Healing Stones (12 page)

The apartment was furnished in Early Marriage—an eclectic collection that included a Wal-Mart dinette set, a mama's cast-off couch and love seat, and an old gate for a headboard, obviously an attempt to follow the instructions in one of those “Redecorate Your Home in a Weekend” magazines. The mismatched place fit me. The pieces of myself didn't go together much better.

Besides, the view of Puget Sound drew me straight to the built-in window seat. Even while sitting on cushions covered in mobile-home plaid, I could feel the Sound's charisma, and I soaked it in. It was its own shade of blue-green, unmatched anywhere I've ever been, and it rose in the wind in small peaks, like miniatures of the majestic Mt. Rainier, which towered faraway and magical as a knowing old sage.

For such an impressive body, Puget Sound maintained a calm and uncanny quiet. Supertankers were barred—one spill and an entire ecosystem would be extinguished. But the absence of something was not what provided the tranquility. It seemed to know something in its depth—because only a being of great wisdom could be so large and yet so at peace.

Puget Sound reminded me of God.

There on the window seat, I grew uncannily quiet myself. I'd emitted many outbursts toward heaven in the past two weeks—most of them along the lines of “God, forgive me!” “God, help me!” and “God, why did I do this?” I knew, however, that those outbursts had little to do with God and everything to do with my self-loathing. I didn't expect my heavenly Father to answer.

Yet here was the sound, being still and knowing that God was God. Harboring His mysterious creatures—His Giant Pacific octopus and His black Dalls porpoise and His coveted silvery salmon. Mirroring His ever-changing sky, a seamless blue one moment, bowed with storm clouds the next. The sound simply did what God asked of it.

That came at me like an accusing finger. When someone knocked at the door, I nearly convulsed, then cried out, “Come in!”

“It's a safe neighborhood,” said the voice that crossed the room, “but you really should see who's out there before you invite them in.”

It was Mickey Gwynne, my new landlady, who lived upstairs with her husband Oscar, whom I'd yet to meet.

“It's actually Michelle,” she'd told me the day she showed me the place. “But nobody calls me that except the IRS.”

She was a little sprite of a thing, the kind who made me feel like Clifford the Big Red Dog beside her. She had an elfin face with a smile almost too big for it and a mushroom cap of fudge-brown hair. Clad in skinny jeans and an oversized green cable-knit sweater, she looked like a teenager. Only the weathering of sun and life on her skin gave her away as late thirty-something.

“Just so you know,” she said now, “I don't make a habit of dropping in on tenants. I wanted to make sure you were settled, see if you needed anything.”

“I'm good,” I lied.

She nodded toward the nook of a kitchen outside the bedroom door. “Did you find the goodies in the refrigerator?”

“No!” I said. I started to get up, but she waved me back to the seat and dropped into a rocking chair that had at least a hundred thousand miles on it.

“No big deal,” she said. “I know when people are relocating they don't have time to get to the market, so I left you some fruit—couple jars of my jam—an artichoke. They were on sale at Central Market.”

“You didn't have to do that.” My voice was thick.

“If you haven't even opened the refrigerator yet, it's probably a good thing I did.” She looked around, probably at my lack of personal décor. “So,” she said, “you like your view?”

“It's spectacular.”

“On a clear day—which, in case you haven't noticed, hardly ever happens—you can see Seattle from here.”

“I know,” I
said. “I live—well, I grew up here. Went to South Kitsap High—graduated in '83.”

If Mickey thought I was rattling on like a moron, she covered it well.

“Did you go to college here too?” she said. “You look smart.”

“No, I went to NYU—in New York City.”

“No, you did not.”

“I did—”

“The people we bought the restaurant from were from New York, which is why they called the place the New Yorker. They tried to do a fifties retro diner, but it didn't go over here.” She gave a funny little grunt. “
They
didn't exactly fit here—obnoxious. But
you're
not that way—of course, you said you're originally from here.”

I liked this woman. She didn't make me think of something to say, and I kind of loved that right now.

“So now we call the restaurant Daily Bread,” she said.

She stopped to take a breath, and I felt I should contribute something.

“Is that the one on Main Street?” I hadn't been there, but it had a reputation for offering fanatically healthy food that didn't taste like grass.

“Best probiotic menu in town,” Mickey said. “We prepare everything as close to natural as we can, the way God intended.”

“Yum,” I said stupidly.

“Come in and I'll make you one of my famous Synergy Smoothies, on the house.” She gave me an unabashed critical review with her eyes. “With extra coconut milk. Don't you ever eat?”

Before I could answer, she put up her hand. Several rubber bracelets slid down her arm and disappeared into her sleeve. “You can tell me to mind my own business any time. I get the feeling this isn't the happiest time in your life.”

I tried not to squirm. “It'll pass.”

“So will you, if you don't get some omega-3s and protein in you.” She put the hand up again. “Sorry. That's just me. Some women see your outfit, I see your vitamin deficiencies.”

“Then you're in the right business.”

Her open face invited me to say more, but I was suddenly exhausted. I felt like I actually had hauled armoires and steamer trunks full of knickknacks in on my back. The eyes I'd barely closed in a week chose that moment to become so heavy I could barely hold them open.

Mickey untwisted her pixie legs from the rungs of the rocker, stood up, and opened a cedar chest that served as a coffee table. “This is great for napping if you don't mind a few moth holes,” she said as she pulled out an afghan in colors so loud I couldn't see how anyone could sleep under them.

She spread it on my lap and nodded like one of the older, wiser elves. “You should sleep well here.”

When she was gone, I did.

Until I awoke with a start to a dark room. I thought fuzzily that the setting sun must have woken me up. Then I realized someone had tapped on the door. I stumbled across the room and felt for a light switch. Not finding one, I opened the door. In a pool of light from the outside lamp sat a grocery bag from Central Market.

I peered inside and found a pound of French roast, a container of what smelled like homemade chicken soup, and the
Port Orchard
Independent
. A note at the bottom read,
Hope today is a better day. I
promise I won't bug you.

Back inside the apartment I squinted at the clock on the microwave. 6:00 AM.

I almost cried. I'd spent the last twelve hours not thinking about Rich and my kids and the house I'd been exiled from. For an entire half of a day, I'd escaped self-hatred. It was a gift.

Since I now had a reason for caffeine, I plugged in the one-cup coffeemaker and brewed the French roast as thick as espresso. I tossed the newspaper into the trash can, since it had done nothing but taunt me for days. But as the lid swung closed I caught the unobtrusive heading at the bottom of page one: NO FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN PROF'S DISAPPEARANCE.

I fished it out and started reading while the coffee dripped. Detective Updike said they'd found no evidence of a crime in the sudden disappearance of Dr. Zachary Archer. I detected a hint of disappointment in his quotes, but I was actually grateful to him and his baby-faced partner. That day in our living room, they'd at least provoked Rich into showing some life for seven seconds.

I wondered whether Rich had even taken down the new contact information I'd left him. So far neither he nor the kids had tried to get in touch with me. With a night's sleep behind me and some caffeine inside me, I couldn't stand the distance another minute.

I rummaged in the drawers and found a pencil and a notepad and set up at the wobbly dinette table. The first order of business—make a list.

FORGET ZACH

GET RICH BACK

FOCUS ON KIDS

GET NEW JOB

I skipped number one for the moment. The fact that it was even on the list produced more guilt than the other three put together. I went to number two and tried to break it down.

After several frustrating attempts, during which the rest of my coffee went cold, I could only come up with the profound thought that it would take time.

I looked at my bare surroundings. If I was going to be here for the time it took to turn Rich's heart, I was going to need some things to keep me from feeling like an alien to myself.

I went back to the house at two-thirty the next day, a time when I was sure Rich would be asleep and the kids would be in class. I was afraid if any of them saw me carrying out my pillow and my twenty-ounce coffee mug and the ratty sheepskin jacket I only wore for taking out the compost, they would conclude that I'd accepted my ousting from the house as final.

But Christopher was ensconced in Rich's chair in the TV area, scowling at the
Port Orchard Independent,
a publication I was really starting to hate. I felt principal's-office nauseated.

“I didn't see your car outside,” I said.

“Did you see
this
?”

He snapped the
Independent
into a fold and thrust it against my leg.

With a profound sense of déjà vu I said, “What is it this time?”

Christopher squeezed out a derisive hiss that could have come from Rich himself and punched the footrest down with his calves. “Burn it when you're done so Dad doesn't see it.”

I would have thrown the thing into the pellet stove right then if there'd been a fire going. As Christopher's footsteps faded into the second story, I sank to the arm of Rich's chair and forced myself to fumble the newspaper right side up in front of me.

ST. CLAIR MAKES NO DENIAL OF COVER-UP AT CCC, the headline said.

Zach gazed at me from his photo, seeming less real than he had the last time. I put my thumb over his face and read on.

Dr. Kevin St. Clair, Vice President of Covenant Christian College
and Theology Department Chair, changed his no-comment position
Wednesday night at a meeting of the Board of Trustees. When asked by
board chairman Peter Lamb to give an official statement regarding the
recent resignation of Dr. Demitria Costanas and the disappearance of Dr.
Zachary Archer, both on the CCC faculty, St. Clair said, “Mrs. Costanas
was not asked to resign but stepped down for personal reasons. No resignation
request was made of Dr. Archer, and his whereabouts are unknown
at this time.”

In the wake of speculation over a possible link between the two events,
the CCC pressed St. Clair for evidence of any unethical activity. His
reply: “We can't rule that out.”

I heard a rip and realized I was holding
a torn piece of Section A between my thumb and index finger. So much for no publicity, St. Clair. Why didn't he just say it: “The two of them are rejects from Sodom and Gomorrah, and you haven't heard the last of it from me.”

He was so careful not to lie, yet so deliberate in casting doubt. I fought the urge to shred the front page as if it were Kevin's liver lips. Above me something creaked, unmistakably Christopher's door, which had squeaked like a yawning puppy from the day we moved in. I riveted my eyes to the ceiling. He wasn't trying to sneak now as his feet fell with purpose down the hall in the direction of our bedroom. I strained to listen.

Was he waking Rich up with this? The urge to torture Mom must have overwhelmed the need to protect Dad.

I thought of fleeing. Behind that came a vision of me catapulting myself up the stairs and pulling Christopher out of our room, arms clasped around his ankles. But I could only stare at the newsprint.

There was more. Repelled by sickening anxiety and pulled by the need to do penance, I read on.

Ethan Kaye, embattled CCC president, was present at the meeting
but still refused to comment directly on the sudden faculty vacancies. He
told the board he was saddened by the effect the suspicions were having
on the students and expressed a desire to “get back to the business of educating
them.”

Kevin St. Clair responded, “No—let us now
begin
to educate them.”

My head shook.

Brandon Stires, theology major at CCC, told this reporter that
rumors abound regarding the stability of Ethan Kaye's job.

“I don't know if [the rumors are] true,” Stires said, “but if they boot
him out, we lose the chance to understand what Christianity is about
and move toward union with God. We're not going to get that from Dr.
St. Clair.”

Ethan's own words, quoted almost verbatim by Brandon, pressed down on my chest.

I had done this. I'd jeopardized a dream that wasn't mine to risk, and now its shards were trembling, waiting to fall from the crack I'd made. And they weren't going to crash on me alone.

Or had they already? My chest crushed me, so hard I could barely breathe. I gasped for air and felt my legs go numb.

Purse still on my arm, I shot from the chair, clawing at the newspaper to get it off me. The back pages paved the floor, and I slid across them as I careened to the front door. The pain was so suffocating I wheezed. My hands were almost too numb to find the knob.