Matters of Faith (37 page)

Ada was gone too. The community in Nebraska, recently disbanded after fifteen members were arrested for running meth labs in three of the houses right next to the apple orchard, swore that she never came back. Marshall's car was found in Texas, driven by a man who claimed he bought it for eight hundred dollars in cash from a woman and her daughter in Oklahoma.

In exchange for his help, and based on the depositions of everyone involved, with the conspicuous exception of Meghan, Marshall agreed to a plea bargain. He had to serve time for jumping bail, as well as for resisting arrest. Those were not happy days for Cal and me.

We spent our time in rehab with Meghan, visiting Marshall, and alternately avoiding talking about our problems and beating each other about the head with them. The worry over what Marshall was enduring in prison wore us down to nothing but exposed nerve endings.

Not that Marshall ever had anything to say about his experience except that things were “okay.” It was the things we imagined that drained us. All I could hope was that my imagination was worse than the reality. He did some good while he was there. He volunteered to teach other inmates to read, he helped develop a program for those entering the system with food allergies, and he wrote a lot of letters to Meghan.

I read them out loud to her. She understands most of them now. She didn't at first. That day at the hospital, when she opened her eyes? It was both a celebration and a sober, stunning realization that our troubles were certainly not over. The neuropsychologist came over from Miami immediately, but it was still a long time before we understood that Meghan was not just going to snap out of it.

She was forever changed, and, like Marshall's letters, there were a lot of things she didn't understand. But now, over a year later, at least she is home. The rehab center was necessary, and we still go twice a week for physical therapy, but it wasn't home. When we reached the point that she could be released from the hospital, I insisted on bringing her here.

Everyone tried to talk me out of it; Cal even flat-out refused to allow it at first, but I was adamant. I had schedules worked out, contingency plans, the living room turned into a makeshift bedroom so we didn't have to deal with the stairs. Therapists would come out three times a week, and I had help in the form of Cal, Sandy, Stacey, Tessa, and her now-official boyfriend, Mingus—Charlie to us finally. Stacey and Kevin's kids, Tessa's son, and Charlie's children all felt at home with us, and I've actually come to enjoy the sounds of a full house.

Dr. Kimball even calls occasionally to check on us, and while we had had some doozies of conversations in the beginning—after I stopped hanging up on her—I have come to almost appreciate her tenacity. In many ways, we are the family she lost, and some compassionate part of me kicks in now when she calls. She always keeps the conversation brief, and always asks if there is anything she can do, then follows it with a comment about likely having done enough. I never know if it is self-congratulation for having saved Meghan's life, or some sort of apology for Marshall, and I never ask for a clarification.

I thought I was the best person to care for Meghan. I knew what to do, and though she was much like a three-year-old, well, I was the one who had taken care of her when she
was
a three-year-old, so I felt confident that I could do it again.

I was wrong.

It took almost two months and a grim three-hour intervention by Tessa (fully supported by Cal, who took Meghan to the beach while it was happening), involving a full-length mirror, threats to end our friendship, a bottle of wine, and an entire box of tissues for me to admit defeat. Leaving Meghan the first time was even harder than finding out she was in a coma to begin with.

But she advanced so much more quickly at the center than she had at home. Leaps were made in just the first few weeks at the center, and after my resentment over this indication of my failure waned, I was excited and hopeful about her future. And when we talked about bringing her home the next time, everyone agreed it was the right decision.

Many things, basic things, have changed. She has no interest in Winona Ryder. The first time Cal and I tried to watch
Beetlejuice
with her she knocked the computer off her lap. After the third flight of the laptop, we agreed that poor motor skills weren't to blame and stopped trying. We pulled the posters down, repainted her room, and got her a new bed.

She's interested in cooking now. Jamie Oliver is of specific interest, and we have cable and TV in her room so that she can watch his reruns on the BBC whenever she wants. Oh yes, she can watch TV anytime. And my determination to upgrade our computer and connection has been an amazing experience for both of us.

Not only do we both belong to online support groups for coma patients, families, and caregivers, but we've also joined food allergy groups, and I've even become something of a mentor for several mothers dealing with their children's allergies for the first time. Tessa is on with me, and we discovered enough parents in Southwest Florida that we started our own support group that meets in person once a month.

I will never go so far as to say that this was all a blessing in disguise. It was certainly not a blessing, but there is no question that our lives are fuller now than they were, especially Meghan's. She has not gone back to school yet, but she has more friends now than she ever had, kids like her, from the rehab center, children of the people in the support group, friends she chats with online.

As I said, a lot of things changed, and that includes the old rules. Cal and I agreed that rules were a more flexible thing than we thought. And it was nice to agree with him. Oddly, it seems that he is more present now that we're separated than he was when he was living here. Of course, I had to have a lot of help with Meghan at first.

Sandy and Stacey were rocks in those early days. They still are, but at that time I was never alone with Meghan. If Cal wasn't there, Stacey or Sandy were. They were there for the first time Meghan maneuvered the stairs by herself, the first time she bathed herself, the first time I collapsed, convinced I could never do everything that needed to be done.

They are still there, but things have progressed so that when they come over, it is for dinner or b-b-ques, usually prepared partially by Meghan. She badgers Sandy for fresh, organic ingredients, and Sandy delights in showing up with unusual offerings, like loquats or pawpaws.

The most unusual thing, to me, is that Meghan has retained so much of her music, though it didn't seem to surprise her piano teacher. She is not technically a better player, but the way she approaches it has changed dramatically. While we struggled with getting her shoes tied, she went at the keys with a passion. When we worked for so long on the motor skills necessary to floss her teeth that we both wound up in tears, she calmed herself down by voluntarily practicing scales.

At first, every day was a discovery of something else she couldn't remember how to do. Now every day is a discovery of something else she can do, or a favorite children's book remembered, or a face in a photo she attaches a name to.

Even our personalities have changed. Her patience got frighteningly short and mine got long, with everything and everyone, even myself. I'd spent so much time getting her and Marshall through their childhood stages, as if they were to be navigated as quickly as possible, that sometimes I realize I am appreciating her more fully as her own person than I ever did when we were going through those stages the first time.

And thank God for that, because Marshall is proving less knowable and appreciable all the time. According to the terms of his plea bargain, he went straight from prison to a mental health facility in north Florida. Cal and I alternate weekend visits. When we compare notes, it feels as though we are talking about two different people.

He is shy and withdrawn with me, while Cal says he'd never talked so much to him in his entire childhood. The therapist assures us that he is not deeply depressed or suicidal the way he was for a time in prison. He takes antidepressants and has taken up smoking, which infuriates me. I try to not show it.

His main topic of conversation with me is Meghan. He wants every detail of her slow recovery. He researches coma recovery online and tells me things I already know. He makes copies of pages from books in the library and always has a sheaf of these things for me when I visit. He never asks if she talks about him.

She doesn't. Though she does remember him, pointing him out in photos and saying his name. She's often quiet afterward, and her counselor—oh, yes,
everyone
is in counseling at this point—tells us to let it be and allow her to work things out, and in time she'll want to talk about him. Everything doesn't have to happen at once, he says.

I think Cal has taken this advice more to heart than I have. Perhaps it is because he is a fishing guide. Sometimes a favorite spot isn't happening, so you move on to another one. You go back the next day, or the day after, or maybe a week, and suddenly things are biting again. I want more immediate results, and when I feel the need for this most strongly I climb the stairs to my studio.

I did send back the paintings I was working on last year. But about a month ago I contacted my usual galleries and clients, and the work has been coming in steadily since then. I turn on my lights, the problem areas reveal themselves to me eagerly, wantonly, and I know what to do to fix them and make them whole and perfect again.

Meghan often plays piano while I work, and I leave my door open and listen to the music my daughter makes until I have fixed enough of the damage to feel able to return to my new life. We give each other space during these times.

She has not asked about why her father does not stay the night. She accepted our changed circumstances as though it has always been this way. And she loves visiting Cal on the boat. Cal sold
McKale's Ferry
to a man who was planning to give it to his son farther up the west coast, and continues to live on
Trillium's Edge
. We never discussed him coming back, but we've also never discussed making our separation more legally binding.

When he comes over he mows the lawn, and he uses his workroom just as he always has, to fix a motor, maintain his records. I visit him out there if I'm at home and bring him lunch or dinner, depending upon the time of day. Meghan often makes him simple dishes to take back to the boat.

I miss him—now that there is slightly more time in my life, now that he has been gone long enough to stop thinking that he's just in the next room. I thought that I would get used to it, and then it would be a better life for me, one free of the extraneous emotional entanglement. But now I am used to it and have discovered that Cal was never extraneous.

I told Sandy that I liked being alone, but didn't like being without
Cal
, and she seemed to understand that. We circle each other now, tension of a different kind thick between us. I see him watching me, the way he did on that airboat in the Everglades. Last week, while Tessa and Charlie were at the house with their kids, he took me for a walk around the bay.

We watched the spaces around the trees turn scarlet with the sunset, as though the woods were on fire, and we held hands on the way back. My wrist still pains me at times, and he was careful of my hand, making sure it wasn't bent in the wrong way as it tucked into his.

My sex drive has returned with a vengeance, though I've not let this little nugget loose, and the way his palm rubbed against mine nearly had me pulling him down to the pine needles right then and there.

When Stacey picked us up for church last Sunday, she told me that Cal told Kevin he thought I looked more beautiful than he'd ever seen me.

Yes, church.

I started going when Meghan was in the center, and even helped paint it this year. The chapel in the hospital had given me a quiet place to think, and despite the fact that the tiny white church was filled with people, it is that place for me now.

There is less talk of God and more talk of peace than I had expected, and that is all I am looking for now. Meghan enjoys the music, and the people there care for us in a less pressing way than I feared. We usually sit with Sandy in the back, while Stacey and Kevin sit with their kids in the first pew, and then we meet back at my house for lunch, where Tessa and Charlie and their combined kids join us.

Nobody has been maimed by the screen door on these Sundays. I unscrewed it from the door frame as soon as my cast came off and, after blasting it with the hose, painted it slate blue and hung it on the wall next to my inherited Harold Newton painting.

I am not sure of what it teaches me yet, but when I look at it I take a deep breath and nod, and that seems to be something.

He had three months left. Sometimes the time passed with agonizing slowness, other times his release date frightened him with its proximity. Progress, they'd made a lot of progress, that was what Dr. Reif said. There were plenty of guys in there who talked about ways to fake “progress.” But he didn't want to fake anything, and he was suspicious and nervous as hell of Dr. Reif's optimism.

He still thought about Ada, especially late at night, when he heard some of the others move around, knew they were seeking comfort in the dark, with each other. They'd never talk about it when they got out, and maybe it helped while they were here.

It wasn't for him, though he'd considered it, at least twice seriously enough that he got close to one particular man in prison. But he had backed out, and had been allowed to. He'd known others, heard others, who had not been so lucky.

It was Ada who kept him clear. He understood more now about her purity angle, and he was repentant about having pressured her. Oh, she'd folded quickly enough, he knew that. And she'd used her sexuality to manipulate him, he knew that too. But the things she'd
said
about purity resonated now. There were different types of purity, and in prison he achieved one, in here perhaps he would achieve another.