Before I Wake

by Robert J. Wiersema

Simon cleared his throat and beckoned me with a surreptitious twitch of his head.

  “How do we…?” he asked in a whisper. Donna was looking over at us. I smiled at her.

  “Ruth said that she used Sherry’s hands…”

  He nodded and stepped forward. “Hey, Jeffrey,” he called, and the little boy turned toward him. “Can I show you something else?”

  Jeffrey looked at his mother, who smiled and nodded.

  “Do you want to feel how soft her hand is?” Simon lifted her arm, turning her palm to face the boy. “Here, go ahead. Touch it.”

  Jeffrey reached out, and with a single finger touched the center of Sherry’s palm, pulling back with a giggle.

  “Oh, you didn’t feel it!” Simon mock-scolded him. Jeffrey responded with another giggle. “Try it again.”

  Jeffrey shook his head, giggling still, making strange.

  “Here, I know what…” Simon started, shifting his hold on Sherry’s arm. “Close your eyes.”

  Jeffrey closed his eyes, then opened them again.

  “No peeking,” Simon warned.

  When Jeffrey closed his eyes the next time, Simon covered the boy’s eyes with one hand. “Hey,” he protested.

  “I have to make sure that you’re not peeking,” Simon explained. With his other hand he gently laid the palm of Sherry’s hand against Jeffrey’s forehead, pushing back his toque.

  “What’s that?” Jeffrey asked, smiling.

  Donna held her breath.

  “Guess,” Simon said, pressing on the back of Sherry’s hand.

  “I don’t know.”

  Donna’s hand was at her mouth, choking back a sob.

  “Come on, guess.”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Does it feel soft?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Does it feel warm?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Does it feel like it’s got fingers?”

  “Uh-huh.” Jeffrey brought his hand up, touching the back of Sherry’s hand. “Is that Sherry?” He traced her fingers, and I heard Donna gasp.

  Blood roared in my ears.

  “It is,” Simon said, lifting his hand away from Jeffrey’s eyes and Sherry’s hand away from his forehead in the same motion. “Aren’t you a smart guy!” he joked, gently tucking Sherry back in. “Aren’t you smart.” He playfully pulled the toque low over Jeffrey’s eyes.

  Jeffrey pulled his hat up. “Is that how she’s going to make me all better?”

  His mother, who had bent to hug him, scooped him into her arms, crushing him to her. “I don’t know, baby. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome, Mommy,” he said.

  Simon and I looked at one another across the room, both of us aware of the bridge we had just burnt.

  There was no turning back.

  “This is Bill Stewart, live at the Barrett residence in Victoria, where just moments ago Simon Barrett announced that he’ll be holding a news conference in a half-hour. We’ll bring coverage of that to you on the news at five. Meanwhile, it’s been a very strange day here. A few hours ago, the front door you see behind me opened and Simon Barrett asked for Donna Kelly. Miss Kelly and her son, Jeffrey, who suffers from leukemia, entered the house. Miss Kelly left almost an hour later, carrying her son, and refusing to answer any questions. It’s unclear what happened inside the house. Perhaps that’s the reason for the news conference we’ll have for you at five.”

  SIMON

  It was cold on the front step. The reporters were all in position below me, a phalanx of microphones, of necks craned to get the best view, cameras raised to get the best shot. Behind them, the pilgrims stood vigil.

  “Thank you for coming out this afternoon,” I began, as if they were doing us a favor. “I have a brief statement, then I’ll take a couple of questions.” The door opened behind me, and Karen came to stand next to me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are the parents of a little girl who was involved in a horrible accident. Our instincts are to protect Sherry at all costs. At all costs. No parent would argue that instinct.” I paused, making eye contact where I could with the journalists, as if they were a jury. “When the news broke about the miracles for which our daughter was supposedly responsible, we were taken completely by surprise. Our first instinct was to pull back, to lock the doors and do everything we could to protect Sherry from all of this.” I gestured at them, at the cameras and the crowds.

  “This afternoon, as you know, we spoke to Donna Kelly, and her son, Jeffrey. Jeffrey has terminal leukemia. Six years old, and no hope of growing up. We spoke to his mother, another parent whose instincts are the same as our own—to do anything she could to save her little boy.”

  “We still don’t have enough information to confirm the rumors you have heard. I don’t know if we ever will. But earlier this afternoon—” I shifted from foot to foot. “Earlier this afternoon, we attempted to replicate the conditions of those healings with Jeffrey Kelly.”

  I pulled myself up to my full height and directed my gaze over the fish eyes of the cameras, toward the pale faces bent toward me, eyes rapt.

  “We’re parents,” I continued, speaking directly to the pilgrims. “And one of the things that being a parent requires us to do is to be good role models for our daughter, to teach by example. One of the things…” I found myself choking up, paused for a second. “One of the things we wanted to teach Sherry is that she has a responsibility, as a human being, as a member of a community, to reach out to people if they need help. Not to walk past the beaten man at the side of the road.”

  I took a deep breath. “We don’t know if what people claim about Sherry is true or not, but we just can’t just walk past.” As I watched, the hope that had been building in people’s faces peaked. Stress gave way to gratitude. The reporters looked stunned, as if this were the last thing they were expecting.

  “So on Monday morning, at ten a.m., we’re going to open the doors of this house to allow people access to Sherry. We don’t know how this is going to work out.” I had to raise my voice to be heard above the murmurs and whispers, the snapping of camera shutters. “We don’t know how this is going to work out, so I’d like to ask for your patience and consideration as we try to come up with some sort of system. I don’t know how hard this is going to be on Sherry, so we’ll have to see, but I think that just a few hours a day…maybe starting at ten? We’ll have to see. Are there any questions?”

  “Mr. Barrett, Suzanne George, New Sentinel. Are you confirming reports that your daughter is able to heal people?”

  I fought the urge to snap at her. “As I stated, we’re not confirming anything. If there’s any possibility, though, I think we need to be open to trying to help as many people as possible.”

  “Mr. or Mrs. Barrett, Brad Roberts, CBC—have you spoken to anyone from any of the churches or religious institutions about your daughter, about what’s going on here?”

  I glanced up to see Father Peter at the back of the crowd, studying me intently. Our eyes met. “My wife and I are agnostics. Religion doesn’t enter into this.”

  The reporter from the New Sentinel started to ask another question, but the reporter from the CBC cut her off. “How can you claim that religion has nothing to do with this? If there are miracles—”

  “Perhaps you should be talking to someone from one of the churches. I don’t have the background to discuss the theory or the theology behind all of this. Next?”

  Father Peter turned and walked down the driveway, quickly merging with the shadows. I guessed he wouldn’t need to check back with us.

  “Mr. Barrett, don’t you see this as exploiting your daughter?”

  I started to answer, but Karen stepped forward, laying her hand on my arm. “I love my daughter so much I can’t even begin to describe it. If someone told me that there was some way—some new therapy, some faith healer, whatever—if someone told me that there was a way that m
y daughter might be able to wake up, might be able to smile at me again, I would do anything in my power to make that happen.” She took a deep breath, calming herself. “If I was in that position, and someone might be able to help, I would hope that they’d be willing to do so. That’s all we’re doing. If you want to view that as exploitation, that’s fine.” With that, she went back into the house, closing the door behind her.

  “That’s all for now.” Ignoring the cries for “just one more question, just one more,” I continued, “I’d like to ask, please, everyone go home. We’ll be here at ten o’clock Monday morning, so there’s no need for you to put your health further at risk by sitting out here in the cold. Go home, please. Take care of yourselves.”

  I ducked back inside, ignoring the voices behind me, closing them off with the front door.

  From behind the curtains in the living room Karen and I watched as most of the crowd dispersed. The press left first, hopping into cars and speeding away, eager to meet deadlines and get footage edited.

  I wondered which sound bite the five o’clock news would choose to run, and how the paper the next day would deal with the whole thing.

  The pilgrims who had been at the house all night were slower to slip away. Some stayed to clean up, picking up their garbage, rolling up their sleeping bags before leaving the yard. Someone even cleaned up the mess of coffee cups and takeout wrappers the press had left scattered in the driveway. Someone else rolled up Jeffrey’s sleeping bag and left it on the front step as they were going.

  By five o’clock the yard was empty. The last pilgrim to leave shut the gate. It was as if none of it had happened.

  MARY

  All day I managed not to answer the phone when it rang. Instead I’d pause in the middle of whatever I was doing—a long overdue cleaning, another chapter in my book—to listen to the answering machine as he left his messages.

  Five messages in the past twenty-four hours. The first an hour after I had left his house, while I was out walking along the water. “Mary? It’s Simon. Are you there?”

  I’d gotten into his habit of checking a clock every time something happened, making a mental note of the time, measuring my life out in increments. Just like him.

  9:40 a.m. “Mary, it’s Simon. What happened to you last night? You just disappeared. I was worried. Listen, give me a call on my cell…”

  His voice was low. Not a whisper, but pitched low enough that Karen wouldn’t hear him. I could picture him, sitting in their family room—

  family room

  —speaking softly into his tiny black phone, keeping one eye on the door, ready to cut it off should his wife appear.

  I’d been through all of this before.

  12:10 p.m. “Mary, it’s Simon again. Are you there? Are you okay? Please call…”

  His voice was touched by tenderness and care, by worry. I should have explained why I had to go.

  But what would I have said? “I’m leaving you so that you can choose between me and your wife. I’m leaving because you want me to leave—you just don’t know it yet.”

  I almost picked it up. Too late. He’d hung up.

  3:40 p.m. “Mary, it’s Simon. Listen, I know you’re mad at me. I know we need to talk. Please, just call me, okay? I love you…”

  Mad at him? Not a chance. I was too furious at myself to even think about him. What was I thinking, destroying a family like that? Taking a father away from his daughter, a husband away from his wife. Mad at you? God, no, Simon. And that last, that “I love you,” as if just saying it could make everything all right.

  But love was easy. I had loved Simon long before he ever moved in, long before it was even a possibility that we could have a life together. Loving him was easy.

  Was easy.

  5:55 p.m. “It’s me…I’ve…It’s been a really long afternoon…I don’t know if you saw the news or not, but…I really need to talk to you. If you get this, please call.”

  I hadn’t watched the news; I hadn’t been doing anything except sitting around, putting CDs into the player, changing them after a few songs, unable to find anything that seemed to speak to me.

  I couldn’t stand to hear him in pain. I was reaching for the phone to call him when it rang. I jumped a little, then answered it. “Hello?”

  “Party Girl!” came the loud, familiar voice, almost a shout over the music in the background.

  “Brian?”

  “Who else, Party Girl? Where have you been hiding?” He was clearly camping it up for an audience at his end of the phone. “We thought you’d died!”

  “No, not dead. Just in love.”

  “That doesn’t sound as happy as it should.”

  “Is it ever?”

  “It’s always a man, isn’t it?” he said, more sympathetically.

  I didn’t need to answer. Brian and I had known each other since we were undergraduates, both headed for law school. The hippie girl from the small town up-island, straight As, who never did anything bad, falling in with a flaming hometown queen who lived off-campus in a house full of lesbians who kept stealing each others’ girlfriends and tampons.

  “How can you live like that?” I had asked him at one point.

  “Honey, if I ever need a reason not to be interested in women, all I have to do is spend a few minutes in the living room.”

  Victoria was Brian’s town, and he didn’t hesitate to show me its secrets: the bars, the restaurants, the nightlife. We would study through the week, pouring all of our energy into our books, papers and exams. Then we’d go crazy on the weekends, dancing at the clubs or raves, crashing house parties, whatever. With Brian it was impossible not to have a good time. Law school went the same way—the work was harder, and we partied harder. After, I decided to go the private route, while Brian took a job at Legal Aid. Always helping out the little guys.

  “Married, gay or stupid?”

  I found myself smiling. Brian can always do that. “Married. And stupid, I guess.”

  “Is this a bad one?”

  “The worst,” I answered. “And you?”

  “This is the lawyer, right?”

  I was a little surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Just because I hadn’t spoken to Brian in the past few months didn’t mean that he was out of the loop. “Yeah, it’s the lawyer.”

  “I just saw him on TV. On the news.”

  “Him and his wife, right?”

  He ignored the question.

  “Listen, Party Girl, I’ve got just the thing for you. Big rave, up the Peninsula somewhere. Love bus leaves at ten—”

  “Brian, I’m not—”

  “Listen,” he said, suddenly serious, oddly maternal, his voice dropping an octave. “You need to get out, right?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Let me guess: you’ve been puttering around the apartment all day, not answering the telephone, in a cleaning tizzy, not eating, trying to think of anything else but him, right? Changing the CDs every half-hour?”

  Ah, Brian. “Right.”

  “So you need to get out.”

  “Brian, I’m not up for this.”

  “Look, we’ll dance. We’ll drink some smart drinks, we’ll talk, we’ll just hang, okay?”

  He was impossible to resist. “Well…”

  “I’ll be there at ten,” he jumped in. “Wear your Day-Glo lipstick.” He hung up.

  As I cradled the receiver I looked at the answering machine, the red light flashing four times, pausing, then flashing again. I thought for a moment about calling, just to let him know I was okay.

  Instead, I pressed the button and erased the messages.

  The light went out.

  KAREN

  I was afraid to admit to myself how good it felt to have Simon at home. It was like what Donna had said, about getting accustomed to the worst and accepting it, and how anything else, any slight hope, was almost too much to bear.

  Sitting at the table, a glass of merlot in front of me, watching him cook, I wa
s reminded of the early days of our relationship. That first basement apartment, so tiny, so dark. We had rented it furnished with an awful cream vinyl chair and couch, a bed that felt like it had no mattress on it at all and a rickety table with two chairs. God forbid if we ever wanted to have company. We had no money, but it never felt like suffering. He could whip up a gourmet meal from a few vegetables, some noodles and the tiniest pieces of meat—all that we could afford. It was so easy to romanticize the poverty of those days, both of us in school, no TV, always working or reading or going for walks or making love. There was no sense of a real world outside that dictated our actions to us. Not the way it seemed to once we grew up.

  When the telephone rang, Simon looked at it with suspicion. I couldn’t blame him. I’d just hung up after a painful near-hour with my mother.

  “Is it true?” she had started, without any warning or preamble.

  “Mom—”

  “Father Jean just called me and said he had heard from someone in Victoria—”

  “Mom—”

  “It is true, isn’t it?”

  I could picture her clutching her rosary beads to her heart.

  “I was going to call…”

  “Oh, Karen, you must be so happy.”

  “Happy?”

  “To be so blessed.”

  I sighed, and Simon shook his head, obviously piecing together the conversation.

  “I wouldn’t say happy, Mom. I’m…the house is under siege. There are reporters and people everywhere—”

  “They just want to see the miracle,” she answered. “They just want their questions put to rest. Just like you.”

  “Mom,” I said warningly, gritting my teeth.

  “It’s true, Karen. It’s what I’ve always said: God doesn’t depend on your belief or disbelief, He just is. And now you see proof.”

  “Mom, I really don’t want to—”

  “I’ve called Air Canada,” she interrupted. “They can get me on a flight Monday—”

  “No,” I said, so firmly Simon looked startled.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said no, Mom,” I said, trying to stay calm.

  “But Karen—”

  “Now is not a good time, Mom. Let us…give us a couple of weeks to get used to this. Maybe right after New Year’s.”