Only Begotten Daughter (40 page)

Relief gushed out of Billy like the fluids with which he’d christened the Great Whore—joy of joys, his campaign against Babylon, so controversial on earth, had been welcomed or high! “Then what am I to do?”

From his tackle box the angel produced a stack of fanfold computer paper. “The script for Sheila’s execution,” he explained, pressing the printout into Billy’s hands. “I wrote it myself. You won’t burn the woman, you’ll drug her with tetradotoxin. Zombie juice.” Reaching into his robe, the angel pulled out the green glass bottle embossed with Sheila’s face and set it on the riverbank. “She’ll fall asleep right there in the arena. The crowd will think her dead. Don’t worry, it’s just a mild case of suspended animation. Afterward, you can give her to … whomever. Her husband. She’ll wake up entirely alive. Thus will your cardinal sin—Billy Milk, persecutor of the innocent—be purged forevermore.”

“Purged? Fully purged?” Billy’s heart pirouetted with rapture.

“Your soul will become as clear as this canal.”

“But is she really”—Billy glanced at the first page of the script:
A hay wagon rolls across the field,
he read,
pulled by a donkey
—“divine?”

“Hard to know. Ambiguous. Ah—a nibble.” The angel worked his reel, soon lifting a great luminous starfish above the surface of the river. Holy water shot from its half-dozen arms as it flailed about, trying to unhook itself. “Some would say Julie Katz is definitely a deity.”

Six arms, thought Billy, a six-pointed star: a Jewish starfish. “Then until the execution, we should be as generous as possible, right? We should treat her as God’s own. Grant all her final wishes.”

“Anything within reason,” said the angel, swinging the starfish onto the grassy shore. “Allow her best friend to visit, that Sparks person.”

“And her husband?”

“Yes, but don’t let anyone go poking into his past. He used to be an Uncertaintist—actually preached it. Dreadful stuff.”

Billy snatched up the bottle of tetradotoxin. A scheme conceived by God, a script authored by an angel! And yet … “We’ll drug her.”

“Right.”

“They’ll think she’s dead.”

“You got it.”

“Suspended animation.”

“Exactly.”

“Fine. Good. Only—”

“Only—where’s the drama?” said the angel. “Whither the spectacle? Trust me. My script is dramatic. Nails are involved, nails and wood. Perhaps you’ve read the Bible. Matthew 27:48. ‘And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar’”—the angel rested his soft white hand on the script—“‘and put it on a reed …’”

“‘And gave him to drink,’” said Billy.

“Likewise will your executioner give Sheila of the
Moon
a sponge filled with tetradotoxin.”

“You mean she’s to be …?”

“Crucified,” said the angel.

Crucified? wondered Billy.
Crucified?
His flock would never accept a crucifixion, that holiest of chastisements—not for the woman they considered Satan’s mistress. “Crucified. Yes, but—”

“Don’t worry, your man will have plenty of time to deliver the drug. It takes hours for a crucifixion to work.”

“But the audience—”

“Ah, the audience—they won’t much like a crucifixion, will they?” the angel anticipated. “A crucifixion won’t go over at all.”

Billy’s lips parted, his biggest smile since Timothy got his eyes. How marvelous having such rapport with heaven. “Only the Savior is worthy of crucifixion,” he said, nodding.

“That’s why she’s to be anticrucified,” said the angel. “An anticrucifixion for an antichrist.”

“Anticrucifixion? As opposed to crucifixion?”

“You got it.”

“What’s the difference?” Billy asked.

“The difference is that you call one a crucifixion,” replied the angel, “and the other an anticrucifixion.”

An anticrucifixion for an antichrist,
Julie mused as Oliver Horrocks led her through a massive cylindrical door into the dungeon’s visitation room, its ceiling a jumble of floodlights and closed-circuit television cameras, their lenses poking into the air like possum snouts. An anticrucifixion for an antichrist: or so went the rumor from her jailor. Her enemies were going back to basics; tomorrow she’d be nailed up before the whole city and left to die. Nailed, not burned. A Pyrrhic victory at best, out of the frying pan and onto the cross.

The floodlights came on simultaneously, bathing the visitation room in milky luminescence, washing away the fact that outside it was late evening, still Saturday by a gentile’s reckoning, Sunday by a Jew’s. Along the left wall, seven grim-lipped and fearsomely armed corporals stood guard. As Horrocks guided her toward the center of the room, Julie clasped her real left hand in its ghostly counterpart and prayed to no one in particular that the next twenty minutes would go well, no awkwardness, no schmaltz.

Across the way, a series of interconnected cell doors opened and closed like canal locks. Her husband entered. Phoebe followed, cradling a scrawny, sleeping, terra-cotta bundle. Evidently Milk was honoring her last request. A kiss before dying. A hug before hell.

“We’re trying every damn thing we can think of,” Bix said, waddling uncertainly toward her, a flat cardboard box labeled
Pentecost Pizzas
balanced on his palms. “We’re always on the phone, even Irene. We’ve got quite a list—a bunch of State Department people, both our senators, a retired ambassador I found in Bryn Mawr, Elmer West from the CIA …” His zebra-striped pajamas were several sizes too small. Domes of pale flesh emerged between the buttons. What a raving paranoid Milk must be, Julie decided: get them out of their street clothes, they’ve probably sewn cyanide into the lining. “Thing is, with Jersey so anti-Marxist and all,” said Bix, “and the only record of your birth being in Trenton …” His eyes were red. Tears stained his cheeks like snail tracks. “Well, we’re just not getting
support.
”

“
I
don’t expect you to save me, Bix. I really don’t. I’ve been heading for the Circus all my life.”

“Hey, the assholes took your hand!” whined Phoebe in a loud, icy, indignant voice. Her pajama top was open, breasts slung into a nursing bra. “They took Molly.”

“No, I gave her to the Chaudrys.”

“You’re a good person, Julie Katz.” Phoebe raked her fingers through Little Murray’s hair, a mass of black spirals. His eyes popped open, dark brown disks haloed by pure white. “He sleeps through the night,” she said. “Great disposition. I’d throw him in the Delaware if you could live.”

“You don’t mean that,” said Julie.

“I don’t mean that. Oh, Katz, honey …”

“Eighteen more minutes,” said Horrocks.

“Want to hold him?” Phoebe asked.

“I’d probably drop him.” Her brother seemed intelligent and well meaning, Pop’s kid all the way. A contemplative astonishment lit his face, as if he’d arrived at the wrong planet and was debating whether or not to stay. “Is he circumcised?”

“Sure he’s circumcised. It’s what his father would’ve wanted. Take him, okay?”

“I’m afraid to. I’m … afraid.”

The baby began squalling. His face reddened like litmus paper meeting acid. “You know, my mom used to nurse you sometimes, right from her own bod,” Phoebe said, unhitching the left flap of her bra. She screwed her dark nipple into her son’s mouth. The corporals’ eyes drifted toward her. “You and I grew up on the same tit.”

A silence descended, broken only by Little Murray’s zealous sucking, a sound like Absecon Inlet lapping against a pier.

“Seventeen more minutes,” said Horrocks.

“Be quiet, you little prick,” snapped Phoebe.

“Take it easy,” said Julie.

Bix sighed, a protracted bass note. “Listen, Julie, we heard they’re not going to burn you. It’ll be … different.”

“I know.” Julie cast a cold eye toward heaven. “An anticrucifixion for an antichrist. Good old God, always looking out for me.”

“And afterward … tomorrow … they’re going to give us … I mean, our pass is good till sundown, so we’ll go home and come back, and they’ll give us … you know.” He exhaled, cheeks ballooning. “Your body.”

“My flesh.”

“Phoebe and I will do whatever you want,” said Bix. “We’ll sit
shivah.
We’ll cremate you, give you a wake, anything.”

Julie clenched her phantom fist. Had Bix and Phoebe actually been discussing her funeral? She was at once appalled and fascinated. She wished she’d been there. “Just drop me in the bay, darling. Bury me at sea.”

“Absecon Inlet?”

“My old playground.”

“Sure. Absecon Inlet.”

“Something else. Before you sink me, I want a kiss.”

“A kiss. Right.”

“A kiss on the lips, Bix. Right on my dead lips.”

“I promise.”

“I’m scared.”

“Of course.”

“Sixteen minutes,” said Horrocks.

“Why don’t you shut up?” Phoebe snapped at the jailor. Her fingers drummed on the
Pentecost Pizzas
box. “Hungry?” she asked Julie.

Strangely enough, she was. “For pizza? Always.”

“We made sure they got it right.” Bix set the box on the floor, flipped back the lid. A divine cloud rushed out, the chemistry created as a mozzarella glacier migrates across dough. “Pepperoni, extra cheese.”

Julie meditated on the topping. Was the plural
pepperoni
or
pepperonis?
God, the crazy data that pass through a condemned incarnation’s mind. “Remember our picnic in the Deauville? You have any Tastykake Krumpets, Phoebe? Any Diet Cokes?”

“Nope,” said Phoebe. “Sorry. Of course I remember.”

“Are those things pepperoni or pepperonis? Is there such a word as ‘pepperonis’?”

“What are you talking about?” said Phoebe.

“Those sausage things.”

“Pepperoni, I think. Why?”

Julie shrugged. They dropped to their knees. Steadying the box with her stump, she tore an isosceles triangle free, lowered it into her mouth in a parody of French kissing. Her two hundred taste buds rose to the occasion, tumefying, relaying every nuance of the cheese, every glitzy detail of the pepperoni. Being so brave was oddly pleasurable. Smiling, she chewed her way to the crust.

Were it not for Little Murray, Julie felt, none of them would have finished eating without weeping or going mad. The baby was their mandala, the focus of their fragile truce with hysteria. Each random burp, gurgle, and smile sparked joyful chatter from the three adults, as if that particular action had never before occurred to any baby, anywhere. By meal’s end, Julie was ready for him.

“Here,” she said, existing palm out, soliciting.

Intoxicated with milk, he lay on Phoebe’s shoulder like an outsized beanbag. “It’s easy.” Prying him free, Phoebe demonstrated something she called the football carry. “Take the hand I didn’t blow off and tuck it under his head.”

“Seven minutes,” said Horrocks.

Julie liked the football carry. You never lost sight of the baby’s face; you could simultaneously move him and teach him physics. “Gravity,” she whispered. “Also magnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force …” She carried the baby toward the corporals. It must feel like flying, she decided, like backfloating down a river. His chocolate eyes were at their widest. “Earth orbits the sun,” she sang to him. “Microbes cause disease.” Such a new-looking thing, so unstamped. How sad that Pop and Marcus Bass hadn’t survived to see this particular twist in their braided lives: the lighthouse keeper’s son, the marine biologist’s grandson. “The heart is a pump.”

His mood swung, a sudden jagged screech. “Shut up,” she whispered, pressing him to her arid right breast, the larger one. “Your problems are just beginning.” It was not death that terrified her but, more prosaically, the nails. She feared for her flesh, its coming pain.

Pop’s son shut up. His gums were spirited and wet, munching on her pajamas like a flounder taking bait, stiffening her nipple. The corporals pretended not to notice. Julie hated them. They were astonishingly handsome, impossibly clean-shaven: men with cauterized whiskers.

Little Murray stopped sucking and smiled.

“Six minutes.”

Julie veered toward the cylindrical door, set the baby prone on the floor, and dropped to his level like a child flattening herself alongside her dollhouse, making it the measure of all things. What should one say to babies, what did they want to know about? “Well, first of all, there’s your mother,” said Julie. “A little flaky, but I think she’s starting to be happy. Then there was your father—also a bit nuts, but I know you would’ve liked him. Your grandfather Marcus was a great biologist. Your grandmother Georgina was somebody I sinned against …”

“Five minutes.”

Phoebe approached, pajama tops soppy with milk. “You okay?”

“No.” Julie forced a smile. “I like my brother.”

“Thought you would. Hey, Katz, guess what—I’ve figured out your purpose.” A tear sat in Phoebe’s left eye like a pearl in oyster flesh. She flipped open the nursing bra and gently lifted her son from the floor. “
Here’s
your purpose, right? This guy. Little Murray. If you hadn’t dragged his mother off a couple of battlefields, he’d still be living in a test tube.”

Rising, Julie kissed her brother’s nappy head. Good old Phoebe, never at a loss for bizarre ideas. “My purpose, huh? Why? Is
he
a deity too?”

“No.” Phoebe grinned. “He’s a baby.”

“And he’s my purpose?”

“I think so.”

“Sounds rather …”

“Ordinary? Exactly, Katz. You were sent to be ordinary.” Extending her tongue, Phoebe snagged the tear as it fell from her cheek. “Someday I’ll write your biography. The gospel according to me. How God’s daughter gained her soul by giving up her divinity.”

“Four minutes.”

And now here was Bix, waddling toward her.

Julie’s stump tingled. Her phantom fingers seized Bix’s pajama lapel, and he leaned into her like a wino grabbing a street lamp. They hugged more tightly than they ever had before; they crushed each other like colliding cars. Her libido blazed to life. She smiled, impressed by the party-crashing shamelessness of sex, its willingness to show up anywhere—a funeral, a sermon, a final farewell. This was the way to go out, all right, thumbing your labia at the cosmos.