Healing Maddie Brees

by Rebecca Brewster Stevenson

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to know what to do, I guess.” She was making this up: maybe someone knew what to do, but she herself had no idea.

  Justine stared at her. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” Maddie felt a little defensive. Who was Justine—recent convert to Vincent, or to his healing people, anyway—to think she knew so much?

  “Because, Maddie.” She breathed a short gasp and rolled her eyes. “Why is it hard to know what to do?”

  “Because there is a lot to consider, Justine,” and Maddie wondered what they needed to consider, steps they should take, or should have thought about taking. She hadn’t envisioned this much. The revelation of Vincent’s gift had never gone the way she thought it should in the first place.

  Justine was already considering. “You bet there’s a lot to consider. Like all the sick people in this city, or in this state. I think Vincent should heal people. Anyone, anywhere.”

  “Yes, well—”

  “He should just go up to random people who are sick, or go to doctor’s offices or hospitals or something. If you have the ability to heal people, you should heal them, right?”

  Yes, Maddie remembered it now. This was what she had thought. It was what she expected would be the outcome when they had told the Tedescos. Again there was the oncology ward, all the beds deserted.

  And with it an appalling sadness, the absolute dissolution of hope.

  About ten minutes after the bell rang, Justine passed Maddie a note: GOD DOESN’T WANT PEOPLE TO BE SICK! “Want” was underlined three times.

  R

  It may be that since its founding, the Bethel Hills Church had looked for a revelation like Vincent’s. If the potluck was any evidence, then Donna Pavlik’s endorsement had gone some distance to broadcast belief. Yet for all her nondisclosure as to what had finally provoked her faith in Vincent’s gift, Justine was far more forthright in her belief than were the church members.

  For church members—post potluck—approaching Vincent was a practice in circumspection. He became the object of prolonged stares and whispering, and people went out of their way to greet him. People he had never spoken to greeted him by name; people he knew began to engage him in casual conversations about their chronic pain or frequent heartburn.

  There was, for example, Bill Mews, a man known to them only as the father of Sam and Alex, two boys from the youth group. In conversation before the Sunday morning service, Vincent was given to learn that Mr. Mews had played football in college, that his team had enjoyed an impressive record his senior year, and that ever since then, he had suffered serious pain in both of his knees—pain that was always more acute when it rained.

  It had been a very wet spring.

  And the service was starting. Vincent expressed his sympathy and wished Mr. Mews well, and then he and Maddie went inside and found their seats.

  The pattern was invariably the same with others: engage Vincent in conversation and casually raise or perhaps only hint at a malady. Wait a moment too long for this to be merely incidental, then end the conversation. Often it was Vincent who ended it, either appropriately, as with Mr. Mews, whose untimely dialogue overlapped the beginning of the church service, or deliberately and, regrettably—Maddie felt—abruptly. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he would say of that person’s physical discomfort, and he would wish him well. “I hope you get better soon,” or “I hope it doesn’t cause you too much pain.”

  Perhaps their caution was understandable. Perhaps they thought Vincent’s gift was, at best, a rumor.

  Maddie thought it best to keep it that way, and she imagined that Vincent shared her opinion. This was his way of keeping requests at bay. Why ask for anyone to be healed if you knew for certain that it wouldn’t work?

  She still hadn’t talked with him about it. She told herself that she didn’t want to force the conversation, as the cycle of sin and repentance was tiring enough. Yet their mutual silence about his gift was beginning to wear on her. She wanted to hear what he was thinking about this subject on which he had rarely, it seemed, had much to say.

  And so she ventured a single, cautious question one morning after Sunday school.

  “Why don’t you just offer to pray for her?” she asked him as they moved down the hall, away from yet another awkward conversation, this time about a toothache.

  “She didn’t ask,” Vincent said.

  “No, but you know that’s what she wants,” Maddie said.

  “That may be.”

  They had left the senior high Sunday school class when Mrs. Leland, church pianist and toothache sufferer, found them, and now they were running late for the church service again. They fell silent as they joined a few straggling classmates on the stairs, and Maddie didn’t continue the conversation until they were seated in a pew.

  She leaned over and spoke to him in a low voice. “Don’t you think that’s what she wants?”

  He leaned in to whisper back to her. “I think that’s what she thinks she wants,” he said.

  R

  A month had passed since the Pavlik potluck.

  “What is your boyfriend waiting for?” This was Justine, of course, and Maddie had no answer other than defensiveness—yet another familiar pattern.

  Her only words were Vincent’s: nobody had asked to be healed.

  “He wants people to ask him?” Disbelief. “Why would he need people to ask him, Maddie? Do people need to kneel and kiss his ring or something?”

  There it was, the customary derision, and Maddie wondered what it would take to convince Justine that there was anything good at all about Vincent. Oh, she of little faith.

  “Sometimes you can be pretty mean, Justine,” she said.

  “No, I’m not being mean. I’m just saying what is he waiting for?”

  Maddie sighed. If Vincent was waiting for what she thought he should be waiting for—that the two of them would find all sexual temptation completely resistible—then they were apparently in for a long delay. But she couldn’t say that to Justine, who had a hard enough time believing in Vincent’s good character and who, for now anyway, still believed in Maddie’s.

  “Maybe he just doesn’t want to have to read people’s minds,” she said. And again, “No one has asked him.”

  R

  It was Mrs. Adams who finally asked. Mrs. Adams, who cried indifferently over news good and bad, who offered a sopping testimony of God’s mercy at every opportunity. She was a widow in her sixties, always very nicely dressed, attending church whenever the doors were open. She was waiting for Vincent after the church service the following Sunday, standing at the end of the pew.

  “Vincent!” She called to him around the bodies and heads of the many teenagers who stood in her way. “Vincent!” she said again. “Would you get Vincent for me, honey?” patting the shoulder of a middle-school girl who stood nearby. And when she caught his eye: “Vincent, I need to speak with you, honey,” she said. “It will only take a minute.”

  Until that moment, Mrs. Adams possessed two primary characteristics in Maddie’s mind. One was the crying; the other was a rich southern accent that defied her decades of residing in Pittsburgh. Now Maddie could add boldness to the list.

  “Vincent,” she said in a conversational tone. Anyone standing nearby could hear her. “I would like you to heal me,” she said.

  Maddie looked around for Justine, and found her smiling at Mrs. Adams. Immediately, she guessed that the two of them had had a little conversation.

  “Vincent? Vincent, honey?” Mrs. Adams prodded.

  Vincent raised his gaze to her from where he’d been looking at the floor and said quietly, “I can’t heal you.”

  Maddie gasped audibly and felt a few heads turn in her direction. What would he say next? Was this to be a confession now, their sins laid out between the pews? A bleak horror spread through her, closing artery and vein. Her fingertips pricked.

  And Mrs. Adams was speaking again. Chuckling, really.

&
nbsp; “Oh, I do believe you can, Vincent. You healed Joey; you healed Dean.” An encouraging, almost coaxing tone, but Maddie was fixed on other things. How did Mrs. Adams know about Joey? When and in what conversations had word spread, connecting Mr. Pavlik with the swing set-glider incident months before? And then she remembered: Justine knew about all of it, because Maddie had told her.

  “I can’t heal you,” Vincent said again, a bit more loudly this time. With clammy hands, Maddie gripped the back of the pew. Then Vincent said, “Only God can heal you.”

  So he would put her off with this, then. He would leave it to God, and Maddie felt a rush of relief. This was a smart way to play it, she thought.

  There was a pause, and Mrs. Adams chuckled again, an unfamiliar sound from someone given to tears.

  “Well, of course that’s true, Vincent. Of course that’s true.” Now she was making her way toward him between the pews. “And of course that’s what I’m asking for. But God has given you an extraordinary gift.” She stopped in front of him. “I am asking if you would use that gift for me,” she said, quietly and gently, humbly. There was not a trace of tears in her voice; she was not beseeching.

  Silence. The group of teenagers standing around Vincent was fixed now on Mrs. Adams. Maddie felt a nervous flutter in her throat and stomach, as if she were facing exams. She was duly impressed with Mrs. Adams, who clearly wouldn’t take no for an answer, but she was terrified for Vincent. What was this? Some torture—the beginnings of protracted punishment. God wouldn’t accept Vincent’s—their—quiet evasion. He would instead put Vincent on display. It was to be a large gesture: the gift’s recision and public shame.

  Maddie thought Vincent should walk away. Get out now, she thought.

  “What do you need to be healed of?” Vincent asked.

  Mrs. Adams lifted her hands for Vincent to see them, and the small crowd stared at knuckles that had been tied in knots. They were hard and lumpy, every joint enlarged, fingers crooked. Her skin looked stretched over them, translucently thin, exposing ridges of blue veins. It was a wonder her knuckles didn’t just tear through and expose the bone.

  Mrs. Adams was talking. She said she used to knit; she used to play the piano. Now her hands ached all day long; she couldn’t even peel potatoes for supper. It was difficult to function, she said, with her hands like this.

  Vincent listened and then, without further hesitation, covered her hands with his familiar ones, almost hairless, smooth and young. His fingers weren’t long, but they were straight and healthy. Beneath them, Mrs. Adams’ fingers disappeared.

  Then Vincent bowed his head; Mrs. Adams bowed too. It was seconds—not minutes—before it was over. Maddie hadn’t had time to compose a prayer.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Adams said. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “No problem,” Vincent said. “It’s no problem,” and he smiled at her.

  She reached for and hugged him over the pew, then dug in her purse for a handkerchief. Maddie was trying to get a look at her hands, to see if the swelling was already going down and knowing that it wouldn’t be, but Mrs. Adams moved off, full of faith. “I’ll let you know when it happens,” she called out, smiling.

  “All right,” Vincent answered, kindly but without enthusiasm. It didn’t sound as if it would matter to him one way or the other.

  Meanwhile, all around them, the departing congregation hadn’t seemed to notice the prayer, the quietly bold request for interaction with the living God. And the teenagers who had witnessed it moved off, already talking about other things.

  R

  The church parking lot ran with the morning’s rain. The sky had been dark with it when they arrived, and Sunday school and the worship service had been accompanied by its steady thunder on the roof. But now the rain had stopped and the sky, still cottoned tightly in clouds, was lighter. Vincent, Maddie and Justine made their way over the black rivers of rain. The air was warm.

  “So what made you decide to go for it?” Justine asked.

  “What do you mean?” Vincent answered. Maddie hadn’t shared with him Justine’s sense of urgency, and neither had she had the chance, since the prayer for Mrs. Adams only minutes before, to tell him of Justine’s likely provocation.

  “I mean, what made you decide to pray for Mrs. Adams?” Her question sounded light-hearted enough, intended, Maddie thought, to be free of pressure. But Maddie felt that instinctive protection of Vincent.

  “She asked me to do it,” Vincent said, disinterested.

  “Oh, so that is what it takes, then,” Justine said, and Maddie detected—or did she imagine it?—derision. Suddenly she felt tired. She didn’t want to deal just now with Justine.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. What do you mean?” Vincent’s words came rapidly, as though he was responding without listening and then was hearing her, tuning her in after having regarded her conversation as so much noise.

  “Well, Maddie said she thought maybe you might need people to ask you,” Justine said.

  Maddie blanched. Justine’s saying this felt like a betrayal, and had Maddie betrayed Vincent by telling her this in the first place? But Vincent seemed unbothered, or as if he hadn’t noticed, as if this had always been public knowledge. As if he was thinking about something else.

  They had reached Vincent’s car and he stood next to it, leaning, his arms outstretched and hands spread and resting, despite the beaded water, on the roof. He was looking out over the parking lot, barely aware of the conversation or their presence, it seemed. He sighed.

  Justine continued.

  “It’s not good enough for you to go out there and heal people, right? They need to come to you. They need to ask you for it.” Now there was a definite edge to her tone.

  “No,” Vincent said, abstracted, and then, “I don’t know,” as if, again, he wasn’t really listening.

  “Justine,” Maddie said sharply. It was a warning. Justine had no idea what she and Vincent had been through. To Maddie’s surprised relief, she seemed to get it. She softened her tone.

  “It was good of you to pray for her, Vincent,” she said.

  “Not really,” Vincent answered. Maddie tensed. What did he mean? Was it to come out now, just to Justine? Perhaps Vincent imagined that she and Maddie shared a confidence about their sin, too. Maddie felt a terror that, like so much else, was becoming familiar.

  “What do you mean by that?” Justine asked.

  “I mean, it wasn’t good of me, Justine,” he answered, looking at her now. “I mean I have precious little to do with it.” Maddie wondered what he was questioning, if this was just the same question of God doing the healing, or if it was larger, if he was in fact questioning his own goodness. Which he could do. No, she thought. To be fair, Vincent could question Maddie’s goodness. That was more to the point.

  But would he? Aloud? And to Justine in the church parking lot?

  The rainwater pouring through the distant drain was loud in her ears.

  “I don’t think that’s true, Vincent,” Justine said. “I think it was good of you, Vincent. Really.”

  It was strange and dreadful for Justine to be so kind now. Kindness was always inviting. Would she unwittingly lure him into confession with it, Maddie wondered. Or had she already guessed?

  Maddie studied Vincent’s face, trying to read what he was thinking. He was subdued, to say the least, almost sad, as if already anticipating that the healing wouldn’t work.

  “Well,” Vincent finally said, “I hope she gets better. Her hands are a mess.” There was a pause then, filled by distant conversations and more of the rainwater running through the grate.

  “Of course you hope she gets better, Vincent. We all hope she gets better,” Justine said with some impatience. She was sounding more like herself again.

  Vincent was silent.

  “Do you hope she gets better?” Justine asked, and Maddie felt the resurgence of that tempestuous cafeteria conversation. She could hardly remember anymore where each of them had stoo
d. If it was to be revisited, Maddie thought, then she was fairly sure she didn’t want to hear it.

  But Vincent seemed unruffled. “I just don’t know if it’s the best thing for her,” he said quietly, looking at Maddie as if she could comprehend what he was saying. But of course she couldn’t, not any more than she had been able to weeks before.

  “Of course it’s the best thing for her, Vincent. Why wouldn’t it be?” Justine said, apparently doing nothing to hide her annoyance.

  “Do you really think she wants to be healed?” Vincent asked. His abstraction was gone. He was engaged but again dispassionate, interested, focusing on Justine’s angry face as if he could have a rational conversation with her.

  “Yes. Yes, I do think she wants to be healed. Of course she does, Vincent.”

  Maddie could see Mrs. Adams’ hands in her mind. Yes, she wanted to be healed. The question was preposterous.

  “Okay, but what next, Justine?” Vincent asked. “What next? The woman is in her late sixties. Before she knows it, she’ll be in her eighties. Who knows what will happen to her between now and then!”

  “What are you saying?” Justine’s tone was incredulous, and Maddie was appalled along with her. “Your sixties is hardly death’s door, Vincent.”

  “Okay, fine,” Vincent said, and something had caught fire within him: there was new passion in his voice. His words came fast, as if he’d been waiting for them to understand and now, full of frustrated impatience, he was being forced to explain: “But does she want to be healed when she needs a walker? Does she want to be healed of the cancer she might get when she’s in her seventies? Does she want to be healed of death?”

  They were all silent for a moment, Vincent staring at Justine as if expecting that she would have an answer. But what in the world was he getting at? Maddie couldn’t see it. Was he saying that no one should want to be healed of anything? Or that the elderly weren’t worth it? Or was this a mask, some philosophical ruse that he could wield as an avoidance tactic, never bothering to try to heal anyone again?