The Wishing Jar

by Penelope J. Stokes

  At last Gracie pulled herself together, rose from the sofa, and went to stand near the hearth. Edith followed. She hadn’t seen, until now, the small walnut casket that sat on a bier to the left side of the fireplace.

  Her heart twisted at the sight. In three-quarters of a century of living, Edith had never had occasion to attend the funeral of a child, never experienced such a brutal, gut-wrenching sense of finality. The incongruity overwhelmed her. This shouldn’t happen. Children shouldn’t die.

  She peered into the casket, forcing herself to look, to take in the full horror of her grandmother’s bereavement. The small waxen faces, serene in death. The doll-sized coffin, small enough for one pallbearer to carry alone. Two tiny bodies in one satin-lined box. Together in death, as they had been together in the womb.

  She couldn’t tell the boys apart. Identical twins, they both had light curly hair and cherubic faces, long feathery eyelashes that lay still against rosy cheeks. Only a few faint reddish pockmarks, evidence of the ravaging disease that had claimed their brief lives, distinguished one child from the other.

  Edith’s heart hammered, and tears clogged her throat. She thought of Neal Grace, that squirming bundle of energy who had calmed in her embrace moments after her birth. How could she have endured it if that beloved child had died before she had a chance to live? How would Gracie endure it now?

  Gracie Neal Quinn, the first of a long line of “strong Quinn women.” A citadel of courage and wisdom. A legend. Edith had grown up in the shelter of her grandmother’s image, had believed that nothing could shake Grandma Gracie. By the time Edith remembered her, as an old woman, she had seemed perfectly grounded, at peace with herself, with God, in tune with the universe.

  Edith had always envied Grandma Gracie’s faith, had always aspired to be like her, had always fallen short. Now, for the first time, she began to realize that the inner fortitude and fearlessness that made up Gracie Quinn’s character had been purchased at a very high price indeed.

  Gracie leaned over the coffin that held her infant sons, and her tears fell onto their faces. “Lord, I believe,” she whispered. “Help my unbelief.”

  12

  One Small Touch

  Reluctantly, Edith left Gracie to her grief. Gestures of sympathy would have been lost on her grandmother, and even if Gracie wasn’t aware of Edith’s presence, she felt like an intruder on the scene.

  Avoiding the dining room where the mourners were gathered, Edith began wandering through the house. Except for the front parlor, where a fire had been lit, the rooms were cold and a bit damp. Through the window on the stair landing, her eye caught a slice of sky—not blue, but a gray-white bleakness. The sight disoriented her. She had no idea what day it was, what time of day, what season. That glimpse of gray might indicate winter, or it could simply be late afternoon, when the sky faded and began to darken.

  Edith mounted the steps and stood on the landing, peering intently out the window. Winter. It was definitely winter. Not a leaf remained on any tree in sight, and a chilly-looking drizzle fell steadily onto the street below.

  Suddenly a realization surfaced in her mind—a thought far more disconcerting than the dismal rain that pattered against the window. She had climbed the stairs.

  Edith raised her left hand and stared at it as if it belonged to someone else. She flexed her fingers, felt the tautness of the muscles that ran up her forearm. Age spots still freckled the back of her hand, but the hand worked! She lifted her left leg and set it down again. Did a little shuffling soft-shoe on the landing. Explored the left side of her face with her fingers.

  There were no signs—none at all—of the effects of the stroke. She was herself again. A miracle.

  Edith’s breath came in short, shallow gasps, and she stood there until reason returned to her. Once, when she was very young, she had sneaked into a tent revival that featured a traveling evangelist and miracle worker. There she had seen an old woman kicking up the sawdust on the floor, dancing her praises and shouting that she’d been healed from arthritis or bursitis or phlebitis—Edith couldn’t quite recall the details. She did remember, however, that all the so-called miraculous healings had been granted to people with invisible illnesses. No one got up from a wheelchair and walked. No blind eyes were opened.

  Except, perhaps, Edith’s own. As she had watched the spectacle, the scales fell away and she saw, for the first time, how people who were gullible enough—or desperate enough—could easily be conned in the name of Jesus. If you didn’t get healed, the evangelist said, it was because you didn’t have enough faith. If you went away sick, or if your crop failed, or if you lost your job or couldn’t make ends meet, it was a sign of sin in your life, of something not right in your relationship with God. God didn’t bless people who didn’t believe.

  The shouting and singing were still going strong when Edith slunk away and went home, pierced and bleeding from the sharp edges of her shattered illusions. Her mother and grandmother had taught her to believe in a God of love and compassion and grace, a God who embraced the lost and lonely, a God who wept with those who suffered. A God who bore little resemblance to the vengeful, demanding Deity the miracle worker described.

  But what if her mother and grandmother were wrong?

  What if bad things did happen as punishment from God for insufficient faith, or the wrong kind of faith, or no faith at all? What did that say about Gracie losing her twin boys, or Edith’s own brothers dying in war, or Sam’s heart attack, or John Mac’s accident, or her own debilitating stroke?

  The thought of the stroke brought her back to her senses. There was no miracle. She wasn’t healed. More likely, the disappearance of her paralysis meant that she was, indeed, dead—or close to it—and experiencing some kind of afterlife echo. Or maybe it was all just an elaborate dream. Either way, she couldn’t control the outcome. Her life was over, and she would just have to wait and see what happened next.

  She pushed away from the window sill and went on up the stairs. The upper level of the house seemed a bit warmer. At the top of the stairway, the door to Neal Grace’s room stood ajar, and she peered in. A fourposter bed with a canopy dominated the center of the room, and the rug was scattered with half-dressed dolls and children’s books. In the corner where Neal Grace kept her stereo sat an ornate Victorian dollhouse with tiny furnishings and little lace curtains. Abigail’s room. But no sign of the little girl who would grow up to become Edith’s mother.

  A few steps farther down the hallway, she heard muffled sobs. The door to the master bedroom was half-open, and she slipped inside. Clothed in a dressing gown, her grandmother was lying facedown on the bed. Behind her, the window was open, and a warm breeze ruffled the curtains. A single bar of sunlight fell across the quilted counterpane. The illumination made Gracie’s auburn hair shine like burnished copper.

  In a far corner of Edith’s mind, something unidentified began scratching around, scrabbling like a mouse trying to chew its way out of a shoebox. Then the truth broke through. Sunlight. Open window. Warm breeze. And Gracie here, half-dressed, when a few moments ago she was downstairs with the mourners.

  Edith stared at the window. The upper branches of an ornamental pear tree, in full bloom, waved in the wind just beyond the sill. She could hear birds singing. It was spring.

  She advanced cautiously into the room. Gracie sighed, sat up, and swiped at her eyes, but gave no indication that she was aware of Edith’s presence.

  After a while Gracie rose, straightened the comforter, and went to sit at the writing desk next to the window. Edith followed, watching over her shoulder as she drew out pen and ink and a small leather-bound journal from the top right-hand drawer. She flipped through until she came to a blank sheet, pressed the book flat, and began to write.

  19th of April, 1909

  Today is the twins’ third birthday.

  Edith stared down at the page, and that sense of disorientation slammed through her once more. Third birthday? 1909? She did a quick mental calc
ulation. The twins had died during the winter of 1907—mid-December, perhaps, she couldn’t quite remember. How was it possible that sixteen months had passed in the time it took her to climb the stairs and enter the room?

  Her mind reeled as she tried to regain her equilibrium. Then she remembered: either this was a dream or she was already well on her way to eternity. And neither dreams nor the afterlife conformed to conventional notions of space and time.

  Gracie had continued with the journal entry.

  Today is the twins’ third birthday. It seems incomprehensible to me that my babies have been gone now nearly as long as they lived. Well-meaning friends keep telling me that the pain of losing them will subside, that time heals all wounds. Some have even had the audacity to suggest (as if it’s any of their business) that Kenzie and I should try to have another child. A new baby to take the place of the ones who died.

  Such logic represents the height of absurdity, and the most damaging sort of meddling. Clearly these Job’s comforters have never lost a child, or they wouldn’t be spouting such mindless nonsense. Besides, I don’t want another baby. I want back the ones God took from me!

  I suppose it might be considered heresy for me to even think such a thing, much less commit it to writing. But God—if there is a God—already knows what I think, so why shouldn’t I voice it? Why shouldn’t I tell God precisely how angry I am, and how my faith has been crushed and mangled by his apparent lack of concern? Where was God when my babies were dying? And where is God now, when my heart is broken beyond repair and my world seems to be falling apart?

  Those final sentences struck in Edith’s heart like a bell. How well she could identify with her grandmother’s torment! She had felt exactly the same way when Sam had died, and again when they had buried John Mac, and a third time when she had awakened in the hospital and realized she was still alive. Abby and Neal Grace had assumed her anger and hostility to be a result of the stroke, a response to the paralysis, a frustration over her difficulty with mobility and communication. In fact, she had been angry with God—furious, enraged. Not because she was bereft of a full life, but because God didn’t grant her the blessing of being completely dead.

  Edith smiled wryly to herself. Perhaps her wish was finally coming true. Perhaps now she was dying, and soon would be free to pass through the curtain and join Sam on the other side.

  She focused her attention once more on Gracie, who was still writing.

  Ever since the twins’ death, life has been less than futile. Simply getting through each day is a monumental challenge. Kenzie has taken over all responsibility for Abigail’s care. I can’t help wondering if she might be better off with no mother at all than with a mother like me

  Something must change, although I have no idea how to effect the necessary transformation. Time hasn’t healed anything. My grief and anger have not gone away. If only I could find a way to hope again, to believe again. But God abandoned me when my babies died, and the faith I once had seems very foreign and far away.

  Edith backed away and went to look out the window, marveling at the response this confession generated in her. All her life, Gracie Quinn had been held up as the epitome of the strong, unshakable matriarch of the family—the great woman of God, whose spiritual strength and faithfulness were both legend and legacy, the bedrock of Edith’s own identity as a Quinn.

  But Gracie hadn’t been a supersaint at all. She had simply been an ordinary woman, trying to figure things out, trying to hold on to her faith in God when difficulties and struggles threatened to overwhelm her.

  Just like Edith herself.

  The Gracie she remembered from her childhood—that extraordinary, awe-inspiring, exceptional grandmother who loomed larger than life—had truly been a person of deep and unshakable faith. But apparently that faith had not always been unassailable.

  A strange fragment of a verse flitted through her mind, something about removing those things that can be shaken so the unshakable things might remain. Had Grandma Gracie herself said that, or was it simply a description of the way life worked?

  When the earthquakes come, Edith mused, you find out what in your life is shakable, and what is unshakable. You discover the true foundations of your soul.

  Grandma Gracie had been the bedrock of the family, the foundation upon which the Quinn legacy was built. But bedrock didn’t just spring up overnight. It was formed through time, as the result of intense pressure.

  Gracie’s current earthquake had shaken her faith to its foundations. The pressure was building. And Edith found herself intensely curious to discover how her grandmother had found her way back to faith.

  She drew near the writing desk and read the remainder of the journal entry.

  If only I might be granted one touch, one word—just a single syllable of comfort or release from the God I once felt so near to me. A sign, just a small sign, that God still cares. That God understands my pain and suffers with me.

  I have spent so long in darkness and silence. If God is not with me in this terrible tomb, I might as well end my life and be done with it. Kenzie would take care of Abigail. They would miss me, no doubt, but their lives would go on, and at least I would not be a burden to them . . .

  As Edith read the words, the reality of what Gracie was considering slammed into her like a fist to the midsection. “No!” she shouted out loud. “Grandma, no! Don’t even think about it. Your daughter needs you! I need you!” She kept talking, pleading, even though she knew Gracie couldn’t hear a word she said. “What would this family be without you? You will get through this. You’ve got to go on living—for all our sakes.”

  She went to the door and called frantically for Kenzie, but of course he couldn’t hear her, either. Panic set in, and her knees buckled under her. She had to do something, had to change Gracie’s mind. Had to convince her, somehow, that God loved her and life was worth living.

  “Dear God,” Edith whispered. “Help her, please.”

  Turning back into the bedroom, she moved on shaking legs to her grandmother’s side. Gracie was weeping now, murmuring to herself. “Just one small sign. One word. One touch. That’s all I ask.”

  Tears pricked at Edith’s eyelids, and she found herself joining her grandmother’s prayer. “Just one touch, Lord. Just one small sign.”

  Without fully realizing what she was doing, Edith reached out and gently laid her left hand on Gracie’s shoulder. The contact, so completely otherworldly, shocked her so thoroughly that she almost let go. Her grandmother’s body under her fingers felt ethereal, incorporeal, a substance utterly unlike human flesh. It kept shifting and moving. Holding onto it was like trying to capture Jell-O, like attempting to halt molecules in their flight.

  But still she held on. “I love you, Grandma,” she murmured fiercely into Gracie’s ear. “God loves you. Believe it. Trust. Stay with us, please.” She watched as her own left hand, spotted with age but strong and sure, pressed down on the insubstantial flesh. Over and over she repeated the words. “I love you. I love you.”

  And then, without warning, Edith sensed another hand, more real than her own shifting grasp on Gracie’s shoulder. A warmth, seeping through her gnarled fingers and down into her grandmother’s flesh. It only lasted a moment, barely enough time to feel it. And when it was over, Edith wondered if it had really happened, or was only the product of her desperate longing.

  Gradually, Gracie stopped weeping. She raised her head. She turned toward the window and looked out at the pear blossoms. She took a deep breath of the honeyed spring air.

  And then she smiled.

  “I feel it,” she said quietly. “After all this time.” Her voice was laced with wonder, and her eyes bright as she lifted her face to the sunlight streaming through the window. “Spring is here. You’re here. Perhaps you were always here.”

  At last Edith removed her hand from her grandmother’s shoulder and stepped aside as Gracie rose from the chair and went to lean on the window sill.

  She p
lucked a branch from the pear tree, inhaled its fragrance, then went to the doorway and called for Kenzie and Abigail to come up and join her.

  Edith, still shaken and trembling, slipped past her into the hall.

  13

  Looking for the Love

  Edith sat in a chair in Neal Grace’s room—no, Abigail’s room, she corrected herself—and tried to sort out what had happened. She had touched Gracie on the shoulder, had said, “I love you.” That was all. But in that touch, and in those words, Gracie had somehow sensed God’s presence reaching into her soul again. A sudden, unexpected spring had returned to a heart caught in the grip of winter.

  How was it possible? Some pain-ridden, cynical place in Edith’s mind resisted, protesting that neither she nor God had anything to do with turning Gracie’s life around. She had merely snapped out of her depression, found a way to pull herself up and keep on going. A simple case of—

  Of what? Bootstraps? Stiff upper lip? Pure will power, guts, and determination?

  No. This wasn’t “a simple case” of anything that had to do with human effort. It was a miracle. Or if not a miracle, then something very nearly like one.

  Edith fought to silence the scornful, skeptical voice in her head—the voice that had dominated her thinking ever since the stroke. If she could just give herself over, for one glorious moment, to the emotion . . .

  When it came, it nearly took her breath away. Joy. Pure, magnificent, pristine joy, shimmering with clarity, unadulterated in its simplicity, almost overwhelming in its power. It swelled up within her, a golden, flawless luminescence, pushing back all dark and pessimistic thoughts and leaving her filled with delight so strong and sweet it threatened to make her weep.