Doctor Sleep

jerky, and David had kept away from anything too clinical (thank God),but Concetta Reynolds saw the sweat-plastered hair on Lucia’s brow, heard her cry out “I am!” when one of the nurses exhorted her to push, and saw the droplets of blood on the blue drape—not many, just enough to make what Chetta’s own grandmother would have called “a fair show.” But not in English, of course.
    The picture jiggled when the baby finally came into view and she felt gooseflesh chaseup her back and arms when Lucy screamed, “She has no face!”
    Sitting beside Lucy now, David chuckled. Because of course Abra did have a face, a very sweet one. Chetta looked down at it as if to reassure herself of that. When she looked back up, the new baby was being placed in the new mother’s arms. Thirty or forty jerky seconds later, another title card appeared: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABRA RAFAELLASTONE!
    David pushed STOP on the remote.
    “You’re one of the very few people who will ever get to see that,” Lucy announced in a firm, take-no-prisoners voice. “It’s embarrassing.”
    “It’s wonderful,” Dave said. “And there’s one person who gets to see it for sure, and that’s Abra herself.” He glanced at his wife, sitting next to him on the couch. “When she’s old enough. And if she wants to, ofcourse.” He patted Lucy’s thigh, then grinned at his granny-in-law, a woman for whom he had respect but no great love. “Until then, it goes in the safe deposit box with the insurance papers, the house papers, and my millions in drug money.”
    Concetta smiled to show she got the joke but thinly, to show she didn’t find it particularly funny. In her lap, Abra slept and slept. In a way, all babieswere born with a caul, she thought, their tiny faces drapes of mystery and possibility. Perhaps it was a thing to write about. Perhaps not.
    Concetta had come to America when she was twelve and spoke perfect idiomatic English—not surprising, since she was a graduate of Vassar and professor (now emeritus) of that very subject—but in her head every superstition and old wives’ tale still lived. Sometimesthey gave orders, and they always spoke Italian when they did. Chetta believed that most people who worked in the arts were high-functioning schizophrenics, and she was no different. She knew superstition was shit; she also spat between her fingers if a crow or black cat crossed her path.
    For much of her own schizophrenia she had the Sisters of Mercy to thank. They believed in God; they believedin the divinity of Jesus; they believed mirrors were bewitching pools and the child who looked into one too long would grow warts. These were the women who had been the greatest influence on her life between the ages of seven and twelve. They carried rulers in their belts—for hitting, not measuring—and never saw a child’s ear they did not desire to twist in passing.
    Lucy held out her arms forthe baby. Chetta handed her over, not without reluctance. The kid was one sweet bundle.
    2
    Twenty miles southeast of where Abra slept in Concetta Reynolds’s arms, Dan Torrance was attending an AA meeting while some chick droned on about sex with her ex. Casey Kingsley had ordered him to attend ninety meetings in ninety days, and this one, a nooner in the basement of Frazier Methodist Church, washis eighth. He was sitting in the first row, because Casey—known in the halls as Big Casey—had ordered him to do that, too.
    “Sick people who want to get well sit in front, Danny. We call the back row at AA meetings the Denial Aisle.”
    Casey had given him a little notebook with a photo on the front that showed ocean waves crashing into a rock promontory. Printed above the picture was a motto Danunderstood but didn’t much care for: NO GREAT THING IS CREATED SUDDENLY.
    “You write down every meeting you go to in that book. And anytime I ask to see it, you better be able to haul it out of your back pocket and show me perfect attendance.”
    “Don’t I even get a sick day?”
    Casey laughed. “You’re sick every day, my friend—you’re a drunk-ass alcoholic. Want to know something my sponsor told me?”
    “I think you already did. You can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber, right?”
    “Don’t be a smartass, just listen.”
    Dan sighed. “Listening.”
    “ ‘Get your ass to a meeting,’ he said. ‘If your ass falls off, put it in a bag and take it to a meeting.’ ”
    “Charming. What if I just forget?”
    Casey had shrugged.