A Small Matter (17 page)

She removed her ring, thought better of it,
and slipped it back on.

It stays on from now on, she thought. These
are my last weeks, possibly last days. I’ve experienced what was no
doubt the worst day of my entire life. The ring stays on.

She thought of her mother and a lump rose in
her throat. Mom had made the journey before her, was even now
awaiting her on the other side--a distance not all that great, but
apparently impossible to traverse until exactly the right moment.
Until that moment, heaven and earth would fight you tooth and nail,
even if it took a thirty pound cat and near-electrocution to force
you to stick it out.

It had been a bad idea to come to the house.
She realized it now. The house held too many memories. Here she
stood in her old kitchen. Dalk was gone, translocated by the
resourceful Mary-Jo into his new Santa Monica estate. Mulroney was
lying dead in an ICU in Westwood, hooked up to Heaven-knew-what
kind of machinery. No dignity in dying there. The kitchen was quiet
save for the sounds of the storm outside and the implausible
macaroon mastications of the cat on the counter.

Something had drawn her back to the house.
She understood suddenly the importance of the cocktail napkin
enscrawled with Mulroney’s hopes for her healing. An invitation
from him to her to attend a miracle on her behalf. An invitation
she, in her pride, had yesterday refused. Today, the message looked
different against the hard flat landscape of her failed suicide
attempt. Today, images of healing began to punctuate her thoughts.
What if there was a chance?

Of course, there would be no healing. But it
was his last request.

She went to her closet to change--the closet
was empty! Somebody, in their well-meaning haste, had moved all her
clothes out of the house along with Dalk’s stuff. She had nothing
to wear but the bloody, torn, wedding dress.

She returned to the kitchen, closing the
cocktail napkin with the North Hollywood address into the datebook,
tucking it under her arm before grabbing her keys and, as an
afterthought, picking up the suitcase containing the Virgin
Mary-embossed bridal train before heading out the back sliding door
into the storm and towards the garage.

Upon opening the car door of her red Camaro,
Kilkenney appeared out of nowhere and leaped in, dog-like.

“Fair enough,” she said to him. “You might as
well go along for the ride. After all, in the game of life and
death, your vote counts as much as anybody’s.” She backed out into
the alley and slowly made her way through the streets awash from
the flood, steering the vehicle slowly eastward towards North
Hollywood and her appointed destination with Mulroney’s Virgin Mary
lady. The cat sat in the jump seat, remaining completely calm. It
was a moment of almost unbearable intimacy--the first between
them.

“Don’t get excited,” she said, “but I’m
starting to like you. Only a little, though.”

Kilkenney didn’t overdo it when he heard
this, choosing instead the self-effacing demeanor which made it
appear that he hadn’t understood a word. He sat heavy in his seat,
shoulders hunched, his voice low and purring, offering to her
wounded mind and body the extreme virtue of his stolid, stoic
support.

In that fashion, the pair slowly vanquished
the flooded streets, coming at last to their destination on Kling
Street, where, it had been said to Mulroney, as the song had once
been sung:

There’s a stranger in town,

And she's healin'

She’s healin’ all the folks around.

Chapter 26

Kilkenney watched dolefully from the Camaro
while Vickie stepped out into ankle-deep water and made her way
around the car and up the sidewalk to the front door of the house.
She’d brought the suitcase with her, reasoning that if she indeed
was venturing into an enclave wherein the Blessed Mother was duly
respected, and healing was indeed taking place, what better gift
could she offer for her healing than the priceless wedding train
which, like the whisper of an angel, conveyed so beautifully the
essence of the Holy Mother.

The house was typically North Hollywood, a
nondescript yellow stucco-covered box with a frayed brown lawn
dominated by an aged and overbearing walnut tree. The windows were
covered with decorative iron bars for repelling any predators who
made it past a couple of faded wooden ducks beside the sidewalk who
sat sentry over a terrazzo pot filled with rocks and the leafless
stem of something she couldn’t identify. The two-step concrete slab
serving as a porch sported a welcome mat, a ribbed rubber job, worn
threadless in times past.

Vickie stood on the porch and couldn’t help
but wonder why somebody’d taken the time and trouble to nail a
small white plastic crucifix over the sill. The faded front
entrance offered her a choice of push-button doorbell or brass
knocker. She pushed the button and heard nothing and gave the
knocker a couple of quick hard raps, preparing to camp out if
necessary, but inwardly praying that someone would answer soon to
save her from the slanting rain, which was now coming down like a
monsoon.

Silently, Vickie started to cry. She cried
for Mulroney and for her own drowned, bloody and wounded
wretchedness. She looked down and saw the blood rivering from the
wound in her side down the outside of her dress onto the porch,
mixing with the water at her feet.

Someone did answer soon and she found herself
face-to-face with a woman in a bright pink robe. The woman was
Hispanic, in her late forties, and a bit thick, with placid brown
eyes radiating compassion. Her persona, that of quiet inner
strength, infused Vickie with a sensation of fragility, like that
of a wounded bird. The woman said not a word at this apparition on
her doorstep, but instead gently led Vickie by the hand across a
living room entirely bereft of furniture to a breakfast nook off
the kitchen wherein was staged a small plastic and chrome kitchen
dinette, seating her carefully before quickly assembling on the
table top various items of first aid and comfort, including a blue
plastic first-aid kit, a pair of soft bedroom slippers, and a large
white flannel sheet. Soaking a clean washcloth with warm water and
mild soap, the woman began gently cleansing Vickie’s wounds,
starting with the lacerations on her back from the electrified gold
chains, slowly peeling away the now tattered and defunct Flower of
Ireland gown, carefully maintaining Vickie’s modesty all the while
by substituting for the gown the flannel sheet, which she loosely
wrapped around Vickie’s trembling frame while she worked.

After a time, when Vickie was cleaned up to
her satisfaction, the woman made tea, using a tea ball filled with
a mysterious herbal material from a plastic pouch, and Vickie found
herself carefully sipping the hot, tangy, aromatic liquid while the
woman frowningly examined the puckered opening in her side from
where the biopsy incision had opened.

“This should be cleaned out and closed up by
a doctor,” the woman said. “The best I can do is close it tight
with a gauze pad and adhesive tape.”

“Please,” Vickie said, “I don’t want the
bleeding to start up again.”

“Here we go,” the woman said. She performed
the closure, taping it tight before gently helping Vickie to her
feet and leading her to a back bedroom, otherwise empty save for a
blanketed mattress and box spring which sat on the floor without
benefit of frame or headboard. “Please lie down,” she said. “I’ll
be back in a minute.”

The blankets and pillowcases smelled clean
and fresh. She stretched out, feeling vulnerable, yet relieved. Her
newfound helper returned and offered Vickie a glass of cloudy white
liquid.

“To help you sleep,” the woman said.

Vickie drained the glass, realizing as she
did so, the oddity of surrendering herself to a stranger. Only a
few hours before, such an act would have been unthinkable. But she
was no longer operating in her old zone.

“Your wound indicates you had a biopsy,” the
woman said. “What was the result?”

“Malignant,” Vickie said. “I have pancreatic
cancer. My husband wanted me to come here--he said there was a
chance of a miracle.”

“What is your name?”

“Vickie.”

“I’m Theresa. I’m a poor woman, but the
Virgin has blessed me with a gift for helping others.”

Again the woman left the room, returning with
a three-foot-tall statuette of the Virgin Mary, noting Vickie’s
widening eyes.

“It’s okay,” Theresa said. “If you kiss the
statue, you will get better.” She extended the face of the statue
towards Vickie’s lips. There was a sticky reddish brown liquid
seeping from the Virgin’s eyes. Vickie kissed the statue, and as
she did so, the liquid dripped on her face. Reflexively, she wiped
it with the back of her hand and examined it.

“This looks like blood,” Vickie said.

“The Virgin is weeping blood for you,”
Theresa said. “That’s a good sign.”

“I have something for you,” Vickie said. “In
my suitcase. Please open it.”

The woman opened the suitcase and drew out
the train, revealing the Mother.

“Ay, Jesus, Maria y Jose,” Theresa said.
“This is indeed a gift from Heaven.” The woman left with the train
and returned with a small plastic rosary. “Here,” she said. “This
is for you. It has a drop of blood from the Virgin on the
crucifix.”

“Thank you,” Vickie said.

“You need rest,” Theresa said. “Sleep now.
When you wake up, we’ll talk.”

Vickie put her head back and closed her eyes.
The tender ministrations of the woman in the bright pink robe had
induced within herself a sense of childlike security, the first
she’d felt in weeks. She’d been prepared, upon her arrival at the
house, to slide into her usual pit of self-loathing and
recrimination over everything that had happened, but found that the
negativity couldn’t get a spark, couldn’t get started in the
presence of her benefactress. Never before had she felt she’d come
to know anyone so fast, trust anyone so completely. But now she
did. She’d been expecting a room full of little old ladies, heads
covered in lace mantillas, reciting rosaries in front of a statue.
She’d not been expecting the simple, solitary straightforwardness
of Theresa.

Outside her window, a howling blast of rainy
wind slapped the windows, accenting her sense of warmth and
security under the soft but comforting weight of her blankets. She
wasn’t sobbing, but she knew she was crying again. She cried for
all the things in her life that had passed, and for all the things
that would never be. Most of all, she cried for her mother and the
torments she’d endured before her death. Vickie realized in the
deepest part of herself that she loved her mother in a way that
would never accept their parting. Her mother’s face appeared before
her--a face young, unlined, peaceful, radiating love, a face that
said to her Everything Is All Right. You Are My Beloved Daughter.
Her mother kissed her forehead and then the lids of her eyes,
sealing them shut.

An image of a Christmas tree entered her mind
and she remembered a happier time when she’d helped her mother
decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. She’d been a tiny child, but
mother had let her help with the icicles, praising her greatly for
her efforts to string the shining strands over the boughs. The
shining strands formed into a sparkling waterfall in her mind, and
she stood before the falls under a cloudless sky. The music of the
falls was joyful, and connected to her soul in a way that brought
forth mirth from the depths of her being. It was a laughing
waterfall, running through her, bringing it’s waves of joy into her
heart. The waterfall began to sing and was joined by voices from
somewhere overhead, the voices merging with the water until the
great intensity of the performance lifted her up and carried her
skyward into the sun. She drank the sun eagerly into herself in a
way which filled her with light.

Vickie slept.

Chapter 27

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought your
cat in,” Theresa said. “He’s certainly a big animal.”

“I don’t mind,” Vickie said. “But I still
don’t understand why you took me in. Most people would have simply
called the paramedics.”

Theresa and Vickie sat talking together at
the dinette while Kilkenney slept on a towel in a laundry basket on
the kitchen countertop. Atop the dinette sat the statue of the
weeping Virgin. Vickie realized for the first time that, apart from
the bed she’d slept on, the dinette was the only furniture in an
otherwise empty house. Wrapped in a heavy blanket from the bed, she
was feeling somewhat better after a rock-solid thirteen hours of
sleep. The day she’d slept through had given way to a crisp, cool
evening, in stark contrast to the earlier storm which, leaving much
devastation in its wake, had mercifully passed. The two women had
shared a simple meal of Mexican sweetbread and even sweeter coffee
and talked at length about the past several days of Vickie’s life,
allowing Vickie the opportunity to unburden herself to this
sympathetic stranger.

“You ask why I took you in,” Theresa said.
“It’s because this place is my home, but it also belongs to Our
Lady. When I saw you at the door, I felt Our Lady was telling me to
take you in. This is not an ordinary place. You yourself have now
seen the statue of the Virgin weeping her tears of blood. A lot of
people have come here and many miracles have happened. They even
came here from Channel 5 a few weeks ago--but the statue wouldn’t
weep for them.”

“You speak very good English,” Vickie
said.

“I learned my English in San Diego when I
lived there for four years when I was a young girl,” Theresa said.
“But I returned to Mexico to marry my husband. We came up here
together last year, but it hasn’t gone well for us. I can’t
complain. Everything is as it should be. Our Lady sees to
that.”