Within Arm's Reach (6 page)

DR. LEWIS’S reprimand sticks with me. I play it over and over in my head. Am I the person he described? Do I not want to be a doctor?

He was definitely right about one thing. At the hospital, in my work, I am on very thin ice. Every time I meet a new doctor, he or she is excited to work with me, having heard about my accomplishments, my grades, my memory. But that excitement lasts only so long, as I inevitably lose my patience in front of them. I know Dr. Lewis, for one, has requested not to work with me. There may be others who have done the same. This is a worrying situation that seems to have little chance of improving. Even with my stellar reputation, I am using up any second chances.

When I leave the hospital at the end of the day, I call the Realtor from my cell phone and tell him I will meet him the next morning. I would do almost anything for Gram, but not this. I need to be able to seal myself off more effectively. I need my own bathtub to soak in, my own answering machine to leave on at all times, my own curtains to draw closed.

When I get to Gracie’s house, she is sitting at the kitchen table, Dear Abby letters spread out before her.

The minute I walk in, she says, “Lila, I’m so sorry about the other morning. Please don’t be mad at me.”

I listen to her beg me, for what must be the hundredth time in our lives, to tell her that no matter how questionable her behavior, she’s a good person, and everything will be all right. I lean into the refrigerator pretending to look for something to eat.

I choose an apple and turn back around. “How are the losers doing this week?”

“They’re not losers, Lila.”

When she started this job, Gracie used to make fun of the letters with me. After all, the premise is ridiculous. Scores of people, mostly women, send their heartfelt questions and painful secrets to a complete stranger. They actually want, wait for, and take this stranger’s advice. And what are the stranger’s qualifications to play God? Don’t even get me started. For my sister, it was sleeping with the editor of the newspaper. So now women all across northern New Jersey are leaving their husbands, making up with their teenage children, and signing up for college courses because my sister, the good lay, the pregnant, unmarried twenty-nine-year-old, thought it sounded like the best solution.

“It’s the letters from the young girls that get to me,” Gracie says. “I have seven letters this week alone from girls whose boyfriends are pressuring them to have sex. They don’t know what to do because they don’t feel ready, but they also don’t want to lose their boyfriends. There are also three letters from girls who want help because they’re depressed.”

Gracie spreads her hands over the rows of letters. Like mine, her hands are pale, without creases, but her fingers are slender where mine are stubby. She looks as exhausted as I feel. “Who am I to give them advice?”

I can’t argue with this, so I concentrate on my apple, which is a little mealy. A picture of Gram in the hospital flashes through my mind: old, bandaged, shaken. I wish suddenly that my sister had been there with me to see Gram. I don’t want to be the only grandchild with that image in my head. I wish that my memory was able to let go every once in a while. It has been too noisy in my head lately, too raucous. I miss the silence I used to be able to create locked in my dorm room or in my favorite study carrel at the library.

If I were at the library now, I would reread a chapter in my medicine textbook. Maybe the one on epidemiology, which was always a favorite. I’d review the causes and symptoms for Lyme disease, Chronic Fatigue, Epstein-Barr. I’d read about the suppressed immune system that lets in all germs, infections, and viruses and makes a bad situation worse. I am a fan of these kinds of diseases, which are vague in their symptoms, heavy in fatigue, capable of blurring the edges of the people they strike. These illnesses dull everything—personality, skills, drive, memory. I like to imagine, when I am tired and burnt out, that I have contracted Epstein-Barr, and that I now have the chance to step away from my life, and lose myself.

“Are you going out tonight?” I ask.

Gracie gives a rueful smile. “No. I’m off men for a while.”

“Literally and figuratively?”

“Funny.”

“Well, I’m going for a walk.” I’m surprised to hear this come out of my mouth. I rarely go for walks. I am more a lie-in-front-of-the-television-until-I-fall-asleep kind of girl.

But once I’m outside in the cool night air, I know it was the right decision. I had to get out of that stuffy kitchen, away from my sister, away from the letters full of unanswerable questions and inconsolable grief.

I round the block and approach the Green Trolley with its painted sign of a green train car. I consider going inside. Maybe I need to raise some hell. I haven’t been drunk since college. I haven’t had sex in, well, a long time.

But my legs take me past the front door of the bar. After all, it is Gracie’s place. I stare straight ahead so I won’t have to make eye contact with half of my high-school class. But out of the corner of my eye I see Joel and his buddy Weber standing beside some overgrown adolescent who is throwing up in the parking lot. Joel freezes at the sight of me, his hand on the vomiting guy’s back. But Weber has no problem talking.

“Hey, Doc,” he yells, “we need some medical attention. Hellooo, I’m right over here. . . . Oh shit, are you ignoring me, Leary? Joel, she’s ignoring me.”

Joel stays frozen. Weber takes two skips in my direction. “I knew your sister had a secret,” he says. “Did she tell you that I knew?”

I have heard about Weber’s so-called psychic gifts. He can’t keep his mouth shut about them. As far as I’m concerned, he’s just a fat fireman, and not much of a friend to Joel either, yelling about his business in the parking lot of the town bar.

“I can tell you’ve got a secret, too,” Weber is saying. “That’s why you’re so goddamned uptight. You need to loosen up! I could help with that—come inside and have a beer with me.”

I turn my head and meet his eyes. I can tell that the contact chills him, as I’d known it would. He stops bouncing in place. Even his crew cut seems to wilt.

I think, I must have ice water running through my veins.

I say, “Stay the fuck away from my sister and me,” and keep walking.

CATHARINE

I won’t tell a soul that it was ghosts that made me stop my car in front of the Municipal Building. Nor does anyone need to know that this kind of thing has been going on for some time now. It would take my children about ten seconds with their heads huddled together to decide that I need one of those fancy new psychological drugs. And there’s no point in telling any of this to Dr. O’Malley, who is my age, and who hates to see any signs that I am growing old.

I keep him as my doctor out of habit, I suppose. He delivered all nine of my children. I drove panicked to his office with the head of my firstborn in my lap, her breath labored, her face swollen and flushed. I carried her, a big three-year-old whom I had told only one week earlier that she was too heavy to be picked up anymore, from the car to his office door. I sat in the waiting room, my worry spreading like a spider’s web across town because Kelly was home alone. Willie had been due back from an errand any minute, so I had decided to leave the eighteen-month-old in her playpen. I told myself that if I’d brought her she would have slowed me down. I had wondered if I should call Patrick at his office. I hated to bother him, so I didn’t until later that afternoon when Dr. O’Malley sent me back home with the news that all I could do was hope that my little girl was a fighter.

The visions I’ve been having are a gift from Patrick. His parting gift. He had always seen things, his entire life. And now he has given his sight to me. We were married for forty-two years. It is in keeping with his character—although I never would have imagined this—that he would brand me with a piece of himself as he left his life.

When our children were young Patrick would sing Irish songs to them in the evenings. While he sang he would actually see the McNamara band march through the living room—few in number but the best in the land—cymbals clanging. He would watch the leader of the band pause behind Kelly’s head, his chest swelled with pride. Patrick swore they locked eyes. Patrick raised his glass of scotch to the leader, and the band moved on. He sang of Miss Kate Finnoir, who left her beau standing in the street below her window, singing his heart out. Sometimes in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, on his way back to the office after a business lunch, Patrick would see the young man standing on the curb outside a Paterson brownstone, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes on a window two stories up. Patrick would pause and listen as the young man sang of his undying love for Miss Kate.

Early in our marriage, Patrick used to tell me about these sightings. They didn’t worry or embarrass or surprise him at all. They were simply a normal, even pleasurable, part of his life. They were as real to him as the sight of his wife standing beside his chair refilling his glass. I never said a word when he came to me, his eyes lit up, and told me whom he’d seen that day. I nodded and smiled and followed along even though when he was excited and it was late in the evening, that was a challenge. I paid perfect attention until he was finished with the story, and then I returned to mending the hole in Johnny’s pants, or straightening up the kitchen, or feeding the baby. Did his stories remind me of my mother and that empty chair beneath the window? Yes, but I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that my husband provided well for myself and our children. We didn’t want for anything. As far as I was concerned, Patrick could see whatever he liked.

That was the situation for years and years. At some point, I can’t recall exactly when, my husband stopped telling me about his visions. I’m not sure why. I knew the visions still existed by the shine he had in his lovely green eyes from time to time. Then, one Tuesday afternoon during Lent, Patrick died on me. I had known the end was coming because he wasn’t well enough to golf or drink. The circulation in his right leg was off, and he said his scotch had begun to taste oily and thick in the back of his throat. “God is calling you,” I said to him. “Don’t argue with me about this, because you know I’m right.”

We both smiled over that comment; it was a private joke. Patrick always claimed he married me for two reasons: one, for my father’s business connections, and two, because I was so utterly levelheaded that I was always right.

He died in his sleep of a massive heart attack. I found him when I went in to wake him from his nap. I sat beside his bed for several minutes, praying, before I made any calls. I could tell that my husband’s soul had not yet left the room, and I have come to believe that that is when Patrick gave me his gift. In that viscous, tenuous time between life and death, anything can happen. A forty-two-year-old marriage suddenly ended; I earned the new and unwanted title of “widow,” and a chill ran through a room in which every window was shut tight against drafts.

THIS AFTERNOON after lunch I’m sitting at the small table I have set up beneath the one window in my room, when the scenery outside the glass suddenly shifts. I’m watching a group of small speckled birds attack the bird feeder hung from the massive tree in the center of the lawn. Beneath the tree there is a bench where the same two men sit each afternoon with their newspapers, their canes propped against their thighs. I am enjoying this familiar sight. It’s a beautiful spring day. I’m thinking about how nice it will be to see my entire family for Easter, and how it won’t be too long now before the sun rises on that sacred morning.

First I notice that the birds are gone. I hadn’t seen them fly away, so I put my glasses on to check if the bird feeder has suddenly become empty. But the bird feeder is gone, too. That’s when I feel that tiny cringe deep inside, and I have to fight the desire to squeeze my eyes shut. Instead, I lean forward and take in what I am supposed to. The two older men and the bench, the newspapers and the canes have also disappeared.

In their place beneath the massive oak tree is a gaggle of young children. There are at least ten of them, and they range in age from nine years old to a baby who is crawling in the dirt, stopping occasionally to pull on a piece of grass. The children are laughing and chasing one another, hopping over the baby. The nine-year-old, a bright-faced girl, picks up a toddler and swings him around in circles.
I’m flying,
the toddler calls out, choking on giggles. The children are familiar; they are freckled and pale and Irish, and at first glance I think they are mine. There is a set of twins, just like I had, and the oldest is a girl. I lean closer to the windowpane, and my breath catches in my throat with disappointment. No, no, no. The twins are both boys, and none of these children have come from me. So, then, who are they? Why have I been stuck with them?

I notice now that the children are a mess. Some of their pants are ripped in the knee. The toddler is wearing a hand-me-down jumper a few sizes too big. The baby begins to cry, and the tightness to the sound means she is hungry. They are wearing the same style of clothes my children wore when they were young. None are wearing shoes. They are clearly all of the same family. Jumbled among them are a few common traits: reddish hair, overly large ears, a wide grin. I have seen them before. I look more closely, scanning for another clue. The children climb and tumble and hug and tussle one another without ever straying more than five feet from the fat oak’s trunk. But the close proximity is not out of choice. The oldest girl tries to tug away occasionally. She skips a distance and then stops each time at the same exact point, turns, and walks back to her siblings.

She is tied to the tree. All the children are tied to the tree. They have white sashes around their waists that lead back to a fat white loop around the tree trunk.

These are the Ballen children. They lived in Paterson near where Patrick grew up. As a child, Patrick was friends with the children’s mother. The father was a drunk, usually gone. Patrick, the children, and I stopped by their house once, on our way home from a visit with Patrick’s parents. We were dropping off some kind of food, perhaps a casserole, or a pie, from Patrick’s mother. I was never comfortable in that neighborhood. It was so different from where I had grown up. The tiny cramped grocery store Patrick’s mother ran. The two cramped rooms upstairs where Patrick and his brothers and parents had lived. The tiny, poorly constructed houses that ran up and down the surrounding streets, filled with Irish. The Ballens’ house was no more than a shack. We pulled up in our shiny Ford that afternoon, and the children piled out before I could stop them. Kelly, Pat, Meggy, Theresa, Johnny, Ryan. I had wanted this to be a quick drop-off and drive away. I followed reluctantly, not wanting to be rude. Mrs. Ballen opened the door, beads of sweat on her forehead, wiping her hands on a filthy dish towel. She flushed to the roots of her hair at the sight of us. She took the casserole, or pie, or whatever it was and said thank you. Johnny said, “Where are your children?” Mrs. Ballen, looking more and more uncomfortable, said, “Around back.” And we all followed Johnny, not knowing what else to do. After all, what did I have in common with this woman? Patrick said something to Mrs. Ballen about his law practice and she nodded. I think he had done some pro bono work for her at one time. We heard her children—one crying, several laughing, a few squeals—as we walked around the side of the shack. We rounded the final corner, and saw them. Tied to the tree in the middle of the yard like a pack of dogs. Mrs. Ballen, her skin still bright red, said in apology, “It’s the only way I can keep track of them.”

I had hated that afternoon. Those twenty excruciating minutes with Mrs. Ballen and her children. Piling our own children back into the Ford. Driving out of Paterson, past the waterfall, back to Ridgewood and our neatly ordered, comfortable home where Willie had dinner waiting. Why would I see those children now? I hadn’t thought of them in years. I had never seen them, or Mrs. Ballen, again. I knew she had died young of a heart attack, the poor woman. I had no idea what had become of her offspring, who would now be in their forties and fifties, the same age as my own children. And yet here they are, tied to a tree outside my window.

I don’t look away. After all, if God or Patrick thinks this is something I need to see, I will not argue. I can stand to be uncomfortable. I simply rearrange myself in my chair and watch. The Ballen children are there for nearly an hour. After a while, the older children notice me. The oldest girl and the twins wave their arms in my direction, then point at their waists. They want me to untie them. They want me to set them free. The twins stand up straight, two lovely little boys, and press their palms together in front of their chests. In prayer, in supplication, in hope.

“I’m sorry, I can’t, I don’t know how,” I say, over and over, until the vision ends, until the children disappear, until I am left alone.

AFTER THIS sighting, I pay a visit to my son Ryan. Something about the murkiness, the timelessness of that vision, leads me to him. As it is, I visit him every Tuesday afternoon, rain or shine. That is our schedule. He serves Pepperidge Farm cookies and tea, which I eat and drink with as little motion as possible, hoping the birds overhead won’t notice I’m there. He has four or five large yellow birds the size of cats. Their wings are clipped so they can’t fly, but they are able to jump from perch to perch. I forget what kind of birds they are. I forget their names. They hop from one corner of the room to the other, squawking and talking and going to the bathroom wherever and whenever they feel the urge. I am, of course, very careful about where I sit.

Ryan asks about his brothers and sisters first thing. He has a very good heart. “How is Kelly, how is Pat, how is Theresa, how is Meggy, how is Johnny?”

Today he pretends not to listen while I run through the answers. I tell him everyone is fine. If I don’t have something good to say, I skip the subject. I don’t tell him about the accident, as there is no need for him to worry. I also skip over Gracie. But there is plenty else to say, and we never stop talking, between the two of us. Or, if we do stop talking, it doesn’t seem like it. The thing with Ryan is that you can’t listen to him the way you do to just anyone. You have to listen to what is beneath his words. You have to listen to his concern, his faith, his heart.

I liken the way I choose to approach Ryan to my study of the Bible as a child. You read stories about Noah, Adam, Solomon, Rachel, and the stories seemed to be just that, stories. You didn’t let yourself get distracted by the details and the background characters. The biblical tales were enveloping clouds of fiction, but soon enough you found the hard, sure stones of truth. Respect your elders, care for your fellow-man, do not steal, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Ryan is very honorable. He is deeply committed to our family, and to the Lord. As am I.

I say, “Meggy is enrolling Dina in the school in their new neighborhood. Hopefully it will be a good change for her. Meggy coddles her too much, lets her do whatever she likes.”

Even as I speak, I am distracted by the memory of those children tied to a tree. I haven’t been able to shake them yet, but I’m happy to be talking about my children and grandchildren’s better chances. I feel like something is at stake. I wish I could tell Ryan that I know Gracie is pregnant, that I have seen her more than once now and there is no doubt in my mind. But this is not the kind of news I can share with my youngest son. He doesn’t handle surprises well. He would cast the news in the wrong light. It would upset and disappoint him.