The Probability of Miracles (36 page)

“Now?”

“Soon, child.”

“You are a pile of laundry.”

“Mmmm.”

“Why did they send you? Why didn't they send my father? Or Lily? And if this town is so magic, why can't you just save me? How is it magic to give me something to live for and then just pull it out from under me? That's cruel.”
All the bullshit rainbows and flamingos and snowstorms in July can't stop me from dying like some crazy lady, talking to a chair
, Cam thought. How could she have believed that they could?

“He's out there, you know,” the widow said again, lifting a creepy, gray, arthritic finger and pointing toward the sea. Cam got up and looked out the window. The sea looked like it was boiling. Hot licks of black lavalike seawater crashed together at odd angles. It was chaos. Cam looked back at the pile of laundry, but the woman had disappeared.

Her gaze shifted to the carriage house, just twenty yards away.

Cam sat on the bed, still watching the storm. “Pretty crazy, isn't it?” she asked as a white zipper of lightning seemed to crack the sky in half.

“Hey, hon, I need to tell you something,” Alicia said, handing Cam a steaming milky mug. She had come upstairs with some hot cocoa.

“Yeah?”

“Perry said that you and Asher had an argument.”

“So?”

“Well, apparently after that, he left.” Alicia sat on the bed and held Cam's hand.

“So?”

“In the boat, hon. He left in the boat, and no one's been able to contact him. He's lost out there in that storm.”

Cam looked again at the violent churning of the sea and sky.
He can handle this, right?
she thought at first, imagining the strength of his capable forearms hoisting and steering and managing the swells.
There is nothing he can't do.
Then another clap of thunder rumbled deeply in the distance, rolling toward them menacingly like an oncoming train. It banged with a final, ear-splitting smack.

“I'm going to get him,” said Cam. “I'll take the kayak.” She hoisted herself off the bed and began rummaging through the laundry—
See, it's only laundry
. Adrenaline had taken over, and she forgot her pain. She pulled on her jeans and a couple of T-shirts and made for the stairs. She could do this. She had taken a few lifesaving courses at the Polynesian's pool where they taught you how to make a life preserver out of your wet jeans by tying the cuffs together in knots and filling them with air.

“Campbell, you cannot go out there.”

“Yes, I can,” said Cam, but as she reached for the railing around the stairs she swooned from dizziness and almost fell over.

Her mom grabbed her elbow. “Wait for him here, Campbell. That's all you can do, sweetheart.”

Cam threw open the glass door of the cupola and stepped onto the actual widow's walk. The slanting rain soaked her instantly. She screamed “Asher!” into the wind. “Asher, you idiot. Come back!” She had wanted him to leave and enjoy his life without her, not leave the planet.

“He can't hear you, Campbell!” her mom yelled.

She watched the beam of the lighthouse swing around the bay and scanned the water for a boat, but all she could see were dark platinum waves and whitecaps slapping into one another and hurtling toward the shore. “He's got to be right out there. Why can't someone just go look for him?” she cried desperately.

“They can't send anyone out in that storm, Campbell. We just have to wait for things to calm down.”

Cam walked back and forth in the rain. “I'm staying out here to look for him.”

“Campbell, don't be silly, you can't do anything from there,” her mom said.

“No. This is my fault. I'm waiting for him.”

“Campbell!” her mom said, exasperated, and then she went inside to find a raincoat and umbrella. She found Asher's yellow slicker sailing suit and forced Cam to come inside, dry off, and then put it on before stepping back out onto the widow's walk. “Why can't you wait inside? That's why they built this thing. For waiting.”

“I just have to be out here, okay?” She needed to be feeling what he was feeling, without any impediments between them. She had to be out there, sending him thoughts, because thoughts are energy, energy is matter, and matter never disappears. Her thoughts could keep him close. She knew if she stopped paying attention he would drift away forever. “You don't need to stay with me.”

Her mother stayed with her, of course, and the two of them shrank down and huddled against the wall. Alicia tried to shield Cam from the rain with umbrellas, but they kept whipping inside out from the wind. Finally she gave up and put her head down against her knees. Cam thought she heard her mumbling some Hail Marys.

“Is that the right prayer?”

“It's the only one I know. I'm a bad Catholic.”

“That's okay,” said Cam.

She kept up her vigil, visualizing over and over again Asher steering the boat for home. She imagined it drifting toward the dock, and then she saw him in her mind's eye, hopping off gracefully and tying up the lines like she'd seen him do.

It was still raining when the first white rays of sun tried to shoot their way through the storm clouds. The wind had let up a little, but it blew the rain sideways against Cam's face. The bay was calm now, but black and empty.

Cam tried to stand up but stumbled and fell onto her mom's knees.

“Campbell, my God, you're burning up!” Alicia said.

She helped Cam get inside and take off her clothes and then the convulsing began. The cold, the fever, the pain, and the exhaustion came together and erupted inside of her, and she could not stop herself from shaking. She was shaking so hard that it took Perry, Nana, and Alicia working together to get her into a warm shower and get her dressed. But the shaking continued until the seizure began, and that's when they knew that the little square brick hospital in Promise was not going to do, and they piled in the car headed for Portland.

STRANGELY ENOUGH, CAM FELT SAFE HERE. BACK IN THE HALLOWED, sterilized halls of Western medicine, her journey had come full circle. The irregular beeping of the monitors soothed her, and she felt cool, clean and hydrated, thanks to the saline solution pumping into her veins at 10 ccs per minute. They must have been pumping something else into her, too, because in spite of having been stabbed through the back of her rib cage with two thick chest tubes, she felt no pain.

She felt nothing at all, really. Was that her foot sticking out of the blanket, with the chipped remainders of black nail polish speckling her toes? It had to be. That was embarrassing. To be caught at death's door without having had a pedicure. She wondered if the undertaker would paint her toenails black.
What do they do with the toes?
she wondered. Probably just cover them up. Just as well.

She heard that familiar hushed, mumbling sound of Alicia in a grave conversation with a doctor, and she knew it would soon begin to escalate. Especially when he told her what Cam already knew. That this was the end.

The hospice nurse had already been in, and Cam had heard her conversation with Perry.

“It will be over very soon, when the fingernails start to turn blue.”

“Blue like when your lips turn blue or like when your fingernail falls off blue?” Perry asked.

“Like the lips,” said the nurse, and then she left, leaving some information packets about death and dying.

“No. That can't be true!” Cam heard Alicia yell. “You should have seen her two days ago. She was perfectly fine. How can this have happened in two days?”

“I believe she's been fighting this for quite a while. Seven years, it says on the chart,” explained the doctor.

“Yes, but that was before,” Alicia said.

“Before what?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Alicia sighed. “Before we brought her to Maine. She was getting well here.”

“People often go through a kind of a wellness period. Or remission before a more serious attack. We don't quite understand it. There's still so much we don't know,” he admitted.

“No. There's still so much
you
don't know,” Alicia said. “This was something different. She really
was
well. It was not a wellness
period
. I need you to find me someone who knows what they're talking about.”

“Respectfully, Ms. Cooper—”

“Now! I want someone else in here, who is not just going to give up on my daughter!”

“Ms. Coop—”

“Mom,” Cam moaned without really meaning to. “Give the guy a break, will you? He's just doing his job.”

“Cam?”

“It's time for you to say something nice to me. You know, like, ‘You were the best daughter, aside from Perry, that I ever could have imagined. I feel so lucky to have known you. Honored to have been your mother.' Something like that. Doesn't the hospice brochure give you some kind of a script if you don't know what to say?”

“I know what to say, Campbell.”

“Then you better say it, okay? For your sake, not mine,” said Cam. Her mom exhaled, let her arms fall to her sides, and walked over to the bed.

“You cannot conceive of the depths of my sorrow, Campbell Maria Cooper.” Alicia brought her fist to her mouth and her other hand to the rail of the bed and took a deep breath before she continued. “I will never be the same when you are gone. Things for me will be dim and gray and flat. But there is one thing that will keep me going, Campbell, and that is a belief in my connection to you. This thing. This crazy enmeshed love feeling that I have for you is real. Like this cup is real. Or this phone is real. And it will not just go away when you do. Okay? Wherever you are going, you will be connected to me by this thing, and you will never, ever be alone, okay? I want you to know that.”

“Wow, was that in the brochure?” Cam asked, sniffling.

“No, I made it up,” said Alicia, wiping her eyes with a hospital tissue.

“It was good.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you for everything you've done. And for bringing me here, Mom.” Promise hadn't saved her, but she understood now that it had made her life more complete than if she had lived a hundred years in Orlando. “I love you.”

Cam closed her eyes, letting her tears slide across her temples and land on the pillow. Her mom kissed her on the forehead, and then Cam turned her head to the side.

“Cam!”

“I'm not dead, Nana. I'm just resting.”

“Oh, thank God,” said Nana.

Perry held Cam's hand and said, “You know, I think you gave me the wrong advice.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. I think I should try to be more like you. Not less.” Perry climbed onto the bed with Cam, so Cam could stroke her wavy blonde hair with her fingers.

“That's nice, Per,” she said. “Take care of Mom.”

“I will.”

Nana was at the foot of the bed, rubbing her hand back and forth on Cam's shins. She hung her head as she prayed silently through her tears. “Don't be sad, Nana,” Cam said. “If things go your way, I'll be having breakfast with Jesus or something, right?”

“I don't know about breakfast. Maybe brunch. He likes my sausage and peppers.”

“How do you know?”

“It's between me and him,” she said. She made the sign of the cross and then said, “
Te amo
, Campbell Maria.”

“
Te amo
, Nana.”