Healing Waters

by Nancy Rue

  When she was gone, I stood motionless in the middle of the kitchen, wrapped in unbecoming white terry and the realization that Marnie and Chip had not had an affair.

  It should have been a marvelous moment that lifted at least that one layer of torment from my soul. I should have snatched up my cell phone and called Chip to apologize for doubting him.

  I would have, if she hadn’t asked me that question.

  Just when I thought I was on a path, when I thought I could take the next thing and the next and the next until I got through it all and left it behind me, why did someone always have to hurl a firebrand across it? Something to burn in the truth. My one dream was gone, and I could never get away from the loss. It would always be there, eating me empty, creating caverns I had to work so hard to fill up.

  I went to the refrigerator and leaned my forehead against it. The firebrand was never anything I could throw back, screaming, “How dare you say that to me? How dare you remind me?” It was always an innocent comment, a harmless question. Like, Are you two ever gonna have kids? Harmless to anyone else, but it seared a hole in me, and the emptiness it left gaped like huge, aching jaws.

  Dear God. Take away the pain. The awful, gnawing, insatiable pain.

  God didn’t. He never did. It just stayed there, chewing me up inside, and I couldn’t stand it.

  I stumbled to the pantry and didn’t turn on the light. I knew where everything was, and I grabbed it blindly and tore open packages. I stuffed the cashews on top of the dreams. I chewed up the chocolate chips and the anger. I swallowed the ice cream and the cake and the chicken cordon bleu, and with it the pain. I bit and tore and gulped until my mother and Sonia and Chip and hope were hidden once more in my gut.

  Heart thudding hard and fast inside my chest, I took stock of the casualties. An entire can of mixed nuts. A half-pint of Blue Bell peach. Two cold slabs of Marnie’s favorite chicken. The rest of the carrot cake.

  I punched my forearm across my mouth and tried not to vomit. I was fighting back the heaving when a voice spoke softly from the shadows.

  “Lucia?”

  I turned from the counter and looked up at Sullivan Crisp.

  Blimpish and gluttonous and ashamed, I stared at him and waited for the disgust and the contempt. He only pressed his hands to the countertop and tilted his head at me. His eyes shimmered.

  “Lucia,” he said, “I can help you with this.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sully took a sip of the worst coffee he’d tasted since the last time he’d lost his head and bought a cup at a gas station. It was instant, the only thing he could find in the guesthouse, minus his usual three sugars and two creams. Before this day was over, he was finding a Starbucks.

  He picked up the microphone. He couldn’t risk going over to the main house for a cup. Last night’s foray for sweet tea had resulted in finding poor Lucia surrounded by the remains of her binge. The biggest difference between that scene and the earlier one with Sonia was the debris that lay around her. The smallest difference was the pain. Sonia he couldn’t help now. Lucia he might.

  Although whether she would continue to work with him was still up in the air. He’d tried to lessen her humiliation, offering to help her look at this thing when she was ready, keeping judgment out of his voice, leaving before she had to meet his eyes for too long. But no amount of tactful sensitivity could have lessened the shame he saw. It would be hard for her face him again.

  Which led him here.

  Sully clicked Record and propped his feet on the desk.

  “What I Know to Be True: Part Three,” he said. “I’ve posed the question: ‘Why, God, if You are such a loving being and You care about every bit of toe jam and belly button lint that affects us’—I think the Bible says that much more poetically—‘why, then, do You allow suffering?’ It’s a question most of us have asked, especially in our own personal moments of misery. I don’t have the answer yet, because I think that I, at least, have been directing my query to the wrong place. Rather than asking God, why not put the question to Suffering itself?”

  Sully got to his feet and paced along the low bookcase under the window. What he had discovered to be a collection of Sonia’s books and CDs and DVDs seemed to watch him accusingly as he continued on.

  “When Suffering grabs me by the heart, as long as we’re that close, why not take the opportunity to say, ‘What’s your deal? What’s this about?’ Since we’re spending so much time together, can’t I ask, ‘Look, what do you want from me? What can I do to get you to leave me alone?’ Or better yet, ‘What do I have to stop doing so you can heal me?’ ”

  Sully ran his hand across Sonia’s titles. He was surprised they didn’t leap out and drag him to his knees so he could repent and be delivered before God.

  “Some of you may think this is blasphemous, but I’m not going for the shock factor. I know this to be true: since we cannot eliminate suffering in this world, we must have a relationship with it, because God apparently does. Rather than merely hate it—which we have every reason to do at times—or try to eliminate it completely, which we can’t do—we have to get to know it, as it so intimately knows us. That is truth. Where that takes us, we have yet to find out.”

  Sully clicked Stop and pressed the mic to his forehead. “And, Father,” he whispered, “please, please, let me.”

  GH

  “What should I draw next?”

  I looked from the sorted mail on the desk to the floor of Sonia’s office, which I could barely see for the pictures of pigs and puppies and flowers Bethany had been making all afternoon. It was as if she had discovered a new land she could romp in at will. Only the shimmer across the pert bridge of her nose kept me from sinking into despair that she had never been brought to this land before. I was neck-deep in despair already; any further and I would smother in its muck.

  “Draw a tree,” I said.

  “Is it okay if I don’t? I already drew two trees.”

  “Bethie,” I said, “you can draw absolutely anything you want.”

  “May I draw you?”

  I stopped, mouth already wrapped around an “absolutely.” What would she come up with? I had visions of a large ball with hair and arms and legs, food spurting from its greedy mouth.

  I forced a smile. “I would love for you to draw me,” I said.

  She pulled her tiny lips into their pink knot and bent over a clean sheet of paper, concentration etched between her fine, black eyebrows. I was so envious. Although I’d spent the last thirty minutes sorting the days’, perhaps weeks’ worth of mail heaped in a basket beside Sonia’s desk, I hadn’t been able to focus. At least not on what I was doing. The ability to concentrate on what I didn’t want to think about was painfully keen: Sullivan Crisp had caught me in the aftermath of gorging myself on every piece of food that, as Grandma Broc would have said, wasn’t nailed down.

  Beneath the bills I hoped to be passing on to that Patrick person, if he was still with us, was the disappointment that I couldn’t go back to Sullivan now, not after he’d seen how out of control I was. He had offered, but I couldn’t survive one more person telling me that I just needed to use some willpower, that I just had to want to be thin, that I just didn’t have enough faith, because if I did, I wouldn’t be fat.

  Until last night, I had believed that when Sully looked at me, he didn’t see an obese slob. Now that I had shown him to what depths I would sink to remain that way, how could he see anything else?

  I studied several of the envelopes addressed to Sonia personally, most in hesitant handwriting. Both Sullivan and Wesley had said I needed to stop living Sonia’s life and start living my own. But what life was that? The one where I stuffed myself numb?

  Could I even go there?

  I found a silver letter opener with an ornate cross at the end, and slit open a letter.

  I miss your voice on the radio, it said. It has always guided me out of my pain into the arms of Jesus. I try to go there by myself, but it’s hard w
ithout your encouragement.

  I smoothed it out and stapled the envelope to it and cut open another one.

  You got me through my son going to prison and my daughter being addicted to drugs—but, Sonia, my grandson has been diagnosed with leukemia, and I just don’t know if I can go on. What could God be doing in this? You always seem to know.

  I did the same with that one, and the next, and the next. They were all alike, all crying out to Sonia for relief from the agony of their lives as if she alone were the guru who could lead them to salvation. By the time I had twenty-five of them in a neat stack, I could feel the pain vibrating from the pages, up into my throat, but I kept reading.

  You are so full of it, Sonia Cabot, the next one said. If what you say is true, that God deals with those who refuse to do His will, then you’re being dealt with, aren’t you?

  I plastered my hand to my mouth so I wouldn’t gasp out loud and flipped the envelope over. No return address. The postmark was only half there.

  This isn’t the end of what you’ve got coming to you, the letter continued. I can guarantee you that.

  I dropped the paper on the desk and shrank back from it. The air in the room went dead. Dear God—what am I supposed to do with this? Dear—

  The phone rang, and I thought I’d been shot. It had to ring a second time before I trusted myself to pick it up.

  “Is this Lucia Coffey?”

  “Yes,” I said, guardedly.

  “This is Dr. Ukwu’s nurse.”

  I pressed my hand to my forehead and melted into it.

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry—can I help you? How is Sonia? Is she all right?”

  “She’s holdin’ her own. We takin’ good care of her.”

  “Does she need me?”

  “No, no, she would just like to have some of her things.”

  “Look what I drew.”

  “If you have a pencil, you could write these down.”

  “I drew this for you.”

  “Just a minute.” I unearthed a pen from under the pile of mail. “Go ahead.”

  “See—I drew it.”

  I put up a wait-a-minute finger to Bethany and pressed the phone tighter to my ear.

  “Maybe some of her own clothes, you know, something a little more stylish than the pj’s we hand out.”

  A small cry went up from my elbow. Bethany turned and waddled like a frightened duck from the room. I could hear her whimpers down the hall.

  “And her pillow. And she would like for you to talk to—”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Can I call you back?”

  I didn’t wait for her answer. I was down the hall, calling out Bethany’s name, probably before the good nurse hung up. My heart throbbed in my throat.

  I found Bethany up in her room, curled into the round cream chair in the corner. With the rag around her neck, she no longer whimpered, but tears filmed her eyes.

  I pulled the matching chair close to, but not touching, hers and sat gingerly. By some miracle, my rear fit into it.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she pulled the rag over her mouth. “Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I interrupted you. Please don’t send me away.”

  I wanted to shriek, What? “I don’t understand,” I said instead. “Where would I send you?”

  She scrambled from the chair, careful to keep the neck rag in place, and got down on all fours beside the bed. I watched as she pulled out a box with a picture of Cinderella, Disney version, on it. With heartbreaking precision, and the familiar tip of a pink tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, Bethany opened it and took out what appeared to be a brochure.

  “Here,” she said, and put it in my hand.

  NEW CREATION CHRISTIAN ACADEMY was printed above photographs of girls barely older than Bethany in gray uniforms, heads bowed in a chapel, hands raised demurely in a classroom, legs kicking at a ball on a soccer field. We educate body, mind, and spirit, the text proclaimed, in a full-time residence program.

  A boarding school.

  “Where did you get this?” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “My mom.”

  “She gave this to you?”

  Bethany nodded. “She said when I got old enough I would get to go there. Only . . .”

  She pulled the rag over her mouth again.

  “Only what?” I said.

  “Only I don’t want to,” she said through it, “because I don’t know how to do any of that stuff.”

  She poked a finger at the photographs, and the film of tears spilled silently over.

  “Did she say you had to go there?” I said.

  “No. Holly did.”

  “Who is Holly?”

  “The nanny before Yvonne.” Bethany frowned. “Or before Katie. I don’t remember.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Holly isn’t the boss of you, and neither is Katie.”

  “Are you?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “I am now, until your mom gets better.”

  She shook her head. “My mom is never the boss of me. I have to leave her alone so she can work, and Holly said if I get in her way, she will send me there.” With one more stab at the brochure, she burst into tears.

  I no longer cared whether she wanted to be touched or not. I took her in my arms and rocked her sobbing self against my chest.

  “Nobody is sending you anywhere as long as I’m here,” I said. “And you can interrupt me any time you need to. You come first.”

  She stopped crying, and for a moment I credited myself with comforting her. But when she sat up, she almost literally sucked the tears back in and said, “I’m all better now.”

  She wanted this conversation to be over, but I couldn’t leave it at that.

  “Bethany,” I said, “I don’t think your mom would ever send you away if you didn’t want to go. Those nannies weren’t telling you the truth.”

  “Yes, she would.” Bethany repositioned the rag. “She always sends people away when they’re bad.”

  “Are you sure about that? Sometimes people just quit, you know.”

  “She sent Hudson away. He baked cookies for me, and then she got mad at him and he went away.”

  “Not because he baked you cookies,” I said.

  “No, he did something else bad, I think. And Holly was bad. She stole stuff from my mom. I heard Marnie say it. And I guess Uncle Chip was bad because he never came back.” Her face began to crumple. “Will you please promise to be good so my mom doesn’t send you away too?”

  She fought hard to keep the tears back. I wanted to tell her to let them go until there were none left to torment her, but she seemed determined to get them under control. I knew the feeling.

  “Do you see this thing about the place you don’t want to go?” I said, waving the brochure.

  She nodded.

  “You’re not the one going away. It is.”

  I tore the paper into as many pieces as I could until I’d reduced it to a pile of rubbish in my hand.

  “Follow me,” I said.

  She trailed me into the bathroom, where I opened the lid to the toilet.

  “Would you like to do the honors?” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means flush this awful place down the potty.”

  The round moon lit up, and with the same painstaking exactness with which she did everything else, she scooped up a handful of pieces and poured them ceremoniously into the toilet. I let her push the handle, and we watched as the thing she feared circled and disappeared.

  “Now then,” I said, “do you think there is room for me to bring another bed into your room?”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Because I would like to room with you from now on, if that’s okay with you. It’s lonely where I’m staying.”

  “My room is ugly,” she said.

  “That’s not a problem,” I said. “What color shall
we paint it?”

  The smile she gave me seared into my heart.

  God, please let it mean she no longer thinks I would send her away because she interrupted me when I was doing . . . what? Listening to Sonia’s request for lounging pajamas?

  “Could we make it look like a princess lives here?” Bethany said.

  “We’ll go buy the paint right now,” I said.

  And Sonia could find somebody else to fetch her personal pillow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sully watched from the front window of the guesthouse as the Escalade pulled out of the driveway with Lucia at the wheel and Bethany in the backseat. He liked seeing them get out of the house. Maybe it would help Lucia decide to keep working with him.

  He let the curtain fall and nursed a pang. If she didn’t, he’d have to find another place to stay, possibly even go back to Porphyria’s and regroup. He couldn’t justify continuing to hang out here if he wasn’t doing therapy with Lucia, no matter how much yard work he did.

  He glared at his laptop. He’d tried all day looking up more distant divinity school acquaintances and discovered he couldn’t remember most of their names. Partials like “Ulea Somebody” and “Something Harrison” didn’t help much. He considered calling Anna for help, but discarded that idea as well as her suggestion that the “old gang” get together. He couldn’t see doing this by committee.

  He actually didn’t envision anything, except drinking another cold Frappuccino from the six-pack he’d picked up when he went out for Starbucks. He pried the cap from his second one and stared at the computer screen again.

  Anna had said something about Fall Creek Falls. It probably had more to do with her than with Lynn—most things did—but maybe a picture would tease something else out.

  Fall Creek Falls State Park came up right away, with a photograph of water tumbling from the top of the Cumberland Plateau to the base of the Cane Creek Gorge. The highest plunge waterfall east of the Mississippi River, the caption said. How could he have forgotten something that impressive?