My Soul to Keep Part 22

She slept a lot. That much she knew. She awakened when she heard a noise-the clatter of some pot from the kitchenette, the running water from the bathroom, the cabin door opening or closing-and she would open her eyes and stare up at the wooden planks across the ceiling.

Once, she smelled food and it nearly made her vomit.

"Are you hungry?" she heard David's voice ask, floating somewhere above her. She shook her head without opening her eyes.

It seemed to her that she must have been lying there for many days, an eternity, though the daylight was always there. At some point, David leaned across the bed to close the heavy curtains across the picture window, making the room darker, and she remembered being glad.

And she was glad to smell his scent, his perspiration, the freshness of his shampoo, even the chemical pine scent from some disinfectant that had cleaved itself to him. She knew those smells. The blood smell, that was the one she hadn't known. That was the smell that pitched her into semiconsciousness, the one her mind retreated from, lulling her to a calmer place.

At last, David sat at the edge of the bed and kneaded her shoulder until she opened her eyes. He was wearing a UM T-s.h.i.+rt and cutoff shorts. He smelled like smoke. She could remember being confused about why he smelled like smoke. Much later, he would explain that he had burned the blanket and bedsheet because of all of the blood, and he'd paid Mantooth extra to replace them. She never knew what explanation he'd given him.

David was smiling at her. She was convinced by now that his image was part of some cruel, elaborate dream, so she did not smile back. Or, had the blood and moaning all been part of an equally elaborate nightmare? She didn't know which.

"Almost time to go, Jess. The boat will be here soon. We'll go pick up Kira, okay? Won't you be glad to see Kira?"

Kira. Oh, yes. Thinking of Kira, Jessica felt her mind emerging from its protective clouds. Kira was at her mother's. The weekend was over. It was time to go back home.

Jessica reached over to David and lifted his T-s.h.i.+rt so she could see his stomach. She saw a crooked path of hairlessness under the cl.u.s.ter of wiry hairs growing around his navel, nothing more. Nothing. She blinked, waiting to feel something. Whatever it was didn't come.

"You didn't have to do it that way," she said. David leaned closer. He hadn't heard her. She struggled to raise her voice slightly. "I wish you hadn't done it this way, David."

David gazed at her and nodded solemnly. "Okay," he said, "I'm sorry." He kissed her open palm. "I'm really sorry."

"You said there's more."

"Yes," he said. "Later. We don't have time now. Wait until we get back to Ochopee. I'll talk to you in the car."

David tried to stand up straight, but she held tight to his hand, pulling him back down toward her. Her words came without thought. "You have to say thank you to G.o.d, David. You told me we'd both see a miracle, and we did. You can't see a miracle without saying thank you. That's all He asks. That's all."

David stared at her tenderly and touched her cheek with his index finger. She saw a struggle in his face, words wanting to come, but he didn't speak at all. Then, he gently pulled his fingers from her grasp and stood up, walking away.

30.

"Daddy! Mommy!" Kira cried, flinging the front door open to run out to the van as they drove into Bea's driveway. Jessica's heart surged to see her daughter dressed up in new matching purple shorts and a tanktop, her hair parted into two puffb.a.l.l.s secured with purple barrettes.

Bea followed closely behind Kira, laughing. Bea was always overjoyed to see Jessica come home from vacation in one piece. And Alex would be next, Jessica knew. Her BMW was parked beneath the shade of the front yard ficus tree. Jessica was so glad to see them all, and yet it was a strain to pull the latch to try to open her door.

"Just stay in the car," David said, patting her knee, before opening his own door and climbing out. He called to Kira. "Come here, d.u.c.h.ess. What did Grandma do to your hair?"

Kira giggled as David lifted her into the air, hoisted her over his shoulders, and began to spin her around. Her laughs sounded nearly hysterical-half joy, half fright.

"David, you're going to drop that child," Bea muttered, walking past him to lean into Jessica's window. "Get your lazy behind out of this car. Dinner's waiting. How was the swamp?"

Before Jessica could open her mouth to answer, David walked behind Bea and knelt down, easing Kira to the ground. "The swamp was great, but poor Jess came down with something. She's not feeling well."

"Mommy's sick?" Kira asked.

"Just a little cold or something."

Bea reached over to touch Jessica's forehead. The gesture was so familiar, so warm, that Jessica longed to tell David she wanted to stay at her mother's house tonight. Just for one night, that was all.

"You've got a temperature. Snake didn't bite you, did it?" Bea asked. "You look worn out, Jessica. I don't know about this camping out in the swamplands. That's for white folks."

Weakly, Jessica shook her head and smiled. "No snakebite," she said, "but worn out, yes. Definitely."

Alex appeared next in her window, wearing a smart mauve dress from church. "Hey, girl. What's wrong?"

Jessica wanted to shrink from their stares. What would they see in her face? So much had happened. So much had changed. How could people go through changes and not show it on their faces? How could soldiers leave battlefields and simply go home to their families, after all they had seen?

"I'm just tired," Jessica said.

"Go get your bag, Kira," David said, playfully swatting her backside. "We need to get Mommy home to bed."

"Lord, well at least let me fix you some plates. Don't you leave me with all this food. Come help me, David," Bea said.

Alex stayed by the van window, smelling of Giorgio, the scent she saved for Sundays. She looked worried, gazing into Jessica's eyes. Jessica glanced away from her sister.

"Everything okay?" Alex asked.

"I don't think I'm cut out for camping," Jessica said.

"That bad, huh?"

Jessica nodded. When would her brain wake up?

"Well, I'm just glad you two are back. I couldn't believe it when Mom told me you were off to some island somewhere without a telephone. I just think of those slasher movies. I don't think I could go for that."

Jessica couldn't think of a response.

"You sure you're okay? Everything okay with David?"

"Why would you ask that?" Jessica asked, looking at her.

"Just asking, that's all. He seems like he's in a big hurry to go home. And he's smiling too much. He only smiles when something's wrong."

"There's nothing wrong," Jessica said, wondering how convincing she sounded to someone as insightful as Alex. She realized what a profound burden David's secret would be. She kept very few secrets from Bea, and none from her sister. Theirs was not a family of secrets. She'd even mentioned the incident with Mahmoud to Alex, and David's explanation. Now, there would be a barrier between them.

"Call me later if you feel like it. I met somebody last night. No big deal yet, but he's an immigration lawyer.... Well, I'll tell you later," Alex said, smiling.

Ordinarily, a love interest would have been big news to Jessica. Now, she had to force herself to feign a reaction. Nothing in her life, she began to realize, would ever be able to affect her the way it had before. Everything would seem trite and inconsequential compared to the past twenty-four hours.

During the drive home, Jessica tried hard to listen to Kira's excited chatter about how she'd spent her weekend. How the little boy next door was a meanie, how he'd broken the toy she got in her McDonald's Happy Meal. How Grandma watched The Lion King on video with her for the hundredth time. David filled up Jessica's silences, telling Kira about the woods and the cabin and the airboat.

Jessica's thoughts could not drift far away from the extraordinary story David had told her during the ninety-minute drive from Ochopee to her mother's house. He'd begun after taking a deep breath, and his tale had been barely punctuated by any pauses as he spoke, his eyes hidden behind his sungla.s.ses as he stared straight ahead at the road.

My name is DAH-weet. I was bom in what is now called Ethiopia nearly five hundred years ago. I am an immortal. There are fifty-eight others like me. Our blood lives forever, and our bodies heal. We do not age. We were not bom this way, and our condition is not genetic. We underwent a Ritual.

We do not have extraordinary strength, and it is not our purpose to harm others. We are merely a race of scholars. Most of us choose not to mingle among mortals, but some of us do. We love, and we have families. I have had wives and children before you. I have either outlived them or been forced to abandon them.

We have a Covenant that forbids us to reveal our truth. For what I am telling you, I expect someday to be punished. I take that risk because I love you. I have been told that it is time for me to leave you, and I cannot. I hope we can all leave together.

David had also said much more frightening things while she sat and listened to his words. He told her that Mahmoud had been sent to spy on their family, that he had been watching them, probably for many months. He might even have wiretaps or monitors in the house, David said, so they could not speak any further of this unless they were somewhere private, like the cave.

Mahmoud may suspect what I have told you, so you must be very, very careful, Jessica. Our Covenant dictates that no one can know. You are a reporter, and therefore he would consider you highly dangerous to the safety of our entire Brotherhood. I am afraid he might try to hurt you. That is why we must go very soon. And we must watch Kira at all times. Our lives will be different now, but until we go we must behave as though nothing has changed.

Jessica had asked questions: Where would they go? Could they ever come back? What was the Ritual they underwent?

David said he was no longer sure about going to France, and he suggested Senegal, saying he considered the nation and its people among the most beautiful in Africa. There, Kira could refine her French and learn Wolof at the same time.

About the Ritual, he said nothing. But she sensed, in a way she had learned from living with him for so many years, that he had purposely chosen to keep silent on that point. So far, her questions far outnumbered David's answers.

What was in their blood? If he had not been born immortal, did that mean that anyone could become immortal?

Thinking of this as she rode with Kira and David in the van, Jessica felt her pulse quicken. She tried to let the thought go. She knew she would need time to absorb everything, so she couldn't dwell too much on any one aspect. She couldn't allow herself to think too much at all, or her fear would drown her. She wondered how she hadn't lost her mind already.

"Are we almost home, Mommy?" Kira's question drew Jessica out of her thoughts, but she felt dazed.

Where were they? David had just coasted off of the 1-95 expressway ramp to Biscayne Boulevard, so they were ten minutes from home. Jessica was comforted to see all the signs of stable life she'd known-the Sh.e.l.l gas station, the convenience store, the empty gla.s.s office buildings glaring in the Sunday twilight. She was mesmerized by the normalcy pa.s.sing her window.

"We're just about there, d.u.c.h.ess," David answered for her.

Jessica was anxious to return home, to crawl into bed, but she wondered if it might overwhelm her to suddenly compare who she was now to the person she had been only two days before, living in the same house. Would the idea of wiretaps in the bedroom make it impossible for her to sleep, to hold her husband?

And who was her husband, really? Who was he?

As usual, their secluded neighborhood calmed the fever in Jessica's mind. The shaded roadway was a sedative. She saw the DeNights' ten-year-old grandson riding his bicycle, and she could hear the jangling music of a nearby ice-cream truck. Her life might spin out of control soon, but for today, at least, she was returning to the sanctuary of what she had known before.

"Yayy! Look, Mommy. He's back!"

Jessica followed Kira's pointing finger as the van pulled into their driveway, and she smiled gratefully.

Teacake was posted on the front porch, his elegant tail curled around his front paws, waiting for them to come home.

31.

After the night Raymond Jacobs never came home from Burger King, mornings were the worst time in the Jacobs house. In the mornings, Jessica woke up and heard m.u.f.fled sobs through her mother's door. Bea seemed too tired to be sad as the day wore on, after she picked up Jessica from their neighbor's house and asked her how school went (although her eyes strayed somewhere else when Jessica tried to tell her, and for a long time Jessica knew her mother wasn't really listening). Bea cooked dinner, the family thought private thoughts in front of the television set, and then everyone went to bed, usually without tears.

Tears came in the mornings.

One morning, fifteen days after her father died, Jessica went into hysterics. The funeral was over. The hams and macaroni ca.s.seroles and sweet-potato pies people had brought to the house were mostly gone. The flowers had wilted. His death was an old thing, not a new thing. But, for some reason, Jessica woke up from a dream about riding on her father's bouncing knee, and a certain part of her didn't remember he was dead. She didn't remember as she looked at her Raggedy Ann and Andy clock and saw that it was only a little after six. She didn't remember as she slipped into her powder-blue house shoes and padded out of her room.

But when she pa.s.sed the living room window on her way to the kitchen, where she planned to fix herself a bowl of Captain Crunch, she noticed a white car in their driveway. Whose car was that?

The memory, worse than any nightmare, stunned her: It was the car their neighbor, Mrs. Houston, was lending to them. The blue station wagon was gone now. The station wagon got wrecked when Daddy was killed in the accident.

Jessica cried so hard, her mother let her stay home from school that day.

Years later, the morning syndrome was repeating itself with Jessica. One morning, she woke up and saw David's bath towel tossed across the bedspread near her feet. She called out, "David, come hang up this wet towel before you get the room all musty!" She felt annoyed, just like she would have before. That was all.

For five whole minutes, sometimes staring straight at his face, she wouldn't think about it. Then, her stomach would plunge as she relived her b.l.o.o.d.y night with him. And she would gaze into his eyes and realize that those eyes were five hundred years old, that they belonged to a man she barely knew, and her heart would drop. Her husband, the father of her child, was a man she barely knew.

The first few nights, which Jessica hardly remembered, she couldn't bear to share a bed with him. She sat on the sofa downstairs, pretending to watch TV with Teacake on her lap, and she stayed wide awake each night. At bedtime, David stood on the stairs and tried to call her to him, but she only shook her head. Even talking to him was a struggle now, and she stopped trying once Kira was asleep. He knew to leave her alone.

So Jessica held herself, s.h.i.+vering sporadically in the warm room that was hers and yet no longer hers. She felt a deadness, a paralysis; a strange dream had enveloped her, leaving her frozen in this fog that used to be her life. Her mind was offering rational answers, trying to free her. Had it all been an illusion? Had David's horrible wound been less serious than it looked? Was David trying to trick her? But why?

Jessica couldn't even bring herself to pray about it, not at first, because her prayers seemed like empty rituals. David flew in the face of everything she'd known or believed.

The only real answer, the consistent answer, was that David was who he said he was, and she had seen what she had seen. He had died and come back. He would never die, ever.

Once she decided to try to accept this, Jessica felt the paralysis fading. She could even lie with David at night; she just couldn't touch him. Not yet. Even though she could feel how much he wanted her to in his cautious silence across the expanse of their bed.

"See here? This is me," David said after he took the damp towel away, slipping an old photograph into her hand. (He must have been relieved to hear her b.i.t.c.h at him, she realized; irritation was better than silence.) He raised his finger to his lips, a reminder that she couldn't respond out loud because of a spy. Real conversation had to wait.

The browning old photograph was ragged on the edges, but the image was almost startlingly clear: six black musicians in tuxedos, posing with their instruments at The Jazz Brigade's Summer Stomp, 1926. David's hair was cut shorter than he wore it now, slicked down, but she recognized him standing in the center of the photo with his clarinet, posing beside a man who wasn't dressed like the others, maybe a bystander or a fan. This was really David. In a photograph that was seventy years old. The thought was a kick in her stomach, and she cradled herself in the bed.

David looked alarmed. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said.

Jessica had tried, in the past week, not to be shocked by David's mementos, or at least not to show it. She wanted to encourage his reminiscences because she knew she needed to hear them. This was a journey, David had said; and she was taking it with him whether she liked it or not. She tried to enjoy the moments they stole away to the cave after Kira was in bed, when he would sit beside her and begin to talk. If she felt overwhelmed, Jessica distanced herself by pretending she was listening to a history lesson. She'd spent enough years as a reporter encouraging sources to pour out their sorrows that she had become good at pulling back when she needed to. It was a survival tactic.

So, she didn't lose her head when David showed her a wrinkled program from the Karntnerthor Theater in Vienna with a date reading 1824.

"Mahmoud and I got tickets by chance, through the man whose sons we tutored, a music patron," David told her in the hush of the cave, brus.h.i.+ng his finger across the yellowed paper. "I wasn't happy with our seats, but it was a marvelous concert. Startling. And he was there himself, as you know. You've heard how he had to face the audience to see our applause. Absolutely true. He was deaf by then. He died a couple of years later."

"Who?" Jessica asked, embarra.s.sed by her ignorance.

David grinned. "Beethoven. This was the debut of his Ninth."

Jessica would experience many of these moments of unreality. Another night, David showed her a faded, handwritten doc.u.ment inscribed with a date from the 1840s for a slave named Seth, who was the property of a Lowell Mason in Louisiana. Rust-colored fold marks crisscrossed the paper. Though the words were hard to make out, Jessica recognized David's handwriting. "This was my pa.s.s," he explained. "I wrote myself a pa.s.s when I ran away. The ink faded here at the top because it got wet."

"Did you get away?" she asked. The whole while, Jessica's brain was telling her it was all right, she was merely asking a historical question. It wasn't like her husband, the man sitting here, had actually ever been a slave more than a hundred years ago.