by Nancy Rue
I brought my fist down on top of the piano. Fragments of glass danced across it. I pulled my hand up to my mouth and pressed, but I couldn’t hold back the weeping.
“Please be that kind of God,” I said, “because I don’t have it in me. I just don’t.”
Sometime later I stopped crying and picked my way amid the crystal slivers to the couch, where I think I talked myself to sleep.
It was after three in the morning when I woke up with the remnants of a dream already slipping away. All I could remember was the sight of my mother on all fours, knelt over Freda III, lifting her eyelids. I could almost hear Mother’s pre-Pick’s voice saying, Pupils equal and reactive.
I sat straight up on the couch. Other patients were complaining, Ponytail had said. She was going into their rooms and standing over them while they were in bed. Couple of people said they woke up and found her poking at their stomachs.
“That’s it,” I breathed. “That has to be it.”
I was at Hopewell by seven, barely out of my pajamas, hair in a haphazard knot on top of my head. I wanted to see the night crew before they went off duty.
Ponytail didn’t attempt to conceal his grimace when I walked up to the counter at the nurses’ station.
“Yes, we kept her door locked all night,” he said. “We unlocked it about fifteen minutes ago in case she wanted breakfast. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” I said. “I appreciate your doing that and—”
I had to stop and choose my words carefully. This wasn’t something I had done often.
“I need to apologize for last night,” I said. “I was upset and I may have overreacted.”
Ponytail smiled, probably in spite of himself. A heretofore hidden dimple appeared in his left cheek. “It happens,” he said. “We possibly weren’t as understanding as we should have been either.”
I asked if it would be all right if I chatted with some of the patients Mother had made house calls to. While Ponytail was making a list, I peeked into her room.
She was already dressed, and Burl was with her.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” I said.
“I generally come by early in the mornings, right after I get off work. She likes to hear what’s going on at the lab.”
“Every morning?” I said.
“Pretty much. It’s on my way home.”
I thought he would probably have done it even if it meant a twenty-mile detour.
I spent a couple of hours interviewing four of the people on the list. Once they realized I was going to stay until I got the information I wanted, each one of them devised a way to drag out the story, branching off into all manner of unrelated topics, including their entire family history for several generations back. Finally, though, they got around to talking about Mother’s night visits.
The first old guy showed me the arm Mother tried to examine. I tried not to react too strongly to the oozy-looking sores he uncovered when he pulled up his sleeve.
The next lady said Mother had yanked her covers back while she was sleeping, and she woke up to find herself being poked and pressed. When I questioned her about abdominal problems, she said that currently she was experiencing stomach pains the doctors couldn’t seem to explain.
The other two residents related similar stories: One awoke to find she was having her pulse taken, the other to discover Mother’s hands pressing his neck. He went on to describe his ongoing bouts with sore throats.
By noon, I was convinced of one thing—my mother hadn’t just been wandering aimlessly through the halls to perform random acts of weirdness on her fellow assisted-livers. She was giving them free medical exams, based on the evidence she was picking up from her own observations.
It was a conclusion that was at the same time reassuring and chilling.
Mother slept most of the afternoon, despite the attendants’ urgings to come join the rest of the gang for yoga, square dancing, and the afternoon movie. I hung around and waited for her to wake up while I figured out what I was going to say. When I found myself roaming around her room like a frenzied gerbil, I sat down in her chair at the window and muttered under my breath.
“Okay God, so if this is You—and I’m just saying if—are You going to tell me what to do with all this? I’m grasping at straws here, and I hate that.”
It suddenly occurred to me that it probably wasn’t a good idea to be irreverent with God, just on the off chance that such a being did exist.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
Talk about acting as if.
When Mother finally woke up, she bolted out of bed and came to stand next to me. She looked agitated until I got out of her chair and let her sit in it.
“I think I’m getting what you like about that thing,” I said. “It kind of molds to you, doesn’t it?”
She blinked placidly and then faded off into sleep again. I crouched beside her. It was becoming my automatic position with her.
Had I conjured up the whole thing—about her examining patients as naturally as the rest of us breathed or swallowed? Was I actually starting to believe that she still had something of herself left, or did I just want so much for it to be true that I was looking for reasons to think that it was? Maybe that was what people did when they said they believed in God.
A deep ache took shape in my chest. That was a question for Sam.
I left at suppertime and went home to attempt to get some work done. What was left of my rational side told me I needed to return to the real world before it got away from me completely. However, the minute I propped up on the couch with a pencil in my hand, I nodded off. I was pulled from sleep by a faraway rapping that seemed to get closer as I peeled my eyes open. Somebody was knocking on the front door.
“Hold on,” I said thickly. I staggered to the foyer and fumbled for the doorknob. When I finally got the door yanked open, Sam was standing there. Hands in pockets. Face frozen in an uncertain smile.
“Hey, you,” he said.
Later, I was able to convince myself that if I’d been wide awake, I would have slammed the door in his face and let that be the end of it. Only because I was just semiconscious did I first gape like a runny-nosed toddler and then let him in.
In that same self-deceptive conversation, however, I did give Sam credit for not trying to take advantage of my near-catatonic state. There was no reach to hold me, no attempt to kiss me. He just stood there in the foyer with his hands in his pockets and said, “I wasn’t sure you’d let me in. I wouldn’t really blame you if you didn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I said. Some reactions just kick in automatically, no matter how porridge-headed you are.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Because I haven’t called you in a week for no apparent reason.”
“Has it been that long?” I said.
His eyes flinched. It ached in me, and I turned and went into the living room. He followed.
“I know I don’t have any right to ask this,” Sam said, “but could we not play games here?”
I had my back to him as I sank one knee onto the couch. I could feel him behind me, not crowding me, but with no intention of backing off either.
“Okay,” I said. “You didn’t call me for a week and I was at a loss for a reason. I mean, the last I heard, I was compelling.”
That remark stung even me. I turned around in time to catch him wincing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You caught me at a bad time. No, that’s a lie. Seems like it’s always a bad time with me these days.”
He shook his head.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m ticked off that you dropped out of sight—you insensitive, arrogant pig—and you’d better have a good reason or you are out of here, because I didn’t let you in just to have you do your little tap dance on my—”
I needed to say feelings, but I couldn’t. Evidently I didn’t have to, because Sam was grinning at me. He was trying not to—but he was flunking.
“What?” I sai
d. “What is so funny?”
“Nothing’s funny I just missed you.”
“Yeah, right,” I said in my best sarcastic tone. I glanced at my watch, fighting back a smile. “You have exactly ten minutes to tell me a story that doesn’t force me to boot you out of here.”
He nodded at the couch.
“No, I’m going to make you tell it standing up, face to the wall…of course, sit down—you’re driving me nuts standing there.”
I dumped my papers onto the floor with a sweep of my arm and tucked myself into a corner of the couch. Sam plopped down at the opposite end.
“I had to go out of town,” he said.
“Something sudden, I take it.”
“No, I knew about it several weeks ahead of time.”
The ache in my chest nudged me to tighten up. “Look, there’s no reason why you should have told me you were going off someplace. It’s not like we have some commitment.”
“I have a commitment.”
“Not to me.”
“To myself—to be available to you while you’re sorting things through. I shouldn’t have just dropped out of sight without some kind of explanation, and I’m sorry.”
I felt a rising disappointment. I tried to rake it out with a hand through the hair.
“I managed to keep sorting,” I said.
“I’m sure you did.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. We were definitely a pair to draw to.
“All right,” I said, “go ahead.”
“I went to Illinois.”
“In December. Good call,” I said. Then I put up my hand. “Sorry. Go on.”
“You’ve heard of Wheaton College—maybe not, it’s a Christian school. There’s a department chairmanship open there, and I applied for it. I made the short list, and they flew me out for an interview. It went well, so I stayed a few extra days to really look the place over. ‘Course, I nearly froze my tail off back there.”
I was staring at him. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re on the faculty at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but you’re considering taking a job at some—” I stopped myself. “At a small college that’s only going to offer you one thing you can’t get here—a frozen tail.”
Sam shook his head. “They have a lot more to offer than that, at least in my view. I haven’t been happy here since day one. Okay, maybe day two. On day one I enjoyed the prestige thing, but that wore off once I realized Stanford isn’t a good fit for me. It’s an incredible university but—you’ll find this out once you get your degree and start interviewing—it isn’t about the university name or even the money. It’s about the fit.” He was leaning toward me. “I’ve got a soul-longing,” he said. “I want to teach in a place where I have a chance to see the divine fire in my colleagues, and I’m not going to see that here—not out in the open, not where it can move me along on my own spiritual journey. Is this making sense to you?”
“Nothing you say makes sense to me, Blaze,” I said dryly. “But I can see how it makes sense to you. That’s what matters, right?”
“Not entirely. Listen, I have to know this: Do you think I was being dishonest with you because I didn’t tell you about my job opportunity? I mean, I’ve been thinking about it since before we met. It’s not like it came out of the blue. I had plenty of chances to tell you.”
“No,” I said. “Now, if at some point I had said, ‘Gee, Blaze, I guess you’re set here for life, huh?’ and you’d just said, ‘Yeah, I have no plans to move elsewhere,’ then, yes, I would’ve said you weren’t honest. Not that it’s any of my business—”
“But it is your business. At least, I want it to be your business.”
He picked up one of my hands and kneaded it between his. It was another one of those firm holds I couldn’t have gotten out of if I’d tried—and I didn’t try.
“Up until the day before I left, I didn’t think there was any reason to tell you. We were focusing on you. But then it all happened at once—at least for me.”
Did I miss it? I wanted to say. But I knew that came from old habits. Something else, something new and deep, told me to shut up and nod.
“We were sitting in Denny’s,” he said, “and I saw it all in one piece: you so close to touching God, and me so close to touching you, really touching you.”
I did pull my hand back then. “This was some goal you had?”
“No,” he said. “It was something that happened in spite of my goal—which was to keep myself from falling in love with you.”
“Oh,” I said—eloquently.
Sam put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me up to his face. “I love you, Jill,” he said.
I didn’t have to answer him. I told him in the kiss.
He pulled away just far enough to look at me. “Okay, let me just say this,” he said. “If they offered me the job at Wheaton and I accepted, would you think about going with me?” He put a finger to my lips, which had already started moving. “It wouldn’t be until June, and by then you’ll be finished with your degree. I’m just planting a seed. There are a lot of ifs involved anyway, but can you even think about it?”
It was as if my mouth were frozen. I did manage to get out: “Is this a marriage proposal?”
“I just know I liked everything about Wheaton except that you weren’t there.”
“So—you’re asking me to—do what?”
“I’m just telling you how I feel and asking you to think about it. That’s all.”
I gave him a numb nod, and he grinned—like a kid grins when his mom has said “maybe.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s just put that on the back burner for now. I want to hear about you.”
“Not so fast, Blaze,” I said. “I still don’t get why you didn’t tell me about this when we talked before you left. Or why you didn’t call me from there. Why all the secrecy?”
The grin faded. He looked more somber than I had ever seen him.
“Because I was scared to death of what you’d say. I’m still scared.” He touched my cheek. “I want you in my life.”
The questions lined up in my head, jostling for position. I thought you wanted a church lady, Blaze. What happened to that? You want me to go find a teaching position in Podunk, Illinois, so I can be close to you even though you can’t even define our relationship? You think you’re the only one who has ifs?
But I suddenly hated all of those questions, and I hated the fact that they had even entered my head. This man who was earnestly searching my face with his eyes—this man didn’t deserve to have any of those questions hurled at him.
“What are you thinking?” Sam said. “Or should I ask?”
“I’m thinking…I want to tell you what’s happened with my mother.”
“Tell me,” he said. He looked longingly in the direction of the kitchen. “You got any Max meals we could thaw out while we’re talking? I haven’t eaten all day.”
While I warmed up the last of the cappellacci with meat sauce in the microwave, I filled Sam in. The more I talked, the more of it came to me.
After putting the plate down in front of him, I sank into the chair opposite him, another entire piece forming in my head.
“What?” he said.
“Do you think she’s still trying to practice medicine?”
“It sounds like it.”
“But do you think that’s just an automatic reflex on her part? If I had Pick’s, I might write equations on the walls. If you had it, you might still…”
He laughed. “Yeah, just exactly what is it that I do, anyway?”
“The point is, when people have dementia, do they keep doing what they did for a while, just out of habit?”
“Did you read anything about that in the literature?”
I shook my head. “Besides that, Mother hasn’t actually seen patients for twenty-some years, except for looking at my sore throats and saying, ‘You’ll live. Go to school.’”
“So you’re say
ing this wouldn’t be a habit.”
“Not unless her brain’s going back to when she was in med school or something.”
Sam watched me as he chewed. Then he said, “I hear another possibility in there somewhere. It could just be habit. Or—?”
“Or she’s consciously clinging to her mind.”
“Or?”
“Or her soul,” I said. I put a hand up. “Don’t start doing your little end zone dance, Blaze. I’m just considering it as a possibility. If she has a soul that’s going to transcend everything—death, dementia, disease, whatever—then that’s where her drive to heal and preserve life could possibly be. Just possibly.” I shook my head. “But then I think about her trying to flush her nylons down the toilet and I’m not so sure.”
“Yeah, well, I’m voting that not only is she clinging to her soul, but she’s trying to tell you she still has a soul.” Sam put down his fork and leaned toward me. “Let me just put this out there: Maybe your mother is taking Pascal up on his wager.”
“If you had known my mother when she was in her right mind, you wouldn’t even suggest that.”
The grin went earlobe to earlobe. “I know you in your right mind, and you took him up on it. I don’t see a big difference here.”
“I can’t believe I listen to some of the stuff you hand me, Blaze,” I said, grinning back at him.
TWENTY
The next week was the start of winter break, and I had never been so glad to see it come. Without classes to teach and office hours to squeeze in and Jacoboni to listen to, I could concentrate on my own work…and on Mother…and on Sam.
Seeing that my life was still overloaded even without classes in session was an eye-opener, and I found myself discussing that with the ceiling on a regular basis. Sam called it praying, a point I continued to argue.