Healing Stones

by Nancy Rue

  I poked into the bowl of seeds. “Why is it I can have such perspective with your kid, but when it comes to my own, I don’t even know how to be with her?”

  “Looked to me like you were doing fine.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I guess.”

  Mickey dumped what was left in her hand back into the bowl and brushed her palms together. “Okay, I’m going to go ahead and jump into territory that’s none of my business. Stop me if you want.”

  I sank back against the cushions. “Go.”

  “When you brought her in there, I thought, That child needs to be in the emergency room. But ten minutes with you, and she came back from the dead.” She twitched an eyebrow. “She probably did, if you know what I mean.”

  “She says it’s bad at home.”

  “Bad? She’s scary-skinny. She looked like she was afraid of herself, until you started reading to her. Here’s the thing: that child needs to be with you.”

  I stared at my toes, now blurring before me. “It was so hard to take her home.”

  “Home for that girl is where you are. You can bring her here. She could have the bedroom—you never use it anyway. We’d cut you slack so you could take her to school on your way to work. Audrey could pick her up after class.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not? There’s no legal document that says you can’t have custody of your own daughter, is there?”

  “There’s no legal anything. Christopher said Rich hired a lawyer, but I haven’t seen any paperwork yet.”

  Mickey bugged her eyes. “Why does Rich get to control everything? Why can’t you get legal representation?”

  Sudden anxiety shot me off the window seat.

  “I’m sorry, Demi, but I don’t get why you are so cowed by this man when it comes to your kids.”

  I stopped my march across the room and turned to her. “It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

  “You have to stop it.”

  I dropped into one of the chairs, pushing aside the afghan. “You know what—I think it’s more Christopher than it is Rich. He’s actually lying to turn Jayne against me.”

  “Why are you letting him get away with that?”

  “I just found out,” I said. “And I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

  Mickey’s eyes gleamed. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Do you have a plan?”

  “I want to wring his neck.”

  “That’s good for a start.”

  My cell phone rang. I picked it up and looked at the screen. HOME. I was almost too stunned to answer.

  When I did, Rich said, “Demitria.”

  I grasped at his voice, deadwood as it sounded.

  “Rich,” I said.

  “Look, did Jayne call you?”

  “When?”

  “Within the last hour?”

  My mother antennae went up. “What’s wrong?”

  On the window seat, Mickey sat up straight and watched me openly.

  “I don’t know if there’s anything wrong.” His irritation was forced. “She’s not here, and I thought maybe she called you.”

  “I haven’t seen or heard from her since I dropped her off at five.”

  He was silent. Anger lapped at me.

  “Rich.”

  “I’ll just keep looking for her, then,” he said.

  But I already had the phone halfway closed as I said, “I’m coming over.” And I didn’t wait for permission.

  Someone different from the Demi I’d been living inside of barked half an explanation at Mickey and roared the Jeep all the way to the house. This Demi left her shriveling guilt back in the day- light basement and threw open the mudroom door as though she belonged there, confronting a husband who stood stiff at the kitchen counter.

  “Are the police coming?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Rich, we don’t know where our daughter is.” I snatched my cell phone out of my jacket pocket.

  Rich reached across the counter and grabbed at it. I didn’t even give myself time to gape at him.

  “What is wrong with you! This isn’t about your stupid pride, Rich—this is our child. Somebody could have abducted her.”

  “She left,” Rich said. “We had an argument, and she ran off.”

  My thoughts rammed into each other like bumper cars—and somehow formed themselves into a line.

  “I thought she might have gone back to you,” he said. “She said she saw you today.” He hissed. “You got her all upset.”

  “No, I did not.”

  I rounded the end of the counter and got close to him. He slanted away.

  “We had a good talk,” I said into his face. “Which we should have had long ago, except that Christopher has kept her from hearing from me.” I shook my head. “What did she say to you?”

  I could hear his teeth grinding. “I think I drove her out of here, Demitria.”

  “What did you say? Tell me—please.”

  He moved away, leaned against the stove, went restlessly to the refrigerator, where he supported himself with one hand over his head, his back to me. “I got up to get ready for work and she came into our—my bedroom. She told me I was being stupid and stubborn and that I ought to listen to you because this isn’t all your fault.” He gave me a look over his shoulder that didn’t harden all the way to its edges. “That could only have come from you.”

  “No, because I didn’t say any of that to her. All I said was that I am trying to figure out why I did what I did.”

  Rich kept his face away from me.

  “I know you don’t believe me,” I said. “You don’t believe a thing I say anymore.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because this is not about you and me—this is about Jayne. What happened after that?”

  Rich shrugged. “I told her it was none of her concern—that it was between you and me. She said she didn’t see how it could be since we weren’t even talking to each other.”

  “And?”

  “I told her not to take that tone with me,” Rich said. “She said somebody had to.” He stopped and set his jaw.

  “Why did she run off?”

  “Because—I told her to get out.”

  I put my hands to my temples.

  “I meant get out of the room—but she left the house.”

  “How long ago?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Did you not go after her?”

  “No.” He went for the stove again. “I figured she’d come back— where is she going to go?”

  “Boys come back,” I said. I headed for the mudroom door. “Girls wait to be found. But I guess you haven’t figured that out.” I nodded toward the stove that held him up. “Would you please put some water on for tea?”

  Jayne was in the storage shed.

  I peeked through a crack first and saw her narrow, diminished self almost fitting into it. She sat on a cooler between two pairs of cross-country skis, sorting out her mind. I knocked and heard a faint, “Go away, Dad.”

  “It’s Mom,” I said.

  “Mom?”

  “Can I come in?”

  I didn’t have to. She came to me—arms flailing to go around me, face searching for a neck to bury itself in. She cried until she went limp—that place where things can begin to make sense. I knew that place well.

  “The tea water ought to be ready by now,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Is Dad there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is he going to hit me?”

  I pulled her away from me and stared into her face. “Hit you?”

  “He was so mad I thought he was going to slap me. He didn’t, like, raise his hand or anything. But it felt like he was going to. That’s why I ran.”

  I crushed her against me, my hands tangled in her damp hair. She’d washed it since the afternoon.

  “I’m with you,” I said. “Come on—we have to go talk to him.”

  Talk wasn’t som
ething Rich was going to do. After the gush of relief when he saw us come in together, he turned his face from us and muttered, “I’m glad you found her.”

  It was the only cowardly thing I had ever seen my husband do. I wanted to claw the paneling.

  “We have to talk about this,” I said. “I’m going to pour some tea, and we can sit down and—”

  “What is there to say?” Rich pointed at our daughter. “You don’t need to worry about what’s going on between your mother and me.”

  “Yes, I do,” Jayne said, “because nobody’s telling me anything! What am I supposed to do but worry, Dad?”

  Rich turned his glare on me.

  I glared back. I had never disagreed with him in front of the children about anything pertaining to them, and at the moment I resented him for putting me in this position.

  He looked back at Jayne, though I wasn’t sure he saw her. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said finally.

  She pawed at me until she found my hand at my side. “I’m scared,” she said to him.

  “Don’t be,” he said, tone short. “Everything is—”

  “Going to be all right? It isn’t all right! Mom’s not living with us. Christopher has turned into Hitler. I don’t even see you anymore.”

  Rich’s eyes bore into me. He wanted me to make her stop—but I longed for the kind of release my daughter must be feeling.

  “I can only do so much.” Rich’s voice was hard but thin, like a brittle bone. “What do you want me to do, Jayne?”

  She squeezed my hand until I realized she needed me to squeeze back. When I did, she lifted her fragile chin and said, “I want you to let me go with Mom.”

  I stopped breathing. Rich’s eyes went to me, accusing, and Jayne shook her head until the angel hair trembled.

  “She didn’t ask me, Daddy,” she said. “This is my idea. This is what I want.”

  I watched Rich’s Adam’s apple rise and fall like an adolescent boy’s.

  “Jay,” I heard myself say, “why don’t you give us a minute?”

  Her hand went limp in mine, and for a moment I thought she’d change her mind, hate me for not marching off with her in victory. But I heard a tiny sigh as she let go and hurried soundlessly to the steps. I didn’t wait to hear her door close.

  “I didn’t put her up to this, Rich,” I said.

  He leaned, palms down between the burners on the stove. “I know that, Demitria. I hate this.”

  “So do I.”

  Rich lifted his face toward the ceiling. There was strain in every line—some of which I’d never seen before.

  “I know you’re sorry,” he said. “But it’s not enough.”

  “What more do you want?”

  “I don’t know!” His voice caught.

  I pulled back. This had to be hope I was seeing, and I didn’t want to breathe, lest I blow it away.

  “I think Jayne should go with you.” He jerked his head toward me, but he didn’t meet my eyes. “She’ll get more attention from you—it’ll be better for her.”

  “And it is about her, Rich. Not about you winning or me winning.”

  He straightened and absently patted his back pocket. “Will you need money?”

  “No. But, Rich, we’re going to have to talk about money, and Jayne and Christopher—and us—soon.”

  “I’m not ready to talk to you without feeling like I want to tear the place apart, all right?”

  It came out a barely controlled snarl, and involuntarily I startled back. While he stood there, staring down at the stove again, I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Get some things together, Jay. You’re coming with me.”

  I heard the Harley roar out of the garage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR

  I was glad Jayne’s first few days with me were over a weekend. She seemed far too jangled to deal with school or anything else.

  I let her sleep as much as she wanted to and fed her a steady stream of nutrition pipelined from upstairs. Mickey insisted that I take Saturdays off from now on and stay home with her, for which I was thankful. I couldn’t leave Jayne alone with herself again. As I watched her sleep, I was even more keenly aware of how pale her skin was, and how it stretched over her bony wrists and collarbone like cheesecloth, and how shadows passed over her face in her dreams. When she was awake she fell into long silences, as if she’d spoken all her words and only wanted to gaze out over the sound until she found more.

  She did talk when she ate, which I coaxed her to do every few hours, and I managed to pull some fairly depressing information from her. Her grades, usually As with the occasional B, had fallen to Cs, with the threat of a D in pre-algebra. Teachers sent e-mails to Rich, at his request, rather than notifying me.

  “Actually,” Jayne said, “Christopher did that. I don’t think Dad even knows.”

  I added that to my list of bones to pick with my son. There were already enough for an entire skeleton.

  Jayne said she couldn’t sleep at home at night because she was afraid, and she nodded off in class. Her teachers were threatening to call Rich at work.

  “Has anybody asked you if there’s trouble at home?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t tell them anything if they did.”

  “That’s not the point,” I said. “I want to know if anyone cares about the why.”

  She shrugged and fell silent again.

  In spite of Mickey’s constant barrage of affirmations about what a blessing I was to the young female population, I groped for a way to draw Jayne out. “I love you,” I said to her—every fifteen minutes.

  “Love you,” she sometimes mumbled. Other times she only nodded.

  Maybe Rich was right. Maybe it wasn’t enough to be sorry and keep loving. And maybe the Kevin St. Clairs were right. Maybe you didn’t deserve grace when you’d screwed up this badly.

  That finally got to me Sunday afternoon—the idea that the legalistic edicts of a blowfish could separate me from my child. I dried my hands from washing the teacups and went to her on the window seat where she sat with an open, unread literature book.

  “What do you need, Jay?” I asked. “I don’t know what to do—I need for you to tell me.”

  “This doesn’t feel like home,” she said.

  I blinked.

  “It always feels like home wherever you are, but there’s no you here.”

  I grimaced as I looked around at Mickey’s early attic décor. “I haven’t done anything to it because I don’t plan to be here that long,” I said.

  “But what if we are?” The look she gave me, full in the face, was imploring. “Dad is being stubborn. I told you, Christopher is evil in his soul.”

  I bit back a laugh again.

  “It’s true! Mom—I don’t want us to go back there with them being all—stiff.” She sent a gaze around the room. “If this has to be home, then can’t we make it friendly? I’m sick of feeling like an alien.”

  I gathered her sweet, bony self into my arms. “Me too, Jay,” I said. “Me too.”

  We didn’t have much to work with, which meant a trip to the house. For once no one was there, and we crept around like thieves, gathering our own throws and pillows and pottery. Jayne made off with enough stuffed animals to start a small toy store, and I scored a set of wind chimes and a bird feeder, because she said she needed birds. I would have set up an aviary if I could.

  It was almost eight before we were through home-izing, as Jayne called it. I had to admit we’d created a place where I didn’t feel like a stranger to myself. I was positioning a book on Pacific Northwest sea life on the trunk coffee table when Jayne floated in from the bedroom and put something beside it.

  It was the big rock Sullivan Crisp had told me to find a use for. My spirit sank.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  I sighed. “It’s a symbol of my anger at myself.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m supposed to find something to do with it besides throw it at me.”
>
  “Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “That would hurt.” Her eyes took on their golden glow. “You already hurt, don’t you?”

  I could only nod.

  She touched the rock. “Can I do something with it?”

  “As long as you don’t pitch it at me.”

  “I would never do that,” she said. “You’re my mom.”

  Then she carried off the rock that was nearly as heavy as she was.

  Sully leaned back in the papasan chair and locked his hands behind his head. “You weren’t expecting this, were you?” he said.

  Demi shook her head. The bright spot at the top of each cheek made her sadness even more poignant.

  “Sort of like winning a bonus round.”

  She rolled her brown eyes. She’d definitely been spending time with a teenage girl. “I’ll call it whatever you want,” she said. “I have my daughter with me—and that gives me hope for all of us being together.”

  Sully sighed inwardly. He hated this part—where responsible therapy called for bursting a bubble.

  “You don’t think so,” she said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. You’ve got that sorry, wrong answer look on your face. And thank you for not buzzing.”

  “It’s not that it’s the wrong answer,” Sully said. “I’m still not sure you’re asking the right question.”

  “My only question is ‘How can I get my family back together?’”

  Sully didn’t nod.

  “Okay—no—it’s ‘What made me do this stupid thing in the first place?’ You keep saying if I figure that out, I’ll be able to move on without being afraid this is going to happen again.”

  Sully rocked forward. “But you’re still not sure that’s the way to go.”

  “It’s hard to work on the why thing when I’m afraid Rich is going to give up before I have a chance to figure myself out.”

  “Rich didn’t call it quits when you took Jayne, right?”

  “Right.”

  “He didn’t say he never wanted to talk to you—just not yet.”

  “Not while he’s still so angry.” She focused sharply on Sully. “He actually scared me. And Jayne. She thought he was going to hit her—and that’s not Rich.”