The Shadow Wife (27 page)

Alan both supported and envied his wife. He pleaded with her to teach him everything she knew about her method of healing, but no matter how long Alan spent with a patient, no matter how intently he spoke to them, looked into their eyes, held their hands, he made no difference in their physical condition.

Carlynn knew he was proud of her, though. Proud and thrilled by the newfound fame that brought them more patients than they could handle. He tried to protect her from overdoing it by putting an end to the walk-in appointments and by hiring nurses to screen the patients so that she would see only those in the greatest need. Some, she turned away herself, knowing from talking with them on the phone or in person that she could not help them. She just knew. There was something in their voice, or in the words they used, that told her. And it was nothing she could explain to anyone who asked, not even her husband.

Her own mother was one of those people.

She tried to visit her mother every month, sometimes with Alan, sometimes alone. Delora never asked Carlynn about Lisbeth, and if Carlynn offered any information about her sister, Delora feigned deafness in addition to her failing eyesight and arthritis. Once, Carlynn overheard an interviewer ask Delora the question, “How many children do you have?” and her mother replied, “One” without a moment’s hesitation.

Carlynn had felt guilty at first, continuing to see their mother, but Lisbeth insisted that she did. Someone needed to be sure Delora was all right and getting her eyes checked regularly, Lisbeth said. So she encouraged Carlynn’s contact with their mother, and Carlynn was relieved. No matter how horrid one’s
parents were, she thought, it was the duty of the family to look after them.

Her mother had grown rather famous in Monterey County, not that she’d truly ever been an unknown. But now that word had spread about Carlynn’s healing powers, newspapers and magazines were always after Delora for an interview. Sometimes they tried to contact her to see if she might be able to get them an appointment with her daughter to treat their cancer or their ulcers. It annoyed Delora tremendously that she, herself, wasn’t a better advertisement for her daughter’s skills. Carlynn had been unable to heal her arthritis or the macular degeneration that was stealing her vision. Not for want of trying, certainly, and with every visit she tried again, sending her energy into her mother’s body until she was drained and had to sleep for hours. But nothing worked, and Carlynn was never surprised. Her mother was one of those people she would turn away from her office, knowing that no matter what she did, this woman would not get better. Not her eyesight nor her knees. Not her narcissism. And certainly not her cruelty toward her unwanted second daughter.

L
IAM WALKED INTO
M
ARA’S ROOM CARRYING HIS GUITAR CASE.
Joelle smiled at him from the edge of Mara’s bed, and Carlynn looked up from where she was sitting in the recliner.

“Good!” Carlynn said. “I’m proud of you.”

He had not brought the guitar the week before, when Carlynn had initially instructed him to do so. He hadn’t touched it since the day Sam was born. It would need new strings, he told himself. The calluses on his fingers were no longer as tough as they should be. He’d had a world of excuses. Mainly, he just did not want to have to look at, hold or play something that was so strongly connected to his life with Mara. He was afraid of how it would make him feel, and he didn’t want to be that vulnerable, especially in front of Joelle and Carlynn.

He was annoyed at Carlynn’s intrusion into his life. Yet, he had to admit, it was kind of spooky in Mara’s room when she was there. There were changes in Mara since Carlynn had been seeing her. Even the physical therapist admitted it. Mara was tracking better with her eyes as she followed the little stuffed toy the therapist moved through the air. She was awake for longer periods during the day, and her right hand and arm were not
only getting stronger, but seemed to move now with a purpose, something he had never seen before Carlynn’s involvement.

The therapist said, though, that this was not a miraculous change in Mara. Often, after a period of little or no progress, a person with the sort of damage Mara had suffered could begin to show signs of improvement. Liam should not expect too much, though, the therapist warned him. Mara’s cognitive impairment was likely to remain at its current level, even if she did make small strides in the use of her muscles.

Even though he had not brought his guitar to their last meeting in Mara’s room, he had to admit that the visit had been almost fun. He’d brought a couple of tapes that he and Mara had made of their performances, instead. They’d listened to the music while Carlynn did whatever she was doing to Mara’s hands, and the songs brought back memories of various concerts and made him and Joelle laugh again. The laughter had seemed alien the first week, when he and Joelle obediently talked about their memories of being together with Mara. How long had it been since they’d laughed together? But last week had been better. Joelle didn’t seem like so much of a stranger, or an enemy, or, as Carlynn had pointed out to him weeks earlier, an evil person to be avoided. She seemed actually quite harmless, and it felt okay to enjoy his time with her as long as it was to help Mara. That was how it had been the first year after the aneurysm: he and Joelle had done many, many things together, all in the name of helping Mara. It wasn’t until they did something just for themselves that their togetherness felt wrong.

Joelle was back at work now, a week sooner than her doctor’s recommendation, but she seemed fine. Pregnancy looked good on her. There was something about her small size and long hair and the clothes she was wearing, which drew attention to her expanding middle, that led everyone to talk about how cute she looked. Was he the only person who thought she also looked very, very sexy? He’d always found something provocative in her petite body and in the way her long dark hair fell over her breasts.
He could still remember the weight of that hair on his chest and his thighs and the feeling of it in his hands. That memory would come to him at the most unexpected and inappropriate times—when he was working with the family of a cancer patient, for example, or in the midst of a meeting with the E.R. staff—and he was annoyed with himself for being unable to control it.

Everyone at the hospital was still speculating about how she came to be pregnant. He speculated right along with them, feigning ignorance. People thought he knew and was keeping it from them, not because he personally had been involved in the conception, but because he and Joelle were good friends. The newest rumor was that she was pregnant through in vitro fertilization with one of her gay neighbors having donated the sperm. He said nothing to dissuade that thinking. But his big worry of late was that Joelle’s baby might look like Sam, with those telltale blond curls.

It upset him that that night would not go away. With Joelle pregnant, that night would always be there, staring him in the face, first in the shape of her pregnancy itself, and later in the form of a child. What his relationship would be to that child, he didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine any relationship at this point.

He’d told Sheila that Joelle was pregnant, not wanting her to find out either by bumping into her or through the grapevine, and again, he pleaded ignorance to knowing how she came to be that way. Sheila, he thought, had eyed him suspiciously.

Now he felt Mara’s eyes on him as he opened the case and pulled out the guitar. Would it upset her to see the instrument that she used to play so well, far better than he ever could, when she was unable to even hold it herself? But there she was, smiling as usual, with no hint of sorrow or distress or anything, really, other than that simple happiness that had become such a part of her.

“Okay, now,” Carlynn said as she stood up from the recliner.
“Is that the best chair for you to sit on to play?” She pointed to the straight-back chair and he nodded.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and Joelle admonished him with a teasing look.

“You want to sing with me, Jo?” he asked.

“No way,” she said. She took her seat in the recliner, while Carlynn sat on the bed and began massaging Mara’s hands.

He started with “There But for Fortune,” then played and sang several more songs in a row, and it felt like coming home to him. He no longer cared what this music was doing to Mara. He was in his own world, and it was a good place to be.

He played one of his favorite songs, an upbeat tune that had a zydeco feel to it.

“Oh!” Joelle said in the middle of the song, hands on her belly. “She’s dancing.”

He stopped playing and looked at her. “She?” he asked, and Joelle nodded.

For some reason, he hadn’t thought of the baby as a girl. Or as a boy, either, for that matter. He’d managed to give it no identity whatsoever. But now, as he continued singing, he couldn’t get the image of a curly-haired, blond baby girl out of his mind.

“Play the one you and Mara wrote for me,” Joelle requested when he’d finished that song.

“Only if you’ll sing it with me,” he said.

“Are you out of your mind?” she asked.

“Come on,” he said, although he knew she couldn’t carry a tune. “It’s just a fun song. You don’t have to really be able to sing.”

Joelle shifted in the recliner, sitting up straighter, readying herself to sing, and he had to laugh.

“By all means, sit up straight,” he said. “Maybe your posture was the problem with your singing all along.”

She looked at him from under hooded lids. “Don’t make fun of me, or I’m not going to sing with you,” she warned.

“You’re right. Sorry.” He played a few chords of introduction,
then started singing, and she joined in. God, she was terrible. Worse than he’d remembered, and he had a hard time keeping a straight face. He happened to glance at Carlynn, who was still studiously massaging Mara’s hands, but who looked as though she, too, was trying not to laugh. They finished the song, and Joelle looked quite pleased with herself.

Silence filled the room for just a moment. Finally, Carlynn spoke. “Mara, dear,” she said as she focused on the massage she was delivering, “you will never, ever, have to worry about Joelle taking your place.”

San Francisco, 1964

G
ABRIEL’S NEW BOAT WAS A STUNNING FORTY-FIVE-FOOT,
refurbished, two-masted yawl, and Lisbeth felt a thrill as they pulled away from the pier at China Basin. Carlynn and Alan were sailing with them, and she could see her sister’s nervous smile as they motored past the breakwater into San Francisco Bay. Lisbeth and Gabriel had finally persuaded Carlynn to join them, telling her it would mean so much to them to have her and Alan’s company as they christened their new boat. Lisbeth knew how hard it had been for Carlynn to climb aboard, and she was glad the breeze was gentle, the sun bright and the air warm for an August morning.

Carlynn was too pale, Lisbeth thought as she watched the sunlight play on her sister’s face. Pale, but beautiful, with the identical features Lisbeth saw every time she looked in the mirror. The twins still weighed exactly the same: one hundred eighteen and a half pounds. They even went to the same hairdresser these days, getting the same cut each time just for the fun of it,
although Lisbeth wore her cut curled under, and Carlynn wore a flip. Lisbeth had some stretch marks on her belly and thighs and breasts from losing so much weight over the years, but other than those few differences, they were very much twins.

She was worried about Carlynn, though. Ever since learning that she and Alan couldn’t have children, Carlynn hadn’t been the same. Sometimes it seemed as though she was merely going through the motions of living, and her smile, when it was there at all, seemed artificial. Alan was worried, too. He’d confided in Lisbeth that he’d suggested Carlynn see a psychiatrist, afraid that the stresses of her work, combined with her pervasive sadness, might lead to a nervous breakdown. Carlynn had told him she had no time to add another appointment to her already crammed schedule.

“I can’t force her,” Alan had said to Lisbeth. “All I can do is worry about her.” He’d looked terribly sad, and Lisbeth had put her arms around him in comfort. But she could think of nothing to say to alleviate his concerns, since she shared them.

Gabe carefully walked out on the narrow bowsprit above the water to release the jib from the sailbag, and Lisbeth laughed as Carlynn hid her head on her arms at the sight of her brother-in-law balancing on that narrow piece of wood. She didn’t dare tell Carlynn the other name for the bowsprit: “widowmaker.”

“I’ll haul the mainsail up if you take care of the jib,” Gabriel said to Lisbeth as he came back on the deck.

Lisbeth hoisted the jib, and once Gabriel had the main up, he trimmed the sheets and killed the engine. Then they were moving over the water with only the sound of the wind in the sails.

“We’re going to head upwind for a while, Carlynn,” Gabriel said. “Then we can take a nice, smooth downwind ride back. All right? Are you ready?”

“I’ll never be ready,” Carlynn said. “Weren’t we going upwind when I fell overboard, Lizzie?”

“Yes, but that’s not going to happen this time,” Lisbeth reassured her.

Gabriel jumped into the cockpit. “Helm’s alee!” he called, turning the wheel, and Lisbeth released the starboard jib sheet. The sails luffed wildly above their heads, then began to fill with the wind, and Lisbeth winched the port sheet in.

The boat tacked from side to side as they made their way toward and beneath the Bay Bridge. Sailing this new boat would have been a thrill, anyway, but the fact that Lisbeth had a skill her sister did not possess made it all the more enjoyable for her. She only wished Carlynn could enjoy it, too. Carlynn clung to Alan, her face contorted in fear, even though Gabriel was obviously doing his best to prevent the boat from tipping too severely to either side.

“Look at the Golden Gate Bridge.” Alan pointed toward the orange structure as it came into view in the distance. Although the sky above the sailboat was clear, the bridge was haunted by a ghostly fog slipping in and out of the cables and hiding the tops of the towers.

“Carly and I went to the opening ceremonies when the bridge was built,” Lisbeth said, trying to pull her quiet sister into the conversation.

Carlynn looked at her and smiled her I’m-trying-to-look-happy smile.

When they had finally tacked far enough, Gabe steered off the wind and eased the sails, and the ride instantly flattened.

“Oh, thank God,” Carlynn said, taking in a deep breath.

“You can relax now, Carly,” Gabe said to her.

The air was much warmer as they sailed downwind, and Lisbeth persuaded her sister to take off her jacket and bask in the sun with her for a while, while the men talked about sports.

Lisbeth could see Gabriel from where she lay on the deck. He was wearing a T-shirt, and the muscles in his dark arms were still long and lean and strong, and for just a moment she wished her sister and brother-in-law were not with them so that she and
Gabriel could anchor the boat, go belowdecks to the beautiful cabin and make love on one of the berths. He was getting more handsome as he got older, she thought. It scared her sometimes to think that he was eleven years older than she was. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. Thank God he’d given up smoking the year after their wedding.

They sailed for a half hour or so before she brought the picnic basket up from the galley. Carlynn seemed more relaxed now, her smile almost genuine, and they ate sourdough bread and Monterey Jack cheese and toasted the new boat with champagne.

“I wish you’d leave Lloyd’s office and come work for Carlynn and me,” Alan said to Lisbeth as they ate. It was not the first time he’d made the offer, but this time he sounded truly serious. “Our office is getting out of hand.”

“
Getting
out of hand?” Carlynn said.

Lisbeth occasionally thought about working for Carlynn and Alan, but she’d been with Lloyd Peterson for more than a decade, and her loyalty to him was strong. Lloyd had taken in a couple of partners, and she’d enjoyed the challenge of learning new skills and training the girls who worked under her. Still, she knew things had grown wild at Carlynn and Alan’s office and that they desperately needed someone with experience to come in and take charge.

That one simple article in
Life
two years earlier had spawned dozens more, and Carlynn’s reputation had grown more quickly than any of them could have imagined. People came from as far away as Europe and Africa and Japan to see her, and some of her patients were celebrities—a couple of movie stars, an injured baseball player and a politician from the Midwest. Even Lisbeth didn’t know their exact identities, since Carlynn honored their pleas for confidentiality. They didn’t want to be perceived as kooks, as Carlynn often was herself.

“What I wish,” Alan said as he polished off his second glass of champagne, “is that Carlynn could train people to do what
she does. There’s only one Carlynn to go around, and it’s just not enough.”

“I hate turning people away when I know I can help them,” Carlynn agreed. “And it’s not like there’s someone I can refer them to.”

“Do you think that what you do is a trainable skill?” Gabriel asked. “Or do you think it’s a true gift?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Carlynn said. “I barely understand it any better than I did when I was sixteen.”

“She’s tried to train me,” Alan said with a self-deprecating smile that Lisbeth found endearing. “I’m apparently untrainable.”

“I believe that my…techniques, for want of a better word…may be something other people can learn to do,” Carlynn said, “in spite of Alan’s experience. My fantasy is that, if I could figure out what works and what doesn’t, and we could somehow
prove
that what I do has validity, and we could offer a scientific explanation for it…then I could train people in what works, and those people could train other people, and there would be a whole lot more healing to go around. But it would require years and years of research to get to that point, and I don’t have enough time to breathe right now, much less add another facet to my work.”

“What if you could create an institute of some sort, where you could just focus on the research?” Gabriel cut a piece of cheese and handed it to Lisbeth with a chunk of bread.

Carlynn and Alan exchanged a look. “We’ve actually talked about that,” Alan said. “It’s a pipe dream, though. We couldn’t afford to give up our practices, and it would take a lot of money to get something like that off the ground and keep it going.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “maybe you could treat people there as well as do the research. You’d just have to get enough funding for it so you weren’t dependent on seeing X number of patients a day.”

“Oh my God,” Carlynn said, looking up at the sky. “How I would love that!” Lisbeth couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard such enthusiasm in her sister’s voice.

“I could help you apply for grants,” Gabriel said. “I’ve written so many grant applications for research at SF General that I could write them in my sleep.”

“Where would they apply?” Lisbeth asked her husband. It was one thing to find grant money for the customary studies SF General would embrace. How would Gabriel find money for something most of the world considered quackery?

“In the beginning, you’d need some seed money to get you started,” Gabriel said. “Then once you’re up and running—and showing some results—it shouldn’t be that hard to get more.” He smiled ruefully. “Not impossible, anyway. And I love a good challenge.”

“Are you serious, Gabe?” Carlynn asked him.

“Completely serious.”

“This would be great.” Alan sat up straight, a look of excitement on his face. “Carlynn and her reputation would be our draw, of course, and I could design and direct the research. You could be our financial guy, Gabe. And Lisbeth could run the whole shebang.”

“What would you call it?” Lisbeth asked.

“The Healing Research Institute of San Francisco,” Alan said, and Lisbeth knew this was not the first time he’d said that name to himself.

“We need Carlynn’s name in there, though,” Lisbeth said. “People need to know she’s behind it.”

“The Carlynn Shire Center for Healing,” Alan suggested.

“No,” Gabriel advised. “Leave out the healing part. The word is too charged. Just call it the Carlynn Shire Medical Center.”

“You’re all just dreaming, right?” Carlynn asked. “You’re tormenting me with this.”

“Everything worthwhile starts with a dream, Carly,” Alan said, and he passed her the bottle of champagne.

Carlynn was coming back to life, and she hadn’t truly known she’d been away. She chattered endlessly as she and Alan drove
south toward Monterey the day after they’d survived sailing with Gabriel and Lisbeth.

“I really, really want to do it,” she said. “The research center. Or institute. Or whatever we call it.” She was turned in her seat so that she could face Alan as he drove. They’d been talking about starting a research center all the night before and that morning, but their conversation had focused on the type of work they could do there, not on the feasibility. “Do you think we can? I mean, I know it would mean we’d lose a lot of our income, at least initially, but, Alan, this is so important. There are answers we need to find.”

Alan let go of the steering wheel to reach across the seat and take her hand. “I don’t care about the money,” he said. “I don’t care if we never live in a beautiful home in Pacific Heights. I care about two things: your happiness and using your gift to the fullest. A research center seems the best way to do it. And Gabe made it sound as though it really could work.”

“But we can’t have him writing grant applications for us for free. We have to pay him.”

“Yes, we’ll have to pay him,” Alan agreed, and it pleased her to realize that he’d been thinking about this just as she had. “We’ll need him working full-time to handle all the financial aspects of the center as well as the fund-raising.”

“You’re serious about this!” Carlynn could barely contain her enthusiasm.

“You bet. We’ll need to ask him if he’ll do it. Then he can work out our business plan and our budget, and give himself a nice fat salary. And then we have to see if we can get Lisbeth away from Lloyd Peterson.”

“This is so wonderful!” Carlynn threw her arms up in the air. “All of us working together. I would absolutely love it.” After a moment, though, she leaned her head against the headrest, suddenly somber. “How the heck do we get something like this off the ground? Gabriel said we’d need seed money. Where does that come from?”

Alan glanced at her, but it was a minute before he spoke. “I’m surprised you haven’t thought about the answer to that question,” he said quietly, and she knew he had thought through this part of the plan as well. “How about the woman we’re on our way to visit?”

“Mother?” she asked, surprised.

He nodded. “What do you think?”

Carlynn stared out the window as they passed the Santa Cruz exit off Highway One. Delora Kling was an undeniably wealthy woman. She’d been born to money and had inherited even more when her husband died, and she regularly donated large sums to charities. This would not be a charity, of course, but she had never been shy about publicizing Carlynn’s gift.

“I hadn’t thought of her,” Carlynn said, “but she just might be willing.”

There was a new servant at the mansion, a fat and sassy Negro woman named Angela, who was working as Delora’s personal aide, helping her get around when her vision did not allow her to move independently. Carlynn wondered just how poor her mother’s vision had become. Did she know this was a Negro she had come to depend upon?

She did, indeed. Over lunch on the terrace, Delora spoke about how fabulous it was to have someone to find her hairbrush for her when she’d misplaced it or to guide her to a chair on the terrace so that she didn’t tumble off the edge.

“Even though she’s colored,” Delora said as she sank her fork into the salad in front of her, “she has been a splendid help. I don’t know how I got along without her.”

Carlynn took courage from her words. Maybe her feelings about Angela would have softened her attitude toward Lisbeth and Gabriel. She glanced at Alan.

“Mother, Alan and I would like to talk to you about a plan we’re considering.”