The Soul Thief_ A Novel - Charles Baxter [51]
34
BUT IT WAS MY SISTER who had become a wonder and a marvel. When the reports of what had happened to me in Buffalo made their way to the Milwaukee halfway house where she lived, she spoke up. Words came from her mouth. She issued a demand: “Take me there.” Meaning: to him. To me. My mother flew out on the next nonstop to get her and brought her back to West End Avenue. Catherine—this was reported to me later—saw me sitting in my room, my personhood having been drained out, leaving behind this smeary blotch of nothingness, and, with a cure in mind, she marched over to the bookshelf in the living room. She chose a novel. (I learned later that she happened upon Flaubert’s Sentimental Education—not where I would have started.) I don’t remember the thread of the story, though I do remember hearing her voice; for me, the journey was like coming out of an ether dream, accompanied by a woman telling a coming-of-age tale of someone named Frédéric. And somewhere, toward the end of that book, the ether dispersed, or, to use another metaphor, the muddlement in my head began, ever so slightly, to lift, and I saw people and things in the room where I sat, and I heard a story being told to me, and I could tell the difference between the actual things and the imaginary ones.
Later, much later, she told me, “I just wasn’t going to let both of us go down the drain.”
Her recovery was sometimes referred to as “a miracle,” more miraculous than mine, but I don’t believe in miracles, just the force of compassion, which under certain circumstances can bring the dead to life. Nor do I believe that to say so is to be a sentimentalist. Though a prejudice exists in our culture against compassion, there being little profit in it, the emotion itself is ineradicable.
After I had come to, I made an effort to talk to Catherine, but she didn’t enjoy conversations as much as reading aloud. In fact, she didn’t care for conversations at all. Small talk irked her and touched her in the site of her wound. She read to me for another few months, until I was on my feet, whereupon she returned to Milwaukee, eventually found a job, and got herself an apartment. By saving me she saved herself. My stepfather landed me a temp position as a clerk downtown in an East Village sundry shop, where I shelved and restocked shampoos and soaps and condoms. Then I applied for a job at a post office over on Staten Island. I got it. My adult life began. My parents let me go. They released me to the perils and rewards of the world. I moved to another city. I went to work for Amalgamated Gas and Electric, where I met Laura. She had an innocence that moved me. After she gave me a quilt as a token of her love, I married her.
Meanwhile, Catherine thrived, if you can call it that, in Milwaukee, where she resides now. She currently works in a hospice. She plumps pillows and talks softly and reads and actively cares for people she hardly knows. She has never married.
I call her sometimes. I have unanswered questions.
“Why didn’t you speak after the accident?”
“I couldn’t.”
“But when you came home, and you started reading to me, you could.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just was.”
“Because I was in such bad shape?”
“Maybe. I wasn’t going to let you go.” There was a pause. “Also.”
“Also what?”
“You used to call me. Remember? You used to tell me about your life. Stories. Serials.” Another pause. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay.” I had one more question that I had to ask her. “How does the world look to you now?”
“It looks all right.”
“You don’t think about Dad ever anymore?”
“Sometimes. But, you know, I did all that.”
“What was it like, when you weren’t speaking?”
“Nate, I have to go.”
“All right,” I say. “Talk to you next week.”
“Right.” And then she always says, “Love from here.”
And I answer, “Love to you, from us.”
35
LAURA SLIPPED INTO the den, where I had retreated clutching the slip of paper with Coolberg