The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 9

“One more time, Uncle David! One more time!”

David was about to get off the ice-he hadn’t been skating in years and he considered it a miracle that he hadn’t taken a fall yet-but in deference to his niece, he agreed to go around the rink with her for one more lap. After all, it was Christmas Eve.

It was cold, but still bright and sunny out, and as they skated past Sarah, sitting on the bench and wrapped in a long down coat and a woolen cap pulled down tight around her ears, David shouted, “You hanging in there?”

Sarah nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Then we’ll be right back!” And still holding Emme by her mittened hand, David sailed back into the crowd of kids and teenagers weaving their way around the rink to the tinny, amplified sound of “Frosty the Snowman.” It was a picture out of Currier and Ives-the frozen pond in the park, the skaters in their stocking caps and colorful leggings, their breath fogging in the air.

And it felt good to be out and exercising in the open air, especially as he had felt trapped in the whirlwind of his own thoughts ever since Mrs. Van Owen’s visit to the library. It had been the single most surreal moment in his entire life, and even after he’d run outside to return her pen-and she’d assured him that she meant every word she’d said-he’d been consumed by her promises. On the one hand, he knew it was insane-how could she possibly guarantee to save his sister’s life? No one could do that. But on the other, there was that business card, with the one-million-dollar offer on it. What kind of treatments or care or special attention could a million bucks bring? Plenty, he thought. He kept the card tucked away in his wallet, but he was never unaware of its being there. It just didn’t feel right-and he wondered if it was the kind of thing he should divulge to Dr. Armbruster… although he noticed, guiltily, that he hadn’t.

In an effort to forget about the distractions and just get on with the work, he had thrown himself into reading through the remaining pages of The Key to Life Eternal, presumably written in Cellini’s own hand. And as the secrets of the manuscript revealed themselves, he had come to understand what was driving Kathryn Van Owen and her search for La Medusa.

She believed in it.

She believed that the book was true, and that the glass truly held the power of immortality. As she had told him outside the Newberry, she had never entrusted this particular document, in its entirety, to anyone but him.

“Guard it carefully,” she had said. “You are the first person that I believe can make sense-and use-of it in your search. Do not disappoint me.”

As it turned out, the Key was not only an account of Cellini’s experiments with sorcery-the disinterment of dead bodies from holy ground, the construction of strange devices designed to nurture homonculi, the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone-it was also a detailed account of his own obsessive quest for immortality. Not content with the marvelous creations he had already made, or the artistic genius he had been blessed with, he had enlisted the help of a Sicilian magician named Strozzi and gone in search of the greatest gift of all-life everlasting. What he wanted was nothing less than all the time in the world-time in which he could re-create Nature in its most idealized forms, and craft things, from statues to fountains, paintings to glittering parures, of unmatched beauty and ingenuity. He reminded David of another great, if fictional, figure-Faust-who was prepared to sell his own soul for the knowledge acquired through immortality.

And in perhaps its eeriest passage, he recounted a hallucinatory (or so David had to assume) expedition to the underworld, led by Dante himself. Cellini claimed to have found not only the secret of invisibility-in a clump of bulrushes-but the secret of eternity, too. It lay in the water from the infernal pool, a few drops of which he had preserved beneath the glass of La Medusa. The mirror, Cellini wrote, could grant this gift, but only “ se il proprietario lo sa come approfondire ”-or, “if its owner knows how to use it.” In his Tuscan dialect, he went on to explain how the mirror must be held-“closely and directly, as if staring into one’s own soul”-and graced by the light of the moon, “the constant, but ever-changing, planet above us.” He concluded with an admonition: “But it is a boon less simple, less desirable, than may be thought, and I do fear that great anguish and misfortune may ensue.”

Tell that, David thought, to Mrs. Van Owen, as he distractedly embarked on one more circle of the rink.

“Amanda!” Emme screeched, before abruptly dropping her uncle’s hand and skating off to join her best friend, who was just teetering her way onto the ice.

David took that as his cue to skate over to the edge of the rink and plop down on the bench next to Sarah.

“Looks like she got a better offer,” he said, unlacing his skates.

“Don’t feel bad. She and Amanda are pretty much inseparable.”

“How are you holding up? Should we pack it up and head home?” Her face had the cold translucence of ice, and with her eyebrows gone from the chemo, she looked alarmingly like a glass mask. Only her eyes-as dark a brown as David’s-still held any spark of color and life.

“No, Emme’s having such a good time, it makes me feel better just to watch. I never know how many more chances like this I’ll have,” she said matter-of-factly.

It was the very offhandedness of her remark that struck David most forcibly. He tried like hell to keep his sister’s mortality out of his thoughts, but of course he knew that the subject was never far from hers. How could it be? For over a year, she had been living under a sentence of imminent death. She had gone from one surgery to another, one treatment to another, one special protocol to another, and while there were occasional respites in her decline, the general direction was unmistakable. Remission, if it came, would not come for long.

“You know what I’ll miss most?” she said, musing aloud.

He hated this line of thought, but if she needed to express it…

“Getting to watch Emme grow up.”

Just then, her daughter whirled by, laughing, and swinging hands with Amanda.

“But you will get to see her grow up,” David said, meaning the best, even if he knew-and he knew she knew-that any reprieve was temporary. “You’re looking better all the time, and Gary tells me that this new regimen they’ve got you on has shown some real improvements. You are going to get better.”

She patted the back of his hand, still following Emme, and said, “Put your boots on, or your feet will freeze.” He finished removing the skates and pulled on his boots, which were cold as icicles inside.

“I’d give anything to make that true,” she added, and David could not help but flash again on his strange conference in the book silo with Kathryn Van Owen.

In a deliberately casual tone, he asked, “You would?”

“Would what?” she said, already having forgotten what she’d just said. The drugs made it hard for her sometimes to follow the thread of a conversation.

“Do anything to… keep on going?”

She took a deep breath and looked out across the rink at the laughing, spinning skaters.

“I never thought I’d believe that,” she said. “I always thought-as much as anybody who’s healthy ever thinks about it at all-that I’d be happy to live my life, and go peacefully, with no complaints, whenever it ended.”

She coughed, and raised a gloved hand to her colorless thin lips.

“But that’s what you think when things are fine,” she said. “That’s what you think when there’s nothing really wrong. I don’t think like that anymore.”

A note of bitterness, one he seldom heard, had crept into her voice.

“Now, I’d give anything I could-and do whatever it takes-to live. To get old and gray with Gary. To see Emme play in the all-city orchestra, and go to her high-school prom, then off to college. To find out who she falls in love with, and what she decides to do with her life. To see her become a young woman, and have children of her own. I want all of that, David, all of it,” she said, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. “I never thought I could want anything so much. And I’m so ashamed to be so weak and angry now.”

“You have no reason to be ashamed of anything,” David said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her tight. “You’re the bravest person I know, and you’ve got a right to be angry. You’ve been through hell.” Mrs. Van Owen’s offer-“I can promise she’ll live to a ripe old age”-rang in his head like a cracked bell.

The tears were rolling down both cheeks, and one or two of the passing skaters threw a glance their way.

“Don’t let Emme see me like this,” she murmured into his coat.

“Don’t worry. She’s way over by the concession stand with Amanda,” he assured her.

“I just needed to say it.”

“You can say anything to me, you know that. You always have.”

She sniffled a little and smiled at that.

“Remember how you told me,” he said, “back when I was in junior high, that no girl would ever go out with me if I didn’t get rid of my dandruff? Or that I was such a bad dancer, I should just sort of stand in place and shuffle my feet around?”

“I told you that?” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be-you were right. I bought shampoo, and I learned how to dance.”

She wiped her eyes on the back of her mittens and straightened up. “I wonder if this is how Mom felt, right about now?”

It was something that David had considered, too. Had their mother, who perished in the same way, felt this same anguish and frustration and-yes-fury toward the end?

“Maybe so,” David said.

Sarah just nodded.

Emme was skating toward them very carefully, with a big cardboard cup of hot chocolate in her hand.

“Watch it or you’ll spill that,” David said, getting up and giving her a hand. Emme looked at her mother, knowing something was up, as she plopped down on the other side of the bench and began to take her own skates off.

“I see you got the whole enchilada,” David said to distract her. “Whipped cream and marshmallows on top. What happened to the cherry?”

“Is everything okay?” Emme asked her mother, pulling on her boots.

“Fine, honey. Everything’s fine. But did Amanda pay for that? I’ll go give her mother the money.”

“No,” Emme said, reclaiming the hot chocolate. “A friend of Uncle David’s bought one for both of us. He said it was his treat.”

Sarah glanced at David, just as a puzzled look crossed David’s face. “A friend of mine? What was his name?”

“I don’t remember. But he had a funny way of talking.”

“Is he still here? Point him out, Emme,” he said, in a cautiously neutral tone. “I’d really like to go and say hi.”

Emme took a big swig of the chocolate while her eyes scanned the rink, then the street beyond.

“That’s him,” she said, pointing out toward the street, where a stocky man with a bald head was just then unlocking the door of a black BMW.

“Do you know him?” Sarah asked nervously.

But the look on his face told her no.

“I’ll be right back,” David said, taking off around the edge of the rink.

“David, just call the police if you have to! Don’t do anything that could get you hurt.”

But David was already hearing nothing but the pounding in his own eardrums. Who was the guy, closing the car door? If he’d really been some friend, he’d have come over to say hello. But he was starting to look vaguely familiar. Why?

“Hey!” he shouted, rounding one end of the rink, with his arm raised and waving. “Hey, you!”

He had to scramble through the line of kids waiting at the concession stand before he actually got out of the park.

The BMW had pulled away from the curb, and David, marooned on the wrong side of the street, had to wait for a bus to rumble by. By the time it did, the car was moving toward him, and David skidded out into the slushy thoroughfare, waving his arms and calling out for the car to stop.

All he could see of the driver, hunkered down behind the tinted windows, was a shaved head, tilted inquisitively to one side, as if the guy was amused at playing a game of chicken.

“Stop!” David shouted, holding up his hands, though instead of slowing down, or even swerving, the car kept coming right at him. “Stop the car!”

If anything, the guy sped up, blasting his horn. Somebody at the bus stop shrieked, and David, his feet slipping on the icy pavement, had to leap out of the way at the last second, landing in a snowbank piled up at the curb. He plunged into the snow up to his elbows, but by the time he was able to turn around again, the black car had zoomed by, horn still blaring, and was turning at the next corner. There was no time to make out any of the numbers on the license plate, or much else.

A passerby suddenly leaned over the snowdrift, extending a hand and saying, “That was a close call! What the hell were you doing in the middle of the street?”

David took his hand and pulled himself over the snow and onto the sidewalk.

“You hurt?” the man asked.

“No, I’m okay,” David said, dusting the snow and ice off his pants and coat. Several people were standing in the park on the other side of the street, and some of the skaters had stopped dead to watch the drama unfold.

“It’s all over,” David called out. “End of show.”

But it wasn’t. Above the noise of the passing traffic, and the scratchy sounds of “White Christmas” from the concession stand, David heard Emme’s voice, screaming his name.

The ambulance arrived within minutes, and after hugging Emme and assuring her that her mother was going to be all right, David sent her home with Amanda and her mom. The paramedics said he could ride in the back.

Sarah was going in and out of consciousness, and from the best David had been able to gather, she had run after him in a panic, lost her footing on the ice, and smacked her head on the sidewalk. He hovered above her, holding one hand while the medic monitored her vital signs.

“Anything else I should know about her condition?” the medic asked, glancing up at David.

“She’s being treated for cancer,” David said, and the medic immediately nodded, confirming his suspicions. It was hard to look at her and not guess it.

“Which hospital?”

“Evanston.”

“Good. That’s where we were going, anyway.”

As soon as they got there, Sarah was rushed through the emergency entrance, and David made a quick call to her husband’s cell phone. When Gary picked up, he said he’d already heard from Amanda’s mom and was on his way from a real-estate conference in Skokie. When he arrived, the paper name tag was still stuck to the lapel of his sport coat.

Fortunately, her oncologist, Dr. Ross, was on call, and he joined them near the nursing station, with a grave expression on his face.

“This certainly hasn’t helped,” he said, “but we do have her stabilized again. She’s conscious, and she doesn’t appear to have suffered a concussion. But we’ll keep her in the ICU overnight, just for observation.”

“And then?” Gary asked.

“Then,” he said, with a slightly more hopeful expression, “I’d like to enter her on a new experimental regimen. We’ve just gotten the go-ahead on it, and I think Sarah might be a very good candidate. The clinical trials in Maryland were impressive.”

For a minute or two, he explained how the therapy might work, and what its side effects might be, then concluded by saying, “But as it is experimental, there may be some trouble getting it by your insurance company.”

Gary didn’t hesitate. “I’ll handle it.”

“And I can help,” David blurted out, thinking of the business card in his wallet.

“That’s fine,” Dr. Ross said with a nod. “And I’ll do what I can from my end. But I just wanted to warn you.” And then he left them there, to continue his rounds.

“Why don’t we adjourn to the cafeteria?” David said. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

Lost in thought, they sat staring into their respective cups. A crooked Christmas tree, decorated with ornaments made by the pediatric patients, stood forlornly beneath the ticking wall clock.

David didn’t have to guess what was going through Gary’s mind. Apart from the life-and-death question that was forever hanging in the air, there were the money worries. Whether the insurance plan picked up most of this experimental protocol or not, Gary was looking at financial disaster. His business, David knew, had been way down-Sarah had once confessed that he was thinking of quitting and trying something else entirely-and there was no way he could cover any further demands without, at the very least, selling his own house.

But what couldn’t a million dollars do?

David would have to go to Florence. And he’d have to go now, while Sarah had been granted this temporary reprieve. There was always a chance that the new protocol would work… and there was always a chance that it wouldn’t. If he was ever going to take this chance, now was the time.

“You know that promotion I mentioned that I might be getting?” he ventured, and Gary nodded, without lifting his eyes.

“Well, to nail it down, I might have to go to Italy.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

Now Gary raised his weary eyes. “For how long?”

“It’s hard to say,” David replied, “though I could come back, on a moment’s notice, anytime I had to.”

He could see Gary processing the information, just another complication in his already tumultuous life. “I just hate leaving you in the lurch like this, but-”

“Go,” Gary said kindly, “go. There’s no reason all of us have to live in this damn hospital. And if Sarah were sitting here, she’d be saying the same thing. You know that.”

There, David knew, he was right. It only made sense for him to leave immediately especially as he had begun to entertain-against his own better judgment-the nagging, and utterly irrational, notion that Mrs. Van Owen’s claims weren’t as impossible as they seemed. For one thing, he was beginning to believe that someone else took them seriously. Why else had he nearly been run down in the street? He glanced down at his knuckles, scraped raw from plunging into the snow and ice. Determined as Mrs. Van Owen was, was there some rival out there, equally determined to thwart her?

And for another-and this was the part that troubled him even more deeply-right after she had driven away from the Newberry, he had returned to the book silo and, slumping in his seat, turned the next leaf of The Key to Life Eternal. A sketch, one that he had barely paid attention to on his first reading, jumped out at him like an acrobat.

It was clearly an early rendering of the figure of Athena, destined for one of the panels making up the base of the great statue of Perseus. And the likeness to Kathryn Van Owen was startling-the imperious gaze, the haughty posture, the rich mane of dark hair. The words, Quo Vincas / Clypeum Do Tibi / Casta Sosor, were faintly legible below it; “I, thy chaste sister, give thee the shield with which thou wilt conquer.” Athena was the goddess who had provided the advice, and shield, that allowed the hero Perseus to slay the Medusa. And though David recognized that the woman who had just left the library could not possibly have been the artist’s model-that this had to be a mere coincidence, maybe even a trick of his own imagining-there was another part of him that said, Believe it. Because at this point, a belief in miracles, in the long-lost secret of immortality, might be his sister’s best-and only-hope. How could he dismiss it?