by Andrew Roe
Others begin to assemble and fill the seats. There is some grumbling when they see it isn’t sports but the news. These men, too, say little, and Matthew Ronald Kimbrough is thankful for that. He has twelve years left in his sentence, will be up for parole in eight. He doesn’t understand how that time will pass. He doesn’t understand how you get over something like this. He will always be the drunk driver who caused an accident that paralyzed a little girl. This will be the single statement that defines his life, no matter what he does from here on out. It’s all he’ll think of. It’s all his mother or sister or the person interviewing him for a job will think of. He has become someone else, familiar but no longer fully known, not fully his core self anymore, this whole other complicated layer that takes away from who and what he used to be. It was vodka gimlets that night, a woman next to him at the bar who laughed at his jokes and he thought maybe there was a chance.
On the TV, they cut from the anchors in the studio to the high school. Everyone waiting in line, the police cars, the ambulance, people getting out now. Then the mother. Then the father. He remembers them from the trial, their shattered faces, the few times when he could keep his eyes on them for more than two seconds. And then they carry out the girl. She’s cocooned in one of those beds with wheels and straps, which they gently place on the ground, the legs extending to the proper position. They start pushing her. Photographers jockey around for the best angle, snapping away, cameramen filming, too. There are also machines on wheels, and other people are pushing the machines along in unison. The machines are connected to the girl and vice versa. They all move together, move as one scrum, move slowly, toward the end of the football field, where there seems to be some kind of shrine, only it’s not really a shrine, it’s a clear plastic dome-shaped tent, about seven feet high and eighteen feet long, which is up on a stage and which reminds him of the movie from when he was growing up, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, where this little kid had this weird disease and couldn’t go outside or touch anyone and he had to live in a bubble, which really wasn’t a bubble but a completely antiseptic and germ-free plastic enclosure thing in his room, and he remembers it being one of the few times he cried as a child, watching this movie. He figures that’s where they’re going to put the girl, that’s where the people will pass by and say what they’ll say, pray what they’ll pray, do what they’ll do, and Matthew Ronald Kimbrough suddenly wants to be there, very badly, he knows what he’d ask for: forgiveness. And he’d not only ask the girl but also the mother and the father, and he’s picturing it in his mind, these conversations, what he’d say, and how the parents would reply, when somebody, a fellow prisoner, snaps him out of it by saying, “What the fuck is this fuck-shit we’re watching? Someone change it to CNN. I want to see the countdown for when everything goes up in smoke. Only one more day to go. Then all this, all this here, won’t matter. We’re all the same. We’re all equal. Free at last, free at last.”
* * *
He decided not to go. Because of the long drive from Laguna Beach, because of the crowds and the parking (he’d had enough of that at the girl’s house). But as he sits in his living room, watching it on TV, sipping reheated coffee and debating whether or not he’s going to ignore Patricia’s wishes and have a memorial service anyway, he kind of wishes he had. The mother, Karen, has just walked up to the podium to address the crowd. She looks overwhelmed, tired, nervous. A man stands next to her, close, suspiciously scanning the audience and scenery the way Secret Service guys do, seeking out the one deadly anomaly amid a sea of ordinariness. The mother utters “Good morning” and the microphone responds with squealing, high-pitched feedback.
Donald can’t explain exactly why he wants to be there. He visited the girl, he made his entreaty, he drove home, and Patricia died three days later. His desire, he figures, probably has something to do with being around people who understand what he’s been going through. Who were also dealing with life and death—mostly death. If you weren’t immersed in this intense, narrowed existence, this tunneling down to questions of what constitutes living and how long you’d want to prolong something that might not be living, you just didn’t know. You just didn’t know. He supposes he wants to be around people who know.
His son and daughter-in-law, who had taken care of Patricia while he made the journey to El Portal, didn’t know about the visit. He’d lied, fabricated something about lunch with an old friend from work, from way back in the day, no, no one you’d remember. If they had known they would have wondered about him, just as he was wondering about himself. What was next? Psychics with 900 numbers? Poorly toupeed late-night TV preachers whose mere touch sends the faithful into mystic convulsions? Whatever it took, he’d decided. Whatever it took to have his wife for a little while longer. And whatever it took to make the decision that will either liberate him or destroy him. Which was what led him to Shaker Street, another seeker of miracles and wonders, one of many.
It had taken all day, what with the driving and getting lost. Then hours to get in. Hours with his new best friend Cassie Solinski. Hours to consider the mysteries of faith. Hours in the sun. Then that woman had collapsed. Heat stroke was the general consensus among the crowd. Or smog stroke, if there is such a thing. Or maybe she was overcome by the spirit of the girl, even from outside. He heard such stories from the people in line. And other tales, from the papers and TV: communion wafers that leaked blood; the teenager with chronic acne who visited Anabelle and the next day was clear-skinned for the first time in her life; the elderly neighbor who took a photograph of the girl and an angel appeared in the background.
The room was small and locker-room stuffy, smelling powerfully of flowers and bodies and incense. Barely enough room for the bed—one of those hospital beds that has retractable railings so the sleeper will not fall out, similar to his wife’s bed in ICU, but smaller, girl-sized—plus the respirator and the other anonymous gadgetry keeping her alive, breathing. He didn’t know what to do. Kneel? Stand? Pray? The Father/Son/Holy Spirit thing that the Latino baseball players do? Think of his wife? He should have been more prepared, done some research, paid more attention in that Intro to World Religions G.E. class he’d taken sophomore year at USC. He wanted to ask the mother: What do most people do? But she had already left, respectfully giving him his time alone. And then there was the earlier breakdown in the living room. An open wound that worsened the more he dwelled on it. But how could he not? How had he let that happen? Crying in front of strangers. Bawling. This was not like him. This was not like the man who’d paid for his children’s college educations by mastering the stock market in his spare time. He was letting his wife down. Failing her.
It was hard to look at the girl for more than a few seconds. Seeing her so immobile and helpless, a miniature version of his wife. So removed. Reduced. All the motion and momentums of life gone. Is it worse to have a child like this or a spouse? Is it valid to even entertain such questions? He tried to avoid the girl’s eyes: Hershey’s brown, eerily open, blinking occasionally. Thinking what? Looking for what? And he told himself to banish the next thought, to blot it out before it fully formed, but it was too late, there it was, it had already mutated too far, he was fucking up: She didn’t look holy or blessed or anything. She looked like a sad, crippled little girl. That’s all. Then he became aware of the passing of time, the seconds slipping away. He had to make good use of his allotted minutes. He had to concentrate, focus. The mother said she’d knock before she came back in.
Out of panic, what he did was this: He explained what had happened to his wife. Quickly summarizing the details, the Reader’s Digest version, making sure to point out the similarities between his wife’s situation and her own, the girl’s, a little sympathy couldn’t hurt, might as well, working up to the pledge they’d agreed to years before—that if one of them wasn’t really living that something should be done—and thus his current dilemma. He wasn’t sure if he said all of this out loud or merely recited it internally (had he b
owed his head? closed his eyes? would his ignorance of protocol lessen the chances of the girl helping?), but either way the information was out there, passing, he hoped, maybe, from him to the girl and then who knows.
The mother did indeed knock, gently said, “How are we doing here?” Her voice soft and floating. She touched his hand. He touched back. There were still three more people waiting for their turn, including the sort of loudmouth guy, Ned, Ted, who had placed his hand on his shoulder and called him brother.
Driving home that night, he thought how rare it was these days for him to brave the traffic and travel northward to L.A. People in Orange County were generally afraid of Los Angeles, and Donald Westerfield was no exception. He also didn’t usually listen to the radio when he drove, but he was doing so now because today was a day of irregularity and impulse and why not follow it through all the way. Someone, a man with a regional accent of some kind, was talking manically and circularly, the general thesis involving the U.S.’s uncertain international role in this post–Cold War era.
The question, then, that kept snapping back at him as he steered the Lexus: Do you have to be a true believer for it to work? And what if you’re not? Does that make him an impostor? Always, always his instinct to gravitate toward the here and now, the tangible muck of his day-to-day life, not what may or may not be above the clouds, elsewhere, unknown. He’s probably agnostic, though he’s never used the word to describe himself. (It means maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, right? Hedging your bets, playing it safe, which makes perfect sense to him. Actually, there was one thing he remembered from that religion class: something called Pascal’s Wager, which basically said that we’re incapable of really knowing whether God exists, yet we must wager whether he does. And it’s the smarter wager to believe in God because if it turns out that God does exist you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife. But if you wager against God, if you don’t believe, and it turns out that he exists, well, then you’re screwed and you’ll be punished for your disbelief. On the other hand, if God doesn’t exist, you don’t lose anything either way. The gist, then, being: it’s better to believe than not to believe.) If cornered on the subject at a cocktail party—not that they went to cocktail parties anymore—he’d just say he’s not that religious and leave it at that. Patricia a little more certain, believing there is some kind of force out there, a truth and mystery beyond us, a higher power, but never taking it much further than that.
The radio garbled out chunks of static as he scanned the stations. A Costco lasagna awaited him at home, ready to be microwaved, bought by his son the previous day, along with army-sized rations of pancake mix, almonds, mouthwash. He hadn’t eaten all day, his stomach reminding him with periodic gurgles and snarls. The faraway voices on the radio continued to fight through the poor reception. Wyatt from Dime Box, Texas, was concerned about the country’s lack of purpose.
The Lexus almost drove itself. It should, considering how much it set him back (Patricia not complaining, allowing him the indulgence because he had so few), and it was a good thing, too: Donald’s thoughts consumed him as he drove, ping-ponging from the girl to Patricia to his family and back to the girl again, large blocks of time disappearing without him realizing it, and suddenly he was on the 133 and weaving through Laguna Canyon and almost home. He thought how he would soon pull into the garage and turn off the engine. He’d sit there for a while, then go inside, shower, check the mail, water Patricia’s plants. Next he’d head back to the hospital, greet his son and daughter-in-law, thank them, apologize for being late, the traffic, time flies, etc. He’d wait until after they had left. Then he’d confide to his wife that he went and saw the little girl, the one he told her about, the girl on TV. He’d say: I prayed. I think I prayed. I hope I did it right. I should have checked. We’ll see. Now there’s nothing to do but wait. Wait and see. Wait and hope that it’s all true. That miracles exist, are still possible in this day and age, so late in the century. What do you think of that? And how are you, my dear? How was your day? Tell me. How was your day?
And that’s pretty much what had happened that day. And it was OK that the little girl did not save Patricia; she had died, was gone; and that meant he no longer had to grapple with the decision of whether to take her off life support, so perhaps he didn’t get what he asked for but he did get something else. And now he’s here on the sofa and on TV the mother has finished speaking and he wishes he was one of the people surging forward to see the girl one last time. He just wants to tell her that Patricia is gone and that it’s OK, and yes there will be a service, something small and intimate for friends and family, because they need to remember his wife, his beautiful dead wife, and the remembering was beginning now and would last as long as he kept waking up in the morning, as long as he breathed and ate and walked the earth and was capable of recalling her face, her smell, her essence, her love.
* * *
She knows, yes, she can feel it, she can tell: there is something growing inside her belly, life taking root, a baby, a boy, yes, another boy. Things are happening and cannot be stopped. This not long after her time with the Miracle Girl, her neighbor. She and Marcus waited with the others, chatting, after the woman had passed out, small talk among strangers, the mother’s eyes scanning back and forth like radar as she spoke and listened and spoke, nice and cordial, but obviously there were like eight thousand things on her mind.
And then Mavis and Marcus were inside the room, just like it looked on TV, only smaller seeming; and there Mavis was, so close to her own her house and yet in this famous room, this newly designated holy place, that had been broadcast to the world.
“Belle honey, this is Mr. and Mrs. Morris, our neighbors,” the mother introduced. “From across the street. They wanted to meet you. They’re going to spend a little time with you.”
The mother smiled at them, slipped away, closed the door, though not completely; a just-in-case-you-need-me crack remained.
Now what? Mavis thought. She tapped an uncharacteristically unpolished nail on the rail of the girl’s bed: the metal, or whatever it’s made of, cool, smooth, like something you’d want to press your cheek against on such a hot day (she did not, however). The voices and activity elsewhere in the house. The factorylike churning of her thoughts. The heart’s inadequacy when confronted with the magnitude of its raw wants.
Mavis assumed the position, followed, reluctantly, by Marcus. It’d been a while. Her head swirled. She went back to the hospital and when they pulled it—him—from her womb and how when she saw Marcus crying she knew it was bad, bad. Nobody would tell her anything at first and she was so narcoticized that even when they explained what happened she was thinking, fine, I can deal, I’m floating here, floating along like a dream and anything that comes along I can handle, I can incorporate it into the dream and make it right. Other snapshots of her life flashbulbed in her mind, too: the time her brother brought Marcus over for Sunday supper, their first introduction when she was just fifteen years old; her father’s easily provoked fury, his children forever disappointing him in some vague, unacknowledged way; her mother retreating to her baked goods and Billie Holiday records. But she told herself to focus, to pray. So she prayed. She prayed for her dead son with no name. She prayed for the fertility of a rabbit. She prayed that one day they might be able to have another child, that whatever had been corrupted inside her would heal and disappear like a paper cut. She prayed that Marcus wanted this as much as she did. She prayed that she and Marcus were not too old. She prayed that the statistics you hear about older women and birth defects would not apply to her. She prayed and she realized it had been years since she’d clasped her hands like this, palm to palm, dropped down to her knees and humbled herself, eyes shut, head bowed, and it felt good, it felt right, it was a goddamned (sorry) relief in fact, and it was as if there was this great unburdening of something, an internal relinquishing that shuddered through her pleasantly submissive body. Nice. She prayed for the mother, the neighborh
ood; for Marcus, if she hadn’t already, specifically singled him out, that is. And while she was at it she prayed for her aunt, for her parents, for her nieces and nephews, for anybody whose life basically intersected with her own, amen. Opened her eyes and the girl hadn’t moved, hadn’t budged, because she couldn’t move, couldn’t budge; but that mouth, those eyes; the eyes of the living dead; the eyes of her son had they ever opened.
She knows, yes, she can feel it, and she could feel something was already changing right after they left the girl’s house that day and came home and she said now and he said what? and she said upstairs, now, while the magic’s still fresh, and he said fine. She’s been telling Marcus this—the knowing—all throughout the morning, while watching TV, switching back and forth between the girl and the coverage at the high school and The Price Is Right, Marcus now shuffling to the bathroom, in need of a break—from the TV, from her.
“It might be a while,” warns Marcus, who’s known for camping out in the bathroom for long stretches of time, typically working his way through multiple magazines in one sitting. “My stomach again,” he adds.
The baby boy’s name, by the way, is Anthony. He is growing and will continue to grow until he’s ready to come out, the eight and a half months will fly by. Marcus will hold him in his arms and then, there—all the doubt and hesitation and everything else will disappear. They will be parents, at last. Anthony will coo and gurgle and charm them. A baby! A boy! Look! Marcus’s diapering skills will improve. The adjustment will be hard but worth it, so, so satisfying. Baby Anthony will crawl then walk. Sounds then words will fill his beautiful mouth. They will tell him things, teach him things. Their house will become what it’s never been: a home. They will, however, eventually move to a bigger house, a better neighborhood with better schools and better malls, better everything. Marcus’s back will heal and he’ll be able to work again. Anthony will grow, grow: the miracle of childhood. He will start school and excel. My, his teachers will say, what a smart boy, what a bright boy, you’ve got a very special child there, Mr. and Mrs. Morris. Good things will happen. Promotions at work. Investments paying off. Time at the gym and regular doctor checkups and clean bills of health. Anthony a boy that will hug freely and without restraint, that will be warm and loving, and that also will like sports. Baseball. That will be his game, and he will excel here as well, and they will attend all his games, support him and love him, always love him. Then it will be junior high already and the girls will call on the phone, naturally, Anthony sweet and a little shy, Marcus having started his own business, following his dream, and it will take off and there will be another house and an even better school, life amazes, and Anthony will make all-stars for the second year in a row, plus they’ll take vacations to Hawaii and Europe. Then high school will be upon them, Anthony joining clubs and of course the baseball team. They’ll purchase a new car for Mavis, a Mercedes, even though she rarely drives, hates driving and yet lives in L.A. (funny, right?), and pretty soon Anthony himself will be driving, applying to colleges and thinking he wants to be either a scientist or a lawyer. And through it all, as the years accumulate and yield better and better things, Mavis will every now and then think of the girl, think of their old neighbor, how on that day she touched Anabelle and then touched her own stomach, how something must have passed from the girl to Mavis, and everything thereafter was blessed, everything thereafter was changed, and you could argue it was the girl or Mavis’s own positive thinking or that’s just how things would have worked out anyway, it didn’t matter, because it all happened, her life finally happened the way it was supposed to happen, and it was all beautiful and just like she’d always pictured it.