The Pact Read online

  "CONGRATULATIONS, DR. HARTE," the receptionist said on Wednesday morning.

  For a moment, James stared at her. What the hell could she be applauding him for? When he'd left the house this morning, Chris had still been sitting on the couch where James had left him the night before, staring blankly at the same Spanish-language television channel. Gus had been in the kitchen, making a breakfast that James could have told her Chris would not eat. There was not much in his life, right now, that could call for congratulations.

  A colleague clapped him on the back as he made his way to his office. "Always knew it would happen to one of us," he said, grinning, and walked off.

  James entered his small consultation room and closed the door behind him before anyone else could say something bizarre. Sitting on his desk was the mail he'd not had a chance to pore over since Friday. But open, on top of the stack, was the New England Journal of Medicine. Their annual report listing the best doctors, by field, was splayed over several pages. And under ophthalmological surgery, circled in red, was James's name.

  "Holy cow," he said, a smile starting somewhere in the region of his heart and spreading outward. He picked up the phone and dialed home, wanting to share the news with Gus, but there was no answer. He glanced up at his Harvard diplomas, considering how the award would look laminated.

  Feeling much lighter in spirit, James hung up his coat and trekked through the corridors, in search of his first patient. If any of the staff knew about Chris's stay over the weekend, they did not mention it; or maybe the NEJM honor had sup- planted the less savory rumor. He stopped at an examination room, pulling the file and flipping through the history of Mrs. Edna Neely.

  "Mrs. Neely," he said, swinging open the door. "How are you doing?"

  "No better, or I would have canceled the appointment," the elderly woman said.

  "Let's see if we can fix that," he said. "Now, you remember what I said last week about macular degeneration?"

  "Doctor," she said, "I'm here for eye problems. Not senility."

  "Of course," James answered smoothly. "Let's get this angiogram out of the way, then." He directed Mrs. Neely to a big camera and seated her in front of it. Then he took the hypodermic of fluorescein and injected it into Mrs. Neely's arm. "You might feel a burning sensation in your arm. The dye is what we're looking for," he said. "It will travel from your vein to your heart, and then around the body, eventually getting up to the eye. The dye stays in normal blood vessels, but will ooze out of the abnormal, hemorrhaging ones that caused your macular degeneration. We'll figure out where they are, exactly, and treat them."

  It took twelve seconds, James knew, for the dye to travel from the arm to the heart to the eye. The light, in the back of the eye, illuminated the fluorescent dye. Like the tributaries of a river, the normal blood vessels of Mrs. Neely's retina branched out in fine, tentative lines. The abnormal vessels were sunbursts, minuscule fireworks, which softened into puddles of white dye.

  After ten minutes, when all the dye was gone, James turned off the camera. "All right, Mrs. Neely," he said, hunkering down to her level. "Now we know where to guide the laser treatment."

  "What's that going to do to me?"

  "Well, we hope it will stabilize the damaged retina. AMD is a serious problem, but there's a chance we can save some vision, although it might not be as good as it was before you noticed the disturbance."

  "I'm going to go blind?"

  "No," he promised. "That won't happen. You may lose some central vision--the kind you use for reading, or driving--but you'll be able to walk around, shower, cook."

  He waited a moment, and then Mrs. Neely gifted him with a lovely smile. "I heard them talking in the waiting room, Dr. Harte. They said you're one of the best." She reached across the small space that separated them and patted his hand. "You'll take care of me."

  James stared into her dilated, distorted eye. He nodded, suddenly drained of all his earlier enthusiasm. This accolade was not an honor, it was a mistake. Because James knew firsthand what it had been like for Mrs. Neely to sit down one evening and realize the door was not the same shape it had been minutes ago, the newspaper was not printed as clearly, the world was not the way she remembered it. The panel at the New England Journal of Medicine would rescind the award when they learned about his suicidal son, on trial for murder. Surely you did not pay homage to a vision specialist who had not seen this coming.

  "YOU PROMISED," Chris said heatedly. "You said the day I got out. And it's already a whole day past that."

  Gus sighed. "I know what I said, sweetheart. I just don't know if it's such a good idea."

  Chris jumped up from the kitchen chair. "You already stopped me once from going to her," he said. "Have you got a sedative in the fridge, Mom? Because that's the only way you're going to do it again." He came so close his words spat against her cheek. "I'm bigger than you," he said softly. "And I'll get by you if I want to. I'll walk the whole way if I have to."

  Gus closed her eyes. "No," she said. "All right."

  "All right?"

  "I'll take you."

  They drove in silence to the cemetery. It was actually within walking distance of the high school; Gus remembered Chris telling her that some kids liked to come there during free periods to do their homework and their reading. Chris got out of the car. At first, Gus looked away, pretending to read a gum wrapper trapped in the fold of the passenger seat. But then she could not help herself. She watched Chris kneel down beside the rectangular mound, covered with its profusion of still-fresh flowers. She saw him run a finger over the chilled lips of roses, the hawked throat of an orchid.

  He stood up far more quickly than she imagined he would and came back to the car. But he went to her window and knocked for her to roll it down. "How come," he asked, "there's no gravestone?"

  Gus looked at the freshly turned earth. "It's too soon," she said. "But I think in the Jewish faith, it's different anyway. It doesn't go up for six months or so."

  Chris nodded and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Which way is the top?" he asked.

  Gus looked at him dumbly. "What do you mean?"

  "The head," he explained. "Which end is Emily's head at?"

  Shocked, Gus glanced wildly around the cemetery. The plots were not straight, but fairly haphazard. However, the predominant number of headstones were facing a certain way. "I guess the far end," she said. "I'm not sure."

  Chris walked away to kneel at the grave again, and Gus thought, Ah, of course. He wants to talk to her. But to her amazement Chris straddled the slight mound and lay down on top of it, his arms holding close the flower arrangements he was crushing, his head and shoes just spanning the six feet, his face pressed into the earth. Then he stood up, dry-eyed, and walked back to the Volvo. Gus put it in gear and continued along the cemetery road, shaking with the effort not to look at her son, whose mouth was ringed with a lipstick of soil as branding as any kiss.

  THEN

  December 1993

  Chris rode up to Sugarloaf in Emily's parents' car because they wanted to hook together their Game Boys and have a Tetris marathon. They were going skiing for Christmas, renting a condo with Em's family. Aerosmith blared from the tape deck, the speakers in the front turned down low. "Jeez," Chris laughed, his thumbs pounding the miniature computer. "You are so cheating."

  Huddled against her side of the seat, Emily snorted. "You are so lying."

  "Am not," Chris said.

  "Are too."

  "Oh, right."

  "Whatever."

  Driving, Michael glanced at his wife. "This," he said, "is why we never had another kid."

  Melanie smiled and looked out the windshield at the taillights of the Hartes' car. "Do you think they're listening to Dvorak and eating Brie?"

  "No," Chris said, glancing up. "If Kate's getting her way, they're probably singing 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.'" He turned back to the small screen. "Hey," he said. "That's not fair."

  "You s