Miriam's Well (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Told by Adam

“What is
this
? Dad, what's this mystery food she's passing off on us?” It jiggled on my plate like dead vomit-colored Jell-O.

“Tofu,” my mother said. “It's healthy. It's Japanese. They eat it in California.”

“Yes, but we're in Kansas, Abby. This is beef country.” Dad moved the offender under a lettuce leaf, which, incidentally, was a lot greener than any lettuce we'd ever eaten in this house.

“I'm trying to make you two healthy,” Mom said, pouting. She was hurt, as if she were Japanese, or even Californian.

“Speaking of healthy,” my father began, “I'm up at Memorial Hospital today visiting McGorkle, that client of mine who was in the grain elevator accident, and I pass this room, you could swear a foreign potentate is staying in it. There's a sign on the door saying NO ONE ADMITTED WITHOUT PRIOR CLEARANCE, and standing outside the door's an armed guard. And who do you suppose is in the room?”

“Danny Glickman?” Mom guessed. Dan Glickman was a member of our synagogue and also our congressman.

“Not Danny Glickman. That girl, the religious nut with cancer.”

“That's Miriam Pelham,” I said quietly.

My mother asked, “You know this girl?”

“Sort of.”

Dad squished the tofu with his fork. “So, does she really buy into all that Jesus stuff?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“God, the poor kid.”

I told my parents I was going to the library after dinner, but I went to Memorial Hospital instead. Don't ask me why. I had to show my driver's license and leave it with the guard outside Miriam's door before the nurse would even go in to ask if Miriam wanted to see me. Finally, they let me in. Miriam was curled on her side with the blankets up to her ears and her back to me. She didn't say a word when I walked in.

“It's the vulture,” I quipped. “You know, the thing with feathers?” Nothing. “Okay, so you're mad at me for getting you into this mess. You're freezing me out, right?”

I was feeling pretty stupid talking to her back. Maybe she was asleep, and I was really talking to myself—even stupider. So I walked around to the other side of the bed. Her eyes were wide open, and tears were dribbling down her face at this weird angle, like winter rain.

“Why are you here?” Her voice was nasally and thick, as if she had a bad cold or was me during allergy season.

“Good question. Why am I here?”

“You'll think of something. You're the debater.” Those tears kept sliding down her face, soaking her hair. A wet circle was spreading on her pillow. I looked away; I was always embarrassed when my mother cried. Diana never cried, which is part of why I liked her so much. Finally—I don't know what got into me—I picked up a corner of the sheet and wiped Miriam's tears with it.

“I'b id trouble, Adam.” Now she was using the sheet for a handkerchief, blowing her honker like a grieving widow.

“Can I do anything?”

“Doe.”

That cut me off, clean. “Yeah, well I'll see you later, then.” I was more than ready to leave. Besides, the air-conditioning was blowing spores all over the room from these big puffy flowers, and my nose was starting to run. If I stayed much longer, I'd be using the other corner of her sheet.

But when I got to the door, she eased herself onto her back. I saw the pain streak across her face like lightning. “I'b id big trouble.”

Did she want to talk? I hung around a minute, but she didn't say anything else. “Listen, why don't I check in with you in a couple of days when you're feeling better, okay? I'm getting ready for a debate tournament in Dodge City on Friday and Saturday. Maybe I'll come by on Sunday.”

“And baybe you won't.”

That was a real possibility.

“But baybe you will?”

“Sure.” Not a chance. Well, a slim chance.

“It's insane, Adam, clearly insane,” Diana said. We were in Mr. Bennet's van, somewhere way west of Wichita. Mr. Bennet was alone in the front seat, then Diana and I had the middle section, and behind us Andy Woodman and Jeremy Schein, our sophomore novice team, were catching a nap before we pulled into Dodge. We were past the Golden Arches, the Pizza Huts, and the Taco Ticos, out into what is nostalgically called the prairie. We call it the boondocks, that wheaty flatland between Pratt and Dodge City, where Wyatt Earp is supposed to be buried, but isn't.

“I mean, the girl is stuck in the hospital with a police guard, and half the state of Kansas is arguing over what's best for her,” Diana said. “I don't see what the fight's about. I know what's best for her.”

“Yeah? What?” I thought about the soaked pillow.

“They should start zapping her with chemo, Adam. I know. I interviewed Dr. Miller for the
Vanguard
article.” Diana, of course, was editor of the school paper. “And Dr. Miller's a cancer specialist. He's world-famous all over the greater Midwest, and he says the treatment of choice is chemotherapy. He mentioned some drug, Cytocel, that he'd probably prescribe, and he says she's got better than a fifty-percent chance of beating this thing. So what are they waiting for?”

“I don't think it's that simple.” It used to be, I thought to myself, but it was getting more and more complicated every day. I was actually thinking about going back to the hospital to visit the girl.

Andy leaned forward and dug his chin into my shoulder. “Who are you talking about, that Jesus weirdo up at Memorial?”

“They're poetry partners,” Diana explained.

“Wow. She's one of the looniest space cases I ever knew.”

Diana said, “You don't know everything, Andy.”

“No, you're the only one who knows everything.”

Diana smiled. “Well, I know what they should be doing. They should be moving posthaste into aggressive chemical treatment while the tumor is still localized. A direct quote from my
Vanguard
article. Adam? You're not talking.”

“I don't have to. You talk enough for all of us.”

“Well, thanks a lot. You sure depend on me to talk in debates. I'm always bailing you out.”

“That's a bald-faced lie!”

“Right,” Diana said, leaning over to kiss my neck.

“Stop all that slobbering. I'm sleeping,” Jeremy shouted.

“But it's the evidence that's most important,” whispered Diana, “and the evidence is clear that Miriam can't risk any delays.”

Andy climbed over the seat and planted himself between Diana and me. “What's that crazy religion she's in? Something like Sword and Sorcery.”

“Sword and the Spirit,” I replied. I'd heard the name half a dozen times on TV in the past week, and my parents were always talking about it at dinner. “It's from the Bible somewhere. It means ‘the word of God.'”

“Yeah, the Great Swordsman. Are they, like, nineteenth century or what?”

“All right, Woodman, let's get the facts straight,” I said. “It's a small religious sect with about six hundred members in Kansas and Nebraska and maybe Indiana, I'm not sure. The head man is this guy about the size of Bull on
Night Court
—heavy beard, carpenter's overalls, Shepler's bargain boots—you get a clear picture? They call him Brother James. His name's probably really something like Gonzo or Howie.”

“You're such a cynic, Adam. The man definitely has charisma,” Diana said.

“The church gets off on the Bible, which they call the
Book in Gold Leaf
. And they're not into doctors.”

“What have they got against doctors?” Andy asked. “My uncle's a urologist.”

“Oh, gross,” said Diana.

“Their thing about doctors is, they believe that all healing comes from God, maybe through Jesus, I'm not real clear on that, but they say it goes directly to the sick person and doesn't need an errand boy like a doctor.”

“That's cool,” Andy said, “only what happens if she gets sicker and sicker? I mean, like, people die of cancer.”

I'd thought about this a dozen times, how she could die while she was waiting for God to cure her. Or worse, she could die while waiting for the government and the doctors to fight it out with her family and Brother James. And wasn't Brother James just like an errand boy, just like a doctor, only he didn't give drugs?

“How come you know so much about it?” Andy asked, flexing the earphones he was anxious to put on to drown out my voice.

So I kept the answer short. “I pay attention. Jesus, it's on the news forty times a day.”

“I only watch CNN,” Andy said. “Is it on CNN?”

No, but I had a feeling it would be soon. This thing would be huge. The prairie streaked by, and I couldn't clear my head of Miriam Pelham.

Diana slept most of the way back from Dodge. She said she was getting something and didn't think I should come over to her house. She coughed in my face to emphasize her point. I was always sneezing and snorting because of my allergies, but when Diana got a runny nose, it was like a national health crisis.

So anyway, it looked like I wasn't going to be enjoying what I'd looked forward to most that whole week—lying around on Diana's couch with the only light coming from the TV. And nothing else was going on, so after we dropped Diana off, Mr. Bennet dropped me at the hospital.

Miriam sat on her bed, dressed in her usual school clothes and with her hair pulled back over one shoulder. She was cutting words out of a magazine to make a collage or something. When I pushed her door open, the breeze made a bunch of her cut-outs fly around the room. “Hi,” I said, chasing the scraps of paper around.

“How did you do in Dodge City?” she asked.

“Won.”

“Of course.”

“Diana's a lot better than I am.”

“She couldn't be.”

“Right. I lied.”

She liked my grin. It made her own eyes smile, which was a lot better than those soppy tears from the other night.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing.” She gathered the words into a messy pile and stuffed them in her drawer, along with a bottle of rubber cement. On the bedside table was a small glass of some thick orange-colored juice, with its weight sunk to the bottom. I leaned forward for a whiff of it. She handed me the glass, and I drank some warm apricot stuff.

“Disgusting, isn't it?” she said.

“Then how come you gave it to me?”

“It's been here two days.” She shifted around, and the magazine slid to the floor. I reached over to pick it up and felt the apricot rise in my throat. The magazine was called
Young Christian Crusader
, and it had a white basketball player on the cover, a guy who looked like he'd never sweat.

“So what are you doing with the cutouts? Making something—what—a scrapbook?”

“A sort of letter.”

“About all this stuff you're going through?”

“No,” she said, her eyes dimming again. “Who's it for?” I thought maybe she was making it for me.

“This boy I know in Emporia. He's going to Greece this summer on Teen Missions International. He's going to put up buildings. It's like the Peace Corps, only Christian.”

“He doesn't get paid for it either, I'll bet.”

“Not a dime,” Miriam said, smiling again.

“So, are you going with him?”

“To Greece?”

“No,
with
him, going out with him. Is he your boyfriend?”

“No, no, nothing like that. He's just a boy I met at a church conference. Brother James introduced us.”

“Well, what's he like?” I asked. I pictured a face with pink bumps just ready to burst, and thin blond hair, and watery gray eyes. The total package came to five foot three, and maybe he sniffed a lot. But Miriam didn't realize I meant, what's he like
physically
.

“Very serious,” Miriam said. “Not like you.”

“I can be serious.”

“I've never seen it.”

“Yeah, well there's a lot you don't know about me.” How do I explain why I got mad all of a sudden? Maybe because I'd had a long day, and it didn't end the way I'd expected, and now I was being asked to defend my personality, which Diana already understood so well. I was starting to fume, and sneezing about six times in a row didn't help my disposition. “Why've you got all those man-eating plants around?” I moved one plant over to the window, out of whiffing distance. Jesus, two years of allergy shots. I shoved some moldy flowers into the corner behind the chair.

“No one's keeping you here,” Miriam said, handing me a couple of tissues out of the box on her tray table. It was like something your mother would do, handing you a Kleenex when you were crying at home about being called a sissy for crying about being called a sissy at school.

I hated the way my voice sounded after I'd had a sneezing fit. “I guess you want to get back to your magazine stuff, anyway.”

“Not really,” she said, shrugging. “It's boring here.”

“But this guy in Emporia, he's waiting anxiously for your letter.”

“I doubt it. I just didn't have anybody else to write to.”

She eased herself back against her pillow, with her hands behind her head and her legs crossed at the ankles. Her eyes were closed. Good thing, too, because mine were wide open as I noticed for the first time that there were definite signs of shape to this girl. For some crazy reason, her bare feet embarrassed me. Me, who's always looking for fresh flesh.

“I acted like an idiot the other night. I apologize,” she said. Her eyes were still closed.

“Not exactly an idiot,” I assured her. “Moron, maybe. Imbecile, possibly; cretin comes to mind. But you definitely weren't idiotic.”

“Anyway, thanks for coming by, Adam.”

“Am I leaving?”

“Probably,” she said.