Miracleville (10 page)

I want to help her out and turn her right side up, but I'm afraid if I touch her, I might squash her. I could try using the end of my spoon, but I'd have to be careful not to poke her, and besides, my spoon's got milk on it. So I move my chair a little closer and lean over so I can blow on her.

I take a breath and blow, but not too hard. I'm thinking of the wolf in “The Three Little Pigs”—and of how, in Genesis, God gave man life by breathing into him. The wolf used his breath to destroy the houses of the first two pigs. God used his for creation.

It's only when the ladybug flips over that I realize she's one of those rare orange ladybugs. The kind Tante Hélène spotted that day we went on the picnic. The day of Mom's accident. Somehow, starting my morning off with this orange ladybug and being able to turn her right side up with my breath feels like a good sign. It also feels like a good sign when a moment later she flies off, leaving only the memory of her bright orange shell behind.

Mom's coming home. It's been almost three weeks since the accident. The doctors and physiotherapists at the hospital have done everything they can, and now, because the hospital is so overcrowded, they need her bed for another patient. Mom is still paralyzed from the waist down.

Dad has put in a wheelchair ramp in front of Saintly Souvenirs too. He says he doesn't know why he never thought of it before. Having the ramp will be good for business, and it'll make things easier when, eventually, Mom starts doing some work in the shop.

The three of us go to pick Mom up. Dad has rented a collapsible metal ramp. That way Mom can stay in her wheelchair and we can load her right into the back of the van.

She's sitting in her wheelchair when we come, her suitcase on her lap. Carole Tremblay, the social worker assigned to Mom's case, is with her. “We'll talk next week,” Carole tells Mom, leaning down to give her a big hug.

“You keep your chin up, okay, Thérèse?”

Mom pats Carole's back. “I hope your son gets over that bronchitis soon,” Mom tells her. It's so like Mom to know Carole's son has bronchitis. Maybe Mom should've been a social worker.

Carole shakes Dad's hand. “One day at a time,” she tells him, “and remember”—now Carole turns to Colette and me too—“your mom is still the same person she was before the accident.”

Colette has grabbed the rubber handles on the back of Mom's wheelchair. “Of course she is,” she says.

But as Colette wheels Mom down the hospital hallway, with Dad and me on either side, it feels to me like Mom isn't at all the same person. My mom loved to hike in the woods and bicycle even in the pouring rain. My mom practically flew down the staircase in our house. My mom sang while she scrubbed the kitchen floor. What if this mom can never do any of those things again?

When I hit the Down button for the elevator, I see Carole is still in the doorway to Mom's room, watching us.

Dad has made Mom's favorite—chicken salad with cut-up apples in it—for lunch. Colette picked black-eyed Susans and I helped her arrange them in an old milk jug that we put out on the dining-room table. Colette wanted to make a banner, but I told her that would be overdoing it.

“The wheelchair ramp is going to make things much easier,” Dad tells Mom once we've managed to get her into the back of the van.

The fence is a surprise. Dad spent most of Saturday repairing it, and on Sunday he gave it two coats of white paint.

“I want to stop at the basilica first,” Mom says as we leave Quebec City and get onto the 138.

“Are you sure it can't wait till tomorrow?” Dad asks.

“I'm sure.”

Dad sighs. “In that case, we'll stop at the basilica first.”

We're not alone in the basilica today. There are several people in the pews, praying quietly. And there's a cleaning person mopping one of the side aisles.

Dad has come inside too. It's the first time I've seen him in the basilica, though I know he was here when he and Mom got married and, later, for my baptism and Colette's. He looks around as if he's afraid someone might jump out from behind a golden pillar and mug him, or worse, try to convert him. Colette is holding on to his hand.

“Except for the tv monitors,” Dad whispers, looking up at the screens on either side of the altar and the ones behind the pews, “everything still looks the same in here.”

Mom wants us to wheel her as close as we can get her to the Miraculous Statue of Saint Anne. It's a beautiful wooden statue painted gold. And there are real gems— amethysts, turquoises and corals—in Saint Anne's crown.

Dad brings Mom's wheelchair right up to the marble riser. “Close enough?” he asks her.

Mom nods. She drops her chin to her chest and begins to pray. She's whispering, and though I could try to listen, I take a few steps back. Mom needs some private time with Saint Anne.

I let my chin drop to my chest too. I want to pray. I want to pray harder than I've ever prayed. Please, Saint Anne, please, please, I beg of you, heal my good mother. Let her walk again. Please intercede on her behalf.

I close my eyes and press my palms so close together they burn.

I can just make out the hushed sound of Mom's whispering.

“All right,” Mom says, “I'm ready to go home now.”

Dad wheels her down the center aisle. When I catch up with Mom, I run my hand over her skirt, along where her thighs are. But she doesn't look up. Mom still can't feel a thing.

What was I expecting?

I know it doesn't make sense to feel disappointed, but I can't help it. And when we've left the basilica, we pass the statue of Saint Anne in the middle of the pond, I turn away so I won't have to look at the saint for whom I am named. The saint who didn't come through when I needed her.

I haven't seen Mom cry really hard since the accident. But she weeps when she sees the work Dad's done on the fence. “Oh, Robert!” she says, her voice cracking. “After all these years.”

“I should have done it sooner,” Dad whispers.

Mom doesn't say anything about the wheelchair ramp though. But she doesn't want us to help her. “I need to be able to do this myself,” she says, gritting her teeth as she uses both arms to make the wheelchair move forward. The wheelchair pulls to the right, and I rush over to straighten it out. “Don't!” Mom tells me.

I turn to see if Marco Leblanc is watching from his balcony. But for once, he isn't there. His chrome weights glitter in the afternoon sun.

Thirteen

D
ad's in the downstairs bathroom, helping Mom. Because the heat duct in our bedroom is over the bathroom, I can hear every word. Frankly, I wish I didn't have to. Mom and Dad haven't been getting along too well lately.

Truth is, Mom isn't getting along too well with anybody. The first two weeks after she got back from the hospital, her mood was pretty good. But last week the weather in our house turned cloudy. Mom's been getting crabbier and crabbier. Too crabby even to pray.

Last night, when Clara stopped by to say hi, Mom wouldn't come to the door, and she didn't want us to let Clara in either. “Tell her to go away,” Mom whispered from her wheelchair, but I'm sure Clara heard.

It was the same the night before when Monsieur Dandurand brought us supper from L'Église. “How about you phone to thank the Dandurands?” Dad suggested afterward. “They've been awfully good to us.”

“I'm not up to it,” Mom said.

I offered to help her write a thank-you note instead. Colette said Mom could use her favorite stationery. (Not that writing a thank-you note on skull and crossbones stationery would have been exactly appropriate.)

“No.” Which I thought wasn't fair, considering how strict Mom was about training Colette and me to write thank-you notes. I'm afraid if Mom keeps pushing people away, her friends will stop trying to visit and Monsieur Dandurand will stop sending over free food.

“Let me do it myself,” Mom is saying now, and I can hear her spitting into the sink. “I'm not a child, Robert. I can still brush my own teeth.”

“I'm only trying to help,” Dad says.

“If you want to help, just let me be. And don't come following me into the bathroom like a sad puppy.”

“I'm sorry, Thérèse.”

Mostly, I've been feeling bad for Mom, but I'm starting to feel bad for Dad now too. I know from the way he just said “I'm sorry” that his feelings are hurt. Mom shouldn't have said he was acting like a sad puppy. Even if he is acting like a sad puppy.

I'm beginning to think the accident has brought out another side of Mom's personality—a darker side. Before the accident, I don't think I ever heard Mom snap at anyone. And she used to care about washing her hair and looking nice. Mom hasn't let us wash her hair for a week; some days, she refuses to change out of her nightgown. (“Why do I need to get dressed? It's not as if I'm going anywhere!”)

Is this angry, depressed woman my real mom, and was the other one, the mom from before the accident, an imposter? I wonder if, when people get sick or when they've been in some awful accident, they finally become who they really are. Or is it the other way around? Are we most ourselves when things are going fine? Or are we some combination of both?

Will the real Mom please stand up?

Maybe I should go downstairs and try to cheer Dad up, but I'm afraid I'll make things worse. Besides, what if Mom starts snapping at me next?

So I stay inside my room with the door shut. I'm sprawled on my bed, reading my copy of
The Life of Saint Anne
. It's written by a priest, so he only says good stuff about her. Mom gave me the book on my tenth birthday and I've kept it on my night table ever since. I liked it more when I was younger and I didn't have so many questions. Still, sometimes when I don't have much to do, I like flipping through the pages and reading bits and pieces of the story.

If I were Dad, I'd give Mom space, leave her alone the way she told him to, but I can tell from the way the floorboards are creaking that Dad is still down there, waiting outside the bathroom, trying to be helpful.

Mom's confined to the downstairs of our house. Dad took apart their bed and set it up in the living room. I helped him drag the velvet couch into the dining room. Now, the whole downstairs looks like we're preparing for a garage sale—or moving. Luckily the entrance to the downstairs bathroom is extra-wide so we didn't have to knock down part of a wall, so Mom can get into the bathroom in her wheelchair.