Above the Thunder.

A NOVEL.

BY RENEE MANFREDI.

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

-Mahatma Gandhi.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Thanks to all who helped me on my journey of writing this book. For enthusiasm and encouragement of early drafts, thank you to Lisa Dush and Anne Caston. Special thanks to Linden Ontjes and Christina Ward for their close readings and insights into character and structure that helped me see the work anew and to push it toward a stronger draft.

Deep appreciation goes to my agent, Eileen Cope, for her faith in this novel and whose good instincts led us to Anika Streitfeld, to whom I am profoundly grateful for her meticulous editing, great counsel, and encouragement, all of which helped this novel turn a corner. Thanks as well to the entire MacAdam/Cage group for their support of my work and for making me feel so welcome in San Francisco: David Poindexter, Scott Allen, Dorothy Carico Smith, Kate Nitze, and Pat Walsh.

Thanks also to Doreen Fitzgerald, for her friendship, support, and innumerable home-cooked meals; to Matt Wharton for his unwavering friendship and loyalty; to Marilyn Rice for her kindness and friendship; and to Tony Ardizzone, whose belief in me and my work over the years has been invaluable. Big thanks to Steven Balistreri and Andrea Steffke for taking care of my menagerie of animals and my house in the year I lived out of state. Finally, to my parents, John and Mary Ann Manfredi: a million thank yous.

PART ONE.

THE UNDERGROUND POPULATION.

ONE.

HAIRPINS AND NEEDLES.

Staring at specimens of the Ebola virus was not how Anna had envisioned spending her birthday. It was already early evening, and she'd wasted the entire day in this dingy office looking at slides of diseases. She wanted challenging exam questions-these were her advanced students-though of course nothing as obscure as this hemorrhagic fever. Most of the medical a.s.sistants this junior college graduated would be funneled into plush suburban offices in Ma.s.sachusetts, not the Ivory Coast. Still, Anna had never been able to resist a visit with cell pathology.

She looked through her chosen slides: Six diseases of white cells and two of red-sickle cell anemia, and the good old-fashioned pernicious kind. That ought to do it. For the sheer beauty of the cytology, she added acute lymphocytic leukemia as the last and final question-an easy one. She peered at this slide, adjusted the focus for the lens. Microscopically, this was one of the loveliest illnesses around, the cells plentiful and shapely, as festive as confetti from a burst piata.

She turned off her desk lamp, started to pack up, but got sidetracked again by the rare specimen box. Why not? Better to look at Rift Valley Fever than fifty-plus candles on a cake. Her friend Greta had tried to talk Anna into a party, but Anna had never allowed a celebration in her honor, and certainly didn't want one now, three years past the half-century mark.

Anna supposed she'd had more than her fair share of what made for a wonderful life, although she'd never have imagined this-an instructor at a junior college, widowed, estranged from her only child, living in a townhouse that was, as of yesterday when the Goodwill truck came, completely empty except for a desk, her cello and chair, and a bed. She didn't have so much as a saucepan or a throw cushion now.

When Anna moved into the townhouse a year ago, the previous owner had abandoned all of her belongings and moved to Korea. The realtor promised to have everything cleared out and cleaned if Anna took the place, but Anna wanted everything left exactly as it was, down to the dead hyacinths and tacky collections of pirate cookie jars and clown figurines. At the time, she couldn't bear to have her things there, the beautiful china and furniture that had filled the Tudor home she'd shared with her husband on the North Sh.o.r.e. After Hugh died, Anna stored nearly all her household goods and rented a series of furnished apartments.

The townhouse was full of cheap and tacky things, which Anna had found comforting at first; everything here was expendable and replaceable, and nothing around her carried the burden of memory. n.o.body she loved had ruined the finish on the coffee table with a hot mug. The stray socks behind the dryer would never be paired to anything in her drawer. Even the photographs were of strangers, clumps of women in self-conscious groupings at a ski lodge, and-Anna guessed-the previous tenant herself with a man probably a brother-in-law, or husband of a friend. She had the uncertain smile of someone asked to a party at the last minute.

Two weeks ago, when she remembered her upcoming birthday, it seemed even more depressing to be fifty-three with paint-by-number velvet clowns and pirate cookie jars that declared, Aye, aye matey! every time the lid was opened. She'd called in the Goodwill truck.

"Now what?" Greta had asked when she walked into Anna's empty apartment after it had been cleared. "What are you going to do about this?" The kitchen was absolutely and completely bare. Not so much as a salt shaker. "You can't live this way, either."

Anna shrugged. "We'll see." But Greta was right, of course, and for the past two weekends she'd been dragging Anna out to estate auctions, though Anna didn't want cat-clawed sofas or scratched-up tables.

She opened her desk drawer and found the hairpins she bought with Greta last Sat.u.r.day. Twelve of them, morbid brooches made of the deceased's hair to adorn the dresses of the living. She didn't want them, certainly, and bid on them only out of suspicion that the hair of all twelve pins was from the same DNA pool. That interested her most of all: how the woman who wore them bore such prodigious loss. Most women would have stopped at one brooch, letting the first death stand in for all the others. Anna admired this long-dead mother, the fact that each death was particularly commemorated and not swept under one general heading of grief.

She turned the microscope back on and slid a few strands of what was surely baby hair under the lens. Blond and feathery, the cuticle smooth as a quill. Definitely infant down. The child had either died at birth or shortly thereafter; this was hair that had never been exposed to the sun. Not one telltale pit in the shaft or cuticle. She looked at the remaining eleven. Nine of the samples undoubtedly came from one family, and all twelve, she hypothesized from the minimal UVA damage, were under the age of ten. Illness, probably, a devastating turn-of-the-century disease that took all of this woman's children.

She swept the pins into the trash, then feeling guilty, fished them back out. She'd take the collection to an antiques store later.

Someone knocked and opened her door. Nick Mosites, an internist at the hospital who was occasionally a guest speaker here at the junior college. "Hi," she said.

"Sorry to bother you, Anna, and tell me no immediately if you want."

"Okay. No, and thanks for stopping in."

He smiled, perched on the edge of her lab chair. "I'm coordinating a support group for AIDS patients and their families at the hospital, and I need to start a second group. I had someone lined up, but she backed out at the last minute. I was hoping you could find me one of your brightest students to run the event. There would be an honorarium and experience, no real salary."

"Oh," she said, relieved that he hadn't asked her to run it. Anna didn't believe in such things as support groups. She followed Nick's glance to the nest of brooches on her desk. "Hairpins," she said, when she saw his baffled stare. "Brooches made with the hair of the dead. I bought them at an estate sale because I couldn't bear to buy a couch."

"Interesting," he said, but she could see that he wasn't in the mood for banter.

"Support groups are outside my area of expertise." She picked up the most beautiful of the brooches, a wreath of silver forget-me-nots interlaced with strands of impossibly soft chestnut hair. "I'm a med tech. I know pins and needles."

He nodded. "Exactly. And they tell me you also teach a cla.s.s in medical ethics."

"Not really. It's just a one-credit cla.s.s on office and hospital procedures. Glorified bedside manner. How to calm a patient who's afraid of needles. How to rea.s.sure parents when you're doing a needle-stick on their screaming baby."

"Perfect. I want someone with a working knowledge of virology. Basic medical skills and an unflappable manner. What this group will be is just overflow from the meetings at the hospital. Most of these patients know each other and just need a place to gather on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon."

"Oh," Anna said. "So, it's not really a support group."

"Well, yes and no. I need someone to be there to run interference, and I'd like it to be someone who has a basic grasp of immunology and can also handle a few temper tantrums. I know you're turning out exemplary clinicians. The two you put in my office on externships were outstanding." He picked up one of the pins, Anna's second favorite. This one was smaller than the others, unadorned except for a thin blue ribbon that held the strands together. It was made from the hair of two people. From the near identical similarities in texture and shade, Anna guessed that this brooch marked the death of twins.

"And what about the running interference part? What does that mean?"

"Just that most of these patients know each other well, and can get into...well, dysfunctional family dynamics. Anyway," Nick said, "there's a psychiatric resident who will drop in when he can. All your student will need to do is commit to one hour on Sat.u.r.days, and write up a few notes about who was there and general topics discussed. The student will get a small honorarium, and of course, something to put on a resume."

"You don't think you should ask one of your residents? Or a med student?"

"I did ask, but they're so overworked I can't in good conscience make them do it. Look, I'd run the thing myself, but Sat.u.r.days are the only day I have with my family." He paused. "I promise it's only temporary."

"I'll see what I can do," Anna said.

"Great. I really do appreciate it." He turned to go. "Oh, one more thing. I know anybody you send over will be an excellent student, but I hope you'll be able to find one who is compa.s.sionate and patient."

Anna looked back at him, but before she could ask him anything further, he was out the door.

She looked through her cla.s.s roster after he left. How would she gauge something like compa.s.sion from the contact she had with these kids? Compa.s.sion, in Anna's view, was a personal thing, a quality that emerged in a case-by-case basis only; what moved you about one person left you cold with the next. At least that was her experience. She circled two names in her grade book. She'd call these students tomorrow.

But enough today. She reboxed the slides. It was her birthday, after all, and what she wanted suddenly was to get a little drunk-a good sign, she thought, since that meant she wasn't too old to enjoy the finer pleasures of a good Scotch with a good friend. She picked up the phone to call Greta.

"What are you doing?" she said when Greta picked up.

"Well, I was about to make dinner, but Mike called and said he's working till nine, so not to bother."

Anna could sense her friend's mood immediately. Six months ago Greta had quit her job as vice-president of a software firm to devote herself full-time to the business of trying to get pregnant. Her tripart.i.te obsession these days was conception, making elaborate dinners with ingredients she drove all over Boston to find, and coordinating a music and dance group for deaf children. Greta called the ensemble The No-Tones, and had already been written up twice in the Boston papers. Both of Greta's parents, German immigrants, were deaf. Anna was awed by Greta's childhood stories, the way, without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, she described leaving the silence every morning and moving slowly into sound, "like I was the light on water, and had to reach one sh.o.r.e in the morning, and the opposite every evening."

Greta's moods these days, Anna knew, were a rope bridge, swaying this way and that with emotion of even the slightest weight. She spoke softly. "So, anyway, since my wayward husband is missing dinner yet again, why don't you let me cook for you?"

"Better yet, meet me in the city. Let's go get drunk."

Greta laughed. "You paranoid thing, you. You don't believe me when I said I called off the surprise party?"

"Yes, I do. Mostly. But I just don't want to go home right now." Greta's townhouse was right next to Anna's.

Greta agreed to meet her at a working-cla.s.s bar in Back Bay, a place she'd never been but had noticed on one of her drives. "It's across the street from a Korean Deli," Anna said. "I'll meet you there in an hour."

By the time Anna was on her second martini, Greta still hadn't shown up. She got out her cell phone to call Greta's house, but the battery was dead. Anna ordered a San Pellegrino, to sip along with the drink, though she was less afraid of drunkenness than she was of maudlin emotion.

A little more than a decade ago, she turned forty at the summer home in Maine. Hugh had arranged for a surprise dinner party-the one and only time Anna didn't mind, since he'd invited only people she truly loved. He had taken her for a two-hour walk on the beach and when they returned, there on the front porch were their friends at tables set with snowy linens and pink roses. There was a string quartet on the lawn, and hired servers to fill champagne flutes. Sometime during that evening Anna wondered where she would be for future birthdays and vaguely imagined that it would be right in the same place, with Hugh beside her, maybe just the two of them drinking wine on the beach after a quiet dinner in town. This, this sticky-floored bar with its torn vinyl booths and damaged-looking characters-of which she supposed she was one-was the last place she would have guessed.

Greta walked in finally, grabbing two pool cues on her way over to Anna's booth. "Sorry I'm late."

"Is everything all right?" Anna said, noticing Greta's bloodshot eyes.

"No, but I'm not talking about my problems right now. This is your night." She gave Anna a pool cue. "Follow me, Fifty-three."

Anna laughed and walked with her friend over to the pool table, then watched as Greta racked the b.a.l.l.s. The look on Greta's face was precisely the reason Anna was done with relationships.

Other than Greta, she didn't even especially want friendships. The older she got, the more any successful human relationship seemed impossible. There were men around when she needed or wanted them-Anna thought of them as white cells; whenever she felt a little low, the monocycles and leukocytes attacked the virus of loneliness until she felt better. She'd had a few dalliances in the years since losing her husband, but no one had truly held her interest.

"Your turn," Greta said. "You're stripes, and we're playing slop."

"Naturally," Anna said, and her shot sent two b.a.l.l.s thumping off the table. "Oops."

Greta gave her an exasperated look, then signaled to the waiter for another round.

"I shouldn't," Anna said. "I teach tomorrow and I still have quizzes to grade."

"Oh, bull. It's your birthday. You need to be self-indulgent. If you were a man in mid-life you'd be buying supersized SUVs with equipment racks for sports you don't even play."

Anna studied the table for a decent shot. "I need to do something out of character. I think I'm in a rut." The third martini was a mistake: Alcohol never had the mellowing effect on her that it seemed to on others. She didn't need to be stirred up, didn't want to think about regrets or mistakes. She didn't get the career she'd wanted, but she got an unexpected bonus in her husband who made her life just as fulfilling-more, probably-than if her plan to become a surgeon had worked out. She had things in her life now that satisfied her-her music, her teaching-and if her world was smaller and more lightly made than it had once been, it was also easier to let things go and let small pleasures step in for any epic striving after happiness, whatever that was.

Anyway, what satisfied her these days were quiet, low-key things-hanging out with Greta, rehearsals for the community chamber orchestra, helping out with an occasional charitable event.

"Earth to Anna," Greta said. "It's your turn."

Anna lined up a sure shot, but it went wide of the pocket.

Greta laughed. "What's the matter, granny, got the shakes?"

"Give me a break. I'm almost a senior citizen. In some states, I'm old enough for a retirement community."

"Sure. Any minute now you'll be breaking a hip and taking in stray cats. Watch my youthful dexterity now: six, corner pocket."

Anna watched Greta concentrating on the game, along with, she saw now, most of the men in the bar. Greta was in her late thirties, though she looked much younger. She commanded attention wherever she was. It was her hair, partly, the shimmering length of gold, but there was something else, too, something intangible, as though she carried her own weather with her, changing the air from cool to warm, from low pressure to high, whenever she walked into the room. Greta was a big woman, not heavy or especially tall, but outsized somehow, awkwardly postured, as though she were constantly b.u.mping her head against the ceiling of her life and coming away wounded. It was this air of bruised vulnerability that made her more beautiful.

Anna was grateful that she didn't worry about losing her looks as she got older. Men were attracted to her for reasons other than physicality, she knew. Hugh once said it was her aura of aloneness the first time he saw her at the freshmen mixer, her cool blue dress and watery drape of dark hair, the proud tilt of her chin, as though dancing or standing alone made no difference to her at all. Anna believed that the ideal world would consist of two physical types of women: those powered by estrogen and maternity, and those who functioned on the rational hormone of progesterone, cut with a little testosterone, for a compet.i.tive edge. She'd have chosen the latter, hands down.

Greta sank the eight ball and ended the game. "Another?" she asked.

Anna said no, but agreed to a nightcap at Greta's when it became clear that her friend didn't want to be alone. "I'll see you at home then," Anna said, and ducked into the ladies' room to wash her face. She felt a little sick, light-headed with a sudden dread. She put her hands under the cold water. A man was speaking Spanish on the pay phone just outside the door. He was angry, whoever he was. He looked her up and down when she came out.

"Seora," he called.

She turned. He held out something to her. One of the hairpin brooches. She took it from him. "Gracias," she said, and saw that he was breathtaking. Beautiful dark eyes and lovely hands, lean and elegantly dressed in closely cut trousers and a yellow shirt that looked like raw silk. She turned the pin over in her hand. The one with the silver forget-me-nots. She put it back in her pocket. She might keep this one.

Back at Greta's, Anna put on a pot of decaf while Greta checked her phone messages. Anna ran her hands over the smooth blue and white tile on the butcher-block island. Greta's things were nice, of the highest quality. Beautiful copper-bottomed pots hanging on a rack above the sink, wonderful smells in every part of the house-cinnamon and dill in the kitchen, eucalyptus and lavender in the living room. Greta usually had a vase or two of daises or baby tulips, but wandering now through the rooms, Anna counted no fewer than ten vases of exotic flowers. "Who died, anyway?" Anna said, nodding toward a huge arrangement of pink orchids and Asian lilies.

"I know. Isn't that something? Mike's been bringing them home. Every other day. I suppose I should be suspicious."

Anna raised an eyebrow.

"Birthdays, anniversaries, or forgiveness. Is there any other reason a man brings a woman flowers?" Greta opened the linen drawer, pulled out a pack of cigarettes from beneath the dishtowels. "Wanna do something wicked?"

"I didn't know you smoked," Anna said.

"I don't. Only when I'm feeling rebellious. Mike hates it."

"Sure, I'll have one." She'd been a regular smoker in college, but hadn't had a cigarette in at least twenty years.

Anna followed Greta to the deck in back. A small fence here separated Greta's yard from Anna's. "I have to ask, Greta."

"Yeah?"

"Is everything all right? Between you and Mike?"

Greta didn't answer at first. "I don't know," she said. "He's staying away longer and longer. He sometimes leaves the house at six in the morning and doesn't get back till nine or ten. Yesterday he didn't get home until midnight."

"Well," Anna said, "well, what do you think?"