Composing Amelia

by Alison Strobel

  The next morning Marcus stopped off at the church to pick up his mail and let the secretary know he wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Atop his mail stack were a handful of phone messages from the other elders, offering everything from meals to housecleaning to rides up to Omaha and back. Ed had asked for Marcus’s permission to share with the elder board the fact that Amelia was hospitalized, but Marcus hadn’t expected this kind of outpouring in return. Apparently Ed wasn’t alone in his views on the church as a family.

  “Ed told me he’d be doing the message this week too,” the secretary said. “And that, if you try to come in to work, I should tell you to leave or risk formal disciplinary action.”

  Marcus laughed. “He can be a little pushy when he wants to be, eh?”

  She grinned. “I think I’d call it protective.”

  “Ah. You’ve got that exactly right.” Marcus looked again at the messages. “Man, the phones must have been busy this morning.”

  “Most of them were on the machine when I got here, actually.”

  Marcus shook his head in wonder. “I have to say, it’s humbling.”

  The secretary gave him an empathetic smile. “Well, we all go through something eventually that requires the help of others to deal with. There’s no shame in that.”

  “You’re right.” Marcus slapped the stack of mail in his palm. “It’s not at all how I was raised, but I’m going to have to just get over that.”

  “I know what that’s like. There’s all sorts of mess from my childhood that’s made it hard to live right sometimes. But God gives me strength.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Marcus checked his email one last time, then left for Omaha. The drive felt far less depressing than it had yesterday. Even though he still hadn’t decided whether or not to tell Amelia about his father and the things he’d been dealing with, Marcus was definitely going to tell her about his discussion with Ed and how supportive the elders were being. He felt light and unburdened for the first time in … Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way. There had always been a shadow behind him, pushing and driving and goading. Ed’s words had been revolutionary.

  It’s going to be different now, God. I’m going to be different. I don’t want to neglect my family the way my dad did. I don’t want to live behind some mask of strength and think I have to make everything okay on my own. Thank You for Ed. Thank You for this church. He thought a moment as the cornfields rolled past. One of these days I may even be able to thank You for putting me through all this.

  He smiled, an unfamiliar but pleasant sense of peace enveloping him, and set his thoughts on the things he’d talk about with Amelia. Despite where she was and what she had done, he couldn’t wait to see her.

  Amelia’s first twenty-four hours on the ward had been nothing like she’d expected. Her only frame of reference for mental hospitals was a movie she’d seen back in high school and a book she’d read in college. From those she had inferred that the staff would be abusive and her fellow patients either psychopathic or delirious. Neither, thank God, were true.

  The staff, while not the most nurturing people in the world, were not sinister or cruel. They upheld the rules in no uncertain terms, but they had been helpful to Amelia as she’d been settling in and made sure she was doing all right. The other patients were on the ward for a variety of reasons, but only two of them shared Amelia’s diagnosis. One of them, Kristine, was her roommate.

  Kristine was currently experiencing what she told Amelia was called mixed states. She was suicidally depressed but revved with mania. “It’s a heckuva thing to be so sad that you want to die but so powered up you also want to run a marathon,” she’d told Amelia as they’d dressed for bed that first night. “I’m lucky because my manias are actually kinda fun, when I’m not experiencing them in mixed state, anyway. I play trombone and I’m a painter, too, so I just stay up all night and paint and write music and play and play and play. I have synesthesia, too—do you know what that is? It’s where you see sound as color. So my paintings and my compositions are all coordinated. I play them and then I paint them.” The whole time she talked she was twisting the end of her shirt until Amelia thought she’d rip the fabric. “So I’m guessing this is your first time being hospitalized, huh? You don’t look like someone who’s done this before.”

  “First time, yeah. I just got diagnosed.”

  “Aw man, that’s a bummer. I mean, it’s good that you know what it is, but it sucks that you’ve got it too. Medication is good, when it’s working. Mine isn’t working because I stopped taking it.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because I didn’t want to anymore.” She raked her nails up her arms, leaving angry red tracks. “Did they give you something to help you sleep? They gave me something, but I don’t think it’s going to work. It usually doesn’t when I’m like this. I apologize now if I keep you up. I don’t mean to.”

  “It’s all right. I probably won’t sleep well anyway.”

  “Naw, you will, it’s good stuff, the stuff they give us to help us sleep. When it works.”

  A nurse had come in and told Kristine to can it so Amelia could sleep. But when they woke the next morning, Kristine started in again and didn’t stop until group therapy after breakfast. “So when you’re not so depressed that you want to kill yourself, what do you do? Do you have a job? I haven’t had a job in forever; I can’t keep stable long enough to hold one. It sucks. Where do you work?”

  “I’m a pianist. But right now I’m not working. I just moved here from California because my husband got a job here.”

  “You’re a musician too! That’s awesome! I wish I had my trombone here; we could jam. Although you don’t hear a lot of piano-trombone duets, do you? We could write one. And then I could paint it. That would be awesome. So what does your husband do?”

  Amelia fidgeted in her chair as she pushed greasy sausage links around her plate. “He’s a pastor.”

  “A Christian one?”

  “Yeah.” She kept her eyes down, hoping Kristine would move on to something else. She didn’t want to talk about Marcus. It made her miss him even more.

  “Hey, I’m a Christian too! That’s awesome!”

  “Girl, leave Amelia alone and let her eat.” This came from one of the other patients, a woman whose name Amelia couldn’t remember but who reminded her of the black nurse on Scrubs.

  “I am letting her eat. You’ll notice I’m doing most of the talking.”

  “Yeah—isn’t there something the nurses can give you for that?”

  Kristine stuck her tongue out at the woman and turned back to Amelia. “So you’re a Christian too, then, huh? I am too. I don’t think I’ve ever met another Christian on the ward before.”

  Amelia gave up on the sausage and pushed her plate away. “Yeah. Well … sort of. I mean … actually … I’m not sure I am anymore.”

  Kristine’s eyes grew big. “Oh. Why? Because of the bipolar?”

  “No … maybe. I don’t know. A lot of things, not just that. I’m not sure if I ever really and truly was in the first place. I did it more to protect myself.”

  “From what?”

  Amelia gestured to the ward. “From this. From the crazy that my mom had. She disappeared when I was in college; everyone says she killed herself. She was always unstable, always messed up. She had an amazing career and lost it, and I didn’t want to be like her. My roommate was a Christian, and I figured it was worth a shot if it kept me from turning into her.”

  “Did it?”

  “Nope.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Shouldn’t it, though?”

  Kristine shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not a theologian. But I’m not a Christian because of what it does for me.”

  Amelia frowned. “But if it doesn’t work, then what good is it?”

  One of the therapists came by the table. “Group therapy in five, folks.” The othe
rs stood to take their trays to the cart, but Amelia remained in her seat.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Kristine asked.

  “Is it mandatory?”

  “Um … no.”

  “Then no.”

  “But you’re not going to get out of here unless you’re participating and getting better.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you want to leave?”

  “Yeah … eventually. But not until I’m ready. There are … things I need to figure out first.”

  Kristine gave her a puzzled look but said nothing as she stood with her tray and left the table.

  Amelia propped her chin in her hand and stared, unseeing, at her breakfast. The silence in the room as the others disappeared into the therapy room gave her space to think. Everything she’d said to Kristine was true, and the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that God didn’t figure in to her future. She had no reason to trust Him—if He was even real—and she didn’t want to waste her time trying to toe some religious line that just made life more difficult.

  There was only one problem. She was married to a minister.

  A phone rang at the front desk. A nurse answered, then called out, “Amelia, your husband is here to see you.”

  Oh no. Amelia bit her lip, thinking. “Tell him …” She stared at the space where her wedding ring had been before the nurses had confiscated it for the duration of her stay. She wanted to see him, but she was so embarrassed over the behavior that had landed her here, and so confused about who she was. She also didn’t have it in her to keep up a facade, and she wasn’t ready to be honest with him about what she was thinking.

  Amelia looked to the nurse. “Tell him I don’t want to talk.” She heard the nurse relay the message as she stood and brought her tray to the cart, then curled up on the couch and began to cry.

  Marcus sat in his car and eyed the hospital building through the rain-covered windshield. He’d been resolute when he’d left the apartment, telling himself it didn’t matter if she wanted to see him or not; the important thing was to show up. But two days in a row of being shot down were beginning to wear on his perseverance.

  He pulled an umbrella from the floor of the backseat and left the car with a sigh. He knew the route by heart now, and followed it without thinking as his mind contemplated how he should respond today if Amelia still refused to see him. He didn’t have a lot of options; it’s not like he could storm the ward and demand she talk to him. But maybe he could talk to her therapist and ask her to convince Amelia to at least explain why she wouldn’t meet him.

  He shook out the umbrella at the lobby doors and followed the damp carpet path to the reception desk. The receptionist gave him a small smile. “Back again.”

  “A glutton for punishment.”

  She dialed the phone. “Marcus Sheffield is here to see his wife, Amelia.”

  A jumbling of nerves in his solar plexus was put to rest yet again when the receptionist hung up and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” He gave her a terse smile and turned to leave, then stopped. “If I wanted to write her a letter, how would I get it to her?”

  “Just leave it here with me. I’ll make sure it’s delivered.”

  He nodded. “All right then. Thanks.” Inspired, he followed the signs to the gift shop and purchased a spiral bound journal and a cheap pen. Where there’s a will, he thought, there’s a way.

  He was halfway to the cafeteria when he saw a sign for the chapel. Even better. He followed the arrow and came upon a wooden door propped open at the end of a hall. Inside were eight rows of short pews and a platform on which stood a simple wooden stand. A bank of tea lights stood against one wall on a table draped in wine-red velvet, and an upright piano sat in the opposite corner. The sight of the piano made his heart hurt.

  He sat in one of the pews and opened the journal.

  Dear Amelia,

  He stopped, thinking about what exactly he should write. What he wanted to write was not likely to convince her to see him, though getting it out of his system would certainly make him feel better. Any ideas, God?

  After a few minutes he began to write a rough draft, telling himself he’d just say whatever he wanted first and then rewrite a final letter later. He certainly had the time.

  Dear Amelia,

  Hey babe. How is it in there? I keep picturing it like the cafeteria, for some reason, but without the buffet. Have you had the red Jell-O yet? Good stuff.

  So … I miss you. I’d like to think you miss me, but given how the last few days have gone, I’m guessing you probably don’t. Is it something I said? Or didn’t say? I know this is new territory for you, but it is for me, too, so if I’ve done something wrong I hope you’ll give me a do-over. Or maybe you’re embarrassed, or scared. You don’t have to be, because I love you. That’s what it all comes down to. I love you.

  Marcus reread what he’d written and decided a straight-from-the-heart letter was better than something edited and polished as though destined for public consumption. He carefully ripped the page from the journal and folded it, then walked it back to reception. “Don’t suppose you have an envelope, do you? I promise to bring my own next time.”

  The receptionist chuckled and pulled one from a drawer. “On the house.”

  “Thanks.” He sealed the letter inside and wrote Amelia’s name on the front before handing it back.

  “You’re welcome.” She gave him a sincere smile. “I hope you get to see her soon.”

  Marcus nodded. “Thanks. Me, too.”

  Marcus had visions of Amelia calling in tears, begging forgiveness for refusing him and promising to see him whenever he wanted. But it didn’t happen. The resolve he’d felt earlier dissipated in the face of her silence as the day wore on, and when Marcus went to bed that night he decided not to go back up the next morning. He wasn’t going to keep going if she had no intention of seeing him.

  He showed up at work the next morning and the secretary wagged a finger at him in mock disappointment. “Pastor Sheffield, don’t make me call Ed.”

  He flashed a terse smile. “I don’t really have a reason not to come in today. I’ll be in my office.” He took his mail from the corner of her desk and closed his office door behind him a tad too loudly. He didn’t really want to be here, either. He just didn’t know where else to go.

  He’d just finished emptying his inbox when his phone rang. “I hear you’re in to work today,” said Ed’s jovial voice.

  Marcus glared at the door. “Yes, I am. I’m being paid to do a job, not to sit at the hospital and wait for my wife to decide to see me. And since I don’t know when that’s actually going to happen, I figured it made more sense to be here.”

  “Your wife needs you, Marcus.”

  “You know, I don’t think she does. I’ve been up there the last three days, and every single time she’s refused to see me. I’m over it. When she’s ready to talk she can call me, and I’ll be happy to go up then.”

  “I can tell you’re frustrated, Marcus—”

  He snorted. “Can you?”

  “—but I think you need to go back up there anyway.”

  “What for? So I can waste more gas and another two hours in the car just to have the receptionist give me that look of pity again?”

  “No. So Amelia sees just how committed to her you really are.”

  “She knows.”

  “Does she?”

  Marcus was irked. “Of course she does.”

  “Remember that actions speak louder than words. It doesn’t matter how much you say it, if what you do tells a different story.”

  Marcus was about to spout off a list of ways he’d shown Amelia his commitment, but couldn’t come up with a list. A different one, however, queued up easily. He’d put his career ahead of hers, he’d been working the kinds of hours his father had always worked and that Marcus had always resented, and now he was essentially giving up on her until she’d proven herself to him.

>   Marcus shut down his computer with a sigh. “All right. I’ll go.”

  “I think that’s wise.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime, son. Anytime.”

  The chapel was as good a place as any to spend his time while in Omaha, so after being rejected yet again, Marcus returned with his notebook and pen, an envelope folded in his back pocket, and sat in the same pew as before to write another note to Amelia.

  So … you don’t want to see me. Okay. Are you … I don’t know … testing me or something? I wouldn’t mind if you were, though I would appreciate knowing how long it was going to last and what I had to do to pass. You are okay in there, aren’t you? I need to know you’re all right.

  Ed is doing all the preaching this month—isn’t that kind of him? He’s an amazing man. I know you haven’t talked with him much, but I think you’d really like him. When things are back to normal, we’ll have to have him and his wife Lucy over for dinner. We’ll order takeout so we don’t have to cook. I know it’s not your favorite thing.

  Not that we’ll ever get back to our old normal, hm? So … once we figure out our new normal, then we’ll have them over.

  New is good, by the way. You don’t have to be afraid of it.

  Marcus slipped the note into the envelope and sealed it closed. But instead of leaving for reception like he had before, he waited, the letter sitting beside him on the pew, and stared at the candles on the table against the wall. He didn’t try to focus on anything in particular, just let his mind wander, and after a few minutes he started praying.

  So how much of my father have I projected onto You, God? Not only do I not know who I am.… I have a feeling I don’t really know who You are, either. If my views of what it means to be a pastor were as skewed as they were, then I can only imagine how messed up my views of You are.

  He sat up straighter in the pew, cutting off the train of thought. He wasn’t ready to do that kind of detective work yet. He stood and left the chapel, heading for the sympathetic receptionist, and hoped this would be the day Amelia put him out of his misery.