I did a word count for no apparent reason: two hundred and seventy-seven words. Not even three hundred words had stood as a chaperone between me and Tom. How few words it took to bring a girl down from a mountain, as Tuck said. How few words and yet how many.
I didn’t read what I had typed; I didn’t dare. I directed the mouse to send the message and immediately a window zapped open with a little noise: No Subject Given. Do You Wish to Send the Message With No Subject?
After only a moment’s hesitation, I highlighted the space beside the RE: and typed “Why I don’t close my eyes.” And then SEND.
The horizontal bar at the bottom gradually changed from gray to blue and then disappeared altogether, as my message sat on Tom’s computer, waiting to be read. Being read? When would he log on?
Come back to me, I thought.
I glanced at my watch; fifteen more minutes had passed. It was time to go. I reached to shut down the computer and then impulsively typed a new email. I wrote the words that were perhaps more important than the previous message. The words that Tom had probably been waiting for years to hear: words that came directly from my heart.
“I need you.”
As Windows was shutting down, I walked out to my car, my mind now focused on a seventy-nine-year old man with garden dirt under his nails.
Debra and Tuck had gotten there before me and gone to the cafeteria for a snack. I spoke with the nurse. The operation would take longer—until afternoon. There were some complications with the bleeding. The nurse, who looked like she didn’t smile very often, smiled. “Dr. Burns is an excellent surgeon. Mr. Blair is in good hands.”
And with that, her crispy white Reeboks squeaked away, leaving me alone in the waiting room where time stood still.
I sank into one of the rust vinyl chairs that made a little cushion fart every time I moved around. I stared at the green cinder box walls and news magazines scattered around the tables. This is what there will be if Maddy dies, I thought. This is what I will have to come back to. The world. Walls and news and traffic and people.
My eyes burned from the night of sleeplessness and weeping. I found myself talking—to whom? It was a quiet voice, one that had not been used since … since when? It was the voice of prayer. And my prayers were for Maddy.
“I can’t lose him, God.” My mouth moved and possibly my words were even audible. “I lost Grace, I lost Doro, I can’t lose him too.” And then the word if. “Just a little more time with Maddy. Please. If you bring him back to me, I’ll believe. I’ll know you’re there.”
The day dragged on in this manner, me making deals with a God that I doubted.
“Maddy believes in you. Isn’t it enough that he believes? Don’t you want to save one of your own?” Over and over, my lips whispered what my mind screamed. “Don’t you need him here? I need him here.”
In the end it was all about me. I knew that. I also knew not to bargain with God. But what I wanted at that moment was a reason to believe. I wanted proof I wasn’t alone.
My eyes drifted to a floor lamp in the corner, its polished brass shell shade shielding the forty watt bulb. I thought back to that March 15 night so many years ago. When I entered the waiting room that night, escorted by Mrs. Webber, Doro’s hand clutched the pole of a lamp in a different hospital, a different city, as if for support. I remember Mrs. Webber’s words echoing my thoughts.
“Miss Wilson, you’re all alone here.” And Doro’s response: “I’m not alone.”
What assurance, what confidence. What faith. “But I am alone, Doro. I don’t have your faith,” I whispered. “I don’t know your … I don’t know your God.”
And, at that moment, sitting all alone in that hospital as morning drifted toward afternoon, I knew what I wanted. Perhaps I had known it for some time; maybe I had just realized it. Yet staring at the empty walls, there was no question in my mind. I wanted Tom, and I wanted home.
Two months ago, if asked the question, I would have had to admit that it wasn’t love that had brought Tom and me together, but infatuation. Common ground, friendship. But throughout the time we had been together, through the days when I whispered “Love you” on the telephone at work before hanging up, the nights in bed when I whispered it in response to his kisses, I wanted to mean it. But something held me back. Perhaps before I could mean it I had to understand it.
Who could explain the nuances of love? In my life, each instance of love had been so distinctive. It was passionate and impulsive, like my recent days with Tuck. It was protective in Doro’s case and possessive, as with Genia. It was innocent and simple, like my parents. With Grace it was painful, horribly painful. And now, this was a tender and all-consuming love for an old man in surgery. It was roses and thorns and birds of paradise and elephant ears—yes, elephant ears—all bound up in one swollen heart.
With Tom, for the first time in my life, love was easy and undemanding and perhaps that’s why it was unrecognizable to me. But as I sat in the hospital I yearned for the simplicity of our relationship in a way that I had wanted few other things before. Closing my eyes, I didn’t imagine kissing Tom or daydream about lovemaking—didn’t think about his voice or his touch.
What I wanted was the one thing that Tom alone could give me. He had restored equilibrium to my life. With him I felt something that had been stolen from me on that mountain with Grace: With Tom I felt secure. Loved, yes, and wanted and special. But most importantly, I felt assurance—like I could bury my head in his arms, and he would swell around me like a dark, sweet smelling quilt. As if I could get lost a thousand times, but he would always find me.
Find me now, I thought. No, not a thought. It was a prayer.
And as much as I wanted Tom, I wanted Mt. Moriah. I craved the place that was more a part of me than I had ever realized. I wanted to tend the land that had tended me. Mt. Moriah had not forsaken me; rather it was the other way around. Or perhaps I had forsaken myself.
I wanted to drive down streets I knew by heart, to hear the tinny music on Woodbury Avenue at Christmastime and get goosebumps from the familiarity. I yearned to watch the pumpkin patch come to life behind the church, to turn onto Walker Drive and instinctively slow down because so many children live on that street. I longed to stroll alongside the small man-made lake and feel suddenly as if my feet had springs—and to sip coffee on the square outside Town Hall and watch autumn leaves swirling at my feet. To know that the trees, and the seasons that changed them, had born silent witness to my seasons. To drive down Chapel Avenue and immediately be immersed in the vista in front of me—the magnolia marquis that had been alive before me and would be living here long after I was gone. To travel down that road and feel the sunlight seeping through the leaves. To remember that very sunlight from a place deep down inside where my memories lived. To sit in that white frame sanctuary and feel at home. Loved.
To know that all of it is a part of me and me of it.
Tuck and Debra interrupted my thoughts. “What do you need, Jo?”
I shook my head.
“Chris, I’m going home to check on Andy,” Debra said. Turning to me, “He’s with our neighbor.”
“No,” I said. “Take Tuck with you. I’m okay. I’ll let you know when the surgery is over.”
Tuck looked worried. “You don’t need to be alone.”
I smiled wearily, trying to reassure him. I knew he would stay, and I knew Debra would be fine with that. But I knew Tuck’s place was with his family, not me.
“Go,” I said, and after we hugged, I was alone again.
Muttering quietly, I prayed to a tile ceiling that held no answers. In my solitude, my prayers bounced around like gnats drawn to and from a light-bulb. And I finally brought myself to say what I feared most. “I don’t want to be alone!”
Rubbing my eyes with both fists, I stared at a plant, long abandoned on a high table in the corner. Numb with fatigue, I could no longer think, no longer cry. Could not pray. The air in the room seemed to stop moving and hover
around me, waiting for me to move, to feel. But I could not: I was lost in darkness.
And that’s when it happened.
It felt like a tiny hiccup erupting from deep within me. Or a paintbrush lightly sweeping the inside of my stomach. People liken a baby’s first kick to butterflies. They call it quickening. To me, it was a paintbrush.
I changed my position and sat poised, waiting for the brush. Had I imagined it?
There, again. The tiniest bristles sweeping across my womb with pastel colors. A speck of color here, there. In spite of myself, I laughed out loud and threw my hand over my mouth at the very moment the surgeon walked into the room.
“The surgery went well. The next hours and days will be critical, but Mr. Blair’s chances look really good. He’ll be in recovery for a little while, but the nurse will come get you as soon as he’s in his room.”
His hand gripped mine briefly and then he was gone and I was alone again. And yet not. I had just received two signs of life. Two gifts. Two answers.
An hour later the nurse directed me to Maddy’s room where he had just been wheeled in. His chins spread out under those thin lips. He looked so very old. But his chest rose and fell in what seemed to me a beautiful dance. Gently, I lay my cheek against his hand and fell fast asleep, my hand resting on my stomach.
Alive, Jo Jo, you are alive!
It was Tuck’s voice in my ear.
And Grace’s.
I wiped at the little spot of drool at the corner of my lips and opened my eyes. The clock on the wall said 5:00. The sun was teasing its descent. Maddy was staring at me. How long had he been awake?
“I hurt like hell, little thing. Why are you smiling so big?”
Indeed I was smiling. “You’re going to be okay, Maddy. The doctor said he opened the blockage. No more bacon for you, mister.” My words toppled over each other to get out as I fought back tears. Thank you, God. Thank you for bringing him back.
“Are you okay, Jo?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, why? I’m just so glad …”
“You look different.”
He knew me so well. He loved and knew me so well.
I pushed his pillow into the crook of his neck, and Maddy smiled in appreciation. One tear seeped from the corner of my eye. “I prayed for you, Maddy. God heard my prayer.”
Those blue eyes stared hard at me, daring me to drop our gaze.
“There was never any doubt He heard your prayer, little thing. What I wondered was if you could hear His answer.”
His eyes closed then and he turned his head away for sleep.
“I heard this time, Maddy,” I whispered to his light snore.
I prodded my stomach, anxious for the flutter. That feeling of life. Unexpected, undeserved. A shadow inside me stirred from the womb that I thought had been destroyed. I was not only alive but endowing life. The magical, mystical brush—with all its varying hues—would paint my life back. After all those years of searching, I had found God in a hospital waiting room and inside my own body.
Although all my questions weren’t answered that day—weren’t even all asked—at last, I thought I knew Doro’s Big Secret. It was not that the world was full of all things good. Rather, the Big Secret lay in the fact that there was a bit of God in everything—in things both wonderful and wicked—in anything that had life to it: everything human, every struggle, every celebration. That’s what Doro and Maddy understood that I did not.
I understood finally that God is not only in a church sanctuary. He is also in the blood-spattered operating room as surgeons try to save a little girl’s grandmother.
God is in the perfect ascent of a golf swing on a bright spring afternoon. And just as surely he’s in the ferocious lightning bolt that downs a stately timber.
He resides in the timid, wet goodnight kiss of a senior prom date, and in the tear-soaked pillow of an eight-year-old orphan. In the delight of shared French fries and the odious tenor of a bully’s mocking.
God lives in the highest trumpet notes of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and in the smelly sweat of a front line soldier. He floats in the cool stillness beneath the surface of a summer lake and in the cries of a mother whose baby lies blue and lifeless. In the late-night telephone call of two lovers and the silent phone of an old widow. In the crash that took my parents. And the aunt who called me hers.
God is in the warm careless hug of two lifelong friends.
And God was in the bullet that tore one from the other.
God is in life only because He is also in death. Finally I saw the challenge: to find Him in both. Maybe doing that means finding the part of us—however veiled—that is Him.
Our still small voice.
That was my myopia: While I had searched for a God who was separate from me, all the time, He was within me.
Perhaps before you find God, you have to find yourself.
I ate dinner with Tuck and Debra when they returned, and then I settled into the recliner next to Maddy. Despite its discomfort, I slept deeply and well. When the nurses came in to bring Maddy some breakfast, I saw that the sun was high in the sky, a new day.
“Time for a bath, Mr. Blair.”
Maddy groaned and muttered.
“I should’ve gone toward the light, little thing.”
I moved toward the bed. “Behave. I’m going home for a while.” I kissed the groggy old man goodbye as the nurses poked and prodded him. I pushed open the door and took in a deep, deliberate breath. From my womb, that desolate homestead of memories deep inside me, stirred the little piece of life—a mere cluster of cells—that would lead me back to where I needed to be. The piece of Creation that would make me arise each day and give thanks for the dawn.
Although tired to my very core, I didn’t think about going to bed.
There was somewhere I needed to go first.
34
ALIVE
STOPPING BY THE INN to brush my teeth and wash my face, I stepped into Maddy’s room and saw that the bed had been slept in. Had the heart attack come in the middle of the night? I noted the bedside phone off the hook. Had he tried to call me? How long had he been by himself? And was he worried where I was?
I had to push these thoughts out of my mind. Grabbing Maddy’s toothbrush and robe to take to the hospital, I was back in my car and headed down the mountain. The cottony clouds were puffs created by an artist’s feathery strokes.
Alive!
The flutters continued in my stomach. I found myself eagerly awaiting the next one.
“Are you real in there?” I spoke softly. I began to hum and then sing “Bye Bye Blackbird.” To the car next to me at the stoplight, I was singing and talking to myself. But I knew better.
Twenty minutes later, I found Genia Collins on her knees pulling weeds. Her back was hunched over, and I watched as she paused to wipe her cheek with the back side of her gardening glove.
She was a woman I had hated all my life. And loved.
“Mrs. Collins. Genia.”
She turned then and arose carefully, one hand in the small of her back.
“JoAnna, dear.” She moved four paces toward me, then frowned ever so slightly. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s okay, but Maddy had a heart attack. It happened night before last. They did surgery and it went well.”
Genia covered her mouth with her muddy glove—not thinking or, it seemed, caring about the smear on her lips.
“Thank the Lord.”
“Yes.” Genia moved to hug me—timidly, perhaps afraid I would push her away. I didn’t. We stood there amongst the dahlias and the peonies and hugged, neither lightly nor clinging. A simple falling into each other’s arms.
A jab of nausea hit me. “Genia, could I come inside and talk for a minute?”
She led the way, holding the screen door open for me to pass through. Inside I could smell cinnamon and hear the loud ticking of her mantel clock.
I sniffed dramatically. “Coffee cake?”
She smi
led. “You remember my coffee cake?” Genia went to the sink, washing first her hands and then her face. “It’s for Circle meeting tomorrow.
“JoAnna, you look pale. Are you alright?”
I nodded. And then I told her my news that Doro had never gotten to hear. It was right that Genia Collins should hear it. She was now the closest thing to a mother I had. And I was finally mature enough to know I needed one. An imperfect one, but yet a mother.
Tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, this would make Doro so very happy.” Genia’s voice quieted. “And Grace.”
I squeezed her hand and we sat quietly for a minute. I knew what I wanted to tell her—what I needed to tell her, about Grace, about me, about that day on the mountain. But where to start?
“Did you know that Grace was pregnant?” she asked suddenly.
“I just found that out last night. Tuck and I talked for a long time. I just don’t know,” and I didn’t know, “how you have managed your grief.”
“It never goes away,” said Genia. “I never stop thinking about Grace—something I want to say to her, something I think she’d like. I make her favorite desserts. You know what a sweet tooth she had, amazing she didn’t have every tooth in her head filled—but then you know I can’t take a bite. Those beautiful pies and cakes just sit on the counter and rot.”
She searched my eyes—for understanding? For sympathy? Perhaps just for companionship.
“But what can I do? I have to go on.”
“Yes. We all do.” How could I tell her?
“You know, I have a CD Grace made me years ago; I guess she was seventeen or so. I’ve listened to that lovely voice so many times I’m surprised the CD still plays.”
“She was very talented, you know.”
“I know that, JoAnna. And sometimes—you know, those days when it hits me so hard, I almost can’t get out of bed—I wonder what would have happened if she had taken that scholarship and gone to Georgia and pursued her music.”
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