Forged in Grace (12 page)

Drew cocks his head.
“I interviewed her,” he tells me, leaning forward past Marly, who’s gone uncharacteristically silent. “Would you believe she was very serious and I had to prod her to talk?”

Marly wrinkles her face.
“I was trying to impress you, you know, to get the job.”

“
And so…what, you didn’t hire her?”

Drew puckers his lips then blows out air.
“Oh she got the job. She just got a better offer before we could hire her on.”

“
And thank God,” Marly grasps her Diet Coke straight out of the waiter’s oncoming hand. “Or I’d have been stuck behind a desk all day, rather than in my tank, free!”

After salmon and wild rice, two staffers appear at our table. Marly turns to me.
“You sure you don’t want to try a mud wrap with us?”

“
No, it’s ok, thanks. I want to check out their cactus garden and aviary.”

She and Drew are ushered off to put on sand colored robes, and I can
’t help myself—there’s no one overseeing my actions. I wander off, casually, in the direction of that group of pilgrims, with a frowning look of “oh, sorry, I’m lost” on my face.

The people are gone, though footprints in the sand remain, and I follow them around a bend, to a large open pit, lined with tall, flaming tiki torches, glowing red.

Red hot ovals of coal flex and move, like baby dragons about to hatch. Several burn survivors in my support group had done firewalking to “heal” their fear, to empower themselves. One—a patient of Adam’s—collapsed on the coals, burned her legs, had a total relapse and wound up in a mental hospital after the experience. I watch the coals ebb and reignite as though by an inner life. Skin is barely more than a tease to fire; it protects for a moment, and then yields like a virgin, offering up fluids and sinew. Fire takes what it wants, eats through nerves and melts away more, turning to ash the soft, moist inner marrow of bones.

My fear of fire is not consistent—a campfire no more inspires dread than a faucet, though the crackle and pop of a burger frying in a pan will have me flinching. If anything, I became more fascinated by fire after the accident. Only when there
’s threat of it inching near my face, I think, shuddering at the recent memory of the fire dancers, does it cause alarm. I’m hopeless around birthday candles, candle-lit dinners, candle vigils, but coals—I can see the appeal: fire, contained and localized.

“
The coals demand a lot of us,” a voice says from my back, startling me a step closer to the pit than I intend. I turn and find Krish, removed of his turban, eyes soft in a way that tells me he spends a lot of time meditating.

“
Life
demands a lot of us,” I hear myself saying.

“
You want to walk them, don’t you?” he asks.

The coals
’ gentle pulsing glow is hypnotic, all potential, no actual flame, yet it holds me in a kind of thrall. As I look at the glowing embers, a foreign feeling of courage flexes inside me. A little like when the healing energy begins, the serpent merging with my skin, my bones. Maybe the only thing that can really heal me is more fire.

I only realize I
’ve nodded when Krish answers, “Don’t run. Just walk briskly, with purpose. Know you can do it. Offer yourself to—”

I snap a look of irritation at him and he shuts up. I have given enough of myself to flame.

I slide out of my sandals and let a foot hover over the top of the coal-bed, just to feel its warmth. It sizzles, crackles, the coals shifting with a sound like glass beads clinking together. Something about it reminds me of those high school physical fitness tests—like some cruel version of survival of the fittest, the weakest of us discovering we did not have the strength to shimmy up a rope or make a long jump.

All I feel is silly. It doesn
’t feel right unless I know what I’m offering, or better yet, what I hope to receive in return.

“
Thanks,” I say softly, unable to make eye contact, “maybe another time.” I slide my foot back into my shoe.

I follow the spiral path back with a slight sense of urgency, as though the coals can somehow chase me down,. I pass a tall row of lithe flowering plants and around to a little cabana where I see Drew and Marly
’s backs, their feet disappeared inside a hot tub, steam rising like a shroud around them.

“
So what are you going to do, just wait for him to strike again?” Drew says, loud enough for me to hear where I’m standing. I don’t move. “There’s only one way you can get him fully out of your life.”

There
’s silence and then Marly takes on a heavily sarcastic tone, “Oh I get it, you don’t want to be with someone who’s carrying the seed of another man. You men are all alike—harking back to your Neanderthal roots. Why don’t I just wait until it’s born and you can smother it in its sleep.”

“
Shit, Marly—you always take it way further than I’m going with it. But you can’t deny it gives him a claim to you, to your child, a way in.”

“
Well maybe you should have gotten there first.”

Drew groans.
“You didn’t want anything serious.”

“
Oh right, now it’s my fault.”

“
Well I sure as hell didn’t make you get married and pregnant.” Drew splashes his foot hard into the water.

I want to interrupt them, if only to keep the mood up for the rest of the day, but whatever glory I felt from my success with Calvin Snow is ebbing like the ember of those coals I didn
’t walk on. I’m a fraud, a nothing, not brave or beautiful. And Marly’s life is riddled with secrets, revealed on a time-release.

I don
’t interrupt them but take the path around to the mineral pool, even though I have no intention of stripping down to a bathing suit, though the pale jade water does look inviting. A woman with buzzed black hair is hunkered down in the water on one of the natural stone steps, arms crossed over her knees, an off-in-the galaxy stare making her seem carved, not human.

She does a double take when she sees me, and I cut her the slack of surprise.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to disturb you. I can go.”

She shakes her head.
“No, no, of course not. Stay.”

Her voice is hollow, like she
’s whispering to me from the end of a long corridor. Inside the vaguely sulfurous whiff of the water I smell loss, a stark, metallic scent that seems to be wafting off her body. I can’t very well go over and put my hands on her, so instead I slip off my shoes and socks and dunk my toes into the water. It’s neither cold nor hot, more like a bath left to grow lukewarm.

“
I’m Grace,” I say, voice reedy. I need practice at being the one to speak first, to willingly call attention to myself.

“
Janine,” she says, and I’m tickled that she holds out her hand. I give her wet hand a firm shake, and though it’s faint, I have a quick image of tangled roots, white skeins of scar tissue wrapped around a pink surface.

“
I can help you,” I say, before I mean to. She retracts her hand, eyebrows narrowing into one dark isthmus, surely expecting a religious or commercial pitch of some kind. “It’s endometriosis, isn’t it? My mother has it.”

Her eyes plump from raisins to licorice drops and her voice is a whisper.
“How could you know that?”

It
’s not without some pride that I answer her, “It’s just what I do.”

By the time I come back to find Marly and Drew, they
’ve smoothed over their squabble. If I hadn’t overheard, I’d never know now that they had shared so much as an ill word. They’re sipping what looks like iced tea with mint leaves and reclining on lounges.

“
Grace, there you are! Did you see the cacti in all their prickly splendor?” Drew asks. “Or build yourself a sand mandala?” I appreciate the irony in his voice, but I also feel cut off somehow, like they’re putting on a show.

“
Drew and I have been talking about ways to get our next client,” Marly says. “
Your
next client, I mean.”

I hold up one of my new business cards, indented with wet finger prints and Janine
’s phone number scrawled on the back. “Thank you, my friends, but I have done just fine on my own.”

“
Well look at you!” Marly says, sitting all the way up now.

Her eyes flicker, and I can
’t tell if I’m reading hurt in them, or something else altogether.

That night I wake, sweating, from a dream that Brownie, the big old bear, a resident of the
Wildlife Center since I was a child, died in his grotto, and they called me to resurrect him. His hulking form rises from the ground, eyes dead white, fangs bared. In the sliver of moonlight penetrating Marly’s curtains, it doesn’t seem so scary, though my heart is at an aerobic pace.

Ma
’s voice rents the stillness in my mind
. What are you still doing there, Gracie? You have a life back home, a job.
This conjures the slopes of Adam’s kind face, his unruly bangs, shirt collars never ironed quite flat, hands reaching out to his patients with tenderness no matter their ailments. My three weeks is almost up, so what am I doing setting up another client, handing out business cards?

The clock—its red digital numbers the only color in the room—tells me it
’s 3:00 a.m., but there’s no way I’m going back to sleep now. I lie in bed for another ten minutes when I hear Marly visit the bathroom, shuffle around in the cupboards and refrigerator. I rise and tiptoe out to the kitchen. A box of Cheerios is toppled over on the counter, and she’s standing at the kitchen window, bowl in her hands.

“
Hey,” I say softly, but she still jumps, sloshing milk and wayward O’s onto the floor.

“
Shit, did I wake you?” She puts a hand to her mouth.

I shake my head.
“Weird dreams.”

“
Full moon.” Marly gestures to the sky with her spoon. Even though she’s not showing much yet, her nightgown billows out as she moves, creating a gravid illusion of a swelling abdomen. “Always does that to me.”

“
Are you okay?” I ask.

“
Yeah. I just wake up a lot. To pee. To eat. To think about what the hell I’m going to do.”

What a coincidence
. “You know, today, at first, when you handed me that business card with my name on it, I felt this amazing sense of purpose, excitement. Even at work I don’t have a card of my own, no specialty. But—”

“
I know, ‘healer’ is a flaky term. I couldn’t think of anything else that sounded better,” Marly says, then shovels in two big bites of cereal. “Drew wanted to put Priestess as your title, I kid you not.”

I laugh at the thought.
“No, the title is fine. It’s just, we’re acting like I live here. Like this is my work, my calling, like I don’t have to go back home.”

In the dark of the kitchen I can
’t see her expression, only a subtle shift of her shoulders. “You don’t,” she says, as though it is a command.

“
But maybe this gift—I mean, maybe I can help Adam, and the animals at the Wildlife Center.”