Tuesday Night Miracles

by Kris Radish

  But Dr. Olivia Bayer was dauntless and rarely gave up on any of the inmates enrolled in her classes and therapy sessions. When she thinks of someone hard, someone whom everyone else had given up on, the person who comes to mind is an inmate named Denise, who turned to prostitution in order to support her two sons. That led to drug addiction, because she couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror. The addiction led to AIDS, and then Denise robbed a small grocery store to feed her habit and her sons.

  Dr. Bayer wouldn’t give up, even as Denise refused to let her sons visit her in prison, and showed no remorse for what she had to do to survive. Finally, a month before her death, Denise understood what her life choices had done, not just to her but also to her sons. There is always another way was, and remains, Dr. Bayer’s mantra. When Denise received permission to leave prison and die in a hospice, she was reunited with her sons, who have stayed in touch with Dr. Bayer for thirty years. One of the sons owns a furniture store and is a city alderman, and the other son became a dentist and runs a monthly clinic for impoverished inner-city children.

  Dr. Bayer thought about Denise on her drive to tonight’s meeting. Leah and the other three women have so much at stake—every single one of them—and she so needs them to see the importance of letting go of the moment in the past that holds them in place. All this lingering on the anger and holding on to it is like refusing to bury the dead dog. Olivia nearly laughs. This group might want to stuff the dead dog and keep it around! She’d love to throw them all in a locked detention room for two days without food or water. When and if they turned inward and looked around she might consider letting them out. Their responses, and what she has seen of their writings, have been superficial. They must try and work harder.

  That is why Dr. Bayer is poised to do battle tonight. Olivia knows that once you lose the lead, once the people in the chairs think they have you right where they want you, think they have outsmarted you, you may as well hoist the white flag and get the hell out of sight.

  Grace Collins, Jane Castoria, Kit Ferranti, and Leah Hetzer have come to spar with a five-star general. They should look a lot more frightened than they do.

  Dr. Bayer starts out slowly. She watches the women as she speaks, asks to see the assignment, does not bother to look at them when Grace, Jane, and Kit hold them up, because she’s certain the women have been lying about what’s inside. They don’t look very happy, but that’s okay. This process can’t complete itself overnight—look how long it took these four women to get here. When Leah admits that she didn’t write in her log, Dr. Bayer, much to the shameful delight of the other three women, is curt and to the point.

  “Let me make myself clear, Leah,” Dr. Bayer explains sternly. “Writing down what makes you happy is not an elective project. It is mandatory. To get out of this class and get on with your life in a positive manner, you must do it. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Leah says timidly. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Dr. Bayer sees a yard of relief over all their faces when she next says they’re going to talk about something else this week. She tells the women to put down their notebooks but asks them to remind her to look at them later.

  Right, everyone but Leah thinks. Maybe the day after hell freezes over.

  “Sometimes in order to focus on the birth of anger it is important to take a step back,” Dr. Bayer explains, sitting straight in her chair with her feet planted firmly on the floor. “Anger, when used properly, can be a healthy emotion, a way of releasing tension, but only if it is appropriate. Everyone gets angry, but it’s what you do with the anger, how you express it, that is obviously the difference between women in an anger-management class and the women who are not here tonight.”

  Dr. Bayer is very serious, and she has raised her voice a few decibels so that there is no question she’s in charge. It’s totally business tonight.

  When she continues to explain the importance of keeping anger in its proper place, Dr. Bayer can see that Jane is clearly agitated by her lecture. She keeps talking and is just starting to explain how anger can be used constructively when Jane interrupts.

  It took approximately eight minutes. Eight minutes of sitting quietly and, hopefully, listening before Jane reached her limit.

  “Can you give us an example of a good use of anger?” Jane asks, expecting everyone to believe that she can’t answer the question herself.

  “You tell us,” Dr. Bayer responds. “Or I can continue without interruption.”

  Everyone has noticed that the kind and gentle Dr. Bayer has taken a backseat this evening. And her serious tone of voice, the way she sits without moving, has forced them to examine her from head to toe. Their minds wander as she speaks, and at least they can focus on what this doctor woman looks like. All of the women, even Leah, have been visually exploring every inch of Dr. Bayer’s body as she speaks. This week she has a pair of ruby-red glasses resting on her nose. The glasses make her lively blue eyes stand out even more than they did last week. She has the perfect hair, gray streaks intertwined with dark brown strands that fall loosely around the gorgeous flawless skin on her face that would make most women jealous.

  Even with her scruffy brown clogs, which look as if they have been around for at least three decades, matching cotton slacks and jacket with a simple white blouse that is so grandma-like and probably has an elastic waistband, Dr. Bayer is quite lovely.

  There are long laugh lines gliding from the corners of her eyes, she has great teeth, and with her luminous skin it’s impossible to tell how old she is. Late fifties? Could she be in her sixties? Weeks ago she seemed older, but tonight, while she is really being examined, the women think they may have underestimated everything about this woman—not just her age.

  Dr. Bayer wears a simple gold watch on her right wrist and a delicate gold band with a beautiful piece of inlaid turquoise in the center on her left-hand ring finger. It’s the kind of ring a woman might buy for herself, but it’s also the kind of ring someone who knows you are an old, funky, hippie-like woman and loves you for that, and a million other reasons, might give you.

  Is Dr. Bayer married? Does she have children? Where does she live? What does she do when she isn’t trying to save the weary hearts, souls, minds, and bodies of the world?

  It’s clear to Dr. Bayer from the bobbing heads and the way the women’s eyes are roaming all over her that she might as well be speaking in tongues. They are looking at her, but they aren’t listening. She continues talking for a few more moments and then throws them all off track by clapping her hands. Her cognitive lecture has gone into four ears and has apparently gotten lost somewhere inside these loopy women’s brains.

  The women all snap to attention when they hear her clap. Dr. Bayer decides that she must try and frighten them into an honest and open place.

  “Before we have you read something out loud from your journals, I’d like to ask each one of you to tell us something about yourself that might be a surprise. It can be anything. Something you love, a lost dream, a remarkable memory, anything at all.”

  The women look startled. This is not what they expected her to say next. Everyone but Leah was scrambling to remember the bogus accounts of happiness that Dr. Bayer was threatening to make them read out loud. There’s obviously a game plan tucked away inside the good doctor’s mind. But this honesty and openness she’s now requiring? How to get around that? How to outmaneuver the captain of this ship?

  Dr. Bayer waits. Oh, she loves this part of class, where she can feel them thinking and shaking a little bit and wondering what they can unearth to share that won’t embarrass the hell out of them but will get them through this wretched moment!

  She lets a very long minute pass, and then says, “Anyone, please.”

  And Kit speaks, and she surprises herself by doing so.

  “I imagine we all have dreams that we stopped chasing or that fell away when we ignored them,” Kit says as she wiggles to the edge of her chair, arms on her legs, eyes
planted on the floor in front of her. “When I have a serious dream, I’m always onstage. A real stage. And I’m performing.”

  Dr. Bayer is so happy she feels if she lets go she might start sobbing. No one moves, including Kit. She looks as if she is in the middle of her dream right this moment.

  “What are you performing?” Dr. Bayer asks gently.

  Kit hesitates and for good reason. These women are not Girl Scout leaders. She can’t even believe she’s talking like this. What is wrong with her? It’s been a long, long time since she had one of the dreams she’s talking about, and longer since she has shared anything intimate or personal with anyone besides Ronnie. And that was only because of Dr. Bayer. Kit has talked many times to the kitchen sink, the two cardinals that refuse to leave each winter and live in the backyard, her neighbor’s dog, and the cellphone she has in her purse but hates to use.

  Now that Kit is speaking about her forgotten dream, she realizes that the months she lost while she was her mother’s caregiver seemed to have drawn a curtain through what few personal relationships she has managed to maintain during the past how many years? How long has she been so dreamless and friendless? How long has she been so alone?

  Kit does not want to share those thoughts with this group of strangers. She isn’t certain she wants to share them with anyone, herself included. But now what? Why in the name of God did she have to say something?

  “Kit, are you okay?”

  Kit hears the gentle voice of Dr. Bayer and is glad that the terse Dr. Bayer has temporarily departed. She looks up and manages a half smile, and she’s embarrassed. This is an emotion that has been parked in neutral for a very long time. Kit is so uncomfortable she’s sweating, as if her menopause had been resurrected.

  “Sure,” she lies. “I was just thinking that you would all laugh at me if I told you that I’ve always wanted to do stand-up comedy.”

  “Seriously?” Leah asks, almost as softly as Dr. Bayer.

  Grace and Jane start laughing.

  “See how funny I am,” Kit says, beginning to laugh herself. She can’t believe she shared that bit of news, either. What is going on today? And how could Dr. Bayer have known to send her to that comedy club if she could barely remember this lost dream herself?

  “I can see it,” Dr. Bayer tells Kit. “You have a certain way and attitude about you. How long have you been dreaming about this?”

  “It’s a pretty old dream, but something I still think about when I’m not trying to kill one of my brothers or dodge angry women on my way to this class,” Kit tells her with a half smile. “I was the only girl in an Italian family that also included four brothers. The material is endless.”

  “I can see where it would be,” Dr. Bayer responds.

  “You could use wine bottles for props,” Jane suggests seriously. “That might be really funny.”

  “If I ever get out of this class,” Kit says, equally serious.

  “I get the dream thing, though,” Jane adds without prompting. “Stand-up comedy has its place. Some of those people are hilarious. There’s something about performing that gets me. My big dream was to be a dancer. I lived for it. I must have taken more dance lessons than any kid in this entire state.”

  Jane is lost for a moment in one of the few lovely childhood memories she carries with her. She begged her mother to let her take dance lessons when she was a little girl and one day, as if it were Christmas, her mother picked her up from school and took her to her first dance class. She was as astonished as she was joyful, even when her mother brushed her aside when she tried to hug her in thanks.

  Kit immediately figures the dancing fetish and Jane’s penchant for high heels that can be used as weapons make sense. She has never been able to figure out how dancers can do loop-the-loops while wearing shoes that should be outlawed. Perhaps Jane’s shoe addiction started with her dance classes.

  “Why didn’t you keep dancing?” Dr. Bayer asks.

  Jane shrugs it off, which usually means there’s an important reason or event behind the shrugging that might help uncover something else that’s terribly important.

  “Dreams die,” she says flatly, refusing to admit that her parents forced her to stop. Dancing, after all, was not a substantial or sustainable profession. “That’s why. It’s part of life.”

  “That’s not really true,” Leah says quickly and with great emotion. “You can’t believe that. Dreams are what keep some of us alive. They don’t have to die. Someone, please agree with me!”

  Leah looks almost desperate. She has buried so many of her dreams, and now that a few are about to break through the earth she must believe that anything is possible. She has been struggling with that idea, with the thought that she can have and be and do what her heart desires. Surely these women, older and supposedly wiser, can tell her that all dreams do not die!

  Jane would love to walk over and get right in Leah’s face. “Grow up,” she’d yell. “Look at yourself, for heaven’s sake. Screw dreams.” But she just looks at Leah in disbelief and clenches her jaw. This kid has a lot to learn. Jane’s compassion has totally disappeared. Why, oh why, can’t she connect with these women? She feels as if she has just had thirteen cups of coffee. She’s longing to run from the room, longing to get to the safety of her car, longing to stand on top of her chair and scream.

  Grace is the one who speaks next. She uncrosses her legs, sits back, and looks at Leah with nothing but kindness in her eyes before she speaks.

  “You’re right, Leah,” she says. “Dreams are important. I know just what Kit is talking about. My whole life, even now, I’ve wanted to be a singer. I used to think about it all the time. I should have put that on my happy list. I could have done it too, once, a long time ago. I sang in high school, had the lead in all the musicals, and had a chance to go to college and study with some amazing people—”

  She stops suddenly. Her face closes, and it looks as if she’s just woken up and realized that she’s standing naked in the middle of a bus terminal. She hasn’t talked about this for such a long time. She can’t even remember the last time she sang in the car, the shower, while walking up the back steps of the hospital. But she wants Leah to know that everyone has dreams and that it’s okay. Leah looks so alone, someone has to help her, keep her from falling over.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Jane sneers. She can’t stop herself. One part of her, a very tiny part, is aghast at what she has said, and the other part, the pushy, always-has-to-be-perfect part, seems to win every round.

  “Really?” Kit says with more than a hint of surprise in her voice, too, and without waiting for Grace to answer. “A singer?”

  Grace is absolutely horrified. How can everyone here be so cruel? She takes one look at Jane, then turns to look at Kit. Her heart is pounding, she can feel the blood pumping to her head about a hundred miles an hour, and she’s utterly embarrassed and hurt. Why did she share something so personal? Tears start to run down her cheeks. She picks up her purse, pushes back her chair, and runs from the room so quickly that no one has a chance to get up.

  Dr. Bayer closes her eyes, counts to ten very slowly, and wonders if anyone has ever thrown a metal chair through the glass window at the back of the room. So much for the happiness theory. These women would cause a vat of sugar to go sour.

  18

  The Intervention Convention

  There is no way Phyllis is getting off the bed to waltz into the living room tonight. Olivia could be surrounded by a pile of soup bones, a slice of raw steak, and those meaty, fat-laced treats she sometimes brings home from one of those silly doggie shops that people who think their pets are human frequent.

  One thing about Phyllis that sets her apart from other spoiled animals is that she knows her place. She doesn’t jump on legs, scratch at the door, bark when she needs to be patient, or do any ridiculous pet tricks. She also knows when Olivia is not simply thinking and talking out loud but actually dancing on the edge of something important even if it may be co
nfounding.

  Olivia heard Phyllis tiptoeing to the bedroom door about two hours ago while she was talking to her supervisor the day after class with her four experimental subjects. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Then Phyllis stopped and listened. What she heard was that raised tone of voice that was anything but sweet.

  “Of course I know,” Olivia was not so much saying as shouting. “I’m not a dumb-ass and yes, I know the risks, but those risks would be there if these women were in a traditional group setting as well.”

  There was a pause, but Phyllis stood her ground.

  “Of course I will call Grace. I planned to do that anyway, and yes, if she needs me to I will meet with her alone and see if I can get her through this.”

  That sounds a little nicer, but Phyllis is no fool. Besides that, even from this far away, and so close to the ground, Phyllis can see that Olivia does not have on her dark bathrobe. She is also sitting on the very edge of the big chair, and not nestled against the back so she can lean over, drop her arm, and then run her sweet fingers up and down Phyllis’s lanky spine.

  There is a very long pause. Olivia is listening and Phyllis, once again, remains hopeful, but at this point skepticism rules the night.

  “Damn it!” Olivia exclaims. “Don’t you think I know that! Of course I will not make it about me! What the hell! It’s Dr. Bayer you’re talking to now and not your old friend Livie.”

  That’s it. There was not a shit in that conversation, but Phyllis can tell that it might be a while before Olivia settles down, grabs all those folders, and plops in the big, soft chair the way she should be plopped right this minute. She doesn’t bother to growl in disappointment when she turns and walks back toward the bed.

  Olivia listens impatiently, her right foot moving rapidly up and down, and then agrees that she will file a report first thing in the morning. She already has a plan for the following week that she is certain will work.

  “I know what’s on the line,” she says forcefully. “At some point, darling friend and sublime superior, you have to hope that after all these years I know what I’m doing. I have a plan. Believe in me the way I believe in these women, please.”