“I couldn’t help him—or you. I tried, but…”
“Shhh.” Ted put his hand to her lips. “It’s not your fault. Sometimes people simply can’t be helped.”
“But dreams mean something. I know it. Jonathan never believed he could be healed. Maybe that’s why he died. I’ve been so stupid! I blamed myself all this time.”
“Come on, let’s go inside, where it’s warmer.”
“Warmer? You’re cold? Of course. How thoughtless. Yes. Here, grab my hand.”
He allowed her to tug him up the steps. She chattered the whole time.
“You believe in me though, don’t you? You believe I could help you, right?”
“It’s too late, Grace. No one can help me now.” At the door, he held her back. He leaned down to rest his forehead against hers and gripped her face with shaky hands. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should never have yanked you into my life. I just don’t know how I’m going to let go. Eddy, and now you.”
Grace feverishly ran her hands over his cheeks and hands. Ted mourned for her, frightened he would lose her first. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
“I know this is right!” she exclaimed, once they were both on the other side of the door. Ted, winded from his exertions, sat on the couch trying to catch his breath.
“I don’t know why it never occurred to me before.” She plopped down next to him, turned to the side, one knee pulled up underneath her. Her hair was tangled and her cheeks rosy. Her energy level felt maniacal. He had only known one other person who was manic depressive, one of the students in his dorm. Had he completely missed that about her? Or could the symptoms start out of nowhere?
She jumped up and paced. “I have to think this through. It’s possible this is the clue I’ve been missing.”
Ted feared Grace was still in the midst of a breakdown. Had he brought his cell phone? He poked through his pockets. Nope.
Grace stopped in front of him, frowning. “Ted, what are you doing here? Are you all right? I told you I was fine, earlier. But this dream…” She turned away again, striding across the living room and back, hand at her throat.
She faced him again. “You must know someone locally who can help me, Ted. Don’t you know anyone who does dream therapy?” She turned away again, speaking to herself. “Of course he doesn’t know anyone. Why would he? But Greg probably does, or Davy. Yeah, I’ll call one of them.”
Ted watched helplessly as Grace went from one activity to the next talking to herself, stopping to write something on a pad of paper, to fix them something to drink, but thankfully, not making any phone calls. Once he got her to sit down, he turned on the radio to her favorite evening program and she seemed to relax and doze. He covered her up and left quietly, locking the door behind him. He had to go home and figure out what to do. He’d ask Shelby. Even Evans if he had to.
Lena’s telephone rang about one-thirty in the morning. Accustomed to emergencies, she was immediately alert and answered professionally.
“He never asked me,” a familiar voice said.
“Grace, is that you?” Why was she calling in the middle of night? “Never asked you what?” Lena said.
“I had a dream,” Grace said slowly, deliberately. “I was dreaming about Jonathan. I realized that never during his whole illness did he ask me to heal him. I tried, yes,” she went on, almost cheerily. “You all know I did. But he never did come right out and ask to be healed.”
“So,” Lena said, starting to be peeved. Grace could have called about this anytime.
“So it means he never believed that I could. Don’t you see? If he never believed then of course I couldn’t help him! It wasn’t my fault!”
“Grace, of course it wasn’t your fault.”
Now Lena felt the prickle of alarm. She sat up and reached for the light next to her bed, pulled on her glasses, and reached for a notepad.
“Don’t you get it?” Grace’s overly excited voice rushed on in her ear.
“I think you’re the one who doesn’t get it. You know what happens when you work with the difficult cases. Jonathan never wanted you to suffer and possibly die if you took on his illness. He loved you. You listen to me.” Lena leaned desperately toward the telephone, as if she could make her friend hear her better. “You have to calm down. It’s the middle of the night. Have you slept at all? Did you just wake up from this dream?”
“No, I had it this afternoon. On my porch. But I didn’t understand it until now. It’s the missing piece, I know it. But that still doesn’t explain why he never asked me. I would have done anything for him, Lena. I tried. Everyone knew that. You believe me, don’t you?”
“We always believed you. And Jonathan knew that, Grace. We all did. No one blamed you—you felt that for yourself. You’re the only one who thought you should have been able to fix him.” Lena tried desperately to think of what she could do long distance. She didn’t know anyone else in East Bay except the Marshalls. She wondered if she could find that doctor for whom Grace worked. There’d been a friend, too, who had a baby.
“Grace, are you okay, honey? Are you still there?”
“But what about Ted? He won’t ask me. He doesn’t know. How can he ask me if he doesn’t know what I can do for him?” Her voice came back quieter, less intense.
“Grace! You can’t say anything to anyone. You know what happens. You called me before, afraid you lost the gift, remember? What’s going on?” Lena tried to keep her talking.
“But what if it wants for someone to ask? To need it enough? Maybe that’s what I’m missing. Then it will come back, and I can make them all better.”
She was definitely not all right. “Grace? I need to see you. Someone needs to be with you now. Are you alone? Who can I call to come and stay with you until I can get there? I’ll leave right away.” Lena began to pull some clothes out of her dresser and make a quick list of people to contact.
“No! Really, it’s okay. You don’t have to interrupt your life.”
“Grace, you cannot, absolutely under any circumstances, tell Ted Marshall or anyone else, about the gifts of the Spirit. You know how outsiders think it’s all hocus-pocus or some sort of magic spell. Honey, I’m worried. I’m coming. Give me the number for, ah, that friend of yours—Shelby, right? Just tell me her phone number, okay?”
“No! You can’t come! You’re right.” Grace sounded panicky. “You’re right, Lena, I won’t tell. They don’t understand, here. No one does.”
“I do. I understand.” Lena sat back down on the bed, half-dressed, and closed her eyes and made a helpless fist.
“Yes, you always have. I-I think I’m better now. I’ll be okay. I’m sorry I called you like this. I just, just couldn’t tell anyone else.”
Grace did seem quieter. “You were right to call me. I’m always here for you. Hey, babe. You’re sure, now? You’ll be okay?”
A little hysterical snort. “Some day. Yes, everything will work out. Shelby said that. She said, ‘everything will work out.’”
Grace was quiet, breathing into the phone. Lena was comforted by the even tones of her voice.
“Grace,” Lena said after a moment.
“Yes?”
“I love you, you know. I want to come.”
“I know,” Grace said. “But not now, okay? In a little while, like we planned.”
She seemed calmer, back in her right mind. Maybe it had only been the dream. Lena decided to talk it over with Reverend Edwards to hear what he thought.
“We’re all praying, Grace, for you and for—everyone there. Elizabeth, Jeremiah, everyone here who knows you.”
“Thank you,” Grace whispered. “That’s the right thing right now. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t be. I’m glad to hear your voice. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. Goodnight.”
Matty was deeply troubled. After Ted Marshall called her three days ago, asking her advice, she had gone right over to see Grace. Other than exuberance, she seemed
well enough. She made sense when they talked, but Matty had not stayed long. Something did not feel right, but she wasn’t sure what to do.
She called Ted on her lunch break. “How is she today, Ted?”
“She wouldn’t let me in. She answered the phone once this morning. Said she was busy. I don’t know what to do. Would Doctor Evans—”
“No. I must think on this. If we can’t prove she is a danger to herself or others, there is nothing to be gained by attempting to draw in authorities. I, too, have been so worried. This is not the Grace we have come to know and love, is it? Do you know what happened?”
“It started with a dream, a nightmare, I think, about her husband’s death. She kept talking about not being able to help him. That he never asked her to help him. And then, that Randy asked her to help me. You must have seen her at the clinic, Matty. Did she ever act like this? Or can you find out if she’s been treated for problems like this?”
“That would have been revealed in her records. No. I’ll visit again today. Perhaps Grace simply needed to work this out. All that business from the summer took a toll, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Just wait. I will try and have her come here to us, so I can see. And Harold will see, also. I think you are too close to her.”
“You may be right. I’m sorry.”
“Tsk, now. Sometimes too much emotion overloads a soul—like a circuit, no? We find a way to help her release. You cannot be sorry for love. Or for living, for that matter.”
Matty spent two long days trying to contact Grace by telephone before she finally went over to her house after work and forced her to accept an invitation to Saturday dinner at the farm.
Saturday was cloudy and gray with surprise cold rain showers. Matty felt on edge. Maybe she should have had Harold pick her up. Should she be driving?
Matty winced when Grace squealed the tires turning into their gravel drive. She stopped the engine only a couple of inches from their new maple tree.
She had obviously not washed her hair, or even brushed it, for the past couple of days. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her sweater was buttoned wrong. Grace smiled, but her eyes seemed childishly blank. Matty shivered.
“Harold! Here’s our Grace, now,” she called to her husband, who was right then walking in from the barn. He took one look, and calmly said, “We’re going for a little walk around the yard before it grows dark. We’ll let you alone to finish up dinner. I’ll get to talk with my favorite Tennessee gal before you girls start to chatter up a storm. How’s that?”
Matty simply nodded, too upset to speak. She knew he would take care of her. Maybe he could do something to help. Grace gave him a dazzling, if dopey, smile and followed meekly in his wake.
Harold turned the light on once back inside the barn. He led the girl over to where the latest litter of kittens mewled in their nest of hay bales. He wasn’t sure why, but seeing new life often seemed to bring on some kind of healing for those in trouble. That Grace was in a heap of trouble was an understatement. He had seen a few of the boys from his unit in Nam go bonkers like this. Post Traumatic Stress. Yeah. And no wonder. Death upon death with no time in between to recover. Helplessness. Poor girl. Could they bring her back? He watched her carefully. She had been so good with the boy whenever she brought him out here. If they weren’t too late, if she wasn’t too far gone, maybe he could reach in there, dig it out and help her deal with it. He would wait and see which direction the spirit guided him.
Grace poked her finger at the kittens. A tear rolled down her cheek.
The little fluffballs were only a day old, blind and helpless. They wandered, crying piteously for their mother. Mother was actually close by taking a cat bath breather before returning to her duties.
When he saw Grace look at the mother cat as if she was angry that it ignored its babies, he knew what to say. “Even the most devoted cat mothers need to stop and gather their wits about them before getting back on track,” he said gently. He picked one of the babies up to put into Grace’s palm.
She took the precious handful of fur and sharp nails, cuddling it close, rocking. She held it to her cheek when it started a wheezy purr. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Harold. Lately I feel like I’m losing my mind. Sometimes I feel I can do anything, and sometimes like I can do nothing.”
Harold nodded. “I know what you mean. I thought I had my life all mopped up, a good career, nice pension plan. Then when retirement came closer, I began to panic.”
Grace looked at him. He was glad to note that she appeared more focused.
“I thought I had worked everything out so that Matty and me, we could do pretty much anything we wanted to for the rest of our lives and have no worries. Not money-wise, leastways. So then I went and did something really dumb.”
“Oh?” Grace knit her brows.
Harold nodded. “I wanted to show Matty I was so smart, that I could make us some easy money so she wouldn’t have to worry about working any more. I took our biggest retirement account and put it in stocks— you know a few years back when things were so good for everyone? I got a tip from someone I knew and trusted. And at first things were pretty good.”
The cat came back, sniffing about for her lost baby. Grace set it back down next to its mother, where it stretched its tiny body and immediately began to nurse.
“What happened then?” she asked.
“Same as most everyone else, I suspect. I trusted the wrong person. And when the panic set in, so many of us lost the whole thing. Me too.”
“What did Matty say?”
“You know, that Matty. She’s pretty special. She knows a lot about what to say and when to say it, when she can fix something, when to ask for help.” Harold looked at Grace. “She told me she never had any intention of retiring when I did, anyway.”
He leaned down and gave her a hand up. “We’re both concerned about you, Grace. Won’t you tell us what we can do to help?”
Grace closed her eyes and swayed. Harold tightened his grip. She shook her head and looked down toward the floor. She must have realized her sweater was buttoned up in the wrong holes, for she let go of his hand and started to fix them.
“From my experience in the army, Grace, I think you might be suffering from PTSD.”
She looked up at him, frowning. “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? That fits, I suppose.”
“You’ve been through a lot of turmoil, many personal losses and all that ruckus of the summer. Maybe you should think about letting others help you for a change.”
“Maybe. I guess I have to learn who I can trust around here, Harold. Thank you.”
She took his arm and leaned against him affectionately back to the house where he and Matty showered her with all the love and healing they could provide.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Matty sought out Greg at the clinic the next day. “All my years before I came to you, I worked in the mental health unit.”
“Yeah, it was great practice for coming to me.”
She didn’t smile at her boss’s flat joke, and went on as if he never spoke. “Harold thinks Grace might have PTSD.”
“Well, until she goes through the next big trauma, there’s nothing we can do. We just have to wait. Then, maybe…I have someone in mind she can see. If she wants to.”
Matty grew furious with him. “Wait? Until when? The Marshall boy dies?”
“That’s inevitable. After that, we can see she receives the help she needs.”
“You can help her, you mean. I’ve never understood you to be so-so pig-headed…”
“There’s nothing else we can do. Unless she goes off the deep end and hurts herself, or someone else.”
“We can pray,” she said.
And to her surprise, Greg reached for her hand, his eyes strangely brittle and dark. “Yes. Maybe we can try that.”
Grace’s healing continued with the prayers of her friends, and a phone call. The card of the counselor Greg reco
mmended sat on her dresser. Thoughtful, but not necessary. She needed to remember who she was. That would be the best treatment. Pull out and examine each stressor, deal with it, and bury it.
Mrs. Webb, Eddy’s first grade teacher, invited Grace to speak to the class when they reached their Good Health unit. Grace stalled for three days before she pulled herself together and decided she could do it. Most of the children’s talk after Eddy’s birthday party had blown over. They no longer acted afraid of her when they saw her in the shops and at church. The past few days had seemed like gelled blobs of time during which she could not recall eating or sleeping or talking to anyone. Mrs. Webb’s call seemed to pull the plug of a stopped up vat of rendered emotion.
Grace washed her hair and did her laundry. Those simple chores reminded her of the routine tasks to perform to keep functioning. Eddy! Had someone else been taking care of him, when she could not care for herself?
She waited for his bus that afternoon. He barreled into her arms when he saw her. Eddy was back. She waved to Ted, who watched them from his door. She was not ready to talk to him yet. Soon, though.
She visited Eddy’s class at school. Their mesmerized little faces reflected every emotion when she explained about germs, blowing noses and washing hands and covering your mouth when you cough. She showed them pictures of Germaine Germ at work and hoped they wouldn’t provoke angry calls from parents accusing her of causing nightmares.
The fifth grade teachers invited her, too. Grace returned to Wind Point School and spoke to the older children. She was more prepared with slides of real organisms and a couple of medical books. She also talked about the kind of education they would need to be doctors or nurses.
Tony Vander Groot had undergone a dramatic personality change, the bleeding incident of the summer now forgotten.
“This is my doctor,” he introduced her, having beat out any classmates for the honor.
Neither Grace nor the teacher corrected him in front of his peers. Instead, Grace asked him to tell about some of the things that happened to necessitate a visit to the clinic.
Healing Grace Page 24
