The Miracle Girl

by Andrew Roe

  And the nightly ritual begins. Heart rate: check. Ventilator: check. Catheter: check. Feeding tube: check. Singing Anabelle’s favorite song (“You Are My Sunshine”): check. Damp cloth to the forehead, applying ChapStick to her lips, filling out the chart that the nurse will check at tomorrow morning’s weekly visit. Karen collapses on the side of the bed. Anabelle as still as a photograph. Karen can study her daughter’s face for hours, whole worlds there, levels of subtlety and hint that the inexperienced eye will miss. And sometimes she’ll wonder as she stares: What do you see? What do you think? What do you feel? Do you know that I’m sitting here next to you, that I’m your mother? Do you know what happened and why all these people come to our home? Of course you do. How could you not. I am your mother. It’s OK. You’re safe now. You can tell me anything. Hello? I’m listening. I’m always listening even though I don’t always hear. But I try.

  Karen turns on the TV, habit, then goes about performing additional nighttime sacraments: a quick sponge bath (face, neck, arms, elbows, armpits); removing stray hairs or eyelashes or flakes of skin or any other miscellaneous bodily accretions; reading aloud the notes and cards that have been left during the day (along with the candles, the candy, the flowers, the stuffed animals, the photographs of the sick and the dead); and then finishes the last of the Life, wetting and dipping her fingertips in the cereal dust to salvage all the nourishment she can. How many lives had Anabelle affected today? How many souls touched, mended? She watches the news, and there’s her friend Kellee Clifton, interviewing a distraught woman whose husband had kidnapped their two children and fled to his native Iran. Then, because she can’t be bothered to change the channel, she sits through a new dating show where the contestants are younger, meaner, more forthcoming with the details of their sexual appetites. Again: more that her daughter will never experience, though in this particular case she doesn’t mind so much.

  The chair that now serves as her bed has become more or less contoured to her more or less plus-­sized body. It’s almost comfortable. She covers herself with a blanket and closes her eyes, the TV still going (something about lawyers now), knowing that sleep is not an immediate possibility. But eventually she will fall asleep. Eventually she will dream. And the dream will most likely be the familiar one, the one that floats above all the rest: the dream where Anabelle talks and walks and runs and is a normal regular girl. No more miracles, no more akinetic mutism, no more machines. The thing, though, is this: she can never tell in the dream if Anabelle has lost her power, or whatever you want to call it. If the sacrifice has been reversed. That is the question: Is being normal the cost of being miraculous?

  She will sleep but she will wake every two hours or so, the stunted slumber of the new parent, only she’s not so new anymore, it won’t get any better. Checking Anabelle, checking herself, checking the numbers of the digital clock (they never change when you look, never), the green digits glowing futuristically in the darkness. Always the hum of the machines. That underwater sensation of having slept but not enough, it’s never enough. The day ahead awaits. Then she will get up around five-­thirty or six. She will turn on the lights, move around the house, brew the coffee, signs of activity, of the day beginning anew, people arriving so they can have their time with Anabelle, who’s still her daughter but also something else entirely, and more and more Karen knows that it’s the right thing, what she’s doing and how she’s proceeding, and how could she deny anyone what she has to offer.

  When Kellee Clifton had asked about her husband, there was a very long pause.

  “Is he still in the picture?”

  Kellee Clifton and the bearded camera guys waited. Karen stared at the lights shining on her and tried not to look at the camera, tried to keep her voice from cracking.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  THE STORY AIRS two days later, featured on the 5, 6, and 11 p.m. Channel 7 newscasts. A week after that, it gets picked up nationally, running on the ABC Sunday evening news, the very last segment, that final slot that’s kept free of politics or violence or scandal and that’s reserved for the good, old-­fashioned uplifting human-interest story. The calls start almost immediately. The phone rings and rings, and she answers it 100 percent of the time. CNN, MSNBC, USA Today. What to tell all these people? Editors, reporters, fact-­checkers, assistants to somebody. It’s hard to believe they’re calling for her, Karen Elizabeth Vincent, asking for her comments, setting up times for more interviews. Before: as anonymous as anyone else she knew. After: someone that is quoted and supposed to have something to say.

  One of the callers, a smoker-­voiced man from The Boston Globe, tells her: “It’s interesting . . . We seem to be hearing more and more about this stuff. Maybe it’s because of Y2K, the new millennium and all that hullabaloo. The hype becomes the reality. Like a self-­fulfilling prophecy kind of deal . . . Or maybe—I don’t know. Maybe we need miracles more than we thought.”

  “Maybe,” she agrees, not knowing what else she could possibly say.

  2

  | John |

  IT’S ONE OF those bars where there are only two kinds of music on the jukebox: country and western. The best of Waylon, Willie, Merle, Johnny, Hank. Men—and it’s always men in bars like this, no Patsy or Loretta or Dolly allowed—identifiable without a surname, the true gods, who have been to the clichéd and well-­traveled edge and found their way back. And don’t even think of making the suggestion of possibly maybe broadening some musical horizons with a token smattering of, say, classic rock or a tasteful soul compilation: That’s not what this place—technically the Wishing Well but known to its dedicated regulars solely by the truncated “the Well”—is about. Here, there’s nothing but reliable songs of lament and loss (and of course drinking) that fit right in with the clientele’s collective state of mind. And that suits him fine tonight. That’s why he chose the Well. Tonight he’s up for plenty of authentic lamenting and losing. And drinking. So why not have the appropriate soundtrack?

  Because he’s already laid a pretty significant foundation with a few vodka tonics, John Vincent takes a moment to reflect on his current intoxication level and contemplate where he hopes to go from here. He stands in front of the jukebox, his unshaven face lit by its sci-­fi-­like glow. Breaking hearts, broken hearts, cheating hearts. Such a resilient organ, he concludes, and stares up at the mounted heads of various slain creatures—deer, bear, jackalope—which glower above the bar, their dead eyes still very much alive, reminding him, he hates to admit, of his daughter.

  It is well after nine, the hopeful Friday night crowd dispersed throughout the classically shoebox-­shaped room, the ratio of men to women predictably uneven, the prowling patrons well on their way to good and proper lubrication. After two unsuccessful attempts, he catches the eye of the bartender—shaved head, Satanic goatee, tank top that’s purposefully too small, arms like cut logs, basically a man who could pull trains with his teeth and bench-­press a Toyota—and orders another. He takes the last empty stool. The bartender doesn’t like him. Just doesn’t. He can tell. When vodka tonic number three finally arrives, he leaves an even bigger tip than last time.

  His only other previous visit to the Well? That would be the time he was dragged here by Janice, a fellow TempPeople sufferer, one of the first people he met after he landed in Nevada, both of them pretending to be busy for two weeks at a real estate office. It was Janice’s birthday and a group of coworkers were going out to celebrate and Janice wouldn’t take no for an answer. Janice Gabriela Moonstone Verdugo—she of the Hopi jewelry and bioelectric shield and energy balancing. Called herself a “cultural creative,” told him there was a website if he was interested. He wasn’t. And even if he was, he didn’t have an Internet account yet, this latest revolution bypassing him completely, one more example of his lifelong inability to discern what’s important from what’s not.

  A wave of applause ripples through the bar. A play, a score, a triumph, something. He gazes up for guidance, away from the
watery world of his cocktail and his musings. There are several TVs, all tuned to different stations, games, commercials; he doesn’t know which one to focus on. Whatever it is, was, he’s missed it. Too late, too late, once again. So he returns to his drink and that night with Janice, after the other folks from the office had left and it was just the two of them, sitting at one of the Well’s booths, where she proclaimed she wasn’t a drinker, that alcohol polluted the spirit and deadened the life force (as did microwaves, televisions, and Republicans), but she powered down another rum and Coke, followed by a shot of Jäger and a Kahlúa and cream. She cried about her kid, her supposedly genius son who lived back East and was being brainwashed by her ex-­husband, the shit-­fuck, which was the exact hyphenated noun she used. Janice: who deep down he suspected didn’t believe in everything she said she believed in, not as fervently at least, but it was better than the way she had been living before (he didn’t know all of the details, but he knew enough), so who’s to say, whatever gets you through the night.

  But now he’s here again, locked in, marking territory, imagining himself as a painting: “Lonely Man Sitting at Bar.” The music could be louder. He wants to feel it more, physically, in his chest. He decides to switch to beer. This is not a decision that’s made lightly. Multiple attempts to catch the bartender’s eye and finally he’s good, he’s beered, he’s set for another fifteen minutes, maybe longer. To his right, a young man drinking solo; to his left, an old man drinking, also solo. The bartender slaps his change on the surface of the bar, a nasty, incriminating sound, singling him out somehow, it seems to John, and momentarily he considers changing tactics and snubbing the tip this time, teach the guy a lesson, but he relents, slides back the two quarters. The beer tastes warmish and flat. The label tells him he’s drinking “The Champagne of Beers.” Living the high life, all right.

  Let’s stay focused, he reminds himself as he takes another sip of his beer. Remember that you have a purpose. To observe the significance of the day, the date. Trying to remember and trying to forget. Mostly to forget. Which is usually the point of going to a bar like the Well. This is important, what he’s doing. He has a plan, limited and unoriginal though it may be, and for now he’s enjoying the satisfaction of having a tangible goal that can be accomplished: drink, wallow, memorialize, then obliterate; then pay for it the next day, perhaps longer if he does it right. He can’t get too distracted.

  WHY IS IT that some men are inclined to chat when urinating in public bathrooms while others prefer to be stoic and silent about the whole damn thing? John had always been firmly in the latter camp, preferring to pee and savor the moment to himself, sans interaction with his pissing peers. It was don’t-­talk-­to-­me time: a brief respite from the world’s ongoing whirl. But for some guys it’s an invitation to socialize. They can’t help themselves.

  “You believe that shit?”

  This from the beer-gutted gent occupying the urinal next to him, who stands there with his legs spread wide, a wise and time-­honored tactic when a certain level of alcohol has been consumed. John (wisely) spreads his legs a little more, assumes the manly pose, just to be sure.

  “Guy says—guy like you, guy like me. A regular guy. Says his wife’s pregnant. Out of the blue. Pregnant, preggers. Can’t be his, though. Can’t have any. One of those low-sperm-­count deals, he says, he tells me, the guy. Unless it’s some kind of miracle and his boys finally made it through. Possible, right? Immaculate reception. Stranger things have happened, suppose. She says no, no way. There’s nobody else. It’s yours, yours, yours, baby. But fool me once. You know. Don’t fuck with me twice. And he’s staying with her. He’s staying. Me? I’m outta there.”

  It’s time for John to chime in or be considered unfriendly, a dick, if he does not reciprocate.

  “Harsh,” he says without looking up, over.

  His companion doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t flush or wash his hands either. Just leaves. John zips up and moves over to the sink. The mirror above is dotted and streaked with who knows what, the shed crud of previous generations of drinkers and pissers. It also has a big gigantic crack. When he looks at himself, the crack slices right through his neck, which gives the not-­so-­subtle effect of him looking like he’s been decapitated.

  And why is it that some men leave and others stay? Why is he so far from home on a Friday night in the middle of the desert? Why why why? he wonders.

  More than anything else, it’s about the simple failures of love, which of course are not so simple.

  NEXT HE COMMANDEERS a seat recently vacated by another old man, this one practically skeletal, with minimal teeth and an oxygen tank, a sight just as depressing as it sounds. Yes, he knew the day would be rough and he was right. Why couldn’t there be a delete key for this day on the calendar—press a button and it vanishes. Isn’t that how it works in these technological times of ours? But this is not something that can be so easily erased. He cannot, like Janice, revisualize, recontextualize. He’s too fucking literal. What happened, happened. And what he remembers most, the grainy home-­movie footage that played in his head more than anything else now, is not the big scene with Karen (curled in a ball on the living room floor, rocking like a child, not speaking but yelling in tongues), or even the days, the weeks—shit, the months, years—leading up to his departure, but after, once he had made up his mind and was in the car and fully realized what he was doing: following a guilty tradition of male abandonment. The long, silent, radio-­less drive. He didn’t know where to go. He knew only that he was leaving, that it was happening. That was six months ago. Six months ago tonight. He left on Thursday, April 22, 1999, five days after his thirty-­first birthday, four months after the accident.

  Happy anniversary, asshole.

  So here he is, marooned and indistinct, among the Well’s nightly flock of followers. This particular stool wobbles. You have to be completely still or it feels like you’re about to tip over, fall into the void below. The bartender brings him another beer, just as warm, just as flat. Had he ordered it? Not sure. Then the bartender hovers there, arms crossed, like a cop who knows something you don’t, some vital fact about you that popped up on the routine computer check, a mistake from years ago that continues to haunt you. How long does it take to have a clean record, to be free of the past? He’d like to know. Janice Verdugo would like to know. The bartender still hovering, weird. What? he wants to ask. A gesture, a line seems to be called for. John raises his bottle. How about a toast? Does he know any toasts?

  “Here’s to swimming with bow-­legged women,” he says.

  The bartender is not amused. Doesn’t get it.

  “That’s a quote. I’m quoting. Quint. From Jaws. You never seen Jaws?”

  Apparently not. The bartender shakes his head, like saying sad, a dude quoting lines from a movie, it’s come to that, and returns to the other end of the bar, his preferred geography. John deciding he most definitely will not be tipping on this round and possibly the next. The jukebox’s current selection fades to a tear-­stained end—a cheery little ditty called, he’s pretty sure, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

  You leave a family once. But then you leave them every day after that, too. There is always the leaving. It never goes away.

  DISAPPEARING IN LOS Angeles is relatively easy. It’s certainly big enough, capable of sufficient anonymity. But he thought he needed something more, a greater exile, and so he left the area, having vaguely decided to travel east and then take it from there, with no real plan or purpose other than putting space and mileage between him and his recent past. And besides, as a lifelong Southern Californian who’d only been out of the state two or three times and never farther east than the Hoover Dam, he got sort of swept up with the idea of finally experiencing some of the rest of the country. It would be an adventure, he tried to convince himself. His own private version of Easy Rider except without the motorcycles, the acid trip, and Dennis Hopper. Getting down to essences. Living off the land. Meeting Indians.
He would turn a bad situation into something positive, and continue to try to tame the guilt that was now part of his blood.

  But nothing much happened. Mostly he drove a lot. Sweated, too. Listened to the same cassettes over and over. The revelations he’d hoped for were a no-­show. The speedometer spun and he squinted like a lost explorer into the approaching horizon. Dust swirled, settled over everything: his car, his backseat, in his ears, a layer of lingering remorse. Tourists always seemed to be asking him for directions, at which he had to laugh. The sky was open and blue and oftentimes disturbingly cloudless, a thing that could swallow you whole and you’d never know the difference. And there was no land to live off, at least none that he could find, at least not for free. So he settled for KOAs and Motels 6, 8, 9, and 12. The only Indians he saw drove pickup trucks and talked on cell phones. Apparently there were no more essences to be had.

  He yawned through a string of jobs that didn’t require paperwork or references. Phoenix. Albuquerque. Missoula, Montana. In Savior Lake, Idaho (good name, that), he watched a woman choke on her Grand Slam, coughing up flecked remnants of scrambled egg and diced ham, her face ghosted with death after. About three months passed, which felt like three years. He swore he saw a new wrinkle or line branching around his eyes every time he glanced up at the rearview mirror, something he tried to avoid doing, not only because of his unsettling reflection, but also because there was a lot of bad voodoo back there, and what else is there to do when you’re driving eight, ten hours straight and “Hotel California” just isn’t cutting it anymore. It became pretty obvious that he wasn’t taking to the vagabond lifestyle; it looked better in the movies. He craved the familiar. He wanted to sleep in, rent a movie, have a pizza delivered. He wasn’t, he concluded, much of a traveler.