by Kris Radish
The women are surprised when Dr. Bayer doesn’t hash over last week’s events. There is no “How is everyone?” or a check on Jane’s physical well-being. She doesn’t tell them again what a wonderful job they did or how remarkable it was that none of them got hurt. No touchy-feely Kumbaya. So much for the popcorn and beer idea. Dr. Olivia Bayer is not sitting in the antique chair from Kit’s long-dead uncle Jerome to knit socks.
“Let’s get going right away tonight,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Kit, thanks for the house and the drinks. I trust everyone was very busy this week getting on with their lives and completing all the assignments. We have a lot of work to do tonight.”
The women nod. The spell has been broken.
“Let’s start out with a general question and then move on from there.”
There’s no asking this week, just telling. There is, however, uneasy movement by all four of the women, who shift in their seats, put down drinks, clear their throats, and prepare for the question. They are thinking of themselves. Each one of the women could be in the room with just the good doctor.
“Does anyone have anything they want to share about the assignments, their own lives, anything at all that might be good to talk about?”
“Good” probably means “happy.” That’s what all four of them are thinking, and although they each have more than a few things to share, it’s taking them a while to start their engines.
Leah speaks up first. Dr. Bayer is all business, and she wants to get on with business as well.
“Just little things for me, like worrying about classes I might not be able to get at the university because … well, because I’m in this class, which takes priority,” she says. “But I’m learning to put things in perspective. I’m alive. The kids are doing great. It was actually a pretty wonderful week. And it was because I refused to have it any other way.”
“Good for you, Leah. Anyone else?” Dr. Bayer has raised her eyebrows and is looking hopeful.
But Jane, Grace, and Kit can’t get past the classes Leah mentioned. What classes? It’s as if someone threw something shiny in the middle of the room and they can’t take their eyes off it. There is so much they don’t know about Leah, and here she is showing them up with her positive attitude.
“No one else?”
“Um, I was terribly busy, which is a good thing for me, I guess,” Grace adds quietly. “Nothing too major. Lots of thinking in the few quiet moments I had about mistakes I’ve made along the way and how I don’t want to go back there anymore. It’s like I’m a new person, almost.”
Grace takes a quick glimpse at Jane, hoping she gets what the word “almost” is all about.
“No dwelling back there too long, I hope.” Dr. Bayer says this partly as a question, wishing Grace could be more specific.
Grace shakes her head, smiles because she doesn’t have to lie, and decides to keep talking—which is almost as stunning to her as it is to everyone else.
She doesn’t know where the energy comes from to speak, or why she has suddenly decided to open up in a way that she has not opened up in a very long time—and she really doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about Jane’s alleged power over her or what Kit or Leah or even Dr. Bayer will think. Grace speaks for herself in order to empty her well of soot, so that she can see the bottom of her own heart, or close to it.
“This has been the strangest and most wonderful week, and I’m not sure why,” she admits. “Maybe it’s because the puzzle pieces of this interesting class are all fitting together or because I’m tired of struggling against the ropes of my own life or because I finally realize that I have so damn much to lose.”
Grace can’t stop herself. She talks about the weight of the world that she has gently shifted off her shoulders, and about assumptions she has made about the people closest to her, including her two daughters, and about how maybe it was necessary for her to go through all of this—even the dreaded incident that brought her to class—so that she could feel again.
Feel again, as in feel the possibilities and not the bad stuff that leaks into everyone’s life. Feel again, as in opening new doors and closing ones that should have been closed a long time ago. Feel again, as in forgiving herself and others, maybe even her mother, maybe … if she can stretch that far.
“I’m guessing we all know women like me,” she continues, looking past Dr. Bayer, who does not want Grace to stop talking. “Women who focus on something like a marriage gone bad and then keep hanging on to it as if the rope is something they need to keep breathing. I think it’s all fear, you know—fear of change and of finding new parts of yourself—and that’s not always easy, is it? But I mean really, at some point we all need to shut the hell up and let go of the rope and move forward. I was divorced years ago, and I can’t believe I’m still talking about it.”
And one more thing, or maybe more than one thing. Grace shares that writing down things that are good is so much better than writing down things that are bad. It forces you to go to a place that is far better than the other place—you know, the place that probably brought them all to this very room to begin with.
Suddenly Grace isn’t sure she can stop. But she can’t bring up her relationship with her mother, her true feelings for Evan, or her daughter’s sexuality. Enough, Grace! Is there something in the coffee? She forces herself to be quiet, takes a sip of coffee to steady herself, and then dares to make eye contact with Dr. Bayer.
“Sorry,” she concludes.
Sorry? Dr. Bayer has to restrain herself from jumping up and kissing Grace. What’s happened? What’s next?
“Thank you, Grace,” Dr. Bayer says, shifting her weight and deciding to forgo what she thought was going to be a harsh lecture on moving forward. “Some people hate to write their thoughts down, even the good ones, but sometimes it’s a way to help move you in the right direction.”
Keep at it, she tells them, keep writing and perhaps at the end of class they can talk some more about that process. Dr. Bayer is dying to look at their journals again.
Grace feels as if she just shed fifty pounds. The other three women are obviously thinking about what Grace has just shared and, hopefully what they haven’t, and to give them time to recover Dr. Bayer decides to do a general review focusing on anger management. She spends a great deal of those twenty minutes re-explaining the way thoughts control feelings and how being in control means that you can also always be in control of your anger and your happiness.
Dr. Bayer, always the mistress of actions, is watching them all with her ever-knowing eyes. They are listening, but are they listening? Perhaps they’re lost thinking about what Grace said.
One part of her wants to scoop them all up and set them on her lap and let them know that she cares so much that she doesn’t sleep, has broken her whiskey rule, and has had more than one drink two nights in a row—and that she has great hope for all of them.
The other half wants to rise up, shake them, and get them all to speak up. Little by little, Olivia. One at a time is better than none at a time. She knows that something happened last week when Jane fled the county building and that eventually—before, during, or after they all head out into the sunset—she will find out what it was.
Last night Olivia spent two hours going through her class notes. She wants to make certain she hands these women the tools they need to deal with their life issues. She has to do this part of her job. What they do with the tools is supposed to be their business.
If only it were that simple.
“Okay, ladies, any questions?” she asks, folding up the notes she used during her lecture.
Nothing.
“This is wonderful. We are making progress, then. That’s what this is all about.”
Olivia stops to take a sip of her coffee. She doesn’t want the damn coffee, but it’s the only way she can focus. She has been told on numerous occasions, by people who care about her very much, that at least eighty percent of her body is made of marshmallows and raspberry je
lly. The simple sip of coffee will keep her from running around and kissing everyone. She does like these women—even Jane, who has been behaving appropriately so far but looks as if she’s lost in a very long thought.
“Now, let’s move on to one of the assignments. We never did get to discuss what you might have in common beyond this class and the activities that brought you here. I’d like to start out with that first and then move on to the things you admire about yourself.”
It appears as if all four women are swallowing at once.
“Who would like to go first?”
Before anyone can say anything, Kit turns to look at Leah, narrows her eyes, and then shifts back to face Dr. Bayer.
“Can I ask something first?”
“Certainly.”
“We never really got to hear Leah’s story and what her dreams were, and maybe it would help us—even though I assume we have all done the assignment—to know more about her life before we move on,” Kit shares with a half shrug that makes her question seem uncertain and almost brave.
Kit has developed great affection for Leah and so wants to know her and the rest of her life story, even if she’s terrified about sharing hers. Maybe Leah will say no. Maybe not.
Dr. Bayer leans forward for a moment, as if she is stretching her back, and admits that she briefed Leah when she missed the first class. But, yes, it’s true they never got a chance to hear details of her life that are terribly important.
Leah is sitting with her ankles crossed, her hands folded in her lap, as if she is about to hear a church sermon.
“Yes, Leah, would you mind telling everyone your entire story—how you came to be at the shelter, what happened before that?” Dr. Bayer asks almost tenderly, as if she planned this very moment weeks ago.
38
A Life on Hold
The small kitchen light hanging above Kit’s sink begins to flicker on and off the moment Dr. Bayer asks Leah if she will tell her story. No one notices the soft movement but Leah, who is absolutely mesmerized by the blinking light.
Before Leah begins speaking, she forces herself to look away from the light. It reminds her of something—a place, a moment, perhaps another window. But she can’t quite remember where the memory begins.
Dr. Bayer and the other women are quiet. They are all looking at Leah, who turns first to Dr. Bayer. Leah knows Dr. Bayer has heard most of her story from the shelter director. She has also read it in what must now be volumes of court documents. It was Dr. Bayer who gave her the chance to be in this group. It was Dr. Bayer who somehow understood how Leah had gotten from where she was before the shelter to Kit’s living room. It was Dr. Bayer who told her that yes, it is true, sometimes life is truly unfair.
But Dr. Bayer had never heard the story from Leah’s lips. She deserved to hear it, and hear it all. This chance, this group, was one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given her. And these other women? It really didn’t matter now, because here she was and she had this chance and she was going to keep it.
And maybe if she shares her story, her life up to this point it will also be a way for her to bury it and move forward even faster. Leah trusts Dr. Bayer, and a part of her has come to see the other women as fellow travelers, comrades, maybe—just maybe—even friends.
“Okay,” Leah whispers, turning then to look from one woman to the next before she continues.
The broken light in the kitchen catches her eye again and she is glad to look at it. It’s as if she is being hypnotized so that she can remember. All Leah has been trying to do is forget, but perhaps this is important, perhaps this is part of the process, perhaps this will help her design a Tuesday-night miracle.
Her first sentence makes time stand still.
“I got pregnant in high school the very first time I had sex,” she begins, watching the light, moving only her lips. “He was just a boy. I was barely a young woman, really only a girl.”
And then Leah’s story unfolds as if the world has stopped and nothing else matters. None of the women move. There is no sound but Leah’s voice, low, sweet, and laced with a kind of sorrow that is electric.
Leah’s family all but disowned her. They were Christians, after all, who had standards, and premarital sex was not part of the program. It didn’t matter that the sex was not consensual and that the boy was an angry, selfish person who came from a family where things like kindness, love, and respect were nonexistent.
Seventeen. A high-school senior. Alone.
There were no choices for a young girl living in rural Illinois who had been raped and who had a family who would not listen, and seemingly did not care, and very quickly orchestrated so many years of her life that Leah is embarrassed to tell them how old she is.
The boy-man, whom Leah can’t bear to name, was forced to marry her. Leah remembers those days as a kind of blur and recalls feeling as if she were being crushed from the inside out. Her younger brother and sister weren’t allowed to speak to her, her mother packed her one small bag, her father drove her to the courthouse, signed papers because she was underage, and left her there. She would never see him again.
There is a sigh of disbelief rolling through everyone except Dr. Bayer. In this day and age? Leah surely is under the age of thirty, which means this happened ten or so years ago? How can this be?
Kit and Jane are especially stunned. Leah is being totally open, sharing intimate details of her life, something neither of them has yet done in class.
Dr. Bayer senses the shock that must be surging through Kit, Grace, and Jane, and before anyone says anything she simply reaches out, rests her hand on Leah’s for just a moment, as if to say, “Keep going,” and then pulls it away.
No one else says a word.
Leah blinks, inhales, and continues to talk while everyone, Dr. Bayer included, remains temporarily paralyzed.
“I have been trying very hard to forget all of this so I can move forward and so my children can move forward,” Leah explains. “But I suppose it’s healthy to share it. Not that I’m wanting to use what happened to me as an excuse for what I did.”
This thought springs to her mind and grows larger, and Leah suddenly stops talking. Will these women now think even less of her? Will they discard her because of what they hear and tell her she should have known better? When she tells them all of her secrets, will all be lost?
“We are not here to judge, Leah,” Dr. Bayer assures her. “We all have stories; even I have a story. Sharing is very brave. Right now, you tell us what you can, what you think you need to say. But I do think your story is something that can help all of us right now.”
Leah looks surprised. Kit, Grace, and even Jane are still not moving. Surprisingly, it is Jane who speaks.
“After last week, Leah, I think we should all be able to trust each other,” Jane offers, shocking everyone in the room. “This is important for all of us. Please, tell us the rest of your story.”
Dr. Bayer knows she is going to remember this night for a long time. She thinks Leah’s story is not just important but also something the other three women need to hear. And Jane? Well, maybe Jane is finally realizing that her life of excess in all arenas, especially her personal behavior, is pretty damn ridiculous.
All eyes are back to Leah.
The boy’s father forced him to marry Leah and stayed to make certain everyone did what they were supposed to do. Of course he blamed Leah, who must once have been beautiful before the years of anguish, loss, and yearning set it. Back then she was so young and pretty. How could his son resist?
Leah recalls the months following the day she was forced into a relationship she never wanted as lonely, hard, and often very cruel.
It is hard for Leah to say the word husband. A husband is a loving companion, someone you can trust, the better part of your entire life, the one who pulls you up when you fall, causes your heart to constantly exhale with gladness, keeps his warm fingers on the pulse of your life.
This man was not a husband. He was a
mean person who resented as much as she did what they had been forced to do. They moved into an apartment so small that the only place for privacy was a bathroom that was as big as Kit’s front-hall coat closet.
How did they live? Why didn’t she run? Was there no one to help her? Where was her own mother? Was there absolutely no one to rescue her?
The women can’t help themselves. They are jumping over one another to ask these questions, and everyone but Dr. Bayer appears so astonished that it looks as if a window is open and a strong wind is blowing their faces into poses of disbelief. Eyebrows are slanted, eyes are wide, mouths gape open, chins grow taut.
You don’t understand, Leah explains. I lived in a different world.
“Have you ever been to Dunbar, Illinois? It is a small farming community. It is a place where the men are in charge of everything and where everyone goes to the same church. There is one small factory on the edge of town where they make steel components for machinery. The women knit. It may as well be a cult.”
The high school one town over, which everyone in the county attended, was Leah’s only island. She was preparing herself for a much larger world and was so close, so very close to leaping into a life she had already designed for herself inside her mind.
But that baby.
“This may be hard to understand, because you’re all such strong, successful women, but I felt as if I had to try and it was because of the baby.”
Kit’s living room is now so quiet that the soft ticking of the old kitchen clock sounds like a moving tank.
Leah tells them that she finished high school and could have garnered a scholarship to any state school. But she was six months pregnant by then, working at a gas station, and her husband, of course, was working at the local factory.