CHAPTER ELEVEN
At a few minutes past nine on Saturday morning, Bob Carey maneuvered his father’s Volvo into the left lane of the Bayshore Freeway, and three minutes later they left Palo Alto behind. Alex sat quietly in the back seat next to Lisa, his ears taking in the chatter of his three friends while his eyes remained glued to the world outside the car. None of it looked familiar, but he studied the road signs carefully as they passed through Redwood City, San Carlos, and San Mateo, then began skirting the edge of the bay. His eyes took in everything, and he was sure that on the return trip that afternoon, even though he would be seeing it all from the other direction, all of it would be familiar.
Then, a little north of the airport, Bob veered off the freeway and started inland.
“Where are we going?” Kate Lewis asked. “We want to go all the way into the City!”
“We’re going to the BART station in Daly City,” Bob told her.
“BART?” Kate groaned. “Who wants to ride the subway?”
“I do,” Bob told her. “I like the subway, and besides, I’m not going to drive Dad’s car in the City. All I need is to have to try to explain how I smashed a fender on Nob Hill when I was supposed to be in Santa Cruz. I’d wind up grounded lower than Carolyn Evans was.”
Kate started to protest further, but Lisa backed Bob up. “He’s right,” she said. “I had to argue with my folks for half an hour to keep from having to bring Kim along, and if we get caught now, we’ll all be in trouble. Besides, I like BART too. It’ll be fun!”
Forty minutes later, they emerged from the BART station, and Alex gazed around him, knowing immediately where he was. Yesterday he’d found a tour guide to San Francisco in the La Paloma bookstore, then spent last night studying it. The city around him looked exactly like the pictures in the guidebook. “Let’s ride the cable car out to Fisherman’s Wharf,” he suggested.
Lisa stared at him with surprised eyes. “How did you know it goes there?” she asked.
Alex hesitated, then pointed to the cable car that was just coasting onto the turntable at Powell and Market. On its end was a sign that read “Powell & Mason” and, below that, “Fisherman’s Wharf.”
They wandered around the wharf, then started back toward the downtown area, through North Beach on Columbus, then turning south on Grant to go into Chinatown. People milled around them, and suddenly Alex stopped dead in his tracks. Lisa turned to him, but he seemed unaware of her. His eyes were gazing intently at the faces of the people around him.
“Alex, what is it?” she asked. All morning, he’d seemed fine. He’d asked a few questions, but not nearly as many as usual, and he’d always seemed to know exactly where he was and where they were going. Once, in fact, he’d even told them where a street they were looking for was, then, when asked how he knew, admitted to having memorized all the street signs while they rode the cable car. But now he seemed totally baffled. “Alex, what’s wrong?” Lisa asked again.
“These people,” Alex said. “What are they? They don’t look like us.”
“Oh, Jeez,” Bob Carey groaned.
“They’re Chinese,” Lisa said, keeping her voice as low as she could, and silencing Bob with a glare. “And stop staring at them, Alex. You’re being rude.”
“Chinese,” Alex repeated. He started walking again, but his eyes kept wandering over the Oriental faces around him. “The Chinese built the railroads,” he suddenly said. Then: “The railroad barons, Collis P. Huntington and Leland Stanford, brought them in by the thousands. Now San Francisco has one of the biggest Chinese populations outside of China.”
Lisa stared at Alex for a moment; then suddenly she knew. “A tour book,” she said. “You read a tour book, didn’t you?”
Alex nodded. “I didn’t want to spend all day asking you questions,” he said. “I know you don’t like that. So I studied.”
Bob Carey’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You studied? You read a whole guidebook just because we were coming up here for a day?”
Again Alex nodded.
“But who can remember all that stuff? Who even cares? For Christ’s sake, Alex, all we’re doing is messing around.”
“Well, I think it’s neat,” Kate told her boyfriend. Then she turned to Alex. “Did you really memorize all the streets while we were on the cable car?”
“I didn’t have to,” Alex admitted. “I got a map, too. I memorized it.”
“Bullshit!” Bob’s eyes were suddenly angry. “Where’s the mission?” he demanded.
Alex hesitated a moment; then: “Sixteenth and Dolores. It’s on the corner, and there’s a park in the same block.”
“Well?” Kate asked Bob. “Is he right?”
“I don’t know,” Bob admitted, his face reddening. “Who even cares where the mission is?”
“I do,” Lisa said, reaching out to squeeze Alex’s hand. “How do we get there?”
“Go down to Market, then up to Dolores, and left on Dolores.”
“Then let’s go.”
The little mission with its adjoining cemetery and garden was exactly where Alex had said it would be, crouching on the corner almost defensively, as if it knew it was no more than a relic from the city’s long-forgotten past. The city, indeed, had even taken away its original name—San Francisco de Asís. Now it was called Mission Dolores, and it seemed to have taken on the very sadness its name implied.
“Want to go in?” Lisa asked of no one in particular.
“What for?” Bob groaned. “Haven’t we all seen enough missions? They used to drag us off to one every year!”
“Well, what about Alex?” Lisa argued. “I bet he doesn’t remember ever seeing a mission before. And did you ever see this mission? Come on.”
Following Lisa, they went into the little church, then out into the garden, and suddenly the city beyond the garden walls might as well have disappeared, for within the little space occupied by the mission, there was no trace of the modern world.
The garden, still kept neatly trimmed after nearly two hundred years, was in the last stages of its summer bloom. Here and there dead leaves had already fallen to the ground, dotting the pathways with bright gold. Off in the far corner, they could see the old cemetery. “Over there,” Alex said softly. “Let’s go over there.”
The quietness of his voice caught Lisa’s attention, and she turned to look into Alex’s eyes. For the first time since the accident, there seemed to be life in them. “What is it, Alex?” she asked. “You’re remembering something, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Alex whispered. He was walking slowly along one of the paths now, but his eyes remained fixed on the weathered headstones of the graveyard.
“The graveyard?” Lisa asked. “Do you remember the graveyard?”
Alex’s mind was whirling, and he barely heard Lisa’s question. Images were flickering, and there were sounds. But nothing was clear, except that the images and sounds were connected with this place. Trembling slightly, he kept walking.
“What’s wrong with him?” Kate asked, her voice worried. “He looks weird.”
“I think he’s remembering something,” Lisa replied.
“We’d better go with him,” Bob added, but Lisa shook her head.
“I’ll go,” she told them. “You guys wait for us, okay?”
Kate nodded mutely, and as Alex stepped into the tiny fenced cemetery, Lisa hurried after him.
The images had begun coming into focus as soon as he’d entered the cemetery. His heart was pounding, and he felt out of breath, as if he’d been running for a long time. He scanned the little graveyard, and his eyes came to rest on a small stone near the wall.
In his mind, there were images of people.
Women dressed in black, their faces framed by white cowls, their feet clad in sandals.
Nuns.
In his mind’s eye he saw a group of nuns clustering around a boy, and the boy was himself.
But he was different somehow.
His hair was darker, and his skin had an olive complexion to it.
And he was crying.
Unconsciously Alex moved closer to the headstone that had triggered the strange images, and the images seemed to move with him. Then he was standing at the grave, gazing down at the inscription that was still barely legible in the worn granite
Fernando Meléndez y Ruiz
1802–1850
A word flashed into his mind, and he repeated it out loud. “?Tío!” As he uttered the word, a stab of pain knifed through his brain, then was gone.
And then voices began whispering to him—the voices of the nuns, though the images of them had already faded away.
“él está muerto.” He is dead.
And then there was another voice—a man’s voice—whispering to him out of the depths of his memory. “?Venganza … venganza!”
He stood very still, his eyes brimming with unfamiliar tears, his pulse throbbing. The voice went on, whispering to him in Spanish, but only the one word registered on his mind: “Venganza.”
His tears overflowed, and a sob choked his throat. Then, as the strange words pounded in his head, he gave in to the sudden unfamiliar rush of emotion.
Time seemed to stand still, and he felt a kind of pain he couldn’t remember having ever felt before. Pain of the heart, and of the soul.
The pain seared at him, and then he became aware of a hand tugging at him, slowly penetrating the chaos in his mind.
“Alex?” a voice said. “Alex, what’s wrong? What is it?”
Alex pointed to the grave, sobbing brokenly, and Lisa, after a moment of utter confusion, began to understand what must have happened. She had listened carefully that day last month before Alex came home from the hospital, and she could still remember the words.
“He could start laughing or crying at any time,” Alex’s mother had told her. “Dr. Torres says it won’t matter if something is funny or sad. It’s just that it’s possible that there will be misconnections in his brain, and he could react inappropriately to something. Or he could simply overreact.”
And that, Lisa was certain, was exactly what was happening now. Alex was overreacting to an ancient grave.
But why?
He had remembered something, she had been sure of it. And now he was staring at the grave, tears streaming down his face, uncontrollable sobs racking his body. Gently she tried to pull him away as a priest appeared from the back of the church and looked at them quizzically.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” Lisa quickly replied. “Everything’s all right. It …” She floundered for a moment, trying to think of an explanation for Alex’s behavior, but her mind had suddenly gone blank. “Come on, Alex,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
Half-dragging Alex, she edged her way past the priest, then out of the graveyard. Once back in the garden, she put her arms around Alex and squeezed him. “It’s all right, Alex,” she whispered. “It was only an old grave. Nothing to cry about.”
Slowly Alex’s sobs began to subside, and he made himself listen to Lisa’s words.
Only a grave. But it hadn’t been only a grave. He had recognized the grave, as he had recognized the cemetery itself. What he had just experienced, he had experienced before.
The memories were clear in his mind now. He could remember having been in that cemetery, having looked down at the grave, having listened to the nuns telling him his uncle was dead.
His uncle.
As far as Alex knew, he had no uncle.
And certainly he wouldn’t remember an uncle who had died in 1850.
But it was all so clear, just as clear as the memory he’d had at school last week. Clear, but impossible.
He took a deep breath, and his last sob released its grip on his throat. Lisa found a handkerchief in her bag and handed it to him. He blew his nose. “What happened?” she asked.
Alex shrugged, but his mind was whirling. It didn’t make any sense, and if he told her what had happened, she would think he was crazy. But he had to tell her something. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I … I remembered something, but I’m not sure what. But it was like I was here before, and something terrible happened. But I can’t remember what.”
Lisa frowned. “Were you ever here before? Maybe something did happen here.”
Then, before Alex could say anything else, Bob and Kate moved toward them, their expressions a mixture of worry and uneasiness.
“What happened?” Kate asked. “Are you okay, Alex?”
Alex nodded. “I just remembered something, and it made me cry. Dr. Torres said it might happen, but I didn’t really think it would.” Lisa looked at him sharply, but said nothing. If he didn’t want to tell them what had really happened, she wouldn’t either. “Maybe it’s a good sign,” he said, making himself smile. “Maybe it means I’m getting better.”
Kate and Lisa exchanged a glance, each of them realizing what might have to happen. Finally Kate voiced the thought.
“Are you going to tell your folks about it?”
“He can’t,” Bob said. “If he does, then all our folks will find out what we did, and we’ll all be in trouble.”
“But what if it’s important?” Lisa asked. “What if it means something?”
“Why can’t he just say it happened at the beach?” Bob suggested. “Besides, what’s the big deal about crying in a graveyard? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
“I didn’t say it was a big deal,” Lisa replied. “All I said was that it might mean something, and if it does, none of us should worry about getting into trouble. I just think Alex should tell his folks exactly what happened.”
“Well, I think we should vote on it,” Bob said. “And I vote he doesn’t tell.” He looked expectantly at Kate Lewis, whose eyes reflected her uncertainty. Finally she made up her mind, looking away from Bob.
“Lisa’s right,” she said. “He should tell. And I think we should go home right now.”
“I don’t,” Alex suddenly said. The other three looked at him, puzzled. “I think I should call Dr. Torres and tell him what happened. Maybe he’ll want me to stay here.”
“Stay here?” Lisa asked. “Why?”
“Maybe something else will happen.”
Bob Carey stared at him. “What are you, some kind of a nut? I’m not gonna waste the rest of the day waiting for you to freak out again!”
“Bob Carey, that’s just gross!” Lisa said, her voice quivering with anger. “Can’t you ever think of anybody but yourself? Why don’t you just go away? We can get home without you. Come on!” She grabbed Alex by the hand and began walking quickly toward the church door. Kate hesitated, then started after them.
“Kate—” Bob called, but his girlfriend whirled around and cut his words off.
“Can’t you ever think about anybody but yourself? Just once?” She turned and ran to catch up with Lisa and Alex.
They found a phone booth half a block away, and Alex studied the instructions carefully before placing his call. On the second try, he managed to get through to the Institute. While Lisa and Kate fidgeted on the sidewalk outside the booth, he tried to explain to Torres exactly what had happened. When he was finished, Torres was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “Alex, are you sure you remembered that cemetery?”
“I think so,” Alex said. “Do you think I should stay here? Do you think I might remember something else?”
“No,” Torres said immediately. “I think one experience like that is enough for one day. I want you to go home right away. I’ll call your mother and explain what happened.”
“She’s gonna be pretty mad,” Alex replied. “I … well, I told her we were going to the beach. She thinks I’m in Santa Cruz.”
“I see.” There was another silence, and then Torres spoke once more. “Alex, when you lied to your parents about where you were going today, did you know you were doing the wrong thing?”
Alex thought for a few seconds. “No,” he said finally. “I just knew that if I told them where we were going, they wouldn’t let me go. None of our folks would have.”
“All right,” Torres said. “We’ll talk about all this on Monday. In the meantime, I’ll fix things with your mother so you don’t get into any trouble. But I don’t see how I can do anything for your friends.”
“That’s okay,” Alex said. He was about to say good-bye when Torres’s voice came over the wire once more.
“Alex, do you care if your friends get into trouble?”
Alex thought about it, and knew that he was supposed to say yes, because part of having friends was caring what happened to them. But he also knew he shouldn’t lie to Dr. Torres. “No,” he said. Then: “I don’t really care about anybody.”
“I see,” Torres replied, his voice barely audible. Then: “Well, we can talk about that, too. And I’ll see you tomorrow, Alex. We won’t wait ’til Monday.”
Alex hung up the phone and stepped out of the booth. Kate and Lisa were staring anxiously at him, and a few feet away, Bob Carey stood uncertainly watching them all.
“He wants me to go home,” Alex said. “He’ll call my mom and tell her what happened.” He fell silent, then decided what he should say. “I’ll try to get my mom to make it all right with your folks too.”
Lisa smiled at him, while Kate Lewis looked suddenly worried. “How are we supposed to get home?” she asked.
“I’ll take you,” Bob Carey offered. He stepped closer, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk at his feet. Then he hesitantly offered Alex his hand. “I’m sorry about what I said back there. It’s just that … Aw, shit, Alex, you’re just different now, and I don’t know what to do. So I just get pissed off.”
Alex tried to figure out what he should say, but couldn’t remember being apologized to before. “That’s okay,” he finally replied. “I don’t know what to do either, most of the time.”
“But at least you don’t get pissed off about it, and if anybody has a right to get pissed, I guess you do.” Bob grinned, and Alex decided he’d chosen the right words.
“Maybe I will sometime,” he offered. “Maybe sometime I’ll get really pissed off.”
There was a moment of startled silence while his three friends wondered what his words meant. Then the four of them started home.
Marsh Lonsdale hung up the phone. “Well, that’s done,” he said, “even though I still don’t approve of it.”
“But, Marsh,” Ellen argued, “you talked to Raymond yourself.”
“I know,” Marsh replied, sighing. “But the whole idea of four kids getting off scot-free after going someplace they knew perfectly well they shouldn’t go, and lying about it to boot, just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Alex didn’t know he shouldn’t go to San Francisco—”
“But he knew he shouldn’t lie,” Marsh said, turning to Alex. “Didn’t you?” he demanded.
Alex shook his head. “But I know now,” he offered. “I won’t do it again.”
“And Alex is right,” Ellen added. “It isn’t fair for the other kids to be punished, and him not. And besides, if they hadn’t decided to break all the rules and go up to the City, Alex might not have had this breakthrough.”
Breakthrough, Marsh thought. Why was bursting into tears in a graveyard a breakthrough? And yet, when he’d talked to Torres that afternoon, the specialist had assured him that it was, even though Marsh had suggested that it might be simply a new symptom of the damage that still existed in Alex’s mind. Still, Marsh was not yet ready to accept Torres’s assessment. “And what if it’s not a breakthrough?” he asked, then held up his hand to forestall Ellen’s interruption. “Don’t. I know what Torres said. But I also know that I’ve never been to Mission Dolores, and I don’t think Alex has either. Did you ever take him up there?”
“No, I don’t think I did,” Ellen admitted. Then she sighed heavily. “Oh, all right, I know I didn’t. I’ve never been there either. But I think you might consider the possibility that Alex went there with someone else. His grandparents, for instance.”
“I’ve already called my parents,” Marsh told her. “Neither of them can remember ever taking Alex there.”
“All right, maybe it was my folks who took him there. For that matter, it could have been anybody.” She searched her mind, looking for something—anything—that might explain what had happened to Alex. Then she remembered. “One of his school classes went to San Francisco on a field trip once! Maybe they went to the mission. But if Alex remembers it, he remembers it. And I don’t see why you can’t simply accept that.”
“Because it just doesn’t make sense. Why, of all the places Alex has been—that we know he’s been—would he remember a place that as far as either one of us knows, he’s never been to at all? I’m sorry, but I just don’t think it adds up.” He turned back to Alex. “Are you sure you really remembered being there before?”
Alex nodded. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d seen it before.”
“That could have been déjà vu,” Marsh suggested. “That happens all the time to everyone. We’ve talked about it with Dr. Torres.”
“I know,” Alex agreed. “But this was different. When I went in, I didn’t even look around. I just went right into the cemetery, to the grave. And then I started crying.”
“All right,” Marsh said. He reached over and squeezed Alex’s shoulder. “I guess the fact that you cried is really what’s important anyway, isn’t it?”
Alex hesitated, then nodded. But what about the words he’d heard? Were they important too? Should he have told his parents about seeing the nuns and hearing the voices? No, he decided, not until he’d talked to Dr. Torres about it. “Is it okay if I go to bed now?” he asked, slipping away from his father’s touch.
Marsh glanced at the clock. It was only a quarter to ten, and he knew Alex was seldom in bed before eleven. “So early?”
“I’m gonna read for a while.”
He shrugged helplessly. “If you want to.”
Alex hesitated, then leaned down to kiss his mother. “Good night.”
“ ’Night, darling,” Ellen replied. She watched her son leave the family room, then turned her gaze to Marsh, and immediately knew that the discussion of what had happened that day was not yet over. “All right,” she said tiredly. “What is it?”
But Marsh shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to talk about it anymore.” Suddenly he grinned, though there was no humor in it. “I guess I’ve just suddenly fallen victim to a feeling, and I don’t like it.”
Ellen sat down on the couch next to him and slipped her hand into his. “Tell me,” she said. “You know I won’t laugh at you—I won’t even argue with you. I’ve had too many feelings myself.”
Marsh considered for a moment, then made up his mind. “All right,” he said. “I just feel that something’s wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it, because I keep telling myself that what I’m feeling is a result of the accident, and the brain surgery, and the fact that I’m not too crazy about the eminent Dr. Torres. But no matter how much I tell myself that, I still have a feeling that there’s more. That Alex has changed somehow, and that it’s more than the brain damage.”
“But everything that’s happened is consistent with the damage and the surgery,” Ellen replied, keeping her voice as neutral as possible and choosing her words carefully. “Alex is different, but he’s still Alex.”
Marsh sighed. “That’s just it,” he said. “He’s different, all right, but I keep getting the feeling that he’s not Alex.”
No, Ellen thought to herself. That’s not it at all. You just can’t stand the idea that Raymond Torres did something you couldn’t have done yourself. Aloud, though, she was careful to give Marsh no clue as to what she’d been thinking. Instead, she smiled at him encouragingly.
“Just wait,” she said. “We’ve had several miracles already. Maybe we’re about to have another one.”
As she went to bed that night, she decided that when she took Alex down for the special meeting Raymond had asked for tomorrow morning, she’d have a private talk with the doctor.
A talk about Marsh, not Alex.
For María Torres, sleep would not come that night. For hours she tossed in her bed, then finally rose tiredly to her feet, put on her frayed bathrobe, and went into her tiny living room to light a candle under the image of the Blessed Mother. She prayed silently for a while—a silent prayer of thanksgiving that at last the saints were listening to her entreaties, and answering her.
She was sure the answers were coming now, for she had been in the Lonsdales’ house all afternoon. She had listened as they talked to their son and heard his story of what had happened at the mission in San Francisco, and like all the gringos, they had barely been aware of her presence.
To them, she was nobody, only someone who came in now and then to clean up after them.
But they would find out who she was, now that the saints were listening to her, and had sent Alejandro back at last.
And Alejandro knew her now, and he would listen to her when she spoke to him.
She let the little candle burn out, then crept back to her bed, knowing that sleep would finally come.
She hoped the gringos, too, would sleep well tonight. Soon there would be no sleep for them at all.