The Skill of Our Hands--A Novel Read online

  Besides, when Celeste died, and Phil spiked her into Ren, her stub had gone AWOL and hidden or unlooped or whatever. Ren had gotten some of it, enough to become an Incrementalist anyway, and Oskar and Phil and the rest of Salt with their “no real power” and their secrets had turned the rest into a pattern or a book or something. Pretty dang radical, if you wanted Kate’s opinion. Not that anyone did.

  Which was fine. She didn’t actually have much of an opinion on most of what the rest of them got so worked up about. But now Phil was dead and in the Garden, and everyone else was on the forum handing out opinions like condoms at a Pride parade. Even Ramon sounded emotional, if you could imagine. He and Jimmy both wrote long posts, Ramon giving background, Jimmy offering perspective. Oskar posted that he was in the Garden when Phil died, and was going to Tucson to support Ren. Ren, bless her, hadn’t written or seeded a thing. She was more like Kate that way, didn’t like to get herself so involved with the whole group dynamic. Well, she was in it now for sure and certain with Phil dead, poor dear.

  Kate called Legal One as she drove, but it went straight to his voice mail, and there was no point in calling Homewrecker. He was four hundred miles away with his mother and couldn’t have picked up the kids anyway because he was grieving, even if he didn’t know it yet. Kate wasn’t sure he knew his mom was dying. But he’d driven the six hours to see her when Kate had told him to.

  By the time she pulled into the school parking lot, Kate was happy to get out of the car and hug the kids. They were not quite two years apart, and before anyone could make the joke about a doctor not knowing how that happened, Kate would tell them she did know. She’d done it on purpose, thank you, because she also knew what kids do to a woman’s body and career, and she wanted that acute, not chronic.

  And they were cute.

  They were cute and messy and funny and selfish as hell. Like kids should be.

  Kate hugged them both and bundled them into the minivan. She sang along with them to the Frozen soundtrack the whole way to Chuck E. Cheese, where she gave them bad pizza and a plastic cupful of tokens. They dove into the ball pit, and Kate put on her tinted glasses, opened the latest edition of The Lancet, and double-checked it was right side up. She closed her eyes to have a good, long look through Oskar’s.

  * * *

  I didn’t know until I started collecting seeds for this narrative that Kate had been grazing mine so thoroughly. It surprised me. Like she says, Kate doesn’t usually get involved in issues not related to children’s health, but she had more to do with how things finally played out for Ren and Phil, and thus for the entire organization (not to mention Matsu) than almost anyone else.

  —Oskar

  * * *

  JUNE, 1856

  “MY NAME IS CARTER. WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?”

  I admit to being a little tickled at having traveled through the South taking money over a card table from slave-owners to finance a trip to Kansas so I could work for abolition. Having the money helped a great deal; I was able to supply myself well for the trip, even adding a Sharp’s carbine and a shotgun in case of the worst. I collected a good supply of clothing, including two pairs of over-alls, winter gear, a nice suit for Sundays, and plenty of socks and drawers. I had a sack of flour, a sack of dried beans, jerky, sugar, and tobacco as well as top-grade shovels, rakes, hammers, saws, and a hoe, all purchased from Elwood Adams Hardware. I splurged to the extent of $400, plus more for shipping, for a house from Kansas and Nebraska Portable Cottages that would be waiting for me, complete if not assembled, when I arrived at Lawrence. When I’d finished my purchases, I still had more money than I wanted to be carrying around, so I sent some to the Emigrant Aid Company in Massachusetts, imagining the look on some of the faces of some of my card-playing opponents if they knew.

  I spent a good deal of time with maps of Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas, and determined to go through Nebraska. I arranged for hotel stays where I could, and for rail and steamboat travel when possible, which turned out to be a lot more of the journey than I’d have thought.

  And then I started hearing horror stories about the winter, and I decided someone who’d been gallivanting through the deep South lately had no business in Kansas in February. I resolved to wait for spring or summer. That’s how I missed the raid on Lawrence.

  FOUR

  Complete If Not Assembled

  Ren started to pull away but Oskar only held her closer. “What do we need to do before we leave?” he asked over her head.

  “Renee may need to speak with the police again.” Tina’s chair scraped back from her desk.

  “I’ll do that,” Oskar said. “Phil will be cremated—we called him Phil.”

  “I gathered. His middle name, I guess?”

  “Probably.” Oskar shifted Ren into his left arm. “We’ll make funeral arrangements privately. Phil would have signed an organ donor card, so whatever needs to happen there…” Oskar extracted a piece of paper from his back pocket, and the muscles in his chest flexed against Ren’s cheek as he held his arm extended. “Here’s everything I think you’ll need.”

  Incrementalists were all so organized, so experienced with death. They all had wills, info cards, and contact lists in a shared directory on the website. Ren did too, but she’d never felt less like one of the tribe. It was all new to her. Oskar finished with Tina and deposited Ren at a bathroom door.

  “I made a Fibonacci spiral for Phil in my Garden,” she told Oskar. “It was the only thing I could think of to reel him back.”

  “Go wash your face,” he said.

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Ren.” Oskar bent to her eyes like a man to a gun sight. His hands on her arms were the first thing Ren had felt since the parking lot asphalt. “We’ll get him back,” he said.

  “I know.” Ren nodded. “We will. Our Phil. But I won’t. Not mine.”

  “Bodies don’t matter.” Oskar straightened. “What’s the name of the woman in the waiting room?”

  “Jane.”

  “Use the bathroom. Don’t look in the mirror.”

  Ren wondered how bad she must look. She hadn’t worn any makeup to yoga or gelled her short hair, but Oskar wasn’t the type to notice. Still, she went obediently into a stall and sat on the toilet. Her feet looked distant and strange against the clinical tile. How could she own teal moccasins? Those weren’t the shoes of a widow. She just couldn’t see herself wearing them. Her feet were bad mirrors, and Oskar had said not to look. Ren stood up and blew her nose. At the sink, she cupped cold water to her face, and dried it with brown paper towels that melted like lunch bags in her hands.

  Oskar had retrieved Jane from the waiting room, and was consulting with her outside the bathroom door. Jane startled and put some space between their bodies when Ren approached. Oskar stayed where he was, one shoulder leaning against the hallway wall, his blond head bending over Jane’s. He opened one arm and drew Ren against his side.

  Jane reached out and squeezed Ren’s wrist. “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ren said. She was made of prickling cold and hollow bones, mummified in ice, but wide awake, blinking through the miles of white. “I can’t go home,” she said.

  “You have to,” Oskar said. His hand took almost all the space between Ren’s shoulder and elbow.

  “You could come to my place,” Jane offered.

  “No.” Oskar tightened his arm around Ren. “We should get the worst things over while you’re still a little shocky.” He bowed his head to Ren’s. “Grief is a trauma to memory,” he said, “an amputation of what was to be. What you dread is what will fester.”

  “Ren?” Jane asked.

  Ren drew a deep breath and met Jane’s eyes. “It’s okay,” she said. “I trust him.”

  Jane nodded. “Which CVS?” she asked Oskar.

  “Corner of Thornydale and Ina.”

  “She’s that far north?”

  “Yeah. Ren, Jane is going to drive to the yoga studio
, pick up your car and bring it to us. Where are your keys?”

  “In my bag. I don’t know where my bag is.”

  “You left it in the waiting room.” Jane slipped it off her shoulder and handed it to Ren.

  Ren dug her car keys out and gave them to Jane. “Thank you,” she said again.

  “Oskar told me you have a large family and an extended support network, but if there’s any way I can help…” Jane glanced up at Oskar.

  “You’ve already helped so much,” Ren said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t seen me in the parking lot. Other than burn my butt.”

  “We’ll see you in about an hour, Jane,” Oskar said.

  Ren stayed still under his arm watching Jane walk away. She knew Oskar was right about dread, but she wasn’t ready. “Celeste was in my Garden,” she told Oskar. “This is all her fault.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “There was a fire in my Garden, Oskar.”

  “That wasn’t Celeste, Ren, I promise. She shaded. This isn’t about her. This is about meddlework.”

  “And Jane?”

  “I didn’t meddle with her much.”

  Ren almost rolled her eyes. “You didn’t meddle with her at all; you’re just six foot six and ridiculously good-looking. I was meddling with her. Before you got here, before Phil…” Ren’s brief focus evaporated.

  Oskar’s never wavered. “This is about the meddlework Phil was doing.”

  “He was helping me,” Ren told him. “Jane’s husband teaches at a high school where there’s something weird about the boys.”

  Oskar snorted derisively. “Everything’s weird about high school boys everywhere. That’s not what I’m talking about. I was in the Garden with Phil when he was dying. He showed me all the anti-immigration switches. SB 1070, Brewer, Pearce, Arpaio. Ren, he had some for John Tanton and Jared Taylor. What the hell did he think he was playing at? Why hadn’t he posted anything to the forum?”

  Clear as a seeded memory, Ren’s mind delivered a snapshot of her once future husband floating on his back in their pool one late night. Phil’s big toes stuck out of the water, and he splashed her occasionally with a lazy finger flick. He’d tried to talk her into taking off her clothes and joining him, but she had stayed sitting on the edge in a tank top and her underwear. She was dangling her feet in the cool water, enjoying the night, the distance of the stars and the nearness of her man. He’d been humming softly for a while before he rolled onto his belly and frog-kicked over to her. “What do you think about SB 1070?”

  “You know what I think.”

  “Want to do something about it?”

  “I kinda thought that was why we moved to Arizona.”

  “I moved here for you.” He kissed both Ren’s knees.

  “Funny,” she said. “I moved here because you didn’t want to move to Phoenix.”

  “You said you preferred Tucson to Phoenix.” He shrugged. “I’ve been reading up on it, the DREAM Act and immigration in general.” Phil ran his hands over Ren’s thighs, sliding water and goose bumps up them. “Did you know high school officials are reporting not just a decrease in enrollment and parent involvement, but an increase in student stress-related illness and marriage?”

  “It’s all part of the same constellation, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Phil dimpled under his wet mustache. “Illness and marriage?”

  Ren brushed her thumb over the wiry hairs of his eyebrows, and his hands slipped up over her hips. “Does marriage sicken you, my love?” His voice was playful, but the dimple was gone.

  “No, but I don’t think it’s healthy for high school kids,” she said.

  “How about for us?” He was standing between her legs, and Ren leaned in to kiss him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. His hands ran over her hips and rear.

  “Sure, but probably not for our work. At least not in the short run, and this is important.”

  He groaned and lifted her, drawing her to him into the water. “You are important.”

  The pool water wicked up Ren’s T-shirt to her breasts, and her nipples tightened with the chill. Phil held her close to his body and kissed her.

  “Mmm,” she said.

  “What?” Oskar’s arm tightened around her in the hospital corridor. “Are you dizzy? Do you need to sit down?”

  “No.” Ren’s tears ran like pool water. “I don’t know why he hadn’t posted anything about it. But it’s not like him to keep anything secret.”

  “True,” Oskar said darkly.

  “I don’t think it was a conscious decision not to,” Ren added. “It seemed very personal to him.”

  Oskar grunted, brooding. Ren closed her eyes and rested against him.

  He straightened with such force she staggered. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “I thought you needed to talk to the police.”

  “Fuck the police,” Oskar said. “They’re part of the problem. They aren’t going to solve this, we are.”

  * * *

  Oskar thought he had walked out of the hospital without his luggage and almost went back for it before he remembered that it was in his rental. The momentary confusion suggested to him that maybe he wasn’t handling things as well as he’d thought he was. But he needed to fake it. Falling apart would not help Ren.

  He considered stopping for groceries, but the plane flight and car rental had left him fairly broke. He could still manage a few supplies if needed. Jimmy would help. Jimmy could afford to, and he always came through.

  Oskar guided Ren into his rental, and almost buckled her seat belt for her, but she shook her head. He put her address into his GPS and headed out. He didn’t try to talk. Ren stared straight ahead, not sobbing, but there was a steady flow of tears as Oskar drove.

  He exited the freeway and turned into a compact neighborhood of houses mostly dating from the ’50s, when the postwar boom plus a wave of strikes produced a massive increase in the number of working-class families who could afford to buy their own homes. Most of those homes now showed the kind of neglect of the yard, roof, and trim that indicated they were rentals. There were a lot of toys in the yards, but most of them looked pretty cheap. In contrast, there were bright designs on many of the retaining walls—attractive, if abstract; lots of turquoise. The art was in good condition. Even allowing for the preservative effects of the desert, it was being maintained.

  Oskar pulled into the driveway behind Phil’s Prius. No, the Prius wasn’t Phil’s, it belonged to Charles Purcell, and Charles Purcell was dead.

  Oskar helped Ren out of the car and into the house, and the first thing he saw was the horrid painting. Ren saw it too and started sobbing.

  “Ren,” Oskar said. “Look at the painting. That wasn’t Chuck, that was Phil. That’s a piece of what will be back. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, but she needed to be held so he held her.

  After a while, she went to the patio door, let the dog in and fed it—usually Phil’s job, Oskar guessed from the way Ren had to look for the scoop. Then she sat on the sofa petting the creature while Oskar put water on for tea and checked his phone. Jimmy was en route. Good. For consoling someone who was hurting, for providing support, and for helping to choose a path amid a morass of morally ambiguous choices, Jimmy was the best.

  Oskar returned to Ren, squatting next to her where she sat. “Jimmy is—”

  The doorbell rang.

  Ren started to get up in an automatic gesture, but Oskar took her shoulders until she stopped. He answered the door and found a tall, young Asian woman, with the most startling and lovely blue eyes set off by utterly black hair, smiling almost shyly.

  Oskar managed to keep his voice low. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  * * *

  Ren knew Oskar rarely used his size to make a point or to get his way, but she couldn’t see around him. She quit trying. She didn’t really care who he was filling up her doorway to shield her from anyway. It wasn’t Phil. She closed her eyes
, tasted root beer and smelled salt mud, and her desolate Garden unspooled under her. Vast and empty as always, it seemed newly interior and claustrophobic, and she opened her eyes. Oskar was still growling at a shrill woman in a muffled audio negative of her parents’ fights heard from under the blankets. She walked out the back door, through the side gate and around the crispy front yard. Neither she nor Phil cared about landscaping.

  Oskar had one elbow on the doorframe, his hand shielding his eyes from the setting sun. The gesture accentuated the span of his shoulders, as did the slender build of the woman arguing with him.

  “You have no talent for delicacy, Oskar. No subtlety!” she exploded, tossing back waves of sleek black hair. “Did you even ask Ren if she wanted you here? Have you asked her anything at all? Or did you just march into her life at its most painful pivot, trample over her choices, and take charge? Ren needs a woman’s touch right now. She needs me.”

  Ren was pretty sure she didn’t. Whoever that was.

  “Ren needs pampering and listening to,” the woman went on. “She needs beauty and nature, flowers and silk sheets.”

  Irina. So that was what she looked like now. Oskar was right to keep her on the doorstep. Ren walked back through the side fence and stared into the pool. She wished it were a lake. Phil loved having a pool but Ren didn’t like swimming in water she could see through. “Phil, can you hear me?” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t. “I don’t know what to do. Oskar’s in charge and Irina’s here. Ramon and Jimmy are coming, almost full Salt. These are your people, Phil. Not mine. I don’t know what to do. Phil—”

  Phil—his memories and personality, his habits, abilities, and preferences—were waiting in stub in the Garden. Almost everything she loved about him was stored and safe, but inaccessible, waiting for some Incrementalist somewhere, but probably Oskar, to recruit someone willing to let his body become Phil’s. Ren was lucky, she reminded herself, compared to any other grieving person. It was a kind of decadence to ache this much over Phil’s lost hands and eyebrows. She knew that, she just couldn’t make herself stop.