Before I Wake (22 page)

 

“Barrett residence.”

“Karen?”

“No, I'm sorry. Mrs. Barrett isn't available to come to the phone right now. This is Ruth Page speaking.”

“Oh. Is…is Simon there?”

“No, I'm sorry. Mr. Barrett isn't available either. Is there something I could help you with?”

“No, I…Will they be home soon? I need…”

“I'm afraid I don't know exactly when they'll be home. Is there something wrong?”

“No. No, I just…Can you take a message?”

“For Mrs. Barrett?”

“For either of them, I guess. It doesn't really…”

“Of course.”

“Tell them…This is Donna Kelly. My son, Jeffrey…could you please tell them, tell them we're sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry for what? Mrs. Kelly? Are you still there? Mrs. Kelly? Hello? Hello?”

 

SIMON

Neither of us was particularly hungry after our late lunch in Chinatown, so we had a salad for dinner. A little lettuce, a little endive, some red cabbage and grated carrot, a honey vinaigrette—light and sweet with a touch of bitterness.

After dinner, Karen looked at me. “Would it be okay with you if I had a bath? I never feel comfortable having one when it's just Sherry and me in the house.”

“Of course.”

Once I was done with the dishes, I went upstairs.

Access to the attic was a pulldown ladder at the end of the corridor. The only light was a bare bulb hanging from the rafters, catching motes of dust in the air. Karen and I had talked about building an apartment up here for Sherry when she got to be a teenager. It had seemed so far in the future then—now, it seemed to belong to a distant past.

The attic wasn't cluttered: some boxes of books and clothes, an old dresser still waiting to be refinished, a trunk of Christmas decorations that my mother had given us when she sold the house. It still took me a while to find the guitar, the black case leaning in a corner in plain sight, but overlooked so often it might as well have been hidden. I dusted the case off
with the dish towel I had brought up with me, then pulled the chain to turn the light off, closing the attic door behind me.

My new books and CDs were on the coffee table in the family room, alongside my watch and wallet. At one end of the couch I had stacked my pillows and the folded sleeping bag. Sitting down, I set the guitar case on my lap, flipping open the catches.

I lifted the guitar from the case and the fingers of my left hand curled around the neck. I carefully rubbed it down with a chamois, bringing the color back up to a rich, honey-colored shine. The conditions in the attic must have been all right—it hadn't warped or dried out. I changed the strings, and then spent several minutes tightening the keys, plucking each string, bringing the whole into tune.

I'd heard stories of guitars that had been destroyed by being stored for a lot less time than this one. Sometimes an unloved, untouched guitar just faded away, incapable of holding a note, flat and lifeless. Casualty of neglect.

I strummed the strings lightly. The sound was far from pure, far from clean, but that was more my rusty technique than the guitar itself. I fumbled for the chords. My fingers were stiff, and my transitions were awkward, but the guitar sounded fine. Its vibrations pulsed through my belly and filled me with a remembered warmth. The strings pressed small troughs into my fingertips as I moved through the chords, first slowly, gradually faster.

Karen had bought me my first guitar for my twentieth birthday. I didn't even play. In high school, with my father out of work, then out of the picture altogether, my mother always struggled to make ends meet. She wouldn't let me work to help out, so I dedicated myself to my studies. There just wasn't any time to waste on something as frivolous as music.

But Karen knew that a guitar was something I had always wanted.

I asked Chris, this pothead who had lived on my floor in residence, to show me some chords. After that, I practiced every night for an hour, a good break from studying. The first time I played in front of people I was drunk. I played “Tangled Up in Blue” to the crowd at one of our house parties, stumbling a little on the changes at first, but quickly getting caught up in the flow. I even sang.

“Well, you're not as bad as Bob Dylan,” Karen told me that night after everyone had left. I took it as a compliment and kept playing. Soon, a couple of the other guys started bringing their guitars with them and we'd play together.

I wondered where they'd ended up.

I fumbled in the pocket of the case for my capo, fastening it to the neck of the guitar, bringing it up a bit to suit my voice. I tried to find the pitch, then took the capo off, dropping it back into the case. Apparently my voice wasn't as high as it had been.

Clearing my throat, I began to sing.

KAREN

He was playing with his whole body, leaning into the notes, the chords, bending into the song, his eyes closed. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his voice strained a little to keep even close to the tune. He mumbled the words he didn't remember, or just hummed over them. I drew my robe closely around myself against the cooling of the house.

He played each song all the way through, never stopping, as if he needed to finish, needed to see each one through.

 

Well met, well met, my own true love

Well met, well met, cried he

I've just returned from the salt, salt sea

And it's all for the love of thee.

 

They were all songs I had heard a hundred times, songs that seemed more fragments of dream than of memory.

I finally crept away without him seeing me, turning off the lights as I went. As I crawled into bed, I could still hear the guitar echoing through the heat pipes, the hallways, the otherwise silent rooms, his voice weaving in and out of the notes.

For some reason, the sound of it made me feel both warm and frightened.

 

Victoria New Sentinel
Monday, December 9, 1996
Miracle Fraud?
Investigation reveals false healings, fraud
~City Desk~

 

In a surprising development late Sunday, a source close to the Catholic Church announced that an inquiry may take place into the healings attributed to four-year-old Sherilyn Barrett, comatose since a hit-and-run accident last spring. According to confidential reports, those healings may be part of an elaborate fraud devised by her parents, Karen Barrett, a former journalist, and her estranged husband, Simon Barrett, an associate with Bradford & Howe.

The
New Sentinel
spoke to one pilgrim who says she no longer expects a miracle.

“It's all about money,” says Donna Kelly of Seattle. Kelly's six-year-old son, Jeffrey, suffers from leukemia, and was invited into the Barrett home on Friday. “They sit you down and give you this story about medical bills, and how all of the money goes to caring for Sherry. It's pretty clear that if you don't cough it up, they won't let you see her.” Although Miss Kelly wouldn't divulge the

amount she contributed, she is very clear on the cost to her. “They catch you in this untenable position. You're ready to do anything if you think there's a chance that maybe it'll save your child's life.”

A source close to the Catholic Church discussed the nature of miracles. “We usually find that these supposed miracles are psychosomatic. People experience temporary recovery because they believe in the possibility of having been healed. For the sufferers, it's all about faith. People who are less scrupulous can easily take advantage of these believers. That's what makes fraudulent situations so reprehensible. That people can prey on other people's desperation, taking advantage of tragedy for their own gain, is terrible.”

According to a statement released by the Barretts Friday afternoon, they will be allowing people access to their daughter and her alleged powers beginning at ten o'clock today. “It looks like a textbook situation,” says the source. “You hold people off, start the rumors going, then just let the demand build. The higher the demand, the higher the price.”

The Barretts could not be reached for comment, nor would they allow investigators access to examine Sherilyn. Victoria Police would not confirm whether they would investigate the situation, or if criminal charges would be pending. “It would be premature to say anything at this point.”

 

KAREN

I awoke to a familiar but unaccustomed weight at the foot of the bed. “Simon?”

“It's me,” he whispered, touching my foot through the
blankets. I could see the vaguest outline of him, sitting on the bed and looking toward the bedroom door.

“What are you doing? What time is it?” I struggled up to a sitting position.

“It's a little after seven.”

“Okay.”

“Can I turn on the light?” He stood up, and the mattress shifted.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, fumbling for the bedside lamp.

He turned on the ceiling lamp before I had a chance to flick the switch. The light was painfully bright on my sleep-darkened eyes. “Sorry,” he said as I winced.

“What's going on?”

He sat down on the bed next to me, wearing only his socks, underwear and an undershirt. “You need to look at this,” he said, laying today's newspaper on my lap.

“What is it? What's…” The black headline, over the picture of our house stopped me cold.
Miracle Fraud?
“Oh my God,” I muttered, skimming through the article.

“I'm going to guess that the unnamed church source is likely—”

“Father Peter,” I finished Simon's sentence for him.

I stared at the headline. “Why would Donna Kelly say we asked her for money?”

“Maybe Father Peter made her a better offer.”

“But we saved her son. Sherry saved Jeffrey's life.”

“We think. We don't know that. Jeffrey might be just as bad today. Worse.”

I dropped the newspaper onto the bed. “Well, I guess that's what her phone call was about yesterday.”

“Father Peter likely showed up at her hotel room with a bag full of money and some variation on the line he tried to sell us. She didn't really have a choice. She's not working—”

“I know, I know,” I said, shaking my head, able to imagine myself in her position. “I just can't—”

I wanted to curl up and go back to sleep, to wake up a few hours later and discover that this was all a dream.

Instead, I asked, “So what do we do now? Can we sue them, or…”

“We can try,” he said. “It's pretty expensive to pursue a libel action.”

“So what are we going to do? Nobody's going to come if they think the whole thing is a fraud.” A moment later I realized what I'd just said.

“Wouldn't that be better?” Simon looked at me. “Not to have to worry about it…Just like Father Peter was saying the other day?”

“No,” I said. “No. It might be easier, but if Sherry
can
help people, then it's not better. I want the people to come.”

I waited for an argument, but he just nodded.

“That's good,” he said. “Because there were four people waiting on the front step when I went out to get the paper.”

“Had they seen it?” I couldn't keep track of all the things that I was feeling.

“One of them mentioned it to me,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“There were already people waiting?”

“As of seven o'clock.”

 

“Sheila, it's Simon.”

“Simon, I was just…Is everything all right?”

“It's been a strange couple of days. That's why I'm calling. I think I need to take a few personal days to try to get through the worst of this. Can you please…”

“Simon, I was about to call you.”

“Why? What is it?”

“The senior partners want to meet with you at 9:30.”

“Did they say—”

“In Mr. Fitzgerald's office.”

“Oh. Well. Let them know I'll be there.”

 

MARY

I was sitting on the leather couch in Simon's office, pretending to make notes on a yellow pad, when he opened the door. I stood up slowly, my heart rushing in my chest.

“Good morning,” he said, closing the door.

“Hello,” I said. “I saw the paper.”

He set his briefcase on the floor. “Yeah.”

I had no idea what I wanted to say. The silence stretched for almost a minute, before I asked, “So what are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“About the newspaper?”

He shrugged. He seemed distracted, not really there. “There's not a whole lot we can do. If we threaten to sue, they'll just print a correction on page H17 where no one will ever see it. And I'm not about to go suing the Catholic Church over whether or not my daughter's a saint, let alone that poor kid's mother.” As he was speaking his eyes were darting around the office.

Leaning over his desk, he glanced through the pink message slips. “I tried calling you this weekend,” he said, without looking up. “After you left.”

“I went home. Back to my apartment. I got together with some friends Friday night.”

“Why?”

The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean
why?
You were at home with your wife and daughter. I didn't think there was a whole lot of room for me in that picture.”

“I needed you.”

“You don't know what you need.”

“What?”

“Simon, I love you,” I started, as coolly as I could. “But you—you just don't know. You don't know where you're going, you don't know what you want. Who you want to be with.” He started to protest, but I held up my hand. “No. Don't. I don't want to be the girl who broke up your marriage. And I don't want to be some bit on the side. Not anymore. That's why I left. If there's any chance that you're going to go back to Karen, I don't want to stand in the way, but I sure don't want to participate in it.”