Lila couldn’t be sure, but the slow swish of Grace’s plume might have been a wag of pleasure that Lila was home. Though she was glad Grace was improving, Lila felt burdened all over again because Grace might want more from her than she was able to give.
When Lila went to the bedroom, Grace followed and plopped down next to the dresser so her bottom and front legs made a small tripod that was reflected in the TV screen. A sliver of her tongue hung below her charcoal-lump nose. She panted slightly, like she was asking about Lila’s trip to the store. If Lila were a dog, Grace would have expected her to pant a reply.
As Lila shrugged out of her fuchsia jacket, a stab of pain traveled down her injured arm. “Ow!”
Grace shrank back like she’d felt the pain too.
“I can’t help it. This awful man shot me, and my arm still hurts.” What was Lila doing telling her troubles to a dog?
Grace blinked and cocked her head with rapt attention; she looked like she was listening with all her heart. If Grace had been a person, Lila would have believed she was concerned. But surely dogs couldn’t feel empathy or pick up people’s feelings.
After lunch Grace’s eyes followed Lila as she pulled the sheets off the bed with her right hand. She unfolded a clean bottom contour sheet and tossed it over the mattress the best she could, then wrestled, one-handed, with the sheet’s lower right corner. When she got it in place, she tackled the lower left corner, but the sheet’s right one snapped off. No matter how hard Lila tugged, her injury prevented her from fitting the lower corners at the same time.
Finally, struggling till her forehead was sweaty, she worked a safety pin through the sheet and mattress cover to hold the lower left corner, and then she yanked the second into place and pinned it, too. Though she pulled till her right hand trembled with fatigue, she couldn’t get the sheet over the upper left corner—and she had to admit to herself that fitting the upper right one would also be impossible. For now she was going to have to sleep in a rumpled, sheetless bed.
Flopping onto it, she told herself that having no sheets wouldn’t kill her, but it would remind her how gravely she’d been hurt and how limited she was. Frustration sidled up to her, as if it planned to be a permanent guest at her table and there wouldn’t be room for anyone but the two of them. With her good hand, Lila squeezed part of the sheet into a frustrated ball.
When Grace limped over and pressed her body against the mattress, Lila was about to shoo her away so she wouldn’t get fur in the bed. She pressed her cheek against Lila’s hand so the silky tufts of fur above her ear brushed Lila’s wrist. To her surprise, the softness felt soothing; she released the sheet and stroked Grace’s fur with the backs of her fingers.
Perhaps Lila had been wrong about empathy in dogs. Grace seemed to have come to console her, just as Lila had consoled Grace during the storm. If she couldn’t hug or speak, she might be comforting the best she could by presenting a part of herself for Lila to hold. Astonished that Grace might be offering solace, Lila stroked Grace’s ear again.
Grace rested her chin on the mattress and looked at Lila with eyes that said, I care! I really, really care! But slowly they got a troubled slant, as if she were thinking about something that hurt her.
Soon Grace’s eyes gave Lila a gut-wrenching speech that no one would need words to understand. Grace said that she sympathized with Lila’s distress. And even though Grace had lately been putting on a chipper front, deep down she was distressed herself, and she needed someone as much as Lila did to encourage her out of sorrow. Grace had had a miserable time at her cruel, sick owner’s hands, and she was desperate to be with someone who would love her.
Can’t you be that person? Won’t you give me the home I want more than anything in the world? Grace’s sad eyes begged. Please, please, I’ll do anything if you’ll let me be your dog. Please, love me.
Grace’s eyes were moist with longing. She could have been a street urchin, looking in the window of a candy store and clutching a penny that could not buy a single chocolate-covered cherry wrapped in gold foil. Lila closed her own eyes to cut off the emotions pouring out of Grace, but her neediness was too compelling to escape.
Lila’s sympathy urged her to help Grace. The dog wasn’t bad; Lila hadn’t minded being around her nearly as much as she’d expected. But she couldn’t possibly keep Grace when she couldn’t even change her sheets. Lila still had months to go before her life’s dust would settle and she’d be herself again. She didn’t have the time or strength for Grace, who was a constant distraction when Lila needed to focus on healing.
For both their sakes, Grace and Lila needed to get on with their lives and go their separate ways. The sooner Adam found Grace a home with people who’d love her, the better. Lila removed her hand from Grace’s shoulder and sat up in her rumpled bed. She sighed. “I care about you, but I have to do something. It’s time.”
“Adam?” Cristina’s contact list was on the desk next to the phone. Grace was at Lila’s feet. “This is Lila Elliot.”
“I recognized your voice.”
He sounded welcoming. An artful ploy to coax Lila into keeping Grace for another month?
“How are you and Grace getting along?” he asked.
“She’s growing too attached.”
Adam ignored the negativity implied in “too” and said, “I told you she was a loving dog.”
“She is,” Lila conceded and set her hand on Grace’s head, a natural resting place. “I’ve been waiting for you to call. Isn’t it time for you to come and get her?”
Adam’s pause told Lila that his engineer’s brain was outlining ways to dodge her request. “I can’t get Grace now.”
“You’ve quit looking for her home?!”
“No. I’m asking around all the time.”
“Is asking around enough? Can’t you do more? What about the posters?”
Lila’s Pleaser urged, Don’t be pushy!
“You don’t have to get upset,” Adam said.
“You told me Grace would be gone in a few days, and it’s been two weeks. Don’t you think you’re being thoughtless?”
Lila’s Pleaser hopped around and shrieked, Don’t talk like that, for heaven’s sake. Your mother taught you to be gracious.
If Lila had listened to her Pleaser, she would have clamped her hand over her mouth and told Adam that something must have gotten into her; she was never so blunt. But her Crazy Aunt jumped out of her Ford Explorer and snarled, You have a right to speak your mind! I’ll smack you in the chops if you apologize to him.
“It can’t be so hard to feed a gentle dog,” Adam said. In his words, again lurked judgment.
“Feeding Grace is only part of it. Having her around is difficult,” Lila said. “I’m scared I’ll trip over her. I got shot. I can’t do half of what I used to.”
“I remember. The broken arm.”
The broken arm? “It’s not a simple broken arm.” You could be more understanding.
“I know you’ve had a hard time,” Adam said.
Lila would not allow that concession to sway her. “Before you left Grace with me, you never asked if I could manage a dog.”
“I thought your injury might be too personal for me to mention. I didn’t want to pry.”
“You could have asked. You could have made sure Grace wouldn’t be too much for me.”
Adam exhaled, loud enough for Lila to hear. “Actually, I thought Grace could help you heal.”
“Heal?!”
“By keeping you company. Being there for you.”
“It’s been the other way around,” Lila said.
But, then, she wasn’t being honest. Grace had just tried to comfort her when she was distressed about her sheets. And Grace had kept her company and tempered her distrust of dogs. Lila didn’t know what else to say to Adam, and suddenly she felt too tired to argue. Walking to town that morning had sapped her strength. She wanted off the phone.
Grace’s chin rested on Lila’s toes as if claiming her as her very own. Grac
e’s closed eyes gave her a proprietary look, which notified anyone else who might want Lila that Grace had gotten title to her first, and negotiation for her was impossible.
14
Lila’s new physical therapist, Betsy McKibbon, had an encouraging, gentle manner, and her smile exposed a tiny gap between her front teeth. Her eyes were the blue of an autumn sky on a cloudless day. Silver dolphins cavorted at her earlobes just below salt-and-pepper curls, which rested, flat and soft, against her plump cheeks.
In her consulting room, Betsy settled on a metal stool opposite Lila, who was sitting on a padded table, and Betsy’s knees protruded under her long purple skirt. A pair of lavender-framed bifocals hung from a silver chain around her neck. Her wide hips and large breasts made her look like she’d birthed and nursed eight children.
“I’ve got to tell you. You’re the first person I’ve treated who’s been shot,” Betsy said. “It must have been traumatic. You can’t snap your fingers and get over something like that.”
Her empathy contained a kindly hug that put Lila at ease. “It’s been hard,” she admitted.
“I can imagine.”
Betsy put on her bifocals and flipped through the records from Dr. Lovell, who had removed Lila’s cast the day before. When he’d sent her to Betsy, he said she was slightly unconventional, but good with distressed patients—Lila’s category, he inferred.
As Betsy glanced through Dr. Lovell’s notes, Lila looked around the room. The carpet, walls, and curtains were violet; in a tabletop fountain, water splashed from a copper fish’s mouth onto an amethyst geode. Feathers and peace pipes hung on the walls beside papier-mâché angels with heavy Frida Kahlo eyebrows. On a rolltop desk in the corner was a framed photograph of towheaded boys jumping on a trampoline—probably Betsy’s grandchildren.
From the desk, she pulled out a printed form with the outline of a body, the arms and legs extended like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. She unscrewed the cap of her purple fountain pen. “Okay, so tell me . . . what happened? How did the bullet hit you?”
When Lila explained its path from her breast into her arm, Betsy marked an X on the body for each wound. “What about pain?”
“I still hurt.”
“Where exactly?”
Lila pointed to places on her shoulder and arm, and Betsy noted them on the drawing of the body too.
“What kind of pain? Burning? Aching? Throbbing?” she asked.
“Aching. It comes and goes.”
“Any particular movements that bring it on?”
“Mostly reaching up and forward.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the pain today if ten’s the worst?”
Lila thought for a moment. “Maybe seven. Mostly when I move my arm.”
As Betsy wrote “seven” under the body’s left foot, she said, “We’re going to get that number down to zero.”
Lila wanted to believe her, but faith eluded her, especially when Betsy examined Lila’s arm, which was pasty and shriveled. As Betsy moved it back and forth at the elbow, though, she acted like she’d seen plenty of injured arms and Lila’s wasn’t unusual. Betsy bent down and looked closely at the wound; healed like the one on Lila’s breast, it resembled an angry crimson centipede.
Betsy ran her fingertip over its legs, where stitches had been. “You’ve got ‘proud flesh.’ The name comes from the swelling.”
“Maybe my flesh is swollen and red because it’s still mad at the bullet.”
Betsy chuckled. “And you’re still mad at the man who shot you?”
“I hate him. I can’t help it.”
“That’s not helpful for your spirit. The only person your anger hurts is you.” When Betsy smiled, she exposed the gap between her teeth again. “You can calm down the scars with vitamin E oil. Skin is very forgiving.”
Like Lila should also be, she figured Betsy was implying. But that would be impossible. You couldn’t walk away and forget someone who’d tried to kill you.
As Lila fidgeted, the papier-mâché angels on the wall looked like they were frowning at her.
Betsy left the room while Lila took off her shirt and bra and climbed between the padded table’s sheets, which were striped lavender and white. When Betsy returned, she draped a pillow of warm flax seeds around Lila’s neck—a delicious comfort. Next, Betsy put gel on Lila’s injured arm and ran the flat metal surface of an ultrasound head over her sore, tight muscles to reduce pain, though Lila guessed that Betsy was talking long term, because Lila couldn’t tell a difference. Finally, Betsy rubbed cream on her hands. As the smell of lavender filled the room, she gently kneaded Lila’s flesh from shoulder to elbow, to reduce swelling.
The massage made her as limp as gauze. More relaxed than she had felt in months, she closed her eyes and listened to the water from the fish’s mouth splash on the geode. Outside, a motorcycle roared down Mill Valley’s main street. But Lila ignored it because she was soaking up the peace in Betsy’s office.
When she stretched out Lila’s arm as straight as she could coax it, it stayed stiff and partly bent. But it tingled, as if Betsy had opened a dam in Lila’s veins and persuaded new blood to flow through. Betsy put more cream on her hands, reached under Lila’s shoulders, and massaged with heavy sweeps. Over the years Betsy’s powerful hands had surely removed pain from legions of needy people.
Lila pictured her slapping reins on oxen and rumbling across the prairie in a Conestoga wagon. Strong and sturdy, she would not flinch at snakes or blink at dust; she would bake huckleberry pies on campfires. Stability also seemed lodged in her touch, and it made Lila feel as close to safe as she’d felt since getting shot. Betsy was like Mother Hubbard, peering at the heavens through a shoelace eye and reassuring Lila, one of her many children.
Betsy gently pressed her fingers against Lila’s shoulder blades. “You’ve got a lot of tension here. Your shoulders are still cringing from terror.”
“I can’t help it.”
“It’s involuntary.” Betsy pushed them down as if she were encouraging them into a straight, more trusting line. “Our bodies show what we’re feeling in the present, but they also hold emotions from the past. I’d say you’re carrying a lot of stress.”
“I can’t get rid of it.”
“Sometimes it’s difficult.” Betsy kneaded Lila’s shoulders again. “When my husband died, I went around hunched down with grief. It took me a couple of years to push my shoulders back and stand up straight again.”
“How did you get yourself to do that?”
“Thinking things through. Seeing my life was still good. Even though I was alone, I had lots to be thankful for.”
“I have things to be thankful for, but I’ve got reason to be mad, too,” Lila said.
As the muffled voices of passersby filtered through the window, she told Betsy about her flashbacks and nightmares. For good measure, she threw in Reed and Adam and Grace.
“Sometimes challenges come in groups,” Betsy said.
Lila didn’t see challenges. She saw Yuri’s violence, Reed’s disloyalty, and Adam’s inconsideration. “All I want is to get my life back in control.”
Betsy’s laugh came from her belly. “You think we can control our lives?”
“We can clean up messes. We can straighten out things.”
“Oh, honey. Seems to me it’s more important to accept them. Then they usually straighten out themselves.” Betsy pushed Lila’s shoulders down again and gently put them in their place. “The best way to fix your life is to go after what makes you happy. Forget the rest. I tell everyone who comes in here that joy is the greatest healer.”
“Uh-huh,” Lila said. But where were you supposed to find joy after a maniac shot you?
Betsy moved to the side of the table and massaged Lila’s arm again, then pulled it up and forward. “Look! Your range of motion is already better.”
Lila had to admit she was right.
“Your life is going to be better too. This injury is going to be
the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Before Lila could say, “That’s crazy!” her Pleaser leapt in and gagged her.
Betsy covered Lila with a Navajo blanket that had brightly colored stripes of triangular trees, stylized eagles, and zigzags of lightning. Betsy said they symbolized Native Americans’ values: The trees meant growth; the eagles, independence; and the lightning, power. The heavy wool weighed down on Lila and smelled of mysterious sheep.
“I want you to lie here for a few minutes and think about your injuries. When your body got hurt, so did your mind and spirit,” Betsy said. “Those three parts of you are related, and one influences the others. I can help put your body back together, but only you can heal the rest of you.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“You could start by not seeing yourself as a victim.”
“I am a victim. It’s a fact. I got shot.”
“There’s more than one way to look at things. Your job now is to get your power back.”
Power, as in the blanket’s lightning, Lila guessed.
Betsy adjusted the venetian blinds so the room got as shadowy as a church, and she left and shut the door behind her. As Lila closed her eyes, the American flag in Mill Valley’s town square snapped in the wind so wire clinked against the pole. She asked herself: How do you stop seeing yourself as a victim when you are one?
A movie started playing on the screen behind Lila’s eyelids. It starred Mrs. Podolsky, her favorite high school English teacher, who was all angles and no curves; chopsticks through her bun kept even it from looking rounded. She’d just had the class read The Diary of Anne Frank, and she asked what they thought of it.
Billy Axelrod, who always acted like he thought he was so smart, spouted off, “Anne seems like a goody-goody.”
Mrs. Podolsky narrowed her eyes at Billy, like he was Santa Fe High School’s biggest twit. She rested her palms on her desk as if she were about to leap over it and squash Billy as flat as plywood. “Anne was heroic. She could have simpered and hated up there in that Amsterdam attic, but she chose to be brave and kind,” she said.
An Unexpected Grace Page 9