City of Truth (12 page)

"What's his name?" Toby asked.

Sebastian, God bless him, was prepared. "Down on Santa's Power Pony Ranch, we called him Chocolate."

"That's a weird name," said Toby as the machine loped over and nuzzled his cheek. "Look, Dad, I got a brown Power Pony called Chocolate." He coughed and added, "I wanted a black one."

A sharp ache zagged through my belly. "Huh? Black?"

"Black."

"You said brown," I wailed. These final weeks — days, hours — must be perfect. "You definitely said
brown
."

"I changed my mind."

"Brown's a great color, Toby. It's a
great
color." Toby combed the pony's mane with his pencil-thin fingers. "I don't think I'll ride him just yet."

"Sure, buddy," I said.

"I think I'll ride him later. I'm tired right now."

"You'll feel better in the morning."

Toby slipped his mask back on. "Could I see how that Happy Land works?" As Dr. Krakower operated the mattress crank, raising Toby's head and chest and giving him an unobstructed, God's-eye view of Happy Land, Sebastian twisted the dials on the control panel. The toy lurched to life, the whole swirling, spinning, eternally upbeat world.

"Faster," Toby muttered as the carousel, ferris wheel, and roller coaster sent their invisible passengers on dizzying treks. "Make them go faster!"

"Here,
you
do it." Sebastian handed my son the power pack.

"Faster..." Toby increased the amperage. "Faster, faster..." I sensed a trace of innocuous preadolescent sadism in his voice. "Step right up, folks," he said. "Ride the merry-go-round, ride our amazing colossal roller coaster." In his mind, I knew, the ferris wheel customers were now puking their guts out, the roller coaster was hurtling its patrons into space, and the carousal horses had thrown off their riders and were trampling them underfoot. "Step right up." It was then that I observed an odd phenomenon among Santa and his helpers. Their eyes were leaking. Tears. Yes,
tears
— children's tears.

"What's the matter with everyone?" I asked Martina.

"What do you mean?"

"Their eyes."

Martina regarded me as she might a singularly mute and unintelligent dog.

"They're crying."

"I've never seen it before." I pressed my desiccated tear ducts. "Not in grownups."

"Step right up," rasped Toby.

"In Satirev," said Martina, "grownups cry all the time." Indeed. I surveyed the gathered grownups, their dripping eyes, their wistful smiles, their self-serving grimaces of concern. I surveyed them — and understood them. Yes, no question, they were enjoying this grotesque soap opera. They were loving every minute of it.

Toby was no longer saying, "Step right up." The only sound coming from him was a low, soft moan, like wind whistling down the Jordan River. A flurry of grim, efficient movement: Krakower cranking Toby's mattress to a horizonal position, turning on his inhalator, opening the meperidine stopcock. Anthony Raines took my son's knobby hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"Will I see you people again?" asked Toby as the drug soaked into his brain.

"Will you come
next
Christmas?"

"Of course."

"Promise?"

"We'll be back, Toby. You bet."

"I don't think there'll be a next Christmas," my son said.

"You mustn't believe that," said Anthony.

I lurched away, fixing on the tree ornaments. A Styrofoam snowman held a placard saying, GET WELL, TOBY. A ceramic angel waved a banner declaring, WE'RE WITH YOU, SON. A plastic icicle skewered an index card reading, WITH

PAIN COMES WISDOM.

Turning, I tracked a large, silvery tear as it rolled down Santa Claus's cheek.

"Of
course
there'll be a next Christmas," I said mechanically. Toby's blue skin, stretched tight over cheek and jawbone, crinkled when he yawned. "I love Christmas," he said. "I really love it. Will I die today, Santa? I'm so cold."

Sebastian said, "That's no way to talk, Toby."

"You're crying, Santa. You're..."

"I'm not crying," said Sebastian, wiping his tears with his mittens.

"Thank you so much, Santa," Toby mumbled, adrift in meperidine. "This was the greatest day of my whole life. I love you, Santa. I wish my Power Pony were black..."

My son slept, snoring and wheezing. I turned to Martina. Our gazes met, fused.

"Tell them to get out," I said in a quavering voice. Martina frowned. "These HEART vultures," I elaborated. "I want them out. Now."

"I don't think you get it, Jack. They're here for the long haul. They came to—"

"I
know
why they came." They'd come to see my child suffocate. They'd come to feast on the maudlin splendor of his death. "Tell them to leave," I said. "Tell them."

Martina moved among Santa's helpers, explaining that I needed some private time with Toby. They responded like wronged, indignant ten-year-olds: pouty lips, clenched teeth, tight fists. They stomped their feet on the bright yellow floor. Slowly the HEART filed out, offering me their ersatz support, sprinkling their condolences with Satirevian remarks. "It's a journey, Mr. Sperry, not an ending."

"He's entering the next phase of the cosmic great cycle." "Reincarnation, we now know, occurs at the exact moment of passing."

As Anthony Raines reached the door, I brushed his holly necklace and said,

"Thanks for hunting down all those toys."

"We think you're being selfish," he replied snappishly, twisting the feather in his hat. "We've done so much for you, and now you're going to—"

"Cheat you out of his death? Yes, that's perfectly true. I'm going to cheat you."

"I thought you wanted us to synch your son's immune system with the cosmic pulse. I thought we were supposed to—"

"I don't believe that business any more," I confessed. "I probably never did. I was lying to myself."

"Let's leave him alone." Sebastian pressed his amplified belly against Anthony. "I don't think he needs us right now."

"Some people are so fickle," said Anthony, following Santa Claus out of the room. "Some people..."

At last I was alone, standing amid the grotesquely merry clutter, my ears vibrating with the ominous tom-tom of Toby's inhalator. Christmas tree, Power Pony, Happy Land, plush giraffe, android clown, snare drum, ice skates, backgammon set, Steve Carlton baseball glove — I'd given him all these pointless things, but now, finally, I would give what he wanted.

* * *

Toby awoke at midnight, coughing and gagging, gripped by a 105-degree fever. The August air was moist, heavy, coagulated; it felt like warm glue. Rising from the cot, I hugged my son, tapped on his rocket jockey's oxygen supply, and said,

"Buddy, I have something to tell you. Something bad."

"Huh?" Toby tightened his grip on Barnaby Baboon.

I chewed my inner cheeks. "About this Xavier's Plague. The thing is, it's a very, very bad disease. Very bad." Pain razored through my tongue as I bit down.

"You're not going to get well, Toby. You're simply not."

"I don't understand." His eyes lay deep in their bony canyons; the brows and lashes had grown sparse, making his stare even larger, sadder, more fearful. "You said Mr. Medicine could cure me."

"I lied."

"But you said—"

"I wanted you to be happy."

Anger rushed to his face, red blood pounding against blue skin. "But — but Santa Claus brought me a
Power Pony
!"

"I know. I'm sorry, Toby. I'm so terribly, terribly sorry."

"How could you lie to me? How could you even
do
that?"

"This Satirev — it's different from our old city, very different. If you stay down here long enough, you can learn to say
anything
."

"I want to ride my Power Pony!" He wept — wept like the betrayed seven-year-old he was. His tears hit his mask, flowing along the smooth plastic curves. "I want to ride Chocolate! I don't want to
die
!"

"You can't ride him, Toby. I'm so sorry."

"I knew it!" he screamed. "I just
knew
it!"

"How did you know?"

"I
knew
it!"

A protracted, intolerable minute passed, broken by the interlaced poundings of the inhalator and Toby's sobs. He kissed his baboon. He asked, "When?"

"Soon." A hard, gristly knot formed in my windpipe. "Maybe this week."

"You
lied
to me. I hate you. I didn't want Santa to get me a
brown
Power Pony, I wanted a
black
one. I hate you!"

"Don't be mean to me, Toby."

"Chocolate is a
stupid
name for a Power Pony."

"Please, Toby..."

"I hate you. You're horrible."

"Why are you being so mean to me? Please don't be mean." Another wordless minute, marked by the relentless throb of the inhalator. "I can't tell you why," he said at last.

"Tell me."

He pulled off his mask. "No."

Absently I unhooked a plaster Wise Man from my son's Christmas tree. "I'm so stupid," I said.

"You're not stupid, Dad." Mucus dribbled from Toby's nose. "What happens after somebody dies?"

"I don't know."

"What do you
think
happens?"

"Well, I suppose everything stops. It just ... stops." Toby ran a finger along the sleek rubbery curve of his meperidine tube. "Dad, there's something I never told you. You know my baboon here, Barnaby? He's got Xavier's Plague too."

"Oh? That's sad."

"As a matter of fact, he's
dead
from it. He's completely dead. Barnaby just ... stopped."

"I see."

"He wants to be buried pretty soon. He's dead. He wants to be buried at sea." I crushed the Wise Man in my palm. "At sea? Sure, Toby."

"Like in that book we read. Barnaby wants to be buried like Corbeau the Pirate."

"Of course."

Toby patted the baboon's corpse. "Can I see Mom before I die? Can I see her?"

"We'll go see Mom tomorrow."

"Are you lying?"

"No."

A smile formed on Toby's fissured lips. "Can I play with Happy Land now?"

"Sure." I closed my eyes so tightly I half expected to hear them knock against my brain. "Do you want to hold the control panel?"

"I don't feel strong enough. I'm so cold. I love you, Dad. I don't hate you. When I'm mean to you, it's for a
reason
."

"What reason?"

"I don't want you to miss me too much after I'd dead." It would happen to me now, I knew: the tear business. Reaching under his bed, I worked the crank, gradually bringing Toby's vacant gaze within range of his amusement park. Such a self-referential reality, that toy — how like Veritas, I thought, how like Satirev. Anyone who inhabited such a circumscribed world, who actually took up residence, would certainly, in the long run, go mad.

"You won't miss me too much, will you?"

"I'll miss you, Toby. I'll miss you every single minute I'm alive."

"Dad — you're crying."

"You can play with Happy Land as long as you like," I said, operating the dials on the control panel. "I love you so much, Toby." The carousel turned, the ferris wheel spun, the roller coaster dipped and looped. "I love you so much."

"Faster, Dad. Make them go faster."

And I did.

* * *

We spent the morning after Christmas outfitting a litter with the necessities of Xavier's amelioration, turning it into a traveling Center for the Palliative Treatment of Hopeless Diseases: tubing, aluminum stands, oxygen tank, inhalator. Dr. Krakower placed a vial of morphine in our carton of IV bottles, just in case the pain became more than the meperidine could handle. "I'd be happy to come with you," she said.

"The truth of the matter," I replied, "is that in a day or two Toby will be dead —

am I right? He's beyond medical science."

"You can't put a timetable on these things," said Krakower.

"He'll be dead before the week's out. You might as well stay." Martina and I carried Toby through Satirev to the Third and Bruno storm tunnel, Ira Temple riding close behind on the Power Pony, then came William Bell, dragging my son's Christmas presents in Santa's canvas sack. Toby was so thin the blankets threatened to swallow him whole; his little head, lolling on the pillow, seemed disembodied, a side-show freak, a Grand Guignol prop. He clutched his stuffed baboon with a strange paternal desperation: Rumpelstiltskin finally gets his baby.

By noon Toby was with his stalwart, Veritasian mother, drooping over her arms like a matador's cape.

"Does he know how sick he is?" she asked me.

"I told him the truth," I admitted.

"This will sound strange, Jack, but ... I wish he didn't know." Helen gasped in astonishment as a drop of salt water popped from her eye, rolled down her cheek, and hit the floor. "I wish you'd lied to him."

"On the whole, truth is best," I asserted. "That's a tear," I noted.

"Of course it's a tear," Helen replied testily.

"It means—"

"I
know
what it means."

Weeping, we bore Toby to his room and set his marionette-like body on the mattress. "Mom, did you see my Power Pony, Mom?" he gasped as William and Ira rigged up his meperidine drip. "Isn't he super? His name's Chocolate."

"It's quite a nice toy," Helen said.

"I'm cold, Mom. I hurt all over."

"This will help," I said, opening the stopcock.

"I got a Happy Land, too. Santa brought it."

Helen's face darkened with the same bewilderment she'd betrayed on seeing her tear. "Who?"

"Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas. The fat man who goes around the world giving children toys."

"That doesn't happen, Toby. There is no Santa Claus."

"There
is
. He visited me. Am I going to die, Mom?"

"Yes."

"Forever?"

"Yes. Forever. I'd give almost anything to make you well, Toby. Almost anything."

"I know, Mom. It's ... all right. I'm ... tired. So ... sleepy." I sensed his mind leaking away, his soul flowing out of him. Don't die, Toby, I thought. Oh, please, please, don't die.