The Healing Party

by Micheline Lee

  ‘Mum had a tumour as big as a fist above her stomach. The doctor said it was like a ticking time bomb, that it could burst any minute,’ Anita said.

  I gasped. ‘I didn’t know that. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Who else knew this? Did you know, Patsy?’

  Patsy shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t.’ Her face was pale and tense.

  ‘Did Mum know?’ I asked.

  ‘Look, what’s the point in bringing all this up?’ said Anita.

  ‘Did Mum know?’ I asked, louder.

  ‘Yes, Mum knew!’ Anita yelled. ‘Listen! If it wasn’t the tumour above her stomach, then it was the one in her spine that killed her. It doesn’t matter. She had cancer!’

  I heard my voice breaking. ‘What about the miracle, the healing?’

  Anita looked at me with a combination of pity and disgust. ‘The miracle you never believed in?’

  ‘You all said she was going to be healed,’ I said, holding back tears.

  Maria came out. ‘Shhh. We can hear you from inside. You’ll upset Dad.’

  We looked up at his studio window. He was watching us, partially concealed by a curtain.

  I turned to Maria. ‘Did you know? About the tumour the doctor said was a ticking time bomb?’

  Maria scratched her face with both hands. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Patsy and me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t really think of it … Sorry. She was going to be healed.’

  ‘Look, the main thing is to stay positive.’ Anita was being placatory now. ‘And as Dad said,’ she continued, ‘it wasn’t the miracle we expected, but there were other miracles. God works in mysterious ways. Now we need to move forward.’

  I hated her work voice. Her ‘let’s be nice and reasonable’ voice. ‘I don’t know how you do that,’ I said. ‘When the miracle doesn’t happen, you just change tack. You must be a lot more sophisticated than me. I can’t do that doublethink. Or is it all just pretence for you?’

  Anita’s eyes hardened, and a mirthless smile creased her face. ‘So selfish.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘So selfish.’

  ‘You think we’re all better off pretending, don’t you? You think it’s harmless,’ I said.

  Anita threw her hands up in the air. ‘Just let her stew and feel sorry for herself,’ she said to the others, walking back into the house.

  Patsy stepped closer to me. ‘The miracle has manifested!’ She was breathless. ‘Look at how many people Mum inspired to come to the Lord. And I’m not anorexic anymore. Haven’t you seen? I’ve started eating.’ She gave me a desperate smile.

  ‘That’s good you’re eating, Patsy,’ I said.

  ‘It’s okay to feel disappointed, Natasha. I was disappointed with Jesus too,’ said Maria, her eyes compassionate and sickly sweet. ‘But then I forgave Him. I know He is teaching us something.’

  I looked up at the window again. Dad was still there. ‘I need to ask Dad if I can take the ramp down. So I can mow the yard,’ I said, and went inside.

  *

  I climbed the stairs two steps at a time before I lost courage. The door was ajar and I entered without knocking.

  ‘Dad, I want to take down the ramp,’ I said.

  He was studying a large photomontage on an easel. His face, in profile, had a deep and intellectual cast. I wanted to apologise for interrupting him before I had even started. Without turning his attention from the piece, he addressed me.

  ‘That’s fine. Take the ramp down. It has served its purpose. You feel your mother wasn’t healed and you are angry with Jesus. I saw you talking with your sisters. Do not hurt the memory of your mother, please, by quarrelling with them. I pray one day you will have the same spiritual maturity and wisdom that they do.’

  Images covered the studio walls. He stood up, the man at the centre of his creative output, and turned to me. ‘I believe with all my heart that the miracle did occur. The outward deliverance is not granted, but the inward deliverance is glorious. One day you will see it. She found peace. She found forgiveness.’

  A million inexpressible thoughts and feelings screamed inside me. His voice continued, authoritative but lilting. ‘Did you see how happy she was? She prayed every day that you would reject your New Age self-gods and find Jesus. I know that she is in heaven now, interceding for us. Your mother was a saint.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t!’ I heard myself say, and it was like in dreams, when I was falling and falling and unable to scream, until finally I found my voice. ‘Don’t say she’s a saint!’ I sounded shrill and ugly, but couldn’t stop. ‘You make her meaningless when you do that. She suffered. You tried to silence her. We couldn’t even talk to her when she was dying. You make us all pretend. You make us deny things that happen right in front of us.’

  For a moment he was too shocked to speak. ‘Ask for forgiveness, ask for forgiveness right now from the Lord for your abject thoughts. Your mother would be very disappointed. She and I have always been forgiving of you. Consider whether it was you who didn’t want to talk with her. You wouldn’t even go to church for her.’

  ‘I’m not listening to you. You lie all the time. You lied to her and you lie to us.’

  He was livid now, his face contorted. He jabbed a finger at me. ‘You are the bad, destructive child. You hurt her, but most of all you offend Jesus.’

  ‘No, you hurt and humiliated her. You cheated on her from the start. We knew about the affairs – everyone knew. Then you became born again. You did try to be good – I’ll give you that. But then you became the great holy man and you still couldn’t keep your hands off the girls. And Bonnie. We all knew it deep down. But you made us think we didn’t know it. I don’t know how you do that.’

  His eyes widened, big and terrible. ‘You are mad! The devil is using you to attack me.’

  I saw the fear in his eyes, but kept going. ‘You made Mum doubt what she saw with her own eyes. You told her the demon of suspicion and jealousy was in her. You —’

  Suddenly Anita was there. She raised her arm and struck me hard across the face. I stumbled. Maria, appearing at my side, put out a hand to steady me. Dad collapsed into a chair. Maria went to him. Anita dragged me by the arm out of the studio and down the stairs. At their foot, Patsy stood with her back tense against the wall. At first I thought she was softly wailing, then I realised she was singing in tongues.

  Anita, sweating and panting, yanked me across the lounge room. In her rage, she was far stronger than me. I couldn’t stand the pain of her nails biting into my flesh. ‘Let me go!’ I cried. ‘What are you, his bodyguard? Why, you’re more angry with him than I will ever be.’

  ‘You bitch!’ she snarled. ‘How could you do this when everyone is trying so hard? I’ll never forgive you. Just get away from me. We don’t want to see your face.’ She let go and I walked out the front door.

  *

  The oval was too close to home. I had no money or bag, so I just walked, turning randomly, going deeper into the labyrinth of residential streets. I walked fast at first, striking the footpath. But soon it felt as though all my energy had drained away. My limbs became heavy and slow and I longed to stop. There was nothing in these streets but rows of houses shut tight. If I stopped to rest in front of one, it would arouse suspicion. When it was almost sunset, I turned around and headed back to the oval.

  My cheek was still hot and throbbing where Anita had struck me. Although it was dusk, the oval in the half-light reminded me of the early-morning walks I would take before getting Mum out of bed. How different, though, the feel of those walks. With the beginning of each day, there had been new hope – maybe this would be the day I would talk to Mum, find common ground and get to know her better.

  If only I could have told her I loved her. She was in a coma when I finally did. Why didn’t I say it on the last day I saw her? I winced as the image surfaced that I had been trying to suppress. She was sitting at the hospital window with its glass so thick that no sound penetrated; the light th
at filtered through was weak and grey. ‘I’ll see you at Christmas,’ I had said, and walked out. I saw her turn and stare out the window with haunted, grieving eyes. She knew it was our last time. I could have turned back then and told her I loved her.

  Liar! Liar! I punched my cheek where it was sore. I was so good at lying to myself. I could have stayed. I should have stayed. I could only think I’d been punishing her. On the night I stayed with Mum in the hospital, after everyone left, taking their rejoicing and verve with them, I had reminded her that I was leaving the next day. In the deathly quiet, in the smallest of voices, she had said, ‘Do you have to go?’ I had pretended I didn’t hear.

  *

  Maria opened the door. ‘Good, you’re back.’ She ushered me in, locking first the security door and then the inner door. She double-checked the locks. Anita and Patsy had left. I told her I would cook dinner. She said Anita had already bought some noodles, but Dad wouldn’t eat any. She was wary and distant, though not hostile.

  I climbed the stairs to his studio. There was no light coming from under his door. I knocked. No one answered. I knocked again and pushed it open. The lamp on the landing cast a triangle of light on the studio floor. Beyond that, I saw darkness, shadows and menacing shapes. I could smell the chemicals and paints, and underneath that, sweat and something bitter. Now I saw him, a black, breathing form, skulking in the back corner.

  ‘Dad? Dad? Are you all right?’ I searched for the light switch on the wall.

  ‘Leave the light off!’ His voice came out strangled and animal-like.

  I felt my way across the room to him. He was crouched on the ground. I knelt down near him. ‘Dad, are you okay? What are you doing on the floor?’

  ‘Leave me,’ he growled. His breath was loud and ragged, his shoulders rose and fell heavily. An intense tang came from him, the smell of heat and shame. I felt we were back in Rowling Road.

  My eyes, grown more accustomed to the dark, could now make out parts of his face – the gleam of tooth and eyeball, and his mouth gaping and panting.

  ‘Dad? We know how hard you try. We all love you.’ I took a deep breath and started to shiver uncontrollably. ‘I love you.’

  He was silent. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Thank you. You’re a good girl. Don’t be angry.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad, for hurting you with what I said before.’

  ‘I forgive you,’ he said. ‘You didn’t know what you were saying.’ His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I knew what I was saying.’

  ‘You were angry with God for taking your mother. I understand.’

  I shook my head. He probably couldn’t see me in the dark. ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘Your mother loved all her children very much. I know I have been defective. Sometimes I feel like a monster. I will be in purgatory for a very long time.’ He gasped sharply, then he was sobbing and heaving.

  Tears started to fall down my face, too. I tried not to make a sound. I took his hand and he gripped mine back with a warmth that flooded through me. I was on the verge of telling him I had failed Mum and that I wished I had stayed. The memory that I couldn’t trust him stopped me from doing so.

  ‘At first I felt, oh no, now that Irene is dead, she will know all my thoughts and all my deeds past and present and all the sins I have hidden from her.’ He shook his head from side to side. ‘But God put on my heart that Jesus wipes the slate clean. He not only forgives, but forgets. So she will not see anything.’

  He believed in God’s mercy. I was struck by his innocence – the innocence that in spite of everything, in spite of his need to dominate and control, had stayed alive.

  ‘You must look at the big picture. Within the big picture, your mother was a saint,’ he said. We were silent again. ‘Yes, your mother was a saint. Now go and get some sleep.’

  He would not get up or let me turn on the light, despite my entreaties. I left him there on the floor, my insides twisted with love, pity and guilt.

  An hour later he was still up there. Maria and I tried to take him some food and drink.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he growled when he heard us on the staircase.

  It took me a long while to get to sleep that night. I lay in bed listening for his footsteps. I thought of Dad alone and tormented in the blackness of his studio, and of Mum locked up in the cold church annex with its teetering chairs stacked to the ceiling. Pushing away thoughts of her coffined body, I fixed an image of Mum’s essence as something diaphanous and softly sparkling, and wondered where it might be.

  *

  The family, Ed, the drama group and two funeral directors arrived at the church early to set up for the service. The church was not yet unlocked, so for some minutes we milled around, tensely exchanging commiserations on the concrete steps. Dad leant against the wall like an old man.

  Dad had slept in his studio. When he came down in the morning, he walked stooped over, with slow shaky steps. At breakfast, he was quiet and aloof, passively chewing the noodles that we served to him and mumbling flat responses to the questions we asked. Before we left for the funeral, Maria tried to get him to pray with her but he waved her aside. She looked at me in consternation. I was sickened to think what my outburst yesterday had done to him. I wondered that Maria did not condemn me.

  Now Anita, taking Dad’s arm, guided him to the piece of lawn at the front of the church where there was a bench under a willow tree. Patsy followed a few steps behind, looking lost. Anita brushed the leaves off the bench and waited for Dad to sit down. Then she went up to Maria, who was on the stairs, talking to Ed. Anita had not looked at me once all morning.

  ‘Tell everyone to gather round,’ Anita told Maria.

  ‘Can everyone come down here for a prayer before we go in?’ Maria called out.

  We clustered around Dad where he sat on the bench. I wore dark glasses to hide a purple bruise that had come up under my left eye from Anita’s blow. Even through my glasses, everything was too bright. The tree swayed in slow motion, each blade of grass was too precise, the wind and voices too loud and artificial.

  The group, even the funeral directors, formed a circle around Dad. His hands were trembling, his mouth panting. He appeared to be barely in control. The night before, in the darkness of the studio, when my eyes made out his shadowy form in the corner, I had had the impression of a crouching, injured animal. Images had come to me of Dad’s caged brother, and of the chaotic narrow house on Rowling Road. I remembered the out-of-control fear I would feel back then that something terrible and disastrous was about to happen. Unable to breathe, my head prickling, I felt the same fear now as we stood in a circle waiting for Dad to start.

  What would happen if he was stripped of his beliefs? It was terrifying to imagine. As much as I fought against the Charismatics, I had not questioned the family belief that our faith had kept the wolves at bay. It had stopped Dad from going off the rails, from leaving Mum, and the family from falling apart. We had been saved.

  Dad did not look up from the ground. He started to mumble, ‘What is heaven like? Irene knows. The Lord knew it was time for her reward in heaven.’ We strained to hear him. ‘Tell me, what is heaven like?’ he said.

  We were silent, not knowing if he was talking to himself or to us.

  ‘Are you asking us a question, Dad?’ said Anita.

  ‘Describe heaven, someone, come on,’ he said, his voice quavering.

  ‘The bible says the walls are made of jewels and the road paved with gold,’ said an older member of the drama group.

  ‘Heaven is better than that,’ Dad said louder. He looked up now. His face, usually so animated when he talked, was drawn and severe, his thick lips downturned. ‘Someone else. What is heaven like?’

  ‘There’s manna from heaven. It’s full of the love and the joy of Jesus?’ said Maria.

  ‘It’s better than that,’ Dad said. ‘What is the most beautiful thing you can imagine?’

  Troy stepped forward. ‘Angels singing, every day is a sunri
se and every single one of our loved ones is with us.’

  Dad stood up. ‘It’s better than that! Whatever any of you might say, I say back – heaven is better than that. Our earthly minds cannot even begin to contemplate its magnificence.’ His eyes were fierce. There was a desperation in them.

  ‘Let us hold hands and pray. We thank you, Lord, for the miracle of Irene,’ he began. As he prayed, he slowly came back. His voice growing stronger with each word, he exhorted us to rise, to mingle our tears of grief with tears of happiness, for the miracle had occurred. ‘Each and every one of you,’ he proclaimed, ‘your life has been changed and you will now go out and inspire others. Today will be a victory for the Lord.’

  Then he cried, tears rolling down his dignified face, and Bridie and another member of the drama group comforted him.

  He was in fine form. With each triumphant word he uttered, I felt myself sinking. After the dread I had felt that he would be somehow changed, I was shocked that it was not relief I felt now, but devastation. I wondered what it would have been like if he had broken down, cried words of shame and regret, if he had even renounced the prophecy and the miracle.

  A dangerous, powerful thought took hold of me. What if they had not been born again? What if the day Dad and Mum gave their lives to Jesus had not been our salvation? What if it had actually stopped us from growing, from seeing things, from finding courage? The thoughts were making my head spin. I leant against the tree to stop myself from falling.

  The doors to the church opened. The group on the lawn gathered up guitars, flowers, costumes and their belongings and made their way inside. Maria called me in.

  ‘Just a minute,’ I told her. I sat on the bench under the tree. The funeral would start soon. Mum’s body would lie in the coffin at the foot of the altar. Dad would give the remembrance speech next to the altar. From there, he would descend the red-carpeted steps, dragging the microphone, to sing ‘I Believe’, standing by the coffin. Anita would be mistress of ceremonies, Patsy would sing and lead the music ministry, and Maria would perform a short piece accompanied by four members of the drama group. They were going to run down the three aisles, writhe and roll on the carpet, and shout ‘Jesus!’ at the end, with arms held high.