Tuesday Night Miracles (5 page)

Jane finally puts her foot back in her shoe and pushes her feet under the chair. Bravo. No one says a word.

“All three of you committed violent acts,” Olivia continues. “People were harmed. What you did was a crime.”

Kit sits back and boldly asks what would happen if they walked out of the meeting.

“You would be arrested and taken to jail. Has anyone ever been to the overcrowded Ellington County Jail? The state prison?”

All three shake their heads. Olivia jots something down on the outside of her file folder. Do these women get how serious this is? This isn’t going to be easy.

A few moments of silence tick by. Olivia hopes they’re imagining what it would be like to be strip-searched, showered, examined in every orifice, and then locked in a tiny cell with a repeat offender. She hopes they’re thinking about the shitty food, and the women on drugs, and the guards who treat them exactly the way criminals should be treated. They could be treated as second- or third-class citizens for the rest of their lives. They might have to give up their homes, their spouses; their children may never want to speak to them again.

But are they listening? Do these three women know that they’ve been given an extraordinary second chance?

“So you’re saying this is serious,” Jane repeats, as if she is speaking for the entire group. “I get that. But how long do we have to be here?”

“As long as it takes,” Olivia responds.

“Weeks?”

“Probably longer.”

“Jesus.”

“Every Tuesday until—well, until you say we are released?” Grace asks with very wide eyes.

Olivia nods. She’s lying through her lovely white teeth.

“Okay,” Grace says, nodding agreeably. “Will other people be coming, or will it be just us?”

“Just the three of you.”

During the next fifteen minutes, Dr. Bayer talks about anger management in a very clinical manner. Nothing complicated except a Psych 101 discussion about staying in control, not crossing the line, using anger in a positive way. She has to do this much. After this, all bets are off.

As she speaks she watches them. Eyes wander, Kit starts tapping her foot, Grace looks at her watch. Jane is, well, Jane.

Finally, Olivia stops.

“When we first started, I asked you to explain why you are here. Does anyone want to add anything else about that?”

Three blank faces look back into her blue eyes.

“I’m sorry?” Grace offers.

Olivia doesn’t respond. “Anyone else?”

“Okay then,” Olivia says as she rises and gathers up her files and notebook. “I was hoping you would have understood the seriousness of what brought you to this meeting tonight. You are all bright women, but that doesn’t mean you can skate through this. You have a lot to think about.”

“We’re done then for tonight?” Kit asks, looking up.

“Not quite,” Olivia says, as they all let out a stream of hot, disappointed air.

The one thing she is now sure of is that her professional insights are still working. She’s pretty certain she has managed to predict each one of these women’s personalities from their records and their initial writings. What she has prepared next seems perfect—to her, at least.

“I’m going to hand each of you an envelope,” she says. “There’s an assignment inside the envelope, with a set of instructions. You can choose to open them here or when you get home, but you must not open them until I leave. Do you understand?”

Three stunned heads nod at the same time.

“My cellphone number and other contact information is inside the envelopes if you ever need to get in touch with me,” she explains, looking directly at each of them in turn. “I’m always available for you. Always.”

Then Dr. Olivia Bayer rises, picks up her tattered briefcase, nods, and leaves the room, praying that when she turns her back on them she doesn’t get stabbed.

7

The Blue Dot

T
here’s barely a speck of light on the western horizon when the women stagger out of the Franklin Building and flee to their cars. They do not speak, acknowledge, or look at one another. Not one of them has opened the mysterious envelope.

Grace makes it to her driver’s seat before she breaks down. She locks the doors, puts her head on the steering wheel, and tries to remember the last time she felt so humiliated—not counting the night she was arrested.

She struggles to control herself and succeeds for a few moments, but then she starts her car, looks in the rearview mirror before she begins to back out, and catches a glimpse of her own eyes.

“What is wrong with you?”

She knows she should be sad and not angry. Dr. Bayer would probably kick her out of the class right this second if she knew Grace was angry. She’s angry she had to go to the meeting, angry her life has gotten to this point, angry she didn’t say more, angry she didn’t tell that brassy Jane to hit herself in the head with her own damn shoes. Truth be told, Grace is angry because she’s angry, and now what?

Now she has to go home and face the daughter who got her into this mess and pray that the other daughter, and whatever she calls
her
friend—
partner
is apparently the preferred word these days—haven’t decided to stop by unexpectedly. That visit would be like dropping the last rock into a load that tips her right off a cliff.

Traffic heading away from the city is light, and Grace pulls into her driveway sixteen minutes after she leaves the meeting. And a meeting is where she has been. That’s all she’s going to tell her barely seventeen-year-old daughter, Kelli.

Kelli
.

Maybe next week Grace will tell her little group that
Kelli
and the word
anger
are synonymous. This kid has pushed buttons Grace didn’t even know she had. She’s constantly throwing her mother’s long-ago divorce in Grace’s face as if it’s a toxic chemical, and for good reason. Grace has pained herself with guilt over how she handled the entire mess every day since their father left. She knows that Kelli and her sister, Megan, didn’t like or need their daddy—and he sure as hell wasn’t anything close to the word
father
. They don’t even know where he is now. But Grace realizes she’s not the only one to blame for the divorce mess. She knows she made mistakes that ricocheted down to her daughters, and every mistake they make, every wrong turn they take, every slip or fall, she takes personally. She hates herself for the yelling before she split up with their father, for the way she talked about him, for all the emotional crap she put them through.

She could and should be a better mother, a better daughter, a better friend. Grace can feel her heart surge, as if every ounce of her blood is trying to push through her heart valves at once. If she could figure out a way to drive the car over the top of her head right now, she just might do it.

When she pulls into the garage and gets out of the car, slamming the door a bit too hard, Grace sees the dent in the fender from Kelli’s last bout of carelessness. The bent garage door that may never get fixed. The bad grades. The sassy mouth. The drinking. The smoking. The lying. And, finally, the boyfriend from hell.

The boyfriend who sneaked in through the bedroom window and helped Kelli organize a party when Grace was at a medical convention. The boyfriend with the rich parents who love him by buying him things like a car that costs as much as everything Grace owns. The boyfriend who forced Grace to take her daughter to see the gynecologist and ask for a birth-control prescription.

Grace turns to grab her bag out of the backseat just as a car honks, scaring the living hell out of her, and pulls in right behind her parked car.

Thankfully, she hears a familiar voice almost laughing. “Didn’t you see me, honey? I’ve been following you for a couple of miles.”

It’s Karen, Grace’s best friend, her female soul mate, and the only human being in the entire world who has been allowed during the past twelve years to step inside Grace’s heart. Karen is also the only person in her life who knows about the anger class. Grace freezes. Kelli especially doesn’t know. Kelli would hold it against her mother like a hot poker until she got her way 24/7.

“Karen!” Grace says, barely above a whisper. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m desperate for a kind face and so glad you caught me before I got inside to see Ms. Smart-Ass.”

Karen slams her door and walks into the garage. “I couldn’t wait to see you either.”

Grace would love to fall into Karen’s arms and let her friend drag her into the house and make her a cup of hot tea. Karen would probably even rub her feet and draw her a bath. She’s sweet and kind but a tough-as-nails hospice nurse who works several floors down from Grace. Karen is ten years younger than Grace, but she’s about to jump into the heart of the teenager years with her own daughters. Grace jokes that she trades her parenting advice, which she thinks stinks, for Karen’s lovely compassion.

“Let’s step around the side of the garage,” Grace whispers, pulling Karen with her.

Karen has absolutely flawless black skin that she swears was part of her mother’s prenatal agreement with God. Unfortunately for Karen, her daughters were part of the same agreement and are just as beautiful. The boys are already lining up.

“What’s going on?” Karen asks, slightly baffled by the secrecy.

“I just came from the first meeting.”

“Oh, my God!” Karen says loudly before clamping her hand over her mouth.

The two women are huddling against the side of the garage as if they were teenagers themselves.

“Honey, why are we whispering?” Karen asks as she puts her hands on top of Grace’s.

“Kelli’s in there, and she still doesn’t know about this. You know what she’d do.”

“Oh, sugar! Give her some credit. You might be surprised.”

Grace snorts. “You’re the one who’s going to be surprised when your daughters start drinking your vodka and then filling it with water to cover the missing booze.”

“I drink gin now.”

Grace can’t help laughing. Karen is like her own living, breathing bottle of gin every single time she sees her.

“I’m serious,” Grace says.

“How was the meeting?” Karen asks gently.

“Sweet Jesus. There are two other women who give the word
anger
new meaning, but I can’t talk about them or anything. It’s just, well, it’s not going to be easy.” Grace does not want Karen to know about the letter, which she’s dying to open.

Karen doesn’t say another word. She simply pulls Grace into her arms and holds her for a few seconds and then pushes her away and lightly slaps her on the face.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

“Snap out of it, sister. Stop being a baby. Suck it up.”

Grace sticks out her lower lip like a pouting one-year-old and drops her head. She’s on the verge of keeling over. She’s absolutely exhausted from the inside out.

“I’ll try to try,” she promises.

“I’m bringing dinner over tomorrow night, by the way, and the girls are coming with me so Kelli can teach them how to smoke and climb out windows.”

No one can make Grace laugh like Karen. She smiles and immediately feels as if she seriously doesn’t deserve to have such a wonderful person in her absolutely overburdened life.

“Go in the house,” Karen says. “Eventually you’ll have to tell her. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“Thank you, Karen,” Grace manages to squeak out as Karen lopes back to her car as if she were a secret agent coming out of hiding.

When Grace gets into the house, her daughter is sprawled across the living room; boyfriend dink-wad is not in sight, thank God. He’s banned from the house for an indefinite period, which created a raging war that’s not yet over. It is not a good thing to threaten to file criminal charges against your girlfriend’s mother, even if she did total your car.

“Yo, Mama.”

“Hi, baby. How are you?” There are books, empty plates, glasses, and a trail of clothes from the door into the living room and the kitchen.

“Where were you?” Kelli is standing with her head turned to one side as if she’s now the mom in charge.

There’s a million-dollar question.
“Honey, I was at anger-management class with two other crazy women”
is not going to cut it.

“A meeting. Did anyone call?”

“Mom, the phone thing is weird. We are, like, the last people in the world who have a landline. But the phone did ring. It was that same guy from your work who always calls, Evan.”

“Oh.” Grace looks away, trying to act as if she doesn’t care.

“He calls a lot,” Kelli says, dropping her head and trying to look into her mother’s eyes.

“We have a lot of projects going on at the hospital.”

“Whatever.”

“Does he want me to call him back?”

“What do you think?” Kelli says in a snotty tone of voice that really means, “Mom, get a life!”

Grace turns, so that Kelli won’t see her blush, and walks quickly into the kitchen.

The last thing she wants to do is talk to her daughter about Evan. It’s none of her business. As far as Kelli is concerned, Evan works in accounting at the hospital, right next to her mother’s office on the third floor, and is helping her with cost-effective procedures. Nursing is not what it used to be, and now that Grace is a critical-care manager she spends more time with her hands on paperwork than on a patient’s pulse.

Kelli does not need to know that Evan keeps buying Grace coffee, has asked her out to lunch at least fifteen times, and has made it known that he’s interested in more than the bottom-line numbers on her nursing floor.

And Kelli also doesn’t need to know that Grace is trying to figure out what to do with her own rising feelings for the gentle man whom she sees every day.

In order to forget the whole mess, Grace would love to go to bed early with a glass of wine and a trashy novel, but that’s an impossible dream. She’s taken on an extra shift to pay the damn attorney she had to hire to help her navigate through this anger mess, she brings home paperwork every night, and she’s living in constant fear that human resources will fire her if they find out about the pending assault charges and her evil temper.

That would be the end of her life. The one blessing so far is that the newspapers have gotten so small they’ve stopped running police reports. People talk, she knows this, and she’s surprised that Kelli’s damn boyfriend hasn’t taken out a full-page ad on Facebook about what happened.

The “incident” has all but paralyzed Grace and she would do anything—stand on her head naked if this Dr. Bayer woman wanted her to—to get back the little pieces of her life that she has given away.

“Terrified,” Grace tells herself. “I am absolutely terrified.” Thank God her mother and father have been mostly out of touch for the past six months while living in Australia, where her father has been teaching an ornithology class and her terribly traditional mother has been doing what she always does—standing by to assist.

Grace knows that her mother, who actually wears makeup while bird-watching, would be appalled if she knew about the “incident.” It was bad enough when Grace divorced. Her mother would never speak to her again if she found out about the incident and that made it even worse. The mental pressure is so intense that Grace has started getting headaches for the first time in her life. Even though she’s exhausted and dripping in what she thinks is the last of her estrogen, she knows she really doesn’t have a choice but to get her act together.

Before she walks to the back bedroom that used to belong to her older daughter, Megan, and is now her garage sale–outfitted office, Grace glances at Kelli, who is immersed in a reality-TV trance. Her friends tell her that one easy daughter—well, up until Megan’s partner-girlfriend-I’m-gay thing surfaced—is a blessing. Kelli is normal, they say. She’s pushing the limits, testing, trying to do things to get you to flip out so you’ll be the one to act stupid.

Stupid, Grace knows, would be to lose everything she has worked so hard for her entire life—this tiny, outdated house, her overwhelming job, the one moment a month when Kelli does something lovely, like crawl into bed with her on Sunday morning so they can read the paper together.

On her way through the kitchen, Grace picks up the dishes, wipes off the counter, locks the door, and takes a chance by running her hand lightly through Kelli’s hair as she walks past.

Kelli reaches up at the last second and barely brushes the tips of her mother’s fingers.

This is what Grace will think about the next time Kelli does something insanely stupid, which could be any moment. She’ll try harder, she will. How difficult can it be?

The moment she gets into her office she all but tears open the envelope from Dr. Bayer:

Grace, not every class will be held at the county building. You have an assignment. Next week, instead of class as a group, your assignment is to spend three hours in a row by yourself. You must not call another person, take notes, or do anything except one thing that you love to do for yourself. Only you know what that might be. You have a week to complete this task. You must tell me what you did, how you felt, and send me an email by one week from today. The next class details will follow once I have your assignment
.