Tuesday Night Miracles

by Kris Radish

  Not that Derrick would notice. It’s as if she has the plague because of this little problem with the court system. Derrick has suddenly gotten very busy at his engineering firm. Jane sees this as a mixed blessing. If something miraculous happens and she starts to get busy again, he won’t miss her. Also when he’s busy like this he seems to forget how much he wants to be a father.

  If Jane had a dollar for every time he’s talked about kids, begged her to go back for more tests, talked about adoption, or rattled on about his nieces and nephews, Jane would be able to restock her wine rack for the next few months.

  “Forty-two-year-old women are having babies all over the place,” he often reminds her. “Anything is possible.”

  For a few moments, Jane drops both of her hands to her lap and presses her fingers above where her stomach ends and where she is certain her dormant uterus sits like a useless weight. A baby would fit right there, riding between her hips, growing little fingers and toes, and twirling like a fish in the sea. She would feel it move one day, see a heartbeat, wait for the tiny ball of energy to push itself out into the world, where she would be the first person to look into its eyes.

  I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.

  Jane presses harder each time she lies to herself, until she almost bruises her skin.

  “Babies,” she says mockingly, closing her eyes. “All everyone talks about is babies.”

  Her so-called friends have made her physically ill with their baby showers and photographs. Who cares about new teeth and first steps and the way a baby changes your life so drastically you quit your job, downsize so you can still pay your bills, and disrupt every relationship you ever had?

  Who cares if your husband looks at you as if he hates you when you tell him you don’t give a goddamn if you ever have kids? And you are not, absolutely not, going to have one more exam or do the test-tube thing!

  Who cares if your own unemotional mother thinks something is wrong with you, if you refuse to even get a puppy, if you’ve drawn a line around your heart that has a huge NO TRESPASSING sign on it?

  Who cares if you beat the shit out of that guy and now you have to go to a dumb class with one woman who looks like an Avon lady and another one who looks as if she’s on furlough from her street gang?

  Who cares if the cotton queen in charge can make you roll over and speak if she wants to, and holds a very important key to the rest of your professional and personal life?

  Who cares if this whole anger mess has given you a nervous twitch that makes your left shoulder move forward involuntarily at awkward moments?

  Jane pushes herself away from the slick granite island where she has been sitting and turns toward the refrigerator. The shiny surface is like a mirror. She can see the outline of her tight curls, the way her high cheekbones push against the corners of her eyes, the almost invisible tiny white scar above her left eyebrow from a bicycle accident when she was ten years old.

  Ten years old when she started to wonder who she really was, because she didn’t look like her mother or her father. Ten years old when she started keeping secrets and discovering things a little girl should never have to know, or worry about simply because she’s adopted.

  Jane raises her hand to the scar, an imperfection that reminds her how much she has to lose if certain people find out about her wild outburst. After all, women like her aren’t allowed to have an outburst in public.

  Her mother made sure of that, always talking about the perfect this and the perfect that, and how a woman had a responsibility to set the stage, always be ready, prepare for her purpose in life, which meant both a fabulous, high-powered career and a family. You can have it all, her mother said constantly, while her father smiled in the background and waved his hand as if on cue.

  Many times Jane has imagined a conversation of total honesty with her mother, a mother who has also cared for her, tried what was probably her best even if it was based on a 1950s Good Housekeeping article about preparing for your husband’s nightly arrival from work. Make certain you have reapplied your makeup. Clean up the house so he can relax. Make certain the children are amused so as not to bother him. Always prepare him a drink—remember he had a very hard day at work while you were at home.

  Even with all that, Jane would love to put her head on her mother’s lap, feel the coolness of her hand stroking her face, and tell her about the dark ache in her heart. Jane remembers the few times that happened as if they have been seared into her memory.

  Her mother would call her over to the couch and pat the side of her leg almost as if she were calling a pet over for some affection. “Come,” she would say, and Jane would run.

  Her mother would hum a little bit and Jane would lie there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to say a word, because her mother might remember that she was there on her lap and shoo her away.

  Sometimes they talked.

  “How was school, little Jane?”

  “Good, Mother. I was a good girl, and the math teacher told me I have a gift.”

  “Wonderful. You must keep at it. Work harder. Always work harder.”

  “I try very hard, Mother.” Jane knew what to say. It had to be just right. And her mother was always a mother, not a mom, a mommy, a mum—absolutely nothing but mother.

  “Someday you will be very glad you worked so hard,” her mother said, pushing her own hair back behind her ears.

  “Yes, Mother. Thank you so much.”

  Jane can recall even now what her mother smelled like. She wore the heavily scented perfume Tabu, and often Jane could smell her coming. It was like a scented invisible wave. When she set her head on her lap, she could feel the warmth of her mother’s legs rising slowly into her shoulders and then her neck. When her mother touched her face, it was as if a feather were dusting her cheeks or an angel kissing her face with the tip of its wings.

  One of Jane’s deep secrets is that she goes to this place when she’s sad and weary. Sometimes she actually lies down on the couch with her head on a pillow and imagines her mother there, the old clock on the mantel ticking, the refrigerator kicking in, her mother’s deep sighs, her own heart beating as if she had just run a race.

  When Derrick isn’t home, she sometimes talks to her mother in a way she can’t talk to her face-to-face or even on the phone.

  “Oh, Mother, I’m so tired. Tired of trying to be perfect, trying to have babies.”

  Then she will wait a moment, making up a reply that is usually filled with affirmation, before she continues.

  “Don’t you think I can let go now? Can’t I go shopping in my sweatpants and stop worrying about what’s fashionable and what’s not? And what is so wrong about dancing in the living room with your friends? Friends! Mother, do I even have any friends?”

  Derrick has never caught her like that, and sometimes she wishes he would. Maybe if he heard her he would know that she’s not always a bitch, not always ready to impale someone with a shoe, not always just downright rude.

  Jane isn’t sure she will ever be able to talk to her mother the way her friends talk to their mothers. She watches every Diane Keaton movie over and over when Derrick is out of town, just to see what it might be like. But every day that passes, with every mistake she makes, Jane’s certain that she’ll never have the kind of relationship she sees in the movies.

  It’s because the real sound of her mother’s voice, her tight face, the way she looks at Jane as if she’s checking for flaws so she can expel her, immediately erases Jane’s few kind and lovely memories.

  Jane wasn’t just not good enough; neither was the parade of friends who came and went and came and went until Jane herself actually began believing that she was superior.

  “Mother, am I better than everyone?” she asked, after her mother sent home a friend who had dared to spill juice on the living-room floor.

  “You would never spill juice on her floor, would you?”

  “Not on purpose. But it was an accident. People have
accidents. It was just a mistake, Mother.”

  After three days of absolute silence from her mother, Jane realized how she must play the family game. There would be no complaining, no spilled juice, no room for failure of any kind. Is it too late now? Too late to laugh into the wind and recapture the Jane who never had a chance?

  The refrigerator is humming like her mother’s, and Jane pulls her head off its cold surface and for a fleeting moment looks into her eyes and then looks away very quickly

  She turns and heads directly for the envelope, opens it, reads it, and is immediately totally baffled:

  Next week, instead of class as a group your assignment is to drive to Johnson State Park and take the five-mile hike. You must do this alone, slowly, and notice everything that is around you. When you return home, I want you to write me a letter about the experience—and not just about what you see and what happens but also what you feel. Good luck. You have a week to complete this task, and I suggest you go in late morning. You will see why once you get there. The next class details will follow as soon as I have your assignment.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Bayer.

  Hiking? Jane wonders who in the world this Dr. Bayer person is and if she even has counseling credentials. Is she nuts? Me? Hiking? This is totally insane! But surprisingly, after she sets down the letter Jane forgets that she was going to open another bottle of wine.

  She paces back and forth in the kitchen and shouts, though no one is around to hear, “You’ve got to be kidding!” She finally sits back down and reads the letter five more times before she remembers that she owns a pair of terribly expensive hiking boots she has worn only once.

  But she can’t stop telling herself that the woman in charge of her anger-management class must be totally off her rocker.

  10

  The First Assignment

  The Red Dot

  Jane, not one to let tasks slide, has her hiking boots laced up, her water bottle filled, the directions plotted on her GPS, a sack lunch and a thermos of coffee ready, and is heading toward the state park before 9 A.M. the day after class.

  Derrick agreed that hiking might sound a little nuts, but he also noticed a small spark in his wife’s eyes while she was ironing her shorts.

  “Honey, you’re going to be the best-dressed woman on the trail,” he said. “I half wish I could go along and watch. Sweetheart, you have to be the only woman in the world who irons hiking clothes.”

  “Shut up,” Jane said, smiling.

  Derrick stood with his hands on his hips, and Jane thought for a second how she really should run into his arms and push her face against his chest. Derrick is physical perfection. He is tall, dark, handsome, and kind. He has short wavy coal-black hair that is showing an occasional hint of gray, which makes him look even sexier. His hazel eyes always seem to be dancing, even when he’s upset, and Jane knows other women look at him not just with admiration but with pure lust.

  How in the world did I land this guy?

  “Don’t tell me to shut up,” he teased, taking a step toward her. “You shut up.”

  “How dare you!” she said, feigning in anger. “You shut up.”

  When had they last been playful with each other like this? For a second, Jane almost wished she didn’t have to go hiking. She wished everything was the way it used to be and that she was ironing a skirt for work, and helping Derrick with his tie, and then kissing him as if they had just met and were saying their first goodbye.

  Instead, she brushed him off by moving her hands back and forth as if there was a fly buzzing around her head. Derrick looked disappointed but called out, “Don’t get lost, city girl,” as he turned and walked out the door.

  Jane is just behind the morning traffic, which is exactly what she planned, and the two-hour drive will get her to the park a little after eleven, just what the doctor ordered.

  As she drives east through the towns that fan out from Chicago, Jane tries hard to remember when she last went hiking. It had never been at the top of her activity list, though in college she’d gone to a few parks and there had been tons of hiking when her mother sent her away to camp—year after year after year. But that was a long time and several shoe sizes ago. Maybe that’s why her hiking boots still looked as if they had never been worn.

  Whatever. Here she was following orders like a good girl, sipping coffee, and a tiny bit excited. She was actually excited about the adventure because it gave her something to do besides moping around the house and feeling sorry for herself. The state park, she had learned the night before, was part of a huge estate once owned by the Wrigley family, who made a fortune on chewing gum. The house was now park headquarters, and hiking trails and picnic areas spread out for miles from the entrance.

  The moment she pulls into the lot, pays her fee, and parks, Jane feels different. No one knows her here. She could be anybody, and before she even gets out of the car she’s actually embarrassed by the crease in her green shorts. What in the hell was I thinking?

  She quickly wiggles around in the seat to try and get a few wrinkles. After several semi-successful attempts at looking like a real hiker, Jane straps on her small fanny pack, picks up a map of the five-mile trail, and starts walking.

  It is absolutely quiet except for the birds, the chipmunks, whatever is rattling around in the grass at the edge of the trail, and the sound of her boots crunching against the gravel. Walking into the almost deserted park actually feels, well, good.

  Jane doesn’t bother to look at the trail map. There is only one five-mile trail. This little hike won’t take long, and then she’ll write up her simple report and that will be the end of whatever this was supposed to be. She heads off, and ten minutes later she’s standing next to a stream that looks like a small river. It is a river she has to cross by stepping on a series of rocks that have been placed in a straight path.

  “Serious?” Jane is talking to the rocks. They do not answer her. She looks around to see if there’s a missing bridge or a large man to carry her across.

  “Shit!”

  Jane realizes she could cheat, walk back to the car, go get a latte someplace, and spend the rest of the day in her bathtub. But what if there’s something she is supposed to notice? Dr. Bayer specifically suggested late morning. Maybe there’s a trunk show around the corner, or a wine bar.

  For the love of God.

  Jane balances carefully in the unfamiliar boots, one foot and then the other, her arms straight out and waving so she won’t fall. And then, just before she steps off the last rock onto the other side of the river, she hears something that startles her, then screams and loses her balance.

  When she falls, it’s forward and to one side, so that only half of her body gets wet and also gets more than a little muddy.

  She screams as she rolls to her knees just as an elderly pair approaches from the opposite direction.

  “Are you okay?” one woman asks, running to help her.

  Jane looks up as if she is a dog waiting for a treat and sees that the woman and her hiking companion are old enough to be her grandmothers. She’s mortified.

  “I think so,” she lies, getting to her feet.

  “Here, dear,” the other woman says, dipping her hands into the water to splash the mud off Jane. “This will come off easy, and it’s lovely out. You’ll be dry before you hit the dung fields and thistles.”

  “What?” Jane is aghast.

  “You’ve never been on this trail before?”

  Jane can’t speak. She shakes her head.

  “Oh, my!” the first woman says. “You’re in for a treat. You might want to hurry so as not to miss the feeding. There’s absolutely no one else on the trail, and Bella is going to need your help.”

  The two women turn and Jane watches them hop over the rocks as if they are Olympians, and then she is alone and wonders if she has gone mad.

  Thistles? Dung fields? Bella?

  She glances at the river and decides to keep moving forward. There must be
a bridge somewhere. She’s now certain the wine bar is out of the question, and she imagines what it might be like to push Dr. Bayer into the river fully clothed. All that cotton would surely weigh her down.

  Eventually Jane realizes that her heart has slowed and it’s once again quiet and she’s drying off quickly as she passes through pine trees that smell like Christmas. Without thinking, she picks up a fallen branch, smells it, and tucks it into her mud-streaked waistband. It’s warm and sunny, the sky is bright blue, and Jane doesn’t notice she’s tromping through the dung fields until she smells something nasty and looks down.

  “Oh, my God!” There is some kind of poop everywhere. Long, brown hunks of goo are sticking to her shoes, and without much effort she has flung some up onto her legs. Jane starts shaking her legs one at a time because she doesn’t want to touch the poop. Sweet Mother of God this is crazy! She starts hopping as if that will clean her legs and get her out of the dung field.

  Jane hops for several minutes, bouncing through the field as if she is on a pogo stick. She’s also swearing. “Damn that stupid Dr. Bayer!” Then it’s as if someone is holding up a mirror, and she realizes she’s being absolutely ridiculous.

  “Here I am,” she laughs, “out standing in a field of crap.”

  She laughs so hard that she’s afraid she’s going to fall over in the poop and until she hears someone calling, “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”

  When she looks up, there’s a woman in the distance waving a huge straw hat in her direction. It must be Bella. Jane responds with her own “Hello!” and she can see the woman motioning for her to come. Jane doesn’t hesitate, even though she knows there must be thistles ahead. Well, maybe she’s the thistle. Maybe Dr. Bayer called ahead to warn the park. “A prickly woman is about to enter! Danger! Danger!”

  The waving woman makes Jane forget about the poop, and before she knows it she can see the edge of what must be a pond or a lake and the sound of something—geese? And, of course, here come the thistles and here comes Jane in her shorts, with her beautifully shaved legs and her lovely leather belt and, yes, eye shadow and lip gloss.