Miriam's Well (11 page)

“My friends,” Brother James began, “in the name of the Lord, I welcome each and every one of you here to the kingdom of Christ. Those of you who are guests at the Sword and the Spirit Church, please take your cameras from around your necks and lay them on the floor in front of you. We will have the floodlights off and the video cameras off immediately. I remind you that this is a spiritual meeting in the service of the Lord; it is not a circus, and it is not a media event.” He motioned for the cameraman to fold up his tripod and be gone, which he was in no time.

My heart began to beat faster as we neared my time to speak. I sang with the choir, with my spirit and my mind, and never had the hymns sounded so sweet, so full of poetry. At last, it was time. I stepped around the people seated on the altar steps and faced the congregation, waiting for the words to come. Brother James urged me over to the lectern. He lowered the microphone for me, and, in a shaky voice, I began.

“As you can see, I walked up here on my own.”

“Praise the Lord,” some brothers and sisters murmured.

“A month ago, I felt a stabbing pain in my lower back, and I could not have managed these few steps without holding on to a handrail. Three weeks ago, doctors told me I had a disease that had invaded my body and that might even take my life. I saw the pictures myself, I saw a black knot in one of my bones, something ugly and foreign that did not belong there. People told me, even people I dearly respect, that I should put myself in the hands of the doctors.”

“Oh, Lord help us,” someone cried out.

“People told me, even people I dearly respect, that nothing could cure me but the medicines and machines of the doctors. I admit, I was scared, and I started to believe them. I'm only seventeen, and I'm praying that God's not ready to take me to the next world, because I haven't had enough of this one yet. So I started to believe those people, though my mama tried to save me from them.”

I looked at Mama, her face glistening with tears.

“And I'll admit, my faith was weak when the pain overcame me. I didn't always believe that I would be healed without the doctors and their medicines. Brother James stood by me and counseled me and reminded me that if the Lord meant for me to go on in this world, He would heal me. He reminded me of the place in Matthew 19:26 when Jesus says, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'”

“Hallelujah!”

“Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that the power of the Lord is awesome.”

“Amen.”

“And that I am not hurting anymore.”

“Amen, that's right.”

“And that I am healed.”

“Amen! Praise the Lord.”

The choir broke into “Amazing Grace,” which Brother James planned because he knew it was my favorite hymn. My face was flushed and radiant, I could feel it, and tears of joy were streaming down my cheeks as the choir sang “was blind, but now I see.” I looked out over these good people who had been my family for all the life I could remember. I smiled at my uncles, at Mama's friends, at my Sunday School teachers, at my little nursery children who had been brought to the service to hear me speak in thanksgiving.

And then I saw him, sitting beside his father, and the two of them were the only ones not singing.

“A-a-a-may-zee-eee-eeeng grace, how sweet the sound,” the choir sang, and I felt like a bride, like a queen, like Mary herself must have felt when she first held the Child that was promised to her.

And Adam did not lift his eyes from my face.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Told by Adam

I knew the words to “Amazing Grace” because my mother was always playing an old Judy Collins record that it was on, but I never knew it was a church song until that day. Then I couldn't sing it, just like I couldn't say the Jesus parts of the service, and like I never could sing “Silent Night” in school Christmas programs. I'd always thought it was because when I was a kid, I was sort of embarrassed to sing about a round young virgin, but finally I figured out that there were certain things that were common in the Christian world that Jews could not do comfortably. Singing in a church full of zealous believers was one, and believing in Miriam's miraculous healing by Jesus was another.

But watching her face, I felt 100 percent sure that
she
believed, and if she believed it strongly enough, she could probably do it. Look, my parents weren't heavily into God things, but they always told me that if I believed in myself, I could accomplish almost anything. So, in order to put Miriam's faith into terms that I could live with, I assumed that she
thought
that she was trusting God, or what she believed to be the son of God, to heal her, but actually she was doing it herself. Mind over matter again.

Well, we drifted with the crowd into the fellowship hall, which doubled as a church library. Books lined one whole wall, and on another wall was a poster that said “A GOOD BOOK/THE GOOD BOOK.” Underneath the poster was the punch and cookies table.

My dad and I must have stuck out like whiskers in a wart. “Good salt-of-the-earth religious types,” my father muttered. “Not a suit that fits right.”

I figured we were probably the only two sinners in the crowd.

An enormous lady in a flowery dress came up to us. “You're new, aren't you?” she said, as if she'd said, “You're lepers.”

“I'm the lawyer,” my father replied.

“Ooh, bless you. Edwin,” she said, tugging at the coat of a man hanging over the punch bowl, “this is the child's lawyer.” Edwin smiled broadly, with a mouth full of brown cookies.

My father said, “And this is the lawyer's son.”

Edwin shook on it, his hand still wet from punch. Mine felt sticky, but I had nowhere to wipe it, except maybe down the back of Edwin's green polyester suit. Edwin said, “Say, I want you to meet Dr. Ogilvie. He's an optometrist.” Dr. O. had Coke-bottle glasses and looked at you and away at the same time. At least I was glad to see that the church let people wear glasses. I wondered what they did about dentists. Were dentists instruments of the devil, like doctors? Like Miriam thought I was? Or were they just the sadists the rest of the world knew they were?

Then a hush fell over the room. Miriam came in with Brother James. Everyone swarmed them, and Dad and I were on the fringe of the mad crowd. Miriam worked her way through it like a politician on the campaign trail, until she got to us.

“Well, Mr. Bergen?” she said, triumphantly.

“Well, Miriam. You knocked them dead.”

“It was so nice of you to come, Adam.” Frosty, as if she were saying, “It was nice of you to order my execution.”

But it wasn't nice of me, it was imperative. I hadn't been able to get her out of my mind since that day on Diana's porch. “Can I talk to you alone?”

“I don't think that's a good idea,” she said, and I felt awful that I'd caused the first frown on her day of glory. But not awful enough, I guess, because I hung right in there.

“I'll come over to your place later.”

“No, Adam.”

My father patted my arm, signaling me that it was time to give it up. Brother James came up to us, holding a little kid in each arm. “It's a pleasure to have you visit our humble church,” he said. One of the babies pulled at his beard, and he kept yanking his face back. The other kid squirmed to the floor, with her dress stuck up over her head.

A good-looking blonde, nearly six feet tall, came over to claim the kid. She grabbed the brat with one arm and put her other hand out to Dad. She looked down at him. “How do you do, I'm Marylou Wadkins.”

“Marylou, meet Samuel Bergen, Miriam's lawyer.”

“Oh, I know who you are.”

“And his son, Adam.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you both.” Her handshake was like a man's. “Mr. Bergen, we all appreciate what you're doing for us.” She had a warm smile, like a first grade teacher, and a way of talking that said she wasn't from Kansas.

The rug rat tugged at Marylou Wadkins wine-colored dress—I guess they could wear wine, even if they couldn't drink it—and smeared wet cookie crumbs up and down her mother's curvy left flank. “Oops, we're a mess. Excuse us!” She whisked the kid off, the smaller one trailing behind like a wagon. Brother James's eyes followed them out of the social hall.

“Well, it's been quite a day,” my father said, with an arm around Miriam. Miriam shifted from foot to foot.

Brother James said, “A glorious day. Did you feel the power, Mr. Bergen?”

“Clearly,” replied my father, and I caught the sarcasm in his voice.

“Brother James,” I said, surprising myself that I could call him by this ridiculous name. “Could you talk to Miriam for me?”

“Adam!” cried Miriam.

“About what, son?”

“Well, we sort of had a fight, and I wanted to get it cleared up today while she's feeling on top of the world. Don't you guys say ‘turn the other cheek'?”

“We do,” Brother James assured me.

“Well, I want another chance.” I saw Miriam turn to Brother James and wait for his advice. I thought she really wanted to talk to me but wasn't sure she should.

“If you have some unfinished business, you take care of it,” he said, “and be done with it.” I knew he meant I was to talk to Miriam, clear it all up, and clear out of her life.

“Come by tonight at eight,” she said.

My mother was curled up in the family room reading. Knowing the power of Stephen King, I hoped I could slip by her unnoticed, but no such luck. With her face buried in the book, my mother sniffed the air around her.

“You put bug spray on. Are you going out with Diana?”

“No, I'm not going out with Diana.”

“Whom do you have a date with, then?”

“I don't have a date with anywhom.”

“You don't drown yourself in that aftershave unless you're hot on the trail of a lady. You can tell your mother.”

“Why does my mother have to be the Grand Inquisitor?”

She craned her neck to see my father, who had briefcase papers spread all over the game table. “What's going on with your son?”

“It's privileged information, Abby. You'll have to torture it out of him.”

“Oh,” she struck her forehead with the heel of her hand. “The light dawns. You're going to see that Pelham girl. Well, how nice of you.”

What did she think, I was visiting Miriam out of pity? It was because she was driving me nuts. When I closed my eyes at night to let Diana's face fill my imagination in the eerie time before sleep, more and more there was Miriam's face butting in. I hated that. I had to get things straight with her, so I could get free of her and enjoy my old fantasies.

“Poor girl, my
toochas
,” Dad said. “You should have seen her today. She could have won for senator. We should all be as healthy, when we're dying of cancer.”

“Wait a minute, she's not dying, Dad. I've had her in class for two years, and I never saw her look so good.”

My parents exchanged one of their looks. My mother kept her finger in Stephen King and said, “It's just a matter of time, Adam.”

“You guys both believe that?”

“We're realists,” my father said with a sigh.

“Let me get this straight: You're defending their right to deny treatment, but you think she's going to die if the doctors don't treat her?”

“Law of averages,” my father said. “People don't survive cancer any better today than they did in 1950.”

“But what about this miracle healing? You were there. She had a mob of people believing it happened. She believes it.”

“Aw, Adam, there are no miracles,” my father said.

“You goddamned hypocrite!” I'd never talked this way to my parents before, and though my mother's face looked stricken, neither of them said a word. I had to get out of there. I grabbed my jacket and ran, slamming the door so hard that the windows rattled. My parents were both standing at the window watching when I drove away in my mother's Jeep.

Miriam was just getting back from Sunday night church, so I parked across the street and waited. The bald-headed uncle got out and came around to open her side of the car. After five minutes or so, I went up to her porch. There was a small square of window cut into the door, but some kind of brown curtain hung behind it, and I couldn't see inside. Before I could knock, the huge uncle opened the door. Glaring at me, he rolled his belly back to let me in.

Miriam came up out of nowhere and brushed past him. “We're going out for a walk, Uncle Benjamin. Tell Mama when she gets back from the store, okay?” She started sprinting up the street.

“What's the big rush?”

“I'm avoiding you,” she said.

I could hardly keep up. Damn wheezy allergies. About a half dozen houses up the block, she spun around and said, “I want this to be over.”

“I just got here.”

“Not you,
it
. The case. I'm sick of it. It's all so silly, because I'm fine now.”

I didn't tell her that my father said it would take three months to settle the case, or about the dying part. Instead, I asked her, “What does your father say about all this?” By now she'd slowed down, and I could walk next to her without gasping for breath.

“Is this what you were so desperate to talk to me about?”

“Well, not really.”

“So, what was it?”

“What, you can't guess?”

“This conversation is going nowhere, Adam.”

“Kind of like when we studied poetry together.”

“You got a B+,” said Miriam, slowing her pace another notch. “Guess what, I got an A.”

“So where is your father?”

“How's your girlfriend?”

“Okay. She's going to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving.”