The Talisman

floated , he swam across Lily’s crowded frozen bedroom in an instant that seemed as sharp to him as an image on a photographic plate. Her hair puddled on the grimy carpet, her small knotty hands.
    He inhaled the thick odor of illness, of close death. Jack was no doctor, and he was ignorant of most of the things so wrong with Lily’s body. But he knew one thing – his mother was dying, her life was falling away through invisible cracks, and she had very little time left. She had uttered his name twice, and that was about all the life left in her would permit. Already beginning to weep, he put his hand on her unconscious head, and set the Talisman on the floor beside her.
    Her hair felt full of sand and her head was burning. ‘Oh Mom, Mom,’ he said, and got his hands under her. He still could not see her face. Through her flimsy nightgown her hip felt as hot as the door of a stove. Against his other palm, her left shoulderblade pulsed with an equal warmth. She had no comfortable pads of flesh over her bones – for a mad second of stopped time it was as though she were a small dirty child somehow left ill and alone. Sudden unbidden tears squirted out of his eyes. He lifted her, and it was like picking up a bundle of clothes. Jack moaned. Lily’s arms sprawled loosely, gracelessly.
    (Richard)
    Richard had felt . . . not as bad as this, not even when Richard had felt like a dried husk on his back, coming down the final hill into poisoned Point Venuti. There had been little but pimples and a rash left of Richard at that point, and he, too, had burned with fever. But Jack realized with a sort of unthinking horror that there had been more actual life, more substance , to Richard than his mother now possessed. Still, she had called his name.
    (and Richard had nearly died)
    She had called his name. He clung to that. She had made it to the window . She had called his name . It was impossible, unthinkable, immoral to imagine that she could die. One of her arms dangled before him like a reed meant to be cut in half by a scythe . . . her wedding ring had fallen off her finger. He was crying steadily, unstoppably, unconsciously. ‘Okay, Mom,’ he said, ‘okay, it’s okay now, okay, it’s okay.’
    From the limp body in his arms came a vibration that might have been assent.
    He gently placed her on the bed, and she rolled weightlessly sideways. Jack put a knee on the bed and leaned over her. The tired hair fell away from her face.
    11
    Once, at the very beginning of his journey, he had for a shameful moment seen his mother as an old woman – a spent, exhausted old woman in a tea shop. As soon as he had recognized her, the illusion had dissipated, and Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer had been restored to her unaging self. For the real, the true Lily Cavanaugh could never have aged – she was eternally a blonde with a quick switchblade of a smile and a go-to-hell amusement in her face. This had been the Lily Cavanaugh whose picture on a billboard had strengthened her son’s heart.
    The woman on the bed looked very little like the actress on the billboard. Jack’s tears momentarily blinded him. ‘Oh don’t don’t don’t,’ he said, and laid one palm across her yellowed cheek.
    She did not look as though she had enough strength to lift her hand. He took her tight dry discolored claw of a hand into his own hand. ‘Please please please don’t—’ He could not even allow himself to say it.
    And then he realized how much an effort this shrunken woman had made. She had been looking for him, he understood in a great giddy rush of comprehension. His mother had known he was coming. She had trusted him to return and in a way that must have been connected to the fact of the Talisman itself, she had known the moment of his return.
    ‘I’m here, Mom,’ he whispered. A wad of wet stuff bubbled from his nostrils. He unceremoniously wiped his nose with the sleeve of his coat.
    He realized for the first time that his entire body was trembling.
    ‘I brought it back,’ he said. He experienced a moment of absolute radiant pride, of pure accomplishment. ‘I brought back the Talisman,’ he said.
    Gently he set her nutlike hand down on the counterpane.
    Beside the chair, where he had placed it (every bit as gently) on the floor, the Talisman continued to glow. But its light was faint, hesitant, cloudy. He had healed Richard by simply rolling the globe down the length of his friend’s body; he had done the same for Speedy. But this was