Before I Wake (28 page)

It had been a very long time since he had been forced to call his soldiers to direct action. This pressure would be enough. This family had no faith, nothing to guide them. They were barely a family: why should they persevere?

He allowed himself to smile as the front door opened and the husband emerged, his face a grim mask. The husband stared at the stranger as he closed the door behind him, rattling the handle to ensure it was locked.

The stranger's face broke into a smile as the husband began to scrub at the wall. Such fools, to think they could so easily clean the stain on their house, on their souls.

RUTH

Simon was hunched over the sink with the water running when I came into the kitchen. “Am I in your way?” he asked.

“I can wait.”

“It could be a while. I can't get this paint off.” He squirted dish detergent into his palm, then scrubbed with a small brush.

“It was still wet?”

He shook his head, attacking his nails. “No, it's these little flecks. They stick—” He threw the brush into the sink and rinsed his hands under the water. “Forget it. I'll take care of it later.”

“Did you get most of it off? Of the house, I mean.”

He nodded. “I can't believe people,” he said.

“They're just confused.”

“They're sheep. And that priest. Just standing there, staring.”

I spoke softly, trying to calm him. “They're doing what they're told because they think it's the right thing to do.”

“I think I've heard that excuse a time or two. It always starts with a little paint.”

“Sometimes it's the truth.”

He looked at me strangely. “What made you so forgiving?”

“It's not for me to judge.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and leaning forward. “I mean,” his voice dropped. “When did it happen?”

I tried to pretend that I didn't know exactly what he was talking about. “What do you mean?”

“You never used to cross yourself. And you're wearing—” He gestured toward me. “I never noticed you wearing a crucifix before.”

My hand rose to my throat.

“You try to keep it covered, but I've seen it. When did this—”

I cut him off. “When do you suppose?”

“Right. But I didn't know you were Catholic.”

“I'm not. I mean, I wasn't. I was baptized in the United Church. But there's a bit more room for the miraculous—”

“Not if you listen to our friend out there.” He gestured toward the front of the house.

“That's why I didn't say anything. I know how Karen feels about the Church, and she's told me about her mother, and with Father Peter…I don't think that he and I pray to the same God.”

Simon nodded as if he understood.

“When I was a girl, growing up in Henderson, the church was the center of everything. It wasn't a matter of belief, it was just there. Bake sales and swap meets. Weddings, wakes and funerals. Christenings. It
was
the community.”

“When I came to Victoria, I didn't feel connected to the church anymore. I had never really believed, so it wasn't a matter of losing my faith. I just didn't need that sort of enforced community. I was too busy building my own. But then…” I hadn't spoken to anyone about the way things had changed for me since Sherry had healed me. “What happened with Sherry opened my eyes. When she healed my sister, it made me see that there's more to the world than just all this. Things we don't always understand.”

“Like what?”

“Like a little girl in the other room who can heal the sick, who stays
well
herself, but can't wake herself up. Why is that, do you think?”

He shook his head.

I smiled. “I don't know either. I'm looking for the answers.”

“I understand.” His voice was almost a whisper.

“In the meantime, though, we should probably help some of those people find what they've come looking for.”

KAREN

By six o'clock I was alone. I ate, straightened the kitchen and washed the dishes. My bones ached. I was exhausted, but I knew that if I tried to go to bed early, I would just lie awake for hours.

I mixed up a supplement and fed Sherry. Her lips were dry and I moistened them with water from the bottle by the bed, then gently dabbed them with balm. On my way back through the house I turned on any lights that weren't already burning. No matter how bright the rooms were, it felt dark. I hit power on the stereo in the family room. I needed the sound, but I couldn't decide who I wanted to listen to, so I left the radio playing. My clothes pinched and pulled, as if they—or my skin—suddenly weren't my own.

There was only one thing to do: I sat beside Sherry's bed, took out my notebook and began to write.

In the last week, I had almost filled a notebook.

I would never show anyone most of what I wrote: rhythmic, rhyming poems almost like nursery rhymes, but threaded with a darker story; fairy tales, but set in the modern world; fables in which the morals were predominantly fatalistic, not uplifting.

I was writing letters to myself, trying to make sense of everything that had happened since the accident. I had fought so long against the idea of miracles, of the divine, but now I wondered. I held my confusion up to the light, trying to allow myself to see in a different way.

My writing seemed marked by the metronomic regularity of my daughter's breathing. In the distance, I could hear the
faint conversation of the protestors on the sidewalk, but they were a world away. Between thoughts or paragraphs, or verses, I looked up at my girl, her lips parted in sleep.

“How are you, baby?” I asked in a whisper, as if she might wake. “Do you want to hear what Mommy's been working on?”

I began to read. “When the spring came and the air filled with the scent of flowers, Mr. Squirrel took off his winter coat and ventured from his house, little knowing that today his life would change forever…”

Hours later I awoke, slumped in the chair, pages clutched to my chest. Turning her carefully on her side, I slid under the covers with her, and slept until the morning light against the blinds woke me.

 

Victoria New Sentinel
Thursday, December 19, 1996
Miracle Casualty
Tempers flare at Fernwood home
~City Desk~

Police and an ambulance were called to the home of four-year-old Sherry Barrett yesterday afternoon when a forty-five-year-old man, suffering from multiple sclerosis, was injured by protestors while attempting to see the little girl.

Witnesses reported a struggle occurred when protestors tried to restrict the man's entry to the Barrett property and the man was pushed to the sidewalk, suffering injuries to his head and back. His name was not released to the media, and the Barrett family could not be reached for comment.

HENRY

Even into the night there were people in front of the Barretts' house, marching, holding their signs proudly, even though there was no one to see them.

I stayed in the shadows, not knowing anymore who might be able to see me, not wanting to risk meeting Peter again. From the dark of the hedge I could watch both the house and people on the sidewalk.

I caught sight of Mrs. Barrett every now and then, the outline of her against the blinds in the front room as she cared for Sherry. It felt a little strange, almost like I was a peeping Tom or something, but it wasn't like that. Not at all.

After midnight all the lights went out inside the house. The protestors set down their signs and sat in a circle on the concrete with candles in front of them, holding hands. Some of them slept in sleeping bags or under blankets, while others kept watch.

I could hear the faint sound of whistling from down the block, then a dark figure walked up the middle of the street and stopped in front of the driveway gate, just outside the pool of light thrown by the streetlamp.

Was he one of the protestors? I couldn't tell. He seemed—

I realized suddenly that he was watching me.

His voice cut through the still air so loudly that I was amazed that lights didn't start turning on in all of the houses on the block, that the protestors didn't hear. “Aren't you cold, my boy?”

“Tim?” I whispered, hurrying toward him. “What are you doing here?”

It wasn't until I saw that he was bundled up in a winter coat with scarf and gloves that I noticed the cold.

“Freezing my ass off,” he answered, rubbing his gloves together. “And you, out here in your shirtsleeves.” He shook his head, then burst out laughing. “I was just about to tell you that you should be careful or you'll catch your death.”

I didn't find the joke so funny. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I would see where you were going every night. I thought it might be here.”

“I just—”

“Henry,” he said, cutting me off. “I've got something important to tell you.” The humor had left his eyes. “Here, step into the light.” Pulling off a glove, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. There was an address on it, written in spidery black ink. Downtown. Not too far away from the library.

“What's this?” I asked.

“It's a church. An old church where your friend Father Peter holds meetings every night.”

I flinched, and glanced over at the protestors. “You want me to go to a meeting with Father Peter? Why would I do that?”

“For the same reason that you spend every night here, watching over this family.” He took a deep breath, his face tight with concern. “You know you have a role in this.”

“But I don't want to have anything to do with—”

“I know.”

“What's he got to do with the Barretts anyway? What aren't you telling me?”

“You can't imagine the terrible things he's done, Henry.” He shook his head and laid one hand on my shoulder, squeezing. “His actions can't be traced back to him directly, but when things do happen, he's usually around. He's been spotted in the backgrounds of photographs, or people mention seeing him days or hours before…I've seen what he's done. I think you need to go to one of his meetings,” he said.

“Why?”

He sighed. “Because it is always better to know one's enemy than to simply hope he'll go away.”

“Then why don't you go?”

“This isn't about me, Henry,” he answered.

No, it was about me. And the Barretts. Sherry.

“What's he going to do to them?”

He gestured toward the note in my hand. “I don't know.”

“So I'm…” My voice trailed off as the full realization hit me. “I have to stop it, don't I? That's why I'm here. Whatever it is he's planning to do, I have to stop it.”

“You don't
have
to do anything, Henry,” Tim said. “If you want to, you can just walk away from all this. But if you were going to do that, you wouldn't be out here in the cold every night, would you? Here,” he added, undoing and pulling off his coat. “You hang on to this.” He held the coat out to me.

I realized how cold I had been as I slipped into it, his warmth surrounding me. “Aren't you going to be cold?”

“I'm keeping the gloves.” He smiled. “Don't worry about it. I'll just steal another from the lost and found. You need it more than I do.”

My cold fingers fumbled with the buttons, but once it was done up, the coat felt like armor.

MARY

When I opened my apartment door, it took me a moment to accept that Simon was really there, standing in the hallway. It had only been ten days, but it felt like a lifetime.

“Hey,” I said, holding the doorknob tightly.

He shifted from foot to foot. “I guess this is a bit of a surprise.”

“A bit.”

Part of me wanted to slam the door. Another part wanted to invite him in—to erase the time and the distance between us.

I was afraid he was going to say that he wanted to come back, that leaving had been a mistake. I was afraid he was going to say that it was over, that he was happy with Karen. I was afraid of how I would respond to whatever he said.

I
so
wanted to close the door.

“I tried you at the office, and they said you were no longer with them.”

I nodded.

“Did they fire you? Was it because of us, or Sherry, or—”

“I left.” Stepping back, I allowed the door to swing open. “Why don't you…?”

He nodded and stepped inside.

It was strange to have him in the apartment again. “What's done is done. I don't want to talk about it.”

“You worked so hard,” he continued, as if he hadn't heard me.

“I didn't want to be there after what they did to you,” I blurted. “I know how stupid that sounds. I tried to give two weeks' notice the day after they fired you and they told me to leave, immediately. Paid out my two weeks.”

I pre-empted the lecture I knew was coming. “I know it was stupid. I know that I've thrown away, well, maybe my whole career. But I'm happier now. I'm going to be doing work that matters.”

“You've got a new job already?”

“After the holidays I'll be starting with Legal Aid. My friend Brian from school hooked me up.”

“That's a good direction for you.”

“No lecture about being naïve and idealistic?”

“I don't think you're naïve. And I'm starting to think that maybe idealism isn't such a bad thing.”

“I think it's the right thing for me right now.”

“I'm glad,” he said. “I'm glad it's working out for you.”

He looked down at the carpet.

“I wanted to say I'm sorry,” he said, without meeting my eye. “It wasn't fair, what I did to you. Drawing you into all of this, then leaving you up in the air.”

I touched the back of his hand, and he looked up. “I'm a big girl, Simon. I went into this with my eyes open. You don't get involved with a married man assuming that it's all going to work out perfectly. I never thought we'd be permanent. I never thought that you'd leave Karen. Or Sherry.” I smiled a little, and then simply asked, “Are you back with Karen?”