Tuesday Night Miracles (14 page)

Grace threw back her head and laughed. “You are still very attractive. I can imagine what you looked like back then, but I think we were all pressured. The one good thing is that we don’t have to pressure our own children.”

“Hell no!” Bonnie agreed, and they bumped glasses and toasted the modern world.

This fairly new concept—personal conversations—kick-started during the first anger class, made Grace nervous at first. Talking about herself? Conversations usually centered on one of her daughters, patients, her supervisors, the sorry state of her finances, or the notion that she will never, ever date again the rest of her life.

Grace was stunned when she pulled into her driveway and discovered that it was almost 1
A.M
. During the past several hours she hadn’t bothered to think about the assignment, what she might write to Dr. Bayer, or what would happen the next day or the day after that.

She was thinking about this new friend who made her laugh, wasn’t afraid to move forward, and had invited her to spend a weekend with her and her sister at the lovely cottage she had won in the divorce settlement.

“Seriously?” Grace had said in disbelief.

“You’re fun, Grace, and you’ll love the cabin.”

Grace fell asleep that night repeating “I’m fun, I’m fun” over and over to herself, and she woke up the next morning almost convinced that the entire night had been a wild dream. But then she spotted her nylons on the floor, her skirt lying on top of the lamp, where she must have thrown it when she fell into bed, and there was a plastic wineglass from the art event sticking out of her purse.

“Dr. Bayer, what have you done to me?” she asked, rolling out of bed and accidentally stepping on her spare reading glasses.

The Black Dot

Leah carried her assignment letter around for four days, opening it and reading it about sixty times. She read it in bed, in the bathroom, the kitchen, standing on the back porch, and every night when she sat by the window she so loved to touch.

She could not wrap her mind around the assignment—the meaning, the purpose, the anything. Her confusion drove her to silence about what she was calling “the entire mess.” This anger-management class was not what she had expected, not at all, and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

Leah’s group sessions at the shelter didn’t include white envelopes with private assignments. Also, when she asked her supervisor about anger-management classes, she was told to expect a mixture of men and women.

“There will be lots of talking and coffee drinking,” Leah was told. There wasn’t one thing about painting birdhouses or these secret assignments.

This is so odd, Leah thought, even though she was excited. Dare I tell anyone else about this?

Leah, I know you will be befuddled by this but you must do it anyway. Do not worry, either. Everything will fall into place. Next Monday morning a car will pick you up at 10 a.m. You will be driven to the Marco Boutique, where a nice woman named Carol will meet you. You are going to get a manicure and a pedicure. Take the time to look around, think, then write me about what happened and how you felt. I will be in touch with the next assignment
.

Sincerely
,

Dr. Bayer
.

The car is coming in twenty minutes, and Leah feels like a fool. Her children are at school, and this time of day the shelter is very quiet. She hurried through her chores, showered, and made certain her shabby clothes were at least clean. Then she started to pace in the large living room.

Leah has never had a manicure and a pedicure. She’s rarely had her hair cut at a salon, never had a massage or her eyebrows waxed. She has worried about rent money, food, clothes for her children, and staying alive more than she has ever worried about her fingernails.

She doesn’t get it, and she doesn’t want to go.

But when she hears the car pull up she signs out of the shelter and goes outside. There’s a man waiting for her, and he’s holding the back door open.

“Hello,” she says softly.

“Good morning, ma’am. There’s water for you in the back. Please let me know if I can do anything.”

Leah wonders if she should ask him to drive her to Dr. Bayer’s office so she can ask her what in the world is going on. But she smiles, gets into the car, and realizes that she must be in some kind of limousine.

She barely moves, and is afraid to drink the water. The ride is short, less than fifteen minutes, and the car pulls up in front of a tiny shop on a side street. The driver opens her door and says that he’ll be back to get her when she’s finished, and that Carol will notify him.

Leah isn’t so much afraid as terrified. Who’s going to be in there? Will other women look at her old clothes and laugh? What will she say to Carol?

She hesitates before going into the salon and is startled when the door opens and a tiny Asian woman with gray hair and a brilliant smile says, “You must be Leah. Come in, dear. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Leah notices a
CLOSED
sign on the door when she walks into the deserted room. “No one else is here?”

“No, sweetie. I’m closed on Mondays. This is special, just for you.”

Leah is relieved but dumbfounded.

“I’m confused.”

“Sweetheart, there is nothing confusing about a manicure and pedicure. It makes your hands and feet so lovely. No worries. Please take a seat. We will do your fingernails first.”

Leah sets her hands on the table as instructed and is amazed at how soft Carol’s hands are. There’s a candle burning on the table next to her, the lights are dim, and Leah isn’t sure if she’s supposed to talk.

“I have some lovely tea for you when your hands are dry,” Carol says. “I picked a soft pink color for you. I hope that’s okay.”

“I’ve never had my nails done before. I don’t know anything about this.”

“Your hands are beautiful, Leah. I’ve done this a very long time, and I can tell many things from a woman’s hands.”

“Do you know things about me from Dr. Bayer?”

“Absolutely not! Dr. Bayer is a client of mine, but she never, ever talks about work. All I know about you will come from your hands.”

Leah is even more confused now.

“Don’t worry so much now,” Carol tells her, smoothing lotion on her arms. “I can tell you worry so very much, and that you have a clean heart that is very special. You must now relax. That is half of what happens here.”

Relax? In the middle of an assignment? Is she supposed to be looking for something? Does Carol have a hidden clue?

By the time Leah is in the pedicure chair, sipping mint tea, it’s impossible not to relax. She’s sleepy and she can’t stop looking at her perfect fingernails. Leah doesn’t want to miss one moment of what’s happening to her ugly, usually ignored feet. Her calluses are being removed, and Carol looks as if she’s going over her toes with a microscope. No wonder women love having this done. She’s seen photos of perfect nails in magazines, but she would never in a million years have imagined that this could happen to her.

“Carol, what do you think about when you’re doing this kind of work?” Leah is leaning back and feeling totally relaxed.

“Oh, my mind flies here and there, and if I sense that I’m working on a woman who isn’t very nice I try and give her some good energy so that she will be kind and not hurt anyone.” Carol is very serious when she speaks, and she’s massaging Leah’s calves and speaking with her eyes closed.

“Do people think less of you, treat you badly, because of what you do?”

“Of course.” Carol opens her eyes and looks directly at Leah. “Sometimes people must make themselves feel better by trying to make someone else feel bad. Does that make sense?”

“Oh, yes.”

“No one can make you feel what you don’t want to feel, though, and for those people I give them the deluxe treatment,” Carol says, laughing. “I also hope that they get ingrown nails and scrape their toes on their car doors so the polish gets mussed on the way home.”

Leah starts laughing so hard that Carol stops working on her for a few minutes. Then she takes Leah’s feet in both hands and holds them steady.

“I’m compelled to tell you something else,” Carol says, not waiting for a yes or a no. “I can tell from looking at your feet that you have barely started to walk. You must be careful not to go too fast so that you trip, but these feet are made for running. You are going to go many places.”

Carol’s kindness will linger inside Leah for a very long time. Leah doesn’t want the pedicure to end or the tea to get cold or the man to come and take her back to the shelter. When she is finished, she asks Carol if it’s okay to give her a hug.

Carol opens her arms and welcomes Leah into her embrace. “Oh, sweet girl, yes, if you ever need a hug you come and find Carol. And you can bring your feet with you, too!”

Leah had planned to go directly to the computer to type up her assignment notes, but when she gets back to the shelter she sits quietly, staring at her fingers and toes, until she hears her children pounding up the sidewalk after the bus lets them off.

Her daughter, Jessie, a miniature version of Leah with her dark hair and beautiful eyes, notices the nails right away and shrieks, “Mommy, you’re so pretty!”

Leah reaches for her daughter and holds her as tightly as possible. “Thank you, sweetie.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell her the polish will wear off quickly.

15

Displeasure on the Homework Highway

G
race has locked herself in her home office with a blank notebook, a bad attitude, and a huge cup of coffee that will most likely keep her up half the night and then make her crash moments after she reports for duty in the morning.

These assignments are driving her a bit nuts, even if she does enjoy parts of them. “Damn it,” she swears, pulling open her desk drawer to find a pen.

It is late Monday night and three weeks have passed without a formal anger-management class. Dr. Bayer gave them two weeks for the last assignment, Grace’s big night out. Then there was a bizarre fall snowstorm that shut down the city last Tuesday. Grace almost wished she had the phone numbers of the other women in class so that she could have them over to celebrate and find out what they’ve been working on from this mysterious shrink.

But the joy of not having group classes proved short-lived when Dr. Bayer emailed each one of them a homework assignment a week ago. The same email went to all of them, which was a new twist, and it seemed like a simple request at first:

Dear Jane, Kit, Leah, and Grace,

Your reports on your last assignments were fascinating. We do, however, have miles to go before we sleep. This new assignment should help us go part of the distance. Hopefully, it will also become a tool to help you for a very long time.

I want you to keep a journal or diary if you’re not doing so already. But this won’t be an ordinary kind of journal. I don’t care where you went or what you had for dinner. I want to know how you feel—and only the good stuff. It can be written in a booklet or on scraps of paper—the form does not matter. What matters is that you do it, and do it with great honesty.

When you feel good, when something makes you happy, write down what happened, what you were feeling, what might have caused you to feel however you were feeling. It does not have to be elaborate, but it does have to
be
!

You are all very smart women. I know that not only can you figure this out; you can do it. And isn’t it time we all saw each other again? Tuesday night—same time, same place.

Any questions?

Just hit Reply.

See you soon.

Dr. B.

That assignment threw Grace into a small frenzy, which she dealt with by procrastinating. None of them were thrilled with this kind of homework assignment. Thank God Dr. Bayer sent them a reminder:

Dear Anger Class Scholars,

Remember class tomorrow night even if you have to get there on a sleigh. Did one of you make it snow? Snow? The day after it was sixty-three degrees? All I can say is: Chicago!

And one more thing.

Bring those new assignment pages to class.

Dr. B.

Thus, Grace was consuming caffeine close to midnight as if she were dying of thirst. Thinking about what makes her happy on a daily basis is not at the top of her to-do list. Then again, neither is having a police record, losing her job, or giving Kelli the satisfaction of watching her mother go down like a beleaguered old battleship.

Grace actually had to sneak into Kelli’s backpack and steal a new notebook so she had something to write on, lest she show up at tomorrow night’s meeting empty-handed. Now all she has to do is fill the damn thing up with several pages of make-believe happy moments.

The first thing she does is yank out her work calendar so she can backtrack and try to think about what may or may not have happened during the past week. She writes out specific days so it will appear as if she has been working on the journal all along. Then Grace pauses so she can begin making up reasons to be happy.
There are more damn patients than beds. Kelli is still seeing the boyfriend from hell
. It’s easier to think of reasons to be mad.

She sighs and makes the effort:

Meeting a new friend during the last assignment. It was beyond fun, but I already told you that, and it was like getting lost. Once I stepped out of the car, things started to happen. Kelli’s helping me with the dishes
.

When she pauses, after writing all about the evening in even more detail than the last report she’s already sent in, she manages to fill up most of one page with sincere comments. Grace stops to sip some coffee and wonders if she can squeeze by with what she has written.

She can almost hear Dr. Bayer saying, “Well, Grace, you could probably fill up a notebook if you really tried. And please do not get angry about this.”

Some nights like this, when she’s already sleep-deprived and realizes the rest of the week is going to not so much cascade as crash through her world, Grace feels a kind of exhaustion that immobilizes her. Her entire body aches, her eyes burn, and it feels as if a major form of arthritis has invaded every bone in her body. It seems as if work and the overcrowding at the hospital never ease up.

Years of singleness weigh her down so that she can’t move. Single mother, single breadwinner, single homeowner, single disciplinarian, single supervisor, single everything. And now this one single class that feels as if it’s going to tip her right over an edge that’s only a half step away.

Karen constantly reminds her that this, too, shall pass. But that’s a small finger of hope in what she perceives as her deep sea of endless responsibility. And she’s supposed to find strings of happiness?

There is a very small part of Grace that wishes she could be honest in her notes about her real life, as she momentarily acknowledges the one event during the past three weeks that truly brought her to the door of emotion, and the one Dr. B. was looking for. It was a simple request from her oldest daughter, Megan:
Can I please bring Jenny home for Thanksgiving this year?

What kind of mother has to think about that? What kind of mother questions who and why her daughter loves? What kind of mother gets so angry when her daughter asks to bring her girlfriend home that she breaks a glass in the kitchen sink? What kind of mother bad-mouths men so much that her older daughter runs in the opposite direction?

In a real moment—and there have been plenty of those during the past few weeks—Grace is absolutely terrified of her behavior. She believes that is what has kick-started her rolling headaches. She’s a mother, and mothers are supposed to be an example. This mother of two does not want to be like her mother—an overbearing my-way-or-the-highway kind of perfectionist—even as she is afraid of losing her mother’s love for the mistake that sent her to anger class.

Grace does not bother to finish the last two inches of coffee in her mug. She says, “To hell with it,” gets up, throws the notebook into her briefcase, and then forces herself to lie in bed, where she tosses and turns for three hours, listening for Kelli’s bedroom window to open.

She’d love to catch that son of a bitch of a boyfriend climbing into Kelli’s room tonight. That would be one way to keep her anger kettle simmering on high and help her flunk the class. How easy it is to forget the sweet moments she’s had in her life the past couple of weeks, like the night she and Kelli did the dishes and they talked without hesitation or worry, the easy way she fell into a friendship with Bonnie, or the realization that she can recapture things she used to do for herself, like needlepoint.

While Grace begins her bedroom guard duty, Kit is slipping out of her own bedroom and tiptoeing into the kitchen. Peter came home, had one glass of wine, dove into bed exhausted after another double shift, rolled over, and fell into a snoring coma.

Kit was about to be pissed off because of the snoring when she remembered that she hadn’t written one entry in what she is calling her happy-face log. She at least had a log. It was a lovely leather journal that her daughter, Sarah, had given her years ago for her birthday and that had never moved off the shelf, where she put it the moment her daughter left the room.

Introspection, she remembers thinking, when Sarah gave her the journal. Who has time for something like that? Of course, that was back when she had a real life. It was before she took a leave of absence from her job as a graphic-arts designer at a downtown advertising and marketing firm. It was before her mother died, and before she was laid off the first day she went back to work. It was before she discovered her boss had hired a recent college graduate to replace her, at probably half the salary, and then blamed the layoff on the economy, which was total bullshit, because things had picked up so much her friends there were working overtime.

Now all she has is time and worry, and then a little bit more time. Even as Kit knows those are the not the kinds of things Dr. Bayer would love her to put into her log, she sits at the table staring at the empty pages and wishes she could write those things down instead. She stares for quite a long while.

Then she starts looking around the kitchen as if the stove or cookie jar will walk over and begin writing something for her. When she discovers a wine bottle nestled against the toaster next to the stove, she takes this as a miraculous sign.

She gets up, fills a lovely clear long-stemmed glass as close to the top as possible, and shuffles back to the table without spilling a precious drop. And then she tries really hard to be a good girl and write something:

The sound of my husband coming home. The smell of coffee in the morning, especially if I’m the one who didn’t have to make it the night before. An empty clothes basket, which means all the clothes have been cleaned and put away
.

Kit takes a break and then enjoys a large sip of the wine, which she holds in her mouth like liquid gold while she reads through what she has written. Then she swallows, lies to herself, and says, “I’m sure this is exactly what the lovely doctor wants to see.”

Suddenly there is a loud rattle coming from the vent near the front door. This has happened for the past five years every time the furnace kicks in. It has been five years since her then seventeen-year-old daughter accidentally bashed the vent when she was showing her friend a karate move that went bad.

This memory does not anger Kit, even as she remembers how she wanted to kick Sarah’s own rear end for bending the damn thing. Sarah had just finished her third karate class and was showing off even though she was a total novice. Back then was she really that angry, or was she happy? Did she yell all the time or just some of the time? Has she turned out like her mother, her aunts, her sad grandmother? And why, why has she always been so hard on, so overprotective of, the daughter she absolutely loves more than life itself?

Even with the old furnace rumbling in the basement, it’s too quiet for Kit to find comfort. She grew up with noise and boys and constant yelling and some absolutely stunning fights. Her friends, of course, loved to come visit, because the house was loaded with dark-haired Italian boys who learned how to flirt from their father. In the Ferranti family, the hot-blooded Italian thing was a constant reality.

Kit drains all but one tiny ounce of wine from her glass when she thinks about her father. This, she admits, might be a lovely anger fertilizer. So much for happy-face time.

“Asshole,” she whispers into her glass as she raises it to her lips and finishes it. “Thanks for turning your sons into jerks.”

She looks down at the few words she has managed to write and wonders for a moment what it might be like if she were truthful, if she could dig that deep, if she took more than fifteen minutes to actually focus on happiness instead of anger. She shakes her head to chase away all those long-buried not-so-happy memories about her father.

Kit hasn’t shared everything with Peter about the class. She can barely bring herself to recall his face when he came to pick her up from the police station. He tried quietly, and with nothing but support and love, to talk to her about anger issues, about their daughter, about her father, about the basket of family crap she had never allowed herself to empty.

“Kit,” he pleaded, “there are things you need to think about. This one incident doesn’t mean you have figured this out and that it will never happen again.”