Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Lucy stared at her, her lips still moving. "I'm praying," she said, and ignoring the shocked expression on the woman's face, resumed that exercise: head forward, swaying slightly back and forth, in the manner of some of her paternal ancestors, forcing everything out of her mind but the prayer. Her breathing deepened. The crazy voices shrank in volume. The train burst out of the tunnel and rushed along the top of Manhattan and over the high rail bridge to the Bronx. The sky was full of bruised purple clouds; the sun was descending over the Palisades and, as they crossed the bridge, it shot out great shafts of topaz light, gilding the filthy waters of the Hudson and Harlem.

Lucy was aware of a change at her side. The matron was gone, and in her place sat an elderly woman in a black nun's habit and a soft white cloak. Her face was dark and passionate, and little fires flickered in her deep-set eyes. Her mouth was full and sensual and pursed into an amused twist. When she spoke, her voice was deep and melodious. Her Spanish had a thick Castilian lisp.

"And what do you think you are doing, little girl?"

"Where have you been?" Lucy blurted.

"I am always in the same place, thank God. Where have you been is what needs discussion. That, and where you are going."

And they did discuss it as the train swung east toward the gathering darkness and the fancy towns of exurbia: New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, Greenwich. Lucy had enjoyed an intimate relationship with St. Teresa of Avila since the age of ten, when her mother had given her, for some strange reason of her own, The Interior Castle. At first Lucy had imagined that everyone had a private saint, as she had imagined (briefly) that everyone could speak any language they heard after minimal effort. When she had found that both of these assumptions were false, she had kept mum about the former gift, feeling that she had already attracted enough attention and trouble with the latter. Mike Dugan knew about it, but being the sort of priest he was, he kept quiet too. The apparitions happened on their own schedule, sometimes twice a month, sometimes not for many months. It had been over a year just now.

The discussion grew heated. Teresa, of course, had many saintly virtues, but forbearance toward recalcitrant and impetuous girls was not one of them, as she had amply shown during her life on earth. She did not believe such young girls ought to be traipsing around the countryside. Lucy was needed at home. Her duty lay there, and besides, she had received her precious talent from God, and God would in His own time tell her what use she should put it to.

"You did enough traipsing around," Lucy retorted.

"Yes, when directed to by heaven, and very often to my great disadvantage and suffering. Are you being directed? No, you are running away. From your mother's pain, from your failure, from your feelings about this wretched young man. Go back, I tell you, and do your duty!"

"I can't! It's too much."

"God often makes life difficult for His friends."

"Then it's no wonder that He has so few friends!"

The saint's lip creased slightly, and her heavy eyebrows rose. "I said that."

"I know," said Lucy, and then another voice said, "Miss? Miss, are you okay?"

A conductor was leaning over her. The suburban matron was gone, or no-there she was, in the aisle, behind the conductor, looking nervous. The conductor, a pie-faced man with watery blue eyes magnified by wire-rimmed spectacles, looked nervous, too. Lucy recalled that talking to people who weren't there on trains had before this been a prelude to a murderous fusillade. She said, "I'm fine."

"You were talking to… ah… yourself, miss."

"I was having a religious experience," she replied with dignity. "I am not a danger to myself or others."

Everyone in the nearby rows was staring, craning their necks around to gape, the magazines and laptops abandoned. Lucy blushed. Now that the aura of the experience had passed, she was back in the world of social embarrassment. The conductor turned to the matron and, after a brief consultation, moved the woman and her many packages to a seat in the NO PRAYING section. People were still staring, and some of the ones sitting too close to the lunatic got up and moved to another car. The train was slowing down, gliding into a station. Without further thought, Lucy jumped out of the seat and fled the train. She looked around and discovered that she was in Bridgeport.

She knew someone in Bridgeport. In fact, it was probably a sign. Not Boston, Bridgeport. No, definitely a sign, she thought, and trudged out of the station. She asked directions and walked some distance until she came to Main Street, a tatty zone of the old downtown: pawnshops, saloons, cheap clothing and furniture stores. And oriental restaurants and groceries. She found a blue sign that said PHO BAC, in white lettering, and she went into the door beneath it, past windows clouded with steam. Odors of anise and cilantro, and of the fermented fish sauce called nuoc mam, and boiling rice. She went through the dining room and past a door that bore a metallic sign: PRIVATE.

Behind it, a small room containing a ratty couch, a round table in the center, some chairs. Four oriental men dressed in black clothes sat at the table playing cards. They looked up, bemused, when she entered. They were in their twenties, their thirties, all with thin, hard faces, three of them pockmarked, one, the oldest, smoothly handsome. His name was Freddy Phat, and he was a gangster. They were all gangsters there. He stared at her, his fine brows knotting.

"Freddy, it's Lucy. I'm here to see Uncle Tran." She spoke Vietnamese, with a fancy Saigon accent.

A smile. "Little Lucy! He didn't say you were coming."

"He didn't know. Where is he?"'

"Out. Doing business. How are you?"

"I've been better." Suddenly she felt weak. She went to the couch and threw herself down on it. The cooking smells from the kitchen reminded her she had not eaten since early morning. She closed her eyes.

"Hey, you're sure you're okay?" asked Freddy nervously. Freddy Phat had no particular liking for white girls, but this particular one was the most important white girl in the whole world.

"I'm okay. I think I must be hungry."

He grinned. "You came to the right place then." He laughed, and the other thugs laughed, too, hiding their bad teeth with their hands.

She was spooning hot pho into her mouth when a thin, middle-aged Vietnamese man walked in from the street. He wore a short, black leather coat and a white broadcloth shirt buttoned to the collar and a white silk scarf. On his head was a plastic-covered rain hat with the brim turned up all around. An unprepossessing figure, oriental anonymous, like a waiter or a clerk, until you studied the eyes. Tran Do Vinh was his name. Tran had been a minor official in the South Vietnamese government's finance ministry who had tried to escape by sea in 1978 and had perished of disease and exhaustion midway on the journey to the Philippines. The present owner of his name had been on the same leaky craft, although he had been a major official of the National Liberation Front, the so-called Vietcong. This was known only by Freddy Phat, Marlene Ciampi, and the girl who now jumped up and ran to him and threw her arms around him. He held her tightly. They had not seen each other in two years, and both of them were somewhat surprised to discover that she was now as tall as he. She pressed her face into the leather of his jacket and inhaled his scent-old-fashioned lilac hair oil, cigarettes, nuoc mam. He held her away from him and looked into her face. "My dear girl," he said in French, "I am so happy to see you. But what is wrong?"

She was crying like a baby. "Everything, Uncle! My life is a quite complete ruin."

"I am desolated to learn it. Finish your soup and let me hear the terrible details." They sat, he ordered tea, he sipped, she slurped and told her story-the disaster at school, her mother's collapse, the money and what it had wrought. He listened, smiling, asking hardly a question, and thought, as he often did in her presence, of his dead daughter, who would have been near Lucy's age now. He was not a sentimental man, but this he allowed himself. He loved her. It always surprised him, like a radio message from a dead self.