Stephen King - Revival

“Tell me, Jamie—why are you the special lemming who feels no urge to jump off the cliff? Why are you immune?”

I just smile and shrug. I could tell him, but he wouldn’t believe me. Mary Fay was Mother’s door into our world, but I was the key. Shooting a corpse kills nothing—not that an immortal being such as Mother can be killed—but when I fired that pistol, I locked the door. I said no with more than my mouth. If I told my shrink that some otherworldly being, one of the Great Ones, was saving me for some final and apocalyptic act of revenge because of that no , said shrink might begin thinking about involuntary committal. I don’t want that, because I have another duty, one I consider far more important than helping out at Harbor House or sorting clothes at the Goodwill.

At the end of each sessionwith Ed, I pay his receptionist by check. I can afford to do this because the itinerant rock guitarist turned recording engineer is now a wealthy man. Ironic, isn’t it? Hugh Yates died without issue, and left a substantial fortune (handed down from his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather) behind. There were many small bequests, including gifts of cash to Malcolm “Mookie” McDonald and Hillary Katz (aka Pagan Starshine), but a large part of the estate was to be divided between me and Georgia Donlin.

Given Georgia’s death at Hugh’s hands, that particular bequest could have provided probate attorneys with twenty years’ worth of legal munching and tasty fees, but since there was no one to kick up dickens (I certainly wasn’t going to), there was no wrangle. Hugh’s lawyers got in touch with Bree and told her that, as the deceased was her mother, she arguably had a valid claim on the loot.

Only Bree wouldn’t argue. The lawyer who handled my end of the business told me Bree claimed Hugh’s money was “tainted.” Perhaps so, but I had no compunctions about taking my share of it. Partly because I played no part in Hugh’s cure, mostly because I consider myself tainted already, and feel it’s better to be tainted in comfort than in poverty. I have no idea what happened to the several million that would have gone to Georgia, and have no desire to find out. Too much knowledge isn’t good for a person. I know that now.

When my twice-weekly sessionis finished and my bill is paid, I leave Ed Braithwaite’s outer office. Beyond is a wide carpeted hall lined with other offices. A right turn would take me back to the lobby, and from the lobby to Kuulei Road. But I don’t turn right. I turn left. Finding Ed was just happenstance, you see; I originally came to the Brandon L. Martin Psychiatric Center on other business.

I walk down the hallway, then cross the fragrant, beautifully maintained garden that is the green heart of this large facility. Here patients sit taking the reliable Hawaiian sun. Many are fully dressed, some are in pajamas or nightgowns, a few (recent arrivals, I believe) wear hospital johnnies. Some engage in conversations, either with fellow patients or with unseen companions. Others merely sit, looking at the trees and flowers with vacant, drugged-to-the-gills stares. Two or three are accompanied by attendants, lest they hurt themselves or others. The attendants usually greet me by name as I pass. They know me well by now.

On the other side of this open-air atrium is Cosgrove Hall, one of three Martin Center in-patient residences. The other two are for short-termers, mainly people with substance-abuse problems. The usual stay in those is twenty-eight days. Cosgrove is for people with issues that take longer to resolve. If they ever do.

Like the corridor in the main building, the one in Cosgrove is wide and carpeted. Like the corridor in the main building, the air is chilled to perfection. But there are no pictures on the walls, and no Muzak, either, because in it some of the patients hear voices murmuring obscenities or issuing sinister directives. In the main building’s corridor, some of the doors are open. Here, all are shut. My brother Conrad has been residing in Cosgrove Hall for almost two years now. The Martin Center administrators and the psychiatrist in charge of his case want to move him to a more permanent facility—Aloha Village on Maui has been mentioned—but so far I have resisted. Here in Kailua I can visit him after my appointments with Ed, and thanks to Hugh’s generosity, I can afford his upkeep.

Although I must admit my walks down the Cosgrove hallway are a trial.

I try to make them with my eyes fixed on my feet. I can do that, because I know it’s exactly one hundred and forty-two steps from the atrium doorway to Con’s small suite. I don’t always succeed—sometimes I hear a voice whispering my name—but mostly I do.

You remember Con’s partner, don’t you? The hunk from the University of Hawaii Botany Department? I didn’t name him then and don’t intend to now, although I might have done if he ever visited Connie. He doesn’t, though. If you asked him, I’m sure he’d say Why in God’s name would I want to visit the man who tried to kill me?

I can think of two reasons.

One, Con wasn’t in his right mind… or in any mind at all, for that matter. After hitting the hunk over the head with a lamp, my brother ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and swallowed a handful of Valium tablets—a small handful. When Botany Boy came around (with a bloody scalp that needed stitches, but otherwise not much the worse for wear), he called 911. The police came and broke down the bathroom door. Con was passed out and snoring in the tub. The EMTs examined him and didn’t even bother to pump his stomach.

Con didn’t try very hard to kill either Botany Boy or himself—that’s the other reason. But of course, he was one of Jacobs’s first cures. Probably the first. On the day he left Harlow, Charlie told me that Con had almost certainly cured himself; the rest had been a trick, pure huggermugger. It’s a skill they try to teach in divinity school , he’d said. I was always good at it .

Only he lied. The cure was as real as Con’s current state of semi-catatonia. I know that now. I was the one Charlie conned, not just once but again and again and again. Still—count your blessings, right? Conrad Morton had a lot of good stargazing years before I woke Mother. And there’s hope for him. He plays tennis, after all (although he never speaks), and as I said, he’s a volleyball monster. His doctor says he’s begun to show increased outward response (whatever that is when it’s at home), and the nurses and orderlies are less likely to come in and see him standing in the corner and striking his head lightly against the wall. Ed Braithwaite says that in time Conrad may come all the way back; that he may revive . I choose to believe he will. People say that where there’s life, there’s hope, and I have no quarrel with that, but I also believe the reverse.

There is hope, therefore I live.

Twice a week, after my talks with Ed, I sit in the living room of my brother’s suite and talk some more. Some of what I tell him is real—a kerfuffle at Harbor House that brought the police, a particularly large haul of almost-new clothes at the Goodwill, how I’ve finally gotten around to watching all five seasons of The Wire —and some of it is made up, like the woman I’m supposedly seeing who works as a waitress at the Nene Goose Bakery, and the long Skype conversations I have with Terry. Our visits are monologues rather than conversations, and that makes fiction necessary. My real life just won’t do, because these days it’s as sparsely furnished as a cheap hotel room.

I always finish by telling him he’s too thin, he has to eat more, and by telling him that I love him.