The Fall of Never(69)

“I understand,” she said with near-perfect clarity. “We even said so, Josh and I, that you were…” All of a sudden she appeared close to tears. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” he said.

The grip on his thumb tightened the slightest bit. “I can’t see…”

“My son, Nellie,” he said. “I need to know about my son. I spoke with my wife’s doctor and you were right, it’s going to be a boy. Julian. Don’t you remember saying that name? Don’t you remember what you said about my son?”

A single tear slipped from the corner of Nellie’s right eye and traced the wrinkled contours of her cheek. It reached her chin, clung there suspended in time, then dropped suddenly onto their clenched hands.

“I don’t remember,” Nellie said.

Mendes pulled away and straightened up. Over his shoulder he saw Josh leaning back against the kitchen counter, watching him. Beside him on the countertop, the coffee percolated.

“There are things I know,” Nellie said. Her voice was almost apologetic. “Some other things I cannot. Some things I see, Doctor. Some things I don’t.”

“Josh told me about…” About what? How could he say something as ridiculous as “telepathic powers” while keeping a sane mind? In fact, though he had no reason not to believe Josh just moments before, he suddenly felt as though his world had just been pulled out from beneath him. Suddenly, he felt angry.

“Let’s sit down,” Josh spoke up. “All of us. Nellie, I’m making coffee—”

“No.”

“Hmmm?”

With much difficulty, the old woman shook her head in defiance. Her eyes were pinned on Mendes. He couldn’t shake her stare, practically couldn’t move. He thought he even felt a heat emanating from those eyes, bridging the gap between them, and warming his own flesh from across the room.

“No,” Nellie repeated. “Doctor Mendes isn’t here for a friendly little chat. Doctor?”

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. “I’m not even sure what I expected.”

“Please,” said the old woman. She manipulated her wheelchair around and maneuvered it around the other side of the couch. The intent in her eyes was unmistakable—she wanted Mendes to sit directly in front of her.

As if pushing through a dream, he repositioned himself in front of the old woman. The record had reached the end; the phonograph needled crackled and popped ceaselessly, the only sound in the room.

Nellie rested her good hand in her lap and sat without a word, her darkened, rheumy eyes staring at the shadows that played along the opposite wall.

“Nellie?” Mendes said, leaning forward on the edge of the sofa. “You’re sick,” he said.

She waved her hand at him. “What you hear someone say,” she said, “and what you experience for yourself sometimes makes all the difference in the world, don’t you think?”

“All right.”

Slowly, she brought her right hand up off her lap, palm up. Her fingers were all gnarled and bent at right angles, curled and twisted like dehydrated vegetables. When she brought her eyes up to meet his, he noted strong reflection in them. “There is nothing good about knowing certain things, especially when we can’t do anything to change them. I have come to know a few things in my time. Some of those things have been good. Have been beautiful, in fact—such greatness in some, such harmony. Then there are the others, and there is nothing good there, Doctor, nothing of beauty. They’re people just the same, but it’s almost as if the Lord had forgotten to add some significant ingredient that makes them complete. And I’ve seen both types of people in my lifetime. Plenty. I’ve lived a long, long time.”

Josh moved behind the sofa in the darkness and turned the phonograph off. He remained beside it, his hunched form silhouetted before the blue illumination of the drawn window shade. Yet Mendes did not notice this. He had fallen into Nellie Worthridge’s incredible world.

“You scared the hell out of me when you said that about my son, Nellie,” he whispered. “And all I’ve been able to do since then is return to what you said, go back to it over and over and over again, and I can’t keep doing that. I’m driving myself insane thinking about it—God, even thinking about how someone could know something like that—and I’m causing my family to become very worried about me. Please don’t think I blame you for anything. I just…I came here because I need to know what to do. I need some sort of truth, some sort of verification that if what you said is actually going to happen, then I need to find a way to prevent it.”

Sitting before Mendes, the old woman looked to him like a small child. Her face, half cast in darkness, even took on the appearance of youthful innocence. For the first time he noticed dark patches of bruised flesh running up her arms and creeping up the right side of her neck.

“Maybe there is a way,” she said quietly.

Mendes put a hand atop Nellie’s own, his breath exhaling in one long sigh. “Yes. What? Tell me.”

“You can’t be afraid.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to be. Not anymore. That’s why I’m here.”

Again, Nellie overcame her paralysis and offered him a warm smile. Her right hand again slipped around his own. Easing back in her chair, she closed her eyes and widened her nostrils, inhaling deeply. The stale, humid stink of citron and body odor rushed back at Mendes yet this time he did not recoil; he merely sat beside the tiny woman in meditative silence, his eyes glued to her shimmering face. He could feel her grip on his hand slowly grow tighter, tighter.