The Twelve Read Online Free

made love. Howard would have left his wife and children had Jane desired him to. Yet she did not. Her love for Herbert was not diminished. Her love of her children was not diminished.
    But Jane’s love for herself was diminished. Her affair with Howard was over at summer’s end—a hot and sultry Indian summer that lasted from September until mid-October. A healing of sorts had taken place in her, and she returned to normal life, although life was never really the same for her again. She was never again as much a part of her own family, and with Max in particular there was a distance that hadn’t been there before.
    The cigarette smoking, the heavy drinking, and the loss of wonder and of living in a state of grace changed Jane in ways that were observable to all—especially to Max. The strong bond he and his mother had shared was gone, leaving a lonely void.
    ***
    When their mother returned, Max and Louis knew only that something had changed.
    Their mother took up knitting, and she produced all shapes and sizes of hats and mittens, even sweaters, which more often than not were somewhat imperfect, but always warm and full of love.
    Dr. Gray continued to attend to the Doffs, and to the boys he was smart and always making witty comments. He was the kind of family doctor who was well-acquainted with the medical history of every family member. He made house calls at a time when few doctors still did.
    Then on February 19, 1965, Max suffered from a severe case of the flu, with bronchial symptoms that made his every breath painful. He had been held out of school for three days, but his symptoms were getting worse, not better. The juices, soups, and pills were not helping.
    â€œYou’d better bring him in,” Dr. Gray said, when Jane called on that fateful afternoon. It was exactly 2:44 p.m. when she and Max entered the waiting room to the doctor’s office.
    Sick as he was, Max’s senses seemed heightened, and as he sat there he noticed every detail—the reproduction on the wall of George Washington crossing the Potomac River with his men, the National Geographic magazines, with their yellow covers, the brown table on which they lay, the green chairs on which he and his mother sat for what seemed like hours, but were only minutes, and the fresh white uniform of nurse Ethel who greeted Max warmly as she led him into the doctor’s office.
    It took only a few minutes for Dr. Gray to examine him. He held a stethoscope to Max’s chest and asked him to breathe. Max wheezed and then coughed in pain.
    Nurse Ethel took his temperature and noted that the fever was only moderate.
    Dr. Gray decided to give Max a penicillin-based shot that he had been using on patients with similar symptoms. It had been able to knock out the flu in at most two days, he explained. Then he asked Max to roll up the sleeve of his shirt.
    Max hated shots but was tired of the pain in his throat, and so he resigned himself to the needle in his arm.
    There was a prick, pain, and then it was done.
    â€œSit here,” Dr. Gray told Max. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
    Max had no idea how long Dr. Gray was gone, or if he ever left the examining room at all. What Max remembered was that he was suddenly in a state of bliss.
    He experienced a sense that he was a creature of pure light, floating with other light beings in the brightest glow he’d ever known. His body pulsated with feelings of love, and every pulse brought even more light around and within him.
    He entered a state of complete euphoria.
    Suddenly, through the bright light came an array of beautiful colors, vibrating and floating around him, like individual objects. As the color vibrations became stronger, Max saw a person’s name embedded within each one of them. He counted twelve colors and twelve names—none of which were known to him.
    Then, just as quickly as the names and colors had appeared, they receded, and the pure white light