Untitled.FR11 (20 page)

Lyra asked her what she wanted today.

“Coconut oil,” Katt said. “Ten minutes on the back, ten on the front, and the remainder on my hands and arms. They feel drained.”

“Too much time in front of the monitor?”

“Maybe,” she said. That wasn’t it. Pervasive guilt had slumped like a lead cloak on her back. Her hands had hung like weights at the ends of her arms, a slight shift really, but she felt stooped like an orangutan. Her body had responded, the night of Lyra’s lecture, to emergency, like a mother lifting a car off her child. Since then it had foundered in shock.

Katt rested her head downward on the face cradle, as Lyra pulled along her back and drew sighs and sorrow from her. She felt like nothing, lying there. Unworthy to be touched. It seemed absurd now that she had suspected her friend of knowing her secret. And yet she marveled that, unclothed as she was on the massage table, Lyra could not divine what was inside her.

Talk was minimal until Katt turned over. Then, in a state of repose, she knew that her face, preoccupied with guilt as it was, spoke volumes. “You’re tense today, all over.” No accusation. Just observing.

“Yes, I guess I am.”

Seconds drifted by. Lyra worked her legs and thighs with strong sure hands. “This is a good time to let your worries go,” she said. “You can invite them back later.”

“You’re helping,” Katt said. Barely helping, a skim of misery off the top. “It’s just that. . .” Her pause went on, melded with the silence. Lyra didn’t pursue it, but oiled Katt’s right arm and began vigorous deep tissue massage from elbow to shoulder.

“Joseph and I pour our troubles deep into the earth. Sure, the holes we dig around the cabin let Gaia breathe. But lately we go deeper and deeper.” Lyra pressed firmly into Katt’s flesh, striking sorrow. “Four feet deep. We do it naked except for our ten-nies. We watch one another dig, good honest sensual work. Then we kneel at the hole and allow all of our negativity to settle into it. Feels so good to shovel the dirt lightly back in, spreading the excess around. The Mother is there for us. You ought to try it next time you’re up there.”

Katt felt her friend’s firm nurturing touch upon her right hand and fingers: Innocence strengthening a murder weapon. The sense memory of harming her son revived, and tears came. How could she have done it? Marcus had been heavy upon her mind, and Conner had been caught up in the stress of those days. Katt could see herself then, could feel dim echoes of what moved her—but it seemed so alien now, so remote from anything she’d ever do. And yet, who could say that she wouldn’t again feel the pressure? Was she without morals? Was she unnatural? A monster?

“What is it, sweetheart? What’s bothering you?” The gentle caring in Lyra’s tone brought more tears. Lyra leaned over and hugged her. “I feel,” Katt said, “I feel like I caused it, Conner’s illness.” How to say it, and yet not say it? “Almost as if I set it off.”

“You didn’t set anything off,” Lyra said. “You made him well. You’ve got the touch. You know it, and I know it. The energy vortex helps us, but you more than me and Joseph. Until we buried envy in the ground, we envied it in you.” She reached down and seized the hand she’d been working on. “You’re a good person, Katt. A kind, caring sweetheart.”

An urge to confess all welled up. Lyra would surely understand, the complexities of mood, how life was really lived beneath society’s simple vision. “But what I did,” she began. Then she saw Lyra’s face, the locked-in look, her eyes fixed fiercely on her own New Age notions, light and airy, denying or shunting aside all meanness, denying the inner darkness. “What I did . . . was I guess not to really be there for him when Marcus . . . slipped away.” “You think that set him off?”

“Yes.” And in that vein she continued, spinning the yarn she had to spin, lies, all lies, pulling away like a slow train from her friend. Her tears were real, but her words shied around the truth, did not tell it, refused to set it down unvarnished. And Lyra’s comfort, directed at the wrong target—a mask hung askew over a bare face—did Katt good, but of course missed its true mark. After she had helped Lyra finish an exchange of plaint and comfort, she lay there, washed spottily clean. Her left arm eased under Lyra’s touch, the guilt again there, mingled with a get-ting-away-with-lies. Would she ever dare tell anyone? Or (and this she fervently hoped) might the guilt dwindle away and leave her in peace, no more than a distant ache?

Something was wrong with Mom. She returned his hugs, told him she loved him. But it always felt as if she were going somewhere else. That night in the hospital had been amazing. He’d been drowning, his lungs full of water, his body ready to give up. Then she’d reached down and lifted him up up up through the glittering surface into sunlight, draining his lungs, coaxing breath back into them, holding him close and warm, giving new life to him. But since her return home, it was almost as if she’d sacrificed too much for him. His energy felt boundless. He was determined to right the balance.

He’d been back many times to the Poudre, hoping for a glimpse of his jogging friend again. No luck. He pedaled west through glorious sunlight, eager to find Mom while he felt so invigorated. She was in the breakfast nook, a mug of coffee untouched in front of her, when he came in.

Instead of a Hi! in passing, her returning it without looking at him, he slid in across from her. “Hi, Mom,” he said, a friendly opening, almost a challenge.

Her glance toward him happened in stages. A flare of alarm passed over her face, then a sickly softening. “How was your biking?” Her hands curved protectively about her coffee mug.

“Super,” he said. “Can I ask you something?” It was urgent in him, the need to get this out. It’d hammered at him for days.

“Sure.” She wasn’t sure at all. He knew that by her tone and by her sideways shift in the chair.

“It’s great that you cured me and all. I mean really great—”

“It was a miracle.”

“—assuming it lasts and everything—”

“It’ll last. Don’t worry about that.”

He was faltering. “But what I want to know is, could you have cured Dad? I mean why didn’t you?” She squirmed a little. “I bet I know why. You had no idea—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “You can wonder those things. I want to know what’s bothering you, whenever anything is. I wish I’d had the power then. But I didn’t. I’m sure of that. It was ... it grew over time.” She had him fixed in a soft laser beam, the look she used when she wanted to stress how serious she was. “I doubted it. I realize now that I could have come to you much sooner, and that’s part of what’s been eating at me—”

“But the point is, you came.”

“—yes and I know that in my head. But my body feels bad about it. Sometimes it’s hard to get them in synch.”

That was true. God, or whoever, had made people like Slinky toys, where the tail end always lagged behind. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m just happy to have my life back.”

She smiled wanly. “I’ll get there. Don’t worry. As for your father, I know without question that I didn’t yet have anywhere near the ability I needed. I wish it’d been otherwise. But it wasn’t.”

Conner thought of the drive out west, him next to his dad, not realizing how little time they had. He tapped an index finger lightly on the table. ‘‘I miss him, Mom.”

“Me too.” She didn’t. She didn’t miss him. But she caught that glibness, and countered it. “Yes, I really do miss him. It’s just that I’m trying to adjust to his loss and so I’m shutting him out sometimes— does that sound too terrible?—but it feels too early to do that, and at night in my bed, all alone, he’s still there, nearby and yet not within reach. I wonder someumes if I’ll ever get over it at all.”

“Me and Sherry are here for you,” he said. Funny how he included Sherry in the picture. But she seemed family, not at all a stranger.

Mom nodded. “I’m so grateful for you both.” “Oh and about Sherry?” He felt bold, rushing into it on a breath.

“Yes?”

“It’s okay with me, it’s all okay.” His sex ed class in Iowa had brushed by it. But the kids on the playground had had a field day. The talk had concentrated on how ugh it was to think of guys together like that. And there was some sniggering about girls. But they’d all been thinking about Miss Mitchell, the Spanish teacher, how nice she was and how nice Miss Nugent the admin assistant in the office was, and how perfect and normal they seemed, how clear and right it was that they were together—something not stated ever, but refreshingly obvious. So Conner didn’t have any problem with girls together. None at all.

“What’s okay?” his mother asked.

“ You know,” he said. “All of it.”

Mom paused. “Sherry’s a good friend.”

“I think she’s the greatest. I love her.”

“I do too.” She looked astounded and admiring all at once. “I love her too.” It was the first faint sign of a smile he’d seen in days. “And I love you, Conner. I love you very much.”

“Ditto, Mom.” He felt suddenly embarrassed. He slid out of his chair. “So you can do . . .” Thoughts flitted by: Sherry living here, breakfast in bathrobes, beginning the school year, finding friends, testing them by how they took it. He’d nearly died. He couldn’t waste his time on small-minded bigots. “. . . you know . . . whatever.”

“Got you, Conner. I think!”

“Good. Good.” No need to say any of that. And next time, he’d shake loose of the embarrassment— just like how I love you became easier to say once you broke the barrier—and there they’d be. “Well, I guess I’ll go find things to do, read a book or something.”

“You do that.”

“I will.” He grabbed a stack of Oreos and closed the cupboard door. “See ya.”

Sherry fled from the dream, the edge of protest still in her voice. Waking had rushed into her, as swift as the brand came searing into her face, MINE glowing in hot wire that lay somehow flat as the base of an ingot. It flamed. Orange heat wrapped about the letters, and it was close no it flared open her face! and the man holding it was Derek, her husband, yes, but his face shifted through Doctor Bein and the intern at the elevator and Twisted Man and the guy on the couch yanking at himself and Marcus—and flickering scores of others like a snapped deck of cards. It pressed against her cheeks, mashed her nose, the hot metal sinking in deeper and deeper. MINE, all MINE, burning up and into her every thought. And then the bedroom, dim and warm and quiet, rose up to awaken her, sheets in gripped bunches at her chest.

Wide awake, she swore. Her heart was pounding. Took in the clock. An hour earlier than her normal rising time but there was no sleep left in her. She got up, showered, dressed, microwaved some Quaker Instant in milk—Maple and Brown Sugar. She thought she’d processed all that crap in the year following Derek’s departure. Must have buried it and paved it over, too much to handle after a while. Now, allowing herself to open up again, her unfinished business had returned, clamoring for completion.

Most of the day, stacks of ungraded exams kept her in the office. Bernie Hedges came by for a conference on his master’s thesis—the dreamy-eyed Mr. Hedges, who needed no conferring at all, but only a reliable barrage of boffing. Not from her, never that, but from some girlfriend who was taking her time materializing. Bernie, she told him, your thesis is fine. Let’s discontinue the weekly conferences. You don’t need them. He had mumbled an okay and gone away crestfallen, one more minor complication pared away.

Then she called Katt. Just checking in, Sherry said. Her friend sounded down but reasonable. Katt told her the things Conner had said that morning, among them an oblique but clear okay to their relationship. That’s the word she used. Relationship. It heartened Sherry.

“Listen,” she said. “Why don’t I come over in say an hour or two? I’ll stop at Alfalfa’s, gather some fixings, make you two some nice polenta for dinner.”

“I don’t know if tonight would be good.” Same damned deferral she’d been hearing for days.

“Katt, c’mon. I like you. Dammit, I love you. It’s been this way for a week.” It was closer to two weeks but why quibble? “I call, you put me off, Conner talks to me, invites me over, and we end up having a nice quiet healing time together. And the healing works both ways. I’ve got stuff in me you’re doing wonders for, even without trying. But look, it comes down to this.” Did she want to deliver an ultimatum? A challenge? No, but sometimes such things were required. “I have to know where I stand with you. I don’t want to rush things, and I think you know that—”

“I do.”

“—but you need to invite me into your life. Any way other than that feels like I’m horning in and I don’t want to hang around where I’m not wanted.”

There was confusion in the pause that fell. But Katt said, weakly at first, then stronger, “You’re light. I' ve been just the way you said. Things feel so

small and dead and closed up when I’m here alone. But I’m always so glad when you drop by. Please do it. Please come by and we’ll make dinner together, the three of us.”

Then Sherry popped it, Conner’s approval on her mind: “I’d like to bring a change of clothes.”

“You mean ...” Katt said.

Sherry hung fire.

“Don’t you teach classes tomorrow morning?” “Not a problem. I’ll leave at dawn, get home, shower up, be there in plenty of time.”

“Well okay. Yes. Do. Just cuddling though. I need to be held, that’s all.”

“I understand,” Sherry told Katt. She’d be damned if she’d settle for that. No. She amended her thinking. If Katt truly only wanted hugs, then so be it. But sex had a healing power all its own, the body rising to an emotional peak, joy and tears and heartache coming to the surface in an outsurge of salvation. She’d tempt Katt that way, coax her with gentle hands and soothing words, test the waters. “We’ll hold each other all night long,” she told her.

The hour dragged, her mind no longer able to fix on C code and its intricacies. At last, she slapped her pen on the blotter before her. Enough for today. Outside in the waning sunlight, students walked by in idle chat. Couples in miniature, far too young to know what love was, slanted arm in arm across her third-story window.

She drove home, packed her overnight bag, stopped for tomatoes and spices and flour, then up College to Prospect and past the Holiday Inn. All that time, thoughts of what she’d witnessed at the