“What were you doing?” she asked in a slow measured way that was laced with accusation. She was a sharp, angular shadow against the yellow light in the hall.
“Nothing! Just checking my email.”
“So why did you close it then? Why did you panic like that?”
He could smell his own breath like a rank beast hunkering in the dark. “You startled me, that’s all.” He should have turned on the light, he thought. It would have made things better, less suspicious somehow, if he’d only done that.
Her thin shadow didn’t move. There was a long silence then she said icily, “I was going to tell you that I warmed up some leftovers, but I guess you’re busy with other things.” Then she turned and stalked off and he felt something snap inside him.
He thrashed about wildly in the computer chair and gave the middle finger to the floor where he could hear her downstairs slamming the dishes around and mouthed FUCK YOU then he gave the finger to the computer screen and to the window and to the ceiling. A shred, a tiny shred of self-control prevented him from screaming, from actually going ahead and smashing his fist through the screen with its stupid screensaver of a mountain lake that he’d never even fucking been to, and the fact that this small shred still existed, the fact that he couldn’t, that he didn’t just go ahead and punch it, made him even angrier. He balled his hands into fists and punched at the air. He couldn’t do anything! He couldn’t fucking do anything! Everything he did, every least thing, was some kind of strike against him. Come home early, come home late, what did it matter, he was already accused. Jesus, he was mad. I’m sooooo fucking sorry I ruined your life, he wanted to scream. You had sex with me too! You fucked me too!
He sat there for a while, then he got up and went downstairs where he crashed about the liquor cabinet. Why should he have rules for himself when everyone else seemed to do whatever the fuck they wanted? He poured a HUGE glass of scotch but she stayed in the kitchen and didn’t get to appreciate it so he stomped back upstairs and returned to the computer.
He sat there in the dark with this reckless anger battering around inside him, then he thought of something he could do. Over the past year he’d thought about doing it many times, but something had always stopped him. Ken had been so grave, so serious, warning him several times: ‘Always through me, you understand? If you have any questions, any problems, you come through me,’ his pale eyes boring into Matt in such a way that Matt had felt like he’d already done something wrong. Fuck him, Matt thought now. It was his money and if Ken hadn’t wanted him to know her name he could have just gone and done things the regular way instead of cutting through the red tape, instead of ‘hooking him up direct.’ There wasn’t any harm in it, anyway. It was just a search, that was all.
He typed ‘Annika Torrey, WA’ into Google.
There were multiple results. At the top of the list was a link to a tourism website for Saltery Bay, a small town in the San Juan Islands. It showed a directory of local businesses. Halfway down the list was a place called Twisted Anni’s with a little star beside it saying NEW! Coffee, muffins, cinnamon buns, open year-round. Contact Annika Torrey, then a phone number and a mailing address. It can’t be her, he thought. There must be another Annika Torrey; yet his heart had begun to pound wildly in his chest.
The next link was to a photo in a weekly newspaper, The Saltery Bay Tribune. The picture showed a busy outdoor market. There was a table covered in produce, another in what looked like sweaters. In the aisle between the booths were three lines of dancers, women mostly, but with a few bearded and pony-tailed men thrown in. All the dancers had their hands in the air and were in slightly different phases of a lunge to the left. The caption read: Flashmob! Members of the Healing Journeys Meet-up treated shoppers to an impromptu dance performance at last week’s farmer’s market. From left to right the dancers are . . . followed by a list of names. Matt leaned forward. He held his breath.
Annika Torrey was in the back row, on the end. She was slim, wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt, and had a mass of thick, dark hair that was twisted into a braid that hung down over one shoulder. She was beautiful, in a way, with sharp, haughty cheekbones and big, dark eyes. Unlike the other dancers she was not smiling and appeared deep in concentration. Intense. It couldn’t be her, he told himself again, yet he remembered the medical report. He remembered that he’d imagined her to be attractive: 5’8 and 135 lbs. He thought about the dark, angry slash of her signature pressed into the page. Healing from what? The article didn’t say.
The next link was from Island Life magazine, again about Twisted Anni’s Bakery Café. “Torrey, 39, came to Saltery Bay a year ago.” He caught his breath. He remembered that too. That she was the same age as him. She was quoted: “I came here looking for a quiet place away from the city and I liked it so much I decided to stay and try to make a life here. I’ve always toyed around with the idea of owning my own business. You come to a point in your life when you realize that we’re only here for a short time and you might as well make the most of it.”
He stared at the screen for some time. It was her. It had to be her. He took a long drink of Scotch but it didn’t make him feel any better. The booze just seemed to seep under his skin and make him feel hot. He went back to the web page with her photograph and stared at it. She didn’t look sick. He’d always imagined people with cancer having no hair, but he supposed that was only if they were getting radiation.
He sat there in the dark, drinking and looking at the photo. He looked up viatical settlements, hoping, perhaps, for reassurance but the more he dug, the more he came across stories of fraud and bad behavior. Faked medical records. Brokers selling fake policies. A total gong show in the eighties with the AIDS crisis.
His face began to burn. Why would a dying person start a café? Even if you lived longer than predicted, you wouldn’t start a new business. The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. She could have forged the medical records, lied about her illness then started a new life with his money. Or maybe Ken had lied. Ken! That opportunistic little shit, he thought. He should have known.
He polished off the Scotch and decided he had to do something. No one else was going to help him. He’d called Ken the week previous to check in and Ken had brushed him off with non-comital bullshit. He’d told Matt to be patient, that if he’d wanted medical reports he should have specified that in the contract. Fuck him, Matt thought. He’d ask her himself. He wrote the address of the café down on a small scrap of paper, then opened a new document and began to type, his fingers pounding down on the keys: “Dear Ms. Torrey . . .”
CHAPTER NINE
Annika arrived at the healing circle early and sat alone at the table, watching tendrils of smoke unfurl from the glowing ember at the end of a stick of incense. The smoke rose and twisted, then spread out into wraithlike fingers that seemed to beckon ominously as they curled upwards into the peak of the high timber-framed ceiling.
Only a week ago, she’d felt safe here. The beautiful house, the delicate china tea cups and herbal teas and quiet music had made her feel cared for and she’d dared to hope, to believe that healing—from cancer, from heartbreak, from life—might actually be possible. Then she’d received the letter. Receiving it did something to her, let the air out somehow, made everything around her flat and dull and ugly. She was aware of her own creeping cynicism, of a ragged whisper inside her brain, mocking her efforts to build a better life, to be healthy and whole.
The doorbell rang, jarring her from her trance-like fixation on the smoke. She heard Marion, an aspiring energy healer who hosted the weekly therapy group, go out to answer it. Soon, familiar voices drifted in from the hall.
Annika sighed and turned to the large bay window, hoping the bright day outside might lend her some of its optimism. It was a beautiful afternoon: the sun was sparkling on the water and the shapes of the nearby islands were cut in crisp, fine lines into the pale
strip of blue where the sky touched down. On the lawn directly in front of the window, Marion’s husband Helmut was working, arranging what appeared to be rusted sections of pipe onto an orange tarp that was spread out over the yellow grass. He stooped, then stood upright, clasping his hands behind his back as he assessed his loot, a tall athletic man with a silver crew-cut. Helmut was often around the house, working on the property, but never joined in his wife’s healing sessions. He was always alone, quiet and contained. Annika watched him closely.
Amongst the Saltery Bay healing community, it was rumored that Helmut was a sociopath, a man so ruined by violence he’d lost the ability to feel, a claim greased along by Marion, who, after several glasses of wine liked to corner anyone who would listen with her marital woes. “You have no idea what he’s like,” she’d say, then her eyes would go misty and she’d shake her head, as if to rid herself of some terrible memory. Helmut’s past didn’t help him either: his parents were Austrian immigrants who’d moved to the States shortly after World War II and then Helmut himself had spent the majority of his adult life in the military, serving in an unknown capacity at a number of overseas postings, a position which, if the beautiful house was any indication, had earned him a great deal of money. Yet, despite all these rumors, Annika couldn’t help but feel drawn to him. She watched as he walked over to his pick-up and lifted something heavy from the back: in the bright crisp air, with the sun on his face, he seemed to her to be healthy and strong.
Now, the other participants began to filter in from the hall and she turned around to greet them. Barry and Kat and Susan arrived close together, then stood around the tea station, fixing their drinks and exchanging news of their week. Shortly after, Doug and Velma arrived and their group was complete. Once everyone was settled, Marion came in and sounded the chime.
“Welcome all,” she said in a deep, mysterious voice, running her palms over the flawless white linen tablecloth. Standing at the head of the table in her flowing white dress, her smooth, golden skin aglow in the sunlight, Marion appeared otherworldly, like a prophet or a movie star. She pushed her sleek, black bob behind her ears with two fingers. “I hope everyone had a relaxed and healing week and were able to think about the things we discussed. Today, I’d like to begin our session with a guided meditation.” In a slow, graceful motion, she reached over to the small table beside her and turned on the CD player. She asked everyone to close their eyes.
The music began, a mix of Celtic drums and pipes that crept along like fingers of mist creeping down over the hills. “You’re sitting by a pool, looking into the water,” Marion said in the low, steady voice she used for the meditations. “You feel good there, as you sit by the water’s edge; you feel safe and relaxed. There is nothing to think about or worry about as you sit looking down into the clear, clean water, breathing deeply, steadily, your mind as still as the clear, clear water.”
Annika listened as the breath of the others fell into a rhythm, rising and falling in unison like waves on the shore; it was peaceful, hypnotic even, yet she was unable to settle into it. She felt restless, the way she used to in Church, sitting in the hard pew with the sweet spring air coming through the open door. Since receiving the letter, she hadn’t been able to focus. She hadn’t been able to sit still at all.
She opened her eyes and looked at the faces around the table, each one deep in concentration, unaware of her watching, then she looked around the room, as if searching for her lost peace, but she could not find it. Today, the great living room with its high ceilings and wide windows appeared to her cavernous and bare; the friendly glow from the rose quartz lamps lost to the brightness in the window; the vivid colours of the Native American artwork washed out and over-exposed. Marion and Helmut had built the house several years earlier as a new beginning after the death of their daughter and they’d spared no expense; it was all perfect, all new; yet there was something false about it, a dream built by people who’d lost their ability to dream, who dreamed of what dreams should be.
Annika turned back to the window. She watched Helmut as he hauled a hose out of the shed with brisk, athletic competence. When her gaze returned to the table, she started: Marion had caught her.
Marion regarded her sternly, then silently passed her hand over her own eyes in that calm, lissome way she had, motioning for Annika to rejoin the meditation.
Annika closed her eyes again and tried to focus but the sun from the window made the backs of her eyelids glow and squirm, a liquid fire of reds and yellows. Suddenly she felt angry. What did Marion, with her pampered grief, really know about anything? Her only qualification was her own untouchable loss, a grief she held as whiter, purer somehow than the rest of their squalid compromises and mistakes . . . Annika shook her head. Stop, she chastened herself. It was cruel to think of Marion that way.
“Now look deep into the water. What do you see? What new awareness comes?”
They were supposed to envision a clear, cold pool, Annika knew, in which some vision or insight would appear, but today she saw only the backs of her own eyelids like squirming petrie dishes of her own blood.
“Now I want you to take this new awareness, this thing you’ve discovered and take it to your secret place, that place which is all your own, where it can be considered and cherished, where it can be turned over and over thoughtfully like a cool and precious stone. Breathe deeply and go now to your secret places, bringing this new awareness with you.”
The secret places! The secret places that weren’t secret at all! The secret places that were, in fact, so painfully obvious they seemed almost a pornography, a pornography of loneliness and need. She could go around the table and name them: there was Marion who dreamed of a crystal palace and pretty dresses and her daughter still alive; Kat, an obese diabetic with multiple health problems, who travelled to a gypsy carnival and danced with abandon round a fire; Barry, an ex-lawyer and ex-husband recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, who dreamed no further than a backyard barbecue with cold beer and easy laughter and a wife’s forgiveness; Susan, the thin silver-haired celiac recently divorced after a life of doing exactly what she was supposed to, who rode wild horses on the Mongol steppes with a fur-clad warrior prince; and Paul and Velma, a symbiotic old hippie couple suffering form 30 years of political disappointments, who travelled back in time to a barefoot and hopeful love in a mud-slick field. There was nothing secret about any of it!
Irritated, Annika opened her eyes again and regarded them harshly; yet there was something so child-like and trusting about them sitting there with their eyes closed that her irritation quickly softened and turned into an exasperated affection, the desire to shake them and hold them all at once, to shield them and show them at the same time: don’t you see? Don’t you see that your dreams cannot protect you? That the world is brutal, that its consequence shall come to bear regardless of what you do?
She sighed and closed her eyes, remembering what Sasha, who’d recommended she come here in the first place, had told her: “There’s no right way, Annika, only that you choose to heal. Everything that comes after, whether its yoga or religion or chemotherapy, everything is secondary to that intention.” And Annika did want to heal. She did want to try. Breathing deeply, she willed her mind to her own wide horizon, to a summer field shifting in the breeze.
The music ended and there was a gentle opening of eyes.
The next part of the session was a group discussion where they each took turns sharing the troubles and triumphs of their lives. When no one volunteered to begin, Marion looked at Annika. “Annika, you seem distracted today. Is there anything you’d like to share?”
Maybe it was her irritation flashing again at Marion’s prissy innocence, or maybe it was just there, like a splinter ready to come out, because she found that she wanted to tell them. She wanted to tell them about the letter and Matt Campbell and the whole squalid affair so they would see, so they would understand.
S
he took a deep breath, then began: “When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I sold my life insurance policy for cash. I had a policy through my work and no dependents so that’s how I got the money to come here.” She looked around the table: the faces were blank and uncomprehending. She tried again: “It’s called a viatical settlement: I got paid part of the money up front with the understanding that my investor will get the full death benefit when I die. I know it probably sounds a bit morbid, but I didn’t have any savings and I couldn’t imagine dying in a hospital all cooped up with no living air, you know . . .” The faces were still empty and confused but she soldiered on: “Anyway, I ended up getting better, so I used the rest of the money to start the café and since then I feel like things have been going well. I’ve been trying to move on, slowly figuring stuff out, but then last week I got a letter in the mail from my investor. He beat around the bush, but the gist of it was: when did I plan on dying.”
For a moment, no one spoke or moved at all. It wasn’t a long moment, but long enough for all her loneliness to come rushing back, forcing its way into the shocked gap of their understanding, pushing it wider. How could these people begin to understand? she thought bitterly. They all had money. They all had second homes and cottages and families who they complained about, adult children who didn’t visit or call enough but who were part of their lives nonetheless. They had no idea what it meant to be alone.
Now they all began to murmur and shift and look at her with wide, caring eyes. Susan, who normally kept her silver head bowed against her bony collarbone when someone else was sharing, looked up. “That’s not right, Annika,” she offered. “They shouldn’t be contacting you. Maybe you should call the police.”
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