rest, my dear.”
“I suppose so,” Astrid said, “but what I’d really like to do is dance. Dance for joy.”
“In time you will.” He patted her hand. He was smiling as he did it, but I had an idea he was deeply disappointed at her failure to remember the door and the city. I was not. I didn’t want to know what she had seen when Charlie’s secret electricity stormed through the deepest recesses of her brain. I didn’t want to know what was waiting behind the hidden door she had spoken of, yet I was afraid I did.
Mother.
Above the paper sky.
• • •
Astrid slept all morning and well into the afternoon. When she woke, she declared herself ravenous. This pleased Jacobs, who told Norma Goldstone to bring “our patient” a toasted cheese sandwich and a small piece of cake with the frosting scraped off. Frosting, he felt, might be too rich for her wasted stomach. Jacobs, Jenny, and I watched her put away the entire sandwich and half the cake before setting her fork down.
“I want the rest,” she said, “but I’m full.”
“Give yourself time,” Jenny said. She’d spread a napkin in her lap and kept plucking at it. She wouldn’t look at Astrid for long, and at Jacobs not at all. Coming to him had been her idea, and I have no doubt she was happy about the sudden change for the better in her friend, but it was clear that what she’d seen in the East Room had shaken her deeply.
“I want to go home,” Astrid said.
“Oh, honey, I don’t know . . .”
“I feel well enough. I really do.” Astrid cast an apologetic look at Jacobs. “It’s not that I’m not grateful—I’ll bless you in my prayers for the rest of my life—but I want to be in my own place. Unless you feel . . . ?”
“No, no,” Jacobs said. I suspected that, with the job done, he was anxious to be rid of her. “I can’t think of better medicine than sleeping in your own bed, and if you leave soon, you can be back not long after dark.”
Jenny made no further objection, just went back to plucking at her napkin. But before she bent her head, I saw a look of relief on her face. She wanted out as much as Astrid, although perhaps not for quite the same reasons.
Astrid’s returning color was only part of the remarkable change in her. She was sitting upright in her wheelchair; her eyes were clear and engaged. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you, Mr. Jacobs, and I certainly can’t repay you, but if there’s ever anything you need from me that’s mine to give, you only have to ask.”
“Actually, there are several things.” He ticked them off on the gnarled fingers of his right hand. “Eat. Sleep. Work hard to regain your strength. Can you do those things?”
“Yes. I will. And I’m never going to touch another cigarette.”
He waved this away. “You won’t want to. Will she, Jamie?”
“Probably not,” I said.
“Miss Knowlton?”
She jerked as if he’d pinched her bottom.
“Astrid must engage a physical therapist, or you must engage one on her behalf. The sooner she gets out of that damn wheelchair, the better. Am I right? Am I cooking with gas, as we used to say?”
“Yes, Pastor Danny.”
He frowned, but didn’t correct her. “There’s something else you fine ladies can do for me, and it’s extremely important: leave my name out of this. I have a great deal of work to do in the coming months, and the last thing I need is to have hordes of sick people coming up here in hopes of being cured. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Astrid said.
Jenny nodded without looking up.
“Astrid, when you see your doctor and he expresses amazement, as he certainly will, all you’ll tell him is that you prayed for a remission and your prayers were answered. His own belief—or lack of it—in the efficacy of prayer won’t matter; either way, he’ll be forced to accept the evidence of his MRI pictures. Not to mention your happy smiling face. Your happy and healthy smiling face.”
“Yes, that’s fine. Whatever you want.”
“Let me roll you back to the suite,” Jenny said. “If we’re going to leave, I better pack.” Subtext: Get me out of here. On that, she and Charlie Jacobs were thinking alike; they were cooking with gas.
“All right.” Astrid looked at me shyly. “Jamie, would you bring me a Coke? I’d like to speak to you.”
“Sure.”
Jacobs