The Miracle Girl

by Andrew Roe

  “I’m telling you, Marcus,” she calls out to him. “I can feel it.”

  “Why don’t you just take one of those tests you can buy at Sav-­ons and be done with it?” Marcus answers from the bathroom.

  “I don’t need a test to tell me what I already know,” Mavis says. “I know what’s happening with my body. We got a baby on the way, so get ready, husband. Get ready for the adventure of your life.”

  * * *

  Bryce Resnick hands out the last of the T-­shirts—red, short sleeves, ANABELLE’S ANGELS blazed across the back, a pair of angel wings hovering above the words, his own design, only Smalls and XXLs left. He’s also trying to keep things as orderly as possible now that the procession has commenced; he’s running from the stage to the designated start of the line, people coming forward, hungry for their time with Anabelle. It’s only just begun and already he’s exhausted, having been going-­going-­going since five this morning, making phone calls, setting up, coordinating, checking the p.a. system, tracking down extra trash cans and duct tape and markers for signs. After Karen spoke, he went to the mic and explained to the crowd how it would work: from the viewing line that’s been formed here between the two sections of chairs on the field, we’ll start letting in small groups, then you can come up onto the stage, walk past the tent, and see Anabelle inside, feel free to pause, take a moment, but please try to keep moving along as much as possible, because, as you can see, we have a lot of folks here today, I’ll be at the front of the line helping out, like a traffic cop directing traffic and answering any questions you may have, and if you’re sitting in one of the chairs, please consider that there are others waiting for your seat, and when you pass by Anabelle pictures are fine, video is all right, too, but again try to remember to keep it brief, I’m sorry, but we want to accommodate everyone, this has been an amazing journey and the spirit of Anabelle will always be with us, and if you think about it this isn’t an ending if we keep Anabelle and what she represents in our hearts, thank you.

  He doesn’t know what will happen after today. The arrival of the husband—John—sealed his fate. Even though, sure, he’d fucked things up before that with that kiss. His communication with Karen has been minimal as of late, mostly details and logistics related to the day, but at some point he’d need to talk to her. There was still the website, all the e-mails, the reaching out from all over the country and the world. Maybe Karen was ready for it to stop, but he wasn’t.

  “Can I go yet?” asks the woman who’s next in line, her forehead beaded with sweat, shifting her purse to her other shoulder, switching the bouquet of flowers to her other hand.

  Bryce checks his watch, looks up at the sky, gaping and alive with clouds and color and complicated light. It was a year ago today that his mother died. After a long illness, as they say, and after he had moved back home to take care of her, putting his life on hold—not that it was much of a life, living in West Holly­wood working odd jobs and going to acting auditions and being told things like his face was too asymmetrical. Besides the cancer (specifically, lymphoma; more specifically, non-­Hodgkin’s lymphoma), there were strokes, broken bones, pneumonia, neuropathy, depression, dementia. A total betrayal of the body and mind, and he was witness to it all, his father long dead and his brother long gone. At the end it was just him and the hospice nurse, a Filipina woman named Donna with whom he primarily communicated via hand gestures and degrees of eyebrow arching.

  A year ago today, as he watched men with suits and gloves carry his body-­bagged mother out of the house, the accident also occurred. The very same day. Almost simultaneously. Coincidence? He thinks not. He no longer believes in coincidences. He now believes in fate, destiny, the inevitability of things. Just look at how Anabelle came into his life when he needed her, needed something to turn him inside out, after too many years of floating inconsequence. Anabelle gave him hope. Anabelle gave him something that previously did not exist within him.

  “Is it my turn yet?” the woman asks again.

  “Not quite yet,” Bryce says. “Almost.”

  * * *

  Kellee Clifton is not working today, not officially. She’s not covering the event, but she’s here anyway, flashing her press credentials to bypass the lines. She’s here to give thanks, wanting to see Anabelle one last time, because she got the call from the network and she’s moving on, bound for New York and the real big time, ABC headquarters, a national gig, and it’s because of the girl. The Powers That Be had followed her series of stories about the Miracle Girl, and they were impressed, they made an offer, and now she’s in the midst of packing up her apartment in Los Feliz, saying good-­bye to friends and colleagues, breaking up with her boyfriend (poor Dalton, he wasn’t taking it so well), and it was so amazing to think—Kellee Clifton from a small town in West Virginia no one has ever heard of, and for good reason, growing up poor and invisible, a stutter, a glasses-­wearer, a bark-­eater, a talker to trees, a girl that didn’t get invited to birthday parties because everyone in town knew her family couldn’t afford a gift, and now look at her, just look, the transformation, and if it wasn’t a miracle then it sure sometimes felt like it, how your life can surprise you and surpass your expectations. She wants to touch the girl’s hand one more time, feel her skin, and give thanks.

  * * *

  The earth shakes briefly, then stops.

  * * *

  He purposefully left his clerical collar at home, opting instead for a T-­shirt he received after running the annual Marina del Rey 5K Turkey Trot N Fun Run last month. Meaning he’s here covertly, like he’s undercover, and he’s here to absorb, not make conclusions, part of his ongoing, neverending research. Actually, he should probably be in his office, combing through his findings and deciphering all his notes and preparing for the upcoming presentation to Archbishop McAdams. The calls from the media, the pressure from his superiors. Building, building. Poor Nancy about to crack. Everyone wants to know: what’s the church’s official position on the matter of Anabelle Vincent and her supposed miracles?

  Good question, agrees Father Jim Hinshaw, who’s currently standing on the five-­yard line, about three or so people away from the front of the line leading to the girl, also now calming the jittery woman behind him who’d started hyperventilating when the ground shook with a fierce jump and then ceased just as suddenly, causing a wave of exclamations and whoooooas among the steadfast, heat-­dazed crowd. She’s not from California, the woman explains. She’s from Tennessee. She’s not used to earthquakes. In fact, it’s her first.

  “They’re not all so short and brief,” says Father Jim. “Especially the ones we’ve been having lately. They go on and on. This one was minor compared.”

  Talking like a long-­time resident, Father Jim recently celebrating his two-­year anniversary in Los Angeles, an occasion marked by a phone call to his parents and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

  “Guess I’ve been baptized then,” the woman tells him. “I’m officially in Southern California.”

  Father Jim laughs. Baptized. If she only knew who she was talking to.

  He’d arrived early this morning, his bus getting stuck in the swell of traffic, although he was more than happy to hop off and walk the two miles to the high school. Now it’s past one, the day sweltering along (December! Winter! When would it ever cool down? It was snowing back in Ohio), and the line moves swiftly, efficiently, they’re doing a pretty good job of maintaining the flow of traffic, and soon enough he’s next, and a young man in a red T-­shirt tells him to wait here until it’s time, then it’s time, and then he’s walking toward the stage, rehearsing his prayer for and to the girl. The mother, Karen, sees him, waves him over to the front of the stage and steps down to talk to him.

  “Father Hinshaw,” says Karen. “Were you waiting all this time? You could have come right up here. I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s OK. I was fine waiting in line. I just wanted to see Anabelle again. Like everyone else.”

  “This
is my husband, John.”

  A man on the stage approaches the edge, leans down, extends a hand.

  “John, nice to meet you.”

  Father Jim shakes hands with the husband. There’s never been a husband before.

  “Hi,” says John, a tallish, uncertain-­looking guy. “You’re a . . . priest?”

  “Well, I left the collar at home today. We’re allowed to do that sometimes. Plus the heat. I’m better off.”

  “Father Hinshaw has been working on the investigation,” Karen explains to John. “By the Catholic Church. They putting together a report. How’s it coming along, Father?”

  “Oh, we’re plugging along. A lot of people to interview. A lot of information and stories to sift through. But we’re making progress. Slow but steady. We’ll get there. All your cooperation has been a big help.”

  And as he says all this, he’s picturing all the documents and articles and testimonials piled up and waiting for him on his desk. All the data gathered so far. And yet what it will come down to—for him, personally, not the report—is a gut feeling, a sensation of knowing/not knowing. Like a cop with a hunch. It is, ultimately, a leap of faith. He knows his Kierkegaard. Faith and belief—these supposed occurrences, these purported miracles were not based on evidence, could never be. You make the commitment of belief because that’s what you know to be true in your heart. It was that simple. Doubt still exists, still descends like a dark cloud from time to time. But you make the leap. Again and again. Just because you believe doesn’t mean you don’t have to cross that river repeatedly. You do.

  “How are you holding up, Karen?”

  “It’s been a long day. But we”—looking back at her husband—“we felt like it was the right thing to do. We just didn’t want it to end with shutting and locking our door. It seemed necessary. Some kind of a final send-­off. Closure is what people have been saying.”

  “It’s very kind,” Father Jim says. “This and everything before. Not a lot of people would have done what you did.”

  “Thank you, Father. That’s nice to hear.”

  Father Jim turns and looks behind him, at the line he’d been standing in, a river of souls waiting in the sun. This is what amazes him, even more than the girl: the people who came, the people who need something, the people seeking their own individual solaces, some named, some not named. They had the faces of angels.

  “Why don’t you go inside,” says Karen.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  He climbs the stairs to the stage, ducks into the tent, nods to the doctor and stern-­looking nurse who are monitoring everything. The girl appears the same as on his previous visits to the house, except sweat rims her forehead and face. She remains hooked up to various machines, the portable air conditioner chugs away, and additional fans have been brought in as well. Yet it’s still balmy inside, rain forest-­y. Father Jim quickly catalogs the small mountain of items that have been placed at the foot of the stretcher/bed throughout the day: flowers, balloons, cards, candy, photographs, handwritten notes, stuffed animals. It’s like a minishrine, one of those memorials that spontaneously spring up in the wake of tragedy and death; Anabelle, however, is alive; or rather her own unique version of alive; somewhere in between life and death, hovering in a kind of spiritual and physical limbo, which is perhaps what bestows this apparent holiness upon her. Perhaps.

  Father Jim makes his prayers, says what he has to say. His time is up, and he departs the tent, getting envious stares from those filing by—who is he to receive such special treatment; they are just the masses, and there are so many of them on this long, last, almost-end-of-the-millennium day.

  * * *

  It wasn’t meant to be a funeral, but it kind of feels that way, what with everyone shuffling by, as if paying their final respects, though it’s certainly an ending—or is it, John wonders, really a beginning? For him it is. It’s his chance. His second chance. And he’s not going to fuck things up this time.

  Of course he’d seen it on TV—the people, Anabelle, Karen, the reporters, the spectacle, the women fainting, the men crying—back when he was in Henderson, and then, in person, at the house after his return. Now this, now today. A high school football stadium—his old high school, in fact—brimming with activity. Helicopters flying overhead. Cameras everywhere. If it wasn’t his daughter he’d probably scoff, make jokes, dismiss the whole thing. But he’s inside it, part of it, sort of. So it’s different. He’s experienced firsthand the scores of people who seek out his daughter, and whether or not anything actually happens (a cure, a healing, a prayer answered) it doesn’t really matter. They are better. They have hope. Something that previously did not exist. And it’s the same with him: now he has hope, too.

  They’ve been sitting on the stage for hours, next to each other, side by side, not saying much, occasionally commenting on the size of the crowd and the growing mountain of flowers and gifts at the foot of the stage, crossing and recrossing their legs, sipping bottled water, thankfully shaded by the canopy, marveling at the sight before them, witnesses to countless visitors coming and going, Karen at times checking in with Dr. Patel and the nurse to see how Anabelle is holding up (so far so good). Somebody said the estimate was now over ten thousand. More police were on the way to help out.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” John asks.

  “God yes.”

  They hop off the stage without telling anyone, roam around like teenagers playing hooky (something, in fact, they did together while she was still in high school, driving to the beach and disappearing for the day, everything a possibility and adventure), and everywhere they go people approach Karen like she’s the Pope, wanting to talk to her, shake her hand, give her a hug, touch her if only briefly, commenting on the earlier earthquake and asking her what she thought it meant. It’s like being with a celebrity. And that’s what Karen has become while he was gone: someone that people recognize, that they think they know even if they don’t, a face that elicits an automatic response, warm and welcomed. There’s one guy—kind of pushy, glasses, wearing a backpack, hair greasy, neglected—who says he has a website and could he ask her some questions, but John intervenes, tells the guy Karen needs to clear her head and get some food, sorry man, and then just like that someone else hands them two giant sub sandwiches wrapped in foil, and they peel away from the crowd, munching their food and settling on an empty wooden bench next to the gym, named for a long-­ago alumni who played in the NFL for two seasons.

  “Any big plans for New Year’s Eve?”

  Karen smiles. The sandwiches are almost finished. They’d both forgotten to eat, too immersed in the proceedings to note their hunger, which had been unleashed now that food was en route to their stomachs.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Probably just stay in. I’ll be lucky if I make it past eleven.”

  “Come on. Dick Clark is counting on you.”

  There are full-­blown conversations now, even some of their old banter. Each day, then, he proves his worthiness a little more. Progress. Because when trust has been broken like this—well, there are no quick fixes. He knows this. The only cure is time. Proof that he’s staying, will stay. He also knows there have been phone calls and conversations on the subject of his return. Warnings to Karen from family and friends and people he doesn’t know. Some overt and some not so overt. If he left once he’ll leave again. Men are men. People don’t change, only the seasons change (unless of course you live in Los Angeles).

  During those awkward times, he’ll slink toward Anabelle’s room and check on her and the current visitor, who usually will thank him and confess his or her story to him in a few hurried sentences. He’s heard a lot of stories since he’s been back. He already understood how fragile life can be, how quickly things can change and turn tragic (the accident had taught him all that, and more), but he receives further affirmation of this from these brand-­new tales of woe and despair and misfortune. How people can be shattered yet still manage to wake up in the
morning, do what they need to do. Then the visitor will leave (again thanking him) and he’ll be alone. Just him. His daughter. The room. The first time he saw her after his return: her face looked essentially the same, a bit older perhaps, motionless and mysterious as ever, but he discerned a sparkle of recognition there, a sense that she, too, knew he was back. And she was happy about this. And wanted to throw her arms around him and say she loved him still. Welcome home, Daddy. These were the people of his life: his wife, his daughter. This was where he should be. Daddy. Husband. John. Life could resume now. He was lucky. He was sleeping on the couch. And that was fine. This low-­level kindling he hoped to coax into a full-­on flame.