Healing Stones (28 page)

“No. But, Rich, we're going to have to talk about money, and Jayne and Christopher—and us—soon.”

“I'm not ready to talk to you without feeling like I want to tear the place apart, all right?”

It came out a barely controlled snarl, and involuntarily I startled back. While he stood there, staring down at the stove again, I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Get some things together, Jay. You're coming with me.”

I heard the Harley roar out of the garage.

CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR

I
was glad Jayne's first few days with me were over a weekend. She seemed far too jangled to deal with school or anything else.

I let her sleep as much as she wanted to and fed her a steady stream of nutrition pipelined from upstairs. Mickey insisted that I take Saturdays off from now on and stay home with her, for which I was thankful. I couldn't leave Jayne alone with herself again. As I watched her sleep, I was even more keenly aware of how pale her skin was, and how it stretched over her bony wrists and collarbone like cheesecloth, and how shadows passed over her face in her dreams. When she was awake she fell into long silences, as if she'd spoken all her words and only wanted to gaze out over the sound until she found more.

She did talk when she ate, which I coaxed her to do every few hours, and I managed to pull some fairly depressing information from her. Her grades, usually As with the occasional B, had fallen to Cs, with the threat of a D in pre-algebra. Teachers sent e-mails to Rich, at his request, rather than notifying me.

“Actually,” Jayne said, “Christopher did that. I don't think Dad even knows.”

I added that to my list of bones to pick with my son. There were already enough for an entire skeleton.

Jayne said she couldn't sleep at home at night because she was afraid, and she nodded off in class. Her teachers were threatening to call Rich at work.

“Has anybody asked you if there's trouble at home?” I said.

“I wouldn't tell them anything if they did.”

“That's not the point,” I said. “I want to know if anyone cares about the
why
.”

She shrugged and fell silent again.

In spite of Mickey's constant barrage of affirmations about what a blessing I was to the young female population, I groped for a way to draw Jayne out. “I love you,” I said to her—every fifteen minutes.

“Love you,” she sometimes mumbled. Other times she only nodded.

Maybe Rich was right. Maybe it wasn't enough to be sorry and keep loving. And maybe the Kevin St. Clairs were right. Maybe you didn't deserve grace when you'd screwed up this badly.

That finally got to me Sunday afternoon—the idea that the legalistic edicts of a blowfish could separate me from my child. I dried my hands from washing the teacups and went to her on the window seat where she sat with an open, unread literature book.

“What do you need, Jay?” I asked. “I don't know what to do—I need for you to tell me.”

“This doesn't feel like home,” she said.

I blinked.

“It always feels like home wherever you are, but there's no
you
here.”

I grimaced as I looked around at Mickey's early attic décor. “I haven't done anything to it because I don't plan to be here that long,” I said.

“But what if we are?” The look she gave me, full in the face, was imploring. “Dad is being stubborn. I told you, Christopher is evil in his soul.”

I bit back a laugh again.

“It's true! Mom—I don't want us to go back there with them being all—stiff.” She sent a gaze around the room. “If this has to be home, then can't we make it friendly? I'm sick of feeling like an alien.”

I gathered her sweet, bony self into my arms. “Me too, Jay,” I said. “Me too.”

We didn't have much to work with, which meant a trip to the house. For once no one was there, and we crept around like thieves, gathering our own throws and pillows and pottery. Jayne made off with enough stuffed animals to start a small toy store, and I scored a set of wind chimes and a bird feeder, because she said she needed birds. I would have set up an aviary if I could.

It was almost eight before we were through home-izing, as Jayne called it. I had to admit we'd created a place where I didn't feel like a stranger to myself. I was positioning a book on Pacific Northwest sea life on the trunk coffee table when Jayne floated in from the bedroom and put something beside it.

It was the big rock Sullivan Crisp had told me to find a use for. My spirit sank.

“What's this?” she said.

I sighed. “It's a symbol of my anger at myself.”

“Oh.”

“I'm supposed to find something to do with it besides throw it at me.”

“Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “That would hurt.” Her eyes took on their golden glow. “You already hurt, don't you?”

I could only nod.

She touched the rock. “Can I do something with it?”

“As long as you don't pitch it at me.”

“I would never do that,” she said. “You're my mom.”

Then she carried off the rock that was nearly as heavy as she was.

Sully leaned back in the papasan chair and locked his hands behind his head. “You weren't expecting this, were you?” he said.

Demi shook her head. The bright spot at the top of each cheek made her sadness even more poignant.

“Sort of like winning a bonus round.”

She rolled her brown eyes. She'd definitely been spending time with a teenage girl. “I'll call it whatever you want,” she said. “I have my daughter with me—and
that gives me hope for all of us being together.”

Sully sighed inwardly. He hated this part—where responsible therapy called for bursting a bubble.

“You don't think so,” she said.

“I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to. You've got that
sorry, wrong answer
look on your face. And thank you for not buzzing.”

“It's not that it's the wrong answer,” Sully said. “I'm still not sure you're asking the right question.”

“My only question is ‘How can I get my family back together?'”

Sully didn't nod.

“Okay—no—it's ‘What made me do this stupid thing in the first place?' You keep saying if I figure that out, I'll be able to move on without being afraid this is going to happen again.”

Sully rocked forward. “But you're still not sure that's the way to go.”

“It's hard to work on the why thing when I'm afraid Rich is going to give up before I have a chance to figure myself out.”

“Rich didn't call it quits when you took Jayne, right?”

“Right.”

“He didn't say he
never
wanted to talk to you—just not yet.”

“Not while he's still so angry.” She focused sharply on Sully. “He actually scared me. And Jayne. She thought he was going to hit her—and that's not Rich.”

“He's reacting—that's all I can say without seeing him.”

Demi made a hissing noise that didn't fit her. “Like that's going to happen.”

“We'd make a lot more progress. You could pray about asking him.”

She jammed her hair behind her ears. “I'm still having a lot of trouble going to God. I told Audrey—I've told you about her—”

Sully nodded.

“I told her to throw herself at God's feet and ask for forgiveness.” She looked wryly at Sully. “But can I do that?”

“What makes you any different from anybody else who's separated from God?”

Her face softened. “You
are
one of Ethan Kaye's, aren't you?”

“What gave it away?”

“He always refers to sin as separation from God.”

“Yeah.” Sully grinned. “Ethan used to say whenever one of those dyed-in-the-wool legalists started to talk about ‘see-yun,' it was sure to be about policing genitalia.”

Demi spattered out a laugh.

“He's cleaned up his act now that he's an administrator. Unfortunately, some people don't think he's cleaned it up enough.”

“I haven't helped. Which brings us back to my ‘separation from God.'” Demi tilted her head. “It does seem less final when you put it that way—like it's only a temporary separation and you can always go back. At least, I used to think that.”

“Until?”

She looked at him.

“So—let me get this straight,” Sully said. “Your Audrey can sleep with a guy, feel horrible about it, and go to God for forgiveness. Then she gets to go and leave her life of sin.”

“Right.”

“But you can't. Why is that?”

She closed her eyes. “I'm an adult. I should know better.”

“You are, and you did.”

“But I did it anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you think it's because Rich was ignoring me and I couldn't help him and we weren't having sex.”

“What do you think?”

“I still think those are just excuses.”

“Let's call them symptoms,” Sully said, “of a marriage that was already in trouble. You tried to fix it.”

“I did try.”

“Running to another man wasn't your first response to being shut out.”

“It was never my response! Zach found me—I didn't chase him.” She curled her lip. “Does that sound like I'm blaming him? I do take responsibility.”

“Responsibility? You're practically a martyr. Go ahead and put some of it on him.”

Demi nodded absently. “I did try with Rich.”

“Now bear with me when I ask you this,” Sully said, “because I'm going to sound like a shrink.”

“Ten bucks says you're going to sound like a game show host.”

“When you tried and he didn't respond, how did you feel?”

Demi's mouth twitched. “You do sound like a shrink.” She leaned her head back. “It made me feel like a failure as a wife—as a woman.”

“And failure is never an option for you, is it?”

“I can't remember ever failing before this.”

Sully saw her swallow.

“When I do it, I do it big-time.”

“It's not like you've shot the pope.”

“I can't minimize this.”

“No, but you can keep it in perspective. You failed to meet Rich's needs—but you were able to meet somebody else's.”

“Now you're going to ask me how
that
felt.”

Sully nodded.

She put her hands to her temples and pulled at the corners of her eyes.

“It's okay to cry in here, Demi,” he said.

“I feel stupid for crying over something that was wrong to begin with!”

“You felt good because someone needed you. Feelings themselves are not wrong.”

“It's what you do with them.”

“Which we've already established.”

She was obviously determined to go down the guilt path to its inevitable dead end.

“All right,” she said. “It felt good to have Zach need me and tell me I was good for him.”

“Good?”

“Amazing.” Her mouth crumpled. “It's sickening now, but that feeling of being wanted and needed after so long was irresistible.”

Exactly the word Sully himself would have used. He held back a ding-ding-ding.

“So that was something
you
needed.” Sully picked carefully through the possible phrasing. “And not only needed, but felt like you were entitled to, in order to be—”

“Be what?”

“You tell me.”

“Give me a second.” She cupped her face in her palms.

Sully had to hand it to her—she would do anything to put this back together.

“Okay—here's all I know,” she said, bringing her head up. “If I'm not providing what somebody needs, what am I
worth? Basically, I'm no good if I can't do that.” She closed her eyes. “Please don't buzz me.”

“I'm not going to buzz you,” Sully said, “because I think that's the right answer.”

Her eyes sprang open.

“To you, it was the right answer. To me—and to God—it's a false premise.” Sully leaned forward, palms rubbing together. “And I think it's the one we've been looking for.”

She stared at him. A light, the tiniest pinpoint, came into her eyes. “Then where's my ding-ding-ding?” she said.

“Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!”

She sat up straight in the bowl-chair. “So—do you think Rich will get this? Understand why I did what I did?”

“I think
you
have to understand it first. We're going to work with it.”

“But it's a start, right? I could go to him and try to explain.”

“You could,” Sully said slowly.

“You don't think I should.”

“I think you have to consider that any reunion with Rich is going to have to be on more honest terms than your marriage was before. You going back to him is not necessarily going to pull him out of his depression over 9/11, for instance. How are you going to handle it if he continues to shut you out?”

She glared. “That hope was short-lived.”

“Demi—this isn't a black-or-white thing. There
is
hope for you. You can work on this need to be all things to all people. And if Rich takes you back, that can help your marriage. But if you go back under the same circumstances, without dealing with your own premise, what's to say it's going to be any different?”

“It has to be,” Demi said. “Because I'm not the same.”

“And what about Rich?”

“I don't know.” She turned her face away.

This was as far as he was going to pull her today. He could see her fighting back tears, and he couldn't let her leave that way. “You know what?” he said.

“Probably not.”

“I think what you're doing with Jayne means God wants to use you.” He waited until she looked at him. “No matter what.”