“No,” I say, watching a red pickup crawl toward the intersection.
“Plenty of time,” Phoebe says.
After the red truck, I track a boxy blue car a ways off but traveling fast.
“Am I good?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t tell.”
Phoebe turns and glares at the blue car. “For heaven’s sake. I could have gone. I know it’s a lot to ask, Charmaine, but I need your help here.”
“How do you make turns when you’re driving by yourself?”
“I can’t wait until you’re old enough to drive,” she says. “I can’t wait for you to see how nerve-racking it can be.”
We leave Clay’s Corner and head west over the stretch of highway that leads into Beacon County.
“They’re still working on your father’s medication,” Phoebe says after a time. “It’s not the best situation. But it’s good you’ve been writing to him. You have a very sweet side, Charmaine. Very thoughtful. One of these days I hope to see more of that thoughtfulness directed toward me.”
I stare out the window at the last few tobacco farms before we hit the horse country. You can look right through the front doorways of the big black barns to where the rough, yellowing sheaves hang like hides from the roof beams. In the fields, rows of harvested stalks go back so far and straight you can’t see where they end. They’re as regular as breathing, and as we pass, I count four rows as I breathe in and four rows as I breathe out, which reminds me to pray.
“If you have something to say, say it out loud,” Phoebe says.
“Are you mad at me?”
Phoebe frowns at the road. “Sometimes, yes, I admit it, but not right now. Believe it or not, Charmaine, the world does not revolve around you.”
At the big brick mansion, we enter the same waiting room as before, only with two different women behind the reception counter. One is a young brunette and the other is elderly, a redhead like Tracy but with white roots. She breaks into a smile and a “Hi-dee.”
Phoebe steers me toward the counter. “Marion, Lilly, this is Charmaine. We’re seeing Doctor Phillips again. Both of us. I mean, all three of us.”
“Well, that’s fine,” says the red-haired woman, the way older ladies say “that’s fine,” with fine meaning “wonderful.”
The other woman, Lilly, leads us down the long hallway, up the staircase at the end of it, back down the upstairs hallway, and into the same white room as before. And although the doctor isn’t there yet, my father is. He sits at a card table, facing the wall of windows like he’s trying to make the most of the fading afternoon light. When he hears us, he looks over his left shoulder then turns back to his work as if he is used to ignoring interruptions. Then he straightens his shoulders like he’s just realized who we are. He pushes back from the table, stands up, and turns around.
“Look who’s here,” says Lilly, encouraging him.
“Go and say hi to your father,” Phoebe encourages me.
And I want to, or I feel like I should want to. But it’s been three long weeks since I saw him sleeping in the hospital bed, and now he’s standing there, very still, just the shape of him in front of the tall windows so that his face doesn’t show, and he says nothing, and what I’m thinking is He is here, he is here, when of course I knew he would be here all along. And I feel all at once empty. I feel as though the way things used to be—even if it was a crazy way to live, as Phoebe says—has been drained right out of me, and I am filling up with how things are now. For the first time, I understand that things might be how they are now from now on, or that they might change again, and again even after that, until there’s nothing left to recognize and no way back. This thought keeps me from breathing right. When I try to step forward, I can’t. I seem to be moving my arm instead of my leg, reaching for something, but when I look, I see that I am not moving my arm at all.
“Let’s all sit down and relax,” says Lilly, which helps me find my legs again. All of us, three from one end of the room and my father from the windows, make our way to a white couch and two chairs in a corner near the white piano.
“It’s good to see you,” my father says to me. He’s clean-shaven and puffy at the neck, and he does not sound nervous, and there is room—by which I mean time—for me to say something back to him, which is not normal. Usually my father and Phoebe talk hard at each other, over each other, filling in all the quiet spaces.
“It’s good to see you,” I say back. In the corner of my eye I catch Phoebe running her tongue over her bottom lip.
My father turns to her. “Mother came by.”
“I know,” Phoebe says.
We all keep sitting there in the white room. It’s starting to feel like something that happened a long time ago, something I’m remembering. Maybe something I dreamed. I can’t think of one single thing to say, but as long as I don’t look at my father, or at Phoebe, I feel peaceful. And suddenly sleepy. Like time is slowing way, way down. Like we’re approaching the edge of a black hole.
“I guess it’s been a while.” Lilly says. “But I made sure he got your letters, Charmaine.”
“Thanks,” I say, which comes out too loud.
“I think I hear the doctor,” says Lilly, and we all turn in relief to watch Lilly make her way to the door.
Dr. Phillips wears the same light brown corduroy coat as last time. His glasses have been pushed to the middle of his forehead, like he has another set of eyes up there over his brows. “This is an event, isn’t it, David?” he says, taking the white chair next to my father. “Phoebe and Charmaine both here.”
“It is,” my father says. “An event,” he adds on. He talks like the sound of his own voice surprises him a little each time he hears it.
“I want you to be able to ask any questions you might have, Charmaine,” says Doctor Phillips. “This must all seem a little strange.”
Phoebe and my father are both studying my face like they’re waiting for something to land on it. A giant insect, maybe, or a lunar module.
“First, maybe you and your mother will catch us up on the news of home. Then maybe your father will tell you a little about his days here.”
Phoebe has been holding her purse beside her, wedged in between her thigh and the chair. Now she leans over and places it on the floor. “Well, okay.” She crosses her legs in my father’s direction. “I have subbing again every day this week. The Pinto is fixed. Temporarily. We had some very strong rains, and the river rose, and we lost the dock. Nothing flooded, though. Margaret Deeds told me she appreciated your old piece on prayer and expectation. Your mother seems fine. We’re all looking forward to having you back.” She stops on the word back when my father and Doctor Phillips glance at each other.
“What?” Phoebe says.
“Let’s keep going,” says the doctor.
My father picks up his feet one at a time and puts them back down. He’s wearing a pair of suede moccasins, and I wonder if they’re the same pair Phoebe said he was making for me.
“Has something been decided?” Phoebe says.
“Not at all,” says Doctor Phillips. “What else has been happening? You talked to David’s mother, I believe you said? Daze?”
“I think I’m a little more interested in what’s been happening here,” Phoebe says, looking full-on at my father. “Last week there was a bit of a complication.”
My father blinks at her slowly.
“Everything working better? The Haldol?”
“Lithium, now,” says the doctor.
“I have all that written down,” says Phoebe, uncrossing her legs. She straightens her posture with a little twist, and I steel myself for whatever’s coming. “I just don’t want there to be any communication loss here. What with all the other issues. Doctor?”
The doctor brings his glasses down from his forehead onto his nose and lays a hand over his mouth. One finger in the mustache, the rest curling toward his chin. “I understand you’re concerned,” he says thro
ugh his fingers.
“Oh, you do? I can’t tell you what a relief that is.” Phoebe’s voice is like a plucked wire. She shifts her whole body away from the doctor as if he’s not there and beams the full wattage of her gaze on my father. “I said we were looking forward to having you back, and you looked at the doctor. Is there significance? Am I overreacting? I’m not sure I even know the difference anymore.”
“Perhaps conversation about aftercare options is premature,” says the doctor.
Phoebe nods quickly, and her voice changes to something almost pleasant, but I know better. “Because of Charmaine, here,” she says. She gestures toward me with kind, cupped hands, all without turning from my father. “We wouldn’t want Charmaine to experience anything painful.”
“And because of David,” says the doctor. “And also because of you. It’s a complicated time. Can we back up a little?”
“Oh, let’s,” says Phoebe, and my stomach gets tight. I wish I could stop her, but I can’t. It’s like she has a fever. “Let’s back up a month, to right before David came back from the Holy Land inhabited by the Apostle Paul. Or how about a year, when the Lord told David to quit his job and live on faith alone, and, guess what, his family too! Or how about when God laid it on his heart to eradicate the pagan holiday of Christmas, and we all passed out those brochures.” She reaches back to where I’m sitting and gives me an affectionate push on the knee. “What were you, Charmaine, nine? The year you wanted a Cabbage Patch doll? Remember we all went to Clay’s Corner instead and handed out the brochures to shoppers about the ten reasons real Christians don’t celebrate Christmas?”
I had forgotten about that Christmas, but now it comes back to me. Daze gave me the doll anyway, only she kept it for me at her place for a year so my father wouldn’t know.
My father has leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, eyes closed. When he opens them they seem set deeper into his head, like he is trying to shrink into himself, away from Phoebe’s voice. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, then opens it again. “That’s true,” he tells the doctor, as if holding on to facts he can confirm. “We did that.”
“Of course it’s true,” says Phoebe, exploding. “Why would I make it up?”
“You’re angry,” says the doctor.
“You’re a genius,” says Phoebe.
“Are you coming home?” I say. My words come out like a little bleat, and my father turns his calm, unhappy eyes on me.
“Sweetheart,” he says, a word he hasn’t used since I was very young. We all wait for him to say something else, but whatever he might have been about to say has left him. He reaches his hand over the space between us, palm up like he’s feeling the weight of the air.
“Doctor,” says Phoebe, bending at the waist and reaching into her purse. She pulls out her pocket New Testament. “Are you familiar with Ephesians five:twenty-two?”
“Hold on a second,” says the doctor.
“Or Colossians three:eighteen?”
My father drops his head into his palms. I hate that he doesn’t say anything. I wish that he had an idea he was trying to convince us of, or a new plan. Something so that I could tell him I got it, that I was willing, and he could tell me he knew the Lord was at work in me.
“David, are you okay?” says the doctor.
“Yes,” says my father, speaking straight down into the floor. “Let her go on.”
“Let me,” Phoebe says. “Let me?”
Outside the long windows it still seems like daytime, but when Lilly cracks the door open to flip on the light switch, the windows turn black against the bright white room. She dims the lights with a dial and closes the door again.
“How about those verses, Charmaine?” says Phoebe. “Do I need to look them up?” Some of the air’s going out of her, and her voice sounds weary.
“Do you know them?” The doctor’s loose neck turns toward me, a soft rudder.
“Does she know them,” Phoebe says.
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,” I mumble, “as unto the Lord.”
“And they say you’ve been confused,” Phoebe says to my father. “I’m the one who’s been confused.”
“Do you still pray?” I ask him. “Have you heard the voice of God?”
My father lifts his head but leaves his body bent forward. “I still pray.”
“Without ceasing?”
“No,” he says. “Not anymore.”
“Charmaine brings up a good point, David,” says the doctor. “About the voice of God. Do you want to try to explain? You don’t have to. Not right now. Are you tired?”
I hold my breath and will Phoebe not to say anything, and she doesn’t.
“Can you hear this?” the doctor asks her. “I really am concerned for you.”
The anger has burned out of Phoebe now, and what’s left is worse. She palms her brow and lifts, and the skin above her eyes stretches upward. Then she takes her hand away and everything settles sadly into place.
“You’ve heard a bit of this before,” the doctor says. “The voice of God has been a pretty powerful idea in your home.”
Phoebe nods tiredly. “I’m guessing you’re not a believer.”
“Does it matter?”
“It might,” she says. “I don’t know.”
“Phoebe.” It’s the first time my father has said her name, and at the sound of it she tears up.
“Has he told you about how we met?” she asks the doctor. “How the still, small voice of God whispered in his ear and told him I was to be his wife?”
“This must be very difficult for you,” the doctor says.
The tears are leaking out of Phoebe’s eyes now.
“Don’t cry,” says my father.
“How about you?” the doctor says, turning to me.
But Phoebe is crying, and Phoebe has been mad. And if I feel something, too, if this is as difficult for me as it is for her, then she and I will be having the feelings together at the same time, like we’re the same person. Which means the only thing I feel is numb.
“She takes it in,” my father says to the doctor. “All of it. I never saw it before. I’m sorry.”
“You see more now,” says the doctor.
I think my father’s talking about Phoebe, who has begun weeping silently, but when I look up, his unhappy eyes are on me.
“Are you still a prophet?” I say.
We all wait for his answer.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “I don’t know who I am.”
“That makes two of us,” says Phoebe. “At least.”
I want to tell my father that I know who he is. Or who I want to believe he is. I want to believe he’s like the girl’s father in A Wrinkle in Time, a hero on a mission that has gone off course. A father who just needs a little help finding his way home. In the book it’s a matter of traveling through space and time to a planet where her brother and father are held captive by an evil, throbbing brain that loses its power only in the face of love. In real life that kind of travel is impossible, unless you’re somewhere near a black hole, maybe, where space and time flatten out, but even that, even navigating time and space, still seems easier than helping my real-life father find his way back to himself so he can come home.
“I love you,” I say, which is how the book girl defeats the evil brain, and my father appreciates the words, I can tell, but nothing else happens. The room stays white, Phoebe keeps crying, the doctor strokes his mustache, and my father, my father says again, to us all, that he’s sorry.
When we stand up to leave, my father hugs me good-bye. His body is softer than it was, and he holds me gingerly, like the burned parts under his clothes might still hurt. “I hope you never have to feel like this,” he says.
“Why should she?” Phoebe asks, wiping her eyes, stepping in between us. With her hands on my shoulders, she steers me toward the door. “Because it’s hereditary, you mean? I, for one, am not borrowing trouble. She’s half me too.” Phoeb
e does not say good-bye. We wait for the doctor in the hallway, and when he joins us I listen to him tell Phoebe there are things she can do for herself to get through this tough time.
“You know what?” Phoebe says. “I think you’ve got enough on your plate right here, professionally, without worrying about me. And I’ve done a lot already. In fact, I think I’ve done just about the best I could, and look where it’s landed us. But thanks for all your help.” Doctor Phillips covers his mouth with his hand again. He holds Phoebe’s gaze with his own kind eyes. “I can tell you don’t think I mean it,” Phoebe says, “but I do. I’m not being sarcastic anymore. I just wish we’d met you before we all became so ridiculous.”
The word ridiculous hangs in the air all the way down the hall. Then my father comes out of the white room and ambles after us. I stop and wait. When he reaches the top of the curved staircase, he holds out a pair of suede moccasins like the ones he’s wearing. They have been unevenly stitched together with heavy leather cording, and the foot bed is made of cream-colored fleece. I slip a hand into each of them, and when I look up to say thank you, my father’s face is scarier than anything so far. He’s smiling uncertainly at me, hopefully, as if I’m the person who could tell him what’s supposed to happen next.
While Phoebe handles paperwork at the front desk, I take off my tennis shoes and slip my feet into the moccasins. I try them out a little in the lobby.
“Don’t go anywhere,” says Phoebe, but I do. I head outside to wait for her under the porte-cochère. In the early dark, the air has a chill. I keep walking, telling myself I’ll wait for her at the end of the long drive, at the edge of the two-lane country road that leads back to the interstate. But when I reach that point and she still hasn’t come outside, I turn my back on the huge house and start walking on the shoulder of the road.
There’s hardly any traffic. I can feel the rough gravel through the moccasins, but not sharply enough to hurt. Beside the road runs a ditch, and on the other side of the ditch stretches the split-rail fence, and beyond the fence, two large thoroughbreds stand close together, watching me. “Hey there,” I say softly. I can tell they’re listening, just like I can tell with Titus. I would like to cross the ditch and climb the fence and stand beside them, if they’d let me, between their solid, comforting bodies.
Lay It on My Heart Page 18