Mating for Life

by Marissa Stapley

  • • •

  It was dark when Helen turned her car down the spa’s driveway. She had been in the car for an extra hour, having turned off the GPS Iain had once given her because she was always getting lost. It felt a little pathetic to be actively defying someone she hadn’t seen or spoken to in months, not since that afternoon at the cottage when she had shouted at him about his greens and he had said, “You should go,” and she had.

  I didn’t want the GPS. I told him I didn’t need to be told where to go all the time, that I’m excellent with directions. And then he had said, “I just always want you to be able to find your way back to me.”

  She felt a plummeting sadness. Just then, she hit a patch of black ice and started to skid and thought, What if I die out here, what if this is it? but she felt nothing at all in response to this thought.

  She turned on the GPS.

  Soon, at the insistence of the disembodied voice, she turned into the parking lot of the spa, stopped the car, and cut the engine. The building was constructed of stained wood planks with churchlike windows, and there was an ivy-covered stone tower with a peaked roof in the center. She could see there was a lake. She looked around the lot and saw Ilsa’s car. The windows were fogged up. She must have been sitting inside, waiting.

  Helen got out of the car and walked toward Ilsa’s car, carrying her small bag. Ilsa wiped the fog off her window, peered out at her mother, and then reached into the backseat for her valise and got out of her car. Helen embraced her and told her she looked beautiful instead of tired. This spa weekend will do her good, too.

  “We can surprise Fiona, and then maybe you can take a bath and go to bed,” Helen said.

  “Surprise her,” Ilsa repeated. “Do you really think she’s going to be excited to see us?”

  “She takes on so much. Maybe she’s just stressed out. Maybe we can convince her to be happy we’re here.”

  “Helen. This is Fiona we’re talking about.”

  Helen grimaced slightly. “Maybe we need to wait until Liane gets here?” Liane had always been their buffer. And she was taking an early morning flight. She’d be there, in a taxi, in time for a late breakfast.

  “We can go to her room, all three of us, in the morning,” Ilsa said.

  “That’s a better idea, isn’t it?”

  They walked across the lot, pushed open the heavy door, and entered a lobby with stone walls and high ceilings. It was empty, but there was a bell and a sign that read PLEASE RING. Ilsa sat down in a chair. Helen didn’t want to seem impatient; she could already tell this was no place for impatience—there was a sign beside the bell that read ANGELS GIVE US FAITH TO WAIT FOR MYSTERIES TO BE REVEALED—so she stood and waited. Finally, though, she leaned forward and tapped the bell gently. Then she went back to the pamphlet she was reading, which said that the center rested on a mineral deposit with healing properties. There was a labyrinth for meditation, a sea salt pool, a green-tea hot tub, infrared saunas, a spa, yoga, guided meditation, vision-boarding, and, of course, the chakra readings and color therapy sessions.

  A moment later, a woman with shoulder-length dark hair—she was likely the same age as Helen, but her skin was smooth and her eyes were clear and Helen felt momentarily envious, having just that morning looked in the mirror and compared her own skin to an old piece of flannel—rounded the corner. She was wearing a white blouse, several colored scarves, dangly earrings (exactly as Helen had suspected), and black yoga pants. Her feet were bare.

  “You must be Helen. I’m Iris. Thank you so much for coming. And is this one of the sisters?”

  “Yes, I’m Ilsa.” Ilsa stood. She extended her hand, but Iris hugged her instead, then turned and hugged Helen. She smelled of patchouli.

  “And your other daughter is coming first thing in the morning?”

  Helen nodded.

  “This is so wonderful. I really feel we’re gathering the forces Fiona needs to survive this.”

  “That’s the thing: survive what?” Helen said.

  “What she’s going through,” Iris said.

  “But what exactly is she going through?”

  “Let’s just go upstairs,” Iris said. “I’ll take you to Fiona’s room first, and you can get settled in your own space later.”

  “Um, well—” Ilsa began. Helen opened her mouth to speak, too, but what was she going to say? Actually, we thought we might hide in our room until Liane, our buffer, gets here. Fiona doesn’t like either of us much.

  Iris stood, her head tilted slightly, waiting for one of them to voice whatever it was they wanted to say. But neither of them continued.

  “Has it ever seemed to either of you that Fiona has a drinking problem?” Iris said.

  “Never.”

  “I’m not even going to answer that,” Ilsa said.

  “What about prescription abuse?”

  “Are you joking?” Helen said.

  “Of course not.” Iris shook her head. “This is not a laughing matter, not at all.” She said it like it was all one word: “atall.” Helen felt chastened. “Fiona is in a very dark place. I’m just trying to figure out where it might all be coming from. She has one of the saddest, most despairing auras I’ve ever seen. Her chakras . . . they’re in wild disarray.”

  As though that explained everything, Iris turned and started walking again, up a staircase and down a hallway painted pale yellow and lined with wall sconces and doorways, before tapping on a doorway with the number 212 on the outside. No answer. She tapped again. “Fiona? It’s Iris.” Still no answer. Iris frowned, and Helen began to feel sick, scared. Before she could stop herself, she reached up and banged the door with her fist. Iris looked startled.

  “Fiona!” Helen shouted.

  “Mom,” Ilsa said. “She might just be sleeping. Maybe she took a sleeping pill.”

  “I have the master key,” Iris whispered. “I’ll let us in and we can see if she’s okay.”

  It was only when Helen was standing beside the bed her daughter was sleeping in, when she had touched her chest softly to make sure she was breathing, the way she had when each of the girls were babies because she had a friend who lost a child to crib death and the memory of her haunted eyes had never left Helen, that her own breathing returned to normal. The light from the hall and the noise of the three of them entering the room didn’t cause Fiona to stir. And there was indeed a bottle of Tylenol PMs on the end table beside Fiona. Only a few were missing—Iris had checked the bottle like she was a forensics expert, and Helen had found herself waiting, holding her breath. But no. She hadn’t done anything drastic. Of course not. Not Fiona.

  “We shouldn’t wake her,” Iris said. “You’ll have to see her in the morning.”

  “I agree,” Helen whispered, feeling relieved. They filed out of the room.

  • • •

  “I still can’t believe that crazy woman called my emergency contact,” Fiona said the next morning at breakfast. She was rubbing her head like she had a hangover. She saw Helen watching.

  “Caffeine withdrawal headache,” she explained.

  “You have to admit, it’s pretty funny,” Liane said, pouring more of the chai tea from the carafe on the table into her cup. She dumped in almond milk and looked up. “Seriously, no coffee here? None at all?”

  “None,” Fiona said. “I made the mistake of asking and got a lecture on the evils of caffeine at such high levels. I’m definitely the black sheep around here.”

  “Think of that,” Ilsa said.

  “No booze, either. Apparently a lot of people come here to detox.”

  “I see.” Helen tried to arrange her expression in a manner that wouldn’t betray her disappointment that, in addition to no coffee with breakfast, she was also not going to be able to have wine with dinner.

  Meanwhile, Fiona’s mood was oddly buoyant. She had been happy to see Lia
ne, at least, and seemed to be tolerating the fact that Helen and Ilsa were there. But Helen was unsettled. Fiona seemed fine—so what was this dark problem Iris was talking about?

  Helen cleared her throat. This wasn’t easy for her, but she had to ask. “Fiona, why did you put me down and not Tim as the person to call in case of emergency?”

  “He’s out of town,” Fiona said without missing a beat.

  “No, he’s not,” Ilsa said. “You asked me to cook dinner for him tomorrow. He most certainly is in town.”

  “That’s right: I asked you to cook for him and the boys,” Fiona said, her voice now irritated. “What happened to that, by the way? I guess they’ll be having pizza?”

  “Hot dogs, actually. And you heard Helen. That woman said it was an emergency, and I’m a good sister, so I came. Besides, after about an hour of trying to emulate you in the kitchen, I needed a spa weekend, too.”

  “Spa weekend,” Fiona repeated. “Is that it, Helen? You think this is fun?”

  “I didn’t call it a spa weekend, Ilsa did. And besides, whatever it is, we’re here because we’re worried about you and we love you. So if something is going on with you, I think you should tell us.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just here for the color therapy and meditation labyrinth?”

  Helen frowned. Why had Fiona always made it so difficult to love her? And why did she always have to be right?

  Iris had entered the dining room and was walking from table to table, talking to the guests. Her feet were bare again. She arrived at their table. “Ladies! Good morning. What’s on the agenda for today?”

  Fiona didn’t say anything.

  “I really need a pedicure,” Liane ventured. “And, um, do you have family counseling?” But no one laughed and Iris smiled sympathetically.

  “Check in at the front desk after breakfast and see if they can book you in for one. There’s also yoga right after breakfast, vision-boarding before lunch, and mindfulness meditation at two. And tonight . . .” Iris smiled and clapped her hands together lightly. “This is exactly what you need. There’s a new moon, so we’re doing our traditional fire ceremony by the lake. All guests attend. You’ll be there, ladies.” She put a hand on each of her shoulders, and walked away from the table.

  “For someone so new-agey, she’s surprisingly bossy,” Ilsa said.

  • • •

  That night, they stood by the fire, side by side in jackets and scarves and hats: Helen’s hand-knit and wool, a long scarf draped many times around her neck; Liane in layers of sweaters, one with a hood, and her jean jacket; Fiona’s a navy beret-style cap, no scarf but a high-buttoned neck on her ­pewter-gray coat; Ilsa in a bell-shaped red coat. She had forgotten a hat, so Iris had lent her a multicolored woolen one that looked out of place, but still, she was striking.

  Iris was holding a copper bucket. It was filled with pink and amber stones. “I add a little bit of a twist to the traditional fire ceremony by incorporating these rocks into it,” she said, smiling at each of the women gathered before her, her head turning so she could make eye contact with each of them. There were about two dozen. “Since there are so many rocks and crystals around here and they have healing properties, I like to make use of them. What I need you all to do right now is go into the bucket and choose the rock that seems right to you. Don’t overthink it, whatever feels right, whatever your fingers land on. Then just hold it, or put it in your pocket. You’ll keep it with you until the end of the ceremony.”

  They each did so. Fiona went last, Helen noticed, but at least she took one.

  Now Iris picked up some small strips of paper, and handed one to each woman, along with a pen. “Write on this paper your deepest, most fervent wish for yourself and your life. Long-term, short-term, whatever it is that’s most important to you. We’ll use the power of the new moon to help you manifest your goals, your desires.” Helen heard someone snort softly. She was sure it was Fiona. She didn’t want to look at her. Iris also handed out small pieces of cardboard so they’d all have something to write on.

  Helen looked down at her blank scrap of paper. Whatever it is that’s most important to you.

  My girls, she thought. My girls are most important to me. She had believed, when she became a mother, that she would not be one of those women who was defined by motherhood. Maybe that was why Fiona resented her so much, because Helen had fought against the maternal pull a little, when she was pregnant with Fiona and when Fiona was an infant. In some ways, she had been trying to make a point, not trying to become a mother.

  She wrote: I want my girls to be happy. That’s all I want for my life. Writing this made her feel a little sad. Her own mother had been a martyr and it had done nothing but drive Helen away. It wasn’t easy to exist when there was a person in the world so uncomfortably invested in your happiness. If you didn’t attain it, you felt like a failure. Helen sometimes marveled at how, even though Fiona had never met Abigail, she was in so many ways the same type of mother.

  Helen looked around the circle. Everyone else seemed to be either thinking or writing. Except Ilsa, who was just staring into the fire. Helen underlined what she had written. She worried about her girls now more than ever, she realized.

  “Is everyone ready?” Iris said. She was now holding a bunch of sage and a lighter. Helen breathed in the evocative smell of wood smoke. She looked out across the lake, then up at the sky. The air was cold. Winter was coming.

  “I just want you all to know I saw coyote tracks out here this afternoon when I was preparing for the ceremony,” Iris said as she lit the sage and waved it around. It smelled to Helen a little like a turkey cooking. “I found that interesting. He must have been around today. So we welcome his spirit energy, and his ability to help us adjust to the way things are, rather than fighting against them or fruitlessly wishing for them to be different.”

  Now Iris asked the women to form a closer circle around the fire. “Come on, get close, don’t be afraid to touch one another. The touch of another human being is a blessing. It should be celebrated.” Fiona was standing beside Helen, and Ilsa was on her other side, and Liane was on the other side of Ilsa. Iris was speaking again. “The traditional fire ceremony is a Native American tradition that can be about many things: letting go of the past, inviting in the future, or simply being grateful to the divinities. I like to do it during the new moon and focus on intentions: inviting goodness, saying goodbye to what we don’t need, focusing on what we need to do to move forward. Generally, something is brought to burn in the fire, and that’s what we’re going to do with those pieces of paper you just wrote on. But before we can welcome these things into our lives, we need to get rid of what we no longer need.” She put the sage out in a bucket of water and held up a small rock. “I want you to take your rock or stone in your hand.”

  Helen did. She felt her daughters around her, reaching their hands into their pockets.

  “Now I want you to think of something that’s been dragging you down. An emotion, a feeling, a thought pattern, anything. Something that you need to let go of. It can be helpful to boil it down to one word. Say that word in your mind as you hold your rock. When you’re ready, walk to the edge of the lake, and throw your rock in.”

  Helen was surprised when Fiona walked to the edge of the lake first and flung her rock, then returned to stand by the fire, her piece of paper in her hand tightly folded. She was already starting to hold it out to the fire. “Wait,” Iris whispered to her.

  Helen looked down at her stone, a small pink quartz. Regret, she thought. About Iain, about the mistakes she had made, about everything. And I need to stop trying to write my stupid memoirs. It’s all been said, and I don’t need to go back and nitpick. She walked to the edge of the lake and threw her rock as far as she could, then turned away, picturing it sinking to the bottom. She saw Liane then, about ten feet down, standing by the water. She realized her daught
er’s shoulders were shaking and she quickly approached. “Liane?”

  Her daughter looked up and wiped a tear from beneath her eye. “I was so skeptical when she was talking, and then I took this rock, and the word grief came into my mind, and I thought about my dad and . . . and now I’m just standing here, afraid to let it go. But I want to, because everything in my life is so great right now . . . but I still feel so sad sometimes. And I think it might be because I’m holding on to him.”

  Helen reached out her hand. “Can I hold it for a minute?” she asked, and Liane nodded. Helen took the rock and squeezed it.

  “It wasn’t us, you know,” she said. “It wasn’t our fault.”

  “I know,” Liane whispered.

  “He was depressed, and it is a sickness, but you don’t have it. And you’re not going to get it. Okay?”

  Liane nodded again, but the tears still fell.

  “And just because you let go of this, of the sadness and regret about what you may or may not have been able to do to help him, does not mean that you are letting go of him. He will always be inside you. The good parts of him. And there were many. He was the most incredible person. He loved you so much.” Helen opened her palm and looked down at the stone. It was dull and flat, but there were little flecks of brightness. “I’m going to keep a little bit of this grief for you, okay? I’m going to hold it for you, and whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here.” She squeezed the rock in her palm again, then looked up and pressed the rock back into Liane’s hands. Oh, Wes. How I wish things could have been different.

  As Helen walked away, she heard a small splash. She also saw Ilsa, up ahead—but Ilsa didn’t throw her rock. She put her rock in her pocket and walked quickly back to join the circle before Helen could catch up.

  Back at the fire, Iris said, “Please give your pieces of paper to me.” Then she cleared her throat and held the small pages before her. “Now it’s time for us to trust each other. This is not a traditional element of the ceremony, but in the spirit of sisterhood that I like to foster here, I think it’s important. I’m going to pass these pieces of paper around. You’ll each get someone else’s. I want you to read it, and I want you to focus on wanting what this person wants, this person you may not even know, just as much as you would want it for yourself.”