I roll my eyes. “I have never looked hot in my life.”
She plucks at the strap of the black top she gave me to wear. She paired it with jeans and black heels. I can barely walk in them. “Well, congratulations. You do now.” Helen gets a knowing look on her face. “Finn is going to faint.”
“I don’t want him to faint,” I say, but I’m smiling.
“Not literally.” She’s laughing. “But you do want to make his heart pound.”
“Maybe. Will Sonia be there tonight?” I ask, dragging out the name of the girl Helen likes. “Are you going to make her heart pound?”
Helen sweeps a hand across her body. “Damn, I hope so! I mean, look at this! What girl wouldn’t want this?”
I laugh. “I wish I had your confidence.” I reach for Helen’s beer bottle and wait to see if she swats my hand away. When she doesn’t, I take a sip. It makes me wince. It’s only my second sip of beer in the entirety of my life and this one seems even more disgusting than the first.
“Good thing you can’t really get that down,” Helen says. “I don’t want you drunk and puking at your first party.” She makes a warning face. “You need to be careful, my darling. You have zero tolerance and the alcohol will go straight to your head, and fast.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Seriously. You are not getting sick on my watch. Parties are supposed to be fun, not vomit-inducing. There’s a difference, and it all depends on this”—she grabs the bottle and holds it up as evidence—“and how much or how little of it you drink. Besides, you can’t get sick, because I need to hit on Sonia tonight!”
I stand up and nearly topple over on these heels. “I know, I know.” I slide the phone into the pocket of my jeans and follow Helen out of the bathroom, through the front door, and onto the porch, almost falling again. “You really think I can handle these on the beach?”
She glances over her shoulder. “We’ll be on the deck in the back. And until then”—Helen stops and slips her own heels off her feet—“we can go barefoot. And if you want to walk the beach, then voila!” She dangles the straps from a single finger.
I slip mine from my feet too, grateful to be rid of them, imitating the way Helen holds hers. The two of us set off across the grass. Everything about today, this evening, the promise of a party, thrums through me. The sun has just set, and the sky is the bright aqua blue of early evening, the stars like crystals across the expanse of night ahead. As we walk from yard to yard, the soft scuffing sounds of our steps break the quiet. I reach out and grab Helen’s hand.
She turns to me, hair curling over her shoulders. “What, Marlena?”
I weave my fingers through hers, searching inside myself, searching for the healing touch that has always been as familiar as the lines on my palm, even the shape of my own face. I find something else instead. “I’ve seen inside your soul,” I tell Helen. “I think I even saw this moment between us, all those years ago when you first came to me in that chair.”
As if to prove the strength of her perfect legs, Helen steps gingerly across a series of low, flat boulders that line a neighbor’s garden, agile as a gymnast. “What was it like?” She guides me left, her hand still holding mine. “My soul, I mean.”
“It was painted with hope and happiness,” I say. “With openness. Love.”
“I think you’re biased,” Helen says. Then she asks, “Are all souls like that?”
I shake my head. A cottage appears far down the street, lit up, dozens of cars parked outside and clotting the road. “Some souls are full of despair and darkness. Hopelessness. Sometimes they are gray with it, deadened by whatever troubles or sickens them. But all souls are beautiful, regardless. I feel guiltier now that I’m older, that I’ve reached into so many, and without anyone’s permission.”
“But you did have permission. All those people wanted something from you.”
The noise from the party grows louder as we get closer. “I guess. But I’m not sure people realize that by asking me to heal them, they’re opening the doors of their soul to me. Sometimes it feels like stealing, like I’m some thief who is rummaging around in their most hidden parts, prying into a place where no one else should be allowed.”
Helen stops at the edge of the yard. Music and laughter pour through the open windows. Two people, a guy and a girl, get out of a car and head up the walkway and into the front door of the cottage. “It’s okay, Marlena. It’s okay with me, if that’s what you really want to know. I’ve always felt”—she pauses a moment, blinking—“lucky to have this lasting connection with you, after everything I went through when I was little.” The shoes sway from her fingers. “I know you’ve lived a lonely life, but mine was lonely, too. It would have been lonely always, I think, if it weren’t for you.” Helen’s eyes shine in the light of the moon. “I know you don’t like thinking of yourself as a saint, but sometimes I’ve wondered how you are walking this earth as though you’re a normal girl.”
I shake my head, hard. “Don’t do that to me, Helen. It’s my mother’s dream that I act like an angel. The cost of being a healer is this”—I gesture between us—“friendship. Going to parties. Going anywhere at all. And I want to be free.”
“I want those things for you, too, Marlena, you know that,” Helen says.
I hear her hesitation. “But?”
“But what if someone is sick? What if I came to you now, in that chair? Would you turn me away?”
This question chills me. I stand there, bare feet planted in the lush, dewy grass, the cool air of evening brushing my skin, trying to figure out what to say. It is one thing to turn my back on people I’ve never met, but it is something else to think of doing that to Helen, a person I love, someone whose soul still twirls inside me like a child. “It’s a good thing I don’t have to answer that question. Not with what I know of you now, and who you are to me.” But what if it happened? What if I did have to face that situation? These questions whisper through me. “I hope I never have to worry about it.”
“I hope so, too,” Helen says. Then she forces the clouds from her gaze and eyes my feet. “Shoes, Marlena,” she commands.
I obey, grateful for the end of this inquiry. Helen slips hers on expertly, and strides up to the front door of the cottage. I totter behind her, letting the thrill of the party flow through my limbs and push all worries aside.
TWENTY-FIVE
When Finn walks onto the deck, I wave at him, trying to catch his attention.
It’s a relief to see someone I know amid Helen’s college-partying friends. She is dancing in the living room, beer in hand, jumping up and down, hair flying around her face. Sonia is there with her, dancing just as hard. I’ve been watching them through the window. Helen keeps coming to check on me, but I keep sending her back to her dancing and Sonia. They both look so happy.
I’m learning a lot tonight, like why people are always taking out their phones when they’re alone. I’d take out mine, but the only people I know to text are here, or before, they were driving. It’s not that people haven’t talked to me, or that Helen hasn’t introduced me around. But it’s strange to try to make small talk with someone I’ve just met when we have nothing obvious in common, and when the person doesn’t need something from me, like healing. I can change my clothes and read fashion magazines and buy bikinis and hold a beer and even sip it in public, but that doesn’t stop me from being the Marlena I’ve always been, which is a Marlena who has no idea, really, how to be at a party.
It’s like I am at the party, but not of the party. Just like I’ve always been in the world, not of it. I don’t like how difficult it is to shake my healer life, my healer outsiderness. I am ever the anchorite, heavy curving iron wrapped around my ankle and dragging me down to the bottom of the sea.
Finn finally sees me waving and smiles.
“Hi,” he says when he reaches the edge of the deck. He eyes the beer in my hand and holds up his own. “I didn’t know you drank beer.”
I laugh. “I
don’t. Not really. This one is mainly for show.”
“I think that’s probably a good thing. You don’t want to drink too much.”
“Spoken like Helen,” I say.
“Sounds like Helen knows what she’s talking about.”
“Helen told me a party stops being a party when you start puking your guts out.”
“Wise woman,” Finn says.
I want to fling myself on Finn, throw my arms around him. What is my problem? How does this work, this liking-a-boy thing? I have no idea how to behave or control myself when with one. I lean forward on the railing, because I don’t trust my limbs, and look onto the beach. Finn does the same. The moonlight shines off the ocean. We glance at each other briefly. I want to touch his cheek. His neck.
I hold up my beer instead. “Cheers?” I say, then add, “I’ve always wanted to make a toast.”
“Then you shall.” Finn tips the neck of his beer bottle until it makes a glassy thunk against mine. He grins. “I thoroughly enjoyed getting your messages tonight.”
“Well, yours were confusing.”
Finn laughs. “You’ll get the hang of it. Besides”—he pulls his phone out of his pocket to show me, then puts it back—“these things are overrated.”
I study him. “I guess, now that I think of it, I never really see you on yours.”
“I try my best to pay attention to the people I’m with. I try not to look at it too much, in general.”
“But what if I text you later? Will you look at my message?”
He leans a little closer to me. “If I know it’s from you, then definitely.”
My heart does a little spin at this, at his nearness and his words.
“If it isn’t the famous Finn,” Helen calls out from behind us. She is making her way through the crowd on the deck. I’m grateful for the interruption, because without it I may soon act on my inappropriate impulses. Helen is barefoot again. She doesn’t hold out her hand to Finn and instead reaches around him for a hug. How does she do that so easily?
“I feel like I already know you,” she says to him.
“Nice to meet you, Helen.”
We form a circle. Me and two of the people I care about most in the world. A tiny party of three.
Helen looks Finn up and down. “So you’re the genius.”
Finn nudges me. “Aw, Marlena? Really?”
I like the casual way he touches me and I want to nudge him back. But what if I fell on top of him in the process? “Why are you embarrassed about being smart?”
“Yeah,” Helen says, laughing. She gestures behind her at the rest of the party. “There aren’t too many other geniuses here. I think it’s good to have at least one present. You know, just in case things get out of hand.” Helen grabs my beer and holds the bottle up to the light coming from the house. “Wow, it’s practically still full.” She puts an arm around my shoulder. “Good job. I told this one no puking.”
All of this casual touching is bolstering my spirit. And making me wonder how I ever lived without it.
Finn chuckles. “Yes, Marlena reiterated this excellent advice.”
Helen lets go of my shoulder and turns to me. “You guys should walk to the old bridge. They took down most of it when they built the new one, but they left a bit for the fishermen.” Helen points into the darkness toward a rectangle of lights over the water. “It’s just over there.” Finn turns to look and Helen leans into me to whisper, “He’s supercute. You should take advantage and go be alone with him!” Then she takes a step back, addressing us both again. “Okay, lovebirds,” she sings. “I’m back to my dancing and my Sonia!”
“Enjoy. We’ll be around,” Finn says.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” Helen tells him. “Marlena has keys to my place and no curfew. But be good to her or I’ll sic Mama Oliveira on you,” she adds with a twirl and begins weaving her way across the deck, beer held high over her head.
“Helen!” I shout after her, but she’s already heading into the house. I turn to Finn. “I can’t be held responsible for anything that comes out of her mouth.”
But Finn is laughing. “I think I like Helen. I think we should take her advice and check out the bridge.” The deck is more and more crowded, the biggest group of people circling a keg. “Unless you want to stay?”
I shake my head. “I think I’ve had enough of my first party.” I sigh. “I can’t manage to sit through a movie and now I’m ready to leave a party after an hour.”
Finn grins. “I think you’d just rather be alone with me.”
I bite my lip to hide my smile. “Whatever you say, genius.” I gesture toward the stairs on the deck that lead to the beach. “After you.”
Finn and I push through the crowd. Before my feet hit the sand, I take off my shoes and dangle them from my finger like Helen showed me. As Finn and I walk, he slips his hand into my free one. A rush flows over my skin all the way up the back of my neck. Each time we touch, something happens to me. I feel happiness, I feel hope, I feel possessive. Like I want Finn to myself and for nobody else. As we step across the cool sand, I’m proud of myself for not tackling him.
How do people know what to do? Why aren’t there boyfriend instructions?
Is Finn even my boyfriend?
He squeezes my hand. “What are you thinking? You look lost in thought.”
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing I’ll tell you.”
“In that case, I’ll have to convince you otherwise.”
We reach the old bridge and sit down on a bench at the very end of it, one that looks onto the blackness of the ocean. Out here, it’s silent aside from the soft sound of waves lapping against the pilings beneath us, and the occasional splash of a fish. “Thank you for coming to rescue me from my first party.”
“I didn’t know you needed rescuing,” Finn says.
His profile is lit by the moon. I wish I had the guts to inch closer. “You’ve saved me more than once. The first time was after I fought with my mother and you came to pick me up in your truck.”
Finn shifts, and his thigh presses lightly against mine. I make sure not to move. “Well, I’m happy to ‘save’ you or ‘rescue’ you whenever you want,” he says. “It’s about time someone else does the saving in your life.”
I close my eyes to let Finn’s words sink in. Without having to ask, without even really knowing, Finn just gave me a gift I’ve been yearning for as long as I’ve been old enough to wish for it.
He reaches out and tilts my chin upward with his finger. “What just happened, Marlena? Where did you go?”
“I’m still here,” I tell him, opening my eyes. There is longing in his, and I wonder if he can see the longing in mine. People have always looked at me with longing, but the kind I see in Finn is different. It makes me feel real.
The stars are bright in this dark place over the ocean. There’s no nearby city to block them out. The night glimmers.
I place a hand over my own heart, feeling it pound. “What’s happening, Finn?”
Finn turns to face me. He leans closer. “What do you mean?”
The air is velvety as it moves between us. “I almost can’t catch my breath. It’s like I’ve gone running.”
A smile drifts across Finn’s lips. “I think it means you want to kiss me.”
I laugh softly. “I’ve been wondering how people manage to make second kisses happen after first ones.”
“Oh, Marlena, you really are funny,” he says.
“Is your heart pounding, too?” I decide not to resist my urges any longer and reach out, placing my hand against Finn’s shirt, right where I know his heart resides behind the cage of his ribs. He closes his eyes. I press my palm into his chest until I feel it beating.
Finn lets out a whoosh of breath and moves my hand away. He shifts farther from me on the bench.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” he says, but too quickly.
I study him in the darkness. What is he holding back?
“Okay,” I say. Finn will share when he’s ready. I can wait. I need to. It’s what normal people do.
There is relief on his face when I don’t press him. Then his eyebrows arch and he inches my way again, until his face is all I see. “You were talking about kissing me?”
I lean toward him. “You were talking about kissing me back?”
Our lips are close. I can feel the warmth of his breath. Finn’s hands find the small of my back and he draws me to him. His lips brush mine, barely, before they press a little harder. His hands find their way into my hair and my hands find their way inside his shirt, across his smooth, warm skin. We stay there, gripping each other, holding each other close, until everything becomes urgent, our breathing, our mouths, our tongues. This is unlike our first kiss at the healing rocks, which was slow and sweet and short. But also like it, too, because somehow I know exactly how to kiss Finn, even though the way we are kissing is completely new. I let my body think for me, speak for me, with words I didn’t know I had.
The instinct to heal, the one that flips on in me so my body can take over and reach out to the body of another, is similar to the one that switches on in me now. I didn’t know the body could feel hunger like this, for a kiss, for someone’s presence, to see their face. I am greedy for Finn as I look at him between our equally greedy kisses. It’s all I know and all I can think. I feel like I can see inside Finn’s soul, inside his heart, but not in the way I’m used to. It burns red like the setting sun and is as beautiful and powerful as the ocean. I let it warm me. I let myself bask in it. I find myself wanting to paint it.
When the two of us pull apart, I start to laugh.
“What?”
“Wow,” I say.
“I know.” Finn’s hands are still wrapped around me. “Lately, I forget that you’re a famous healer. I told you I didn’t think I could, but it turns out I can.”
“Lately, I forget I was, too,” I say, trying not to linger too long on the fact that, without even intending to, I phrased my life as a healer in the past tense.
The Healer Page 17