The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter fifty-seven

Four days later, his blood had yet to normalize, but as he was reporting no obvious ill effects, neither the resident nor his insurance could justify keeping him in the hospital any longer. They gave him painkillers and a follow-up appointment. A nurse wheeled him to the curb and he hobbled on crutches to the waiting Taurus.

Nigel got out to hold the door for him. “Lookin good.”

“You should see the other guy.”

The plan was to recuperate at Sam’s. They stopped by Jacob’s place to pick up clothes.

The Honda sat in the carport, looking somehow different. As Nigel helped him limp up the steps, Jacob realized what it was: for the first time in months, the car had been washed.

Jacob asked Nigel if he’d done it.

Nigel laughed. “Nope,” he said, fishing out Sam’s copy of the apartment key. “Maybe some girlfriend did you a favor.”

Everything Subach and Schott had brought — the desk, chair, computer, sat phone, camera, printer, router, battery pack — was gone. The TV had been restored to its original position and reconnected. The bookcase had been repatriated to the living room, the potter’s tools neatly arrayed on the shelves.

Also gone were Phil Ludwig’s boxes of evidence, along with the murder book Jacob had put together.

The bathroom smelled piney. The fridge had been purged. He didn’t own a vacuum cleaner but there were outfield stripes in the bedroom carpet. A zip-top bag on his nightstand contained his wallet, keys, and badge.

His old cell phone was plugged in, fully charged and getting five bars.

His backpack sat on the floor by the closet. He looked inside and saw his tefillin bag; a bunch of candy wrappers; his Glock and the magazine. They’d left him the binoculars, affixed with a Post-it, two words written in a whispery scrawl.

You’re welcome.

He had gotten used to the chaos. The reversion to form disoriented him. He packed hurriedly, stuffing items into a duffel. Nigel hoisted it over one shoulder, the backpack over the other, and went down to put them in the car. While he was gone, Jacob limped to the living room, stood at the bookcase, examining the tools. Combs, paddles, a wire cutter, a set of knives.

One of the knives, the longest one, was missing.

Nigel reappeared in the doorway to help him down the stairs. “Ready to go?”

“Hell yes,” Jacob said.

Downstairs, a white work van was parked across the street.

CURTAINS AND BEYOND — DISCOUNT WINDOW TREATMENTS

An unfamiliar man sat in the driver’s seat. He was black, sitting up so tall that the top quarter of his head was out of view. He appeared not to pay them any attention, but as the Taurus eased into the street, Jacob raised a hand to him, and he waved back.

Sam insisted on taking the pullout couch and giving Jacob his bed, and he proceeded to astonish Jacob by handing him the remote control for a brand-new thirty-inch flat-screen television on a stand.

“Since when do you have that?”

“I’m not a Luddite.”

“You hate TV.”

“You want to argue about it or you want to watch it?”

The barbiturates cleared from his system within forty-eight hours, and withdrawal set in.

Sam watched from a chair by the bedside, a pained expression on his face, as Jacob shivered and leaked sweat. “We should go back to the hospital.”

“N — nnnn, not a ch — chance.”

“Jacob. Please.”

“Juh — just got to ri — ride it... out.”

His hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t lay his tefillin straight.

Sam said, “Don’t feel obliged because of me.”

“You want to argue about it,” Jacob stuttered, “or you want to help me?”

His father got up and cradled him from behind, wrapping the leather straps in evenly spaced coils. They were close against each other, Jacob’s nose pressed to Sam’s scratchy neck, and the smell of Irish Spring made him aware of his own, stale stink.

“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled.

Sam shushed him gently and reached for the head tefillin, smiling as he centered them between Jacob’s eyes.

“What,” Jacob said.

“I was remembering the first time I showed you how to do this,” Sam said. He adjusted the box to the left. “How big they looked on you. No more talking, please.”

Flat on his back, Jacob recited an abridged service, getting through as many of the core recitations as he could manage before the prayer book slipped from his hands.

Delicately, Sam lifted Jacob’s head off the pillow and loosened the tefillin. He removed them; removed the arm tefillin. He fetched a cold towel and sponged down Jacob’s forehead, soothing the spot where the leather box had bitten into his skin.

Tremors yielded to low-grade headache and fatigue, the harbingers of a coming downturn in his mood, emotional nausea to go along with the physical kind. Sam appeared to sense the change, too. He responded by seeking to fill the hours with mild distractions, idle chatter and endless streams of riddles and puns.

Jacob doubted he could stave off full-blown depression with word games, but it was hard not to be charmed somewhat by his father’s enthusiasm for providing care rather than accepting it. It had been a long time since he’d seen how Sam actually lived, and the self-sufficiency his father demonstrated was eye-opening.

Shuffling to and from the kitchen, ferrying tuna fish sandwiches and Gatorade and ice packs, going to the bathroom to rewet the compress or wash out the puke bucket.

Knowing the TV set had been bought for him, Jacob tried to show his appreciation by sticking to programming his father might conceivably enjoy: sports and news. They lamented the Lakers’ early exit from the playoffs, watched baseball without comment. Sam studied while Jacob dozed. Jacob’s major accomplishment of the first week was summoning the energy to call Volpe, Band, and Flores to relay the good news. Grandmaison he didn’t bother with. Let him figure it out on his own.

When he felt well enough, he and Sam began going out for long, slow walks, building up to three times daily, their tempo set by the drilling pain in Jacob’s leg. Along the way they would encounter neighborhood folks, many of whom greeted Sam by name. A soft-bodied woman pursuing a pair of rambunctious grandchildren; a young father wrestling with a stroller. It was as if they owed Sam a great debt of gratitude, as if the weight of his existence lessened theirs, and Jacob thought of Abe Teitelbaum’s refrain about his father being a lamed-vavnik.

On a Thursday evening, near the corner of Airdrome and Preuss, a girl on a bicycle called to them as she whipped by.

“Hi, Mr. Lev.”

Sam raised a hand.

“Popular guy,” Jacob said.

“Everybody loves a clown,” Sam said.

For his part, his father gave no indication of being burdened. Jacob reckoned that had to be true. If you thought you were a lamed-vavnik, you couldn’t be a lamed-vavnik. The reason for that went beyond a lack of the requisite humility. A lamed-vavnik could never recognize the immensity of his obligation, because the instant he did, the crush of worldly sorrow he was required to bear would paralyze him.

Jacob glanced back at the girl, her pigtails streaming. “Who was that, anyway?”

“How should I know? I’m blind.”

They turned down Airdrome street.

Jacob said, “Do you remember we used to have our Sunday morning study sessions?”

“Certainly I remember,” Sam said.

“I have no idea what you were thinking, exposing me to some of that stuff.”

“What did I expose you to?”

“You taught me about capital punishment when I was six.”

“In a purely legalistic sense.”

“I’m not sure a first grader can reliably make that distinction.”

“Is this where you tell me how I’ve ruined your life?”

“You haven’t ruined my life,” Jacob said. “I take sole credit for that.”

At Robertson Boulevard, the orange and green 7-Eleven sign loomed in the twilight, firing up Jacob’s cravings for bourbon and nitrates.

“Can we turn around?” he asked. “It’s too noisy here.”

“Of course. Are you getting tired?”

“Another couple blocks,” Jacob said.

They walked east.

“Abba? Can I ask you something else?”

Sam nodded.

“Did you know Ema was sick when you married her?”

Sam said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Jacob said. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“It’s all right. I’m not angry. I’m thinking about it, because I want to say it right.”

They walked in silence a moment.

“Let’s consider the question from another perspective. If I could go back, would I do it again? And the answer to that is, yes, without a doubt.”

“Even knowing what happened to her?”

“You marry someone for who they are, not who they could become.”

In the silence, Jacob’s crutches scraped the pavement.

You can live inside your experiences or outside of them.

He was having trouble choosing.

He was having trouble deciding if that was an authentic choice, or an illusion.

“I worry that it’s going to happen to me,” he said. “I worry that it’s happening already.”

“You’re a different person, Jacob.”

“That doesn’t make me exempt.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“So what makes you so sure?”

“Because I know you,” Sam said. “And I know what you’re made of.”

It had begun to get dark.

Jacob said, “I was thinking, maybe, we could try it again sometime, learning together.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Pick something interesting. I’m sure as soon as I get back they’re going to slam me with a bunch of busywork, so, I can’t promise my attendance will be perfect. But I’m up for it if you are.”

“I’d like that,” Sam said. “Very much.”

At La Cienega, traffic reared up. They retreated westward. It took them twenty minutes to make it back to the house. Sam didn’t seem too put out; for the moment, at least, they’d found a mutually agreeable pace.

It felt wrong to tell Phil Ludwig over the phone. On a Sunday morning, Nigel picked Jacob up and they drove down to San Diego, where they found the good D crouched in his front yard, optimistically installing geraniums beneath the inland heat.

Ludwig stood, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “This is either gonna be a real great day or a real fucking bad one.”

Over lemonade, Jacob recapped the events and the evidence, lapsing into generalities in describing Richard Pernath’s final moments. Ludwig listened stonily. In his curt verdict — “Good” — Jacob saw an honorable effort to conceal disappointment. His success made Ludwig’s failure official.

“I haven’t talked to any of the families yet. I was hoping you’d be able to help me out with that. Not the Steins. Them, I’d like to speak to myself.”

Ludwig said, “Let me think about it.” Then, perking up, he said, “I got something for you, too. When you e-mailed, it reminded me I never gave you an answer about that bug.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Fuck don’t worry about it. I was up half the night. You’re gonna pretend to be interested.”

Out in the garage, Ludwig cleared the tabletop of the work in progress, a pristine tiger moth mounted on a bright white mat. He took down a crumbling, acid-ravaged reference book.

“I forgot I even had this,” he said, stroking the warped cover, red cloth stamped in black.

“I picked it up years ago, at a library sale. I don’t think I bothered checking it before cause it’s Old World species.”

He had bookmarked the entry with a color printout of one of Jacob’s photos. He aligned it with a pen-and-ink illustration of Nicrophorus bohemicus, the Bohemian burying beetle.

Jacob crowded the table to read.

Found along the riverbanks of central and eastern Europe, N. bohemicus, like other burying beetles, displayed a behavior unusual in the insect world: mates remained together to rear their young. In the Bohemian, the tendency was pronounced, with couples pairing for life.

“Here’s the thing,” Ludwig said. “This book’s from 1909. I looked online for a color photo and Wikipedia comes back that the species went extinct in the mid-1920s.”

Jacob continued to stare at the images — to his eyes, identical creatures.

“You’ve got to remember,” Ludwig said, “insects, it’s hard to say that definitively. They’re small, they live underground, and most people see em and just want to smash em. There’s this beetle from the Mediterranean nobody’s seen in a hundred years, and last year it turned up in the south of England. So, it happens. My thought was we pass this along to my friend. If he agrees, maybe then we go to one of the journals.”

“Go for it,” said Jacob. “No need to include me.”

Ludwig frowned. “They’ll want to know who’s making the claim.”

“Tell them you took the picture yourself.”

“I shouldn’t do that.”

“You’re the one figured it out,” Jacob said. “I never would’ve known.”

After mulling over whether there was condescension in this offer, Ludwig nodded. “Fair enough. You’re sure?”

“Couldn’t be surer.”

The Steins welcomed him at their mansion. Jacob was concerned they would react badly to the news that the men who had murdered their daughter would never face trial. Rhoda sprang up and ran from the room, and Eddie tottered toward Jacob with his hands up. Jacob braced to block an uppercut, but Eddie wrapped him in a bear hug, and Rhoda returned carrying a bottle of champagne and three flutes.

“You see?” Eddie told her, shaking him. “I said all along he wasn’t such a schmuck.”

Buying gifts for Sam, a man with zero material lust, had never been easy, and it had gotten more challenging as Jacob grew up and realized that his father never wore ties. To thank him for the extended stay, Jacob settled on making him a Sabbath meal, the last before he returned to work.

Making his way through a slice of store-bought chocolate cake, Sam said, “Delicious.”

“Thanks, Abba.”

“I’m sure you’re ready to be back in your own bed. Don’t be a stranger, though.”

“I can’t,” Jacob said. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

When he got home, the curtain installer’s van was there; the same man sat behind the wheel, reading.

Jacob waved to get his attention. The man closed his magazine and lowered the window.

“Look, I don’t know what your shift schedule is, if it’s always going to be you out here, but I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Jacob.”

“Nathaniel,” the man said.

“You want a drink or something?”

Nathaniel chuckled. “I’m all set, thanks.”

“Okay. You change your mind, just come by.”

Nathaniel smiled and saluted and buzzed the window up.

Marcia in traffic said, “How was Hawaii?”

Jacob pried open a box of Bics. “I wasn’t in Hawaii.”

“Vegas?” She leaned over his desk. “Cabo?”

Jacob shook his head and stood the pens in a mug.

“I know you’ve been somewhere,” she said. “You have that glow.”

He laughed.

“Fine,” she said, pouting. “Be that way.”

“Love to tell you, but there’s nothing to tell,” he said.

“Top secret,” she said.

“Smart woman.” He grinned.

She grinned back. “Well, I’m glad to have you back.”

“Thanks, hon.”

“Lev,” a man’s voice barked.

He looked up. Across the squad room, red as a fire hydrant with inflammatory bowel disease, stood his old boss, Captain Mendoza.

Marcia muttered, “Meet the new czar.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I need you in my office,” Mendoza called.

From R-H to Traffic was quite a fall. Jacob knew from personal experience. “Who’d he piss off?”

“We haven’t figured it out yet,” Marcia said. “Any guesses?”

“Lev. Did you hear me?”

“Right away, sir,” Jacob called. To Marcia: “I might have one or two.”

Mendoza had ducked back into his office and was sitting with his feet up, flipping through a four-inch binder. Jacob could see the work of stress: ten lost pounds, dark half-moons beneath the eyes, scattered pimples. The mustache, usually trimmed with precision, lay crooked.

“Hope you enjoyed your vacation, cause playtime’s over.” Mendoza’s voice sounded strained, higher-pitched, as if his vocal cords had been ratcheted tight.

He slapped the binder down. “Fifty years of information about car versus pedestrian accidents. Your magnum opus.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mendoza stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Did you consider where bicycles fit in this equation?”

Jacob hefted the binder and took it back to his cubicle.

On the bright side, he was home by six-thirty most days, and weekends were light. He made the regular Monday and Wednesday evening AA meetings at the Anglican church on Olympic Boulevard, finding his regular place at the back. It wasn’t the first time he’d sat in a house of worship, mouthing words he didn’t believe in. Without alcohol, he had little reason to stay out at night; he was early to bed, early to rise, diligent and uncomplaining, chaste and humble. Eventually Mendoza grew bored of harassing him.

When he stopped in at 7-Eleven for diet cola, Henry would clutch his chest. “Was it something I did?”

Now that he knew what to look for, he easily picked out the people who had been sent to watch him. No regular rotation he could discern; sometimes every couple of weeks, other times monthly, a vehicle would show itself within a two-block radius. Caterer, roofer, furnace repair, a piano tuner, weatherproofing installation. Some of the lone occupants were cordial, others glum. None of them displayed anxiety or prolonged the conversation.

They didn’t worry Jacob, either. It wasn’t him they were after.

Returning home from his meeting one night, he was oddly pleased to spot Subach, his chicken-finger fingers drumming the dash of a plumber’s van.

“Hey, Jake.”

“Hey, Mel. Moonlighting?”

“You know. Same old.” Subach grinned. “Traffic treating you okay?”

“Very fucking funny.”

“Ah, relax.”

“Tell Mallick thanks a lot.”

“The Commander, I guess you could say he was a wee bit... vexed.”

Jacob smiled tiredly.

“Don’t worry. Won’t last forever.”

“Nothing does,” Jacob said. “Take it easy, Mel. No hard feelings?”

“None from me.”

Jacob paused. “But?”

Subach laughed. “Hey now. Be realistic. The world’s full of hard feelings. Without that, we’d both be out of a job.”

For their weekly study sessions, Sam selected a tractate discussing criminal justice, including the chapter on capital punishment.

“I think you’re finally old enough,” he said.

Jacob ran up a streak of fourteen straight Sunday mornings without an absence, the two of them sitting on the patio, eating pastry and drinking tea, batting around arguments. The melody of Talmudic study returned to his lips; he reintroduced himself to the luminous personalities that adorned the pages, and he found them far more sympathetic at second encounter. They were men, very much in the grip of their own uncertainties, trying to figure out how to be. The ritual structure they’d established was a noble attempt to infuse life with dignity and meaning. They strove for autonomy, for self-worth, for holiness. And when they failed, they sought new strategies. Jacob had missed that lesson the first time around. He did not intend to miss it again.

The Sunday before Rosh Hashana, Jacob arrived five minutes early. As usual, Sam was waiting out on the patio, his magnifying spectacles pushed back on his forehead. Instead of twin volumes of the Talmud, the table held a single sheet of paper: Jacob’s transcript of the Prague letter.

Sam gestured to the free chair.

Jacob sat.

Sam cleared his throat, lowered the spectacles, flapped the page to straighten it. Paused. “Something to drink?”

“No. Thanks.”

Sam nodded. He began to read, translating from the Hebrew.

“‘My dear son Isaac. And God blessed Isaac so may He bless you.’ You’re correct in identifying this as a term of endearment for Isaac Katz. He and the Maharal were close, not to mention that they were student and teacher, a relationship compared to that of son and father.”

He looked up. “Shall I continue?”

Jacob nodded.

“‘As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so may God rejoice over you. For the sounds of joy and gladness yet ring in the streets of Judah. Therefore this time I, Judah, will praise Him.’”

Sam righted his glasses. “Isaac Katz was married to two different daughters of the Maharal. First Leah, who died childless, then her younger sister, Feigel. The date here, Sivan 5342, corresponds to that second marriage. Isaac Katz is a newly married man, and that’s why the Maharal feels the need to give him an out by citing the priest’s speech to the troops. He’s saying, ‘Something’s happening, and I need your help, but only if you can set aside your personal concerns.’ The next paragraph discusses what the problem is.”

He offered the letter to Jacob.

“‘But now let us remember that our eyes have seen all the great deeds He has done,’” Jacob read. “‘For the vessel of clay we have made was spoiled in our hands, and the potter has gone to make another, more fit in her eyes. Shall the potter be the equal of the clay? Shall what is made say to its maker, you did not make me? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, you know nothing?’” He put the letter down. “Sorry, Abba. I’m not getting anything.”

“The Maharal was concerned that his son-in-law wouldn’t understand, either. He put in a fail-safe. Here, in the last line. It’s not very subtle.”

For in truth we have desired grace; it is a disgrace to us from God.

“You couldn’t find the biblical verse this alludes to,” Sam said. “That’s because there isn’t one.”

Jacob reread the line in Hebrew.

“Take your time,” Sam said. “Play with it.”

The instruction Sam had used when amusing Jacob with gematria — the geometry of letters.

Jacob added up the numerical values of the letters, reversed them. Nothing.

He selected the first letter of each word and paired them together.

“Barach ha-Golem,” he read.

The golem has fled.

“There’s nothing more hubristic than the impulse to create life,” Sam said. “Children are the best example of that. The Talmud says three partners participate in the birth of every child: the mother, the father, and God. That equation raises people up to the level of the Divine. It’s also a statement of faith, declaring that God involves Himself with the individual. And yet, no matter how we attempt to assert our authority — even if we appeal to the Divine — children go their own way.” He paused. “Any sort of offspring seeks to find its own way. That is the fundamental joy of parenthood, and also its terror.”

Jacob said, “She came for me.”

Sam didn’t answer.

“Because of the blood in your veins.”

“You said it yourself, Jacob. She came for you, not me.”

Jacob looked at him.

“If you don’t mind,” Sam said, “I’ll wait here while you get the car.”

For a legally blind man giving driving directions, his father exhibited remarkable confidence.

“You’ll want to get over to your right.”

“I’m not going to keep saying this—”

“Then don’t.”

“—but I can’t help thinking it’d be simpler if you just told me where we’re going.”

“You’re going to miss it.”

Jacob checked over his shoulder, swerved to avoid the 110. “Do I get three guesses?”

“Slow down,” Sam said. “There’s a speed trap ahead.”

Jacob touched the brake pedal.

Beyond the overpass, a radar gun glinted.

“I probably could have talked us out of it,” Jacob said.

“No need to take chances,” Sam said.

There was only one place Jacob could think of that was due east, one place Sam visited often enough to navigate there by sound alone. At the interchange with the 101, he signaled right, then bore left for the 60 East into Boyle Heights, toward the Garden of Peace Cemetery. He signaled again for the exit at Downey Road.

“No,” Sam said. “710 South.”

He thought his father must be misremembering, or miscalculating; perhaps he went with Nigel at different times of day, when the drive took longer or shorter, and they followed a roundabout route. “Abba—”

“710 South.”

Off the freeway, a tawny hill heaved up into view, speckled white with monuments. “The cemetery’s right there. I can see it.”

“We’re not going to the cemetery,” Sam said.

Mystified, Jacob made the merge onto the 710 South.

Two miles later, Sam had him get on the 5 South.

“I have half a tank,” Jacob said. “Is that going to be enough?”

“Yes.”

They switched to the 605 South, exiting at Imperial Highway and heading west through the city of Downey. Jacob had little to no knowledge of the area, and it was all he could do not to reach for his phone when Sam instructed him to get on the 710 North.

“We just got off the 710 South.”

“I know.”

“We’re heading in a big circle.”

“Keep going.”

Jacob said, “Is someone following us?”

Sam said, “You tell me.”

Jacob glanced in the rearview.

A field of cars.

At Sam’s behest, they changed lanes several times, feinting toward exits.

“I don’t think there’s anyone,” Jacob said.

Sam nodded. “I’m relying on you for that.”

They passed the cemetery again, this time on the east; from that angle, Jacob could not see anything except the nodding mop-tops of palm trees. Continuing on to the freeway’s terminus, they turned onto West Valley Boulevard, in Alhambra. He obeyed blindly as Sam relayed a series of turns through residential streets.

“What do you think?” Sam asked.

Jacob glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Clear,” he said. He was amused and perplexed and irritated in equal measure. “I’m down to a quarter tank, by the way.”

“We can stop on the way back. Right on Garfield, then it’s your first left. Three blocks down, number 456 East, end of the block.”

It was a nondescript lower-middle-class street, ranch houses with concrete latticework and proud flowerbeds, pickup trucks in the driveways, powerboats on trailers.

Sam said, “There’s a parking lot, but it’s only five spaces and they’re usually full. I’d take the first spot you see.”

Jacob pulled over outside a reddish three-story stucco apartment complex with a Spanish tile roof. There was a small semicircular driveway and a tiled overhang, boxwood hedges and a wooden sign.

They sat in silence in the car.

Sam said, “I ask for your forgiveness.”

Jacob said nothing.

Sam bowed his head. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have — I’m sorry.”

He got out of the car and started up the driveway. Sick with dread, Jacob followed.

He knew. He knew the moment they stepped inside. The woman behind the desk smiled at his father. She was wearing Mickey Mouse scrubs. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Abelson,” and Sam nodded and Jacob knew.

The odor of cleaning agents was strong. He looked at his father, scrawling messily on a clipboard, signing himself in. Why was he doing this now? Why was he doing it at all? He’d never known his father to be selfish. Just the opposite. Sam gave and gave and gave. He gave all; forgave all. Jacob had to wonder if that same generosity extended, in a perverse way, to himself. Because he could not imagine a more selfish permission to grant oneself.

“Here.” Sam was offering the clipboard. He had signed his name as Abelson.

Jacob didn’t know what to write. Was he supposed to lie, too? He wrote his real name.

He knew. He followed regardless, trailing Sam down a cracked tile corridor, ecru paint in drippy layers. Through doors left ajar he saw grungy carpeting, flimsy bedspreads. Two beds per closet-sized room. The cheer of a child’s drawing amplifying the deadness of the rough vinyl wallpaper. A vase of failing sunflowers, the finger of water at the bottom luxuriantly scummed. The pain in his heart made room for more pain. This could not be the best they could do. They had to do better.

Glare budded at the end of the hall. DAYROOM.

Figures of men and women. Reading, snoozing, playing checkers. They wandered about in pajamas stained with marinara sauce and applesauce. They wore slippers at noon. They seemed ill-defined, as though the room was filled with steam. Obesity and tremulous hands and cloudy eyes testified to the long-term effects of medication.

Overwhelmingly their focal point was a television set, tuned to a talk show.

Two heavyset Latinas in pink scrubs (hearts, Hello Kitty) made up the staff. They were watching TV, too. They looked over when Jacob and Sam entered. One of them smiled at Sam.

“She’s in the garden.”

“Thank you.”

Jacob knew, and still he followed, passing numbly through the mute ranks of the mad, conscious of their stares. They — the vacant and the reasonless — even they were judging him. The one who never visits.

What the nurse had called a garden was a lagoon of pink cement stamped to resemble flagstone; a plastic trellis overcome by star jasmine; a clump of home-improvement-store planters. Iron fence pickets rose way up high, ten feet or more. He wondered if anyone had tried to escape.

There was one actual tree, a fig wickedly gnarled, dominating the corner, throwing long tentacles of shade, splattering the concrete with uneaten fruit.

She was there, on a corroding bench.

Her hair was dry and gone to gray. Someone had taken the time to comb it and pin it back. The pin was age-inappropriate, a cute little ladybug. Withered pouches of skin replaced the slender neck he remembered; the doughy body, too, insulted his memory. But her hands were the same, wired with sinew, and her eyes were the same electric green.

Her fingers moved ceaselessly, manipulating phantom clay.

“Hello, Bina,” Sam said. He sat down on the bench and put an arm around her, pulled her into him and kissed her on the temple.

One of her hands climbed the side of his face and rested. Her eyes closed.

Jacob turned and walked away.

Sam called, “She asked for you.”

Jacob kept going.

“She hasn’t spoken in ten years.”

Jacob reached the door and grabbed the knob.

“Don’t blame her,” Sam said. “Blame me.”

Jacob faced him. “I do blame you.”

Sam nodded.

Their three bodies triangulated long and narrow, forming an invisible blade laid across the garden. Jacob heard the natter of the dayroom TV. A thin hot breeze awakened jasmine and sweet, rotting fruit. His mother gazed up at the branches, moaning softly, lost. His father gazed at her, lost. Time passed. Jacob took a step toward them. He stopped. He felt drunk. He didn’t think he would make it. He left them there together.