Something didn’t ring true. Matt thought she was a little too glib, a little too eager to tell the story. But he was enjoying Maggie’s company and didn’t say anything. Time would tell, he thought.
“How long had you been married?”
“About a year and a half. He was really kind of strange. Rather cold toward me. Pleasant enough but no warmth. Looking back, I think he wanted to put on a respectable front while he was sorting out his sexuality.”
Matt was ready to move on past this unfortunate story. “Well, may he rest in peace.”
“You mentioned you had children. Tell me about them. Are they grown now? Are you a grandpa?”
“Yes and no. I was,”—he choked back a tear—“but they are all gone now. And my wife, Helene.” He looked away, off in the distance.
“Oh, no! I am so sorry! Can you talk about it?”
Matt took a minute. “I had a son and daughter. Todd and Rachel. They were both married to wonderful spouses and had five children between them. Both families died in separate accidents within a month of each other. Then a month after that, Helene had a brain aneurysm that burst, and she died of a massive hemorrhage before the ambulance could even get there.
“That all started about nine months ago. I was a mess for quite a while after that. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t plan. Life seemed to have lost its meaning. It was all I could do just to hang onto God. It would have been impossible except I knew he was hanging onto me. Does the term ‘basket case’ mean anything in England?”
Maggie had never heard words like that before, about hanging onto God. She knew there must be a God, but that was about all. And she had heard a little about Jesus, whom people mentioned when talking about God.
“Then,” he continued, “about a week ago, I realized my self-pity was dragging me under. When I quit feeling sorry for myself, God spoke to me and told me he had a job for me.”
She had never heard of such a thing. “God spoke to you?”
Matt was about to speak when the pilot came over the intercom. “I am turning the fasten-seat-belt lights back on as a precaution. We will be descending below ten thousand feet and you will be advised to turn off your electronics at that time. You will be further advised when the precaution is over, but until then, it will be necessary to remain in your seats, including the flight attendants.” The intercom clicked off, and the movies and games resumed.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. When she nodded, he continued, “Well, it wasn’t like that at all. It was more like just knowing. It’s kind of hard to explain. The words just came into my consciousness, and way down deep in my spirit it was like, ‘These are my words—listen to them.’ I didn’t hear that; but I knew it like I know my own name.”
“I’m not following that very well.”
“Okay. I’ll try to find a better explanation. It might take me awhile though. Anyway, it looks like you and Jenny are stuck here until we pass through the shadow of death.”
Maggie had heard of the shadow of death before but couldn’t recall where. “We’ll be fine. I just fed Jenny and she’ll sleep for about an hour. At least, that’s what happened on the flight over. She was a little fussy on the hop from Atlanta, but she settled down once we were on the ground. When you got on the plane, we had been on for about fifteen minutes and she was starting to get hungry. I fed her a little, but she didn’t want much. They brought us dinner, and then I fed her again. I hope we are able to move around soon. All my stuff is up front. The only things I brought back here with me are our passports.”
“May I hold Jenny?”
“Sure, but first I want to show you something, so it won’t take you by surprise.” She moved Jenny forward onto her lap and removed the pin holding everything in place. “It’s much easier trying to keep her together on the plane—aren’t big safety pins wonderful?”
As she undid the blanket at her feet, her left foot appeared, covered by a dainty white bootie with pink laces. Her right foot seemed to be hiding in the folds of the blanket. Maggie gently tugged on her right leg. There was no foot. Just part of a heel, then a stump.
“When I was about twelve weeks pregnant, I went in for my ultrasound. They said the heart was beating okay, head looked good, but it took them a long time to look over the rest of her. They took pictures and several doctors came in. Then they showed me. Both legs had formed normally, but something had caused my amniotic sac to form extra bands of tissue, one of which wrapped around her right ankle and kept squeezing it until it stopped the blood supply. Without a flow of blood to it, it stopped developing. What they showed me was that her foot was already gone. They said there was nothing they could do.
“When I got my twenty-week ultrasound, they confirmed the findings. Before I left the clinic after the ultrasound, a new doctor spoke to me about it. He said with amniotic band syndrome, these bands may strike again, wrapping around another limb, the umbilical cord, even the head. He said Jenny would not be normal, and there also may be other maladies or a still-birth.
“He told me it was not genetic, and they don’t really know what causes it or how to prevent it. He did tell me if I got pregnant again, I would have less than a one-in-twenty-five-thousand chance of it happening again. He paused, and recommended I abort the baby. It was the best thing to do, he said, and I should think about it.
“I thought about it for as long as it took me to get my mouth open, and I told him I would never abort her! I will love her whatever happens to her. Period. I went home and cried. Not for me but for Jenny. By that time, we knew she would be a girl.”
She rewrapped Jenny in the blanket, redid the pin, and Matt gently took her in his arms. She was so light, so little!
He now got a good look at Maggie without the babe-in-arms. She had a slender frame, but her body looked too thin, almost emaciated, in the dark shirt that looked one size too large. Her face was normal enough, though, with a glow of good health. And the flowers on her vest! “Those are my favorite colors,” he said.
“Well, these are my favorite flowers. Petunias.”
“Yes, I recognized them. I had a dream about them last night.”
“You did? What about?”
He didn’t want to sound morbid or weird. “Oh, not much. Tell me, what do you teach in Bristol? A grade level or a particular subject?”
She would ask about the petunia dream later. “Year fives, nine and ten-year-olds. I had twenty-two children last school year, and I’ll have twenty-three kids when school starts up again in a couple of months. The numbers hold pretty steady, but the students are different every year. Last year was a good year, but the year-four class I’ll get seems pretty lively.”
She felt like it was his turn. She turned toward the lean, broad-shouldered man, noting his clean-shaven face. The hint of age lines gave his clear and engaging eyes an air of decency and openness. “If you want to, Matt, would you tell me why you’re going to London?”
“I’m not sure where I’m going. My first step is to get to England. I’m taking it one step at a time now, which is quite an improvement.” He stopped briefly. “I may get emotional. Maybe you should take Jenny back.”
He wasn’t worried for the infant, but he thought it would be easier to control his emotions if he could use both hands.
Maggie took Jenny and rocked her as well as she could. It was easier in first class, but she wouldn’t go back there right now for the world.
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
She could sense his pain, but gamely said, “Yes, definitely, if you want to tell me. Will you need tissues? I have some up front.” Maggie always needed tissues when emotions were involved.
“I have some.” He told her of the Costa Rica deaths of his daughter and her family. “Rachel was about your age, thirty-two.”
“I’m twenty-eight,” she quickly interjected.
“Oh. Sorry, I’m not too good with ages. Anyway, I completely blamed myself.”
“How could you do that? You wer
en’t even there!”
“Several weeks before they left, I had a dream.”
Another dream. “About petunias?”
Soon. Not yet, Matt decided. “God gives me dreams sometimes, that’s one of the ways he speaks to me. In this one, there was a big red circle with a red slash through it. You’ve seen them. Sometimes they have pictures in them. No parking. No cigarettes. No pets. No guns.”
She giggled. “I’ve never seen that one anywhere in England.”
“The ‘do not’ symbol was just kind of sitting there. Then the word ‘precario’ floated into the scene, and floated into and out of and through the symbol. This happened three times, then I woke up. I had no idea what it meant. I thought maybe it was ‘precarious’ misspelled, but how could that be from God if there’s a word misspelled? So I forgot about it. Then a week later, I had the same dream again. I still made no connection with Rachel’s mission trip so I dismissed it again. I just prayed and hoped God would take care of them. When the church called us to tell us what had happened, they told us where Rachel and her family had been staying.”
Dealing with suspense wasn’t one of Maggie’s strong suits. “Where was it?”
“They were staying in a place called the Precario. When I heard that, I just went to pieces.”
They both had tears streaming down their cheeks. Matt reached into his briefcase and pulled out two tissues. Maggie put her hand on Matt’s forearm. “I’m so sorry. It must have been terrible for you. What could you have done, Matt? What should you have done?”
“If the dream came from God then I could have, should have, asked him what it meant.”
They were both quiet for several minutes before Maggie broke the silence. “What does that have to do with your trip to England?”
“Ah, yes. After Helene died, I was completely broken. It was torture just to wake up in the morning, to eat, to try to put one foot in front of the other. I had some good friends who appointed themselves to be my guardians. If not for them, I don’t know how I would have made it. They kept me company all day, every day for months.
“I went for long walks. Long aimless walks, with friends at my side. I actually got some tone in my body after many years of a desk job. At some point several weeks ago, I realized how much I was feeling sorry for myself. I pulled myself out of that by writing poems about what had happened. It’s poison, you know, feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Poem therapy?”
“I tried different forms. Regular four-liners. Limericks, but those are supposed to be funny. I finally settled on haikus. They are three-line, seventeen-syllable poems originally done in Japan. Rhyming not required. For example, ‘My children are dead. Does it really hurt so bad? Unquestionably!’ ”
“I’ve heard of those.”
“After several days, I looked back over what I had done and found that every haiku had the words ‘pain’ or ‘misery’ or ‘anguish’, words of that sort. I decided this was helping, so I continued. Each line had to be either five or seven syllables, and I would say the lines out loud to make sure they sounded right. It seemed like good therapy, so I continued. Don’t ask me what they were, because I threw them all away. I was starting to work on a new one. I forget what the line was I had made up, but when I went to say it, what came out of my mouth was, ‘I have a job for you.’
“I thought that was crazy—it was six syllables. I tried another one. I wrote it down and counted the syllables. There were seven. Perfect! I said them out loud. ‘I have a job for you’ again. Those weren’t even the words I had written. Suddenly, I realized those weren’t my words at all. Just as suddenly, I knew whose words they were. And like a major shot of adrenaline, I was filled with energy and a feeling of purpose.”
He stopped to catch his breath. “This time I asked God. And I heard, deep down in my spirit where words aren’t even audible, yes, yes, yes, that I should go to England—I think I saw a map—and there I would find out what the job would be. ‘That was odd,’ I thought. But, why not? I booked the first flight that was available, and here I am. And, I might add, here you are.”
Matt had perked up when he got to the part of his having purpose for his life again.
“That’s incredible,” was all she could muster, but she was still curious. “How did you know it was God?”
He said simply, “Because I know his voice.”
Adela came up the aisle with snacks. Sometimes flight attendants forget to obey the pilot. They both had a soft drink. Matt got a little bag containing exactly eleven mini-pretzels and Maggie got a little bag of exactly eight peanut M&Ms.
A good time to change the subject. “Maggie, why did you come to visit me?”
She was expecting the question to come eventually, but at that point hadn’t developed a plausible explanation. “Well, I noticed how you looked at Jenny and wanted to show her off.”
“A wonderful reason.” Then, after the perfectly timed pause, “but I’m not buying it!”
“Well, okay. I just wanted to hear about your petunia dream.”
That deflection didn’t work either. “I’ll get to that soon enough.”
She looked down shyly, fussing a little with Jenny’s blanket. Then resolutely, she turned and looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t know.”
She was surprised at his response. “Now that’s an explanation I can accept.”
“Jenny and I were loving on each other when you came through the exit door. You said hello to the steward and your voice sent a tingling up and down my back. It was almost weird, that’s never happened to me before. I didn’t recognize your voice and as soon as you came into first class, I looked back down to Jenny. Then you stopped in front of me, almost like you had an appointment, and I was afraid to look up. But then I couldn’t not look at you. I don’t understand it.
“We looked at each other, and, um, I guess I was inspecting you. Who was this? The tingling came back. I got confused and excited at the same time. It was a big relief when you looked at Jenny.” It came blurting out all at once. “After we took off and I fed Jenny, curiosity got the better of me and I just had to find out. Your looking at Jenny gave me the excuse I was looking for, and that’s the reason I gave myself to come here.”
“Actually, I knew you were coming. Didn’t know exactly when, though.”
Maggie’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?! How could you know that?”
“Let me tell you the petunia dream first. I was seated in the center of what appeared to be a tribal circle, with people all around the edge watching intently. I seemed to be the center of attention, but I didn’t know why. A woman came to me, a big woman. Taller than me. Bulky. Not obese or like a sumo wrestler, but she had a thick belly, thick chest, thick arms and legs. Perhaps Polynesian. Strong facial features, but no facial expression. Short dark hair.
“She was wearing a pale green muumuu with all kinds of fish all over it, from minnows to whales. She was carrying a dead baby and was giving it to me. The baby was little and had jet-black skin and pale yellow hair. I couldn’t tell why the baby was dead. It didn’t seem to be her baby, but she was somehow responsible for it. I took it and she stepped back. I held the baby up in the air as if to give it back to her.
“All of a sudden, flowers started falling out of the sky on top of the baby and her. I could tell they were petunias. When the ground was covered, we were all deluged by more petunias. She and I and the baby. Then she took the baby and raised it over her head. As soon as she did that, the baby came to life and started waving its arms and kicking its feet. She set the child on the ground and it started dancing around, all the way to the edge of the circle of people. I watched as it got there, and I noticed there was one face I recognized on the front edge of the circle.”
“Wow, that is fascinating! Whose face was it?”
“Maggie, it was yours!”
She was quite taken aback. “How did you know it was mine? You’d never seen me before, as far as I know.”
“I didn’
t last night. When I saw you this morning, I thought you looked vaguely familiar but couldn’t place you. I thought maybe I’d seen you in a movie. It wasn’t until I got to my seat and settled down that I made the connection. I guess it was sort of like a movie.”
Maggie didn’t know what to say, or even what to think. Was he making it all up? If so, where did the feeling come from that seemed to draw her here? She felt comfortable with him, but decided to see where this led before allowing herself any emotional involvement.
“As soon as I realized the face in the dream was yours,” Matt said, “in that calm and quiet voice God uses with me sometimes, he said to me, ‘I want you to tell her a secret from me.’ So I knew you’d be coming to see me. But I have to tell you, I have no earthly idea what this is all about. I seem to be just as in the dark as you.”
“I wish I could hear God speak like that. You’re the first person I have ever heard speak of God that way.”
“I’ll tell you what the message is, but I feel like I need to do it quietly.”
Matt lightly cupped his hand around her right ear, and in a low but distinct voice, said, “God will prove himself strong on your behalf during the next twenty-four hours.”
Maggie was baffled. “I don’t know what all that means. Did he give you any explanation?”
“No, like I said, I have no idea what it might mean, and I don’t know if I have any part in it.”
“When I was at the university, a friend invited me to go with her to a campus Bible group. I went a few times, but nothing ever seemed to make much sense.”
Matt and Maggie finished their snacks and chatted for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, about where they lived, where they were born, their college experiences. Maggie mentioned her dad had passed away when she was fifteen, in an accident at the tin mine where he was a team leader. Her mum was still living in their home in Cheltenham, a town not far from Bristol. Matt mentioned the international food company he retired from after Helene died.
The Wreck Emerged Page 5
