The Healing (26 page)

chapter thirty-one

Mike woke up wracked with pain. He had sagged sideways off his pillows, causing his whole body to ache, and his head was cocked forward so his spine felt like it was on fire. He suppressed a groan but not a grimace as he gripped the railing and tried to shift into a better position without calling for help. By the time Karen breezed in to check on him, he had straightened up enough to appear comfortable. He didn't want her to notice the shallow breathing or the veil of suffering that dimmed his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, immediately adjusting the rollaway tray upon seeing he was awake.

He managed to spout out a very generic, “All right.”

Karen stopped what she was doing and looked at him more closely. “Are you sure you're all right?” she asked.

Mike realized he was frowning. He had to tell her. “I just slept wrong,” he replied.

“What hurts?”

Everything.
“My back,” he said, because it hurt the most.

Karen lowered the railing and sat on the edge of the bed. “Can I rub it for you?” she offered.

He wanted nothing more than to feel the balm of her touch, but he was reluctant to move. “Maybe later.”

She felt his forehead and reached for the thermometer. “Your temp is back up to a hundred degrees,” she informed him when it beeped.

The way he felt, Mike would've guessed it was 107. “Well, it's no worse than before,” he said.

Karen stood up. “I'll make you some more tea.”

“Later, babe.”

“Well, I have a friend stopping by to take a look at the garden, and I was going to put the kettle on anyway,” she told him.

Mike's initial reaction was to be pleased that Karen had a friend coming over, but he couldn't refrain from being practical. “Do you think it's a good idea to invite someone in when they could catch my cold?”

“I told her you were under the weather,” Karen said. “But she didn't seem to mind. She wants to meet you.”

He was perplexed. “Who is it?”

“It's an older lady I've seen around town since I was a kid. Her name is Grace Mitchell, and she lives on Terry Lane in that beautiful house on the bend that overlooks the bay.”

Mike was too preoccupied with his pain to try and place the name or the house. “Do I know her?” he asked.

“I don't think so,” Karen replied, sitting back down on the edge of the mattress. “I met her when she was walking by the beach one day, and we started talking.”

The beach. Again she mentioned being at the beach. It sparked his interest beyond the pain.

He narrowed his eyes, trying to read Karen's impervious expression. He vaguely remembered that she had mentioned the woman to her sister.

Karen went on, brightening as she spoke. “I told Grace how I've always loved her house ever since I was a little girl, and she actually brought me inside for tea.”

Mike, always so attuned to his wife's mood, envisioned all she was talking about. “I remember that house now,” he said, forgetting his physical discomfort for a few moments. “That one with all the gables, and the statuary in the front. You used to tell me how you imagined living there one day.”

Karen nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, that's the one,” she said. “That's where Grace lives. Isn't that ironic? And she has this wonderful vegetable garden, so I told her about the plants I found growing out back.”

Mike started to lose himself in the flashback, recalling his many walks with Karen along Terry Lane, going to and from the beach at Founders Landing . . . how they had held hands and talked about their future. They had always walked arm in arm, their heads tilted together, their feet striding in a relaxed rhythm. They had murmured softly, laughed, looked at the sky, stopped at all the familiar places . . .

A gentle knock on the porch door put an end to his reverie. Karen jumped up and declared, “That must be Grace now.”

Mike watched her scamper out of the living room and wondered what she had told this woman about him. He tried to listen to their greeting at the side entrance, but he couldn't hear over the low murmur of the television. And by the time Karen led the woman inside to meet him, he was watching the doorway with boyish curiosity.

Given no description of his wife's new acquaintance, Mike never expected to see such a stately, soft-spoken lady. She was wearing a long black shift and carrying a straw tote, reminding him of the photos he had seen of Greta Garbo in her more reclusive years, with her hair pulled back and sunglasses perched on the brim of her sunhat. Mike instantly recognized a timeless beauty in the aging oval face, especially in the wide-set brown eyes that were focused on him with soul-searching intensity.

“Grace, this is my husband, Mike,” Karen said. “Mike, Grace Mitchell.”

The woman stepped up to the bedside and nodded like a monarch acknowledging her loyal subject. The cool, collected smile on her face reflected a tangible inner peace. “It's so nice to meet you, Mike,” she said in a voice befitting her demeanor. “Karen has spoken so highly of you.”

Mike glanced at his wife, who blushed a little, before greeting their visitor. “Pleasure to meet you, too, Grace,” he replied, his voice still thick with congestion. “I apologize for being indisposed, but I woke up with this terrible cold.”

Grace reached out and ever so gently touched his shoulder. It was by no means a bold gesture, yet it had the effect of cutting his words short. “Please don't apologize,” she said quietly. “I should be the one apologizing, for intruding on your rest and your privacy.”

“It's no intrusion,” Mike replied politely. “I'm glad to see my Karen is making friends.”

“You're very kind,” Grace remarked with the humble propriety that reminded Mike of Catholic grade school. She reached into her straw tote and extracted a large Mason jar wrapped in a green gingham cloth; she turned her body so that she was now addressing Karen as well. “You're not going to believe this, but when you called, I was in the middle of making fresh chicken soup.” She unwrapped the jar, revealing the cloudy golden liquid, and handed it to Karen. “Now, you may think this is just a wild coincidence, considering Mike came down with a cold and could use some old-fashioned, homemade medicine, but I rarely make soup in the summer. This morning, for some reason, it popped into my head, and I decided to make it. So it was obviously meant for you.”

Mike didn't know what to make of the woman's unchecked kindness or her claim that the chicken soup was divinely inspired, and he deferred to his wife for a response.

“Oh, Grace,” Karen said with a sigh, apparently moved to the core by her friend's simple gift. “This was so thoughtful of you. How can we ever thank you?”

The gratitude seemed to slide right off the reserved visitor as though she were made of glass. “You can tell me it made Mike feel better.”

When Karen turned to Mike, he recognized the elusive flicker of warmth in her eyes—the faintest glowing embers of all they had once shared. “Do you want to try some?” she asked.

Mike didn't really feel like eating anything, but if he'd been able to force grilled cheese down his sore throat for Raymond, he was certain he could manage a few sips of chicken soup. “Sure,” he answered, mustering up some enthusiasm for the sake of their guest.

“I'll go warm it up,” Karen stated buoyantly. “And I'll make some tea.”

She invited Grace to follow her into the kitchen, and Grace actually said, “Excuse us, Mike,” before gliding out of the living room.

A classy lady,
he thought, leaning his head back on his pillows.

And he was grateful that the spasms in his body had eased up.

He never related it to the strange heat he'd felt in Grace's fingertips.

chapter thirty-two

September 1997

Karen was already asleep, but listening for Mike's car had become so ingrained in her brain that she woke up at the first sound of his wheels turning off the street. She plodded to the window and parted the curtains. The old Toyota was in the driveway, and Mike was trudging up the walkway like a battle-fatigued soldier returning from war. Karen's heart fluttered with relief and contentment, as it always did when Mike came home after a long shift. She hurried downstairs to turn on a light for him.

He dragged his feet over the threshold. “What are you doing up?” he asked, taking her immediately in his arms.

Karen pressed her face into his neck. “I missed you,” she replied.

Mike pulled back to look at her. He needed a shave, and his eyes were slits. “You always say that,” he crooned, and kissed her tenderly on the lips.

“That's because I always miss you.”

He kissed her again and then released her with a groan. “I'm wiped.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No, I had something at the firehouse. I'm going to take a shower and go right to bed.”

“All right.”

“Is Lori asleep?”

“Snug as a bug.”

Mike dragged himself up the stairs by the banister and went into the bathroom. Karen heard him turn on the shower, and she crawled back into bed, nestling in with more comfort now that Mike was home. For about ten minutes, she listened to the running water and wallowed in her feeling of completeness. She was about to doze off again when she heard a tremendous crash followed by a stream of profanity that propelled her out of bed before her eyes were even open. “Mike!”

Karen flung open the bathroom door and barged into the cloud of steam with her heart in her throat. Mike was sitting on the floor between the tub and the toilet, soaking wet and naked, and he was bleeding from a small cut near his hairline. Still muttering through clenched teeth, he was rocking back and forth, holding his left arm. Even Karen's wide-eyed distress couldn't stem the torrent of foul language erupting from his throat.

“What are you
doing
?” she asked.

“Sit-ups,” he hissed. “I wasn't tired enough, so I figured I'd get some exercise!”

The biting sarcasm rolled off Karen, and she crouched down in front of him to determine how seriously he was hurt. “Did you fall getting out of the shower?”

Before Mike could answer her, a frightened voice startled her from the bathroom doorway. “Mommy? What happened?”

Karen was surprised by the sight of her daughter standing in her nightgown and bare feet, but Mike was obviously horrified. He curled up for cover and let loose with another single-syllable, hard-consonant expletive. In the same split second, Karen bolted to her feet and hustled Lori out of sight.

“Is Daddy all right?” Lori asked in a muffled voice. “What happened?”

Karen couldn't tell if she was rubbing her eyes out of drowsiness or because she had seen what no twelve-year-old girl should see. If it was the latter, hopefully she'd wake up in the morning and think that seeing her father naked on the bathroom floor was just a bad dream.

“Daddy just tripped getting out of the shower, and he banged himself up a little,” Karen explained as benignly as she could. “He's okay. He's just really mad at himself.”

Lori seemed mollified, so Karen tucked her into bed and sprinted back to the bathroom. This time she closed the door behind her.

Mike had managed to haul himself off the floor and was sitting on the closed toilet seat, looking overheated and wrung out. A nasty bump the size of a walnut had risen under the cut on his head. Karen grabbed a few tissues and wiped the streaks of blood that had trickled down his face. “Do you think your arm is broken?” she asked, preparing herself for a run to the emergency room if necessary.

“No, but I wrenched it all the way to the shoulder blade,” Mike replied.

“What happened?” Karen asked. “Did you get woozy?”

“I guess.”

“Maybe you shouldn't take such hot showers when you're tired,” she said, knowing Mike liked the water so hot his skin appeared scalded when he emerged.

He just nodded, but he looked troubled.

“Are you sure you're all right?” Karen asked. She sat back on her heels and peered at him with loving concern. It scared her to think that Mike's fall could have been related to all the other weird symptoms he'd been experiencing. “You don't think—”

He raised the usual wall of defense. “Karen, I don't want to talk about this right now.”

“But you've been tripping over your own feet a lot lately. It's not like you.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled to let her know he was out of patience. “Karen—”

She wasn't thwarted. What she wanted to say needed to be said. “You keep blinking like something's wrong with your eyes, and even on your days off you're exhausted by three o'clock in the afternoon. And you get these headaches and backaches all the time. You pop Tylenol and Advil like people eat breath mints!”

Now his eyes churned like angry seas. “A tired fireman with a backache,” he said, the sarcasm free-flowing once again. “Now, there's one for the medical journals.”

Karen didn't back down. Mike's health was too important. She looked him squarely in the eyes, her own gaze aflame with challenge. “It's not the job, and you know it.”

“Thank you, Dr. Donnelly.”

“If you think it's the job, then explain why sometimes you can't—”

She caught herself, but she had gone too far.

Mike shot to his feet, nearly knocking Karen over, and gripped the edge of the vanity when he lost his balance. In the brief moment when he stood before her in all his glorious nudity, Karen could see the angry blue bruise marking the spot where his left buttock had hit the tile. She tried to take hold of his wrist, but he shook her off. “Mike—”

Grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist, he swung the door open with such force he almost ripped it off its hinges.

Karen watched him stride down the hallway, limping and sore. He was still rubbing his wrenched left arm, and she ached for him on a level that physical intimacy could never express. “I'm sorry,” she called after him, wishing she could take back what she had said. She had meant it as just another health issue tipping the scales in favor of going to the doctor. But Mike never wanted to broach the subject. After twenty years of problem-free conjugal bliss, his recent bouts with impotence were apparently far more troubling to him than tingling feet or headaches. It didn't happen every time they made love, but it was happening more and more in recent weeks. For a man who'd always had a healthy libido and a healthy, cooperative body, the scourge of sexual dysfunction must have posed a serious threat to his manhood. Karen knew Mike wasn't worried about failing himself. He was worried about failing
her
.

The more she tried to reassure him, the more he clammed up about it.

Feeling hollow inside, Karen turned off the bathroom light and ventured back to bed. Mike was nowhere to be seen, and Karen heard the television go on downstairs in the den. Two hours later, he came back upstairs and carefully eased himself between the sheets.

Mike probably assumed she was asleep, but adrenaline and worry had kept her wide awake since the incident in the bathroom. She could tell by the way Mike was breathing that he was hurting. So she slipped her hand in his and whispered, “I love you.”

His healthy arm went around her, and he pulled her to his chest. She heard his heart beating and felt the warmth of him envelop her as the fine line of hair at his breastbone tickled the side of her face.

Karen finally fell asleep, huddled against Mike as if he could protect her from what loomed in their tomorrows.

Karen watched proudly as her daughter set up her music stand for the school's spring concert. Lori looked like an elegant young lady in her black skirt and white turtleneck. All of the physical changes she had been hiding under big shirts and layered clothing were now visible to the world. She was even wearing stockings and low black pumps for the first time. Her wavy dark hair was brushed to a high sheen and fell over her shoulders, and her striking features seemed to leap out of her face against the glow of fair, perfect skin. Her exquisite blue eyes surveyed the audience from beneath the canopy of black brows and eyelashes, seeking out her parents and flashing with childish exhilaration when she spotted them in the second row.

“Would you look at her?” Mike said over and over again. Every once in a while Karen caught him shaking his head, as if he couldn't believe how his daughter had been transfigured.

Karen clutched her old thirty-five-millimeter, and Mike was beside her with the camcorder—ready to immortalize the moments when their daughter picked up her flute and played her part in the school orchestra.

The orchestra tuned up, and the band teacher raised his baton. Karen could hear Mike talking to himself as he fumbled to get the videotape rolling. He slid out of his seat at the end of the row and crouched down in the aisle to get the best shot of Lori as she raised the flute to her lips. Karen picked up her camera and snapped away. She glanced sideways at Mike and actually laughed when she saw him on one knee as though genuflecting. He looked completely awestricken. Neither of them had ever played an instrument, so Lori reading a line of notes in the tapestry of the music was, in their minds, on par with brain surgery.

The piece ended. Karen clapped so hard the palms of her hands stung. She looked at Mike again, and he was grinning from ear to ear, the camcorder still poised to capture every last slap of applause. “
Brava,
baby,” she heard him say.

Finally, he pressed the Stop button and rose from his stooped position to get back on his chair. But he never made it. Karen watched helplessly as Mike toppled sideways and crashed into the woman sitting on the end of the front row. The rest of it happened in a kind of suspended slow motion. The camcorder flew out of Mike's hand and clattered onto the wooden floor, and then he fell with a sickening thud in the open aisle amid the gasps and reaching hands of those seated nearby.

Karen bolted to her feet, but before she could get out of the row, a few men rushed to Mike's side, including the band teacher. The school principal rushed over from next to the stage, and people in the audience were standing up and stretching their necks to see what happened. Some of the kids in the orchestra were gawking curiously, and some were snickering out of nervousness, amusement, or pure adolescent cruelty.

Karen looked at her daughter. Lori was frozen in her seat, the color completely drained from her face.

The men who came to Mike's aid helped him to his feet. “Are you all right?” everyone kept asking him.

Mike nodded, tight-lipped and deeply flushed, as someone handed him the camcorder. He thanked the people who had helped him. He apologized courteously to the band teacher and profusely to the woman he'd hit on his way down. Then he turned around and assured everyone he wasn't drunk, which garnered a laugh from the audience.

Karen sat down slowly. Her knees were knocking together. Mike settled back into his seat without daring to meet her gaze. She didn't wish to prolong the spectacle with any wifely fawning, so she resisted the urge to rearrange his hair and wipe the dust from his Dockers. Instead, she just leaned toward him and took his hand. “We're both calling in sick tomorrow,” she said in a whisper. “You're going to the doctor.”

Mike didn't hesitate this time. “Okay, babe,” he finally relented.