Tuesday Night Miracles (38 page)

She decides to shower and put on fresh clothes. That will help. That will make her feel better for sure, and she runs up the steps and into the long walk-in closet that leads to the bathroom, where she notices that Derrick hasn’t taken just a few suits out of the closet but almost all of them.

Jane stops as if she has been frozen in place. Then she pulls out the cedar-lined drawers and sees that all Derrick’s socks and underwear are gone. Every single piece has been taken. There are no flashy boxers that he loves to wear, no dark socks for work, no white ankle socks for the gym. Two shirts are left hanging in the closet, all the sweaters are gone; even his favorite bathrobe, the old green cotton one—“Soft and still talkin’ to me,” as he loved to say—that he once threatened to wear to work have all disappeared.

Oh, Derrick!

Jane never makes it into the shower. She sits down in the middle of the closet after grabbing the two shirts that were left hanging like lonely soldiers guarding all that empty space. She curls on her side and wraps the shirts around her face. There is a hint of Derrick’s cologne, musky and rich, on one of the shirts, and when she smells his scent her heart is whipped into a frenzy that brings tears to her eyes.

While Jane is sobbing into her husband’s shirt sleeve, Kit is desperately trying to get up off the floor, where she has been doing a series of downward dogs as instructed by a yoga video she found under her daughter’s abandoned twin bed.

She was trying to recapture the ignored house inch by inch and had been vacuuming the tiny rug in her daughter’s room when the tape all but leapt into her hand.

Relaxation. Control. The simplicity of the your inner thoughts
.

Who writes this shit, she thinks, bending, and then rising with a laugh, because even that simple movement made her feel as if she were about to spring a leak. Tight hamstrings, tight leg muscles, tight hips, tight everything. When was the last time something physical beyond hauling out the garbage happened around here?

Peter works out all the time. The fire-department rules have gotten intense since three overweight firefighters lost their jobs. Those porkers couldn’t have saved a baby from a burning house, let alone a woman or a man who weighed more than a poodle.

Kit knows she is small enough to have squeezed through the thin rules all these years but she also knows that doesn’t mean she’s in shape. She dropped the vacuum cleaner right where she was standing and walked down the hall to her bedroom.

Before Kit popped the video into the DVD player, she thought about the television being in the master bedroom. Every magazine article she has ever read about reviving a marriage, every smart woman she knows, every romance expert, has said, “Get the damn television out of the bedroom.” Kit now thinks maybe there is something to that advice.

It’s so easy to switch on the TV instead of your libido. It’s so easy to lie in bed like a zombie wrapped in the same blue-flowered flannel sheets you’ve been using every winter for the past seven years. It’s so easy to think about your husband’s great thighs, and the way he touches you in the curve of your hip, and then puts his lips right there as if you’ve just handed him a road map. But not so easy to get to the remote control when the show is just getting to the good part.

Before Kit turned on the television, she spun around to look at the bed. She thought about Peter in a way she hadn’t thought about him in a very long time. He was gentle and never yelled. He stood by her when she got into trouble. He was a fantastic father, even if he never understood their daughter’s adolescent mood swings. He always walked away when Kit started one of her periodic, and apparently quite regular, verbal outbursts. He always backed her up when she talked about what assholes her brothers were and how much she tried to please her father but never could.

All these years, she thought,
he has loved me
.

And I have been selfish. Absolutely selfish.

This realization soared though Kit as if someone had launched a Frisbee from inside her left leg. She could actually feel something rotating through her until whatever in the hell it was reached her heart, which began to pound wildly. Then it pushed through her throat and moved into her head until she could feel the sting of tears behind her eyes.

Oh, Peter!

That is when Kit pushed in the tape and focused on the yoga and breathing and forgiving herself and hoping against hope that it wasn’t too late and that she could make it up to Peter and then their daughter, and maybe, just maybe, one by one, her brothers. And that jewelry box? Kit can’t go there yet. She just can’t. Maybe one brother every year, surely not all at once, and surely not one brother at all, because this has been a long time coming. A lifetime. But for now the closet must stay closed.

When the tape ended, she was dripping wet and absolutely astonished. She was also amazingly relaxed after exerting so much physical energy, and her heart was still keeping pace with her breathing—slow and easy. Go figure!

Now, by the time Kit manages to struggle to her feet, having obtained a new level of bliss in her usually chaotic emotional underworld, she has also given birth to so many new ideas she feels as if her feet may not touch the ground.

First she takes the yoga video from the DVD player, kisses it, and sets it on the dresser next to the television. Then she unplugs the TV, somehow manages to lift it, and slowly carries it downstairs and into the kitchen, where she sets it on the table.

It’s an old television, but it works, and maybe she’ll lug it to the car and take it over to the women’s shelter. There are other things to do first. The DVD player goes next. Then she takes all the bedding off the bed, throws everything in the washer, and decides, as she turns on the washing machine, that she’s going to give away all the bedding too.

When she finishes, Kit heads back downstairs, where she sits at the kitchen table, sipping a huge glass of water, and writes out a list of everything she’s going to buy to turn the master bedroom into a love shack.

She laughs out loud as she begins writing. Turning Kit Ferranti into a love machine isn’t going to be as easy as buying new sheets, candles, a CD player, and whatever else she can think of on the way to the store.

Before she leaves, Kit decides to check her email. She’s been having some absolutely lively and wonderful exchanges with Grace, who told her last night that she also remembers seeing the billboards with Jane’s face plastered all over them.

While her laptop cranks up, Dr. Bayer is struggling to compose an email that must be sent to all four of her Tuesday-night women as soon as possible.

Her throat feels as if it’s been exposed to a major dust storm. Why this is so hard is beyond her—except deep down Dr. Bayer knows why it’s so hard. It’s because she doesn’t want any of these women to fail. It’s because this could be the last rung of her professional ladder. It’s because she’s been experimenting and she has to prove herself or … or, well, what?

Dr. Bayer shakes her head and tries to dislodge all her doubts. It’s now or never, Olivia.

Dear Kit, Grace, Jane, and Leah,

First of all, I want you all to know how proud I am of your progress. Our last session was a small taste of a miracle for me, and I am hoping you feel the same way. I am also hoping that when you finish reading this email you will not drive over here and do bodily harm to me. That would cause you to fail the class.

We have two class sessions left, if everything goes well. The final class, the week before Thanksgiving, will be a wrap-up, a graduation party of sorts, and one last chance to make sure everything is going okay in your lives.

But that leaves next week.

Prepare yourselves.

Next week you will be spending the night in jail. It’s not a jail that is still in use but the old county jail that has been renovated over on Harley Avenue. There are six cells. There is a bathroom in each cell. You will be allowed to bring something to drink. No food is allowed. You must bring your journals.

When we first started this journey, we talked about what you all have to lose if you do not pass this class, if you continued to live your life always on the brink of anger, if you couldn’t see that life is a fabulous gift—almost a game, like the wild hunt for yourselves I have been sending you on.

I’d love to be able to send you to a spa, away from all the distractions of life, but I hope you know by now that those distractions are fuel that can propel you to so many new places. You have all come very close to losing everything. My hope is that you will think of this next adventure as time to meditate and grow. This could be one of the most important events of your life. Bring those drawings—I want you to look at them all night long.

You know how to reach me if you have any questions. I suggest that everyone get a ride—parking is horrid on that street—and I will bring everyone home in the morning. Leah, I will pick you up at 6:45 p.m. next Tuesday evening.

Everyone else, please arrive at 7 p.m. The address is 34 S. Harley Avenue. I will be waiting by the door.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bayer

Olivia hits the send button, stands up, and waits for her phone to ring.

The emails are delivered and read within the hour by everyone but Jane. Jane is sleeping in the walk-in closet, covered by two hand-stitched dress shirts she once gave to her husband for his birthday.

It will be two days before she turns on her computer. And even then Dr. Bayer doesn’t receive one call or email message from any of the members of her Tuesday-night class.

She takes this as a good sign, and she can’t wait to take them down the last stretch of this very interesting road.

44

Sunday Night Serenades

P
hyllis is so angry she’s thinking of going to bed early. She knows it’s the end of the week, and usually about this time of the day she can smell meat cooking. There’s a big red pot on the counter, and Olivia puts meat in there right after they get up in the morning.

The first time this happened, Phyllis was beyond excited. The piece of meat was huge! She sat in front of the counter as if she were watching a movie and waited, and waited, and waited. She later learned that when the meat goes in that pot it takes a long time to come out of it.

During the past several years, Phyllis has figured out how to get a piece of the meat that goes in the red thing. She absolutely never begs. Phyllis learned this the hard way. Once she even tried to stand on her skinny and very short hind legs, the way she had seen the dogs at the park jump around, but she just fell right over with a very large thud. She made the horrid mistake of barking once and she ended up locked—locked, mind you—in the bedroom.

Finally she decided to be calm about the whole thing. Phyllis would simply lie under the table when Olivia started to eat and this is when she learned how to smile. What actually happened is that she was trying so hard not to bark, because the smell of the meat was driving her insane, it was forcing her jaws to twitch.

Olivia noticed. Alleluia!

“Oh, Phyllis, look at you!” Olivia exclaimed with her voice shimmering in that sweet way that made Phyllis realize she was about to hit the jackpot.

It was beef that night. Phyllis can remember it as if it were yesterday, but today is a total bust. She knew she was in trouble when the doorbell rang and Olivia came back into the kitchen with a brown bag filled with little white cartons.

This was not just unusual; it was totally unacceptable. Phyllis watches for a few minutes while Olivia unpacks the bag. Whatever is in there isn’t something Phyllis can wrap her saliva glands around. Thoroughly disgusted and disappointed, Phyllis finally plops down on her bed next to Olivia’s chair.

“What’s a matter, girl? Don’t you like Chinese food?” Olivia says, laughing. “Don’t worry. I ordered a little pork. If you stop pouting, you may get a piece.”

Phyllis totally ignores Olivia, who then ignores Phyllis. Olivia fills a plate, heats up some water for her tea, and then walks over to her chair.

This, Phyllis knows, is also almost unheard-of around their house. Olivia almost always eats at the table. Something is going on again.

“Well, girl, Sunday dinner tonight isn’t what it usually is,” Olivia explains. “I’m tired. Really, really tired.”

During the past few months, the nights have seemed longer. Even with Phyllis jumping like a wild bean when she greets her every evening, the house has never felt this empty, quiet, and huge.

Olivia has never been one to forgo sleep, but her co-workers have noticed that she looks exhausted most mornings when she comes into the office. She hasn’t been sleeping well, and when she does sleep it’s as if her brain got plugged into a running movie. She knows there are dozens of worlds inside her lively mind, but must they all collide and dance at once? Every night? She has stumbled toward the coffeemaker every morning this entire week, and Thursday morning she went back to bed for an hour and was almost late for her first appointment.

Olivia dips into her vegetable fried rice—which she knows isn’t the best thing to eat if you don’t go to the gym five days a week—and watches the bare tree outside the living-room window dance in the November wind. Most people would turn on the television for company, but Olivia usually prefers the silence.

She loves the way her house talks to her. There’s always been loose roof shingles that flap against the eaves when it’s windy. The black cable that is filled with telephone, Internet, and television wires dances haphazardly against the house if there is the slightest breeze. The old refrigerator, which is about to perish, hums constantly, and has some great competition from the furnace.

She loves the sound of Phyllis’s toenails clicking on the floor, and the gentle rattle of every window when a large truck rolls past. When the next-door neighbors moved and took the old sailboat that was parked in the backyard, she missed the clanging of the rope on its center mast every time there was even the slightest breeze.

But sometimes familiarity isn’t enough. Olivia knows that she has been inching toward a huge life change for a very long time, and she has worked hard to address her own fears. New city, new house, new terrain. And all that time spread out when she could … could what? Start golfing? Join a card club? Get one of those bikes with fat tires to ride on the beach?

Well, maybe, she tells herself, wondering what the fortune cookie will say when she bites into it and pulls out the white piece of paper with a lively prediction written on it. Recently she read a story about a mess of lottery winners who discovered they had all picked their winning numbers from the same batch of fortune cookies.

Why not? Why not anything? Why not jump into change like she has suggested to her hundreds of clients? Why not sell the house to Susan from work; she’s been waiting for it for five years? Why not get three new bathing suits and get the hell out of here?

The pork and noodles Olivia starts to eat next are very spicy. She finds the two biggest pieces of meat, rolls them in her napkin to get the spices off, and then drops them quickly in front of Phyllis.

Phyllis smells the meat before it hits the floor. Where did this come from? Those little boxes? Is this a trick? She scoots forward to smell the meat and looks suspiciously at Olivia, who is eating away up there. It sure smells like meat. She licks one piece and her taste buds start dancing.

The pork is gone so fast that Phyllis is already trying to remember if she ate it. She dares not fall asleep now. Who knows what could drop out of the sky next.

“Not bad, huh,” Olivia says, bending down to look at Phyllis.

Phyllis cranks on a smile so fast her nose starts to twitch, and just like that another piece of meat appears.

But then Olivia says, “That’s it, sister. You won’t be able to fit into your bathing suit if I keep cheating with you like this.”

Phyllis remains hopeful and stays in attention mode as Olivia finishes eating and the wind shifts so that the trees are now bending east.

Olivia can’t stop thinking about Leah, Grace, Kit, and Jane for more than five minutes, it seems. Is it because they may be members of her final anger class or maybe even her final clients? Is it because she can feel herself leaning into change, thinking about things she hasn’t thought about for a white, finally falling into a person in a place she has kept waiting a very long time?

That makes more sense to Olivia right this moment than it ever has. She can understand why some people slide along for years. You’d think giving up bad habits or a lifestyle that leaves something to be desired would be easy, but not so. Olivia could continue to sit in her old chair, work another five years, and her life would be the way it has been. Busy, successful, fine, mostly full. But it wouldn’t make her rise with great joy every morning. It wouldn’t give her the laughter she has been missing, the presence of love every moment, the warm embrace only a secure and loving relationship can provide.

She’s pretty certain Kit understands this part of life. Her husband must also be a saint. Kit’s got fire in her eyes, even when she’s sad. Kit must be loved greatly, and Olivia is certain it’s a love Kit may have taken for granted.

Anger does that. It’s like a blind, unstoppable force once you let it take over your thoughts and give it rein to control your actions. Olivia knows all about that, and she still can’t believe she told the women about her own past. She hasn’t spoken about that in ages.

Maybe Olivia’s letting go of everything, too. Speaking about her past seemed to ignite something in all the women. Perhaps it made her more believable. She knows that she dresses like an old grandmother, but there’s a lot going on behind the cotton.

Phyllis is getting weak from holding her head up. Where’s the meat? Is that it? A couple of stinking pieces of pork?

She lets out a bit of air and drops her head onto the pillow. Then she turns sideways about an inch at a time, so she doesn’t have to look at Olivia when she opens her eyes. The only thing she has to hope for now is a dog treat after she goes outside, and maybe the rest of the food she normally gets that sometimes has a hint of old gravy laced inside the brown nuggets.

Life is something. That’s one thing Olivia knows for certain as she gets up and walks back into the kitchen.

Phyllis doesn’t budge. That will teach Olivia to eat most of the pork herself.

When the plate is washed off, and all the leftovers are safely stored in the refrigerator, Olivia asks Phyllis if she needs to go outside and puts on her jacket, because she already knows the answer.

Whatever. Phyllis gets up and not so much trots as slowly lumbers out the door. Olivia thinks people who believe dogs don’t have a personality are the ones without personalities. Phyllis should have her own television show.

While she waits for Phyllis to ever so slowly pick out the perfect spot, Olivia watches the family next door toss a football around the front yard. They are laughing and obviously pretending they’re members of the Chicago Bears. When they pile into a heap—mother, father, two sons, a couple of neighbor kids, and two giggling girls from down the street—Olivia feels a stabbing pain in her chest.

It’s not a heart-attack kind of pain but a blaze of emotion that grips her unexpectedly and leaves her breathless.

“Come on, Phyllis,” she commands, in a voice that is broken and almost inaudible.

But Phyllis hears and she hurries.

They scurry inside, where Olivia stands in her jacket, feeling that same swell of loneliness that has been riding her more and more every day. In one way, she realizes the feeling is a good thing and it validates the direction her life will be taking very soon. But it also hurts. The sadness of a recognized emotion is a gift for sure, but when Olivia opens her eyes she is still alone.

She’s about to bend down and wrap her arms around Phyllis, who makes all things bearable, and who takes away a good portion of her loneliness all the time, when her phone rings.

“Well, there you go.” She almost laughs as she walks into the kitchen to answer the call.

It’s Jane’s husband, Derrick, and he’s all but screaming into the phone.

“Listen to me, Derrick,” she orders. “I am coming over there. It will take me less than ten minutes. You must keep her calm. Then, in exactly ten minutes, you must call the police.”

Phyllis is now sitting at full attention. The air has suddenly turned serious.

“I will tell her, Derrick. That’s why I want you to wait until I’m at the house before you call. It will take the police a few minutes to get there. I’m leaving right now.”

Olivia is gone so quickly that Phyllis is turning in circles. What in the world is going on?

The car is pulling out of the driveway and Phyllis is tempted to bark, but what good will that do? Finally she walks over to Olivia’s chair, looks up at it, wishes Olivia were still sitting in it, and then plops down on her bed to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, Phyllis discovers a rather large piece of meat that Olivia must have placed on the bed when she wasn’t looking. Phyllis, of course, eats it.

But it doesn’t taste the same. Nothing tastes the same without Olivia.