Forged in Grace (9 page)

Chapter Nine

My one flexible finger is the right middle one, which I find ironic. I dial, the phone rings ten times and, though most other people would hang up, I know she’s there, perhaps trying to find the phone muffled beneath a pile of clothing, or prevented from quick access by one of her mounds of unworn clothing or a tower of boxes still spilling out packing peanuts. After fifteen rings, worry is a ball on the roulette wheel of my body, pinging my nerves. What-ifs offer themselves to my mind. What if the big quake hits and Ma is trapped between ancient
Drake’s Bay Gazettes
and the pouty-faced covers of
Entertainment
magazines? What if she trips over one of the wily felines who have learned to twist through the house like little snakes, out of sight, scavenging?

My fears are allayed after twenty rings.

“Yeah.” My mother never says hello; whoever is calling must want something from her.

“
Ma. It’s me.”

Ma sucks in air. Then her growing silence manages to feel loud.
“Well,” she says at last, “Are you having a
good time
?” All of a sudden I want to hug her, if only for a sense that something is normal.

The monochromatic box of a spare room where I
’m staying, thanks to its whiteness, has a sharp, cold feeling. I long for a warm color—mauve, even an eggshell yellow—and I wouldn’t argue with a pile of laundry or some messy plants full of spiky tendrils. Marly’s empty, sterile spaces have a too familiar hospital-like flavor to them.

“
I’m not sure yet,” I say.

“
But you’re well?” she asks. She coughs loud and raspy.

Am I truly going to explain to my mother that I have suddenly discovered myself to have healing abilities? Then again, Ma has spent years buying creams that promised to make my scars disappear, vitamins that would heal me from the inside out,
“magic” make-up that suffocated my pores. Of course I eventually rejected all magic elixirs. After a bracing breath, I spill it out as plainly as I can—telling her limited details of Marly’s injuries, claiming they happened after a fall.

Ma is quiet again for so long, I wonder if she hung up, except I hear no dial tone.
“Gracie,” she says at last, “is this some kind of punishment because I didn’t want you to go? Think it’s funny to make things up—”

“
I’m not making this up! I don’t even
believe
in this kind of thing. You think I would call you just to make fun of you?”

Ma drops into loaded, breathy silence. I imagine the cats, like demon familiars, purring in her lap, plotting to claim my bedroom in my absence.

“Look, I’m calling you because I couldn’t think of anyone else who would believe me. Who would be able to help me understand this.”

“
You want my advice?” Ma asks. “God forbid I should ever offer it unsolicited.”

“
I am soliciting it! Marly thinks I can use this…ability, whatever it is, to help people—”

“
To help people, or for some selfish reason of her own?”

“
She has her issues, but that doesn’t make her evil.”

“
So you say, Gracie. Maybe she staged that fall down the stairs so she could get your sympathy. Maybe none of her injuries were as bad as you thought.”

My lie about Marly
’s “fall” works against me. “Ma, listen to me. I know what I saw, what happened. If you don’t have anything useful to offer me, I’ll go, then—”

“
Fine, fine, don’t get in a huff. What do you want me to say?”

Ma coughs again, and I wonder if this is a stalling tactic.
“Gracie, since you don’t believe in God or a higher power, this is hard for me to answer. But if what you’ve told me is true, then you
have
to believe in
something
. If it really was you, and not Marly concocting a scheme—”

“
Let that go, Ma.” My mother has the power to still make me feel, and whine, like an indignant teenager.

“
You don’t just wake up with the power to heal for a lark!” My mother now sounds excited, as though, between breaths, she’s had an epiphany.

Feeling somewhat stupid, I try to say a little mantra of thanks in my head to whatever force has bestowed this upon me. What I picture, oddly enough, is a big flame goddess extending tendrils of blue fire to my forehead like I
’m knighted.

“
I mean think of what this could mean for YOU,” she persists.

It hits me what she must be thinking and I wish she wouldn
’t. “Ma, I’ve accepted being the way I am.”

“
But if you
could
heal yourself—”

Her words are like steel-wool against my heart.
“Ma? Get over it. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

I hang up on my mother.

I’m just coming out of the bath when Marly gets home. Showers are a thing of the past for me, with all those prickling drops of water like tiny needles on my skin. By the time I’ve dried and dressed she’s sitting on her soft white couch, holding something small and flat in her hand, paper, I think. Her hair is wet and she smells faintly of chlorine, a chemical smell that I’ve always strangely liked. It was the smell of my father after his weekend morning swims, coming home just as I was readying for cartoons and cereal, a towel wrapped around his neck, that stinging scent rising off his strong shoulders.

Marly
’s face looks bare, free of makeup, except for a faint stain of red on her lips, and a pinkish oval around her eyes, which I guess is a casualty of swimming for a living. Her shoulders are rounded forward, and on the small glass coffee table in front of her she’s set a bottle of vodka, still capped.

It takes me a minute to realize she
’s crying, so silent is she, only the nearly imperceptible heave of shoulders upward in a hiccupping motion.

“
Oh Marly, what’s wrong?” I come around and sit on the big white lounge chair opposite her, realizing at once that it’s a mistake, as its soft gravity sucks me uncomfortably into its center.

She holds up the photograph in her hands, a Polaroid, and tosses it at me. It lands on my lap. I expect something from our youth—maybe one of those happy family plastic-smile pictures before we knew how badly things would go for us.

But the photo is recent. In it Marly’s wearing a slinky white dress that barely comes to her knees, high silver heels that look impossible to walk upon. A man has his arms around her, a square-jawed, dark-haired guy, taller than she is in her heels, kissing her cheek.

“
What is this? It looks like a prom photo.” But it can’t be; I can all but hear fourteen-year-old Marly’s scorn as she turned down another Senior,
“I’d sooner die than go to a prom.”

Marly nods, her cheeks crimping with the effort of holding back more tears.
“That’s Loser and me on our wedding day. Three months ago.”

Despite a well-honed reflex against staring at others, I stare at her.
“What?”

Marly
’s shoulders shake with unhappy laughter. “I sent my mom the other picture we had taken at the chapel. I was just screwing around with him, never meant to get serious. He’s one of those guys who blows into your life in a cloud of excitement, promises, bringing you gifts and telling you how beautiful you are, then sleeps with your friends and stops calling.”

“
Oh yeah, I know the type,” I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster, but Marly doesn’t catch it.

“
So why’d you marry him?”

Marly looks at the vodka with yearning, as though it
’s her therapist or savior, though she doesn’t touch it.

“
To piss off my mother. It was a joke, at least I thought it was—we were going to have it annulled, no big whoop—just a silly prank, and hey, when you live in Vegas, getting married at a chapel is just like walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.”

Though one part of me thinks that
’s a silly reason to marry a person, another part of me gets it right away. You don’t live with your mother your whole life without mastering the fine art of pressing her buttons.

“
So, can’t you get it annulled or something?”

Marly tosses her hands up in the air like they could fly away from her body.
“I got pregnant. Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She smacks herself lightly on the forehead. “I got off one birth control pill to try a new one that didn’t make me into a crazed bitch who porked out, and, well, here I am.”

Here she is, revealing personal details like when we were girls, only I have nothing to offer in trade. Other than the short spell of dating Gabriel Diaz, the last few times I
’ve been touched by a man, it was a doctor, usually peeling off bandages and pronouncing me ‘healed’ with a squinting look.

“
And Loser now thinks that because he planted his seed in my soil or some such bullshit, that I am his, that our marriage is real, and that if I won’t listen to reason, brute force will wake me up. I’m in a fucking bind. And all I want to do is pour a big old glass of that Grey Goose right there. I want to drink it so badly, because I keep telling myself that I can still decide not to have this baby, you know? What does it matter if I drink or smoke—it’s just a cluster of cells that accidentally wound up in my body, right?”

“
But it won’t be for long, Marly.” The shaking in my voice surprises me: I’m angry at her even considering taking another drink. “Soon you will have to make a choice.”

Marly
’s face is so drawn and pale I’m overcome with an old feeling of rescue, a late night phone call, panic in her voice
: Grace, I think I did it this time. They want to send me away.

With a deep sigh I heave myself out of the chair and come around to sit next to her, not quite touching her.

She makes a pitiful attempt at a smile. “When you had your hands on me, Grace, I felt it, the baby, for a flash. You gave me something I would never have felt. You, and your gift, are the best thing to happen to me in years, Grace.”

I sink into her words like perfect bathwater.
“That’s really sweet.” But it is so much more than that.

“
I told a good friend of mine about you. His name is Drew. If you’d consider it, Grace, he could set up the circumstances for you to try again, in a neutral setting—no expectations, what ever happens, happens.”

Her eyes are wide, imploring. I feel her need like a bright rope of light twisting its way from her through me.

Would it kill me to try?

Chapter Ten

I close my eyes the entire drive to Drew’s house. Marly doesn’t ask me why my eyes are closed, and even turns the car radio down to a low hum. In the theater behind my eyes I picture a billowing tent, a tuxedoed man hawking tickets to a freak show. I don’t realize we’ve stopped until Marly whispers my name softly.

When I open my eyes again we
’re parked in front of an unassuming white house with a tamed wilderness of a garden—tall flowers wave over soft, fragrant herbs. A little bridge arches over a delicate stream.

“
You okay?” Marly pats my knee so quick and light I barely feel it.

“
I feel like a fraud.” My hands feel heavy in my lap. “I don’t know if I can look at people in pain and pretend that I can help them.”

Marly nods, as if she could possibly understand what I
’m feeling. “You’re not pretending. You’re being…Well, don’t be anything you’re not.” Then she applies a coat of ruby gloss to her plump lips.

With a sigh, I adjust my strawberry curls in the car mirror. My skin is dusted in mineral powder, something I rarely do because it leaves my face feeling like a desert-scape, dry and hot. Marly bought me a white cotton dress that covers all of me, except for my ruined hands. It
’s downy and soft and I feel ethereal in it, like some spirit girl in a séance. Perhaps the power of suggestion alone will heal the masses.

We cross over the little stream, where bright orange Koi nibble with hungry, gaping mouths at the glassy surface, and walk up to a dark red door. Marly knocks, and my bad right leg suddenly throbs as if I
’ve been walking all day. Every crevice that can, sweats. Pressure ripples around me, lifting those few hairs that remain, prickling at me like an impending storm.

A tall, man with dark blonde hair and gentle eyes opens the door.
“Marly! Look at you,” he says, touching her belly through her dress as if he knows her secret. His hand lingers there a second longer than I consider polite; do they have a history together, too? What he thinks of
my
appearance is hidden inside his placid expression.

“
I’m Drew,” he says, extending a long-fingered hand. “We’re grateful you came, Grace.”

I reluctantly disentangle my own hand from the folds of my dress.
If I am here to heal, I can’t very well refuse to shake hands, can I?
What I expect to feel—the images, the lights—is eclipsed by the sensation of his soft skin. No pain follows.

“
We’re all gathered in the back garden,” Drew says. “There’s plenty of shade,” he adds, and exchanges a worried look with Marly.
She’s clearly mentioned my sun sensitivity, but what else?
Drew leads us through the house to a back garden that is even more profuse and lovely than the front. Baskets of hanging flowers drip from the eaves and green plants lurk at the edges of a splendid pond.

But more startling than the garden is an audience—about twenty people—seated on blankets and in white
Adirondack chairs. At first glance there is nothing visibly ill about any of them. People you’d never look twice at. The longer I stare, however, the more I see. One woman’s face bears the greenish shadows of cancer. In others, there are sallow cheeks and bloodshot eyes, spindly limbs and bandaged hands. I have the absurd thought that these people are like the wild animals I work with, trying hard to hide their illnesses for fear of being easy prey.

My bad right leg bends with the threat to buckle entirely.

Perhaps Drew senses I’m overwhelmed, for he’s quickly at my elbow, leading me to a chair under a large umbrella. Then he places a cold glass of what looks like iced tea in my hand, water beaded on its slick surface as though it, too, is nervous. Marly looks dazed.
Did she expect such a turnout?

“
Grace, listen. We don’t want to push you. Just make introductions, that’s all,” Drew crouches at my knee, his face in shadow.

People in the audience close enough to hear him, nod.

“I thought if each person here just stood up and told you, in brief, a sample of their story, then you could see if anyone strikes you. And go from there.”

Just to have something to do, I sip my iced tea and then set it down before I drop it.
“I’ve never done this,” I say quietly. “Except for Marly, and that was…I don’t know if I can do it again.”

Drew gestures out at the crowd as if to say
look at them, at their misery
. “They have nothing to lose,” he says. “Tell them about you.”

Drawing in a deep breath, I sit forward in my chair, searching for words that sound comforting.
“I don’t know if I can help any of you.” My voice is small and dry, cracked. “But I know what it’s like to experience the kind of pain that makes death sound better.” To my surprise, I hear myself chuckle. “And I guess the truth is, you do get through it, and then you kind of forget it. Still, I remember what it’s like to wish for things to be different. All I can say is that I will try to help you. That’s all I can do. Just try.”

Their eyes assess me. I close my eyes and the murmuring of the crowd is almost comforting, as if they
’re encouraging me. I feel called in a direction, and open my eyes to find myself facing a robust looking woman who introduces herself as Flo when I point at her. She’s overweight, her eyes are narrowed to dubious slits; she reminds me of my mother. She limps up at my request and over to the seat that Drew has positioned next to me, where she sits with a wincing smile. Her hand is in mine before I realize I’ve picked it up. She looks at the ruins of my thumb against hers without disgust. We sit there, holding hands like schoolgirls, both of us probably thinking the same thing:
Is there any way on earth that this can possibly work?

What happened when I touched Marly that night she was attacked? I had simply wanted so badly to take away her pain. So I wonder what Flo
’s pain is like. I wait for the images to form, the heat, the sensation of that curious serpent to appear.

The only thing that happens is that our hands grow sweatier and the song
Sweet Home Alabama starts to run through my head like I’m picking up a bad radio station.

At last, I let hers go and shake my head. She sighs and nods and I feel a collective shiver of disappointment rush through the group.

“I’m sorry.” Shame makes my cheeks hot. “I really wish I could have helped.”

Flo bends her head and keeps it there for a long moment. When she raises it again, tears glisten in the corners of her eyes.
“Hey, we’re asking for miracles, after all,” she says kindly. “They don’t come easy.”

Marly is suddenly at my side.
“Maybe there’s someone else you’ll connect with in the audience,” she whispers. “Maybe you can’t heal every wound or illness?”

That has got to be the understatement of the century.

“I can’t believe we got all these people’s hopes up,” I say through clenched teeth. My stomach feels suddenly queasy. “Where’s your bathroom, Drew?”

He jumps up and directs me inside to a guest bathroom fragrant with fresh roses and lavender. I slump down on the lid of the toilet and place my head in my hands, which come away shiny with mineral powder. With a damp washcloth I take off all the makeup, then strip my head of its curls. I don
’t know how long I’m in there, but when I emerge, Drew is gently herding the last couple of people off the lawn. Marly sits on the ground frowning, running her fingers through the grass. I can’t tell if she’s disappointed in me, or guilty for setting this failure into motion.

The last few people to leave include a woman who looks to be in her thirties helping a frail elderly man limp across the grass with a cane. The sun causes a strange dappling of light just above her right breast. It takes me a minute to realize the sun is angled in the completely opposite direction. There is no light source.
“Wait, stop!”

She turns around. Faster than I thought possible, I stride across the lawn, barely even registering the complaint in my tight right leg.

The woman’s eyes widen at the sight of me up close; the wig and makeup shrouded the truth of me from the distance at which she sat.

Panting with exertion, I manage to ask,
“How far along is it?” when I reach her side. “Your…cancer.”

Her hand goes to her mouth, eyes a horrified width.
“My, no, my dad’s the one with—”

Without asking permission, I touch my index finger to the top of her right breast and it
’s like pressing into hot tar. She recoils, but my finger stings after she’s pulled back.

“
I’m not sick,” she says firmly. “I came here today for
him
. He’s the one with cancer. He’s the one who needs help!”

Her father frowns at her.
“You’ve had those chest colds you can’t shake.”

“
Oh this is bullshit,” she looks at him with the weary frown of the constant caretaker. “I came here because you begged me to. Because if medicine hasn’t figured out a cure, surely some new age charlatan will!”

Her father
’s smile turns down, an apology hidden in it. “I am a lot of work.”

“
I don’t blame you for being angry.” I clutch my hands together. “I barely believe myself.”

The old man holds out his hand.
“Thank you for trying.” He purses his lips. “Believe it or not, I feel better just from spending one day thinking that I might actually beat this thing.”

“
What’s your name?” I ask.

“
Ray.”

“
Thank you, Ray.” Uncharacteristically, I take his hand and at the same time we both gasp as a feeling like an electric charge passes between us. The serpent of energy I felt when I touched Marly slides up his arm until it changes direction and creeps toward his mid-section. I follow the serpent with my left hand, which I place right below his belly button. He doesn’t speak or move but stares past me, off into space. I follow the energy deep into his bowels, until I feel it—a dark rotted place that makes me nauseated. His daughter has let go of him and is staring at us as, gape-mouthed, as if we are insane.

“
Lay him down.” My voice sounds husky and thick to me. Drew and Marly get to task; they lay him on the grass and I see the dark place, a shadow spot, that my hands want to follow. “I have to unbuckle your pants,” I say. “I have to touch you skin to skin.” He gives a kind of half-nod, half-shrug and I place my hands against the flesh of his belly, soft and wrinkled. Though I know my hands only rest on the surface of him, it feels as though I am dipping them into pudding. From the outside, what I am doing probably looks obscene, though I don’t touch lower than the top of his pubic bone.

After wading through the pudding I arrive at a hard stone. I close my eyes and see myself lifting the black pulsing stone and tossing it into a bottomless well. Ray groans and his daughter paces around us as though she wants to intervene but can
’t bring herself to.

Beneath the
“stone” is another stone, and another one. I mentally lift, and toss, at least a dozen, Ray groaning beneath my hands each time, until finally he rolls away from me and throws up into the grass.

“
What are you doing to him?” his daughter shouts.

The connection broken, I now feel like a fish flung out of water onto dry land, breathless and dazed. My hands are heavy and I could close my eyes and sleep right then and there if they let me.

Ray shakes his head over and over, though he doesn’t seem to be able to speak.

“
Stay close to a toilet,” I say, my throat parched. “For a couple of days. You won’t be able to keep anything solid down. Lots of fluids, soup, water.” I don’t know where these instructions come from, but I am sure of them.

His daughter helps him to his feet with a scowl at me I interpret as suspicion, and leads him, stumbling off to their car. He looks wrung out, barely able to make his feet walk him to the car, and I want to offer a hand but am too spent. Drew and Marly watch, seemingly paralyzed, as though too afraid of the man
’s daughter to help, either. Just before she buckles herself into the driver’s seat, I see her look down and touch the spot above her right breast.