Tuesday Night Miracles (39 page)

45

Reckless Fury of the Scorned

J
ane’s house is totally dark when Olivia pulls into the driveway. The short drive seemed like an eternity, and Olivia’s heart and head are absolutely spinning. When she swings her legs out of the car and begins walking to the front door, Olivia wonders if the electricity has been knocked out.

There are many things a professional woman like Dr. Olivia Bayer can and does prepare herself for. She’s been wise enough during her career to expect the unexpected. And if she ever stopped long enough to think about it she could write a book, or a long essay at the very least, about some of the characters she has encountered.

There was the guy who never took off his cowboy hat because he had some kind of strange idea about aliens invading his brain if he didn’t keep his head covered. One woman had a trash problem and spent hours and hours walking the streets picking up garbage people had thrown out of their car windows. That wasn’t necessarily bad but then she took it all home, sorted it, and kept everything in tiny cardboard boxes.

Beyond the strange and complex, what Olivia tended to remember was the men and women who finally figured out something as simple as forgiveness, love, or letting go. There was nothing she liked better than to see that light of realization begin glowing in someone’s eyes as they surrendered to whatever emotion they had been avoiding. And Dr. Bayer never gave up on anyone. All the Janes of the world always had a chance, and potential.

As she approaches the dark walkway leading to Jane’s front door, Olivia is struck by the notion that this class and these women have set some new records for her, even this late in the game. She’s not certain what she’s going to see when she steps into the house, but she’s already positive that nothing like this has ever happened to her before.

Derrick has been watching for her, and when he opens the door, and she takes one look at his face, the great Dr. Bayer can’t stifle a very audible cry.

“Oh, Derrick!” she moans. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be okay. I may need a stitch or two. It’s Jane I’m worried about.”

Derrick has a bloody nose, and it looks as if he’s been battered with something large and heavy.

Olivia takes one more step into the house and is absolutely astounded at what she sees. The kitchen off to her right is a shambles. Broken wine bottles litter the floor. What’s left of the huge glass wine rack is hanging by two exposed metal rods from the ceiling. The large wooden table looks as if it’s been set on fire and then doused with water that was sprayed right from the faucet.

It appears as if Jane used a baseball bat not just on Derrick but also on the entire house. Olivia turns to look into the living room and sees that the only piece of furniture left standing is a long leather couch that must have taken the blows without harm.

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs, lying in the closet.”

“Take me to her and then wait down here for the police. They know me. Tell them I’m up there and that we’ll be right down.”

“She must have smashed the electrical box or something,” he explains, leading her up the unlit stairs. “I’m afraid to look through the rest of the house, but we have no power right now.”

Jane really is lying on the closet floor. She’s dressed in a pair of jeans and a turtleneck sweater; her hair looks almost as perfect as it always does. She’s lying on her side, and it looks as if she’s rolled up some shirts to use as a pillow. You’d never guess by her serene pose that she has just completed a rampage. The closet is half empty. Dr. Bayer correctly guesses that Derrick has removed most of his clothes from the house.

“Jane, it’s Dr. Bayer. I’m going to sit down next to you for a few moments.”

Jane doesn’t move or acknowledge Olivia’s presence. Her eyes are closed, but Olivia knows she isn’t sleeping.

“What happened, Jane?”

“I fell apart.”

“Can you tell me why?”

Dr. Bayer isn’t certain what will happen next or if Jane will even talk to her. But she has to try. The police won’t wait forever, and she must prepare Jane for the inevitable.

Jane suddenly sits up. She crosses her legs, leans back on her elbows, and lets her head drop back for a moment. Dr. Bayer is sitting directly in front of her. Even in the dark closet there is enough light filtering in from the bedroom windows so that Dr. Bayer can see Jane’s face.

“I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Am I going to jail?”

“That’s what we need to talk about. First tell me what happened, Jane? What made you this angry?”

“It was the billboards. And then Derrick left me.”

“The billboards?” Dr. Bayer has absolutely no idea what Jane is talking about.

Jane, who is more coherent than one might expect of someone who has just assaulted her husband and done thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to her own home, tells Dr. Bayer everything.

Jane said she could handle anger class, the loss of her job, her overbearing parents, her mounting drinking problem, Grace’s discovery of her well-guarded infertility, which she has always kept from Derrick, and her husband’s departure. What finally threw her over the edge was the billboards. The billboards that were the signs of her great success, her ability to succeed, the nose-rubbing for her parents, who never wanted her to go into that kind of business.

Dr. Bayer is tempted to stop Jane at this point. Everyone in the Chicago area knows the real-estate market has dipped. Olivia wonders if she has totally underestimated the size of Jane’s ego. It must be much larger than the billboard itself.

Dr. Bayer decides to let Jane talk. She will fill in the blanks later. She rotates her legs so she is sitting cross-legged, like Jane.

Jane’s descent into the deepest pit of her anger started when she discovered that she had been adopted. That’s not such a bad thing, but as a young woman, before she married, Jane discovered that she had a hereditary condition that would prevent her from having children.

That’s when she became obsessed not only with wondering why this part of her was so imperfect but also with lying to Derrick. Derrick wanted children and she knew that, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her condition. She thought that he would walk away, see her as flawed, and never marry her.

Jane kept her medical records private. Derrick never knew about her past history—the infertility sessions at the hospital, the fact that she had known all these years that she could never have a baby. She let him go through his own round of testing, and she switched doctors when it was her turn to get tested, so that her past was essentially erased. And all those records Grace saw at the hospital? Those were from the doctors and all the procedures she had before Derrick, when she was in her early twenties and the doctors were experimenting with her fertility.

The truth is that Jane was relieved she couldn’t have children. She thought because her birth mother didn’t want her that she would be a horrible mother herself. She was frightened.

Dr. Bayer reaches out to touch Jane. Jane must have buried this pain so deep inside that she had no idea who she was or what she might become.

“Oh, Jane,” Dr. Bayer says. “You should have come to me. I would have helped you.”

Jane looks up into Dr. Bayer’s eyes and shrugs. She looks totally exhausted and defeated.

“I have absolutely no idea how to be a human being,” she admits. “I’ve ruined everything.”

“Tell me about the billboards,” Dr. Bayer says. “What was it about this that made you step over the line again?”

“It felt like I was being mocked and that everyone knew I had fallen from the billboards and onto a single sheet of paper,” Jane admitted. “I so need to be on a billboard. I do.”

Dr. Bayer wants to slap her own head. Jane’s problems are much, much deeper than the anger itself. And the billboard? Something else must have happened.

Jane is quiet again. She’s staring at the empty hangers.

“Jane, there must be something else besides Kit mentioning the billboards and Derrick leaving? Can you tell me?”

Jane imagines everyone will find out anyway. What difference does it make now? The whole world will know she’s nothing but a loser, a fake, everything her parents probably feared she would become the day they adopted her.

“I sent out a mess of fake résumés to try and get a banking job,” she admits, not really caring what Dr. Bayer thinks. “I had to do something. I thought if I could get into banking, because I have so much experience with housing loans, I could get back at them for what happened to me when the markets collapsed.”

The résumés, Jane explains, were her last hope. But this afternoon when the phone started ringing with questions from the human-resources people about her references and experience Jane realized that she was in over her head. She had been stupid. And Derrick was leaving her! She loved him, she really did, but it was too late now.

Too late for Jane.

Then Jane did what she always did when something turned in a direction that displeased her. She got angry.

“It was almost as if I was having an out-of-body experience,” she recalls. “I was calm at first. I walked into the garage and found one of Derrick’s baseball bats, and the minute I walked back into the house it was as if a switch inside me had been turned on.”

“I saw what you did, Jane.”

“I would have kept going, but Derrick showed up to talk to me and I went after him.”

“I noticed that also.”

And one other thing.

“There’s more?”

“I thought Derrick was having an affair. I thought he was lying to me, and all the time he was seeing someone, a counselor, because he was so unhappy. I made him so damn unhappy.”

Dr. Bayer can hear the front door opening and then the muffled sound of voices in the entryway. The police have arrived. It’s now time to do the hard part.

“Jane, remember when anger class started and I said that it was a chance and that if something else happened, another violent act, you would have to pay the price?” Dr. Bayer explains, gently, making certain that Jane looks into her eyes.

“I remember. That made me angry, too,” Jane admits, almost smiling.

“I need to know if you think you might be a danger to yourself or to anyone else,” Dr. Bayer says.

“Didn’t you get a close look at Derrick?”

“Does that mean you would do it again?”

Jane drops her head, lets the air out of her lungs, and remains quiet. She is afraid to speak, to move, to be totally honest.

Dr. Bayer gives her a moment and then reaches over to lift up her chin, so that she’s looking into her eyes again.

“Do you want me to help you, Jane?”

Jane’s entire life balances like a rock about to go over a cliff. It’s quiet in the closet, and she’d love to curl up against Dr. Bayer and sleep for three weeks. She’s suddenly seized by a wave of such exhaustion that she’s afraid she won’t be able to speak, move her hands, blink an eyelid.

Where have all the days and nights and chances gone? Was there ever a moment when she could have imagined this desperate position? Is there a correct answer for the question she has just been asked? Why couldn’t she hang on to those wonderful moments she had while doing Dr. Bayer’s assignments?

Jane sags forward and Dr. Bayer can feel the weight of her body, the weight of what she has done, the weight of what surely she must now know lies ahead. She brings both hands to Jane’s face, cups it softly, and pulls up her head again.

Once, Dr. Bayer looked like this. Once she was a forgotten, miserable, lost soul who could have taken the fall over the cliff just as easily as the step back. But Jane has to want to take that step. Dr. Bayer knows that some people have to fall hard before they can get up and accept the fact that they must learn a new way of walking. And how she wishes that were not true.

How she wishes that she could wave a wand and save every dark soul, every heart that aches, every lost and longing person she meets! How she wishes Jane had not destroyed the house, half of her husband’s face, and the glorious chance she had to dissect her anger, take the little pieces and throw them into the wind, and then take off in a new direction! How she wishes she were not sitting cross-legged on the floor of an empty closet with a woman who has to make the hardest decision of her life!

While Jane debates something that is not debatable, Olivia has a moment to wonder why she didn’t see this coming. Maybe she did see it coming and she ignored it because she was so damn desperate for a total happy ending. Maybe she forgot that even with a class of four, the odds against every single woman accepting her penance, forgiving herself, and moving on was slim to none. Maybe she was so eager to go out with a total victory that she didn’t bother to think about anything else.

Jane was certainly up and down but she was trying sometimes or maybe doing a really good job of faking it. Maybe if there had been one more red flag, something else—anything—Jane would be in the kitchen now reconciling with Derrick.

The list of maybes makes Olivia realize exactly how tired she is at this moment. The reality, no matter what was and wasn’t ignored, is that two grown women are now sitting on the floor of a closet. The bigger reality is what Dr. Bayer will now have to do.