The boy leveled his eyes at me, coolly appraising, and for an instant I believed I had lost him. And then he said, “Sure. Why not?”
From the other bench, I retrieved an oversized book, which I thumbed open. Duane stared at the photo of the young saint lashed to a tree and pierced with arrows. “Jesus.” The word was one soft breath. He pulled back. His reaction was not unlike my own when I’d first looked at the book Father Gervase had left at my home. The endless depictions of torture.
“Who is he?”
“Saint Sebastian. There’s not a lot known about him. He was a soldier in the Roman army, and when he refused to renounce his Christian faith, he was shot with arrows and then clubbed to death.”
“Jesus,” Duane said again.
“Sebastian was an enduring theme for artists. Botticelli and Andrea Mantegna. And Antonello da Messina.” I opened a second book, flipped to a page. “The one you were looking at is by El Greco. Here’s one by Hans Memling.”
Duane turned a few pages, looked at several of the other saints—Simon, Stephen, Sylvester—and then leafed back to Sebastian. “So back before—that day at the playground about a week ago. Remember? You said you wanted to ask me something . . .”
“Yes.” I was taken by surprise that Duane remembered that afternoon.
“Was that all you wanted? To ask me to pose for you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Why?”
“Why what, Duane?”
“Why do you want me to pose? Why do you want me to be Saint Sebastian?”
I was careful with my answer. “It’s hard to explain, but I saw something in you that drew me.”
“Like what?” The boy’s tone was wary, defensive, his face closed.
Again I considered. At the least I owed the boy honesty, and I wanted to define for him the qualities I had seen. “I guess I would say there is in you both vulnerability and strength.”
The boy stared at me, then blurted, “That’s exactly what Lucy said.”
My lungs emptied of air. But of course I had misheard. I could not trust my hearing. When I finally inhaled, my breath came in jerks. “What did you say?”
“Lucy,” Duane said. “She told me that too. That I was both vulnerable and strong.”
Lucy. Lucy. Lucy. My ears rang with my daughter’s name.
Duane was running on now, saying what a good person Lucy was, how everyone liked her, how you could talk to her, how you could trust her.
I sank on a stool, stared at the painting of the impaled saint. Lucy.
“Mr. Light?”
Lucy.
“I’d like to do it. Okay? I mean I’d like to pose for the painting.”
I slumped over the table, barely aware of the light touch of the boy’s hand on my shoulder.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Rain was slumped in her don’t-give-a-shit slouch.
There was something off in the room, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She looked at the copper bowl full of candies and then at the table by her chair with the box of tissues. Her gaze swept the bookshelf and the clock that ticked away the minutes marking time until she could escape, the desk across the room. The little kneehole below. At least the room was pleasantly cool. Not frigid the way air conditioners could sometimes make a place, so cold you needed a sweater. And it was better than being at home, where suddenly Duane the Lame could do no wrong. Her mother who always thought he hung the moon was now acting like he walked on water and all because he was posing as a saint for Lucy’s father. Duane the Lame as a saint. That was a laugh. If her mother only knew. Then it hit her. The off note. “So where’s your dog?”
Dr. Mallory followed her gaze to the empty space beneath the desk. “Oh. I had to take him to the vet.”
“What’s the matter with him?” Not that she cared.
“They think it’s a stomach flu. But just to be sure, they wanted to keep him overnight.”
Just to be sure. In Rain’s short experience, those were not good words. Just to be sure, we’ll run a few tests. Just to be sure, we want to admit him. That was what they’d said to her grandmother when her grandfather went into the hospital. Just to be sure.
Dr. Mallory indicated the book Rain had returned and that sat on the table. “You needn’t have returned it so quickly. I hope you had a chance to read it.”
Rain pulled her attention back from the empty spot beneath the desk, back from thoughts of her grandfather. “Yeah.”
“I’m curious to know what you think about it?”
“It’s okay, I guess. I mean, it’s kind of small for a real book.”
“You’re right. It is a very short book. Do you think it would have been better if Isak Dinesen had written a longer story?”
Isak Dinesen. Rain pictured the photo of the author on the back cover: those dark lips, the long fingers, one holding a book, the other a cigarette, the piercing gaze. She thought about this, taking her time, but the shrink didn’t hurry her. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
“What did you think it was about?”
“What?” Rain asked. “I mean, what is this? A test or something? To see if I really read it?”
Dr. Mallory considered her questions. “In our short time together, Rain, you have struck me as quite forthright. Honest.”
Forthright. Honest. The words warmed her, but she knew enough not to lower her guard.
“Why on earth would I think you’d lie about whether you read a book or not?”
Because everybody lies. “Well, I didn’t. Lie, I mean. I read it. Okay?”
“Well, then,” Dr. Mallory said. “It occurs to me that you might like to talk about it. I’ve found sharing with a friend doubles the pleasure of things. A meal or a book or a film.”
This was true. For a fact. She and Lucy used to spend hours talking about a movie they’d seen together. And after they read The Diary of a Young Girl in freshman English, their conversation had gone on for weeks, long after all class discussion about the book had ended, covering everything from the horror of the Holocaust to Anne’s amazing honesty about the other people in the annex, including her dislike of her mother. “Isn’t it interesting that her last name is Frank and she’s so frank in her observations about the others?” Lucy had said, which Rain had thought was such a clever thing to notice. For days they’d debated whether or not they could have stayed in the attic annex for two years without going outside. Rain didn’t believe she could have; Lucy said she could absolutely if it were necessary. “We can do lots of things we never think we can do until we have to,” she had said. When Lucy was first missing, Rain used to wonder if she had gone to a secret place. But of all the people she knew, Lucy had the least cause or need to hide or run away.