The Miracle Girl

by Andrew Roe

  They’ve finished their sandwiches. Could have eaten another one, both of them famished. The bench filled with chipped paint and splinters, carved initials and cryptic slang. Whatever happened to all those people he went to high school with? Was twelve, thirteen years really so long ago? Maybe they’ll go searching for the sandwich person on their way back. That could have been the best sandwich of his life. The most nourishing, most needed, certainly.

  Karen says, “How long do we let it go on?”

  Her smell. God. He had missed her smell. Not her perfume-­y smell. Her life smell.

  “However long it takes, I think,” he says.

  “We could be here well into the night.”

  “Will the lights go on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  He wonders: What did he himself really believe? What did he make of what had happened to his daughter and wife? What did he make of anything? All his life this vague sense of adolescent drift, of moving from one thing to the next without seeing the connections, without fully understanding the deeper implications. Other people—friends, adults—had advanced in a way he hadn’t. There’d been a general stalling. When would that end? Maybe now. Maybe now that he was here. Back. Redeeming himself. Making it right. Yes. Maybe now there was the chance, the possibility. His true life would begin.

  “Are you ready to go back?” she asks.

  “No,” he says.

  “Me neither.”

  “Then let’s not.”

  * * *

  After a while you get really, really tired of people asking if you’re tired. Karen can’t count how many times she’s been asked that question or flat-­out been told “You look tired” or “My, you look like you need some sleep, dear” throughout this very long, very draining day. But she is tired, so fuck it, who cares—she’s beat like she’s never been beat (which is saying something), the sun finally sinking down, the SoCal sunset blazing red and orange and purple, like one of those Laserium light shows she and John used to go see at Griffith Park (minus the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon), and still there are more people waiting, always more people, always more faces. The only dreams she remembers now are the dreams of faces. Nothing else but faces. One after another, a neverending movie reel, each different and new and wanting something from her. It’s hard to imagine ever being alone again. Or just her and John. And Anabelle. Always Anabelle. They need to get back to that core: the three of them, a family. But not like they were before. Different. Transformed. Again, that word.

  The football stadium lights do come on, in a sudden, surprising burst, flooding the field with an influx of manufactured brightness. The crowd spontaneously applauds. It’s a pause, a breath that everyone seems to need. She senses their energy sagging, true, yet they remain dedicated, alert, collectively yearning. It takes a while for Karen’s eyes to adjust to the new light, like when an eye doctor dilates your pupils. Everything temporarily sensitive and blurry. It would be nice to have a margarita. Her left ass-­cheek burns. These folding chairs they’ve been sitting on all day truly suck, probably dating back to before she was born. She blinks repeatedly until there’s focus again.

  Not long after the lights switch on, Dr. Patel stops by for his hourly update, informing them that Anabelle is a trooper, she’s doing fine, asking how much longer they want to keep going. She glances at John, sitting next to her, leaning forward and tapping his thigh to prevent his leg from falling asleep again. He sips a Snapple lemonade, looks extremely tired as well. But he nods. So does Linda, who’s next to John, who’s also in it for the long haul, prepared to see this through, giving Anabelle mini massages every other hour. Seems like days ago when the ambulance pulled into the driveway at the house, the three of them, plus Dr. Patel, watching the mustache paramedic guys transport Anabelle to the vehicle, then climbing in themselves, backing up with the lights flashing and the brakes squeaking. Her neighbor, Mavis, waving at them from across the street, calling out something they couldn’t hear.

  “There’s people still waiting,” Karen tells Dr. Patel, motioning to the line, trying to suppress a noticeable yawn. “Let’s keep going for a little while longer if we can. Let’s see how many more can get through. I don’t want to have to turn anyone away.”

  Plus she’s also given like ten, twelve, twenty interviews today, saying the same things over and over, reminding her of professional athletes and their stock locker-­room phrases: we’re taking it one day at a time, we’re trying to stay focused and positive, one game doesn’t make a season, we know what we need to do and now we just need to go out there and do it.

  “I’ll tell the nurse and Bryce,” says Dr. Patel. “But I’d recommend no more than an hour longer, Karen. It’s been quite a day. She’s doing fine but we don’t want to overdo it.”

  Dr. Patel wears a white long-­sleeved shirt and patterned tie yet he doesn’t sweat. He’s short, heavyset, always glancing at his watch. Probably not much older than her sister Tammy, who surprised her by coming today (“I need to be around more,” she told Karen), along with Dom of course (another piercing, this time her lip), along with her friends Marnie and Meredith, who had been there since the beginning, when the house first smelled of roses. Karen’s always astonished by people around her own age, like Dr. Patel, who have made it in the world. The confidence required. The lack of self-­doubt. Not caring what others think. Some people were like that. She wondered how they lived, how they came to be that way, so far from her own hushed existence.

  “All right,” she says. “One more hour then.”

  “And I think we’re going to need a truck for all the gifts. You could open your own store.”

  After he speaks briefly with Bryce, Dr. Patel returns to the tent, and the procession continues.

  One more hour then. John now taps his other thigh, and she thinks of how she’s glad she convinced her mother not to come, who otherwise would be here on the stage, how she would second-­guess everything, from the clothes Anabelle was wearing to the music playing over the loudspeakers, always putting in her two told-­you-­so cents, asking if it was all right to smoke even though prominent NO SMOKING signs were posted everywhere, all of which would have made for an entirely different day. For the best.

  It feels strange to be on a stage, elevated like this. Reminds her of high school graduation, of walking across the makeshift platform to receive her diploma. She’d hurried along, kept her eyes down, almost tripped. She’s never liked the spotlight. Her own locker-­room phrases include: I have mixed feelings about all this ending, and but I can’t help but wonder if it is ending, I still have my daughter, I still have Anabelle, that is never going to change, you’re a parent forever.

  But she’s learned how to present herself, even though she knows she still blushes, her neck and chest blooming an embarrassing red. When a reporter asks John a question, he just shakes his head, says he’d rather not, it’s not his thing.

  True, John was never much of a talker, a man of few words, fewer monologues. Hates talking on the phone, too. He did call her, once, during his time away. It was fairly early on and she was halfway through a bottle of wine, Dom spending the night to help with Anabelle and give Karen a little break. The “break” consisted of folding laundry while watching a Designing Women rerun (and the wine). His voice sounded distant, like he was calling from somewhere far away that he’d never actually be—Europe, China, Australia. She started to cry. She tried not to, but she did. He apologized. Said he needed to figure some things out. He’d take care of them. He’d send money. Every week. Whatever he had. To help with Anabelle’s mounting medical bills. To tide them over until the money from the lawsuit finally came through. He’d figure things out and then. She kept crying. She said you let me know, you let me know when you figure things out because I’d like to know, too. The conversation ended at some point and the dial tone morphed into that annoying beeping/squawking, which she didn’t realize until Dom was
there and hung up the phone for her.

  Bryce’s voice booms through the p.a. system: “Hi everyone. Me again. Bryce. How’s it going out there? Just a little update. We weren’t planning to go this long, but we really want everyone to be able to see Anabelle today, so we’re extending for one more hour. That’s one more hour. It would be helpful if you could speed up the pace and then hopefully everyone who’s still here will get their turn. Hang in there. And thanks again for your patience today.”

  Bryce, who’s a different person now that John is back. Bryce, who she wants to take aside and say something reassuring and life-­affirming and original and not a stock letting-you-down-easy-type phrase (it’s not you, it’s me, things happen for a reason, you’re a great guy, you’ll find someone else, love comes when you least expect it), but she’s not sure what words to use. He’s already moved away from her, and she understands.

  One more hour then. She wants to be home. She wants it to be over. The past six months are like a dream, a fiction that is also true. She realizes that, more than anything else, she believes in her daughter. Not all the religion and God and miracle stuff. She simply believes in her daughter. She reaches over and touches John’s hand, skin against skin, hers, his. She finds herself doing this often now: touching him, verifying. He touches back.

  While he was gone, she often asked herself: What if he never comes home? What if this is permanent? Would she survive? She came to the conclusion, after several months, that yes she would survive. Damaged, yes; lessened, sure; but she’d survive. She realized she possessed a strength that she previously did not know existed. She would survive either way. But this way was the preferred way. This way was better. And it would continue to get better, if she believed, if he believed. She wanted to tell him things right away, right now, before they escaped her. It was hard not to give in to this electric urgency. But there was no rush. Because now there was time. The better way—

  A woman screams. Who? Everyone sitting on the stage turns. It’s a woman passing by Anabelle and who has now stopped moving, as has everyone else. The woman looks around, panicked, like a shoplifter who gets a tap on the shoulder, guilty, caught. She screams: “The girl! The girl! She moved! I swear, she moved!”

  Karen and John rush over to the tent, followed by others onstage, plus the passersby surging forward to take a look, a general jockeying and rubbernecking for position to see what’s going on.

  “Are we filming?” someone yells. Cameras point, aim, click, focus.

  The woman who screamed moves aside so that Karen and John can go in and check on their daughter. They trade alarmed looks, gaze down at Anabelle. Nothing. The tent’s plastic is clear but could the woman have seen anything from outside? Or is she crazy? Is it another tall tale? Another story that will be passed down no matter if it’s been proven true or false? Karen tries to calm the insistence of her rapidly beating heart, working its way up higher and higher to the bottom of her throat, rising, a motherly alarm now all too familiar. They wait.

  “I swear,” the woman repeats outside. “I swear.”

  They wait and nothing happens and they wait some more and then yes something happens: Anabelle, their daughter, opens her mouth; opens it farther, that is, since it’s already ajar; blinks her eyes, once, twice, several times; curls her fingers; lifts her arm; tilts her head; yes, it’s true, she moved, is moving; and it looks like she’s about to speak, to say something, a declaration, her jaw finding its way, and everything changes, again.

  * * *

  Technically, scientifically, rationally, Captain Dave knows the Cessna is heavy, something like 1,500 pounds, yet he’s always felt his beloved plane was weightless, capable of a feathery, beautiful drift, and piloting it was like a piloting a cloud or dream. You just have to keep it up in the air. You have to keep it going. You have to have the balls to believe you can fly. Then the magic will happen.

  He’s exhausted, having done two shifts back to back, taken his two breaks, fixed a faulty headset, filed his last traffic report of the day, and cleared his flight path back to Fullerton Municipal Airport. This one might make his Top 10—his own personal list of the L.A. traffic-­related incidents he remembers most. There’s something humbling, something privileged, about seeing all this activity from above. He never gets used to it. Yes. Perspective. Plus his back is killing him. The pills he takes don’t work. His wife takes pills, too, for other ailments, the number always increasing: another doctor’s appointment, more pills. They now keep them all in a rectangular plastic container, each day of the week with its own specified slot so they don’t mess up the dosages and frequency. They’d never had kids. It’s the kind of thing you think about when you’re an old man and there is only the simple fact of flight, when you’re up here among the clouds, aloft and distinct.

  The back-­and-­forth with KTZ’s Layton and Peck, drive time’s top-­ranked morning program in the über-­competitive Los Angeles market, was a little off today, the Captain reflects, always immediately critiquing his shift once it’s over, how he could have done better, how he can improve the next day, it’s what makes the Captain the Captain. Might have been because he was thinking about the girl, all those antlike believers down below, lost in his whirly thoughts as the day progressed. You have the stop-­and-­go nature of life in L.A., but then something—something besides the traffic—really makes you stop. Of course it could also be that he’s just too critical of himself, which is why his wife puts little notes in his lunch bag or briefcase, her elegant, school-­girl handwriting telling him to have a nice day and be nicer to himself. He tries. We can always do better. And we better hurry. Tomorrow night the world was supposed to blow up, after all.

  He swoops and accelerates the Cessna for a final flyover of El Dorado High, invisibly waves good-­bye to the still large flood of people gathered at the football stadium and scattered throughout the school grounds, as well as those hiking back to their cars, parked (and double-­parked) far away, all over the neighborhood and beyond, what a day; Captain Dave wishes them well, salutes them with an official Captain tip of the hat; he hopes they are able to find whatever it is they’re looking for; and ahead of him the sky is open, calm, gentle—a familiar embrace.

  PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE ARCHDIOESE OF LOS ANGELES CONCERNING THE MATTER OF ANABELLE VINCENT (AKA “THE MIRACLE GIRL”)

  ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES

  NEWS

  Office of Communications

  3424 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010 Phone/Fax 213 791-7172

  Contact: Father Jim Hinshaw

  213-791-7172

  email: jhinshaw@laarchdiocese.org

  Archdiocese Issues Preliminary Findings on Miraculous Claims Regarding “The Miracle Girl” Anabelle Vincent Statement by Most Rev. lawrence P. McAdams, Archbishop of Los Angeles

  MARCH 24, 2000 — During the past approximate 9 months, many miraculous claims and various unexplainable circumstances have occurred in the proximity of a bed-ridden 8-year-old girl named Anabelle Vincent. As the notoriety and fame of Anabelle grew, I asked a team of medical and theological professionals to review the matter to determine its possible impact, negative or positive, on the Catholic faithful, the family, and the people who sought out Anabelle in such growing numbers.

  Just as the commission was about to report its preliminary findings to me, Anabelle came out of her “coma” during a much publicized “farewell viewing event” held at a local high school on December 30th of the year past. Since this time the claims of miracles and healing have significantly curtailed (the Vincent home, it should be noted, is no longer “open” to the public), and Anabelle has been interviewed by several commission members, including myself.

  The girl has no recollection of being in the previously mentioned coma state (“akinetic mutism”), or of any of the “other than normal” experiences supposedly occurring in her home, or of all the media attention she and her family received. She is also at present being examined by multiple doctors (specialists) to d
etermine if the coma, and the concomitant trauma from the accident that caused it, as well as a subsequent mishandling of medication doses (resulting in a lawsuit), have led to any long-term brain damage or mental capacity reduction of any kind. The doctors additionally point out that recovery of consciousness in cases such as Anabelle’s is rare, usually brought on by a regimen of drugs and therapy over time, not by the patient simply and suddenly “waking up”. It is therefore hoped that Anabelle’s case will provide them with great insight into better understanding this condition.

  The commission has now issued a revised preliminary report to me, concluding that, while further study is recommended in some instances, no manifestations of chicanery were found regarding the claims reviewed. This does not, however, mean that the commission endorses the verity of the claims. According to the fundamental rules of logic, one cannot presume that the inability to explain something automatically makes it miraculous. This simply means that thus far no instances of fraud or deception have been discovered.

  One area of further study is regarding the composition and source of the oils and other substances found in the Vincent home. In doing this, I want to strongly emphasize that any “paranormal” occurrences are not miraculous in and of themselves. In the hundreds of years since Pope Benedict XIV (1740—1758), the consistent practice of the Catholic Church has been not to use such occurrences as verifications of miraculous claims.