The Healing (18 page)

chapter twenty-two

Karen sensed that Sunday was going to be a hard day, despite her efforts to be optimistic. It was the Fourth of July—the day they were supposed to be enjoying the company of friends. It was also Raymond's day off, and his replacement, a young Bulgarian immigrant, didn't speak much English. Since it was his first time at the Donnelly house, it was unfair to expect the man to carry out his duties with the same competence as Raymond, but it was apparent from the start that Mike didn't feel secure in the hands of the new guy. Not only was the language barrier a problem, but Raymond's sure-footed strength just wasn't there, making even the most routine tasks a struggle. It was hard to watch. The newly hired health aide was frustrated, and Mike was embarrassed. The Bulgarian's lack of experience emphasized Mike's physical weakness, and both hated being exposed. The result was a session of minimized care. In the allotted amount of time, the health aide was only able to sit Mike on the toilet, wash him up, and give him a shave. Karen had to throw clean underwear in his face to remind him that Mike needed to be changed out of his pajamas.

Nora shuffled into the kitchen in her robe and slippers. “Who is that?” she asked in a loud whisper.

“I think his name is Alex.”

Nora's reaction was predictable. “Even on Sunday you have strangers traipsing in and out of here?”

Did she actually ask that question? And what answer was Karen supposed to give? Was her mother-in-law that oblivious to the amount of care that Mike now needed? Or was she insinuating that Karen should be doing it all herself? She couldn't possibly be that deluded. In all likelihood, Nora was just airing her opinion without considering the effect of her words.

Karen was in the middle of preparing breakfast, vigorously beating eggs in a bowl, when her newly inspired resolve was tested. She tried desperately to hold on to the promises she had made to herself at the crack of dawn that morning, but Nora made it difficult. She tried to keep her priorities straight and to implement all the lessons she had learned the previous day, but everyone was so needy. “This is the first week that someone had to come every day,” Karen said to her mother-in-law.

Nora pulled her robe tightly closed as an assertion of both her modesty and her disapproval. “Do you think I should go upstairs and get dressed?”

“That's not really necessary,” Karen replied.

“And where's Mike? That guy is in the living room staring at the TV, and Mike is nowhere to be seen.”

Karen pointed to the closed door of the half bath off the kitchen. His empty wheelchair was right outside the door, if Nora had only taken the time to make a few simple observations before the questions, comments, and complaints came rolling off her tongue. For someone who asked so many questions, she knew very little about her son's daily challenges. “He's in the bathroom?” Nora asked.

Karen nodded.

What followed was another predictable reaction. Nora sighed, clucked, and shook her head. “Oh, my poor Mikey. Everything is so hard for him.”

Karen's deep well of patience threatened to run dry. “Mom, could you pour the orange juice?”

Nora started opening cabinets and muttering to herself. “I don't even know where anything is. Big help I am.”

“Take your time,” Karen said. “Mike will be in there a while.”

Nora looked alarmed. “Is he all right?”

“He's fine. It just takes time to get the bowels regulated,” Karen said. She realized she was using the same soothing voice as the medical professionals who reassured her every day. “By next week his body should get used to the schedule.”

Her mother-in-law still looked horrified. “He just
sits
there and
waits
?”

Karen retrieved the juice glasses from the cabinet because Nora had stopped searching. “Sometimes the aide gives him an enema to speed things along.”

“Oh, my God.”

“It beats wearing a diaper and soiling himself.”

“I suppose—”

“Can you get the orange juice out of the fridge and pour it, Mom?”

Karen tried to delegate the simple task to her mother-in-law, but Nora was too distracted and overwhelmed to function. She was more of a hindrance than a help. As if that weren't enough of a challenge, Nora tried to foist the blame on yet another beleaguered family member. “Where's Lori? Shouldn't she be down here helping you?”

There was so much Nora didn't understand. And Karen didn't have the time or the composure at the moment to plead her daughter's case. Nora always thought Lori's problems could be solved with parental discipline and better motivation. But Karen knew the signs. Her daughter was spending too many hours in bed because another bout of depression was taking hold of her. “Lori hasn't been feeling well,” she told Nora softly, hoping to elicit maternal concern rather than disdain.

But Nora's response was a result of neither. She just mumbled something about her son's family falling apart.

Karen was on her last nerve when the real chaos erupted. She heard Lori open her bedroom door. Luka came bounding down the stairs, her heavy paws thumping like a drumroll. The Bulgarian aide, who was still sitting by himself in the living room, did not know the big black dog was friendly. Karen heard him yell something in his native language, and Luka started barking.

“Oh, no,” Karen said, and headed for the living room. She was halfway there when she heard the yelp.

The health aide stood with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. Luka was crying and pawing at her nose, a high-pitched wheeze giving voice to her insult, and Bitsy was clawing the sofa with her fur standing up. Karen could have taken hold of the situation with very little incident if Lori hadn't heard the commotion and come flying downstairs. To make matters worse, she was wearing nothing more than a skimpy little tank top and bikini underwear.

“What did you do to my dog?” she asked, her eyes wild. “Are you
crazy
?”

The health aide muttered something else in Bulgarian and backed up against the mantel.

Of course Nora materialized to witness the drama. “Oh, my God,” she said.

Karen planted herself between the health aide and her daughter. For a moment she was afraid that a physical assault might be imminent. “Lori, go back upstairs,” she said with the commandeering tone of a military officer. “It was just a mistake. Go put some clothes on.”

“But what kind of idiot whacks a friendly dog? Look at her. Luka!”

Karen was relieved when Lori veered away from the stranger to crouch beside her dog. But she almost screamed when Nora put a hand over her eyes and huffed back to the kitchen. For once it would have been nice to have a little help in restoring an acceptable level of sanity, if any of the other individuals in the household considered someone besides themselves.

In all of thirty seconds, the immigrant health aide was babbling in Bulgarian, Nora was holding her head in the kitchen, Luka was snorting and whining, Bitsy was darting in all directions, Lori was sobbing, and Mike was calling frantically from the bathroom, “What the hell is going on?”

Karen lost it. She didn't stamp her feet and yell. She didn't lash out at anyone or act out. No matter how justified such a tantrum might have been, it would have been unkind, and she would've regretted it later. So she simply shut down. She walked calmly into the kitchen, turned off the burners on the stove, and headed for the back door.

“Karen?” Nora called after her. There was a tremulous edge in her voice.

Karen kept walking.

“Karen! Where are you going?” Nora shouted. Her voice rose in panic. She must have realized she'd have to fend for herself.

Karen tried to let go of everything that was happening inside the house and stepped outside, where there was a chance she could slip into the comfort and contentment of the past. Lately, it was all she had. She had to remember who she was and what she was determined to accomplish.

You seem to be doing everything in your power to keep your husband at home with you for as long as possible.

The air was pungent with that damp, earthy smell of the morning, and Karen inhaled deeply as she strolled across the backyard. The grass was so overgrown that her bare feet got wet to the ankles from the dew. Still able to hear the voices through the open windows, Karen made her way toward the farthest corner of the property and tried to calm herself down. The apple tree in the center of the yard looked like a tired old friend that wanted to give her solace but couldn't. It was merely a noble, unmoving sentry standing guard over poignant memories and a lonely future. The lawn where she used to play badminton only made her miss her sister. And the garden she never got to plant . . .

Karen was standing on the very spot her grandmother had cultivated for years. She looked down around her feet, where dead foliage from the previous summer covered the ground in a decaying blanket, enriching the soil and feeding a new generation of healthy green weeds. Tears welled up in her eyes because the unruly patch of earth appeared to represent her whole life—something once so beautiful that had become a neglected, unrecognizable mess.

I'm sorry, Grandma.

Karen was about to surrender to despair when she spotted something next to her foot. Bending down to take a closer look, she dared to hope she wasn't seeing things. Tomato plants can resemble common weeds before flowering and bearing fruit, but Karen had seen enough of them to recognize one sprouting up amid the tangle of underbrush. Her grandmother used to start her tomatoes from seeds at the beginning of March, germinating them in milk containers lined up on the windowsills in her apartment in Queens. By the time she planted them in the ground sometime in May, they were proud specimens that couldn't be matched at any nursery.

Upon closer inspection, Karen spotted three more renegade tomato plants near where she was standing. Realizing she was standing where the compost heap used to be, she began pulling up the larger weeds and pushing aside the grass to see what else she would find. Were the tomato plants growing every summer without anyone even knowing? Karen couldn't imagine such an oversight was possible, but there was no other explanation for their appearance. Grandma had been gone for almost ten years, and she had stopped gardening a few years before that. Maybe the neighbor had taken advantage of the abandoned parcel and tossed his organic garbage over the back fence. Or maybe Helen had thrown some tomato scraps on the overgrown spot when she and Dave had come east and spent a week in Southold the previous summer.

To Karen's further delight, some vines that could have been zucchini or summer squash were also growing wild in the compost heap. It was far from the idyllic garden kept by Grandma or Grace Mitchell, but to Karen it was nothing short of a miracle.

Something inside her came alive.

The house was quiet by the time Karen went back inside. The health aide was gone, Nora and Lori had retreated to their respective rooms, and Mike was sitting alone in the living room. Karen noticed his chair wasn't in its usual place in front of the television, but he had positioned it next to the window that looked out across the backyard. He had been watching her.

“Did you eat anything?” she asked him softly.

Mike shook his head.

It was already eleven o'clock, and nobody had thought to give him some basic sustenance. “Why didn't you ask your mother to bring you a shake or something?”

“She's upstairs getting her stuff together.”

For a moment Karen didn't process what he said. “She's
what
?”

“I told my mother to go home. Trish is coming out to get her.”

In the sizzling silence that followed, Karen eyed her husband warily. Either she had heard him wrong or he was toying with her. Or maybe his depression was worse than anyone thought and he was having a psychotic episode. But Karen had seen her daughter endure such an episode, and Mike wasn't exhibiting the same clues. He seemed perfectly lucid, and he was gazing back at her with calm resignation. His eyes were like oceans in more ways than color. There were countless wonders waiting to be discovered beneath the surface. And even though she was reluctant to be drawn in, she didn't look away. “What happened?” she asked in a whisper.