The Healing (13 page)

Grace seemed pleased by her observation. “Thank you.”

The bedrooms on the second floor were filled with furniture that was nearly a hundred years old, which Karen expected. What she didn't expect was to learn that Grace didn't occupy the master bedroom, with its unobstructed view of the bay, its sunlit French doors that opened to the captain's walk, and its own fireplace. Instead, Grace slept in the room that had always been hers—a modest corner room in the front of the house with only a partial view of the bay from a side window. It consisted of a single bed covered by a handmade quilt, a plain wardrobe, and a nightstand with a hurricane lamp and three or four books. Over the bed hung an old crucifix. Karen couldn't help but wonder if Grace's bedroom had always resembled a convent cell, or whether it was a conscious choice of her later years.

But the greatest revelation about Grace was down the hall in the small bedroom that had once been a nursery. She had converted the eight-by-ten space into a prayer room. In the corner was a small round table draped with fine English linen, and on the table was a larger standing crucifix between two candles. In front of the table was a kneeler, and from the side of the kneeler hung a beautiful pearl rosary. The drapes were drawn on the lone window to shut out any distractions and to maintain a churchlike atmosphere when the candles were lit.

True to character, Grace was matter-of-fact about her need for such a room, as if there were one in every home. “In the summer I do a good portion of my kneeling in the garden,” she said, verifying what Karen had begun to suspect. To Grace, the simplest things in life were sacred—things like growing tomatoes and having a cup of tea.

Karen suddenly recalled what the cashier at the Wayside Market had said about local kids thinking the house was haunted.
She could be celebrating Black Masses in the basement for all we know.
And Karen remembered being frightened in her bed at night when Helen told her that the woman in black was lurking outside.

With all of these misconceptions in mind, the thought of Grace kneeling in her humble little prayer room made Karen want to cry. Not only because everyone grossly misjudged the woman, but also because she herself had given up on prayer.

The kettle whistled downstairs, and the women ventured back to the kitchen. Grace invited Karen to sit at the table by the window and asked her if she wanted coffee instead of tea. “I have a small bag of freshly ground Colombian and a filter that fits right over the cup.”

“No, thanks,” Karen replied. “I had three cups of coffee already this morning. A cup of Earl Grey sounds more inviting.”

Grace tilted her head, looking very much like an aging Lladró figurine. “Am I turning you into a tea drinker?”

Karen gave her a tired grin. “Maybe,” she replied. She watched the older woman set a very pleasing table in front of her. “Are you sure I can't help you with something?”

Grace opened her gift basket and handed Karen the box of biscotti. “You can open those. I'd like to taste them.”

Karen found herself savoring every moment in that kitchen. She didn't need a therapist with a doctorate in psychology to tell her Grace represented all that Karen needed to be at that particular time in her life. And the more she learned about Grace, the more she perceived all the fruits of an unshakable inner peace. Grace had a love of life's simplest pleasures, and the spiritual connection was obviously at the root of it all.

As Karen set the biscotti on a plate, she thought of a hundred philosophical questions she wanted to ask. But Grace kept the conversation firmly rooted in the practical while they drank their tea.

“So how are things going at home?” she asked.

Karen placed her teacup in her saucer with controlled precision. She'd thought they were going to talk about literature . . . history . . . something other than the struggles going on in the Donnelly house. That was why Karen had come by in the first place. To escape. But Grace had asked, so she replied, “My mother-in-law is coming out for the weekend.”

“So you'll have some help for a few days,” Grace said.

Karen didn't mince words. “I doubt it. She'll just make things worse.”

“How so?”

“Oh, she'll start lamenting about how sick Mike is, and how it breaks her heart. She goes on and on. After a while it seems she wants as much sympathy as her son. And frankly, I just don't have that much sympathy to go around.”

Grace nodded. “How does Mike feel about her visit?”

Karen lifted her shoulders like a stumped schoolgirl. “Who knows? He never lets on how these things affect him. I just hope he's okay while she's here.”

“Is your mother-in-law aware of the recent setbacks?” Grace asked, tactfully referring to the deteriorating situation Karen had described the previous week.

“Well, she hasn't seen him in over two months,” Karen replied. “So it's safe to say she's in for a rude awakening.” She picked up one of the biscotti and took a small bite. “Doesn't that sound like a fun holiday weekend?”

“Too bad you didn't plant that garden,” Grace said. “You would've had somewhere to go where you could find a moment's peace.”

Karen broke into a wistful smile and thought once again of her grandmother. So
that's
why she spent half the summer cultivating that corner of the property. And no wonder it seemed to get larger with every passing year.

chapter fifteen

Mike lowered the volume on the television so he could listen to Karen rustling about in the kitchen. She was getting ready for his mother's visit without a word of complaint, preparing a meal that filled the house with a somewhat fishy aroma. Mike guessed it to be her famous risotto with shrimp and peas, a family favorite that her grandmother always made.

Too bad he had no appetite.

He considered wheeling himself into the kitchen to acknowledge Karen's efforts and let her know he appreciated what she was doing, but he figured he'd only get in her way. So he stayed in the living room and made himself useful by stroking Luka's soft black head, which was resting contentedly on his lap. At least the dog wouldn't be getting under Karen's feet while she worked. And even though Mike wasn't in the same room, he found it easy to conjure up a vivid image of his wife darting between the table and the stove, swiping at her hairline with the back of her wrist.

He was learning how to live and love in the hidden realm of his mind, where he wasn't a burden to anyone and where there were no physical restrictions.

Karen didn't realize how beautiful she was. She never did . . . even back when she had been eighteen years old. Mike loved that about her. He loved her for being genuine in an increasingly plastic world. He loved that they were both content with the simple things in life. He would have given anything to relive just one of those routine, inconsequential days from before he got sick.

His illness had robbed him of so many things, but what he missed most was what he had shared with Karen—those everyday moments.

Mike stared at the TV, but the images he saw were in his head. He listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen and mentally planted himself on one of the chairs at the table. Karen was slicing something. He could hear the knife thumping out a fast rhythm on the cutting board.

Karen didn't use a lot of the new culinary gadgets. No food processors or electric devices. He could see her standing there with just her knife, a few good pots, and a few utensils. In an old-fashioned kitchen.

Like when they were first married.

Mike drifted easily back to the small three-room apartment in Queens. They were so happy there. They felt like they could conquer the world with their bargain-store furniture and bottom-of-the-pay-scale salaries. Karen was working as a copy editor for
Ladies' Home Journal
while going to school at night, and Mike was a probationary firefighter who loved every minute of his life, both at work and at home. They didn't get to spend too many evenings together those first two years, but they certainly made the best of the ones they had. They were newlyweds in every sense.

Their apartment was on the top floor of a three-story brick apartment house, complete with a fire escape that doubled as a poor man's veranda on hot summer nights. The moldings had been painted and chipped and painted over again at least a dozen times. There was only one closet, a two-by-three space in a corner of the bedroom, and the bathroom was an eyesore of aged white tiles and abused porcelain fixtures. But Karen made the drab little apartment a home. She bought several cheery pictures for the walls and strategically placed a few tasteful accents to brighten the dreary rooms. She even put potpourri on a table by the door so that anyone coming in would smell whatever happened to be her favorite aroma that month. Mike never cared for the various manufactured fragrances, although he never confessed this to his enthusiastic new wife. Instead he made it a habit to bury his nose in the crook of her neck and get high on the clean, natural scent of her skin.

Mike took a deep breath. He couldn't smell the risotto anymore.

He remembered coming home on nights when Karen didn't have school. He'd find her in the kitchen, trying out some new recipe or consulting the handwritten cookbook her mother had given her. The cheap little radio was playing from the shelf over the table, its long antenna angled to catch the right frequency. Karen always changed into comfortable clothes as soon as she got home from work or school—soft sweatshirts in the winter and scant cottons in the summer—and clipped her hair up because she was a fanatic about hygiene and proper food handling.

Karen wasn't artistic or passionate about cooking, but she considered it important and was good at it. Like her mother and grandmothers before her, she believed in preparing fresh food from scratch rather than saving time with canned or frozen foods loaded with salt and preservatives. So she spent a lot of her free time at the stove.

Mike was easy to please. He was always hungry and never too discriminating. Karen would ask him to critique some new concoction, and Mike's response was always the same: “It's great, babe.” Then he'd gobble it up. Karen never knew what was going through his mind as he wolfed down the wonderful meals she prepared for him.

He was the luckiest man alive. Not only had he married the sweetest, sexiest, smartest woman in the world, but Karen's love for him was evident in everything she did. Their stuffy three-room walk-up was a palace, and he felt like a king.

“Mike?”

His senses were switched off. His focus was turned inward. That was how he could ooze into the comfort of the sofa with Karen nestled against him and watch their favorite reruns from the 1950s and 1960s. Or trudge into the kitchen on winter mornings, where the smell of steam heat and fresh-brewed coffee unknowingly embedded itself in the recesses of his brain, and where Karen sat at the table in her fuzzy green robe and smiled at him with sleepy eyes and mussed hair. Or revel in every detail of their physical intimacy in the cluttered, private paradise of their bedroom and cherish the sight of her moving like a dream in the semidarkness.

“Mike.”

She said his name like a sigh in his ear.

Maybe that was why he loved the everyday moments. So many times they led to that private paradise.

He was back in that old-fashioned kitchen with its painted cabinets and its circle of fluorescent light, helping Karen do the dishes after dinner and making her laugh with some story about the guys at the firehouse. She was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, and she looked better than any model in
Vogue.
The window was cracked to let in the fresh spring air, even though it overlooked a sunless alley, and the radio was playing on the shelf.

Mike threw his dish towel on the counter and grabbed his wife around the waist. She gave a little squeal of surprise and then looked up at him with laughter . . . anticipation . . . delight firing up her eyes. He began to dance her around the small space between the table and the sink, keeping time to the music and dipping her so low that she squealed again and hung on to his neck. And he sang to her.

Dancing closer to the window, he drew the shade.

Their kiss tasted like coffee and the powdered donuts they had just eaten.

“Mike!”

His insides lurched, but his body could only react with a small stir. He turned his head and looked up at Karen, blinking his eyes to try and focus them on the here and now. He realized by the way Karen was looking at him that she had been alarmed by his unresponsive state. Even his hand, which had been petting Luka, had slipped off the dog's head and was hanging limply at his side.

Karen gripped his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Mike closed his eyes briefly and nodded. “Yeah,” he replied with no tone.

“Are you sure?”

He did
not
want to be back in the present. “Yeah. I'm fine.”

“Then what's the matter?” she asked. “For a minute I thought you stroked out or something.”

Mike was ashamed Karen had caught him staring and slack-mouthed. If only she knew how good it felt to have an out-of-body experience. “I must've fallen asleep.”

“With your eyes open?”

He didn't look up at her again. It hurt his neck. “I guess.”

Karen let go of his shoulder and stepped in front of him. “I hope you intend to sit at the table and have dinner with us,” she said, sounding very much like she did when she was being assertive with Lori.

Mike hated to disappoint his wife yet again, but he knew he wouldn't be able to eat more than a few bites. Before he could decline, however, Karen tried to reason with him.

“Come on, Mike,” she urged, putting a hand on one hip. “Your mother needs to see you at your best. Do it for her. Besides, your sister is driving her out, and she'll probably stay for dinner, too.”

He tried to imagine what it would be like to have his mother and sister watch him eat. The violent tremors that overtook him when he attempted to bring a spoon to his mouth almost always resulted in spills and face-wiping and frustration. It was such a pathetic sight, his mother would probably choke on her food. “Seeing me with a bib and watching me stab myself in the chin isn't going to reassure anyone, Kar.”

“Then I'll help you.”

His face closed up like a stubborn little boy's. “No.”

Karen clicked her tongue and threw her hands up. Now she was looking everywhere but directly at him. “At least come and sit at the table with us. You can sip one of your protein shakes. Otherwise your mother is going to think you're on your deathbed.”

“She'll only nag me about why I'm not eating,” he said.

“Look, Mike. This isn't going to be an easy weekend for anyone, especially your mother. But if you sit at the table with her and sip a shake through a straw, at least she'll be glad for your company.”

Oh, sure. He was a barrel of laughs. “I don't feel like very good company.”

“Your mother doesn't have to know that,” Karen said. “Just sit for a few minutes and talk to her. You don't have to put on a fake smile and be the life of the party for her sake. She'll be happy just to see you. Besides, Raymond took extra care to make you look nice today.”

Raymond had indeed taken extra pains today to make Mike presentable for his mother's visit, giving him a meticulous shave and dressing him in a pair of old khakis and a polo shirt before propping him in his chair. Maybe Nora Donnelly wouldn't notice that her son had lost about thirty pounds since she had last seen him and that the clothes he was wearing were hanging off his decrepit frame like laundry drying on a rack. At least she didn't have to know that he was still recovering from the ordeal of having a suprapubic catheter surgically inserted the day before. The tube wasn't visible under the loose pants, nor was the urine bag that was now strapped to his leg, but Mike sure felt the squeeze in his sore bladder and the sting of a new incision.

“I don't see what difference it makes,” he said, not realizing the effect his apathetic words would have on Karen. He was a little shocked at the way her eyes riveted on him in anger, and he instantly regretted having said something so childish. In the thirty years he had known her, Mike rarely saw true anger blaze in Karen's eyes. And in the eight years since he had been diagnosed, he had never seen it once.

“You don't see what
difference
it makes?” she echoed, forcing him to hear his own self-pity.

Even Luka heard the tone of Karen's voice and went slinking away submissively.

“Well, it makes a hell of a difference to your mother,” Karen reminded him. “And it makes a hell of a difference to me, too, for that matter. Maybe
I'm
the one who really wants you to come and sit at the table. Did you ever think of that?”

Of course he had never thought of that. Why would he think Karen wanted him around when their time together was an emotional minefield of averted eyes, tedious medical care, and surgical supplies? But before he could open his mouth to reply, Karen was marching back to the kitchen. Her face was blood-red.

“Do what you want,” she said just before she was out of earshot. “Let your mother see the real you.”

Mike felt like Karen had slapped him. But then he realized what she had admitted in a weak moment. She wanted him to come to the table for
her.