The Crystal Child (12 page)

A few days after his fifteenth birthday, he had invited her out to lunch. He chose an upscale little bistro on Union Street near her clinic.  The wine menu was a problem, but he had passed it to her deferentially.  “You can order any wine you want by the glass,” he informed her.

“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll have Perrier.”

“Me too,” he said.  When the waiter came, Alex ordered, then held his own at a mature conversation.  When they were finished, he deftly took control of the check. “You don’t have to,” Julia had said.  “This isn’t a date.”

“I know.  But when am I gonna have a date as good as this?”

Foolish, extravagant, just mildly flirtatious — but she had loved it.  She took pride in the way they could joke affectionately with one another, knowing he would never lose his respect for her, never fail to honor her authority.  Still, she was flattered to think of herself as Alex’s first girl friend.  If she could admit that openly, didn’t that absolve their relationship from the obvious Freudian implications?

But now, since Aaron’s arrival, so much that had been charming about Alex looked very different to her.  He began to recede into the category of teen-ager, better than most, but at his best, still an unformed adolescent, awkward and rough-edged. Yes, he would outgrow all that to become a man, which was all she had ever expected of him in the past.  But now everything about youth and age had become confused in her mind.  What did it mean for a boy to “grow up,” after all?  To become solid and serious and ordinary like his father?  That seemed so meager.  She had learned there was a different kind of masculinity that managed to be forceful yet gentle, sensual yet innocent, and remarkably self-possessed in dealing with a woman, with her.

What was this change that had come over Aaron, she asked herself again and again.  What had given him this uncanny masculine charm that she hoped he might never outgrow?  It was almost as if, in stripping away the damage done by his disease, she had broken through to some unexplored layer of the male soul, a quintessential virility there at birth like a theme waiting to be sounded in later years.  But in Aaron, it had emerged in his early boyhood with an overpowering clarity.  Though she was his doctor, each time she was with him, she felt slightly unnerved, off-balance, a woman in the presence of a man whose wishes she wanted to honor — not because he was male, but because he seemed strong and confident, someone whose judgement was sounder than her own.  All the more so when he went out of his way to set her at ease.  There were moments when she felt certain he was talking down to her, though not without his usual high respect.  He was simply trying to make it easier for her to get on with him.  And, like Alex, Aaron had his beguiling ways.  They might be nothing more than a glance, a touch on the arm, a light in his eye. He was masterful — a quaint word, one she had never used for any man she knew and would once have found objectionable.

***

One evening not long after Aaron had moved in, his parents came calling, their faces hard, unfriendly.  From the moment they entered the house, the air seemed to congeal into a sheet of glass ready to shatter at the first wrong word.  Alex was never told why the Laceys came, but he assumed it was to take Aaron home.  He was asked to go to his room, again as if he was too young to be part of the crisis.  In other circumstances, he might not have minded; he might have agreed that heavy legal and emotional matters were not for him to hear.  But it hurt to know that Aaron would remain with the grown-ups.  Later he learned that Aaron had refused to go with his parents.  He had overheard enraged words exchanged and then Julia demanding that the parents leave.  “We will never, never let you get away with this!” Todd Lacey called out at the door.  Alex heard his mother respond, shriller than she had ever been.  “I’m his doctor.  He requires my care.”

After that night there was a steady stream of phone calls.  Alex knew the calls were about Aaron.  Julia often came away from them pale and shaken.  She needed more help than she was getting from Jake, but when Alex offered to be with her, she dismissed him, telling him not to worry.  “Just pay attention to your school work,” she would say.  Official people came.  When Alex met them at the door, they said they were from “child welfare” or some county department.  Once a police officer came with them.  Alex was told not to speak to them; on one occasion, he was told not to answer the door at all.

“We’re protecting Aaron.”  That was Julia’s only explanation.

“From what?”

“His parents don’t understand him.”

“
My
parents don’t understand
me
.  Is it okay for me to run away?”

“It’s different with Aaron.”

“It’s always different with Aaron.”

***

I’m going to have trouble with Alex.  He’s a jealous child, really very insecure.  Never had to adjust to any siblings in the family.  A mama’s boy, even though he tries to cover it up with tons of bravado.  He has all these silly mannerisms, the way he struts, the way he talks dirty.  If she has to choose, which way will Julia go?   At this point I can’t be sure.  She’s not the same person here at home.  Husband, son … she has distractions.  I’m sure she’ll stand by me, let me stay here.  But here she has to justify herself to Alex and to Jake.  If they had their way, I’d be out on the street in a minute.  That may still happen.  I must find a way to win her over.

***

It was past midnight.  Julia had slipped silently into Aaron’s room.  She found him still awake in his bed reading. “You must tell me about Clara,” she said, seating herself beside him and speaking in a hushed tone.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Did you communicate with her?  How?”

Aaron thought about his answer.  “Not with words.  I just held the thought in my mind — and she knew it was there.  For all she seemed to have lost, there were other capacities.”

“You’re telling me this was some kind of telepathy?”

“I don’t know what I did.  Maybe it’s like a dog being able to hear a note beyond the human range.  I can’t say for certain that she understood anything.”

“She did.  I know.  I could tell by her expression.  She was herself, the mother I once knew.”

“I’m glad you felt that.  She was a brilliant woman.”

“She was a brilliant woman until …”

“Whatever she was, it was still there, locked up in her.  Believe me.  Alzheimer’s is a disease of the brain, not the mind.”

“I’m not sure I understand that distinction.”

“A doctor wouldn’t.  Somebody once called the brain a meat machine.  That’s probably true.  But the mind isn’t.  When the brain goes haywire, the mind scrambles like mad to find some way to stay alive and well. It tries to rewire itself.  But it has to have something to work with.  Clara tried hard but she ran out of cerebral strategies.”  He fixed her with a strong gaze.  “It wasn’t all genetic.”

“Meaning?”

He studied her for a moment, wondering
are we ready for this?
  “The genes do their best to adapt, but sometimes life assigns them more than they can achieve.  Then they break down, fail.  A doctor sees that as disease.  And in a sense, it is — a failure of the organism.  But ask what Clara was trying to do, what are all of those like her trying to do?  What was the impulse?”  His gaze wandered beyond her.  He went on as if he might be musing to himself.  “I’ve been reading about the diseases of time, diseases that derange time.  Fascinating subject.  Not the way you understand it, Julia, but as a philosophical quest.  Attention deficit, amnesia, Alzheimer’s, certain forms of autism.  What are they all about?  The soul struggling with memory, forgetting, losing track, returning to childhood.  Think of it as dysfunctional temporal relations.  Something tells us we must leave time behind, overcome it, outrun it.  Because time — our sense of time — is a trickster, a cruel illusionist. It binds us to change, to the passing moment, distracts like a sleight-of-hand magician.  ‘Look here, look here,’ time says.  But nothing worthwhile happens in time.  Deep down, we all know that. Finding meaning is a matter of stepping out of time.  It’s like — well, think what happens when we speak.  I open my mouth and words come out.  The words take time to be spoken, maybe a long time.  But what I
mean
to say is in my mind all at once.  I
know
what I want to say as if it were one, complete, unchanging idea there in my mind — taking no time at all.  The way whole symphonies were there in Mozart’s mind.  Music out of time, not needing time — except to be heard by others.  The tragedy is that so few have the power to break free.  Clara simply wasn’t moving fast enough.  She tried, but time caught up with her and punished her.  That’s what I had in common with her.  We both knew that time is a trap.  But she couldn’t find a way out.”

Julia could not follow this, but she asked, “And you, Aaron?  You know the way out?”

“If I don’t find it … ”  He paused, knitting his brows over an unwelcome thought.  “There’s a line in Shakespeare.  ‘Thought’s the slave of life, and life’s time’s fool.’  Yes, that’s a good way to put it. ‘Life’s time’s fool.’ ” His eyes, now alight as if with a sudden discovery, found hers.  “ ‘And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop.’ ”

Julia waited for him to say more, but he fell silent, his lips soundlessly repeating the words, “ ‘life’s time’s fool.’ ”  When she knew he was finished talking, she said, “You gave Clara a good death. I’m grateful for that.  That’s one reason why I feel I owe you all the support I can offer.”

“One reason.  But there are others, aren’t there?”

She did not answer.  Instead she reached to take hold of the small silver chain he was wearing around his neck.  She had not noticed it until now when she saw him in his night clothes.  She drew the chain out and saw that it was Beth Soames’ pendant.

***

“He never sleeps.”

“What do you mean?”

“His light is on all night.”

“All night? How would you know?”

“I watched a couple nights. I set my clock and looked every time I woke up.”

“Maybe he sleeps with his light on.”

“I hear him moving around.  Sometimes I hear him talking.”

“Talking?  To who?”

“Mom.”

“Mom!”

“Well, it must be. If he’s not talking to you or to me, who’s left?”

Jake could make no sense of what Alex was telling him, but he was reluctant to ask more questions.  Alex was old enough to be curious about the fact that his parents often slept apart in separate bedrooms.  He had never asked, but he must know it was the sign of a troubled marriage.  Jake did not care to make any explanations.

“You must be mistaken,” he insisted to Alex.  “Everybody sleeps.”

“He doesn’t.  He’s a freak.”

“Don’t let your mother hear you say that.”

“Well, what do you think?”

Jake gave him a wink.  “Freak. Absolutely.”

***

I keep turning back, looking, as if I might have taken the wrong turn along a road I’ve never traveled.  When I woke from the coma, I thought my eyes were bandaged or that I had awakened in a dark room.  There was no light, none.  I felt as if I’d lived in this darkness for millions of years.  I couldn’t tell myself from the darkness, where I ended, where it began.  There was only the darkness.  And then, like a needle piercing my eye, a sharp pain, a dot of pain, a small circle of pain.  I feel afraid, so afraid that my mouth goes dry, my blood stands still.  Something is pressing on the darkness, penetrating my perfect blindness.  The needle thrusts deeper; it burns like fire.  The dot of pain widens like a hole.  But no!  The darkness I’m in —
that’s
the hole.  I’m in the hole.  I’m imprisoned. The burning circle is the way out.  And I want to be out.  Out there in that vast, bright place.  I want to go where the brightness leads me.   Out there, out there.

And then the brightness deflowers the dark, forces itself in, an eager lover giving harsh pleasure.  I’m  floating in dark waters, hurting so much.  The pain I feel is
seeing.
 I am
seeing.
 I am the first eye.  There is light inside me; it has forced its way in.  My eyes are feeding on light — a strange food.  Even stranger, the hunger that craves such food.  Far above me, there is a roof of light.  Around me presences like fish arc and spiral in great schools, rising out of the depth, wanting the light above.  I rise with them, a daring swimmer.

But I have no idea what’s out there.  Out there might be some unlivable hell, a place of terror.  I have no word for this thing that is stabbing into me.  I don’t know what light is.  Still I swim toward it, the bright surface.

That’s when I realized.  Where I have been is only
one
place, a dark place.  There’s more.  Up there. 
I know this place.
  I’m not finding, I’m returning.

Alex carried the question with him through the day and took it to bed with him at night.  What was it about Aaron that made him different, older, the equal of adults?  Searching for the answer, Alex felt like a blind man being asked to describe the rainbow.  There were things he could not understand, things hidden from him beyond a horizon called “being old enough.”  He had been hearing that phrase for years.  “When you’re older … ”  But Aaron, apparently, was already “older.”  Or rather he
had
been older.  He had been an old man at the age of five, six, seven.  He was going to die of old age before he got to high school.  Was that what made him so different now? His mother had stripped away the years that burdened his body but had left him somehow older inside.  How could that be? 
Being
old was not the same as
looking
old.  Aaron had simply looked old, that was all.  And now he did not look old at all.

If being “old enough” had been a wall, Alex would have tried to tear that wall down with his bare hands.  If it had been a distance, he would have run that distance until his heart burst.  But it was nothing like that.  It was more like a secret that grownups kept to themselves, the password to a club where they were all members, no kids allowed.

Except for Aaron, who was … different.

“Let me show you something,” Aaron said, suddenly seating himself beside Alex with no invitation to do so.  It was a Sunday morning.  Alex was reading on the patio, doing all he could to stay out of sight.  It had become his habit to find corners of the house and yard where he could hide himself from his mother — and from Aaron — before he took off to spend the day at school or among friends.  Before he could protest or remove himself, Aaron had spread what looked like several jewels across the table in front of him.  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Aaron asked.  “I started collecting these in the clinic.”

Alex flinched back, startled.  “Yeah?  So?”

“They’re rock crystals.  I’ve been thinking of having one of them made into a necklace for Julia.  This one maybe.”  Aaron picked up a stone with a pinkish glitter to it.  “Do you think she’d like that?”

“She doesn’t wear jewelry,” Alex said, as if the very suggestion was insulting.

“Have you ever studied crystals?” Aaron asked.

“No, why should I?”

“They’re not just beautiful, they’re intellectually fascinating.  I hear you’re good at mathematics.  There are some tantalizing mathematical problems about crystals.  You know Roger Penrose?”

“No,” Alex said. “Who’s he?”

“He’s sort of a major figure in math.  He worked out the five-fold symmetry problem for tiling crystals.  That’s rather like squaring the circle.”

Aaron was sounding more and more like a school teacher talking to a pupil.  “Well, I’m not into that,” Alex said, affecting as much boredom as possible.

“Me neither.  The basic thing about crystals, what makes them important I think, is their relationship to time.  Actually, they have no relationship to time. They’re atemporal.”

That intrigued Alex.  But did this guy know what he was talking about?  “What does that mean?”

“They grow, they evolve, like living systems.  Some people claim they feel, they even weep.  But they mature toward indestructible stability.  No movement.  No change. No decay.  In a crystalline universe, there would be no time. Time would be wrung out of everything. Which is possibly what the universe was meant to be.  An eternal present.”

“That sounds just crazy,” Alex said.

Aaron chuckled. “Yes, I guess it does. But there’s also a kind of beauty to it.  A frozen world in some third state between life and death, forever there.  Makes you wonder: maybe we’re crystals that have gone wrong.”

“What d’you mean ‘wrong’?”

“We age, we die.  We can’t escape entropy.”  He looked at Alex.  “Would you like one?” he said, sweeping his hand over the array of crystals before them.  “Please choose one.”

Not accepting the offer, Alex rose to leave.  “I have to get somewhere,” he said.

***

Julia, fearing that the Laceys or the authorities might descend upon the house unannounced, cut back on her hours at the clinic simply to be with Aaron if he needed her.  Her schedule shrank to three days a week, then two.  At home, she and Aaron passed the time like people waiting for crisis to strike.  Even when they sat together, they spoke little.  Whatever they did to pass the time, they seemed to be listening for a knock at the door.  Often they read, though Julia remembered very little of what she read from day to day.  Aaron would browse the bookcases to find a book.  Julia’s office was filled with professional publications, but now he showed little interest in them.  He preferred poetry.

“What do you think of Traherne?” he asked one day, holding out a book. She stared back, clearly drawing a blank. “Thomas Traherne,” Aaron said.  “The poet.”

“I can’t remember,” Julia answered.  “Is that one of my books?”

It was.  An old college text, something left over from an English literature course she had long since forgotten.  She glanced at the page Aaron held open.  Traherne’s dates were seventeenth century.  She could not recall when she had last read anything of that vintage — except Shakespeare.  And even Shakespeare … but after all, she was a busy doctor.

“Listen to this,” Aaron said.  “It’s a poem about infancy.”

“That’s quite beautiful,” Julia said.  “I don’t believe I ever read that.  Yes, I guess that’s how it might be with babies.”

“No.  He’s wrong,” Aaron said at once with a casual objectivity.

“Oh? How so?”

“What he’s talking about — ‘naked, simple, pure intelligence’ — that doesn’t happen in infancy.  It’s just that he couldn’t imagine where else to look.”

“Where should he look?”

“Forward not backward. That’s what I learned from Kong.  You have to take the leap.”

He laid the book aside and sat down beside her on the sofa.   “Be truthful.  Do you really want me here?” he asked.  His leg was resting lightly against hers. She wanted to move away from him, but wondered what he would think if she did.

“Of course.  We’ll work out the problems.  Your parents are reasonable people.”

“My parents are idiots.”

“That’s unfair. They stood by you for years.”

“But they hate the result.  Me.  Here.  As I am.  They can’t accept what’s happened.”

“I’m sure they’ll come around.  Meanwhile, you can stay here as long as necessary.”

“Jake hates me.  Alex even more.”

“They don’t hate you.  They just don’t understand.”

“Actually they’re afraid of me.  I’m strange.  But it’s the kind of fear that becomes hatred.”

“We’ll work it out.”

“You’re not guarding me as a specimen, are you?  A medical curiosity?”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Can you think of another reason?”

“You’re my patient.”

“Not any more.”

“All right.  My friend, my co-worker, I might almost say.”

“No other reason?”

“You’re a child. You need a home, somebody to care for you.  If you can’t stay with your parents …”

He cut her off with a gentle protest.  “Julia, you above all the others know I’m not a child.”  She fell silent.  Staring steadily into her eyes, he had silenced her.  She could not connect the feeling that swept over her with someone as young as the boy who sat beside her.  Violation.  She felt violated and had to look away.  He reached to take her hands.  “Say it, please.  Say I’m not a child.”

“No,” she said.  “I won’t say that.”  When she looked back, his eyes had softened and become inviting.  The boy at her side, leaning into her now, his shoulder against her breast, was the most exquisite human being she had ever seen, for the moment neither male nor female, a face that transcended age or gender.

“If I thought …” she began.  But she got no further.  Aaron bent toward her and placed his mouth lightly against hers, enough to stop the words.  At the touch of his lips, she turned her cheek. The word “no” was in her mind, waiting to be spoken.  There was a moment, a slow beat.  Then she turned back, doing nothing to avoid his lips. After an instant of contact, he drew away, but only enough to search her eyes again.  A question.  Then he gently placed his lips back on hers and left them there long enough to make clear that the kiss meant more than gratitude.  When she tried to draw away, his hand was behind her head, not forcing her to stay but requesting.  She waited.  The pressure of his lips increased just slightly, but she could not tell if he was pressing harder or if she was returning the kiss.  At that moment, Julia felt something like a dark wave roll through the room, swallowing the light.  She had once experienced a similarly faint feeling as the anaesthetic took hold just before an operation. But the wave did not take her all the way under. She was left completely conscious, though she lost all sense of everything besides Aaron’s lips upon hers.  When he came away, she kept her eyes closed to avoid seeing him.  She could feel a hot rush of blood rise to her throat, her cheeks. 
Speak!
a voice inside her cried out. 
Speak now!
  But she did not speak.  She looked into his face, an acquiescent silence.  He was smiling gently.  “Sir Sharmer thanks the princess,” he murmured. Then he turned and left the room.

***

It was hours later, certainly past midnight.  She knew she had not fallen asleep, she was sure of that. How could she be asleep? She had been tossing restlessly since she lay down.  Two AM … three AM … She was perfectly aware of being in her bed, in her bedroom.  Yet what she was seeing all around her was a scene that could only be a dream.  She was in an unfamiliar place, walking among trees, an ancient grove long before the time of cities.  On all sides shadows thronged like a crowd of curious spectators almost pushing her along her way.  There was a cool, moist breeze smoothing her nightgown against her body.  Beneath her feet she felt damp earth.  With no more than the light of the moon to see by, she was pursuing someone who was ahead of her in the wood, leading her deeper into a shadowy glen.  The figure was male — lithe and boyish — yet at the same time feral in its movements.  She followed as if she could not hold herself back, apprehensive but in a state of high excitement.  Was it Aaron?  She wanted it to be Aaron.  She wanted to explain about the kiss.  He, whoever he was, knew she was there; when she fell behind, he tarried along the way for her to catch up.  She passed a tree where there were words glowing as if with faint fire. She stood closer to read what was written.  The words were not English.  They were Greek.  She did not know Greek, still she understood.  “I love and I fear,” she read.  She knew this was a warning to go no further. But ahead lay an adventure she dare not miss.  “Wait,” she called, and then louder, “Wait!  Wait! Don’t leave me!”  She raced forward, dodging trees and rocks, calling into the night. “Don’t leave me!  Wait!”

“For what?” Jake asked.

“Wait for me to catch up.”

“Who with?”

“I don’t know.  This is like a fairy tale,” she said as she quickened her pace.

“What is?” Jake asked.

“What I’m seeing, it’s a fairy tale.”

“What fairy tale?”

She turned to see Jake’s shape hovering over her in the darkened bedroom.  Julia stared up at him in bewilderment.  “You said, ‘This is like a fairy tale’,” he reminded her.

“I did?”  She sat up in her bed.  Dimly she could still see the forest — there behind Jake — and the path leading toward the glen.  And the faun …

“Just now.  You said you were seeing a fairy tale.”

“Did I?”  Why was Jake standing there in the forest blocking her way?  “Is there something wrong?” she asked.  Her skin was coated with a light sweat.

“You tell me,” Jake said. “For Christ sake, you’ve been making a racket.  I could hear you across the landing.”

“I wasn’t dreaming.  I was … ”  But she saw now that the forest was gone and with it the figure she was following.  “Well, I guess I was.”  She stared at the wall, the ceiling, the floor.  This was her bedroom.

“Dreaming about what?”

“I think it was Aaron.”

“Aaron?”  He spoke the name in a challenging tone.  “You wanted Aaron to come to you?  Here?”

“No.  I thought he was here.”

“Thought?  Or wished?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Do you feel all right?  Are you sick?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, struggling to clear her head.

“Let me know how it turns out,” Jake said, his tone grumpy.

Jake had gone back to his room.  Julia cautioned herself. 
Careful, careful, careful
, she repeated.  But she could not forget the giddy sensation that had come over her with Aaron’s kiss.  She was troubled, and yet a sense of dizzy recklessness filled her.  No question but that the kiss had been a forbidden gesture.  She should have shown him adult disapproval, used the moment to teach him right from wrong.  She should have invoked some word like … “inappropriate.” 
Yes, yes, yes
.  She wasn’t a fool.  Yet she had acted like a fool.  Why?  Because something in him had overpowered her judgement, a force more potent than intelligence.  She knew she had nothing to teach him.  He — this eleven-year-old boy — knew better, saw more clearly.  He did what she had wanted; if she tried to seem displeased, he would know she was lying.  He would know she nursed a fierce, unreasoning fascination, like someone inching closer and closer to the edge of an abyss, enjoying the thrill.  What she had experienced was not lust, nor merely flirtation.  She searched for a word.  A visitation?

The next morning, Jake found her at breakfast flipping through a large book filled with illustrations. “What’s this?” he asked.

The Brothers Grimm.
  A children’s edition given to her by her mother and then handed down to Alex.  Inside the cover she found an inscription: “To Julie on her sixth birthday.  Always trust your imagination.  All my love always, Mother.”  Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, stories Julia remembered reading to Alex, it seemed not long ago.  Like all boys, he had quite suddenly crossed a line that left such childish things behind.  The book had stood unopened on the library shelf for years.  But that morning she had gone searching for it, not quite knowing why she was so eager to find it.