Second Skin (77 page)

“Oh, God.”

“See, this is what I wanted to avoid.” Splayne leaned forward. “You aren’t gonna pass out on me, are you?”

With fingers like steel pincers, he steered Bravo’s face in his direction, stared hard into his eyes. There was a slight cast to the left eye, as if something terrible had happened to that side of his face. Bravo caught the other’s intensity, allowed it to bring himself back from the edge of panic and despair. His father dead, Emma blinded, all in the space of a single breath. It was too much, he couldn’t accept it as the truth. There must be another reality out there—one in which his father had survived, where Emma hadn’t lost her sight—if only he could find it.

“Mr. Shaw, I need you to tell me what happened. It’s important, okay?”

“Yes,” Bravo said in a reedy whisper. “I understand.” He recounted as best he could what he remembered of the brief chain of events just before the explosion.

When he had finished, the detective looked at him. “To be honest, I didn’t expect much more than that.”

“Then why was it important to talk to me?”

“Hey, I gotta close this thing out, otherwise the paperwork will hound me like a bitch in heat.”

Bravo felt a renewed surge of anger. “Do you know what caused the blast?”

“Gas leak in the basement. It was an old brownstone, maybe the heating system was in need of repair. The fire department’s going over the place now.” Detective Splayne’s pen was suspended over the notebook. “One other thing, who’s Jordan”—a quick glance down to his notes—“Muhlmann? He’s been calling twice a day to check on your condition.”

“He’s my employer and my friend.”

“That’s what he told me. So. Anything else?”

Bravo shook his head.

“Then my work here is finished.” With a sense of finality, Splayne closed his notebook. “I wish you well, Mr. Shaw.”

“That’s it? That’s where the investigation ends?”

Splayne shrugged. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Shaw, it’s where most investigations end. This is a big city, millions of people in it walking in shadows, running away from the light, crawling in the sewers like maggots. It’s the maggots I get to spend time with, day in, day out. This here’s clean and clear-cut compared with the shit I get most days. I swear, it’s enough to hollow you out inside, turn even a hard-case optimist into a cynic.” He rose. “Like I said, I’m sorry for your loss, but it’s time I was getting to where I’m really needed.”

Bravo, still fighting the effects of the Valium, twisted in bed. There was a question he’d wanted to ask. What was it?

“Wait a minute, did you talk to my sister?”

But Splayne had already gone.

Bravo lay back for a moment, his head swimming. The moment he closed his eyes his father reappeared. “All
of life’s great lessons involve loss,”
Dexter Shaw said and laid his hand on his son’s damp brow.
“Don’t forget what I’ve taught you now.”

With a growl, Bravo pulled the Valium drip from his arm, ripped off all the monitoring devices. He sat up, swung his legs off the high bed. The floor felt cold as ice to his bare feet, and when he put his full weight on them he was obliged to clutch the bed linens lest he fall. His heart pumped hard in his chest, and his legs felt as if their bones and muscles had dissolved during the forty-eight terrible hours he’d been unconscious.

He had to shuffle across the room to the door, and when he opened it he was confronted by an angry-looking nurse, clucking away like an offended nun.

“What have you done, Mr. Shaw?” She had a wide nose, a firm jaw and café-au-lait skin. “Get back in bed this minute.”

She had reached out to turn him around, but Bravo checked her, “I want to see my sister.”

“I’m afraid that’s im—”

“Now.”

He held her eyes for so long she knew he wasn’t going to back down.

“Look at you, weak as a newborn, you can’t even walk.” Still, his eyes would not let her go. At length, capitulating, she fetched a wheelchair, brought it around behind him. He sat down, and she pushed him forward.

Outside Emma’s room he held up a hand. “I don’t want to go in there like this. Let me walk.”

The nurse sighed. “In her current condition she won’t know the difference, Mr. Shaw.”

“Maybe not,” he said, “but I will.” Hands on the armrests, he levered himself up. The nurse stood, watching him, arms crossed over her bosom, as he grasped the door frame and moved slowly into the room.

Emma, reclining on the bed, looked a mess. Not only her eyes but the upper half of her face was heavily bandaged. He sat on the edge of the bed, sweating alarmingly inside his gown. His heart was pounding so hard it threatened to squeeze through his rib cage.

“Bravo.” Emma’s voice, rich and musical, varied as an artist’s palette, rose to him, the one word like a song.

“I’m here, Emma.”

“Thank God you’re alive.” Her hand fumbled for his, found it and squeezed. “How badly are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing compared—” He barely had time to choke off the rest of the sentence.

“Compared to me, you mean.”

“Emma.”

“Don’t do that, don’t you pity me.”

“It isn’t pity.”

“Isn’t it?” she said sharply.

“Emma, you have every right—”

“Don’t be such a good sport!” She turned back. “Who should I be angry at, Bravo? Who did this to me?” Then she shook her head. “It’s disgusting. I’ve had enough of terror and anger and self-pity.”

With an enormous effort of will she smiled, and like sunlight flooding the room he saw her as she had been, carriage erect, her mouth open wide, honey-colored hair flying in the wind created by the stage fans, her huge emerald eyes, wide cheeks and generous mouth so much like their mother’s, one hand uplifted as the aria emerged from her, glorious and full-born, as he always imagined Puccini had heard it when he’d first composed it.

“I’ve waited two long horrible days to feel you, to hear your voice.” She took his hand again. “This makes me happy, Bravo, this cuts through my endless night. Even in my worst, blackest moments, I was able to rise above it long enough to pray for your recovery, and God heard my prayers and kept you safe.” Her smile widened. “So now I want you to do the same—to rise above your anger and your self-pity. I want you to have faith, Bravo, if not for yourself, then for me.”

Faith? Faith in what? he asked himself. His father had wanted desperately to tell him something, and because he had hardened his heart, because he hadn’t been able to forgive him for his manipulations, he’d never know what was so important. His jaw clenched. Wasn’t forgiveness a major component of faith?

“Emma, Dad is dead and you’re—” His throat was filled with bitter bile.

She placed her soft hands on either side of his face, as she had done when, as a child, he had become agitated and frustrated. She pressed her forehead to his. “I want you to stop and listen,” she breathed in a musical murmur, “because I’m sure that God has a plan for us, and if you’re filled with anger and self-pity you’ll never be able to hear it.”

His throat was clogged again with all the emotions boiling up from inside. “Emma, what happened that day?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I can’t remember.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s a blessing.”

“I wish I could remember something—
anything
—about what happened.”

“A gas leak, that detective said. An accident. Put it behind you, Bravo.”

But he couldn’t, and he couldn’t tell her why.

“Now I need you to help me get to the bathroom,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.

When Bravo stood up his legs felt stronger. They reached the bathroom without incident. She seemed strong to him, despite what had happened to her. Was that her faith he felt, deep and rippling like a stream at spring’s first thaw?

“Come inside with me,” she said, drawing him in before he had a chance to protest. She locked the door behind them, then opened her hand, revealing a pack of cigarettes and a small lighter. “I bribed Martha.” Martha was her personal assistant.

She sat on the toilet and with surprisingly little difficulty lit up, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs and holding it there. On the exhale, she said with a laugh, “Now you know my secret, Bravo. The smoke gives my voice that depth the critics so rave over.” She shook her head. “God works in mysterious ways.”

“What does God have to do with it?”

At once, she stood up. “Oh, Bravo, I hear the anger, you can’t keep it out of your voice. I wonder if you know how ugly it is, how it distorts the beautiful tenor of your voice.”

“It’s you who has the beautiful voice, Emma.”

She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. “We both have Mama in us, only maybe—just maybe—I have a bit more.”

“I know you thought Dad loved me more,” he blurted out, because it had been on his mind.

“No, Bravo. He loved me, too, but you and he had some—I don’t know—some special connection. It hurt me so to see the two of you at odds.” Her face turned up to his. “Have you cried yet, Bravo? I know you have.” Her fingertips traced the bandages over her eyes. “I envy you that luxury.”

“Oh, Emma.”

“The first few hours afterward when I was first hit with what I had lost I fell into a black pit. But faith is a tree, growing new branches even in the face of a storm. And when the time is right, those new branches bear fruit. It’s faith that sustains me, faith that makes sense out of chaos, faith that holds the world together in the face of crisis.” She took another, smaller drag from the cigarette. “I wish I could make you understand. When you have faith, despair is not an option. I grieve for Dad. Inside I’m crushed because a part of me has been ripped away and I’ll never get it back. That, at least, I know you understand. But I also know that his death, the loss of my sight, either temporary or permanent, is for a reason. There
is
a plan for us, Bravo. My faith shows it to me, even without the use of my eyes.”

“Was it God’s plan to have Dad blown up, for Mom to waste away?”

“Yes,” she said firmly and deliberately. “Whether you can accept it or not.”

“I don’t understand how you can be so sure. This is a part of you I never got, Emma. What if your faith is an illusion, what if there is no plan? That would mean that there
was
no purpose.”

“No purpose we can yet see.”

“Faith. Blind faith is as false as everything you rail against.” Bravo thought of what Detective Splayne had said, and his hands curled into fists. “How can you live in such a world and not be cynical?”

“I know your cynicism is a facade, because
cynicism
is just another word for frustration,” Emma said softly. “We spend so much time trying to maintain control over everything that governs our lives, but it’s futile—and terribly frustrating—because, really, what can we control? Almost nothing. And yet we still seek the impossible, even knowing that it’s a hollow pursuit. What can fill the void, can you tell me? No. But, listen, listen, when I let go of everything, when I sing, I
know.
” Her cigarette had burned down, unsmoked. She must have felt the heat on her fingers because she groped behind her, flicked it into the toilet. With a brief angry hiss, its lit end winked out. “Bravo, the explosion may have taken my sight, but miraculously it left me my most precious possession—my voice is unharmed.”

He held her tight then, feeling her substance, as he always had, ever since he could remember. “I wish I had your faith.”

“Faith is a lesson to be learned, just like everything else in life,” she whispered in his ear. “I pray that one day you’ll find yours.”

And in his other ear his dead father whispered: “
Beneath the surface—where loss manifests itself—that’s where you must begin.
”

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