The Placebo Effect (37 page)

Decker did.

Eddie whipped it back at Decker. In the cold—it hurt to catch.

“I don't get it, Decker.”

“Get what?”

“Why you don't hop a damned plane to Victoria.”

“And do what when I get there?” Decker threw the ball to Eddie.

“Track down Seth. What the fuck are you doing here when your son is way the hell out there? I'd do anything—I did everything to get my daughter back.”

Decker heard the change of tense.

“Catch!”

Eddie lofted the football high in the air. Decker looked up, tracking the ball. He reached up for it just as Eddie's full weight struck him in the chest and he fell to the ground—tackled, a great
umph
of air coming from him. He looked up. Eddie was standing over him, breathing hard.

“Get up!” he shouted.

Decker struggled to his feet.

“Down and out,” Eddie ordered. Eddie hopped back.

Decker raced six yards, then cut hard to the right. The ball almost took his head off as he made the turn. He tipped the ball in the air and caught it just as Eddie's body smashed into him a second time, driving him hard to the ground again.

“Get up. Get the fuck up!” Eddie screamed. “You want to live in my house? You at least try and find your son.”

Decker got to his feet, feeling a pain in his side, and said, “I didn't do anything, Eddie. But what did you do? What?”

“What I had to, Decker. What I had to.”

Then he understood—it was so obvious! Eddie had access to everything. He even put in the bid on the house in the Junction without asking. And, oh fuck, Eddie had been showing him over and over and over again what was going on but he hadn't allowed himself to see it. The guest room that Eddie slept in while Decker slept in Eddie's room! And the doll. The damned doll. “When's she coming home, Eddie? When's your daughter coming home?”

“Soon. Very soon, I hope.”

“Is that what Charendoff promised you?”

Eddie didn't answer.

“Is it?” Decker demanded. Eddie couldn't meet his eye. “And what did you have to do for that asshole in return?”

“Warn you, Decker. Warn you not to fuck with him. Fuck, man it was only money. I gave Charendoff access to your passwords that allowed him to drain your bank account that got your credit card canned and sprung the call of your bank loan.”

“And condemning my studio?”

“Yeah that was Charendoff—and me, too.” Eddie took a deep breath then said, “Fuck, man, it was just money.” For the first time Decker saw Eddie deflate—become a cripple. Then he mumbled, “Look what I had to do to try and get back my daughter, and she's still not here and I have no idea if she's ever going to be here. Look what I had to do—why don't you do a damned thing to get back your son?”

Decker didn't remember how he got to the airport or much about the flight to Victoria. He assumed the NSA was tracking him but he didn't care. He cared that when he arrived in Victoria it became obvious that somehow Seth knew he was coming and had erased almost all trace of himself in that city.

The only things Seth couldn't get rid of were the hospital records, which Decker managed to see as his next of kin. They were identical to the ones he'd seen on the three huge monitors in the Cincinnati synagogue.

Decker spoke to librarians and teachers, to street kids and hookers, to cops and preachers, to surfers and skateboarders, but no one claimed to have ever seen Seth.

Finally he found the beach where Seth surfed and shortly thereafter a hostel where surfers stayed. On a small bed in a back room he found Seth's old leather satchel. In it were three catheters, strong antinausea drugs, and a pad of paper. On the top sheet in Seth's messy handwriting was a note to him: “I saw your show. Hideous direction but clever script—although you really don't know dick about the people of the city or the Junction.”

Decker picked up the pad, and an eight by ten colour photograph fell to the floor. It took his breath from him. It was of the boy encased in ice in the Stanstead stream, his mouth open, a
hollow scream caught in the eternity of death. He turned the picture over. “This is what happens when you get close to people, Dad. Stay away from me.”

On the afternoon of the winter solstice, when the sun barely cleared the horizon for five hours, Decker's heart was so heavy that he staggered to the Victoria airport and bought a ticket for the only place he could think of—the only place that he had any hope of finding relief. Houston, Texas—the home of the Rothko Chapel, a place that had healed him before. A place by, about, and for people like himself. A portal.

THE IRONY OF MARK ROTHKO'S CHAPEL BEING IN THE HEART
of evangelical oil country; that it was initially intended for a Catholic college; that the artist killed himself before seeing the completion of his masterpiece was not lost on Decker as he entered the strangely hunching bomb-shelter-like structure.

He'd been in this ghost-filled chapel a thousand times—no, a thousand thousand times before, and never before, just as every time a person sees the ocean knows that he's been there before. Its pulsing waves a perfect match for the beating of his heart—its depths like the darkness of his mind.

And each time he'd been there he'd ignored the tall lamppost standing outside the entrance—like a gibbet waiting for a condemned man.

Inside, the massive black triptych on the north wall greeted Decker upon his entry—offset by two identically sized panels one to either side on slanted walls. The balance forced Decker's eyes to his left then his right. In both cases—east and west—to offset triptychs that pulled him toward them. Then around, to face the south wall, where a single massive black canvas hung—the only single canvas on a straight wall. It assaulted him, pushing him back to the centre of the room.

The very centre of the sacred space.

Then Decker sensed him more than saw him.

He heard the monk's pure voice sending single note after single note up to the ceiling and then heard the cascading chords
of sound raining down upon him—releasing him from his earthly bounds—and him rising.

Decker didn't know if there were others in the chapel. He didn't care. They didn't stand between him and the greatness of the mad artist's work. The man had clearly drunk so deeply of the pure jet stream—been to the valley and returned with the images in these fourteen extraordinary panels and the building he designed to house his sacred vision.

Decker turned and faced the dark pulsing of the triptych on the north wall. Took a deep breath and felt the cold approach and something heavy and metal in his right hand. Then the pulse of the painting took control of his breathing, and his heartbeat slowed to match that pulse. He felt himself lifting his arms and turning in a slow spin. Rothko's panels passed by him in stately procession—slanted blackness, offset triptych, slanted blackness, massive blackness, slanted blackness, offset triptych, slanted blackness—then the perfectly proportioned triptych on the north wall seemed to open its darkness to him—and he knew, beyond knowing, that he was through the portal.

THE SUN BEAT DOWN ON DECKER'S SHOULDERS. HIS HAIR
was matted to his forehead.

“This place is the temple of dream healing at Epidaurus. Now look about you,” Brother Malcolm said. Decker did. “You have been seeking this place for a long time, Decker.”

Decker looked up and read the motto above the temple gate:
Pure must be he who enters the fragrant temple.

“Think nothing but holy thoughts,” Brother Malcolm continued, “because you are badly out of balance. It is why you are here.” Decker looked around him and sensed the timelessness of this place. “Christ will not walk the earth for another five hundred years. You have brought some gifts for Asclepius, the god of this place. After your long journey here you have eaten very little, avoiding the foods that will prevent dreaming—wine, meat, certain fish, and broad beans. Last night you bathed in the cold water of the fountains. This afternoon you saw the sacred plays in the theatre, listened to the birds sing in the perfumed groves and danced the sacred dances. Now step up to the statue.”

Decker approached the giant statue of Asclepius. Incense filled his nostrils as the incantations of the priests floated on the still air. He took a wheat cake from his sack and offered it up to the god—and he felt lighter in his heart. And he was lighter in every way. There was a smile on his face. He turned—and gasped.

It was suddenly dusk.

He moved toward the temple, then stood—waiting. Somehow
he knew that he had to be invited to enter the sacred dream chamber.

“It is the hour of the consecrated lamps,” Brother Malcolm said. “It is several days later. Your health has improved, but you are not yet in perfect harmony. You offer up money to the god for the sacrifice.”

A wide slash of blood marked the ground in front of Decker, a ghastly crimson slur.

The priest had performed the rite on a sheep.

Brother Malcolm said, “It is time. You are invited into the dream chamber.”

Decker found himself lying on one of the many raised ivory slabs, wrapped in the blood-flecked skin of the sacrificed sheep. He looked around him. There were many others wrapped in sheepskins on their ivory slabs. The person closest to him had obscured his features by drawing the animal skin over his face.

Decker turned and watched the movements of the yellow serpents on the floor below him. They were not poisonous, but there were so many and they were so large. He reminded himself that they were nourished by the god. The temple servants extinguished the torches. The air was heavy with incense. In the darkness Decker heard the famous anchorite Hildegard of Bingen's even more famous hymns sung by Paul Sheel's clear voice and the
swish swish swish
of the serpents against the rough floor.

“Sleep,” Brother Malcolm said.

Then silence.

Then a pure boy's voice above the whispering of the snakes. “Sleep and dream your way out of your dream, Father.”

Seth's voice in the dark.

Near him.

On the slab beside him with his head covered with the sheep's skin.

“Dream your way out—out of the room with no doors.”

IT WAS SNOWING AGAIN—THIS WINTER WAS SETTING NEW
records for the white stuff. Banks of it on the sides of the road were already chest high, and it wasn't even mid-January.

The snow drifted on the charred beams of what had one time been Decker's house. Standing across the street he watched as the flakes caught and held on the blackened skeletal remains. “What am I doing here?” he asked the chilled air.

His breath misted, then was blown back in his face.

He walked up to Dundas. Across from the Baker's Dozen, empty storefronts stood out like missing teeth in a smile. Farther west the gospel churches awaited Saturday to send out their message of hope in joyous song. Theo's window featured a new display of the works of Harlan Ellison thrown together with what can only be described kindly as reckless abandon. Decker was tempted to knock on the door—but decided against it.

He turned east—toward the city. Passing by the Axis Grill he had a memory flash. A condominium being built on, around, and through an old church on Annette Street had a glossy handout with photos of “romantic Dundas.” The shots were taken from a high angle at night and carefully lit so as not to show the wide variety of cheap convenience stores, to say nothing of the choice selection of used appliance shops. The photos made Dundas look like a chic Paris street on the Left Bank just waiting for the right hour of the night for the cafés to open and the bohemian nightlife to spring into action.

Decker never trusted photographs. In fact, he didn't like them.
They were based on an intrinsic lie. They stopped life for an instant. But life—while there is life—never stops. Is never a matter of instants of time. Life is fluid. What happens at any given moment only has meaning in relationship to what happened before and may happen after. Only in death is a photograph truthful. When there is no “there” there, a photograph is an honest thing.

He looked up and down the old street. Nothing called out to him.

Eddie was within walking distance, but he caught a taxi and headed downtown to his studio.

Decker paid the Bengali cabdriver and climbed over the large mounds of snow between the street and sidewalk. He was happy to see that the condemned sign had been removed from the front door. His key, however, didn't work the lock. No doubt they'd changed the locks to prevent the occupants from getting in when the building was condemned—and, of course, hadn't bothered restoring the originals.

Decker went around the building's north side, hopped up on the Dumpster there, got hold of the bottom rung of the fire escape, and hauled himself up. For an instant he worried that his hand would stick to the frozen metal—but it didn't. He pushed open the side window and entered his studio.

The forty empty chairs that were filled every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday for his classes seemed to silently welcome him back. He wondered when he would teach again. He'd contacted his assistant to put his classes on hold. Maybe he should start up soon—get back to his life.

To his truth-telling business? He had no idea how that would play out.

He looked around and wondered if Yslan and her boys had been in here. No doubt they had.

He pushed open the office door and flicked on the light. Yslan had left the
Globe and Mail
and the
Toronto Star
open to reviews of
At the Junction.
“Not bad,” she'd scrawled across the former.

Considering that a cranky old Irishman controlled the reviews of Canadian television, it wasn't bad.