Tuesday Night Miracles (15 page)

“Shut up, Peter!” she shrieked, as he jumped back. “You don’t know everything. You don’t know what it was like for me growing up like that.”

Peter, strong, supportive, and ever patient, dropped his hands to his side and his head followed. He stood looking at his feet as Kit continued to yell and her anger rose up as if she were an erupting volcano.

And then Kit shut him out and he started working more and the phone never rang and her boss lied to her and her daughter said she probably would not make it home for Thanksgiving and maybe not Christmas and no one in her family was speaking to her and she had to attend a dumb-ass anger class with three other women who probably want to run away as much as she does. Where’s the happy in that, Dr. B.?

Kit stretches out her hands on the table and lays her head down on top of them. She falls asleep like that, dreaming about four angry women pulling a U-Haul loaded with weapons down the interstate toward the western horizon.

Hours later, it is close to sunrise when a horn from a car on the street beeps her awake, and she jumps and almost falls out of the kitchen chair. Her neck is stiff, and when she twists her head to get the knots out she sees another open wine bottle on the counter.

This time she looks at the bottle and realizes that it is the same type of wine bottle she used to attack her brother. It’s an Italian red, of course, and simply holding the bottle makes her take a huge step backward. She can see her brother’s face the night she attacked him, feel his hand on her arm, his breath pushing against her skin.

At almost the exact moment that Kit opens up the back door and flings the bottle into the backyard, which makes her very, very happy, Jane, who is on her way to retrieve the newspaper from the front step, remembers she has not written one thing in the mandatory “everything is beautiful” log.

“Damn it,” she says, slamming the front door and going back inside. “Homework. I forgot all about it, and it’s due tonight.”

“What?”

Derrick is filling up his travel mug with coffee and preparing to dash out the door. He’s dressed in a gorgeous black wool suit and he’s picked an off-green tie that makes his hazel eyes glow.

“I remembered something I’m supposed to do for the meeting tonight,” she tells him, throwing the paper on the table. “That’s all.”

Jane looks like a frumpy housewife. Her hair is flat on one side, she hasn’t put on makeup, and her bright pink and fluffy bathrobe makes her look like a wild bird.

“That doesn’t make you mad, does it?” Derrick says, with a half grin.

“Very funny,” Jane says, looking at Derrick with a gaze of pure affection.

“Well,
does
it make you mad?”

“That’s what I’m not supposed to write about. It’s a happy-girl journal.”

Derrick is almost out the door before he dares to say, “The unhappy stuff could fill up a book. We’d never have enough paper anyway.” He ducks playfully, as if Jane might throw a punch.

Before Jane
can
throw something at him, Derrick closes the door and jumps into his car. He used to kiss her goodbye. Sometimes, especially when he thought she was ovulating, he’d grab her and drag her back upstairs, ravish her wherever they fell, and he’d be late for work. Even when she was so busy selling real estate she could hardly blink, Jane often found the time to make something for breakfast, even if it was just toast, so they could have a few moments together.

When did that all end? When did they become roommates instead of lovers? When was the last time she bothered to get dressed the way she used to when she actually had someplace to go in the morning? Will he someday be able to forgive her?

“Look at me,” she whines, filling her own coffee mug and searching for something to write on that might resemble a happiness journal, whatever in the hell that might be.

She rummages through the tidy built-in desk drawer at the far side of the kitchen until she unearths an old appointment book with a competitor’s logo on it. “Bastards,” she snarls, walking to the table.

Writing about happiness is about as appealing as fishing or cleaning her own house or bumping into a former colleague. Jane taps her pen over and over while her shoulder dances until she thinks she might dent the table. She wonders what in the hell the hippie doctor expects. Who keeps a frigging happy log?

She would like to stick the entire class—log, battered child abuser, the chick in scrubs, and wild Kit—right where the sun does not shine, but she figures it’s just a game. A game she has to win in order to get what’s left of her life back.

She knows that she could cooperate. She could lie down, roll over, and see what happens. Just yesterday she managed to have a normal and very sweet conversation with the little paper-delivery girl. It was a child, and she was even nice to her! Just like the YWCA assignment. Maybe it’s just that every other thing is going to drive her nuts. Maybe eventually this will all end and everything will fall back into place. Maybe.

Jane grabs the pen, yanks her cellphone out of her bathrobe pocket, looks at her calendar, and starts the journal on the very day Dr. Bayer sent the email telling her to do it. This is easier than she thought. She makes it up as she goes along and is feeling very clever:

Sept. 26—Husband says he loves me
.

Sept. 28—Old clients call who might be wanting to find a new house
.

Sept. 29—A stress-free day with no interruptions
.

Jane takes a break for some coffee, and because she has absolutely no idea what to write next. Maybe there will be something in the paper that makes her happy and she can lie about it. Jesus. Keeping track of happiness?

Jane makes it to page three before she gets seriously upset. Before she can even finish the article about how the power in real estate has shifted so much into the hands of the bankers, she rips the paper into shreds with her hands so that it could only be used to start a small fire or as confetti.

“Fuck you, Dr. Bayer,” she says only seconds after she carries the tiny pieces of paper to the front porch and shoots them into the sky.

While Jane has been tearing up the newspaper, Leah Hetzer is on a city bus, passing through the outer edges of the old Greek neighborhood not so far from downtown Chicago on her way to the employment office. She has already gotten her children ready for school, washed all the dishes in the shelter kitchen, had a private talk with her counselor, like she does every morning, and is just now remembering that she hasn’t written one thing for her journal assignment.

The happiness assignment! Leah is devastated. She so wants to charge through this anger class to prove to Dr. Bayer, her counselor at the shelter, and mostly to herself that she can get through this, that she is not an evil woman, that she will never, ever hurt her children again.

“Leah!” she says to herself. “What is wrong with you? This was so simple.”

The bus rattles to a stop, it seems, on every block. While at least a dozen people file in, she tries hard to think what she could jot down about what makes her feel good if she had paper.

The one thing that pushes into her mind full force, and that she so wishes she could write down, is
herself
. When she allows herself to think about it, Leah is disappointed in herself. The years she hesitated, put her life on hold, couldn’t seem to be bold and take a risk. That makes her sad, but maybe sadness is a step toward happiness? Leah has been working through some of those issues with her counselor, and she feels as if she’s been slowly opening Pandora’s box.

What is going to jump out next? Her mother? Her father? The years they abandoned her when she needed them the most? The wrong choices? Her sham of a marriage? The hundreds of desires she has never cashed in? And Dr. B. wants happy?

An elderly woman waddles toward her, gripping the seats with her hand until she flops into one of them and lets out a breath that speaks for itself. Leah’s response is instinctive, kind, generous.

“Are you okay?” she asks the woman.

“Oh dear, yes. Thank you. I’m just fine. My hips are shot. Take care of your hips, sweetheart.”

Leah smiles and promises that she will. Is this what she will look like when she grows old? Will she have lines wrapping the edges of her entire face? Will her hips hurt? Now that she isn’t going to be beaten to death in an abusive relationship, will she grow to be an old, open, honest woman, too?

The woman notices Leah staring. “Is everything okay, dear?”

There is something so lovely about the energy of this elderly woman that Leah is tempted to shift her own hips, drop her head into this woman’s lap, and tell her every single detail of her life story. She imagines this woman has a few stories of her own to tell. She has most likely lived through the Great Depression, the loss of a spouse, her best friends, perhaps even a child. The veins in her hands look like vines descending past her wrists and disappearing into the sleeves of her worn green jacket. Who loves this woman? Why is no one driving her to where she wants to go? Why is she on the bus?

Leah forgets about herself, which is what she always does. She thinks about this woman and her tired hips and how hard it must have been for her to make the first step and then walk down the aisle. She imagines the woman is en route to the drugstore to pick up some medicine and this simple trip will exhaust her so that she will spend the rest of the day in bed. What can Leah do?

“I’m fine, yes, I’m fine, but what about you?”

The woman smiles and then ushers a small laugh through her ill-fitting dentures. “Aren’t you sweet! You have such very kind eyes. Has anyone ever told you that? Your soul is dancing right there next to your pupils.”

Leah is taken aback. She opens her eyes even wider.

The woman leans in, touches her gently on the arm, so that Leah can feel how soft and warm her skin is.

“You have had a hard life. I can tell. Don’t worry, honey. It’s all going to be okay.”

The bus lurches to yet another stop, and before Leah can utter a word or move to help her, the woman hoists herself up and disappears.

Leah’s heart is pounding. She feels as if she has just received an unexpected gift. And she has one thing she can now write in her assignment book.

When she turns her head to look out the window, tears are streaming down her face and it looks as if it’s snowing on the front porch of the house the bus is passing. Either that or a wild-looking woman in a lovely, thick flamingo-pink bathrobe is throwing tiny pieces of newspaper into the air while she stands on her front porch step and screams.

16

Writing It Down at Dinner

B
uffy Vandeis lives in one of those gorgeous, restored, terribly expensive town houses close to downtown Chicago that were once tenement homes for the Polish and German immigrants who made Chicago the multicultural city it remains to this day. Olivia can’t believe she has such a dear friend who lives in such a remarkable place. She also can’t believe she has a friend named Buffy.

Phyllis, of course, adores Buffy. Buffy always cooks something that smells terrific when they come over for dinner and when Phyllis sidles up to her after they eat when Livie and Buffy sit on the couch, Buffy picks her up and puts her next to her.

On the couch!

Phyllis is on the couch right now, looking across at Livie, who shakes her head every time Phyllis winks at her. And Phyllis is totally winking at her.
I’m on the couch. I’m on the couch. And Buffy loves me more than you do!

The couch is a lovely shade of pale green, and smooth, but all Phyllis cares about is how her hips and shoulders feel when she leans against Buffy and then dips her head onto the edge of the cushion. She could spend forever right here.

Livie feels pretty much the same way. Buffy married up, divorced much higher than up, and she’s been Livie’s closest friend for more than twenty years. Buffy is the woman Livie thinks about when she counsels someone who doesn’t have a friend and needs one very badly. Buffy is her emotional anchor, a retired psychologist, one of only two people in the entire world who know her better than she knows herself, and she’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Buffy has been trying to get Livie to spring loose from her job for years. She wants to take her to Paris and rafting, but Olivia wouldn’t go camping if the end of the world were near, and foreign travel is not on her dream list.

“You, my sweet darling, look exhausted,” Buffy says, stroking Phyllis.

“You would be exhausted, too, if you had these four women facing you tomorrow night. And, besides that, I have no idea what I’m doing. At least that’s what it feels like.”

Buffy moves her right hand across her body as if she’s shooing a fly off her own face. “This wouldn’t happen if you would have quit while you were ahead.”

“Up yours, honey,” Livie jokes, laughing lightly.

“Talk to me. Where are you?” Buffy leans forward and puts her elbows on her knees.

“I’ve done everything I’ve always wanted to do. Focusing not on the anger but on what should be coming next. Instead of the anger logs I usually make people keep, I’m making them write down what makes them happy.”

“Ah, the write-it-down therapy. I can see them now, sitting around their tables making up lies.” Buffy relaxes and sits up.

“It eventually works,” Livie explains, pointing a finger at her friend. “You know that. These women have dipped away from honesty for so long it’s going to take a while. These are special clients. Not your run-of-the-mill badasses, anyway.”

“Be careful now, dear. I can almost imagine who they are and what they look like.”

Admittedly, Olivia sometimes crosses the line when she talks to Buffy about her clients. But Buffy, with her silk suits, glorious peeled face, and Ph.D. mind, has never betrayed her.

She has seen Livie through the beginning and end of so many groups like this that she could step in and run them herself. Well, maybe not this one. Still, she has seen her friend through things that were much more savage. But Buffy knows what Livie has on the line.

“Still confident, sweetie?”

“I’ve seen some progress and I’m bringing them back in again tomorrow,” she tells Buffy. “But who knows? This is all my bright idea and I’m not about to back up now.”

“You’ve sure as hell talked about doing a group like this long enough,” Buffy says, closing her eyes and trying hard to remember exactly how long they have been talking about new ways to treat angry people. “I’m actually a little jealous.”

“Seriously?” Olivia opens her eyes as wide as they can go and stares at her friend.

“Honest,” Buffy admits. “I doubt if there’s a therapist alive who hasn’t thought he or she could do things better. Think about it. Half the books we use were written in the Dark Ages.”

“No kidding!” Olivia laughs. “Thank God I threw all my damn books away!”

“If anyone can change the world and the way people think it’s you, Livie,” Buffy says with admiration and affection in her voice. “You’ve always been remarkable at what you do.”

Phyllis’s eyes are beginning to droop. The three of them—meaning Buffy, Livie, and Phyllis—had a hearty beef stew for dinner. It’s a miracle that Phyllis didn’t get to sit at the table and drink her own glass of wine. The scent of the stew still lingers in the house, and these are the moments that keep Phyllis and Livie young. The soft hand, the cushion, Olivia sitting with her feet up—and that smell!

“Tell me,” Buffy says as Phyllis begins to fall asleep. “Do you think you can pull this off?”

Olivia hesitates for a moment. She knows that in the quiet of the night the human heart wrings itself out and stands in front of a mirror to examine possibilities, potential, and, yes, failings. The power of the self, the ability to try something, give it your all, then accept what does or doesn’t happen has been the center of most of her life. She has always had to try.

“In a way I feel as if these broads, and I use that term loosely right now, are a gift to me, Buffy. It’s one hell of a challenge. The answer to your question is yes. I think I can change the system, or, at the very least, show that there is more than one way to handle group sessions.”

“That’s my girl!”

Phyllis shifts and wakes up when Buffy uncrosses her legs.
Please don’t stop talking! Please let us stay a while longer!

It’s still early evening and Olivia feels the same way Phyllis does. She loves the view of the city from the kitchen, the graceful calm Buffy brings to her life, and she loves that Buffy won’t let her get away with a thing.

“One more drink?” Buffy asks, knowing she’s having one no matter what Livie says.

“I took a taxi. And you know what?”

“What, darling?”

“I’m starting to get sick of moderation.”

“Thank Jesus. This has only taken, what? Twenty years?”

Phyllis hears the ice go into the glass after Buffy gets up and she lifts her head, turns it just a little bit, and, swear to God, winks at Olivia as if to say, “Thanks! I love this fabulous couch.”