Love & The Goddess (21 page)

The handle turned and the door creaked open, just as I pictured my hand reaching out to David’s tiny index finger. Regretful the session had ended, I put on my sandals and quietly gathered
my things to stumble outside in the direction of the garden overlooking a wild meadow of tumbling hills and forest beyond. Aromas of warm soup made with onions and root vegetables wafted on the
breeze as I passed near the soup hatch. Pilgrims congregated outside at wooden tables, eating and chatting in competing dialects. But I was lost in my thoughts. I took my seat on a deserted bench
on the wooden veranda where pilgrims sometimes went for private meditation and reflection. As I inhaled scents of lavender and jasmine, it struck me as strange that I was supposed to be living in
the present moment and yet I had been forcibly sent back to face the past. Then I remembered what Aidan Whyte said on one occasion:
If you have not dealt with past issues they will continuously
come up for healing. You drugged yourself with Prozac to deaden the pain. Let
go of the fear and allow yourself to feel every emotion and you may find you can handle it. Walk right into the
pain – remember, you are bigger than any one emotion.”
What he had said seemed abstract at the time and I hadn’t understood it, as though emotion was a foreign language I
couldn’t or didn’t wish to grasp.

Opening my satchel, I took out a pen and the floppy A4 pad I’d brought as a temporary “feelings journal”, intending to enter into what Whyte called a stream of consciousness
– allowing words to appear without thinking. My eye followed my hand scribbling random words around the page:
God and punishment … Mother’s story … Grim reaper …
The Prophet … Snow Queen … Thaw.
I felt I’d entered a vortex with my memory acting as a time machine spiralling backwards.

Trevor had been so happy as the locals in Kiltilough had congratulated us. “You’ve one of each, a boy and a girl, the perfect gentleman’s family.” I’d never heard
the phrase before and have rarely heard it since. It seemed to imply we had pulled off some mighty stroke, favoured by the Gods smiling down upon us. David had been a quiet baby from the start,
only crying if he needed feeding or a nappy change – unlike Julie, who had been very difficult to get to sleep. Initially it made me nervous and I often held a mirror close to his face to
check he was still breathing.

Then it seemed, when I’d finally begun to relax, I awoke one morning with an eerie sense of heightened perception … a sense of time no longer existing. Accompanied by a gnawing
emptiness in my chest, I walked towards the nursery and remained for what seemed an eternity rooted to the outer threshold, unable to enter the room. “Don’t look up,” said the
voice in my head. I stared at swirling shadows towards the edge of the carpet, cast from a colourful fish mobile attached to the lampshade and blown by a mocking breeze from the slightly open
window. Standing there in the middle of the room was Trevor wearing burgundy-striped pyjamas. Stared at by a huge smiling Eeyore on one shelf and Winnie the Pooh on the other, he held our adorable
baby boy in his arms as tears flowed down his ashen cheeks. I knew before I walked over to touch David’s alabaster skin and cradle his doll-like remains, clad in a lemon velvet baby-gro. It
seemed like I’d known upon waking that he was taken from me. But I could do nothing, not even scream or cry for a very long time afterwards.

The days and months that followed seemed to go by in some sort of haze. The Sudden Infant Death Association put us in touch with other couples who had suffered the same experience. It was good
to talk to people who had been through the same awful ordeal, but I couldn’t break the endless cycle of self-blame. I knew the starting point of my anxiety had really come into play when I
had begun to lean on Trevor for support and direction. I had become another person – the bohemian, enquiring bubbly girl I had once been had died with my baby. Died with David.

Liz came to visit and offer her support in those early days. I told her over and over again in the week that followed, “I was his mother. I should have been better tuned into him. I should
have known something was wrong.”

“Kate, you did everything right. These things cannot be prevented. You breast fed him for three months … no, don’t tell me you should have done longer. Stop being so hard on
yourself. Do you remember the story of a mother, by Hans Christian Anderson, that Dad read to us as children? It suggests that a child’s hour of death is decided before birth and nobody
should interfere in that.”

I had momentarily stopped sobbing as I remembered the story of how the mother tried to bargain with the Grim Reaper until he explained that one of two plants in his garden represented her baby
son’s soul. The first was capable of spreading happiness and healing to everyone he met whereas the second would only bring evil and destruction. When asked did she still want to interfere in
God’s plan, the woman declined. I said angrily, “Well if God knew everything in advance, couldn’t he have ensured David had the good genes?”

Liz didn’t give up so easily. “We only ever have our children on loan – they are never ours to own.” She continued her theme of parables in hopes of calming me,
paraphrasing a section from Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet –
a book I had given her one Christmas and had thought she was dismissive of at the time. Obviously, she had found it
meaningful even if she couldn’t remember the exact words to quote. It felt strangely more comforting to believe that David had been like an angel, merely visiting me for a brief time. This
perception cracked through the endless “if onlys” and spoke to a deeper part of me where the need for analysis wasn’t necessary. Yes, Liz had been a torrent of strength and wisdom
and that had helped me in the early days

The overhead cries of a white-crested eagle awakened me from my reverie, bringing me back to Brazil and the present moment. I turned the page in my journal to write:

I’d become so adrift from my feelings. I’d become a bit like the Snow Queen, freezing my heart in ice to protect it. It finally broke again when my marriage ended. But the value
of a broken heart is that it can be put back together and made whole. The real thaw and healing began today on the crystal bed.
I was astounded when I glanced over the last two lines of what I
had written. It was through identifying with characters in stories, no matter how childish, that I could begin to accept and trust in a divine plan. I thought back to my experience on the crystal
bed and was comforted that in some strange way my connection to the divine had grown and suddenly I had a renewed faith in the words my mother had uttered about David: “He’s an angel
now and will always be with you.”

W
e arrived at the airport after sharing a taxi with two American sisters we’d met in our
poussada
. Ella had booked a flight to
Rio and rescheduled her flights home for a later date, claiming it would be a mortal sin not to take in Rio after coming this far. And since she had come on a pilgrimage it would be better not to
commit such a grave sin. On the lookout for a good business opportunity, she was determined to investigate products in Rio, having discussed importing coffee with Adolfo.

After check-in we met for a browse around the shops in the small airport terminal before entering duty free, stopping suddenly outside a lingerie shop with the most stunning negligee in the
window. More like a very sexy evening gown, it really had the “wow” factor, with a silk satin skirt flowing from an uplift lace bra bodice, encrusted with black bugle beads. “Oh
Ella, isn’t that amazing?” I remembered how Trevor used to buy me nice lingerie. Despite my pilgrimage, I still found it difficult to be a woman alone. I regularly received emails from
“
luvpicasso”
aka Geoff, but he was my only contact and we remained platonic friends. It would most likely continue in that vein, as he’d told me in the last one that he had
met a girl from the site and had been dating her for the past three weeks. It was just as well I hadn’t wanted anything to develop with him; I needed time to continue the healing which had so
recently begun.

We went into the shop and checked the back of the gown. Its lace panel tapered to a V at the centre back below the bodice, through which a matching lace thong could be seen. The doll-like
Brazilian shop assistant smiled and purred in response to our interest. “It’s magnificent, no?” Her doe eyes lit up as she daintily turned the price tag to show us. “Not
expensive for you – no? You American?”

“No, Irish.” Ella nudged me. “That’s an outfit to drive a man out of his mind. It’s a Goddess gown. And not that expensive – if it had an Italian label it
would cost three times that.”

“It’s still expensive for a negligee.” I considered. “Unless you converted it to evening wear by adding a silk slip underneath.”

“Creative as ever, Kate. How are you so brilliant? An evening gown for one hundred and fifty dollars …” She whispered into my ear. “You try it on for size and if it
looks well on you I’m going to buy it and try to get it copied. Maybe I’ll see if I can prise any information out of the sales girl about the designer.”

Five minutes later I emerged from behind the curtains of the tiny fitting room to call Ella over and at the same time have a look in the nearby mirror. “Oh my God!” It was my face,
but it didn’t look remotely like my body with the clever corsetry uplifting my very average breasts to display a magnificent cleavage.

“Gorgeous, Kate. You look like you could go to the Oscars in that gown,” Ella said, and the assistant murmured in agreement.

“Well, if it had an under slip …” I returned to the changing room to put my own clothes on.

“This designer is a friend of mine. I met her when I was modelling,” I could hear the girl telling Ella as they waited for me to get dressed. “What about you? Can I help you
pick something special?”

“You can wrap up the gown and I’ll pay for it. But do you mind me asking where your designer friend lives?”

“Are you going to Sao Paulo?”

“No, Rio, but I’m interested in looking at importing a variety of products.”

“Then my friend may very well meet you in Rio. Here is her business card.” The young woman handed Ella a gold-embossed card, just as I emerged from the fitting room. With forty
minutes to spare before I was due to board my plane to Lima, we sat drinking coffee from paper cups on a plastic bench in the duty free area, as busy commuters passed by.

“That was a stroke of luck you managed to get the contact details from her,” I said.

Ella nodded seriously. “It seems like that was good advice I got from Naomi, the American girl we met that first night, telling me to put in a request for help with starting a business. It
certainly appears to be paying dividends. I told you I felt I was being called to Brazil for a reason, Kate. Adolfo gave me a list of export agents representing everything from chocolate-covered
almonds to gem-stone jewellery and fashion. I’m over the moon. I think you and I benefited in very different ways from our trip.” She paused to study my face. “You look much more
relaxed, lovey, and I’m delighted you had a healing experience. I always thought it was unnatural that you spoke so little of David and to be quite honest with you I often had to hold back
from talking to you about babies. Afraid I’d upset you. Strange because you were always so open about everything else.”

“Trevor practically made discussing David a taboo subject. It all began when people started suggesting I should think about having another baby. First a psychologist mooted it, then
Trevor’s family and finally my mother. It was always said in the same coaxing manner, head cocked to the side, soft tone of voice as though they were talking to a half wit in need of sound
advice. It was hurtful. Trevor and I were in agreement. David could never be replaced by another baby.” The tears were coming, and Ella pulled a tissue from her bag and offered it to me while
placing her hand reassuringly over mine. I wiped my eyes, before continuing: “I became so sick of the endless coaxing, I felt something had to be done. Since David’s birthday occurred
four months after his death, I decided to have a mass said in the house, inviting all the family. Trevor and I agreed we would make a speech, thanking everyone for their support, adding that while
we knew everyone meant well, the suggestion that we should have another baby was a painful one, that we needed a certain degree of privacy in dealing with our grief. Then for some reason, I
didn’t understand, Trevor baulked just before everyone arrived and told me he would not stand for me making a speech. Imagine!”

“What did he say?”

“He spoke to me as if he were scolding a bold child, telling me he forbade me from raising the issue. It was the first time I saw a side to Trevor I had never seen before. The Mr Hyde to
his Dr Jekyll, capable of frightening me into total submission. Perhaps it was irrational on my behalf for I knew he would never harm me, but his tone was that of a maniac. It shook me to my very
core, as it would on later occasions, if ever he felt I might challenge him.”