Healing Waters

by Nancy Rue

  I shook my head. “There’s still so much baggage. Can you ever get around that? I mean, should I just go ahead and divorce him?”

  “You don’t want me to tell you whether to do that or not.”

  “I have my moments,” I said. “I don’t know. Now that it doesn’t seem like it’s all my fault anymore, I have a choice. I didn’t think I did before.”

  Sullivan nodded. “I will tell you this much: if you don’t know exactly what to do, don’t do anything yet.”

  “I don’t think I can wait.”

  “Why? Is Chip pushing you to make a decision?”

  I grunted. “He thinks he’s already made it for both of us. Maybe that’s what’s holding me back. It might be different if we did it together—but he just wants to go out and make this life for us and then stick me into it. Just like always.”

  I could feel my face flushing as the words shoved their way out on their own. “I do want a relationship—a family—but I don’t want it that way.”

  Sullivan leaned across the table, eyes shining into me. “That’s because you’ve stopped thinking they and started thinking I—and not just I, but we.”

  “We,” I said.

  “You and Bethany, for starters. And the community you’re forming with Wesley and James-Lawson. Sonia could be part of that. Maybe Chip. The point is”—he danced his finger toward me—“you can decide that. You can determine who your we is going to be.”

  He sat back and watched me. At first I’d hated when he did that. What the Sam Hill was I supposed to say? But now—now I had at least the faint shimmer of an idea.

  “Ding-ding-ding, Dr. Crisp,” I said. “Ding-ding.”

  That—and Wesley’s phone call the next morning telling me that I could do this thing—got me to the front door when the hospital transport service brought Sonia home. She insisted on arriving that way, Dr. Ukwu told me, and he wanted to encourage her self-care.

  She opened the door before I could even get my hand to the knob.

  “Hi, sorella,” she said.

  Standing there in the rain, her voice was the same, creamy and rich as a mousse, but everything else was jarringly different. I had reminded myself with every toss and turn of the night that she would still be marred, but she had been transformed again, as if the first ravaging had not been enough.

  The scars had set up like thick red yarn in some places. In others her skin was so flat and translucent I was sure if I touched it, it would dissolve on my fingertips. The ruins seemed less angry, and her eyes were brighter in the midst of them. With the rust-colored bandana wrapped around her head, she might have been a war-torn refugee arriving in a land she hoped would take her in.

  “Welcome home,” I said.

  She nodded. She could nod now, and although her neck was still as gnarled as cypress bark, her chin lifted at least two inches higher than it had before she left. Yet as she gazed around the foyer, it seemed to sag from within.

  I could not begin to imagine what she must be thinking, revisiting the scene of her madness—the mirrorless wall, the chipped marble floor, the echoing screams of “I hate God!” But I knew the pain that came with digging through that rubble, and it rose in my throat.

  “Can I get you—”

  “I want—”

  We spoke over each other and choked on our words. Sonia was the first to try to smile, slowly, stiffly around her prosthesis, but surely.

  “I have a long way to go, sorella,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “We do. We.”

  Sully sat on the front porch with a glass of sweet tea and watched Lucia drive off through the rain to pick Bethany up from school.

  “So far so good,” she’d told him. “Sonia’s asleep right now. She says the meds still knock her out.”

  “That’s a common side effect,” Sully said. “It should wear off after a while.”

  “I’m glad she’s resting. I think this is all wearing her out—it’s like she’s trying so hard not to backslide.”

  Sully nodded to himself now. The kinds of transformations therapists and psychiatrists and counselors led their patients through were exhausting. He could use some decent sleep himself. He was lucky to get five straight hours on any given night, with Porphyria’s words wrestling with his dreams: It’s going to find you, Sully, just get yourself ready.

  When the phone rang, he jolted so hard the tea slopped out of the glass and over his hand. What a waste. He pried the phone open on his chin while he swiped his palm on the back of his shorts.

  “Sullivan Crisp,” he said.

  “You owe me.”

  “Anna?”

  Sully tried not to sigh.

  “You are going to be so glad that I can’t keep my nose out of other people’s business.”

  Sully doubted that, but he said, “Why am I glad?”

  “After I gave you Cyril and Una’s contact information, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. All the old times, yada yada. I attribute it to being almost fifty.”

  “Uh-huh. Look, Anna—”

  “No—wait. You want to hear this. I decided to call Una myself. I mean, who knew she was just down the road? I was like you: I thought they’d gone back to the Old Country years ago.”

  Sully shifted the phone to his other ear and took a long pull of sweet tea. He could be here for days. Decades. She was going to feel ridiculous when he finally had a chance to tell her that Cyril and Una had been a dead end.

  “So I called and I said, ‘Hey, Una, Sully Crisp looked you up, and I thought I would too’—blah, blah, blah—and imagine my surprise when she said she didn’t know what I was talking about.” “I could have told you that,” Sully said. “Cyril said he didn’t want her to know I was trying to get in touch with her.”

  He waited for her to deflate, but she pumped up anew.

  “She came to that conclusion like that.” Sully heard Anna snap her fingers. “I guess when you’ve been married to somebody that long, you know that kind of thing. Not having had that experience myself—”

  “Anna.” Sully set the tea glass on the table and stood up. “What did she say?”

  “You mean once she stopped crying? I had no idea she was still that torn up over Lynn’s death. It was like it happened yesterday. She said she would have talked to you if you’d gotten her first, but—”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Cut me some slack; I’m going there. I said to her, what is the deal with the husband making this decision for you? Is that some kind of Eastern European tradition? Sully needs your help, and you’re playing 1 Corinthians wife. Or was that Colossians? Anyway, I guess she got the message.”

  Sully put a stranglehold on the phone. “What do you mean, she got the message?”

  “She just called me back and said she talked to Cyril, and he said she should do what she thought was right—hello!—and she wants to meet with you. She asked me to set it up.”

  Sully closed his eyes against the rain, the grate of her voice, the onslaught of doubt. The light was in there somewhere.

  “Where and when?” he said.

  “Forty-five minutes at Benton Chapel. She’s at the divinity school for some church conference thing.”

  “Forty-five minutes from now.”

  “Yeah. Hey—Sully.” Her pause was surprisingly tender. “Now that I’ve set this whole thing up—are you sure you want to go there? As upset as she is—this can’t be good news for you.”

  “I have to,” Sully said. “And, Anna? Thanks.”

  She gave him the gravel-filled laugh. “Like I said, Crisp—you owe me.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I was a few minutes later than usual pulling into the pickup line in front of the school. My conversation with Sullivan had put me a little behind, but I didn’t see Bethany out front yet. Maybe I should just get out my umbrella and go inside.

  But I needed a few minutes to get myself centered before I took her home to see her mother. What I’d gotten out of Bethan
y the night before gave me hope, but there were still some eggshells to be walked on.

  “Draw me a picture of a face,” I’d said to her while I was finishing up the supper dishes.

  “What kind of face?” she said, tongue and crayon poised.

  “The face you want to make when you think about seeing your mom tomorrow.”

  Then I’d held my breath while she got still. Did a six-year-old even know what that meant? Maybe I should just leave well enough alone . . .

  But the crayon had begun to move across the paper, and I pretended that getting macaroni and cheese off a plate was my sole purpose in life.

  “Wanna see it?” she said when the scribbling stopped.

  I turned and nearly fell into the dishwater. She’d drawn a round face, surrounded by a cloud of dark curly hair and wearing a blindfold. It couldn’t have been clearer if it had been a photograph of Bethany geared up for her turn at Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

  “Can you tell me about it?” I managed to say.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Why do you have your eyes covered?”

  “Because I’m not allowed to see my mom without her face.”

  I knelt down in front of her, hands still covered in suds. “Your mom said that to you?”

  She bobbed her head.

  I couldn’t even remember Bethany being in the same room with her mother since the hospital, and then their conversation had consisted of Bethany screaming as if she’d been stabbed.

  “When did she tell you that?” I said.

  “When I was five.”

  I tried not to let my mouth drop open. “Tell me that story,” I said.

  “It’s not a story. I was in her room, and she was reading to me about Noah.”

  She touched the memory like a treasure she only handled with the tenderest of fingers.

  “And we were almost done, and Miss Roxanne came in—and she said my mom had to change her makeup so she could be on TV, and my mom made everybody go outside.”

  Bethany blinked at me as if that were the end of the tale.

  “Did you have to leave too?” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she said nobody was allowed to see her without her face on.”

  A long moment passed before I could register that. When I did, the enormous relief spilled over into the urge to shake my sister’s teeth loose.

  Even with wet hands I took Bethany’s shoulders and pulled her close to me. “Bethie,” I said, “she was talking about her makeup. That was her fake face, and she just meant—”

  That wasn’t sinking in.

  “You know what?” I said.

  She giggled. “You sound like James-Lawson.”

  “I know, and you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Your mom has a face. It’s just a different face from the one she had before.”

  She chanced a smile. “So I’m allowed to see it?”

  “Yes, tomorrow.”

  She gazed down at the paper she held, while the small pink tongue worked at the corner of her mouth.

  “Can I draw a new picture now?” she said.

  GH

  I peered through the rain and turned on the windshield wipers. Still no Bethany, though I did see Miss Richardson, so she was probably in the line right inside the door staying dry. Within fifteen minutes she would be seeing her mother for the first time in who knew how long. Seeing her without being afraid that she’d be scolded for viewing that creature without her face.

  I’d shown the new drawing to Sonia—a picture of a curly-hairedround-faced being with the tiniest of smiles on her face.

  “I don’t think she’s going to scream this time,” I said. “I don’t know for sure, but—”

  Sonia had put her hand on my arm. Her skin was icy. Fearful.

  “Lucia,” she said. “I know you can’t do it for me—but can you teach me?”

  “Teach you what?” I said.

  “Can you teach me how to be a mother?”

  I swiped at the tears under my eyes now. This was not the time to start crying, with Bethany moments away. Maybe I should just go in and get her.

  I reached for the door handle just as Miss Richardson appeared on the passenger side, face surrounded by a hood. I rolled down the window.

  “Hi, Aunt Lucia Mom,” she said. “Did you forget something?”

  I laughed. “I know I’m a few minutes later than usual, but her mom came home today.” I waved myself off. “Is Bethany inside?”

  I watched the color drain from the young woman’s face.

  “No,” she said. “I’m confused. Did you bring her back after you picked her up?”

  “I didn’t pick her up. I just got here.”

  “But you drove up—and you waved—and she got right in the car.” Her hand went to her forehead.

  Mine clawed at the door until I got myself out. “She did not get in this car,” I said. “That wasn’t her you saw.”

  “It was! The windshield was fogged up, but she got in so happy—Oh my Lord—”

  I had already gone where her mind was headed, shouting Bethany’s name, pushing through the wide-eyed children against the wall, knowing I wouldn’t find her there.

  “Lucia—Lucia, what’s wrong?”

  Francesca Christie was at my elbow, and I snatched up her sleeve in my hand as I screamed into her face.

  “Bethany! They’ve taken Bethany!”

  Una Eremenko had changed less than anyone or anything Sully had seen since he’d returned to Nashville. Standing in the dark, wide-open vestibule of Benton Chapel, she was the same sturdy, bob-haired, clear-faced woman who had soothed their souls at SATCO thirteen years before. There was perhaps a bit of seasoning now in the slight forward roll of her shoulders and the shadow on her former blondeness, but she was still as hale and natural as a farm girl.

  She was gazing up at a gaunt sculpture of Christ crucified. Only when Sully was close enough to startle her from her reverie did he see what had changed. The gray-green eyes had gathered wisdom. Whatever she had done with her life in the past decade, it had placed her among the sages.

  When she saw him, her arms went around him, wordlessly, and she hung on until he realized she was silently crying.

  “Sully, Sully, Sully,” she said. “I’m so glad you still look like an overgrown boy.” She held him out at arm’s length, eyes streaming without embarrassment as she looked into his. “But I see you’ve grown up after all.”

  “I’m not so sure, Una,” he said.

  “I am. I see it.” She squeezed his shoulders, still making no attempt to brush away her tears. “This world breaks your heart, does it not?”

  Sully nodded. There would be no pleasantries in this conversation, no obligatory exchange of résumés while they privately tapped their mental toes to get on with what they had come to say. He was as grateful for that as he was unnerved by it.

  “Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s empty.”

  The chapel itself was starker, had more rectangular lines than he remembered, though maybe back then things like warmth and hue hadn’t meant as much to him. The stained-glass windows consisted of colored squares that inspired nothing. Only the smell of candle wax and worn hymnals gave it the feel of a place of reverence.

  Sully followed Una to a back pew, where she sat in the dimness and patted the seat for him to join her. “I’ve hoped for years that I could talk to you,” she said. “I think you and I loved Lynn more than anyone did.”

  “I . . . I didn’t know you were that close to her,” Sully said. “I sure didn’t know you grieved so hard for her. I only started to genuinely grieve myself recently.” He ran his toe along a kneeler. “I don’t know if you knew, Una, but Lynn’s death wasn’t an accident. I know what the papers said, and what we didn’t say at the funeral, but . . .” He trailed off as she drew her brows together.

  “I knew. Is that why you wanted to see me? To tell me?”
/>
  “Partly. And to see if you knew anything that might help me understand why.” Sully pulled his arms around himself to keep his heart from slamming through his chest. “Now that I’m here, I’m not sure I want to know.”

  Una cocked her head, sending the bob against her cheek. “I know your work, Sully. The only way out is through. In the why is the what next. Those are wise words.”

  “Until you have to use them on yourself.”

  “You don’t think it was the postpartum depression?”

  “You knew about that too?”

  “I would have had to be blind not to. Sully—the shape she was in—what more is there to know?”

  Sully steepled his fingers at his forehead. “I need to know if it was me too—if I wounded her somehow, so deeply that the depression took her over the edge.”

  “Sully, Sully, no. Lynn loved nothing in this world as she did you. Nothing. She lived for you, and you never failed her.”

  “Then why do I feel like there’s more, Una?”

  She pulled Sully’s hands into hers. “I spent years—years—trying to understand why Lynn did what she did. I even read your books, hoping you’d show me. And do you know what I found out?” She squeezed emphatically. “I found out that I can’t know. Only God knows. I had to leave it at that.”

  Sully shook his head. “Somehow, I can’t.”

  She let the stillness press them for a minute before she said, “I’m curious about something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You seemed surprised that I already knew Lynn’s death was a suicide. I knew it the minute I heard what happened.” Her eyes flooded again. “That’s why I avoided you. I thought you’d be angry with me.”

  “Why would I be?”

  “Because I didn’t stop her.”

  Sully shook his head. “How could you? She never threatened to take her own life. I had no idea she’d even thought of it.”