Sacred (35 page)

“So until thirteen, the parents sort of safeguard the boy’s role? And then it’s all on him?”

“Uh-huh.”

He kept eating chips, as if nothing had changed. Was it possible that he really didn’t see what I saw?

“Will,” I said. “I don’t think you infected your mother.
I don’t even think you shared something with her. I think she held your abilities for you, like a jacket, until you were old enough to take them on for yourself. Until you turned thirteen.”

Will stopped chewing. He held a chip with a bite taken out of it, and after a moment he lowered it to the tablecloth.

“I was thinking about it backwards,” he murmured, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself. “I thought that she handed me her abilities after she died, but I had it all wrong.” He was silent, staring off into space, but then his gaze snapped back to me. It was fevered, intense. It scared me. “But you must be right. They would have transferred to me, if she would have lived, when I turned thirteen. Maybe she would have been okay, free—if only she had lived one more day.”

I swallowed hard; this wasn’t where I had intended this talk to go.

“It’s not your fault she died, Will,” I whispered.

“Of course it is.” His voice was harsh. “You must be right. She was holding my curse, bearing its weight until I was old enough to take it from her. But it was too much. It crushed her.”

I wanted to say something to comfort him, but I had no words.

When Martin entered the kitchen, it was clear that he’d heard everything we’d said. He walked over and placed his hand on Will’s shoulder, but Will shrugged it off and stood. The feet of his chair screeched as they slid across the floor.

“I’m not so hungry,” he murmured.

He untied his apron and dropped it on a chair, then fled
the room as if pursued—which, perhaps, he was—by memories, by theories that I had foisted upon him.

“Martin, I’m so sorry,” I said. Martin sighed heavily, dropping into the chair where Will had sat.

“It’s not your fault, Scarlett. He would have found out eventually.”

“So … you knew? But why didn’t you tell him yourself?”

Martin looked at me pointedly. “Did you see how he took it?”

“Okay. But the truth’s got to be better than a lie, hasn’t it?”

“Not always, Scarlett.”

There was a feast in front of us—salsa, guacamole, beans, fried tortillas, meat—but neither of us reached for any of it.

“What does it mean, Martin?”

“I’m still trying to learn,” he confessed. “But I’ll tell you what I know. And Will should hear, also. The time for keeping secrets has ended.”

He left the kitchen. I imagined Will in his bedroom, and his father entering; I wondered what words they would say. Would Will feel the need to apologize, as if he was to blame for his mother’s death? Would Martin be able to convince him that he wasn’t culpable, that none of this was Will’s fault?

They were gone for a long time, and when they came back, Will’s eyes were red and Martin’s arm was draped across his shoulders. Will smiled at me, a tired smile, and then he sat at the table. This time, he chose a seat next to me, and he held my hand, squeezed it.

“No reason for this good food to go to waste,” Martin
said, and he passed around the tortillas, helped himself to the meat, and encouraged us to do the same.

“No prayer?” Will asked when Martin ripped into his taco.

“Not tonight,” Martin answered. “I tire of ritual.”

So we ate, and it was as if we had tacitly agreed to finish our meal before we talked. Martin ate leisurely, as if to forestall discussion, but at last he had to push away his plate.

“Well done, son,” he said. “What was that spice you added to the meat?”

“Cumin,” said Will.

“Ah, cumin,” mused Martin.

He was quiet for a moment, contemplating the fine attributes of cumin, I guess, and then at last he said, “Son, when a man and a woman decide to have a child, they accept responsibility for whatever may happen as a result of that choice. If the child is born with a disability, or if the child is sickly, or becomes injured in some way, the parents accept responsibility for that with open and happy hearts.”

“So whatever is wrong with me is a sickness, is that what you’re saying?”

Martin held up his hand. “Let me finish.”

Will looked as though he was going to say something else, to argue, but under the table I rested my hand on his knee.

Martin continued. “And the parents, too, they accept whatever gifts the child might bring to the family. If he is a gifted musician, the parents must foster that gift. If he has a deep interest in the sea, the parents must try to take him to the sea. Of course, the parents are proud of their child,
whatever his weaknesses, whatever his gifts. But I think your mother, Will, was especially proud of you. She knew that you were different … special. And it was her honor to hold your talents for you until you came of age.”

“How do you know? Did she tell you that?”

“Not exactly. She never spoke of it to me. She did her best to hide what troubled her, so as not to worry me. That was one of your mother’s few flaws … her irrational desire to spare me from anything she thought might hurt me.” He regarded Will shrewdly. “I guess she and I share that weakness,” he admitted. “Years ago, I should have told you what Scarlett just discovered. I didn’t know it myself, until after your mother died and I discovered a journal she had kept. She wrote about you, Will, about how she had felt when pregnant with you … 
As if I am carrying something great and precious
, she wrote. I’ll give you the journal. It should be yours.”

“I’d like that.” Will’s eyes were on the table, his voice barely more than a whisper.

And then Martin continued. “After your mother died, it was just days until you had your first episode. I didn’t put the pieces together until much later, when you finally confided to me what was happening to you, and even then I was too consumed with my grief to think rationally. I didn’t put it together—your mother’s death, your turning thirteen, your seemingly inherited need to go to these dangerous places, do these impossible things. And I watched it grow in you, Will, as you got older. I could tell the radius of your sensitivity was growing. It got to be that a week wouldn’t pass without you
appearing for breakfast or showing up late in the evening with that look in your eyes—either the pain of a headache that mirrored the headaches your mother used to get, or the half-wild look of someone who’s done something far too risky. I didn’t know which look to dread more. All I knew was that I had to get you out of there. So here we are, on an island. And you still manage to find trouble.”

He smiled at me to soften the impact of his words, but still they stung. He thought I was trouble.

“But what does any of this have to do with the bar mitzvah?” I asked. “And why Will?”

“I’ve spent many hours wondering these things,” Martin admitted. “Do you know, Scarlett, what a mitzvah is?”

I shook my head.

“A good deed, basically,” said Will.

“That definition will do, for our purposes,” said Martin. “You see, Scarlett, once a boy has become a man, in the Jewish culture he becomes responsible for performing mitzvahs—good deeds—both within the community and in the greater world. Will’s particular gift—”

“Or curse,” Will interrupted.

Martin shrugged. “Semantics. Either way, gift or curse, Will’s abilities enable him to perform mitzvahs above and beyond the range of a normal person. And at thirteen, since he
can
perform these mitzvahs, it becomes his duty to do so.”

“But you moved him out here, to the middle of nowhere,” I argued. “Isn’t that preventing him from doing his duty, as you called it?”

Martin smiled slyly. “Perhaps I’ve found a loophole.”

“But why Will?”

“That’s a question we all ask about our lots in life, isn’t it, Scarlett? ‘Why me?’ is a question each of us raises to the sky many times in our lives. Certainly, I’ve been guilty of asking it myself.”

“So you don’t know?”

Martin shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. I have my theories, of course. I have long thought, as you discovered in your own reading, that Will is one of the
Tzaddikim
and that he possesses
Ruach HaKodesh
, that state of the soul that allows him to see, or feel, some aspects of what is yet to come. Understanding the implications of this, and trying to discover ways to keep him safe, has been my work while we’re here in self-imposed exile on this island of yours. I’m attempting to understand why Will has the gift—or curse—that is uniquely his.”

“And?” My one-word question sounded rude, but I wanted Martin to show all his cards. I had the feeling he still knew more than he was telling us.

Martin looked distinctly annoyed. I pressed on anyway. “I mean, is it a genetic abnormality? Like being born left-handed?”

“Hardly,” Martin scoffed. He looked at us appraisingly before continuing. “There are some among us,” he said at last, “who believe that we do not come to this earth just once, but many times, until we have manifested six hundred and thirteen mitzvahs. I theorize that Will has been here before. His is an old soul; I think he can see the future because as he’s visited and revisited this place, his soul has grown richer and more closely attuned to
Ein Sof
—the Infinite.”

I looked at Will. His expression was difficult to decipher. But I knew how I felt: dubious. “Wait a minute,” I said. “
Ein Sof
 … is that another name for God?”

“It is.”

Finally, Will spoke. “I’ve been here before?”

Martin looked worried. “It’s just a theory, son.”

But then Will grinned. “Does that mean that I’m older than you? I guess that’s the end of my curfew, then, huh?”

Martin’s face relaxed into a smile, and his rich laughter filled the kitchen. “Like I said, just a theory. Too soon to go making any major changes.”

But Will’s countenance had shifted. His face seemed brighter, more hopeful.

Martin looked at the clock. It was after nine o’clock. “It’s late,” he said, “and tomorrow is your big night. Will, why don’t you leave the dishes to me? Drive Scarlett home so she doesn’t look too tired onstage.”

“Let me get my coat,” Will said, and he headed back toward his bedroom.

“Martin,” I said. “There’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you. You’re a rabbi.…”

“Not so much these days,” he qualified.

“Okay,” I continued, “but I read something in one of the books I’ve been studying about nightmares, and rabbis …”

“The
Hatavat Halom
?” he asked. “The rite to transform disturbing dreams into something pleasant?”

“How did you know?”

He smiled. “You’re not the first to want me to fix a bad dream,” he said. “It was a request I got more than once when I led a congregation.”

“So it works?” I felt hopeful. “Because I keep having this dream, only it changes, and it’s always really disturbing.”

“I don’t know if it works,” Martin admitted. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. But this is what I suggest—and it’s connected to the idea of
Hatavat Halom
—the next time you have the nightmare, try not to be afraid. Let your subconscious tell you what it wants you to know. You have the power, Scarlett, all on your own, to make your dream a good one.”

Opening night was a madhouse. Lily came backstage with me to help me with my costume and hair. I got to wear this fantastic gown made of pink lace with a pinched waist and a fabulous bustle. Lily and I curled and piled my hair on top of my head, using about three hundred pins to hold it in place. Then Lily turned my back to the mirror and took it upon herself to do my makeup. Jane Maple was the official makeup artist for the show, but Lily gave her one of her patented Lily looks and Jane left us to our own devices.

Across from me, Will was buttoning his coat. He looked absolutely gorgeous: gray wool trousers, an evening jacket with tails, a silver silk cravat. Shiny black wingtips and his hair arranged into artful, deliberate curls completed his nineteenth-century look.

He caught me looking at him and dropped me a wink. Had I actually been a socialite named Cecily Cardew, I absolutely would have fallen for him. After all, here I was in the twenty-first century, and I was gone, gone, gone on Will Cohen.

The footlights were blinding at the beginning of the
second act, when I appeared onstage for the first time. I blinked against them, trying to forget that practically the entire town, including all my friends and my parents, was out there on the other side of those lights … and then I spoke my first line in my best British accent—“But I don’t like German. It isn’t at all a becoming language. I know perfectly well that I look quite plain after my German lesson.”

And then my jitters left me, and I became Cecily, and I flirted shamelessly with Will—Algernon—and I lost myself in his words, his embrace, his kiss.

“I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.”

I was not offended in the slightest.

“Cecily, ever since I first looked upon your wonderful and incomparable beauty, I have dared to love you wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.”

This was fine with me.

And when he took me into his arms, slanting his mouth across mine, it was as if we were all alone far, far from the stage, and the hoots and hollers from the audience might as well have come from owls and jackals. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, and I never wanted to stop.

The audience gave us a standing ovation, and Will and I got to step forward from the line of actors and take a special bow. After the curtain dropped for the final time, Mrs. B was beside herself with pleasure.

“Absolutely, without a doubt, the finest production our
school has put on,” she gushed. “Will, where were you last year when we were doing
My Fair Lady
? All right, everyone, go get out of costumes. Cast party at the Hendersons’ café in half an hour. Chop, chop, everyone! Well done!”