“Oh yes, I remember that one.” Mallie smiled in recognition. “I loved it.”
Father Jon sat back in his chair; his expression became serious. “Now, tell me, how did you like this morning’s session?”
“I liked it very much,” Mallie said, “but I have a question. Would you talk to me about the idea of ‘life abundant,’ I don’t think I understand—I mean, what does Martin Israel mean by that?”
“I’ll tell you what I think he means. It’s not a concept to be defined. It’s a joyful way of living, something to be experienced—as love is experienced—something beyond definition.”
“And ‘the bondage of matter’? Does that mean a dependency on material things?”
“We’re all dependent on elements of material things, my dear,” the priest said. “We’re human. Matter is part of our civilization and our survival. It only becomes bondage when we worship matter—and when we see ourselves as sole creators—as separate from God as the Creator of matter.”
Mallie had a vision of the Aurora Borealis in the night sky—the awesome beauty of it and her exhilarating experience of feeling connected to it. Perhaps that was the mutual communion that Martin Israel spoke of. She thought about her feelings of communion in a garden.
“Is a garden considered ‘matter’ created by man?” she asked.
“I see a garden as one of man’s greatest collaborations with God.” Father Jon said. “There are glorious fields of wildflowers in meadows all over England that have nary a whit’s assistance from man, but God never grew a rose bush in a garden without a man to dig the hole.”
Mallie liked that idea. “Sometimes when I’m painting—or, when I used to paint—something happens that feels as if it came from somewhere beyond me—beyond what I know. I don’t know how I did something to create exactly what I wanted. It just seemed to happen. When it happens, I feel overcome with gratitude, a sense of utter joy about it.”
Father Jon nodded his approval. “When you’re in touch with your creative self, you’re reaching into the deepest part of your-self—your spiritual connection to God. That’s where true joy comes from. That’s the experience of ‘life abundant.’”
Yes, yes, Mallie thought. That made sense. She remembered hearing Bruce Larson say nearly the same thing at Faith at Work. As if she had to travel on many roads to discover truth, she felt that her path to St. James was adding to her life experience and bringing her a deeper understanding.
“And what about love?” Mallie asked. For an instant, in her mind’s eye, she saw Tom’s face. “Is experiencing the love of another person the same thing?” She suddenly wanted to tell Father Jon about Tom, about the new love in her life—about the loss of love in her marriage.
“Love is many things,” the priest said. “Martin Israel says that ‘love is the keystone of the arch that joins the soul to God.’”
Mallie felt deflated. She was not thinking about her soul—or God’s love. That was different. “I’m talking about loving a real person,” she said.
As if he read her mind, Father Jon said, “Loving another person is also loving God—and at the same time, it’s loving yourself.”
“But suppose the other person doesn’t love you the way you love him.” She couldn’t believe that she was questioning Tom’s love in front of Father Jon.
“Love is the most powerful force—the greatest gift—on this earth,” he said. “It is also our finest teacher.”
He opened Summons to Life to a particular page: “Here’s what Martin Israel says: ‘Until you give yourself, and suffer betrayal if need be, you cannot know what the soul is and what of yourself can never be lost. A fool in love is also a fool for God. Whatever is lost is repaid by increased self-knowledge.’”
Mallie’s heart felt weighted with fearful images. Her father. As a child she had so adored her father. Yet, she carried the horrendous memories of being betrayed by her father. His smile one minute, his terrifying rage at her the next. Larry. Loving, generous, handsome Larry—then the strange phone calls, the letters, the lies. Larry, too, had betrayed her. She thought of Tom. She loved him. Surely he would not betray her. The idea of losing Tom—or of his betraying her—was unbearably painful. Martin Israel’s words echoed in her head. Surely she was not just a fool in love with Tom, a fool learning about herself.
“Love is never lost,” Father Jon said. “It is sometimes obscured by our behavior—or someone else’s behavior—but it’s never lost.”
His words were fatherly, warm and comforting to her. In halting sentences, she told the priest about her divorce, her sadness at losing her family center. She told him about Tom. Not everything about her relationship with Tom. She told him that she was in counseling with an Episcopal priest, and that she loved him—she was certain that he loved her. She watched his face as she spoke, waiting for any sign of his negative judgment.
“You have been blessed by all of your experience,” he said. “In all that you have suffered, you have also been blessed.”
Mallie left Father Jon’s office both gratified and puzzled. She was not sure how to interpret his meaning about being blessed by all of her suffering. Maybe after she and Jenny attended the Sunday service, the whole picture would become clearer.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Elizabeth met Mallie and Jenny at the front door of Sarabande House when they returned from Arundel. No wide smile this time. No doggies circling her feet.
“Mallie, you’ve had a call from the States,” Elizabeth said. “You are to call your sister Anne right away.” She handed Mallie a piece of paper with an unfamiliar Memphis telephone number written on it.
What was Anne doing in Memphis? She lived in Atlanta. Mallie knew, instantly, that something was seriously wrong at home. Her children? Oh God, please, surely nothing had happened to one of the boys. No, the call was from Memphis. The boys were in Watch Hill with Larry.
“Come.” Elizabeth took her arm, walking her toward the paneled library. “Let me show you the telephone. You’ll have the privacy of Ian’s study.”
What time was it in Memphis? Six hours earlier. About noon. Mallie sat in the dark green leather captain’s chair at Ian’s desk and dialed the number on the piece of paper. It also had an extension number.
“Methodist Hospital,” the voice of a switchboard operator said.
Mallie’s heart sank. Something serious had happened. “Extension 614,” she said promptly, trying to stay composed.
Anne picked up the receiver on the second ring. “Hello.” Her voice was unusually subdued.
“Anne, it’s me. What’s happened?”
“Oh, Mallie,” she said, immediately recognizing her sister’s voice. “It’s Daddy. He’s had a stroke. Late yesterday afternoon. He’s still in intensive care. I’m here with Mom.”
The connection was clear and direct. Anne’s voice could have come from across the room, its shocking message provoking a thousand questions in Mallie’s mind. Before she could sort them out to speak, her mind went blank. She felt as if her electricity had suddenly gone out and her wits disappeared in the dark. She waited for Anne to say something else.
“Mallie, I think you should come home as soon as possible,” Anne said. “I’ve called Kye too. She’s on her way here from New York.”
Mallie murmured into the phone that, of course, she would come home. “What does it mean?” she finally asked.
“The doctors don’t know,” Anne said. “It happened while Mom was at the country club playing bridge yesterday. No one else was in the house. She came home and found him. He’s been unconscious ever since.”
Mallie could tell that her mother was nearby, and that it was difficult for Anne to say too much.
“I’ll get there as quickly as I can,” Mallie said. Her mind began racing through the mechanics of getting from West Sussex to Memphis—changing tickets, finding a ride to the airport, being sure she had enough cash. “Take care of Mom,” she said.
“Wait,” Anne said, “Mom want
s to talk to you.”
Mallie braced herself for her mother’s voice.
“Mallie? Is that you? Are you coming home?” Joan Malcolm sounded small and almost soft, so unlike her—so different from the woman with the rigid spine who took charge of everything. She was also the woman who had always put her father’s needs above everyone else’s. “I hate for you to ruin your trip, dear.”
“I’ll get home as soon as I can, Mom,” Mallie said. She could only imagine the fear that her mother must be feeling. Her husband—Mallie’s father—was her mother’s whole life. Surely her father wouldn’t die. But a stroke! She knew it was possible that he could die or that he could be left severely paralyzed. How would her mother cope with that? She could cope with anything. She always had.
Joan Malcolm said a quiet “thank you” and handed the telephone back to Anne. Mallie assured Anne one last time that she would make arrangements and be there as soon as possible.
When she hung up the telephone, she slumped forward onto Ian’s desk with her head on her hands, unable to move, the reality of the situation encircling her like a vise. Her father might be dying or paralyzed. She could not imagine life without her father. Life would not be the same for her. Not for her family. Not for Malcolm Brothers. What would it mean for Larry? For his job? And, of course, her trip to England was over. She had so wanted to go back for the Sunday services at St. James, the last day of the retreat. And she would miss the London theatre entirely. She thought of Tom. She wasn’t certain when he was getting back to Memphis from his vacation. It had been a week already since she had seen him. She had thought when she left that he would be there when she returned, but perhaps her early return would mean that she would be at home alone—without the boys or Tom. Of all the people in her life, in that moment, she wished that she could be with Tom.
Jenny came into the library and put her arms around Mallie. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry,” she said. The extent of the problem, even without the details, was obvious.
Ian called a friend at British Airways and arranged for Mallie to exchange her return ticket for a flight to Memphis through Atlanta the following morning. He offered to drive her to the Gatwick airport at dawn.
Chapter Thirty
Dozing intermittently on the airplane, Mallie tried to imagine her father in the Methodist Hospital, tubes and bleeping machines, doctors using their skills and technology to save him. She willed him to live—at least, until she could get there. All of her childhood fears of him as the unpredictable giant—sometimes panda, sometimes ogre—gave way to her adult experience of loving him, respecting him as a person, enjoying his company and counting on him as her father to always be there. The thought that she might not see him again was unbearable.
Hospitals in Memphis had played a poignant role in Mallie’s life. Her memories of the Methodist Hospital came from giving birth to all three of her boys. The Baptist Hospital, the largest hospital in Memphis, was where Nannie Malcolm, her favorite grandmother, died of emphysema. She never passed John Gaston Hospital, the city’s charity hospital, without feeling a pang of loss, of longing for her beloved nurse Bernice.
Mallie and Bernice had lived in the same room from right after Mallie was born until she was ten. Besides her sister Anne, Bernice had been Mallie’s constant and caring companion throughout her childhood—the one she turned to for solace when her father scared her, the one she turned to for answers to questions too embarrassing to ask her mother. Bernice was the one who showed her how to use a Kotex. She explained the meaning of the word shit—the word Mallie had heard the older girls at school giggling about. “It means what happens when you go to the bathroom and it is not a word for you to ever use,” Bernice said. She taught Mallie about her heroes, Joe Louis and Lena Horne. And about cancer. Mallie remembered the horror she felt when she unexpectedly caught Bernice in her room before she had finished dressing. A jagged black scar ran across her bare chest into her armpit as if she had been cut by a barbed wire fence. Later when Bernice was in the John Gaston Hospital, Mallie had not been allowed to see her—no visitors under the age of fifteen. Several times she and Anne had waited in the car while their mother went in to see Bernice.
Mallie recalled the day in June when her mother phoned to tell her that they were transferring Bernice from John Gaston to the Home for the Incurables, a hospital out in the county. She said that if Mallie and Anne wanted to see Bernice, Mallie could take the Morris Minor on the back roads over to Summer Avenue, and the ambulance would stop for a few minutes at the corner of Mendenhall Road. Her mother had an engagement that she could not change, or she would come home to take them. Normally, Mallie’s learner’s permit would not authorize her to drive alone at fourteen, but her mother had given her permission.
The Morris Minor had once belonged to a business acquaintance of her father’s. It had been a gift, more a toy than a real car. The tiny maroon convertible, made in England, had a stick shift and a thirty-mile-an-hour governor on it. Mallie’s father thought it would serve the purpose of teaching her—and, eventually, Anne and Kye—how to drive safely. She had been driving by herself, up and down their street, since she was twelve. Taking the car to the corner of Menden-hall road to see Bernice would not feel unnatural to her.
The ambulance was already in the driveway of an abandoned Texaco station on the corner when Mallie drove up. She could see the driver was leaning against the ambulance door smoking a cigarette. Mallie parked the Morris Minor and took Anne’s hand in hers as they walked over to the ambulance. Mallie was both excited and fearful of seeing Bernice. Images of the scar on Bernice’s breast surfaced making her feel nauseated. Still, nothing would stop her from wanting to be with her beloved nurse.
The driver stamped out his cigarette on the cracked concrete. “Miss Bernice is waiting for you,” he said without emotion. He opened the ambulance door and motioned for the girls to step up. “Watch your head,” he warned. “One at a time.”
As if entering a cave, Mallie bent over and took small steps toward the back, where she could see a figure lying on a gurney, covered tightly in a thin woolen blanket. Her initial shock was Bernice’s small, brown, shaved head on the white pillow, her hollowed cheeks and the dark streaks across the top of her right forehead. Mallie got down on her knees and buried her face in Bernice’s blanket, determined not to cry.
In a weak voice she heard Bernice speak to her. “You musn’t worry about me, Mallie,” she said. “I’m all right.” Mallie lifted her head and looked into Bernice’s eyes, her soft brown eyes. She felt Bernice take her hand out from under the blankets and touch her face, the warmth of her long graceful fingers assuring Mallie that she was really Bernice, not just a skeleton of the person she had known and trusted so completely for her entire life. “I’m all right,” she said again. “The Lord’s taking care of me.” She smiled—a smile so familiar that, for a second, Mallie forgot why she was there, that Bernice was on her way to a place called the Home for the Incurables. “I love you, Bernice,” Mallie whispered. “I love you so much.” She buried her face again. She couldn’t control her tears.
“Time for your sister now,” the ambulance driver called to her.
Mallie kissed Bernice’s hand, patted her blanket one last time and crawled out the door. Neither she nor her sister could speak when they returned to the car. She was not sure how she drove the Morris Minor home, barely able to see the road in front of her. She knew that she would never see Bernice again.
Those painful images came back as she stared out the window of the airplane at endless blue sky over the Atlantic. It had been twenty-six years since the summer day when she knelt in the ambulance to tell Bernice goodbye. It felt like yesterday. She held on to Father Jon’s words—“love is never lost.” Her love for Bernice was certainly not lost. Still, she knew she was going home to face the possibility that her father was dying. Maybe she could see him to tell him she loved him before he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-one
Mallie walk
ed into the Methodist Hospital in Memphis around five o’clock in the afternoon, eleven o’clock London time. She asked the woman at the front desk for directions to the waiting room for the Intensive Care Unit.
Anne stood up to greet her. “Oh, Mallie. I’m so glad to see you,” she said, putting her arms around her sister. They stood in silence for a few minutes, tacitly acknowledging their shared history, a deep and abiding link that had often seemed diminished by distance and the demands of their own husbands and children.
“Mom’s in with Daddy. Kye’s with her,” Anne said, before Mallie had time to ask about her mother.
Anne looked weary: her blond hair, usually perfectly curled and bouncy, was pulled back in a stringy ponytail, her flowered cotton skirt full of wrinkles.
“How is he?’ Mallie pushed her suitcase into a corner behind their chairs. “Any change?” It had been nearly twenty-four hours since she and Anne had spoken.
“He survived the first twenty-four hours—nearly thirty-six, actually,” Anne said. “That’s crucial. But he’s still not regained consciousness. They don’t seem to know whether if he lives—and that’s a big question—there will be brain damage, or if he’ll be paralyzed.”
“What’s the doctor telling you?”
“Nothing optimistic today. We don’t even know which doctor is really in charge. It’s not like having dear old Dr. Prentiss who would sit and talk to us.”
“What brought this on, do you suppose?”
“He’s had terrible high blood pressure for years. You knew that.”
Mallie nodded. But lots of people have high blood pressure. She had never been particularly worried about her father’s health. He always seemed so strong. But she also knew that he smoked Camels, at least two packs a day, and had drunk too much most of his adult life.
“Have you been here the whole time?” Mallie asked.
“No, the three of us went home last night, but none of us slept. We came back around six thirty this morning.”
Valeria Vose Page 15