The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  “What line of work are you in, Mr. Petersen?” she said.

  “I’m in commercial architecture,” Dad shouted. “I own a firm in San Francisco with branches in Santa Barbara and San Diego.”

  Frankie opened the gate and let us pass her into the shelter of the cottonwoods and out of the wind. “Well, welcome to Montana—although I understand MSU is your alma mater.”

  “Right. Go Polar Bears.”

  Frankie gave him her husky laugh. “We’ve come to that, haven’t we? Distilling our fine educational institutions down to the stuffed animals who dance at football games.”

  She laughed again, and if I hadn’t felt like I was making my way through some surreal painting, I would have laughed with her. I had always felt that way about the obsession with college sports.

  Now, my father, he showed no signs of laughing at all. He put his hand on the back door and said, “Please, after you.”

  I was surprised, and maybe a little relieved, to find only Andy waiting at the table when we got to the dining room. My guess was that Emma had expressed her opinion about my father and had been packed off to Conrad with Joseph for pizza. I had to wonder, though, why Andy didn’t go with them.

  He stood up the minute we entered the room and offered his hand to my father. He was freshly showered and shaven. I could even smell a trace of musky aftershave.

  “Andy DeLuca,” he said.

  “Sandy Petersen. Are you a patient here, Andy?”

  Oh. My. Gosh.

  Andy grinned. “I have always been a patient here, sir. I’m Frankie’s nephew.”

  Being back in Andy’s presence, and Frankie’s, brought the picture into focus. I caught Andy’s surreptitious grin for me as I took my customary seat at the table, and it gave me a pang. I was leaving right when it really did look like we could be friends. Not a this, as Joseph had put it. Not a this he was supposed to tell Frankie about, but a good-bud thing.

  Really? You want to go there right now?

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t see to go anywhere—not with my father’s revelation about Wes, and his plan to take me from here and put me someplace else, and the tears in his eyes because he thought I’d tried to kill myself—not with all of that spinning in my head. I scratched at my arm under the table and tried to center.

  The dinner was, as always, fabulous, and so was Frankie’s way of guiding the conversation along like a piece of silk. Andy wasn’t bad at it either, though he punctuated his repartee with sly secret smiles at me.

  My father held his own, especially when Frankie drew him out about his avant-garde design for a spa in Palm Springs and his plans for a father-daughter trip to the South of France when I was well enough—at which point Andy raised his eyebrows quizzically at me and I shrugged. Another one of today’s surreal surprises.

  But as the evening progressed, I also saw Dad’s smile become more plastic and his eyes more vague. Once I saw them redden and his closed mouth stretch as if he were holding back a yawn. I looked at Frankie but she didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she was too polite to let on, because Frankie didn’t miss much of anything. Still, I hoped she missed that.

  Just about the time I knew Dad was going to make an excuse to leave, he leaned back in his chair and looked smoothly around the dining room.

  “Well,” he said in his confident baritone, “I can see this place has done Kirsten a lot of good. There’s a part of me that hates to take her away.”

  The air froze. It was Andy who chilled it with eyes of ice, not Frankie. Her demeanor was as quiet and intentional as ever as she said, “Would you like to explain that, Mr. Petersen?”

  “Of course. I think I owe you that much.”

  As he filled them in on his plan, I clawed at my arm, though it wasn’t enough to put out the fire on my skin. I couldn’t look at Andy, but I knew he was searching my face for an explanation that went far deeper than the one my father was giving.

  “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” Dad said. “I’m sure in time your method would produce the same results. I just think a more professional approach will speed things along so she can get back to school.”

  Is it just me, or did he just make that entire announcement without ever looking at you?

  Which meant it had to be blatantly obvious to both of them that my father had formed the rescue plan without consulting me.

  Wasn’t a heartfelt rescue what you wanted? What you always wanted from Daddy?

  I couldn’t deny that, especially since my father’s reaction to my situation was not at all what I’d been afraid it would be. Yet something crawled up the back of my neck. I didn’t recognize it as resentment until Frankie said, “Do you think you two have discussed this enough?”

  Her eyes prodded me. I could hear them telling me: Say exactly what you think.

  “We haven’t discussed it at all,” I said.

  Dad sniffed. “What is there to discuss? Kirsten needs the best and fastest care so an unfortunate incident like that won’t happen again.” He gave Frankie the synthetic version of his smile. “I don’t know what financial arrangements you’ve made with Kirsten’s mother, but I’ll pay you for the entire thirty days Kirsten was to be here. That’s only right.”

  Frankie said nothing. It took me several seconds to realize she had no intention of saying anything as long as he was still there.

  “Excuse me,” Andy said.

  He scraped his chair back and left through the kitchen without a glance at me. And certainly not a sly smile.

  I stopped scratching at my arm and let the resentment crawl up my neck unhindered. When I heard the back door slam, I turned to my father.

  Say exactly what you want to say. Say it.

  “It wasn’t just one unfortunate incident,” I said. “And I wasn’t trying—”

  “Then all the more reason to get you the best doctors in the psychiatric field.” He rose from the chair and kissed me on top of the head. “Listen, we’ve got a big day tomorrow, kiddo, so I’m going to let you get some rest.” He nodded at Frankie. “Sister, it’s been a pleasure.”

  Frankie and I sat without talking as the door closed and Bathsheba growled and the Lincoln’s engine purred to life and faded down the driveway. When all was quiet, she drew my arm out from under the table and rested her hand on it.

  “I can feel something stirring under your skin,” she said.

  I was only a little startled. “That’s exactly how it feels,” I said.

  “How much does he know?”

  I looked down. “He thinks I tried to commit suicide. He doesn’t know about the cutting apparently, which makes sense, since my mother doesn’t give him any more information than he asks for and Wes couldn’t have told him about the—self-injury—because he’s in total denial. He’s still telling himself he saved my life.”

  “Your dad doesn’t give you much chance to explain, does he?”

  “I will tomorrow,” I said. “On the way to Great Falls. I mean, I have to, right?”

  “Only you can answer that.”

  “It isn’t that he doesn’t care about me. He wasn’t the check-your-homework-every-night kind of dad when I was growing up because he was busy building his business—”

  And his extramarital affairs, in case you want to throw that in.

  “And then after the divorce, my mother took Lara and me to Missouri but he couldn’t leave it all in California so I didn’t see him much. But he was the one who told me I needed to get out of there, away from my mother’s dead-end life, and he said he’d pay for any college I wanted to go to, all four years, room, board, tuition, books, everything. And he did.”

  My voice sounded defensive, even to me, and it didn’t have to be. Frankie was listening and nodding without a trace of judgment on her face.

  “When it got to be my senior year at MSU and I didn’t know what I was going to do next, he came back, just at the right time again, and said he’d not only pay for grad school but he’d rent a house for me so I could live
off campus and really be able to focus on my work. He even furnished it.”

  “He’s generous.”

  “I never had to look for change in the sofa cushions like some of my friends did.”

  “When was the last time you saw him before today?”

  I had to speak past the lump forming in my throat. “Almost a year ago. He came to Bozeman to help me get settled in my house. He’s been going through a divorce this year so . . .”

  We fell silent again. I was just starting to pray that Frankie would say something, anything, when she whispered, “The Lord be with you.”

  “And also with you,” I said.

  Frankie breathed in, long and slow as if she were drawing God Himself into her soul. “Father, I hate to see Kirsten go before she has a chance to hear Your voice. You’ll go with her, I know that. Please—speak Your voice deeper and louder than her earthly father’s. Don’t let him drown her out.”

  Once again she touched my arm and when my eyes opened, she said, “I’ll walk you back.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll have Bathsheba with me.”

  She nodded. “I’m actually beginning to trust that dog’s instincts.”

  I was all the way to the gate before it came to me that I would be leaving Bathsheba behind. The thought made my throat ache.

  “Listen,” I said to her as she lathered my hand. “You’re really starting to shape up. You can still be the dog you were made to be after I—”

  “You really shouldn’t be out here by yourself at night, Bo.”

  I sucked in air and closed my eyes. The good news was—it was Andy. The bad news was—it was Andy. I wasn’t sure I could stand to hear the questions, much less answer them. I wanted to leave it at the giggling, spraying, wonderful hosing-down that now seemed like so long ago.

  But he only said, “I’ll walk you home,” and fell into step beside me. Bathsheba licked his hand too.

  You can’t catch a break, can you?

  No, especially when one of the lambs on the hill cried out for its mother and I thought of Petey for the first time since my father had shown up.

  “I need to go check on her,” I said.

  Andy didn’t ask who. He just changed course and saw me to the barn.

  At first glance it seemed all was well in the bum lamb pen. The young residents were piled inside the shelter, as still as their grown-up counterparts on the hill. All except one.

  In the corner of the pen, near where I’d dropped the sweet hay for her, Petey lay curled in a ball, trembling.

  “Petey,” I called softly. “Petey, it’s me.”

  She answered in a voice frail as a cobweb, but she didn’t run to me.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  I climbed the fence in one move and went to her. She looked as frail as she did the day she was born, maybe more so. I cradled her into my arms and carried her to the gate that was always kept closed to prevent escapes. Andy had it open. He looked at Petey and said, “I’ll get Frankie.”

  Nothing we did seemed to help. Frankie examined the lamb and gave her a dropper of something, but an hour later it had had no effect. I tried the last of the formula but Petey spit the nipple out. I held her the way she loved to be held, and yet she couldn’t seem to sleep. As the night deepened, so did the concern on Frankie’s face.

  At about three a.m., when Petey was stirring restlessly in my lap, Andy said to Frankie, “What else ya got?”

  “I have one more idea,” she said. “Would you get Hildegarde into her chute?”

  Andy hurried out and I stared at Frankie. “You’re going to milk the cow now?”

  “I’ve seen this work before,” she said. “I don’t know if it will this time, but we have to try. We’re going to give Petey some of Hildegarde’s milk. I think it may have the nutrients that will build her back up.”

  “If she’ll even take it,” I said.

  “Who’s going to turn down Hildegarde’s cream?” Frankie gave me probably the only smile she had left. “I just hope she’ll give us some. She doesn’t like to get off her schedule.”

  “I want to try to milk her,” I said. “I have to do this for Petey.”

  Without hesitation, Frankie said, “Then let’s give it a shot.”

  Andy had a taciturn Hildegarde ready when I took my place on the tractor seat and put the bucket under her, away from her back feet. As I massaged her udders with balm, I talked to her.

  “It’s like this, Hildegarde. You’re a mother. You know you’d do anything for Little Augie. You even let him lie down to nurse.”

  “She does?” Frankie said.

  “I caught her at it today.” A hundred years ago. “I’m not an actual, biological mother like you are, but I love that lamb. I can’t just watch her die. I’m begging you to help me—mother to mother.”

  I handed the jar back to Frankie, took a breath, and put my hands on the two long nipples.

  “Will you talk me through it, Frankie?”

  She did, voice low and soft and sure. I followed every word with my hands—until a rich white stream sprayed into the bucket.

  “Thanks be to God,” Frankie whispered. “We just need a few ounces. Then I’ll take over and you can go try to feed Petey.”

  When we had enough, Andy poured it into the bottle he had ready and he and I ran back to the pen. I had to squirt some of the milk into Petey’s mouth to get her started, but once she got a taste of Hildegarde’s cream she couldn’t seem to get enough. What she couldn’t swallow drooled down her fleecy chin.

  “Look at her chug-a-luggin’,” Andy said.

  “I think I love that cow,” I said.

  When Petey fell asleep on the hay beside me, Frankie didn’t even try to make me leave.

  “We’re not completely out of the woods yet,” she said. “When she wakes up, there’s more Hilda milk in the fridge. We’ll know more then.”

  I did know at dawn, the minute Petey nuzzled me awake with her nose. She still looked fragile but there was no mistaking the voice. She was hungry.

  “I’ll get you a bottle,” I said.

  I climbed over the gate and immediately tripped over someone lying in front of it. Bathsheba bounced up from her shirt nest, saliva at the ready, but the pile of person on the barn floor only rolled over and squinted his dark eyes at me. A hunk of black hair fell over one of them.

  “How’s she doing?” Andy said.

  “Good. I’m going to feed her again. Go back to sleep.”

  He nodded and curled up again. But before I reached the refrigerator, he whispered, “Hey. Bo.”

  “What?” I whispered back.

  “I’m glad you didn’t kill yourself.”

  My breath caught. “I never intended to.”

  Andy nodded and settled back into his bed of hay. As his eyes closed he said, “Then you better tell your father that.”

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  Don’t let any voice speak louder than God’s. #TheMercifulScar

  Chapter

  ELEVEN

  After I fed Petey and made sure she was settled into a sweet new bed of hay, I went to the Cloister. Emma was either still asleep or already gone and the house seemed strangely empty without her.

  Now you start to get attached to this place.

  I turned on the water in the shower to give it the required five minutes to heat up. If my father had shown up a week ago I would have left with him before the dust had settled around the Lincoln and not looked back. A posh “rest home” on the Pacific would have sounded like Utopia compared to moths circling the showerhead and a brainless border collie dogging my trail. Now there were good-byes that would have to be said.

  Steam was starting to rise from the shower, so I stripped out of the milk- and drool- and hay-covered clothes and stepped in.

  Don’t clog the drain.

  Right.

  You have just enough time to check out those scars.

  It wasn’t a taunt. In fact, it so
unded like something Frankie would suggest, though maybe not in those words. The tone was definitely there, warm and wise.

  So I did look down to the early scenes of my attempts to let out the pain. They seemed fainter than they had the last time I’d looked, but they were there, a purposeful puzzle etched on my skin, so many that the scene had become too crowded and I’d had to look elsewhere for relief. As for the one I never looked at, inside my thigh . . .

  I shut off the water with a squealy jerk and watched the last of it trail down my jigsawed legs. If it were just as simple as it used to be to let it go—

  And let Daddy.

  I heard the front door close, which meant I was no longer alone. The pressure was building again under my skin. I had to be by myself.

  When I knew Emma was in her room, I threw on some clothes and a jacket and went looking for Frankie. The light was early-weak yet, so she might still be at the house. I tried there first.

  I had never gone up to the door without Frankie but I didn’t feel like I was trespassing as I pulled it open just a crack and called her name. But a day from now, even a few hours, it would be trespassing. Suddenly everything took on a this-is-the-last-time-you’ll-do-this feel. It wasn’t a feeling I’d ever had before, and I was grateful for Frankie’s voice calling back to me from the garden on the side of the house.

  “We’re out here, Kirsten.”

  Although I had peeked at the side yard through the dining room curtain once, I hadn’t actually ever gone out there. From my brief glance it had seemed pretty enough. Neat rows of green things and a couple of benches.

  Now in the Montana early morning I would have sworn it was a garden lifted from an ancient cloister and lightly set down here, Sister Frankie and all. Wrought iron spikes and bars formed its boundaries, keeping the billows of flowers I couldn’t name from overflowing into the vegetable garden on the other side. A circle of trimmed emerald grass rounded a concrete cross like the one on the dining room wall, the one we prayed under just as Frankie appeared to be praying now. Sitting on a plain bench next to Andy.