Tuesday Night Miracles

by Kris Radish

  “I’m having a hot flash, sweetie. Take advantage of it.”

  “Something is wrong with you.”

  “No kidding. Where are you wanting to sleep?” Grace is never sure if she wants to hear the answer to that question.

  “Karen asked me to hang with the girls and sleep over so she and Jack can stay out really late.”

  Grace is baffled. Had Karen said anything about babysitting? Grace had been imagining a cocaine binge at a pimp’s house. What else was she missing? She waved Kelli off with her left hand and a shake of her head, threw her a kiss, and grabbed the newspaper. That’s where she found the art-singles thing. And that’s why she’s now hiding halfway under her steering wheel, watching people walk into the gallery.

  She looks up through the windshield at the lovely night sky and wishes she were up there floating through the stars, maybe touching the moon—anywhere but sitting in her car with tight nylons making it hard for her to breathe. She closes her eyes, turns her head to the right, and sees a woman sitting alone in the next car over.

  Grace watches her for a moment, and the woman doesn’t move. Finally she scoots her head back and does exactly the same thing that Grace has been doing. Grace laughs. The woman hears her through the open window and turns. The woman smiles.

  Grace knows that if she doesn’t go in now she will never go in. Is this really so hard? Seriously, Grace, get thy ass moving.

  She looks at the woman, points her thumb toward the gallery, and mouths, “Should we go in?” The woman opens her car door, grabs a lovely beaded black purse, walks around the front of Grace’s car, and leans down to the open window.

  “I can’t believe I’m even here.”

  “I’m not really here,” Grace says. “I’ve left my body. I’ve been invaded by something evil that brought me here.”

  The woman, who is absolutely lovely and probably also in her fifties, is wearing designer jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a very hip suit jacket. She’s fairly short and has let her chin-length hair go gray but has it styled so that it all but floats around her lovely face. She’s also laughing so hard she begs Grace to get out of the car and walk in with her so she can use the restroom.

  “There’s wine,” Grace says, reluctantly getting out of the car. “That’s something.”

  By the time they get to the door, Grace has learned all about her newly divorced friend Bonnie. Bonnie has also learned about her not so newly divorced friend Grace, or so she thinks. Grace wasn’t about to reveal the true reason she’s there. Instead of eating pieces of bluefish sashimi, she wanted to be home in her old bathrobe eating popcorn on the couch.

  There are about sixty women at the event, and maybe twenty men. Grace feels like an idiot, walking around with her orange nametag and a plastic glass. The women are eyeing the single men as if they are hungry dogs. And Grace has an alarming desire to go poke all of them in the eye with her toothpick.

  Bonnie looks equally disgusted. “Is it just me, or do you feel like you’re in the middle of a cattle auction?”

  “I’m an old cow being led to slaughter.”

  “Should we get the hell out of here?”

  Grace has to think for a minute before she answers. The assignment was to go to a singles event. She’s done that. Is there something else she doesn’t get about this?

  Bonnie seems like a lot of fun. Kelli’s gone for the night. Grace doesn’t work the next day until the afternoon. She decides that, no matter where she is, she’s at a singles event.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They both grab one more glass of wine before they leave, drink it before they exit the gallery, and run to their cars giggling like grade school girls.

  “That was fun,” Grace says. “Now what?”

  Bonnie tells Grace that she knows a little joint about a mile away that’s quiet, has some live music, and she’s never seen a guy in there who wears short pants and white socks.

  “Hurry!” Grace shouts. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  The next three hours are a blur that Grace will find hard to remember, mostly because she simply had a good time and because they never really bothered to talk much about men—new men, that is. Both women ran through the details of their failed marriages quickly and leapt into a running conversation about themselves.

  “I should never have married him in the first place,” Bonnie shared, moving her wineglass in small circles. “I was sort of pressured by his parents, by my parents, by the notion that at twenty-three I was getting to be over-the-hill.”

  Grace threw back her head and laughed. “You are still very attractive. I can imagine what you looked like back then, but I think we were all pressured. The one good thing is that we don’t have to pressure our own children.”

  “Hell no!” Bonnie agreed, and they bumped glasses and toasted the modern world.

  This fairly new concept—personal conversations—kick-started during the first anger class, made Grace nervous at first. Talking about herself? Conversations usually centered on one of her daughters, patients, her supervisors, the sorry state of her finances, or the notion that she will never, ever date again the rest of her life.

  Grace was stunned when she pulled into her driveway and discovered that it was almost 1 A.M. During the past several hours she hadn’t bothered to think about the assignment, what she might write to Dr. Bayer, or what would happen the next day or the day after that.

  She was thinking about this new friend who made her laugh, wasn’t afraid to move forward, and had invited her to spend a weekend with her and her sister at the lovely cottage she had won in the divorce settlement.

  “Seriously?” Grace had said in disbelief.

  “You’re fun, Grace, and you’ll love the cabin.”

  Grace fell asleep that night repeating “I’m fun, I’m fun” over and over to herself, and she woke up the next morning almost convinced that the entire night had been a wild dream. But then she spotted her nylons on the floor, her skirt lying on top of the lamp, where she must have thrown it when she fell into bed, and there was a plastic wineglass from the art event sticking out of her purse.

  “Dr. Bayer, what have you done to me?” she asked, rolling out of bed and accidentally stepping on her spare reading glasses.

  The Black Dot

  Leah carried her assignment letter around for four days, opening it and reading it about sixty times. She read it in bed, in the bathroom, the kitchen, standing on the back porch, and every night when she sat by the window she so loved to touch.

  She could not wrap her mind around the assignment—the meaning, the purpose, the anything. Her confusion drove her to silence about what she was calling “the entire mess.” This anger-management class was not what she had expected, not at all, and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  Leah’s group sessions at the shelter didn’t include white envelopes with private assignments. Also, when she asked her supervisor about anger-management classes, she was told to expect a mixture of men and women.

  “There will be lots of talking and coffee drinking,” Leah was told. There wasn’t one thing about painting birdhouses or these secret assignments.

  This is so odd, Leah thought, even though she was excited. Dare I tell anyone else about this?

  Leah, I know you will be befuddled by this but you must do it anyway. Do not worry, either. Everything will fall into place. Next Monday morning a car will pick you up at 10 a.m. You will be driven to the Marco Boutique, where a nice woman named Carol will meet you. You are going to get a manicure and a pedicure. Take the time to look around, think, then write me about what happened and how you felt. I will be in touch with the next assignment.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Bayer.

  The car is coming in twenty minutes, and Leah feels like a fool. Her children are at school, and this time of day the shelter is very quiet. She hurried through her chores, showered, and made certain her shabby clothes were at least clean. Then she started
to pace in the large living room.

  Leah has never had a manicure and a pedicure. She’s rarely had her hair cut at a salon, never had a massage or her eyebrows waxed. She has worried about rent money, food, clothes for her children, and staying alive more than she has ever worried about her fingernails.

  She doesn’t get it, and she doesn’t want to go.

  But when she hears the car pull up she signs out of the shelter and goes outside. There’s a man waiting for her, and he’s holding the back door open.

  “Hello,” she says softly.

  “Good morning, ma’am. There’s water for you in the back. Please let me know if I can do anything.”

  Leah wonders if she should ask him to drive her to Dr. Bayer’s office so she can ask her what in the world is going on. But she smiles, gets into the car, and realizes that she must be in some kind of limousine.

  She barely moves, and is afraid to drink the water. The ride is short, less than fifteen minutes, and the car pulls up in front of a tiny shop on a side street. The driver opens her door and says that he’ll be back to get her when she’s finished, and that Carol will notify him.

  Leah isn’t so much afraid as terrified. Who’s going to be in there? Will other women look at her old clothes and laugh? What will she say to Carol?

  She hesitates before going into the salon and is startled when the door opens and a tiny Asian woman with gray hair and a brilliant smile says, “You must be Leah. Come in, dear. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Leah notices a CLOSED sign on the door when she walks into the deserted room. “No one else is here?”

  “No, sweetie. I’m closed on Mondays. This is special, just for you.”

  Leah is relieved but dumbfounded.

  “I’m confused.”

  “Sweetheart, there is nothing confusing about a manicure and pedicure. It makes your hands and feet so lovely. No worries. Please take a seat. We will do your fingernails first.”

  Leah sets her hands on the table as instructed and is amazed at how soft Carol’s hands are. There’s a candle burning on the table next to her, the lights are dim, and Leah isn’t sure if she’s supposed to talk.

  “I have some lovely tea for you when your hands are dry,” Carol says. “I picked a soft pink color for you. I hope that’s okay.”

  “I’ve never had my nails done before. I don’t know anything about this.”

  “Your hands are beautiful, Leah. I’ve done this a very long time, and I can tell many things from a woman’s hands.”

  “Do you know things about me from Dr. Bayer?”

  “Absolutely not! Dr. Bayer is a client of mine, but she never, ever talks about work. All I know about you will come from your hands.”

  Leah is even more confused now.

  “Don’t worry so much now,” Carol tells her, smoothing lotion on her arms. “I can tell you worry so very much, and that you have a clean heart that is very special. You must now relax. That is half of what happens here.”

  Relax? In the middle of an assignment? Is she supposed to be looking for something? Does Carol have a hidden clue?

  By the time Leah is in the pedicure chair, sipping mint tea, it’s impossible not to relax. She’s sleepy and she can’t stop looking at her perfect fingernails. Leah doesn’t want to miss one moment of what’s happening to her ugly, usually ignored feet. Her calluses are being removed, and Carol looks as if she’s going over her toes with a microscope. No wonder women love having this done. She’s seen photos of perfect nails in magazines, but she would never in a million years have imagined that this could happen to her.

  “Carol, what do you think about when you’re doing this kind of work?” Leah is leaning back and feeling totally relaxed.

  “Oh, my mind flies here and there, and if I sense that I’m working on a woman who isn’t very nice I try and give her some good energy so that she will be kind and not hurt anyone.” Carol is very serious when she speaks, and she’s massaging Leah’s calves and speaking with her eyes closed.

  “Do people think less of you, treat you badly, because of what you do?”

  “Of course.” Carol opens her eyes and looks directly at Leah. “Sometimes people must make themselves feel better by trying to make someone else feel bad. Does that make sense?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “No one can make you feel what you don’t want to feel, though, and for those people I give them the deluxe treatment,” Carol says, laughing. “I also hope that they get ingrown nails and scrape their toes on their car doors so the polish gets mussed on the way home.”

  Leah starts laughing so hard that Carol stops working on her for a few minutes. Then she takes Leah’s feet in both hands and holds them steady.

  “I’m compelled to tell you something else,” Carol says, not waiting for a yes or a no. “I can tell from looking at your feet that you have barely started to walk. You must be careful not to go too fast so that you trip, but these feet are made for running. You are going to go many places.”

  Carol’s kindness will linger inside Leah for a very long time. Leah doesn’t want the pedicure to end or the tea to get cold or the man to come and take her back to the shelter. When she is finished, she asks Carol if it’s okay to give her a hug.

  Carol opens her arms and welcomes Leah into her embrace. “Oh, sweet girl, yes, if you ever need a hug you come and find Carol. And you can bring your feet with you, too!”

  Leah had planned to go directly to the computer to type up her assignment notes, but when she gets back to the shelter she sits quietly, staring at her fingers and toes, until she hears her children pounding up the sidewalk after the bus lets them off.

  Her daughter, Jessie, a miniature version of Leah with her dark hair and beautiful eyes, notices the nails right away and shrieks, “Mommy, you’re so pretty!”

  Leah reaches for her daughter and holds her as tightly as possible. “Thank you, sweetie.”

  She doesn’t have the heart to tell her the polish will wear off quickly.

  15

  Displeasure on the Homework Highway

  Grace has locked herself in her home office with a blank notebook, a bad attitude, and a huge cup of coffee that will most likely keep her up half the night and then make her crash moments after she reports for duty in the morning.

  These assignments are driving her a bit nuts, even if she does enjoy parts of them. “Damn it,” she swears, pulling open her desk drawer to find a pen.

  It is late Monday night and three weeks have passed without a formal anger-management class. Dr. Bayer gave them two weeks for the last assignment, Grace’s big night out. Then there was a bizarre fall snowstorm that shut down the city last Tuesday. Grace almost wished she had the phone numbers of the other women in class so that she could have them over to celebrate and find out what they’ve been working on from this mysterious shrink.

  But the joy of not having group classes proved short-lived when Dr. Bayer emailed each one of them a homework assignment a week ago. The same email went to all of them, which was a new twist, and it seemed like a simple request at first:

  Dear Jane, Kit, Leah, and Grace,

  Your reports on your last assignments were fascinating. We do, however, have miles to go before we sleep. This new assignment should help us go part of the distance. Hopefully, it will also become a tool to help you for a very long time.

  I want you to keep a journal or diary if you’re not doing so already. But this won’t be an ordinary kind of journal. I don’t care where you went or what you had for dinner. I want to know how you feel—and only the good stuff. It can be written in a booklet or on scraps of paper—the form does not matter. What matters is that you do it, and do it with great honesty.

  When you feel good, when something makes you happy, write down what happened, what you were feeling, what might have caused you to feel however you were feeling. It does not have to be elaborate, but it does have to be!

  You are all very smart women. I know that not only can you fig
ure this out; you can do it. And isn’t it time we all saw each other again? Tuesday night—same time, same place.

  Any questions?

  Just hit Reply.

  See you soon.

  Dr. B.

  That assignment threw Grace into a small frenzy, which she dealt with by procrastinating. None of them were thrilled with this kind of homework assignment. Thank God Dr. Bayer sent them a reminder:

  Dear Anger Class Scholars,

  Remember class tomorrow night even if you have to get there on a sleigh. Did one of you make it snow? Snow? The day after it was sixty-three degrees? All I can say is: Chicago!

  And one more thing.

  Bring those new assignment pages to class.

  Dr. B.

  Thus, Grace was consuming caffeine close to midnight as if she were dying of thirst. Thinking about what makes her happy on a daily basis is not at the top of her to-do list. Then again, neither is having a police record, losing her job, or giving Kelli the satisfaction of watching her mother go down like a beleaguered old battleship.

  Grace actually had to sneak into Kelli’s backpack and steal a new notebook so she had something to write on, lest she show up at tomorrow night’s meeting empty-handed. Now all she has to do is fill the damn thing up with several pages of make-believe happy moments.

  The first thing she does is yank out her work calendar so she can backtrack and try to think about what may or may not have happened during the past week. She writes out specific days so it will appear as if she has been working on the journal all along. Then Grace pauses so she can begin making up reasons to be happy. There are more damn patients than beds. Kelli is still seeing the boyfriend from hell. It’s easier to think of reasons to be mad.