by Amber Foxx
The silence of the car echoed with her thoughts, and Mae began to hear how hurt and furious she was. As her heart rate slowed, she realized she was driving too fast, and she slowed the car as well, easing into the open land beyond town. A full moon shone over the bare fields and trees, a silvery, spacious world in which a small herd of deer grazed, turning their eyes to the lights before they leaped into the woods.
She had cut herself loose from her mother. One corner of her soul felt guilty, and a little puddle at the bottom felt sad, but the wide open space of most of it felt proud. Somehow, she would find the money for the half of the tuition Rhoda-Rae would take back ... for the training for the job Rhoda-Rae had pushed her to go after.
The pride crumpled. Her mother wasn’t all bad. Close to it, but no one was all bad. Not her mother—and not her father.
With the thought of him, Mae felt her strength rise again. She’d gotten up the nerve finally, with Arnie’s help, to look for her father, and for that she wanted to thank Arnie. She’d have to drop in on him at his job to do that. This thought reminded her that she’d gone over there to thank Rhoda-Rae and ended up undoing the very thing she'd gone to say thanks for. Somehow, in the end it felt right, but in between it felt wrong. Between finishing the course and starting the job, she had to come up with the rest of the money—and explain that problem to Hubert.
Chapter Six
Mae and Hubert waved as the school bus pulled away. Brook and Stream were bouncing and making faces in the far back windows. When the bus was out of sight, they walked towards Buddy’s.
“What’s up—walking me to work?” Hubert wrapped his hand around Mae’s, and swung their arms playfully. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, I am. I couldn’t even get to this part last night. We’d’ve been up ’til dawn.”
“This to do with your fight with your mama?”
They passed Ronnie’s house. The mayor, on his porch drinking from a huge steaming mug, and Joe, on his knees digging in the pansy bed, paused in their conversation.
“Hey, Ronnie,” Mae called. “How’s Priv?”
“Touch and go. We’ll see. He’s still at Hassell’s.”
Joe sat back on his lean haunches, pushed his winter cap back, and twisted to look at Mae and Hubert. He said something that made Hubert and Ronnie laugh, something that included the phrases “... see’d that cat on a grave ... see what you up to ...” Mae understood enough to guess he was implying that Hubert should stay on the straight and narrow because she would be able to see whatever he did. As he resumed removing wilted pansies and replacing them with fresh ones, Joe spoke more quietly to Ronnie. The mayor raised his eyebrows, looked at Mae, and then drank his hot drink, shoving his free hand deep in his pocket.
“I think we’re gonna have a problem,” Hubert said as they crossed the street. “Joe’s got him some good material.”
“We might. When I did that, I didn’t even think about Joe-mail.” Mae didn’t like the way Joe had punched the word grave when he described her finding the cat, like he was making some witchcraft reference. It would make a better story if he played that up, of course.
Joe’s cronies had not yet arrived on their bench. The day needed to warm up a tad for the gossip and coffee and cigarettes to come out. When they did, Mae would no doubt be part of the conversation.
“What’s our other problem?” Hubert asked.
“It’s big.” Mae stopped at the edge of the parking lot. Buddy, a thickset, light-skinned black man in his forties, stood outside the open garage doors talking with a customer who had pulled up an SUV in front of the work bays. She didn’t want Buddy to hear. Money matters were private, according to how she had been raised, and you didn’t talk about it outside of family.
“You pregnant?” Hubert looked worried.
Money was too tight to even think of raising three children. “No. Nothing that expensive. But it’s money. Mama’s gonna stop payment on her check to the community education program at CVU. I’m gonna be short half my tuition.”
“Shit.” Hubert pulled off his cap and smacked it against his thigh. “I thought we were all set on that. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna have to quit the course? That’s your job hanging on that.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see if they can wait for me come up with the rest.”
“We don’t have it. I owe Jesse for the roof still, and we have to finish the insulation—”
“I know. I’m not asking you to come up with it.”
“I wish you’d thought of that before you got Rhoda-Rae stirred up.”
“I don’t think I thought at all, she made me so mad.”
Hubert looked at Buddy, signaled with two fingers that he needed two minutes, and looked into Mae’s eyes again. “I can’t get more hours here. That’s all the work there is. I hate to ask my folks, but I don’t see any other way.”
“Please, don’t.” Mae knew that while Hubert’s parents had the land, the house, and the antiques that came with it, the nature of farming meant they had little in the way of cash. She’d seen Jim and Sallie sell some two-hundred-year-old Ridley heirloom to help cover a crop loss. “Let me find a way. Wait at least until I talk to Randi tonight at class.”
“I’d rather owe family than the school if we’re gonna have debt. I don’t like debt.”
“Wait, please. It’s my fight, it’s my class, and it’s my job. I want to take care of it myself.”
“Mae.” Hubert sighed and took both her arms in his hands. “You don’t have to be so—I don’t know what to call it. Like you’re not part of the family. If my folks can help, they will. You’re acting like you’re still not one of us.”
“I don’t mean to. But I’d feel better, I’d feel safer, if I could figure it out on my own.”
“Trust us. Parents like yours, I don’t think you know how to trust people.” Hubert kissed her and went to join Buddy. Mae swallowed her husband’s words into a heavy heart. He might be right.
At home she cleaned the house, did laundry, and studied. Sometimes she got on her laptop and looked at the web page for College of the Rio Grande softball, and looked at the coach’s smiling picture. Daddy’s phone number at work was right there, and his e-mail address. Here she’d gone and made Rhoda-Rae act like it was the end of the world over finding him, and now that Mae could get in touch—something stopped her.
She knew where he was, but not why he’d left. If she asked him, and it was bad, would he tell her the truth? Still, how bad it could it be, with a job like that? They’d do a background check like Health Quest had for her. Worst thing a man could do to his wife, Rhoda-Rae had said, and yet Mae had never seen a sign of violence. And their fights had been mostly one-sided—Rhoda-Rae making a scene and Marty putting up with it or walking out. Maybe that was that “worst thing.” Walking out for good. But maybe it was something so dark Mae couldn’t even imagine it.
Each time she looked him up, she felt a little closer to calling, and a little more scared to try.
By the time she met Patsy at the hospital for their drive to Norfolk, Mae had studied thoroughly, but still not contacted her father.
“Your mother’s in a mood today,” Patsy said, as she and Mae left the hospital parking lot. “Is that why you were waiting outside?”
“Yeah. If I ran into her I don’t know what would happen. We had the fight to beat all fights.”
“She wouldn’t talk to me at lunch. Am I part of it?”
“Doesn’t matter anymore. Mama and I aren’t even speaking. You can share all the woo-woo spooky stuff in the world with me, and it won’t matter one whit.”
“I’m sorry y’all fought, though. Rhoda-Rae is difficult, but she’s still your mother. And she’s ...” Patsy frowned, then smiled. “She’s actually a good nurse. Hard on her colleagues, but sweet as honey with the patients. She makes them laugh, and I swear every man over forty she takes care of gets better faster.”
Rhoda-Rae was a habitual flirt. “Bet she’s doing some hands
-on healing like Granma.”
“You joke, but maybe she is. You inherited your grandmother’s gift, why shouldn’t your mother?”
“Wouldn’t you have to be a nicer person to be a healer?” Mae felt guilty as soon as the words were out of her mouth, even though Patsy chuckled at them. “Sorry. Shouldn’t say that about my mama.”
“But it’s a good question. See if you find the answer in your readings.” Patsy nodded toward the back seat, and Mae looked around to see a thick stack of photocopied articles.
“Thank you.”
“I made you a copy of the syllabus in case you end up eavesdropping again or borrowing the DVDs. I think you’ll like it.”
“If I find out that some trifling person like Mama could be a healer—sorry, there I go again. I’m just so mad at her—”
“I understand—you’re hurt. The point about the readings, though, is that ordinary people affected those REG machines. Not any nicer or more holy than anybody else.”
And Charlie Tann affected Randi’s golf ball. He didn’t seem like a saint.
During the personal training class, Mae focused well most of the time. She liked picturing how muscles moved bones, understanding how everything worked. But in the back of her mind, as she listened to Randi explaining the major muscle groups, Mae wondered if she would find a way to finish this course and use what she was learning. And she wondered what her father would think, if he’d be proud to see her going into work a little like his. If the fight with Mama would still let her do it.
At the end of the class, Mae asked Randi to wait and talk with her.
“Sure. What’s up?”
Mae felt a twinge of pain, anger, and embarrassment, all those feelings that went with Rhoda-Rae. “My mother isn’t paying half my tuition after all. She stopped payment on the check.”
Randi’s expression showed such genuine chagrin, Mae liked her for the compassion. “So what are you going to do?” Randi asked. “It’s all supposed to be paid up front.”
“I don’t know.” They started down the stairs. “I hoped there might be some way to pay it later once I start working.”
“Gosh. I have no idea if the Community Ed people would let you do that. I can tell you’ve really been studying. I’d hate to see you not finish.”
“I’d hate to see me not finish, too.”
As they arrived at the first floor hallway, Randi said, “If you don’t mind waiting while I finish up some work, I can give you a ride over to Spruce.”
Mae accepted the offer and took the spare chair in Randi’s office. She took out the syllabus and articles Patsy had given her. Reading them would keep her mind off the money issue.
Course description: A study of the healing traditions of indigenous cultures and of the influences of spirituality and nonlocality on health.
Course objectives: Students will gain insight into worldviews and healing practices frequently excluded by modern Western biomedicine, and examine explanatory models for documented events that suggest alternative understandings of reality. Contributions from physics and philosophy, anthropology and religion, as well as health sciences will be brought together in the process of inquiry. Health care professionals will develop respect for and openness to cultural concepts of medicine outside of their own.
Not all of it made sense on first reading. But one thing did: documented events that suggest alternative understandings of reality. Mae knew what that meant.
In the hallway, she heard soft voices, unmistakably Charlie Tann and Dana, moving from the direction of his office toward the exit door.
“Give it some thought,” Charlie said. “Do that for me.”
“Charlie, it’s my career.”
“Just think about it. Don’t close your mind. Think what could happen.”
“My mind isn’t closed.”
“No?”
“Pre-contact Indians? Ancient Egypt? Wow. No. My mind is open. It’s like ... what if ... what if we really were there?” It sounded as if the book on reincarnation had made some inroads into the skeptic. Mae wondered why Charlie would want Dana to believe in reincarnation. If he was flirting with her, it would make one heck of a pick-up line: I knew you in past lives. We were meant to meet again.
“What if we were, indeed? What—”
They passed Randi’s office and abruptly stopped talking, as if the open door was a police car and they were speeders. As Charlie resumed speaking, his voice became less intimate, more formal and public in volume and texture.
“Are you parked out back?”
Dana also lost the soft, gentle tone and sounded as if she were onstage. “I’m right outside.”
The hall doors softly breathed open and clumped shut, and footsteps descended the stairs to the back door, which closed more loudly. Mae had a flash image of Arnie in his pained dejection, Thou shalt not commit adultery, and of Rhoda-Rae in her green dress and fancy shoes, three hours late. Was her mother as suspect as Dana and Charlie?
As Charlie came back down the hall, Mae noticed a slight unevenness in his steps, as if he had a bad knee or ankle. At Randi’s door, he stopped and said in his booming, jolly voice, “Working late, young lady?”
“Working for you.”
“And how’s that working for Rick?”
“That’s not funny, Charlie.” Randi spun her chair to face him. Mae looked at Randi and nodded towards the door, implying an offer to leave if Randi needed to talk with Charlie. “No, you can stay. He’s just being a pain in the ass. Rick wishes I didn’t work so much. I told you that already.”
Charlie stepped into the doorway, apparently wondering to whom Randi was speaking, and peered into the corner where Mae sat.
“Good evening, Dr. Tann,” Mae said.
“Doctor Tann,” he repeated in a mock serious and deeply formal voice. “Charlie.”
“All right. Good evening, Charlie.”
“You’re reading my syllabus.” His voice expressed delight, as if she had flattered him. She noticed he said “my,” not “our,” although he shared the teaching with Bernadette.
“And all the articles,” she said. “Patsy gave me copies.”
“A psychic—you don't already know all that?”
“Don’t let him mess with your head,” Randi said, turning back to her computer. "It’s Charlie’s hobby, messing with people’s heads.”
“If they are easily messed with,” he replied, walking up behind Randi and placing his hands on the back of her chair. He read over her shoulder for a while. Mae could see it annoyed Randi.
“You want to read it? Be my guest.” Randi slid her chair away from Charlie. “They’re your students.”
“Aren’t we testy tonight.” He backed off with a mock gesture of self-defense, hands held up as if to ward off a blow.
Randi looked at him, shook her head with a forced laugh. “I’m tired. And I have a problem.”
“Ye—-s?” The word slid from basso profundo to light baritone.
“You’re good with Bibhi in Community Ed?”
“I should hope so. I got her the job. Problem with her?”
“No, not exactly. Mae needs to pay half her tuition later, and I wondered if you could use a little influence. Get Bibhi to bend the rules.” Randi looked into his eyes, her voice pleading. Mae didn’t like having her financial problems exposed, but again Randi’s sincerity won her over. And it had to be done—she needed help.
“Bend the rules, eh?” Charlie sat on the edge of Randi’s desk and flipped the edges of a pad of blue post-it notes. He looked at Mae. “How much later?”
“I don’t know. It’s ...” She blushed. Her earlier confidence that she would find the money fell in the face of the question. “I’m not—I mean, I’d pay, for sure. But I don’t have a job until I finish the certification and the exam.”
“I suppose you could get a loan. But that wouldn’t come through fast enough.” Charlie looked at the post-its, still flipping them, then set them down. “What if ...” He studied
Mae, his cool eyes serious. “Come with me.” He stood and started out the door. Charlie seemed to be making a mystery on purpose, but she hoped whatever it was led to her problem’s solution. Reminding Randi that she’d d be back for the ride to Spruce, Mae followed.
Walking to Charlie’s office, she noticed that it was his right knee that seemed to bother him, the cause of the unevenness in his walk.
“You got a hitch in your git-up. You hurt your knee?”
“Used to run marathons. Pounded too much pavement.” He opened the over-decorated door and looked around the room before going to his desk. “Of course I was younger and slimmer then.”
Mae sat in the chair facing him. It had been moved away from the cluttered table and freed of the layers of papers that had been on it the day before. “I ran track,” she said. “Never did a marathon.”
“Track? I’d have taken you for ...” Charlie studied her. “Basketball, maybe. My ex-girlfriend played basketball.” His expression darkened, so briefly Mae wondered if she’d seen the cloud pass. “Tall woman. You remind me of her.”
“Everyone takes me for a basketball player. I know I don’t look like a runner.” She tried to picture him with an athletic woman. It didn’t fit. And then she wondered if the basketball player had been a student. Probably. How did a man like him attract a young woman like that, or like Dana? Mae dropped the train of thought to come back to the conversation at hand. “I did track and softball.”
“And now you’re going to be a personal trainer.” He said this as if it were an occupation he only pretended to respect.
“I plan on it, yes sir.”
“Sir.” He chuckled. “You could make more money as a psychic.”
“Are you kidding?”