The Philosopher's Apprentice (18 page)

“She's my
sister
?”

“Your sister Donya.”

“I don't understand.”

“This way.”

I took Londa's hand and guided her toward the conservatory, all the while attempting to explicate the strange procreative ecology of Isla de Sangre. A petri dish instead of a marriage bed. A beaker instead of a womb. A catalyst instead of a childhood. Amnesia that wasn't amnesia but something far stranger. Three genetically identical sisters—and a fourth, progenitor sister bent on representing herself as the first three girls' mother.

“You're not making much sense,” Londa said.

Donya's next scream inspired us to break into a run. Quetzie abandoned Londa's shoulder but stayed with us, gliding directly above his mistress's head. We rounded the corner and veered into the conservatory. Edwina lay on her back, wrapped in a green smock and sleeping soundly. Donya, sobbing and quivering, had flung herself across her mother's chest. Henry stood over his pupil, a guardian tree as faithful and protective as Proserpine.

Our arrival prompted Donya to lift her head and glance toward the doorway. Tears stained her cheeks. Her eyes were as red as radishes.

“Hello, sweetheart,” I said.

“Mason…” Donya stepped toward me, then changed her mind and, retreating, hugged her mother more tightly than before, a shipwreck survivor clinging to a floating spar.

The two nurses fidgeted near the cardiac monitor, a noisy black box the size of a microwave oven, its cathode-ray tube displaying a dancing sine wave, its sound chip bleeping in high-pitched counterpoint to Edwina's heartbeats. Brock leaned against the sentient mangrove like Ulysses bound to the mainmast of his ship. Upon noticing Proserpine, Quetzie judged her an ideal perch and soared to the highest branch.

I rushed to Donya's side, and together Henry and I looped our arms around her quavering body, squeezing her tight until she stopped crying.

“Mommy's not going to get better,” she gasped. “Not ever.”

“I know,” I said.

“Isn't that
terrible
?”

“It's terrible.”

Donya jabbed an accusing finger toward Londa. “Who are
you
?”

“This woman's daughter.”

As Londa set her hand on Edwina's shoulder, the patient opened her eyes, then rotated her head far enough to determine that the
worst had happened: her youngest daughter and her oldest were occupying the same spatiotemporal location, and they looked conspicuously like two different people.

“No, she's
my
mommy,” Donya protested. “She's
mine.
”

“We're sisters,” Londa told Donya.

“It's true, Donya,” Henry said.

“No, that's
wrong,
” Donya said. “I don't
want
a sister.”

At last Edwina spoke, her voice bloodless and far away. “You must stop this, dear child. Stop coming apart.”

Now Yolly raced into the conservatory, doubtless drawn by Donya's cries, wearing the expression of a stranded traveler watching the last bus leave the station, and behind her came an equally bewildered Jordan. I'd not seen the middle Sister Sabacthani since her nativity. Sharp, bright, and skillfully composed as they were, Jordan's snapshots hadn't done Yolly justice. She was a glorious child with radiant skin and shining eyes, her hair as vibrant and summery as a crown of laurels.

“Are you the person Jordan says you are?” Yolly asked, pointing at Londa. “Are you my sister?”

“Probably.”

“Londa, right?”

“Right.”

“I'm Yolly, and I don't like
any
of this.”

“Me neither,” Londa replied.

“Me neither,” Donya said.

“My teacher says I'm really only thirteen months old,” Yolly said.

“Mine insists I've been around just two years,” Londa said.

Yolly circumnavigated the gurney, soon entering Edwina's field of vision. “My wonderful mother.”

“You're not supposed to be here yet.” Edwina sounded like a lost ghost asking directions to a séance.

“But I
want
to be here,” Yolly said.

Edwina closed her eyes, and for a few moments the air was free of human voices. The only sounds were the caws of jungle birds and the bleeping of the cardiac monitor.

Stretching an arm toward Donya, Yolly ran her palm along the child's hair. I imagined she brought a similarly unqualified affection to the act of stroking Oyster's mane.

“Little sister?” Yolly said.

“I'm
not
your sister.” Donya began weeping again.

“Donya, it's
great
having a big sister, and now you've got
two,
” Henry said.

Tears streamed down Donya's cheeks like raindrops on a windowpane. “But who's going to take
care
of me?”

“I will,” Henry said. “Brock will.”

“You bet,” Brock said.

“And I'll take care of you, too,” Yolly said.

Donya's sobs grew softer. The monitor kept bleeping. Edwina opened her eyes.

“This is not acceptable behavior, Yolonda,” she said in a thick whisper. “I forbid you to break apart.”

“Mommy, can't we have just one more tea party?” Donya said.

This proved too much for Yolly, who started weeping as prolifically as her little sister. She wrapped her arms around herself, then slumped against the IV dispenser, shivering and whimpering, her face hatched by tears.

“I was a good mother, wasn't I?” Edwina said to no daughter in particular.

“You're the best mommy in the
whole world
!” Donya exclaimed.

Yolly uncurled one arm and pulled her sleeve across her nose and mouth, gathering up a mass of mucus, spittle, and tears. “Thank you for everything, Mother,” she said, staggering toward the
gurney. She kissed Edwina's pale, thin lips. “Thank you for Jordan and Oyster and the flute lessons. I'm the luckiest girl alive.”

“Mommeee!” wailed Donya.

Londa now shifted her gaze from her doomed mother to her bemused morality teacher. We locked eyes. She glowered. This Gorgon would not settle for turning her victims to ordinary stone: only New Hampshire granite would suffice, or diamond-grade carbon. “Mason, damn it, you should've
told
me about this! You
liar
!”

I grimaced but remained silent.

“Londa, dear, your mother needs a kind word from you,” Jordan said.

“
You're
a liar, too!” Londa wailed, lurching toward Jordan. “You made Yolly think I didn't exist!” She extended her index finger, aiming it first at Henry, then Brock. “And
you
two did the same thing to Donya! But I
do
exist!”

I wanted to tell Londa there were five liars in the room, not four, most conspicuously the patient on the gurney, but I simply said, “Jordan is right. You owe your mother something. Blessed are the comforters.”

There was no such Beatitude, and Londa knew it, but rather than correcting me, she stepped toward Edwina and grasped her limp, wrinkled hand. “I love you, Mother. Whatever this crazy thing is you've done, I love you.”

I assumed that Edwina would now smile. I expected her to acquire a seraphic face, aglow with peace and maternal fulfillment, but instead an arcane, almost preternatural force seized her body. Her teeth chattered. Her lips quivered. Her limbs trembled so violently that I feared her ligaments might rip free of her bones.

Without exchanging a word, the tutors moved to shelter their charges from Edwina's terminal spasms. Henry took one of Donya's hands, Brock the other, and together they propelled her toward the patio. Jordan approached the gurney, curled an arm around Yol
ly's shoulder, and escorted her behind the cardiac monitor. Londa did not resist when I set my palm against the small of her back and guided her into Proserpine's fecund shade.

“Stop splitting!” Edwina suddenly cried. “Stay together!”

Donya released a shrill moan. Londa slouched beneath the breathing tree and wept.

“Quetzie is a handsome devil!” squawked the iguana.

“Together!” Edwina demanded.

The cardiac monitor played a few final measures of reassuring bleeps, and then the cadence disintegrated into random chitters.

“Cogito ergo sum,”
Quetzie averred, but his insight was lost on Edwina, who had entered a realm where cogitation does not occur.

 

ALTHOUGH THE TWO NURSES
had proved only marginally useful during Edwina's final days, they certainly earned their salaries after she was gone. Seizing upon a hidden potential of the IV dispenser, Hector and Sebastian filled her veins with a small quantity of embalming fluid, just enough to counter the spoilage threatened by the Florida heat. They ordered a steel casket, signed the death certificate, and ran interference with a health inspector from Key West who'd long ago deduced that biological events on Isla de Sangre rarely fell within the norm. They even interred the body, digging a grave at the axis of Edwina's empire, in the shadow of the sandstone pillar where the three concrete walls converged, then setting the casket in its moist groove and shoveling back the soil.

Shortly before the funeral, Londa composed an epitaph, which Brock, master of all media, succeeded in etching onto a bronze tablet the size of a sandwich board. After everyone had assembled by Edwina's resting place—children, tutors, chefs, servants, groundskeepers—we propped the tablet against the burial mound, so that the grave acquired a door: a brazen gate opening onto the Nothing, much as the ontogenerator was a titanium portal into
Dasein.

 

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
EDWINA SABACTHANI

Servant of Science

Seeker of Wisdom

Eternal Protector of
Three Devoted Daughters

Donya read the words aloud, slowly, haltingly, then began to cry, partly from her frustration over not understanding them, partly from her realization that those same words, comprehended, would have broken her heart. Henry deftly led her away from the knot of mourners toward a commodious clearing ringed by ferns. From his backpack he withdrew a bag of figs, a bunch of bananas, and a flask of Hawaiian Punch, immediately convening a jungle picnic for Donya and himself, leaving the rest of us to continue the ceremony on our own.

For the next hour, we eulogized Edwina with anecdotes. Brock described her touching attempts to enter the universe of Donya's miniature amusement park. Javier praised Edwina's financial generosity, most especially her insistence on paying for his father's bypass surgery. Chen Lee recalled the time he'd carelessly allowed thirty pounds of fish to go bad and how his boss had unhesitatingly absolved him. Charnock offered his opinion that Edwina's brief but productive career with GenoText, Inc., would eventually lead to effective germ-line therapies for cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. Yolly spoke of how she and her mother had wept openly during their screening of
The Black Stallion.
Londa noted that her mother was “always there when I needed her,” then added, under her breath, “as long as I needed her on Wednesday and Friday.” Paralyzed by ambivalence, Jordan and I said nothing.

Later that week, two attorneys from the classy Miami law firm of Acosta, Rambal, and Salazar descended upon the island. While their ostensible intention was to apprise the girls of certain postmortem arrangements, it was obvious that Rex Fermoyle and Martha Carrington were primarily looking to score slices of the walloping financial pie Edwina had left behind. Watching them sift through their late client's private papers, I thought of those proud corps of airport dogs employed to detect heroin, explosives, and illegal foodstuffs, though Fermoyle and Carrington's specialty was sniffing out obscure stock options, neglected government bonds, and misfiled life-insurance policies.

When it came to the legal dimensions of her death, Edwina had obviously been willing to regard Yolonda as three distinct entities, for Fermoyle and Carrington began their presentation by noting that each girl had inherited her own billion-dollar trust fund. Moreover, by scrutinizing every twig and burl of the Sabacthani family tree, Edwina had located three blood relations willing to become the girls' legal guardians, though in her prescience she'd also included a provision whereby we tutors might take custody of our charges. For Londa, Edwina had found a dullard first cousin whose life revolved around his marginally profitable Milwaukee hotel, for Yolly a dotty female second cousin who every Halloween turned her Baltimore mansion into a Poe-themed haunted house, for Donya a gifted great-aunt still employed as a cellist by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. I was not surprised when Henry and Brock announced their intention to adopt Donya, nor was I taken aback when Jordan said she would make Yolly her ward, for despite her protestations concerning motherhood and trapeze artists, it was obvious that Yolly's advent had simultaneously diagnosed and treated a void in Jordan's life. I myself did not address the guardianship issue that day, but the following morning I confided to Fermoyle that I'd be just as happy to let the Milwaukee hotel manager worry about Londa for a while, even as I
admitted to myself that this decision was unlikely to free me of her sticky charisma.

In the months following the funeral, the Sisters Sabacthani came remarkably close to fulfilling their mother's dream of a unified Yolonda. They laughed together, cried together, ate, slept, gossiped, sang, danced, swam, sailed, windsurfed, flew kites, played croquet, built sand castles, and—once Jordan had imported a mare named Guinevere for Londa and a Welsh pony named Crackers for Donya—rode across the scrubland together. And of course they also drove one another batty, for only a sister has that special talent for breaking your last bottle of perfume, spilling grape juice on your best sweater, dropping your curling iron into a sink full of soapy water, losing your favorite Distressed Leather CD, borrowing your bicycle and then blowing out the tires, and cutting you to pieces by criticizing your taste in music or clothes or movies or anything.