Brain Child Part 18

"Oh, back to that, are we?" Alan asked, wheeling around to fix her with eyes bleary from too much liquor and not enough sleep. "Well, for your information, it just happens that the kind of job I'm qualified for doesn't grow on trees. I'm not like you-I can't just wander out someday and come home with a job. 'Course, when I do do come home with a job, it pays about ten times what yours does, but that doesn't count, does it?" come home with a job, it pays about ten times what yours does, but that doesn't count, does it?"

Marty took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Alan, I'm sorry I said that. It wasn't fair. And we're not talking about jobs anyway. We're talking about Kate."

"Tha.s.s what I was talking about," Alan agreed, his voice starting to slur. "You're the one who changed the subject." He grinned inanely, and poured several shots of bourbon into his gla.s.s, then maneuvered back to the kitchen table. "But I don't give a d.a.m.n what we talk about. The subject of our darling daughter is closed. She's grounded, and tha.s.s that."

"No," Marty said, "that is not that. As long as you're drunk, any decisions about Kate will be made by me."

"Oh, ho, ho! My, aren't we the high-and-mighty one? Well, let me tell you something, wife of mine! As long as I'm in this house, I'll decide what's best for my daughter."

Marty dropped any effort to cover her anger. "At the rate you're going, you won't be in this house in two more hours! And if you don't pull yourself together, we won't even be able to keep this house!"

Alan lurched to his feet and towered over his wife. "Are you threatening me?"

As his hand rose above his head, a third voice filled the kitchen.

"If you hit her, I'll kill you, Daddy."

Both the elder Lewises turned to see Kate standing in the kitchen doorway, her face streaked with tears but her eyes blazing with anger.

"Kate, I told you I'd take care of this-" Marty began, but Alan cut in, his voice quavering.

"Kill me? You'll kill me? n.o.body kills their daddy..."

"You're not my father," Kate said, struggling to hold back her tears. "My father wouldn't drink like you do."

Alan lurched toward her, but Marty grabbed his arm, holding him back. "Leave us alone, Kate," she said. "Just go over to Bob's or something. Just for a few hours. I'll get all this straightened out."

Kate gazed steadily at her father, but when she spoke, her words were for her mother. "Will you send him back to the hospital?"

"I...I don't know..." Marty faltered, even though she already knew that the binge had gone on too long, and there was no other choice. Alan had switched from beer to bourbon on Friday afternoon, and all day yesterday, while Kate had been gone, he'd been steadily drinking. All day, and then all night. "I'll do whatever has to be done. Just leave us alone. Please?"

"Mom, let me help you," Kate pleaded, but Marty shook her head.

"No! I'll take care of this! Just give me a few hours, and when you get back, everything will be fine."

Kate started to protest again, then changed her mind. After the last five years, she knew the last thing her mother needed during one of her father's binges was an argument from her. "All right," she said. "I'll go. But I'll call before I come back, and if he's not gone, I won't come home."

"You won't even leave!" Alan Lewis suddenly roared. "You take one step out of this house, young lady, and you'll regret it!"

Kate ignored him, and walked out into the patio, letting the screen door slam behind her. A moment later she slammed the patio gate as well, and hurried away down the street, her hands clenched into fists as she tried to control her churning emotions.

In the kitchen, Alan Lewis glared drunkenly at his wife. "Well, this is a fine f.u.c.kin' mess you've made," he muttered. "A man's wife shouldn't turn his little girl against him."

"I didn't," Marty hissed. "And she's not against you. She loves you very much, except when you get like this. And so do I."

"If you loved me-"

"Stop it, Alan!" Marty's voice rose to a shout. "Just stop it! None of this is my fault, and none of it is Kate's. It's your fault, Alan! Do you hear me? Your fault!" She stormed out of the kitchen and upstairs to the bedroom her husband had never appeared in last night, shutting the door behind her and locking it.

She had to get control of herself. Right now, shouting at him would accomplish nothing. She had to calm herself down and deal with the situation.

He'd be upstairs in a minute, pounding on the door and alternately begging her forgiveness and threatening her. And she'd have to get through it all once more, and try to talk him into letting her drive him to the hospital in Palo Alto to check himself into the alcoholism unit. Or, if worse came to worst, call them herself, and have them come for Alan with an ambulance. That, though, had only happened once, and she prayed it wouldn't happen again.

She went into the bathroom and washed her face with cold water. Any second now, he'd be at the door, and the argument would begin. Only this time, it wouldn't be about Kate. Kate, at least, would be out of it. Now it would be the drinking again.

Five minutes went by, and nothing happened.

Finally Marty opened the bedroom door and stepped out to the landing at the top of the stairs. From below, there was only silence. "Alan?" she called.

There was no answer.

She started down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to call her husband once more. When there was still no answer, she headed for the kitchen. Perhaps he'd pa.s.sed out.

The kitchen was empty.

Oh, G.o.d, Marty groaned to herself. Now what? She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot she always kept hot on the stove in the hopes that Alan would choose it over alcohol, and tried to figure out what to do.

At least he hadn't taken his car. If he had, she'd have heard him pulling out of the garage. Still, she checked the garage anyway. Both cars were still there.

Maybe she should call the police. No. If he'd taken his car, she would have, but as long as he was on foot, he couldn't hurt anyone. In fact, one of the La Paloma police would probably pick him up within the hour anyway.

Would they bring him home, or take him to the hospital? Or maybe even to jail?

Marty decided she didn't really care. Yesterday, last night, and this morning had been just too exhausting. It was time for Alan to clean up his own messes. She'd call no one, and do nothing about finding him, at least until this evening. Then, if he still wasn't home, she'd start looking.

Her decision made, she began cleaning up the kitchen, starting with Alan's liquor. She drained the half tumbler of bourbon into the sink, then began taking the bottles off the cupboard shelf.

One by one, she emptied them, too, into the drain, and threw the bottles in the trash basket by the back door.

Thirty minutes later, when the kitchen was spotless, she started on the rest of the house.

Alex wandered through the village, doing his best to follow Raymond Torres's instructions to keep his eyes open and his mind clear. But so far, nothing had happened. The village seemed familiar now, and everything seemed to be in the right place, and surrounded by the right things. After an hour, he stopped in a complex of little shops that specialized in the expensive items that so intrigued the computer people in town.

In one window there was a small gla.s.s sphere that seemed to have nothing in it but water. Then, when he looked closer, he realized that there were tiny shrimp swimming in the water, and a little bit of seaweed. It was, according to the card next to it, a fully balanced and self-contained ecosystem that would live on in the sealed globe for years, needing only light to survive. He watched it for a few minutes, fascinated, and then a thought came into his head.

It's like my brain. Sealed up, with no way to get at what's inside. A moment later he turned away and continued up La Paloma Drive until he came to the Square.

He stopped to gaze at the giant oak, and found himself wondering if he'd ever climbed the tree, or carved his initials in its trunk, or tied a swing to its lower branches. But if he had, the memories were gone now.

And then, very slowly, things began to change. His eyes fixed on the base of the tree, and everything around him seemed to fade away, almost as if the coastal fog had drifted down from the hillsides and swallowed up everything except himself and the tree.

Once again, as at the mission in San Francisco, images began to come into his mind, and something he had only vaguely remembered when he came home from the Inst.i.tute was suddenly clearly visible.

There was a rope hanging from the lowest limb of the tree, and at the end of the rope, a body hung.

Whose body?

Around the body, men on horseback were laughing.

And then a sudden pain lashed through his brain, and the whispering began, as it had begun in the cemetery at the mission in San Francisco.

The words were in Spanish, but he understood them clearly.

"They take our land and our homes. They take our lives. Venganza...venganza..."

The words droned on and on in his mind, and then, finally, Alex turned away from the ancient oak.

Standing a few yards away, staring at him, was Maria Torres. His eyes met hers, and then she turned and began walking toward the tiny plaza a few blocks away.

As the strange mists gathered closer around him, Alex followed the old woman.

The plaza had changed, but as Alex sat on a rough-hewn bench, Maria Torres whispering beside him in the Spanish he now clearly understood, it seemed to him that the plaza had always looked this way.

The mission church stood forty yards away, its whitewashed walls glistening brightly in the sunlight. Brown-ca.s.socked priests, their feet clad in sandals, made their way in and out of the sanctuary, and in the shade of the building, three Indians lounged on the ground.

Set at right angles to the church, the little mission school stood with its doors and windows open to the fresh air, and in the schoolyard five children were playing while a black-habited nun looked on, her hands modestly concealed under the voluminous material of her sleeves.

On the other side of the plaza there was a small store, its wood construction in odd contrast to the substantial adobe of the mission buildings. As Alex watched, a woman came out, and though she looked directly at him, seemed not to see him.

He began to listen as Maria whispered to him of the church and of the brightly painted images of the saints that lined its walls.

Then Maria began whispering to him of La Paloma and of the people who had built the village and loved it.

"But there were others," she went on. "Others came, and took it all away. Go, Alejandro. Go into the church and see how it was. See what once was here."

As if in a dream, he rose from the bench and crossed the plaza, then stepped through the doors of the sanctuary. There was a coolness inside the church, and the light from two stained-gla.s.s windows, one above the door, the other above the altar, danced colorfully on the walls. In niches all around the sanctuary stood the saints Maria had told him of, and he went to one of them and looked up into the martyred eyes of the statue. He lit a candle for the saint, then turned and once more left the church. Across the plaza, still sitting on the bench, Maria Torres smiled at him and nodded.

Without a word being spoken, Alex turned, left the plaza, and began walking through the dusty paths of the village, the whispering voices in his head guiding his feet.

Marty Lewis woke up and listened for the normal morning sounds of the house. Then, slowly, she came to the realization that it was not morning at all, and that the house was empty.

A nap.

After Alan had left, and she'd cleaned up the house, she'd decided to take a nap.

She rolled over on the bed and stared at the clock. Two-thirty. She had been asleep for almost three hours. Groaning tiredly, she rose to her feet and went to the window, where she stared out for a moment into the hills behind the house, and wondered if Alan were up there somewhere, sleeping off his bender. Possibly so.

Or he might have walked into the village and be sitting right now at one of the bars, adding fuel to the fires of his rage.

But he wasn't at the Medical Center. If he were, she would have heard from them by now.

She slipped into a housecoat and went downstairs, wondering once more if she should call the police, and once more deciding against it. Without a car, there was little harm Alan could do.

She poured the last of the morning's coffee, thick with having been heated too long, down the drain, and began preparing a fresh pot.

When Alan came home-if Alan came home-he was going to be in need of coffee. Alan came home-he was going to be in need of coffee.

She was just about to begin measuring the coffee into the filter when she heard the back gate suddenly open, then close again. Relief flooded through her.

He'd come back.

She went on with her measuring, sure that before she was done the door would open and she would hear Alan's voice apologizing once again for his drunkenness and pleading with her for forgiveness.

But nothing happened.

She finished setting up the coffee maker, turned it on, and, as it began to drip, went to the back door.

Two minutes later, her heart pounding in her throat, she knew what was going to happen to her, and knew there was nothing she could do about it.

Alex blinked, and looked around him. He was sitting on a bench in the plaza, staring across at the village hall and at the black-clad figure of Maria Torres disappearing down the side street toward the little cemetery and her home.

A thought flitted through his mind: She looks like a nun. An old Spanish nun She looks like a nun. An old Spanish nun.

Suddenly he became aware of someone waving to him from the steps of the library, and though he wasn't quite sure who it was, he waved back.

But how had he gotten to the plaza?

The last thing he remembered, he'd been at the Square looking at the old oak tree and trying to remember if he'd ever played in it when he was a boy.

And now he was in the plaza, two blocks away.

But he was tired, as if he'd walked a couple of miles, much of it uphill.

He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past three. The last time he had looked, only a few minutes ago, it was one-thirty.

Almost two hours had gone by, and he had no memory of it. As he started home, his mind began working at the problem. Hours, he knew, didn't simply disappear. If he thought about it long enough, he knew, he would figure out what had happened during those hours, and know why he didn't remember them.

The back door slammed, and Marsh looked up from the medical journal he was reading in time to see Alex come in from the kitchen. "Hi!"

Alex stopped, then turned toward Marsh. "Hi," he replied.

"Where you been?"

Alex shrugged. "Nowhere."

Marsh offered his son a smile. "Funny, that's exactly where I always was when I was your age."

Alex made no response, and slowly the smile faded away from Marsh's face as Alex silently left the room, drifting upstairs toward his own room. A few months ago, before the accident, Alex's eyes would have lit up, and he would have asked where, exactly, nowhere was, and then they would have been off, the conversation quickly devolving into total nonsense on the subject of the exact location of nowhere and just precisely what one was doing when one was doing nothing in the middle of nowhere.

Now there was nothing in his eyes.

For Marsh, Alex's eyes had become symbolic of all the changes that had come over him since the accident.

The old Alex had had eyes full of life, and Marsh had always been able to read his son's mood with one glance.