help.”

“Be right there, Lucy,” the teacher called, and then he jerked his head at me. “Go keep her company a second, would you?”

So I was trapped. Lucy’s picture was a mess. She’d been trying to do a copy of a portrait of her done maybe ten years back by someone else. The older portrait was actually pretty good—and a little disturbing, if you knew how to look. In that picture, your gaze snapped to her eyes: blue, sharp, a little angry, the irises stark against the whites—like a surrealist’s vision of what a doll’s eyes might look like. But the rest of her face was deliberately blurred, like another Lucy was trying to step outside her body, or maybe it was just that the perspective had been flattened and smudged, her image like something scissored out of a magazine and slapped onto paper. But I could’ve sworn another person was there, stepping out of Lucy’s body: not quite a shadow, not a ghost, but as if Lucy were giving birth to another version of herself. Imperceptible but there nonetheless. There was virtually no color other than Lucy’s accusing blue eyes and a bloodred sweater. Everything else—her skin and features—was gray with smudges of a sick, putrid yellow, like something oozing out through her pores. The background was a frenetic, spastic wash of various shades of cool gray mixed with 6 percent blue into slate and pewter and a little green. Maybe the artist had sensed that Lucy was losing it.

Lucy’s attempts at a copy had produced only an amorphous muddy blob floating in the center of the paper: A vaguely egg-shaped head with tiny pellet eyes, an off-kilter nose glued to one cheek. A slash for a mouth. A Cubist’s nightmare, actually.

“I just can’t seem to get it right.” The hollows beneath Lucy’s faded denim eyes were wet. A tear trickled over the cracks and crevices of one pruned cheek. Her fingers were black from charcoal, and when she smeared away tears, she left a watery smudge. “Could you help me? I can’t seem to find myself. I used to . . . but I can’t now.”

That made me feel really sad, and I kind of choked up. “Sure,” I said. I found a clean piece of paper and clipped it to her easel and took down the artist’s portrait because I thought, well, maybe it upset her. Then, without thinking, I reached out and took her right hand in mine.

The moment of contact was a snap, a charge, like a little electric shock. I stiffened and Lucy gasped, and her fingers twitched. My mouth was dry, and I said, “We’ll . . . let’s draw it out together, okay?”

“All right,” she said, her voice faint as if from far away, or maybe that was just my head starting to balloon. She/I pressed the charcoal against the paper and made the first hesitant swoop of a cheek and jaw—and then I thought:
Don’t look. Just let it come out. Just draw. . . .
So I closed my eyes.

And then I felt it happen, the magic, and I was floating, my head expanding.

Disjointed images and sensations flickered bright as flashbulbs: a hot summer’s day that was so brilliant the sidewalk was bone and it hurt to look; the high screech of a train whistle in the distance; grit in my eyes; a flutter of white dress; a fan of lush black hair. Everything faded away, the itch in my hands, the voice of the teacher, the murmurs of the other seniors. I was only dimly aware that Lucy’s movements were more fluid, no longer hesitant, no longer
old
but swift and sure and graceful, like we’d found an island of calm in the center of a hurricane. The only sounds in my ears were the soft scratch of charcoal on paper and the steady thump of my heart.

In time—I don’t really know how long, but I do know that I didn’t want it to end—Lucy went still and then I heard her say, “Oh my.”

I opened my eyes.

Lucy wasn’t quite Whistler’s girl but close. The girl in
her
picture wore her hair in an old-fashioned kind of bun that revealed the graceful swan’s curve of her neck; her dress was square-necked with loose, gauzy sleeves. The bodice gave way to a cinched waist and then a flow of skirt that just brushed the tips of her black shoes. She was turned slightly away, looking back at the viewer over her left shoulder, a parasol balanced over her right. In the background, there were tracks and a station platform and a blocky locomotive just moving in, the words
RIO GRANDE
clear and unmistakable. But the girl was Lucy, no question. All you had to do was look at the eyes.

“Oh my God.” The teacher, over my right shoulder, and then I saw that Peggy and the doctor were there too. I realized then that I was still holding Lucy’s hand. I dropped it like I’d been scorched. “I...uh...I...I was just help...
helping . . .
”

“I’ll say,” said Peggy.

But Lucy only stared at the drawing. Tears dripped down her cheeks, but she—oh,
she
was beaming. “Oh,” she breathed. “
There
I am.”

I nodded. My mouth was very dry, and I could hear the click in my ears as I swallowed. Even now, the whole episode felt unreal, like it had happened to someone else.

The doctor was saying, “Lucy used to be an elementary art teacher a long, long time ago. But she’s got Alzheimer’s, and well, you can see what’s happened to her work.”

I slicked my lips and the roof of my mouth. “You mean, that picture of her, the one with her in a red sweater . . .
she
did that?”

“Uh-huh. Her illness was just starting. The thing about Alzheimer’s is that while it affects the entire brain, it really whacks the right parietal lobe.” She touched the right side of her head. “That’s where people visualize things in their head and then translate that onto paper or canvas. Over time, her ability to visualize herself has diminished.”

“Is that why she can’t even draw her own face anymore? Even when she’s looking at it?”

“Yes. She’s gotten so bad we’ve thought about not allowing her to go to art anymore because it upsets her so much. Today, I’m glad we did because what you did for her was . . . amazing. It’s like you calmed her down enough to tap into her visual memories. I’ve no doubt that her drawing was all muscle memory, a picture of herself from long ago. That’s why there’s the parasol, the dress, the train.” She shook her head again. “Truly amazing. You’ve got a real gift.”

Yeah. Lucky for me, this time my gift didn’t get anyone killed. “Is that the same thing as what’s going on with that old guy? The one with all the paintings?”

“We do not gossip about our guests,” Mrs. Krauss put in.

The doctor either didn’t hear or decided to ignore her. “Mr. Witek? No. He’s had another left-hemispheric stroke.”

Mrs. Krauss leaned forward. “Doctor, this is privileged medical information.”

The doctor threw Mrs. Krauss a cool, sideways glance. “No, this is information that any caregiver needs in order to serve our residents better. Or would you prefer that Christian just muddle along?”

Mrs. Krauss’s eyes slitted, and her face hardened. But she flicked a hand, giving permission.

The doctor said to me, “Mr. Witek’s latest stroke occurred about three weeks ago. The way your brain works, a stroke on the left affects the right side of your body. He’s got right-sided paralysis now because of the stroke; that’s why his face droops. Of course, he had profound memory problems before, but I can’t begin to assess them now. I can only imagine that everything is much worse. Anyway, he was just transferred back to our facility a few days ago. There’s not much more a hospital can do for him.”

“Why?”

“Because Mr. Witek is going to die,” the doctor said, “and soon. Even if he hadn’t suffered a stroke, his Alzheimer’s is in its terminal phase. Most patients live ten to fifteen years, max. He’s been ill for ten, so . . . at this point, he’s a DNR: Do Not Resuscitate. He can’t eat or drink, so we’re keeping him hydrated and comfortable.”

“How long can he live like that?”

“Not long. He wasn’t eating before the stroke, and his body’s eating itself. It’s a normal part of dying. So, a few weeks, maybe a month.”

“Why can’t you feed him through a tube?”

“Because that’s not what’s in his living will. Someone has power of attorney. Perhaps a relative, but I don’t believe anyone visits.” She looked at Mrs. Krauss. “Are there any relatives?”

Mrs. Krauss said, “None of which I’m aware.”

“So we’re his family,” said the doctor. “The biggest problem now is that if he’s in pain, he can’t tell us. I have to infer. I’ve reduced his sedation, gradually, to see how much he wakes up. I’d rather not snow him with meds, but he’s bound to be confused no matter what. Actually, he had this very peculiar delusion: intermetamorphosis, the delusional belief that people are body-hopping, switching identities.”

Whoa, that sounded a lot like what I’d felt in the hayloft and just today. “Wow. Really? I mean, can people do that?”

“Body-hop? Oh no. It’s a delusional misidentification syndrome caused by profound brain dysfunction. Anyway, I don’t know what he’s thinking now because we can’t communicate. Although . . . there are reservoirs of brain function we can’t fathom, or perhaps reliably measure. You’d be amazed how some people have these startling moments of clarity at the very end. No one knows why, but we observe it quite often.”

“So he can’t paint anymore.”

“I’m not sure he’s ever painted. The way I understand it, those pictures were done by—”

“We’re getting a little far afield now, aren’t we?” Mrs. Krauss interrupted. “I don’t see how this is relevant. I understand that you’re fairly new in town, Doctor, and so you may not appreciate the reluctance we feel here in discussing one another’s lives. In a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone else. We strive to maintain some distance.”

Hunh. Like anyone had ever done that for me. The doctor either didn’t understand or wasn’t cowed. Maybe both. “All I have to do is examine his medical records for the relevant history and ...”

“And you may do so at your leisure. Now,
you
.” Mrs. Krauss threw me a look. “You are excused. I need a moment with the doctor.”

I got up to go. “I’m really sorry, ma’am,” I said to Mrs. Krauss. “I just . . . Lucy needed help. I didn’t mean any harm.” Thinking of the judge: “I really don’t want to lose this job.”

The doctor said, “You didn’t do a thing wrong, and I’ll note that in the medical record. In fact,” she grinned, “you were awesome.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t think I can write that in the record—it would sound a little weird coming out in court—but if anything
does
end up with the judge in any capacity, the medical record will be part of that. Might even be made public, I don’t know. But I’ll be sure to document what happened today—and my assessment of your behavior and contributions.”

I had a feeling she’d meant that more for Mrs. Krauss than me because Mrs. Krauss’s face suddenly pinked. If that look had been daggers, the doctor would’ve been skewered.

“Okay. Thanks,” I said.

“My pleasure,” said the doctor. “See you around, Christian.”

Okay. To say that I was freaked out would’ve been an understatement. I really thought I was losing it, big time. The first time, I’d had the awareness that something was happening to
me
, Christian Cage. Yes, I’d been that kid, David, but the sense that there was something wrong in my/his head had been there from the start.

This time, that hadn’t happened with Mr. Witek. It was literally a case of here one instant, there the next—and it happened when I saw
them
, the paintings. There’d been the draw, the same kind I felt when I’d painted all over my walls, like a door waiting for me to have the courage to step through into the sideways place....

The thing was, I wasn’t being honest with myself. Forget being honest with the doctor or anyone else; they already thought I was crazy, even if the doctor had been okay. But the thing with Lucy? Oh yeah, I knew that feeling. That little click in my head happened when I painted, at the moment I separated the thinking, critical part of my mind from what I was actually
doing
. When the click happened, it was like another set of eyes opened up in my mind, and I painted what
they
saw. I drew
from
them. And I knew that because I’d done it before: with Miss Stefancyzk. And Aunt Jean. Now . . . Lucy.

Shit, I’d have to be careful.

Then I went to bed, expecting to dream or time travel or body swap or whatever. But nothing happened. Thank God.