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It would be the greatest trick of all time.

—

Twilight was spreading its desultory magic as he crossed West Tenth. Grayness and barrenness everywhere, just too much; he wished someone would unleash a high-pressure hose, blasting away the neighborhood’s grime and brokenness. How had this shithole seduced him? How much emotional capital had he invested, convincing Alice this was the best place for them? All the money and sweat he’d devoted to being here.
Here?

Oliver’s head swiveled; he checked in each direction. Any asshole lurking in those side streets? All that turned up were a pair of undernourished teenagers spraying complicated graffiti onto the side of an eighteen-wheeler. Their jokes did not pause when Oliver passed, and this furthered his rage, his body knifing through air that was unseasonably sticky.

Maybe halfway down crumpled and forsaken Gansevoort, a distinguished couple emerged from a small saloon. Possibly they’d visited the son they were supporting at the bar where he worked part-time. Holding hands, they walked toward the lone working streetlamp, underneath which, it was apparent, the front headlights of their Cadillac had been destroyed, its bumper half-hanging. The aged man stomped his right foot in place. His wife looked at him in horror, said his name out loud. As if on cue, a police car approached, slowed, cruised onward.

Oliver didn’t know where he was going, had no specific purpose. Maybe he’d head for the comfy nooks and cramped sidewalks of the West Village, lose himself gazing through the windows of tasteful boutiques where doctors purchased brocaded knickknacks for mistresses.

But if he was to survive this next half hour, he had to get away from the stench. The frozen death.

He smelled the smoky aroma of roasting peanuts from across the street. He could see the vendor scoping the teenybopper bridge-and-tunnel girls coming out of the PATH station, passing the minutes until he could push his cart toward its nightly storage facility.

On the side of a bus stop a poster showed a black woman adorned in a headdress, dashiki, and multicolored earth-tone pattern, looking so stereotypically African it almost hurt the soul. She offered relief, 900-737-3225, the Psychic Friends Network, $3.89 a minute.

Muscled young men in T-shirts from a corporate basketball league were tossing a basketball and quoting hip-hop lyrics. Coming from the opposite direction, an elderly woman wrapped her basset hound’s shit in a plastic bag.

Oliver let himself be distracted by all this: classical white American southern Protestants and preening goths and carefully put together burnouts, all of them without any awareness other than their own concerns. A particularly civilized and gorgeous and sophisticated couple caught his eye. They sauntered at a leisurely pace, motioned toward one another with their hands, made warmly funny comments. Their subject? Where to go for dinner.

Oliver marveled. Like he was witnessing the invention of fire.

—

He was heading back home when he noticed two women exiting a discount wig shop. Minuscule skirts and long legs, shapely in fishnets, made them impossible to ignore. One woman was pulling at the other’s plastic bag. The second was slapping back, laughing, telling her not to play.

“What you looking at? Oh, it’s sweet hubby.” A smack of gum. “Hey there, sweet hubby.”

The second one joined in. “Yo, sugar.” Her Adam’s apple throbbed.

“Oh,” said Oliver.
“Oh.”

“Don’t act like you ain’t know.”

“Hey, Donette—” Oliver said. “Michelle.”

“Yeah, I know you seen this good stuff, baby.” Extending the gum from her mouth, the first teased out a long slick line, sucked it back in. “How that lovely wife of yours holding up?”

What could he say? What was there to say?

There was this to say

“I
love you more than life.”

Oliver watched her compose herself: cap off, sunglasses off. Bare head. Her eyebrows gone so that the ridge of her forehead was apparent, patches of dried skin patterned like small scallops at her nearest temple. She was wincing, etched grooves at the corners of her eyes, gunky and glistening, lashes fluttering.

Still she focused across the room, finding the camera.

“Your birth was without a doubt the greatest thing I’ve experienced,” she continued. “I’m so grateful I had support: my doula, Oliver, all my friends. They allowed me to go without any pain meds. I’m so grateful. I was lucky enough to receive the gift of feeling you exit my body. That sound and feeling,
lump, thump, bump
.” She laughed. “I thought it would go on forever. There was
so much
baby. So much of you.”

Her hand rose, long fingers caressing her cheek. Alice’s voice was winsome. “Seeing your face for the first time, that was the single best moment of my life. Finding out you were a girl…I fell so deeply in love….I couldn’t sleep that night, after you were born….I just kept marveling at you, holding you.”

It seemed she might cry. Instead she said, “I am so blessed to have had that experience.”

Her concentration broke, and she emerged from what might have been a trance, bald head gradually rising. Looking reedish and mystic, she spent a moment taking in the chaos around her on the bed: note cards scattered atop the throw quilt’s ragged panels, a small brass statue—some kind of mutant elephant—knocked on its side. Directly in front of the covered lumps that had to be her legs, a yellow pad with bullet points was propped on a throw pillow.

“I had an order to what I wanted to say,” she thought out loud. “But I don’t think, what feels organic—”

“You’re doing fine,” Sparrow replied, without looking up from the viewfinder, the video camera mounted on a tripod.

Alice covered her eyes with a cupped hand, checked with Tilda.

“What you said was beautiful.” Her voice came from behind the light source. “Go on, honey.”

She understood, looked at nothing, inward perhaps—opening a drawer in her mental desk, peering at its contents. Eyelids lowered, stayed shut. Now a thin smile widened her lips, chapped and blistered.

“When you are asleep, my Doe dear, I watch how trusting you are. I just bask in your breathing, that face I love more than life, that face that is life to me, it’s…it…” Alice sniffed, crinkled her nose. Lids opened onto black diamonds, wet and sparkling. “It means so much to me.” She directed her attention toward the camera now.

“Since falling ill, I have kissed you so many times. I have always known that the moment would come when I can’t kiss you anymore. If I look for too long it becomes impossible to appreciate the sight of you. I can’t enjoy the moment. But, my dear sweet girl, please know what I am saying. The pain of your face is not your face, just the fact I have to be away from it.”

From the doorwell, not meant for the world’s ears:
“Jesus.”

Oliver, exhausted and shabby, arms folded across his chest. His eyes were soft and open, his cheeks still ruddy from the cold air. He felt at once stunned, touched, and horrified.

“You weren’t supposed to see.”

Her eyes red—more hashish? Crying?

“Isn’t giving up, isn’t this the opposite of what we should be doing?”

“I thought this might be the right time.”

“Believe me, it’s not like I’m in love with that hospital. But lots of smart people are devoting their lives to fighting this horrible shit and helping you get better—”

“I can’t eat. I can barely see. We don’t have a donor. What should I be doing?”

The bedroom blinds had been raised, presumably to give them light while filming, but night had taken over, spreading shadows through the room’s edges. Out of the window the elevated railroad tracks were blackened husks.

A new voice interrupted: “She’s not giving up.”

Sparrow had uprighted herself, was placing herself between Oliver and his wife. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she told Alice, “I asked about Siddhartha leaving his wife to become Buddha.”

“Right, your treatments,” Oliver said. “You have a history of amazing results. That’s what I’ve heard?”

“Come on already,” Tilda said, off to the side.

“Why—” Alice complained.

“I get it,” he cut them off. “I just want to learn.
Really.
” To Sparrow: “Your treatments have cured cancer?”

“I’ve had successes.”

“You’ve put people in remission?”

“At the ashram we’ve—”

“And where’s this ashram at?”

“Western Massachusetts, just north of the Berkshires.”

“And in that ashram just north of the Berkshires, you cured how many people of cancer?”

“Oliver, this is not the place or time—”

“I’m a big girl, Alice.”

Sparrow remained fixed on him, that weirdly intense gaze of hers, holding him, searching out his vulnerability. For an instant, Oliver felt himself drawn in, buckling, wanting to trust her. And it was in that moment—as he felt himself waver—that Sparrow unleashed her smile. The kindness bloomed in her voice: “With care and help and the proper meditation and chanting, we’ve been blessed with a ninety-five percent success rate. And before you ask, more than half of those who come with us
do
stay in remission.”

“Ninety-five percent? Wow. From yoga and herbal packets?”

“There is science beyond Western science. Coffee enemas purify a bloodstream. Broccoli and other fresh, steamed greens—”

“Really impressive.
Really.
But here’s what I’m curious about. If ninety-five percent of the cancer patients you gave broccoli enemas went into remission, why aren’t you on the
Today
show? Why aren’t you consulting with doctors everywhere?”

Oliver paused long enough for the point to impact. “This disease is the worst fucking scourge in history,” he continued. “The single
worst
. At Whitman, they capture cells at the fucking moment they split, so they can learn whether the new cells are
potentially
cancerous. You’re telling me the medical-industrial complex can’t figure out if something inside
broccoli
might contain a cure? Come on. Pfizer’d have fucking stormtroopers marching through that ashram. They’d be rushing those packets through clinical trials like shit through a chicken, monetizing like
fuck
.”

Oliver’s stare challenged. But rather than meet her eyes this time, he looked slightly higher, to the little gulley, the planted field of gray hairs down the separating groove where her hair parted. She’d probably been the smartest secretary in her department, passed over too many times for promotion, maybe. Or maybe some deep family trauma had caused mental collapse? Whatever it was, she’d risen from the ashes, this grande mystic of the Berkshires, passing her days in careful meditation while bilking sick people desperately grasping for hope.

“It took years before Buddha returned to the castle.”

Sparrow’s voice was not loud but placid, a fall breeze.

“The baby was much older by then, naturally. Buddha’s wife was also older. Though she had not seen her husband for long years filled with hardship, she accepted him into the castle without complaint. And still, another three weeks passed before the Buddha visited her quarters.”

“Women can’t even
be
Buddhists.”

“Oliver—”

“I read it on the Net. They have to be reincarnated as men.
Then
they can.”

Sparrow waited, the etched time lines of her forehead remaining flat. “The first thing Buddha’s wife said to him was
‘
Did you have to leave?’ Buddha answered,
‘No. But I could not know this without leaving.’ 
”

The skin of her cheeks was hard and smooth as carved wood. She let her story sink in, then told Oliver, “I’m not taking money for anything.”

“You fucking shouldn’t.”

Behind him there was a misstep, a bump—the light source flickered, the room’s balance of light and weird shadows recalibrating.

“I think Oliver and I need to talk.” Alice’s hand was steady, moving to her heart.

Sparrow understood, broke from her duel, and hugged Alice. She held both of Alice’s hands even as she backed away, and now their arms improvised a circle. Sparrow whispered; Alice nodded.

As the healer began gathering her bags and books, Tilda and Alice now shared a look, communicating in their own exclusive language. Alice assured Tilda she’d be fine, told them to leave the equipment, though it would be nice if Tilda could turn off the light, please.

Alice motioned to Oliver, patting the adjacent space.

He didn’t sit. He loomed.

She asked if he could hand her the water.

During each of her two gulps, her Adam’s apple seemed inordinately large for her neck.

From the other side of the drywall they could hear the sounds of the women retreating, clumps and whispers, Alice’s mom warning, the baby was asleep.

“If I die in the next little while,” Alice said, “I’m afraid you’ll let your darkness take over.”

His eyes were whirlwinds.

“I’m saying this to help,” she continued, “you shouldn’t take it personally.”

“Just the kind of qualifier that ensures—”

Her raised hand halted his sarcasm. Looking up, she tried to focus on his face, but it proved too difficult. Instead her eyelids landed with force, remained closed.

“I just want you to know. I hope with all my heart that you will fight the darkness and not stay there.”

“I’m not giving up, Alice—”

“You can have a wonderful life without me. You can meet someone else who can be a good partner for you, a good mother to Doe. But that will only work if you open yourself to that possibility.”

“I’m not giving up. If that means someone’s got to be King Dick around here, fine, I’ll take the mantle. But—”

She bit her lip, placed a hand on his knee, felt his tension, the solidity of his resistance.

“I know how hard this is on you. I feel the pressure you’re under. But it’s poisoning you, Oliver. You bring me so much joy. I want to spend years with you. I even want to keep going through this hell with you. I want to be a parent with you. But if I don’t get to do that, I don’t want you to do it alone.”